What The If?

Listener Anne of Queens got us thinking about flying reindeer for the holidays. Imagine herds of 1,500-pound mammals migrating through your town like Canada geese. Suddenly those goose droppings don't seem so bad. Discover why the classic Santa sleigh makes no aerodynamic sense (eight reindeer in parallel? Your cargo's dragging on the ground) and why the real solution is a reindeer dirigible with...

What the if the Sun suddenly turned green? Your pizza now looks like charcoal because all red things go black. Stop signs become invisible. The sky shifts from cheerful blue to permanent dusk. And plants? They absolutely despise green light—they reflect it because green photons are the M&Ms they pick out of the bowl. So with a green Sun, photosynthesis grinds to a halt, oxygen tanks, and everythin...

Happy Thanksgiving! We're off this week for the holiday, so we're presenting an encore presentation of an episode that was originally broadcast on September 5, 2018, and remains one of our all-time audience favorites. What the if humans evolved into shrikes - those adorable songbirds that impale their prey on thorns and barbed wire? Dr. Kiki Sanford, neurobiologist and host of This Week in Science...

Scientists just discovered ant queens that give birth to two completely different species - not twins, but actual separate species hatching from the same mother. But what the if every animal on Earth reproduced this way? Suddenly every pregnancy becomes a species reveal party, dairy farms need to manage herds where some cows give birth to regular calves while others pop out Ice Age yaks, and your...

This week we're trading hypothetical fungi and exploding planets for something scarier: actual government budgets. But don't worry - watching America accidentally hand the space race to China is just as entertaining as any sci-fi disaster scenario, and way more preventable. Think "For All Mankind" but with spreadsheets instead of heroic astronauts. What happens when NASA's budget gets slashed in h...

What the if mosquitoes were helpless against the sweet smell of their own doom? Scientists genetically engineered Metarhizium fungus to smell so irresistibly delicious that mosquitoes can't help but fly straight into deadly traps with a 90-100% success rate. Discover why these bloodsuckers are actually tiny recycling agents in nature (who knew?), learn why we can't just eliminate them without the...

What the if Frankenstein was real and doctors actually tried stitching corpses together to create new people? Forget dramatic lightning strikes and brooding in Gothic towers - the real adventure is managing the world's most complicated pharmacy order when seventeen different immune systems meet for the first time and immediately start fighting. Join us as we explore why creating a functional monst...

What the if all bodies of water on Earth were fizzy like soda? In the real world, Seneca Lake in New York produces mysterious underwater booms called "Seneca guns" that scientists think come from occasional gas pockets, but nobody knows for sure. But in our imaginary world where every lake constantly fizzes like champagne, Chicago would relocate to the mountains as Lake Michigan burps methane clou...

Honey guide birds in Africa respond to culturally distinct human calls and lead hunters to beehives, where humans crack them open and birds feast on the exposed beeswax. But what the if humans could whistle for any wild animal to help with tasks? Call a deer to haul your Costco groceries home (extra cabbage as payment), summon crows to find your lost earring for peanuts, or live in a Viking villag...

Scientists just used artificial intelligence to design the world's first AI-generated viruses capable of hunting down and killing drug-resistant strains of E. coli. These bacteriophages look like tiny alien pineapples with syringes that stab bacterial cells, and they're just the beginning of AI-created life. From Matt's dream of dish-cleaning bacteria that won't eat you (hopefully) to the accident...

What the if your brain literally ran out of storage space like a laptop refusing to save one more file? Neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin explains how memory isn't a filing cabinet but more like water carving rivers down a mountain - and when you carve too many paths, everything becomes a muddy mess. Discover why Mr. S, who remembered everything perfectly, couldn't recognize faces or taste food bec...

What the if gravitational waves were big enough to see and feel? Instead of measuring distortions smaller than a proton, imagine watching your coffee table accordion in and out as ripples from distant black hole collisions pass through your local cafe. Every time Charlie the cat bats a toy mouse in Greenwich Village, sugar cubes scrunch in Williamsburg cafes. Brain surgeons would need to ask all o...

What the if you found a rock on Mars that might - emphasis on might - show signs of ancient life? NASA's Perseverance rover discovered intriguing leopard spots in a 3.5-billion-year-old rock that contain vivianite, a mineral that could potentially indicate biological activity, though scientists remain cautiously skeptical. These dark-outlined splotches bear some resemblance to patterns that microb...

Our guest this week is science fiction author Nicholas Casbarro, who brings us a universe-changing concept from his novel Vitalerium - a radioactive space rock that enables faster-than-light travel. What the if humans discovered this exotic material so powerful that a fist-sized chunk can propel a football field-sized spaceship at 12 times the speed of light? Matt helps us explore the real science...

D'oh! We had technical difficulties this week and so we are presenting this encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes. It also happens to be Kirby's birthday, and we're eager to honor his awesomeness by sharing with you this fabulous episode we did with him on December 16, 2021. Enjoy the ride! --- DR. KIRBY RUNYON is a planetary geomorphologist and morphodynamicist seeking to unders...

What the if the speed of light crawled along at walking speed instead of zipping around at 300,000 kilometers per second? Tracey McCallum from Ontario wondered about this scenario. Imagine reaching for your cat only to grab empty air because she's already somewhere else entirely. Baseball becomes a black-hole-creating death sport when pitchers throw faster than light speed. Concert audiences sing...

Matt & Gaby are on assignment this week, so we present an encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes. This one is super fun and comes from Sept. 16, 2024. We hope you enjoy it. --- What if humans were the latest must-have pet for trendy aliens? This episode explores the hilarious and bizarre scenario of extraterrestrial beings snatching us up like puppies from a shelter. From alien ve...

What the if there was a nuclear reactor on the moon? NASA wants to launch a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor to the lunar surface before 2030, powerful enough to run about 80 households. From the terrifying "tickling the dragon's tail" experiments at Los Alamos where scientists held uranium chunks apart with just a screwdriver, to the reality that plutonium feels "like holding a rabbit" when you touch...

Anne from Queens, a longtime listener and proud sticker-carrying Patreon supporter, inspired this week's episode by asking: what the if humans couldn't sweat? Discover a world where everyone walks around panting like dogs with their tongues hanging out, cities install massive water pipeline infrastructure for knee-deep living rooms, and portable misters become as essential as smartphones. From the...

What the if we just kept making telescopes bigger and bigger until they're the size of entire planetary orbits? Starting with the new Vera Rubin Observatory's 21-foot camera that immediately spotted 2,000 asteroids, explore a world where astronomers drop telescopes throughout Earth's orbit to create a synthetic lens 200 million miles wide. Discover how gravitational lenses could let you see taxi c...

Apologies for the delay in posting episodes! Holiday and travel got the best of us. But we're back, baby! ---- WHAT THE IF we could trade genes like playing cards? Scientists have discovered that fungi possess "Starship elements" - massive genetic cassettes that jump between species carrying cargo genes for superpowers like heavy metal resistance. These DNA chunks got their Star Trek names because...

What the if we could go back to 1930 and experience the reluctant discovery of an entirely new kind of particle? When electrons started bouncing off things with missing momentum, physicist Wolfgang Pauli faced a choice: abandon the fundamental law of conservation of energy or invent something completely invisible to save physics. His solution was the neutrino - a particle so tiny and elusive it to...

[Matt & Gaby are away this week, so please enjoy this Encore Presentation of one of our most popular episodes.] What The IF... you could see the TRUE SCALE of the Universe? We imagine entering the notorious torture device from he dastardly mind of the great Douglas Adams. Tune in to find out how it feels, and bring a BIG EGO and a hunger for fairy cake because this is a mind expanding adventure if...

What if climate change made submarines completely undetectable? As ocean temperatures rise, thermal layers are disrupting sonar so dramatically that entire regions become acoustic dead zones where submarines can hide indefinitely. Watch civilization adapt when nuclear subs vanish into warm water pockets, jellyfish swarms clog warship engines, and whale songs get drowned out by thermal chaos. Welco...

What if the universe was stuck in an eternal cosmic Groundhog Day? Picture traveling backwards through time past the Big Bang only to discover you've looped right back to where you started - like a cosmic snake eating its own tail. Explore the mind-bending possibility that our entire universe repeats itself in endless cycles, where infinite copies of you exist scattered across millions of light ye...