What's new today

Story of this episode: It was a cold morning in July 2020. A crew manning a 46ft boat saw a group of killer whales swimming towards them. They waved towards the friendly orcas, whom they had met many times before. But the orcas were in no mood for a friendly chat. They rammed the boat in full force, chewed pieces of its rudder and pushed the boat around, nearly 180 degrees. As the crew panicked an...

An online platform where children can meet others, interact and make friends, all while playing a video game - that's Roblox in short. This is a platform that has more than 43 million daily active users. What makes this game so popular? Even more popular than Minecraft? To find out more about this game, I chat with 9-year old Rishaan Das from Bengaluru, to look at this game from the perspective of...

If you are like me, you might catch yourself wondering how to avert a disaster that hurtled the way of dinosaurs (a meteorite crashing into earth). If you are like a scientist at NASA, you'd have found a way to avert that disaster. If you are like any space scientist around the world, you'd be onto greater things - such as finding out how the solar system looked like, a few billion years ago. NASA...

A couple of years ago, a group of people in nice long white lab coats (some call them scientists) set about solving a mystery about animals on islands. They had 2 interesting clues to get on about(a) a rodent the size of a 2-year old child. It was scurrying around eating up large chunks of your cake in one go.(b) a hippo similar in size to young children. A biologist called Foster first suggested...

Did you know that 'Face with tears of joy' is the most popular emoji of 2023?Did you know that Gen-Z things pagers are bookmarks? Join a 10-year old Isabelle Abraham to listen to a scintillating description of the Emoji movie. Isabelle attended What's new today's podcasting workshop and was thrilled to present her views 'based entirely on her original research', as she puts it:)Do you like to read...

Ever wondered what would happen if you took a big black rectangular solar panel from your rooftops, and place them on a lake? Can the solar panel float? Will the water below damage the panel? Will the solar panel be efficient? generate electricity? Middle schooler Medhansh and primary schooler Pranshi, both from Aspee Nutan Academy, Mumbai, dig deep into these questions. In this episode, they shar...

The Harry Potter book series took the world by storm. Many a child today owes his / her love for reading from J.K.Rowling's creations. The thick, fat pages of Goblet of Fire or the Deathly Hallows hardly deterred 7 and 8 year olds around the world. For some children, it is hard to believe a world where there were no Harry Potter books. It was only 25 years ago that the first Harry Potter book - Ph...

Ink and paper was all that we think of, when the printer comes to our mind. But if we told you that you could order a cheesecake at the printer. Scientists at Columbia University recently introduced a 3D printing machine for children to choose which toppings and what flavours they would like on each cheesecakeWith this, we sign off our 120th episode of Season 1. We will be taking a short break thi...

In this podcast episode, we dive into the fascinating world of artificial intelligence, exploring the distinctions between two powerful tools: ChatGPT and Google, and pondering the question of whether ChatGPT is poised to dominate the future. Drawing from personal experiences, 11-year-old Vidyut and 12-year-old Rohan explore how from using YouTube to expand our understanding of art to leveraging G...

Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy won the men's doubles finals at Badminton Asia - the first pair from India to have won this in 58 years. We are familiar with Saina Nehwal and P.V.Sindhu - two Indians who made India proud by winning Olympic medals. Now Chirag and Satwiksairaj bring badminton once again into centrestage. In this episode, 13-year old Eesha Vijay shares her thoughts on -'how...

Walt Disney used to take his children to neighbourhood parks. He felt disappointed with the kind of experiences these parks had to offer. He had grand ideas of building something more interesting. That's how Disney theme parks came to be about. About this time, he had already started making animation movies. So combining the fairy tale characters he was showing in his movies with the fabulous them...

5 rings bring images of sports and victories in the Olympic. 4 rings shift our minds towards cars and the company Audi. A tick mark takes us to shoes and the company Nike. The letter G now represents the all-important Gmail. Brands and logos are in front of us wherever we go. But why do companies change these, from time to time? Why does the company Pepsi keep changing the way its logo looks? List...

Project Re-shark is an initiative to bring more sharks into our oceans. While some people have been busy over-fishing sharks, a few others have taken it upon themselves to grow baby sharks in aquariums and then releasing them back into the wild. To talk about this interesting real life story, 7-year old Owen from New York (USA) joins us. While sharks are quite the thing that 7-year olds love to ta...

No longer do you need to worry if your mobile phones are near or far from telecom towers. No longer do you need to think about whether you'll get internet access when you are vacationing in some far off place, away from civilization, or up on a mountain or on a cruise ship far away from land. In this episode, Syed Ayan, a fourth grader from Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, explains how all of this will soo...

If there were a genie that said - name your wish and I'll show you a picture of how your wishes or dreams would look, we seem to have found it. It goes by the name 'artificial intelligence for art'. In the past few months, many such engines generate art after you give them a prompt. You could go wild with your imagination and even ask for - 'show me a picture of a lion sitting in an office typing...

From email IDs to opening youtube accounts, passwords are some of the most common things we type, day in and day out. In this episode, ninth-graders Shambhavi Nautiyal and Advaith Nair from Ahlcon Public School, Delhi, share their thoughts on how we can make passwords safer. They also speaking of impending risks to our passwords from quantum computers. To answer the quiz at the end, the two passwo...

If the word countryside and summer vacations reminds you of adventures of the Famous Five, children in Japan are being enticed to have just that - a lot of adventures by the village-side all year round! Japan is facing extreme pressure in its tightly congested cities such as Tokyo. The government is encouraging families to move to smaller towns by the city. They hope that the monetary incentive wi...

Roald Dahl used to visit the chocolate factories near his school, as a boy. The multiple machinations and the workers in the factory all appeared to be a part of a magical world. Years later, these experiences would inspire the popular work of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'.In this episode, you can listen to Ms. Geetanjali Shetty Kaul, a professional storyteller who chats with primary schoole...

Ever wondered how Mufasa's road appears majestic? or how Rapunzel's hair flows all around? or how Olaf jumps and hops around singing in the snow? You can find answers to a ton of such questions in this episode. Chatrasal Singh, an animator with Disney Studios at Burbank, California, joins us. 10-year old Shriya from Bengaluru and 12-year old Ananya Harish from Mumbai quiz him on how he helps creat...

This is a 3-part podcast series, as Disney celebrates its 100 years of existence in 2023. This episode (which is part 2 of this series) covers the last couple of decades of Disney's existence. 12-year old Ananya Harish from Bunt Sangha's S.M.Shetty International School, Mumbai, India joins as the guest speaker in this episode. After much reading about Disney characters (esp. Disney princesses), An...

Disney studio was established in 1923. Rabbits, mice, ducks, cats and many more characters came alive on screen, thanks to Walt Disney and his team. Not happy with just showing his audience fairy tales on screen, Disney also expanded to develop theme parks. Now you could meet some of these characters in person and on rides, in these theme parks. As time went on, Disney studios brought bigger and r...

What's flaxseed got to do with Lenovo? What's peanut shells got to do with food delivery? What's a pencil got to do with our terrace gardens? The short answer is - packaging that is sustainable. In this episode, 9-year old Shanaya, 8-year old Dhanush and 9-year old Isabelle from the Children's Academy Group of schools, talk about these stories. While we often talk about moving away from single-use...

Superheroes have captivated our imagination for eons. The Marvel Cinematic Universe - Spiderman, Doctor Strange and many more, has been one of the most successful superhero franchises. But a void has now arisen. With Iron Man and Black Widow dead, Steve Rogers retired and Captain Marvel busy protecting other galaxies, the case for a new band of Young Avengers is high. In this episode, 7-year old A...

In the story 'Finding Nemo', the journey undertaken by Marlin and Dory kept us all on the edge of our seats. Some of us may have also heaved a sigh of relief when the clownfish Nemo is saved and is back home. What if we told you that a band of humans have come together to save many more creatures of the sea, the ocean floor and much more. Yayy! It's true. Listen to 8-yr old Tweesha, 9-year old Saa...

In 64 years, for the first time, Dr. Nicola Fox, a British-origin scientist has been appointed to head science projects at NASA. Her dad loved science and especially space, and some of that seemed to have rubbed off on her. She also went to a girls' school and felt fully at home in science laboratories. There were no boys around, so no one told her that science may be for boys (mainly). In this ep...