logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2024
33m 6s

This Is Why We Play: Stories about motiv...

Story Collider, Inc.
About this episode
In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers give us behind the scenes glimpses into why they do what they do. Part 1: While constantly staring at Mercury’s craters for NASA's MESSENGER mission, a picture of the Galapagos Islands captures Paul Byrne’s attention. Part 2: While serving in the navy to get his engineering degree, David Estrada is struck by t ... Show More
Up next
Yesterday
Blood & Guts: Stories about hemoglobin and intestines
In this week’s episode, we wade into the bloody (and sometimes gory) side of science. Part 1: Shawn Musgrave wants to donate blood, but runs headfirst into the FDA’s lifetime ban on gay men as donors. Part 2: While working with the condor recovery program, Molly Astell opens a fr ... Show More
24m 37s
Oct 3
Close Calls: Stories about near misses
In this week’s episode, our storytellers face life-or-death moments they’ll never forget.Part 1: On a trip to Colombia for a research conference, biologist Stephanie Galla must rely on her fight-or-flight instincts when she is cornered by a mugger with a knife. Part 2: An ordinar ... Show More
28m 56s
Sep 26
Best of Story Collider: Hypothesis
This week we present two classic stories from people who had hypotheses. Part 1: Teaching sixth grade science becomes much more difficult when Xochitl Garcia's students start hypothesizing that fire is alive. Part 2: When journalist John Rennie is assigned to cover an entomologic ... Show More
35m 31s
Recommended Episodes
Oct 2023
2023 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium: Part 2
Join Planetary Radio host Sarah Al-Ahmed for part two of her trip to the 2023 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium in Houston, Texas.  You'll hear from Mike LaPointe and John Nelson, the NIAC Program Executive and Deputy Program Executive along with Theresa Benyo (N ... Show More
49m 58s
Nov 2021
Deliberately doomed dart
DART is a space mission designed to hit a distant asteroid and knock it slightly out of orbit. It’s a test mission, a pilot project for a way of potentially protecting the earth from a stray asteroid. We hear from mission coordinators Nancy Chabot and Andy Rivkin, both from the A ... Show More
30m 15s
May 2017
EP 38: Beau Lotto - Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently
In this episode we discuss: *The 3 steps we must each take to open ourselves up to new possibilities *Why pursuing conflict is crucial to our personal evolution *How to create the environment for those around us to live a creative and innovative life *The reason we search for cer ... Show More
44m 37s
Jan 2022
The James Webb Space Telescope launches astronomy into a new era
Now the mission has reached its destination, what lies ahead for the science programme? 
46m 20s
Jan 2024
FLASHBACK FRIDAYS: Harvard Meets Hogwarts: The Science-Backed Guide to Controlling REAL Magic with Dean Radin Ph.D
Dean Radin is Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS), Associated Distinguished Professor of Integral and Transpersonal Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Swami Vivekananda University in Ban ... Show More
1h 6m
Sep 2023
2023 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium: Part 1
Join Planetary Radio host Sarah Al-Ahmed on a trip to the 2023 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium in Houston, Texas. In this jam-packed two-part series, you'll hear Sarah's interviews with the inspiring NIAC fellows who are thinking up the technologies that could ... Show More
59m 51s
May 2022
196 | Judea Pearl on Cause and Effect
To say that event A causes event B is to not only make a claim about our actual world, but about other possible worlds — in worlds where A didn’t happen but everything else was the same, B would not have happened. This leads to an obvious difficulty if we want to infer causes fro ... Show More
1h 16m
Mar 2023
Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Dedicated to a synthesis of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines, the scope of its ambitions were matched only ... Show More
1h 21m
Jan 2021
Astrophysicist Andy Fabian
Professor Andrew Fabian from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy has spent his career trying to unravel the mystery of how some of the most dramatic events in the universe can profoundly influence its evolution. For over 50 years he’s been examining our universe using X-ray satell ... Show More
27m 39s