I love podcasts, you love podcasts, your grandma probably loves podcasts. Looking for some science you can enjoy while your eyeballs do stuff that isn’t reading? Perhaps hoping to regurgitate something that sounds smart while sitting around with family this holiday season? Great. Read on.
Flash Forward
Half science, half fiction (which is why it also made our list of the best sci-fi podcasts): Every week, host Rose Eveleth picks a fictional future and has real experts explain how it might work. What if all drugs were made legal? What if antibiotics stopped working? What if the internet suddenly disappeared?
Episode recs: Micro But Mighty, The Altered State, Bye Bye Binary
Radiolab
Radiolab is actually kind of a dinosaur in podcast years: It’s been around in some capacity or another since 2002. But it’s no wonder the show has stuck around. The hosts have a knack for drawing audiences in to deeply reported science stories. The banter can grow a little tiresome—it’s feels pretty formulaic at this point—but Radiolab’s stories are always smart and interesting, and often pretty touching to boot. The podcast has branched out to non-science-y subjects in recent years, but curiosity is always a key story element.
Episode recs: Colors, Shrink, Sight Unseen, Juicervose, Radiolab Live: Tell-Tale Heart Featuring Oliver Sacks
Science Friday
I’m a little biased, because I show up on SciFri’s news roundup every once in a while, but when it comes to reviewing the week in science, there’s no one like Ira Flatow. His genuine enthusiasm for all things science means his show is remarkably conversational and super informative. SciFri is particularly good to listen to on your way to family holiday gatherings, as it can get you up to date on recent science headlines while giving you a few intriguing evergreen stories with which to impress the in-laws.
Episode rec: 2015’s Year in Review, in which I talk about poop
Gastropod
Here’s another great holiday season recommendation (because food). Gastropod dives into the science and history behind the stuff we stuff our faces with. With a mix of long, in-depth pieces and bite-sized food facts, this scrumptious show will make you feel like one smart cookie at the dinner table.
Episode recs: What is Native American Cuisine?, Kombucha Culture, The End of the Calorie
Invisibilia
Invisibilia is a must-listen: The show examines the hidden forces that influence human behavior. The hosts get into lots of fascinating psychology, but my favorite episodes are the ones that focus on profoundly weird brain quirks that can occur. People who can’t feel fear? Check. Folks with empathy so strong they believe they physically experience the sensations they see others experience? Yup. A blind man who insists he can see? Absolutely.
Episode recs: How to Become Batman, The Secret History of Thoughts, Fearless
PERIOD
This relatively new offering goes into the science and historical baggage of (duh) periods. If you get periods, you’ll be fascinated. If you don’t get periods, you’ll also be fascinated. Go ahead and learn something. Periods aren’t gross. It’s all gonna be okay.
Episode recs: This one is so new that you should just listen to all of it, tbh
Science Vs
This new show from Gimlet media (the network behind the popular internet culture show Reply All) puts various ideas (fracking, gun control, hypnosis) to the test using science. What’s a fad, what’s a fact, and what’s somewhere in the mixed-up middle? Now you’ll have an arsenal of knowledge to pull from when your cousin starts babbling about the importance of attachment parenting.
Episode recs: Attachment Parenting, The G-Spot, Organic Food
The Story Collider
Scientists do interesting work, but they’re often interesting people, too. The Science Collider is a story-slam type podcast not unlike The Moth, but it focuses on stories “about science”. This is defined quite broadly for the purposes of the show: Sometimes you’ll hear about things that happened inside a lab, sometimes a scientific expert will tell an emotional tale that they’re able to relate back to their line of work in some powerful, poetic way, and sometimes someone will just have a lot of scientific or medical facts to share about something really random that happened to them. If you like science and you like stories, it’s a no-brainer.
TECH ZONE IT 