MENTAL HEALTH: School is already stressful enough without a pandemic and polarizing election thrown in. Nate and Sam wondered how students can take care of their mental health during these historically stressful times. Kate Staley, director of

How Do Researchers Work with Deadly Viruses?

Oct 5th, 2020 22m

BIOSAFETY LEVEL 3: With all the news about COVID-19 and talk about developing a vaccine, Nate and Sam wondered how researchers actually study these dangerous viruses. Joyce Jose, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn

What is Graduate School Like? Do Graduate Students Have “Free Time”?

Sep 7th, 2020 37m 52s

GRAD SCHOOL: It’s season two of “Hey, I got a question about that” and Nate and Sam are back and better than ever. In this episode (with an interview filmed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic), Nicole Famularo and Albanie Hendrickson-Stives visit t

What's Going On at the Eberly College of Science During Covid-19?

Jun 8th, 2020 34m 17s

PANDEMIC: Nate and Same talk to Doug Cavener, the Verne M. Willaman Dean of the Eberly College of Science at Penn State via Zoom about how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the college. Can the dean work from home? How did remote learning work

What are Genetic Tests? Are They Reliable?

Mar 6th, 2020 31m 23s

GENETIC TESTING: Cheryl Keller, associate research professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, stops by the studio to talk about genetic testing and direct-to-consumer genetics. What can these genetics tests tell us? How are

What is a Microbiome?

Feb 3rd, 2020 24m

MICROBIOME: Emily Davenport, assistant professor of biology at Penn State, visits Nate and Sam in the newly-revamped studio to talk sh*t. Well, sort of. Emily studies the human microbiome, how it evolved, and how it is related to human health.

Where Do Emerging Diseases Come From?

Jan 6th, 2020 24m 31s

EMERGING DISEASES AND BATS: Nita Bharti, Lloyd Huck Early Career Professor and assistant professor of biology at Penn State, drops in to the studio to help Nate and Sam understand how human encroachment into animal habitats is impacting emergin

What is Big Data? How Does Data Get Big?

Dec 2nd, 2019 38m 28s

BIG DATA: Francesca Chiaromonte, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Statistics for the Life Sciences at Penn State, joins Nate and Sam in the studio to talk about data, BIG data. Massive amounts of data are being collected constantly

Is Pluto a Planet? What is a Planet Anyway?

Nov 4th, 2019 41m 38s

PLANETS: Chris Palma, associate dean for undergraduate students in the Eberly College of Science and teaching professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, visits the studio to explain to Nate and Sam that nostalgia is not a proper sci

How Do Animals Handle Environmental Change? Can They Adapt?

Oct 6th, 2019 23m 8s

ANIMALS ADAPT: Tracy Langkilde, professor and head of the Department of Biology at Penn State, joins Nate and Sam in the studio to discuss how animals respond to changes in their environment, like invasive species and traffic noise. How do liza

How Do Vaccines Work? Are Vaccines Safe?

Sep 3rd, 2019 39m 16s

VACCINES: Too many guests to fit into our tiny studio this month! So, Nate and Sam take a trip to the Millennium Science Complex at Penn State to talk to Scott Lindner, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; Matt Ferrari, a

How Do Our Genomes Differ? What Does That Variation Mean?

Aug 5th, 2019 23m 16s

GENOME VARIATION: Nate and Sam talk to Santhosh Girirajan, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and of anthropology at Penn State, about what variation in the human genome means and how it relates to complex neurodevelopmen

What Was The Nittany Lion?

Jul 1st, 2019 33m 12s

NITTANY LION GENOME: Nate and Sam are in their new studio for this conversation with Shaun Mahony, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, and George “PJ” Perry, Harry J. & Elissa M. Sichi Early Career Professor

Where Does Color Come From? What Causes Iridescence?

Jun 10th, 2019 19m 41s

STRUCTURAL COLOR: Nate and Sam visit Lauren Zarzar, assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State, to talk about color and a cool kitchen science experiment. Where does color come from and what makes things like opals and butterfly wings iride

Is There Life On Other Planets? How Do We Look For It?

May 6th, 2019 20m

ALIEN LIFE: In this inaugural episode, Nate and Sam travel to Penn State’s observatory on the roof of Davey Laboratory to talk to Jason Wright, associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics, about the possibility of life out there in the un

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