Join the team of Science for the People for one last episode, where we interview... ourselves. We talk about our time as Skeptically Speaking and Science for the People, the rebranding, our favourite episodes, how the podcast has changed us, an

#642 The Last Episode

Dec 31st, 2023 1h

#641 The Last Nerd Gift Guide

Dec 16th, 2023 1h

For the last time, Bethany and Rachelle skip gleefully across the world wide web, plucking nerdy objects out of obscurity to shine a spotlight on in hopes a few of these fascinating, delightful things find their way into the right kind of geeky

#640 The Last Science Book Club

Dec 7th, 2023 1h 33m

For the last time, Joanne Manaster and John Dupuis talk us through their favourite science reads from the last year, and add a little "time travel" seasoning in to keep things interesting, harkening back to old favs as well as talking about the

#639 The One About Periods

Nov 20th, 2023 1h 5m

Period. Menstruation. For something that roughly half the human population does, we sure don't talk about it much. But it's a fascinating biological phenomenon with a really interesting history, and the potential for a better future. We're talk

#638 Do you feel love? What about ecstasy?

Nov 7th, 2023 1h 19m

If you're plugged in to science news (and you, our listeners, definitely are) then you know that psychedelics like ketamine and LSD are having a moment in therapy. But what about Ecstasy (MDMA)? What makes it different, and what could it do? Th

#637 A special announcement

Nov 6th, 2023 18m 29s

In the beginning, way, way back in 2008, this podcast was just a bunch of Canadians wanting to talk about science and skepticism. Nearly 15 years later, we've spread out all over the globe, spoken to famous writers and scientists the world over

#636 Life on an unruly planet

Oct 24th, 2023 1h

We might say climate change is coming for us. But really, it's here. Fires are worse in hotter, drier conditions. Hurricanes are powered up supersoaking storms. Even tides are now rising into the streets and the beautiful oceanfront property we

#635 Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

Oct 9th, 2023 1h

In the book Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, journalist Ben Goldfarb details how roads have transformed our world. On this week’s show, Ben shares insights from his reporting on the science of studying how roads

#634 Back to the future

Sep 25th, 2023 1h

We all know that climate change is coming for us. It's already here. But it's really, really hard to change people's actions, especially when those actions don't benefit the here and now, but matter most for the future. They require long views

#633 An Ice History

Sep 14th, 2023 1h

Ice is one of those invisible little gears of the modern, westernized world. We don't notice it when we have it, and as soon as we can't get it we find ourselves desperate to get it back. It wasn't always like this: ice started as a luxury of m

#632 We are what we eat

Aug 28th, 2023 1h

You are what you eat, right? Well then, who were the ancient Romans, and who were the people they colonized? And who are we? And why do we eat so much chicken? This week we're sitting down with Silvia Valenzuela Lamas to talk about how Roman co

#631 Tenacious Beasts

Aug 14th, 2023 1h

In his book Tenacious Beasts, philosopher and writer Christopher Preston explores creature comebacks. Some of these stories highlight the evolutionary advantages that animals have racked up over millennia, while others are marked by intensive h

#630 The Jewel Box

Jul 31st, 2023 1h

A lot of us learned basic ecology in primary school. Maybe we took a biology class in high school or secondary school and dug in a little more. We use terms like "niche" but do we really know what they mean? How much complexity does that little

#629 How birds go the distance

Jul 5th, 2023 1h

Birds carry out some of the most amazing feats of athleticism in the world. Hummingbirds cross the entire Gulf of Mexico, their tiny wings beating continuously for three days straight. A single bird will fly across the entire Pacific ocean in o

#628 Brave the Wild River

Jun 19th, 2023 1h

In 1938, two botanists, Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter, made an ambitious voyage down the Colorado River driven by the desire to chronicle the plant life of the American Southwest. In her new book Brave the Wild River, science journalist Melissa

#627 Ancient Migrations

Jun 5th, 2023 1h

Humans are a roaming species. We've been traveling from continent to continent since our very earliest evolution. In fact, we've been doing it even before we were humans. This week, we're talking with archaeologist Radu Iovita about the ancient

#626 Our Friend, the Wasp

May 25th, 2023 1h

Is there an insect more universally despised than the wasp? What have they done to incur so much of our ire? No one likes them. Well... almost no one. Seirian Sumner, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at University College London and cofounder o

#625 This one really is about aliens

May 9th, 2023 1h

Do you believe there's something Out There? What do our ideas of aliens say about what life is, how life could look and act? And what does it say about us, about what we think life needs, wants, and should be? We're talking with Jaime Green abo

#624 The Devil’s Element

Apr 24th, 2023 1h

With fertilizers that supply phosphorus–what Asimov called “life’s bottleneck”– people broke the circle of life. Dan Egan’s new book The Devil’s Element traces the history of this essential element from curiosity to crop miracle. Egan documents

#623 Peopling the Americas

Apr 11th, 2023 1h

Thousands of years ago, people crossed a land bridge from Siberia to Western Alaska and dispersed southward into what we now call the Americas. The story of exactly when that was, how they did it, and who they were has fascinated us for a long

#622 What's wrong Colonel Sanders? Feeling chicken?

Mar 27th, 2023 1h

Give a cluck about chickens. The most popular meat actually has a 3,500 year history of cockfighting, backyard keeping, incubation invention, and a lot of scrambled eggs. And now, people are keeping them in their backyards as pets. How did we g

#621 Of memoir and sea creatures

Mar 13th, 2023 1h

Sea creatures do so many things that astound us. They regrow and regenerate, they incubate eggs for years without ever eating a morsel. They can be one big individual one moment, and a multicelled colony the next. And writers like Sabrina Imble

#620 The Matter of Everything

Feb 27th, 2023 1h

In the past 120 years, physicists have revamped our understanding of matter — of everything that makes up the world. This week on the show, particle physicist Suzie Sheehy takes us on a tour through a cosmos of physics experiments that have rev

#619 Breathless

Feb 16th, 2023 1h

In January 2020 a race began to identify, control, and understand a novel coronavirus that quickly spread around the world creating a global pandemic. In his most recent book "Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus", writer Da