Hey Undiscovered listeners! We’re back to tell you about a brand new show from Science Friday. Universe Of Art is a podcast about artists who use science to take their creations to the next level.Hosted by SciFri producer and musician D. Peters

Science Friday presents Science Diction

Mar 8th, 2020 2m 7s

Hello Undiscovered fans! We're here to tell you about a new show we've been working on at Science Friday. Science Diction is a podcast about words—and the science stories behind them.Hosted by SciFri producer and self-proclaimed word nerd Joha

New Show: Science Diction

Mar 8th, 2020 2m 7s

Spontaneous Generation

Dec 11th, 2019 20m 24s

These days, biologists believe all living things come from other living things. But for a long time, people believed that life would, from time to time, spontaneously pop into existence more often—and not just that one time at the base of the e

Into The Ether

Dec 4th, 2019 18m 18s

In 1880, scientist Albert Michelson set out to build a device to measure something every 19th century physicist knew just had to be there. The “luminiferous ether” was invisible and pervaded all of space. It helped explain how light traveled, a

Planet Of The Killer Apes

Nov 27th, 2019 23m 55s

In Apartheid-era South Africa, a scientist uncovered a cracked, proto-human jawbone. That humble fossil would go on to inspire one of the most blood-spattered theories in all of paleontology: the “Killer Ape” theory. According to the Killer Ap

Like Jerry Springer For Bluebirds

Nov 20th, 2019 25m 46s

“Do men need to cheat on their women?” a Playboy headline asked in the summer of 1978. Their not-so-surprising conclusion: Yes! Science says so! The idea that men are promiscuous by nature, while women are chaste and monogamous, is an old and t

Mini: The Undercover Botanist

Mar 28th, 2019 15m 54s

In 1767, a young French servant sailed around the world, collecting plants previously unknown to Western science. The ship’s crew knew the servant as “Jean,” the scrappy aide to the expedition’s botanist. But “Jean” had a secret. She was actual

Mini: Cats, Villains At Heart

Dec 17th, 2018 10m 42s

Undiscovered is back between seasons with a listener question: What saved the cats? If you rewind to the Middle Ages, cats and humans were on bad terms. Cat roundups, cat torture, and even cat murder were common occurrences throughout Europe. B

Not Your Subject

Nov 13th, 2018 30m 40s

In U.S. cancer research, the most promising clinical trials are done mostly on white patients, which means people of color—and especially African Americans—are underrepresented in research that might save their lives. In this episode, a young,

This Headline Might Kill You

Nov 6th, 2018 27m 50s

In this Undiscovered Cares Report, Annie and Elah dig into a scary science headline to help Elah’s friend, David, figure out how scared he should be that his B12 vitamins will give him lung cancer. And we find out how—even with top-notch scient

Party Lines

Oct 30th, 2018 29m 43s

In 2016, a North Carolina legislator announced that his party would be redrawing the state’s congressional district map with a particular goal in mind: To elect “10 Republicans and three Democrats.” His reasoning for this? As he explained, he d

The Long Loneliness

Oct 23rd, 2018 34m 24s

Americans haven’t always loved whales and dolphins. In the 1950s, the average American thought of whales as the floating raw materials for margarine, animal feed, and fertilizer—if they thought about whales at all. But twenty-five years later,

Turtle v. Snake

1 Oct 16th, 2018 34m 5s

Travis Thomas is a rookie turtle researcher in Florida. He was on the verge of publishing his first big paper and naming two new species of turtle when he found out he’d been scooped by a stranger in Australia: Raymond Hoser, a.k.a. the Snake M

Guest Episode: The Infinite God

Oct 9th, 2018 28m 51s

This week, Annie and Elah share an episode from one of their favorite podcasts, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sum of All Parts.For years, Robert Schneider lived the indie rocker’s dream, producing landmark records and fronting his

Plants And Prejudice

Oct 2nd, 2018 30m 12s

Are non-native species all that bad, or are we just prejudiced against “the Other”? In the San Francisco Bay Area, one particular foreign species has been dividing environmentalists for years: the blue gum eucalyptus. Eucalyptus opponents say i

The Magic Machine

Sep 25th, 2018 36m 48s

As a critical care doctor, Jessica Zitter has seen plenty of “Hail Mary” attempts to save dying patients go bad—attempts where doctors try interventions that don’t change the outcome, but do lead to more patient suffering. It’s left her distrus

The Holdout

Sep 18th, 2018 32m 47s

Since the 1980s, Gerta Keller, professor of paleontology and geology at Princeton, has been speaking out against an idea most of us take as scientific gospel: That a giant rock from space killed the dinosaurs. Nice story, she says—but it’s just

I, Robovie

Sep 11th, 2018 33m 57s

A decade ago, psychologists introduced a group of kids to Robovie, a wide-eyed robot who could talk, play, and hug like a pro. And then, the researchers did something heartbreaking to Robovie! They wanted to see just how far kids’ empathy for a

Trailer

Undiscovered Is Back For Season 2

Sep 4th, 2018 2m 10s

Annie and Elah are back with tales of dinosaurs, robots, and more!

Bonus

Mouse’s Vineyard: Update!

Aug 23rd, 2018 35m 29s

It’s been two years since we followed MIT scientist Kevin Esvelt to Martha’s Vineyard. Has he created his Lyme-fighting super-mouse? We follow up.

Mouse’s Vineyard

1 Jun 27th, 2017 29m 1s

Martha’s Vineyard has a Lyme disease problem. Now a scientist is coming to town with a possible fix: genetically engineered mice.An island associated with summer rest and relaxation is gaining a reputation for something else: Lyme disease. Mar

Kurt Vonnegut and the Rainmakers

Jun 20th, 2017 31m 35s

In the mid 1940s, no one would publish Kurt Vonnegut’s stories. But when he gets hired as a press writer at General Electric, the company’s fantastical science inspires some of his most iconic--and best-selling--novels.Every snowflake is uniqu

The Wastebook

Jun 13th, 2017 31m 1s

After a senator calls her research a waste of taxpayer dollars, biologist Sheila Patek heads to Capitol Hill to prove what her science is worth.In December 2015, the fight over science funding got personal for biologist Sheila Patek. She disco