A podcast about the left turns, missteps, and lucky breaks that make science happen.
Latest episodes
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2 min
New Show: Universe of Art
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…
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2 min
New Show: Science Diction
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 th…
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20 min
Spontaneous Generation
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 exis…
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18 min
Into The Ether
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 an…
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24 min
Planet Of The Killer Apes
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 pa…
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26 min
Like Jerry Springer For Bluebirds
“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 b…
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16 min
Mini: The Undercover Botanist
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 th…
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11 min
Mini: Cats, Villains At Heart
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,…
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28 min
This Headline Might Kill You
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…
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30 min
Party Lines
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…
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34 min
The Long Loneliness
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…
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34 min
Turtle v. Snake
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 scoop…
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29 min
Guest Episode: The Infinite God
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 in…
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30 min
Plants And Prejudice
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 environmentalist…
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37 min
The Magic Machine
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 outco…
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33 min
The Holdout
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 fro…
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34 min
I, Robovie
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…
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2 min
Undiscovered Is Back For Season 2
Annie and Elah are back with tales of dinosaurs, robots, and more!
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35 min
Mouse’s Vineyard: Update!
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.
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29 min
Mouse’s Vineyard
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 relaxati…