Quantum Birds
14 February 2025 - 34 minsAnnie McEwen went to a mountain in Pennsylvania to help catch some migratory owls. Then Scott Weidensaul peeled back the owl’s feathery face disc, so that she could look at the back of its eyeball. No owls were harmed in the process, but this brief glimpse into the inner workings of a bird sent her off on a journey to a place where fleshy animal business bumps into the mathematics of subatomic particles. With help from Henrik Mouristen, we hear how one of the biggest mysteries in biology might finally find an answer in the weird world of quantum mechanics, where the classical rules of space and time are upended, and electrons dance to the beat of an enormous invisible force field that surrou...
Series Episodes
More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual
With the death penalty back in the news, we revisit a 2016 episode that asks: what is cruel and unusual punishment?
55 mins
6 November Finished
The Buried Bodies Case
What's a lawyer's obligation to provide the best defense to the worst people?
49 mins
30 October Finished
Octomom
A mile under the ocean, we get to watch an octopus perform a heroic act of heart and determination.
34 mins
23 October Finished
The Smell of Hell
What if the smell of death is actually the smell of life?
43 mins
16 October Finished
Math Vs Machine
explicitMachines are answering our hardest problems... Does it matter if we don’t understand how?
31 mins
9 October Finished
A 4-Track Mind
A neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor, then the impossible happens.
21 mins
2 October Finished
