Undiscovered
Channel Details
Undiscovered
A podcast about the left turns, missteps, and lucky breaks that make science happen.
Recent Episodes
28 episodes
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 scie...
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...
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 tim...
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 “lumini...
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-s...
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 i...
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...
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 term...
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 t...
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...
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,...
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 whe...
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...
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...
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 interventio...
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...
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 researche...
Undiscovered Is Back For Season 2
Annie and Elah are back with tales of dinosaurs, robots, and more!
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.
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 asso...
Kurt Vonnegut and the Rainmakers
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 fantastica...
The Wastebook
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.
...
Six Degrees
Are you just six handshakes away from every other person on Earth? Two mathematicians set out to prove we’re all connected.
You have probably he...
Sick and Tired
When researchers publish a new study on chronic fatigue syndrome, a group of patients cry foul—and decide to investigate for themselves.
A landm...
Born This Gay
At the turn of the 20th century, a German doctor sets out to prove that homosexuality is rooted in biology—but his research has consequences he never...
The Meteorite Hunter
Deep in Antarctica, a rookie meteorite hunter helps collect a mystery rock. Could it be a little piece of Mars?
In Antarctica, the wind can tear...
Boss Hua and the Black Box
A team of social scientists stumbles onto a cache of censored Chinese social media posts—and decides to find out what the Chinese government wants wip...
Hi! We are Undiscovered.
We're a podcast about the left turns, false starts, and lucky breaks that move science forward.