Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
Are you tired of hearing about coronavirus? Has lockdown left you worn out? Then perhaps it’s time to escape. Join Rowan Hooper and the team at New Scientist in this covid-free space, as they discuss all that’s right with the world - the stories that remind us of how wonderful this planet really is. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Science escapism • Nature and animal behavior • Sound, music, perception • Physics concepts: mass, speed of light, dark matter, neutrinos • Space: moons, escape velocity • Psychology: flow, metacognition • Scientific history, overlooked researchers • Materials, elements, carbon chemistry • Math puzzles, infinity, games • Technology: supercomputers, invisibility cloaks, robotsThis podcast offers a covid-free, escapist tour through science and ideas, using themed conversations to highlight curiosities that make the natural world and human ingenuity feel expansive and surprising. Episodes move fluidly across disciplines—biology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, psychology, and technology—often linking everyday experience to deeper mechanisms, from how perception and metacognition shape what we think we know to what happens in the brain during “flow” and meditation.
A recurring thread is making the unseen or hard-to-grasp more tangible. The show explores phenomena beyond human senses (ultrasound, infrasound, subatomic particles), and uses sound as both subject and storytelling tool, including animal communication, audio illusions, binaural effects, and the idea of translating data into music. It also regularly zooms between scales, contrasting tiny organisms and materials with cosmic concepts like dark matter, infinity, and the speed of light.
The content frequently connects scientific concepts to real-world contexts and histories: notable places where chemical elements were discovered, the engineering and measurement behind scientific standards, and profiles of under-recognized figures whose work shaped medicine, mathematics, and spaceflight. Space and exploration appear as well, with discussions that range from escape velocity to notable moons as potential sites for understanding planetary evolution and the search for life.
Overall, the series blends explanations, examples, and evocative audio-rich moments to examine how nature works, how humans measure and model reality, and how discovery happens.
