Twitter: @SciShowTangents • @hankgreen • @ceriley • @itsmestefanchin • @im_sam_schultz
Site: complexly.com/shows/scishow-tangents
260 episodes
2018 to present
Average episode: 35 minutes
Open in Apple Podcasts • RSS
Categories: Three+ Hosts
Podcaster's summary: SciShow Tangents is the lightly competitive knowledge showcase from the geniuses behind the YouTube series SciShow. Every other Tuesday, join Hank Green, Ceri Riley, and Sam Schultz as they try to one-up and amaze each other with weird and funny scientific research... while not getting distracted. There will be tangents about video games, music, weird smells, surprisingly deep insights about life, and of course, poop, but it always comes back to the science.
| Episodes |
| 2024-Apr-16 • 47 minutes Turtles Devotees of the testudines rejoice! Whether you have one as a pet, admire them at the zoo, or giggle with the rest of the internet when they rock each other off logs, chances are high, we think, that you like turtles. We like turtles! And conveniently for us, turtle science is also extremely cool, so this was basically an ideal episode to make. Enjoy! |
| 2024-Apr-03 • 6 minutes Teaser: Big vs. Small Patreon Bonus Episode A wild teaser appears! This little snippet is the first part of our revisit of Big vs. Small and answering even more questions that we didn't get to in the episode. You can listen to the rest, and also a bunch more bonus content, on our Patreon. It's one of the best ways you can support the show and keep Tangents going and free for everyone. Head over to Patreon.com/scishowtangents and join in all the learning and shenanigans! Thank you so much to all our Patrons - we genuinely would not get to do this with... |
| 2024-Apr-02 • 45 minutes Textiles From expressing ourselves through fashion to protecting ourselves from the elements, textiles seem to be self-evidently significant to the human experience. But it's our goal on Tangents to always poke holes in the obvious, tear through distraction, and weave humor with knowledge - and the facts this episode will blow your cotton-poly blend socks off. |
| 2024-Mar-19 • 44 minutes Feathers It may be well-known that hope is the thing with feathers, but how much is known about feathers themselves? Turns out, plenty! From shrub grouses to shuttlecocks and all the pea-babies (diminutive for peacocks, definitely for sure) in between, come soar on the delightfully complex wings of knowledge with us! |
| 2024-Mar-05 • 45 minutes Garbage Trash, rubbish, waste, refuse...we have a lot of words for the gunk that goes on the truck, because whether we like it or not, humans make a lot of garbage. Get comfy with some grossness as we root around in garbage's past, present, and future. We're all on a path, you guys! |
| 2024-Feb-20 • 43 minutes Hormones Oops, all science this episode! Erstwhile editorial assistant Deboki Chakravarti steps in for erstwhile everyman Sam Schultz as we parse through fundamental puzzles about humanity: what makes us, us, and if it is hormones, does that make us cocktails or cauldrons? |
| 2024-Feb-06 • 48 minutes Cheese It's the long-awaited cheese-stravaganza! And it's every bit as melty, crumbly, stretchy, and stinky as hoped for. We dip into some fetamology, we stretch our nokkeledge of cheese applications, and we unwrap the shocking tartrutho about a cheese we thought we knew!* *Here are the real cheese names I butchered into puns: feta, nokkelost, tartuffo. All delicious, go try some! |
| 2024-Jan-23 • 41 minutes Darkness The question plaguing us this episode is, how dark can it really get? Turns out (according to some), not that dark! Unless you're at the bottom of the ocean or floating in the all too-eerie void of deep space, you're always gonna have some photons hitting your face. (I'm pretty sure I accidentally stole this rhyme right out of Hank's poem, but you'll just have to listen to know for sure...) |
| 2024-Jan-09 • 45 minutes Refrigeration In this not-so-chill episode, everybody gets a little unsettled by the concepts around refrigeration. Quantum computers, thermoacoustics, molecular chemistry, elephants, the phantom letter "d" that gets added to the shortening of refrigeration...it's all just. So much. |
| 2023-Dec-26 • 43 minutes Quiet Do you hear what I hear? Probably not, because in this episode, we're bringing things down several notches to learn about quiet. Does it have a scientific definition? Is it all just relative? Should crickets have podcasts? Join us as we (ok, maybe not so) quietly contemplate quiet. |
| 2023-Dec-12 • 45 minutes Oil Oil: it's a ubiquitous substance humans have been relying on for longer than you might think. We cook with it, we moisturize with it, we run machines with it - it keeps slipping into places we least expect to find it, for good and for ill... |
| 2023-Nov-28 • 46 minutes Telescopes What's that you spy on the horizon, just out of sight? If you have a telescope handy, you can hone your gaze on...more telescopes! From pocket spyglasses to Extremely Large (a real telescope name), join us and special guest Julian Huguet as we set our sights on the far-reaching world of these incredible devices. How we wonder what they are... |
| 2023-Nov-14 • 49 minutes Batteries Batteries are all around us, in things we use all the time, and in all different shapes and sizes, so of course we know exactly how they all work, right? Nope! Not even close! The bizarre breadth of our battery banter includes Ben Franklin, tiny computers, and...shrimp? |
| 2023-Oct-31 • 42 minutes Trick or Treat Month: Slime with Alexis Nikole Nelson! Trick or Treat Month returns... and this time it's personal! Join us for another month of spooky themes and special surprise guest apparitions! Try not to get too scared! And so we close the ancient, flesh-bound spell book on another Trick or Treat Month... but we're going out on top, baby! Alexis Nikole Nelson has appeared, as if by magic, to lead us into the deep, dark woods and point out all the slimy, sticky, gross stuff on the ground that she says we can eat. I guess I trust her! |
| 2023-Oct-17 • 55 minutes Trick or Treat Month: Theories with Dan Schreiber! Trick or Treat Month returns... and this time it's personal! Join us for another month of spooky themes and special surprise guest apparitions! Try not to get too scared! Our yearly cavalcade of terror rolls on with a new Grand Marshall of Terror: podcaster, author, and mad genius Dan Schreiber! And he's here to tell us about the weirdest, creepiest, most otherworldly theories ever devised of! There are lots of science-y ideas out there, and not all of them can be right, after all! |
| 2023-Oct-03 • 50 minutes Trick or Treat Month: Tombs with Siobhan Thompson! Trick or Treat Month returns... and this time it's personal! Join us for another month of spooky themes and special surprise guest apparitions! Try not to get too scared! This year's ghastly Grand Guignol of science and screams begins where most human lives end: the tomb! And we dug up an old friend, Dimension 20's Siobhan Thompson, to guide us deep into the cursed catacombs of knowledge! |
| 2023-Sep-19 • 46 minutes Hygiene A big part of being a human is that you get progressively more gross as the day goes on. Various parts start stinking, hair grows all over your face, you're touching who-knows-what... luckily for all of us, someone a long time ago decided to invent hygiene! Otherwise we'd have to lick ourselves like cats! |
| 2023-Sep-05 • 49 minutes Big vs Small with Tiny Matters Sam's out this week, but worry not: he found another Sam to replace him! Sam Jones, host of the podcast Tiny Matters that is! Sam and her co-host, our own Deboki Chakravarti, join Ceri and Hank in our first ever team-based episode of Tangents! Two teams enter, one team leaves! |
| 2023-Aug-22 • 42 minutes Dust The universe is dusty AF, frankly. It's on your body, in every nook in cranny of your house, some planets are just made entirely of dust pretty much, and space is full of it! It's everywhere, so I guess we might as well learn something about it... |
| 2023-Aug-08 • 43 minutes Blue From trustworthy to calming, sad to steadfast, and, of course, jeans - the color blue means a lot of things to a lot of people. Join Team Tangents as we delve into this deceptively complicated primary color! |
| 2023-Jul-25 • 44 minutes Bacteria It's easy to write off bacteria as no good, nasty, disease causing creeps, but consider this: without bacteria, we wouldn't have yogurt, or delicious sourdough bread, or a gut microbiome to digest those things! There are probably other good examples of ways bacteria are helpful to us, but I'm too hungry to think of them... |
| 2023-Jul-11 • 41 minutes Shells From eggs to tacos to Ninja Turtles, some of the best things in life come in shells. So cozy on up inside the nearest conch as we regale you with tales of shells from all across the scientific spectrum! |
| 2023-Jun-27 • 44 minutes Speed This week we're talking about our old friend, Mr. Distance-Over-Time himself: Speed! From the speediest hedgehog to the slowiest slug, we all have speed, and we can all come together and listen to this podcast to learn more about how and why that is. |
| 2023-Jun-13 • 48 minutes Numbers Whether you're tracking the orbit of satellites, looking at your phone, or picking out a dozen fresh-baked donuts, the chances are pretty good that right this second, YOU are using numbers! Hate to break it to you, bud, but math is actually pretty important after all! |
| 2023-Jun-06 • 1 minutes Upcoming Schedule Announcement No new episode this week! Come back next week, June 13, and every other week after that for a new episode. |
| 2023-May-23 • 45 minutes Crust with Ashley Roboto From the planet Earth to the humble pizza pie, some of the most important things in the whole universe have crusts! Including, most likely, the ears that are listening to this! |
| 2023-May-09 • 42 minutes Glass "Oh, glass, big deal" you might be saying. Well guess what: if you're reading this, you're looking through glass right now to read about this episode about glass. You might even be touching glass to make this glass episode play! It's glass's world, you're just living in it! |
| 2023-Apr-25 • 43 minutes Color Color: it's not just for art anymore. From red dwarfs to green algae to... uh... brown squirrels, science is chock full of color, too! |
| 2023-Apr-11 • 40 minutes Growth Spring is upon us, which means a whoooole bunch of junk is going to start growing, such as flowers, grass, and little baby animals. So this week, Tangents is hacking into that growth mindset being displayed by Mother Nature to talk all about the science of stuff getting bigger! |
| 2023-Mar-28 • 44 minutes Ants If you are on the planet Earth right now, there's probably a pretty good chance you're near an ant right now. So spare a thought for those hard working little fellows and unplug your headphones so they can hear this episode about ants (featuring special guest Maddie Sofia) and learn more about themselves! |
| 2023-Mar-21 • 35 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Weather SciShow Tangents will be back next week with a new season and very special guest! Until then, please enjoy this beloved classic episode about Weather! Because it's spring and the weather is changing, you see! |
| 2023-Mar-14 • 47 minutes Aging Every millisecond of every day, you, everyone you know, every rock on the ground, every star in the sky... they're all aging. And podcasts are no exception. In fact, Tangents is hitting a milestone in its aging as we bring season 4 to a close with this episode! You can't hear the dull roar of time lurching ever onward if you're listening to a funny show, so come listen! |
| 2023-Mar-07 • 40 minutes Farming Learning is a little like farming, in a way. You sow your brain field with facts seeds, nurture those seeds into thoughts and ideas and voila: you're smart! So slap on your headphones and jump on that tractor: We've got a bumper crop of knowledge to harvest! |
| 2023-Feb-28 • 41 minutes Lasers In all of science, there are very few things conceptually cooler than lasers. A beam of light you can use to blast aliens? Heck yeah! But are lasers actually as cool in reality as they are in science fiction? Probably not! But I guess you'll have to listen to find out for sure. |
| 2023-Feb-21 • 42 minutes Poop The bodily function so universal, there's a kids book all about how everybody does it! But... is that kids book a lie?! Find out the answer to that and way more in this very overdue episode of Tangents! |
| 2023-Feb-14 • 42 minutes Mating In honor of Valentine's Day, that most cherished day of beauty and love, the Tangents crew gets real down and dirty by telling you more than you could ever want to know about sex harpoons, cannibalism, living sperm, and some other utterly un-romantic methods of copulation employed by the animal kingdom! |
| 2023-Feb-07 • 38 minutes Spit You need to clean a smudge of your glasses? Use some spit! You gotta make some food gooey so you can swallow it? Why not try spit? Lips too dry to whistle a tune? My friend, spit is the bodily excretion for you! Spit: don't leave home without it! |
| 2023-Jan-31 • 38 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Artificial Intelligence It seems like everyone's using Artificial Intelligence these days, so we thought we'd dip back into our archives for a little refresher on just what the heck AI even is. |
| 2023-Jan-24 • 38 minutes Rubber You can bounce it, you can stretch it, heck... some people even chew it! That's right, it's rubber! And at long last, the Tangents team is finally talking about it! You all really wanted an episode about rubber, right? Well, we made it anyway, so you have to listen. |
| 2023-Jan-17 • 39 minutes Tails From a bunny’s seemingly-useless fluffy li’l puffball to a scorpion’s practical and deadly venom-filled stinger, the world is filled with all sorts of wonderful tails! And heck, some of them aren’t even tails at all, but that’s ok! |
| 2023-Jan-10 • 39 minutes Gas From precious oxygen to the lowly fart, every day we’re all wallowing around in an invisible soup of gas! Exciting, isn’t it? Tune in to go on an exciting adventure into the world of gas with Sam, Ceri, and Dr. Tubeboy! |
| 2023-Jan-03 • 40 minutes Memory It's the time of year for old acquaintances to be forgot, but SciShow Tangents has never been one to bow to convention! So this week, we're remembering all our dang acquaintances and way more as we dive deep on the concept of Memory! And Deboki's here, too! |
| 2022-Dec-27 • 33 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Sleep There are no two ways about it: winter is a great time to sleep. In fact, the Tangents crew all decided to sleep this entire week, which is what this episode is a rerun! See you next week/year! |
| 2022-Dec-20 • 38 minutes Cold Jack frost ain't just nipping at our noses where we live, he's basically biting them off! Ouch! So we thought we'd learn a little about what "cold" even is, and you may not be too surprised to hear that the answer is way, way more complicated than you'd think. Bundle up and take a listen! |
| 2022-Dec-13 • 42 minutes Testing New Games with Deboki Chakravarti *sniff sniff*... What is that awful smell? Ah, it's our stinky, old games! I mean, just look at Truth or Fail! It's all covered in mold! Good think Deboki's here this week to try out some fresh, exciting new games with us! |
| 2022-Dec-06 • 39 minutes Poison It's said that the dose makes the poison, but that doesn't change the fact that some poison is just more poison-y than others. This week, we get a lethal dose of venomous knowledge! |
| 2022-Nov-29 • 42 minutes Crystals with Tyler Thrasher In a universe of chaos, one scrappy form of highly-ordered solid matter dares to be different: crystals! And crystal expert Tyler Thrasher is here to tell us all we need to know about them! |
| 2022-Nov-22 • 39 minutes Wings with Stefan Chin It's just about Thanksgiving here in the US; a special time during which we count our blessings. And this year, Tangents is giving you an extra thing to be thankful for: Stefan Chin is back as our special guest! Our long lost co-host returns to talk to us about wings: birds love to use 'em, people love to eat 'em, and planes need them too, I guess. Sit around the table with us, won't you, as we pass out some heaping helpings of science knowledge. Pass the gravy! |
| 2022-Nov-15 • 38 minutes Sight Before you listen, just take a moment to think about how sight works: light comes out of the sun, bounces off of a tree (or whatever), goes inside of your head, and hits some nerves which send signals to your brain which turns that into an image of a tree (or whatever)! I wouldn't believe it if I weren't looking at this screen and typing these words right now! |
| 2022-Nov-08 • 39 minutes Pain This week, we investigate one of the more complicated, fraught, mysterious, and downright unpleasant ways we and lots of other living things navigate the world: pain. |
| 2022-Nov-01 • 35 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Teeth It's the day after Halloween, which means you might have a surplus of candy in your house. But before you start digging in to those sugary treats, spare a thought for your teeth, won't you? And to help you with that, today we have a classic episode all about your pearly whites! |
| 2022-Oct-25 • 50 minutes Trick or Treat Month: Blood with Justin and Sydnee McElroy! Trick or Treat Month reaches it's horrific, blood-soaked conclusion! And who better to help us wade through the pools of gore than Dr. Sydnee and Justin McElroy, co-hosts of the medical history podcast Sawbones? No one, that's who! |
| 2022-Oct-18 • 38 minutes Trick or Treat Month: Gourds with Jackson Bird! |
| 2022-Oct-11 • 41 minutes Trick or Treat Month: Creepy Crawlies with Lulu Miller! Trick or Treat Month continues, and we've called upon the spirit of Radiolab and Terrestrials ghost-host Lulu Miller to get down in the muck with us to talk about all the wormy, wriggly, slimy, little creatures that send shivers down our spines: creepy crawlies! |
| 2022-Oct-04 • 43 minutes Trick or Treat Month: Preserved Foods with Bill Oakley! Tangents annual descent into horror returns with Trick or Treat Month! And this time, we brought some fiendish friends along! Join us for a whole month of spooky themes and special guest stars! And to kick off Trick or Treat Month, we've summoned Simpsons writer, author and food reviewer extraordinaire Bill Oakley to talk about preserved food! How is preserved food spooky? I guess you'll just have to listen to find out! |
| 2022-Sep-27 • 19 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - The Science of Scary Sounds - A SciShow Tangents Adventure It's almost October, and SciShow Tangents is getting ready for its month-long Halloween blowout! While we make final arrangements, please enjoy this classic, sound-filled journey through Tangents Manor! |
| 2022-Sep-20 • 39 minutes Radiation Popular culture makes radiation seem pretty scary, and frequently it is. But we encounter way more radiation in our day-to-day life than you might think! From nuclear reactors to the light from your average lightbulb, we explore the whole spectrum of radiation on this week's Tangents! |
| 2022-Sep-13 • 42 minutes Babies From mighty lions to postal workers, presidents to pelicans, they all have one thing in common: they were once tiny little babies! And so, too, were all the Tangents panelists, who celebrate their humble, squishy, helpless origins this week by talking all things baby! |
| 2022-Sep-06 • 39 minutes Coral Reefs Summer is just about over, but we can all cling to those warm, tropical feelings for at least one more week as we strap on our scuba gear and take a dive into the wild world of coral reefs! Scuba! |
| 2022-Aug-30 • 28 minutes A.N.A.G.R.A.M. - Unlocked Patreon Bonus Episode Did you know that you can go to Patreon.com/SciShowTangents to become a Patron of the show and get cool stuff, like bonus episodes! See what you've been missing this week as we bring you an unlocked bonus episode featuring a devious game by Sam! |
| 2022-Aug-23 • 38 minutes Cities Tall buildings, subways, bodegas, rats. These are just some of the things you'll find in cities. Another thing you'll find? Science! From the smelly yet impressive sewers to the smelly yet impressive pigeons, we're covering big city science this week, baby! |
| 2022-Aug-16 • 41 minutes Carbon Carbon gets a pretty bad rap these days, what with global climate change and all, but every living thing on Earth owes their very existence to this multitalented little element! And heck, that's not even all it does! Click play to find out more. |
| 2022-Aug-09 • 40 minutes Skin When it comes to keeping all of your guts and blood inside, skin is second to none! Yet so often is it taken for granted. Today, we fix that by talking about skin for a whole 40 minutes! You're welcome, skin! |
| 2022-Aug-02 • 43 minutes Spaceships 10....9.... Hey gang, Kids Month is about ready to blast off into space ....8....7....6 but before it does, we have one last topic exploring the childlike wonder of science to cover ....5....4...3 Spaceships! And wouldn't you know it? There's one more seat on our rocket! Climb in! ....2...1.... Lift off! |
| 2022-Jul-26 • 37 minutes Bubbles Kids Month floats on as we talk about possibly our lightest subject ever: bubbles! Pop in to learn what makes a simple soapy membrane so fascinating to kid and adult like! |
| 2022-Jul-19 • 35 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Candy Sometimes, when you're making a podcast with 3 hosts, one of those hosts is going to get sick for two weeks and totally messes up Kids Month. So this week, we humbly present a classic episode that happens to be about something kids love: candy! Grab your favorite snack and join us on this sugary journey to the past! |
| 2022-Jul-12 • 44 minutes Dinosaurs Kids month continues with maybe THE most-beloved-by-children scientific topic of all time: dinosaurs! Come on a journey back in time to learn about the giant guys who used to stomp around and eat each other all over planet Earth! |
| 2022-Jul-05 • 42 minutes Play This month on SciShow Tangents, we're celebrating the sense of childlike wonder present in science by discussing a bunch of stuff kids like! We're calling it Kids Month, naturally, and we're kicking it off by talking about a thing all kids (and lots of animals) love to do: play! |
| 2022-Jun-28 • 46 minutes Books with Vanessa Zoltan We here on SciShow Tangents may have the market cornered on science podcasting, but that doesn't mean we know everything. Put us in a lab, and we're like fish in water! But put us in a library, with all those big tall shelves and the Dewey Decimal System, and we're like a fish not-in-water! So we called in our friend, podcast, theologian, and noted book-reader Vanessa Zoltan to help us learn more about books! |
| 2022-Jun-21 • 38 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Waves Inspired by last week's episode about beaches, we decided to take the week off and catch some rays. Please enjoy this encore presentation of our episode on Waves, and we'll be back next week! |
| 2022-Jun-14 • 40 minutes Beaches Summer is here, which means it's time to visit everyone's favorite geological feature consisting of a strip of land covered in loose particles, existing exclusively alongside a body of water ! That's right, pack your trunks, cause today we're hitting the beach! |
| 2022-Jun-07 • 40 minutes Fuel Cars need it, trains need it, and guess what? People need it, too! Can you deduce the answer to my devious riddle? That's right, it's fuel! Fill up your tank, cause we're going on a trip to learn all about the things that keep other things going, from coal to tuna sandwiches and everything in between! |
| 2022-May-31 • 40 minutes Paper When I was a kid, everything was on paper. Books were on paper, magazines were on paper, newspapers were on, you guessed it, paper. Nowadays, everything's on the internet, but you can still find paper if you know where to look! |
| 2022-May-24 • 37 minutes Symbiosis When, in nature, two little guys are benefiting off each other one way or another, we call that symbiosis. But, if you think about it too hard, you start to realize that everything in nature is benefitting off some other thing in nature somehow and come to the conclusion that all of Earth is a giant symbiotic relationship! To that I say, simply try not to think about it too hard! |
| 2022-May-17 • 42 minutes Worms From big, slimy earthworms to microscopic C. elegans, worms are everywhere... or are they? It turns out, as is often the case on Tangents, that everything you thought you knew about worms is a lie, up to and including their very existence! |
| 2022-May-10 • 32 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Pee We're hard at work on a cool new project, but we needed a little extra time to work on it! So this week, please enjoy a rerun of the all-time classic Pee episode! |
| 2022-May-03 • 42 minutes Asteroids Last week we talked about boring old rocks on the ground. This week, we're again talking rocks, but these are rocks... from SPACE! |
| 2022-Apr-26 • 36 minutes Rocks Igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic... need I say more? Welcome to SciShow Tangents or, as I like to call it, Rock Talk. |
| 2022-Apr-19 • 38 minutes Recycling Get a jump start on Earth Day by joining us as we discuss garbage's sexy, complicated little brother: recycling! |
| 2022-Apr-12 • 36 minutes Soft Things Spring is a soft and fluffy time of year, what with all the baby chicks and bunnies bopping around, so we here at Tangents are seizing the opportunity to talk about the softest, cutest, most huggable science there is! |
| 2022-Apr-05 • 39 minutes Nerves Someone can get on your nerves. You can have nerves of steel. Heck, nerves can even be frayed! But have you ever wondered what nerves actually are? If so, you've come to the right place! |
| 2022-Mar-29 • 33 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Flowers It's Spring Breeeaaaak baby, and we're taking the day off! Enjoy this classic episode on Flowers so you'll know all you need to know when they start blooming! See you next week! |
| 2022-Mar-22 • 36 minutes Homes From shells to hives to holes in the ground, most animals have a place to call home. And today, we're paying them all a visit! So open up, cause Science is knocking and it needs to use your bathroom! |
| 2022-Mar-15 • 36 minutes Green Grass... money... Ninja Turtles... some of the best things in the world are all the same color: green! This week, we're taking a deeper look at this most verdant of colors. |
| 2022-Mar-08 • 43 minutes Computers Back in my day, a computer was a computer: It was big, tan, and was plugged into your living room wall. But now we've got computer cars, computer phones, even computer lightbulbs! And that's great! But I think we better keep an eye on them all just in case... |
| 2022-Mar-01 • 43 minutes Venus We kick off Season 4 by getting up close and personal with Earth's other, less popular, more mysterious neighbor: Venus! |
| 2022-Feb-22 • 30 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - The Internet Season 3 has come to a close, and the Tangents crew is taking a week off. While we scour the World Wide Web for all new, mind-blowing science facts, enjoy this classic episode about the Internet! |
| 2022-Feb-15 • 45 minutes Butts It's all been leading up to this! We usually relegate our butt facts to the end of episodes, but this week we're giving butts the respect they deserve. It's butts all the way down, baby! |
| 2022-Feb-08 • 37 minutes Hands & Feet The Season 3 finale draws ever nearer, but before we get to that big beautiful Butt episode, we need to make a detour to those nifty tools on the ends of our limbs: hands and feet! |
| 2022-Feb-01 • 39 minutes Heads Season 3 of Tangents is drawing to a close, and we're celebrating by taking a long, top to bottom (literally) look at bodies! To kick us off, we'll be appreciating that brain-holding, eye-having, mouth-possessing orb on top of almost all necks on Earth: the head. Thank you, the head! |
| 2022-Jan-25 • 37 minutes Birds of Prey The pointiest birds in the wild blue yonder finally get their due! Join us to learn all of these lethal birds killer secrets, and to discover their hidden softer sides. Some use teamwork! Some keep pets! |
| 2022-Jan-18 • 38 minutes Yeast These little, bubbly guys help us make such perennial favorites as 'bread' and 'beer.' If you're saying to yourself "what is yeast, Alex," I got good news for you: you're right! Come learn about the microscopic fungus amount us on this week's Tangents! |
| 2022-Jan-11 • 41 minutes Mirrors We're back, baby! And we're seeing double! Ring in the new-ish year with us as we reflect on mirrors! |
| 2022-Jan-04 • 33 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Timekeeping SciShow Tangents is off again this week, but since it's a new year and all, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to rerun our episode all about ways humans have devised to measure time! See you for a new episode next week! |
| 2021-Dec-28 • 35 minutes Stump Ceri - Unlocked Patreon Bonus Episode SciShow Tangents is taking a couple weeks off for the holidays, but we aren't gonna leave you hanging! This week, we present an unlocked Patreon patron bonus episode in which we try to stump Ceri with a barrage of science and pop culture questions! |
| 2021-Dec-21 • 38 minutes The North & South Poles The Tangents crew gets lightly festive as they talk about the increasingly-less-cold tippity-top and bippity-bottom of good old planet Earth! |
| 2021-Dec-14 • 37 minutes Cells We’ve talked about all sorts of living things. Bugs, for instance. And plants… elephants… the list goes on. But what we haven’t discussed is the thing that all of those animals are made of: cells! |
| 2021-Dec-07 • 35 minutes Snakes Snakes get a bad rap. Sure they’re slithery, venomous, silent killers… but they have some nice qualities, too! We don’t talk about many of those nice qualities in this episode, but they do exist. |
| 2021-Nov-30 • 38 minutes Food Between now and the end of the year, people all over the world will be enjoying all sorts of holiday feasts, eating lots of cookies, and maybe even enjoying a sugar plum or two. In other words: it's food season, baby! And we've got a piping hot bowl of science stew for you! |
| 2021-Nov-23 • 35 minutes Cosmetics Since the beginning of recorded history, people have been putting on lipstick, applying perfume, wearing fake nails, and just generally making themselves look nice for all sorts of reasons. Heck, there are even some animals in on it! |
| 2021-Nov-18 • 1 minutes Ceri's Cnidarian Song - Deluxe Edition Please enjoy this version of Ceri's smash hit Cnidarian Song, with musical accompaniment by our own maestro Joseph "Tuna" Metesh! |
| 2021-Nov-16 • 35 minutes Cnidarians Jellyfish, corals, anemones… they have a couple things in common. They’re all cnidarians, and they all seem like they don’t really have a whole lot going on. They just sort of float around! But looks can be deceiving: this mysterious, blobby phylum holds many secrets! |
| 2021-Nov-09 • 32 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Flightless Birds Turns out we needed a week off to recuperate from all the Halloween festivities, so please enjoy this very old episode about Flightless Birds in the meantime! Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week! |
| 2021-Nov-02 • 33 minutes Heat If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you might be starting to notice a chill in the air. Let's all fondly reminisce about those warm, summer days that feel so long ago as we learn about heat! |
| 2021-Oct-26 • 36 minutes Graveyard Smash - It was a Dark and Stormy Month Ceri and Sam headed on down to the cemetery to dig Hank up for one more bone-chilling edition of It Was a Dark and Stormy Month! We hope you enjoy and have a happy and safe Halloween! |
| 2021-Oct-19 • 34 minutes The Moon with Deboki Chakravarti - It Was a Dark & Stormy Month “It Was A Dark & Stormy Month" rises from its grave once more to deliver knowledge so good... it's scary! Hank accidentally buried himself alive again, so we are once again joined by Deboki Chakravarti to learn about Earth's little buddy, the Moon! This one's guaranteed to have you howling! |
| 2021-Oct-12 • 35 minutes Cats with Deboki Chakravarti - It Was a Dark & Stormy Month “It Was A Dark & Stormy Month" lumbers along with more frightful topics and frightfully bad poetry! This week, an oft-requested and much anticipated topic: cats! These weird little goblins can steal our hearts even while infesting us with behavior-altering, poop-dwelling parasites! We must really love 'em! |
| 2021-Oct-05 • 34 minutes Storms - It Was a Dark & Stormy Month It’s October, so you know what that means: SciShow Tangents is about to get a little spooky! This year, we’re celebrating the Halloween season by talking about traditionally eerie subjects and writing bad collaborative poems! Welcome to “It Was A Dark & Stormy Month"! And to kick it off, we’re talking about the number one most scary of all types of weather: storms! |
| 2021-Sep-28 • 31 minutes Mosquitos Summer's over, which is a bummer, but now's the perfect time to remember that summer isn't all perfect. It brings sunburns, too-hot car seats, and, worst of all, blood-sucking mosquitos! So let's embrace the beginning of fall by talking some smack about those nasty, itchy, little guys! |
| 2021-Sep-21 • 38 minutes Brains I don’t want to alarm you, but you’ve got a big ol’ glob of pink goop in between your ears right now, and it pretty much controls everything you do. In fact, it might BE you... But try not to think about that too much while you enjoy this episode! |
| 2021-Sep-14 • 31 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Trees The days are getting shorter, the sweaters are coming out of the closet and the leaves are starting to take on just a hint of yellow... Fall is officially on its way. And speaking of trees, we spoke of trees at length last year! Please enjoy this encore presentation. |
| 2021-Sep-07 • 34 minutes Power Generation The power required to get this podcast into your ears was brought to you in part by wind, water, coal, gas, and a generous contribution from the old sky guy himself: The Sun! |
| 2021-Aug-31 • 31 minutes Elephants This week we pay tribute to our big, wrinkly, grey friends with funky trunks: elephants! |
| 2021-Aug-24 • 33 minutes Water Time to take a big ol’ sip of science knowledge as we dive deep on that good, wet stuff we call water! |
| 2021-Aug-17 • 31 minutes Listener Questions- Unlocked Patreon Bonus Episode This week, we're sharing one of our Patreon bonus episodes with all of our listeners! Join us as we answer some questions from our audience, and be sure to check out Patreon.com/SciShowTangents for more of our monthly bonus episodes! |
| 2021-Aug-10 • 31 minutes Volcanoes In this truly explosive episode that will have you erupting with laughter, we share our lava of volcanoes! This is a hot one, folks! |
| 2021-Aug-03 • 40 minutes Toilets with Deboki Chakravarti This episode was brought to you by Gates Notes, the blog of Bill Gates. Go to https://www.gatesnotes.com to learn more about the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, which is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this year! Just because you poop and pee in them doesn’t mean that toilets don’t deserve your utmost respect! From the International Space Station to the comfort of your own home, these waste-disposing scientific wonders help make our lives cleaner and safer. So next time you see a toilet, say “thank you!” |
| 2021-Jul-27 • 33 minutes Surgery This week, the Science Couch is more like the Science Operating Table. Get ready to have 33 minutes of pure, surgery-inspired science implanted directly into your brain, stat! |
| 2021-Jul-20 • 37 minutes Waves Whether you're surfing, listening to the radio, getting an x-ray, or just looking at something, take a moment and thank waves for making it all possible! |
| 2021-Jul-13 • 33 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Allergies It feels like this allergy season is never gonna end, so we decided to dig into the archives to learn a little more about the pollen, dander, and other tiny things currently making our lives a living heck! Achoo! |
| 2021-Jul-06 • 35 minutes Teeth Get ready to take a big old bite of science (and fun)! This week, we’re sinking our teeth… into teeth! Ouch! |
| 2021-Jun-29 • 37 minutes Cyborgs with AshleyRoboto This week, Twitch streamer and science enthusiast AshleyRoboto joins us to talk about cyborgs! Get ready to radically broaden your definition of cyborgs all the way down to “person with glasses!” |
| 2021-Jun-22 • 37 minutes Fruit The Tangents team tackles one of the greatest controversies in science history: are tomatoes fruits? |
| 2021-Jun-15 • 34 minutes Dogs with Frankie Jonas Frankie Jonas stops by to chat with us about your best friend and mine, the humble dog! |
| 2021-Jun-08 • 38 minutes Electricity Danger! High voltage episode! This week, we're zapping your earholes with electrifying knowledge that's sure to illuminate you! |
| 2021-Jun-01 • 32 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Cars It’s too nice outside to make a podcast this week, so instead, we’ve got a classic episode for you! Learn basically everything you need to know about cars before you set out on your epic summer road trip. |
| 2021-May-25 • 33 minutes DNA with Amanda Wacker This week, we’re joined by scientist and podcaster Amanda Wacker to talk about DNA, the building blocks of life! |
| 2021-May-18 • 34 minutes Smell If SciShow Tangents had a smell what would it be? It’s full of knowledge, so maybe a dusty old book? We talk a lot, so maybe all of our nasty breath? We talk about butts a lot… you know what? Podcasts don’t smell, and maybe that’s for the best. |
| 2021-May-11 • 33 minutes Sticky Things Sticky seems easy, right? You step on gum, it sticks to your shoe. You put glue on paper, it sticks to other paper. It just works! But it turns out stickiness is one of those sneaky, impossible-to-explain science things that involves physics and atoms and stuff! |
| 2021-May-04 • 33 minutes Dirt A wiser man than me once said “worms make the dirt and the first makes the Earth.” And that’s true. Join us as we learn about the stuff everything on earth walks, sits, and poops on all day, every day! Thanks, dirt! |
| 2021-Apr-27 • 38 minutes Tools Humans use tools to do work! It’s what separates us from the animals! Except for crows… and honeybees… and dolphins… octopuses… well, regardless, tools are great and so is this episode! |
| 2021-Apr-20 • 29 minutes Fish with Kurtis Conner Comedian, streamer, and YouTuber Kurtis Conner (@kurtisconner) stops by to talk to us about fish! Don’t be koi… give it a listen! |
| 2021-Apr-13 • 34 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Fungi We're taking a break this week to rest up and work on some exciting things! In the meantime, join us as we talk about fungus and Praise the Drungus! |
| 2021-Apr-06 • 32 minutes Flowers It’s been said that April showers bring May flowers, but here’s the thing, gang: we couldn’t wait a whole month to talk about the darn things! Stop and smell the roses with us as we sniff out some of the finest flower facts! |
| 2021-Mar-30 • 33 minutes Marsupials This week, we’re taking a trip Down Under (and to South, Central, and North America) to meet our weird mammalian cousins with built-in cargo pockets, the marsupials! |
| 2021-Mar-23 • 31 minutes Armor Strap on your greaves and grab your gauntlets: It's time for the weekly science/comedy deathmatch that is SciShow Tangents! |
| 2021-Mar-16 • 32 minutes Pee This week's topic is bound to make a real splash! That's right, your favorite science wizzes are talking about pee! Stream it today! |
| 2021-Mar-09 • 37 minutes Exoplanets The Tangents crew blasts off beyond the Sun’s familiar orbit to check out all the weird, wild, possibly-inhabited exoplanets circling distant stars! Who needs our boring old solar system anyway? |
| 2021-Mar-02 • 34 minutes Candy This week, we're talking about the ol’ tippy top of the food pyramid: Candy! |
| 2021-Feb-23 • 37 minutes Climate Control From roaring fires to air conditioners to fuzzy slippers, humans have a knack for inventing things to keep them at just the right temperature. Unfortunately, they also have a knack for messing up the temperature of the planet… |
| 2021-Feb-16 • 30 minutes Listener Mailbag 2 We're cracking open the mailbag once again to answer some dusty old questions you sent us a long time ago! |
| 2021-Feb-09 • 37 minutes Immortality with Deboki Chakravarti True immortality may be a scientific impossibility, but podcasts last forever. Whether you listen to this the day it comes out or 1,000 years from now when your brain’s been uploaded to a computer, SciShow Tangents will be here for you! |
| 2021-Feb-02 • 34 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Giant Rodents No, you didn't wake up back in March 12, 2019, this is just a rerun of the classic Giant Rodent episode in honor of Groundhog Day. Be back with something exciting next week! |
| 2021-Jan-27 • 1 minutes Ceri's Weather Shanty - Deluxe Edition Our very own Josef 'Tuna' Metesh took Ceri's already exceptional sea shanty and turned it into a masterpiece! |
| 2021-Jan-26 • 35 minutes Weather Weather is an evergreen small talk topic, and after this episode of Tangents you will be fully equipped to blow the socks off every grocery store clerk, dental technician, and next door neighbor you meet with your in-depth knowledge of wind, precipitation, and more! |
| 2021-Jan-19 • 32 minutes Ears In the world of podcasting, one organ reigns supreme: the ear. This week, we give thanks to the orifice that allows us to enjoy SciShow Tangents and that also helps us balance for some reason! |
| 2021-Jan-12 • 32 minutes Cephalopods Tangents is back for a 3rd season, and things are going to get weird! So we’re embracing the weirdness by talking about some of the weirdest animals around: cephalopods! |
| 2021-Jan-05 • 36 minutes SciShow Tangents Enhanced Classics - Experiments in Space SciShow Tangents is still on a break, but we have another Enhanced Classics for you! This week, a rerun of Experiments in Space with a brand new Ask the Science Couch and Butt Fact! |
| 2020-Dec-29 • 36 minutes SciShow Tangents Enhanced Classics - Light SciShow Tangents is taking a short break, but we didn't want to totally leave you hanging! You're about to listen to a rerun of the Light episode, but with a special twist: we recorded a new Ask the Science Couch and Butt Fact! |
| 2020-Dec-22 • 36 minutes Stefan's Favorite Things Join us as we send Stefan off in grand style by talking a lot about the things that bring him great joy in life: getting yolked, going to the store, and dice. He’s a complicated fellow! |
| 2020-Dec-15 • 35 minutes Ceri's Favorite Things This week, we celebrate the brains of this whole operation: Ceri! |
| 2020-Dec-08 • 31 minutes Sam's Favorite Things The Tangents team faces their most complicated, multi-faceted, and mysterious topic yet: Sam. Who is he? Can anyone ever really know? Find out in this very special episode. |
| 2020-Dec-01 • 33 minutes Hank's Favorite Things Season 2 of SciShow Tangents is coming to a close, and to celebrate, we’re honoring each of our panelists with episodes about their favorite things! We’re starting, of course, with our fearless leader and professional liker-of-strange-and-amazing-things: Hank! |
| 2020-Nov-24 • 36 minutes Vegetables Whether you love vegetables or hate them, they exist and you pretty much have to eat them. Sorry! |
| 2020-Nov-17 • 35 minutes Wood If you look out a window right now, you're probably going to see a tree. And that tree? Why, it's made out of wood, friend. And that's where things start to get interesting... |
| 2020-Nov-10 • 31 minutes Architecture When you think architecture, you’re probably thinking blueprints, slide rules, maybe a compass or something, I don’t know. But it turns out some of our animal brethren can hold their own when it comes to building stuff, and they don’t have any of those fancy tools! They have like… their mouths! |
| 2020-Nov-03 • 33 minutes Migration It’s our 100th episode! And to celebrate our migration from double- to triple-digits, we’re talking about… animal migration... Ok, we forgot it was our 100th episode. But this is still a great episode! Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen If you want to learn more about any of ... |
| 2020-Oct-30 • 18 minutes The Science of Scary Sounds - A SciShow Tangents Audio Adventure Monster Month bursts from the grave with one last shocking surprise! Enjoy this audio adventure through a haunted house, as Scary Ceri guides you through some of the spookiest sounds around! Be sure to wear your… deadphones! Ha ha ha ha ha! Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgree... |
| 2020-Oct-27 • 32 minutes Monster Month: Monster Mash Monster Month meets its ghoulish end, and we’re throwing it a swinging wake! This week, all the monsters we didn’t talk about during the rest of October come together for a great big Monster Mash! |
| 2020-Oct-20 • 34 minutes Monster Month: Vampires Monster Month turns up the spooky sex appeal as we talk about the hunkiest monster in Monster Town: vampires! |
| 2020-Oct-13 • 35 minutes Monster Month: Living Dead Monster Month shambles on! This week: the living dead! We’re talking zombies, we’re talking Frankensteins, we’re talking skeletons. And by the end, things get downright poignant! |
| 2020-Oct-06 • 31 minutes Monster Month: Ghosts! It’s ba-ack! Fear Month is back from the dead in a hideous new form: Monster Month! This week we’re busting out the Ouija board and summoning forth some Ghostly science knowledge from beyond this earthly plane! |
| 2020-Sep-29 • 33 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Bats We're taking a short dirt nap this week in preparation for October's frightening festivities! Enjoy this classic, slightly spooky episode and join us next week as we kick off Monster Month! It'll be worth the wait, I promise! |
| 2020-Sep-22 • 35 minutes Language with Deboki Chakravarti What would a podcast be without language? Perhaps a series of soothing tones? Maybe frog sounds? Wait… that sounds nice… |
| 2020-Sep-15 • 32 minutes Eyeballs Jeepers creepers, today we’re talking about peepers! |
| 2020-Sep-08 • 32 minutes Cars Cars are definitely one of the more common-place things we’ve talked about on Tangents… yet to some, including many on our panel, they are even more mysterious and confusing than the human body or the fundamental forces of nature! |
| 2020-Sep-01 • 34 minutes Black Holes Does the Tangents crew know anything about black holes? Not really. But when has that ever stopped us? Let’s get theoretical! |
| 2020-Aug-18 • 31 minutes Milk Milk is pretty normal, right? Boring even! But have you ever thought about it? Like, really thought about it? We have! And I gotta say, it led us to some challenging places. |
| 2020-Aug-11 • 30 minutes Listener Mailbag We get A LOT of questions from our listeners! So this week we decided to put the competition on hold, open up the old Tangents Mailbag, and answer a few of them! |
| 2020-Aug-04 • 31 minutes Glowing Things Glowing Things: is that a scientific topic? Yes, but not by much. In fact, we spend a lot of the episode figuring out of there even is a scientific definition of 'glow!' Very exciting! |
| 2020-Jul-28 • 34 minutes Proteins What do proteins do? Heck, an easier question to answer would be 'what don't they do?" No, seriously... I think they do, like, everything. |
| 2020-Jul-21 • 33 minutes Frogs What’s a frog? Well, it’s not quite a fish, and it’s not quite a lizard, but put them together and you have a stout, slimy little pal that everyone can agree on! Especially Ceri! Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, ch... |
| 2020-Jul-14 • 32 minutes SciShow Tangents Classics - Bees The Tangents crew needed to get out and enjoy some summer sun, so this week we're reposting our classic Bees episode! Tune in next week for a new episode! |
| 2020-Jul-07 • 29 minutes Diseases From toenails to T-cells, human bodies have a whole lot of moving parts, which means there’s ample opportunity for things to go not-quite-according-to-plan! |
| 2020-Jun-30 • 31 minutes Whales The sea is filled with giant, super-smart aquatic mammals communicating across vast distances and using the stars to navigate. No jokes in this description! Whales are amazing! |
| 2020-Jun-23 • 31 minutes Flying Machines Humanity’s quest for flight has been, all things considered, extremely successful! Sure, we aren’t all zipping around in jetpacks yet… but honestly I don’t think we’re ready for jetpacks. |
| 2020-Jun-16 • 29 minutes The Internet From the joyful to the hateful to the extremely weird, the Internet is all of the complexity of human thought given shape! And boy do humans think about cats and sex a lot! |
| 2020-Jun-09 • 33 minutes Allergies From itchy and annoying to potentially deadly, allergies seem to make our lives worse for pretty much no discernible reason! |
| 2020-May-26 • 33 minutes Healing Are you suffering from mild boredom, a grumpy frown, and a general lack of extremely niche scientific knowledge? Well, SciShow Tangents has the cure for what ails you! Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out SciShow... |
| 2020-May-19 • 32 minutes Games Kicking the ball, passing another type of ball, running around the big arena and making a point! SciShow Tangents knows one thing and that one thing is SPORTS! Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out SciShowTangent... |
| 2020-May-12 • 31 minutes Hair Mammals pretty much have the market cornered on hair, and you know all the other types of animals are jealous of us. Imagine a little lizard with bangs or something? It just wouldn’t be right. Sorry! |
| 2020-May-05 • 31 minutes Salt Salt: a mineral so nice that much of early human civilization was based on its procurement! Now we put big chunks of it on tasty pretzels at the mall! |
| 2020-Apr-28 • 34 minutes Holes Humans have been digging deep holes for fun and profit since time began, and some animals have been doing it for way longer than that! And all of those holes can't hold a candle to some of the natural holes the Earth's got going on. And those are nothing compared to space, which some (Sam) would argue is the biggest hole of all! |
| 2020-Apr-21 • 31 minutes Trees This Arbor Day, give your favorite tree the gift they really want: this tree-themed episode of SciShow Tangents. Just put the headphones around its trunk or in a knothole! |
| 2020-Apr-14 • 32 minutes Robots Real robots have more and more in common with science fiction robots every day. Not enough that you need to worry about them rising up against humans, but you should maybe consider being nicer to your smartphone... |
| 2020-Apr-07 • 32 minutes Rivers It's Spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, and the rivers swell with crystal clear snowmelt from tall mountain peaks... and we're all stuck inside and can't really look at it! Dang it! So I guess close your eyes and imagine floating down a beautiful river with your favorite podcast hosts as they drone on and on about bridges and salmon and stuff. |
| 2020-Mar-31 • 36 minutes Ducks You might see the title and think 'a duck isn't science.' Well i've learned a thing or two from those eggheads on the science couch and I can definitely say that you are wrong! It turns out, everything is science! Seems like a cop out, but it's true. |
| 2020-Mar-24 • 34 minutes Museums This episode has a little bit of everything: the French Revolution, haunted amulets, mummies (maybe??)... why, it's like a regular Night at the Museum! Have fun! |
| 2020-Mar-17 • 35 minutes Experiments in Space Space… it’s big, it’s confusing, and there isn’t any gravity! That’s why we have a dedicated team of people up in the International Space Station running all kinds of experiments to try and figure out just what the heck is even going on up there. |
| 2020-Mar-10 • 35 minutes Sugar with Deboki Chakravarti SciShow Tangents editorial assistant/genius Deboki Chakravarti joins us once more to talk about that sweet sand we all love so much: sugar! |
| 2020-Mar-03 • 34 minutes Viruses with Deboki Chakravarti Viruses are the subject of confusion & misinformation. Luckily, we have a friend who knows a lot about them! We sit down with microbiology genius Deboki Chakravarti to talk viruses. |
| 2020-Feb-25 • 32 minutes Oceans Oceans: they cover 70% of the planet, but what do we really know about them? Like what’s with all the salt, huh? And just what is the difference between a ‘sea’ and an ocean anyway?! I have questions! |
| 2020-Feb-18 • 34 minutes Subatomic Things get a little weird this episode, and by ‘little’ I mean very little! |
| 2020-Feb-11 • 34 minutes Hearts They say the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I think if you ask a doctor they would probably say that’s wrong! But what do I know? |
| 2020-Feb-04 • 33 minutes Meat Meat... seems pretty simple on the surface, but what do we really know about it? Like.. are living things made of meat? Or is meat only meat once it's being eaten? What was the first meat? What was the first thing to eat the first meat? Is eating prehistoric meat a good idea? Do we find the answer to any of these questions in this episode? I can't remember, frankly, but probably a few. |
| 2020-Jan-28 • 31 minutes Music So look, Stefan sings a song in this episode, so I’m not sure what more you need. He looked cool as heck when he was doing it and I was really proud of him! |
| 2020-Jan-21 • 31 minutes Running From diet, to shoes, to movement efficiency, people devote their lives to researching and perfecting the art of running. Meanwhile, cheetahs run 75 mph and they sleep all day. No fair! |
| 2020-Jan-14 • 31 minutes Magnets Wise men have long pondered how magnets work. We all know the answer is “magic,” but Ceri and Hank have to keep up the illusion that science is real, so please humor them. |
| 2020-Jan-07 • 32 minutes Money Listening to Tangents is like making an investment with your brain. And the dividend? Knowledge. Invest today, won't you? |
| 2019-Dec-31 • 32 minutes Light SciShow Tangents’ exploration of the electromagnetic spectrum continues with good old, dependable light! What is it? Where does it come from? Only Ceri knows (sort of)! |
| 2019-Dec-24 • 35 minutes Radio Humans have wielded the power of radio waves for more than a century, but what exactly are they and how do we use them to transmit information? It turns out, even geniuses like Hank and Ceri have a hard time explaining that! |
| 2019-Dec-17 • 34 minutes Festive Ecology Jingle Bells, Frosty the Snowman, Let it Snow; the timeless sounds of the holiday. And to that pantheon of greats is added another track: this 30-minute-long, spoken-word science podcast! |
| 2019-Dec-10 • 32 minutes Ceramics From ancient clay pots to the heat-proof panels on the space shuttle, ceramics have been an integral part of human technology from the very beginning. I can’t even think of any jokes about ceramic! It’s just cool! |
| 2019-Dec-03 • 29 minutes Bones Bones… seems like a simple enough topic, right? Well, would you believe me if I told you that scientists can’t even agree on how and why bones evolved in the first place?! And teeth? Don’t even get us started on teeth... Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out this episode's page at scishowtangents.org |
| 2019-Nov-26 • 30 minutes Nutrition When it comes to proper nutrition, just about the only thing everyone can agree on is that people need to eat food. Everything else, from eggs to carbs to vitamins, is basically up in the air! The Tangents crew wades into the quagmire that is modern nutrition science to see if we can figure out what the heck humans are supposed to be eating! |
| 2019-Nov-19 • 29 minutes Transportation People absolutely love going places and doing stuff! And in our zeal to go places and do stuff even faster, we've invented some wild things. Come with us on journey of discovery as we sail the seven seas of science and fly the friendly skies of... innovation...? |
| 2019-Nov-12 • 32 minutes Cryptography YRHA WJ, XAWOQT KXTAQOQCT! XP DEW TEKIQ LD TWJQC TQNCQA LQTTHVQ, AYQQA LQ "KEEMT KXMQ TAECLD YQHARQC" HOF DEW YXKK SQ XOFWNAQF XOAE ARQ THL NHFQAT, LD OQY QZNKWTXIQ PHO NKWS! |
| 2019-Nov-05 • 32 minutes Fire Ancient man harnessing and wielding the elemental power of the flame was pretty cool, I guess, but I think this being Tangent's one year anniversary is a little cooler, honestly! Plus, we announce who won the first season, so actually this episode is sort of twice as important as fire if you think about it! |
| 2019-Oct-29 • 33 minutes Fear Month: Spiders! SciShow Tangents' Month of Fear concludes with what is undeniably the scariest, most valid fear of any of those discussed... spiders! I'm not saying spiders will pour out of your headphones and into your ears when you listen to this, but I'm also not promising they won't. |
| 2019-Oct-22 • 33 minutes Fear Month: Claustrophobia SciShow Tangents' Month of Fear continues and… wait… do you feel it… the walls they’re... closing in around you! Crushing you! ...were you scared? Well, if your name is Hank Green you probably were, because his fear is enclosed spaces! How is that related to science? Good question! |
| 2019-Oct-15 • 33 minutes Fear Month: Decomposition! As the SciShow Tangents Month of Fear continues, your hosts get down into the wormy, slimy muck to discuss Ceri’s biggest fear: decomposition! Does that sound too generic to be truly terrifying? That’s what Sam thought too, and now he is also quite scared of decomposing! Boo! |
| 2019-Oct-08 • 31 minutes Fear Month: Sharks! SciShow Tangents' Month of Fear continues! This week, Stefan is confronted by his fear of sharks! Thrill as we weave a tale of nigh-immortal sharks! Feel the chills run down your spine as you learn about how weird shark penises are! Try not to scream when you hear about Sharkarado, the Shark Colorado! This episode... might be too scary!!! |
| 2019-Oct-01 • 34 minutes Fear Month: Failure with Caitlin Hofmeister! Here at Tangents, we don't mess around when it comes to Halloween. So each week in October, the topic will be one of our greatest fears! Hank was apparently too afraid to even be on this episode, so instead special guest Caitlin Hofmeister confronts her fear of failure as we tell her tales of science gone wrong! |
| 2019-Sep-24 • 29 minutes Plastic Plastic: space age wonder material or planet-destroying scourge? The real answer may lie... somewhere in the middle (but leaning more towards scourge). Plus, learn exactly how many LEGO minifigures you can eat before you die! |
| 2019-Sep-17 • 32 minutes Teens For humans, the teenage years are marked by angst, self-discovery, and homework. For elephants, they’re marked by pus-weeping face glands, uncontrollable rage, and a green penis! |
| 2019-Sep-10 • 32 minutes Fashion New York Fashion Week is in full swing, and the world's most stylish science podcast is celebrating by exploring the intersection of fashion and science! |
| 2019-Sep-03 • 32 minutes Navigation Wether it's a human trying to figure out the quickest way to the airport, a salmon returning to the waters where they were born, or a dog trying to figure out the perfect place to poop, almost everyliving thing uses some sort of innate or technological navigation system every day. |
| 2019-Aug-27 • 32 minutes Precious Metals Almost all of human culture and economics is structured around a handful of pretty metals that we have arbitrarily assigned value to! |
| 2019-Aug-20 • 34 minutes Extremophiles Extremophiles are tough little guys that not only survive but thrive in the harshest environments on Earth; unforgiving places like volcanic vents at the bottom of the sea, lakes of acid, and your bellybutton |
| 2019-Aug-13 • 33 minutes Acid This week, the Other Couch's high-school-level understanding of chemistry is really put to the test as we talk about acid! What is it? How does it dissolve things? It has something to do... with protons? It seems way simpler in the movies! |
| 2019-Aug-06 • 31 minutes Deserts You might think you know everything there is to know about deserts: big, sandy, hot, etc. But between the alien mummies and the ice blades, we're guessing there's a lot you don't know. |
| 2019-Jul-30 • 33 minutes Metamorphosis When you think metamorphosis, you might think a beautiful butterfly coming out of its cocoon. However, lots of things metamorphose in much less graceful, much more sticky, gooey, unsettling, and potentially dangerous ways! |
| 2019-Jul-23 • 33 minutes Fungi Plants and animals get all the glory, but fungi are out there every day, breaking down leaf litter, making our bread nice and fluffy, and fermenting alcohols. They deserve a little thanks, so we did a whole episode about them! |
| 2019-Jul-16 • 30 minutes The Apollo Program From 1961 to 1972, thousands of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, seamstresses, pilots, and even a child or two worked on the Apollo Program, collaborating to bring humanity to the moon. Today, Tangents celebrates this unparalleled work of collective science and engineering! |
| 2019-Jul-09 • 31 minutes Cancer Living things are so full of complicated systems of cells and DNA, that things are bound to go wrong. And sometimes when things go wrong, cancer is the result. Today on Tangents we talk about the causes, health impacts, and potential cures (both real and fake) of cancer. |
| 2019-Jul-02 • 33 minutes Natural Disasters Natural disasters are a fact of life when you live on a giant ball of water, ice, and rock with a gooey magma center that’s hurtling through space… and all the pollution we’re pumping into the environment doesn’t really seem to be helping, either. |
| 2019-Jun-25 • 31 minutes Fossils with Kallie Moore Fossils: a profound link to our Earth’s past… some are profound... some are beautiful… some are poop! Kallie Moore, host of PBS Eons joins the Tangents crew to talk old stone bones, fraudulent fossils, and a dinosaur so well preserved, we may be able to figure out what its last meal was. |
| 2019-Jun-18 • 33 minutes Communication with Vanessa Hill Birds singing, dogs barking, computers sending and receiving data, you reading this description: at the end of the day, it’s all communication. This week, we sit down with Vanessa Hill, host of the YouTube channel Braincraft, and do a little communicating about communication! |
| 2019-Jun-11 • 32 minutes Digestion Everybody eats, and everybody poops, but in between… that’s where the magic happens! This week we’re talking about everyone’s favorite organic method of removing nutrients from food: digestion! |
| 2019-Jun-04 • 35 minutes Messes with Joe Hanson Be they big or small, purposeful or accidental, innocuous or potentially-planet-destroying, there is no question that humans are great at making messes and not so great at cleaning them up. Joe Hanson, host of the PBS channel Hot Mess, joins us to talk about some of the more notable messes we’ve made, and what, if anything, we can do to be less messy in the future. |
| 2019-May-28 • 33 minutes Sleep We delve into the eternal mystery that is 'sleep.' Where do ours dreams come from? How does sleeping help rejuvenate our brains and bodies? Why do some people need less sleep than others? Turns out, no one really knows yet, but it's still fun to talk about! |
| 2019-May-21 • 31 minutes Cooking Every day, billions of people perform vital, life sustaining chemistry right in their homes! Baking, frying, boiling, fermenting… all cooking is science, and the way it weaves into our lives and cultures makes it uniquely fascinating! |
| 2019-May-14 • 29 minutes Mars From countless stories of little green men to colonization plans and endless rover and satellite missions, humans are sort of obsessed with Mars. One of those obsessed humans is Hank Green! |
| 2019-May-07 • 34 minutes Sound We couldn’t make podcasts without the science of sound. There’s a lot of technology involved in capturing the vibrations we’re making with our vocal folds so that we can share them with the whole Internet! So this week, we’re fine-tuning our knowledge of sound. |
| 2019-Apr-30 • 34 minutes Mutation with Trace Dominguez This week, we’re joined by Trace Dominguez from the YouTube channel Uno Dos of Trace to talk about genetic mutations! Tiny changes in an organism’s DNA sequence can lead to big variations or absolutely nothing. It’s just a roll of the dice! |
| 2019-Apr-23 • 35 minutes Agriculture A bunch of things are considered agricultural science, from planting crops and raising sheep for wool to food safety and developing fertilizers. This week, we’re skimming the surface of agriculture, with a little detour into animals that sort of farm too. |
| 2019-Apr-16 • 31 minutes Pregnancy Pregnancy is, biologically speaking, extremely weird! A pregnant animal’s body goes through so many hormonal and physical changes to make sure a zygote has everything it needs to grow. This week, we’re talking about a few of those things, like why pregnant people get nauseated and other animals might not. |
| 2019-Apr-09 • 34 minutes Ancient Mega with Blake de Pastino This week, we’re joined by Blake de Pastino from the YouTube channel PBS Eons to talk about how plants, animals, and geologic events used to be so… huge. |
| 2019-Apr-02 • 32 minutes Bats Bats have a bad reputation because of the ones that drink blood or spread disease, but these furry flying critters can be pretty cute! This week, we’re talking about everything from echolocation to weird potential uses for bat poop. |
| 2019-Mar-26 • 33 minutes Charles Darwin You might know him from his greatest hits: natural selection, Galápagos finches, and eating lots of the animals he studied… it’s Charles Darwin! This week, we’re talking about this famous biologist and some of the weirder science he did. |
| 2019-Mar-19 • 33 minutes Timekeeping If you think about it, we’re all time travelers moving forward at one second per second… right? This week, we try really hard to define time, get sort of existential about it, and then talk about the science of timekeeping, from circadian rhythms to weird mechanical clocks. |
| 2019-Mar-12 • 33 minutes Giant Rodents When can you start calling a rodent “giant?” When it’s twice the average size of its species? When you’re not grossed out by it? When it could be a mascot for a family fun center? We don’t really have a precise answer to that… but this week, we’re exploring the science of big ol’ rodents! |
| 2019-Mar-05 • 45 minutes Celebrity Science with Elah Feder For our very first live show at PodCon 2, we were joined by Elah Feder, the co-host and producer of the podcast Undiscovered! Podcasting on a stage with a live audience meant we really had to bring our A-game, so we swapped stories of famous actors, politicians, and other celebrities who also dabbled in science. |
| 2019-Feb-26 • 32 minutes Bees Do you ever just wonder, “are the bees doing okay?” They’re so important to our food industry and native ecosystems, and every couple of years it seems like something horribly bad is happening to them. So this week, we’re taking a look at the fascinating lives and deaths of bees! |
| 2019-Feb-19 • 37 minutes Artificial Intelligence We’ve all heard about “The Algorithms” that affect our lives, making decisions for and about us. And artificial intelligence systems are recommending podcasts, picking out targeted ads, and playing games against humans every single day. This week, we’re going to skim the surface of AI and chat about everything from Siri to personality prediction software. |
| 2019-Feb-12 • 32 minutes The Sun with Caitlin Hofmeister This week, our producer Caitlin Hofmeister is joining the pod to talk about the Sun, and lending her expertise as a host of the YouTube channel SciShow Space. |
| 2019-Feb-05 • 33 minutes Stimulants Are you one of those people who doesn’t feel awake until you have caffeine coursing through your bloodstream? Well, you can choose to ingest some chemical stimulants, but they’re also something your body makes! Just think about the adrenaline rush before a public speech. |
| 2019-Jan-29 • 33 minutes Flight At some point, we’ve all probably looked up at birds and wished we could fly. And some curious people took that wish and did science! From the biology of flying animals to machines that help humans take to the skies, this week, we’re exploring the science of flight. |
| 2019-Jan-22 • 34 minutes Mucus Mucus grosses people out. Whether it’s coming out of your nose or slime oozing from an animal, it’s not really a pleasant substance. But scientifically, mucus is super cool—it can be used for protection, hunting, lubrication, or plain old stickiness. |
| 2019-Jan-15 • 33 minutes Dragons Some small, magical corner of your heart wants dragons to be real, right? Well... sorry. They’re not. But this week, we wanted to celebrate some science-adjacent to dragons! |
| 2019-Jan-08 • 34 minutes Ice and Snow From sugary snow cones to WWII plans for an aircraft carrier made of ice and wood pulp, humans have had big dreams for frozen water. So this week, we’re exploring the science of snow and ice across the globe. |
| 2019-Jan-01 • 32 minutes Exercise A new year means New Year’s resolutions! Lots of people are probably getting their fitness on, whether it’s by joining a gym or putting on yoga YouTube videos. So this week, we’re stretching our muscles to explore the science of exercise! |
| 2018-Dec-25 • 34 minutes Parasites with Sally Le Page This week, we’re joined by evolutionary biologist and science communicator Dr. Sally LePage to talk about parasites! |
| 2018-Dec-18 • 32 minutes Advertising From website banners to scratch-and-sniff magazine spreads, you’ve probably been the target of thousands of ads. Like, you’re even going to hear one during this podcast—we gotta eat! |
| 2018-Dec-11 • 28 minutes Eggs This week, we’re cracking the science of eggs wide open! |
| 2018-Dec-04 • 33 minutes Taste Have you ever wanted to lick the Moon and find out what that grey dust tastes like? No? Well apparently someone at NASA did. Find out what the moon tastes like (and lots more) in this week's Tangents! |
| 2018-Nov-27 • 34 minutes Satellites What do the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Space Station, and the Moon have in common? They’re all satellites that orbit the Earth! |
| 2018-Nov-20 • 31 minutes Flightless Birds With American Thanksgiving around the corner, turkey is on everyone’s mind! So this week, we’re taking a closer look at flightless birds of all shapes and sizes! |
| 2018-Nov-13 • 36 minutes Science Hoaxes In our debut episode, we delve into the complicated world of scientific hoaxes. Some are just goofs that went a little too far, but others have had serious negative impacts on public health. |
| 2018-Nov-02 • 3 minutes Introducing: SciShow Tangents Introducing the lightly competitive knowledge showcase from the geniuses behind the YouTube series SciShow. Every Tuesday, join Hank Green, Ceri Riley, Stefan Chin, and Sam Schultz as they try to one-up and amaze each other with weird and funny scientific research... while not getting distracted. There will be tangents about video games, music, weird smells, surprisingly deep insights about life, and of course, poop, but it always comes back to the science. |