For possible answers, we travel to the moment after the Big Bang and discover all that came into being in those few minutes after the great flash: time, space, matter, and light. Plus, the bizarre stuff that makes up the bulk of the universe: dark energy and dark matter.

Also, what we set in motion with the invention of the light blub. How artificial light lit up our homes, our cities and – inadvertently – our skies.

Guests:

• Sean Carroll – Theoretical physicist at California Institute of Technology
• Leonard Susskind – Theoretical physicist, Stanford University
• Jane Brox – Author of Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light
• Peter Fisher – Physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Find out what’s coded in humpback whale song and whether human-cetacean dialogue is possible… how information theory reveals communication patterns within the animal kingdom… how plants call out to animals to protect them… and why only humans evolved language.

Guests:

• Douglas Carlton Abrams – Author of Eye of the Whale: A Novel
• Laurance Doyle – Scientist at the SETI Institute
• Douglas Vakoch – Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute
• David DeGusta – Anthropologist at Stanford University

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Also, the secret behind the extraordinary breakthroughs that DARPA scientists are making – from building autonomous cars to wiring robotic surgeons.

Plus, making space for humans… and their bodily functions: the engineering tricks of toiletry. And, a carbon-based astronaut on the view of Earth from orbit.

Guests:

• Kevin Warwick – Professor of Cybernetics at University of Reading in the U.K.
• Santiago Bilinkis – Student at the Singularity University
• Mary Roach – Writer and author of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
• Tom Jones – United States astronaut, space consultant, and veteran of four Space Shuttle flights
• Michael Belfiore – Space and Technology writer, and author of The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs

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Also, Brains on Vacation takes on a challenge to relativity and our Hollywood skeptic has doubts about exorcism. It’s enough to make your head spin on Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it!

Guests:

• Bruce Hood – Cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and author of The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs
• David Morrison – Director of the Carl Sagan Center for The Study of Life in The Universe at the SETI Institute and keeper of the NASA website Ask an Astrobiologist
• Martin Snow – Research Scientist, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder
• Jim Underdown – Executive Director, Center for Inquiry, West – Los Angeles
• Phil Plait – Astronomer, keeper of badastronomy.com, and author of Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . .

Discover the future of personalized medicine with biologist Craig Venter, as well as a man who turned his body over to the new science. Learn what his tests revealed.

Plus, why stem cell research really is a horse race. And, why getting sick is sometimes the best thing.

Guests:

• Craig Venter – Genome scientist
• Frank McCormick – Director of the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco
• David Ewing Duncan – Journalist and author of Experimental Man: What One Man’s Body Reveals about His Future, Your Health, and Our Toxic World
• Sharon Moalem – Neurogeneticist and Evolutionary Biologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and author of Survival of the Sickest
• Sean Owens – Director of the Regenerative Medicine Laboratory at the University of California, Davis
• Julie Burges – Animal Health Technician, Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, University of California, Davis

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Also, how disease almost halted the most ambitious engineering project in the world … how elite disease detectives puzzle out perplexing epidemics … And – could tiny bugs from spaaace, ace, ace be our ancestors?

Guests:

• Sonia Shah – Author of The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
• Michael Conniff – Historian, director of Global Studies at San Jose State University, and author of Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981 (Pitt Latin American Series)
• Mark Pendergrast – Author of Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service
• Robert Zubrin – President of the Mars Society

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Hear about the chemistry of poisons … why Botox may freeze your emotions as well as your face… which animal is most lethal to humans… and how 19th-century poisoners got away with murder – until the birth of forensic science.

Guests:

• Deborah Blum – Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
• Martyn Smith – Toxicologist, University of California, Berkeley
• Joshua Ian Davis – Psychologist, Barnard College, New York
• Jamie Seymour – Venom biologist, director of The Tropical Australian Stinger Research Unit, School of Marine Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia

Plus, a trip to the Body Farm where decaying bodies help science…how we might cheat the Big Sleep with drugs… why Mexican cemeteries look like villages… and a doctor’s fight against one of the world’s deadliest diseases.

Guests:

• Bill Bass – Forensic Anthropologist, founder of the University of Tennessee Forensic Research Facility. Author of Beyond the Body Farm: A Legendary Bone Detective Explores Murders, Mysteries, and the Revolution in Forensic Science and fiction, written under the pen name, Jefferson Bass. The latest: Bones of Betrayal: A Body Farm Novel.
• Stanley Brandes – Cultural Anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley, author of Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond
• Matt Kaeberlein – Pathologist, University of Washington
• Ross Donaldson – Doctor and author of The Lassa Ward

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Plus, our Hollywood skeptic spills his guts and other entrails for a phony class for nurses and Phil Plait gives us the latest lapse in critically-thinking brains.

It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it.

Guests:

• Phil Plait – Author, badastronomy.com and Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . .
• Mark Adams – writer and editor, and author of Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet
• Jim Underdown – Executive Director, Center for Inquiry, West – Los Angeles
• Steven Novella – Assistant professor of neurology at Yale School of Medicine

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Guests:

• George Foy – Author of Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence
• Garret Keizer – Author of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise
• Craig Hogan – Director for Particle Astrophysics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

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