EPISODE 7 – Spider Silk Superpowers

Chris Hadfield Promo by Startup podcast by two National Geographic Explorers

"The End" of Science Faction has arrived! For our 8th and final show, hear from three great Canadian researchers, planetary scientist Dr. Alan Hildebrand, immunologist Dr. Matthew Miller, and climate champion Merran Smith, talk about three possible ways the world could end and how we can avoid TEOTWAWKI (a.k.a. the end of the world as we know it).

Spidey senses tingling? This month on Science Faction, we learn about how spider silk can be used by humans in many strange and unexpected ways. We speak with Utah State University's Dr. Randy Lewis & BioArt Laboratories' Jalila Essaïdi about "Spider Silk Superpowers."

Dr. Angela Crean from the University of New South Wales Australia tells the Science Faction team about her shocking experiments that reveal that a mom’s previous mating partner can influence the appearance of her future offspring, at least in flies. Join us this month for “I Look Like My Mom’s Ex”.

This month on Science Faction we visit the laboratory of Dr. Emily Standen at the University of Ottawa to learn about fish that can walk. This story about present-day Polypterus fish walking is actually a story about our distant past & how it is that ancient fish gave rise to four-legged land animals, including us.

Have you ever had a bad memory that you wanted to change into something better? This once impossibility is now possible, at least for mice, thanks to research led by Nobel laureate Dr. Susumu Tonegawa of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics. Join us this month on Science Faction.

Strange radio bursts from deep outer space are the subject of this month’s Science Faction episode as we chat with astrophysicist Dr. Victoria Kaspi from McGill University about her team’s amazing discovery and speculate on some of the possible sources of these mysterious signals.

This episode brings us to the chemical engineering laboratory of Dr. Michael Strano of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where a group of scientists has developed a way to integrate microscopic technology into the leaves of plants, transforming them into the self-powered machines of the future.

In this episode, the Science Faction team speaks with mechanical engineer and biologist Dr. David Hu from the Georgia Institute of Technology about the fascinating physics of fire ants and how these tiny creatures are inspiring new branches of robotics.

An exception to every rule! Science Faction takes on the challenge of explaining difficult scientific concepts using only the 1000 most common words... well almost. Here are "A Few Little Exceptions" to our 1000-word rule.