Science, Actually Presents : The Nerd and the Scientist

Our very first guest and our very first return guest - Dr. Dimos Katsis - becomes our second 'third timer'. He's the principal engineer at Overview Energy - a company that's building the infrastructure to gather solar energy in space with satellites each as big as two football fields, and then beam it down to us here on Earth. To sum it up real quick... Kovi and Benjamin asked, "so, the microwave power plant from the video game Sim City 2000 is for real!?" Dimos, "yep."

Moondial! Get it? Like 'Mundial' but we made it say 'Moon' because we're space nerds? FIFA World Cup 2026 is over (congrats, Spain!), so get your vuvuzelas ready as Kovi and Benjamin get into some of the science behind soccer. Over time the ball was reengineered to be smoother until it actually ruined its aerodynamics, one venue is almost 1 1/2 miles above sea level where the air is 23% less dense, players lose up to 2% body mass due to sweat each game, and penalty kicks happen faster than the goalie's brain can process what's happening - so it's all chance.

Kovi and Benjamin talk about things that explode in space. Well Kovi talks about things that explode in space, and then Benjamin says something along the lines of, "you mean like in Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country!?" Tune in and clearly see where the line's drawn between nerd and scientist. The boys talk micronovae, novae, supernovae, and 'movie physics'. (spoiler - those 'launch a nuke at it' solutions in the movies? yeah, they won't work)

Dr. Bryan Scott's interested in principled inference and astrostatistics. His research focuses on the use of large galaxy surveys and intensity mapping experiments to constrain cosmology and astrophysics over cosmic time. His graduate work at U.C. Riverside focused on measurements of the Ultraviolet Extragalactic Background Light and on the sensitivity of future spectroscopic intensity mapping experiments to modifications of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. And he's won many certificates for his excellence in teaching all that stuff. And he loves LEGOs... And Star Trek... In this episode our nerd, Benjamin, and our scientist, Kovi, are faced with so...

While Benjamin might be a working nerd, Kovi's a working scientist. In this episode Kovi walks us through this new thing he found, lurking out there in the universe. A rare binary star system in the Ara constellation. A 'Rosetta stone' for explaining mysterious, repeating cosmic radio pulses. You probably saw it online - it made all the news - we're talking about ASKAP J1745. Also, how does Kovi eat a sandwich?

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As this episode's guest, Anastasia Shavrova, explains - the road to studying and falling in love with spiders begins with hating spiders and loving ants. As Anastasia explains why some spiders' third pair of legs are very strong, Kovi and Benjamin can't help but fawn over Zilly - their guest's guest lizard.Follow us everywhere!

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...and follow Anastasia right here https://ashavrova.com/

What goes up, must come down - even if you send it up to space three times aboard a space shuttle. Just ask our latest guest, Rex Walheim, who flew on shuttle Atlantis three times - including the last shuttle flight... ...ever. Kovi and Benjamin did their very best to keep their composure as they spoke with Rex about how he became an astronaut, what it's like up there, does space really have a burnt smell!?, and just how powerful an experience being in space can be.

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Jennifer Swanson woke up one day and thought, "what have I done with my life?" So at the ripe old age of 5 (yes, FIVE), she wrote and illustrated her first book about science. Since then she didn't do much - other than graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy with a degree in Chemistry, taught chemistry, got a master’s degree in K–8 Science Education, gave a Ted Talk and wrote 55 more books. Kovi and Benjamin, however, have an assortment of rubber ducks.

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Welcome to The Nerd and The Scientist's Book Club. Today Kovi and Benjamin will be talking about Project Hail Mary. Specifically - THE BOOK - as Kovi hasn't seen the movie yet. The book does raise some interesting questions, however, like how would we go about communicating with aliens? Extreme environments where liquid water could still exist. How life might evolve on other worlds. And was it funny? (It was)

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As they watched a jar of Nutella float by, Kovi and Benjamin knew right then and there they needed to do an episode about all the goings on aboard Artemis II. From a broken toilet to googly eyes on the CO2 scrubber to the toilet breaking again, it was quite the ride. But also all the sentiment - a message from the first astronaut to go around the Moon, a flag from Apollo 18 that never got to fly, and naming a crater after a loved one.

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Dr. Zoe Xirocostas joins Kovi and Benjamin to talk about peer reviews, getting grants for research, the effort behind getting a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), and creating mutant super plants that can survive any habitat.

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Find Zoe here https://zoexiro.com/

How do we explain this one? It's the 'Part Two' of Kovi and Benjamin's previous episode where they were waiting for their guest, Daniel Orvomaa of the Talking Ass podcast, who never showed up. It's 'Part Two' of a double episode done with the Talking Ass - 'Part One' of which is available on the Talking Ass right now. It's also Daniel's third time on the show but only his second time rapid-firing through the Questions & Quibbles at the end. Kovi kicks us off talking about islands and atoms, and then the gang discusses what's going on with our...

Hot Dogs and Toilet Paper and Action Figures, OH MY! All studied up and ready to record a double episode with the Talking Ass' very own Daniel Orvomaa - Daniel had a scheduling mix up, didn't make it, and that left Kovi and Benjamin just riffing. Well, we didn't get all dressed up for nothing! The boys talk about Vegas shows and try out some new Questions & Quibbles questions for future guests.

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There are 1.5 million freshly minted engineers in India every year. One of them, this week's guest Naman Bajaj, said, "well, I guess they've got enough of those," changed course, became an astronomer, scored an insane amount of time on JWST (that, in itself, is amazing - which totally rocked Kovi's and Benjamin's minds), and found that protoplanetary disks - baby solar systems - lose 85-90% of their original mass by the time they're done forming. They do so in tremendous, huge jets - some of which, in turn, spark the beginnings of other baby solar systems.

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Kovi and Benjamin were getting their questions and notes in order, preparing for another amazing episode with another amazing guest - when there was a sudden reschedule that left the boys alone, unprepared, and unsupervised. Join the gents as they just talk... well... they way they usually talk - NERD TALK. From NORAD, to data science, to something that goes great with maple, strawberry or blueberry syrup - Zel’Dovich Pancakes!

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In this episode, Kovi and Benjamin dive headfirst into the Ig Nobel Prize, science’s annual celebration of research that makes you laugh first and think later. The lads cover everything from the prize’s origins and its wonderfully weird traditions to the unforgettable “winners” themselves, all while celebrating the curious, human side of scientific discovery. It is a reminder that science is not just serious. Sometimes it is very, very funny.

And because the Ig Nobels deserve a little swagger:

Iggy Iggy Iggy, can’t you see

Sometimes your prize...

Everybody look busy! Our boss is back. For those of you who don't know, Kovi and Benjamin first nerded together as co-hosts on the Space Case Sarah Show, hosted by our return guest - the space case herself - Sarah Treadwell. Tune in to hear about her PhD journey, being a professional science communicator, what her son's favorite planet name is (nope, not what we thought either), and what does one actually do with a space inflatable planetarium?

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Do you think about databases? Do you think like a databse? This week's guest David Ezrakhovich does. Listen to Kovi and Benjamin's 70th episode (holy moly 70!) as David shares with us how his journey and his mindset led him to becoming a multi-disciplinary engineer. ...and all that happens somewhere in the middle of three nerds being nerds.

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Where do 'nearby stars' end and 'distant stars' begin? Learn the answer to that question from UC Berkeley astronomer Howard Isaacson! Kovi and Benjamin swoon as Howard gets romantic about astronomy, his love of exoplanets, black holes, and the search for life in the universe.

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Find Howard here https://astro.berkeley.edu/people/howard-isaacson

Dr. Helen Maynard Casley, (one of) THE principal scientists at ANSTO (Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation), sets Kovi's and Benjamin's brains alight as she talks about working on the Wombat (not an acronym - Australians just like naming things after animals). Wombat is a high intensity neutron diffractometer that Dr. Helen uses to just scoop some neutrons out of a working nuclear reactor. You know, for kicks! You'd think that line of work would make someone glow, but not so! The reason she glows - or glowed - was when she helped set the Guinness World Record for...

Dr. Blitz, Kovi and Benjamin showed up in matching shirts, glasses and microphones to talk about all things Star Trek, the path Dr. Blitz took from a young age to become the scientist he is today, science communication, the expansion of the universe, spacetime, and a bunch of things black holes do that you probably didn't know they did. So sit back, relax, and enjoy our sixty-seventh episode.

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Multidisciplinary biologist and bee expert Sarah Aamidor returns for part two - or should we say Part Bee - of her deep dive conversation with Kovi and Benjamin about some of the weirdest things bees do. Yes, in order to conduct her studies on bees she had to kill a few bees - but she didn't kill nearly as many bees as bees kill. Nor did she torture any bees - unlike bees who regularly torture bees. And she definitely didn't rip off many bees'... um... bits and pieces... The point is the queen bee rips off some bees...

Zap! Zorp! Zew! This week's guest is Cameron Jones! Boom! Fweet! Bzzzt! Join us as he explains his work in free space optics communicaton! Zzzzap! Vreeee! Pew! Pew! Which means he uses lasers to talk to spacecraft! Choonk! Fwom! Thoom! We talk about kinds of lasers, wavelengths, and the difference between communication lasers and military lasers! K-shoom! Shzzak! And Kovi and Benjamin really test Cameron's laser-knowledge as they put him through the show's first ever laser game! Fzaaap! Krzzzzzzt!

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Just in case you missed her wildly popular TikToks, or you missed her YouTube channel, or you missed her TED Talks, or you missed her creating a space telescope from scratch, or you didn't get your hands on her new book, Weird universe, now you can listen Dr. Erika Hamden chatting with Kovi and Benjamin about all things astrophysics and radio-astronomy! ...and, seriously, get that book!

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This week, Kovi and Benjamin take a breather before drinking from the firehose of science guests lining up to chat with them. Tune in as they dive into spacecraft, telescopes, and observatories named after scientists. “Hubble the satellite. Hubble the telescope. Hubble the flamethrower! …the kids love this one.”

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Our favorite talking ass, Daniel Orvomaa, is back for round two! He joins Kovi and Benjamin in a very unstructured conversation about bad science, bad science reporting, pseudo science, and superpesis - Finland's version of baseball. It's a long one this time, so grab some snacks and settle in for some science-fueled randomness.

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Find Daniel here : https://talkingasspodcast.com/<...

I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee... Won’t my mommy be so proud of me? I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee... OMG! Bees are really, really WEIRD!!!! That's not how that nursery rhyme is usually sung, but it might as well be because as Kovi and Benjamin learned from this week's guest - biologist Sarah Aamidor - bees are really, really weird!

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There are few things as iconic on an astronaut's flight suit as their mission patch—a singular piece of art that encapsulates everything about the mission: who’s going, what country they’re from, what vehicle they’re riding, where they’re headed, and what they plan to do when they get there.

From space shuttles to space stations, from space telescopes to asteroids, this week’s guest is the man who designed hundreds of them—Tim Gagnon.

From the very first sketch he submitted as a kid, to the dozens that actually flew to space, to the...

Sure this episode starts with talk about sausages, but how else does one segue their conversation to talking about salp? And you need to talk about salp to talk about jellyfish, right? Which, of course, is the best way to talk about crabification. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Whales can't poop under pressure - the pressure achieved in great depths of water, not the pressure of pooping in front of a crowd. This week's guest, the Guernsey Scientist herself, marine biologist and conservationist, Elizabeth Sweet, takes Kovi and Benjamin on a heck of a ride as she shares her...

Kovi and Benjamin got together for slice at Jupiter Pizza. They loved the menu - some wood fired pizza options were the Cassiopeia, the Io, Galileo, Gaia, Mercury, Ares, and Triton. As fun as those names are, they pissed off Benjamin something royal. You see, the names are all spacey, yes, but pick a theme! We've got some planets (Ares was the Greek name fo the planet we now call Mars), random moons (from different worlds, mind you), an explorer, a constellation... It's all over the place! The eatery is called Jupiter Pizza - you'd think they'd have, at...

Tree lines are moving both toward the poles and uphill, as they try to reach cooler temperatures. Flowers in Japan that have been blooming at precisely the same time for hundreds of years are suddenly off schedule by a full week. This week's guest, plant ecologist Inna Osmolovsky, explains how this and more are due to climate change. Plus, as Kovi and Benjamin are primarily space nerds, she easily blows their minds with all kinds of interesting plant facts!

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Kovi and Benjamin were delighted to have the host of the Talking Ass podcast, Daniel Orvomaa, on their show. Or were they guests on his show? Someone was a guest on someone's show, we remember that. We do know that this is Part One of a two hour conversation that was had - and if you'd like to listen to Part Two, you need to track down the Talking Ass. It's the podcast with a tie-dye donkey as its mascot. For this episode, we meant to touch upon the rampant spread of AI - specifically it's misuse among students...

On this quantum episode of The Nerd and The Scientist, your quatum hosts Kovi and Benjamin have a great quantum conversation with quantum guest, quatum physicist Chris Ferrie. From his humble quantum journey from a small town in Canada to being a professor of quantum physics in Australia, Chris also tell us how he got into writing quantum physics books for babies, and why people put 'quantum' in front of everything just because it sounds cool. Quantum.

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Kovi and Benjamin finally get a moment to themselves without having to entertain yet ANOTHER amazing guest. "What should we talk about, Kovi," Benjamin asked. "Bugs," Kovi snapped back. He wasn't serious, but Benjamin was. So now we have an episode about bugs in space - both living critters brought up for experiments, or software bugs that either almost, or did, bring on an early end to many a mission.

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Benjamin was crushed when he learned that 'starquakes' weren't actual ground-shaking events on a star's surface that shook little star buildings and cracked little star roads. Kovi's colleague, astroseismologist Courtney Crawford, explains how asteroseismology is the study of stellar oscillations - rhythmic pulsations in a star’s brightness - that help astronomers understand a star's internal structure, composition and rotation. Courtney wanted to be a butterfly until she watched MythBusters - and that set her down the path to talking to us about starquakes.

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We like big shuttles and we cannot lie... Kovi and Benjamin double up their guest payload this episode, as they speak with space historians and authors Emily Carney and Bruce McCandless III. Emily and Bruce just released their new book 'Star Bound' about the evolution of the space program - from the very first person to build a little rocket all the way to astronauts today. They share how their experience brought them together, what inspired their book, and the awesome things we've done - and will soon do - in space.

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The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Kovi laughed as Benjamin's mind was blown when hearing this knowledge nugget from this week's guest, researcher for the SETI Institute, Dr. Chenoa Tremblay. Who, you asked? Let's put it this way - if there are alien civilizations out there, Chenoa is the person who's going to find it. Seriously. Name a radio telescope - chances are she's used it to look for life, or signs of life, out there in the cosmos. Join us as we discuss biosignatures, technosignatures, and strong opinions on pizza.

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Before we could even press record, astrobiologist Dr. Graham Lau was already explaining to Kovi and Benjamin how advanced alien civilizations have already discovered, and been taken over by, their own version of AI - and they're coming to get us. If that's not a reason to give this episode a listen we don't know what is. Tune in to our milestone 50th episode as the gang discusses possible life on other worlds, what they need to evolve, how we can detect them, is there possible extraterrestrial life in our own Solar System, and more.

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Kovi got an astrophysics degree because he wanted to do astrophysics and then just kind of fell into this SciComm game. Benjamin got a film degree because he wanted to do film and then just kind of fell into this SciComm game. This week's guest, Rayner the Explainer, got both science AND arts degrees (at the same time!) specifically for SciComm, and has dazzled and sparkled her way across the scicommverse with no signs of slowing down. Join the boys as they talk to Rachel about her science comedy shows, science poetry, and her unique disco-ball-eqsue style of science...

From record-breaking rockets to stranded astronauts, 2024 was one hell of a year for space exploration. In this episode, Kovi and Benjamin take a look back at the most exciting, bizarre, and groundbreaking moments in space science and technology. They break down SpaceX's relentless launch streak and Starship's ambitious test flights, Boeing's Starliner drama, two astronauts' unexpected extended stay in orbit, new missions to explore our universe, a solar eclipse, deep space discoveries, private space milestones, and more!

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