What The If?

Our listener MIGUEL from South Africa wrote in and asked us, “What The IF… we replaced our HANDS with LIGHTSABERS?” This idea was so insane it sat on our list for a year and a half… as we SEARCHED OUR FEELINGS… waiting for the just the right moment to begin this wicked thought experiment.. We celebrate the conclusion of the Star Wars saga by diving into this great space-operatic question. Happy Holidays to ALL our listeners AROUND THE WORLD, you folks are incredible! Keep the cards and letters coming’, it’s great to get to know ya. Enjoy your new LIGHTSABERS, listen now and find out how they’re gonna change the galaxy!!! MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU ALWAYS * * * Share your love for the IF by dropping a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts! https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?ls=1&mt=2 Have you subscribed? Grab one (always free!) and never miss an episode! https://pod.link/1250517051 Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt

What the if EVOLUTION were very DIFFERENT? Strap on your pith helmet, and lock the doors! OUR LISTENER Jon from Sweden wrote us and asked: What if Charlie “Eye of the Tiger” DARWIN was wrong and “Hoist Up The” Jean-B. LAMARCK was right? These two scholars had very different ideas about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, and especially about YOU and me’s! * * * Share your love for the IF by dropping a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?ls=1&mt=2 Have you subscribed? Grab one (always free!) and never miss an episode! https://pod.link/1250517051 Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt

Is there a DOOMSDAY PLANET named Nibiru heading our way? Nope! But what the IF there was? We challenge astronomer & astrophotographer Bob King to play out the RAM-ifications of this Earth SHATTERING scenario, from which we learn a WHOPPING amount of real science! BOB KING is the author of URBAN LEGENDS FROM SPACE: The Biggest Myths About Space Demystified, where he cuts through the fog of myth to bring the truth behind 51 celestial legends and exposes the scientific truth at their core. Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society recommended it as one of the best books for kids of 2019. Buy it at your local bookstore or one of the many online sellers listed here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263575-urban-legends-from-space Bob has enjoyed the night sky and astronomy since childhood and loves to share his passion through public observing, speaking and writing. He is the photo editor at the Duluth News Tribune, and when the sun goes down you'll often find him photographing the northern lights or fir

Do Electrons dream of having feet? WTIF you were an ELECTRON jogging through the hot circuits of a CLASSICAL COMPUTER and all of a sudden you lept into a QUANTUM COMPUTER? What does it look like inside the bizarre new machine? Why is it so COLD in here? What’s with all the signs posted everywhere saying “DON’T LOOK!” The astounding final chapter of our journey through the EVOLUTION of COMPUTERS! Fear not if you haven’t heard the previous episodes, each one stands on it’s own! * * * Share your love for the IF by dropping a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?ls=1&mt=2 Have you subscribed? Grab one (always free!) and never miss an episode! https://pod.link/1250517051 Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt

Science Fiction FILMMAKERS Carylanna Taylor & Jacob Okada bring us the IF of their new film, ANYA, a contemporary sci-fi love story about a couple whose determination to have a child leads them to a cutting-edge geneticist, an ancient outlier community hiding in plain sight in New York City, and ultimately, a life-changing question: are they willing to have a gene-edited baby, no matter the cost? ANYA is now available on demand, DVD, and hosted screenings: https://www.anyamovie.com/watchnow ANYA is the first narrative feature by anthropologist Carylanna Taylor, PhD (writer/producer), and documentary filmmaker Jacob Akira Okada (writer/director). Under their First Encounter Productions banner, Taylor and Okada have also produced the feature documentary PAINTING THE WAY TO THE MOON (available on Vimeo). For ANYA, they collaborated with Harvard Medical School's Wu Lab, the Personal Genetics Education Project, and Carnegie Mellon's Pfenning Lab where they filmed the lab scenes. ANYA is now available on deman

GOOGLE just announced that its' researchers have built a QUANTUM COMPUTER that has achieved... Quantum Supremacy. ACK!!! Do you feel like standing and cheering, or fleeing for your life? It's essential that we all learn how a quantum computer works, but... Most of us don't even understand how a regular computer works! What's really going on inside that humming typewriter on your desk? What about the one that's heating up your lap? Or the one that's in your hand? WTiF you could go INSIDE your thinking machines and see WTF is going on? Strap on a rubber suit so you don't get electrocuted... and let's go WALTZING into our CLASSICAL COMPUTERS. It's Part TWO of our FANTASTIC VOYAGE into the evolving COMPUTER! What the IF you could go spelunking into the very circuits themselves... what would you find? Step into your anti-static hazmat suit and let's find out! * * * Like the show? Share your love for the IF by dropping a review on Apple Podcasts! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Have you subscr

GOOGLE just announced that its' researchers have built a QUANTUM COMPUTER that has achieved... Quantum Supremacy. ACK!!! Do you feel like standing and cheering, or fleeing for your life? It's essential that we all learn how a quantum computer works, but... Most of us don't even understand how a regular computer works! What's really going on inside that humming typewriter on your desk? What about the one that's heating up your lap? Or the one that's in your hand? WTiF you could go INSIDE your thinking machines and see WTF is going on? Strap on a rubber suit so you don't get electrocuted... and let's go WALTZING into our CLASSICAL COMPUTERS. Here in PART ONE of this fantastic voyage: we enter the warm, cozy computer built out of VACUUM TUBES called a "Von Neumann Machine," where super smart, hard working ladies are in charge! Grab a patch cable, plug it in and let's find out what's going on inside this GIANT machine they call a UNIVERSAL COMPUTER. * * * Like the show? Share your love for the IF by dropping

Ancient Science Secrets! DR. ROBIN GEORGE ANDREWS returns with an incredible story of how modern day SEISMOLOGISTS are hunting through ancient AZTEC inscriptions, and the records of indigenous peoples around the world, to uncover a nearly FORGOTTEN HISTORY of the vibrating and violent EARTH! * * * ROBIN ANDREWS is a doctor of experimental volcanology, a full-time freelance science journalist, a part-time photographer, a scientific consultant, an occasional lecturer, public speaker and explain-how-volcanoes-work TV guest, as well as a pending author of a rather curious book. He can tell you exactly how powerful the Death Star is, how cryovolcanoes on alien worlds work, why a supervolcano probably isn’t what you think it is, and why the Moon is shrinking. His work has appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE ATLANTIC, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, EARTHER, GIZMODO, FORBES, THE VERGE, ATLAS OBSCURA, DISCOVER MAGAZINE, WIRED and elsewhere. VISIT his website: robingeorgeandrews.com * * * Like the show?

This week's show is ripped from the headlines! A study by Michael Way and Anthony Del Genio of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies reveals that VENUS may have been habitable for it's first THREE billion years! For some unknown reason, 750 million years ago, a catastrophic amount of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere. The hellish conditions consumed the entire planet, resurfacing it from pole to pole. What the if... we found an archaeological site on Venus? Like Pompeii, a city that captured a record of it's in habitants attempting to survive a world that is erupting around them. What would it have been like to live on Venus during the years of transformation from Eden to Hell? Planetary Geologist KIRBY RUNYON a member of the team at John's Hopkins Applied Physics Lab that sent NEW HORIZONS to Pluto. What caused the apocalypse on Venus, and what would it have been like to live through it? Let's fly there now, to find out! * * * Follow Kirby on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/nasaman58 And

"No BUCKS, no Buck Rogers," says astronaut Gus Grissom in "The Right Stuff." So we ask, what the if... NASA got hundreds of billions more, or even TRILLIONS of dollars more in funding? Imagine it happened today! Can we build a SPACE UTOPIA worthy of the most optimistic science fiction... or are there some things money can't buy? Will we sing "Can't buy me love," or "Fly ME to the Moon"? Our guide on this joyous spending spree is CASEY DREIER, the Chief Advocate & Senior Space Policy Adviser of The PLANETARY SOCIETY and an expert in how NASA gets funded by the US Congress, and how citizens can play a role. Casey reveals to us that our current TECHNOLOGY enables us to do incredible things... if we have the WILL and can pay the BILL. * * * Learn more about The PLANETARY SOCIETY at planetary.org -- and how you can join them on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC for their annual DAY OF ACTION at planetary.org/dayofaction Visit Casey Dreier on Twitter: @CaseyDreier * * * This episode is sponsored by ASTRONOMY Ma

COMET BORISOV just showed up in our solar system, only the second INTERSTELLAR OBJECT known to visit us! What is it, where does it come from, where's it going and will Earthlings be able to study it before it vanishes forever? What The IF you could RIDE the comet? That'd be a heck of a way to learn about it! This week we imagine being passengers exiled from our home world, sent on an eternal cometary road trip... and, wow, we've got a sight seeing trip about to happen like no other. Look at that fine yellow sun, and what's that blue planet up ahead? Can we get off this flying snow ball? Hold on tight while we have a wild ride through the SCIENCE of Comet Borisov! ----- This episode is sponsored by ASTRONOMY Magazine's "Space And Beyond Box," an awesome subscription where you'll automatically receive boxes and boxes of super educational and super fun stuff from Astronomy's editors. Visit the website -- SpaceAndBeyondBox.com/Giveaway -- to learn more, and get a chance to win a FREE annual subscription! ---

What The IF... All the TREES were GONE? Would we still have air to breathe? Water to drink? Well don't ponder those questions too long because there's an AVALANCHE coming your way! Our guest Kyle Crichton is a filmmaker and an experienced backcountry snowboarder and skier who's new documentary, "LEAVE NICE TRACKS" is about the importance of keeping our planet, including the lovely wooded mountains of his home state Vermont, livable, breathable, and lovable. KYLE CRICHTON has worked alongside some of the best documentary filmmakers of the day, including Barak Goodman, Morgan Spurlock, and Sandi Dubowski. He has contributed to documentaries and other programs that have aired on DISCOVERY Channel, HISTORY Channel, and PBS. Similarly, his work has premiered at both the SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL and the TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. Raised in the mountains of Pennsylvania, Kyle has a passion for snowboarding, as well as all things winter-related. After traveling to Vermont on several occasions, he discovered

Would you CRISPR your baby? The great science journalist Carl Zimmer, award winning columnist for the New York Times and author of thirteen (!) books joins us to imagine the steep up sides and the slippery down sides of the revolutionary technique for modifying genes. Fix those typos in your DNA! Write a better life for baby! And why not rewrite your own bad self? What The IF... you could? CARL ZIMMER's newest book is "She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Power, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity". His column "Matter" appears each week in the New York Times. Zimmer’s writing has earned a number of awards, including the 2016 Stephen Jay Gould Prize, awarded by the Society for the Study of Evolution to recognize individuals whose sustained efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science. In 2017, he won an Online Journalism Award for his series of articles in which he explored his genome. She Has Her Mother’s Laugh won the 2019 National Academies Communication Award. It was also named a Notab

As you read these words, copies of you are being created.  Theoretical physicist SEAN CARROLL says the astonishing MANY WORLDS theory might be correct, and if it is… 5,000 times per second your reality is splitting into alternate universes. Like, a lot of em. But Sean says... Don't Panic! Sean is one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science and with his newest book, SOMETHING DEEPLY HIDDEN, he is rewriting the history of 20th century physics -- and urging physicists, and all of us, to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. There are many, many Sean Carrolls. Many of every one of us. Rarely does a book so fully reorganize how we think about our place in the universe. We are on the threshold of a new understanding—of where we are in the cosmos, and what we are made of. SEAN CARROLL is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, host of the Mindscape podcast, and the author of From Eternity to Here, The Particle at the End of the Universe, and The Big Pic

Listener Daniel asks: WTiF we could get rich from drilling for gold… in space? --- Please REVIEW our podcast! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 SUBSCRIBE (for free!) pod.link/1250517051 EINSTEIN'S WAR by our very own MATT STANLEY is on sale now! The Washington Post says "Stanley is a storyteller par excellence." A starred review recipient from KIRKUS, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, and BOOKLIST. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608113/einsteins-war-by-matthew-stanley/ Thanks & Keep On IFFin'! -- Philip & Matt

Once again, our listener mail bag is exploding! Our fans, aka our #SuperIFFers discuss our most mind-blowing shows and share their own mind-bending IF's! What the IF... you could hang out with the smartest, funniest, science-y-ist audience in the galaxy? You can! Listen now and FEEL THE IF! --- Please REVIEW our podcast! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 SUBSCRIBE (for free!) pod.link/1250517051 EINSTEIN'S WAR by our very own MATT STANLEY is on sale now! The Washington Post says "Stanley is a storyteller par excellence." A starred review recipient from KIRKUS, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, and BOOKLIST. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608113/einsteins-war-by-matthew-stanley/ Thanks & Keep On IFFin'! -- Philip & Matt

Science journalist and Science Fiction author Matt Williams joins us and asks: What the IF humanity conquered the entire solar system, inhabiting every planet, moon, asteroid, nook, cranny and whatever else we could latch onto… and hang on? What in all the worlds would this society look like? How many new forms of bodies, new cultures, new languages, new levels of snobbery by Earthlings? The immense distances would challenge us in ways that we never, ever have experienced. Can humanity survive living so far from it’s mother? Can mother survive with all her kids changing their body types? What the IF!!! --- MATT WILLIAMS has written many short stories and two full-length novels, all which take place within the same fictional universe. In addition, he’s written over one thousand articles on subjects of science, technology, astronomy, history, literature, pop culture, and general knowledge. His first published novels, The Cronian Incident and its sequel The Jovian Manifesto (published by Castrum Press) can be

What the IF you could travel to the very EDGE of the SOLAR SYSTEM... and beyond? What would you see when you looked BACKWARDS? What would happen when you encountered the river of energized particles swirling through our galaxy? We're joined by KIRBY "Nasa Man" RUNYON, one of the scientists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab who works on the New Horizons mission that visited PLUTO and Ultima Thule. When it launched, New Horizons was the fastest object ever rocketed into space... and today, Kirby takes us even further! We strap ourselves aboard a mission that NASA is conceptualizing to send a robotic spacecraft to explore the very edge of the Solar System, beyond the Kuiper Belt, beyond the Oort Cloud, right to the very zone where the Sun's particles crash into the matter that flies between the stars. Jump in and join us, let's fly faster than anyone has ever gone, to see how it feels to be truly INTERSTELLAR. --- DR. KIRBY RUNYON is a planetary geomorphologist and morphodynamicist seeking to understand

It's Opposite Apollo Day! In honor of the 50th Anniversary of the first landing on the Moon, our special guest today is Nancy Atkinson from Universe Today! Her amazing new book is "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Mission." We ask: What The IF we lived on the Moon and had to send the first mission to EARTH? This lunacy gives rise, as with all our IFs, to an amazing about of information about the REAL Apollo mission, and the science, engineering and chutzpah it took to do it. The only thing that could have been harder would have been if we... lived on the Moon and had to send a Moon-person to the Earth and, as Moon-Kennedy proclaimed, "return them safely to the... MOON!" If you wanna visit the Earth, if you want to get off it again, how you gonna do it? OMG, you gotta bring your own Saturn V with you, so good luck with that. Landing on the Earth is hard! It's one of our most crunchy and delicious meals of Sci and Fi yet. Check it out. --- NANCY ATKINSON is a science journalist and author

Our TWIS Special, Part TWO! TWIS the IF? What The TWIS? You put your science in my what! It's a special, double stuffed, super combo show. Dr. Kiki invited us to bring the IF to her long-running public radio show and podcast, This Week In Science. In Part 1 we got some science up in the NEWS! Dr. Kiki, Justin & Blair invite Philip & Matt to join the insightful, hilarious and very, very bizarre news stories that fly around the roundtable this week. Now In Part 2: Join us as we take the NEWS to the IF! There was a really, really weird news story this week about a scientist in China injecting HUMAN cells into a PRIMATE embryo. Happy Birthday! Or is it??? What the IF this procedure becomes commonplace? What miracles could it bring? What horrors? What horrific miracles??? Question marks run amok! --- This Week in Science (TWIS) is a weekly, hour-long web and radio show presenting an humorous, often opinionated, and irreverent look at the week in science and technology. In each episode, TWIS discusses the la