The Podcast

65 million years ago, an asteroid struck the earth; in the ensuing planetary darkness, the dinosaurs went extinct. But the dinosaurs didn’t have a space program. We do, and we can now spot incoming asteroids with steadily improving confidence.  If we see one on a collision course with the Earth, we know from the movies […]

In 1914, British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s historic expeditiontoAntarctica stalled when floating ice trapped, crushed, and finally sank his ship, Endurance. Shackleton’s men survived 21 months on the ice, alone and freezing,became one of the most incredible adventure stories ever recorded. But the ship itself, Endurance, was not seen again for 107 years. Every attempt […]

Deepfakes, those computer-generated videos of well-known people saying things they never actually said, strike a lot of experts as terrifying. If we can’t even trust videos we see online, how does democracy stand a chance? As photo- and video-manipulation apps get cheaper and better, the rise of fake Obamas, Trumps, and Ukrainian presidents seemed unstoppable. […]

The star attraction of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is the Perseverance rover. But bolted to its underside was a stowaway: A tiny, 19-inch helicopter called Ingenuity.  She was intended to fly five times on Mars, as a wild experiment to see if anything could fly in Mars’s incredibly thin atmosphere. But as the speed, altitude, […]

In early 2023, ChatGPT blew up the internet. It’s an AI app that can create any piece of writing you ask for. Poems, homework, lyrics, essays, outlines, recipes, interview questions, even code. All indistinguishable from something written by a person, all instantaneous and free. In schools, cheaters began cheating immediately. Educators were horrified, calling it […]

From NASA helicopters in space to robot buoys at sea, “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent David Pogue is covering all the latest innovations across tech and science on season 2 of Unsung Science. Hear interviews with industry leaders who take you behind the scenes of the world’s greatest advances in transportation, food, space, internet, and health. […]

In “Back to Titanic” Part 1, David Pogue told of his invitation to join an expedition to visit the wreck of the Titanic in a custom submersible. The company, OceanGate, ordinarily charges $250,000 per person, as part of a new wave in adventure travel.  Bad weather immediately canceled the dive that Pogue and the “CBS […]

The wreck of the Titanic lies about 2.4 miles below sea level. Only five submersibles in the world can carry people to that depth—and four of them have been retired or reassigned. The one remaining sub is something special. First, it holds five people comfortably (instead of two or three uncomfortably). Second, it’s the only […]

If you type the word “carrot” into Google Images, you get thousands of photos of the classic root vegetable. They’re all full-length, orange, straight, and pointy. Which is a little odd, because 70% of all the carrots we buy are, in fact, baby carrots. Or at least we think they’re baby carrots. Turns out baby […]

People talk about greenhouse-gas emissions from cars, planes, and factories, but one source out-pollutes them all: Cows. Raising meat animals like cows generates more methane than the entire fossil-fuel industry. So Pat Brown left his job as a Stanford biochemistry professor to dedicate his life to fixing the problem. He vowed to create perfect meat […]