What The If?

Latest Episodes:

No Opposable Thumbs? Jan 14, 2022

Show notes

Join The Non-Opposition Party! Our long time listener Nigel of Portsmouth, UK ascends to Super IFFer status by having his question chosen as the topic of this week’s show: What the IF… Our ancestors had never evolved opposable thumbs? Want to support the show? Visit our exciting new Patreon page and check our all the fabulous rewards: Patreon.com/WhatTheIf Attend Matt’s fabulous online lecture, “Albert Einstein: The Man Behind the Math”. January 18, 2022 at 4 PM Eastern. Learn more on the event page at One Day University: https://www.onedayu.com/videos/albert-einstein-the-man-behind-the-math-2/ Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

"Gift-wrappus" PARK? Dinosaur PETS For Everyone! Jan 07, 2022

Show notes

Happy New Year, fellow IF-ers!!! We taped a bunch of shows at the end of the year, so we're starting out 2022 with a bang: we're posting a brand new WTIF episode every day this week! Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Riding GRAVITY FORCE ONE with KIRBY RUNYON Jan 06, 2022

Show notes

Happy New Year, fellow IF-ers!!! We taped a bunch of shows at the end of the year, so we're starting out 2022 with a bang: we're posting a brand new WTIF episode every day this week! --- DR. KIRBY RUNYON is a planetary geomorphologist and morphodynamicist seeking to understand the evolution of planetary landscapes and the associated near-surface processes through the analysis of remote sensing imagery and laboratory experiments. He is a science team affiliate on the New Horizons mission to Pluto, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt and a science team collaborator on the HiRISE (High Resolution Imagaing Science Experiment) camera currently in orbit around Mars. Kirby is passionate about engaging the general public in the passion, beauty, and joy of space exploration and promoting scientific literacy among non-scientists. He lives in Columbia, MD, with his cat, Nixie, named after Nix, a small moon of Pluto. Keep up with Kirby, if you can! - Read Kirby's Op-Ed in The Baltimore Sun, "Why go to space? You might as well ask: Why make music?" https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-1208-space-exploration-20211208-26uthbg4v5a6fpjqlzuetqryla-story.html - Visit his website: https://kirbydanielrunyon.space - Follow him on all the socials: - Twitter: @nasaman58 - Instagram: @kirbydanielrunyon - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kirby.runyon --- Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

OhMyCron! Covid News Update (Dec 9, 2021) Jan 04, 2022

Show notes

DUNE - Holy Spit! Jan 04, 2022

Show notes

World War TROLLS? Social Media During WW2! Jan 03, 2022

Show notes

Happy New Year, fellow IF-ers! We taped a bunch of shows at the end of the year, so we're starting out 2022 with a bang: a brand new WTIF episode every day this week! Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Crabs! Dec 06, 2021

Show notes

Got an IF of your own? - Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? - Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! - Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Stop! In The Name of LAVA Nov 06, 2021

Show notes

The fearless and fabulous DR. ROBIN GEORGE ANDREWS joins us for an explosive IF! Robin George Andrews is a science journalist with a PhD in volcanology. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, National Geographic, Scientific American, Atlas Obscura, and other publications. He lives in London, England. HOT off the press, his new book, "SUPERVOLCANOES: What They Reveal About Earth and the Worlds Beyond" is an anthology of magmatic mountains and fiery fountains, revels in the incomparable power of volcanoes and their eruptions. But it does more than marvel at their preternatural abilities. It also explores how their idiosyncratic, incredible displays of incandescence, past and present, reveal secrets about both themselves and the worlds to which they belong: from the forces that sculpt the sea, land and sky to the machinery that makes or breaks the existence of life. All volcanoes play their part on these dramatic planetary stages, but those in this book – those on Earth, above and below water, to those on the Moon, on Venus, on Mars and on worlds beyond – showcase this phenomenal force of nature better than any others. It's a time-travelling tale of how volcanic fire forged entire worlds, a saga 4.5 billion years in the making. Buckle up: it’s one hell of a ride. Buy SUPERVOLCANOES in digital or flammable (!) print version from: - Direct from your local bookstore via: - Indiebound.org https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393542066?aff=PublishersWeekly - Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/books/super-volcanoes-what-they-reveal-about-earth-and-the-worlds-beyond/9780393542066 - Or via these titans of industry: - Amazon (every 40¢ you spend lifts a Blue Origin rocket one inch higher ;-)) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393542068 - Barnes & Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/super-volcanoes-robin-george-andrews/1138718483 Or listen to the Audiobook from: - Libro.fm (supports your local bookstore!) https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781666162462-super-volcanoes?bookstore=bookshoporg - Audible/Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Super-Volcanoes-Reveal-Worlds-Beyond/dp/B09HW6WR48/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= --- Got an IF of your own? - Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? - Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! - Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

The SUPERSTITION Industrial Complex: Factories of LUCK! Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Theory of Everything: CANCELED? Brian Keating Imagines the Impossible! Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

In one corner, the welter weight challenger, Quantum Mechanics! In the other corner, the veteran, the heavyweight, the titan, destroyer of apples: GRAVITY! These guys just CAN'T GET ALONG. What The IF, asks our brilliant guest, Astronomer Brian Keating... they will NEVER come together? Is science DOOMED to failure? Was Einstein too fussy? What if it's all just a scrambled mess and DAT'S DA WAY IT IZ, YO! Dr. Keating takes us to the front line, where theorists and experimentalists hunker down in the trenches, trying to figure it ALL out. It's a titanic clash of cosmologies, bring your helmet! Brian Keating is a Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences (CASS) in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. He is a public speaker, inventor, and an expert in the study of the universe’s oldest light, the cosmic microwave background (CMB), using it to learn about the origin and evolution of the universe. Keating is a writer and podcaster and the best-selling author of one of Amazon Editors’ ‘Best Non-fiction Books of All Time”, Losing the Nobel Prize. His newest book is "Into The Impossible: Lessons from Laureates to Stoke Curiosity, Spur Collaboration, and Ignite Imagination in Your Life and Career" in which the wisdom of nine Nobel Laureates has been distilled and compressed into concentrated, actionable data you can use. While each mind is unique, they are united in their emphasis that no one wins alone—and that science, and success itself, belongs to us all. Got an IF of your own? Want to have us consider your idea for a show topic? Send YOUR IF to us! Email us at feedback@whattheif.com and let us know what's in your imagination. No idea is too small, or too big! --- Want to support the show? Click a rating or add a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app! itunes.apple.com/podcast/id1250517051?mt=2&ls=1 Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

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