Universe of Art

You can read a transcript for this episode here.

Think back to your favorite childhood TV show—was it “Blue’s Clues”? “Little Bear”? “Winnie the Pooh”? Animated TV shows are important for kids because they can teach them to read, draw, spell, and talk. Plus, the ways these shows tell stories and create colorful, fictitious worlds can broaden children’s knowledge and capacity to imagine.

But children’s shows aren’t accessible to all d...

NASA is preparing to send humans to Mars. Although the launch date has been pushed back over the years, the agency says it wants to get there in the 2030s. And it has a lot on its to-do list. NASA needs to build new rockets, new habitable living spaces, new spacesuits, and new radiation shielding, just to name a few items.

But what if the one of the biggest challenges of these missions is not the engineering, but the mental health o...

Last month, Netflix released its adaptation of the Hugo Award-winning sci-fi book The 3 Body Problem by Cixin Liu. It follows the journey of several scientists, from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to the present day, as they seek to understand why their fellow researchers are dying and why their scientific results no longer make sense. Along the way, they discover an ultra-advanced VR game and a dark secret that suggests we might ...

“Dune: Part II” is one of the year’s most highly anticipated films, and it picks up where the first film left off: with Paul Atreides escaping into the desert on the planet Arrakis. It’s a scorching-hot world that’s covered in dunes, and home to giant, deadly sandworms.

Obviously “Dune” and its setting are fictional, but could there be a real planet that resembles Arrakis? And if so, could it sustain life?

Science Friday host Ira Fla...

A scientist and a comedian walk into a bar—for an interview about the craft of science comedy. Ira talks to comedians Chuck Nice, Kasha Patel, and Kyle Marian Viterbo about their work bringing the joke format to science communication. 

While all three have different approaches to science—whether it’s sneaking the knowledge into “regular” jokes, or going straight for the factual jugular—they agree that the practice of stand-up has mu...

Gamers often spend hours embarking on quests, unlocking new levels, and collecting badges. But what about when aspects of games start popping up in other parts of life—like work, school, and exercise?

Adrian Hon created the fitness app “Zombies, Run!” and has thought a lot about how the principles of gaming have crept into so many different corners of our lives, and why it may not always be as innocent as it seems. 

Ira Flatow and co...

The fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (also known as STEM) are not particularly diverse. And despite a gradual uptick in diversity over the last decade, a 2023 report from the National Science Foundation showed that only 24% of people in these industries are Hispanic, Black, or Native American.

Dr. Carlotta Berry is working to change that, taking an untraditional approach to encourage people from marginalized back...

We’re working on an upcoming episode about the science-inspired art that you’re making! If you want to share paintings, songs, pottery, poetry, or anything else, we’d love to hear about it. Write to us or send us a voice memo at universe@sciencefriday.com to tell us about what you made and why, and we might reach out to you. Thanks!

Today, we’re going to take a field trip to a couple science-inspired museum exhibits that host D. Pet...

Comic book superheroes use and abuse physics for their supernatural powers. But how many can actually explain the physics behind gravitation or electromagnetism? In The Dialogues,  graphic novel by physicist Clifford Johnson, the heroes are scientists—and though they have no special powers beyond their scientific abilities, the characters address everything from the mysteries of dark energy to the possibility of immortality.

In this...

Have you ever wondered what a Great Blue Heron would write in a love letter to a potential mate? Or what the moons of Mars think of themselves? These are the scenes that nature cartoonist Rosemary Mosco dreams up in her comic Bird and Moon.  

“Nature is really funny. It’s never not funny,” Mosco says in a SciFri SciArts video. “You can go into the woods and find 20 or 30 hilarious potential comic prompts anywhere you go.”

Viewers may...

This past July, the 12th International Conference on HIV Science was held in Brisbane, Australia. But this wasn’t your typical scientific conference. Yes, findings were presented on the latest in HIV research, but it culminated in a museum exhibition. 12 HIV-positive artists were paired with 12 scientists, and each pair collaborated on a piece of art, largely based on the scientists’ research. And one of the pieces attracted a bit ...

For most people, when you hear the first few bars of “Rock-A-Bye Baby,” you immediately know that the tune is a lullaby. But would you be able to pick out a lullaby from another culture?

This is the question that cognitive scientist Samuel Mehr and evolutionary biologist Manvir Singh were interested in answering. They played lullabies, dance songs, and other types of songs to random internet users to see if there was a universality ...

Today, we’re featuring an episode from the podcast Sing For Science, where musicians talk to scientists about science as it connects to their most famous songs. In this episode, recorded live at the 2022 On Air Fest in Brooklyn, NY, rapper Kilo Kish and NYU neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki talk about Kish’s song “NEW TRICKS: ART, AESTHETICS, AND MONEY” and how it overlaps with brain plasticity, memory formation, and brain anatomy.

Un...

Children have a natural talent for imagination. Even in moments of boredom, their imagination can take them away into daydreams that help pass the time in a flash. But for many adults, falling into a daydream is hard, especially when our minds are filled with worries about tomorrow’s obligations, finances, and a global pandemic. 

Turns out those who feel this way are not alone. New research shows that adults report getting to a dayd...

Poet Jane Hirshfield calls these “unaccountable” times. Crises in the biosphere—climate change, extinctions—collide with crises in human life. And in her new book Ledger, she says she has tried to do the accounting of where we, human beings, are as a result.

As a poet whose work touches on the Hubble telescope, the proteins of itch, and the silencing of climate researchers, Hirshfield talks with John Dankosky about the particular ob...

When composer Sarah Hennies learned about a neurological theory called “motor tapes” from Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia, the concept stuck with her for years. The theory comes from neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, who posited that many of our thoughts, memories, and physical movements operate via a series of “looping tapes,” with the goal of reducing the amount of energy the brain uses while doing common, repetitive tasks.

The conce...

It’s Climate Week in New York City this week, which brings together hundreds of events, all aimed at encouraging conversation and participation and action around our climate crisis.

So this week, we wanted to play two stories of artists grappling with and integrating climate change into their work. The first is about a gaming competition called the Climate Jam, where teams compete to build video games about climate change in just on...

“Meg 2: The Trench” is the sequel to the 2018 movie “The Meg,” in which a team of ocean scientists discover a megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, thriving at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Megalodon went extinct over 2.6 million years ago … or so the movie’s characters thought.

When the team’s research sub gets damaged, a skilled rescue diver, played by Jason Statham, is brought in, who happened to have encountered the ...

In the new movie The Pod Generation, a wife named Rachel, played by Emilia Clarke, and her husband Alvy, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, want to start a family. In the movie’s near future, you don’t have to have a baby by getting pregnant, or using IVF, or going through a surrogate.

If you’re lucky, you can get a reservation at The Womb Center, where you can grow your baby inside a convenient, high-tech, egg-shaped pod. Pressured by her...