What The If?

We hope this episode finds you and your loved ones well, no matter where in the world you are. Here in New York, we recorded this new episode just as they shut down our city. First they came for the sports arenas, then they came for the bars and pubs, and then the coffee shops… but we will persevere. PEOPLE OF EARTH, WE SALUTE YOU. And since we’re all stuck at home, we figured it was no reason to stop educating and entertaining and imagining a utopian world where fashion never dies! This week, we present a special WHAT THE IF for these very strange times: What The IF... we were ISOLATED all of the time! Can you imagine a world where nobody could be with anybody? Just the grammar of that thought alone is terrifying. So put on your sexiest N-95 mask and your hazmat suit made of out the finest Corinthian mat… and let’s do this! --- Special thanks to Kyle Crichton, Howard Zheng and Illia Zheng for their help with the show. --- Like the show? Share your love for the IF by dropping a review on Apple Podcasts

Our awesome audience member, and newest SUPER IFFER, Micah Frier of New York City asks: What The IF… TIME ran backwards? Well it turns out that YOU and me, and Matt and Micah... and all our atoms... and all our other important ingredients... would also be running BACKWARDS. Would you notice? What does eating at the dinner table look like? The horror! Strap on your intellectual seat belts (or unstrap them?) because it’s gonna be (already was?) a THGIN YPMUB! --- Special thanks to Kyle Crichton, Howard Zheng and Illia Zheng for their help with the show. --- 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 subscribed? Grab one (always free!) at pod.link/1250517051 and never miss an episode! Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt, WhatTheIF.com

What the if ROBOTS were hosting their very own PODCAST? They are replacing our jobs! WE WELCOME OUR ROBOT OVERLORDS! Our listener Rod in Edinburg, Scotland wrote in and asked: “Could AI's do a PODCAST?”We had a little bit of shade thrown at us, testing our podcasting skills with a little bit of our own kind of TURING TEST! Are we losing the ability to distinguish between a NATURAL being and an ARTIFICIAL one? Tune in and find out! Special thanks to Kyle Crichton, Howard Zheng and Illia Zheng for their help with the show. --- 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 subscribed? Grab one (always free!) at pod.link/1250517051 and never miss an episode! Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt, WhatTheIF.com

CalTech Seismologist Celeste Labedz asks: WTiF we could get our pet CATS to create a global EARLY EARTHQUAKE WARNING system? We have lots of fun... for science! CELESTE LABEDZ is a grad student in geophysics at CalTech. Her research explores environmental processes using seismological observations. In particular, investigating subglacial hydrologic conditions using continuous seismic tremor data collected on and around the glacier. in order to improve observations and understanding of glacier dynamics as a whole. She's also interested in geoscience communication and public outreach. Follow Celeste at Twitter.com/celestelabedz or Instagram.com/celestelabez And listen to ALIE WARD’s wonderful interview with Celeste on the fabulous podcast series, OLOGIES! https://omny.fm/shows/ologies-with-alie-ward/cryoseismology-icequakes-with-celeste-labedz --- 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 subscribed? Grab one

A scientist and an artist are trapped in an elevator. Can they learn to understand each other? JANCY McPHEE, Founder and Exec. Director of the SciArt Exchange joins us to explore the vastly different ways scientists and non-scientists think about the world, and to look for ways to find common ground... even if it is fifty floors up in the air! * * * Visit the SciArt Exchange at SciArtEx.net for more about all their amazing programs! * * * JANCY McPHEE wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to be when she grew up. She loved science and exploring, but all her hobbies were related to music and theater and reading about how other humans think, feel, create and move. Hoping to combine her interests, she became a neuroscientist, a person who examines the science behind these human capabilities. Formally, Dr. McPhee has a B.A. in Neurobiology and Behavior from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Brandeis University. She was a cellular and molecular neuroscience researcher in academia for 17 years befor

Dateline WASHINGTON DC: The Planetary Society's DAY OF ACTION is coming up! In honor of this incredible opportunity for citizens to meet with their legislators to talk about NASA funding, we present this encore of our very popular episode with the Planetary Society's Casey Dreier. Listen and dream, then sign up and join: https://www.planetary.org/get-involved/be-a-space-advocate/take-action/2020-day-of-action.html (Registration ENDS on Monday Feb 3, sign up now!) * * * "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 NAS

We answered the ringing telephone in The Matrix and on the line was the great filmmaker, game designer, and composer Robyn Miller with a sizzling good IF! Robyn asks "If you were an evil robot overlord and you wanted to use people as your power source... how'd ya do it? Can people be used as batteries?" Let's find out! Take the correct colored pill and we'll see you on the other side... of the IF! * * * Share your love for the IF by dropping a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts! Have you subscribed? Grab one (always free!) and never miss an episode! Keep On IFFin', Philip & Matt

SCIENCE JOURNALIST and SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR Matt Williams joins us and asks: What’s the absolute biggest thing you could build… in the entire Universe! Have Aliens beaten us to it? How big does our civilization need to be to outgrow even MEGASTRUCTURES and build even bigger? Can we build GIGASTRUCTURES? What about PETASTRUCTURES? How about a GOOGLESTRUCTURE. We’re gonna need THOR’S HAMMER for this project, and his screwdriver and rivet maker, too! Let’s get to work and make some 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 purchased on Amazon.com, or Castrum Press, or click here to read an excerpt of the books. They are also available as

We're joined by Chris Carberry, the distinguished CEO of EXPLORE MARS and author of the awesome new book, ALCOHOL IN SPACE... Join us for a fun and fabulous Happy Hour on What The IF! * * * CHRIS CARBERRY is the CEO and co-founder of Explore Mars, Inc. a nonprofit space advocacy organization that was created to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars within the next two decades. Carberry is a well-respected expert and influential director of strategic alliances in the space community and has been responsible for growing many partnerships, grants and sponsorships for leading industry organizations. Currently, as CEO of Explore Mars, he acts as the main liaison for efforts and project ventures. Prior to joining Explore Mars, Carberry served as Executive Director to The Mars Society. In his early career, he acted as a member of the Steering Committee where he organized congressional outreach efforts around the country. He also played a leadership role in congressional outreach events such as the 2007-2017

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our listeners around the WORLD! We’re celebrating with an encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes ever, with one of the greatest Science Fiction authors of all time, ALASTAIR REYNOLDS as our guest! PRE-ORDER his exciting upcoming novel, BONE SILENCE at your local bookstore or on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0819W4456/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i10 Al brings a whopper of an IF, loosely inspired by one of his newest stories, "Different Seas" which he wrote for the new prophetic anthology, "TWELVE TOMORROWS" from MIT Press. WTiF Elon Musk sent a bunch of dummy bots to the red planet into whose bodies we could transport ourselves, via telepresence, and explore from the comfort of our own home? It's just like being there! But WTiF there's other bots being run around the planet, too, by people who's minds may be filled with the itch to cause mischief... or murder??? Watch your back, you n00b! --- ALASTAIR REYNOLDS is a science fiction writer based

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