What The If?

Edward Teller, creator of the Hydrogen Bomb wondered one day (smoke drifting from his pipe) could NUCLEAR BOMBS be used for (puff puff) PEACEFUL purposes? Could you build a harbor with the flick of a switch? Egomaniacs that we are, today we go even further and ask out loud to you and us.... Heck if BOMBS could be used for construction, what about BIG BANGS?! WTiF you could make a bang in your backyard? DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. But do listen, at home, or wherever you are most compelled to ask the BIGGEST, BANGIEST question in the Universe: "What The IF?" Click & listen!

In memoriam, we remember and celebrate Stephen Hawking by turning up his HAWKING RADIATION to eleven!!! What the IF would happen if, as Black Holes not only evaporate, as Hawking discovered, but they do it really really fast. What if Hawking Radiation was as bright and fast and mischievous as the man himself? In this very special episode, in which we also celebrate Pi Day and Einstein's Birthday, we explore and stand in amazement as we gaze upon one of the epic discoveries that made Stephen Hawking famous. What the IF all the Black Holes in the Universe exploded with light and put on a show for this scientist who triumphed over so much, and gave so much to the world. Click and enjoy!

What The IF we experienced our world operating by the BIZARRO rules of QUANTUM MECHANICS? Matt is holding up an umbrella and urging us to join him on the street corner, where we'll team up by the buddy system, walk through the gate and enter QUANTUM STREET... where the ordinary is extraordinary. Grab your camera and your towel and we'll say the three magic words "What The IF!" and off we go!

What The IF the SPEED OF LIGHT were much much much much much s... l... o... w... e... rrrrrrrrrrrr? Like WTiF it were only 4 MPH, so that when you went walking, you were already rocketing along, step by measly human step, at HALF the speed of light? What if you RODE A BIKE and tried to pedal faster, faster, faster, could you push your way past the pokey 4 mph speed of light??? When he was a spry young 16 years old, Albert EINSTEIN imagined himself doing all kinds of crazy races with his bike against light beams. And boy did his imagination tell us some AMAZING and BIZARRE things about what we would experience in this (relatively!) magical bicycle ride down our street. Strap on your helmet, hop on your bike, and get ready to race a light beam. You can do it, all you have to do is shout, What The IF, and hit that play button!

From the pre-Harry Potter Scottish Enlightenment to public relations wizardry of Galileo to the classic anchor pairings of Fox News to genius of SETI and.... badda-BING we find ourselves asking What The IF there are alien civilizations who communicate using GRAVITY WAVES? They gotta bang a whole lotta BLACK HOLES together -- just to use A-Date for a fun Friday night! Join Grab your BONGOS and let's follow STEPHEN HAWKING to the clambake! TGIF, it's WTiF!!!

It's an epic WTiF DOUBLE FEATURE! The apocalyptic scenario served up to us by our imaginative listener Kyle, in which the Earth's core dances like a chicken at a chicken wedding... continues! In our previous episode, we dove deep, into the core, and into the workings of the mysterious magnetic forces which protect us from the radioactive spittle of the Sun. How could we survive when the Earth's SHIELDS ARE DOWN? We're gonna have to be clever. And might diapers be the savior of humanity? Find out in the exciting conclusion of one of our biggest, baddest IF's yet!

Another awesome IF inspired by a listener! This week, listener Kyle asks, WHAT THE IF would happen if the Earth's magnetic pole FLIPPED? Birds depend on it, fish depend on it, and by golly WE depend on it staying STABLE. If it goes flippin' around, every electronic thing we depend on goes haywire. We live on top of a gargantuan spinning magnet, and sometimes it starts thinking outside the box, and that gives us a BIG BAD case of the IF'S.

ELON MUSK launched his own car into space, on a flight to Mars and beyond. What The IF we could ALL do that? And ride in our space cars wherever we wanted to go?

SALT is life. Potato chips are even better life! No salt, NO LIFE. What The IF all the salt in the world ran out??? A very special, very imaginative, spectacular episode, pulled straight out of our listener mail bag! And this is by FAR our most TASTY episode yet. Betchya can't listen to it just once! Do YOU have an idea for a WTiF adventure? A vision that wakes you up at night, or in the middle of your nap? A hope? A fear? What The IF, send it in and we might feature it on the show just like we are THIS week. Share all your ideas, reactions, and just plain old how-do-ya's with us at: feedback@whattheif.com or WhatTheIF.com/contact

TODAY WAS CRAZY because GEOLOGY suddenly sped up like craaaaaazzzzy. No more waiting eons for mountains to rise, watch 'em before your very eyes. Heck, ride that mountain as it grows, grows, grows! The continents move at wicked speed under our feet. Earthquakes, earthquakes and more earthquakes Volcanoes, volcanoes, oh boy, so many erupting volcanoes! Come with us on this hair raising, and flaming, ride, it's super, super fun, if you can stand -- literally, can you stand? -- this volcanic visit to EARTHQUAKE EARTH. Also, did we say LAVA? Lots and lots of lava! What the, what the... What The IF?

Today we solve, once and for all, one of humanity's greatest mysteries: WHY are the Aliens TEASING US??? Plan for the best, prepare for the worst, people of Earth! Professor Matt is back from ICELAND with new insights and a whole new fascinating barrel of SCIENCE and FACTS for us to hold and taste and throw in the air and dance among their glittering rays. And we try to talk to the creatures of the SEA! What The IF we survive this experiment, of which we may be the subjects??? Turn it on. Turn it up. Dive in!

PART THREE OF THE WTiF UFO CHRONICLES. Philip rubs his hands together and plots how to score an interview with one of the aliens who've abducted him. We urge ALL CITIZENS to take one for the team (EARTH!) and get some photos of your travels on a UFO. Our listener Jay, who wrote in to tell of his journeys to "the most beautiful places in the Universe" (!!!) has made us so envious we're more green than a Martian. Were the places more beautiful than, say... Paris??? Or Iceland??? Or Nabu??? PLUS more secrets from behind the scenes of what it's like when you're making a UFO documentary. How to do it, without selling your soul to the Vogons. This is a wild, wooly and wacky episode, come along for the ride. Put on your big ol' aviator sunglasses, zip up your flight suit, shout "What The IF?!!!" and away... we... goooooooo! Send your thoughts & ideas! feedback@whattheif.com Follow us on Twitter: @WhatTheIFshow Share a review on iTunes or your favorite pod service! Hear all episodes & learn more at WhatTheIF.com

DEAR ALIEN ABDUCTEES: Please help us out, take pictures! Also, can we get AIRLINES to pick us up at home, while we're sleeping, too??? It'd be so much more CONVENIENT. And we also have some REQUESTS for ALIENS WHO ARE ABDUCTING PEOPLE: what's a poor SKEPTIC gotta do to get picked up??? 'Cause that would be awesome, ok, thanks. Also, PRO TIPS for potential abductees. HELP US OUT, KIDS! Sleep with your camera in your pocket! Crucial information for EVERYONE in this special holiday edition (!!!) of WTiF, with your host, Philip Shane, flying solo, without a SEATBELT but with a MARTINI. Hop aboard, let's go, up up and away... to a galaxy far far... YEP! Send your thoughts & ideas! feedback@whattheif.com Follow us on Twitter: @WhatTheIFshow Share a review on iTunes or your favorite pod service! Hear all episodes & learn more at WhatTheIF.com

We watch the skies, and read the New York Times and we shout OMG! A very special What The IF?

WE DELAY THE ASTEROID that killed the dinosaurs by five minutes, and thus... the giant lizard dudes and dudettes continued to breed, and evolve. And then they got big ideas in their head. Well, they got big brains at least. And BAD ideas. THE DINOSAURS START THINKING, like humans. What's a human? Those little creatures who won't evolve now, because Tyrannosaurus RICK is in charge of the Earth, buddy! DO NOT WEEP FOR THEIR TINY HANDS, these guys and gals evolve opposable thumbs, and they start to use tools and we wonder.... what kind of skyscraper would a dinosaur would build? Because they definitely would do that, because they think like people. What The IF???

• Email us feedback@whattheif.com, let us know you're listening & share your thoughts! FLAT EARTH: words the strike fear into the heart of every fact loving, rational thinking human. To imagine it is to fall into the depths of insanity, stupidity, comedy, tragedy. Oh, the madness! And yet (WTF?!!!!) people are all chitty chatty these days about the Flat Earth theory. Inexplicably (seriously, WTF?!!!!) basketball players are at the forefront of the Flat Earth crusade... I mean, you'd think that they'd want the world to be shaped like a basketball. Ok, breathe, breathe, flat earth is a joke of an idea, people haven't believed the Earth was flat since Columbus sailed the ocean blue... right? Well, not right, with apologies to every grade school teacher I had, this wasn't true. Thanks to the tremendous bank of knowledge that resides in the brain of Professor Matt, our guide to all things IF, we learn the truth of how *ancient* people figured out that the Earth was round, and they probably played better basketba

How FAR can you stretch a thought experiment? How much can you bend your mind? How far off the cliff can we run without looking down? Today we push the concept of learning from an IF into new dimensions. It's the exciting conclusion to our wild & wacky "Haiku In The Collider" scenario! We learn a tremendous amount of amazing REAL science in the process, as we spin out (of control!) this SciFi idea, keeping it as rooted in scientific facts as possible. We rejoin the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider... they're transfixed by the HAIKU flashing on all the screens in mission control. They've spent months ruling out all possibilities that this is an error, or a prank, or that they're dreaming and will wake up and find normality restored. Nope! The mystery begs for explanation. Who is sending this message? Why is it in Japanese? Why Haiku??? HOW did they do it? Where are they? So many many questions. We summon the minds of a fantastic cornucopia of scientists, and the best hard-SF writers to bring this tr

Click here rate us in iTunes, thanks!: getpodcast.reviews/id/1250517051 Thanks! Send us your comments, questions & suggestions: feedback@whattheif.com What will happen after our cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode??? We find ourselves floating in the air, like Wile E. Coyote, safe and oblivious... until we look down! In our most dangerous, craziest WTiF yet, we've imagined what the IF would happen if the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful atom smasher in the world, discovered the most fundamental answer about what makes everything go and go and go in the Universe. Einstein and all those who love him theorize that there is a single equation from which all other workings of the universe follow. But what if (and it's a big what if, I mean totally what the IFFFFF?) instead of the mathematical data that they see on their screens at LHC Mission Control, which looks like numbers, lines, graphs, and when all plotted out, it looks like fireworks... all the zillions of different particles spraying o

Click here rate us in iTunes, thanks!: getpodcast.reviews/id/1250517051 Thanks! Send us your comments, questions & suggestions: feedback@whattheif.com MATH! It strikes fear into the hearts of millions of people. Or billions of people. OR GAZILLIONS of people. Yes we're having fun with big numbers! Math is so scary to the British that they even call it MATHS -- like there's too many of them -- run for your lives! NOTHING happens in the universe without MATH knowing about it. Math rules over everything, to infinity and beyond (yond, yond, yond...) What The IF you could really understand Math? Really FEEL it, like a Mathematician feels it? You see it, you taste it, you feel it in your bones, and you look at all the beautiful math in your beautiful mind and your beautiful hot tub, and you'll ask your fellow hot tubbers, "Holy cr*p, where does all this Math come from? Why does everything from super stars to slimy snails eat, breathe and sleep... and live and die... and party like it's 1999... All according to

Click here rate us in iTunes: http://getpodcast.reviews/id/1250517051 Thanks! Send comments, questions & suggestions: feedback@whattheif.com ARE YOU a thinker or a do-er? Or perhaps you're ambi-thinkerdo-extrous? Sure, it takes all kinds, but what if one particular kinda humans got NASA in their grubby little paws? It'd be funny! But I also suggest you RUN FOR YOUR LIFE because that Saturn VI rocket ain't gonna fly straight. PHYSICS HAS TWO KINDS: Theoretical Physicists and Experimentalists. The world has thrived with these two mighty species working together. But what if one of 'em ate a million cans of spinach and got super buff and kicked out the others? This is a deep thinking, big bun busting episode of WHAT THE IF... I mean it's really wild, like a safari suddenly broke out in our recording studio. Aristotle, that ancient greek guy, guest stars! Listen now, and get thinking' young paduan, because you'll never become a Jedi by sitting around the house. Open the window and shout it, "WTiF!"