What The If?

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Our guest is Gerardo Aldana, Professor of Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara and Author of “Calculating Brilliance: An Intellectual History of Mayan Astronomy at Chich’en Itza” We ask “What the if Mayan astronomy were still practiced in the same way today?" Find out more about Gerardo's book at https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/calculating-brilliance And learn more from Gerardo about Mayan Astronomy in his article, "Maya Calendar and Mesoamerican Astronomy" in Carnegie Mellon's "Encyclopedia of the History of Science" at https://lps.library.cmu.edu/ETHOS/article/id/520/ --- Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

(Apologies for the audio in this episode.) Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif --- Our guest today is Lee Alan Dugatkin, an animal behaviorist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science in the Department of Biology at the University of Louisville. He is the author of more than one hundred and fifty papers and the author or coauthor of many books, including “The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness.” His newest book is “Power in the Wild: The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others”, learn more here: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo127023354.html --- 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif --- What the IF your next awesome science conference were taking place... on MARS? How would you pack? When would you have to book your tickets? What's the cocktail party like? Important questions that boil the imagination like a hot day on the red planet! Our fabulous guest this week is Chris Carberry, who is leading a real conference of amazing proportions here on Earth that's coming up soon: The HUMAN TO MARS SUMMIT in Washington, DC. Visit https://www.exploremars.org/summit/ to get the exciting details! Chris Carberry is the CEO and co-founder of Explore Mars, Inc. (Explore Mars), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit space advocacy organization that was created to advance the goal of sending humans to Mars by the mid-2030s. Carberry is a well-respected expert and influential director of strategic alliances in the space community as well as with non-traditional organizations. Carberry has presented oral (and written) testimony to both the United St

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif 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! Don’t miss an episode! Subscribe at WhatTheIF.com Keep On IFFin', Philip, Matt & Gaby

Check out our membership rewards! Visit us at Patreon.com/Whattheif --- Our guest this week is the time traveling, super imaginative theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern with an explosive, super mind-bending, steam train chugging, atom smashing idea ripped straight from her new book: QUANTUM STEAMPUNK. Nicole asks, What the IF... The Victorians had become proficient in quantum science and used it in their technology? Get your cosplay game in full gear, throw on your steampipe top hat and your aviator goggles and let's find out what happens when steam and PUNK collide... for SCIENCE! Follow Nicole on Twitter @nicoleyh11 And check out her awesome book at https://quantumsteampunk.umiacs.io/book/ Nicole Yunger Halpern is a Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS), a theoretical physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland. Nicole earned her Bachelors at Dartmouth Colle