What The If?

Patreon Update: We have another Patreon member, Don from Pennsylvania who has joined at the $10/month “Clockwork Universe” Tier where he receives the monthly newsletter and a logo sticker. Welcome, Don! Join Don and all our other Patreon supporters, check out our page now at Patreon.com/Whattheif and see all our great rewards for new members. --- And from the Mailbag: Devoted listener Beckett ascends to Super IFFer status as the question he emailed in to us becomes the IF of the week! Brandon writes, "I’ve been devouring the back catalogue as quickly as I can! I even had a dream about time travellers who were called iffers

Welcome to our newest Patreon member, KEN! You, too, can support the show and get awesome rewards by joining us at Patreon.com/WhatTheIf -- see you there! --- Join Matt for a virtual class, with live Q&A! Experience his lecture, "Albert Einstein: The Man Behind the Math" on January 28, 2022 at One Day University. Check it out now: https://www.onedayu.com/videos/albert-einstein-the-man-behind-the-math-2/ ---- This week's IF comes from Joshua who asks: "Ever heard of the Mandela Effect? Basically, it's described as the idea that several various incidents in history have been switched around so that people collectively remember them happening incorrectly. In a sense, this theory believes that parallel universes are to blame for this collective memory loss. Now, what I really want to know is: forgetting the plausibility of this theory for a second, what if our history really DID overlap with a parallel universe's, and what would that look like?" Here's some brief examples: https://www.provolibrary.com/blog/

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

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

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 w

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 pod

What The IF... the ORIGIN of LIFE was on your desktop? What if it WAS your desktop? How does non-life become LIFE? 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

Our listener, Super IFFer CHRIS in Vancouver asks: "Is it conceivably possible that a virus could have POSITIVE symptoms? Say by commandeering olfactory cells and cranking the smell knobs to 11? Would be a much more interesting world if viral infections led to super powers until your immune system fought them off, rather than just feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck." What the IF...? 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

Put Your Mettle To Your Pedal Listener ED from Brooklyn writes in and asks, “What the IF there were no cars, only bicycles?” And we take up the challenge, thus granting Ed a battlefield promotion to Super IFFer status! We take Ed’s question and kick it up a notch, BAM!, pushing it to the limit: WTIF there were NO INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES??? How far could we go with only pedal power? Could we build the Empire State Building using only human power and gears and chains? Could we have mass transit? Unlock your bike, and unlock your brains — don’t forget your helmet — crank into top gear and let’s find out what happens when BIKES RULE THE WORLD! --- 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&l

The Serious Search For Extraterrestrial Life We are thrilled and honored to have the esteemed Astronomer AVI LOEB join us for this week’s very special thought experiment. Avi says, “Asking ‘what if’ is my job!” Yes, friends, we have a genuine Professional IFFer in the house! The founder of THE GALILEO PROJECT joins us to play out a thought experiment: let’s imagine how this experiment — a serious SCIENTIFIC search for VERIFIABLE evidence of Extraterrestrials — might play out. Avi reveals the difficulties in keeping such a hunt truly scientific, devoid of speculation, unaccepting of eyewitness testimony, relying only on hard evidence that is captured and verified by multiple sources, vetted by the most careful analysis. Ya know, the scientific method! But Avi also shares with us the human challenge, the massive resistance from his colleagues in science academia. He helps us understand his passionate belief that fear of failure or, perhaps even worse, fear of criticism has led to timidity in science. This

Luis, Mike and Rather specialize in discussing UFO's with skeptics and believers, and through laughter, love and logic, bringing people together to find common ground in our shared fascination and joy for imagination and the pursuit of science. Does the stigma around UFO's, even if logical, help science or hurt it? Can science communicators harness the incredible interest in UFO's for the benefit of science? Is the UFO debate an opportunity for learning how to discuss difficult issues by learning to become aware of your reflexive emotions and learning to listen to each other? Can that learn to gaining respect, building alliances, and helping the media and our educational institutions teach science better? Can deescalation lead to better education, and happier humans? This week, in this special roundtable discussion with a trio of guys who are creating a larger, safer space for nuanced discussions where scientific and skeptically minded folks can meet on the shores of Woo Beach with all kinds of other folk

Terraforming via MOLE? In this encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes -- when we tried out a new format called "Fantastic Voyage" -- Captain GABY takes us to the RED PLANET, and has brought along some of her favorite animals, naked mole rats, to help make the place livable, lovable, and lucrative. Who needs Elon Musk when you have naked mole rats leading the way? Is it possible to bring these real life creatures to Mars to slowly terraform it, cultivating the land from underneath, rebuilding the atmosphere, for eventual Earth-like living? Let's find out! Join documentary filmmaker Philip Shane, NYU Historian of Science Matthew Stanley, and Rockefeller University virologist Gaby Paniccia as we take a fantastic journey to learn the magical wonders of biology... up close... and in living AUDIO color! --- 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/1

WHALES spend their entire lives inside a medium, water, in which they can’t actually breathe. So throughout the day, and the night, they have to swim to the surface to take a breath of that sweet, sweet ocean air… or they die! We humans, and other land lubber mammals like us, are spoiled, just inhale, anytime you want, and… problem solved. But — What The IF humans had to breathe by dunking our head in water? The amazing Dr. Vanessa Pirotta joins us from Sydney, Australia to take us into the wet and wild thought experiment, so we can learn real science! Imagine living the life of the whale, turned on it’s head. What world would we have built if our bodies worked this way? It’s like what if we emerged from the oceans, as we believe life did, but never adapted to breathing outside the water like we used to. Humans with gills? Are we wearing helmets on our head that are filled with water? Do we fill our *buildings* with water? Water the IF! — Dr. Pirotta is a wildlife scientist and a gifted science commun

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