The Alford Plea

If a species is horrible enough, do we have the right to kill it forever? Seventy years ago, a nightmare parasite feasted on the live flesh of warm-blooded creatures in North America: the screwworm. That is, until a young scientist named Edward F. Knipling discovered a crucial sc ...  Show more

In this episode, we consider a creature we often don’t think much about—the snail. And not just snails, but their sex lives. Which, as it turns out, is epic. There is persuasion and subterfuge, spaghetti penises and co-copulation. And this very surprising habit—erm kink—of making ...  Show more

Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He writes a weekly ...

It's one of the most important Supreme Court cases you may never have heard of: Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency. The ruling held that the U.S. government could regulate greenhouse gases. Today we’re sharing the wild backstory of this critical Supreme Court case, ...  Show more

On October 4, 1960, Eastern Airlines Flight 375 took off from Boston’s Logan airport, and then, two minutes later, it crashed. 62 people died. Investigators couldn't figure out what had happened, and they decided to ask a scientist working at the Smithsonian for help. Roxie Laybo ...  Show more

It started with students walking out of school to demand more action on climate change, built into an international movement – and then was propelled forward by a pandemic. Today on the show, the surprising story behind Europe’s climate plan, and what the rest of us can learn fro ...  Show more