Big Picture Science
500 episodes listed below
Weekly themed science interviews spanning cryonics, quantum computing, ancient ice cores, and bird flu.
Big Picture Science treats science as a living trail of clues: ice bubbles, asteroid samples, rose gardens, feathers, and moon rocks all matter. The show suits curious generalists who like careful questions, vivid evidence, and the occasional dry joke.
PRESS PLAY
Big Picture Science is a themed science magazine show rather than a single-guest interview program. Each episode picks one organizing idea and moves through three or four shorter conversations with different specialists who each address a facet of it. The show is hosted by astronomer Seth Shostak and science journalist Molly Bentley, who narrate transitions between guest segments and frame the overall argument of the episode. Guests are drawn mainly from universities and research institutions: paleobotanists, paleoclimatologists, plant biologists, archaeologists, quantum-computing researchers, ornithologists, and earth scientists, along with occasional museum curators, naturalists, and authors of popular science books. Episode themes recur around deep time and the geological record (ice cores, ancient rocks, fossilized pollen), quantum physics and computing, ecology and conservation (redwood forests, the Amazon river system, migratory birds), wildlife and public-health science (avian influenza), and applied research with practical stakes such as crop yield and food security. Some segments are recorded as field interviews, including an on-location walk through a redwood forest with a park naturalist, while others are studio conversations with lab-based scientists. The show carries sponsor reads and is distributed through the Airwave Media podcast network. It suits listeners who want a survey of several current research findings per episode rather than a single deep-dive conversation, and who are comfortable with topics ranging across biology, physics, geology, and environmental science within one show. The tone throughout is explanatory and educational, with an occasional more investigative episode, such as one tracing the spread of H5N1 among wild and farmed birds.
Made for: Curious adults interested in earth science, biology, physics, and ecology who prefer multi-guest thematic episodes over single long-form interviews.
What sets it apart: Rather than one guest per episode, each show weaves three or four short expert interviews around a single theme, hosted by astronomer Seth Shostak and journalist Molly Bentley.
The surprising connections in science and technology that give you the Big Picture. Astronomer Seth Shostak and science journalist Molly Bentley are joined each week by leading researchers, techies, and journalists to provide a smart and humorous take on science. Our regular "Skeptic Check" episodes cast a critical eye on pseudoscience.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Big Picture Science turns wide-ranging research into concrete explanations by pressing guests on mechanisms, consequences, and the comparisons that make both understandable.
Big Picture Science follows scientific questions into the systems around them. Molly Bentley and Seth Shostak move from Amazon ecology and Indigenous history to avian influenza, Arctic change, ancient rocks, trees, cryonics, and quantum technology.
This is the show that takes you from ice-core bubbles to Amazonian telegraph lines without losing the plot.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A deep-time science episode about rocks, markings, and ice as physical records of the past.
Old School follows origins through evidence you can almost handle: lava flows with stromatolites on top, early symbolic tablets, and polar ice that stores old air in bubbles. Its best passages make deep time feel less abstract.
A clear Arctic climate story, grounded in one changed river and the unsettling force of remembered cold.
Big Picture Science starts with the Arctic as an imaginary circle of latitude, then makes it stubbornly physical: sea ice, caribou, permafrost, winter wind, and 4 million people living inside a line drawn around 66 degrees north.
A bouquet opens into a lively tour of flowering plants, rose history, pollination, and the puzzle of the first bloom.
Flower Power starts with a familiar sight, roses and daffodils in bloom, then opens onto one of botany's durable puzzles: why flowering plants appear so suddenly in the fossil record that Darwin called them an "abominable mystery." Molly Bentley keeps the scale moving, from the…
A wide-ranging look at cold as sensation, sales pitch, and essential tool for quantum machines.
Cold gives this episode its shape, beginning with swimmers in 44.1-degree ocean water and moving through cryonics companies promising deep freeze as a bet on future revival, before landing in the engineered chill of quantum computing.
A quiet Redwood walk that makes tree science feel close, tactile, and freshly observable.
Big Picture Science treats trees as working presences: timber and shade, carbon storage, oxygen makers, habitat, and part of the evolutionary setting our primate ancestors eventually left.
A broad Amazon story that connects river scale, Indigenous knowledge, exploration, and the stakes of conservation.
Big Picture Science's "Amazing Amazonia" opens with scale you can almost feel: the Amazon River stretching to the horizon, less like a river than a sea, and feeding a vast system of tributaries that carries the largest flow of freshwater on Earth.
A sober bird-flu episode that keeps the birds, not just the human risk, at the center.
Big Picture Science puts avian influenza back where this episode says it belongs: with the birds. Molly Bentley frames H5N1 as more than a possible human pandemic, starting with the enormous toll on wild and domesticated flocks and the brutal containment work that follows when…
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Tracy Wilson and Holly Frey narrate overlooked history, from Courbet's realism to IUD regulation.
Mike Duncan narrates Rome's full history solo, from Aeneas to Romulus Augustulus's exile in 476.
Big Picture Science's "Old School" links proto-writing, six-million-year-old Antarctic ice cores, and 3.5-billion-year-old rocks to one question: how did Earth become habitable and how did humans learn to record it?
The Arctic Circle is partly imaginary.
Big Picture Science's 'Flower Power' episode traces the origins, evolution, and future of flowering plants through interviews with three scientists and a rose garden expert.
This episode explores how the 1966 sci-fi film 'Fantastic Voyage' might be prophetic for future medical technologies like nanobots and microsurgeons, while also discussing historical body exploration and modern issues like plastic in human blood.
This episode discusses the sci-fi novel Project Hail Mary, featuring an interview with author Andy Weir about its space-traveling story and exploring scientific plausibility regarding aliens and extreme environments.
This episode examines why moon landing conspiracy theories persist despite overwhelming evidence, while also discussing NASA's Artemis II mission and recent lunar science discoveries.
This episode explores how asteroids may have delivered the building blocks of life to Earth while also posing extinction-level threats.
This episode explores the life and work of Roxy Laybourne, the world's first forensic ornithologist, who used bird feathers to solve crimes and aviation accidents, and discusses modern applications in bird conservation.
This episode explores recent developments in lunar and solar science, including NASA's Artemis II mission to the Moon, asteroid tracking, and studies on solar storms affecting Earth.
Big Picture Science's "Hot to Cold" opens with a 44.1-degree ocean plunge and a swimmer who calls cold-water immersion "medicine" after breast cancer treatment.
This episode explores what we still don't know about lightning, how lightning storms are changing, and why lightning is becoming more frequent in places like the Arctic.
This episode discusses the rapid warming of the Arctic, the thawing of permafrost, and the revival of ancient microbes, with implications for climate change.
The episode begins with a fundraising appeal and then transitions into a discussion about kite flying and wind energy.
This episode explores volcanoes across the solar system and their connection to the possibility of life on other planets and moons.
This episode explores the history and science of hypnotherapy, separating fact from illusion.
This episode promotes tech podcasts covering AI developments, security issues, and a fundraising campaign for independent science journalism.
A science podcast discussing the intersection of science and technology, with a fundraising appeal and a segment on enjoying dystopian science fiction movies.
Trees arrive as companions.
This episode features a fundraising appeal for the independent science podcast Big Picture Science, which covers surprising connections in science and technology.
The Amazon does not fit normal scale.
Bird flu is more than a human-pandemic scare.
This episode explores the history, promise, and challenges of string theory as a candidate for a theory of everything.
This episode discusses the impact of federal funding cuts on public media and scientific research, and promotes Patreon support for the show.
This episode revisits a series on hurricane preparedness, exploring how New Orleans responded to Hurricane Katrina and how climate change affects hurricane-prone areas.
The episode discusses the impact of federal funding cuts on public media and scientific research, urging listener support for independent science journalism.
This episode explores how shipwrecks serve as frozen historical artifacts that provide insights into past events and ideas, and the challenges of finding them.
This episode explores the societal implications of AI, including misinformation and job loss, drawing parallels to historical Luddite movements.
The episode investigates a press conference claiming evidence for Bigfoot, highlighting the intersection of science and pseudoscience.
The hosts discuss their trepidation and curiosity about riding in a driverless car, blending humor with scientific skepticism.
This episode of Big Picture Science critically examines the feasibility and potential consequences of asteroid mining.
This episode discusses the impact of federal worker firings and grant freezes on scientific research, with a call to support the show.
A science podcast that explores surprising connections in science and technology with a humorous and skeptical take.
This episode discusses the resurgence of preventable diseases like measles and tuberculosis due to neglected scientific research.
This episode explores the physiological and psychological effects of watching movies and TV, including how our bodies react to on-screen content.
This episode explores the critical roles insects play in ecosystems and the alarming decline in their populations.