Science teaching with real-world texture.
Lab Out Loud is a science education show led by classroom-minded curiosity. Its conversations move from biomaterials and Earth systems to humor, sensors, solarography, scientific illustration, and the changing online communities that support science learning.
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Lab Out Loud approaches science education through the conversations teachers wish they had more often. Dale Basler and Brian Bartel speak with people who make science visible, testable, funny, practical, or easier to question. The show has a warm classroom rhythm. A topic may begin with a joke about flu season, a conference window, or spring weather, then settle into a careful discussion about how students actually encounter scientific ideas. Recent episodes show the range clearly. Oscar Castaño explains biomaterials, tissue engineering, and how a small off-the-shelf printer can support lab work. Marsha Bjornarud brings geology into a more poetic frame, describing a planet in motion and asking how Earth science can meet climate concern without leaving students hopeless. Jonathan Steyer pushes on wellness claims, misinformation, expertise, and the importance of science literacy. Sarah Rose Siskind makes the case for humor as a serious tool in science communication, from robots to classroom examples. Brian Kastner connects local sensor data to global patterns. Ella Maruschenko describes scientific illustration as a bridge between research and visual understanding. Another episode considers what happens when science communities built on social platforms have to scatter and rebuild elsewhere. Across the show, the hosts keep asking how these ideas travel into classrooms. They are interested in careers students might imagine, tools teachers can use, and language that makes difficult concepts less remote. The result is not a lecture series. It is a steady, curious workshop for science educators who want their teaching to keep pace with the living world of science.
Made for: Lab Out Loud is for science teachers, STEM educators, curriculum-minded librarians, and informal educators looking for current examples they can translate into learning. It also suits science communicators who care about how research becomes understandable.
What sets it apart: The show stands out by keeping expert conversations anchored in classroom use. It pairs approachable teacher banter with concrete examples from labs, fieldwork, books, sensors, visual art, comedy, and online science communities.
Lab Out Loud is a show about science teaching in the classroom and beyond. Lab Out Loud seeks to explore science education through discussions with educators, researchers, leading scientists, science writers and other guests who are committed to promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Lab Out Loud connects working science to classroom decisions through curious guest interviews, practical follow-up questions, and a steady concern for science literacy.
Lab Out Loud turns conversations with scientists, researchers, and science communicators into questions Dale Basler and Brian Bartell can carry back to the classroom.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Biomaterials and light-based printing, grounded in a lab setup that has to stay sterile.
The episode centers on biomaterials and 3D printing through Oscar Castano, a professor at the University of Barcelona and a researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia.
A classroom-friendly Earth science conversation that treats rock as active, strange, and worth taking seriously.
Lab Out Loud returns Marsha Bjornarud to discuss Turning to Stone, and the result treats the solid Earth as something lively rather than inert.
A grounded reminder that wellness claims need trust, training, and evidence.
Lab Out Loud keeps its focus on everyday wellness confusion, with hosts Dale Basler and Brian Bartell joined by clinical psychologist Jonathan Steyer to sort through the wellness industry, misinformation, and the gap between sounding informed and actually having training.
A funny, practical case for making science communication easier to remember.
Lab Out Loud treats humor in science communication as useful craft rather than garnish. Sarah Rose Siskind, a science and comedy writer, comedian, and founder of Hello SciCom, grounds that idea in her South by Southwest EDU keynote and the practical work around it: helping a…
A clear look at what happens when a scientific community depends on one platform.
Lab Out Loud treats science Twitter as a once-vital space where practicing scientists traded craft, discoveries, setbacks, career paths, and the occasional personal detail.
A classroom tech story that turns Chromebook churn and expiration dates into a practical school technology problem.
Lab Out Loud frames Chromebook churn as a practical problem shaped by school schedules, not by school control. Dale Basler and Brian Bartell bring in Lucas Gutterman, the researcher and director of the Design to Last campaign with USPIRG, and the conversation keeps returning to…
Strange claims, tested cleanly.
Plainspoken sermons for faithful Christian life.
Dale and Brian introduce solarography using a simple pinhole camera at South by Southwest EDU.
Oscar Castaño says biomaterials can be "any material that's inside the body," and the episode uses that definition to connect 3D printing with tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
["Marsha Bjornarud tells Lab Out Loud that earth science is \"the one science that every earthling should be exposed to,\" and she ties that claim to groundwater, oil, gas, minerals, and climate.", "Dale Basler and Brian Bartel talk with the structural geologist about Turning to Stone, her earlier book Timefulness, and her path from an outsider to science to a professor of geoscience.", "She argues that geologic illiteracy delays climate accountability, keeps Earth science weak in many middle and high schools, and leaves students with only a shallow rock cycle.", "The conversation moves through AP geosciences, field camps, climate despair, enhanced rock weathering, Mars colonization, and why Earth's water and carbon cycles are not easy to replace."]
Lab Out Loud speaks with Jonathan Steyer about Mind the Science: Saving Your Mental Health from the Wellness Industry, with the discussion centering on a $5.6 trillion market and the science behind health claims.
On Lab Out Loud, hosts Dale Basler and Brian Bartell talk with Sarah Rose Siskind, founder of Hello SciCom, about using comedy to make science communication less boring.
Science teachers discuss using Vernier sensors to help students measure local environmental data and connect it to global scientific concepts.
Dale and Brian discuss solarography and using a simple pinhole camera to capture sun trails, sharing their experiments at South by Southwest EDU.
A scientific illustrator discusses her career path and the role of art in science education.
Miriam Vidal says scientists are leaving Twitter in "massive waves" after a Nature survey of over 9,000 responses.
Lab Out Loud brings on Lucas Gutterman, director of the Design to Last campaign with USPIRG, to discuss “chromebook churn” and why school devices are expiring too quickly.
A squid biologist and executive director of Skype a Scientist discusses connecting scientists with classrooms to improve trust in science and reach diverse audiences.