FIRST, a global robotics community helps prepare students for the future through their programs, competitions, and fun.

Ann Burg talks about her new young adult biography on the life of Rachel Carson, "Force of Nature: A Novel of Rachel Carson."

As a total eclipse approaches on April 8, 2024, solar eclipse enthusiast and former science correspondent for National Public Radio, David Baron, tells about the earliest eclipse chasers in 1878 in his book "American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World."

Evidence-based explanations and critical thinking can help us all better understand paranormal beliefs and why we have them. Chris French, author of the new book "The Science of Weird S***," sheds light on where these beliefs come from and how we can explain these bizarre experiences.

Plasma physicist Sierra Solter talks about the effects of decaying space junk on Earth’s ionosphere. As satellites and other orbital objects decay and burn up in the atmosphere, they are leaving a layer of conductive, electrically charged particles around the planet and the dangerous effects it could have on the Earth's ionosphere and life as we know it.

Dr. Arturo Casadevall from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health talks about a potential fungal epidemic in his new book, "What if Fungi Win?"Then, what if there was one overarching theory that could help explain much of our modern-day daily lives? Science journalist Tom Chivers explores the concept of the predictability of everything, based on a theorem developed by Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century Presbyterian minister and statistician.

Shawn Shan, project lead of The Glaze Project at the University of Chicago, a research effort that develops technical tools with the explicit goal of protecting human creatives against invasive uses of generative artificial intelligence, talks about their program helping to protect human generated art from AI.Then, Mark Wolverton tells the story of the scientific feud between physicists Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton over the nature of cosmic rays in his new book, “Splinters of Infinity, Cosmic Rays and the Clash of Two Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists over the Secrets of Creation.”

Lee Billings, senior editor of "Scientific American" magazine, talks about the many fascinating elements of space: from solar storms, to space junk, and even to the possibility of a new planet.Then, local resident and CEO of TRS Group, Brett Trowbridge, tells how they use scientific innovation to clean up containments in the soil through thermal remediation. These are “forever chemical” contaminants that can be cleaned up at the site instead of being hauled away.

University of Michigan geology professor, Nathan Niemi, delves into the university's yearly summer geology field camp here in the western U.S., or what they like to call the best field trip ever. (0:57)Then, University of Utah Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Jessica Swanson, shares her research on using biological methods to remove excess methane from the atmosphere. (24:58)

Professor Jeff Karp, teaches biomedical engineering at Harvard Medical School and MIT joins the show to talk about the brain's neuroplasticity and how he adapted his brain to tackle his early learning disabilities and ADHD and shares how you can too.Then, biomedical engineer and blunt trauma specialist, Rachel Lance, explores how a team of scientists during World War II made science history by discovering how to breathe underwater, a crucial element in an eventual victory for Allied forces.