Science, Actually Presents : The Nerd and the Scientist

Dr. Helen Maynard Casley, (one of) THE principal scientists at ANSTO (Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation), sets Kovi's and Benjamin's brains alight as she talks about working on the Wombat (not an acronym - Australians just like naming things after animals). Wombat is a high intensity neutron diffractometer that Dr. Helen uses to just scoop some neutrons out of a working nuclear reactor. You know, for kicks! You'd think that line of work would make someone glow, but not so! The reason she glows - or glowed - was when she helped set the Guinness World Record for longest glow necklace!Follow us everywhere!Find Benjamin at Science, Actually : https://www.scienceactually.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/actuallyscienceFind Kovi at Fun Fact Science : https://www.funfactscience.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/funfactscienceFind Helen here https://profiles.ansto.gov.au/helen.maynard-casely

Multidisciplinary biologist and bee expert Sarah Aamidor returns for part two - or should we say Part Bee - of her deep dive conversation with Kovi and Benjamin about some of the weirdest things bees do. Yes, in order to conduct her studies on bees she had to kill a few bees - but she didn't kill nearly as many bees as bees kill. Nor did she torture any bees - unlike bees who regularly torture bees. And she definitely didn't rip off many bees'... um... bits and pieces... The point is the queen bee rips off some bees' bits but Sarah didn't, is what we're saying.Follow us everywhere!Find Benjamin at Science, Actually : https://www.scienceactually.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/actuallyscienceFind Kovi at Fun Fact Science : https://www.funfactscience.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/funfactscienceFind Sarah here https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sarah-Aamidor and here https://royalsociety.org/blog/2019/01/can-you-bee-lieve-it/

Just in case you missed her wildly popular TikToks, or you missed her YouTube channel, or you missed her TED Talks, or you missed her creating a space telescope from scratch, or you didn't get your hands on her new book, Weird universe, now you can listen Dr. Erika Hamden chatting with Kovi and Benjamin about all things astrophysics and radio-astronomy! ...and, seriously, get that book!Follow us everywhere!Find Benjamin at Science, Actually : https://www.scienceactually.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/actuallyscienceFind Kovi at Fun Fact Science : https://www.funfactscience.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/funfactscienceFind Erika here https://www.ehamden.org/

Our favorite talking ass, Daniel Orvomaa, is back for round two! He joins Kovi and Benjamin in a very unstructured conversation about bad science, bad science reporting, pseudo science, and superpesis - Finland's version of baseball. It's a long one this time, so grab some snacks and settle in for some science-fueled randomness.Follow us everywhere!Find Benjamin at Science, Actually : https://www.scienceactually.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/actuallyscienceFind Kovi at Fun Fact Science : https://www.funfactscience.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/funfactscienceFind Daniel here : https://talkingasspodcast.com/

There are few things as iconic on an astronaut's flight suit as their mission patch—a singular piece of art that encapsulates everything about the mission: who’s going, what country they’re from, what vehicle they’re riding, where they’re headed, and what they plan to do when they get there.From space shuttles to space stations, from space telescopes to asteroids, this week’s guest is the man who designed hundreds of them—Tim Gagnon.From the very first sketch he submitted as a kid, to the dozens that actually flew to space, to the one he finally made with his own name on it for his analog astronaut mission in Utah, Kovi and Benjamin close out Season 6 of their show by asking the most important question of all:What would a mission patch look like for their show, where the mascot is a rubber duck?Follow us everywhere!Find Benjamin at Science, Actually : https://www.scienceactually.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/actuallyscienceFind Kovi at Fun Fact Science : https://www.funfactscience.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/funfactscienceFind Tim and his beautiful work here https://www.kscartist.com/

Kovi and Benjamin got together for slice at Jupiter Pizza. They loved the menu - some wood fired pizza options were the Cassiopeia, the Io, Galileo, Gaia, Mercury, Ares, and Triton. As fun as those names are, they pissed off Benjamin something royal. You see, the names are all spacey, yes, but pick a theme! We've got some planets (Ares was the Greek name fo the planet we now call Mars), random moons (from different worlds, mind you), an explorer, a constellation... It's all over the place! The eatery is called Jupiter Pizza - you'd think they'd have, at the very least, four pies named after the Galilean moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Nope! They didn't even refer to pepperoni as 'great red spots' - and that's just off the top of the head! Anywho, this episode was thought up in a pizzeria called Jupiter - so let's talk about places here on Earth named after places in space!Follow us everywhere!Find Benjamin at Science, Actually : https://www.scienceactually.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/actuallyscienceFind Kovi at Fun Fact Science : https://www.funfactscience.com/ & https://www.facebook.com/funfactscience