On the first episode of 2024, we present Mike's interview on the Dice in Mind podcast, where hosts Jason and Brad ask Mike about his scientific journey, his podcasting journey, and his Star Trek journey.

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Strange New Worlds: https://twitter.com/scienceoftrek
Dice in Mind: https://twitter.com/diceinmind
Mike: https://twitter.com/miquai
Jason: https://twitter.com/vagabondkaufman

Episode 165: Mike on Dice in Mind

Guest: Elise Cutts 

Science journalist Elise Cutts returns to reflect on Caltech's 2016 Star Trek musical, "Boldly Go!", and dissect the 2023 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds musical episode, "Subspace Rhapsody."

Watch "Boldly Go! A Star Trek Parody Musical": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdtBArmWHdY&ab_channel=BoldlyGo%21

"The Simple Geometry That Predicts Molecular Mosaics" by Elise Cutts: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-simple-geometry-that-predicts-molecular-mosaics-20230621/

"The Mysterious Case of Ireland’s Missing Earthquakes" by Elise Cutts: https://eos.org/articles/the-mysterious-case-of-irelands-missing-earthquakes

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Mike: https://twitter.com/miquai
Elise: https://twitter.com/elisecutts

Episode 166: Subspace Rhapsody

Guest: Kayla Smith 

Getting accepted to grad school isn't something that happens every day. Episode 167 of Strange New Worlds is dedicated to celebrating Kayla Smith, an undergraduate who works with Mike, and her recent acceptances to PhD programs in planetary science. Kayla talks about watching her first Star Trek episode, her journey in academia, her research on Mars, her aspirations to look for life on exoplanets, and why studying planets is both a science and an art.

Mike's Carnegie Postdoc Spotlight: https://epl.carnegiescience.edu/michael-l-wong-explores-strange-new-worlds

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Mike: twitter.com/miquai

Episode 167: Of Hope, Optimism, and Tomorrows

Guest: Jaime Green 

Author Jaime Green beams aboard to talk about how we imagine alien life in science and in science fiction. Her new book is "The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos."

"The Possibility of Life" by Jaime Green: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-possibility-of-life-jaime-green?variant=40643758391330

"Uncertain Contact" by Jaime Green: https://aeon.co/essays/alien-life-might-not-be-something-science-can-ever-discover

"An Existential Problem in the Search for Alien Life" by Jaime Green:https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/12/defining-life-existentialism-scientific-theory/676238/

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Mike: https://twitter.com/miquai
Jaime: https://twitter.com/jaimealyse

Episode 168: The Possibility of Life

Guest: Prof. Paul Rimmer 

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation finale, Q and Picard time travel to the origin of life on Earth. How does that scene compare to our modern scientific understanding of life's emergence? Prof. Paul Rimmer walks us through what Star Trek gets right and wrong—and what we still don't know—about our humble beginnings.

"Could Dune really exist? What scientists think of our favorite sci-fi worlds" featuring Mike & Prof. Mohamed Noor: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/01/1198909447/dune-part-two-arrakis-habitable-planets-star-trek-wars

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Episode 169: The Abiogenesis Zone

Guest: Dr. Stuart Bartlett 

Complexity scientist, astrobiologist, and artificial life researcher Dr. Stuart Bartlett joins us to discuss how information processing has been a key feature of life, from its emergence 4 billion years ago to artificial intelligence today.

Stuart's paper "Provenance of life: Chemical autonomous agents surviving through associative learning": https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.106.034401

Mike & Stuart's paper "Searching for Life, Mindful of Lyfe’s Possibilities": https://www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/12/6/783

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Episode 170: Learning & Life

Guest: Dr. Shi En Kim 

Science journalist Dr. Shi En Kim joins Mike to talk about DSC: "Red Directive," from sand avalanches to the big revelation at the end of the episode.

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DSC 501: Sturzstrom

Guest: Dr. Shi En Kim

Mike and Kim examine the themes in DSC: "Under the Twin Moons." What does it take to get a double solar eclipse? And what do they make of Captain Rayner's advice?

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Strange New Worlds: twitter.com/scienceoftrek
Mike: twitter.com/miquai
Kim: twitter.com/goes_by_kim

DSC 502: Double Solar Eclipse

Guest: Dr. Shi En Kim 

Mike and Kim take a closer look at DSC: "Jinaal." What do they make of the Trill's test? And why was Stamets so bubbly about isotope half-lives?

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Strange New Worlds: twitter.com/scienceoftrek
Mike: twitter.com/miquai
Kim: twitter.com/goes_by_kim

DSC 503: Half-Life

Guest: Dr. Shi En Kim 

Mike and Kim unpack DSC: "Face the Strange" and "Mirrors." Can you use relativity to defeat a temporal shield? What do they make of Moll and L'ak's backstory?

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Strange New Worlds: twitter.com/scienceoftrek
Mike: twitter.com/miquai
Kim: twitter.com/goes_by_kim

DSC 504 & 505: Temporal Bug

To celebrate the launch of Biosphere, we invite you to join our conversation about some new beginnings in the microbial world and in our scientific paths. We often think that the birth of live young is a special characteristic of some animals. Mammals do it, some sharks do it, and it would totally make sense if no single-celled microorganisms did it. But that is not the case! We talk about one example of a bacterium, Epulopiscium fishelsoni, that lives in the guts of Regal Tangs, such as Dory the Fish, that nurtures little babies inside of it until they grow up, explode their parent, and move on to bigger and better things. Epulopiscium roughly translates to “guest at a fish’s banquet”. Find out if this is a banquet that you want to join in this episode!

Aditi, John, Julian, and Lev, all had different experiences starting in science. For one of us, this involved a difficult choice between sea sponges and human disease. For another---lots and lots of spiders. Tune in to hear our stories.

You can learn about the discovery of E. fishelsoni here: https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/18/us/in-the-world-of-bacteria-a-behemoth.html

You can learn more about bacteria giving birth to live young and reproducing in other weird ways here: https://micro.cornell.edu/research/epulopiscium/binary-fission-and-other-forms-reproduction-bacteria/

Find us at https://caltechletters.org/podcasts/
Contact us at biospherepodcast@gmail.com
Tweet Lev @LMT_Spoon

***The cover image is CC-BY SA 4.0 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Regal_Tang_sketch.jpg. Not only charismatic movie stars, Regal Tangs house a lot of wonderful biology.

Biosphere Season 1

Biosphere 1: New Beginnings

What would it sound like if the scientists producing some of the latest research also produced podcasts about their work? Listen to Caltech Letters Podcasts to find out!

In all our shows, you'll hear Caltech researchers blending science and storytelling to bring you the latest findings in their fields as well as a window into how science works, breaks, and moves forward. We believe communicating our research honestly reveals how scientists view their own work, and helps us all understand how to consume science with the right amount of passion, skepticism, and confidence.

You can find other Caltech Letters content here: https://caltechletters.org/

Caltech Letters is not a publication of the California Institute of Technology.

Biosphere 1: New Beginnings

Caltech Letters

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