Sometimes we get questions from listeners that are so intertwined that we just have to include them both in one episode, and today is one of those days! Cardiologist Dr. Courtney Jordan Baechler helps us figure out the answer to two questions – why does blood taste like metal, and why are we not magnetic? And as a bonus, Dr. B. includes a super fun experiment that you can do at home. Got a question that’s meddling with your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help iron out t...
Feb 04, 2025•6 min
Isn’t it cool that cars can go forwards and backwards? Backwards and forwards go can cars that cool it isn’t? All joking aside, these huge, heavy machines can switch directions with just the push of a lever! But how do they do it? We asked car expert Chaya Milchtein to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s driving you wild? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll steer you in the right direction!...
Feb 03, 2025•7 min
So far, only adults have been to space. But there are plenty of kids who’d love to travel to space, so what gives? Why can’t kids walk on the moon? Or visit the International Space Station? We asked NASA engineer Varoujan Gorjian to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s moonwalking around your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll spaceCRAFT an answer for you .
Jan 31, 2025•5 min
Clay is neat stuff. You can knead it, shape it, carve it, sculpt it, and make all kinds of beautiful creations. It goes from soft and squishy to hard and breakable when it’s baked in a kiln. But clay is…dirt, right? It comes from the ground! So how do you get it out of the ground and into the blocks that you find at an art supply store? We asked ceramic artist and educator Lauren Sandler to guide us through the process. Got a question that you just knead an answer to? Send it to us at BrainsOn.o...
Jan 30, 2025•5 min
We love when our listeners send in super unique questions. We also love robots. So we had to answer this head-scratcher of a question from listener Lucas: why aren’t robots ticklish? We asked pediatrician Emma Gerstenzang to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s tickling your fancy? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll find the answer faster than a well-oiled machine !...
Jan 29, 2025•5 min
Antarctica. Home of the South Pole and an incredibly diverse population of sea life. You know what there’s not a lot of in Antarctica? People! But there are some adventurous scientists who go there for research. These folks can’t just zip out to the grocery store when they want to make a meal…so what do they eat? We asked scientist Cameron Hearn to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s just the tip of the iceberg ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll give you an ocean of k...
Jan 28, 2025•5 min
If you’ve ever taken a dog on a walk, or let them run around the woods, you know that they LOVE to roll around in stinky stuff! And it’s one heck of a mess to clean up. Why do they do that? We asked researcher Elizabeth Carranza from the Arizona Canine Cognition Center to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s rolling around in your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help sniff out the answer....
Jan 27, 2025•6 min
Dragons are fantastical fairytale creatures that fly and breathe fire. They aren’t real, but there are animals that can do the things dragons do! So … if dragons did exist, how would they fly and breathe fire? We asked science professor Dr. Mark Lorch to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s DRAGON you down ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll fire off an answer!...
Jan 24, 2025•7 min
We know that soil helps many things grow -- but how is it made? It must come from somewhere, right? We talked to farmer Angel Papineu to find the answer. Got a question growing in your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll dig for the truth!
Jan 23, 2025•5 min
There are more than 8 billion people living on our big wonderful planet. What if all of those people traveled to the exact same spot on Earth and jumped at the same time? What would happen? Would we move the Earth? We asked physicist Dr. Kiley Kennedy to help us find the answer. Got a question jumping around in your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll find an answer that moves you !...
Jan 22, 2025•5 min
Teething, losing teeth, growing new teeth. It’s a part of life that every human goes through! But what about dinosaurs? Did they experience the same thing? We asked paleontologist Shaena Montanari to help us find the answer. Got a dino mite question for us? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help you out because we’re as smart as a the saurus !
Jan 21, 2025•4 min
Energy powers our entire universe, whether it’s light from a star or energy stored in the food we eat. But could we ever run out? Will there be a time, far in the future, when the last drop of energy is used up? We asked physicist Dr. Kiley Kennedy to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s draining your mental battery ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact and we’ll find the answer for you, because knowledge is power !...
Jan 20, 2025•6 min
Have you ever noticed how sometimes when you wash and dry a piece of clothing, it comes out a little smaller? Why does that happen? We asked science professor Dr. Mark Lorch to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s tumbling around your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we won’t shrink away from answering it!
Jan 17, 2025•6 min
Are your ears burning? ‘Cause we’ve been thinking about them. Sure, they’re an incredible self-cleaning marvel that we can wax poetic about all day. Sure, they’re a great place for dads to store all kinds of hairs. But do ears have bones? We asked Olivia Bermingham-McDonogh from the University of Washington to help us find the answer. Heard a good question recently? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , because we’re ear for you....
Jan 16, 2025•4 min
Some snakes make a chemical in their bodies called venom. They use it to hunt and protect themselves. Sometimes, if a human gets bitten by a snake, they need to take a special medicine called antivenin. How does this medicine work? We asked pediatrician Emma Gerstenzang to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s snaking around in your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help find a sssssatisfying answer!...
Jan 15, 2025•6 min
Have you noticed that there’s a kind of cheese that’s holier than all the rest? Swiss! Why does it have all those holes anyway? We asked Jenny Eastwood of Small Goods to help us answer this delicious question. Hungry for some answers? Send your questions to BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll brie pare an answer justfor you.
Jan 14, 2025•4 min
Ping pong is a super fun game. It’s like miniature tennis, where people use paddles to make balls fly across a table., and sometimes way, way up in the air! But how do those tiny plastic balls manage to bounce so high? We asked physicist Dr. Kiley Kennedy to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s bouncing around your brain? Ping us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll serve up the answer!
Jan 13, 2025•5 min
Lots of cars, trucks and buses are powered by gasoline. You put the gasoline in a little hole on the side of the vehicle, it powers the engine and then it comes out of the tailpipe as exhaust fumes. But what’s going on inside that engine? And how does gas turn into exhaust anyway? We asked chemistry professor Dr. Josie Nardo to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s really exhausting you? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll steeryou toward the answer!...
Jan 10, 2025•6 min
Let’s say you wake up on a Tuesday morning feeling fine and fresh. But by the end of the night your throat hurts, you’re coughing, and there’s snot dripping from your nose. What happened in the course of that one day to make you feel so sick? Dr. Courtney Jordan Baechler helps us stick our noses in this (t)issue . Got a question you can’t fever out? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and then be patient ! We’ll help find the answer....
Jan 09, 2025•7 min
There are all different kinds of trees in the world, from towering redwoods to tiny willow trees smaller than an action figure. Why are there so many different sizes of trees, anyway? We asked tree expert Jake Miesbauer to help us find the answer. Got a tree-mendous question? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll ginkGO find the answer!
Jan 08, 2025•6 min
Have you ever picked up a peach in the supermarket and noticed that its skin is covered in soft fuzz? What’s that about? Should we be taking our peaches to barbershops? And what about kiwis? They’re covered in scratchy hairs! Why do some fruits have fuzz while others have smooth skin? We talked to Dario Chavez from the University of Georgia to find out. Got a fresh ‘n’ fruity question? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help find an a-peeling answer....
Jan 07, 2025•5 min
Black holes are mysterious. They are so dense that no light can escape them, which makes them super hard to find! So how did we discover the first black hole? We asked NASA engineer Varoujan Gorjian to help us find the answer. Got a mystery you’d love to shed some light on ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help search the skies for an answer.
Jan 06, 2025•6 min
Records are big flat discs with circular lines on them that you can use to play music. But how does a record work, anyway? We asked audio engineer Josh Bonati to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s spinning around in your brain? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help find an answer that’s music to your ears!
Dec 20, 2024•7 min
Airplanes fly high in the sky and at super fast speeds. But is there a limit to how fast they’re allowed to fly? You know, in the way cars have speed limits? For this episode, we talked to Bobby Sharp, an air traffic controller, who helps us understand if airplanes have a need for speed . Got a question you need answered fast ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll try our plane old best to get it answered!...
Dec 19, 2024•4 min
Have you ever been to the doctor and had them listen to your body with a stethoscope? It’s that funny looking thing that looks like a long rubbery tube with a round metal circle on one end and two ear pieces on the other. Doctors always seem to have one handy, but what is it and how does it work? We asked pediatrician Emma Gerstenzang to help us find the answer. Got a question that you need scoped out ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll prescribe you an answer!...
Dec 18, 2024•6 min
Most of us know that we have a heart. We know that it beats - sometimes faster, sometimes slower. But just how many times does it beat in a day? We asked Dr. Courtney Jordan Baechler to have a heart-to-heart with us about this question. (She is also the host of the podcast Heart-to-Heart Conversations !) Got a question that you just love ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we won’t beat around the bush!...
Dec 17, 2024•5 min
Have you ever seen a sinkhole? These are spots in the Earth’s surface where the ground has collapsed and formed a hole. Sometimes they can be more than a hundred feet deep! But how do sinkholes form? We asked geologist Hazel Barton to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s a real hole in one ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help dig up the answer!
Dec 16, 2024•6 min
Black holes are super dense spots in space. They have so much gravity that when something falls into a black hole, it can’t escape. We asked UCLA astrophysicist Dakotah Tyler to help us imagine what it would be like if we traveled through one of these dark marvels. Is there a question that’s really pulled you in? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll spaghettiFIND you an answer!
Dec 13, 2024•6 min
3D glasses. Those little paper spectacles with one red lens and one blue. Put ’em on, and suddenly, POW! Images seem to leap right off the screen! Do these glasses play magical mind tricks on our brain? Do they give our eyeballs multi-dimensional superpowers? For a lens into how it all works, we talked to UW-Madison physicist Pupa Gilbert. Got a question that’s really jumping out at you? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll help you put it into focus ....
Dec 12, 2024•5 min
Vocal cords are magical things. They let us speak, sing, squawk and scream. But what are vocal cords and how do they do all that? We asked pediatrician Emma Gerstenzang to help us find the answer. Got a question that’s chattering away in your brain ? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact , and we’ll belt out an answer !
Dec 11, 2024•5 min
