Wildly Curious

Send us a text Ever wonder how birds, eels, whales, or even bugs find their way without a GPS? In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole uncover the jaw-dropping science behind animal navigation. From locusts using sky maps and magnetic fields, to eels migrating thousands of miles to a secret oceanic birthplace no one’s ever seen (seriously), and birds that may be using quantum mechanics to see the Earth’s magnetic field—it’s a global tour of natural way-finding. 🌎 ...

Send us a text Subscribe if you love science, chaos, and bugs that are way too confident. In this Swarms Minisode, Katy dives into the desert locust, a grasshopper that transforms—literally—into one of the most devastating swarm creatures on Earth. 🦗 What causes a peaceful insect to go full apocalypse mode? 🌾 How do they morph from shy loners to yellow, muscle-bound sky-hulks? 🌪 What triggers a swarm so massive it consumes everything in its path—eating its body weight daily?  ...

Send us a text Subscribe and brace yourself—because this week, the swarm has teeth. 🦈 In this second episode of our Swarms Minisode Series, Laura and Katy dive into a lesser-known swarm behavior: shark aggregations. From 1,400 basking sharks off New England to over 15,000 spinning sharks off the Florida coast, this episode explores the science (and chaos) behind why some of the ocean’s most feared predators travel in giant, synchronized groups. 🦈 Why do basking sharks—normally loners—form fee...

Send us a text Subscribe and let your nose lead the way. This episode stinks—in the best way possible. In this surprisingly deep dive into all things scent, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole explore how your sense of smell works, why it’s wildly underappreciated, and what makes certain smells feel amazing (or like a chemical attack). 🧠 How does smell connect to memory and emotion? 🦨 What makes skunk spray so powerful—and impossible to wash off? 🌺 Why do corpse flowers pretend to b...

Send us a text Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. It’s time for Swarms. In the kickoff to our Swarms Minisodes, Katy and Laura dive into one of nature’s most mesmerizing spectacles: the murmuration of starlings. These jaw-dropping bird formations swirl through the sky like smoke or liquid—but behind the beauty is a stunning system of rules, physics, and evolutionary strategy. 🐦 What exactly is a murmuration—and why do starlings do it? 🌪 How can thousands of birds turn on a...

Send us a text Subscribe and let your inner science goblin move into its own weird little ecosystem. 🦠 In the Season 12 kickoff of Wildly Curious, Katy and Laura reveal the bizarre—but very real—ecosystems thriving inside your house. From the Amazon rainforest of your belly button to the bug-filled biome behind your fridge, your home is alive in more ways than you think. 🦠 Why scientists swabbed hundreds of belly buttons to study bacteria 🍄 How household fungi can go from harmless to ha...

Send us a text Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. We see you. We respect it. In this Season 11 finale of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole blow the lid off volcanoes—literally and figuratively. From earth-shaking eruptions and blue lava to the creation of entirely new islands, this episode dives into the molten madness of how volcanoes destroy, preserve, and even give life. 🌋 What exactly is a volcano? 🌎 Why do they erupt, and where can you find them? ⚡️ What’s...

Send us a text In this out-of-this-world episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole tell the incredible—and deeply emotional—story of Ham the Chimp, the first hominid to survive spaceflight. 🧠 How was Ham trained to perform tasks during a rocket launch? 🚀 What made his 1961 mission so important to Project Mercury? 💔 And what did it cost to send an intelligent animal into space? Ham wasn’t just a passenger—he was a pioneer who proved humans could survive and funct...

Send us a text In this out-of-this-world episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole unravel the story of two unexpected astronauts: Anita and Arabella, the garden spiders launched aboard Skylab 3 in 1973. 🕸️ Can spiders spin webs in zero gravity? 🕷️ How do they adapt without gravity to guide them? 🛰️ What can eight-legged astronauts teach us about behavior and resilience in space? Anita and Arabella weren’t just part of a quirky science experiment—they were pione...

Send us a text Why do we sleep? What’s going on in our brains while we dream about flying bagels and dolphin taxis? In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole stay up late to explore the science of sleep, REM cycles, lucid dreaming, and why getting less than 5 hours can mess with your memory, mood, and metabolism. 🧠 From brain waves and neurotransmitters to memory formation and emotional resets 😴 The truth about sleep deprivation, circadian rhythms, and why you...

Send us a text Before astronauts, there were monkeynauts. In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the bizarre and often tragic history of the first primates sent to space—Albert I, II, III, and IV. The U.S. was determined to test the limits of space travel, and what better way than by strapping a rhesus macaque to a rocket? Unfortunately for the Alberts, early spaceflight engineering wasn’t exactly foolproof (seriously, how hard is it to pack a working p...

Send us a text From sky-high lightning bolts that span hundreds of miles to walls of sand swallowing cities whole, extreme weather is wild—and sometimes, just plain weird. 🌩️💨 In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy and Laura break down some of nature’s most shocking meteorological events, including lightning that’s hotter than the sun, haboobs that turn day into night, and actual raining animals (yes, really). But that’s not all! We also dive into pink snow (that smells like watermelon), blo...

Send us a text Frogs. In. Space. Yep, you read that right! In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole take you on a hilarious and mind-blowing journey into the weirdest space experiment you’ve probably never heard of—the Orbiting Frog Otolith mission. Back in the 1970s, NASA decided that launching two bullfrogs into orbit was a great idea. Why? To study how weightlessness affects the inner ear and balance. But the story doesn’t stop there—these amphibian astronauts, ...

Send us a text Could dinosaurs be the next great delivery workers, pest control experts, or even search-and-rescue heroes? In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole take a deep dive into the wild world of dinosaur training—imagining what it would take to turn prehistoric creatures into modern-day workers. From speedy compies delivering packages through city streets to armored Borealopelta stopping high-speed car chases, they explore the science behind animal trainin...

Send us a text Blast off into the strange world of space-bound critters with Wildly Curious! In this episode, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole uncover the bizarre true story of Félicette—the first (and only) cat launched into space. From rigorous astronaut training (including high-G centrifuge spins) to a suborbital flight with no windows, Félicette’s journey was as weird as it was historic. Why did France decide to send a stray tuxedo cat into the cosmos? What did scientists hope to learn? ...