Big Picture Science

Series produced by Big Picture Science

Series image

Big Picture Science is a weekly one-hour science magazine that connects ideas in surprising and humorous ways to illuminate the origins and evolution of life and technology on this planet… and beyond.

From free-thinking robots... to the recipe for dark matter... to the mix-and-match genes of synthetic biology, we have it all! One episode a month, Skeptic Check, is devoted to critical thinking.

Produced at the SETI Institute and hosted by Seth Shostak and Molly Bentley.

Big Picture Science can be found on iTunes and other podcast sites. Radio stations carrying the program are listed on our "listening" page at radio.seti.org

The program is freely available to radio stations for broadcast.

The show began with the title Are We Alone? in 2002.


329 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: Exoplanets, Credit: Seth Shostak
You may be unique, but is your home planet? Why the astronomer who’s discovered hundreds of exoplanets is hopeful about the hunt for alien life. ...

Bought by WRGY, KBGA 89.9 FM, KREV-LP, and KVSC


  • Added: Jun 17, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: Cosmos: It's Big, It's Weird, Credit: Seth Shostak
It’s all about you. And you, and you, and you and you … that is, if we live in parallel universes. Physicist Brian Greene’s case for multiverses.

Bought by KSKQ, WRGY, KBGA 89.9 FM, WRIR, and KREV-LP


  • Added: Jun 03, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 5
Caption: Skeptic Check: Hostile Climate, Credit: Seth Shostak
It’s a record we didn’t want to break. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is at an all-time high. Meanwhile an op-ed in a leading new...

Bought by C89.5 - KNHC Seattle, WRGY, WRIR, KREV-LP, KVSC and more


  • Added: May 20, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 6
Caption: Going Viral, Credit: Seth Shostak
Discover how viruses go from birds to pigs to you, how fossil viruses got into your genome, whether E.T. might be a virus, and what it takes for id...

Bought by WUFT, KKWE Niijii Radio, WRGY, WRIR, KREV-LP and more


  • Added: May 13, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 6
Caption: Stomach This, Credit: Seth Shostak
Not all conversation is appropriate for the dinner table – and that includes, strangely enough, the subject of eating. Yet, what happens during th...

Bought by WRGY, KREV-LP, WRST-FM Oshkosh, and WNJR


  • Added: May 06, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: Skeptic Check: Forget with the Program, Credit: Seth Shostak
Just remember this: Even our memories of dramatic events that seem to burn themselves directly into our brain are riddled with errors.

Bought by WRGY, WRIR, WRST-FM Oshkosh, Royalton Community Radio, WNJR and more


  • Added: Apr 15, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 6
Caption: Seth's Wine Cellar, Credit: Seth Shostak
In this potpourri show: from atomic clocks … to solar storms … to gold particles that might make gasoline obsolete … there are lots of science surp...

Bought by KSKQ, WRIR, KREV-LP, WRST-FM Oshkosh, Royalton Community Radio and more


  • Added: Apr 08, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 7
Caption: Anthropocene and Heard, Credit: Seth Shostak
Why climate change and loss of biodiversity may mean goodbye to the "Holocene," and hello to a new geologic epoch, the "Age of Man."

Bought by WRIR, WRST-FM Oshkosh, WNJR, and Royalton Community Radio


  • Added: Apr 01, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: Happy Daze, Credit: Seth Shostak
Calling all pessimists – discover why your brain is wired for optimism, the evolutionary advantage of thinking positive and other research into th...

Bought by KSKQ, KCMJ Community Radio, WRST-FM Oshkosh, and WNJR


  • Added: Mar 04, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: Whodunit, Who'll Do It?, Credit: Seth Shostak
The tools of forensics have moved way beyond fingerprint kits - discover why, these days, a prosecutor is as likely to wave a fMRI brain scan as a ...

Bought by WRST-FM Oshkosh and WNJR


  • Added: Feb 18, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 2
Caption: Whither the Weather?, Credit: Seth Shostak
BiPiSci 110914 Whither the Weather? BiPiSci11-09-12 09/14/11 10/11/11 We all talk about the weather, and now scientists are doing something about i...

Bought by Northeast Indiana Public Radio, KREV-LP, WNJR, and KVSC


  • Added: Jan 14, 2013
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: Ultimate Hook Up, Credit: Seth Shostak
Our love-affair with computers marches on: if we wire human brains directly to them, where does the mind end and the machine begin?

Bought by KREV-LP and WNJR


  • Added: Aug 18, 2014
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 2
Caption: Skeptic Check: They're Baack!, Credit: Seth Shostak
When we return: the mythos and the science of reincarnation, hibernation, and suspended animation.

Bought by Cove Mountain Educational Broadcasting, WRST-FM Oshkosh, and KREV-LP


  • Added: Dec 31, 2012
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Remembers Only, Credit: Seth Shostak
Almost everything we know about memory comes from the life of one man born in 1926 and known as H.M., the world’s “most unforgettable amnesiac.”

Bought by KSKQ, KREV-LP, and WRST-FM Oshkosh


  • Added: Dec 24, 2012
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Doomsday Live, Part 2, Credit: Seth Shostak
If there is only one show you hear about the end of the world, let it be this one. Recorded before a live audience at the Computer History Museum ...

Bought by WCPN, KREV-LP, and WRST-FM Oshkosh


  • Added: Dec 03, 2012
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Doomsday Live, Part I, Credit: Molly Bentley
If there is only one show you hear about the end of the world, let it be this one. Recorded before a live audience at the Computer History Museum ...

Bought by WCPN, WRST-FM Oshkosh, KREV-LP, and KSKQ


  • Added: Nov 26, 2012
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 4
Caption: No Expiration Date, Credit: Seth Shostak
Why food molds, people age and plastic sticks around so gosh darn long.

Bought by KREV-LP


  • Added: Nov 19, 2012
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 1
Caption: Skeptic Check: Zombies Aren't Real, Credit: Seth Shostak
Writer Guy Harrison on why Zombies might be a ghosts from our Pleistocene past, and how mathematical modeling of these mythical creatures could hel...

Bought by KMUN, Cove Mountain Educational Broadcasting, KUNM, WRST-FM Oshkosh, and KREV-LP


  • Added: Jan 13, 2014
  • Length: 54:00
  • Purchases: 5
Caption: Going Global, Credit: Seth Shostak
Writer David Quammen on what it takes for an animal disease to become a human pandemic. Also, was hurricane Sandy a man-made disaster?

Bought by KVSC, WRST-FM Oshkosh, and KREV-LP


  • Added: Nov 05, 2012
  • Length: 54:02
  • Purchases: 3
Caption: Space Archaeology, Credit: Seth Shostak
Why modern archaeologists forsake digging in the dirt in favor of a satellite view, and how we might track extraterrestrials from the trash they le...

Bought by WRST-FM Oshkosh and KREV-LP


  • Added: Oct 22, 2012
  • Length: 54:01
  • Purchases: 2