What The If?

Listener Anne of Queens got us thinking about flying reindeer for the holidays. Imagine herds of 1,500-pound mammals migrating through your town like Canada geese. Suddenly those goose droppings don't seem so bad...

What the if the Sun suddenly turned green? Your pizza now looks like charcoal because all red things go black. Stop signs become invisible. The sky shifts from cheerful blue to permanent dusk. And plants? They...

Happy Thanksgiving! We're off this week for the holiday, so we're presenting an encore presentation of an episode that was originally broadcast on September 5, 2018, and remains one of our all-time audience favorites...

Scientists just discovered ant queens that give birth to two completely different species - not twins, but actual separate species hatching from the same mother. But what the if every animal on Earth reproduced this...

This week we're trading hypothetical fungi and exploding planets for something scarier: actual government budgets. But don't worry - watching America accidentally hand the space race to China is just as entertaining as...

What the if mosquitoes were helpless against the sweet smell of their own doom? Scientists genetically engineered Metarhizium fungus to smell so irresistibly delicious that mosquitoes can't help but fly straight into...

What the if Frankenstein was real and doctors actually tried stitching corpses together to create new people? Forget dramatic lightning strikes and brooding in Gothic towers - the real adventure is managing the world's...

What the if all bodies of water on Earth were fizzy like soda? In the real world, Seneca Lake in New York produces mysterious underwater booms called "Seneca guns" that scientists think come from occasional gas pockets...

Honey guide birds in Africa respond to culturally distinct human calls and lead hunters to beehives, where humans crack them open and birds feast on the exposed beeswax. But what the if humans could whistle for any wild...

Scientists just used artificial intelligence to design the world's first AI-generated viruses capable of hunting down and killing drug-resistant strains of E. coli. These bacteriophages look like tiny alien pineapples...

What the if your brain literally ran out of storage space like a laptop refusing to save one more file? Neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin explains how memory isn't a filing cabinet but more like water carving rivers down...

What the if gravitational waves were big enough to see and feel? Instead of measuring distortions smaller than a proton, imagine watching your coffee table accordion in and out as ripples from distant black hole...

What the if you found a rock on Mars that might - emphasis on might - show signs of ancient life? NASA's Perseverance rover discovered intriguing leopard spots in a 3.5-billion-year-old rock that contain vivianite, a...

Our guest this week is science fiction author Nicholas Casbarro, who brings us a universe-changing concept from his novel Vitalerium - a radioactive space rock that enables faster-than-light travel. What the if humans...

D'oh! We had technical difficulties this week and so we are presenting this encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes. It also happens to be Kirby's birthday, and we're eager to honor his awesomeness by...

What the if the speed of light crawled along at walking speed instead of zipping around at 300,000 kilometers per second? Tracey McCallum from Ontario wondered about this scenario. Imagine reaching for your cat only to...

Matt & Gaby are on assignment this week, so we present an encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes. This one is super fun and comes from Sept. 16, 2024. We hope you enjoy it. --- What if humans were the...

What the if there was a nuclear reactor on the moon? NASA wants to launch a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor to the lunar surface before 2030, powerful enough to run about 80 households. From the terrifying "tickling the...

Anne from Queens, a longtime listener and proud sticker-carrying Patreon supporter, inspired this week's episode by asking: what the if humans couldn't sweat? Discover a world where everyone walks around panting like...

What the if we just kept making telescopes bigger and bigger until they're the size of entire planetary orbits? Starting with the new Vera Rubin Observatory's 21-foot camera that immediately spotted 2,000 asteroids...

Apologies for the delay in posting episodes! Holiday and travel got the best of us. But we're back, baby! ---- WHAT THE IF we could trade genes like playing cards? Scientists have discovered that fungi possess "Starship...

What the if we could go back to 1930 and experience the reluctant discovery of an entirely new kind of particle? When electrons started bouncing off things with missing momentum, physicist Wolfgang Pauli faced a choice...

[Matt & Gaby are away this week, so please enjoy this Encore Presentation of one of our most popular episodes.] What The IF... you could see the TRUE SCALE of the Universe? We imagine entering the notorious torture...

What if climate change made submarines completely undetectable? As ocean temperatures rise, thermal layers are disrupting sonar so dramatically that entire regions become acoustic dead zones where submarines can hide...

What if the universe was stuck in an eternal cosmic Groundhog Day? Picture traveling backwards through time past the Big Bang only to discover you've looped right back to where you started - like a cosmic snake eating...