The impending doom of an asteroid (or comet or whatever) colliding with the Earth is the premise of any number of movies and books and such. But what would we really do to stop such a thing from happening, if we had to? One solution might be to try to nudge the asteroid off its collision course with us, and NASA is about to test a way to do just that.

And: A few points about baseball's two-way phenom, Shohei Ohtani. He might be having the best season anyone's ever had, "it's almost inarguable that he's the most physically talented all-around athlete ever to play the game," and, also according to Ben Lindbergh, "if you can't get into Ohtani, maybe baseball isn't for you." But are we maybe not appreciating Ohtani enough?

And finally: If I say "shark," you think of Jaws, right? But there are two major problems with the shark-as-villain stereotype. First, sharks are fascinating and awe-inspiring more than they're scary. And second, we need to be more afraid for sharks than afraid of them.

GUESTS:

Ben Lindbergh - Staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of Effectively Wild
Melissa Cristina Márquez - A marine biologist and shark scientist
Andrew Rivkin - A planetary astronomer and the DART Investigation Team Lead at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

Colin McEnroe and Cat Pastor contributed to this show.

Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Colliding With Asteroids (On Purpose), Shohei Ohtani, And The Misunderstood Shark