Probably Science

British comedian and actor Barry Castagnola (@BarryCastagnola) joins Jesse, Andy and Matt to discuss Midwest cold, royal warrants and drugs, Mick Jagger, chicks and number lines, lefthanded people, musicians and music stands, mudsharks and Who jackets, rodents of unusual size with giant teeth, high-speed lasers that can see molecules, an even larger reboot of the Large Hadron Collider, the doomsday list, a new Earthlike planet and TV apologies.

Comedian Jackie Gold (@iamjackiegold) joins the crew this week to talk about Barbie dolls, Jackie's genetics, pheromone parties, Broken Heart Syndrome, over-the-counter meds linked to dementia, Matt's fake foreign accent, bad BICEP/good BICEP, UK lawmakers approving three-parent babies and how exactly those are made, and the wonders of J-Date.

Comedy legend, podcasting pioneer and author Todd Glass (@ToddGlass) helps Andy, Matt and Jesse celebrate the 150th episode and the new identities they’ve been assigned by discussing stalagmites and stalactites, Jesus painting restoration, anonymous donors, a guy with endless déjà vu, ketamine and anesthetics, boners and massages, bouncing water, sex education, unboiling an egg, getting paid to donate your poo, hookworms vs. gluten, wiping vs. bidets, Gaye vs. Thicke, and why you shouldn't hit your kids.

Former psychology major and tight end-turned-comedian Patrick Keane joins the proceedings this week to talk with Jesse, Andy and Matt about Chinese diaper trains, Wims and Pims, the video of Stefan Pop's visit to Bluebell Ranch, celebrity photographs and autographs, snow shoveling and heart attacks, polar bear wangs and pollution, some annoying truth-stretching in The Imitation Game, Alan Turing stories from the first and fifth episodes of Probably Science, Jesse's squirting update, listener Anderson Jones's recently published paper, PTSD in the ancient world, false crime memories, finding the space Beagle, the speech Nixon would have given if the moon landing had gone wrong and Patrick's adventure chaffeuring Buzz Aldrin around town.

Television's Tone Bell finally makes his Probably Science debut this week to help the gang with topics including Ted Bundy's jello woes, Tone's cat restructuring, a punk rock Joe Strummer snail, weird shipwreck metal, ancient milk drinking, how Facebook likes can predict personality, ketamine's depression uses, Andy's Uber/Lyft tales, an unbeatable poker computer and things Jesse would do for $500,000.

Comedian and co-host of The Dollop Gareth Reynolds joins Jesse, Andy and Matt this week to talk about Hollywood tourists, Gareth's important moss experiments, airborne farts, the point of the narwhal's point, an antibiotic breakthrough, what self-tickling tells us about brains, materiAl vs. materiEl, why lady jizz ain't jizz, why lady jizz may in fact be jizz, HIV getting milder and Native American art.

Matt, Jesse and Andy haven't seen each other in about a month, so this week's episode is a guest-free chance for everyone to catch up on each other's December goings-on, including Andy's Nicaraguan war stories and Jesse's bro-lesque competition, along with updates on SpaceX's aborted launch, Elon Musk's Reddit AMA, a British effort to send a probe to the moon (and how you can add your DNA to the mission), the slurred singing of drunk birds, the complexity of music as it relates to popularity, carnie scams and whether or not Earth's water came from comets.

The ProbSci gang aren't all back in town together just yet, so to hold you over until our next new episode, please enjoy Jesse's interview with Lizard Case, a Nashville songwriter and tavern proprietor who also happens to be his father. Happy New Year!

Actor/podcaster/improv master/festival producer Janet Varney (@janetvarney) sits down with the crew on this week's episode to talk about voicing the hero of The Legend of Korra, the hilarious Bachelor parody Burning Love, Janet's first LA acting gig on Catwoman, growing up near Biosphere 2, Janet's award-winning science fair project on burning stuff, trash-eating seagulls, Radiolab's look at violence in baboons, Andy and Janet's Serial obsession, a corpse flower bloom, new evidence on human/neanderthal breeding, obscene gestures in various cultures, Matt cowering from the sun, spider sex and hairy mouthparts, the brilliant comedy of Kasper Hauser and their book SkyMaul, Janet's incredible festival SF Sketchfest, the largest genetic analysis of gay brothers, an email from a sex worker listener and a detailed account of Jesse's most humiliating moment ever.

Anthropologist and spider monkey expert Dr. Christina Campbell joins the gang this week to get an update on Jesse's kidney stones and talk about her field of expertise, including research on Barro Colorado Island, the snubbing of Darwin contemporary Alfred Russel Wallace, Jesse trying to adopt a wallaby, Chris Burke’s Eating Is Fun/Eating Is Serious, Dr. Campbell's book on spider monkeys, the torture tape experiment, wombats and wallabies, barrel of monkeys vs. barrel of apes, chimps catching bushbabies with spears, the relative intelligence of Koko vs. Kanzi, the 1980s orangutan movie Link, spider monkey trivia, why you shouldn't use sign language in front of primates, why you shouldn't tickle a slow loris, spider monkey sexual rendezvous and the drunken monkey hypothesis.