Probably Science

Scottish comedy wunderkind Daniel Sloss (twitter.com/daniel_sloss) is here in the US to perform on Conan, and he stopped by Bluebell Ranch to talk with Matt, Jesse and Andy about: British comedian intros! Doing comedy at a rave! Scottish pride! Upkilt photographs! Ben and Jerry-inspired homophobic slogans! Bot Out Of Hell: Daniel and his father's Robot Wars competitor with a diamond sawblade! A new drug that fixes bent boners! Everyone's fingers connect! Adolescent mice that drink alcohol because of peer pressure! Where humans really sit on the food chain! Eating animals to teach them a lesson! Throwing pennies away! The nuts and bolts of being hanged, drawn and quartered!

This episode is a complete shambles. With Andy out of town, Canadian/British comedian Jason John Whitehead (twitter.com/jjwhitesnake) drops in on Matt and Jesse attempting to make a Thanksgiving bonus episode in Jesse's bedroom. Topics include: Birthright trips to Israel! Thanksgiving stuff! Jesse's typewriter collection! Mighty hunters! Genetic inheritence of fears! Seahorse fluid dynamics! Illegal koala handling! Goosing!      

British comedian/actor/writer Andi Osho (twitter.com/andiosho) now lives here in the US, where she's recently appeared on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and @midnight, and she joins Matt, Jesse and Andy this week for a listener-centric episode focused on topics sent in by our lovely fans, including: The speed of gravity waves! How to pronounce Trygve! Andy's Nicaraguan rental car! Jesse and Andy's roommate's iTunes woes! Jesse's dad was a mall Santa! The gray area of children's photos! Ridiculously fast LED-based Li-Fi internet connectivity! A fluid dynamics discussion of fart dissipation! A scientific analysis of urinal splashback! Dogs reacting to the directions of fellow dogs' tail wags! Why spoilers might increase your enjoyment of a story! Junk DNA corrections!

Actor Samm Levine (twitter.com/SammLevine) who made a name for himself on Freaks and Geeks and Inglourious Basterds and comedian Susan Burke (twitter.com/ThatSusanBurke) who's received rave reviews for writing the film Smashed join Matt, Andy and Jesse this week to discuss: All-night comedy shows at UCB! Halloween robot costumes! Samm's Short Circuit 2 nostalgia! Samm playing doctor as a kid! Losing to Jon Hamm in the Leonard Maltin game! Monkeys who are hardwired to be scared of snakes! Hotel living! Jesse's fake Zagat binder for solo dining! The perks of priesthood! The secret to sneaking into things! Using levitating droplets of water to create nanoparticles! Samm's gold-collecting dentist father! Using teeth to make replacement eye lenses! Actress Hedy Lamarr's frequency-hopping spread-spectrum invention! The early days of Jim Jones! Asteroid-hunting space telescopes!

Hilarious writers/comedians/producers Scotty Landes (twitter.com/MarylandMudflap) and Heather Thomson (twitter.com/CasualVelvet) join Matt, Andy, and Jesse this week for the show.  Man about town James Austin Johnson (twitter.com/JAustinJohnson) sits in for color commentary!  Together, they dive deep into: Pepto Bismol!  Scientific Hippie poetry!  Sitting in the shower!  Women are better multitaskers!  Self-pleasuring in cars!  Rubbernecking!  Professional hugging!  The science of Captchas!  Second rate sex parties!  Selling your own blood!  Robotic dogs!  Facial recognition software!  Animals doing math!  Sam Elliott!  India's space program!  Scratch-off tickets and champagne!

Caltech and LIGO physicists Jamie Rollins and Larry Price (www.ligo.caltech.edu) join Andy, Jesse and Matt to up the Science:Probably ratio for just one week as they discuss: Why we don't go straight through tables! What's inside an atom! Why chemistry isn't their forté! Dark matter and WIMPS! Gravity waves and what LIGO actually is! How to measure something that's smaller than the smallest thing you can think of! Putting experiments in space! What inspired Einstein to come up with relativity (hint - the two of them didn't agree on it)! How scientists fake getting a result to test each other! The feebleness of gravity!

Edinburgh Comedy Award-winner Brendon Burns (twitter.com/brendonburns) sits in with Matt, Jesse and Andy this week to dig into: Worrying about your Google-ability! LA streets named for celebrities! Orange people in the Australian outback! Making "Be a Lady" T-shirts! Naked children on giant slip-n-slides! Underwear that filters your flatulence! Learning how to pronounce "awry"! Finding bombs with dolphin-inspired radar! The four-disc Flaming Lips experimental album! Whatever killed the dinosaurs wiped out a load of bees, too! Personality trends across the US! Junk DNA that shapes your face! Perthans!

You've seen comedian Nate Craig (twitter.com/NateCraig1) on truTV's World's Dumbest and Comedy Central's Mash Up, and he joins Matt, Andy and Jesse to discuss: Jesse's new co-host status! Lowball podcast donations! Exchanging a million pennies! Fake IDs! Figuring out what Yetis actually are! Farting into tissues! Ancient human ancestry! Youtube videos of Danny Devito cuddling with Michael Jordan! Los Angeles coyotes! Flushing out brain toxins while you sleep! Matt's experience with colonics! Andy's Jack In The Box confession! Our upcoming live video stream of the show! Using static electricity to dispose of space debris! Rapidly aging breast tissue! Ironing your jeans! A possible cure for baldness! Toupee stories! Ironic combovers!

Star of Doctor Who and the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy Karen Gillan (twitter.com/KarenGillan2) joins Matt, Andy and Jesse this week to talk about: Being on the cusp of superstardom! Andy and Jesse's rat problem! Growing up as a Scottish serf! The parade of bad accents! Kaisers of the Cosmos! Dealing with nerdy fans! Criticizing the physics of the movie Gravity! Closed captioning for grandparents! Alfred Nobel's personal ad! Karen's Carmina Burana funeral plans! This year's Nobel Prize winners! What's your go-to charity? Karen's freshly shaven head! Fruit bat fellatio! Androgen-insensitive supermodels! Parents tracking your career via Google! Metallic 3D printing! Karen's Twitter nemesis!

This week's episode comes to you from the second annual LA Podcast Festival (lapodfest.com), with Matt and Andy welcoming Rhys Darby of Flight of the Conchords and Brandon Fibbs of New Race For Space and the reboot of Cosmos, to discuss: An explanation of winglets! Rhys's knowledge of Morse Code! The technological prowess of the New Zealand Army! The Cryptid Factor podcast! Sea serpents: The guardians of Atlantis! Rhys Darby: Sasquatch Whisperer! The upcoming return of Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson! Elon Musk's Mars plans! Space sex! Astronaut reality shows! Harvesting Helium-3 from the moon! Space lawyers! Giving birth in space! New Zealand's lack of awesome Australian animals! The intricacies of the Welsh language! Rhys sells the audience some raffle tickets!