Bob McDonald anchors weekly multi-segment interviews on new research, from cricket courtship to moon missions.
Quirks and Quarks follows research from space to animal behavior with a steady, interview-led format. Recent segments move from asteroid deflection and black holes to burn tolerance, ancient dogs, talking seals, and sea stars that coordinate without a brain.
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Quirks and Quarks is a weekly interview-based science magazine produced by CBC Radio and hosted by Bob McDonald, who frames each episode and introduces roughly four to five separate guest segments per show. Guests are typically PhD students, postdocs, and professors at North American and European universities, each explaining a specific study they authored or co-authored, drawn from institutions such as the University of Reading, Imperial College London, Case Western Reserve University, and Michigan State University. Recurring subject areas include evolutionary biology and animal behavior (cricket courtship, seal vocal mimicry, raccoon and cockroach adaptability), paleontology and ancient life (fossilized dinosaur vomit, armored-fish jaw structure, early hominin bipedalism), and space and planetary science (the Artemis II mission, moon-formation theory, exoplanets, the interiors of Uranus and Neptune). Segments on human health, nutrition, and emerging technology also recur, covering topics like gut-microbiome toxicology, HIV latency, and organoid-based biocomputing. Episodes regularly mix current research news with archival material, including occasional full retrospectives that replay decades-old Quirks and Quarks segments. Short cross-promotional inserts for other CBC podcasts, such as Bookends, This Is Ottawa, and Commotion, appear within some episodes. There is no season-long narrative; each episode is a self-contained set of unrelated science stories rather than a continuing investigation. The explanations are aimed at a general audience with an interest in current research rather than specialists, using accessible, non-technical language. Listeners who want a recurring digest of new findings across many scientific disciplines, rather than a deep dive into one field, are the primary beneficiaries. Production follows a traditional public-radio segment structure without heavy narrative sound design.
Made for: Listeners curious about current scientific research across many fields who prefer short, plain-language segments over single-topic deep dives.
What sets it apart: Unlike single-topic science interview shows, each episode packages four or five distinct new-research interviews and periodically revisits the program's own multi-decade broadcast archive.
CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks covers the quirks of the expanding universe to the quarks within a single atom... and everything in between.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bob McDonald makes new research legible by pressing researchers on mechanisms, evidence and the limits of their conclusions.
Quirks and Quarks turns a crowded science agenda into a sequence of direct conversations. Bob McDonald moves from lunar geology and early bipedalism to animal behavior, gut bacteria, SETI and biotechnology, asking researchers to explain both what they found and what remains…
Bob McDonald gets from cricket booty-bumping to extraterrestrial signals without losing the scientific plot.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brisk Quirks and Quarks episode connects speech habits, burn survival, a fossil surprise, Carl Sagan, and the science of overlooked animals.
Quirks and Quarks ranges across a busy science hour, with Bob McDonald moving between changing speech habits, the genetics of burn survival, a fossil billed as an ancient octopus that may not be one, Carl Sagan from the archives, and Marlene Zuk's case for outsider animals.
A brisk Quirks and Quarks sampler on ancient walking, strange ice, animal behavior, and the push beyond animal testing.
Quirks and Quarks builds this episode as a brisk science sampler with an animal-minded center. Bob McDonald moves from possible alternatives to animal testing into planetary physics, animal behavior, and human origins: hot ice made under icy-planet conditions, ravens that follow…
Steven Novella and a rotating panel dissect weekly science news and debunk pseudoscience claims.
Vox reporters trace how Botox, brain-speech implants, and scientific disputes actually happened.
Bob McDonald opens Quirks and Quarks with a 300-million-year-old fossil called Fulcipia, and Dr.
Quirks and Quarks opens with Peter Cook explaining why harbor seals can mimic sounds like Hoover’s “Hello there,” then contrasts that flexibility with sea lions that all bark in the same stereotyped way.
This episode promotes St.
This episode of Quirks and Quarks covers NASA's successful asteroid deflection test, aggressive behavior in female bonobos, and other science topics like blood clotting in space and winter spiders.
This episode discusses the groundbreaking first image of a black hole captured in 2019, exploring its significance and related scientific topics.
This episode of Quirks and Quarks explores how space debris from rockets like Falcon 9 may pollute Earth's upper atmosphere, along with segments on sea star movement, climate shifts, and dark matter.
This episode explores how living on Mars could physically alter humans, along with other scientific topics like Yellowstone's ecosystem, genetics in longevity, and COVID-19 evolution.
This episode discusses a newly discovered solar system 117 light-years away that challenges astronomers' understanding of planetary formation, as it may not follow the typical pattern of rocky planets close to the star and gas giants farther out.
This episode covers the Thwaites Glacier's melting, beluga whale mating, near-infrared light for brain injuries, and small nuclear tech.
This episode of Quirks and Quarks explores diverse science topics including polar bears thriving in Svalbard despite climate change challenges, the common cold's effects, animal extinction secrets, ocean algae, and memory alteration.
This episode covers Mars' influence on Earth, nitrogen-enhanced carbon sequestration, a woolly mammoth's death, space debris tracking, and gifted word-learning dogs.
This episode covers mapping Antarctic landmass, puma reintroduction in Patagonia, social insect expendability, deep sea fish shapes, and rational chimpanzees.
A listener question show where the host answers science questions from the audience, starting with a question about astronaut Roberta Bondar's eyesight change after spaceflight.
This episode of Quirks and Quarks is a holiday book show featuring discussions on whale song, biological sex in animals, and deep geological time.
This episode covers the final preparations for Canada's first moon astronaut, the brainpower of extinct flyers, AI detecting life in ancient rocks, and reindeer losing antlers due to climate change.
This episode covers new findings about smaller Tyrannosaurs, environmental impact of peatland development, ant nest architecture, and other science stories.
This episode explores a scientific study revealing that bumblebees can track time while foraging, using Morse code experiments conducted by researchers in England.
This episode covers a powerful stellar explosion that could threaten Earth, along with segments on golf physics, arctic foxes, and snake bite mitigation.
This episode covers the discovery of a new interstellar comet and its unusual behavior, along with segments on seasonal eating effects on internal clocks, woodpecker communication, hominin hand evolution, and geoengineering.
This episode covers a 23-million-year-old Arctic rhino, the physics of paper cutting, a network of scientific fraud, and a startup's plan to reflect sunlight at night for solar power.
This episode of Quirks and Quarks covers Halloween-themed science stories including wolves' fear of humans, methane emissions in Montreal, and a storm that swept away baby flying reptiles.
This episode covers the 2025 Nobel Prizes in science, including interviews with laureates and other science stories.