Strange New Worlds: A Science & Star Trek Podcast

Strange New Worlds: A Science & Star Trek Podcast is hosted by Mike Wong, who describes himself as both a professional astrobiologist and a science communicator. That double identity shapes the show. Several recent episodes grow straight out of his own desk: a paper, a grant, a book. Anirudh Prabhu joins him to explain a study that trained machine learning on organic chemical data from ancient rocks, pushing molecular evidence of life back to samples 3.3 billion years old. The details are the draw. A lab instrument gets described as an oven that bakes your cake and tastes it for you, and a wasp nest that the model kept classifying against its label is singled out as a favorite example. Caleb Scharf, who co-led a NASA astrobiology proposal with Wong, ranges from Darwin's voyage on the Beagle to the odd physics of pouring water on a spinning spacecraft to large language models tuned to stand in for particular experts. Bob Hazen, his co-author on Time's Second Arrow, lays out a law of increasing functional information meant to describe evolving systems from minerals to living cells, with side glances at music and AI. Star Trek is never far away, though it plays different roles. Sometimes it is a scientific prompt. Katie Mack uses the Deep Space Nine episode Chrysalis, in which characters try to head off the Big Crunch, as a way into dark energy, the DESI galaxy survey and the competing possible fates of the universe. Sometimes it is a mirror. In one episode Wong admits that the most important thing in a Trek story is often not the science, then hands the floor to Joe and Nicole Praska of Deep Space Love and their antifascist Star Trek watch list, discussed against the backdrop of federal immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities. The franchise also arrives through its makers, with Trek novelists Una McCormack and David Mack and actor Bob Picardo among the guests, and through Lower Decks, which science journalist Shi En Kim has discussed with Wong across its fifth and final season. Science policy is a steady undercurrent, from Wong's op-ed on federal cuts to astrobiology funding to The Planetary Society's Days of Action, where advocates met with Congressional offices. The feed also carries his appearances elsewhere, including Sean Carroll's Mindscape, and a reading of his essay for Noema Magazine. The register is warm and unguarded. Wong praises guests without reservation, calls Hazen a force of nature, and lets small stumbles survive past the sign-off. A newcomer drawn to cosmology might start with the Katie Mack conversation, while one who wants Trek as social commentary has the Praska episode.