Earth Sciences Podcasts

Science Moab is the clearest way in. In A Modern Wonder from Ancient Dunes: The Iconic Navajo Sandstone, Part 2, Marjorie Chan, retired professor from the University of Utah, recalls being asked whether the sandstone's iron concretions might help explain iron oxide on Mars. She had never considered it. Then a rover sent back images of small round "blueberries," which her team felt were concretions. If they were, Mars once had groundwater. Notice that "felt": this is an interpretation, built by comparison with Utah examples. The Astronomy page picks up the Martian thread.

Don't Panic Geocast is looser. In Episode 427 - "Feeding Tubes Yo!", a throwaway diagnosis of a mystery photo makes a paleontologist turn around at a department seminar. The talk becomes a tour of trace fossils, the marks animals leave behind. There are dinosaur tracks viewed from beneath the rock layer, and there are crawling marks called cruziana, which one host says "looks kind of like a weld bead." Neighbouring episodes chase the history of temperature scales, which makes the show a natural bridge to the Physics page.

Fresh Thinking by Snowden Optiro is for people who work in resources. In Ep 151: When Bigger Isn't Better: Rethinking Resource Model Size, mining engineer Taryn Elkington helps weigh when extra detail in an orebody model earns its place. Near the end the host offers a test worth borrowing: "what detail is actually changing decisions."

The newest strand ties climate to earthquakes, rockfalls and other hazards, and here qualifiers matter most. The Climate Question's Earthquakes and climate change handles it well. Seismologist Verena Simon of the Swiss Seismology Service explains that permafrost acts like a seal in fractured rock, keeping cracks frozen shut, and calls 2015 a turning point for high-altitude events. The episode keeps the word "hypothetically" in play, and a host asks Simon how worried to be on a mock Richter scale. Another episode, Are dams still worth it?, visits a Thai village whose old paddy fields now lie metres under flood-borne sand.

For What It’s Earth covers volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis in Natural Disasters: Can taking action on climate change have an impact?. At one point the hosts imagine a wave lapping at their feet. Their own phrasing sets the right level of confidence: a link between ocean warming and tectonic plates "has been theorized."

On Getting Through It, Getting Through It: After the Fires #5 has a guest explain what repeat airborne laser surveys reveal about burned hillsides. The guest says they had, for the most part, already given way during the fire itself, leaving loose sediment "sometimes six, eight feet" thick in creek bottoms before any rain arrives.

What About Water? with Jay Famiglietti treats water as science, money and politics at once. In John Fleck on the Inconvenient Science of the Colorado River, Fleck recalls reading 1925 congressional testimony in which E.C. LaRue told senators, in Fleck's paraphrase, that there was not enough water for their plans. Fleck kept waiting for someone to follow up. Nobody did. Still, Fleck says, "I want to be a little bit careful about demonizing the people who made these decisions."

Growing the Valley carries soil questions into California orchards. In The benefits of applying almond hulls and shells as mulch in orchards, a researcher reports potassium gains in some cases but no increase in yield, and guesses the trees were already well supplied.

Sustainable California, from University of California Television, takes carbon underground. In Carbon Dioxide at Scale: Working Fast for an Equitable Future, a Lawrence Livermore speaker says of the carbon dioxide already in the air, "it's gonna have to go underground." The episode dates from 2022, so treat it as background. The Environmental Science page covers neighbouring ground.

Future Ecologies suits listeners who want to hear the field. Critical Mast follows masting, the years when whole populations of trees produce huge seed crops together. Andrew Hackett-Payne of the University of Liverpool notes that masting in southern England is almost identical to northern France. He doubts anyone proposes "mycorrhizal networks that extend under the English Channel," the underground fungal links between roots. Weather, the episode argues, is the more economical explanation. In On Fire: Out of the Green, Into the Black, a host trades talk for work on controlled burns in Yurok territory. The Biology page goes further.

Hakai Magazine Audio Edition reads long magazine features aloud, and its archive is the asset. Near the end of The Fleet-Winged Ghosts of Greenland, reader Heather Walter calls it the final Hakai episode. For the Love of a Little Sea follows a marine biologist and an electron microscopist who have monitored an Irish sea lough at their own expense since 1990. Over that time purple urchins have dwindled and a blanketing "scunge" has spread. The story calls it a likely sign of nutrient pollution.

Obsessed With the Weather brings weather down to human scale. Steve McGuire hosts it from Scituate, Massachusetts. In 234: Bikeway of Hanover Shop owner Austin Koplozsky, the guest's ideal ride is 65 to 70 degrees and slightly overcast, because bright sun under leafy trees can hide cyclists from drivers.

Catastrophe makes good audio, so method matters. The BrainFood Show's Is Nuclear Winter Actually a Possibility or Just Pseudoscience? traces the idea from a 1947 science-fiction story to a 1982 paper co-written by Paul Crutzen. It then cites more recent research suggesting smoke particles linger for months rather than years, while keeping the risk to food systems in view.

Kosmographia works differently. In Solar Variability Ignored / IPCC Mandates AGW / Dark Age Cold Period / CO2 Fertilization Effect, it reads at length from an article arguing that the IPCC appears to have ignored solar datasets implying different trends. Adapt 2030 is built on its own forecast of a solar-driven mini ice age. Hear both as arguments, and check contested claims elsewhere.