Ask the Naked Scientists

Dr. Chris Smith has been fielding the weirdest, most wonderful science questions from listeners since 2008, and the show has racked up over 780 episodes with no sign of slowing down. The format is simple and addictive: real people send in questions they’ve been wondering about — things like how high a giraffe’s blood pressure gets, or how many organs you could donate and still survive — and Chris rounds up expert guests to actually answer them. It’s not dumbed down, but it never feels like a lecture either. Chris has this knack for keeping things moving and making complicated biology or physics feel like bar conversation. The show runs about 30 minutes per episode, which makes it perfect for a commute or a lunch break. Some weeks you get a grab bag of totally unrelated questions, other weeks there’s a loose theme tying things together. The guest scientists rotate regularly, so you’re not hearing the same voice every time. One episode might feature a Cambridge immunologist explaining why your nose runs in the cold, and the next could have an astrophysicist tackling black hole paradoxes. With a 4.7-star rating and nearly two decades of back catalog, this is one of those shows where you can genuinely pick any episode at random and learn something you’ll want to tell someone about later. The Naked Scientists brand started as a BBC radio show in Cambridge, and that public radio DNA shows — it’s polished without being slick, educational without being preachy.