KQED Science Video Podcast

The cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica) uses deception and patience to trick unsuspecting insect prey into its highly specialized pitcher traps.

Whether it’s a lager or ale, sour or bitter, dark or light, most beer has one thing in common: yeast. KQED Science visits a commercial yeast laboratory and a local brewery to reveal how this key ingredient is a major player in both science history and beer production.

What happens when you fill up a giant space with over 200 eager science fans from around the Bay Area for a weekend? You get Science Hack Day San Francisco, a two-day event where a diverse group of "hackers" -- from developers and designers to scientists and students -- works side-by-side to see what they can quickly create within 24 consecutive hours.

Something strange and unsettling is happening to Bay Area honeybees. Entomologists at San Francisco State University have identified the culprit: a tiny parasitic fly is causing the bees to exhibit bizarre nocturnal behaviors before suffering a gruesome demise.

Forty percent of the food produced in the U.S. goes uneaten. From "farm to fork", there are many reasons for food waste, including consumer demand for perfect produce and confusion over expiration dates printed on packaged foods. This massive waste occurs as one in six Americans struggles with hunger every day, even in affluent regions such as Silicon Valley.

Stanford University students set out to revolutionize home design by entering a solar powered prefab house into the Department of Energy's biennial Solar Decathlon competition.

Join a research team from University of California, Santa Cruz as they track, tranquilize and collar a wild puma. The special GPS collars collect data on the puma’s location and behavior, and they reveal how the big cats survive in their shrinking habitat in the Bay Area.

More than a million visitors visit Alcatraz every year, but a recent discovery has revealed another attraction that lives within the shadows of this historic prison.

More than a million visitors visit Alcatraz every year, but a recent discovery has revealed another attraction that lives within the shadows of this historic prison.

The University Herbarium at the University of California - Berkeley boasts one of the largest and oldest collections of seaweed in the United States, dating back to the time of the U.S. Civil War. Kathy Ann Miller, a curator at the herbarium, is leading a massive project to digitize nearly 80,000 specimens of seaweed collected from the west coast of North America.

The rural foothills along the Santa Cruz County Coast hold an ancient secret. Deep below the redwoods, White Moon Cave extends for nearly a mile -- making it one of the longest caves in California. But few people have ever been in it. Join the KQED Science team as we squeeze through the narrow clandestine entrance, and meet the uncanny cave inhabitants to bring new light to this hidden realm.

Scientists and farmers are starting to notice that, as California's winters warm up, the state is becoming more hospitable to destructive agricultural pests.

In this edition of "Why I Do Science", we hear from Stephen Palumbi, a world-renowned marine biologist and director of the Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, California.

Black holes have been the stuff of science fiction since their discovery in the late sixties. But now a new, nimble NASA telescope is using its powerful x-ray vision to hunt for these abundant yet invisible, massive space oddities.

Motion-activated cameras at Stanford University's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve provide scientists a window into the secret lives of the animals that roam around Jasper Ridge at night.

Can nuclear power be produced safely and affordably? A scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, is working to do just that.

QUEST Producer Sheraz Sadiq interviews Bay Area filmmaker and musician Jesse Hiatt about the experience of filming in one of the world's most extreme environments. See his footage in the QUEST segment, "Field Notes: Dan Costa in Antarctica."

At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, scientists are using a cutting-edge microscope, the first of its kind in the world, to image whole cells in 3-D with the penetrating power of x-rays. The new images generated by the microscope are offering a deeper, more precise understanding of cellular structures and how they change with diseases.

SOFIA is more than a telescope tucked into a re-purposed commercial airliner. It's a complete flying astronomical observation platform which carries a dozen or Astrophotographer Rogelio Bernal Andreo's colorful wide field images of deep sky objects like galaxies, nebulae, star clusters has garnered him dozens of photography awards including the Royal Observatory of Greenwich's 2010 Best Astrophotographer of the Year.

SOFIA is more than a telescope tucked into a re-purposed commercial airliner. It's a complete flying astronomical observation platform which carries a dozen or more astronomers, observers and crew far above the clouds to observe objects and phenomena too cold to be seen in visible light.

Their basic design hasn’t changed much, but scientists still don’t fully understand the forces that allow humans to balance atop a bicycle. QUEST visits Davis – a city that loves its bicycles – to take a ride on a research bike and explore a collection of antique bicycles.

Kip Evans is a natural history documentary filmmaker and photographer from Pacific Grove, California. This is an excerpt of his short film, "Isla Holbox: Whale Shark Island."

In this "Field Notes" segment, Amy Gotliffe, director of conservation at the Oakland Zoo, shares her photographs and stories from Uganda, where the zoo's Bodongo Snare Removal Project works to protect endangered chimpanzees from illegal poaching.

Off California's coastline, thousands of feet below the deep blue ocean where the sun's rays don't reach, teems a diverse community of deep sea corals. Armed with unmanned submarines equipped with robotic arms, sensors and HD cameras, scientists are exploring this treasure trove of corals and the rich marine life living among them.

One in six kids in the United States is obese, a condition that doubles their risk of heart disease. Lorena Ramos, 14, a patient at the Healthy Hearts clinic at Children's Hospital Oakland struggles to lose weight. Will she succeed?

By rushing heart attack victims to the operating table and opening their blocked arteries while their heart attacks are underway, doctors are now able to save 95% of those who make it to the hospital.

This half-hour program looks at heart disease – the number one killer in the United States – from the point of view of a teenager trying to lower her risk, a heart attack survivor, and a scientist working to rebuild damaged hearts.

For decades amateur rocket builders, or "rocketeers," have been trying to reach space. Now with advances in materials and technology, they're able to do it. QUEST travels to rocket launches in fallowed fields and barren deserts to learn more about this addictive hobby and to meet a group of passionate high school rocketeers.

"Insects do not taste like chicken," said Daniella Martin, a charismatic advocate of eating low - make that really low - on the food chain. Through public lectures, cooking demonstrations and her 'Girl Meets Bug' website, Martin preaches the gospel of why, in her opinion, more people should munch on mealworms, crunch a cricket or feast on plump bee larvae.

Photographer Simon Christen shares his passion for observing the environment through the process of time-lapse photography. By training his lens on natural events as fog and the orbiting moon, he discovers things about the natures of these seemingly ubiquitous elements of our world that few have seen before.

Scientists in San Francisco have coaxed mouse hearts to repair themselves from within. The breakthrough could lead to treatments for the 5 million people in the United States living with a damaged heart.

Monarch Butterflies migrate from all over the western United States to overwinter along the California coast. Conservation Biologist Stu Weiss uses specialized photographic equipment to study what makes good Monarch overwintering habitat.

The USGS National Wildlife Health Center investigates animal die-offs and threats to endangered species through on-site investigation and necropsies--animal autopsy--at its headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin.

In 2006, the world learned that honeybees in America and Canada were dying in large numbers, and hives were becoming defunct. Five years later, what have scientists learned about the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder?

Kandis Elliot is on the Botany Department staff at the University of Wisconsin, but she's not a scientist or professor. Elliot is an artist and transforms mere photographs of plants into lush, painterly artworks that educate as well as captivate.

Biomedical researchers are investigating ways to 'grow' new skin in hopes that healing burns can be quicker, safer and more complete.

An exoskeleton suit may seem like science fiction, turning ordinary humans into super heroes, but wearable robots are moving forward into reality.

If you can't abide Brussels sprouts and broccoli, your genes may be to blame. Geneticist Danielle Reed of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia studies differences in our perception of taste and smell. A small blip in DNA might determine if you're bitter blind or have a sweet tooth.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is hard at work on a $4.6 billion, decade-long construction project to overhaul the Hetch Hetchy water system, which delivers water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park and five local reservoirs to 2.5 million residents in the Bay Area.

For over one hundred and fifty years, scientists have captured images of celestial objects scattered across the night sky. The Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute in North Carolina is attempting to save those historical records before they vanish into a black hole.

Mike Forsberg, a nationally renowned photographer, conservationist, and author from Nebraska, spent four years traveling 100,000 miles across the Great Plains—from North Dakota to Texas—to create a portrait of under-appreciated species and habitats of what many consider "flyover country."

QUEST travels to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to meet Dr. Spurlock, an anatomist and forensic reconstruction artist who uses clay to re-construct the faces of ancient humans in order to show what they looked like when alive. She also sketches more recently deceased individuals using only their remains in order to help law enforcement solve crimes.

The invasive Asian carp has wreaked havoc in the Mississippi River system. The voracious plankton eaters have out-competed native fish and have become the dominant species in many locations. If the carp reach the Great Lakes, they pose a threat to its $7 billion fishery, so a battle against them is taking place on many fronts.

Within and along the waters of Lake Erie (one of the five Great Lakes), there is a daily struggle for survival between natives and unwelcomed invasive species.

The art and science of salt glaze pottery requires skills and techniques acquired over generations of trial and error. Ben Owen III combines his family’s experiential knowledge of ceramics and additional scientific knowledge to create and improve his unique works of art.

QUEST takes to the high seas with researcher Dirk Rosen to study the underwater world off the California coast. In recent years, the state has established a network of marine protected areas to help fragile habitats and struggling fish populations bounce back. But are they working?

In a dark lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, engineers and mathematicians are developing new burners and studying different flames in hopes of better understanding the power of fire and how to make the most efficient flame possible.

In California, more renewable energy comes from geothermal energy than solar and wind, combined. Today, a new technology known as Enhanced Geothermal Systems has the potential to extract even more heat and consequently energy to power steam turbines, but it's not without challenges.

Experts warn that an offshore quake powerful enough to kill thousands and discharge a tsunami could hit the West Coast anytime. QUEST Northwest talks with geologists and seismologists about cutting edge research in earthquake prediction, and what it would look like if the next "Big One" hits close to home.

Khalid Mosalam and his colleagues at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center's Shaking Table Laboratory are helping to make communities safer in an earthquake.

Looking up at the jet stream, Ken Caldera, a climate scientist from the Carnegie Institution of Global Ecology at Stanford University says, "We find that there’s more than 100 times the power necessary to power civilization in these high altitude winds."