Dr. Starkid

Could something alive on Earth survive in the ocean beneath an alien moon’s ice? Researchers tested that question by recreating some of the conditions thought to exist on Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn. The archaea they introduced survived and multiplied under some of those simulated conditions. I wanted to understand how you even design that experiment when the ocean you’re studying is buried beneath ice. We talk through Cassini’s encounters with Enceladus’s plumes, how tidal heating keep...

Relevant studies mentioned: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/2774113 - melanoma https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/2790089 (free version: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8943625/) - Keratinocyte carcinoma (aka Non-melanoma skin cancer) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10896812/ — The evolution of human skin coloration https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43630-026-00940-x — Blindspot: how sun exposure guidelines have ignor...

Elias 2-24b is already several times Jupiter’s mass, yet its star system is estimated to be less than a million years old. This episode follows the discovery and asks how a gas giant can grow so massive, so quickly. We cover how astronomers use infrared and radio observations to study young planets, how they estimate ages, and why growing from tiny grains into a giant planet is a bit more complicated than it sounds. We also look at how an early forming giant planet can influence the fut...

You might be a Martian. In this installment of the Dr. Starkid astrobiology series, I’m making the case that life on Earth may have actually started on Mars first. This idea does not yet have scientific consensus, but there is a convincing evidence-based argument for what might be the simplest explanation for why life showed up on Earth so early. Expect to learn about panspermia, LUCA, the origin of life, why Mars may have been chemically ready for life before Earth, how early Earth may hav...

Momentum is a basic concept in physics: mass in motion, moving in a particular direction. But it also provides an interesting way to think about how a human life takes shape. In this episode, Dr. Dakotah Tyler starts with the physics of momentum, inertia, conservation laws, and the strange rotations of planets like Uranus and Venus. From there, the conversation moves into biology, energy efficiency, the high metabolic cost of the human brain, learning, automaticity, and why repeated behaviors...

Dr. Dakotah Tyler reflects on the lowest periods of his life, finding purpose through football, losing that identity after a knee injury, and eventually starting over academically on the path toward a PhD in astrophysics. But the point of the story is the difference between believing in yourself and maintaining hope in yourself. You can doubt whether you’ll succeed. You can get exhausted. You can question whether the path you chose is going to work. But as long as you still have some vision o...

Stars do much more than light up the universe. They create the environments where planets form, provide energy to those planets, manufacture new elements through fusion, and eventually return that material to the galaxy where another generation of stars, planets, and potentially life can form. In this episode of the Dr. Starkid astrobiology series, Dr. Dakotah Tyler explains what happens inside stars, why quantum tunneling is necessary for fusion in the Sun, and why more massive stars actuall...

Arian Foster is a former NFL running back who played for the Houston Texans and Miami Dolphins. He also studied philosophy and, after reaching the NFL, developed a deep interest in science, physics, and some of the biggest questions about reality. In this conversation, expect to hear Arian and Dr. Dakotah Tyler talk about general relativity, scientific expertise, misinformation, distrust of science, “doing your own research,” and why changing your mind when new evidence appears is a feature o...

Could an advanced civilization evolve on a planet where trees and wood never existed? In this speculative astrobiology episode, Dr. Dakotah Tyler constructs a rocky super-Earth with stronger gravity, widespread volcanic activity, and immense crystal formations that function ecologically like forests. A six-limbed aquatic species gradually moves onto land and evolves the dexterity, spatial reasoning, memory, and problem-solving abilities needed to survive inside this dangerous three-dimensiona...

The Space Traders by Derrick Bell pdf: https://blog.richmond.edu/criticalracetheory/files/2019/02/The-Chronicle-of-the-Space-Traders.pdf Derrick Bell was a civil rights lawyer and the first Black tenured professor at Harvard Law School. In his 1992 story The Space Traders, extraterrestrial visitors offer the United States enough gold and technology to erase its debt, restore the environment, and provide practically unlimited clean energy. Their price is every Black person in America. In this ...

In Part 3 of the Dr. Starkid astrobiology series, Dr. Dakotah Tyler traces the history of the universe from the Big Bang to the formation of worlds capable of supporting life. Expect to learn about the three major lines of evidence for the Big Bang, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the cosmic microwave background, the first stars, and how stellar explosions created the heavier elements needed to build planets. The episode also covers planet formation, migrating gas giants, the Grand Tack model, why ...

This is Part 2 of the Dr. StarKid astrobiology series. Before we can talk seriously about life beyond Earth, we have to understand how humans figured out Earth was not the center of everything. This episode walks through the ideas, assumptions, observations, and arguments that moved us from ancient skywatching to modern astrophysics. Expect to learn about ancient debates over infinite worlds, human pattern recognition, the night sky as an early scientific tool, planets as “wanderers,” retrogr...

This version has the corrected audio Tony Baker is a comedian, actor, creator, and lifelong astronomy fan who came into this conversation ready with the National Geographic space book that first got him hooked as a kid. Expect to learn how Tony thinks about space, comedy, God, science, acting, stand-up, observation, crows, astrology, astronomy, alien life, and the absurd luck of existing at all. We talk about why comedians are professional observers, why space makes us feel small in a good w...

Dr. Natasha Latouf is an astrobiologist, NASA Fellow, and PhD physicist studying how we could detect Earth-like life on nearby Earth-like planets. Expect to learn what astrobiology actually is, how scientists search for biosignatures, why oxygen is both useful and dangerous, why UFOs and UAPs probably are not aliens, and what future telescopes may be able to detect in the atmospheres of small rocky planets. We also talk about Dr. Latouf’s BARBIE code, K2-18b, extremophiles, Mars, Venus, virus...

Qasim Rashid is a human rights and civil rights attorney, author, advocate, and the founder of Let’s Address This. His work focuses on justice, democracy, human rights, and public discourse, but this conversation turned into a wide-ranging exploration of science, society, faith, sci-fi, and the future. Expect to learn how an astrophysicist and a human rights attorney ended up talking about alien life, Project Hail Mary, relativity, intelligent whales, faith, the Quran and astronomy, black hol...

June Sass is a public health scientist and microbiologist with a master’s from Johns Hopkins in molecular microbiology and immunology. Her work connects fungal biology, public health, pathogens, therapeutics, astromycology, and the microbiome. She also runs Summercraft Kombucha, where she develops mushroom kombucha and wellness drinks. Expect to learn why fungi and bacteria are not just harmful pathogens, but also essential parts of our health, our ecosystems, and the story of life on Earth. ...

This is the first installment in the astrobiology series, adapted from the astrobiology course Dr. Dakotah Tyler taught at university. Expect to learn what astrobiology actually means, why sci-fi aliens are usually too human, why UFO claims require careful assumptions, and why defining life is harder than it sounds. We cover viruses, dormant microbes, ideas as information systems, chemical possibility, life as a physical process, habitability, synthetic life and biosignatures. As always, lead...

Dr. Dakotah Tyler sits down with Dr. Suh for a wide-ranging conversation on biomedical engineering, organs on chips, how biology behaves in space, stem cells, evolution, and human identity. They talk about microgravity and aging, space travel, induced pluripotent stem cells, tissue engineering, animal research ethics, body odor genetics, microplastics, beauty standards, the manosphere, and what it means to deconstruct your sense of self. Lead with curiosity.

What would alien astronomers see if they pointed an impossible telescope at Earth from millions of light-years away? This episode uses that thought experiment to explain light travel time, relativity, time dilation, the Andromeda paradox, and the strange idea that there may be no single universal “now.” We also get into the block universe, why GPS depends on relativity, and what all of this might mean for how we think about the future. Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler. Lead with curiosity.

This episode starts with the story behind the science: how a football injury, a lost sense of identity, and a Cosmos documentary helped send me toward astronomy and exoplanet research. From there, we get into what my dissertation was actually about: atmospheric mass loss for close-in exoplanets. That means planets getting blasted by radiation from their stars, losing gas over time, and sometimes leaving behind clues we can detect from Earth. We talk Mars, Venus, hot Jupiters, helium escape, W...

How did we go from knowing a handful of planets in our own solar system to confirming thousands of worlds around other stars? This episode traces the story of exoplanets, from ancient “wanderers” in the night sky to the modern methods astronomers use to detect worlds we usually can’t see directly. We talk Galileo, Jupiter’s moons, hot Jupiters, pulsar planets, lava worlds, water worlds, rogue planets, Planet 9, and why the universe keeps handing us planets we never expected. Hosted by Dr. Dak...