Dr. Starkid
Hosted by Dr. Dakotah Tyler, a former Division-I college football player turned PhD astrophysicist, science communicator, author, and professor of physics and astrobiology.
Science is one of humanity’s most powerful tools for understanding reality. From the cosmos above us to the questions that shape our daily lives, every discovery offers a new way to see the world.
Through deep dives, interviews, conversations, and curiosity-driven storytelling, Dr. Starkid explores the ideas, discoveries, and mysteries that capture our imagination and expand our understanding of the universe. Featuring scientists, researchers, creators, and other fascinating minds, the show examines everything from space exploration and the search for life to the scientific discoveries reshaping how we understand ourselves and our place in the cosmos.
Lead with Curiosity.
Episodes
19 episodes
Life on Earth Might Have Started on Mars
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 convinci...
Physics Is At Play In Your Personal Life
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 m...
The Worst Thing You Can Lose Is Hope in Yourself
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 Cosmic History of the Atoms Inside You | Astrobiology Series Part IV
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...
Two Football Players Go Deep on Physics, God & the Universe | Arian Foster, NFL Running Back
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 reali...
Evolving an Alien Civilization on a World Without Trees | Astrobiology Series
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 imme...
Aliens Offer To Fix America in Exchange for Every Black Citizen | The Space Traders
The Space Traders by Derrick Bell pdf: https://blog.richmond.edu/criticalracetheory/files/2019/02/The-Chronicle-of-the-Space-Traders.pdfDerrick Bell was a civil rights lawyer and the first Black tenured professor at Harvard Law School. I...
How the Universe Created the Conditions for Life | Astrobiology Series Part III
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 th...
Earth Life Isn't the Center of the Universe | Astrobiology Series Part II
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, assump...
Funny People Love Space | Tony Baker, Comedian
This version has the corrected audioTony 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 l...
Will We Actually Find Alien Life In Our Lifetime? | Dr. Natasha Latouf, NASA Astrobiologist
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...
Science, Faith, and Intelligent Life | Qasim Rashid, Human Rights Attorney
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 expl...
Why Life Might Be Almost Impossible to Kill | June Sass, M.Sc. Microbiology
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. ...
What Counts as Life | Astrobiology Series Part 1
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 req...
Space Biology and Recreating Human Hearts | Dr. Suh, Microbiologist
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 tr...
Your Future Might Already Exist According To Relativity
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,...
My PhD Was About Alien Worlds
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 actu...
How We Went From 5 Planets To 5 Trillion
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 ast...