Third Pod from the Sun is the American Geophysical Union’s podcast where we hear stories from scientists, for everyone.

Latest Episodes

Et tu, Etna?

In 44 BCE, a momentous event occurred. Somewhere on Earth, a volcano erupted—one of the largest of last 2,500 years terms of climate impact. Traces of the eruption can be found in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, in signs of cold weather in the growth rings of trees around the world, and records of famine and agricultural disaster from Egypt to China. The eruption caused global climate effects lasting several years.

Third Pod Presents: Sci & Tell – Pulwarty & Hayes, Connecting Science & Society

Why do people feel they way they do about issues? Why do lawmakers and policy leaders seemingly act against their better interests? And how can information be developed in a way that leads not just to greater understanding, but to better decision making?

Exhuming a Buried Piece of American History

This historic map of the City of New York from 1754 shows the New York African Burial Ground and its surrounding neighborhood. Credit: Library of Congress.

In 1991, the United States government unearthed a staggering archaeological find during construction of a federal office building in lower Manhattan. While digging the building’s foundations, construction crews stumbled upon skeletal remains from the “Negroes Burial Ground,” the largest and oldest burial site of free and enslaved Africans in what would become the United States. 

Discovering Europe’s History Through its Timbers

An analysis of timber used to construct buildings in Europe hundreds of years ago is giving scientists and historians new insights into the region’s history from the 13th to 17th centuries. Using samples of wood taken from old buildings in Europe, Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, a historian and paleoclimatologist at Stockholm University, and Andrea Seim, a…

Third Pod Presents: Sci & Tell – Bärbel Hönisch, “Queen of Boron”

Bärbel Hönisch, Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences at Columbia University also known as Queen of Boron, transported us millions of years beyond the ice cores to the realm when Greenland had no ice.

E25 – Antarctica’s Oldest Ice

Drilling engineer and ice core scientist Robert Mulvaney has driven thousands of kilometers over Antarctica in the past few years in a snow tractor, creeping slowly over one of the highest points of the ice sheet, near a location known as Dome C. He’s looking for the perfect place to drill one and a half million years into the past.

Third Pod Presents: Sci & Tell – Lori Glaze on Nudging Asteroids

It’s no exaggeration to say Lori Glaze’s impact on our understanding of the relationships between Earth and our nearest neighbors is volcanic. In fact, eruptions fascinated her since she was a pre-teen learning about the destructive volcano which buried the Roman city of Pompeii or carefully scraping ash from the Mount St. Helens eruption off the hood of the family car in Seattle in 1980.

CE13 – The Johnstown Flood: A Most Avoidable Tragedy

The Johnstown Flood occurred on May 31, 1889, after the failure of the South Fork Dam, which is located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Third Pod Live: O-klahoma, Where There’s Fracking, Oil, Faults, and More!

What’s it like to be a seismologist who’s studied the Marcellus Shale and San Andreas Fault, worked around the world from Pennsylvania to Rome, and is now a professor at the University of Oklahoma? We found out at AAA’s annual meeting earlier this year when we talked to assistant professor Brett Carpenter.

E24 Part 2- A Walk in the Vault with Jeff Post

Mineralogist Jeff Post has a one-of-a-kind job: he’s curator of the National Gem and Mineral Collection, a collection of over 375,000 rock and mineral specimens housed at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. In this episode, Jeff takes Third Pod producers on a tour of the vault, where the collection’s most valuable and rare specimens are kept. Jeff