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

Latest Episodes

Third Pod Presents: Sci & Tell – James Garvin on Earth Day at 50

James Garvin is the Chief Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Garvin has been at NASA for 35 years in a variety of roles and missions, and is well known for his incredible work in NASA's Mars explorational programs.

Third Pod Presents: Sci & Tell – Earth Day at 50, Stories from NASA

This year is the 50th anniversary. To celebrate, we chatted with over a dozen NASA scientists about what Earth Day means to them in this special compilation episode!

Earthrise

On 24 December 1968, humans witnessed our home planet rise over the horizon of another world for the first time. The crew of Apollo 8 looked up from the Moon to see the blue and white swirls of Earth poised above the stark grey lunar surface—a single oasis in a big, dark universe.

Paradise Lost

From 1946 to 1958, the United States military conducted more than 20 nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, an idyllic tropical island in the South Pacific Ocean. During the first of these tests, conducted in July 1946, the military anchored nearly 100 warships and submarines within Bikini’s large lagoon to see how a nuclear blast would affect a naval fleet.

Third Pod Presents: Sci & Tell – Kim Cobb, Standing Up for Women in Science

Kim Cobb loves being out in the field. She talks about the euphoria and passion she has for it, saying “It's like nothing I've ever experienced literally, and I've given birth to four children.”

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.