“We all, to some extent, are scientists. I just do it for a living.” Dr. Michelle LaRue’s work has been covered internationally by hundreds of media outlets including BBC, NBC Nightly News, Wall Street Journal and National Geographic. As a research ecologist at the University of Minnesota, Dr. LaRue focuses on interdisciplinary tools to study spatial and population dynamics of penguins, seals, cougars and polar bears. She is also a science communicator who loves to work with young people and...

Aric and Levi are super excited to welcome in the new co-host of Regret Labs, Maggie Ryan Sandford. Maggie writes about science and researches how humans learn about science. Also, she has produced work for TV and radio and writes fiction. She was also the first guest of this here podcast! In this mini ep, the gang get’s to know a bit about Maggie’s science background and then quickly pivots into talking about science movies. Maggie explains the plot to a bizarre dolphin film, Aric reveals...

Kenny Blumenfeld is a Senior Climatologist at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He also works for Hennepin County Emergency Management, gives public scientific storytelling performances and helped make the documentary “The Story of Winter.” With Kenny’s help, Aric and Levi get at the complex scientific question, what is weather? Kenny explains why severe weather is so difficult to measure and categorize. He also talks about his most commonly asked weather questions, explains how...

Musician Adam Svec of the band Camp Dark joins Aric and Levi to teach them about pitch perception and hearing. They also get to the bottom of some deep truths about Ghostbusters 2 and learn what some medical cadavers are used for. Show Notes: Camp Dark‘s debut album is available now. Get it. TigerCIS, for examples of how cochclear implants sound. What Does It Mean to Sound Gay?, a podcast from Slate. Book Recommendations: An Introduction to the Psychology of Hearing by Brian...

Levi and Aric return after seven some months of absense! They take and discuss a short science quiz from the Mirror UK and share details of the upcoming live Regret Lab show, which is part of the quickly approching NoisePicnic Podcast Festival held at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis! Get your tickets now! And list to the podcast, of course.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, otherwise known as Undercooked Turkey Day, Regret Labs and food scientist Lainey Black take you through the wonderful world of foodborne illness and food poisoning. Learn all about why you shouldn’t eat sprouts, what kind of diarrhea E. coli 157 will give you, why everyone in on a cruise ship is getting the norovirus, how to summon the elder god of shiga toxin, and why none of the antics in Dumb and Dumber are considered food poisoning. Really, thought. Don’t...

With a few episodes under their belt, Levi and Aric take a look back at their podcast experiment and see how things are working so far. Fact retention, failure, success, confidence, and non sequiturs are your rewards for listening to this episode with your ears.

Brad Hauser teaches us all about chemistry, metal-organic frameworks, and windowless white vans on this Regret Labs podcast episode. In fact, have you ever spent time wondering how black light posters work? Or glow in the dark stickers? Or why gold is such a good conductor of electricity? You can stop wondering! That, and how Grey Poupon is like electrons, are all discussed! Brad Hauser is on Twitter DrBradHauser. If you’d like to learn more about the roots of forensic chemistry, Brad...

Scientific terms have very specific meanings, but are misused in everyday life. io9 put out a wonderful article titled 10 Scientific Ideas That Scientists Wish You Would Stop Misusing last month. Aric and Levi though they should try their hand at defining the terms in the article before reading it. If you’ve listened to Regret Labs podcast before, you already know how this will go. In the podcast, Aric and Levi love the snarky answers from Professor Dave Goldberg, dig up the atheist’s...

Greg Laden stops by the Regret Labs podcast to teach Aric and Levi about climate change. The information is equal parts terrifying and enlightening, because (spoiler alert) things don’t look good. But also, we are not helpless in making changes to improve our situation. Denialism, controversy, skepticism, and handling Twitter fights are also covered in this episode. Should this podcast episode be controversial? No. The science of climate change is grounded in well researched and peer...

On this less special (because now it’s a regular thing instead of a surprise) mini episode of the Regret Labs podcast, Aric and Levi take a Canadian 9th grade test on biological diversity and share their answers and frustrations with you. If you’d like to see how you did on the test, compared to Aric and Levi, you can take the same test at the EDQUEST Middle School Science website. And, after you’re done, here is the link to the answer key. What did Aric and Levi score? You’ll have to listen...

In the second episode of the Regret Labs podcast, hosts Aric McKeown and Levi Weinhagen speak with Matt Kuzma about physics. And Back to the Future 3. But mostly about physics. Particles of light, the inverse square law, and what your eyes and ears do with the waves that interact with them are all gone over with a wide tooth comb. Books discussed in this episode: * The Physics of Superheros by

On this special mini episode of the Regret Labs podcast, Aric and Levi take a 9th grade science test and share their results and failings with you. If you’d like to compare your results to theirs, you can take the same test at the Peel District School Board website. Beware, there are a few typos. But it should allow you to measure yourself fairly accurately against the regretful hosts of Regret Labs. Here are the answers that Aric got wrong: 1, 9, 11, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35,...

Welcome to the very first episode of the Regret Labs podcast. Hosted by comedians Aric McKeown and Levi Weinhagen, Regret Labs is about making up for past mistakes while being open to making new ones for the purpose of learning. Aric and Levi, with little to no expertise in the scientific topics they are exploring, brave the shallows of knowledge by asking the embarrassingly simple questions that they should have learned a long time ago. This episode, Aric and Levi are joined by Maggie Ryan...