Exploradio Origins

Credit NASA

Exploradio Origins ponders the biggest questions in the universe in 90 seconds.

Each episode highlights the work of one of the more than 200 fellows at the Institute for the Science of Origins at Case Western Reserve University. Their research examines the origins of life, the universe, and the strands that connect all of science. Host Kellen McGee delivers a distillation of discoveries that touch on the mysteries of dark matter, language, gender, and evolution. 

Exploradio Origins is a collaboration between WKSU and the Institute for the Science of Origins.  Tune-in Thursday afternoons during WKSU’s All Things Considered.

Ways to Connect

Exploradio Origins: We Came from Clay

By Kellen McGee • Oct 11, 2018
A. DOMBROWSKI / FLICKR CC

"We started out with a planet that was just rocks and water and gasses," says Professor Nita Sahai. "How do you go from that to something that is basically covered with life in every possible environmental niche that you look?"

Exploradio Origins: Meteorites and Bigger Things to Come

By • Oct 4, 2018
Bill Dunford / NASA

"Meteorites are delivered to us free of charge," says Ralph Harvey, a professor in the department of Earth, environmental, and planetary science at Case Western Reserve University.

"Yes, they’re delivered randomly. Yes we have to go pick them up in weird places, but the value of them as specimens is not diminished," says Harvey.

Exploradio Origins: A Quest to Answer Some of Humanity's Deepest Questions

By • Sep 26, 2018
NASA/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Origins.
What Origins?
Why Origins?

For me, it was a welcome label for the type of curiosity that had driven me to major variously in physics, archaeology, and English in college. I wanted to turn things like the universe, human society, or language inside out and find out where they started and how they evolved. I ultimately wended my way through college as a physicist with an English habit, but, despite the rationalizations I presented to relatives around the Thanksgiving table, I really had no clear idea how, or even if, I’d ever blend these interests later in life.