The Rest Is Science
byGoalhanger
Science
Join mathematician Professor Hannah Fry and science creator Michael Stevens (Vsauce) as they dig into the weird scientific questions that often go unexplored. Welcome to The Rest Is Science, a show that sits in the fascinating space between what we think we know, and what we actually know. Why do we assume we understand things like time, randomness, or even gravity? Once you start questioning these familiar ideas, reality becomes astonishingly strange and completely fragile. Whether you're a lifelong science fan or just naturally curious, The Rest Is Science will change your perception of reality, and prove that the biggest...
Episodes(40 episodes)
Season 1 - Episode 77
The Lake At The North Pole That Stops Europe From Freezing
When you picture the North Pole, you probably imagine a vast, frozen expanse of floating sea ice. But hidden deep beneath the surface of the Arctic lies something incredible: a massive, churning reservoir of nearly freshwater, suspended right in the middle of a saltwater ocean.
In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (VSauce) explore the hidden hydrodynamics of the Arctic. Fresh off a real-world scientific expedition to the sprawling ice sheets of Greenland, Hannah shares firsthand accounts of the colossal forces currently reshaping our polar regions. Together...
Published: Aug 12, 2026Duration: 47m 3s
Season 1 - Episode 76
The Science of Putting Sunglasses on The Sun
Why does the cartoon Sun always wear sunglasses? And how big would a real pair need to be?
Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens investigate space mirrors, Reflect Orbital and solar eclipses to find out.
Starting with a pencil held at arm’s length, they use the Sun’s angular diameter to calculate how big a pair of solar sunglasses would need to be for one eye, two eyes, everyone in London and eventually the entire planet.
Their hypothetical answer is a strange structure more than...
Published: Aug 9, 2026Duration: 1h 0m 2s
Season 1 - Episode 75
Why Is It A Colour Wheel & Not A Line?
Colour wheel or colour line? Light itself runs in a straight line from red to violet, yet every colour theory chart bends that spectrum into a circle and the reason has nothing to do with physics.
Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (VSauce) dig into why human vision refuses to see colour the way light actually behaves, tracing the visible light spectrum from one end to the other and asking where all the "missing" colours, like magenta and purple, actually come from if they don't exist on that spectrum at all.
<...
Published: Aug 5, 2026Duration: 47m 9s
Season 1 - Episode 74
Why Lithium Batteries SUCK
Can Hannah convince Michael that the lithium-ion battery is one of our most overrated inventions to ever happen?
Hannah makes her case using a surprising energy source hidden in your fridge, a bell in Oxford that's been ringing since 1840, and a metal that is useful… but prone to bursting into flame from the inside out.
Tracing the battery's strange history, from a twitching dead frog to the executed man who helped inspire Frankenstein.
But the real point runs deeper: we don't have an energy problem, we have a storage issue, and...
Published: Aug 2, 2026Duration: 54m 29s
Season 1 - Episode 73
What Happens Inside Earth's Forbidden Zones?
What grows in the spaces humans are forced to abandon?Hannah brings Michael an actual piece of barbed wire from the Korean Demilitarised Zone, one of the most heavily fortified and forbidden borders on Earth, and it sends them somewhere unexpected.
From deserted no man's land and radioactive exclusion zones to remote islands that most of humankind has quietly agreed to leave well alone, they explore the surprising ways life adapts to the damage we leave behind.Plus your questions: the scientific fact that scared Michael most, where tectonic plates actually go when they...
Published: Jul 29, 2026Duration: 45m 35s
Season 1 - Episode 72
The 2012 Maya Apocalypse Myth & Confirmation Bias
Did the world really end in 2012?
Not with fire, meteors or an ancient Mayan prophecy, but Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens ask whether something just as profound took place instead.
Together they unravel how one of the biggest myths in history took hold and why the Maya were unable to accurately predict the apocalypse. But they also delve into why, according to Michael, 2012 was the year an old world was discarded and a new one began to emerge.
It was, afterall, the year...
Published: Jul 26, 2026Duration: 59m 35s
Season 1 - Episode 73
The Evolution of Colour Vision & Tetrachromacy
Can you hide your skeleton from a dog? Would you want to know the day you’ll die? Has evolution ever come close to producing a real fire breather?
Michael and Hannah test a T-shirt with a secret only humans can see, leading them into the strange world of colour vision, from colourblindness and tetrachromacy, to the remarkable eyes of the mantis shrimp.
They also ask whether DNA could become the ultimate hard drive, visit a data storage mountain in Pittsburgh and discover just how little space all of hu...
Published: Jul 22, 2026Duration: 45m 41s
Season 1 - Episode 70
The Hole In Your Brain That Makes You Doomscroll
Why can't you leave a sealed envelope unopened?
Professor Hannah Fry begins by refusing to allow Michael Stevens to open a mystery envelope addressed to him.
A small act of torture that turns out to be the perfect way in to today's subject: curiosity. What is it, why does it feel almost physical, and how far will people actually go just to resolve a nagging uncertainty?
From there Hannah and Michael trace curiosity's surprising reputation through history; how for well over a thousand years it was branded a vice, even...
Published: Jul 19, 2026Duration: 49m 20s
Season 1 - Episode 69
Forensic Science And The Champawat Tiger
It begins with a discovery in a loft: a full man eating tiger skin, brought back from a village in northern India where Professor Hannah Fry's ex-mother in law grew up.
That find sends Hannah and Michael Stevens into the strange world of man eating big cats: a tigress blamed for a staggering number of deaths, what can turn a tiger toward hunting humans in the first place, and how India now borrows techniques from forensic science…effectively putting a tiger on trial before deciding its fate.
And it raises an uncomfortable question: wh...
Published: Jul 15, 2026Duration: 41m 16s
Season 1 - Episode 68
All The People You Don't Know
Do your friends actually like you? Does an acquaintance think you’re closer than you are?
This week, Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens explore the surprising psychology of friendship, from familiar strangers and para-social relationships to the unsettling discovery that nearly half of friendships may not be mutual.
Why are we so bad at judging who considers us a friend? Why do strangers often have a bigger impact on our lives than we realise? And why do your friends almost certainly have more friends than you do?
Al...
Published: Jul 12, 2026Duration: 56m 28s
Season 1 - Episode 67
An Honest Dad Ranking (Out Of All 2 Billion)
The statistical reality of "The World's #1 Dad Mug" is nothing but a well meaning lie.
In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Michael brings another treasured artifact into the studio: a mug gifted by his daughter.
Rather than claiming the top spot, the mug features a specific, mathematically defensible ranking of his fatherly abilities.
If he's not the very best...surely he's in the top percentile?
Find out on Field Notes.
-------------------
For more information about Cancer Research UK, their...
Published: Jul 8, 2026Duration: 41m 54s
Season 1 - Episode 66
Your Brain Invents Pain. Here's Why.
Stubbing your toe feels like the pain is entirely in your foot. But the reality is far stranger... the agonising sensation you experience is actually a highly complex, constructed illusion, invented in real-time by your brain.In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (VSauce) explore the weird neuroscience of human pain and why pain is ultimately a brilliant evolutionary survival mechanism, how psychological state and the placebo effect can physically alter how much an injury hurts.-------------------For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how...
Published: Jul 5, 2026Duration: 51m 3s
Season 1 - Episode 65
The Most Dangerous Rock In Hannah's Collection
When you think of dangerous geological specimens, does your mind jump straight to radioactive uranium, toxic heavy metals, or even asbestos? What if one of the most dangerous items sitting on a shelf is actually a polished, perfectly ordinary-looking piece of black obsidian?
Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens dive into the surprisingly treacherous geology and chemistry of obsidian.
Hannah brings an onyx from her personal rock collection to explain exactly why this specific piece of material holds the title of the most dangerous rock she owns, unpicking the fascinating physical properties of...
Published: Jul 1, 2026Duration: 56m 26s
Season 1 - Episode 66
The Audio Illusion That Proves We Don't Experience Reality
Your ears are lying to you right now. In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) dive into the bizarre world of audio illusions where your brain hears sounds that don't exist, fills in frequencies that were never there, and constructs a version of reality that simply isn't real.
From the impossible endless ascending tone to the battle between your eyes and ears, explore how auditory illusions reveal the cracks in human perception. Along the way, we uncover how hearing works at a neurological level, why your...
Published: Jun 28, 2026Duration: 57m 32s
Season 1 - Episode 64
The Engineering Of A NASA Space Pen
A pen designed to write in space sits unopened for 25 years. Does it still work?In this episode of Field Notes, Michael Stevens finally opens a treasured souvenir from his time at Space Camp: a genuine Fisher Space Pen that has been waiting decades for its first scribble. From there, the conversation launches into the challenges of living in space, why astronauts abandoned pencils, and what happens to your sense of direction when gravity disappears.Along the way they investigate whether eight billion people clapping could damage a building, discover why the ISS is constantly falling...
Published: Jun 24, 2026Duration: 48m 23s
Season 1 - Episode 62
A Paleontology Of The Future: What We Will Leave Behind
What will humanity leave behind?
In this episode, Professor Hannah Fry and VSauce's Michael Stevens explore the traces humans leave behind and what those traces reveal about how we think.
From Tranquility Base, where humanity's first footprints on another world still sit undisturbed in lunar dust, to a three million year old pebble that may represent one of the earliest signs of symbolic thought, they uncover how ordinary objects can become extraordinary windows into our past.
Why would one of our ancestors carry a...
Published: Jun 21, 2026Duration: 55m 25s
Season 1 - Episode 61
What Are The Odds You'll Become A Fossil?
Most living things vanish without a trace. A select few become fossils. But how?
In this episode of Field Notes Professor Hannah Fry and VSauce's Michael Stevens dig into the unlikely process that turns bone into stone.
From prehistoric seas hidden beneath Kansas to fossils mistaken for mythical creatures, they follow the clues that reveal Earth's deep past.
Along the way they uncover the lost landscape of Doggerland, investigate creatures that survive without sunlight, and tackle listener questions about radioactive waste, volcanoes, and some...
Published: Jun 17, 2026Duration: 39m 21s
Season 1 - Episode 60
Why Feet Are Weirder Than You Think
Compared with almost every other animal on Earth, our feet seem strangely specialised. They can't grip branches, they're full of arches and joints, and for some reason we're the only species that regularly puts shoes on them.
Hannah and Michael explore how millions of years of evolution transformed ape like feet into powerful biological springboards, uncovering a surprising connection between human walking, pizza slices, and one of mathematics' most beautiful ideas.
After the break, they ask why feet attract so much attention from WikiFeet ratings to one of the...
Published: Jun 14, 2026Duration: 45m 53s
Season 1 - Episode 59
How Many Words Do You ACTUALLY Know?
Most people use just a fraction of the words they understand. But how big is your vocabulary, really?
When a listener builds a tool that claims to measure it, Hannah and Michael put themselves to the test.
If you'd like to try for yourself, follow the link and tell us what score you get in the comments: https://vocabowl-870366514258.us-west1.run.app/
Along the way they uncover forgotten words, obscure linguistic curiosities, and a surprising question hiding beneath the quiz itself: what does it...
Published: Jun 10, 2026Duration: 51m 54s
Season 1 - Episode 58
Why You Should Stop Using Face ID
Do you think your thoughts belong to you? How would feel if you found out they don't?
In this episode Hannah and Michael discuss a tangible future where the last bastion of privacy is breached and the thoughts that run through out heads no longer belong to us.
Why is it that in 2026 police can open your phone using face ID any time they want, but they can't do the same with your password? When might a single brain wave called P300 eliminate the need for evidence in court? And how do we protect the...
Published: Jun 7, 2026Duration: 44m 15s