Episode 14: Is Caitlin Really a Doctor? What is Caitlin? | E19 & E20 of The Flash

We’re back! Caitlin finally edited the episode! In fact, you might say that this episode was Lost … on Caitlin’s Hard Drive. In this episode, Caitlin and Nicole are joined again by Caitlin’s long-suffering brother Ryan to discuss episodes 6 and 7 of Lost in Space. (Stars alive, when will we get through this series? How much more can I take? [sobs internally] ) Join us in this episode to discuss black holes, tar pits, and puzzling through what the heck the writers were trying to accomplish with Dr. Smith. Find the articles for the episode, as well as several outtakes, here.

It turns out that Caitlin and Nicole have multiple rocket scientist friends! Longtime friend of the podcast Space Nicole joins our hosts along with newtime friend of the podcast Grant to discuss the Nolan space behemoth, Interstellar. There is … a lot to unpack in this movie. Some of the science is surprisingly good, which makes sense considering that Nolan consulted with actual physicists during the production of the film (Flash writers, take notes). Some of the science is, well, odd, to say the least. Join our crew of intrepid science friends as they journey into a discussion of rockets, docking, relativity, time, black holes, whatever the heck “the blight” is, and the possibly horrible truth behind this secret science program headed by a bunch of all-American scientists(?) Also, Nicole came up for an idea for a TARS and Cooper-themed spin-off television show, complete with theme song, because of course she did. Does anyone know someone at Netflix we can pitch this to? #TARSandCoop

We have come to a movie that is apparently somewhat infamous in the scientific community for its terrible and ridiculous science: The Core. Patricia joins us once again to discuss how plausible it would be that the Earth’s core would stop spinning, that we could drill down to the core, and that we could restart it with nuclear weapons! If your guess was, wow, that sounds insanely implausible, ding ding ding, you got it right! If you thought, huh, that sounds like something that is a very likely problem but also very fixable with nuclear weapons, I am not sure how to help you.

Well … this episode ended up being a bit of a mess for reasons that are explained therein. But you know what? It kind of fits because we’re covering episodes 1 and 2 of Another Life, and this show is a lot of a mess. We’re joined by our longtime podcast friend Space Nicole for the ride. In this episode we discuss the whole gamut of crazy science: - How dark matter isn’t a scary cloud - How pigeons navigate with but don’t produce infrasound - Why space helmets don’t have a retractable visor - And more! But mostly, we’re still confused why Niko didn’t tell her crew that she killed a man because he was trying to murder her and not simply because “it had to be done.”

You mission, should you choose to accept it, is to listen to this podcast episode in which we discuss all of the ridiculous science in Mission Impossible: Fallout, a movie that seems to know as much about plutonium as I know about Black Sabbath — which is to say, basically nothing other than the fact that heavy metal is involved. And, of course, because we’re discussing plutonium, we are joined by longtime friend of the podcast and nuclear scientist, Madicken! Because this isn’t just the plutonium podcast, we also talk about the logistics of HALO jumps and RFID tags. Oh, and Nicole wrote another insane EDM song based on the vocal stylings of Madicken sampled during this episode. It’s in the episode, and you can also find it on the blog post for this episode.