Costa Rican star Debi Nova joins field biologist and Re:wild’s Mesoamerica Director Esteban Brenes-Mora for our first-ever Central American taping. Recorded in Tamarindo, Costa Rica, the conversation centers on Debi’s album Todo Puede Convertirse en Canción (“Everything Can Become a Song”), exploring the challenges and gifts of rewilding, what drives Costa Rica’s remarkable biodiversity, Debi’s impression of the Judas bird—the Cristofué (“it was Christ”)—the bathroom habits of tapirs, and what it means to find balance and coexistence between humans, animals, and the ecosystems we share.
Read the transcript of this episode:https://www.singforscience.org/transcripts/debi-nova-todo-puede-convertirse-en-cancinFor further reading and listening:
Improving Health and Well-Being Through Nature - W.H.O.https://www.who.int/europe/activities/improving-health-and-well-being-through-nature
Costa Rica’s Tapir Resurgence Sparks Hope for ‘Gardeners of the Forest’ - thegef.org
https://www.thegef.org/newsroom/feature-stories/costa-ricas-tapir-resurgence-sparks-hope-gardeners-forest
Debi Nova: Todo Puede Convertirse en Canción
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5OUSPO2MSCouIXwisPnaMjCs_4Gl7Lhh
About the Guests:
Debi Nova
Singer, songwriter, dancer, and multi-instrumentalist from San Jose, Costa Rica. She's considered the most successful Costa Rican artist in history, and the most streamed Costa Rican artist on Spotify.
debinova.com
Esteban Brenes-Mora
Conservation biologist specializing in wildlife management, ecosystem restoration, and sustainable development across Mesoamerica.
https://www.rewild.org/team/esteban-brenes-mora
What turns neighbors into enemies? What makes cruelty feel permissible? And how does music push back? In this episode, Dropkick Murphys founder Ken Casey and Yale psychologist Phillip Atiba Solomon use the band’s new song “Citizen I.C.E.” to explore identity, policing, propaganda, and the psychology of dehumanization. It’s a sharp, urgent conversation about punk, power, and the systems that teach people who belong—and who don’t.
Read the full transcript of this episode: http://singforscience.org/transcripts/dropkick-murphys-citizen-ice-phillip-atiba-solomon-public-safety-scienceFor further reading and listening:
Dropkick Murphys - Citizen I.C.E. (feat. Haywire) (Official Music Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSrDkRm7_78
Why Minnesota Was a Wake-Up Call by Phillip Atiba Solomon for Time Magazine https://time.com/7380603/minnesota-ice-wake-up-call/
To Protect the Next George Floyd, We Must Remove the Threat of Police Violence from Everyday Life by Phillip Atiba Solomon for Time Magazine
https://time.com/5956701/george-floyd-justice-police-reform/
The Root Cause of Violent Crime Is Not What We Think It Is by Phillip Atiba Solomon for New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/opinion/crime-policies-cities.html
Ken Casey: ‘I’m Not Going to Shut Up’ by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/07/ken-casey-dropkick-murphys-donald-trump/682984/
Dropkick Murphys: 30 Years of Fighting Nazis, Now Taking on Trump | On Offense with Kris Goldsmith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVcWLObekRU
About the Guests:
Ken Casey
Founder and vocalist of Dropkick Murphys, known for blending punk rock with themes of working-class identity and social justice.
https://dropkickmurphys.com/
Phillip Atiba Solomon
Professor at Yale University and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, focusing on data-driven approaches to public safety and equity.
https://policingequity.org/
Humanist Heavyweight Steven Pinker joins José González to unpack “Against the Dying of the Light,” a song inspired in part by Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now. Together they explore Enlightenment values, human nature, progress, algorithms, anger, AI, and whether reason, science, and empathy can still help us push back against darkness.
Chanteuse Chan Marshall, best known as the artist Cat Power talks about her recreation of the historic 1966 Bob Dylan concert album at the Royal Albert Hall with Cornell University neuroscientist and nostalgia expert, Hetvi Doshi. We cover the origins of nostalgia study, the growing body of scientific evidence that suggests nostalgia has health benefits and improves social cohesion with one another. We also talk about the dynamics of food nostalgia and Hetvi’s community nostalgia initiative. For more information on Cat Power’s tour and Hetvi’s work please visit catpowermusic.com, hetvidoshi.com and thecommunitynostalgiaproject.com.
Grammy-winning artist Miguel joins science historian Jimena Canales for a live taping centered on his song “Nearsight [SID]” from CAOS. What begins as a conversation about a lyric — “slow it down for me” — opens into a wide-ranging exploration of time itself: how it feels to speed up as we age, how music can stretch or compress our experience of the present, and why certain moments seem impossible to hold onto. Drawing on her work on Einstein and Bergson's philosophy of time, Canales helps unpack the tension between measurable, physical time and lived, emotional time — while Miguel reflects on fatherhood, memory, and the urgency behind wanting to slow a fleeting moment. Taped live at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts on February 14, 2026.
Alt-R&B artist rum.gold joins host Matt Whyte with Dr. Nim Tottenham, Chair of Psychology at Columbia University, for a live taping centered on his song and video “Is It Something I Said.” What begins as a conversation about a music video portraying a mother and son living with anxiety, grief, and hoarding becomes a striking window into Dr. Tottenham’s research on how early caregiving and stress shape the developing brain — and how those early emotional environments can echo into adulthood as anxiety, attachment struggles, and dysregulation. Taped live at Ludlow House in NYC on January 27, 2026 as part of the On Air presents series.
A century-old vanishing act meets modern investigation in a conversation where art and archaeology follow the same pursuit. J. Willgoose, Esq.—founder of the British band Public Service Broadcasting—and archaeologist Dr. Rick Pettigrew, Executive Director of the Archaeological Legacy Institute, go for a deep dive into one of the most enduring mysteries of the 20th century: Amelia Earhart’s final flight. Willgoose unpacks the research and craft behind The Last Flight, PSB’s album built from primary sources, historical texts, and period-accurate voice performances engineered to sound convincingly 1930s. Pettigrew brings the scientific side of the story, explaining why the Nikumaroro hypothesis has persisted for decades—and why a newly analyzed “Taraia object” in the island’s lagoon could represent the long-missing Lockheed Electra. Together they explore the tangled intersection of history, sound, celebrity, navigation, and evidence, from radio failures and line-of-position logic to artifacts found on the island and the ethics of doing archaeology with care and diplomacy. The conversation also looks ahead to Pettigrew’s planned 2026 expedition—what it will take to test the hypothesis on the ground (and underwater), and what it would mean to finally move from theory to proof.
Queen of Percussion and Prince collaborator Sheila E talks about her 1984 hit, working with Prince, salsa music and learning from her legendary father with University of Mexico Neuroscientist, Dr. Hugo Merchant. Hugo shares fascinating findings about how the mechanisms in the brain process rhythm and help us keep a beat.
Where does necrophilia come from? What makes people desecrate corpses? And do you have to be a serial killer to have a death fetish? Today’s guests are Dr. Victoria Hartmann, a clinical psychology researcher and executive director of the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas, and neuroscientist and science communicator Dr. Jens Foell.
Recorded live at London’s Natural History Museum on November 24, 2025. Breaking Bad fanatics, have a fresh pair of trousers at the ready—Bryan Cranston delivers an unforgettable conversation packed with behind-the-scenes stories from his years playing Walter White. He shares how DEA agents taught him the fundamentals of meth production, what he learned shadowing a USC chemistry professor to prepare for the role, and the surprising science details the show actually got right. A Hollywood legend through and through, Cranston does not disappoint. Joining him is the eminent Alan Hart—mineralogist, science historian, and keeper of extraordinary knowledge about the material world. Hart breaks down the real science behind Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the intricate chemistry of organic and inorganic crystal structures, and the remarkable history of how the Periodic Table came to be. Together, Cranston and Hart illuminate the scientific heart of Breaking Bad in a way fans have never heard before.