Quirks & Quarkswith Bob McDonald



Recognizing Black birders and cougar kills

A summer of seeing and tasting climate change




A stranded plastic pollution researcher maps COVID litter in her backyard


Studying sparrows and launching a movement in support of Black scientists










AI is reviewing scientists' old work and discovering things they missed


Scientists create a robot made entirely of living cells




A stand-up robot understands that timing is the secret to comedy

A joke telling robot just finished 32 shows where it got a lot of laughs, but also a lot of data that can help scientists better understand human-robot interactions

August 22, 2020 - Digging up the past summer show

Ancient paint from lake goo, evolving animal worms to fish fingers, fossilized parenting, most dangerous place on Earth and archeology from space

Ancient Indigenous people made durable rock paint from lake goo

The paint for the vivid red petroglyphs at Babine Lake, B.C., has an unusual source

Fish fingers and bilateral symmetry — new fossils shed light on critical stages of evolution

Recent discoveries give clues about two critical stages in the evolution of modern complex animals

Cape Breton fossils are the oldest evidence of parental behaviour

A 300 million-year-old animal was preserved huddled around a juvenile in a den in a hollow tree

Scientists describe the most dangerous place in the history of planet Earth

A hundred million years ago, this site in what is now the Sahara had huge carnivorous dinosaurs, enormous crocodiles, and fish that could have eaten a human in a single bite.

Archeology from space — discovering history from a few hundred kilometres up

Researchers used to getting their hands dirty digging in the dirt, are finding ancient sites using satellite technology

August 15, 2020 - Quirks & Quarks annual book show

Three science books looking at forensic ecology, the many worlds of quantum mechanics and culinary extinction

Exploring culinary extinction: the foods we have eaten out of existence

Lenore Newman's new book 'Lost Feast' looks at the changing foods on our tables

How quantum particles could spawn an infinity of new universes — and we never notice them

Physicist Sean Carroll's new book describes the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics

Tales of a forensic ecologist — tracking criminals with pollen and spores

'I operate at the interface where the criminal and the natural world interact,' writes Patricia Wiltshire, the author of 'The Nature of Life and Death.'

August 8, 2020 - Space science summer show

The fight to be the first female astronaut, growing lettuce in space, deflecting asteroids, Canadian astronaut Jenni Sidey-Gibbons and more

The tale of the two female pilots who could have been the first women in space

A new book tells the tale of two brilliant women flyers who campaigned for a chance at spaceflight