Send us a text

Subscribe and unleash your inner science goblin. We see you. We respect it.

In this deep-dive episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole crack open the bizarre, beautiful world of echinoderms—the “spiny-skinned” sea creatures that are hard on the outside, squishy on the inside, and powered by a literal hydraulic system.

We’re talking sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, brittle stars, feather stars, and sea cucumbers—a group that looks like it shouldn’t make sense… until you learn the rules.

🌊 The water vascular system and how tube feet work like living suction hydraulics
⭐ Why echinoderms don’t have a centralized brain (and why that doesn’t mean “no thoughts”)
🧬 The wild symmetry twist: larvae start bilateral, then reorganize into radial body plans
🥒 Sea cucumbers and their most unhinged defense move: evisceration (yes, it’s what it sounds like)
🌿 Species spotlight: the sunflower sea star—a major predator of sea urchins that helps keep kelp forests alive
⚠️ And the real-world crisis: sea star wasting syndrome, which caused catastrophic declines, including over 90% loss of sunflower sea stars in much of their range

If you’ve ever looked at a sea star and thought “that thing has no business being real,” this episode is your guide to why it does—and why losing them changes entire ecosystems.

Support the show

🎉 Support us on Patreon to keep the episodes coming! 🪼🦤🧠 For more laughs, catch us on YouTube!

Send us a text

Subscribe and prepare to root for the slowest athletes on Earth.

In this Niche Scientists minisode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the bizarre but brilliant world of snail racing—and the scientists who study it to unlock secrets of movement, slime, and survival.

Every summer in England, snails compete in the World Snail Racing Championships. It sounds ridiculous… until you realize researchers are using these races to study animal locomotion, non-Newtonian fluids, and biomimicry.

🐌 Why snail slime is both sticky and slippery
🧪 How snail mucus behaves like a non-Newtonian fluid
🏃‍♂️ How snails move using muscular waves instead of steps
🩹 Why snail-inspired adhesives could revolutionize wound closure and surgery
🤖 How snail movement is inspiring soft robotics for medicine and rescue tech

Scientists from engineering, biomechanics, and ecology use snail racing data to understand friction control, climate adaptation, and even how future robots might crawl through collapsed buildings or blood vessels.

It’s slow science. It’s weird science. And it turns out… it’s incredibly important.

🎧 This episode is part of our Niche Scientists minisode series—short episodes spotlighting the wonderfully specific research quietly shaping the future.

Support the show

🎉 Support us on Patreon to keep the episodes coming! 🪼🦤🧠 For more laughs, catch us on YouTube!

Send us a text

Subscribe and rediscover a skill humans were never meant to lose.

In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole explore natural navigation—the ancient human ability to find direction by reading the land, sea, sky, plants, and animals instead of relying on GPS.

Long before maps and satellites, humans navigated forests and oceans using patterns, movement, and observation. And the wild part? That ability never disappeared—we just stopped practicing it.

🌿 How plants and trees reveal direction through sunlight and wind
🕷️ Why spiders, lichens, and grazing animals act as natural indicators
🌞 How the sun, stars, and seasonal patterns guide movement on land
🌊 How Polynesian wayfinders navigated the open ocean without instruments
🧭 Why navigation isn’t about knowing where you are—but knowing how to move

From reading asymmetry in trees to feeling ocean swells beneath a canoe, this episode reframes navigation as presence, pattern recognition, and attention—not coordinates on a screen.

🎧 Whether you’re an outdoor enthusiast, birder, hiker, paddler, or just someone craving a slower, more grounded way of moving through the world, this episode will change how you look at nature forever.

Support the show

🎉 Support us on Patreon to keep the episodes coming! 🪼🦤🧠 For more laughs, catch us on YouTube!