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Strange Bites

Lance Martin

Strange Bites is a short science podcast. Lance Martin takes a real discovery in biology, physics, neuroscience, genetics, anthropology, or paleontology and explains it in about fifteen minutes, with just enough story to make the facts stick.New episodes twice a week.

Recent bites include a brain built from two lineages, bacteria that grow their own wires, a gene that can still jump, and fossils that may have been an animal’s compass. Sources are in the show notes. The science is not simplified past recognition. It is told so you can follow it.

If you want weird science, new discoveries, and a science podcast you can finish on a walk, start anywhere. Stay strange. Question everything.

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  • 45 episodes
  • a few times a week
  • Avg 11 min
  • English

Episodes 45

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  • S1 · E35
    June 17 · 9 min

    Episode 35: The Fungi Superhighway

    Imagine stepping out into a quiet field on a clear night. The grass brushes your ankles. The stars wheel overhead. Everything feels… still. But what if I told you that right beneath the soles of your shoes, an ancient, living superhighway is humming with activity? A network so vast it could stretch to the Sun and back nearly a billion times. A hidden circulatory system pulsing with life, trading secrets between plants, locking away carbon, and holding our world together in ways we’re only beginning to understand. Tonight, on Episode 35, we descend into the soil to uncover one of the most mind-bending discoveries of 2026: the first global map of Earth’s massive underground fungal networks. Sources ScienceDaily full story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260614011845.htm SPUN / Mycorrhizal Infrastructure Map (interactive): https://spun.earth/ (explore the map directly) Full paper in Science: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu4373 (DOI: 10.1126/science.adu4373) SPUN/EurekAlert: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131131

  • S1 · E34
    June 15 · 11 min

    Episode 34: The Snuffleupagus of the Sea

    Deep beneath the waves, in the twilight zones where sunlight struggles to penetrate, the coral reefs hold secrets that have waited millions of years to be uncovered. Not every mystery hides in the abyss. Some lurk in plain sight, swaying gently among the fronds of red algae, invisible to all but the most patient observers. Today, we descend into the gardens of the Great Barrier Reef to encounter a creature so perfectly disguised that it evaded science for decades. A tiny phantom, draped in living filaments that make it look like a forgotten relic from a children’s story, or something far older and stranger that nature itself dreamed up. This is episode 34, the Snuffleupagus of the Sea (Solenostomus Snuffleupagus). A ghost pipefish that blurs the line between myth and science. Sources Original Research Paper (formal description):
Short, G., & Harasti, D. (2026). Solenostomus snuffleupagus sp. nov., a hairy ghost pipefish (Teleostei: Solenostomidae) from the Southwest Pacific… Journal of Fish Biology.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jfb.70497 National Geographic (excellent overview with photos and diver context):
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/snuffleupagus-fish Science News (strong on science details and timeline): 
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-fish-sesame-street-snuffleupagus Scientific American (great narrative on the long search):
 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-real-mr-snuffleupagus-meet-the-oceans-strangest-new-fish-species/ Wikipedia (concise summary with references to the paper and key collections):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solenostomus_snuffleupagus Sydney Morning Herald (detailed on the 25-year quest and local Australian angle): 
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-25-year-ocean-mystery-solved-with-a-nod-to-mr-snuffleupagus-20260510-p5zvg4.html Discover Magazine (focus on camouflage and evolutionary context): 
https://www.discovermagazine.com/this-shaggy-new-fish-looked-so-much-like-snuffleupagus-that-scientists-named-it-after-him-49110 IFLScience (includes quotes and collection challenges): 
https://www.iflscience.com/its-beautiful-you-wouldnt-expect-it-to-be-a-predator-new-hairy-looking-ghost-pipefish-is-a-real-life-mr-snuffleupagus-83544 Mongabay (conservation and broader reef context): 
https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/new-species-of-ghost-pipefish-named-after-sesame-street-character-found-in-australia/ CBC Radio / As It Happens (interview with Graham Short): 
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/snuffleupagus-fish-9.7207623

  • S1 · E33
    June 11 · 6 min

    Episode 33: Helmets from the Deep

    Deep beneath the gentle waves of the Mediterranean, off the sunny coast of Spain, lies a secret that waited centuries to be told. Heavy iron helmets, silent and encrusted in stone-like shells, resting in the sand like forgotten soldiers from a war no one remembered. For over 30 years, experts swore they belonged to ancient Roman legions. But a clever team of modern detectives just proved the helmets were hiding a much stranger truth – one that rewrites a piece of medieval history. Tonight, we plunge into the murky waters of the Piedras de la Barbada site near Benicarló, Spain, where science cracked open a mystery sealed by the sea. This is Episode 33: “Helmets from the Deep”. Sources ScienceDaily Summary (June 8, 2026): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260606075515.htm University of Alicante / EurekAlert Release: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1131062 Full Paper in Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2026): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/radiocarbon-dating-and-characterisation-of-textiles-preserved-in-late-medieval-helmets-from-benicarlo-castellon-spain/59996BEBF9D493373F80642F304E1C3F Ancient Origins Overview: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/medieval-helmet-hoard-00102847

  • S1 · E32
    June 9 · 8 min

    Episode 32: Is the Block Universe Theory Wrong

    Imagine stepping into a vast, frozen gallery, an endless hall of glass where every moment of your life, every breath you’ve taken, every choice you’ll ever make, is already carved in perfect, unchanging detail. Your first cry as a baby. The laugh you’ll share decades from now. The final beat of your heart. All of them… there. Right now. Not happening, but existing side by side like statues in an eternal museum. This isn’t the plot of a sci-fi thriller. This is one of the most popular ways modern physics describes our universe: the block universe. And a fresh philosophical challenge, just this week, suggests it might rest on a hidden misunderstanding, one that could unravel how we think about reality itself. This is Episode 32 and Tonight, we dive into the weird heart of space-time… where the very fabric of existence might be more mysterious than we ever dreamed. Sources ScienceDaily Summary (June 8, 2026): https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260606075858.htm Original Article by Daryl Janzen in The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-space-time-259630 Music created with Suno - https://suno.com/s/kBby0AbtDNqy1TGc

  • S1 · E31
    June 4 · 7 min

    Episode 31: Saturn’s Phantom Spin and the Eye That Saw Through It

    In the freezing dark beyond the asteroid belt, where sunlight is a distant rumor, there spins a world wrapped in rings and secrets. For decades, astronomers watched Saturn and heard conflicting heartbeats. Voyager’s first whispers in the 1980s and Cassini’s long, patient stare from 2004 to 2017 told the same uneasy tale: Saturn’s rotation rate kept shifting. One measurement said it spun one way; another, taken years later, said something different. A planet the size of nearly ten Earths, with the mass of ninety-five, should not change how fast it turns on any timescale we could notice. Its deep, hidden core should beat with steady, ancient rhythm. Yet the signals kept drifting, as if the ringed giant itself were hesitating, speeding up, then slowing again... Sources ScienceDaily coverage (May 29, 2026): “Astronomers finally solve Saturn’s decades-long spin mystery”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260529043658.htm Phys.org article detailing the research: “JWST solves decades-long mystery about why Saturn appears to change its spin”
https://phys.org/news/2026-03-jwst-decades-mystery-saturn.html Original peer-reviewed paper: “JWST/NIRSpec Reveals the Atmospheric Driver of Saturn’s Variable Magnetospheric Rotation Rate” by Tom S. Stallard et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics (2026)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025JA034578

Showing 41–45 of 45 episodes