Podcasts by Overheard at National Geographic
Come dive into one of the curiously delightful conversations overheard at National Geographic’s headquarters, as we follow explorers, photographers, and scientists to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world. Hosted by Peter Gwin and Amy Briggs.
Further podcasts by National Geographic
Podcast on the topic Naturwissenschaften
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Playback: The Battle for the Soul of Artificial Intelligence from 2022-02-22T10:00
With every breakthrough, computer scientists are pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI). We see it in everything from predictive text to facial recognition to mapping disease incide...
ListenSummiting the World’s Most Dangerous Mountain from 2022-02-15T10:00
K2, a mountain in the Kashmir region of Asia, is the second highest peak on Earth and yet more dangerous than Mount Everest, especially in the winter. But in January 2021, a group of Nepali climber...
ListenJourney "Into the Depths" from 2022-02-10T10:00
In another special episode of Overheard, we continue the journey with National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts, who upends her life—including leaving her job—to join a group of Black scuba divers ...
ListenThe Wonders of Urban Wildlife from 2022-02-08T10:00
National Geographic Explorer Danielle Lee takes us on a tour of potential research sites around her home in the St. Louis area, sharing her passion for witnessing how wildlife (particularly rodents...
ListenIntroducing "Into the Depths" from 2022-02-03T10:00
In this special episode of Overheard, meet National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts, who upends her life—including leaving her job—to join a group of Black scuba divers searching for the wrecks of...
ListenThe Price of Adventure from 2022-02-01T10:00
Renowned mountaineer Alex Lowe had reached the summit of his career by 1999, scaling some of the planet’s most challenging peaks. Just a few months after he was featured in National Geographic as “...
ListenThe Arctic Story Hunter from 2022-01-25T10:00
What’s it like to grow up underneath the aurora borealis, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean? Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva describes leaving—and returning to—Tiksi, a Siberian coastal town that du...
ListenResurrecting Notre-Dame de Paris from 2022-01-18T10:00
National Geographic photographer Tomas van Houtryve documents the layered history and revival of one of the world’s most enduring landmarks, Notre-Dame de Paris. A reflection of the city and part o...
ListenOverheard in 2022: Weekly Adventures Ahead from 2022-01-11T10:00
In 2022, we’ll journey into the Amazon to solve the mystery of a boiling river, to the South Pacific to search for the legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, and to K2, the world’s second-highest mounta...
ListenCapturing the Year in an Instant from 2021-12-14T10:00
We’ll sift through 2021 with Whitney Johnson, National Geographic’s director of visuals and immersive experiences, as she works on the “Year in Pictures” special issue and shares what makes an unfo...
ListenDescendants of Cahokia from 2021-12-07T10:00
How did people create Cahokia, an ancient American Indian metropolis near present-day St. Louis? And why did they abandon it? Archaeologists are piecing together the answers—but Cahokia’s story isn...
ListenKenya's Wildlife Warriors from 2021-11-30T10:00
In the heart of the Serengeti, hippos bathe and hyenas snatch food from hungry lions. National Geographic Explorer of the Year Paula Kahumbu brings this world to life in her documentary series Wild...
ListenThe Gateway to Secret Underwater Worlds from 2021-11-23T11:00
When Jacques Cousteau was young, an accident sent him on a path that led him to invent scuba, opening up the underwater world to humans. Today, explorers David Doubilet and Laurent Ballesta follow ...
ListenAncient Orchestra from 2021-11-16T10:00
Sound on! From conch shells to bone flutes, humans have been making musical instruments for tens of thousands of years. What did prehistoric music sound like? Follow us on a journey to find the old...
ListenWhen Family Secrets (And Soap Operas) Fuel Creativity from 2021-11-09T10:00
National Geographic photographer Diana Markosian tells us about her remarkable childhood and how her career as a photographer led her into the war in Chechnya—and eventually to her long-lost father...
ListenModern Lives, Ancient Caves from 2021-11-02T09:00
There's a lost continent waiting to be explored, and it’s right below our feet. We’ll dig into the deep, human relationship to the underground, and why we understand it from an instinctive point of...
ListenA Skeptic's Guide to Loving Bats from 2021-10-26T09:00
Blood-sucking villains. Spooky specters of the night. Our views of bats are often based more on fiction than fact. Enter National Geographic Explorer at Large Rodrigo Medellín, aka the Bat Man of M...
ListenPlayback: If These Walls Could Talk from 2021-10-05T09:00
Social media is not just for modern folk. In this episode from the Overheard archives, we’ll look at how in ancient Pompeii, people also shared what they thought, who they met with, what they ate—j...
ListenPlayback: The Frozen Zoo from 2021-09-28T09:00
San Diego is home to the world’s first frozen zoo—a genetic library where scientists are racing to bank the tissues and stem cells of disappearing animals. As scientists begin to clone endangered s...
ListenThe Guerrilla Cyclists of Mexico City from 2021-09-21T09:00
Tired of waiting for the local government to build more bike lanes, a group of cyclists in Mexico City, the largest city in North America, took matters into their own hands: they painted the lanes ...
ListenVenturing into the Heart of Manila from 2021-09-14T09:00
While growing up, Hannah Reyes Morales wasn’t allowed to venture out into the rough streets of Manila, but later her work as a photographer would take her there. In the city’s dark corners, she she...
ListenJoel Sartore Wants to Save the Creepy-Crawlies from 2021-09-07T09:00
Joel Sartore has been called a modern Noah for his work on the Photo Ark, a photography project with a simple mission: Get people to care that we could lose half of all species by the turn of the n...
ListenPortraits of Afghanistan Before the Fall from 2021-08-30T09:00
Twenty years since the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban have once again seized power of the country. In the months leading up to the fall of the nation’s capital, Nati...
ListenLucy in the Sky With Asteroids from 2021-08-24T09:00
How did the planets form? How did life happen? Where did Earth’s water come from? To answer questions like these, scientists used to go big—looking at planets, dwarf planets, and moons—but now smal...
ListenCracking Down on Cheetah Traffickers from 2021-08-17T09:00
Cheetahs are in trouble. With just 7,000 left in the wild in Africa, populations have been in a continuous decline due to trophy hunting, habitat loss, retaliatory killings, and dealers looking to ...
ListenThe Aztec: From Empire to AI from 2021-08-10T09:00
August 1521: Spain’s victory over the Aztec launches colonization of Mexico, but Aztec culture will survive for centuries through preservation and practice. Aztec codices—16th-century Rosetta Stone...
ListenCooling Cities By Throwing Shade from 2021-08-03T09:00
Trees provide much-needed shade for urban Americans on a hot day, but not everyone gets to enjoy it. New research illuminates how decades of U.S. housing policy created cities where prosperous, whi...
ListenDive Deeper: Season 7 of Overheard from 2021-07-27T09:00
Exploring the superpowers of sharks. Building shade for warming cities. Remapping the solar system. Investigating illegal cheetah trafficking. Join us for curiously delightful conversations, overhe...
ListenPlayback: The Glass Stratosphere from 2021-07-20T09:00
As billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson lead the charge for a new commercial space race, we revisit an episode from our archives: What if women had been among the first to head to the moon? ...
ListenBonus episode: The Surprising Superpowers of Sharks from 2021-07-13T09:00
Sharks have never been able to outswim their reputation as mindless killers, which is so entrenched that the U.S. Navy once even tried to weaponize them. But are sharks really just “remorseless eat...
ListenOlympic Training During a Pandemic from 2021-06-22T09:00
It’s a dream year in the making. High jumper Priscilla Frederick-Loomis will do anything to support her training for the 2020 Olympics—even clean strangers’ houses. But as the postponed Tokyo Games...
ListenThe Next Generation's Champion of Chimps from 2021-06-15T09:00
How do you calculate the number of chimpanzees living in the forests of Nigeria? If you’re National Geographic Explorer Rachel Ashegbofe, you listen carefully. After discovering that Nigerian chimp...
ListenThe Real-Life MacGyver in Nat Geo’s Basement from 2021-06-08T09:00
In the basement of National Geographic’s headquarters, there’s a lab holding a secret tech weapon: Tom O’Brien. As Nat Geo’s photo engineer, O’Brien adapts new technologies to capture sights and so...
ListenGiraffes on a Boat from 2021-06-01T09:00
It sounds like the start of a bad joke: How do you move eight giraffes—including a newborn calf—off an island in Africa’s Western Rift Valley? Answer: It isn’t easy, and it involves a boat, blindfo...
ListenHow Cicadas Become Flying Saltshakers of Death from 2021-05-25T09:00
After 17 years underground, so-called Brood X cicadas get a fleeting moment in the sun and commence their deafening buzz. But periodical cicadas can’t escape a silent killer: a fungus that eats the...
ListenCamping on Sea Ice with Whale Hunters from 2021-05-11T09:00
Every spring Inupiaq hunters camp on the sea ice north of the Arctic Circle, in hopes of capturing a bowhead whale to share with their village. But as global warming accelerates ice melt, it threat...
ListenThe Battle for the Soul of Artificial Intelligence from 2021-05-04T09:00
With every breakthrough, computer scientists are pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI). We see it in everything from predictive text to facial recognition to mapping disease incide...
ListenTreat Your Brain: Season 6 of Overheard from 2021-04-27T04:00
Dive with killer whales to observe their surprising cultures. Venture into the world of artificial intelligence to see how scientists are teaching machines to recognize human diversity. Visit Nat G...
ListenBonus episode: The Secret Culture of Killer Whales from 2021-04-13T09:00
Scientists are discovering that killer whales, among the most social and intelligent of marine animals, have unique family structures and behaviors, passed from one generation to the next. National...
ListenThe Secret of Musical Genius from 2021-03-23T09:00
Mozart wowed audiences as a child. The Beatles blew away Ed Sullivan. Beyonce hypnotized Super Bowl crowds. The world has been enthralled by those we call musical geniuses. But what defines a music...
ListenLegends of Kingfishers, Otters, and Red-Tailed Hawks from 2021-03-16T09:00
Photographer Charlie Hamilton James chronicles his days ditching high school to hide out by the river near his home in Bristol, England, to snap photos of brilliantly plumed kingfishers dive-bombin...
ListenThe Real Amazons from 2021-03-09T10:00
Greek myths tell tales of Amazons, fearsome women warriors who were the equals of men. Now archaeological discoveries and modern DNA analysis are uncovering reality: these women warriors existed. N...
ListenDeep Inside the First Wilderness from 2021-03-02T10:00
On assignment in the canyons of the Gila Wilderness, Nat Geo photographer Katie Orlinsky has a fireside chat with Overheard host Peter Gwin about telling stories through pictures. She chronicles ho...
ListenUnraveling a Mapmaker’s Dangerous Decision from 2021-02-23T10:00
For much of recorded history, maps have helped us define where we live and who we are. National Geographic writer Freddie Wilkinson shows us how one small line on a map led to a bitter conflict in ...
ListenWhy War Zones Need Science Too from 2021-02-16T10:00
It’s a jewel of biodiversity, the so-called Galápagos of the Indian Ocean, and might also hold traces of the earliest humans to leave Africa. No wonder scientists want to explore Socotra. But it’s ...
ListenBonus Episode: In Conversation: Reframing Black History and Culture from 2021-02-12T10:00
For the past year, Overheard has explored the journeys of photographers and scientists who are focusing a new lens on history. National Geographic presents In Conversation, a special podcast episod...
ListenMars Gets Ready for Its Close-up from 2021-02-09T10:00
Mars Gets Ready for Its Close-up Mars has fascinated Earthlings for millennia, ever since we looked skyward and found the red planet. Through telescopes, probes, and robots, scientists have gazed a...
ListenSearching for the Himalaya’s Ghost Cats from 2021-02-02T10:00
Searching for the Himalaya’s Ghost Cats National Geographic’s editor at large Peter Gwin travels to the Himalaya to join photographer and National Geographic explorer Prasenjeet Yadav on his search...
ListenOverheard Season 5: Bigger. Weirder. Beautiful-er. from 2021-01-26T05:00
Tracking snow leopards in the Himalaya. Looking for ancient microbial life on Mars. Uncovering the truth about Amazon warriors. Unraveling a mapmaker’s dangerous decision. Join us for curiously del...
ListenBonus Episode: Bicycles, Better Angels, and Biden from 2021-01-21T16:53
Since George Washington took the first presidential oath of office in 1789, inaugurations have been held during times of war and peace, prosperity and uncertainty, strong unity and deep division. H...
ListenA Traveling Circus and its Great Escape from 2020-12-15T10:00
Decades of daring acrobatics, spectacular motorcycle stunts, and mind-blowing magic tricks couldn’t prepare Central America’s oldest-running circus for its most challenging feat yet—how to get home...
ListenAn Accidental Case of the Blues from 2020-12-08T10:00
Pigments color the world all around us, but where do those colors come from? Historically, they’ve come from crushed sea snails, beetles, and even ground-up mummies. But new pigments are still bein...
ListenIntroducing: Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller from 2020-12-03T10:00
Today we share an episode of a new podcast series called Trafficked, hosted by National Geographic Channel’s Mariana van Zeller. The series pulls back the curtain on the people operating traffickin...
ListenThe Trouble with America’s Captive Tigers from 2020-12-01T10:00
Less than 4,000 tigers live in the wild, but experts say there may be more than 10,000 captive in the U.S., where ownership of big cats is largely unregulated. Overheard’s Peter Gwin talks with Nat...
ListenThe Strange Tail of Spinosaurus from 2020-11-24T10:00
Spinosaurus has long been a superstar among dinosaur fans, with its massive alligator-like body and a huge “sail” of skin running the length of its spine. Though the fossil was unearthed a century ...
ListenThe Search for History’s Lost Slave Ships from 2020-11-17T10:00
On the bottom of the world’s oceans lie historic treasures—the lost wrecks of ships that carried enslaved people from Africa to the Americas. Only a handful have been identified so far, but Nationa...
ListenChasing the World’s Largest Tornado from 2020-11-10T10:00
How do you measure something that destroys everything it touches? That’s an essential question for tornado researchers. After he narrowly escaped the largest twister on record—a two-and-a-half-mile...
ListenDocumenting Democracy from 2020-11-03T10:00
Andrea Bruce, a National Geographic photographer, has covered conflict zones around the world for nearly two decades. She shares how the experience of capturing democratic ideals as a war photograp...
ListenCan You Hear the Reggae in My Photographs? from 2020-10-27T09:00
Photographer and National Geographic Storytelling Fellow Ruddy Roye grew up in Jamaica, a cradle of reggae and social justice movements. He describes how that background prepared him to cover the h...
ListenOverheard Season 4 from 2020-10-13T09:00
Documenting democracy. Untwisting the world’s largest tornado. Searching for wrecks of lost slave ships. Dinosaur hunting in Morocco. Accidentally inventing a new color. Come dive into one of the c...
ListenHow I Learned to Love Zombie Parasites from 2020-08-04T09:00
Photographer Anand Varma details his very first natural history adventures—not in Amazonian rainforests or on Polynesian coral reefs but in suburban Atlanta—and how a childhood fascination with cat...
ListenThe Failing of War Photography from 2020-07-28T09:00
Anastasia Taylor-Lind talks about how she grew up living the life of a modern gypsy, traveling across southern England in the back of a horse-drawn wagon, and how her experiences covering conflicts...
ListenThe Canary of the Sea from 2020-07-21T09:00
Chirp. Whistle. Creak. Beluga whales, the canaries of the sea, have a lot to say. But noise from ships can drown out their calls, putting calves in danger. What happens when humans press pause duri...
ListenA Spore of Hope from 2020-07-14T09:00
Humans face an existential problem: feeding billions of people in a warming world. But there’s a ray of hope. And it all starts with microbes. For more information on this episode, visit nationalg...
ListenThe Tree at the End of the World from 2020-07-07T09:00
A harrowing journey is all in a day's work for a Nat Geo explorer trying to find the world’s southernmost tree. But what happens when a self-proclaimed "normal human being" tags along? For more inf...
ListenThe United States v. One Tyrannosaurus Bataar from 2020-06-30T09:00
When a Mongolian paleontologist sees a dinosaur skeleton illegally up for auction in the United States, she goes to great lengths to stop the sale. For more information on this episode, visit natio...
ListenThe Unstoppable Wily Coyote from 2020-06-23T09:00
They're smart, they're sneaky, and they aren't moving out any time soon. Meet your new neighbor, the coyote, and find out why these cunning canids are on the rise in North America-and beyond. For m...
ListenThe Towers of Ladakh from 2020-06-16T09:00
A mechanical engineer teams up with an unlikely band of students who use middle school math and science to create artificial glaciers that irrigate Ladakh, a region in India hit hard by climate cha...
ListenOverheard Season 3 from 2020-06-10T09:00
Smuggled dinosaur bones. Man-made glaciers. An audacious quest to find the world's southernmost tree. Each week, we'll dive into one of the curiously delightful conversations we've overheard around...
ListenThe Virus Hunter from 2020-04-28T09:30
Coronaviruses aren't new. For more than 20 years, German virologist Rolf Hilgenfeld has been looking for ways to slow or stop the virus. What does it take to find a treatment for coronaviruses, and...
ListenThe Frozen Zoo from 2019-12-10T09:26
Right now, one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. Conservation scientists are doing whatever they can to save them, or at least of piece of them. For the last 45 years...
ListenIf These Walls Could Talk from 2019-11-26T10:10
Social Media is not just for modern folk. In ancient Pompeii, people also shared what they thought, who they met with, what they ate... It's just, they had to use different technology. For more inf...
ListenThe Aquarius Project from 2019-11-19T09:30
A fireball from outer space crashed into one of Earth's biggest lakes. Scientists didn't know how to find it. So, they called in just the right people for the job -- an actor and a bunch of teenage...
ListenMarch of the Beaver from 2019-11-12T09:31
The desolate Alaskan tundra - a landscape that has literally been frozen solid for thousands of years - is suddenly caving in on itself. Colonizing beavers are engineering new wetlands that thaw th...
ListenCave of the Jaguar God from 2019-11-05T09:36
Crawl into the Maya underworld, where science meets spirits, shamans, and snakes. A long-forgotten cave could shed light on one of history's most enduring questions: why did the ancient Maya collap...
ListenThe Hidden Cost of the Perfect Selfie from 2019-10-29T08:51
What do tigers, sloths, elephants and bears have in common? They're all part of the incredibly lucrative captive wildlife tourism industry. Travelers from around the world clamor for opportunities ...
ListenThe Alien Underground from 2019-10-22T08:09
Half a mile below the surface of the earth, in a cave too hot to explore without an ice-packed suit, NASA scientist and Nat Geo explorer Penny Boston clambers around glassy crystals that are taller...
ListenDigging Up Disaster from 2019-10-15T08:58
How did an ancient Roman harbor end up in ruins? Scientists realized the culprit was a long-forgotten natural disaster that left tell-tale geological clues -- and possibly an eyewitness account in ...
ListenOverheard at National Geographic Season 2 from 2019-10-02T14:32
Exploring the ancient Maya Cave of the Jaguar God. The graffiti of Pompeii. Searching for alien life underground. New season of Overheard at National Geographic starting October 15th. If you like w...
ListenHoneybee Chop Shop from 2019-07-30T08:51
What is a honeybee chop shop, and why do they exist? Turns out the answer has everything to do with the food on our tables. We dig into the sticky business of beekeeping and commercial agriculture....
ListenThe Glass Stratosphere from 2019-07-23T04:01
What if women had been among the first to head to the moon? A NASA physician thought that wasn't such a far fetched idea back in the 1960s. He developed the physical and psychological tests used to...
ListenThe Harem Conspiracy from 2019-07-16T04:02
Murder, succession, and a 18-foot scroll of papyrus that reads like an ancient Egyptian episode of Law and Order. We get the lowdown on the Judicial Papyrus of Turin. For more information on this e...
ListenThe Zombie Mice of Marion Island from 2019-07-09T04:03
Mice on the sub-Antarctic Marion Island are out for blood, and they're feasting, zombie-style, on living, immature albatrosses. Turns out, these tiny mammals are a very big threat to these huge sea...
ListenScuba Diving in a Pyramid from 2019-07-02T04:00
One of National Geographic's writers was hard to pin down for a while. That's because she was in Sudan, scuba diving underneath a pyramid. We had so many questions for her-especially once she share...
ListenRats vs Humans: A Love Story from 2019-06-25T04:00
Bringers of plague, schleppers of pizza slices, garbage gobblers. Rats have adapted over the millennia to survive and thrive in human company, much to our amazement and (often) disgust. But love th...
ListenEvolution of a Little Liar from 2019-06-18T04:00
Most parents see lying as a cause for worry or reprimand. But some experts suggest lying at a young age could be a welcome sign of childhood development. So what does lying tell us about human cogn...
ListenHumpback Hit Factory from 2019-06-11T02:48
There's a humpback whale song sensation that's sweeping the South Pacific. We'll learn about the burgeoning study of "whale culture"-and why these super smart cetaceans may have a lot more in commo...
ListenIntroducing Overheard from National Geographic from 2019-06-04T17:16
A new weekly podcast from National Geographic. We talk with explorers and scientists who are uncovering amazing stories at the edges of our wild and wonderful world. New episodes every Tuesday, sta...
ListenIntroducing Overheard from National Geographic from 2019-06-04T17:16
A new weekly podcast from National Geographic. We talk with explorers and scientists who are uncovering amazing stories at the edges of our wild and wonderful world. New episodes every Tuesday, sta...
ListenIntroducing Overheard from National Geographic from 2019-06-04T17:16
A new weekly podcast from National Geographic. We talk with explorers and scientists who are uncovering amazing stories at the edges of our wild and wonderful world. New episodes every Tuesday, sta...
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