CBC Quirks

CBC Quirks Quirks & Quarks is CBC Radio’s home for listeners who want to understand what science can tell us Quirks & Quarks is CBC Radio's weekly science program.

Join host Bob McDonald to find out the latest in science, technology, medicine and the environment. This page is run by the show's producers.

We kick off another season by catching up with Canadian scientists to learn about their fascinating summer research. Can...
09/08/2023

We kick off another season by catching up with Canadian scientists to learn about their fascinating summer research.
Can't see our links here? Bookmark our website to get the latest episodes from CBC Radio!

We catch up with Canadian scientists who’ve been exploring the Pacific ocean depths, adventuring in the far north and chasing butterflies on the shores of the great lakes.

Why aren't animals as vivid as birds? Can you store light in a battery? Find answers to all this and more in our fabulou...
09/01/2023

Why aren't animals as vivid as birds? Can you store light in a battery? Find answers to all this and more in our fabulous listener question show.

What would happen if we were side-swiped by a comet? Can you store light in a battery? What pollution do rockets produce? How do birds choose how fast to fly? Find out on the latest edition of our ever-fascinating Listener Question show.

Quiet supersonic aircraft, and Brian Cox talks about black holes.
08/25/2023

Quiet supersonic aircraft, and Brian Cox talks about black holes.

Quiet supersonic aircraft, and Brian Cox talks about black holes

Oldest African dinosaur, fork-headed trilobite, and why birds fly north in the winter.
08/18/2023

Oldest African dinosaur, fork-headed trilobite, and why birds fly north in the winter.

Oldest African dinosaur, fork-headed trilobite, and why birds fly north in the winter

This week, we're reading books about physics! The Milky Way tells its story; the experiments that gave us the modern pic...
08/14/2023

This week, we're reading books about physics! The Milky Way tells its story; the experiments that gave us the modern picture of matter; and how humans run on electricity.

And: How humans run on electricity.

Embalming workshop, early farmer violence, and hidden stories in books.
07/21/2023

Embalming workshop, early farmer violence, and hidden stories in books.

Embalming workshop, farmer violence, and hidden stories in books

Summertime for many scientists is when they are at their busiest, travelling to remote locations to do science in the fi...
06/29/2023

Summertime for many scientists is when they are at their busiest, travelling to remote locations to do science in the field. Hear about their research into B.C. sea stars, 10,000-year-old frozen squirrels, polar bear hair and more.

For many of us, summer is the time for things like beaches, bike rides, and BBQs. For some scientists, however, summertime is also when they are at their busiest, travelling to remote locations to get up close and personal with nature.

Check our website for the best of Quirks & Quarks, where our favourite shows and interviews from this past season will b...
06/28/2023

Check our website for the best of Quirks & Quarks, where our favourite shows and interviews from this past season will be highlighted all summer.

CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks covers the quicks of the expanding universe to the quarks within a single atom... and everything in between.

Find out about rocket pollution, the speed of bird flight, brightly-coloured mammals, and more.
06/24/2023

Find out about rocket pollution, the speed of bird flight, brightly-coloured mammals, and more.

What would happen if we were side-swiped by a comet? Can you store light in a battery? What pollution do rockets produce? How do birds choose how fast to fly? Find out on the latest edition of our ever-fascinating Listener Question show.

Bob's blog: If something goes wrong either aboard a submersible on a trip to the deep ocean or on a spacecraft to Mars, ...
06/23/2023

Bob's blog: If something goes wrong either aboard a submersible on a trip to the deep ocean or on a spacecraft to Mars, the crews are largely on their own.

If something goes wrong either aboard a submersible on a trip to the deep ocean or on a spacecraft to Mars, the crews are largely on their own

Cockroaches love sweets so much, they use sugar as part of their mating ritual. And while humans have messed with the ro...
06/22/2023

Cockroaches love sweets so much, they use sugar as part of their mating ritual. And while humans have messed with the roaches' love life by creating sugary poison baits, the pests have found ways to adapt new mating games.

The poison baits we set out for cockroaches are sweet to attract the insects, which use sugar as a "nuptial gift" in their mating. A new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B suggests that German cockroaches have adapted to the lethal baits by making a different gift and using di...

When they leave the womb early, premature babies lose an important opportunity to practice their motor skills. A new stu...
06/21/2023

When they leave the womb early, premature babies lose an important opportunity to practice their motor skills. A new study involving a tiny skateboard aims to bridge that developmental gap.

When they leave the womb early, premature babies lose an important opportunity. All that late-term kicking and squirming in mom’s belly is important exercise that they don’t get in an incubator, which can hamper their motor development. Marianne Barbu-Roth, a researcher at the Integrative Neuros...

Sibling rivalry among Canada jay chicks can be deadly: when the fledglings are 6 weeks old, the chicks fight, and the do...
06/20/2023

Sibling rivalry among Canada jay chicks can be deadly: when the fledglings are 6 weeks old, the chicks fight, and the dominant one aggressively forces its siblings to abandon the territory.

Sibling rivalry among Canada Jay chicks can have deadly consequences. When the fledglings are about six weeks old, the chicks fight and the dominant one aggressively forces its siblings to abandon the territory. Ryan Norris, an ecologist from The University of Guelph, found the ejected siblings have...

The famous early human ancestor known as Lucy stood only a metre tall – but new research suggests that while she was sma...
06/19/2023

The famous early human ancestor known as Lucy stood only a metre tall – but new research suggests that while she was small, she was mighty, with much bigger lower body muscles than ours.

Lucy, the famous human relative, left a small skeleton — only a metre tall — but a new study published in Royal Society Open Science suggests that while she was small, she was mighty. University of Cambridge paleoanthropologist Ashleigh Wiseman combined open-source data of Lucy's fossil with 3D ...

Bob's blog: The Cassini spacecraft discovered phosphates in Enceladus that are at least 100 times more concentrated than...
06/16/2023

Bob's blog: The Cassini spacecraft discovered phosphates in Enceladus that are at least 100 times more concentrated than on Earth - another piece of evidence suggesting life may be thriving beneath the icy surface of Saturn's moon.

Phosphorus, in the form of phosphates, is generally considered the ultimate limiting nutrient in Earth oceans that's necessary for life

Science is a Drag is the brainchild of a group of scientists who saw a need to create more inclusive spaces in STEM and ...
06/16/2023

Science is a Drag is the brainchild of a group of scientists who saw a need to create more inclusive spaces in STEM and find an innovative way of sharing their research.

Science is a Drag is a performance meant to challenge stereotypes about who belongs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, where scientists present their work in a novel way and perform in drag.

Neuroscientist Marc Dingman's new book delves into the unusual things that happen after brain injury.
06/15/2023

Neuroscientist Marc Dingman's new book delves into the unusual things that happen after brain injury.

Brain injuries that cause major changes in cognition, personality and abilities have given us significant insight into how the brain functions. Neuroscientist Marc Dingman has collected some of these stories in a new book, Bizarre: The most peculiar cases of human behavior and what they tell us abou...

Under stresses like high water temperatures, corals will kick out the colorful symbiotic algae that live inside of them,...
06/14/2023

Under stresses like high water temperatures, corals will kick out the colorful symbiotic algae that live inside of them, and go bone-white – which can lead to their death.

Under stresses like high water temperatures, corals will kick out the colorful symbiotic algae that live inside of them, and go bone-white – which can lead to their death. A new study published in ISME Communications suggests that one of the reasons they do this is that the algae might be sufferin...

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Videos

A Throwback to Wonderstruck
A Throwback to Wonderstruck

This week marks Bob McDonald's 30th anniversary as host of Quirks & Quarks. But before Quirks, McDonald hosted a CBC-TV children's science show called Wonderstruck. Here's a clip from 1991 that features an amazing piece of new tech.

Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse.
Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse.

New research shows the Vikings were in Newfoundland exactly 1000 years ago; Rocks from Chang'e 5 sample return mission reveal a younger side of the moon; Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel; Streetlights — especially new LEDs — can drastically reduce caterpillar numbers; Milk may have been the fuel that enabled a major human migration; Whoa Nelly! Modern horses come from ancestors we improved 4000 years ago; How can tiny frogs make so much noise?

Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse.
Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse.

New research shows the Vikings were in Newfoundland exactly 1000 years ago; Rocks from Chang'e 5 sample return mission reveal a younger side of the moon; Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel; Streetlights — especially new LEDs — can drastically reduce caterpillar numbers; Milk may have been the fuel that enabled a major human migration; Whoa Nelly! Modern horses come from ancestors we improved 4000 years ago; How can tiny frogs make so much noise?

Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse.
Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse.

New research shows the Vikings were in Newfoundland exactly 1000 years ago; Rocks from Chang'e 5 sample return mission reveal a younger side of the moon; Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel; Streetlights — especially new LEDs — can drastically reduce caterpillar numbers; Milk may have been the fuel that enabled a major human migration; Whoa Nelly! Modern horses come from ancestors we improved 4000 years ago; How can tiny frogs make so much noise?

Too much choice, for some people, can lead to stressful 'choice overload'
Too much choice, for some people, can lead to stressful 'choice overload'

“Because they find making choices very onerous they try to bail out and pick something adequate and try to move on.” http://cbc.ca/1.5910702

Me, myself and I: Little words might signal a breakup is coming, long before you know it
Me, myself and I: Little words might signal a breakup is coming, long before you know it

New research suggests that long before a relationship comes crashing down, our word use shifts in subtle ways that may signal the end is near and we may not even know it yet http://cbc.ca/1.5901661

Amy Shira Teitel
Amy Shira Teitel

Should we be sending humans to space? That was the debate topic for this special Quirks & Quarks episode, which you can hear here: http://cbc.ca/1.5174690 Space historian Amy Shira Teitel from says we should be careful about romanticizing the Apollo missions.

Chris Hadfield
Chris Hadfield

@Col. Chris Hadfield on what Star Trek got wrong about space exploration. Hear the full Quirks & Quarks debate on whether we should sending humans to space here: http://cbc.ca/1.5174690

Renée Hložek
Renée Hložek

Should we have humans in space? That was the debate topic for this special episode of Quirks & Quarks, which you can hear here: http://cbc.ca/1.5174690 Cosmologist Renée Hložek says in this clip we need to "give the solar system and our planet the kind of respect it deserves."

What to save? Quirks & Quarks' conservation special
What to save? Quirks & Quarks' conservation special

This spring we learned we're facing a "Global Extinction Crisis" with a million species at risk. How do scientists decide which species to save with limited resources and so many species in need of help? We explore this thorny conservation question through a Canadian lens on this special episode of Quirks & Quarks. http://cbc.ca/1.4813305

Chris Hadfield
Chris Hadfield

@Col. Chris Hadfield on what Star Trek got wrong about space exploration. Hear the full debate on whether we should have humans in space here: http://cbc.ca/1.5174690

Amy Shira Teitel
Amy Shira Teitel

Space historian Amy Shira Teitel says we should be careful about romanticizing the Apollo missions. Hear the full Quirks debate on whether we should have humans in space here: http://cbc.ca/1.5174690

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