The cobra lily (Darlingtonia californica) uses deception and patience to trick unsuspecting insect prey into its highly specialized pitcher traps.

Predatory Plant: Lure of the Cobra Lily

Whether it’s a lager or ale, sour or bitter, dark or light, most beer has one thing in common: yeast. KQED Science visits a commercial yeast laboratory and a local brewery to reveal how this key ingredient is a major player in both science history and beer production.

Science of Beer: Tapping the Power of Brewer's Yeast

What happens when you fill up a giant space with over 200 eager science fans from around the Bay Area for a weekend? You get Science Hack Day San Francisco, a two-day event where a diverse group of "hackers" -- from developers and designers to scientists and students -- works side-by-side to see what they can quickly create within 24 consecutive hours.

200 Geeks, 24 Hours: Science Hack Day in San Francisco

Forty percent of the food produced in the U.S. goes uneaten. From "farm to fork", there are many reasons for food waste, including consumer demand for perfect produce and confusion over expiration dates printed on packaged foods. This massive waste occurs as one in six Americans struggles with hunger every day, even in affluent regions such as Silicon Valley.

Fighting Food Waste

Something strange and unsettling is happening to Bay Area honeybees. Entomologists at San Francisco State University have identified the culprit: a tiny parasitic fly is causing the bees to exhibit bizarre nocturnal behaviors before suffering a gruesome demise.

ZomBees: Flight of the Living Dead

Stanford University students set out to revolutionize home design by entering a solar powered prefab house into the Department of Energy's biennial Solar Decathlon competition.

Stanford Students Debut Solar-Powered Prefab Home

Join a research team from University of California, Santa Cruz as they track, tranquilize and collar a wild puma. The special GPS collars collect data on the puma’s location and behavior, and they reveal how the big cats survive in their shrinking habitat in the Bay Area.

Chasing Pumas: Science on the SPOT

More than a million visitors visit Alcatraz every year, but a recent discovery has revealed another attraction that lives within the shadows of this historic prison.

Next Meal: Engineering Food

The Glowing Millipedes of Alcatraz: Science on the SPOT

The University Herbarium at the University of California - Berkeley boasts one of the largest and oldest collections of seaweed in the United States, dating back to the time of the U.S. Civil War. Kathy Ann Miller, a curator at the herbarium,  is leading a massive project to digitize nearly 80,000 specimens of seaweed collected from the west coast of North America.

Preserving the Forest of the Sea: Science on the SPOT

KQED Science explores science and environment news, trends and events from the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond with its award-winning features and reporting on television, radio and the Web.

The app wont let me select the podcast i want to play: i.e. March b3, 2014--mt umunhum

Mt Umunhum

This podcast is great. It scratches that itch to learn.

Cool

KQED Science Video Podcast

Looking up at the jet stream, Ken Caldera, a climate scientist from the Carnegie Institution of Global Ecology at Stanford University says, "We find that there’s more than 100 times the power necessary to power civilization in these high altitude winds."

Airborne Wind Energy

The invasive Asian carp has wreaked havoc in the Mississippi River system. The voracious plankton eaters have out-competed native fish and have become the dominant species in many locations. If the carp reach the Great Lakes, they pose a threat to its $7 billion fishery, so a battle against them is taking place on many fronts.

Asian Carp: Threat to Great Lakes

In a dark lab at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, engineers and mathematicians are developing new burners and studying different flames in hopes of better understanding the power of fire and how to make the most efficient flame possible.

QUEST Lab: Engineering Fire

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is hard at work on a $4.6 billion, decade-long construction project to overhaul the Hetch Hetchy water system, which delivers water from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite National Park and five local reservoirs to 2.5 million residents in the Bay Area.

Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct: Big Fixes for Big Quakes

An exoskeleton suit may seem like science fiction, turning ordinary humans into super heroes, but wearable robots are moving forward into reality.

Exoskeletons Walk Forward 

In 2006, the world learned that honeybees in America and Canada were dying in large numbers, and hives were becoming defunct. Five years later, what have scientists learned about the causes of Colony Collapse Disorder?

New Research into Disappearing Bees

Their basic design hasn’t changed much, but scientists still don’t fully understand the forces that allow humans to balance atop a bicycle. QUEST visits Davis – a city that loves its bicycles – to take a ride on a research bike and explore a collection of antique bicycles.

The Science of Riding a Bicycle

Bryant Austin

Scotts Valley photographer Bryant Austin swims eye-to-eye with the world's largest animals in order to bring attention to the plight of these intelligent ocean denizens.

Your Photos on QUEST: Bryant Austin

Black holes have been the stuff of science fiction since their discovery in the late sixties. But now a new, nimble NASA telescope is using its powerful x-ray vision to hunt for these abundant yet invisible, massive space oddities.

Black Holes: Objects of Attraction

Can nuclear power be produced safely and affordably? A scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, is working to do just that.

What's Next for Nuclear?

Ocean tides rise and fall twice a day, influenced by the gravitational forces of the sun and moon. Studying tides' rhythmic movements helps us understand both the ocean and the cosmos. Astronomer Ben Burress explains how tides work, and QUEST visits Crissy Field in San Francisco to see the oldest continually operating tidal gauge in the Western Hemisphere.

Science on the SPOT: Watching the Tides

Monarch Butterflies migrate from all over the western United States to overwinter along the California coast. Conservation Biologist Stu Weiss uses specialized photographic equipment to study what makes good Monarch overwintering habitat.

Science on the SPOT: Monarch Meetup

One in six kids in the United States is obese, a condition that doubles their risk of heart disease. Lorena Ramos, 14, a patient at the Healthy Hearts clinic at Children's Hospital Oakland struggles to lose weight. Will she succeed?

Childhood Obesity: Kids Fight Back

Forest ecologist Steve Sillett is leading a team of scientists as they climb and measure every branch of some of the last and tallest old growth redwoods in California.  Their goal is to learn how these ancient giants have historically responded to climatic shifts and to monitor how they are being impacted today by global warming.

Science on the SPOT: Measuring Redwood Giants

By 2050, as our population ages, 15 million Americans will suffer from Alzheimer's disease - triple today's number. Researchers at San Francisco's Gladstone Institutes have found that a gene may hold the key to a cure.

Alzheimer's: Is the Cure in the Genes?

This half-hour program looks at heart disease – the number one killer in the United States – from the point of view of a teenager trying to lower her risk, a heart attack survivor, and a scientist working to rebuild damaged hearts.

Pump It Up: Heart Health Special Report (FULL SHOW)

For decades amateur rocket builders, or "rocketeers," have been trying to reach space. Now with advances in materials and technology, they're able to do it. QUEST travels to rocket launches in fallowed fields and barren deserts to learn more about this addictive hobby and to meet a group of passionate high school rocketeers.

Amateur Rocketeers Reach For The Stars

At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, scientists are using a cutting-edge microscope, the first of its kind in the world, to image whole cells in 3-D with the penetrating power of x-rays. The new images generated by the microscope are offering a deeper, more precise understanding of cellular structures and how they change with diseases.

X-ray Microscope: Seeing Cells in 3-D

By rushing heart attack victims to the operating table and opening their blocked arteries while their heart attacks are underway, doctors are now able to save 95% of those who make it to the hospital.

Rushing to Save Heart Attack Patients

The best podcast episodes on Startups. For anyone working in a startup, or anyone interested in the incredible stories behind how people built companies like Instagram, and Facebook. Offering both practical advice and insights, as well as the stories for how many of the biggest startups got to where they are today. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

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Best Startups Podcasts

The best podcast episodes of anyone with an interesting story. With famous guests like Obama, LeBron James, Drake, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, Michelle Obama, Serena Williams, to anyone who has a unique and interesting story to tell. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!