Curiosity Daily Podcast: Aliens Studying Humans, an AI Fairy Tale, and The Importance of Taking Off Your Shoes

Take a bite out of our 38th annual Shark Week event, starting July 26, 2026! Here's everything we have coming up, only on Discovery.

Shark Week is back for its 37th year on Sunday, July 20th. Don't miss it!

National Insect week occurs between June 20 -26. The week focuses on the importance of insects within ecosystems, nature, and wildlife. Insects do have a bad reputation, as some are a nuisance, and some are scary, but each plays a key role in maintaining order in nature. In celebration of the hard-working insects that you may see in your backyard, here’s a list of the ones you won’t be seeing. The rarest insects on the planet.

Luke Tipple is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the Outlaw Ocean Ian Urbina, who has dedicated his life to chronicling crime on the high seas. They discuss the state of our world’s oceans, how nearly 20% of your seafood was likely caught illegally, and the surprising link between modern slavery and the killing of sharks.

Host Luke Tipple is joined this week by renowned Harvard professor, Dr. Avi Loeb, who recently led a deep-sea expedition to discover if evidence for advanced alien life crash-landed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014. They discuss the recent Congressional UFO hearings, how the last seventy years of research into extraterrestrial life has been potentially misguided, and the challenges of searching for tiny objects on the bottom of the ocean.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler explains how “Nudge” has changed the world. Plus: squirrel-inspired robots!

Learn how to tap into your “gut feeling,” which knows more than you think it does; and why Earth's core is growing lopsided.

Learn about non-human animals that say hello and goodbye; life on Snowball Earth; and how to learn skills twice as fast.

Learn about why children write letters backward; how dogs know when you’re lying to them; and mountains on neutron stars.

Learn about the mystery of how Tibetan monks seem to keep meditating after death; and a woolly mammoth that walked VERY far.