Kind: captions
Language: en
Alok Patel: Happy Halloween
my fellow science obsessives!
To keep things creepy - and crawly -, the
inspiration for our show today is one of
Gothic horror lore’s best sidekicks. You may
know him from one of his many movie appearances.
Seward: Your diet, Mr. Renfield is disgusting.
Renfield: Actually, they're perfectly nutritious.
You see it's life that I
ingest. Gives back life to me.
Seward: A fly gives you life?
Renfield: Certainly.
Seward: I shall have to invent a new
classification of lunatic for you.
Alok Patel: That’s Renfield, Dracula's
loyal aide and a patient in an asylum
with a habit of eating creepy crawlies. But
there are actually lots of people who think
there’s nothing unusual about eating insects.
Tanya Latty: There's a tree ant that's green and
you kinda lick their butts, which I know sounds
really weird, but they taste like citrus and they
have this really nice like tang to them.
Arnold van Huis: I like fried termites
very much. Crickets are also very nice.
Tanya Latty: I want to try a honey pot
ant. This particular ant harvests the sweet
secretions of other insects, particularly,
and they store them in their abdomens.
They almost look like grapes. They're so
full of sweet, sugary yumminess. I’ve heard
they are delicious. I'd eat them in a heartbeat.
Alok Patel: These folks aren’t in an asylum.
Nope, they're scientists and just two of the
people we'll meet to tell us why more of us should
start eating bugs. And the excitement is stinging
us at NOVA Now, the podcast that flies through
the web of news headlines and to keep the buzz
on science! I’m Alok Patel.
Monica Martinez:
This is where the magic happens.
Alok Patel: OK.
Monica Martinez: This is where
we toast all of our insects,
and we can toast thousands and thousands at once.
Alok Patel: I paid a visit to a unique food
business local to me in the Bay Area. I spoke to
Monica Martinez, founder and owner of Don Bugito,
one of the first edible insect food
companies in the United States.
Monica Martinez: You know, the edible insects
seem to fall in the category of future foods
and kind of like a new trend. I grew up in Mexico
and we have a very strong pre-Columbian culture.
Pre-Hispanic before any Europeans came through
America, edible insects were part of our diet.
Same as venison, rabbit, duck. So there
were other alternative proteins like fish,
right. We didn't have cows, we didn't
have chickens, we didn't have pork.
So that's why we're trying to rescue and
revive edible insects as a food from the
past. Mexico is one, actually, of the leaders.
We have over 500 varieties of edible insects.
I had to develop this kind of like… thinking,
OK, what sounded less scary for people somebody
who has never had an insect?
Alok Patel: Mealworm tacos
Monica Martinez: Waxworm larva tacos
Alok Patel: Wow, larva tacos. And you said…
Monica Martinez: Toffee mealworm
Alok Patel: Toffee mealworm ice cream.
Monica Martinez: Toffee mealworm ice cream, yeah.
Alok Patel: And cricket tostadas?
Monica Martinez: Yes.
Alok Patel: That actually sounds delicious.
Monica Martinez: Yeah!
Alok Patel: Mealworms aren’t worms but insects,
the larvae of the beetle Tenebrio Molitor.
Monica Martinez: Most people think when you're
talking about insects, they're like going to be
like juicy and soggy and something like that.
Alok Patel: And this is the complete opposite.
There's like a nuttiness and a crunchiness, not
overbearing, great chocolate flavor. And I’m gonna
look at the nutrition on this, actually because...
yeah, it says three grams of protein per serving
and I'm eating chocolate.
Monica Martinez:
OK, ready for this one?
Alok Patel: The coconut
brittle bugito. That actually… wow!
Monica Martinez: So, these guys…
mealworms are very like rich in flavor.
They're like nuts, like like almonds.
Alok Patel: This one is also really good, crunchy
has good texture to it. OK. The first half of that
taste, and I was like, I'm just eating coconut
brittle. This really good. I've had it before.
The latter half, there’s all
of a sudden there's like a
a distinct nuttiness or something, and I'm like,
“Oh, this... there's something special about this
brittle.” And the specialness is the mealworm.
Monica Martinez: So, there's no,
like -- should not even be a talk about
it. It should be just like, “Shut up,
open the mouth and eat insects.” Because this
should not even be the future. It should be now.
Let's eat them.
Alok Patel:
OK, enough snacking. Let's get into the science
to help us properly appreciate these bugs.
Tanya Latty: My name is Dr. Tanya Latty and I am
associate professor at the University of Sydney
in Sydney, Australia. I'm an entomologist, which
means I'm a scientist that studies insects and
other invertebrates. I love love, love insects.
Alok Patel: Tanya Latty argues that it's
difficult to be an animal lover and not
love insects. After all, insects make up
80 percent of all animal species!
Tanya Latty: So we think insects,
and we're thinking, “Cockroaches and mosquitoes
and and oh, this time I had flies at my house
and it was terrible.” And we forget that
there are such huge diversity of insects,
and they're out there doing all these really
important jobs for us. Things like chocolate
wouldn't exist without insects.
Alok Patel: Sold! What would
we all do without chocolate?
Tanya Latty: A large chunk of
our food and particularly all the things that are
really delicious, those things are pollinated by
insects. If we didn't have cockroaches and
flies and things moving around underfoot,
we'd be drowning in our own waste. You know,
they're nature's waste management crew.
Alok Patel: So they help feed
us AND clean up after us.
Tanya Latty: It's really unfortunate that we tend
to associate insects with just those very, very,
very small number of species that cause problems
for us. Insects kind of form a really important
part of the, you know, the web of life or the food
pyramid because lots and lots of things eat them.
Lots of things. So birds, mammals, reptiles,
all these groups that people really love,
a lot of them are dependent on insects for food.
And even if they're not directly dependent,
then the things they eat are usually dependent
on insects for food. I don't expect everybody
to love them. But hating them is dangerous.
Alok Patel: And here's someone who started
out treating bugs as pests. He’s now one of their
biggest champions for their nourishing potential.
Arnold van Huis is emeritus professor at
Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Arnold van Huis: I'm retired, but that
means that I have all the time in the world
to dedicate myself to edible insects.
Alok Patel: He's a tropical entomologist.
27 years ago, he was studying how to
PROTECT crops from insects. But in Niger,
he learned something unexpected.
Arnold van Huis: They told me that
the women make more money by selling the
grasshoppers than by selling their millet.
That surprised me so much because I had been
in Niger for three years. I didn't notice.
So it was the first time people told me
about eating insects. And when I came to
the Netherlands and I gave my first talk about
this, I think in 1996, people were astonished.
Alok Patel: He turned his focus
to edible insects. The practice
of eating insects is known as entomophagy.
Arnold van Huis: Honestly, I don't like the word
entomophagy, because it is invented by Western
people who think that people eat strange things
in the tropics. I mean, it's just normal food.
We also don't have a word for livestock eating.
Alok Patel: Arnold van Huis has helped build
enthusiasm for eating insects. In 2013,
he co-authored a book published by Food
and Agriculture Organization of the UN,
Edible insects: Future prospects
for food and feed security,
which has been downloaded seven million times!
Arnold van Huis: And it got an enormous press
coverage. It was absolutely amazing. In 2014,
we had a conference, Insects to Feed the World,
and that was also attended by 450 people from
forty five different countries. So I think that
was the start worldwide that people started to
realize we can eat insects. And if I look now
at the number of scientific publications,
it's growing exponentially. Absolutely
amazing what has been done the last ten years.
Alok Patel: In the U.S. and Europe, insect-eating
may be unfamiliar. But in other parts of
the world, it’s part of the regular diet of
billions, especially in tropical countries.
Arnold van Huis: Insects in the tropics are
available throughout the year. In temperate
zones, we have a wintertime in which there
are no insects. So they're available throughout
the year. They're larger. And that has to do with
temperature. They have developed much larger than
the insects in European countries. So for them,
it was quite logical to eat insects.
Alok Patel: So fine,
lots of people eat insects. Should they, though?
Arnold van Huis: Well, in principle, insects are
as nutritious as meat. They have all the essential
amino acids. But what is also very interesting
is that insects may have health benefits.
If you look at the exoskeleton of insects,
that is a substance which is called chitin,
and chitin is not synthesized by our body.
So it's targeted by our immune system.
So it strengthens our immune system.
Alok Patel: One warning - people who are
allergic to shellfish - like shrimp or lobster-
might also be allergic to insects.
But for those of us who aren’t,
some research suggests that when we eat chitin,
it promotes the growth of healthy gut bacteria.
Insects are also high in antioxidants
— some insect extracts pack five times
the antioxidant capacity of fresh orange
juice. And silkworm fat has double the
amount of antioxidants as olive oil! .
Alok Patel: Entomologist Tanya Latty
points out there could be even more benefits.
Tanya Latty: There are a projected between five
and 10 million different species of insect on
the planet, you know, of which we've probably
identified maybe 20 percent. So it's this huge,
diverse group. Not all of them are going to be
great food sources, but there's huge potential
that some of them could be really, really great.
Most insects are high in protein, but they
vary quite a lot and how much fat they have. So
I think there's a huge potential to be able to
really pick and choose among the species that
we can grow to kind of come up with things that
suit the various nutrient needs that we have.
Alok Patel: Eating insects isn’t just good
for your body. It's good for the planet, too.
Arnold van Huis: It's absolutely better for the
planet, and that has to do with many things.
They emit much less greenhouse gases than
cattle, poultry or pigs. The water use is
much less. The land use is 10 times less.
Tanya Latty: One of the real big problems
we're facing as a planet is that we need to
grow more food to feed a growing population,
but we can't really use any more land. You can
grow insects in much smaller spaces and because
you don't need to have, like perfect, you know,
beautiful, really good soil or any of the things
you need to grow a plant protein. Insects are
cold-blooded, so they're ectotherms, which means
that they don't generate their own body heat.
Alok Patel: Instead, they rely on the heat from
their environment — sunshine, say — to warm up.
Tanya Latty: And that's useful because mammals and
other warm blooded organisms, we use a lot of the
energy we eat to generate our body heat. And so
that links to something we call the conversion
efficiency which is how much of the energy I
feed that animal am I getting back out? And in
vertebrates, it's actually quite low because a
lot of that gets burned off as heat, a lot goes
into bones and things that we don't really eat.
Whereas invertebrates, most of the
energy we feed, we can get back out
as protein and biomass and stuff we can eat.
Alok Patel: It takes about 10 pounds of feed
to produce just a pound of beef.
Arnold van Huis: And for crickets, it's only two.
Two kg to produce one kilogram of edible
product. So much, much better. And if you
also look at what's part of an insect
you can eat, that's almost 100 percent.
Alok Patel: Compare that to
pigs and chicken where only 57%
and 65-70% of the animal is edible respectively.
Tanya Latty: They have an exoskeleton, which
is quite thin. So in most species, we can just
pop the whole thing in our mouths. So we get a
lot more out of them, which is really important
when you think about how much agricultural land
we currently use just to grow food to feed our
food. Many species of insects are also what we
call gregarious, so they are much happier in
kind of very close proximity to one another.
And that's also useful from, I think,
just an ethical perspective. And so,
you can rear them in relatively high density
conditions without really worrying too much,
you know, about overcrowding them, or maybe
they're unhappy and such. So I wouldn't say that,
like insect protein is better than all the other
protein sources, and we should only do that.
I think it should be a component of a balanced
system, so it's not saying that we should get
rid of livestock. It's not saying we should get
rid of plant based protein. And insects can just
play a really important part of that puzzle.
Alok Patel: Insects also perform a very
beneficial task: something called bioconversion.
Tanya Latty: many of them are able to feed off of
things that we probably wouldn't feed to ourselves
and we wouldn't feed to animals. So things like
food scraps, you know, agricultural waste streams,
things that are otherwise going to be thrown out,
perhaps can be then fed to the larva and
then that gets turned back into foods.
Alok Patel: The black soldier fly is something
of a champ when it comes to bioconversion.
Tanya Latty: The gold idea would be that
you have, say, a farm and that farm has
a black soldier fly, say, facility and they
feed all of their waste into that facility,
and those soldier flies turn that into larva that
are high in protein, and those maybe get fed back
to livestock we're sending off as human food. We
get this really nice sort of circular economy.
Alok Patel: So, let’s all eat insects! But... hold
on. When we come back, we’ll talk about what it’s
going to take to get insects on everyone’s plates.
Alok Patel: OK, so everything I've heard so far
makes eating insects seem like a win-win-win.
They’re the solution to humanity's food needs!
But slow your entomological roll,
there's still lots of work to do
before entomophagy can achieve its full potential.
Alok Patel: I imagine someone out there might say,
“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Tanya, you
said insects are nature's waste management.
How do I know that something that lives in garbage
and eats waste, how is that safe to eat? Isn't
that toxic? Isn't it full of bacteria?”
Tanya Latty: I would never say like, no,
that's definitely not a concern. Just like
any animal product, we need to think about
hygiene and disease, but it's not different from
the other things we already eat. If you've ever
been in a place where they're producing cattle
or chickens, often, you know, it's not like it's
crystal clean and there's no poop everywhere,
right? So these are issues that we have to work
through whenever we eat animal products, I think,
and it's just kind of modifying the procedures we
already have in place and using them for insects.
You know, we may have to think about which
species need to be cooked really well
because they could have microbial loads
and which species we can eat raw.
Arnold van Huis: It's safer to eat insects
than to eat meat because vertebrate animals, they
have similar diseases as we have. For insects,
that's different. They are taxonomically far
apart from humans. I think in general, insects,
they don't have pathogens, especially if they are
reared. If you, of course, collect from nature,
you never know the history. And if you then adhere
to the normal procedures of cooking, etc., what
you do also with normal meat, there is no problem.
Alok Patel: With safety in mind, regulations on
insects for human consumption
can be very stringent.
So far there are only two insect products approved
for consumption in the European Union. And we
can't yet reap the full benefits of bioconversion.
Tanya Latty: Most of the insects you can buy now,
they're not raised on waste. They're
mostly raised on a really nice diet of
actually quite expensive food, that's
itself safe to feed to livestock. So
that's not necessarily the sustainable way we want
to go. I think we want to get to a place where we
can feed them things that we're not otherwise
using. And so, that's going to take some work
to kind of figure out the processes we need to
make sure that those are free of contaminants.
For example, if you feed maggots on waste,
how much bacteria builds up in the maggot?
For some species like black soldier flies
before they go into the - what like looks
a cocoon to turn into the fly -- they
purge their guts so everything comes
out of them pretty much. And that seems to be
a really useful behavior that may make them
have a very low bacterial load.
Alok Patel: So the first important
thing is safety. Next up, it’s
producing a consistent supply.
Alok Patel: In some places, it sounds like they
have the availability of the insects without
necessarily modern technology needed. You know,
my mind is now wanting to know if insects are a
solution to food insecurity, if
insects could be helped to address
malnutrition and global food shortages.
Arnold van Huis: Well, in the tropics,
of course, they are harvested from nature
and then prepared, used for home consumption,
or they bring it on the market. But if you
really want to promote it, you have to rear.
Alok Patel: Rear. That is, raise them.
That's the only way. So efforts are now worldwide
underway to rear the different insects. It's
a new industry, it's a new agricultural sector
and the production is new. The processing is new.
And so that needs it needs investments before
you know you can really bring it
in large quantities on the market.
Alok Patel: Maybe it’s going to take a superhuman
investment to get this off the ground from,
say, Iron Man? Here’s Robert Downey
Jr. on The Late Show with Stephen
Colbert talking about a company he’s backing.
Stephen Colbert: Now what is this? This looks
like I could make cocoa with this. What is… that?
Robert Downey Jr.: Right. Well, that's an
insect based premium protein. It's made from
Molitor, which is mealworms larvae. This is
a powder derived from the mealworms, and it's
an insect protein just been approved by the EU
for human consumption.
Stephen Colbert: You're not just
getting me to eat dirt, are you?
Robert Downey Jr.:
No, man. I wouldn't play you, bro.
Alok Patel: Arnold van Huis gives us an idea of
what mass production of insect products is like.
Arnold van Huis: I visited a factory about two
years ago and that was completely automated.
They could handle about 40,000 crates a day,
and you can stack those crates almost 20 high
and nobody has to be there. It's completely
automated. Then, of course, you have to, often, to
wash them. You may have to blanch them as a kind
of hygienic process, and then you can grind them
and then put them in all kind of food products.
That's one possibility. But you can also get the
proteins out or get the fats out, and the chitin,
and you separate those, and those you can then put
in familiar products. But the most easy is drying,
grinding and putting them in food products.
Alok Patel: Tanya Latty says a big part of rearing
is achieving consistency.
Tanya Latty: For example,
with black soldier fly larva, if you feed them
certain things, you can shift sort of the balance
of fat and protein in their bodies a little bit.
And that's really important because especially if
we're growing things for, say, livestock,
we need them to have a pretty consistent
body composition so that we can turn that
into a food source that's consistent so
we can get consistent livestock.
Alok Patel: And there's still a
lot to learn about the best insects to eat.
Tanya Latty: Bio prospecting, if you will,
so kind of going out and finding new species
because right now, almost all the research for
edible insects is really on three or four species.
Alok Patel: Black soldier fly maggots,
crickets, cockroaches, and mealworms.
Tanya Latty: My research group, we recently
did some work on an insect in Australia that's
related to Black Soldier Flies called the Garden
Soldier Fly. And we found that it's just as good
as Black Soldier Fly at being able to convert
low quality kitchen scraps into protein
and biomass. But it's happy at much cooler
temperatures than black soldier flies.
Alok Patel: Which would make it easier
to raise in more temperate environments.
Tanya Latty: And I think we should just
be doing that with a whole bunch of other
species as well to really work out which one
is going to be the really good one for this
climate, which is really high in this particular
nutrient, which one is really fast growing.
Alok Patel: But of course one big hurdle
is what's very technically known as "the yuck
factor". How do we get people to eat insects?
Arnold van Huis: There are a number
of strategies that you can use.
Target children because they are not biased yet.
Alok Patel: Research on the development of
children’s food preferences suggests teaching
them to eat insects before they start making
their own food choices at about 3 or 4 years old.
Arnold van Huis: Call them something else like
sky shrimps if you talk about grasshoppers.
If you bring something on the market, which
is already difficult for the people, then make it
tasty. But I think the big challenges in future
is to put it in familiar products like hamburgers
or sausages so you don't recognize the insects,
and then season them in a very nice way.
Tanya Latty: Especially in Western countries,
we don't necessarily have a long cultural history
of preparing insects, and so we don't necessarily
know how to prepare them in the way that makes
them the most delicious. If you think of like,
I don't know, steak or chicken, if you had no idea
how to cook them in a way that made them tasty,
they still wouldn't be very good. You know, if
you just chucked your chicken in the microwave,
you're like, “Well, this is dry and flavorless.”
So I think there is going to need to be a lot
of work in figuring out how to market it, how to
cook it in good ways and getting people on board.
And that's probably looking towards
cultures that already do a really
good job of cooking insects and, you
know, getting some insight from them
about the best ways to prepare them.
Alok Patel: Arnold van Huis even
co-authored a cookbook called The Insect
Cookbook: Food for a Sustainable Planet.
If you prepare insects right, he says:
Arnold van Huis: Try it the first time
and the second time is no problem anymore.
Alok Patel: So we put that to the test. Two
of our producers — Rosalind and Sandra —
celebrated our last episode of the season
with brunch -- a cricket brunch, that is, with
a pair of artists who raise crickets in their
New York City apartments. Adam Chad Brody
and Jude Tallichet make music with crickets,
host educational events, and then cook and eat
them. They hope their art and lifestyle get people
to try crickets for that very first time.
Adam Chad Brody: With the first ones that
we harvested, they lived in my apartment for
three months and made the city so much nicer
because there's all the construction noise
and all the traffic. You have this constant
companion of the chirping and even at night,
you know, it feels like it's summer year round.
Jude Tallichet: Whenever you feel like
it, you can grab one over there and try
it. These are all pretty spicy.
Rosalind Tordesillas: Hmm.
Trying to think what to compare it
to. So is there vinegar in there?
Jude Tallichet: Yes. Vinegar and lime...
Rosalind Tordesillas: Yeah,
so there’s like a sour… OK.
Jude Tallichet: And garlic.
Adam Chad Brody: Sometimes I tell people
that they’re land shrimp. [indistinguishable]
…give them a new frame to think about it.
You like shrimp? OK, [indistinguishable]
this is a shrimp that lives on land.
Rosalind Tordesillas: So there's a
nice crunch. And then there's a little
juicyness that comes out when you chew.
Jude Tallichet: What we do is we harvest them
after about three or four months. We take them out
of their cricket houses and then we put them in a
refrigerator and they go dormant and then we put
them in the freezer. We're hoping that that's the
most humane, you know, that they just go to sleep
and then they go more to sleep. And then they
after they're frozen for a little while, then we
take them out and do this, where
we cook with them and spice them.
Adam Chad Brody: Now I'm adding the
marinated crickets into the fajita blend.
The amount of crickets in this dish it's about,
I think we did the calculation last night,
Jude, it's about 30 grams of protein, so it's
more protein than if we added beef into this.
When we started the project, it wasn't necessarily
about wanting to be healthier or or even really
about environmental impact. I think it was more
about like a need that I had where I was like,
I'm living in a city where I wanted to have a
daily thing that I was doing that was directly
contributing to survival. We could raise insects
in our apartment pretty easily. And crickets
were just such a clear winner because they chirp.
Jude Tallichet: And we can make music with them.
Adam Chad Brody: And because they're cute.
Alok Patel:
Adam and Jude have big hopes
for crickets in New York City.
Adam Chad Brody: Every block in the
city has its own little cricket farm
where the crickets are eating gardens, you
travel the gates, the crickets are eating garden
matter and food scraps. And you know,
people are gathering their crickets and
cooking them.
Alok Patel:
Tanya Latty has a similar vision for the future.
Tanya Latty: They're small enough that people
could do it in their homes even. Like you
could imagine a future where maybe you have
your black soldier fly production facility
in the back and you throw in your food
scraps and you get out, you know, maggot burgers.
One of the unfortunate things I think has happened
a lot more recently is that we're starting
to realize that insects are not bulletproof.
You know, they are everywhere, but many groups are
in decline. And that's going to come back and bite
us if we keep walking around going, “I don't care
about insects, and I kind of hate them and I wish
they were all gone.” You know, we might get what
we wish for and that would be, you know, terrible,
you know, catastrophically bad. They are such a
huge chunk of the biodiversity that it would be
tragic, tragic to lose anymore.
Alok Patel: Not to mention all
the ecosystem services they
provide, which we’ve discussed.
So if you’re not yet convinced and you're not
ready to start your own cricket farm just yet,
Tanya Latty has a few recommendations.
Tanya Latty: Honestly, caring is probably
the first step. We need to be aware there's
a problem and care about that problem before
we can do anything. So just telling everybody
that you can is a good step. On a personal level I
think not using insecticides as much as you can is
really important. I also always recommend planting
flowers, weirdly, which is beautiful because you
get lots of flowers. But it's not just pollinating
insects like lots of bees, flies, butterflies,
all those pollinating insects love flowers,
but also lots of predators do, too. So things like
spiders are even known to drink nectar, ladybugs,
lace wings, assassin bugs, all these insects that
will also help keep your pest population down.
Alok Patel: And as for our producers, Rosalind
and Sandra, who tried those crickets. Dare I ask,
would they venture an insect meal a second time?
Rosalind Tordesillas: I enjoyed them. The flavor
is pretty neutral so they take on the flavor
of whatever seasonings you put and this time
they made them really spicy and garlicky. And the
texture reminded me a lot of some other snacks we
have in the Philippines, like tiny, crispy shrimp.
Sandra Lopez-Monsalve: Yes, I would totally try
them again. It was my first time so it was a
challenge. But once I was over the ‘eek’ factor,
they are actually delicious. Very crunchy. Though,
full disclosure... I don’t think I can eat worms.
If you want to learn more about the
advantages and challenges of eating
insects - and see some gorgeous images of a lot
of the creatures and dishes we talked about today,
check out NOVA’s Edible Insects -
now streaming on the PBS video app
and on NOVA’s YouTube channel
- “NOVA PBS Official.”
NOVA Now is a production of GBH and PRX. It’s
produced by Terence Bernardo, Ari Daniel,
Jocelyn Gonzales, Isabel Hibbard, Sandra
Lopez-Monsalve and Rosalind Tordesillas.
Julia Cort and Chris Schmidt are the co-Executive
Producers of NOVA. Sukee Bennett is Senior Digital
Editor. Christina Monnen is Associate Researcher.
Robin Kazmier is Science Editor. Robert Boyd is
Digital Associate Producer. And Devin Robins
is Managing Producer of Podcasts at GBH.
Our theme music makes people dance right
out of their cocoon. It’s by DJ Kid Koala.
Starting next week, for five consecutive weeks, we
have a special podcast series for you — NOVA Now
Universe Revealed. Blast off with us to
explore alien worlds, galaxies, stars,
black holes, and the start of the universe itself
— the Big Bang. Our podcast series coincides
with a 5-part documentary series entitled
NOVA Universe Revealed airing Wednesdays on
PBS and streaming now on the PBS Video App.
I’m Alok Patel. Thank you for joining us on
this second season of NOVA Now. It’s been a
science-fueled journey with all of you as we
chatted about: exercise physiology,
using tech to solve droughts, UFOs,
where we’re at with COVID vaccines and variants,
the future of electric vehicles, safely sending
kids back to school in a pandemic, the smoky truth
about cannabis, the crypto behind cryptocurrency,
and last but not least, the wonderful,
delicious, sustainable world of edible insects.
Until we meet again, stay
healthy and stay curious.