In this episode, co-hosts Matt Smith and Brian Cross take on the tiniest assassins and the wanderlust of the North Pole. They say lego my LIGO in another installment of Disappearing Science, and they use their full brains to decry the unscientific silliness of Lucy in Yackety Science Ruins the Movies. And finally, geologist Claude Bolze stops by to talk trilobites, rock hunting, and the only natural way to cross the Arkansas River.

Got a question, comment, or correction? Yack right back at us at YacketyScience@gmail.com.

Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessed through FreeMusicArchive.org.; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Production help provided by Scott Gregory.

Yackety Science is recorded at the studios of Public Radio Tulsa, Kendall Hall, University of Tulsa, and at the Center for Creativity at Tulsa Community College.

Links:

True Polar Wander:

True Polar Wander Driven by Artificial Water Impoundment: 1835–2011 by Valencic et al. (Geophysical Letters, May 23, 2025)

Bacterial Assassins:

Antagonism as a foraging strategy in microbial communities by Stubbusch et al.

(Science, June 12, 2025)

Disappearing Science–LIGO:

LIGO Information from Caltech

‘Killing a newborn baby’: Cuts to LIGO would devastate gravitational wave astronomy

Geological Opportunities:

Tulsa Rock and Mineral Show: July 12 and 13