Christopher Intagliata was Science Friday’s senior producer, which means he was chief cheerleader for all the radio and podcast projects. He helped to select and shape stories, or put them to a gentle death if necessary. He was also the coordinating producer for Science Friday’s live stage events around the nation, and has skated Olympic ice and served as a prop in an optical illusion for SciFri.
Christopher started at Science Friday as an intern in summer 2008, until the day Ira Flatow called him at home, triggering enormous anxiety about the latest script he’d written, to ask if he wanted to be a producer. His favorite stories usually involve microbes or food or both, but anything can pique his interest—other than ocean chemistry. Sorry.
He also reports regularly for Scientific American‘s “60-Second Science” podcast, and was a 2015 Woods Hole Ocean Science Journalism fellow. Prior to becoming a science journalist, he taught English to soldiers and bankers in Verona, Italy, and traversed the Sierra Nevada mountains as a field biologist, on the lookout for mountain yellow-legged frogs. He speaks fluent Italian, awkward Japanese, and passable Ira Flatowese.
He is now an editor for All Things Considered.
24:00
Hidden Wonders To Hit On Your Science Road Trip
SciFri teams up with the authors of “Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders” to recommend geeky summer road trip destinations, like the mysterious moving rocks in Death Valley, and a museum full of brains.
5:01
The Bad News About California’s Solar Power Boom
Solar energy generation is exploding in California. But the solar glut is overwhelming the state’s grid, and costing ratepayers money.
34:29
The Cephalo-Inspired Technology Of The Future
From camouflage to jet propulsion, researchers see these tentacled creatures as inspiration for their biomimetic designs.
8:48
The Mindset For A Milkshake
The mind exerts a subtle but powerful control over what we choose to eat—and even how our bodies metabolize it.
8:25
Bringing Sensation To Bionic Limbs
An innovative muscle graft could help people with amputations “feel” their bionic limbs.
7:06
Magnus Hirschfeld, The ‘Einstein Of Sex’
The pioneering sex researcher’s goal was to prove homosexuality was rooted in biology. But his ideas fell into the wrong hands.
7:17
Prospecting For Martian Gold In Antarctica
On the latest episode of “Undiscovered,” we hear the story of meteorite hunter Nina Lanza, and what life’s really like in Antarctica.
7:49
Introducing Our New Show: Undiscovered
Science Friday has a new show! It’s called Undiscovered, and it tells the back stories of great scientific discoveries.
7:14
Between A Rock And A Hard Place, Life Thrives
In the driest deserts, hardy bacteria cling to the underside of translucent rocks, eking out an existence where nothing else can.
17:34
‘New World’ Could Be Way Older Than We Thought
A fossil find in California makes the case for human settlement of the Americas 130,000 years ago—more than 100,000 years earlier than previously believed. But not all anthropologists are convinced.