Every year, tens of thousand of people in the United States contract Lyme disease, a malady that can cause permanent damage to the brain, heart, and other organs in the worst cases. Lyme disease is most common in the Northeast, even though the bacteria that causes the disease and the ticks that spread it around are commonly found across much of the nation. What keeps most people in the U.S. safe from Lyme disease? According to Dr. Cherie Briggs, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the answer is lizards. In the podcast, Briggs discusses western fence lizards, ... Read More
Climate Change Pushing Millions to Edge of Starvation
September 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
East Africa is being hit with the worst drought in 60 years, with rainfall less than 30 percent of normal in many areas. In Ethiopia, Kenya, and especially Somalia, widespread crop failure and livestock death have left millions of people on the brink of starvation. In Somalia alone, about 30,000 children under the age of 5 have died. Almost a million more Somalis have fled into overwhelmed refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. In the podcast, Chris Funk, a climatologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, fingers one of the key culprits for the drought: climate change. Funk ... Read More
Evacuation Lessons From Hurricane Irene
August 31, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
With Hurricane Irene causing much less damage than predicted by weather forecasters, many are questioning whether the alarm calls broadcast by government officials at every level were an overreaction. In this podcast, Jai Ranganathan talks with Micah Brachman, a geographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who specializes in mass evacuation planning. Brachman argues that the government response to the hurricane was an overreaction, but a necessary one. As there is an inherent level of uncertainty associated with disasters, especially weather-related events, overpreparation is ... Read More
Law of the Jungle: Powerful Men Have More Children
August 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Two generations after the beginning of the feminist revolution, men still dominate positions of power in the United States. Why are men still over-represented in corporate board rooms, halls of government, and other places where decisions are made? One reason might be that men are evolutionarily programmed to seek positions of high status, as a means of upping their reproductive output. In the podcast, Christopher von Rueden, an anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about his research into the connections between status and reproduction among the Tsimane, an ... Read More
New Answers to Whale of a Mystery
August 17, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
There are around a hundred species of whales all over the world, from the mighty 200-ton blue whale to the tiny 100-pound vaquita. How did the whales evolve so diversely? In the podcast, Graham Slater, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA, explains how the tiny land-based ancestor of all mammals evolved into the multi-ton whales that we see today. Slater discovered that whales experienced an explosion of evolutionary activity 35 million years ago. Far earlier in their evolutionary history than scientists had previously imagined, whales had already evolved into the basic forms that are found ... Read More
Could Organic Farming Threaten Our Food Supply?
August 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Untold numbers of species are threatened by extinction due to people. Yet, a class of animals is thriving, despite humans' best efforts to wipe them out: agricultural insect pests. And these pests pose a serious threat to global food supplies. Insects like the desert locust and the Russian wheat aphid can very quickly destroy the farm production from vast areas. What is it about the biology of these animals that allows them to survive whatever people can throw at them? In this podcast, Dr. Scott Merrill discusses the often bizarre adaptations of insect pests, like the Russian wheat ... Read More
Greek Economic Collapse: Pulling Europe and U.S. Down?
July 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
From Ireland to Italy, governments all across Europe are grappling with sky-high deficits, soaring unemployment, and economies that are stuck in first gear. Nowhere are the problems worse than in Greece, which has an unemployment rate over 15 percent and a government debt load that is well over 150 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Which kinda puts the U.S. debt ceiling crisis in perspective ... Greece's debts are so high that the entire European financial system stands at the brink of collapse, with even the future of the Euro in doubt. In the podcast, Benjamin J. Cohen — ... Read More
Six Months after Arab Spring, Uncertainty Rules in Egypt
July 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Beginning last December and January, the Middle East and North Africa exploded in protests. From Morocco to Yemen, huge numbers of people spontaneously rose up to demonstrate against their corrupt and incompetent governments. But the center of this Arab Spring was Egypt. There, after 18 days of demonstrations that drew millions of people into the streets, President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year grip on power came to an abrupt end. When Mubarak left, so did the television cameras. And while headlines have moved on, there is still news from Egypt. In the podcast, historian Nancy Gallagher talks ... Read More
What Causes Conflict?
July 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
From tangling with the boss to fighting with the kids, conflict is a daily ingredient of most of our lives. And it isn't just humans. It is a big part of the lives among many species that live in social groups, from lions to chimpanzees. In this week's Curiouser & Curiouser podcast, Dr. Simon DeDeo talks about his research into the hidden order behind conflict, an order that connects humans with animals. DeDeo is a physicist at the Santa Fe Institute who brings new mathematical approaches to study complicated problems in biology, like conflict.Here, he discusses a recent paper in the ... Read More
Hidden Patterns in Presidential Voting
July 6, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
With the Republican field finally solidifying, the 2012 presidential campaign season is finally off to the races. For the next 16 months, political pundits will spend hour after hour analyzing the most minor twist and turns in the campaigns — even though almost all of the day-to-day political zigs and zags will make no difference to voters in the end. But what if even the big issues — like the economy and the multiple wars that we are engaged in — didn't matter to voters either? According to Nathan Collins, a political scientist at the Santa Fe Institute, if you look at voting ... Read More
