With summer here, the 2011 wedding season has finally arrived. But with all of the ill-shapen bridesmaid dresses, Bridezillas and talk of till death do we part, one question comes to mind: Where did this idea of marriage — monogamous marriage specifically — come from? It may seem like a difficult question to answer, given that people have been getting married since prehistory. In this podcast, Dr. Laura Fortunato, an anthropologist at the Santa Fe Institute, discusses how she got to the bottom of the marriage mystery. Fortunato, who spoke with Michael Haederle last year about ... Read More
From Siberia to the Tropics with a Thermometer
June 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
We are all connected. A low pressure atmospheric wave moves off the west coast of Africa and, 10 days later, a hurricane batters down the door of Florida. The waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean warm up and, as a result, savage droughts roll through Australia. Finding these global patterns of climate connection is expensive, usually requiring measurement tools like satellites and aircraft. But, sometimes, people find these patterns of planetary connection in the most unexpected of ways, as Dr. Steve Katz discusses in this podcast. A marine biologist with the National Marine Sanctuary ... Read More
The Next Epidemic — How Society Aids Disease
June 7, 2011 • By •
One reason that E. coli kills so many — in the industrialized world as well as less-developed areas — is that the bacteria is found across mammals and birds. If livestock are infected by a lethal strain of E. coli, it only takes one round of undercooked meat for the infection to spread like wildfire to people. In fact, the vast majority of human infectious diseases can infect animals as well. And the last few decades have seen the rise of a large number of new virulent diseases — SARS, AIDS, Marburg virus, to name a few — that have animal origins. Why are so many of these ... Read More
Can Threatened Species Evolve Their Way Out of Trouble?
June 1, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Untold numbers of species are on the brink of extinction. What can do we about it? Dr. Andrew Gonzalez, an ecologist at McGill University, has a brand new approach for thinking about saving species. In this week's Curiouser & Curiouser podcast, Gonzalez talks about the possibility of threatened species getting out of danger through evolution, by changing their genetic code to adapt to new conditions. At first glance, the idea seems crazy. We think of evolution taking place over very long periods, with gradual changes in species over time. How could slow-moving evolution have any ... Read More
Climate Change, Agricultural Production and Africa’s Poor
May 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
All over the world, prices for food are skyrocketing upward. In China, the annual inflation rate for food is more than 10 percent and, in Egypt, food inflation has reached 20 percent. In fact, public discontent over high food costs has been one of the key factors driving the political earthquake under way in the Middle East. The globe is straining to feed ever more hungry mouths, and climate change might make the challenge even tougher by generally reducing agricultural yields. If food production does take a dive, the world's poor will be hit the hardest and no region will suffer more ... Read More
Doggy DNA: Few Genes Separate Chihuahua from Great Dane
May 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
From dainty toy poodles to steadfast bulldogs to massive Saint Bernards, dogs come in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes. But their dog genes are remarkably similar. What is it about the biology of dogs that allows dog breeders to wring so much physical variation out of a single species? The link between the DNA and the physical appearance of a species is generally difficult to sort out, but a revolution in genetic technology has made a breakthrough possible with dogs. In the podcast, Dr. Adam Boyko, a geneticist at Stanford University, talks about the connection between the appearance ... Read More
Year After BP Oil Spill: Where Are We?
May 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and blowing out an oil well a mile below the ocean's surface. In the four frantic months it took to seal off the well, almost five million barrels of crude oil spewed into the Gulf, causing untold economic and environmental havoc. A year after the spill, Dr. Molly Redmond talks about the impact of the spill on the gulf. Redmond, a biogeochemist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was on the scene in the gulf within a few weeks of the beginning of the spill and she is among ... Read More
Nuclear Power’s History in the US: Miracle to Demon
April 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Of all the miracle technologies of the 20th century — aircraft, computers, antibiotics — none held more promise than nuclear power. In the middle of the 20th century, nuclear power held the potential for limitless, clean, and safe energy — something never before achieved in human history. How did a technology with so much potential end up being so hard to handle? Dr. Patrick McCray, a historian of science and a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about the Cold War power politics that led to the creation — and to the downfall — of the nuclear power ... Read More
The Dilemma and Future of Nuclear Power
April 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
In this last of a three part podcast, Dr. Theo Theofanous talks about the health impacts of radiation leaking from the crippled Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and about the future of nuclear power. Here, he discusses the dilemma of nuclear power as a technology that is continually improving, but which remains in the hands of those who are incapable of managing it safely. Click to hear podcast Theofanous is a professor of chemical and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara and he has spent decades researching nuclear reactor design and ... Read More
Japanese Nuclear Crisis: How Does This End?
April 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The fate of the badly damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima 1 Nuclear Power Plant in Japan has been front-page news worldwide for weeks. But given the massive destruction at the power plant — with radiation leaking by air, ground, and sea — can the situation be contained? In this podcast, Dr. Theo Theofanous talks about the current state of Fukushima, with reactor cores in partial or total meltdown, and the options that the Japanese have for averting even greater disaster. Theofanous is a professor of chemical and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He ... Read More
