…you should be listening to Radiolab. Which is something like a science-themed This American Life.
I have learned so many bizarre things from randomly downloading old podcasts of this show. Like, did you know that female ducks evolved a vagina with four re-positionable dead ends? It helps them ward off impregnation by boy ducks the ladies deem unworthy of reproducing.
The show on Emergence just explained both how a group of organisms can be collectively smarter than the smartest member of the group, and also why spamming certain websites with links to cheap Viagra is more profitable than you’d imagine. Yesterday, the show taught me that most of the connections from your ear to your brain actually run in the opposite direction. So if your ear is lacking a stimulus to transmit to your brain — like if you’ve gone deaf — it’s possible for your brain to send your ear hallucinations of music it remembers.
Crazy stuff, but every show I’ve heard so far has been fascinating. Check it out if you catch a free minute!
Did I turn you onto it? If not, how’d you hear about it?
I remember you blogging about it a while ago, but I never gave it a listen until WHYY started running teasers for it this month and the name rang a bell. You were right though — good stuff!
The duck thing was in a recent Science News, too, complete with pictures. As part of their Valentine’s week issue, they ran an article on some rather counter-intuitive sexual adaptations. Seehttp://www.sciencenews.org/