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SciShow Tangents

Latest episodes

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May 28, 2024 • 50min

Cloning

It may seem like cloning really only shows up regularly in science fiction, but it turns out, it's been a sneaky, significant real-world process for a super long time! In this episode we learn about cloning found in nature, labs, and...this very podcast??SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Glenn Trewitt for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! [Truth or Fail]Crayfish that’s been cloning itself might help us study prion diseaseshttps://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/science/mutant-crayfish-clones-europe.htmlhttps://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/904708Scientists envision a new insect repellant while cloning hemlock treeshttps://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/801445Athlete’s foot fungus rejects sex for cloninghttps://today.duke.edu/2018/02/toenail-fungus-gives-sex-infect-human-hostshttps://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/208/4/1657/6084243https://gizmodo.com/the-fungi-that-cause-athletes-foot-have-given-up-on-sex-1823265768[Trivia Question]First cloned cat, which was named Copy Cathttps://vetmed.tamu.edu/news/press-releases/texas-am-says-goodbye-to-cc-worlds-first-cloned-cat/https://www.npr.org/2020/03/08/813384347/remembering-cc-the-cloned-cat[Fact Off]Electric ant queens and males sexually reproduce but actually like two different clonal speciesA 34-member “twin study” with Amazon molly fish cloneshttps://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1009151https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43069-6https://phys.org/news/2021-02-defeating-enemy-evolution-clone-fish.htmlhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4919929/https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/twins-study/about/[Ask the Science Couch]Cross-species cloning and back-breeding as de-extinction strategieshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223960/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4157387/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC521203/https://lsspjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2195-7819-10-3https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/species-revival-bringing-back-extinct-animalshttps://www.fws.gov/press-release/2021-02/genetic-research-boosts-black-footed-ferret-conservation-efforts[Butt One More Thing]Portuguese man o’ war is a colony of zooid clones, including gastrozooids for digesting (and maybe pooping)https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51842-1https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/portuguese-man-o-war.html
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May 14, 2024 • 47min

Glue

Humanity is bound together by so many qualities, and in this episode, we add Being Goopy to the list. What does that have to do with glue? A whole lot, it turns out - cue some ominous foreshadowing....Memento goopy! SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Glenn Trewitt for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! [Secret Ingredient]Fibers mixed with water to make adhesive https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/1/pgac026/6549457https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945194Adhesive inspired by animal proteinhttps://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/945194https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.1c10936Chinese bricks made with gluey substancehttps://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chinese-architecturehttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/eem2.12143[Trivia Question]Year that the first adhesive stamp Penny Black was mailedhttps://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/how-a-single-postage-stamp-birthed-the-information-agehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/first-piece-of-mail-sent-using-a-stamp-auction-180983619/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-story-of-the-first-postage-stamp-14931961/[Fact Off]Reversible glue made with caffeic acid exposed to certain UV light wavelengths Blood albumin glue used in plywood and pre-plastic resin objectshttps://extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/FNR/FNR-154.pdfhttps://foodeng.wisc.edu/images/publications/2010-9.pdfhttps://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/fluidsengineering/article-abstract/54/11/15/1162589/Blood-Albumin-and-the-Woodworking-Industry?redirectedFrom=PDFhttps://plastiquarian.com/?page_id=14216[Ask the Science Couch]How glue adhesion/cohesion works and why glue (sometimes) doesn’t cure in the bottlehttps://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.macromol.1c01182#https://www.uhu.com/en-en/glue-advice/adhesive-typeshttps://d-lab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/D-Lab_Learn-It_Adhesives_Jul13.pdfhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0143749618300575https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/CT07137[Butt One More Thing]Fibrin glue used to help seal anal fistulashttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12682544/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1782483/
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May 7, 2024 • 48min

Introducing Crash Course Pods: The Universe

No, your eyes and ears don't deceive you - this is, in fact, a super special cross-feed treat from our friends over at Crash Course in the form of the first episode of their brand new show, "Crash Course Pods: The Universe." Hosted by novelist John Green and astrophysicist Dr. Katie Mack, "The Universe" is a podcast about the history of the entire universe, from its explosive beginnings to its mysterious, but inevitable, end. In this first episode Dr. Mack walks John through the Big Bang and the very first micro-moments of the universe, and some of the ways that that ancient event is actually still connected to us, here, today. It's great, we really like it, we're really proud of the Crash Course team, and we thought you guys would also really enjoy the show! So to make it easy, we put the entire first episode right here! The rest of John and Dr. Mack's conversation will cover 11 episodes airing every other week on the Crash Course YouTube channel at youtube.com/crashcourse or wherever you get your podcasts. Give it a listen, and we hope you enjoy!
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Apr 30, 2024 • 48min

Machine Learning

We do a lot of learning on Tangents, so naturally, we've got questions about what learning looks like...for machines! AI and machine learning science communicator Jordan Harrod (https://www.youtube.com/@jordanharrod) lends her expertise to this episode as we definitely for sure learn all there is to know and will ever need to be known about machine learning, algorithms, and AI. Definitely we got all of it, everyone.SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscribers Garth Riley and Glenn Trewitt for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! [Truth or Fail Express]Racoon-inspired algorithmhttps://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8552661Dolphin-inspired algorithmPelican-inspired algorithm[Trivia Question]Using machine learning to measure plant vibration and sounds when they experience stress https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00262-3https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/plants-make-noises-when-stressed-study-finds-180981920/[Fact Off]Lenna (an image of a Playboy model) used as the standard for digital image processinghttps://www.404media.co/lena-test-image-ieee-policy/Tricking speech recognition systems with “neural voice camouflage”https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/news/block-smartphone-microphone-speech-recognition-spyinghttps://web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/slp3/16.pdfhttps://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.07076.pdfhttps://www.vox.com/2018/7/20/17594074/phone-spying-wiretap-microphone-smartphone-northeastern-dave-choffnes-christo-wilson-kara-swisherhttps://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188[Ask the Science Couch]AI image generator mistakes (hands, feet, teeth) and how they work (diffusion models)https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/why-ai-generated-hands-are-the-stuff-of-nightmares-explained-by-a-scientisthttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/ai-generated-art-hands-fingers-messed-uphttps://hai.stanford.edu/news/what-dall-e-reveals-about-human-creativityhttps://proceedings.mlr.press/v37/sohl-dickstein15.pdf[Butt One More Thing]Training machine learning models (convolutional neural networks) to classify poop imageshttps://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.10578.pdfhttps://journals.lww.com/ajg/abstract/2022/07000/a_smartphone_application_using_artificial.24.aspxhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33275399/Anal Recognition Paperhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-020-0534-9
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Apr 26, 2024 • 5min

Teaser: Hygiene Patreon Bonus Episode

Another wild teaser appears! This little snippet is the first part of our revisit of Hygiene and answering even more questions that we didn't get to in the episode. You can listen to the rest, and also a bunch more bonus content, on our Patreon. It's one of the best ways you can support the show and keep Tangents going and free for everyone. Head over to Patreon.com/scishowtangents and join in all the learning and shenanigans! Thank you so much to all our Patrons - we genuinely would not get to do this without you, and we really like doing this, so it rocks that we can. THANK YOU!
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Apr 16, 2024 • 47min

Turtles

Dive into the world of turtles with light-hearted banter and intriguing topics including fossilized turtle poop, crushed shells, and the misunderstood Bowser from Super Mario. Learn about turtle robots, communication among turtles, and even a study on sea turtles' poop.
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Apr 3, 2024 • 6min

Teaser: Big vs. Small Patreon Bonus Episode

The podcast features casual banter about crunchy snacks and childhood soda stories. They discuss celebrities not watching their own movies and ponder the smallest possible measurement. Exclusive bonus content is available on their Patreon.
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Apr 2, 2024 • 45min

Textiles

The podcast explores the significance of textiles in human experience, from fashion expression to protection. Topics include fabric shoe sole tariff, water-soluble fiber in Finnish textiles, and innovative medical devices. They discuss nostalgic tales of favorite shirts and the challenges of laundry in space, along with unconventional textile experiments.
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Mar 19, 2024 • 44min

Feathers

Discover the enchanting world of feathers, from their intricate structures to their evolutionary history linked to dinosaurs. Enjoy whimsical musings on cryptids and amusing anecdotes about mythical creatures, all while diving deep into fascinating bird behaviors. Engage in lighthearted discussions about unconventional food sources like chicken feathers and humorous takes on animals, including a 'hairy dolphin.' With trivia and comedy blended seamlessly, this exploration offers laughter and learning in equal measure.
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Mar 5, 2024 • 45min

Garbage

Dive into the fascinating world of garbage! Discover the whimsical history behind terms like 'poubelle' and the hilarious traits of beans. Learn about sulfur-crested cockatoos mastering garbage can openings and the troubling trend of hermit crabs using plastic shells. Engage in humor-laden discussions on innovative waste management solutions, including lasers for decluttering space. From recycling to ecological impacts, the podcast tackles it all with a blend of science and whimsy!

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