Graycen and Alison talk about some recent science stories, including stories about pokémon, Beowolf, regular wolves, and bees. After the break they speak with Ed Yong, staff writer at the Atlantic and author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. Listen here or subscribe on iTunes!
This week Graycen started us off by talking about the Pokémon region of the brain. Did you play a lot of Game Boy when you were little? These stories may be especially relevant for you…
Next Alison talked about her favorite poem and a historical mystery: Beowolf! Turns out scientists are using machine learning to study the structure of the poem and make guesses about who wrote it. Super fascinating stuff—if a computer scientist or a literary historian could let us know if they believe it, Alison is very curious.
After Beowolves, Graycen talked about regular wolves! She read Katherine J Wu’s piece on how wolves boop their snoots to screens to give their packmates sausages. Dogs don’t! SO rude. If you’re curious, we also taught a cat to boop a phone screen in this episode, because of course we did.
To keep the bee-wolf theme, Alison talked about bees! Specifically, selfish bees. Side note: somebody called us out on Twitter for covering bees too much so Graycen made a handy graphic.
After the break, we spoke to Buffs Talk Science unofficial hero Ed Yong! We were super chill about it. Didn’t fawn or anything. (Well, maybe a bit.) Buy his book!
Buffs Talk Science 