This week, Graycen and Alison talk about plastic, aliens, and stressed out dogs! After the break, they interview Atma Ivancevic about viruses that got stuck in our DNA a long time ago and are still wreaking havoc. Listen here or subscribe on iTunes!
Alison learned about how sea life in plastic is not so fantastic from Sarah Zhang, who wrote this piece about it for The Atlantic.
Graycen wishes that aliens would talk to us, but she’s glad to have great articles like this one about SETI@home from Ben Lindbergh at The Ringer to keep her entertained until they do. If you want to feel alone in the universe, but less locally alone in your cosmic aloneness, you should listen to this beautiful episode of This American Life, which also talks about SETI@home. But you should listen to our episode first, because we need you more than TAL does, pls thx. Also, if you want to participate in SETI@home, you can get everything you need to do so from their website. We’re doing it — it’s very exciting!
Rebecca Hersher wrote for NPR about how dogs are sad. But you know what? A lot of podcast hosts are sad too. There are many reasons for this, but one is that they learned that their own prominent Big 5 personality traits are the exact ones that allegedly make dogs unhappy. 😡 This study was published in Nature.
Bonus! If you want to check out Alison on Science Friday, here’s the link! She had a blast, and Buffs Talk Science gets a little Ira Flatow shout-out.
Buffs Talk Science 