Ideas Worth Exploring
Science is the best way we have for understanding how the world works. And you know what makes science better? Puns! This podcast is meant to introduce a variety of scientific topics in a way that is approachable for people without a scientific background and entertaining even for the nerds who think they know everything.
Episodes
32 episodes
Optimization algorithms and the life lessons they taught me
Optimization is about maximizing or minimizing something. The math behind how you do that has taught me some important life lessons, including: (Gradient descent) Incremental progress with regular course corrections will eventually get y...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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31:03
The secret to getting rich is to be boring
I’ve been interested in investing recently, the idea that if you have money then you can use it to make more money. This is a really important topic that I wish my past self had understood better, and so I’m going to break the usual rule...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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23:39
Climate Change Part 3: The solutions to global warming and what they have to do with cows
If we want the globe to stop warming, then we need to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Methods to reduce emissions include: renewable energy, electric vehicles, feeding seaweed to cows to stop them from burping so much, turning ...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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36:17
Climate Change Part 2: Blind octopuses and lonely turtles
Climate change will cause droughts, floods, heat waves, and might even make our vegetables less nutritious. In this episode we will talk about some of the consequences global warming will have on animals and humans, and how much of an im...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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34:15
Climate change part 1: Your car is a greenhouse
Cow burps and car emissions are making the atmosphere heat up. This is the greenhouse effect, and it’s the same thing that turns your car into an inferno in the summer, with some nuance added. In this episode, we will discuss the physica...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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38:01
Game Theory part 2: playing chicken with potatoes
If you ever encounter a situation where you think “who’s going to give in first?” it’s probably a game of chicken. This is the dynamic that shaped the arms races of Cold War, much of modern politics, and probably also quite a few of your...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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32:51
Game Theory Part 1: Society is in a prisoner’s dilemma
What do tic-tac-toe, international politics, and animal grooming behaviors have in common? Much more than you might expect. In this episode we’re going to talk about game theory, a field of economics that lets us analyze social interacti...
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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32:54
Oh no! Polymers are taking over the world!
Polymers are everywhere. There are dozens of types of plastics, but there are also biological polymers such as DNA and proteins, and together, most of the materials you use every day are made of one of the two types of polymer. Even I’m ...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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31:03
Thinking, fast and slow
Gambling, advertising, politics, and household chores. What do these have to do with each other? They’re all areas where your brain can steer you wrong when making decisions, as we’ll see in today’s episode. We’re going to be talking abo...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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37:10
A brief history of life, the universe, and everything
A walk through the history of the universe, starting with the Big Bang and the creation of the elements in stars, moving through the first molecular replicators, the RNA world hypothesis, and the evolution of life by natural selection. P...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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39:19
Building a planet, one climate at a time
Pretend you’re making a new planet from scratch, and you want to know how the climate and weather patterns will be affected by each new feature you add. In this episode we will answer the questions: why is it warmer near the equator? Why...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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29:50
Evolution through natural selection: “I choose you, Darwin!”
Unlike in Pokemon, evolution in our world happens slowly, over many generations. In this episode, we talk about how all life on earth is part of the same family and arose from a single common ancestor through a branching pattern of evolu...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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24:24
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The Big Bang and the fate of the universe
You may have heard of something called the Big Bang, where all the stuff in the universe spread out from a single point. Did you know that the Big Bang is still happening? Well, it is, and you’re in the middle of it! This episode is abou...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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30:16
Matter, antimatter, and beyond!
The universe is full of stuff. Big stuff, small stuff, red stuff, blue stuff, normal stuff, ridiculously weird stuff. Most people don’t understand just how weird some of that stuff is. That stuff is called matter. It’s finally time to an...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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21:47
Brains! Part 2: Memory matters
What is a memory, physically? Do people really only use 10% of their brain? Is my short term memory bad, or is it just my short term memory? Answers to follow!
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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25:35
Brains! Part 1: The humble neuron
Brains! Brains are made of neurons that use electrical and chemical signals in a way that somehow gets turned into us thinking and writing podcasts about brains. This episode is about how neurons do math by using salt to power a rollerco...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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16:18
Eat your nutrients!
Keto, paleo, flexitarian, Mediterranean, it seems like everyone is interested in the newest diet fad. But does eating soy protein puree really make you healthier than eating chocolate covered caramels? Today we’re talking about nutrien...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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29:35
Archimedes’ Principle of Floatiness
How do ducks float? Is it because they’re made of wood? Well, why does wood float? The answer, in a way, has to do with a naked man and a crown. But the real answer is found in the physics of buoyancy. This episode is all about buoyancy,...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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14:09
Black holes don't suck!
You’re flying through the universe on your spaceship, seeing the sights, having a great time, when all of a sudden you see a black hole! Oh no, it’s sucking you in! Then it touches you and you get spaghettified, and that’s the end of you...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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24:00
Microwaves, eyeballs, and why the sky isn't purple
X-rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves, what do they have in common? They’re all colors of light that you can’t see. This episode about electromagnetic radiation, the thing that makes your eyes, your phone, and your oven function as...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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22:30
Viruses: Tiny robots that make us sneeze
People once believed that when you sneezed, your soul left your body, and so they would say “bless you” to prevent the devil from snatching your soul. Now, people don’t tend to worry about that as much, instead they worry about getting i...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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19:25
Your bacteria: Poop, soap, and alcohol
You know the 10 second rule: if you drop a piece of bacon on the ground, you have 10 seconds to pick it up before the bacteria attack. That’s obviously a myth, right? Right? Right. That one is a myth. But today you’ll learn about several...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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22:27
Relativity: How to time travel to the future
If you visit the Mütter museum in Philadelphia, you’ll see pieces of Einstein’s brain preserved on microscope slides. This episode is about an amazing secret that his brain discovered, the fact that time and space change when you move re...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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25:35
