Happy International Women's Day, 2021! Keera Lindenberg introduces you to some of the female scientists, both living and dead, that have paved the way for women in STEM, and changed the course of history along the way. 

 
Trust me, every single available photo of a placenta is horrifying. Here's an adorable newborn baby instead.


Human pregnancy. A sweet symbiotic relationship between 2 beings? Or a BODILY INVASION?? Depends on which of your cells you ask.



In this episode, K+K explore the role of the Placenta, the temporary organ that develops in the mother's body alongside the fetus. Sure, it procures nutrients and keeps the baby alive... but if mom's not vigilant, the placenta will gladly TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Or at least her body.



Find out how the Placenta executes its military attack, what happens if the body can't defend itself, and then as a bonus, why this topic is timely and relevant to an upcoming break in the production of Everything is Interesting episodes.

Although we've had great breakthroughs in pharmaceutical treatments for HIV, the virus remains one of the scariest diseases out there, because as of yet, there is no surefire cure. But as of this month,we have found a cure... for exactly 2 people in the history of the world. Can the experimental treatment used on the 2 patients who have had the virus wiped from their system be used to help the 37 million people living with the disease today? Should it be?

In Part 1, K+K discussed how HIV infiltrates your body, and why its so hard to get rid of. In today's episode, K+K examine the London Patient, and how doctors used the patient's immune system against itself to eradicate the virus. They also look at the recent birth of the first person to be genetically modified with an immunity to HIV, and discuss if this will be and should be the future of medicine.

Disclaimer: the Human Immunodeficiency Virus is not actually a cartoon. 

Although we've had great breakthroughs in pharmaceutical treatments for HIV, the virus remains one of the scariest diseases out there, because as of yet, there is no surefire cure. But as of this month,we have found a cure... for exactly 2 people in the history of the world. Can the experimental treatment used on the 2 patients who have had the virus wiped from their system be used to help the 37 million people living with the disease today? Should it be?

In Part 1, K+K discuss why an HIV infection is such a big deal for your body, how it goes about infiltrating your cells, and the diabolical ways it makes itself so hard to get rid of. This knowledge will set you up to understand the next episode, when K+K examine the London Patient, and how doctors used the patient's immune system against itself to eradicate the virus.

For such a formidable foe, he sure is a tiny guy.

 

If you're a nature documentary fan like we are, you're probably already familiar with Ophiocordyeps, the species of fungus that turns ants into zombies, using mind control to coerce the ant to attach itself to a treetop, just before a mushroom bursts Alien-like out of its head. K+K looked into the research that's been occurring over the last few years to determine just how the fungus pulls this off, and it turns out... not only is everything we thought we knew about this parasitic species wrong, its also way more disturbing that we could have previously guessed.

Don't say we didn't warn you.

How many times has the universe exploded in a great Big Bang? And if the answer is 'more than once' then that poses an even more important question: does Time stop and start over with every Bang?

To answer this, we have to go back to the very  beginning of the universe (if indeed there was a beginning...) to a "time" before mass, matter, and possibly Time even existed at all.

What is time? A line? A loop? A figment of our imaginations? Spoiler alert... no one knows. But we can use what we know about physics, biology, and Einstein's ideas about Relativity to take our best guess. Join K+K on this 2-part journey into the center (if there is such a place) of time (if there is such a thing)!  In this show:

How does the human brain keep track of time?
Why is syncing up our biological rhythms with the sun's cycles so important?
If someone kidnapped you and you woke up in a sensory deprivation tank, would you ever know what time it was again?

Are you the glucose monster or the melatonin fairy? Be honest.

 

 

 

 

 

[photo courtesy of https://www.sciencenews.org/article/origin-biological-clocks]

The kids from Mrs. Pace’s 6th grade class at Pleasant Valley Middle school in Vancouver, Washington sent us so many excellent science questions, we had to take 2 whole episodes to answer them all! This week K+K tackle:

-How the Earth was formed
-Why the Earth’s axis is tilted
-Where Earth’s first water came from
-What the Earth's first plant was
and weirdly,
-The temperature on the moons of Neptune

In a special “Listener Question” episode of Everything is Interesting, K+K answer some excellent inquisitions, sent in by the kids from Mrs. Pace’s 6th grade class at Pleasant Valley Middle school in Vancouver, Washington. The science ladies tackle:

-The physics of flying in a V-formation
-Why there's droughts when the world is covered in water
-The magic behind Magnetic Levitation
-The strange & wondrous ways mosses reproduces

Its a new year! That means its time to make some resolutions about picking up new, healthy, shiny habits! Habits that will definitely become part of your routine right away and you'll do them every day and you'll never break them even when you get super stressed out at work because of that one lady that always comes in and gets on your last nerve and the next thing you know you're eating chocolate chip cookies... right?

Why are bad habits so hard to break, even when we rationally know better? Why do we replay the same thoughts over and over again in our minds, even when we don't want to? Is it possible to rewire our neural pathways in order to break the old, bad habits in favor of some healthier, more conscious decisions? (Spoiler: yes, yes it is.) Join K+K and guest David Zimelis to find out!

All living creatures on earth reproduce themselves in some way or another. But there are so many different ways to make a baby,  virtually the only commonality is that DNA inside one organism is copied and then passed on to an offspring organism. And usually, the offspring will grow, reproduce, and die in the same way, completing the same loop, as their parent. 

Today K+K, and guest co-host Paul Francis, explore some of the world's weirdest life-cycles, and the lengths some creatures will go to in order to keep the life-cycle chain unbroken.

He can't WAIT to tell you about eating his own bones!

Kira and Keera are trying something new: seasons! With themes! In Season 1, they're exploring the idea that in nature, many processes happen in reoccurring patterns, or more specifically, loops.

In today's episode, K+K dive into how important, and also difficult, it is to keep ecosystems in balance. They talk to Alma Frankenstein, Project Manager for the Cascadia Systems Institute, about how the natural world keeps itself from completely falling part, through the use of positive and negative feedback loops.



Then they use this knowledge to tackle a debate that has been waging in the U.S. for nearly 100 years: is the big, bad Grey Wolf really bad? Should we continue to guard its population under the Endangered Species Act, or is this dangerous predator a threat that needs to be eradicated?

Come along and ride on a fantastic Science Voyage, and find out!

Love. Some would say its the reason for being alive. So why does it make you feel sweaty, shaky and nauseous, like someone's forcing you to jump off a bridge at gunpoint?

Join K+K to discover what's happening inside your body when you fall in love, why we give out little candy hearts on Valentine's Day instead of candy brains, and whether or not the characters from Wayne's World will ever find their true soulmates.

Kira & Keera explore the immense geological forces that help to shape our planet, and then share some of the places you can go to see them, right here in our own National Parks.

LAVA!
The discovery of plate tectonic theory
The Cascadia Subduction Zone
MORE LAVA!
Crater Lake
Yellowstone geysers and the ocean of magma beneath them
The Missoula Floods and the creation of the Columbia Gorge
EVEN MORE LAVA!

If you’re an avid pursuer of rare and unique species, this is a very exciting time for you. Christmas Eve is when you have the best chance of catching a glimpse of the elusive Santius Clausadae, more commonly known as the Santa Claus.

What do you get when you take 2 science nerds & 3 radio producers, and put them in a small room to discuss a hotly debated topic like Genetically Modified Organisms and their role in agriculture? Apparently you get today's episode of Everything is Interesting.

After reading recent news stories explaining that the public should embrace "CRISPRing," a new(er) technology for engineering DNA, because its different from the topic of GMOs they've spent years protesting against (spoiler alert: its not, and CRISPRing isn't a word)  K+K set out to bring some actual science into the public conversation. With the XRAY crew, they get extremely passionate about:

the definition of a GMO
how it is that genes change naturally
Golden Bullets and other fun ways to get new genes into old organisms
how the mass use of GMOs could affect the environment
why being strongly for or against all GMOs as a broad category is, frankly, kinda ridiculous

If you want to have an informed debate about GMOs with your friends and neighbors, and we know you do, this is the episode for you!

Your body is almost always using energy, whether you're going hard labor, or just sleeping. Play along with our Labor Quiz to see if you know the answers to questions like:

True or False: When you sleep your body consumes the caloric equivalent of 1 tablespoon of ketchup.
Thinking requires energy, so you burn a lot more calories thinking really hard
Celery is a “negative calorie food,” because it takes more calories to digest celery than you absorb from eating it.
It takes more energy to digest a sandwich made with whole wheat bread and real cheese than one made of white bread and American cheese.

Science Fiction movies are great. But for us, half the fun of watching them is how blatantly they misrepresent the actual science behind their plots. Its ridiculous, it’s inaccurate, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun to pick apart.

On today’s show, we listen to a few clips from some of our favorite science fiction outer space movies, and focus in on one of the major inaccuracies, then give you three possible reasons why it wouldn’t have happened that way. Only one of the totally-plausible sounding scientific explanations is the right one. Can you figure out which it is before the DJs?

If you take your helmet off in space, you turn to clay.

Is it a metal? Or is it METAL?!? (Like, the music. You have to say it with a growl to get the joke.)  In today’s show, K+K attempt to stump the XRAY DJs with phrases that might describe an actual scientific element and its metallic properties, or might be the name of a Metallica song.



Think you know your metals? Play along!