A Little Bit Of Science

Dr Anthony Lanza had quite an impressive career. Amongst many things, he discovered the cause of the lung disease, silicosis, and founded the discipline of industrial hygiene, making workplace environments more safe for employees. He was also a beloved teacher and researcher at New York University in the final years of his career. What a guy. But when he died in 1964, Dr Lanza's far less laudatory...

Australia is a wondrous country with endless sights to see. The Great Barrier Reef, Sydney Opera House, Bondi Beach, the vast sunburnt deserts... and a tiny town in Western Australia where, if you breathe, your chances of dying a horrible death will be vastly increased.   Wittenoom, considered Australia's version of Chernobyl, is a site that no one should visit (and yet some still do). Back in the...

Asbestos. Do you feel like coughing just thinking about it? Most of us shudder to hear the word - it’s a substance that has caused hundreds and thousands of horrible, painful deaths. And yet it’s one of the most goddamn amazing things on the planet.    We’ve all heard about the horrors of asbestos. But what about the miraculous side of it? Think about it - it’s a rock that you can make clothes out...

Imagine a slower pace of life: Growing your own vegetables, spending more time with the children, the smell of freshly baked sourdough wafting through your well-kept home, no pesky job or financials to worry about. That does sound lovely, doesn’t it? And then while your healthy kids are playing in their mud kitchen, you hop online to chat with your tradwife friends about how to ban immigration, ba...

What are girls good for? Well, in the 1800s, the answer to that question was plain as day: birthing children and keeping house. In fact, in 1885, the Pittsburgh Dispatch published a column declaring that a woman who worked outside the home was "a monstrosity”!   This outrageously sexist column sparked a fiery response from one hell of a young woman. Born Elizabeth Cochran and known later and more...

Ebenezer “Eben” McBurney Byers was the personification of the Roaring Twenties: Chairman of his own company, private box at the baseball, golf pro, ladies' man - total Great Gatsby vibes.    Unfortunately, Eben had a fall one day leaving him with an injury that dented his athletic prowess. Conventional treatment failed and so his physiotherapist, Dr. Charles Moyar, suggested he try RadiThor, an en...

The notion of a humanoid machine was developed way back in the early 20th century. We’ve come a long way since then, integrating robots into every crevice of our lives. And we mean, every crevice.   We’ve got robot vacuum cleaners, retail robots, manufacturing robots and military robots. But what about the sexy robots? The masturbots? The love machines? Well, we were asked a stimulating question b...

Picture this: you're on a cargo ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by a vast expanse of water when suddenly, you feel a sharp pain. No, it's not a metaphorical pang of regret for opting for the slow boat rather than the quick and painless intercontinental flight; it's an actual mite bite. Welcome to the wild world of Gianluca Grimalda, a climate scientist with a penchant for slow...

The 1980s had some memorable fads and crazes—hair metal bands, neon leotards, the Walkman… and criminal profiling!   By the mid-1980s, profilers were regularly consulting with the FBI to solve challenging cases and the job was attracting big personalities. Soon after, criminal profiling became a pop-culture sensation, thanks in large part to the 1991 blockbuster, The Silence of the Lambs.    One b...

What do people who have a dull singing voice, contract syphilis, and die suddenly have in common?   Well, according to a book (with the longest title EVER) published in the 18th century by James Morison, the answer was quite simple. Not enough poo.   Born in Aberdeenshire in 1770, James Morison was a bit blocked up. Well, more than a bit. For 35 years, he lived in inexpressible suffering. Having t...

A lesson every kid needs to learn is how to share. Little ones usually want everything for themselves, but as we grow and mature, we learn that sharing is caring. But there are some who have perhaps taken sharing too far. Sperm donation. It’s a massive industry, helping hundreds of thousands of families enter into the joy of parenthood. Whether it's for altruistic reasons, the inherent desire to s...

By the second half of the 20th century, humans were captivated by the idea of taming nature, making their mark on the world with colossal concrete structures. They’d gone absolutely - sorry about this - dam mad.    From democrats to dictators, the latest craze for politicians around the globe was to build dams. And for good reason! Dams are used to produce hydroelectricity, provide irrigation, pro...

Every once in a while, somebody does something in the name of science that turns out to be really useful. Their research changes the world, a eureka moment catapults them onto the world stage for making scientific history. They might even be awarded a Nobel prize.   But what about the science we don’t hear about?    We don’t often witness the shock, the surprise, and, most importantly, the humour...

Cereal, the food of the gods. Who can resist the crunchy, sugary deliciousness in a box? Kids (admit it - adults too) would eat it for every meal if they had the chance.   But have you ever wondered why you choose the cereal that you do? Did one in particular catch your eye?    See, there’s a heck of a lot of money that goes into marketing, especially products made for kids, and especially cereal....

While some people shuffle off this mortal coil in rather ordinary ways, there are those adventurous souls who seem hell-bent on making the grim reaper scratch his head in confusion. Like drowning in a pool of beer, throwing dynamite out the window of a moving vehicle (but forgetting to roll the window down), tripping on your world record breaking beard, and death during sex. Yes, that’s right. As...

One question that pervaded the minds of early European physicians was not whether we should eat human flesh, but rather which part and how much. While cannibalism might conjure up images of wild savages, it turns out medical cannibalism was all the rage back in the day... and continues to be (say what?!).   The “healthy” consumption of humans goes a long way back, like in the 11th century when peo...

Ahhh 1920s psychology… back when you could do anything in the name of science. Like traumatising a baby or making people believe they'd killed someone. The good old days.    Picture this: It's 1924, and Carney Landis, a psych graduate student at Minnesota University, has an ambitious idea. He wanted to determine if humans had universal facial expressions for various emotions.    Now in order to do...

Believe what you will about the Gods, karma, the universe, whatever! There are some rules that even atheists should follow.   Never call your boat “unsinkable”. Don’t call your machine gun “peace-producing”. And DO NOT, for the love of Shakespeare, describe your playhouse as “absolutely fireproof”.   It seems that whenever arrogance takes precedence over public safety, the gods have something to s...

Open plan workplaces. How do we feel about them? Now, we’re all up for modernism and advancement but when it comes to actually being able to get work done, open-plan workplaces SUCK. And there’s a lot of science to back that up. Basically, nobody gets shit done if they’re distracted all day long.    There’s nothing worse than really being in the zone and then your colleague decides it’s an appropr...

Imagine harnessing the power of the sun using nothing more than high school science lab equipment and household ingredients. Desktop cold fusion - it would be the biggest invention of the century! Well, that's exactly what Professors Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann thought they’d discovered in 1989. After experimenting with a palladium cathode in a simple heavy water electrolysis cell, they ob...

If you think cinema is just audiovisual entertainment, hold onto your popcorn folks, because today we're diving into an aromatic abyss of olfactory oddity when Hollywood engaged in the battle of the smellies. This isn't just a whiff of the absurd, but an honest-to-goodness tale of when Hollywood tried to tickle our nostrils along with our imagination. So did cinematic innovation cut the mustard or...

Everyone loves a good hack these days. It’s all about efficiency and finding ways to be even more productive. Well, that’s great for things like finding a quicker way to fold your clothes but when it comes to the workplace, the quest for more productivity can be taken a little too far. And by a little, we mean a lot.    See, the aftermath of World War II left Japan in an economic disaster. Shigeru...

The history of science is peppered with some pretty dubious research… grafting second heads onto dogs, growing bits of human brains inside mouse embryos, experiments with syphilis, and the list goes on. We have delivered many episodes on some pretty horrific things done in the name of science back in the day which is why we’re suitably discomforted by a study on orphan kids called “The Monster Stu...

In the 1700s, hydrotherapy was the panacea. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church, wrote in his book that cold water plunges could cure asthma, malaria, blindness, leprosy and even cancer (wait, did that say blindness?).   But by the beginning of the 19th century, well-informed physicians wanted to get more precise about curing the insane. It was believed that one of the causes of mania...

Picture this: It’s the turn of the millennium. The dust from 9/11 is only just beginning to settle. Shrek, Rush Hour 2 and Donny Darko are packing cinemas. LeAnn Rimes, Shaggy, and Kylie Minogue top the Aria charts. Apple begins their technological invasion with the first iPod and honest little Johnnie Howard is the Prime Minister of Australia.   Can you feel yourself back in that time? Can you pi...