We Have Concerns

Birds can sense Earth’s magnetic field, and this uncanny ability may help them fly home from unfamiliar places or navigate migrations that span tens of thousands of kilometers. Scientists have now pinpointed a possible protein behind this “sixth sense.” Jeff and Anthony consider the bird prankz possibilities. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get...

PATRONS GET A BONUS EPISODE WITH IFY AND DANI. LISTEN TO IT HERE: https://www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-content-18207635 Right now, dozens of train cars carrying 10 million pounds of poop are stranded in a rural Alabama rail yard. Technically it's biowaste, but to the 982 residents in the small town of Parrish, that's just semantics. They want it gone. The load has been there for almost two months,...

The thrilling conclusion of our week of episodes recorded live at PAX East 2018 in beautiful Boston! We respond to audience questions. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever servic...

Scientists in developing nations plan to step up research into dimming sunshine to curb climate change, hoping to judge if a man-made chemical sunshade would be less risky than a harmful rise in global temperatures. Twelve scholars, from countries including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Jamaica and Thailand, wrote in the journal Nature on Wednesday that the poor were most vulnerable...

Around a third of the population have trouble maintaining sleep throughout the night. While nighttime awakenings are distressing for most sufferers, there is some evidence from our recent past that suggests this period of wakefulness occurring between two separate sleep periods was the norm. Throughout history, there have been numerous accounts of segmented sleep, with a common reference to "...

Though they may appear crystal clear in our minds, our memories are not a carbon copy of the events we witnessed. Every time we recall a memory, we may accidentally alter it or diminish its accuracy. Even trivial memories are easily corrupted with mere suggestions. Jeff and Anthony struggle to recall if they've done this story before. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patr...

A study claims to have discovered a new human organ that could help scientists better understand its impact on diseases such as cancer. Reports suggests this organ, called the interstitium, is a series of interconnected, fluid-filled compartments found throughout the body. The study also claims the interstitium is among the body's largest organs. Jeff and Anthony make it through the episode withou...

In the 19th Century, a Pennsylvania dentist called WH Atkinson came across a condition that sounds like the stuff of nightmares. Writing in The Dental Cosmos, the first major journal for American dentists, Atkinson documented an outbreak of exploding teeth. Although there were five or six reported cases in the 19th Century, there has been no documented case of exploding teeth since the 1920s. Jeff...

A reminder of something rad coming up and a scheduling update. Support the show and get bonus episodes, videos, Discord community access and more! http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Jeff on Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/jeffcannata.bsky.social Anthony on Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/acarboni.bsky.social

Right after the election, Erik Hagerman decided he’d take a break from reading about the hoopla of politics. He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016. “I just look at the weather,” said Mr. Hagerman, 53, who lives alone on a pig farm in southeastern Ohio. Jeff and Anthony berate this selfish stranger. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MO...

"What if we told you we could back up your mind?" That's the business pitch of Nectome, a preserve-your-brain-and-upload-it company. Its chemical solution can keep a body intact for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, as a statue of frozen glass. The idea is that someday in the future scientists will scan your bricked brain and turn it into a computer simulation. That way, someone a lot...

A new study from NASA has found that astronaut Scott Kelly's genes are no longer identical to those of his identical twin after spending a year in space. Preliminary results from NASA's Twins Study found that seven percent of Kelly's genes no longer match those of his twin, Mark. Scott Kelly spent one year aboard the International Space Station during the study, while his brother remained on Earth...

IN THE LAST 20 years, genealogy websites have attracted more than 15 million customers by promising insights into your past. It’s deeply personal, affecting stuff. But when your family tree contains thousands, millions, even tens of millions of people, it’s no longer a personal history. It’s human history. Recently, scientists from the New York Genome Center, Columbia, MIT, and Harvard scraped cro...

Most of us know it - that weird, sudden feeling of experiencing something not for the first time. It's called déjà vu - French for "already seen" - and it's an uncanny feeling. But according to new research, that's all it is. Just a feeling. The most accepted explanation is that it has to do with memory. Much like a word can be on the tip of your tongue, a memory could be on the tip of y...

A dog searching for a lost child is typically given an item of clothing to smell. But what does that scent “look” like? To find out, scientists tested 48 dogs, half of which had special police or rescue training. Jeff and Anthony discuss whether or not this study stinks. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch...

Humans assign value to brands. Brands represent wealth, strength, and yes, sex. We are our brands. And for some rhesus macaques in a lab, one brand, Adidas, represents monkey genitalia. The researchers paired dominant male faces, subordinate male faces, and female hindquarters with some brand logos, then paired scrambled images with other brand logos. “We know how social rewards can be processed d...

It's pretty extraordinary for people in their 80s and 90s to keep the same sharp memory as someone several decades younger, and now scientists are peeking into the brains of these "superagers" to uncover their secret. The work is the flip side of the disappointing hunt for new drugs to fight or prevent Alzheimer's disease. Parts of the brain shrink with age, one of the reasons why most p...

If you ever fell into a black hole, your body would most likely be ripped into shreds and become 'spaghettified' - At least that's the theory put forward by most physicists today. But a new study is challenging that claim by suggesting there may be some black holes that you could survive - although doing so may put you into a strange reality. These black holes would destroy your past life and trap...

In a triumph of data collection and analysis, a team of researchers based at Oxford University has built the tools necessary to calculate how far any dot on a map is from a city — or anything else. The research allows us to pin down a question that has long evaded serious answers: Where is the middle of nowhere? The Washington Post processed every pixel and every populated place in the contiguous...

When Josiah Zayner watched a biotech CEO drop his pants at a biohacking conference and inject himself with an untested herpes treatment, he realized things had gone off the rails. Zayner is no stranger to stunts in biohacking—loosely defined as experiments, often on the self, that take place outside of traditional lab spaces. Most notoriously, he injected his arm with DNA encoding for CRISPR that...

Elizabeth Swaney is a 33-year-old skier from Oakland, California who competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics for Hungary. She is not a good skiier. Swaney, who said her grandparents came from Hungary, earned her Olympic berth more from attending World Cup events than actually competing. Women’s pipe skiing World Cups rarely see more than 30 competitors, so it’s not hard to meet the Olympic requiremen...

Biomedicine just took another leap forward. University of Colorado Boulder scientists created so-called electronic skin—e-skin for short. The e-skin is a thin, semi-transparent material that can act like your skin through measuring temperature, pressure, humidity and air flow. The new material, which was detailed in a study published Friday in Science Advances, could make better prosthetics, impro...

After about a week of eye irritation, which she thought might be caused by a stray eyelash, Beckley took a close look in the mirror and found the real culprit. What she pulled out was a wriggling, translucent worm, about a half-inch long. And it wasn't the only one in her eye. The worms in Beckley's eye were from the species Thelazia gulosa, which had not been known to infect humans. Jeff and Anth...

What are the ingredients of a good relationship? Trust? Communication? Compromise? How about a sense of smell? When researchers in the United Kingdom surveyed almost 500 people with anosmia (the loss of sense of smell), more than 50 percent of them reported feeling isolated, and blamed their relationship troubles on their affliction. Smell is important in social bonding, says psychologist Pamela D...

Conservationists have been sounding the alarm over invasive species for years, warning of the damage they can cause to habitats and native animals. But in Florida, an invasive snail might be helping an endangered bird species come back from the brink. The Snail Kite, an endangered species of bird that feeds on snails, responded to an invasive species by evolving quickly. Jeff and Anthony swoop in...