We Have Concerns

Judges of the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year have disqualified a winning contestant after the anteater in his prize-winning photograph was judged “highly likely” to be a taxidermy specimen. Called “The Night Raider,” the image was taken by photographer Marcio Cabral and depicts an anteater underneath starry skies next to a termite mound dotted with glowing bioluminescence. Jeff and...

Hi! Jeff is in the midst of the Fatherhood Ritual. We'll be back next Monday! 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

A Canadian man finally got the chance to clear his name after 17 years in exile from a hotel in British Columbia. His ordeal began in 2001, involving a flock of seagulls (the animals, not the band) and a suitcase full of pepperoni. Jeff and Anthony discuss the value of a good apology. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have C...

What can artificial intelligence learn from dogs? Quite a lot, say researchers from the University of Washington and Allen Institute for AI. They recently trained neural networks to interpret and predict the behavior of canines. Their results, they say, show that animals could provide a new source of training data for AI systems — including those used to control robots. Jeff and Anthony learn that...

While hunting for dinner, the big brown bat must hone in on flitting insects and keep track of its surroundings to avoid crashing into them. Now, scientists have taken a peek at what’s going on in these bats’ brains while they swoop and dive. They identified a brain region that helps the animals map where objects are in relation to their own bodies, and saw that individual brain cells changed thei...

John Corcoran grew up in New Mexico in the US during the 1940s and 50s. He graduated from high school, went on to university, and became a teacher in the 1960s - a job he held for 17 years. But, he hid an extraordinary secret. He had never learned to read. In this episode we learn that Jeff and Anthony thought illiterate meant a dog couldn't have puppies. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MOR...

Crash safety technology has come a long way in the past decade or so, with cars that now sense an impending crash and can prepare the driver for impact or even attempt to avoid a collision entirely. Current Mercedes cars even go so far as to provide your ears with an extra layer of audio protection. It’s called “pink noise” and it’s designed to keep your hearing intact after being bombarded by the...

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...