We Know Some Stuff

Peptides be doing shady stuff sometimes. And i’m not about to trash talk no peptides, mainly because Sorina Chiorean would get upset with me. She makes peptides that do cool things (not deceitful things) Listen to what she is cooking up in the peptide kitchen

Picture a beautiful mountain, like the one on a bottle of water. Picture the snow on that mountain. Now picture that melted snow in the bottle. How much of that snow makes it into the places where they get that water? Caroline Aubry-Wake climbs mountains to figure it out!

Exercise and eat right? Nah…. But what if you had extra motivation? What does it take to make a behavioral change, and what if that motivation is pregnancy? Karishma Hosein is on the job to figure out exactly that!

You find a snake and might run away. Michael Allison runs towards finding snakes. You know snakes may be in a certain area, you stay away from that area. Michael knows snakes may be in an area and uses science to prove it! Why is Michael looking for snakes under rocks using snake…. presents….. find out in this episode!

Who doesn’t love the part of the medicine commercial where the narrator talks really fast about all the side effects. Then they slip some absolutely terrifying side effect like “death”? Well wouldn’t it be even scarier if the people who made the medicine didn’t know why their medicine caused a specific side effect? Good thing people like Toby are figuring out why a certain birth control treatment...

Land - important Food - really important People - incredibly important But who is going to connect them all? That’s where Elisabeth Miltenburg comes in. She studies the connections between the foods native to the lands of the native people who settled in modern day Guelph many years ago. But why is the connection to food and land so important? Listen to what Elisabeth has to say:

Maybe you don’t produce honey, but that doesn’t mean you are not a bee. Furthermore that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve saving! Sage Handler saves the bees by studying the habits of cavity nesting bees. Listen to her buzz about bees

How do you convince someone to change the way they have done something for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years? Agricultural practices contribute a lot to climate change, so people like Lisa Ashton are working towards building bridges from science to policy and find incentives for farmers to adopt green practices to reduce their contribution to climate change. Listen to her build some bridges belo...

Does wasted food scraps burn you up on the inside? Tara Allohverdi feels the same way! She burns food biomass (agricultural and food scraps) to make “biochar” a product similar to charcoal and great for giving plants nutrients they need to grow. Listen to Tara explain her burning passion for biochar.

Pumping iron and pumping blood! Your muscles need blood to flow through them when you exercise, and scientists want to know how, when, and why. Jeremy Cohen is one of those scientists and he is squeezing muscles to find out the answers to those questions.

Why do a job when you can program a computer to do it for you!? Even more so when you don’t even know if the answer to your problem is buried in a library of data. Bianca Lepe is the librarian behind telling a computer how to search for the right proteins to put into the next tuberculosis vaccine. She uses Natural Language Processing, but how about you just naturally process her spoken language by...

Emotions! Who needs them!? Turns out you had emotions your whole life! But how does a child’s brain process emotions? Adaeze Egwuatu wants to see what kids are “thinking” when they see social images (pie vs. friends hugging). I’m thinking I want pie. Listen to how Adaeze is working to better understand this very expansive topic

Ever have a long stressful day at work? If so, you and squirrels may have more in common than you think. Alannah Grant studies squirrel stress. She is not a rodent therapist, but she does know a lot about the environmental factors that contribute to the stress levels of our furry neighbors. Who, what, where, when, and why? Let Alannah answer those question in this episode

Imagine you stepped through a portal into a parallel world that had all your same friends, family, and acquaintances. The two worlds are quite similar expect everyone is more extreme – they look better, seem to travel all the time, are deeply in love, etc. Do you think if you spent more time in this parallel, extreme world that it would have an impact on your thinking? Well most of us travel to th...

Sara Striker does some real tear jerking work with onions. She fights the good fight against moldy onion leaves. But it turns out, finding the solution to eradicating onion mold is a moving target. So its a good think Sara never stops moving!

In the height of DIY and the rise of the glue gun, Andre St Amant emerges from the ashes. Andre is a synthetic chemist and he is one the forefront of making innovative antibody drugs. Maybe you have heard of them before, maybe not, but after this episode you will know all about them and how he glues toxic stuff to proteins.

NERDS ASSEMBLE! Cagney Coomer assembles the nerds in her community and gets young girls interesting in becoming scientists. How does she do it? She makes science relevant. Cagney is a co-founder of Nerd Squad Inc. which focuses on getting young black and brown girls interested in science in and out of the classroom. This non-for-profit is making some waves, listen to her tell us all about it

What’s cooking in the chemistry lab? Marc Lennon knows. As a synthetic chemist Marc makes new things; sounds vague, but that’s because it is super complex. Good thing he is here to explain the ins and outs of synthetic chemistry.

Oh Jake Barnett has been in school for like 100 years. He went to school to teach, taught, and is back in school learning again. Along this way he learned a thing or two about learning, and now he is going to teach us how to learn and teach. That was confusing, let’s leave the teaching to him….

Birds are small, so their brains are small. But I think a bird has outsmarted me before on multiple occasions (not proud of it). Good thing we have people like Jeremy Spool who study bird brains so we can finally find a way to best the birds, and understand why they sing so loudly in the morning!

Ice skating, stamp collecting, rearing giant silk moths in buckets in your garage, baking. All of these are hobbies. Kit Straley might bake a little, not sure if she ice skates, and I don’t think she collects stamps, but I do know she raises giant silk moths. We all have hobbies and this is Kit’s. But what does it take to raise moths? Listen to Kit tell us what to expect when you are expecting (to...

Do you feel yourself drifting off? Does reading this make you sleepy? Writing it makes me sleepy. Well here is something to try to remember: Your brain consolidates memories while you sleep, but you can assist this process and even actively help your brain form solid memories a lot easier with a “life-hack” or two. Kyle Kainec knows the life-hack and is going to tell us all about memory and the sl...

Your brain is processing written language while reading this. But what about all the other things your brain is filing through at this very second. The noises in the room, colors, lights, all the memories of the awkward moments from Mrs. Mantell’s first grade class on December 11th 1997…. nonetheless, your brain does a preventative process to choose what to focus on, and Erika Correll not only stu...

Mold! Who needs it? Its on out bread, in our showers, and grossly neglected by our landlords (I’m talking about my rental property Melissa). But not all molds are bad molds. Where do we draw the line between good and bad molds? Kim Acevedo knows a lot about Aspergillus oryzae and its evil cousin Aspergillus flavus who come from very similar roots, but perform very different functions. But why! hin...

Motherhood isn’t always smooth sailing, and even after the pregnancy is finished, postpartum depression can affect how a mother mothers. Sarah Winkour (as the title states) helps depressed rats be great moms, she studies postpartum depression in rats to learn more about how postpartum depression comes about and how we can potentially treat it in the future.