Curiosity Daily Podcast: A Surprising Amount of Scientific Research Happens at the Zoo

Luke Tipple is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of the Outlaw Ocean Ian Urbina, who has dedicated his life to chronicling crime on the high seas. They discuss the state of our world’s oceans, how nearly 20% of your seafood was likely caught illegally, and the surprising link between modern slavery and the killing of sharks.

Host Luke Tipple is joined this week by renowned Harvard professor, Dr. Avi Loeb, who recently led a deep-sea expedition to discover if evidence for advanced alien life crash-landed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014. They discuss the recent Congressional UFO hearings, how the last seventy years of research into extraterrestrial life has been potentially misguided, and the challenges of searching for tiny objects on the bottom of the ocean.

Shark Week’s Luke Tipple welcomes professional photographer Mike Coots, who lost his leg to a tiger shark attack when he was only 18. But after his horrific injury, he came to love sharks, and became a lifelong advocate for their safety. Luke and Mike discuss his career, his love for photographing sharks, and how to positively approach the big life-changing moments that can happen to any of us.

The discussion turns this week to sharks’ intelligence, and how it varies among species. Host Luke Tipple is joined by Dr. Tristan Guttridge, a behavioral ecologist and veteran of Shark Week whose research has tackled the social smarts, and even personalities, of different kinds of sharks. He sheds light on why we shouldn’t just think of them as dumb fish with rows of razor-sharp teeth. And at the end, our researcher Sierra Kehoe tells us about shark hypnosis.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler explains how “Nudge” has changed the world. Plus: squirrel-inspired robots!

Learn how to tap into your “gut feeling,” which knows more than you think it does; and why Earth's core is growing lopsided.

Learn about non-human animals that say hello and goodbye; life on Snowball Earth; and how to learn skills twice as fast.

Learn about why children write letters backward; how dogs know when you’re lying to them; and mountains on neutron stars.

Learn about the mystery of how Tibetan monks seem to keep meditating after death; and a woolly mammoth that walked VERY far.

Learn about how to avoid getting dragged down by “Sludge”; how hybrid fruit like plumcots are made; and pirate parlance.