Curiosity Daily Podcast: Coronavirus Test Shortages Explained (w/ Dr. Julia Schaletzky), Anonymous Anime Fan Helps Solve 25-Year-Old Math Mystery, and Can Ketamine Help with Depression?

Dr. Julia Schaletzky explains why the U.S. is having a hard time testing everyone for the coronavirus. Plus: learn about how ketamine can help with depression and anxiety; and how an anonymous Anime fan on 4chan helped solve a 25-year-old math puzzle.

March 27, 2020

Episode Show Notes:

Additional resources from Dr. Julia Schaletzky, Executive Director of the Henry Wheeler Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases at University of California, Berkeley:

How can ketamine treat anxiety? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Brock in Utah)

An anonymous 4chan post helped solve a 25-year-old math puzzle by Grant Currin

Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing

Next Up

Curiosity Daily: Asteroid-eating Fungi, Psychedelic…Maybe, Printing Organs

Today, you’ll learn about mushrooms that can eat asteroids to make space soil, how our thoughts affect us as we microdose psychedelics, and efforts to 3D print organs like kidneys and lungs!

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Hacking Device, Designer Seaweed, Accent Exposure

We discuss the latest in phone hacking technology, how aquaculture may be able to help the global food crisis, and how engaging with people who speak in a foreign accent may help us retain language.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Murdering Murder Hornets, ADHD & Hoarding, Pain Pill Ills

Learn about how Japanese honey bees protect themselves from murder hornets, how a new link has been discovered between ADHD and hoarding disorder, and how your over-the-counter pain meds, might actually be making your pain worse!

Curiosity Daily Podcast:The Myth of Man Flu, Arctic Lakes, Buzzing Bats

Let’s talk about whether “man flu” is fact or fiction, how the Arctic lakes just threw a curveball at our climate change projections, and the genius new way bats are tricking their predators.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Space Slingshot, Ancient Modern Pants, Lifesaving Silence

Hear about a slingshot launching payloads into space, the impressively modern-looking world’s oldest pants, and how moth wings are able to absorb sound to avoid detection from bats.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Skin Print, Testing Birth Control, Race To Bring Mars Home

You’re going to learn about efforts to print astronaut skin in space with their own blood, the mystifying side effects of birth control, and the race to bring soil samples back from Mars!

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Reverse Aging, Cooperation Increase, Time & Covid

Today we explore a potential scientific fountain of youth, how cooperation among strangers has, contrary to popular belief, actually increased in recent years, and how the pandemic has caused the perception of time distortion.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Magic Addiction Fix, Parkinson’s Detection, Wind Turbines

Today we talk about how psilocybin from magic mushrooms can help those struggling with alcohol addiction, a new device that can detect Parkinson’s disease from breathing patterns, and how we can recycle wind turbines.

Curiosity Daily: Fry Flying, Gas Giants at Home, Entangled Atoms

Today we are discussing new sustainable fuels for airplanes, creating other worldly heat at home, and a new record for quantum entanglement.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: VR & Transcendence, Stonehenge Calendar, Pregnant With Covid

We discuss how VR is as effective as psychedelics at helping people reach transcendence, whether Stonehenge may have been an ancient calendar, and how COVID-19 has affected women in late pregnancy.