Curiosity Daily Podcast: How Life Expectancy Doubled in Just 150 Years (w/ Author Steven Johnson)
Learn how we doubled life expectancy in the last 150 years. Plus: “impossible” quasicrystals formed from nuclear bombs.
June 30, 2021
Episode Show Notes:
Additional resources from Steven Johnson:
- Pick up "Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer": https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/594501/extra-life-by-steven-johnson/
- Website: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenbjohnson
The first nuclear detonation created "impossible" quasicrystals shaped like 20-sided dice by Briana Brownell
- Castelvecchi, D. (2021). First nuclear detonation created “impossible” quasicrystals. Nature, 593(7860), 487–487. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01332-0
- Bindi, L., Kolb, W., Eby, G. N., Asimow, P. D., Wallace, T. C., & Steinhardt, P. J. (2021). Accidental synthesis of a previously unknown quasicrystal in the first atomic bomb test. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(22), e2101350118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101350118
- Università degli Studi di Firenze. (2021). Quasicrystals in the first nuclear explosion [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkuLjTlUO7A
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Next Up
Shark Week 2025 Kicks Off July 20th
Shark Week is back for its 37th year on Sunday, July 20th. Don't miss it!
Gold Rush Sweeps
The following Promotion is intended for the 50 United States and D.C. only and will be construed and evaluated according to United States laws. Do not proceed in this site if you are not a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C., and 21 years or older, as of Promotion start date.
An Astronomical Review of “Don’t Look Up”
In our annual New Year’s family tradition of struggling to stay awake until midnight, we decided to watch “Don’t Look Up,” the Adam McKay satire starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and other fabulously good-looking people.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Did Alien Tech Crash-Land into the Ocean?
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: The Podcast - How Shark Fishing Funds Human Trafficking
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.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Undiscovered Sharks and the State of the Ocean
Luke Tipple invites “The Lost Shark Guy,” Dr. Dave Ebert, who is personally responsible for finding dozens of shark species that were either previously unknown to science or thought to be extinct. He and Luke discuss why shark populations are a direct indicator of how healthy the ocean is, how to find undiscovered sharks, and why diversity in sharks is essential for marine life.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Lights! Camera! TEETH! Making Shark Docs
Shark Week’s Luke Tipple is joined by longtime filmmaker and Emmy-award-winner Andy Casagrande. He’s filmed and appeared in dozens of shark documentaries, and might just be the most prolific shark cinematographer in history. He talks with Luke about his career, the contentious term “shark porn,” and the future of the industry. And at the end, our researcher Sierra talks about the unprecedented ways that sharks are currently endangered.
Shark Week: The Podcast - How Did a Shark Encounter Survivor Become an Advocate for Their Protection?
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.
Shark Week: The Podcast - How Smart Are Sharks?
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.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Do Scientists Need to Kill Sharks?
Host Luke Tipple welcomes two guests to discuss how researchers can kill sharks in the name of science – and whether they need to at all. The first is Dr. Neil Hammerschlag, shark researcher and founder of Atlantic Shark Expeditions, and an expert on data-gathering in the field. He’s followed by explorer Fred Buyle, a world-record-breaking freediver whose innovative methods of shark tagging are explored. Plus, our researcher Sierra tells us about how a 50-year study changed our understanding of tiger sharks – and much of the work wasn’t even done by scientists.