Curiosity Daily Podcast: How Music Affects Your Work, Damage from Muffled Hearing, and Earth’s Gigantic Atmosphere

Let’s say one day astronomers announce that our worst nightmare has come true: a large object is headed towards the Earth with a significant chance of impact. What do we do?

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.

Pop superstar Kesha joins Shark Week’s Luke Tipple on the podcast to discuss her love of sharks, how her music funds her addiction to diving, and how you can find inner peace while under the water. And at the end, our researcher Sierra drops in to tell us that some sharks have teeth in their eyes.

Shark Week’s Luke Tipple tackles the question “How can I work with sharks?” alongside two experts in the field – and their answers are not always the obvious ones. Luke is joined first by Kelly Link, Associate Curator of the Georgia Aquarium who talks about what it’s like to be an aquarist, how it differs from field work, and how to get yourself noticed. The second guest is Dr. Neil Hammerschlag who goes into detail on what it takes to become a prominent scientist, and what other paths you can take if a PhD isn’t for you. And at the end, researcher Sierra stops by to tell us about the world’s smallest shark.

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.

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.