Curiosity Daily Podcast: Human Hair Was Created in a Lab, You See Less Color Than You Think, and Mapping an Underground City Without Digging
Learn about how archaeologists used ground-penetrating radar to map an entire Roman city underground without digging; the gross but cutting-edge science of creating human hair in a lab; and why you see way less color than you probably think.
July 09, 2020
Episode Show Notes:
Archaeologists mapped an entire Roman city underground WITHOUT DIGGING (Falerii Novi) by Grant Currin
- Entire Roman city revealed without any digging. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/uoc-erc060320.php
- Verdonck, L., Launaro, A., Vermeulen, F., & Millett, M. (2020). Ground-penetrating radar survey at Falerii Novi: a new approach to the study of Roman cities. Antiquity, 94(375), 705–723. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.82
We can create human hair in the lab by Grant Currin
- Hairy, lab-grown human skin cell model could advance hair loss research. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-06/ohs-hlh060320.php
- Lab-made skin grows its own hair. (2020). Nature Podcast. https://play.acast.com/s/nature/bda63f64-1f71-4c08-9ac2-85fb80d576b9
- Lee, J., Rabbani, C. C., Gao, H., Steinhart, M. R., Woodruff, B. M., Pflum, Z. E., Kim, A., Heller, S., Liu, Y., Shipchandler, T. Z., & Koehler, K. R. (2020). Hair-bearing human skin generated entirely from pluripotent stem cells. Nature, 582(7812), 399–404. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2352-3
You see way less color than you think by Grant Currin
- Our visual world of color is largely incorrect, study finds. (2020). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200608163440.htm
- Neuroskeptic. (2020, May 30). How Much Color Do We Really See? Discover Magazine; Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-much-color-do-we-really-see
- Cohen, M. A., & Rubenstein, J. (2020). How much color do we see in the blink of an eye? Cognition, 200, 104268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104268
- Cohen, M. A., Botch, T. L., Robertson, C.E. (June 2020). The limits of color awareness during active, real-world vision. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (24) 13821-13827. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1922294117
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://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY
Next Up
Investigate the Mind of a Shark on 'How to Train a Great White'
See how these apex predators actually think. Will they completely transform our understanding of their intelligence?
Top Five Rarest Bottom Dwellers
National Insect week occurs between June 20 -26. The week focuses on the importance of insects within ecosystems, nature, and wildlife. Insects do have a bad reputation, as some are a nuisance, and some are scary, but each plays a key role in maintaining order in nature. In celebration of the hard-working insects that you may see in your backyard, here’s a list of the ones you won’t be seeing. The rarest insects on the planet.
Get Ready for Puppy Bowl XXII on Animal Planet!
Puppy Bowl XXII premieres Sunday, February 8, 2026, at 2:00PM ET/11:00AM PT with more adoptable puppies from shelters and rescues than ever before.
Shark Week 2024
Shark Week hosted by John Cena was an electrifying and unforgettable experience that left fans in awe of the world beneath the waves. Check out what happened during the best week of the summer on Discovery.
See the full schedule or stream Shark Week on Max!
Get Ready for Puppy Bowl XXI on Animal Planet!
Puppy Bowl XXI premieres Sunday, February 9 at 2P ET/11A PT with more adoptable puppies from shelters and rescues than ever before.
Get Ready for Puppy Bowl XX on Animal Planet!
Puppy Bowl XX premieres Sunday, February 11 at 2P ET/11A PT with more adoptable puppies from shelters and rescues than ever before.
Shipwrecked & Surrounded by Sharks
This week, we do things a little differently, as Shark Week’s Luke Tipple invites Adventure Aaron into the podcast studio to talk about his incredible near-death experience on the open water. Adventure Aaron gets into what it takes to circumnavigate the world in an ocean rowboat, what it’s like to stare eye-to-eye with an oceanic white tip that probably wants you for lunch, and everything else that happened to him when his boat was capsized, and he was lost by himself at sea.
Shark Week: The Podcast - Why is Tagging Baby Great White Sharks So Important?
Luke Tipple speaks with Dr. Riley Elliott, a marine biologist from New Zealand who recently tagged baby great white sharks, which are rarely seen in the wild. They talk about how climate change is affecting shark pupping grounds, why fishers are wrong to think there are “too many sharks,” and about Dr. Elliott’s Great White App, which allows users to track great white sharks in the ocean.
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 - 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.