Curiosity Daily Podcast: Odd Historical Overlaps, Closed Doors Save Lives, and Vacation Time Helps A Company’s Bottom Line

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.

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.

Photographer and conservationist Ian Shive photographs one of the most remote and rugged parts of the United States to take us on a journey to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico's Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

Learn how often people misremember alibis; new lessons from Denisova Cave; and how to remove pesticides from produce.

Learn about the time pirates stopped the US from switching to the metric system; and new learnings about Mars’ interior.

Learn about a key trait in group leaders; why DNA evidence is overrated; and a brainless slime mold that can “think.”

Learn about common ancestors shared by every human; evolution’s multiple directions; and universal facial expressions.

Learn how to turn the table on addictive apps; and how black holes can make us see multiple versions of the same thing.

Learn about why we need memorials for medicine; NASA’s Phantom Torso experiment; and why we often overestimate outliers.

Learn about the earliest use of infinity we’ve found; and vampire-like sea slugs that absorb other organisms’ attributes.