Curiosity Daily Podcast: Why There Are Monkeys If We Evolved From Them (w/ Natalia Reagan), Adult Chickenpox, and Disaster Survival Traits

Learn what personality traits it takes to survive a disaster, and why chickenpox is so much worse for adults. Plus, special guest Natalia Reagan answers the question: if we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?

September 20, 2018

Episode Show Notes:

In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:

Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey

Natalia Reagan is an anthropologist, primatologist, actor, producer, writer, host and comedienne. She is a comedy writer and correspondent on Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk on Nat Geo and is also a StarTalk All-Star podcast host. She was the co-host on Spike TV's show "10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty" where she judged contestants searching for "the world's greatest hide and go seek champion.” Her goal is to meld her passions of science and comedy by educating people about human and animal behavior using humor.

More from Natalia Reagan:

If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, including our next episode (featuring Natalia Reagan), then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron!

Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Next Up

Why We Know Nothing about Dark Matter and Dark Energy

Welcome to the era of precision cosmology…where we’ve managed to very precisely measure everything we don't know about the universe.

Watch Ken Jeong & Rei Ami Make a Splash on 'K-Pop Shark Heroes'

They'll use the power of K-Pop to change the way we view sharks forever!

Shark Week 2026 Kicks Off July 26!

Take a bite out of our 38th annual Shark Week event, starting July 26, 2026! Here's everything we have coming up, only on Discovery.

A Guide to Defending the Earth

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?

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.

What You Can't Miss on Discovery This Week

In need of plans? We've got you covered! Here's what you can watch on Discovery all week!

Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing Survivalist's Weekly PSR Ratings

Naked and Afraid: Last One Standing premieres May 7 on Discovery 12 Survivialists competed for $100k cash prize and ultimate bragging rights

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.

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.