Space

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Stanford Technique for Picking Creative Ideas, Why Whales Are So Big (But Not Bigger), and the First Medical Diagnosis and Treatment in Space from Earth

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Learn about how doctors on Earth diagnosed and treated an astronaut’s medical problem in space for the first time; a new study that explains why whales are so big, but not bigger; and a Stanford technique for getting better at picking creative ideas.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Measure Your Beliefs About the World, the Overview Effect, and a Mercury-Spewing Fountain

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Learn about how the overview effect changes your perspective when you leave Earth; why the Calder Mercury Fountain in Barcelona pumps out pure liquid mercury; and, how researchers came up with a set of core beliefs that measure how you feel about the world.

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

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Learn about why the Earth’s atmosphere extends beyond the moon; whether you should listen to music while you work; and whether your muffled hearing after a concert means you damaged your ears.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Why Asthma Gets Worse at Night, Earth’s Largest Living Thing

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Learn about a heroic experiment that helps explain asthma getting worse at night; and the largest living thing on earth.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Why Pockets Are Rare in Women’s Clothes, Why Earth Twinkles, and Where Life Originated

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Learn about why Earth twinkles from space; why pockets are so rare in women’s clothes; and whether the first life emerged on land or water.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Mars Opportunity Rover Update, Sunscreen SPF Meanings, Turning Carbon Dioxide into Fuel

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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:

Curiosity Daily Podcast: The Habitable Epoch, Mars 2020’s Search for Life, and 4 Research-Based Personality Types

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Learn about why the universe may have been teeming with life billions of years ago; why NASA’s Mars 2020 Martian rover mission is going to be a huge milestone; and four personality types people fit into, according to new research.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Pretzel History, How Earth Got Its Water, Runner’s High Origins, and Words Named After People

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Learn about where the water on Earth might have come from; the surprising history of the pretzel, including the monk who invented it; words you probably didn’t know are named after people; and where “runner’s high” comes from, and whether it’s genetic.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: NASA's InSight Lander Mars Mission, the Chicken or the Egg, and Common Synesthesia

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

We Might Smell Life Before We See It

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It’s a tough game to determine if a distant planet orbiting some nameless star hosts life on it or not. You can’t just walk up to it and start flipping over rocks or poking into the dirt. You can only use your telescopes, and the planets are so extremely distant that you can’t see the surface itself.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: How Loud Is the Sun?

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Learn about a simple way to reduce your internet carbon footprint; how brain images can make you more likely to believe fake science; and how loud the sun is.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: What Neanderthal Genes Are Doing in Your DNA, The Time Photosynthesis Killed Nearly All Life on Earth, and the Inventor of “Do, Re, Mi” Notation

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Learn about what Neanderthal genes might be doing in your DNA; Guido d’Arezzo, the 11th-century Benedictine monk who invented “Do, Re, Mi” notation, or solfège; and how photosynthesis killed off 99 percent of life on Earth during the  the Great Oxygenation Event.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Differences in CEO and Murdering Psychopaths, How Deep Sleep Cleans Your Brain, and the Mystery of Our Inactive Sun

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Learn about how our sun is different from similar stars; how deep sleep literally cleans your brain; and the psychology behind why some psychopaths are serial killers, while others are CEOs.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Moviegoers Blink in Sync, Rain on the Sun, and Why Flamingos Stand on One Leg

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Learn about a new discovery about rain on the sun; why flamingos stand on one leg; and why you blink the way you do when you’re watching a movie.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Exercising for Different Body Types, New England Vampire Panic, Non-Vertical List Benefits, and Constellations on Mars

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Learn about how your body type affects the way you should exercise; the New England Vampire Panic; what our constellations would look like if we saw them from Mars; and the benefits of writing a better, non-vertical list to organize your thoughts.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Zero G Romance, Our Sixth Sense, Oinking at A.I.

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Today, you’ll learn about why studying human intimacy in space is necessary for humanity, the mysterious sixth sense human beings have, which is not seeing dead people, and how researchers used artificial intelligence to figure out a way to speak pig.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: Earth’s Core Growing Lopsided and the Science of Gut Feelings

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Learn how to tap into your “gut feeling,” which knows more than you think it does; and why Earth's core is growing lopsided.

Curiosity Daily Podcast: International Internet Languages (w/ Gretchen McCulloch), Chances of Rain, and Mars in Spain

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Learn about how you can go on a simulated mission to Mars (in Spain); and, what the weather forecast really means when it says there’s a chance of rain. You’ll also learn about how people around the world talk differently online, with internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch.