Recent Posts
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Dress For Succession
Scientists studying the brain’s ability to make choices note that the fewer inconsequential decisions you put in front of yourself, the better you’ll do when it is time to face a really challenging one. Armed with that knowledge, many prominent …
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The Prime Director
Jeff is intrigued by an interview he read about Nasa’s one and only Planetary Protection Officer. Her job? To protect OTHER planets from us and ensure the galaxy isn’t contaminated by microbes, particles, or other detritus that might ruin it. …
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Grin and Bear It
Park Rangers are asking visitors to state park and forest areas to please stop taking #bearselfies. Anthony and Jeff try to figure out what would possess a person to approach a wild, deadly creature in the woods and snap a …
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A Tough Pill to Swallow
Researchers at MIT have developed a new pill that is much more efficient at delivering medicine into the bloodstream. Instead of a simple spheroid, it is covered in a multitude of tiny spikes, which stick into the stomache lining and …
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I Don’t Know
It’s counter-intuative and perplexing, but the truth is, the less human beings know about a particular subject, the more they THINK they know about it. This has become known as The Dunning-Kruger Effectific. A new article in the Pacific Standard …
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One For the Books
A new article describes the benefits of long-form reading and suggests that the tactile feedback of printed books results in better retention than e-readers. While Jeff and Anthony are definitely on board with reading, they challenge the idea that enjoying …
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Tricked by Treats
On this special Halloween episode, Anthony and Jeff consider the nature of of the trick or treat tradition and the urban legend of poisoned Halloween candy. Is asking strangers for food an inherently unsafe activity, or did we manufacture a …
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Leave it to Beaver
A new Wired article recounts the medieval myth that beavers, when cornered by hunters, would castrate themselves by chewing off their own testicles. Jeff and Anthony unpack the myth and try to figure out why the Dark Ages were filled …
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Back to the Hoverboard Future
Previously on We Have Concerns… in the Welcome to the Hoverboard Future episode Anthony mocked Jeff’s enthusiasm for a mind-bending new technology that indicated that hoverboards may, in fact be possible. Now, there is a new article on Engadget that …
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Tell Me How to Feel
A new article describes a study in which doctors told patients they would just be getting a shot of vitamins, but instead gave them something a thousand times more powerful. Whether these subjects thought something strange was happening or not …
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