Curious-ish: A Science Podcast

This week on Curious-ish, Greta takes science to the streets of Chapman University where she asks the campus what they are curious about in the world. A double-major physics and philosophy student, Julianna, asks the question “why don’t we see the color blue often in nature?”. After Julianna gives the question her best shot with her own answer, Greta takes a deep dive into all things blue in nature. From sea life, to birds, to plants, to even human eyes, the color blue is rarely found in our natural environment and when it is, most of the time it isn’t actually blue at all! Finding an actual blue pigment in nature is very rare and only a couple animals have the ability to produce a blue pigment within their body. Greta uncovers what these creatures are and how they do it with the help of plenty of research from many different sources, all cited below for you listeners to browse! Besides the color blue, Greta answers questions from Curious-ish listeners regarding bird migration, how our personality is formed, the de-extinction of animals (if we can even call it that), and so much more! Submit your own questions at imgettingcuriousish.com to hear your question answered by Greta on next week’s episode! Don’t miss out on this week’s Fast Fact that you can share with your friends near the end of the episode! Let’s further our curiosity together in this week’s episode of Curious-ish.

Sources used throughout this episode:

Bandaranayake, W. M. The Nature and Role of Pigments of Marine Invertebrates. Nat. Prod. Rep. 2006, 23 (2), 223–255. 

Baptiste, M.; Jakimovski, I. Linckia laevigata. Animal Diversity Web. 

Barbier, M. The Status of Blue-Green Bile Pigments of Butterflies, and Their Phototransformations. Experientia 1981, 37 (10), 1060–1062. 

Butterfly blues and greens caused by subtractive colour mixing of carotenoids and bile pigments - PMC.

Debat, V.; Berthier, S.; Blandin, P.; Chazot, N.; Elias, M.; Gomez, D.; Llaurens, V. Why Are Morpho Blue? In Biodiversity and Evolution; Elsevier, 2018; pp 139–174. 

Haskell, P. Why do boobies have blue feet?. Galapagos Conservation Trust.

Prum, R. O.; Quinn, T.; Torres, R. H. Anatomically Diverse Butterfly Scales All Produce Structural Colours by Coherent Scattering. J Exp Biol 2006, 209 (Pt 4), 748–765. 

Rainbow nature: life in brilliant blue | Natural History Museum.  

The coloration, identification and phylogeny of Nessaea butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). ResearchGate. 

Why is the colour blue so rare in nature? | Faculty of Sciences, Engineering and Technology | University of Adelaide. 

Why So Blue? Evolution and The Blue-footed Booby. Island Conservation. 

Zagalsky, P. F.; Haxo, F.; Hertzberg, S.; Hertzberg, S.; Liaaen-Jensen, S. Studies on a Blue Carotenoprotein, Linckiacyanin, Isolated from the Starfish Linckia Laevigata (Echinodermata: Asteroidea). Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part B: Comparative Biochemistry 1989, 93 (2), 339–353. 

This week on Curious-ish, Greta takes science to the streets and asks the Chapman University campus what they are curious about in the world. An Animation student, Amanda, asks the question of “how do we breathe?”, which Amanda gives her best shot at answering before Greta takes a closer look into lungs and how they function. She uncovers what it means to breathe, taking a deep dive into how they work and why it is important to keep them healthy. Our lungs are powerful tools that require lots of intricate mechanisms for them to function properly! Greta interviews Dr. Kristianna Sarkan, a molecular biologist who will tell us the ins and the outs of how we breathe and why we can do it in the first place on a macro and micro scale. The two also talk about how Sarkan discovered her love for science and how that led her to doing research in RNA processing mechanisms. Besides breathing, Greta answers questions from Curious-ish listeners regarding fossil fuels, geckos, sunsets, and much, much more! Submit your own questions at imgettingcuriousish.com to hear your question answered by Greta on next week’s episode! Don’t miss out on this week’s Fast Fact that you can share with your friends near the end of the episode! Let’s further our curiosity together in this week’s episode of Curious-ish.

Science is what makes the world go around. Whether it's on a massive scale like outer space or the tiny scale of microorganisms, we are all surrounded by the wonders of the world… but how do they all work together to form what we see in our daily lives? This podcast is for the young, the old, the scientists, the artists, and most importantly, the curious.