Everything Is Interesting -With Keera & Kira

We humans are pretty fortunate. Our intelligence and physical features are a result of the evolutionary hand we’ve been dealt, and are what have allowed us to build an advanced society with sophisticated infrastructure.

Get it?? The HAND we’ve been dealt??

Despite what you may have learned from 2001: A Space Odyssey, genetic changes, which produce physical and behavioral changes, don’t happen overnight, propelled by the power of a giant Monolith. Adaptations like walking upright, dexterity, and large complex brains, took millions of years to develop, and required the right environmental conditions for these random genetic changes to be considered assets. Join Kira and Keera on the journey of just how, and why, our ancient primate ancestors became… us.

In a special “Listener Question” episode of Everything is Interesting, K+K answer some excellent inquisitions, sent in by the kids from Mrs. Pace’s 6th grade class at Pleasant Valley Middle school in Vancouver, Washington. The question writers brought up some super interesting topics, and we wanted to answer them all, so we broke this one up into 2 separate episodes. On today’s show the science ladies tackle:

-How the Earth was formed

In a special “Listener Question” episode of Everything is Interesting, K+K answer some excellent inquisitions, sent in by the kids from Mrs. Pace’s 6th grade class at Pleasant Valley Middle school in Vancouver, Washington. The question writers brought up some super interesting topics, and we wanted to answer them all, so we broke this one up into 2 separate episodes. On today’s show the science ladies tackle:

-Geese vs. Swift formations

If there’s one thing we love, its ruining movie night for everyone by informing them of all the horrible science in wonderful movies. Play along with our 2nd Bad Science Fiction Movies Quiz, and see if you can pinpoint the scientific slip-ups in Transformers, The Core, Spider Man, and The Matrix.

Are you suffering from a stuffy nose? Itchy eyes? Endless sneezing? Overall-dear-god-why-won’t-it-stop-misery? It could be the flu… or it could be allergies! On today’s show, K+K explore our immune system’s response to airborne pollen, the specific mechanisms inside the body that make those of us with allergies feel so awful, and just why the immune system attacks innocent little pollen in the first place.

Bathypterois grallator, the Tripod Fish. So named because it’s an avid photographer.

Have you been feeling like ,homes in Portland are becoming too expensive to afford? Well, good news! There’s plenty of available real estate… under the sea! If, of course, you don’t mind adopting some of the necessary physical adaptations needed to survive there. If fact, the deeper down you go, the stranger your characteristics will have to be. That’s because the deeper down you go, the more extreme conditions like temperature and pressure become. Just ask the creatures that live there!

Female Anglerfish. Male is not visible because his tiny dwarf body has already mostly absorbed into her flesh.

Think you could hack it as a deep sea creature? Listen in to today’s episode and see what it would take!

What’s going on inside a nautilus’s shell? Is it true that cephalopods can edit their own genes? An octopus has how many brains?

Oh hey.

Join Keera & Kira, plus coordinators of the Portland branch of the March for Science and test your Octo-knowledge in today’s quiz, “Science Fact or Science Fiction: Cephalopod Edition.”

We hope to see you at the Portland March for Science, taking place on Saturday, April 22nd, 2017!  Kira & Keera will be there, with their nonprofit educational organization, Science Project. From 10am until 3pm, the Science Project’s exhibit, “Oceans: Dive Deeper!” will provide lots of exciting hands-on experiments that will give you a better understanding of the many layers of our oceans. Plus we’ll be unveiling our very first edition Everything Is Interesting t-shirt!! Come by and visit us, and get your very own!

4/12/2017

A healthy stream ecosystem is an intricate fabric, where pulling one thread could cause the whole system to unravel. Furthermore, each aspect of this ecosystem may provide a service to you directly, but in ways you probably often overlook. You eat the salmon, but the Aquatic Reed Sweetgrass makes your oxygen, the Western Pearlshell Mussel filters the toxins out of your drinking water, and the stable riverbanks supply nutrients that eventually end up in the food you eat.

On this episode, Keera and Kira talk with Jack Williams of Trout Unlimited and Matt Sloat of the Wild Salmon Center, 2 of Oregon’s premiere experts on fishery science and aquatic ecosystems, about our streams, why they matter, and what’s threatening them.

********(Looking for the information about how to send this show to your legislators? Go here: Contact Your Oregon Legislators)*********

(Looking for more information about Suction Dredge Mining and healthy stream ecosystems? Go here: OLCV 2017 Legislative Priorities, here: Trout Unlimited, or here: Wild Salmon Center

Ah, the banana. Cornerstone of Snack Time, foundation of the banana split… and genetically identical to every other banana you’ve ever eaten (in the US, anyway). How did we end up with a banana monoculture? What’s the difference between the DNA of a naturally evolved banana plant and a banana plant clone? And what’s the connection between bananas, Big Mike the rapper, and 100 unicorns? Find out, on today’s episode.

What goes through the mind of a bee? Does it have its own thoughts, or is being part of a hive-minded collective like being a part of the Borg?  Can an organism with swarm intelligence have a private identity, or does the community simply add each individual’s biological and technological distinctiveness to its own?

Lower your shields. Resistance is futile.

On this episode, Keera and Kira examine the decision making process in communities of bees, birds, neurons, and slime mold, and discover what life is like as part of a hive mind.