How Your World Works

Editor Sean Manning talks with writer Elliott Woods about a cadre of Iraqi fighter pilots training in Tucson, Arizona with the 162nd Wing of the Arizona Air National Guard. The pilots are learning to fly F-16 jets, which the Iraqi government purchased from the US and is using to launch air strikes against ISIS.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this round table episode we talk to contributing writer Kira Peikoff about her story on a new form of cancer treatment that finds promise in patients with abnormally positive responses to otherwise unsuccessful trial drugs. Then we float theories on helium, save Neil Armstrong's space suit from disintegration, and consider the merits (or folly) of The Drinking Jacket.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We investigate the spector of young girl at the Brooklyn Public library, talk to an expert in the field of ghost hunting, Dr. Karen Stollznow, the author of Haunting America; and we speak with the Visual Effects Supervisor of Ghostbusters, Richard Edlund.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the tense and thrilling new documentary Meru (in theaters now) mountaineers Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker, and Renan Ozturk attempt to become the first group to successfully summit the Himalayas’ Meru Peak via the Shark’s Fin, one of the hardest climbs in the world. To make things even more challenging, they decided to shoot a beautiful movie as they climbed. Although your cinematic ambition may not involve hanging off a mountain 21,000 feet in the air, Chin says that many of the principles are the same. He offered the following tips.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Andy Weir wrote The Martian, his science puzzler about an astronaut marooned on Mars with only his wits (read: scientific knowledge) to save him, he timed it to come out before the Curiosity Rover launched in 2011. So there’s no way he could have known what the world would be like in September 2015, as the release of the film adaptation is imminent. But, diving into the science behind the movie with NASA’s Dr. Jim Greene, who was a technical advisor, we discovered Mars is quite like Earth in several unexpected ways.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The NFL season kicks off this weekend, and while a lot of the focus may be on Tom Brady's revenge and Arian Foster's groin, we wanted to look at the game from a technology standpoint. As the efforts to protect players have become more and more high tech, so have other things, like the smoothies they drink after practice. We're seeing drones in training camp, quarterbacks using virtual reality, and players outfitted with everything from gyroscopes to accelerometers to GPS. Here are a few of the more interesting technologies we discovered.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a special round table edition of the show, our editors discuss how architectural design can build better jails, and better outcomes for inmates and society. We'll consider whether a computer that costs $9 and is the size of a credit card might change the world. Then we'll unwind with a drink, and learn how bartenders are using new methods (like blow torches and centrifuges) to manipulate classic flavours.

And lastly we'll play Stupid or Amazing, and put the question to a new self-editing camera called Graava.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the show, in honor of the recent launch of the most advanced submarine ever built, the USS John Warner, we take a deep dive on submarines. We’ll learn a little about their history, how they work, as well as what’s new and what’s different on this modern submarine. And we’ll also answer this riddle for you, why is it that you gain weight on a submarine?

Plus we’re going to take a trip to the Suez canal in Egypt. That canal just under went a massive expansion and was just opened to traffic.

And we’ll play a game of Stupid or Amazing, wherein we look at a new product on the market and ask ourselves that very important and surprisingly complicated question. Today we consider a product that could actually bee really useful on a submarine come to think about it, The D-Link wi-fi-water-sensor that detects water and leaks.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you remember the late 90’s? During that time there were a few things that you just couldn’t escape: Celen Dion’s My Heart Will Go on was mandatorily played every 12 minutes across all stations.  There was the TMI of the Lewinski scandal. And there was this other weird thing that you couldn’t stop hearing about, El Nino.

 

El Nino, was—and is--- a weather pattern that forms every 2-7 years, but in 1997-98 it was having its most powerful year on record. So much so that the force of nature became a cultural one as well. Inspiring bits on SNL, and becoming the nations favorite scape-ghoat, something to blame not just bad weather on, but virtually anything from the market to a missed fly ball.  Since then El Nino has dissipated both as wheatear and as cultural icon, but this year scientists suspect that “The Boy” may could be due for a come back.

 

So we wanted to look at not just what El Nino was and how it worked, (What is it anyways?) but what it might mean for the areas of the country that have become defined by another force of nature, drought. El Nino after all, if it is a strong one, could deposited a lot of rain on the California, and that could be a game changer for a region plagued by forest fires and water shortages. But how this will effect California and whether or not the wet weather will come at all is still an open question. So on todays show we wanted to ask, is El Nino friend, or foe? 

 

Plus later in the show, we try our a flame thrower in the show (at least the idea of one.) and muse, is this Stupid or Amazing? 

 

Please subscribe to How Your World Works podcast on iTunes, and let us know what you think of the show.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Whether you believe Pluto to be a planet or not, the pictures that NASA has been releasing since Wednesday are a stunning reminder that even a dwarf planet can be beautiful and awe-inspiring.  Also awe-inspiring: the work it took to get the New Horizons probe, which took the pictures, to the far reaches of our solar system—3.5 billion miles from home.  On this episode of the How Your World Works podcast, we explain how the New Horizons mission worked.  Hint: It started way before the blastoff nine years ago.

 

Plus, Paul Rudd becomes the first smaller than life superhero in Marvel’s newest vehicle, Ant-Man. With Rudd measuring only half an inch tall for much of the movie, a lot of visual effects and computer imaging was needed to create the film. We spoke with Ant-Man’s Visual Effects Supervisor, Jake Morrison, to learn the secrets of the Ant-Man. 

 

Plus, are they all pipes? 

 

This episode was sponsored by Casper.  For $50 toward any mattress purchase, visit www.casper.com/WORLD and use the promo code WORLD.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices