Quirks and Quarks

Fifteen-year-old Tai Poole won’t rest until he’s uncovered the mysteries of the universe, one probing question at a time. In Season 4 of his Webby-winning podcast, Tai talks to everyone from NASA scientists to stand-up comedians to his equally curious little brother Kien. If you’ve ever wondered if we can keep eating meat without destroying the planet or if we’re alone in the universe, Tai has you covered. More episodes are available at hyperurl.co/taiaskswhy

The first land animal to go legless three hundred million years ago; What did history smell like? New field of science aims to find out; This Canadian researcher was trapped on a Russian ship as war broke out; Sharks sleep, sometimes with their eyes wide open; A new book puts together the story of how people came to the Americas.

How do snakes breathe when eating huge meals?; A new chemistry for green fire retardants; How vampire bats had to evolve to live on blood alone; How do we build urban biodiversity as cities continue to grow?; Waste food fed to fungi is turned into faux leather.

Paleontologists identify the first sabre-toothed mammalian hypercarnivore; A rare social spider hunts in packs in order to kill large prey; The urban tree canopy is facing a worst-case scenario in the near future; How do you test how well a whale hears?; Rubber dust from car tires can poison freshwater fish; Your favourite shirt might soon be listening to your hearbeat; Canada has lithium in Northwestern, Ontario. What is being done to mine it?

Will cooperation in space with Russia survive war in Ukraine?

For more than half a century, through international conflict and political turmoil, the west has cooperated on a wide range of activities in space with the Soviets and then the Russians, culminating in the International Space Station. We speak with Mac Evans, former head of the Canadian Space Agency about why the war in the Ukraine runs the risk of ending that long collaboration.

What will the new UN treaty to control plastic pollution need to achieve?

On March 2, at a meeting of the United Nations Environmental Assembly in Nairobi the world’s nations agreed to negotiate a global agreement to control plastic pollution. We speak to Max Liboiron, a plastics pollution researcher at Memorial University of Newfoundland, about how the world created its plastics problem, and Tony Walker, who studies plastics pollution at Dalhousie University, on what he hopes the treaty will accomplish.

The oldest octopus ancestor ever found had ten arms.

Christopher Whalen, a palaeontologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York has identified the oldest vampyropod, the group that includes ancestors of the octopus. The 328 million year old fossil from Montana is in extraordinary condition and is 82 million years older than the previous oldest find. But the big surprise is that this is that this animal had ten arms. His research was published in Nature Communications.

Making medical alarms less awful – and maybe saving lives

Hospitals can be pretty noisy places. Medical devices, in particular, make quite a racket. And while their alarms are essential, perhaps they don’t have to be so unpleasant. Michael Schutz, a professor of music cognition at McMaster University, believes that we can use what we know about music to improve the sonic environment in hospitals – and maybe save lives in the process.

Fear of predation all by itself can reduce the survival rate of songbirds

Liana Zannette, a biology professor from Western University in London, Ontario has found that just being aware of predators, even without actually being preyed upon, can reduce the reproductive rate of songbirds, and reduce the survival rate of those offspring they do have by as much as 53 percent. The most obvious impact is that birds living in fear do not eat. Her research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Are people who get blood transfusions from vaccinated donors protected from COVID?

For the answer to this Quirks listener question, we hear from Dr. Jacob Pendergrast, a director of the blood transfusion service at the University Health Network in Toronto.

IPCC report gives bleak warning about the future, but ideas on how we should prepare; Scientists discover the world’s biggest bacteria; Rare earth elements can be extracted from mining and electronic waste; Researchers watch a wandering Antarctic iceberg the size of PEI melt down; Could we be living in a computer simulation? And if we were, would there be any way to tell?

By many estimates we’re going to have 10 billion people on the planet by the year 2050. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. As it is, we have a hard time feeding the world’s current population. Many experts say that our food systems are at a breaking point, and that the way we eat - and what we eat - has to change. But there are solutions.

This week, on a special edition of Quirks & Quarks, we’ll unpack the latest science showing what the future of food should look like.

First we look at how farmers across the country are turning their fields into science experiments to help them survive climate change. Plus, we’ll look at the technologies that could help Canada grow fresh produce all year long.

Then we look at sustainable food systems that curb waste, and how people are growing food where it was never thought possible - in concrete jungles and remote northern villages.

Finally, we’re looking at the future of protein, from lab-made meat, to milk from a microbrewery, which can all be made without ever touching an animal.

Researchers reveal an ancient Roman porta-potty; A rare ‘rogue wave’ is captured by marine scientists; Dogs range in size from tiny to enormous – and the gene behind the variation comes from wolves; A 500 million year old fossil preserves the nervous system of an ancient sea creature; Marking the science and history of timekeeping, tick by tick; Quirks Listener Question. Do we sense light from other places in our body other than our eyes?

The Antarctic’s doomsday glacier is in danger of living up to its name; Why we love – A new book surveys the science of love in all its forms; Neanderthals and humans swapped a cave in France over millennia; Mosquitos see red to find humans to feed on; Astronomers are fighting back against satellite constellations.

What we know about what long COVID is doing to the brain; Seeing gravitational waves from the biggest things in the universe; Kids take note of who you kiss and who shares your ice cream; Climate change could spark fish wars around the globe; Squirrels survive hibernation by having their microbes recycle their pee.