Science unscripted

It was called a "breakthrough" — a study showing that a common asthma medication could be used to improve people's chances of surviving COVID-19. Now, doctors in Germany and Austria are not only casting doubts on the study itself, but are extremely concerned about its consequences.

"Life is different now than before." Blah-blah-blah you've probably heard that once or twice over the past year - ever since the pandemic put a proverbial straitjacket on life and warped what we thought was normal. But of the things that have changed, would you say your personal hygiene is one of them?

Just how high are the number of COVID-19 infections that happen inside compared to outside? So high that aerosol experts are recommending we drop the masks outside as long as we're social distancing. Also, one of the hosts gets stuck in his apartment as curfews take hold.

It's one of the most frequently asked questions on the internet: "Is my boyfriend/girlfriend/partner cheating on me?" Now, a new study out of Germany suggests part of the answer may lie in the pitch of that person's voice — with some unexpected results when it comes to women.

What's it like being stuck inside your home from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.? Well, just ask one of the hosts of this show. Also, amongst the world's best-vaccinated countries, why are Chile and Uruguay seeing their coronavirus infections spike massively upwards?

1 in 1,000 — those are the absurdly low odds you'll contract the coronavirus outside as opposed to inside. So with social distancing in place, does it make sense to require face masks when people are outdoors? Or could such rules actually do more harm than good?

What is going wrong in the minds of conspiracy theorists when they end up jumping to false conclusions? Also, why are people talking about a helicopter on Mars? And finally, when music makes us feel good, why does it do that?

Whenever we're confronted with new information (see: the internet), we tend to use cognitive shortcuts to try and make sense of it all. But as we reconfigure that information to fit our understanding of reality (or choose to dismiss it entirely), we can arrive at totally false conclusions.

Yes, there really is. Perched inside a crater on Mars, a boxy little drone-copter is set to become the first aircraft to ever fly on another planet. But how'd it get there? Who's controlling it? What are the odds it'll crash (or get blown away)? And if we've already got rovers, who needs drones?

We all know that feeling when the right song hits at the right moment and it's just ... really, really good. No other form of art can quite match the feeling of music-induced pleasure. And brain scientists are getting closer to understanding what it's all about by delving deep into our reward system. But why is music so rewarding?