SciShow Tangents

Every day, billions of people perform vital, life sustaining chemistry right in their homes! Baking, frying, boiling, fermenting… all cooking is science, and the way it weaves into our lives and cultures makes it uniquely fascinating! Join us this week to learn why the heck there’s iodine in your salt, what happens if you forget where in the bog you buried your cask of meat, and why baking a cake at high elevations can be so frustrating!

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!

And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

Hartshorn salt:

https://www.thespruceeats.com/ammonium-carbonate-hartshorn-hirschhornsalz-1446913

https://library.ndsu.edu/grhc/foods/recipe/ammonia.html

Bog butter:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/for-peat-s-safe-bog-butter-unearthed-with-turf-1.583009

https://www.nature.com/news/1998/040315/full/news040315-5.html

Turnspit: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/13/311127237/turnspit-dogs-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-vernepator-cur

https://books.google.com/books?id=FVF_PhTjK7cC&pg=PA316#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Fact Off]

Iodine in salt:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w19233

Hank’s notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13t4UeMlNg5bH3v1HpkixBa_PYT6AB8NtCFqIBEw9XQk/edit?ts=5cbfd777

Graphene vegetable oil:

https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-turned-cheap-cooking-oil-into-a-material-200-times-stronger-than-steel

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14217

[Ask the Science Couch]

Cooking at high elevation:

https://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/icooks/article-3-03.html

https://extension.colostate.edu/docs/pubs/foodnut/p41.pdf

https://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/bread/bread_science.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6098858/

[Butt One More Thing]

Baby poop meat:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0309174013005263?via%3Dihub

https://www.livescience.com/43465-baby-poop-sausage-probiotic.html

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From countless stories of little green men to colonization plans and endless rover and satellite missions, humans are sort of obsessed with Mars. One of those obsessed humans is Hank Green! This week he finally gets to put all his knowledge about his favorite planet to good use: winning fake points on a game show he made up!

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!

And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12swg6fcCIZYuQh4q9vmW6SBwMoLwnb7jq3s2qT9_Djg/edit?usp=sharing

[Fact Off]

First Mars image: 

The picture: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA14033

Plutonium-238:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbyz4v/scientists-are-automating-plutonium-production-so-nasa-can-explore-deep-space

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/plutonium-production-space-exploration/

https://www.greenwichtime.com/technology/businessinsider/article/NASA-s-deep-space-nuclear-power-crisis-may-soon-13530374.php

[Ask the Science Couch]

Earth tectonics:

https://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/pltec/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/science/plate-tectonics-continents-earth.html

https://phys.org/news/2018-09-plate-tectonics-earth.html

Mars (lack of) tectonics:

https://marsed.asu.edu/mep/tectonics

https://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/exploring-the-planets/online/solar-system/mars/surface/volcanoes/

[Butt One More Thing]

Poop-eating bacteria:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/03/582968023/making-space-food-with-space-poop

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We couldn’t make podcasts without the science of sound. There’s a lot of technology involved in capturing the vibrations we’re making with our vocal folds so that we can share them with the whole Internet! So this week, we’re fine-tuning our knowledge of sound. Do scientists even know why music makes us feel emotions? Is the ocean really as silent as it seems, or are fish partying down there? And how did computer nerds send each other video games and Christmas cards through radio broadcasts?

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out themes for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!

And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

Butterfly Hearing:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/these-butterflies-boost-their-hearing-unusual-strategy

[Fact Off]

Coral reef sounds:

Computer program cassettes:

https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/1156672/

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Audio/tape2.html

http://artsites.ucsc.edu/EMS/music/tech_background/TE-16/teces_16.html

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_fifty.html

https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1976-02/1976_02_BYTE_00-06_Color_Graphics#page/n73/mode/1up

http://www.retrotechnology.com/restore/cass_data.html

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2014/10/13/people-used-download-games-radio

[Ask the Science Couch]

General Feelings & Physiological Effects:

https://www.nature.com/news/why-dissonant-music-strikes-the-wrong-chord-in-the-brain-1.11791

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/48/19858

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140130600899104?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=terg20

https://www.nature.com/news/neuroaesthetics-is-killing-your-soul-1.12640

Chills:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-look-what-happens-brain-when-music-causes-chills-180959481/

https://www.wired.com/2011/01/the-neuroscience-of-music/

https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2726 https://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/03/10/scan.nsw009.abstract?cited-by=yes&legid=scan;nsw009v1

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0305735615572358

Harmony:

https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/#sec_2_3_2

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20930-why-harmony-pleases-the-brain/

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.108103

[Butt One More Thing]

Fart noises:

https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19545944/fart-noises/

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This week, we’re joined by Trace Dominguez from the YouTube channel Uno Dos of Trace to talk about genetic mutations! Tiny changes in an organism’s DNA sequence can lead to big variations or absolutely nothing. It’s just a roll of the dice! So what mutations have shown up in modern humans—different bones, livers, or even eyeballs? What is “foreign DNA” and where does it even come from? And can anybody name as many X-Men as Sam?

If you want to know more about any of the topics discussed today, check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

Hypoxia:

https://www.sciencealert.com/indonesian-bajau-genetic-changes-adapt-them-to-aquatic-lifestyle-2

Bones:

https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook-old/the-worlds-densest-bones-47155

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa013444

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28893644

Smoking:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-10-17-mn-51362-story.html

[Fact Off]

Tetrachromats:

Colchicine and watermelons:

https://csuvth.colostate.edu/poisonous_plants/Plants/Details/79

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4656054/

https://scialert.net/fulltextmobile/?doi=jbs.2013.277.282

https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/CAT71326739/PDF

https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/newsletters/hortupdate/hortupdate_archives/2000/may00/h5may00.html

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/artful-amoeba/for-plants-polyploidy-is-not-a-four-letter-word/

[Ask the Science Couch]

Foreign DNA:

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uonc-ahc111815.php

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/290835.php

https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0607-3

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2009.1679

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7934/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6177113/

[Butt One More Thing]

Beautiful buttocks:

https://www.nature.com/news/2002/020917/full/news020916-3.html

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A bunch of things are considered agricultural science, from planting crops and raising sheep for wool to food safety and developing fertilizers. This week, we’re skimming the surface of agriculture, with a little detour into animals that sort of farm too. What accidental evolutionary pressures turned weeds into popular crops? Why are seed vaults so important to humanity? And what made Big Mike  basically go extinct, and are we worried about it happening with other crops? (Big Mike is a banana, by the way.)

Want to know more about our topics? Check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

https://india.mongabay.com/2018/10/farmer-termites-bury-invaders-alive-to-protect-fungus-farms/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10886-017-0902-4

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00040-010-0092-3

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0156847

[Fact Off]

Vavilovian mimicry:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/weed-science/article/vavilovian-mimicry-nikolai-vavilov-and-his-littleknown-impact-on-weed-science/1B0263622E208DA4548BF0BCB918F255

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02858881

http://labs.eeb.utoronto.ca/barrett/pdf/schb_54.pdf

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1752-4571.2010.00140.x

Leningrad seed vault:

[Ask the Science Couch]

Bananas:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/25/banana-farming-danger-cavendish-crop-genetics

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/jun/18/scientists-scramble-to-stop-bananas-being-killed-off

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/12/27/banana-fungus-panama-disease/#.XIgdQFNKhxw

https://www.apsnet.org/about/newsroom/releases/Pages/03Banana.aspx

https://fusariumwilt.org/index.php/en/about-fusarium-wilt/

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44712034

[Butt One More Thing]

Night soil: 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/05/07/182010827/is-it-safe-to-use-compost-made-from-treated-human-waste

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Pregnancy is, biologically speaking, extremely weird! A pregnant animal’s body goes through so many hormonal and physical changes to make sure a zygote has everything it needs to grow. This week, we’re talking about a few of those things, like why pregnant people get nauseated and other animals might not. So is pseudopregnancy a real thing, or are pandas just tricking zookeepers to get extra treats? Why is there a patent for a birthing machine that looks like a horrible carnival ride? And what the heck is a stone baby?

Want to know more about our topics? Check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3216423A/en

https://dublin.sciencegallery.com/failbetter/apparatusfacilitatingbirthchildcentrifugalforce/

[Fact Off]

Panda pseudopregnancy:

Lithopedion:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3979976/

https://alumni.amc.edu/pages/archives/archives---the-stone-baby

https://utmb.influuent.utsystem.edu/en/publications/lithopedion-stone-baby

https://www.health.harvard.edu/womens-health/calcium-beyond-the-bones

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4750627/

[Ask the Science Couch]

Morning sickness:

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2000/05/morning-sickness-protects-mothers-and-their-unborn

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3676933/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2664252?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://www.pregnancysicknesssupport.org.uk/resources/literature-review/symptoms-of-nvp-in-animals/

https://www.livescience.com/32301-do-pregnant-animals-get-morning-sickness.html

[Butt One More Thing]

Meconium:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/112/2901/150.long

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18281199

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This week, we’re joined by Blake de Pastino from the YouTube channel PBS Eons to talk about how plants, animals, and geologic events used to be so… huge. There are still blue whales and massive natural disasters, but the days of the Megalodon have passed. So were those big tunnels in South America really dug out by giant ground sloths? Where is the largest impact crater in the Solar System? And did humans really huddle under the skeletal remains of the giant armadillo-like Glyptodon?

To learn more about this week's topic, check out these links:

[Truth or Fail]

https://natural-history.uoregon.edu/collections/web-galleries/saber-toothed-salmon

https://cals.arizona.edu/classes/ento596c/topic/session9.html

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10420940.2016.1223654?scroll=top&needAccess=true&

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2017/03/28/paleoburrows-south-america/#.XFC3uc9Khxz

http://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/044_Paleotocas_ING.pdf

[Ask the Science Couch]

Glyptodon carapaces:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/ancient-armadillos-grew-big-vw-beetles

https://books.google.com/books?id=kUAKgNfiAvoC&pg=PA184#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.jstor.org/stable/971990?read-now=1&seq=6#page_scan_tab_contents

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/2055556315Z.00000000031?journalCode=ypal20

https://books.google.com/books?id=2tk_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223

[Butt One More Thing]

Stegosaurus butt brain misconception:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-double-dinosaur-brain-myth-12155823/

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Bats have a bad reputation because of the ones that drink blood or spread disease, but these furry flying critters can be pretty cute! This week, we’re talking about everything from echolocation to weird potential uses for bat poop. Are there really bats with suction cups on their wings or is that just a cool toy idea? What is white nose syndrome and could vaping mushroom compounds… help? And what do you really think about Hank’s Dracula impression?

Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out themes for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!

And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:

[Poem]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-pitcher-plants-call-bats-get-their-poo-180956014/

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsbl.2010.1141

[Truth or Fail]

Bats that spend time on the ground:

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2005/03/vampire-bats-keep-out-trouble-running-study-shows

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16621953

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/creatura-blog/2018/01/why-fly-when-you-can-shuffle-the-lesser-short-tailed-bat-prefers-the-ground/

Diurnal bats:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/daytime-bats-help-explain-nocturnal-evolution/

https://blogs.plos.org/ecology/2017/06/29/bat-species-found-only-on-islands-in-trouble-worldwide/

https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/mamm.ahead-of-print/mammalia-2017-0128/mammalia-2017-0128.xml

Suction cup bats:

https://www.wired.com/2010/04/how-sucker-winged-bats-hang-on/

[Fact Off]

Bat & dolphin echolocation:

https://evolutionnews.org/2012/05/tangling_the_tr/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2010/01/hear-bats-and-whales-share-sonar-protein

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(09)02073-9

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12511

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/refined-fine-tuned-placental-mammal-family-tree/

Moth echolocation blocker:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/07/moths-block-bats-sonar

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5938/325?keytype=ref&siteid=sci&ijkey=GbDjRlkoHfRnY

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2009/07/17/tiger-moths-jam-the-sonar-of-bats/

http://jeb.biologists.org/content/214/14/2416

[Ask the Science Couch]

White-nose syndrome:

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/bat_crisis_white-nose_syndrome/Q_and_A.html

https://www.whitenosesyndrome.org/static-page/what-is-white-nose-syndrome

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-bats-could-bounce-back-devastating-white-nose-syndrome-180969378/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02441-z

https://www.mdpi.com/2309-608X/4/2/48

[Butt One More Thing]

Bat guano gunpowder:

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dkc09  

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You might know him from his greatest hits: natural selection, Galápagos finches, and eating lots of the animals he studied… it’s Charles Darwin! This week, we’re talking about this famous biologist and some of the weirder science he did. What kind of books did he write after he published On the Origin of Species? Why was he so disgusted by fish spitting out seeds? And was it normal to write a letter to a scientist friend and ask detailed questions about barnacle sex?

Sources:

[Truth or Fail]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4x38gj/darwins-monsters-parasitoid-wasps

https://books.google.com/books?id=lIcoAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=charles+darwin+eyebrows&source=bl&ots=YrNkw9VczZ&sig=ACfU3U06m2pYFahEfpPveHOyT8auD0ZeXw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwivsMeU4LvgAhUbJzQIHUaoA5wQ6AEwFXoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=charles%20darwin%20eyebrows&f=false

[Fact Off]

Seeds & fish:

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1683&viewtype=text&pageseq=1

https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-1681.xml

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/11/17/darwin-bird-vomit/#.XBlv3c9Khxw

https://academic.oup.com/botlinnean/article/161/1/20/2418329

Barnacles: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3574338/

[Ask the Science Couch]

Darwin’s understanding vs. ours:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20141017-how-flowers-conquered-the-world

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-darwin-didnt-know-45637001/

https://www.wired.com/2014/12/fantastically-wrong-thing-evolution-darwin-really-screwed/

http://www.esp.org/books/darwin/variation/facsimile/contents/darwin-variation-chap-27-i.pdf

http://www.blc.arizona.edu/courses/schaffer/449/Soft%20Inhertance/Geison%20-%20Pangenesis.pdf

[Butt One More Thing]

Darwin bark spider:

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20151126-the-worlds-biggest-spider-web-can-span-an-entire-river

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0011234

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If you think about it, we’re all time travelers moving forward at one second per second… right? This week, we try really hard to define time, get sort of existential about it, and then talk about the science of timekeeping, from circadian rhythms to weird mechanical clocks. What happens to someone’s sense of time if you put them in a big bunker locked away from the outside world? How did we decide there would be 60 seconds in a minute, and did we ever try to measure time with a decimal system? And if a human were to instantaneously dissolve into a pile of goo because their time was up, what would it sound like?

Sources:

[Truth or Fail]

https://mechanism.ucsd.edu/teaching/F11/philbiology2011/aschoff.circadianrhythmsinman.1965.pdf

https://www.mpg.de/943613/S003_Flashback_060_061.pdf

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/science-obituaries/6216073/Maurizio-Montalbini.html

[Fact Off]

Music & walking:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0067932

Castle Clock: 

http://muslimheritage.com/article/al-jazari%E2%80%99s-castle-water-clock-analysis-its-components-and-functioning

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/al-jazari-s-book-of-knowledge-of-ingenious-mechanical-devices-the-castle-water-clock/DgF6LT4UYXvU4A

https://www.ee.columbia.edu/not-your-father%E2%80%99s-analog-computer-professor-yannis-tsividis

Animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz7soHvy-Pw

[Ask the Science Couch]

60 seconds/minutes:

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1487,00.html

http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/161-our-solar-system/the-earth/day-night-cycle/761-why-is-a-day-divided-into-24-hours-intermediate

https://gizmodo.com/why-there-are-24-hours-in-a-day-5926491

http://mentalfloss.com/article/32127/decimal-time-how-french-made-10-hour-day

[Butt One More Thing]

Speed of poop:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/speed-of-poop-big-or-small-mammals-drop-a-deuce-in-12-secs-study-finds/

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/sm/c6sm02795d/unauth#!divAbstract

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