Talk That Science

Met Amsterdamse stadsecoloog Geert Timmermans bespreken we twee diersoorten en één plantensoort die van nature niet in de stad voorkomen, maar er toch terecht zijn gekomen en al flink zijn ingeburgerd. Hoe? En waarom zit niet iedereen op de komst van deze zogenoemde exoten te wachten? Dat en meer komt uitgebreid aan de orde in deze aflevering.

Tracklist:

1. Parakeets - Max Woiski Jr.

2. The Wasp - J-Walk

3. Invasion - Desired State

4. The Squirrel - Tadd Dameron Sextet

---EPISODE IN DUTCH---

This podcast was broadcast by Echobox Radio on January 19th, 2023.

In this episode we are live at the photography museum Huis Marseille during Musuemnight Amsterdam. There is an exhibition 'Natural Sources' from Jochen Lempert, consisting of poetic pictures of the natural world, inspired by Jochen's scientific background in biology. Jochen and our guest, Bram Langeveld, share a fascination for the Great Auk, a bird that became extinct in the 19th century. We will talk about his discovery of the Great Auk fossils in the Netherlands, and the portrayal of the Great Auk by Jochen Lempert. Why are Bram and Jochen so fascinated by this bird?

During her bachelor thesis, Tess Heeremans shared her bedroom with worms. She put these worms in a maze, and got half of them drunk. She then looked at the behaviour of sober and drunk worms in the maze. In this way, the worms served as a model for active matter: a set of particles that can move on their own. Active polymers are currently a big topic in chemistry, biology and physics. More knowledge about this kind of matter will help us understand the behaviour of flocks of birds and schools of fish.

This interview is recorded live during Museumnight Amsterdam 2022 in Huis Marseille.

Do trees talk to each other? In this episode we are exploring the underground world of Fungal Networks with Vincent Merckx, assistant professor at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics and research fellow at Naturalis. His research focuses on a specific type of fungi that exchanges nutrients with plants, and its mechanisms have a remarkable resemblance to the economic model of a fair trade market. We also ask Vincent what he thinks of the idea that plants can really "communicate" with each other by using the underground network of fungi that they are connected to.

*disclaimer: episode in Dutch*

De laatste tijd wordt het steeds duidelijker dat hormonale anticonceptie bijwerkingen heeft waar we niet altijd goed over worden ingelicht. Een inmiddels wel bekende, maar vreselijke bijwerking is dat de kans dat vrouwen depressieve klachten ontwikkelen wordt vergroot. Er zijn daarnaast nog veel meer mogelijke bijeffecten zijn van de pil: onze partnerkeuze zou kunnen veranderen, onze stressrespons wordt aangetast, en het lijkt alsof het er voor kan zorgen dat we de wereld minder intens kunnen meemaken en dus ook minder ervan kunnen genieten. In deze aflevering praten we met Margot Morssinkhof over deze mogelijke bijwerkingen en haar eigen onderzoek hiernaar.

Tracklist:

1. Circle - Phil France

2. Sexy Boy - Air

3. Mystery - Fabiana Palladino

4. Heel Even Niets - Meetsysteem

Dit is de tweede aflevering die is opgenomen tijdens de open dag op het Science Park in Amsterdam. Misschien heb je wel eens gehoord over vogels die in de winter Nederland verlaten voor een vakantieland in het Zuiden waar het warmer en beter is. Maar hoe weten vogels waar ze heen moeten vliegen? En wat is de impact van klimaatverandering op deze vliegreizen? Met Chiel Boom praten we specifiek over de Brandgans die afkomstig is uit het Poolgebied en die Nederland als warm vakantielandje beschouwt!

We spelen het nummer "Italy" van Soap&Skin.

Dit is de eerste aflevering die is opgenomen tijdens de open dag op het Science Park in Amsterdam. We praten met Annelotte Derkink over zware sterren. Dit zijn sterren die maar kort bestaan en snel steeds kleiner worden terwijl ze even zwaar blijven. De allerzwaarste sterren kunnen hierdoor zelfs zwarte gaten worden. Wat zijn sterren eigenlijk en hoe ontstaan ze? En wanneer noemen we een ster een “zware ster’’? Annelotte geeft antwoord op deze vragen en vertelt hoe ze er onderzoek naar kan doen.

We spelen het nummer "Zontimenteel" van Don Melody Club.

(English below)

We weten dat de maan ervoor zorgt dat er getijden in de zeeën bestaan, maar er zijn nog een boel meer fenomenen waarvan sommigen zeggen dat ze worden veroorzaakt door de maan. Er zijn mensen die denken dat er een link bestaat tussen de positie van de maan en hun humeur of slaapkwaliteit. Er zijn ook speculaties over het synchroniseren van de menstruatie- met de maancyclus.

Samen met astroloog en geschiedenisstudent Nora Gosselink praten we over wat de astrologie, wetenschap, en maatschappij te zeggen hebben over de invloed van de maan op het leven op aarde.

We know that the moon causes the tides in the oceans, but there is a whole range of phenomena that people say are affected by the moon as well. Some people, for example, argue that there is a connection between the position of the moon and people’s moods, and their quality of sleep. It is also speculated that period cycles synchronize with the lunar cycle.

Together with astrologist and history student Nora Gosselink, we discover what astrology, science, and societies have to say about the effect of the moon on life on earth.

*disclaimer: episode in Dutch

"Calculate before you give"

Effective altruism is a recent movement that brings extensive rationality and altruism together. It aims to calculate the most effective way to spend your money or time in order to improve the world. The idea that one life can never be worth more than another is far embedded in the philosophy. Rather than just following the heart when wanting to do good, the intuitive feeling should be combined with reason and evidence, according to the people that adhere to this mindset.

In this episode, we talk with Amarins Veringa, who currently works as the community director of Effective Altruism the Netherlands. In the past, she researched the difference between ‘quality-adjusted life years’ (qalys) and ‘self-reported happiness’ as an output measure of altruism. Our second guest is Tim Bakker, a PhD candidate in machine learning. He took the Giving What We Can pledge. With this pledge, he vowed to give away part of his income to do a significant amount of good. We explore their choices and worldviews and talk about the underlying ‘science’ in altruism.

Last year, Daniela Loustalot Knapp and Nicolien worked on a project to study matching algorithms for the school choice problem. Matching is the abstraction of a problem that arises in many real-world situations and consists of making pairs of individuals from two groups that have preferences over the other group. Examples include organ donation programs, house allocations and the school choice problem. In the school choice problem, the question is how to fairly assign kids to schools. Every year, kids going to secondary school have to submit a ranking of their preferred schools. As it happens, some schools turn out to be more popular than others. Consequently, not all kids can go to their favorite schools. To decide who gets their first choice and who doesn’t, the school boards in Amsterdam use a matching algorithm (sometimes also called ‘matching mechanisms’). In this episode, we discuss how different algorithms have varying normative properties. This means that choosing and designing matching algorithms is not just a mathematical problem. The choice for what algorithms to choose may have far-reaching effects. On whether everyone gets equal opportunities, for example. Talking about matching means talking about how to divide limited goods or places as fairly as possible.

Finally, Daniela recently wrote a thesis on justifying matching algorithms. The idea is to provide non-experts with a step-by-step explanation of why the computed assignment is a good compromise between all the agents’ preferences, grounded in a set of principles that are appealing to them. We will touch upon this in the last part of the episode.