After a massive Twitter campaign, the unnamed woman was identified as Sheila Minor, then an animal tech at the Smithsonian Museum.

 

 

FOOTNOTES

What’s known about the mysterious Jeanne Baret? Check out Glynis Ridley’s book, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret, and John Dunmore’s Monsieur Baret.

Browse some of the plant specimens Jeanne Baret and Philibert Commerson collected on their journey, courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden. (Psst, lots more here!)

Read Eric Tepe and Glynis Ridley’s article naming Solanum baretiae.

Read about the crowdsourced campaign to identify “hidden figure” Sheila Minor.

 

CREDITS

Undiscovered is reported and produced by Annie Minoff and Elah Feder. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata. Thanks as always to the staff at Science Friday and WNYC Studios, and a big thank you to On Air Fest and Jemma Brown for giving us the chance to tell this story.

"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/mini-cats-villains-at-heart-1584623239/2357761"},"headline":"Mini: Cats, Villains At Heart","datePublished":"2018-12-17T22:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2018-12-17T22:30:00.000Z","image":"?s=hh-web-app","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Science Friday and WNYC Studios"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hubhopper","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://files.hubhopper.com/assets/web/hh_logo_192x192.png","width":192,"height":192}},"description":"

Undiscovered is back between seasons with a listener question: What saved the cats? If you rewind to the Middle Ages, cats and humans were on bad terms. Cat roundups, cat torture, and even cat murder were common occurrences throughout Europe. But a series of historic events steadily delivered the tiny felines into public favor. In a story that spans centuries and continents, the Catholic Church and the Rosetta Stone, Elah and Annie investigate how the cat’s reputation shifted from devil’s minion to adored companion.

 

Guests

Bob Collom, Undiscovered listener and question asker

Joshua J. Mark, Writer and researcher at Ancient History Encyclopedia 

Footnotes

Joshua J. Mark’s article, \"Cats in the Ancient World,\" was our first introduction to both Joshua and this story. Read it in Ancient History Encyclopedia.

Read about how the Persians cleverly exploited the Egyptians’ love for cats in the Battle of Pelusium.

Look inside an ancient Egyptian cat mummy. Spoiler: It’s a kitten! And learn more about the process of animal mummification.

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Kaitlyn Schwalje with help from Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. Special shoutout to listener Bob Collom for directing us to this wild story. And thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff and the folks at WNYC Studios.

"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/this-headline-might-kill-you-1584623239/2357844"},"headline":"This Headline Might Kill You","datePublished":"2018-11-06T22:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2018-11-06T22:30:00.000Z","image":"?s=hh-web-app","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Science Friday and WNYC Studios"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hubhopper","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://files.hubhopper.com/assets/web/hh_logo_192x192.png","width":192,"height":192}},"description":"

In this Undiscovered Cares Report, Annie and Elah dig into a scary science headline and help Elah’s friend, David, figure out how scared he should be that his B12 vitamins will give him lung cancer. And we find out how—even with top-notch scientists, journalists, and readers—science communication can go very wrong.

 

Guests

Theodore Brasky, assistant professor at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center

 

Footnotes

Read some of the headlines that scared us, and one that did a better job.

Then read Ted’s original study for yourself and the press release.

 

OUR MAIN TAKEAWAYS:

1) If you’re a man who smokes, these findings could matter for you. This study found that if you smoke, taking high doses of vitamins B12 or B6 was associated with an even greater risk of lung cancer than smoking by itself. But this finding still needs to be replicated, so proceed with caution before making massive lifestyle changes.

Ted has notes on this summary:

Might be best to switch the 2nd and 3rd sentences. If you start with “This finding still needs to be replicated…” and then say “Nevertheless, the study found that if you smoke…” it’s better than making the “this needs replication” comment seem offhand; which is an issue with much of the media attention thus far. Not a big deal either way, but I guess I still want people to understand that this is a single and unique study, and that means that trusting the results as truth can be problematic.

All of that said, I don’t think people need to proceed with caution before making lifestyle changes: smoking is singularly responsible for 1 in 5 deaths in the US each year. Anyone who smokes should consider quitting. A good place to start is the National Cancer Institute’s quit line: 1-800-QUIT-NOW. Smoking is awful for a person’s health. It is responsible for heart disease, COPD, and several different types of cancer in addition to lung cancer (which is the #2 most common cancer in men and women and the #1 cause of cancer death).

 

2) If you’re a man who's never smoked, don’t freak out! Men who have never smoked have extremely low rates of lung cancer, and that includes men who took these vitamins. This study didn’t turn up any evidence that these vitamins had any effect on that risk. (In fact, in this study, there were no cases of lung cancer in men who never smoked and were also taking the highest doses of these vitamins.) The study also didn’t find any effect of these vitamins on lung cancer risk in men who’d quit smoking before the study began.

Ted says:

Yes, not freaking out is ideal.

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Michelle Harris. Thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff, and the folks at WNYC Studios.

 

"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/party-lines-1584623240/2357923"},"headline":"Party Lines","datePublished":"2018-10-30T21:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2018-10-30T21:30:00.000Z","image":"?s=hh-web-app","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Science Friday and WNYC Studios"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hubhopper","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://files.hubhopper.com/assets/web/hh_logo_192x192.png","width":192,"height":192}},"description":"

In 2016, a North Carolina legislator announced that his party would be redrawing the state’s congressional district map with a particular goal in mind: To elect “10 Republicans and three Democrats.” His reasoning for this? As he explained, he did “not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”

It was a blatant admission of gerrymandering in a state already known for creatively-drawn districts. But that might be about to change. A North Carolina mathematician has come up with a way to quantify just how rigged a map is. And now he’s taking his math to court, in a case that could end up redrawing district lines across the country.

 

 

 

 

Guests

Jonathan Mattingly, professor of mathematics and statistical science, Duke University

Braxton Brewington, undergraduate senior, North Carolina A&T State University, senior democracy fellow, Common Cause North Carolina

Bob Phillips, executive director, Common Cause North Carolina

 

Footnotes

Read about Jonathan and his students’ analyses of North Carolina’s 2012 and 2016 congressional maps (and check out the rest of their work on gerrymandering)

See North Carolina’s congressional map, which a federal court declared unconstitutional in 2018

Read the District Court’s opinions from January 2018, declaring North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map unconstitutional

Watch Representative David Lewis make his comments before the state legislature's joint select committee on congressional redistricting

Read about the history of Common Cause’s lawsuit: Common Cause v. Rucho

Read about other partisan gerrymandering court challenges

Read about Common Cause v. Rucho’s prospects at the Supreme Court

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff  Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Robin Palmer. Eddie Garcia was our reporter on-the-ground at A&T.

 

Special thanks this week to Thomas Wolf and the Brennan Center for Justice, Justin Levitt, Gregory Herschlag, and Jonathan Mattingly’s Data+ team.

 

 

 

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Americans haven’t always loved whales and dolphins. In the 1950s, the average American thought of whales as the floating raw materials for margarine, animal feed, and fertilizer—if they thought about whales at all. But twenty-five years later, things had changed for cetaceans in a big way. Whales had become the poster-animal for a new environmental movement, and cries of “save the whales!” echoed from the halls of government to the whaling grounds of the Pacific. What happened? Annie and Elah meet the unconventional scientists who forever changed our view of whales by making the case that a series of surreal bleats and moans were “song.”

GUESTS

D. Graham Burnett, professor of history, Princeton University, author, The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the 20th Century

Scott McVay, former executive director, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, author, Surprise Encounters

Roger Payne, biologist, author, Among Whales

Sheri Wells-Jensen, associate professor of linguistics, Bowling Green State University

FOOTNOTES

Read Roger and Scott’s landmark Science paper on whale song. (The paper includes great pics of the spectrograms Scott and Roger analyzed.)

Listen to Roger’s record, Songs of the Humpback Whale.

Listen to more humpback whale recordings (and dolphin tapes too!) courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Read D. Graham Burnett’s essay on John C. Lilly in Orion. (It’s a great teaser for the rest of his book.)

Read a paper Dr. Lilly published in Science, based in part on Scott McVay’s work with Elvar the dolphin.

Read the essay that inspired Scott: Loren Eiseley’s “The Long Loneliness: Man and Porpoise: Two Solitary Destinies”

CREDITS

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff  Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Michelle Harris. Thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff, and the folks at WNYC Studios.

Special thanks this week to Jack Horowitz, Katie Lupica, and to the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.

 

"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/turtle-v-snake-1584623241/2358099"},"headline":"Turtle v. Snake","datePublished":"2018-10-16T21:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2018-10-16T21:30:00.000Z","image":"?s=hh-web-app","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Science Friday and WNYC Studios"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hubhopper","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://files.hubhopper.com/assets/web/hh_logo_192x192.png","width":192,"height":192}},"description":"

Travis Thomas is a rookie turtle researcher in Florida. He was on the verge of publishing his first big paper and naming two new species of turtle when he found out he’d been scooped by a stranger in Australia: Raymond Hoser, a.k.a. the Snake Man. Raymond is a reptile wrangler and amateur herpetologist who’s managed to name hundreds of animals—and has made a lot of enemies in the process. In this episode of Undiscovered, Travis sets out to get his turtles back, and Annie and Elah set out to find out how and why the Snake Man does what he does.

 

Guests

Travis Thomas, PhD student, University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Robert Sprackland, herpetologist, visiting researcher at the Smithsonian Institution

Raymond Hoser, founder of the Australasian Journal of Herpetology, owner of Snakebusters

 

Footnotes

Read Travis Thomas et al.’s 2014 paper splitting alligator snapping turtles into three species, Raymond Hoser's 2013 paper, Raymond's response to Thomas et al. (pg. 19), and a later paper arguing for a different classification.

Check out Raymond’s website where he responds to his critics, lists the animal taxa (species, genera, etc.) he’s named, and posts the Australasian Journal of Herpetology.

Crack open the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature’s big book of rules for naming animals.

Read articles about “taxonomic vandalism” that criticize Raymond Hoser.

Dive into this great Nautilus piece on prolific species namers in history and the ire they provoked.

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, and Annie Minoff  We had production help from Sushmita Pathak who brought us this story. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Michelle Harris. Thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff, and the folks at WNYC Studios, especially Tony Phillips and Jenny Lawton for feedback on this story.

 

"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/guest-episode-the-infinite-god-1584623242/2358185"},"headline":"Guest Episode: The Infinite God","datePublished":"2018-10-09T21:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2018-10-09T21:30:00.000Z","image":"?s=hh-web-app","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Science Friday and WNYC Studios"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hubhopper","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://files.hubhopper.com/assets/web/hh_logo_192x192.png","width":192,"height":192}},"description":"

This week, Annie and Elah share an episode from one of their favorite podcasts, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sum of All Parts.

For years, Robert Schneider lived the indie rocker’s dream, producing landmark records and fronting his band, The Apples in Stereo. And then, he gave it all up...for number theory. Host Joel Werner tracks Robert’s transformation, from a transcendental encounter with an antique tape machine, to the family temple of a mysterious long-dead mathematician, Ramanujan.

Find more episodes of Sum of All Parts.

CREDITS

This episode of Sum of All Parts was produced and hosted by Joel Werner. Sophie Townsend served as story editor and Jonathan Webb served as science editor. Sound engineering by Mark Don and Martin Peralta.

Undiscovered is reported and produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. 

GUESTS

Robert Schneider, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Emory University

Ken Ono, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Mathematics, Emory University

FOOTNOTES

Hear more Sum of All Parts, and see pictures of Robert and Ken at Ramanujan’s family temple.

Robert Schneider and Ben Phelan’s article about Ramanujan, Encounter with The Infinite, was a huge inspiration for this story. Read it in The Believer.

Listen to Ken Ono talk about Ramanujan and a biopic based on his life — The Man Who Knew Infinity — on Science Friday.

Read about the new musical scale Robert Schneider devised, based on natural logarithms.

 

"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/plants-and-prejudice-1584623242/2358264"},"headline":"Plants And Prejudice","datePublished":"2018-10-02T21:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2018-10-02T21:30:00.000Z","image":"?s=hh-web-app","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Science Friday and WNYC Studios"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hubhopper","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://files.hubhopper.com/assets/web/hh_logo_192x192.png","width":192,"height":192}},"description":"

Are non-native species all that bad, or are we just prejudiced against “the Other”? In the San Francisco Bay Area, one particular foreign species has been dividing environmentalists for years: the blue gum eucalyptus. Eucalyptus opponents say it’s a serious fire hazard. Defenders say there’s no good evidence it’s worse than native plants. Which is it? And is the fight against non-native species grounded in science or xenophobia? In this episode of Undiscovered, Annie and Elah investigate. 

 

GUESTS 

Fred Pearce, environmental journalist and author of The New Wild

Norman La Force, Sierra Club, San Francisco Bay Chapter

Dan Grassetti, Hills Conservation Network

Sara Kuebbing, Assistant Professor of invasion ecology at the University of Pittsburgh

 

FOOTNOTES

Read about the Bay Area’s eucalyptus debate.

Watch the debate between Norman and Dan in full, courtesy of Ray Madrigal.

Browse this website by a pro-eucalyptus activist and this page from the San Francisco Sierra Club, which wants to remove eucalyptus trees in some areas.

Invasion biologists defend their field and dispute allegations of xenophobia. Sara Kuebbing has also found that land managers aren’t arbitrarily eradicating non-native species, but selectively removing ones they deem harmful.

Mark Davis, a biologist who’s critical of invasion biology, covers some of the field’s history in his book, Invasion Biology.

Still want more? Check out these think pieces defending non-native species, including Michael Pollan’s article and Stephen Jay Gould’s essay. And for a completely different perspective, check out these sources on the impacts of non-native species, including an early study that attempted a rough calculation of their global economic cost.

 

CREDITS

Undiscovered is reported and produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. We had fact checking help for this episode from Michelle Harris. I Am Robot And Proud wrote our theme. Thank you to the whole Science Friday staff and to the many people on both sides of this issue who spent hours talking to us, taking Elah for nature walks, and providing us with documents.

"},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/the-magic-machine-1584623243/2358356"},"headline":"The Magic Machine","datePublished":"2018-09-25T21:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2018-09-25T21:30:00.000Z","image":"?s=hh-web-app","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Science Friday and WNYC Studios"},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hubhopper","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://files.hubhopper.com/assets/web/hh_logo_192x192.png","width":192,"height":192}},"description":"

As a critical care doctor, Jessica Zitter has seen plenty of “Hail Mary” attempts to save dying patients go bad—attempts where doctors try interventions that don’t change the outcome, but do lead to more patient suffering. It’s left her distrustful of flashy medical technology and a culture that insists that more treatment is always better. But when a new patient goes into cardiac arrest, the case doesn’t play out the way Jessica expected. She finds herself fighting for hours to revive him—and reaching for a game-changing technology that uncomfortably blurs the lines between life and death. 

---

 

Resources

Talking about end-of-life stuff can be hard! Here are some resources to get you started. (Adapted from Jessica Zitter’s Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life. Thanks Jessica!)

 

I want to… 

...figure out what kind of care I might want at end of life:

Prepare uses videos of people thinking about their end-of-life preferences to walk you through the steps for choosing a surrogate decision maker, determining your preferences, etc. 

...talk with family/friends about my preferences (or theirs!):

The Conversation Project offers a starter kit and tools to help start the conversation. 

...put my preferences in writing (an advance directive): 

Advance Directive forms connects you to advance directive forms for your state. 

My Directives For those who like their documents in app form! Guides you through creating an end-of-life plan, then stores it in the cloud so it’s accessible anywhere. 

---

Guests

Jessica Nutik Zitter, MD, MPH, Author and Attending Physician, Division of Pulmonary/Critical Care and Palliative Care Medicine, Highland Hospital

Thomas Frohlich, MD, Chief of Cardiology, Highland Hospital

Kenneth Prager, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of Clinical Ethics, Columbia University Medical Center

Daniela Lamas, MD, author and Associate Faculty at Ariadne Labs

David Casarett MD, author and Chief of Palliative Care, Duke University School of Medicine

---

 

Footnotes

Read the books: Jessica Zitter’s book is Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life. Daniela Lamas’s book is You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor’s Stories of Life, Death, and In Between. David Casarett’s book is Shocked: Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead

Read the memoirs of Amsterdam’s “Society in Favor of Drowned Persons,” the Dutch group that tried to resuscitate drowning victims (including Anne Wortman)

Learn more about ECMO, its success rates, and the ethical questions it raises (Daniela also wrote an article about it here)

Read Daniela’s study about quality of life in long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs). And for an introduction to LTACHs, here’s an overview from The New York Times

Watch Extremis, the Oscar-nominated documentary (featuring Jessica Zitter), about families facing end-of-life decisions in Highland Hospital’s ICU.

Read some of Dr. Zitter’s articles about life support tech (here and here) and the tough decisions doctors and patients face in the ICU (here and here)

---

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was reported and produced by Annie Minoff and Elah Feder. Editing by Christopher Intagliata. Original music by Daniel Peterschmidt. Fact-checking help from Michelle Harris. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. Our mid-break theme for this episode, “No Turning Back,” is by Daniel Peterschmidt and I am Robot and Proud. Thanks to the entire Science Friday staff, the folks at WNYC Studios, and CUNY’s Sarah Fishman. Special thanks to Michele Kassemos of UCSF Medical Center, Lorna Fernandes of Highland Hospital, and the entire staff at Highland.

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Since the 1980s, Gerta Keller, professor of paleontology and geology at Princeton, has been speaking out against an idea most of us take as scientific gospel: That a giant rock from space killed the dinosaurs. Nice story, she says—but it’s just not true. Gerta's been shouted down and ostracized at conferences, but in three decades, she hasn’t backed down. And now, things might finally be coming around for Gerta’s theory. But is she right? Did something else kill the dinosaurs? Or is she just too proud to admit she’s been wrong for 30 years?

 

GUESTS

Gerta Keller, professor of paleontology and geology at Princeton

James Powell, geologist and author of Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Dinosaur Extinction and the Transformation of Modern Geology (St. Martin's Press)

 

FOOTNOTES

Michael Benton reviews the many, sometimes hilarious explanations for the (non-avian) dinosaurs’ extinction. Note: Ideas marked with asterisks were jokes! More in Benton’s book.

Walter Alvarez tells his own story of the impact hypothesis in T. Rex and the Crater of Doom.

The New York Times interviews Luis Alvarez before he dies, and he takes some parting shots at his scientific opponents.

The impact and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary were simultaneous according to this paper.

Learn more about how volcanoes are major suspects in mass extinctions.

Read more about Gerta Keller, the holdout.

 

CREDITS

This episode of Undiscovered was reported and produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata. Original music by Daniel Peterschmidt. Fact-checking help from Robin Palmer. Lucy Huang polled visitors to AMNH about what killed the dinosaurs. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. Excerpts from All Things Considered used with permission from NPR.

 

"}]

After a massive Twitter campaign, the unnamed woman was identified as Sheila Minor, then an animal tech at the Smithsonian Museum.

 

 

FOOTNOTES

What’s known about the mysterious Jeanne Baret? Check out Glynis Ridley’s book, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret, and John Dunmore’s Monsieur Baret.

Browse some of the plant specimens Jeanne Baret and Philibert Commerson collected on their journey, courtesy of the New York Botanical Garden. (Psst, lots more here!)

Read Eric Tepe and Glynis Ridley’s article naming Solanum baretiae.

Read about the crowdsourced campaign to identify “hidden figure” Sheila Minor.

 

CREDITS

Undiscovered is reported and produced by Annie Minoff and Elah Feder. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata. Thanks as always to the staff at Science Friday and WNYC Studios, and a big thank you to On Air Fest and Jemma Brown for giving us the chance to tell this story.

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Undiscovered is back between seasons with a listener question: What saved the cats? If you rewind to the Middle Ages, cats and humans were on bad terms. Cat roundups, cat torture, and even cat murder were common occurrences throughout Europe. But a series of historic events steadily delivered the tiny felines into public favor. In a story that spans centuries and continents, the Catholic Church and the Rosetta Stone, Elah and Annie investigate how the cat’s reputation shifted from devil’s minion to adored companion.

 

Guests

Bob Collom, Undiscovered listener and question asker

Joshua J. Mark, Writer and researcher at Ancient History Encyclopedia 

Footnotes

Joshua J. Mark’s article, \"Cats in the Ancient World,\" was our first introduction to both Joshua and this story. Read it in Ancient History Encyclopedia.

Read about how the Persians cleverly exploited the Egyptians’ love for cats in the Battle of Pelusium.

Look inside an ancient Egyptian cat mummy. Spoiler: It’s a kitten! And learn more about the process of animal mummification.

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Kaitlyn Schwalje with help from Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. Special shoutout to listener Bob Collom for directing us to this wild story. And thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff and the folks at WNYC Studios.

","url":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/mini-cats-villains-at-heart-1584623239/2357761","publication":[{"@type":"BroadcastEvent","publishedOn":{"@type":"BroadcastService","url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/undiscovered/undiscovered121718_cats.mp3"},"startDate":"2018-12-17T22:30:00.000Z"},{"@type":"OnDemandEvent","startDate":"2018-12-17T22:30:00.000Z"}]},{"@type":"RadioEpisode","name":"This Headline Might Kill You","description":"

In this Undiscovered Cares Report, Annie and Elah dig into a scary science headline and help Elah’s friend, David, figure out how scared he should be that his B12 vitamins will give him lung cancer. And we find out how—even with top-notch scientists, journalists, and readers—science communication can go very wrong.

 

Guests

Theodore Brasky, assistant professor at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center

 

Footnotes

Read some of the headlines that scared us, and one that did a better job.

Then read Ted’s original study for yourself and the press release.

 

OUR MAIN TAKEAWAYS:

1) If you’re a man who smokes, these findings could matter for you. This study found that if you smoke, taking high doses of vitamins B12 or B6 was associated with an even greater risk of lung cancer than smoking by itself. But this finding still needs to be replicated, so proceed with caution before making massive lifestyle changes.

Ted has notes on this summary:

Might be best to switch the 2nd and 3rd sentences. If you start with “This finding still needs to be replicated…” and then say “Nevertheless, the study found that if you smoke…” it’s better than making the “this needs replication” comment seem offhand; which is an issue with much of the media attention thus far. Not a big deal either way, but I guess I still want people to understand that this is a single and unique study, and that means that trusting the results as truth can be problematic.

All of that said, I don’t think people need to proceed with caution before making lifestyle changes: smoking is singularly responsible for 1 in 5 deaths in the US each year. Anyone who smokes should consider quitting. A good place to start is the National Cancer Institute’s quit line: 1-800-QUIT-NOW. Smoking is awful for a person’s health. It is responsible for heart disease, COPD, and several different types of cancer in addition to lung cancer (which is the #2 most common cancer in men and women and the #1 cause of cancer death).

 

2) If you’re a man who's never smoked, don’t freak out! Men who have never smoked have extremely low rates of lung cancer, and that includes men who took these vitamins. This study didn’t turn up any evidence that these vitamins had any effect on that risk. (In fact, in this study, there were no cases of lung cancer in men who never smoked and were also taking the highest doses of these vitamins.) The study also didn’t find any effect of these vitamins on lung cancer risk in men who’d quit smoking before the study began.

Ted says:

Yes, not freaking out is ideal.

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Michelle Harris. Thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff, and the folks at WNYC Studios.

 

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In 2016, a North Carolina legislator announced that his party would be redrawing the state’s congressional district map with a particular goal in mind: To elect “10 Republicans and three Democrats.” His reasoning for this? As he explained, he did “not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”

It was a blatant admission of gerrymandering in a state already known for creatively-drawn districts. But that might be about to change. A North Carolina mathematician has come up with a way to quantify just how rigged a map is. And now he’s taking his math to court, in a case that could end up redrawing district lines across the country.

 

 

 

 

Guests

Jonathan Mattingly, professor of mathematics and statistical science, Duke University

Braxton Brewington, undergraduate senior, North Carolina A&T State University, senior democracy fellow, Common Cause North Carolina

Bob Phillips, executive director, Common Cause North Carolina

 

Footnotes

Read about Jonathan and his students’ analyses of North Carolina’s 2012 and 2016 congressional maps (and check out the rest of their work on gerrymandering)

See North Carolina’s congressional map, which a federal court declared unconstitutional in 2018

Read the District Court’s opinions from January 2018, declaring North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map unconstitutional

Watch Representative David Lewis make his comments before the state legislature's joint select committee on congressional redistricting

Read about the history of Common Cause’s lawsuit: Common Cause v. Rucho

Read about other partisan gerrymandering court challenges

Read about Common Cause v. Rucho’s prospects at the Supreme Court

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff  Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Robin Palmer. Eddie Garcia was our reporter on-the-ground at A&T.

 

Special thanks this week to Thomas Wolf and the Brennan Center for Justice, Justin Levitt, Gregory Herschlag, and Jonathan Mattingly’s Data+ team.

 

 

 

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Americans haven’t always loved whales and dolphins. In the 1950s, the average American thought of whales as the floating raw materials for margarine, animal feed, and fertilizer—if they thought about whales at all. But twenty-five years later, things had changed for cetaceans in a big way. Whales had become the poster-animal for a new environmental movement, and cries of “save the whales!” echoed from the halls of government to the whaling grounds of the Pacific. What happened? Annie and Elah meet the unconventional scientists who forever changed our view of whales by making the case that a series of surreal bleats and moans were “song.”

GUESTS

D. Graham Burnett, professor of history, Princeton University, author, The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the 20th Century

Scott McVay, former executive director, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, author, Surprise Encounters

Roger Payne, biologist, author, Among Whales

Sheri Wells-Jensen, associate professor of linguistics, Bowling Green State University

FOOTNOTES

Read Roger and Scott’s landmark Science paper on whale song. (The paper includes great pics of the spectrograms Scott and Roger analyzed.)

Listen to Roger’s record, Songs of the Humpback Whale.

Listen to more humpback whale recordings (and dolphin tapes too!) courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Read D. Graham Burnett’s essay on John C. Lilly in Orion. (It’s a great teaser for the rest of his book.)

Read a paper Dr. Lilly published in Science, based in part on Scott McVay’s work with Elvar the dolphin.

Read the essay that inspired Scott: Loren Eiseley’s “The Long Loneliness: Man and Porpoise: Two Solitary Destinies”

CREDITS

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff  Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Michelle Harris. Thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff, and the folks at WNYC Studios.

Special thanks this week to Jack Horowitz, Katie Lupica, and to the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island.

 

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Travis Thomas is a rookie turtle researcher in Florida. He was on the verge of publishing his first big paper and naming two new species of turtle when he found out he’d been scooped by a stranger in Australia: Raymond Hoser, a.k.a. the Snake Man. Raymond is a reptile wrangler and amateur herpetologist who’s managed to name hundreds of animals—and has made a lot of enemies in the process. In this episode of Undiscovered, Travis sets out to get his turtles back, and Annie and Elah set out to find out how and why the Snake Man does what he does.

 

Guests

Travis Thomas, PhD student, University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

Robert Sprackland, herpetologist, visiting researcher at the Smithsonian Institution

Raymond Hoser, founder of the Australasian Journal of Herpetology, owner of Snakebusters

 

Footnotes

Read Travis Thomas et al.’s 2014 paper splitting alligator snapping turtles into three species, Raymond Hoser's 2013 paper, Raymond's response to Thomas et al. (pg. 19), and a later paper arguing for a different classification.

Check out Raymond’s website where he responds to his critics, lists the animal taxa (species, genera, etc.) he’s named, and posts the Australasian Journal of Herpetology.

Crack open the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature’s big book of rules for naming animals.

Read articles about “taxonomic vandalism” that criticize Raymond Hoser.

Dive into this great Nautilus piece on prolific species namers in history and the ire they provoked.

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, and Annie Minoff  We had production help from Sushmita Pathak who brought us this story. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. We had fact checking help from Michelle Harris. Thanks, as always, to the entire Science Friday staff, and the folks at WNYC Studios, especially Tony Phillips and Jenny Lawton for feedback on this story.

 

","url":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/turtle-v-snake-1584623241/2358099","publication":[{"@type":"BroadcastEvent","publishedOn":{"@type":"BroadcastService","url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/undiscovered/undiscovered101618_turtles.mp3"},"startDate":"2018-10-16T21:30:00.000Z"},{"@type":"OnDemandEvent","startDate":"2018-10-16T21:30:00.000Z"}]},{"@type":"RadioEpisode","name":"Guest Episode: The Infinite God","description":"

This week, Annie and Elah share an episode from one of their favorite podcasts, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Sum of All Parts.

For years, Robert Schneider lived the indie rocker’s dream, producing landmark records and fronting his band, The Apples in Stereo. And then, he gave it all up...for number theory. Host Joel Werner tracks Robert’s transformation, from a transcendental encounter with an antique tape machine, to the family temple of a mysterious long-dead mathematician, Ramanujan.

Find more episodes of Sum of All Parts.

CREDITS

This episode of Sum of All Parts was produced and hosted by Joel Werner. Sophie Townsend served as story editor and Jonathan Webb served as science editor. Sound engineering by Mark Don and Martin Peralta.

Undiscovered is reported and produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. 

GUESTS

Robert Schneider, Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Emory University

Ken Ono, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Mathematics, Emory University

FOOTNOTES

Hear more Sum of All Parts, and see pictures of Robert and Ken at Ramanujan’s family temple.

Robert Schneider and Ben Phelan’s article about Ramanujan, Encounter with The Infinite, was a huge inspiration for this story. Read it in The Believer.

Listen to Ken Ono talk about Ramanujan and a biopic based on his life — The Man Who Knew Infinity — on Science Friday.

Read about the new musical scale Robert Schneider devised, based on natural logarithms.

 

","url":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/guest-episode-the-infinite-god-1584623242/2358185","publication":[{"@type":"BroadcastEvent","publishedOn":{"@type":"BroadcastService","url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/undiscovered/undiscovered100918_soap.mp3"},"startDate":"2018-10-09T21:30:00.000Z"},{"@type":"OnDemandEvent","startDate":"2018-10-09T21:30:00.000Z"}]},{"@type":"RadioEpisode","name":"Plants And Prejudice","description":"

Are non-native species all that bad, or are we just prejudiced against “the Other”? In the San Francisco Bay Area, one particular foreign species has been dividing environmentalists for years: the blue gum eucalyptus. Eucalyptus opponents say it’s a serious fire hazard. Defenders say there’s no good evidence it’s worse than native plants. Which is it? And is the fight against non-native species grounded in science or xenophobia? In this episode of Undiscovered, Annie and Elah investigate. 

 

GUESTS 

Fred Pearce, environmental journalist and author of The New Wild

Norman La Force, Sierra Club, San Francisco Bay Chapter

Dan Grassetti, Hills Conservation Network

Sara Kuebbing, Assistant Professor of invasion ecology at the University of Pittsburgh

 

FOOTNOTES

Read about the Bay Area’s eucalyptus debate.

Watch the debate between Norman and Dan in full, courtesy of Ray Madrigal.

Browse this website by a pro-eucalyptus activist and this page from the San Francisco Sierra Club, which wants to remove eucalyptus trees in some areas.

Invasion biologists defend their field and dispute allegations of xenophobia. Sara Kuebbing has also found that land managers aren’t arbitrarily eradicating non-native species, but selectively removing ones they deem harmful.

Mark Davis, a biologist who’s critical of invasion biology, covers some of the field’s history in his book, Invasion Biology.

Still want more? Check out these think pieces defending non-native species, including Michael Pollan’s article and Stephen Jay Gould’s essay. And for a completely different perspective, check out these sources on the impacts of non-native species, including an early study that attempted a rough calculation of their global economic cost.

 

CREDITS

Undiscovered is reported and produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt, and our intern is Kaitlyn Schwalje. We had fact checking help for this episode from Michelle Harris. I Am Robot And Proud wrote our theme. Thank you to the whole Science Friday staff and to the many people on both sides of this issue who spent hours talking to us, taking Elah for nature walks, and providing us with documents.

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As a critical care doctor, Jessica Zitter has seen plenty of “Hail Mary” attempts to save dying patients go bad—attempts where doctors try interventions that don’t change the outcome, but do lead to more patient suffering. It’s left her distrustful of flashy medical technology and a culture that insists that more treatment is always better. But when a new patient goes into cardiac arrest, the case doesn’t play out the way Jessica expected. She finds herself fighting for hours to revive him—and reaching for a game-changing technology that uncomfortably blurs the lines between life and death. 

---

 

Resources

Talking about end-of-life stuff can be hard! Here are some resources to get you started. (Adapted from Jessica Zitter’s Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life. Thanks Jessica!)

 

I want to… 

...figure out what kind of care I might want at end of life:

Prepare uses videos of people thinking about their end-of-life preferences to walk you through the steps for choosing a surrogate decision maker, determining your preferences, etc. 

...talk with family/friends about my preferences (or theirs!):

The Conversation Project offers a starter kit and tools to help start the conversation. 

...put my preferences in writing (an advance directive): 

Advance Directive forms connects you to advance directive forms for your state. 

My Directives For those who like their documents in app form! Guides you through creating an end-of-life plan, then stores it in the cloud so it’s accessible anywhere. 

---

Guests

Jessica Nutik Zitter, MD, MPH, Author and Attending Physician, Division of Pulmonary/Critical Care and Palliative Care Medicine, Highland Hospital

Thomas Frohlich, MD, Chief of Cardiology, Highland Hospital

Kenneth Prager, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of Clinical Ethics, Columbia University Medical Center

Daniela Lamas, MD, author and Associate Faculty at Ariadne Labs

David Casarett MD, author and Chief of Palliative Care, Duke University School of Medicine

---

 

Footnotes

Read the books: Jessica Zitter’s book is Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life. Daniela Lamas’s book is You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor’s Stories of Life, Death, and In Between. David Casarett’s book is Shocked: Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead

Read the memoirs of Amsterdam’s “Society in Favor of Drowned Persons,” the Dutch group that tried to resuscitate drowning victims (including Anne Wortman)

Learn more about ECMO, its success rates, and the ethical questions it raises (Daniela also wrote an article about it here)

Read Daniela’s study about quality of life in long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs). And for an introduction to LTACHs, here’s an overview from The New York Times

Watch Extremis, the Oscar-nominated documentary (featuring Jessica Zitter), about families facing end-of-life decisions in Highland Hospital’s ICU.

Read some of Dr. Zitter’s articles about life support tech (here and here) and the tough decisions doctors and patients face in the ICU (here and here)

---

 

Credits

This episode of Undiscovered was reported and produced by Annie Minoff and Elah Feder. Editing by Christopher Intagliata. Original music by Daniel Peterschmidt. Fact-checking help from Michelle Harris. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. Our mid-break theme for this episode, “No Turning Back,” is by Daniel Peterschmidt and I am Robot and Proud. Thanks to the entire Science Friday staff, the folks at WNYC Studios, and CUNY’s Sarah Fishman. Special thanks to Michele Kassemos of UCSF Medical Center, Lorna Fernandes of Highland Hospital, and the entire staff at Highland.

","url":"https://beta.hubhopper.co/episode/the-magic-machine-1584623243/2358356","publication":[{"@type":"BroadcastEvent","publishedOn":{"@type":"BroadcastService","url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/audio.wnyc.org/undiscovered/undiscovered092518_themagicmachine.mp3"},"startDate":"2018-09-25T21:30:00.000Z"},{"@type":"OnDemandEvent","startDate":"2018-09-25T21:30:00.000Z"}]},{"@type":"RadioEpisode","name":"The Holdout","description":"

Since the 1980s, Gerta Keller, professor of paleontology and geology at Princeton, has been speaking out against an idea most of us take as scientific gospel: That a giant rock from space killed the dinosaurs. Nice story, she says—but it’s just not true. Gerta's been shouted down and ostracized at conferences, but in three decades, she hasn’t backed down. And now, things might finally be coming around for Gerta’s theory. But is she right? Did something else kill the dinosaurs? Or is she just too proud to admit she’s been wrong for 30 years?

 

GUESTS

Gerta Keller, professor of paleontology and geology at Princeton

James Powell, geologist and author of Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Dinosaur Extinction and the Transformation of Modern Geology (St. Martin's Press)

 

FOOTNOTES

Michael Benton reviews the many, sometimes hilarious explanations for the (non-avian) dinosaurs’ extinction. Note: Ideas marked with asterisks were jokes! More in Benton’s book.

Walter Alvarez tells his own story of the impact hypothesis in T. Rex and the Crater of Doom.

The New York Times interviews Luis Alvarez before he dies, and he takes some parting shots at his scientific opponents.

The impact and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary were simultaneous according to this paper.

Learn more about how volcanoes are major suspects in mass extinctions.

Read more about Gerta Keller, the holdout.

 

CREDITS

This episode of Undiscovered was reported and produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata. Original music by Daniel Peterschmidt. Fact-checking help from Robin Palmer. Lucy Huang polled visitors to AMNH about what killed the dinosaurs. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud. Excerpts from All Things Considered used with permission from NPR.

 

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