We Have Concerns

Jeff and Anthony uncover the remarkable true story of that iconic symbol of the American west, the tumbleweed. Turns out, it was all a lie.

A giant squid, rarely seen outside of deep waters, was filmed swimming near a pier in central Japan. Even crazier, a local dive shop owner decided to leap into the water and swim with the deadly creature. What happens next may surprise you. It certainly surprised Anthony and Jeff, who take a moment to enumerate the various ways this is a stupid thing to do.

Melody Jackson, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, has been outfitting service dogs with computerized vests, so that in an emergency they can find another human and pull a mechanical lever on the vest that triggers an audio message like, "My handler needs you to come with me!" Anthony and Jeff ponder how they might react when faced with that situation, and discuss use cases for animal UI devices.

This year, efforts will resume to drill deeper into the Earth than ever before. In fact, scientists believe this new effort, drilling from a ship at sea, will finally cross the barrier between the crust and the mantle. Jeff and Anthony wonder what horrors wait to be released when we crack into new layers of the Earth, and also take time to rediscover their love of the 2003 film, The Core.

To combat an epidemic of rabies spread by wild foxes, the Swiss government, from the late seventies through the early nineties, showered their countryside with vaccinated chicken heads. Jeff and Anthony are completely flabbergasted by this plan, and wonder what life must have been like in a Europe littered with thousands of disembodied chicken heads.

South Korean companies think they've figured out how to help depressed employees: throw them into coffins and give them fake funerals. One of us loves this idea, one of us is weirded out by it. CAN YOU GUESS WHO?

A woman born incapable of feeling pain has been hurt for the first time, thanks to a drug normally prescribed for opioid overdoses. Jeff and Anthony discuss what it must be like to feel pain for the first time, and whether this is a positive breakthrough, or a terrible thing to do to someone with a superpower.

Over the last 5 years, 283 wooden boats have washed up on the shores of Japan, full of decomposing human bodies. No one knows where they came from, who was aboard, or why they died. Of course, that doesn't stop Jeff and Anthony from solving the case. It's gotta be ghost ships, right?

The problem of splash-back at the urinal has been tackled by Researchers at Utah State University who have developed a new device that's being called a "black hole for urine." Jeff and Anthony discuss the problem of pee splash, and are mystified that this powerful technology isn't being used for more important things.

The recent International Summit on Human Gene Editing brought scientists from around the worth together to debate the benefits and potential dangers of experimenting on the human genome. Anthony and Jeff have their own debate, and imagine a future where DNA is the ultimate creative canvas.

New research by an archaeologist at the University of York suggests that betrayals of trust were the missing link in understanding the rapid spread of our own species around the world. Jeff and Anthony discuss whether the dark side of human nature might be as useful as the light.

An astrophysicist by the name of Matt Ginsberg believes he will revolutionize the way we will watch sports. He is patenting technology that will predict and display the results of a basketball shot the instant it leaves the shooter's hand by calculating the trajectory of the ball in real time. Jeff and Anthony discuss the merits of data against the notion of knowing too much.

Biologists at Tufts University have succeeded in inducing one species of flatworm to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm without altering genomic sequence. The discovery could help improve understanding of birth defects and regeneration by revealing a new pathway for controlling complex pattern formation. Jeff and Anthony imagine a world with new, programmable heads, and wonder what kinds of antics these wrongheaded worms might get into.

Scientists from James Cook University’s Singapore campus have published a study which seems to suggest that modern technology is affecting perception of time. Individuals who use smart phones and tablets report a swifter passage of time than those in analog information streams. Jeff and Anthony have their doubts about the conclusions of this study, but spend much of their time-discussion trying to pinpoint the exact uses of an Arduino.

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, a measure that lets US companies own any non-organic resources they harvest from asteroids and other space objects. Now that space mining is officially legal, Anthony and Jeff discuss the ramifications, and plan their new lives as Space Pirates.