In this episode, Jim and Derek are joined by Aly to discuss how aliens discuss things. Then, we blow the lid off of the flu shot conspiracy (spoiler: there isn’t one). Finally, we cap off the episode by talking about how bad everything would be if water stopped behaving in all the strange ways water behaves.
Panelists: Jim, Derek, Aly
Additional Links for the Interested
How Red Blood Cells Nuke their Nuclei
The Language Sounds That Could Exist But Don’t
Mass Effect: Hanar
Writing in Shorthand
The Waggle Dance
CDC: Common Misconceptions About the Flu Shot
Skinner Box
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I feel like color would be a fairly common form of communication; general broad splashes that might mean “danger” or “friend”
Podcast 31 – if water behaved differently and froze from the bottom up –
My outdoor fish and tadpoles would freeze and die. I’m in N. Carolina, where it will freeze in the winter months (after Dec, usually, for a couple of months).
I have a 45-gallon rubber barrel outside where I raise tadpoles (copes gray tree frogs) to increase our decreasing native neighborhood population of same. Minnows eat mosquito larvae all summer, which makes my life less itchy. I’d be sad if either the minnows or the tadpoles froze to death this winter.
When the top of my water barrel freezes, I have to break holes in the ice to let Oxygen in – but the ice is not otherwise killing my fish. Lack of oxygen would kill them all. Last year, all the minnows survived the winter, and no tadpoles were left after August. This year, I still have half-developed tadpoles in November.
This winter, I’ll learn the hard way whether the tadpoles will stop development into frogs, go dormant, and transform into frogs next spring. Do you have any insights into whether tadpoles who have some legs in November can go dormant and then become healthy frogs next spring? Can you offer me any hope?
Love your podcast – Michele