Free Daily Podcast Summary
MinuteEarth: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Minute Earth
Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had - but once you hear the answer, you’ll want to share it with everyone you know. Our team of scientists digs into the research and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. We’ll tell the incredible story of how monkeys crossed the Atlantic ocean on natural rafts, and we’ll explain why it gets hotter the deeper you dig underground.
Latest Episodes
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- 5 days ago1 min
Why do humans stop growing at a certain point, while other animals don’t?
Many bones have special layers of cells on each end known as "growth plates"; these cells are constantly dividing and turning into brand-new bone. That's what makes both you and, say, an alligator grow. But in humans, once puberty is complete, our bodies release hormones that harden our growth plates permanently, turning them into "no-more-growth" plates. Humans –along with other mammals, and birds– are energy-hungry critters. Our fast metabolisms allow us to run –or swim or fly– long distances, but they require a lot of energy to sustain, even when we’re at rest. And burning all that energy produces a lot of heat. And if you recall, as an animal grows, its volume, and therefore the amount of heat it produces, increases much faster than its surface area does – surface that's needed to vent that heat outward. Getting too big would burn us up, so it makes sense that there’s a biological process that limits our growth. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 6 days ago2 min
What does a mushroom get out of making animals trip?
Here are three of our best theories: The first is that fungi might not get anything from producing psilocybin. Maybe the compound is an evolutionary accident like our widow’s peaks, or a relic from the species’ past, like our tailbone nubbins. Another idea is that maybe it helps them fend off hungry critters… after all, soil-bound species make all sorts of chemicals whose bitter taste or toxins keep herbivores at bay. A third idea is that psilocybin helps the fungus spread its reproductive spores far and wide. Like, say a slug munches on a mushroom, triggering a psilocybin-induced seizure. That tripping-out slug with a belly full of spores might attract the attention of a toad, which might eat the slug, and then hop far away before it poops out the spores. So, despite a lot of study, scientists still don't have a grand unified theory of what psilocybin does for fungi. For now, the bottom line is that when it comes to our scientific understanding of psilocybin, there is still so mushroom for improvement. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago1 min
What do YOU have in common with an Electric Eel?
An electric eel can deliver a shock of as much as 860 volts, which is about seven times higher than the voltage of the average US power outlet. That’s enough to paralyze other animals, or even kill them outright. Being able to produce electric shocks sounds… well… shocking, but all animals are capable of producing electricity – even you. Every time an animal’s nerve or muscle cell fires, it generates an itty-bitty amount of electricity; these tiny jolts do all sorts of important jobs, from regulating an animal’s heartbeat to making it’s body move. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 1 weeks ago1 min
What is kangaroo care - and why is it one of the best ways to help save at-risk premature babies
One of the best ways to help save at-risk premature babies is to have their parents spend hours snuggling them to their bare chests; it's called kangaroo care because the skin-to-skin contact it creates is a lot like the cozy confines of a kangaroo’s pouch. There seems to be a couple major reasons it works so well. First, kangaroo care is a great way to keep a baby warm. Premature babies have less fat and more relative surface area than full-term babies, so they can’t always keep their body temperature up. And it turns out that skin is way better at conducting heat than air is. Preemies that get skin-to-skin care are 67% less likely to suffer from hypothermia than those that don’t. Second, during kangaroo care, bacteria from the parent’s skin hop onto the baby. Which sounds dangerous, but in order to develop a healthy immune system, a baby needs to be exposed to the right amount of bacteria early in life. Full-term babies get this exposure in their mom’s womb during the last few months of pregnancy, but preemies miss out. By microdosing them with bacteria, kangaroo care can cut a preemie’s chances of developing a major infection like sepsis in half. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 weeks ago1 min
Milk Stealing
One of the strangest-ever crime sprees hit a small town in England in 1921. It wasn't murder or bank robbery - instead, people were finding that the milk bottles delivered to their houses would have the foil caps pierced and the cream on top of the milk sucked out. Turns out, birds - specifically a species called great tits - had learned a new way to find a meal. The wildest part is that within a few years, birds all over Europe had copied the behavior. The original birds who had figured out how to steal the cream had taught their neighbors how to do it, who in turn, taught their friends. It's a phenomenon called social transmission, and scientists can replicate it by teaching birds a pretty arbitrary skill - like opening a puzzle box in a specific way - and watching how it spreads through a population. Studying this phenomenon gives scientists a window into the way non-human animals learn new behaviors, even naughty ones like stealing. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 2 weeks ago1 min
Why space rocks are so hard to find
There are a few reasons space rocks are so hard to find. For starters, more than two thirds of the Earth is covered with water, so for all the meteorites that actually get to Earth, most of them splash down into oceanic obscurity. For a meteorite to be discovered and studied, it has to land… on land. most meteorites that ARE found are found in Earth’s deserts. And it turns out that the biggest desert in the world is – you guessed it – Antarctica. So of the 67,000 meteorites discovered and documented, some 42,000 have been found in Antarctica, and each year, expeditions bring back nearly 1000 more. But scientists estimate that the meteorites we’ve found so far are just the tip of the iceberg; they probably only represent about 13% of the space rocks locked up in Antarctica; so there are plenty more secrets left out there, lurking in the ice. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 3 weeks ago1 min
How Do Birds Use GPS?
Birds are incredible navigators that can travel half the world to find the same patch of forest or ponds every single year. Many birds learn their migration routes from older, more experienced birds while others make their migrations alone following maps encoded in their genes. They track their positions using the sun, stars, and even landmarks like rivers. But when all of these things fail, some birds can navigate by sensing the Earth’s magnetic field, although scientists aren’t completely sure how they manage to do it. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- 3 weeks ago1 min
Birds have an embarrassing problem...
This bird has a superpower most animals don’t have: it can fly. And the reason birds can fly is because every part of their body is optimized for an airborne life. Birds have really efficient – and kinda weird – respiratory systems. They don’t just have two lungs like we do – they also have air sacs tucked away in their bodies to hold extra air. Birds also have really big hearts to pump blood to their energy-hungry muscles, and they have big brains because flying requires smarts – I mean, they have to be quick thinkers to avoid flying into trees. But there is a tradeoff – for some parts to become heavier, others had to become lighter. Birds lost many unneeded bones, like fingers, and even gave up their teeth and jaws, opting instead for lighter beaks. Birds don’t even bother with a bladder – in other words, birds can’t even hold their pee because it might weigh them down too much. MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC https://neptunestudios.info If you like what we do, you can help us! - Become our patron: https://patreon.com/MinuteEarth - Buy our merch: http://dftba.com/minuteearth - Buy our book: https://minuteearth.com/books - Sign up to our newsletter: http://news.minuteearth.com - Share with your friends and family - Leave us a comment (we read them!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About MinuteEarth
Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had - but once you hear the answer, you’ll want to share it with everyone you know. Our team of scientists digs into the research and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. We’ll tell the incredible story of how monkeys crossed the Atlantic ocean on natural rafts, and we’ll explain why it gets hotter the deeper you dig underground.
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