Sizing Up Weapons
People think others are larger and stronger if they’re holding a weapon in their hands.
Chilly Relationships Roundup
Social anxiety can affect how you sense temperature.
Podcast for 20 April 2012
SOUND SCIENCE - Can sounds influence dreams? Emotional similarities between music and speech. Does a deeper voice lead people to vote for a political candidate? Baboons that recognize words. And baby goats with accents.
Australian Extinction
Human hunters drove Australia’s largest animals to extinction around 40,000 years ago.
Podcast for 23 March 2012
EVOLUTION & EXTINCTION - What really happened to Australia's missing megafauna, how carnivores lost their sweet tooth, why lovelorn fruit flies resort to alcohol, strategic miscarriages in monkeys, and a new frog species is discovered in plain sight.
Podcast for 16 March 2012
SCIENCE OF SOCIETY - Do wealthier people tend to have fewer scruples? The social costs of mass incarceration. Seeing-eye smartphones for the blind. And, new evidence calls an accepted tenet of science into question. Also: how to make plastic from plants.
Ethics & Social Class
The higher your socioeconomic status, the more prone you may be to unethical behavior.
Podcast for 9 March 2012
NEW MEDICINE - A rare mutation that protects people from diabetes and cancer. How the pancreas "tastes" sugar. And a new implantable microchip that delivers an osteoporosis drug. Also: chimpanzees may yawn for the same reason humans do.
Contagious Yawns
Both humans and chimpanzees can’t resist the urge to yawn when others do.
Language Delays
Screening criteria for language delays in children depend on the culture.
Endangered Voices
Digital technology and social media are helping save endangered languages.
Politics Roundup
Research suggests that conservatives pay more attention to unpleasant images and liberals, to pleasant ones.
Sex Ratio & Spending
The perception that women are scarce may make men less careful with their money.
A Dog’s Eye View of People
One key to our successful long-term relationship with dogs may lie in the eyes.
Kinder, Gentler Monkeys
Rhesus macaque monkeys become kinder after inhaling the hormone oxytocin.
Podcast for 20 January 2012
ANIMALS & PEOPLE - Levitating flies, what dogs and babies have in common, how oxytocin makes kinder, gentler monkeys, a fish that mimics an octopus that mimics a fish, and how bats hear with both sides of the brain.
Sounds & Colors
Like humans, chimpanzees associate high-pitched sounds with bright colors and low-pitched sounds with dark colors.
The Oldest Oldies
Some of the first sound recordings ever made are finally being heard again.
Cooking Up Evolution
Scientists have new evidence that cooking influenced human evolution.
Neanderthal Legs
Scientists have figured out how Neanderthals got by with short legs.
Twitter Mood
Sociologists analyzed Twitter posts to track daily and seasonal mood swings around the world.
Podcast for 30 September 2011
HORMONES & BEHAVIOR - Testosterone and fatherhood, the genetics of oxytocin and depression, gender and spatial reasoning revisited, where taste is found in the brain, and more.