Carry The One Radio: The Science Podcast

Dr. Liz Wayne got her start as a cancer hunter, searching for rogue cells running loose through the bloodstream. But she started to notice something strange – everywhere she found cancer cells, she found immune cells, too. Today, a big issue with cancer therapy is that some cancer sites are really hard to reach, but immune cells have no problem getting there. Dr. Wayne thought, why not hitchhike cancer-fighting drugs onto immune cells to get them straight to the places they’re needed most? Listen to this month’s episode to find out how her research may pave the way for a cheaper, more accessible kind of cancer immunotherapy. Plus, stick around after the credits to hear the origin story of Dr. Wayne’s podcast, PhDivas.

Sharing is caring - so what if you could transmit your HIV therapy to someone else? In this episode, we talked to Dr. Leor Weinberger, whose team has invented TIPs, or Therapeutic Interfering Particles, that are mutant, shortened forms of HIV that cannot replicate on their own and cannot cause disease. In cells that contain HIV, these TIPs outcompete HIV, preventing it from replicating. These TIPs could then be spread from person to person through the same ways that HIV is transmitted. This therapy could go a long way towards fighting the barriers against disease control - adherence, access, and resistance. We thought this was a really unique idea that has the potential of reducing the population level of HIV, and we wanted to share this early-stage research with you.

To date, cochlear implants are the most successful electronic device for restoring sensation in individuals with sensorineural hearing loss. Yet these devices are not without flaws. For instance, pitch perception is extremely poor in these devices, and that can affect an implant user's ability to distinguish sounds in a noisy room. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Charles Limb, a UCSF ear surgeon who specializes in hearing loss and performs these cochlear implant surgeries. By incorporating complex elements of music, Dr. Limb and his team hope to improve the current cochlear implant model so those with hearing loss have a wider range and more sensitive ability to hear.

Dr. David Gordon studies HIV. In Life/Science, a new mini-series produced in collaboration with the UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute, we're giving you a peek behind the curtain. This isn't just a series about science, it's also about the process, about what it actually means to do this kind of research - including the confusion, failures, and triumphs David has faced along the way. Life/Science will be updated monthly, so make sure to tune in next month for Episode 2: Methods! We'll take a deep dive into the experiments David used to figure out how HIV hijacks human cells for its own nefarious purposes. If you like what you hear, leave us a comment or review! We'd love to hear from you. Music featured in this episode comes from Podington Bear.

Pharmaceutical drugs for cognitive disorders are poorly targeted and can have adverse side effects. Could playing video games be an alternative therapy? We speak with Dr. Adam Gazzaley about his work on training the brains of patients using video games, and the effects on this training on their lives outside the game.

Let's talk about sex, baby. Wait, minus the baby. This month, we interviewed a science historian and a current provider, as well as our friends and family, to learn about the scientific and cultural factors that shape contraceptive use in the US.

Forming strong social relationships with others is critical to our mental health and well-being. But what happens when our ability to form these vital connections is impaired? In this episode, Dr. Josh Woolley explores the social deficits in patients with Schizophrenia, and how oxytocin may hold the key to developing a better treatment.

If you could swallow a pill that would give you twenty extra years of healthy life, would you do it? In this episode of CTOR, we talk to Dr. Dena Dubal, a neurologist and neuroscientist at UCSF. Her research on a protein discovered completely by accident may hold the key to living longer, healthier lives more resilient to heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia. How is that possible? Listen to this month’s CTOR episode to find out!

Have you ever wondered what’s going on in a musician’s head while they improvise? In our latest episode, Dr. Charles Limb gives us a window to peer into the process of creativity as it happens: scanning the brains of jazz musicians and rappers as they improvise. Tune in to learn what brain processes allow creative thought, why creativity matters, and whether or not you might compose the next great rock ballad.

The world’s data are stored on millions of computers, or servers, that take up buildings’ worth of space and consume about as much electricity as France. How do we keep up with the increasing amount of data that we are generating? In this episode, we talk to bioinformatician Dina Zielinski about her unexpected solution: storing digital data on DNA.

Carry The One Radio goes live, at the California Academy of Sciences. We talk sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll with Dr. Indre Viskontas, a Neuroscientist and Opera singer, at Nightlife: Brain and Body. Hear why the music industry is obsessed with your brain, why drug addicts often die in hotel rooms, and why "The Wheels on the Bus" becomes intensely annoying as you grow up.

How does a three pound ball of flesh inside your skull lead to your thoughts, your hopes, your feelings...and your sweet dance moves? There are more cells in your brain than there are people on Earth. Billions of neurons making trillions of connections. Trying to figure out how your brain works would be like trying to understand every conversation that’s going on in the world, all at one time…ten times over! So how can we tackle this monumental task? Most scientists simplify the problem by focusing on a single part of the brain, but what if we took a different path? What if we could understand everything that’s going on in a brain, all at the same time? In this episode, Saul Kato explains how he’s doing just that.

From the basic biology to public policy: in this episode we tackle sugar. Find out what happens in our bodies when we eat sugar, as well as the disturbing tactics corporations use to get people hooked on products like soda and junk food. We then talk about soda taxes and other strategies Dr. Laura Schmidt and her colleagues are using to battle against the sugar industry.

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Joe DeRisi, UCSF’s resident Sherlock Holmes of infectious diseases. You’ll hear about a surprising discovery that could have enormous implications for controlling - or even preventing - future Ebola outbreaks. One of the big mysteries surrounding Ebola has been where it hides between outbreaks. Here, Dr. DeRisi uncovers an unexpected culprit that could be harboring this deadly virus.

In this episode, a team of researchers disprove a decades-old dogma. The result? The first ever FDA-approved drug for primary-progressive multiple sclerosis. In this inspiring story spanning decades of research, you’ll hear all the science, and all the dramatic twists, behind this radical new treatment. For more information and links to the music used in this episode, please visit ctoradio.org

Scientists usually study biology in animals such as lab rats, but their discoveries do not always translate between species. What if we could study human biology specifically? In this episode, we talk to Dr. Jurgen Knoblich and Dr. Zev Gartner about their efforts to create organoids, which are miniature, simplified versions of organs created from human cells. Using these organoids, Drs. Knoblich and Gartner can study how human organs develop and how they are affected by disease. How do they make these organoids, and what will organoids mean for our future health?

Have you ever spaced out while traveling somewhere but still made it to your desintation effortlessly? Our brain is amazing at calculating exactly where we are relative to things around us, but this is a skill we often take for granted. In this episode, Producer Sama Ahmed talks with Dr. Michael Yartsev about how we know where we are in the world, how we make memories, and how we make decisions. Dr. Yartsev is uncovering all of this utilizing a rather unconventional and totally awesome animal: the bat! This episode is a re-release of an episode from 2013.

In this episode we bring you short talks from ten young, passionate scientists eager to tell you about their cutting-edge discoveries. Each scientist is given just three minutes to launch their audience to new horizons and bring them back to earth, ready for the next exciting journey. Come with us as we explore new horizons in disease prevention, ways that our bodies could one day produce their own treatments, how scary spiders can actually help us reduce pain, and much, much more. Intrigued? Let's begin our countdown to science!

In this episode we’ll explore humanity’s, and the entire animal kingdom’s, fraught relationship with its closest biological cousins, fungi. We will hear about how we can’t live without them, how they’re trying to wipe us off the face of the planet, and how at least one company thinks they’re the key to changing how we view our own mortality. This one of our largest single episodes, comprised of four parts! First, Dr. Dennis Desjardin of San Francisco State University will tell us about his lifelong relationship with fungi and some of the bizarre organisms he has discovered. Next, we’ll talk to Dr. Margo Daub of North Carolina State University about a deadly pathogen that threatens our food security. Third, we will hear from Dr. Anita Sil of UCSF about a deadly fungus that uses our own immune system against us, and finally, Claire McNamara from the startup Coeio will explain how their product can leverage the power of fungi to create a radical shift in our view on death.

In this episode we bring back Professor Terrence Deacon, a biological anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, to talk about language. He tells us one possible story of how language first evolved, and why he believes language is a uniquely human capability. Listen to find out how language is about a lot more than just speech.