Scienceline

Scienceline explores non-pharmaceutical ways for insomnia sufferers to get a better night sleep This podcast pilot will reviews various sleep-help methods for folks suffering from insomniacs. While many insomnia sufferers resort to drugs, intentioned changes to behavior or listening to music while trying to fall asleep might help, too. I talk to Austin Frakt, an insomnia sufferer and blogger for The Incidental Economist, Kira Vibe Jespersen at Aarhus University in Denmark, and John Watson who runs the Sleep Radio service in New Zealand. Sleep easy! Produced by Ryan F. Mandelbaum [Image Credit: Wellcome Library, London | CC BY 4.0]

Scientists and other talented guests show off and explain their talents. This is talent show, where you show off your talent and I reveal your secret! This pilot will showcase relative and absolute pitch, and how people develop or acquire those talents. Image: Public domain

Your microbiome functions without you even knowing it’s there. Science writer Carl Zimmer and pathologist Zhiheng Pei help explain how we rely on bacteria and viruses to keep us healthy, and what can go wrong when that relationship breaks down. Produced by Peter Hess Image credit: CDC/ Lois S. Wiggs (PHIL #6260), 2004

If you get angry while walking in crowds, you’re not alone Whether on the sidewalk, at the mall or in the grocery store, we’ve all been there. Someone in front of you is walking slower than you want to be walking, and the rage bubbles up as you’re thwarted in your attempts to pass them. Maybe you keep a lid on your frustration, but it’s there. Decrypting You takes a look at sidewalk rage and its close cousin road rage to find out where that anger comes from. Produced by Ellie Kincaid [Image Credit: Gary McCabe | CC BY-SA 2.0]

How water and forest combined to build a city We all have places we love, but we don't often stop to think about what makes these places special. A Sense of Place is all about exploring how a place's surroundings shape its history and culture. In this episode, we visit Venice--the sinking city of canals. [Image credit: NASA/GSFC/MITI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

This is Potato Potato. Each episode we'll invite a mystery guest to tell us a story. Then we’ll have a linguist try to guess where our storyteller comes from. And maybe along the way we’ll learn something about the English language. In this episode: Nisse Greenberg shares a memorable accident and linguist Dan Duncan guesses.

We’ve all heard household and health tips from our moms, grandmothers and know-it-all friends. But what makes a tip a life hack or just quack? In this episode of the Life Hack Almanac we’ll explore whether a famous cold remedy – chicken soup – actually works or if it's just all in your head. Produced by Knvul Sheikh for Scienceline podcasts.

An interview with Girardin Jean-Louis, a behavioral sleep scientist at NYU, produced by Katherine Ellen Foley. Image credit: Lauren J. Young.

Nelson Dellis wears many hats. He’s a software developer, mountaineer and runs a charity that raises money for Alzheimer’s research. But most famously, he’s a memory athlete: He’s won the USA Memory Championships four times, and routinely places in the top 10 at the world competition. Katherine Foley sat down with him to learn more about how he got into the memory business, and what techniques he uses to stay sharp.

For 18 years now, the USA Memory Championships have challenged competitors — “mental athletes” — to stretch the limits of their minds to memorize and recall names and faces, random digits and words and decks of cards. Each year, competitors break each others’ previous records, and the competitive air is almost palpable. But what’s at stake in memory competitions anyway? Who goes to them, and why? Katherine Foley reports.

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These audio files feature a male swamp sparrow’s trill, which consists of the same syllable rapidly repeated over and over again. The first file is the trill at normal speed, and the second file is the trill slowed down 5x. Each syllable in the trill contains the same sequence of three notes: a short initial note that drops rapidly in pitch, a flat middle note and a long final note with a slower fall in pitch. In this study, the researchers specifically looked at the initial and final notes, swapping out short notes for long notes in the initial position and long notes for short notes in the final position to test whether birds discriminated between notes differently depending on context. [Recordings from Robert Lachlan] Read more here: http://scienceline.org/2015/01/sparrow-songs-tune-into-context/

These audio files feature a male swamp sparrow’s trill, which consists of the same syllable rapidly repeated over and over again. The first file is the trill at normal speed, and the second file is the trill slowed down 5x. Each syllable in the trill contains the same sequence of three notes: a short initial note that drops rapidly in pitch, a flat middle note and a long final note with a slower fall in pitch. In this study, the researchers specifically looked at the initial and final notes, swapping out short notes for long notes in the initial position and long notes for short notes in the final position to test whether birds discriminated between notes differently depending on context. [Recordings from Robert Lachlan]

Most media is now hosted online. So how does that change the process of gaining fame and staying famous? By Rebecca Cudmore and Amy Lu

Anyone who travels knows that feeling — the disorienting, sleepy-awake feeling, like you've been hit by a bus. It's jet lag. But why do we get it, and what can we do to offset it? Kathryn Free speaks to a researcher who may have the answer, and a pilot who fills us in on how people in his profession fight jet lag.

Since Freud, psychologists and other social scientists have endlessly pondered over why humans laugh, and what exactly causes us to perceive certain situations and actions as "humorous”. In a special episode for WNYU’s The Doppler Effect program, Becca Cudmore and Neel Patel find out from scientists and humor professionals what makes something worthy of laughs. Listeners will hear insights from Rod Martin, a psychology professor at the University of Western Ontario; David Zomer, a former humor researcher at Hunter College in New York City; Bob Mankoff, the cartoon editor for The New Yorker; and Ryan Hansinger, a comic based in Los Angeles. This episode originally appeared on The Doppler Effect, which airs on WNYU 89.1 FM every Tuesday at 7:30 PM.

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