We Have Concerns

A Venezuelan man had his face surgically altered to look like the Red Skull - Captain America's arch-nemesis in Marvel Comics.  His nose was removed, his brow was enlarged, his skin was reddened, and even his eyeballs were tattooed black.  Jeff thinks this is horrifying and has very bad implications for the man's state of mind.  Anthony thinks we only get one shot at life and if this makes him happy, so be it.  Both of them wonder what his kid must go through at school.

A new study shows that longer, fast-paced running sessions are just as bad for you as not running at all. How much exercise is genuinely good for you? And why do we always think more is better?

What's more ethical: a life sentence in prison, or a drug that slows someone's perception of time to make them feel like they've spent 10 life sentences in a day? The question was asked last year by an Oxford University professor, but isn't the real question: if we could make a drug that let people do multiple lifetimes of thinking, why would we waste it on punishment instead of giving brilliant minds multiple lifetimes to solve human problems? Also what's it like to feel like you have an itch for 1,000 years? 

Songwriter and youtube song-a-day artist Jonathan Mann has a new video online advocating for abolishing the term "Content Creator" for people who release things on the web.  His position is that the term diminishes things designed to be distributed on the online, making them disposable.  As individuals who have been described as "content creators" themselves, Anthony and Jeff discuss what this semantic change might mean, and why the desire to make quality creative endeavors on the web can be challenging.

A Japanese corporation wants to build the perfect underwater city of the future. That is both a real thing that's happening and also something that sounds like the plot of a nightmarish disaster movie.

How easily you can sit down and stand back up without using your hands can supposedly tell you how long you'll have to live. Jeff and Anthony are joined by Justin Robert Young and to try the test for themselves.

A new article describes just how easy it is to induce false memories in subjects.  In fact, researchers were able to to convice patients that they had done horrible things, including assault with a deadly weapon, even when they had done noting fo the sort. Jeff is mystified about how quickly and easily the human brain is bamboozled. while Anthony is worried about what happens to the patients after this kind of dishonest study is complete.

NASCAR driver Kurt Busch is attempting to skirt allegations of domestic abuse by claiming that his girlfriend is a trained assassin. Jeff and Anthony proceed to mock any man who would physically assault his partner, and this man in particular for trying to avoid the issue in such an unbelieveable way.

The Australian Gympie-Gympie plant is the one of the most painfully poisonous in the world. People who have just rubbed up against it have gone mad with pain and tried to shoot off their own appendages with guns. So, like... Would you touch it? Maybe... Maybe we should touch it.

A 23 year-old man has been experiencing constant deja vu for seven years. What would it be like to have the feeling that everything you experienced has happened before? Powerful? Boring? Maddening? Powerful? Boring? Maddening? (see what I did there?)

A new study finds that men who interact with women during the fertile period of their menstrual cycle tend to be more creative with their grammar. Anthony is impressed that human "peacocking" extends into speech patterns, while Jeff is just amazed that men can pick up on when women are most fertile.

Anthony found an article outlining the evidence that Earth is headed for its 6th great extinction event.  Animals going extinct, global food tables imbalanced, resource scarcity, all lead up to a massive, worldwide catastrophe.  He proceeds to use these facts to completely bum Jeff out.  Listen as the show decends into total depression.

A group of researchers studying the effects of alcohol on speech decided to get some birds drunk.  They divided a group of zebra finches - birds that learn and produce sounds similar to humans - into two groups.  One sipped pure juice and the other a mixture of ethanol and juice.  The results may shock you.  Or not.  Jeff and Anthony wonder how a group of researchers can spend grant money intoxicating birds, and why the fact that they slur their tweets is news to anyone.

A review led by a brain scientist at MIT found growing evidence that brain scans can predict future behaviors.  If, one day, we are able to simply scan our brains to determine what kinds of activities we are more inclined to excel at, or problems we may encounter, will that lead to a healthier, more adaptive populace, or one shackled to in-born tendencies?  Anthony and Jeff wrestle with that question, and try to predict what their own brain scans might indicate.

NASA is conducting a study about the long-term effects of weightlessness by asking applicants to stay completely horizontal for 70 days.  In exchange for staying in bed and never standing up up, even to use the restroom or shower, NASA will pay test subjects $18,000, which works out to $1,200 per week or $257 per day.  Anthony and Jeff wonder if they could stand it, and why NASA is holding out on horizontal showering technology for everyone.