We Have Concerns

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.

A court in Argentina just upheld an animal rights group's request to have an orangutan appear in a court, saying it's illegal to hold 'non-human persons' in cages. Whoops, apes are people now. So is this a good thing? How smart are animals? What sort of rights should they have? Also: what kind of animal skin makes the best sneakers?

In order to find a way to stop bedbugs, Regine Gries allowed herself to be bitten by them 180,000 times over a period of five years. Also, did you know that there's billionaire dinosaur porn? That's unrelated, but it doesn't mean we're not going to talk about it for 10 minutes or whatever.

What makes you you? Is the self somewhere in the body or the brain? If you downloaded your brain into a new body, would it be you? ANSWER ME (whatever 'me' is)

A woman has a condition that makes her see dragons wherever she goes. Anthony and Jeff discuss perception and reality, and if we know what we see is real.