In science, there are some traditions: Every October, the Nobel Prize committee announces the winners of that year’s awards, which are presented in Sweden in December. And every September for the past 33 years, a different committee has awarded the Ig Nobel Prizes in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, Science Friday plays highlights from the awards ceremony.
The Ig Nobel awards are a salute to achievements that, in the words of the organizers, “make people laugh, then think.” They are presented by the editors of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research to 10 lucky(?) winners for unusual achievements in science, medicine, and other fields. This year’s ceremony was held virtually, with a webcast taking the place of the traditional raucous ceremony in Harvard’s Sanders Theater. However, it still contained many elements of the in-person Igs, from flying paper airplanes to the participation of real Nobel Laureates in the ceremony.
This year’s awards included prizes for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools, and for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils. SciFri producer Charles Bergquist joins Ira to discuss highlights from this year’s ceremony.
Stop Flushing Your Health Data Down The ToiletYou could be flushing important information about your health right down the toilet—quite literally. Pee and poop can tell you a lot about your health, so what if your waste…didn’t go to waste? What if, instead, it could tell you more about your health? Like number one, it can catch a condition like diabetes early. Or number two, check out what’s going on in your gut microbiome.
That’s the goal of the smart toilet—a device that gets all up in your business to tell you more about your health. Ira talks with the inventor of the PH Smart Toilet, Dr. Seung-min Park, instructor of urology at Stanford’s School of Medicine in California, about how the toilet works, how it can be used to catch diseases early on, and the ethical implications of such a device.
To stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday’s newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
767: Challenging The Gender Gap In Sports Science
766: What Martian Geology Can Teach Us About Earth
765: How Louisiana Is Coping With Flooding In Cemeteries
764: Inside Iowa State’s Herbarium | Science-Inspired Art From ‘Universe of Art’ Listeners
763: Science From Iowa’s Prairies | Planning To Go See Cicadas? Here’s What To Know
762: Maybe Bonobos Aren't Gentler Than Chimps | Art Meets Ecology In A Mile-Long Poem
761: When Products Collect Data From Your Brain, Where Does It Go?
760: Visualizing A Black Hole’s Flares In 3D
759: The 4,000-Year History of Humans and Silk
758: Flint’s Water Crisis, 10 Years Later | Underwater Cables Could Help Detect Tsunamis
757: Fighting Banana Blight | Do Birds Sing In Their Dreams?
756: Why Is Solving The Plastic Problem So Hard?
755: What Worsening Floods Mean For Superfund Sites
754: The Global Mental Health Toll Of Climate Change | Capturing DNA From 800 Lakes In One Day
753: Clean Energy Transition Progress | Avian Flu In Cattle And Humans Has Scientists Concerned
752: A Cheer For The Physics Of Baseball
752: Carbon Cost Of Urban Gardens And Commercial Farms | Why There's No Superbloom This Year
751: Inside The Race To Save Honeybees From Parasitic Mites
750: The Brain’s Glial Cells Might Be As Important As Neurons
749: Limits On ‘Forever Chemicals’ In Drinking Water | An Important Winter Home For Bugs | Eclipse Drumroll
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Marketplace Tech
Make Me Smart
The Indicator from Planet Money
Voices of Misery Podcast
House of Whimsical Terror