Completely Optional Knowledge

Award-winning filmmaker Troy Hale comes to Completely Optional Knowledge to find out which animal has the smelliest farts. Zookeeper Rick of the San Diego Zoo is in the right job to sniff out the answer. He works with 60 different species of animals. “Whether you are in the second grade or in your second retirement, when you hear a rhinoceros fart, you laugh, it’s funny,” he says. Listen and learn about the winds that blow around the animal kingdom...

Annie McEwen has great hearing — but she's still only human — so she's wondering what sounds are out there that she's not able to pick up. To find the answer, we spoke to Milton Garces of the University of Hawaii's Infrasound Laboratory. He tells us about the constant din that eludes our futile human ears. Image credit: Flickr user Nickolai Kashirin (https://www.flickr.com/photos/nkashirin/)

Music critic Stacey Anderson has listened to a lot of songs in her time. So many, in fact, that she’s grown a bit bored of human music. Now she’s curious about the famous crooners of the deep blue: whales. We spoke to humpback whale expert Ellen Garland to find out what makes whales sing what they sing.

If you give a mouse a vodka tonic, will he even drink it? That’s the question Ben Harrison — host of the Let’s Drink About It podcast — has brought to Completely Optional Knowledge. And who better to give us our answer than Dr. Robert Dudley, UC Berkeley biologist and author of “The Drunken Monkey.” Disclaimer: no wild animals were intoxicated in the making of this podcast (though the same cannot be said for human animals).

Listener Stephen Rang wants to know how fast he would have to run (or drive, as it turns out) to flee the world’s fastest known insect. We go off to the races with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences’ Chris Goforth, who informs us that this particular insect can reach flying speeds of up to 70 mph — and it’s probably not one you would expect.

Election season is upon us, and that means choices. If you’re still on the fence about who to vote for, maybe you’d like to take a cue from ants, whose prospective leaders duel with their antennae. We’ve got biologist Clint Penick, PhD on the show to guide us through how strikingly similar animals’ electoral behaviors are to our own.

If you could have a head start preparing for an earthquake to hit, wouldn’t you take it? That’s all San Francisco resident Terry Worona wants, and he’s looking to the animal kingdom to get it. To find out if his theory holds up, we talked to Dr. Rachel Grant, whose research examines how animals’ special “sensitivities” help them stay in tune with changes in the natural world.

Swimmer Veronica Simmonds wants to know what happens when you take aquatic adventure to the extreme. So we called up ‘aquanaut’ — that’s like an astronaut but under the sea — Jessica Fain, who holds the record for longest time spent living underwater at 73 days.

Dr. David Kirby, author of "Lab Coats in Hollywood," digs into that fine line between sublime fantasy and falling flat at the movies. So, what irks scientists at the cinema? Comically rapid evolution, the time-space continuum, animal stereotypes, and pretty much everything else.

Sloths don't really "do" a lot, and yet they've managed to win our hearts time and again. Admitted sloth enthusiast Brooke Ziebell wants to know what's behind the emotions these cute critters manage to conjure. Yale's Oriana Aragon, an expert on human emotions, has our answer.