We Have Concerns

The tiny organism known as the hydra is a half inch tube of jelly that inhabits fresh water all over the world, and it may well be functionally immortal. What does that mean? Anthony and Jeff try to make sense of a creature that can re-grow any part of itself and live for thousands of years - and imagine what that might be like for them.

Now that private companies are getting into space, the legalities of who can own celestial bodies comes into question. Specifically, a company called Bigelow Aerospace of Las Vegas wants to start selling inflatable habitats and property on the moon. Jeff and Anthony discuss the archaic treaties and laws that govern space ownership now, how it might change, and, of course, space pirates.

According to researchers at Macquarie University, couples in long-term relationships develop inter-connected memory systems. Each partner can remember only a few details, but together they piece together a more accurate whole, ostensibly off-loading parts of the job to the other. Anthony is intrigued by this, and what it means for replacing human interaction with machines, while Jeff wonders how much can just be attributed to laziness and coincidence.

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...

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...

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.