I was a frequent contributor to Discovery’s Curiosity Daily podcast.
Here you will find links to the stories I have contributed to this incredible show. It was a lot of fun to work for the show, and I was incredibly lucky to have Ashley Hamer as an editor to delete most of my dumb jokes.
April 2021
Throbbing pain has nothing to do with your pulse
This frog has noise-canceling lungs
There’s a slug that cuts off its own head when it wants a new body
How do we choose our mates? A new computer model may have gotten us closer to the answer
Believe it or not, some viruses protect their hosts and even have therapeutic uses
How will scientists know if life ever existed on Mars?
Our known solar system just got a little bigger
March 2021
Scientists discovered why food sticks to nonstick pans
Why can’t our pets eat chocolate?
Why does a lake freeze from the top down, and not the bottom up?
Catnip may have a purpose beyond getting cats high — it protects them from mosquitoes!
Study of sourdough from around the world shows location doesn’t matter for its microbes
That whole “phosphine on Venus” discovery, suggesting life? That probably wasn’t phosphine after all
Quadruple-helix DNA exists – and it might be useful for fighting cancers
February 2021
The time a bunch of birds became milk bottle thieves
Sleep might have evolved before the brain
There’s a hidden letter in the alphabet song, and you already sing it
Gene therapy injection in one eye surprises scientists by improving vision in both
The first reliable and widely available pregnancy test was… a frog?
The time scientists made ants walk on stilts… for science (obviously!)
Was farming really a step up for our hunter-gatherer ancestors?
A new study confirms that Early Birds and Night owls aren’t alone as the only two chronotypes
January 2021
Researchers find a molecule that promotes muscle health when it’s magnetized
For some frogs, surviving the winter means becoming a “frogcicle”
Why do bacon & eggs just go together? Meet umami synergy
Disgusting sights literally turn your stomach
Why do some vaccines have to be kept so cold?
Scientists have just measured the shortest amount of time, ever.
Meet Alfred Russel Wallace, the other guy who discovered natural selection
Do flies experience time more slowly than we do?
December 2020
Why the Universe Seems to Hate Odd Numbers
Researchers Once Put Feathered Hats on Birds to See if Other Birds Found Them Sexy
We Trick Bacteria Into Making Insulin For Us
Why don’t we have battery-powered airplanes?
November 2020
That time a glitchy instrument led to evidence for the Big Bang
Humans aren’t the only animals capable of deception
Why is life based on carbon and not silicon?
AI could help predict which drugs won’t agree with women (since studies haven’t)
Parasitic Worms Found in Medieval Human Remains May Hold the Secret for Eradicating Them Today
October 2020
In Haiti, Zombies Are More Than Fiction
Some Bacteria in Your Gut Produce Electricity
Could parasites turn us into zombies?
Why Don’t Predators Hunt Their Prey Into Extinction?
Our ability to drink milk evolved way faster than we thought
With Iterative Evolution, a Species Can Evolve TWICE
Ballooning spiders surf on electric fields
September 2020
How did California’s giant redwoods survive the raging wildfires?
Wildfires can create their own storms
How bags enabled human evolution
Painting eyes on cow butts may help solve a key wildlife conservation problem
A mutation that makes us prone to autoimmune diseases evolved to protect us from malaria
We were wrong about the way sperm swim
How do anglerfish fuse to their mates without immune rejection?
August 2020
We might be able to use fungus as a radiation shield
What to do when your pet is scared
Endosymbiont Theory – you have microbes inside your cells
Are there really wasps inside figs?
Dogs might be able to sense Earth’s magnetic field
During WWII, the US military tried to develop shark repellant
Giant sea scorpions were the underwater titans of prehistoric Australia
The unintelligible languages of interstellar travel
We may be able to fight climate change with rocks
The genius math behind credit card numbers
There are tiny rocks in your ears that help you detect motion
Chemotherapy began as a chemical weapon
July 2020
Why the blue blood of horseshoe crabs is essential for drug development
How Fannie Farmer transformed cooking from folk art into science
What do you do when you can’t recognize faces?
Why does my cat have vertical pupils?
How microbes and parasites might actually make us healthier
Dolphins use tools — and they learn how from other dolphins
One of the first gallbladder surgeries happened on a kitchen table
Four of the eight planets have rings. Mars used to be the fifth.
The femme fatale firefly lures males to their doom
Why so many Mars missions are launching this summer
The time that photosynthesis killed off 99% of life on Earth
June 2020
When pollen is scarce, bumblebees bite plants to force them to flower
Why periodical cicadas come out every 13 or 17 years
How failing to build a “death ray” led to the invention of radar
Earth’s magnetic north pole is drifting every year
Maybe the most devastating meteor on record never even landed
Elephants can catch contagious yawning from humans
Scientists made blind and sighted people “see” shapes by stimulating the visual cortex
Why NASA doesn’t launch rockets in the rain
Why llamas are so promising for human virus protection
Japanese honeybees defend against ‘murder hornets’ by forming bee balls
May 2020
When it comes to wounds, science says “rub some dirt on it” might be good advice
What can we learn from prehistoric poop?
This is the first direct evidence that our brains replay waking experiences while we sleep
Apparently, elephants get drunk and they’re total lightweights
Scientists are trying to add the eighth row to the periodic table
How natural selection favors superstitions
The way our noses smell is way more complicated than we thought
What scientists learned when they tried to build a second Earth
Maybe tarantula venom could be an alternative to opioids
Why do allergy medications make us sleepy?
Astronauts may use their own urine to help build the first moon base
We just found the ancestor of most living animals
April 2020
How screeching tape travels at supersonic speeds
How well do you know the back of your hand? Probably not very well at all
How does Tuvan Throat singing work?
Humpback whales use ‘bubble nets’ to catch fish
The surprising genetic reason females outlive males
What can scientists learn from watching the human brain jiggle?
Scientists claim to have discovered the smallest known dinosaur of the Mesozoic
Half-billion-year-old fern-like animals acted like an ancient internet
March 2020
Massive viruses that blur the line between living and non-living
Solar storms blind whales because they mess with magnetoreception
Scientists just created the first synthetic self-replicating genome
Scientists discover first animal that doesn’t breathe oxygen
Dingos descended from domesticated dogs
Kleptogenesis is evolution’s weirdest breeding technique
February 2020
Wasps Can Recognize Each Others’ Faces
Xenobots: the World’s First Assembled Organisms
Hear a 3,000-Year-Old Mummy’s Voice
Superhuman Red Blood Cells for Drug Delivery
January 2020
Studying ‘Split-Brain’ Patients Taught Scientists Strange Things About the Brain
Cameron Duke 