Science On Top
The Australian Podcast putting Science on Top of the agenda

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:34 Snails are a French delicacy that has led to the near extinction, and now revival, of tiny culturally and scientifically important snails in French Polynesia.


00:06:45 3.5 million years ago, something in our galaxy exploded. As more evidence comes in, it's looking like the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way gobbled up some young stars.


00:16:04 The scourge of cane toads continues to spread across Australia. But could a native rodent have learned how to slaughter and eat them? Yes, and they have.


This episode contains traces of 12-year-old Tai Poole, host of popular podcast Tai Asks Why, talking with Natasha Mitchell about the importance of curiosity in school.

Direct download: SoT_0343.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:50am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall

00:00:29 A new hypothesis in the quest to explain the bizarre dimming patterns of Tabby's Star: could it be a moon getting shredded?
00:18:36 It's a belief that's been widely held since 1971: women who live together sync their periods together. But many attempts to replicate the original study have failed, so why is it still such a prevalent belief?
00:28:13 Take a computer algorithm, teach it to read scientific papers, feed it thousands of journals, and watch it predict future discoveries. This could be a new field of scientific endeavour.


This episode contains traces of The President of the United States talking with astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir while they participated in NASA's first ever all-female spacewalk.

Direct download: SoT_0342.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:29am AEDT

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Peter Miller

The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that first make us laugh, then make us think. We take a look at this year’s winners: from the benefits of pizza to the temperature of French postal packages!
You can watch the award ceremony here.

00:01:16 MEDICINE PRIZE which was awarded to Silvano Gallus, for collecting evidence that pizza might protect against illness and death, if the pizza is made and eaten in Italy.
00:08:26 MEDICAL EDUCATION PRIZE was won by Karen Pryor and Theresa McKeon, for using a simple animal-training technique — called “clicker training” — to train surgeons to per[form orthopedic surgery.
00:13:54 BIOLOGY PRIZE went to a team with members from Singapore, China, Germany, Australia, Poland, USA, and Bulgaria for discovering that dead magnetized cockroaches behave differently than living magnetized cockroaches.
00:19:20 ANATOMY PRIZE was award to two Frenchmen for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France.
00:24:11 CHEMISTRY PRIZE Went to a team from Japan, for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child.
00:27:30 ENGINEERING PRIZE was won by Iranian Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine [for use on human infants.
00:30:54 ECONOMICS PRIZE went to three researchers from Turkey, the Netherlands, and Germany for testing which country’s paper money is best at transmitting dangerous bacteria..
00:36:42 PEACE PRIZE went to an international team of seven researchers, for trying to measure the pleasurability of scratching an itch.
00:40:40 PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE was awarded to German Fritz Strack, for discovering that holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier — and for then discovering that it does not.
00:46:17 PHYSICS PRIZE was won by seven researchers from the USA, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.

Direct download: SoT_0341.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:18pm AEDT

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