Twitter: @SoUndisciplined • @mdlaplante • @nalininadkarni
Site: www.upr.org/show/undisciplined
254 episodes
2018 to present
Average episode: 26 minutes
Open in Apple Podcasts • RSS
Categories: Broadcast Radio Programs • Story-Style
Podcaster's summary: Each week, UnDisciplined takes a fun, fascinating and accessible dive into the lives of researchers and explorers working across a wide variety of scientific fields.
| Episodes |
| 2024-Apr-18 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How do you land on an asteroid? In The Asteroid Hunter, Dante Lauretta chronicles the quest to retrieve a sample from Bennu, which is one of the large asteroids that is most likely to collide with the Earth. |
| 2024-Apr-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Can a personal creed help young people connect in a rapidly changing world? The young adults who comprise Generation Z live in a world of far less violent crime relative to the generation before them. So, why are so many of them struggling? Educator John Creger thinks he has part of the answer: They often need help understanding who they are in this world. |
| 2024-Apr-04 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Why do people police language? Anne Curzan might seem like a strange sort of English teacher. The veteran professor doesn’t believe in “right” and wrong” when it comes to grammar. Rather, she wants people to be able to make informed choices about language. |
| 2024-Mar-28 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How long can apes remember each other’s faces? Laura Lewis met a bonobo named Louise as part of a study on the capacity of bonobos to remember the faces of apes they’d spent time with decades earlier. And Louise remembered. |
| 2024-Mar-21 • 23 minutes UnDisciplined: What is it like to leave an evangelical church? Like many Americans, Sarah McCammon grew up in a deeply evangelical family, where she was plagued by fears and deep questions about her belief system, but scared to leave. |
| 2024-Mar-14 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Is there more undiscovered life in the Great Salt Lake? Until recently, nematodes weren’t known to live in the Great Salt Lake. And, in fact, very little lives there — because the lake’s salinity makes most life untenable. But, as it turns out, these tiny worms were doing just fine. |
| 2024-Mar-07 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: What’s ‘fair’ when it comes to climate action? When humans debate climate policy, the questions asked are often posed in terms of what will work best. Fairness isn’t always, or even often, taken into account. But Stacia Ryder thinks that needs to change. |
| 2024-Feb-29 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Are food companies responsible for the epidemic in diabetes, cancer and dementia? Ultra-processed food and the companies that produce them contribute significantly to the epidemic in diabetes, cancer, dementia, and other chronic disease. Is it time to regulate these products like tobacco? And will it take a class action suit to make that happen? Erik Peper believes so. |
| 2024-Feb-22 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Why do humans use the past to inform the future? Memory is not a rigid, static picture of what came before. Rather, it’s a nebulous, ever-changing conceptualization of who we were, what we believed, what happened to us, and what was happening around us. |
| 2024-Feb-15 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Robots, AI and the future of human connection There is precedent for humans connecting with other living things, like getting attention, love, and companionship from dogs and cats and a few other animals that have been domesticated to provide partnership. Now, there’s a new option for meeting this need — social robots — who may end up being even better at fulfilling the human desire for connection. |
| 2024-Feb-08 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Should species be named after horrible people? When an Austrian bug collector discovered a new species of beetle in the 1930s, he bestowed upon it the name of a person he greatly admired. He called it Anophthalmus hitleri — and sent Adolf Hitler a note announcing the onomastic tribute. After nearly 90 years, should species still be named after horrible people? |
| 2024-Feb-01 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Can you still travel the roads that Julius Caesar built? Long before Julius Caesar became one of the most powerful rulers in the world, he was a relatively unknown curator of the Via Appia, a road stretching from Rome on the Tyrrhenian Coast to the Salento Peninsula on the Adriatic Sea. Our guest John Keahey traversed the Via Appia, and he joins us to talk about it. |
| 2024-Jan-25 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: What have we learned from 50 years of the Endangered Species Act? A new book by Lowell Baier is not just a history of The Endangered Species Act, but an explanation of what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong in the implementation of this historic federal statute. |
| 2024-Jan-18 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Were Utah’s pioneers slave owners? Slavery in the United States is often thought to be an institution of the American South, but western states played a part as well. In Utah, a law passed in 1852 made slavery and the slave trade legal, and this law was passed under the urging of the first territorial governor, Brigham Young. Historian Paul Reeve joins the program to discuss newly unearthed documents about Brigham Young and Utah's history. |
| 2024-Jan-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Navigating the future of the global water crisis Water crises are nothing new. Indeed they’ve influenced the very course of human history again and again but we’ve never had a planet with 10 billion people on it before, and so can we solve the water crisis at a global scale? |
| 2024-Jan-04 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How bugs may help us get to Mars If we are going to go to Mars, we’re going to need to bring a lot of things that we need to live that the red planet, so far as we can tell, just doesn’t have... and that includes bugs. |
| 2023-Nov-18 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How inclusivity benefits men and women on the autism spectrum Autism Spectrum Disorder exists on a continuum of behaviors, capabilities, and deviations from norms — and for a very long time, that spectrum didn't include much space for girls. |
| 2023-Nov-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Rethinking sexual harassment prevention in the workplace Almost all large organizations — from government entities to universities to private businesses — engage in sexual harassment prevention training. And yet the problem persists. |
| 2023-Nov-02 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: With natural disasters rising in frequency, the US needs to rethink emergency management The recent disaster in Maui was the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, and it has highlighted a gaping hole in the country's disaster response. |
| 2023-Oct-28 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Why you should become a 'student of seed' Consider for a moment what our world would look like without seeds. |
| 2023-Oct-19 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Carl Nassib came out while playing in the NFL - here's what the media thought about it There are no openly gay players in any of the five major men's sports leagues in the United States. But that's not because there are no gay players in those leagues. |
| 2023-Oct-06 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The surprising side of climate change - why you don't have to fear the future There's a force that people don't think much about — the existential terror of accepting the truth about global warming. But what if we didn't have to be afraid? |
| 2023-Sep-28 • 27 minutes UnDisciplined: How the Great Salt Lake is becoming hostile to life As the Great Salt Lake has shrunk in recent years, it has become an increasingly hostile place to life of all kinds. |
| 2023-Sep-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How to protect yourself and your home from wildfires Under climate warming, the risk of wildfires is increasing. So, we're all going to need to adapt. |
| 2023-Sep-14 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The economic evolution of an icon The top-grossing movie of 2023 is a movie about a doll that is known for creating toxic expectations about girls' bodies and also paving the way for girls to be anything they want. |
| 2023-Sep-07 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Clenched fists and full beards: two pieces of evidence suggesting humans evolved to fight Humans have evolved to do lots of things. And one thing scientists are now coming to recognize is that we also evolved to fight — with each other. |
| 2023-Aug-31 • 21 minutes UnDisciplined: This asteroid is about to pass dangerously close to Earth The OSIRIS-Rex mission has picked up a piece of the asteroid Bennu projected to pass close to Earth. Precautionary? Maybe. But there's a big enough risk that we're doing something about it. |
| 2023-Aug-24 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: 'It's one of the most lonely feelings': The realities of mainstream schooling for deaf children 85% of deaf children attend mainstream public schools and many deaf advocates will say this is a good thing, but good intentions and good educational practices are two different things. |
| 2023-Aug-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Romeo and Juliet — an age-old tale of love, death and pandemics Romeo and Juliet has always been about life in a pandemic, we're just starting to notice it. |
| 2023-Aug-10 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: What the life of Ira Hayes can teach us about the price of heroism Ira Hayes has been commemorated in movies and songs, but his actual life after WWII is still shrouded in a lot of mystery. |
| 2023-Jul-28 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The US is not prepared for the dangers of zoonotic diseases There is no national strategy, let alone a global one to mitigate the dangers of diseases that spread from animals to humans. |
| 2023-Jul-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Linguists identify a new dialect emerging in South Florida There are many ways Latino people and cultures have influenced the country. Some linguists say that an entirely new American dialect is taking shape right now, in Miami. |
| 2023-Jul-13 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How women changed American journalism In American history, women have largely been left out of newsrooms, so how has that changed history? |
| 2023-Jun-22 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: What bees can teach us about trust and collaboration When you think about a beehive, you probably imagine the queen as the leader. But that's not actually how it works. |
| 2023-Jun-15 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Are oceans the solution to the West's water woes? We still need to figure out better long term water solutions. And those discussions tend to happen with more urgency when water is scarce. |
| 2023-Jun-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Unveiling the urban oasis — how tree planting combats rising heat in cities One of the places the world is warming the most is in our cities, as a result of the urban heat island effect. But there’s a way to combat this problem. |
| 2023-May-25 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Here's why heat waves in our rivers are increasing – and why that's a problem Climate scientists are now looking at rivers and streams. And what they're finding is that these parts of our world are warming rapidly. |
| 2023-May-18 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How will climate change impact how animals mate and reproduce? In a rapidly warming world, hot sex just took on a whole new meaning. |
| 2023-May-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The muses help those who help themselves If you've ever had writer's block then you know how desperate that experience can be. What you might not realize is that you're in very good company. |
| 2023-May-04 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Here's why you should be optimistic about the future of climate change Scientists and journalists have been trying to shock people with the overwhelming weight of evidence that our planet is warming. Now perhaps a new tactic is in order – optimism for the future. |
| 2023-Apr-27 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Is predictive, personalized treatment the future of medicine? Our healthcare systems are designed to help people once they have a disease – not to keep them from getting sick in the first place. |
| 2023-Apr-27 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How does climate change impact the geography of inequity? Redlining has been illegal for 50 years, but the negative effects reverberate today. Redlined communities are more at risk under climate change. |
| 2023-Apr-13 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Opioid use and recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic there was an explosive rise in opioid deaths. |
| 2023-Apr-06 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Searching for solutions A very wet winter changed things and in most parts of the West, the drought seems to be over. That gives us a little bit of time to keep working on solutions to water availability. |
| 2023-Mar-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Could whales help fight climate change? The profound decline in whale populations doesn't just change our ocean ecosystems – it might also be impacting our atmospheric climate. |
| 2023-Mar-23 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Taking the unconventional path A variety of studies have shown that, by the second grade, about 75 percent of girls have already developed an implicit belief that science, math and engineering are subjects that belong more to boys. |
| 2023-Mar-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Why are book bans on the rise in the US? There are some ways in which this latest cycle of censorship is different, and perhaps even more alarming. |
| 2023-Mar-02 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Is climate change making us sicker? Climate change isn't just making our world incrementally warmer – its impacts are making us sicker, both physically and mentally. |
| 2023-Feb-23 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The battle between danger and denial When the EPA told people in Globe, Arizona, that their soil was toxic and needed to be cleaned up, many residents responded in a surprising way. |
| 2023-Feb-16 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How can we hold politicians responsible for their inciteful speech? Almost everyone these days seems to agree that political discourse in this country has gotten too heated – a group based in Utah created a tool to try and change that. |
| 2023-Feb-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Technology is decreasing your attention span – here's how to help that Our attention spans have been significantly changed by the digital devices that surround us, but there's things we can do to help that. |
| 2023-Feb-02 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Surprising and often accidental discoveries that changed the world The "project of physics" will never be complete, but some scientists in the 19th century thought there was little left to explore. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. |
| 2023-Jan-26 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How do we prevent a dead pool in the Colorado River Basin? Sometime in the next few years, the water level in Lake Powell may drop so low that it will be impossible for the lake’s dam to continue producing electricity. |
| 2023-Jan-19 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: What Lula's election means for Brazil's rainforests What Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva does now about the Amazon may impact every person on this planet. |
| 2023-Jan-12 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The 2000-year-old modern scholar Plutarch's work continues to find relevance today on pretty much every issue under the sun. |
| 2023-Jan-05 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How Donald Trump exploited the discourse of American exceptionalism Scholars Jason Gilmore and Charles Rowling have argued that Trump has taken American exceptionalism and turned it on its head. |
| 2022-Dec-29 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: On outliving our parents Many of us will be having the experience of not only outliving our parents, but growing to ages they never saw, and living those years without their examples. |
| 2022-Dec-22 • 25 minutes UnDiscplined: Does the canine coat reflect immunity to a deadly disease? A team of researchers noticed that as you go south along the Rockies, the number of black coated wolves will increase. But what does this have to do with the deadly canine distemper disease? |
| 2022-Dec-15 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The forgotten wives of Joseph Smith Many of Joseph Smith's wives have been lost to history due to early secrecy and reluctance to discuss these marriages. Historian Todd Compton is trying to change that. |
| 2022-Dec-15 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Man's best friend in life and art We’re doing a deep dive on dogs in art, and what that relationship means about dogs and humans alike. |
| 2022-Dec-15 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Military veterans can offer lessons on cultivating inner peace For veterans post traumatic stress is real, but so is post traumatic growth. |
| 2022-Nov-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Researchers unraveled the mystery of European eel migration We're talking to the researchers who tracked European eels to solve 100 year mystery. |
| 2022-Nov-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: What can be done to save this 80,000-year-old aspen forest? Some parts of the Pando tree forest are thriving, others are nearly gone. And it's not clear what could or should be done to save it. |
| 2022-Nov-03 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: how "thinking like a predator" helped a USU ecologist study bumble bee mimicry Mimicry is an evolutionary survival tactic in which multiple species share a similar appearance in order to signal to predators that they should be left alone. |
| 2022-Nov-03 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Dense bones allowed the Spinosaurus to hunt under water A study suggests the Spinosaurus may have been subaqueous foragers, which means they pursued prey underwater. |
| 2022-Oct-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: rattlesnakes have a genetically diverse venom toolbox to keep up with evolving prey A new study suggests that rattlesnakes evolved to reach into a toolbox that already has everything they need to adapt, overcome, and eat well. |
| 2022-Oct-13 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: How this invasive species has made its way across continents Researchers are trying to better understand what makes something more likely to be successful once it arrives in a new habitat through the lens of an native New Zealand mud snail. |
| 2022-Oct-06 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: hydropower dams are leading to species extinctions Damming tropical rivers not only drowns wildlife and lowland habitats, it turns ridge top forests into islands, isolating animal populations that need connections between their habitats to survive and flourish. |
| 2022-Sep-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: what this dried-out lake in Chile tells us about the future of the Great Salt Lake We explore a cautionary tale about our beloved Great Salt Lake with insights from a researcher at Utah State University who visited Lake Aculeo in Chile. |
| 2022-Sep-22 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: what do fish bones tell us about the Ancestral Puebloans? Archaeologists have developed new techniques to reconstruct the diet of the Ancestral Pueblo people in the southwestern United States. |
| 2022-Sep-15 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: This invasive plant is destroying the Great Salt Lake wetlands A team of wetland researchers at Utah State University are extending the scientifically sound information to engage land managers and policymakers, bringing knowledge the importance of wetlands to arenas beyond academia. |
| 2022-Sep-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: what makes these berries blue? An exciting new paper has documented the biology and evolutionary history behind blue food, revealing the complex ways that plants have evolved their distinctive colors. |
| 2022-Sep-01 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Is human intervention necessary to regenerate forests after a wildfire? A recent study suggests that fire refugia – the green islands of live trees that remain after forest fires – can enhance forest regeneration. |
| 2022-Aug-28 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Scientists can now eavesdrop on whales A breakthrough approach in marine acoustics that uses existing systems of underwater fiber optics now allows scientists to eavesdrop on whales. This innovative approach may reveal new insights about these beautiful and awe-inspiring animals. |
| 2022-Aug-28 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: what can 3D simulations of sheep tibia tell us about healing bone fractures? A new study used virtual imaging techniques to lead to accurately diagnosing the many cases when healing fractures of bones fail to fuse. |
| 2022-Aug-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: here's what the climate crisis is doing to our mental health A global study found that children and young adults are distraught, afraid, sad, angry and ashamed about what is happening to our global climate. The study's leaders say that's a sign of nothing short of immense trauma. |
| 2022-Aug-04 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: over 20 percent of reptiles are threatened with extinction Over 20%, one out of five, of reptile species are now under threat of extinction. However, conservation efforts for birds, mammals and amphibians are unexpectedly good surrogates for the conservation of reptiles. |
| 2022-Jul-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: chemists put a new spin on the phrase 'tree of life' A new study has revealed that the bark of a tall rainforest tree may provide a cornucopia of potentially useful drugs for people — drugs that could lead to positive neuroactive effects in the future. |
| 2022-Jul-14 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: what happens when humans pass diseases back to animals? We know that many viruses are passed from animals to humans. But there's another part of this story. We often give viruses back to animals. And this week, we're going to be talking about what happens after that happens. |
| 2022-Jul-07 • 24 minutes UnDisciplined: could this new technology ensure clean water for everyone? One in ten people across the planet still don't have access to clean water. But there may be a simpler way – a little trick of bioengineering that could assure safe water for all. |
| 2022-Jun-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: nature improves mental health… but only for rich, white people? A new study shows that the benefits of nature on mental health are based on studies that are strongly dominated by wealthy countries and Caucasian people, rather than drawing on the diversity of humans around the world. |
| 2022-Jun-23 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: could social distancing save monarch butterflies from a fatal parasite? Monarch butterflies are threatened by a fatal parasite and a reason for infection may be that conservationists rear these butterflies and plant Milkweeds for them under crowded conditions. |
| 2022-Jun-16 • 26 minutes UnDiscplined: trees provide over $100 billion in ecosystem services... and we're destroying them A recent study documents how remote sensing tools have transformed the ways we monitor life on Earth. We'll also learn about the value of trees, their ecosystem services hold an economic value of over $114 billion a year. |
| 2022-Jun-16 • 26 minutes UnDiscplined: trees provide over $100 billion in ecosystem services... and we're destroying them A recent study documents how remote sensing tools have transformed the ways we monitor life on Earth. We'll also learn about the value of trees, their ecosystem services hold an economic value of over $114 billion a year. |
| 2022-Jun-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: climate projections predict increased risk of joint surge rainfall events A recent study simulated the hazards of past cyclones and made predictions about future storms and found that by 2100 cyclones could be 30 to 200 times more frequent. |
| 2022-Jun-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: what makes burrowing owls choose to stay when they’ve been relocated? Burrowing owls have suffered from human development changing their habitat. A group of researchers have studied the relocation of these birds and have interesting insights on how to successfully find them new places to live. |
| 2022-May-26 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: scientists developed injectable gel that can help chronic pain in joints Materials science researchers have developed a polymer gel that targets aching joints affected by osteoarthritis and delivers medication to them. |
| 2022-May-19 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: how stable are Utah's famous red rock formations? A Utahn research team generated predictions about the seismic stability of famous red rock formations with the help of experienced mountain climbers. |
| 2022-May-12 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: birds are shrinking due to climate change, especially small-brained ones A new study – based on the analysis of over 70,000 individual birds – found bigger brained birds have been able to withstand shrinkage due to climate change. |
| 2022-May-05 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: why you should be scared about the spread of 'ghost forests' Researchers documented some coastal forests are now inundated by water they can’t use because it contains high levels of salt, a consequence of sea levels rising due to climate change. |
| 2022-Apr-28 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: researchers examined ancient sheep poop and now we don't know who colonized the Faroe Islands A recent study weaves together evidence from genetics, isotopes, and the pollen record to suggest that other people arrived there... long, long before the Vikings. |
| 2022-Apr-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: researchers identify the visual preferences of the world's deadliest animal An interdisciplinary research team has woven evidence from the literature, their own experiments, and wind tunnels to understand how mosquitoes hunt and find their prey. |
| 2022-Apr-14 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: aging increases cluttered memory and creativity A new study documents that older adults have more space allocated to clutter, but that very clutter can also make older people more creative. |
| 2022-Apr-07 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: this impact framework could help us stop wrecking our recreation Skiing, biking, hiking, ATV riding. Whatever form recreation takes, it has an impact on the environment. So how can studying the spectrum of impacts that recreation can have on an ecosystem lead to better management decisions? A new framework developed by researchers from USC, US Institute of outdoor recreation and tourism is working to answer this question and more. |
| 2022-Mar-31 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: what will happen to Utah's 'greatest snow' when there's no more snow? Utah's title of "greatest snow" is at risk due to climate change. We're focusing on impacts, perceptions and adaptation strategies ski resorts are taking as they cope with climate change. |
| 2022-Mar-24 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: could anemone venom be our saving grace when it comes to chronic pain? We love to identify good guys and bad guys–in cartoons, movies, and nature. Nature’s good guys, for example, pollinate our crops. The bad guys are venomous animals that bite, sting, or even kill us with their poisons. But recent scientific discoveries by an Australian scientist revealed that the venom of a species of sea anemones contains 84 types of toxins, some of which might serve as the foundation for medicines that alleviate human pain. |
| 2022-Mar-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: how does science move from the lab to your living room? New scientific discoveries are the purview of researchers, but that vital information is important to everyone. |
| 2022-Mar-10 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: researchers are coming together to address society's grand challenges When we think of research universities, we imagine lab scientists hunkered in their labs, or marine biologists in their research ships, pursuing ever-narrower questions about their specialized study topics. But the complex questions and problems that concern society today must almost always draw upon the knowledge of more than a single discipline – yet scientists receive little or no training to cross intellectual and disciplinary borders. So they need help – and a new Center at the University of Utah is pr... |
| 2022-Feb-24 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: could the genes associated with autism be a driving factor in human ingenuity? Autism is a word that many people fear, but much of that fear is driven by the fact that the United States has classified autism as a disorder. What if we started to think of the autistic brain as just different, not disordered? What if we thought of the autistic brain as an asset, not a liability? We want to try and change the way you think about autism. |
| 2022-Feb-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: new road map of lung development lays the groundwork for progress on lung diseases The life process that is most fundamental to our well-being is the simple act of breathing. But it’s not so simple! Our lungs are one of the most complex and mysterious of our body organs. New research is shedding light on how our lungs develop, by creating gigantic datasets on the proteins that govern the development of our respiratory systems. |
| 2022-Feb-10 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: these two marine species are sticking together to battle climate change Some tidal species just don't do very well in the heat — and these organisms are at obvious risk as our planet warms up. But new research is pointing to a surprising survival strategy for some animals on the rugged Pacific coast: they're sticking together. Literally. |
| 2022-Feb-03 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: dog whistlers About 3.2 million people watch Tucker Carlson each night on Fox News. Think about that number this way: it's the equivalent of every person in the state of Utah, all watching the same show. Every night. And when Carlson gets them riled up–some of them get really really mean. |
| 2022-Jan-31 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: the evolution of evolution Most of us don’t think about evolution often, if at all, and when we do we often conjure up images of Charles Darwin in the Galapagos Islands. Today, the study of evolution is largely driven by mathematics, complexity theory, and machine learning, but a more complete understanding of evolution can also provide us with an important perspective on our place as a little leaf on the giant tree of life. This week we’re talking about why you oughta care about evolution. |
| 2022-Jan-31 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: mosasaurs and me This week we take a deep dive into the ancient, exploring the world as it existed over 66 million years ago, in an attempt to understand our present and our future. Creatures called Mosasaurs once inhabited our seas. They’re long extinct now, victims of the fifth great extinction event, along with 80 percent of the species alive at that time. But their lives and their world may give us insight into our own. |
| 2022-Jan-31 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: the "bear" facts We have a complicated relationship with bears. Ask any hiker what their greatest fear is, and running into a bear will be at the top of that list. But we want to see them too! People travel from all over the world to our national parks with the hope of sighting a bear. Bears play an important role in our history, culture, environment, and economy. This week we’re talking about why you should care about bears. |
| 2022-Jan-27 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: the methane matter Methane. It's more than just the gas released when cows... release gas. It has a warming potential 25x higher than carbon dioxide. Researchers in Utah's Uinta Basin have been studying emissions of methane and other chemicals from natural gas drilling sites since 2015. They recently found that, despite gas production decreasing, methane leaks at these sites have remained the same. As the world works to reduce greenhouse gases, these research provides valuable insights into sources of these emissions. |
| 2021-Dec-02 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Let's Talk Toads They've got warts, they sometimes smell like roasted peanuts, and in Wyoming, they're changing how they move because of a fungus. This week, we'll be discussing a concept known as behavioral fever in boreal toads, and how this fever is helping toads fight chytrid fungus.Dr. Barrile studies how individual toads’ movement and habitat choices scale up to influence population growth and demographic rates. His research uniquely documents toads altering their behavior to cope with chytrid fungus, a concept referr... |
| 2021-Nov-18 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: a parasocial pandemic Just about everyone has experienced a shift in their relationships during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people we didn't get to see as much, some people we saw a lot more of--for better or worse. But researchers are discovering that it wasn't just our relationships with people we know that changed, it was our relationships with people in the media we consume. This week we're talking about how the pandemic impacted parasocial relationships. Bradley Bond is a professor of communication studies at the University... |
| 2021-Nov-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Drunk Flies And Stoned Dolphins If you started your day with a cup of coffee, kept it going with a cup of cola, or ended it with a glass of wine, you are part of a long human tradition of spicing up your life with intoxicating substances. As a species, we have been getting drunk and stoned for a very long time. But, like so many other things, it turns out we aren't all that unique in this way. Animals were getting blitzed long before we were. Oné Pagán is a professor of biology at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. His new book is c... |
| 2021-Nov-04 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: underground allies There's a lot more going on beneath the forest floor than you might realize. A vast underground network of fungi help some 95% of plants survive, helping them absorb nutrients and commnicate with other plants. New research shows that this fungi network might also be protecting the forest's biggest trees against pests and pathogens. Sara Germain is a PhD candidate in ecology at Utah State University in the Wildlife Resources Department. Her latest study was recently published in the journal Ecology. |
| 2021-Oct-28 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: online coping: the Goldilocks effect This week on UnDisciplined we're talking about teens and their smartphones. You've likely heard about how social media is making teens more depressed, anxious and lonely. However, there are some positives to teens staying connected virtually. Intriguing new research looks at how teens are using the internet to cope with stress. |
| 2021-Oct-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: we're in it for the long haul This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about a breakthrough in our understanding of long COVID. Some 30% of COVID patients will have lingering symptoms for 3 to 6 months after contracting the virus. New research suggests that long COVID might be the result on an antibody attacking the immune system and we'll be talking about what we do and don't know about the causes of this phenomenon. John Arthur is a professor and chief of the Division of Nephrology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. ... |
| 2021-Oct-14 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: climate change is for the birds Climate change is profoundly affecting animals, but not only in the ways you might be thinking of. Compelling new research suggests that animals are shape-shifting to adapt. Birds beaks are getting bigger, mouse tails longer, all in an effort to better regulate their body temperatures. Sara Ryding is the lead author of this study published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Sara is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Integrative Ecology at Deakin University in Austrailia. |
| 2021-Oct-07 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Transatlantic Epidemic(s) Covid-19 is not the first virus to travel around the globe. This week on UnDisciplined, we'll be talking about how the slave trade brought new viruses to the Americas. New research uses ancient DNA to trace the origins of pathogens found in Mexico City back to Africa. |
| 2021-Sep-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Architecture Of Access This week on Undisciplined we're talking about disability and accessibility in ancient Greece. You might think that accommodations for disabled people are a relatively new concept, but compelling new research suggests that ancient Greeks were thinking about accessibility as far back as the 4th century BC. Scholars found evidence that ancient architects built ramps specifically to help those with limited mobility. |
| 2021-Sep-23 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Dreams Can Come True We all dream, but why? And what do our dreams reveal about our waking lives? Since the beginning of human history, dreams have played a pivotal role in helping humans make sense of the world. What role do dreams play in our modern lives? This week, we'll be exploring the history of and science behind dreaming. Sidarta Ribeiro is the author of a new book called Oracle of Night - The History and Science of Dreams. He's also the founder and Vice Director of the Brain Institute at the Federal University of Rio ... |
| 2021-Sep-16 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Politics: All The Rage The events of the past several months, and even years suggest that anger is a driving force in American politics. Are politicians stoking the flames and making their supporters angry? A new study looks at just that. We'll be talking to a politcal scientist whose research focuses on the role of emtion in politics. |
| 2021-Sep-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: City-Living Bees This week we are talking about urban bees and how converting vacant lots into green spaces doesn't only benefit humans. With a few adjustments, green spaces can help support local bee populations. We're talking to Ohio State University reserachers about how to help urban bees thrive.Mary Gardiner is a professor of entomology at the Ohio State University. Katie Turo is a post doctoral fellow in the department of ecology, evolution and natural resources at Rutgers University. Their latest study was recently p... |
| 2021-Sep-02 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Sick And Tired This week we're talking about fatigue. And no, it's not the same as being tired. Despite it being the top complaint among people with chronic conditions and those recovering from cancer, fatigue was largely ignored by the medical establishment until recently. We'll be talking to medical historian Emily K. Abel about her new book tracing the history of fatigue in the United States. |
| 2021-Aug-26 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Better Testing With Bayesian When the COVID-19 pandemic first emerged, tests were hard to come by, and you often had to wait days or even weeks for the results. We’ll be talking with an interdisciplinary group of researchers who developed a way to make testing more efficient. |
| 2021-Aug-19 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Nature Is Healing University of Utah researchers set out to measure changes in Park City’s air quality during the ski season and Sundance Film Festival. Then COVID-19 hit. And the city went into lockdown. And the data became even more fascinating. |
| 2021-Aug-13 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Years of the Woman Since 2016, more women have run for political office than ever before, from the governor’s race to local school board elections. With this came an influx of first-time female candidates. But what about the women who didn’t get elected? We’ll be talking to a political science researcher who dug into 70 years of state and local election data to see whether or not women are more likely to quit after losing their first race. |
| 2021-Aug-05 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Great Shark Extinction Researchers recently uncovered the biggest mass extinction event since the dinosaurs. About 19 million years ago, the shark population was decimated by roughly 90 percent. Up until that point, sharks ruled the ocean. Researchers figured this out by analyzing over a thousand fossilized shark skins. |
| 2021-Jul-29 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Women And Wikipedia Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, is one of the first sources Google provides for many different searches. From notable figures to new technology, historical events to horror films, Wikipedia is the initial place countless people look to get quick information. Despite the extensive numbers of articles Wikipedia provides, there is a large gap in gender when it comes to notable figures. Articles about notable women are far more likely to be flagged for deletion regardless of accomplishment, despite many edito... |
| 2021-Jul-25 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Climate Change And Me How much do your personal choices affect climate change? Does promoting the use of energy efficient light bulbs take away from pushing for bigger policy changes like a carbon tax? A new study suggests that reflecting on our individual sustainability efforts might actually make us more likely to support ambitious policy proposals. |
| 2021-Jul-16 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Man's Best Friend There are few things sweeter than a puppy staring back at you. But how does the puppy understand what you're saying, and when exactly do they start picking up on our cues? A new study by University of Arizona researchers shows that puppies as young as two months old can recognize when people are talking to them and look where they're pointing. |
| 2021-Jul-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Police Violence And Public Schools The frustration over police use of force has been simmering for years in the United States. A new study, published in the February 2021 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, focused on how police-involved killings affect the inner-city high school students in Los Angeles. The study found that a range of issues, including students' academic performance and psychological wellbeing can be impaired by such incidents, particularly for Black and Hispanic students. |
| 2021-Jul-02 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Fund Black Scientists Despite calls for increasing diversity, scientific researchers are still predominantly white. One of the main reasons: a substantial disparity in research funding between black and white researchers. This can affect scientists' careers in important ways. We'll dig into a new report by the National Institutes of Health, which promises to address structural racism within the scientific community, and we'll talk to a scientist who's fighting for change. |
| 2021-Jun-24 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Movie Magic Could watching your favorite movie be a successful form of therapy? Researchers are looking into the ways that movies influence their viewers, and they're finding a positive influence on the audience's behaviors and their overall well-being. |
| 2021-Jun-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Cyberbullying Yourself We all know about cyber bullying. We know how pervasive it is. We know how damaging it can be. But there’s still a lot we don’t know about this relatively new phenomenon. For instance: how often are children engaged in cyberbullying of themselves? Well, according to one new study, the answer is a lot. |
| 2021-May-27 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Future Of Fertilizers It’s no longer revolutionary to point out that bacteria can be beneficial in many ways. But until recently, we haven’t had a good handle on the role microorganisms play in plant growth. Now, researchers at Utah State University are starting to ask that question — and the answers may change the way we think about farming. |
| 2021-May-13 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: When Ideology Trumps Science Political scientists Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have written that the United States is experiencing a political era in which facts are fluid and the truth is subjective, and that the consequences of ideology trumping science can be devastating. And they wrote that back in 2017. This week we’ll talk to them about how their fears have shifted in the past four years. |
| 2021-Apr-22 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Asian-American Women In STEM And White Men Named John When Athena Castro thinks about the makeup of research spaces, she sees a paradox. Asian women are simultaneously overrepresented in one way and under represented in another. This week, we’re talking to Castro about the intersectional challenges faced by Asian women in science. |
| 2021-Mar-25 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Social Media And Suicide Risk A recently published study has confirmed what a lot of people have long suspected: increasing social media use is correlated to suicidal thoughts among some adolescents. But before you go pull the plug, the nuances here are important. Researchers have identified specific patterns of use that may be dangerous. This week we’ll talk about who is at risk, and what can be done. |
| 2021-Mar-11 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Combatting Vaccine Misinformation Even before the COVID-19 pandemic there was a lot of misinformation about vaccines floating around on social media. Public health agencies have been trying to figure out what to do. It turns out that one of the most powerful remedies is also one of the simplest. |
| 2021-Mar-04 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Death In The Soil There is nothing more damaging to a nation’s economy than a war on its own soil. But the way we think about the long-term economic consequences of war is often tied up in political instability and reconstruction and the cost of care for veterans. That’s all correct, but my guest this week says we’ve overlooked something: The long-term damage to agriculture. |
| 2021-Feb-25 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: COVID-19 And Compounding Trauma As a counselor and a researcher, Stacey Litam had focused her career on helping victims of sex trafficking to work through their trauma. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and while Litam’s previous work didn’t become less important, she began seeing a growing need for trauma counseling — just about everywhere. |
| 2021-Feb-11 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Of Puppets And Punishment Even if you’re a judge, a prosecutor or a police officer, you might not have given a lot of thought to the question of why we punish people. You might simply conclude that we punish people when they need to be punished. Developmental psychologist Julia Marshall isn’t satisfied with that sort of simplicity. We’ll talk to her about when and why we punish. |
| 2021-Jan-28 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Innocent Bystanders? What is your responsibility when you see injustice being done? For Amos Guiora, this is a deeply personal question stemming from his family’s experiences in one of the greatest atrocities in human history. And now he’s sharing that story. |
| 2021-Jan-14 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: National Security Now The last time the United States Capitol was breached was in 1814, when British troops burned the building using furniture and books from the Library of Congress as fuel. Last week, the capitol was breached again – and that’s raising a lot of questions about the state of our nation. We’re going to work through some of those questions with former CIA analyst Jeannie Johnson. |
| 2020-Dec-26 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: 2020 Year In Review There are a lot of ways 2020 is going to be remembered and, to be honest, a lot of us will probably remember it as a pretty terrible year, for very obvious reasons. But here at Utah Public Radio, we’re also going to remember 2020 as a year in which we learned some amazing things about our world. |
| 2020-Dec-17 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Sounds Of Space No human has ventured farther than 250,000 miles from earth. So what we know about what lies beyond us is limited to what we can see through data collection. But why limit the potential of understanding data to what we can see in images? Why not turn it into something we can touch or something we can hear? |
| 2020-Dec-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Absurdity Of Academia In philosophy, the absurd refers to the conflict between the human desire to find meaning in life and the fact that the more you search, the harder it is to find. This is what makes universities such absurd places. And through the use of a fictional college called Payne University, author Julie Schumacher puts that absurdity on full display. |
| 2020-Dec-04 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Oh, You Tease Have you ever found it strange that one of the ways that we let people know we care about them is by gently making fun of them? Teasing is a weird sort of thing – a combination between aggression and play. And researchers from UCLA wanted to know where it came from. This week, we’re going to talk about what they learned. |
| 2020-Nov-27 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: November Science News Roundup This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about monarch caterpillars, ancient big-game hunters, and of course we’ll be talking about the biggest news in science this month — two apparently effective vaccines for COVID-19. |
| 2020-Nov-20 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Healthy Forests, Healthy People Stopping the decimation of rainforests is unquestionably important to slowing climate change. But simply protecting forests often excludes and disenfranchises local communities. This week we’re talking about a different way of addressing this problem — a pairing of ecology with healthcare. |
| 2020-Nov-12 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Senses and Sensibility Without having a really good reason for doing so, nobody in their right mind would put a dead fish into a ziploc bag, attach it to wires to an electric stimulator, and release it into a tank with an electric eel. |
| 2020-Nov-06 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Bear Necessities 2020 has been rough. I don’t know about you, but there were a lot of times this year that I just wanted to go to sleep and wake up a few months later. Well, it turns out that someday we might be able to do that. Some scientists think humans might, in the future, be able to hibernate. And while that’s a long ways off, there’s a lot we can learn from hibernating species in the meantime. |
| 2020-Oct-29 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: October Science News Roundup Although the national election and COVID-19 pandemic continue to dominate the news cycle, there is other news out there — and the worlds of science, exploration and research are moving along with fascinating new discoveries. |
| 2020-Oct-22 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Devil With The Blue Jeans About 150 years ago, Jacob Davis went into business with Levi Strauss, and the era of blue jeans was underway. Today, at any given moment, about half of the world’s population is wearing jeans and other denim garments. But nothing that successful comes without an environmental consequence, and a new study puts those costs into context. |
| 2020-Oct-15 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Here Come The Cyborg Locusts Since the dawn of agriculture, locusts have been a scourge for farmers around the world. But a new study suggests that while we’ve long been focused on the harms locusts can cause, we might be missing out on the benefits. For instance, and this is just one example, locusts are really good at detecting explosives. |
| 2020-Oct-09 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Don't Say Yes To The Stress For millions of years, evolution has shaped our behavior — we do what we’re designed to do. Or, at least, we did. Because today’s world stresses and confuses our bodies in ways that we are simply ill-adapted for. Now, the psychologist Erik Peper says it’s time for reckoning. |
| 2020-Oct-01 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: September Science News Roundup We’re talking about fires and fossils, sea butterflies and stonehenge, and parasitic plants and saving the planet — well, saving ourselves, anyway. Our guests are researchers from across the nation with a diversity of expertise. |
| 2020-Sep-24 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Save The Parasites We can’t save every plant and animal that we’ve put into danger. But we know from experience that we can have a big effect on the ones we choose to protect. So, make a list. Which ones do you want to save? Pandas? Elephants? Bald eagles? How about parasites? Yeah… parasites. This week, we’ll be making a case for saving creatures that most people really don’t like. |
| 2020-Sep-17 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Cops And Scholars The Los Angeles Unified School District funds the largest independent school police department in the nation. Last year, the department was funded to the tune of 70 million dollars. So, what does the district get for that investment? Well, according to a new report, a lot of distrust among students. Today we’ll dissect the research. |
| 2020-Sep-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The History Of Working From Home During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans who had been used to working from an office found themselves working from home. But while this might have felt like a very sudden shift, it’s part of a historic movement toward home-based work. This week, we’ll dive into that history — and some of its really nefarious themes. |
| 2020-Sep-04 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Very Decent Docents The word “docent” comes from the same Latin root as the word “doctor.” “Doctor,” of course, has come to be most associated with people who are practitioners of medicine, while “docent” has come to mean someone who serves as a guide, often in a museum or a zoo. But that original root? It means “to teach.” This week we’re going to be talking about the kinds of people who are good teachers — and the answers might be surprising. |
| 2020-Sep-01 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: August Science News Roundup This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about the long-lost woolly rhinoceros, Vikings, smallpox, and innovations in playground equipment. With a list of subjects that diverse, you might have guessed that the monthly science news round-up is back – and it is. |
| 2020-Aug-20 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Social Disorder If you are a frequent participant in a social media community, you know what it’s like when someone new comes along and just doesn’t seem to understand or care about the established rules. But our guest this week wanted to know what happens when newcomers join spaces where the rules aren’t just very well established, but also really toxic. |
| 2020-Aug-14 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Monkeying With History For decades, researchers assumed the monkeys depicted on a 3,500-year-old painting in Greece were from Africa, just across the Mediterranean. But recently a team of experts looked at these animals and said – wait a second, that’s not right at all – and that’s forced a lot of other scientists to reconsider what they know about the Bronze Age. |
| 2020-Aug-07 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Black Health Matters A lot of the Black Lives Matter movement has been framed in terms of policing. But even if we could fix the racial disparities that exist in use-of-force situations, we’d still be a far cry from a world in which every facet of our society operates as though Black lives truly matter. Take healthcare, for instance. |
| 2020-Jul-17 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Prehistory Repeats Itself How long has coal burning been responsible for climate change? If right now you are trying to remember when the industrial revolution began, that’s a completely reasonable guess. But according to some recent research, it’s not even close. The correct answer, the researchers say, is 250 million years ago. How can that be? |
| 2020-Jul-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Gravity Falls Today on the program we’re talking about black holes — places in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that light can’t escape. But gravity is just one force at play in a black hole, and our guests say that if you want to understand black holes, gravity might not be the best place to start. |
| 2020-Jul-03 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: It's Snot What You Think All across the world’s oceans, you can find creatures known as larvaceans – free-swimming invertebrates with a superpower, of sorts. |
| 2020-Jun-26 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Stretching Our Lives We all know that exercise is good for us — that’s sort of a given. But have you ever thought about whether one sort of exercise is better than others? Is cycling better than golf? Is golf better than baseball? Is running really the gold-standard for exercise that everyone thinks it is? Demographic sociologist Connor Sheehan thinks he’s got the answers — and they might surprise you. |
| 2020-Jun-19 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Climate Goes Viral As it was becoming clear that the United States was going to be one of the epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was asked to talk to a group of climate adaptation students about crisis communication — and I worried at first that I wouldn’t be able to draw lines between two very different crises. It turns out, though, that these crises have a lot in common. |
| 2020-Jun-12 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Unlocking Nature We’re talking to three researchers who came together, across very different disciplines, to try to do something to address a problem that affects millions of American children: how can we make the experience of visiting an incarcerated parent a little bit less traumatic? |
| 2020-Jun-05 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Would You Like A Saber-Toothed Killer On That? We’re talking about an ancient ancestor of modern anchovies, a fearsome fish that swam the seas about 55 million years ago — and, like so many other ancient creatures, it was a lot scarier back then than it is now. |
| 2020-Jun-01 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Fire And Rice Since the unification of the northern and southern dynasties in China 1,500 years ago, Chinese chefs have been making fried rice. And if you have never stopped to watch a master chef go to work preparing this dish, you are missing out. |
| 2020-May-24 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Dishing It Out We all know that meals bring people together. But when it comes to building trust and cooperation, it turns out that not all meals are created equal. And this week on the program, we're talking to a researcher whose work has shown that people eating from shared serving plates are more likely to work together rather than compete. |
| 2020-May-19 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Using Math To Avoid Mis-steaks We're talking to two mathematicians who have harnessed the power of numbers to solve one of the biggest challenges of the kitchen: how to cook a perfect steak. And yes, this is a fun and whimsical use of math, but it's also a true accomplishment in macromolecular science. |
| 2020-May-14 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Parent Rap Today on the program, we are talking to Jill Suitor, one of the founders of a nearly 20 year old study focused on the relationships parents have with their adult children and, in particular, their favorite children. Yes, it's true parents have favorites. And children are often wrong about who that favorite is. |
| 2020-May-05 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: Aghast Confession This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about the ways in which being innocent of a crime could make someone more likely to confess. And if that sounds like something that might only happen under really extreme circumstances, consider this: in nearly a third of the convictions that are later overturned by DNA evidence, the person who was convicted had at some point confessed to the crime. |
| 2020-May-05 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Toxic Avenger This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about one of the world’s most poisonous creatures. Now, maybe right now you’re thinking of a snake. Or a jellyfish. Or a little yellow frog. And those are all good guesses. But the toxin that Charles Hanifin is studying might be even more powerful than the toxins that come from any of those animals. And its source might surprise you. |
| 2020-Apr-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Devil's Jargon This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about jargon — specialized words or expressions that are used by people in a particular profession and which are difficult for other to understand. The sciences are particularly replete with these words, and that’s not a small problem. Our guest this week is a communications professor who says that insider language tells people that they don’t belong. |
| 2020-Apr-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Environmental Engineer This week on Undisciplined, in the wake of the devastating wildfires in Australia, we’re talking about setting fires to avoid fires. And if that sounds counterintuitive and even dangerous to you, then you’re not alone. Because even though prescribed burning has been shown to be very effective at reducing wildfire risks, it remains an underutilized tactic, in part because of the perceived risks. |
| 2020-Apr-10 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Climate Reporter This week on Undisciplined, we’re going to talk about climate solutions. And here’s the curveball: while you might think that politically conservative states are an unlikely place to find a science-backed roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that might not be the case. |
| 2020-Mar-18 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Science Storyteller This week on the program, we’re going to solve a puzzle. Or, we’re going to try, at least. And here’s the challenge: how do you communicate the depth and gravity and overwhelming scientific consensus on the changes that are coming for our world without making people throw their hands up in despair? |
| 2020-Mar-18 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Forest Biotechnologist And The Evolutionary Psychologist When we told psychologist Joshua Jackson that we were going to ask him to have a discussion with an expert in tree genetics, he wasn’t sure how it would go. But after the conversation, Jackson marvelled at just how interconnected their two worlds of research were. |
| 2020-Mar-18 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The GeoScientist This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about “Project Iceworm,” a secret U.S. government project to build nuclear launch sites in northern Greenland back in the 1960s. Now the project site is getting a renewed look by scientists, thanks to a 1.3-kilometer-long ice core sample that was extracted from the site and kept in storage for more than 50 years. What secrets does it hold? |
| 2020-Mar-12 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Sports Media Analyst And The Research Ecologist This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about the impact of sports on human behavior and impact of chaos on plants, with guests whose fields couldn’t be more different. Or, at least, that’s what it looks like at first. |
| 2020-Mar-11 • 26 minutes Undisciplined: The Social Health Researcher And The Biological Anthropologist This week on Undisciplined, we’re talking about the black market exchange of diabetes medications in the United States and the evolution of vocal traits of a small, nocturnal primate in Indonesia, with guests whose work is very different, but whose drive to ask and answer complicated questions is very much the same. |
| 2019-Dec-10 • 25 minutes UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - November 2019 This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the discovery of an essential element for life on a meteorite, using A.I. for archaeology, and vampire bat buddies. It's time for the monthly science news roundup. |
| 2019-Nov-08 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - October 2019 It's the October science news roundup! This month, we're talking about the little tiny monsters of the present, the really big monsters of the past, the really scary things people do on Earth, and the even scarier stuff out there in outer space. |
| 2019-Nov-01 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Ecologist And The Biomedical Engineer This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about bee biodiversity, blood platelets, genetic engineering, environmental journalism, the fast-changing world of medicine, and the future of our planet. |
| 2019-Oct-19 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Aquatic Ecologist And The Biological Engineer This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about risk and, as we like to do, we're coming to that idea from two very different directions. One of our guests studies aquatic predators, like sharks, in an effort to better understand their role in the global ecosystem. The other creates transgenic organisms, like goats with spider genes, in an effort to build new knowledge and solve old problems. |
| 2019-Oct-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Population Science Psychologist And The Pediatric Allergist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about risk reduction. |
| 2019-Oct-04 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Microbial Pathologist And The Computational Social Scientist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about two ideas that fly in the face of conventional thought. One of our guests will tell us about the creatures in our gut — bacteria. The other will talk about an idea in many of our heads about how fake news impacts the political process. |
| 2019-Oct-04 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - September 2019 This week on the show, we're talking about the science behind Hurricane Dorian, a "rat-pocalypse," a new human ancestor, and poison dart frogs. Everybody on the show is an expert on something, but none of them is an expert on those things. |
| 2019-Sep-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Community Ecologist And The Mathematical Physicist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking to a researcher who's demonstrated that some insects may actually benefit from pesticides. Then, we'll chat with a string theorist who is uncoupling ideas about the universe faster than you can say "Nikulin involution." |
| 2019-Sep-14 • 25 minutes UnDisciplined: The Journalist And The Geneticist What if aging wasn't inevtiable? What if being 90 felt pretty much the same as being 40, just with a few extra decades of life experience? And what if the science that gets us to that point in human history wasn't the subject of speculative fiction — what if it was real? |
| 2019-Sep-06 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Morphological Physiologist And The Migration Ecologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about movement. Our first guest is a scientist whose research is helping us understand the ways the world's largest animal moves its body. Our second guest is a researcher whose recent studies uncover the ways animals are moved as part of complex global trafficking networks. |
| 2019-Aug-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - August 2019 This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy, life on the Moon, a poorly-timed tweet, and the potential impact of artificial intelligence on Hollywood. That's right, it's time for the monthly science news roundup! |
| 2019-Aug-23 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Evolutionary Biologist And The Theoretical Biologist Today on UnDisciplined, we'll be joined by a scientist who is searching the world for the blackest of black. Next, we'll talk to a researcher who is trying to get a handle on how superstitions spread. |
| 2019-Aug-20 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Microbiologist And The Marine Fisheries Ecologist This week on UnDisiplined, we're joined for the second time by Karen Lloyd, whose work is helping us understand the relationship between microbes, carbon, and the deep Earth. |
| 2019-Aug-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Paleontologist And The Atmospheric Scientist For more than a year now, we've been bringing together researchers from different disciplines in our never-ending search to build interdisciplinary connections. That's a lot of researchers, who are all doing a lot of really fascinating work — but we haven't had a paleontologist on our program yet. So today, that's going to change. |
| 2019-Aug-02 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - July 2019 There's no way we could let this month pass us by without talking about the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time: the moon landing. But don't worry, we won't get stuck in the past. |
| 2019-Jul-31 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Climatologist, The Political Scientist, And The Cultural Historian Usually on UnDisciplined, we bring together two scientists to build interdisciplinary connections — but one of the research efforts we're talking about is already really interdisciplinary. So this week, we're going rogue. |
| 2019-Jul-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Evolutionary Biologist And The Epidemiological Obstetrician Do you know what kills more women during and after pregnancy than anything else? The answer is probably going to surprise you. And do you have a pretty good understanding of how evolution works? If so, we might have another surpirse for you. |
| 2019-Jul-12 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Marine Mammal Biologist And The Experimental Psychologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the way dolphins survive in captivity, and the way humans make decisions based on the chemicals in their bodies. |
| 2019-Jul-05 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Theoretical Chemist And The Epidemiologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about how things start. |
| 2019-Jun-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - June 2019 This week on UnDisciplined, we've gathered two of our favorite fellow science geeks to talk about the headlines that caught our eyes in June — and a few we wish would have gotten more attention. |
| 2019-Jun-22 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Political Scientist And The Experimental Psychologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're going to talk about the factors that influence our moods. How do the institutions around us inspire us to take action? And how do the things we put into our bodies impact the way we see the world? |
| 2019-Jun-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Sociologist And The Bioengineer This week on UnDisciplined, we're going to chat with a scientist who is trying to solve a big challenge: engineering blood vessels for transplantation into human bodies. After that, we'll talk to a researcher who is trying to solve a challenge that might be even bigger: reducing gender pay disparities in corporate America. |
| 2019-Jun-07 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Climate Scientist And The Cancer Biologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking to researchers on two sides of a huge scientific challenge. Our first guest researches climate — that means she only has one test subject to work with: the Earth. Our second guest studies cancer, which presents differently in humans and other organisms. That means she has endless test subjects. |
| 2019-May-31 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Science News Roundup - May 2019 This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about artificial intelligence, great white sharks, illegal pollution, snail genes, and new rules for leaders at the National Institutes of Health. That's right, it's the May Science News Roundup. |
| 2019-May-24 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Tropical Ecologist And The Microbiologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about scientific puzzles. For instance, why is it that hundreds of tree species can exist within a single acre of rainforest, but the same species is almost never found next to itself? |
| 2019-May-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Archaeologist And The Chemical Engineer This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about biofuels ... and tattoos. |
| 2019-May-10 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Computational Pedagogist And The Undead Philosopher This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about math education and ... zombies? |
| 2019-May-03 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Cognitive Anthropologist And The Research Surgeon Our world often seems to be really divided, particularly across cultures in which everyone seems to play by different rules. But today we're going to hear from a researcher who believes there are actually seven universal moral rules that have been embraced by pretty much every society. |
| 2019-Apr-26 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: April Science News Roundup This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about black holes, pig brains, and water on the moon as we round up the most intersting, important, and awe-inspiring science stories from the past month with an amateur astronomer, an environmental epigeneticist, and a podcasting paleontologist. |
| 2019-Apr-19 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Superlatives And Survival This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about big things and small things, loud things and fast things, things that kill and things that survive being killed — but we're doing it a little differently than normal. |
| 2019-Apr-14 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Integrated Physiologist And The Socio-Techno Endocrinologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about life hacks, including some that work — like do-it-yourself glucose balancing devices used by increasing numbers of individuals with diabetes — and some that don't, like the common practice of using weekends for recovery sleep. |
| 2019-Apr-05 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Tropical Biologist And The Quantitative Ecologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about some pretty scary things. |
| 2019-Mar-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: March Science News Round-up This week on UnDisciplined, we're gathering the gang for another science news round-up. |
| 2019-Mar-22 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Venomologist And The Behavioral Scientist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about pain, but — as usual — we're approaching it from two very different points of view. One of our guests is a researcher whose discoveries about toxic snails could help lead to painkillers. The other is a health communications expert who studies the way people communicate about pain on social media. |
| 2019-Mar-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Ecologist And The Microbiologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about big animals like wolves, bears and lions — and really tiny life forms, like yeast. |
| 2019-Mar-10 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Making A Scientific Match Every week on UnDisciplined, we put to researchers from completely different fields together and see what connections they can make. |
| 2019-Mar-01 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: February Science News Roundup This week on UnDisciplined, we're gathering up a motley gang of science geeks to talk about some of the biggest stories in science over the past few weeks. |
| 2019-Feb-22 • 31 minutes UnDisciplined: The Computer Scientist And The Information Systems Specialist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the ways computers help people do things better. |
| 2019-Feb-15 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Occupational Therapist And The Evolutionary Biologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about stress, but from two very different scientific points of view. |
| 2019-Feb-08 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Consumer Genomics And Getting 'Good To Go' This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the intersection of science and personal decision-making — and, of course, we're looking at it from two very different perspectives. |
| 2019-Feb-01 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Atmospheric Scientist And The Environmental Economist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about climate, but at two very different scales. |
| 2019-Jan-27 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: January Science News Roundup In UnDisciplined's first ever monthly science news roundup, we're joined by three researchers, plus a fellow science enthusiast, to take a look at recent science news through a bunch of different perspectives. |
| 2019-Jan-20 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Demographic Sociologist And The Social Psychologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about why we don't do the things we know we should do. Why, for instance, don't we get as much sleep as we're supposed to? And why do we often withhold information from our doctors? |
| 2019-Jan-11 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Cultural Anthropologist And The Population Health Analyst We're talking about the ways warfare can build bonds in tribal societies, and how air pollution can have devastating effects in our modern world. |
| 2019-Jan-07 • 31 minutes UnDisciplined: An Almost-Year In Review 2018 is going to be remembered as a huge year in science. |
| 2018-Dec-29 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Molecular Geneticist And The Entomological Ecologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're joined by a scientist who helped create a transgenic mouse that can help us understand the human relationship with a vital molecule. We'll also chat with a researcher who just announced the discovery of nearly 50 new species right here in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. |
| 2018-Dec-24 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Space Geologist And The Neuroscientist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking to a researcher whose work is going to change the way you think about the red planet. Then, we're going to talk to a scientist who is changing the way we think about how to diagnose and treat neurodegenerative diseases. |
| 2018-Dec-14 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Anthropological Archaeologist And The Quantitative Ecologist This week on UnDisciplined, we talked to a researcher whose discoveries have changed the way we understand the history of tobacco in North America. Then we chatted with a scientist who is trying to change the way we think about cryptocurrencies. |
| 2018-Dec-12 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Evolutionary Anatomist And The Geomorphologist This week on UnDisciplined, we unpack two studies that are changing conventional wisdom. |
| 2018-Nov-30 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Nanotechnologist And The Environmental Social Scientist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about really small things, like cell cultures and their effect on research, and really big things, like our planet's climate and its effect on human movement. |
| 2018-Nov-24 • 31 minutes UnDisciplined: The Biomedical Engineer And The Quantitative Analyst What do Judi Dench and Samuel L. Jackson have to do with ending crime waves and curing blindness? We'll find out this week when we're joined by guests Elizabeth Vargis and Sherry Towers. |
| 2018-Nov-16 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Microbiologist And The Human Ecologist Each week on UnDisciplined, we bring two researchers together to talk about their recent work. |
| 2018-Nov-09 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Inorganic Chemist And The Wildland Ecologist Paul Rogers is racing to save a one-tree forest. Lisa Berreau is trying to prove that carbon monoxide can be good for us. Like we do every week, we'll try to draw connections between these two very different areas of work. |
| 2018-Nov-08 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Psychiatrist And The Oncologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about how evolving research impacts health recommendations. |
| 2018-Oct-26 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: Fisetin, Fungus and Frogs This week on UnDiscipined, we're talking about extending life — how nature does it and how humans might do it. Grace DiRenzo investigates the way animals evolve to beat deadly natural chemicals. Laura Niedernhofer studies natural chemicals that might help us prevent aging and put off death. Together, we'll talk about Fisetin, frogs, fungus, zombies and immortality. |
| 2018-Oct-21 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Transportation Economist And The Insect Ecologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the way people and animals move from place to place. Rick Geddes studies economic solutions for reducing traffic. Lori Spears is an entomologist who helps develop ways to keep non-native insects out of North America. |
| 2018-Oct-13 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Wetland Ecologist And The Forest Biotechnologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about how genes impact plant growth, but from two very different perspectives. |
| 2018-Oct-05 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Political Scientist And The Photovoltaic Engineer This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about the way newspapers impact the way people think, and the ways pollution impacts solar energy. |
| 2018-Oct-03 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Entomologist And The Landscape Ecologist This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about measuring wildlife — but at two very different scales. |
| 2018-Sep-25 • 25 minutes UnDisciplined: The Ecologist And The Geneticist Clement Chow studies how—and why—two people can get the same disease and have very different outcomes. Josh Tewksbury's research team has developed a model indicating how human-caused climate change stands to make insects much hungrier. Together, we'll try and build some bridges between those two very different areas of research. |
| 2018-Sep-17 • 25 minutes UnDisciplined: Police And Predators Shefali Patil's recent studies have offered surprising insights into the way law enforcement officers see their jobs. Dan MacNulty's work seeks to understand the way animals interact in Yellowstone National Park. Together, we'll talk about police and predators. |
| 2018-Sep-10 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Psychophysiologist And The Conservation Biologist Erik Peper's recent studies have investigated the ways posture can affect performance. Brady Mattsson's recent work examines how natural resource officials can best share their expertise and experiences in managing protected areas. Together, we'll talk about the ways we manage our bodies, our minds and our environments. |
| 2018-Sep-02 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Bee Biologist And The Behavioral Neuroscientist Ana Clara Bobadilla is a behavioral neuroscientist who discovered how a molecule may be able to help public health workers help people experiencing cocaine addiction. Rachael Kaspar is an evolutionary biologist who studies how bees work together to cool their hives. Together, we'll talk about bees and rats, and what we can learn about ourselves from both. |
| 2018-Aug-24 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Medical Sociologist And The Snow Hydrologist Gabriele Ciciurkaite studies the impact of food insecurity on mental health. Melissa Wrzesien investigates new ways to measure snowpacks. Together, we talk about how decision-making impacts resource allocation. |
| 2018-Aug-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Polar Biologist And The Free Press Policy Expert Ellada Gamreklidze examines the ways in which the views of members of the Supreme Court move through time. |
| 2018-Aug-10 • 25 minutes UnDisciplined: The Aquatic Ecologist And The Feminist Journalist Amanda Subalusky studies how ecosystems are impacted by migrating wildebeests in Africa. Candi Carter Olson's research focuses on how communities of interest use the media to get their messages heard. Together, we talk about gnus and the news. |
| 2018-Aug-03 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Evolutionary Biologist And The Movie Psychologist James Cutting studies the way moviemakers exploit human emotions to tell stories. Zach Gompert examines fundamental questions about evolutionary genetics. Together, we talk about how things change over time and whether we can predict those changes. |
| 2018-Jul-27 • 27 minutes UnDisciplined: The Psychologist And The Geneticist Marlena Fejzo's research has suggested a genetic cause for morning sickness. Jared Martin's recent work demonstrates that not all smiles are created equal. In this episode, we talk about what's happening deep inside of us when we feel feelings. |
| 2018-Jul-20 • 27 minutes UnDisciplined: The Anthropologist And The Aerospace Engineer Anna Cohen uses pulsed lasers to map ancient cities. David Geller works to identify space junk to prevent catastrophic orbital collisions. Together, we talk about how to best encourage young people to become scientific explorers. |
| 2018-Jul-17 • 26 minutes UnDisciplined: The Plant Physiologist And The Political Scientist Yesola Kweon's recent work evaluates the ways in which government salary raises impact corruption. Bruce Bugbee has been researching ways to grow plants in space for more than 30 years. Together, we discuss the importance of "rethinking" in research. |
| 2018-Jul-06 • 27 minutes UnDisciplined: The Ecologist And The Economist Karen Beard's most recent study showed a fascinating association between non-native species in Hawaii. Veronica Pozo's recent work demonstrates a frightening connection between social media and police violence. In this episode we discuss how to avoid looking for simple answers to complex problems. |
| 2018-Jul-05 • 1 minutes UPR Introduces Its Newest Show 'Undisciplined' With Matthew LaPlante Matthew LaPlante, host of Undisciplined, the new science show produced at Utah Public Radio, says “the scientific world is supposed to be a place where ideas come together. Instead, it’s often a place full of really brilliant people who don’t talk to each other.” |