Download podcast android quirks and quarks

CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks covers the quirks of the expanding universe to the quarks within a single atom Vaccine prevents cervical cancer, Atacama comet evidence, bees sound the alarm, cane toad cannibalism and th anniversary of insulin.

Whale appetites feed ocean ecosystems, water vapour and climate change, sabre-tooth sociability, shedding light on bioluminescence. Baleen whales eat much more than we thought — and fertilize the oceans doing it; Understanding the most important greenhouse gas — water vapour; Fossil evidence suggests sabre-tooth cats cared for each other when injured; Deep-sea pioneer looks back on a career chasing light in the deep, dark ocean; Do plants ever mimic other plants?

Black spruce and the boreal forest, mystery mummies from china, going deep on the great red spot, ants with metal mandibles and Andrew Weaver, political scientist, on COP Fire ordinarily helps the boreal's black spruce trees.

Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse. Wild donkeys and horses dig wells in the desert, and create a refuge for plants and animals; Genetically modified grass can suck toxic explosives out of the ground; Animals don't seem to much care if they mate with relatives; Making How NASA built and flew the first helicopter to fly on another planet; The horn of the unicorn of the sea reveals a dirty secret about arctic pollution; Billions and billions of Tyrannosaurs walked the Earth; How long before we Do they dream, too?

Ice cores drilled for missile silo research reveals when Greenland was last green; Grizzly Tinder: Bears rubbing up against trees may be their dating calling card; Microgravity on a trip to Mars might leave astronauts emotionally impaired; Listening in on Earthquake science takes great strides in the 10 years since massive quake hit Japan; Ant-i-social distancing: Ants know how isolation prevents the spread of infection; Sea otters have been saving Pacific kelp forests from rapacious sea urchins; As big as COVID gave climate scientists a natural experiment.

Chance likely played a major role in life persisting on Earth; Frogs have noise When the magnetic poles flip out, Earth seems to suffer; Bacteria-hunting viruses can track down antibiotic resistant bugs where they hide; Levitating solar-powered micro flyers may fly high where planes and rockets can't; HIV testing study of trans people in Pandemic boredom research is thrilling and — and might even be helpful; A dinosaur's 'butthole' was a swiss-army-knife of orifices; Building Earth's largest telescope on the far side of the moon; Mussels play a 'shell game' to deal with increasingly How is the Universe going to end?

Why do humans dance? And how much screen time is too much? Fire ordinarily helps the boreal's black spruce trees. Vikings in Newfoundland, new rocks from the moon, making wood better, LED streetlights suppress caterpillars, milk and migration and when humans improved the horse. New research shows the Vikings were in Newfoundland exactly years ago; Rocks from Chang'e 5 sample return mission reveal a younger side of the moon; Scientists have found a way to harden wood to make a knife that rivals steel; Streetlights — especially new LEDs — can drastically reduce caterpillar numbers; Milk may have been the fuel that enabled a major human migration; Whoa Nelly!

Modern horses come from ancestors we improved years ago; How can tiny frogs make so much noise? This podcast is outstanding. Bob is the best interviewer out there and you can trust him to ask the best questions. Intelligent, trustworthy, and they go right to the source of the discoveries and stories. A science journalism. Apple Podcasts Preview. He says for him the fascination continues as new information is revealed about our world and beyond. Half a million people listen to the radio broadcast each week.

And the podcast audience continues to grow. Bob McDonald describes the range of science in Canada, and the struggle in the face of reduced government support. This now extends to a muzzle on some government scientists. And despite the popularity of science and its importance, newspapers in Canada and elsewhere are reporting science less with fewer dedicated reporters.

Robyn Williams: And so to another big country, to Canada, where Quirks and Quarks has been broadcasting for nearly 40 years. Here's a sample:. Whether you've experienced them firsthand or simply through photographs, their aesthetic beauty is hard to ignore. It's a big part of that image of Canada we all love, but their appearance, as majestic as it may be, is the least of what glaciers provide. Their main function is to supply fresh waters for rivers and streams, for hydro, for agriculture and for drinking, which could all be lost over the next 85 years.

Dr Clarke, welcome to Quirks and Quarks. Bob McDonald: We've been hearing about glaciers receding for some time now. What was different about your study? Garry Clarke: Well, several things. So we've got a modelling approach that allows us to make these broad statements about total percentage loss in the Rockies or Coast Mountains, Vancouver Island, and at the same time looking much closer-scale, so we can zoom up and look at individual glaciers and see for example what the Columbia icefields on the Icefields Parkway between Lake Louise and Jasper might look like at And part of the reason they withstand a bad climate is because the landscape is so high there, there are high mountains in that region, and the glaciers have a place to retreat to.

In the more southerly parts of our study area the mountains are lower. So when you apply heat to the glaciers they move up a bit to the mountain peaks, and after that there is no place to go, so they disappear. Bob McDonald: Well, what's actually happening? What is the mechanism that is causing the glaciers to disappear and retreat? Garry Clarke: What is happening is that the climate is getting warmer and that makes more summer melting occur, and simultaneously more winter rainfall rather than snowfall.

The glaciers don't benefit from rain, they benefit from solid precipitation in the form of snow. So the double whammy here is that the winter supply is being reduced and the summer melting is being increased. And now here's Bob himself:. And unfortunately I've only been doing the program for 22 of those 40 years. Bob McDonald: Because it's always different. Every week people come and tell me amazing stories, things that humanity didn't know before.

I feel like a surfer riding on the cutting edge of our knowledge as we penetrate ignorance. It's wonderful. Robyn Williams: And the status of Quirks and Quarks …big ratings? Lots of feedback? We get half a million across Canada every Saturday, which is good for Canada, and podcasts keep going up. I don't know the numbers there, but we were the first program at CBC to do that. And that has been solid.

And programs on either side of us in our line-up…we are noon on Saturday, but we've had programs come and go on either side of us and we are still there. So it's amazing that a science program and a very simple science program, we don't do a lot of production, we don't play with music and sound effects as much as other shows do, we don't have time for it, we don't have the resources for it, we just let the science stand on its own and people love it.

So I think that says something, that people are interested in the way that science sees the world, and I feel really privileged to be able to do it every week. Robyn Williams: Isn't it interesting that Radiolab does the opposite of what you just said, lots of production, lots of intercutting, and plenty of listeners in Australia hate that.

Bob McDonald: I mean, I admire their production, I love production myself, and when I first began in the s before Quirks in radio I was doing documentaries for Ideas and we were doing all kinds of really trippy stuff. I took a whole hour to go through the Earth. I've created the Earth, destroyed the Earth, gone future in time, backwards in time, and all kinds of great stuff, and radio is wonderful for that, for creating that sphere of sound.

And I don't think it's exploited enough, I wish we could do more of it on Quirks. But you have to find a balance between content and production.