Behind the mic: A sense of awe and eww in our latest episode
Scientific news can be a really deep rabbit hole. You find one interesting fact and chase the details on that until you end up reading about drugged zombie cicadas. Conor McKechnie, co-host of our podcast Discovery Matters, actually wore his silly lenses for our bonus July episode “Fun scientific facts”.
There’s so much we run across in our daily sweep of biotech news. It’s too seldom that we stop and appreciate the sense of awe, or the sense of ewww, that we get when we read these items.
We are also inspired by others who share information well, with humor and delight. (Looking at you, ‘No Such Thing as a Fish.’)
For this podcast, we swept hundreds of links and chose a colleague who is lots of fun to talk to. Allow us to introduce you to Kaycee Palumbo, our Zone leader in the western US. I first met Kaycee over the phone as Cytiva kicked off a Sustainability initiative. As you can hear on the podcast, Kaycee is energetic, insightful, and full of sparkle. About a lifetime ago, when the world was travelling, a group of colleagues met for a brand workshop in Florida. There was a woman waiting in the taxi rank and I could literally FEEL that it was Kaycee. You know the feeling of instant friendship and admiration? That was how it was for me when I first met Kaycee.
Speaking of great connections, this podcast episode has a different sound than normal. Our fantastic editor Thomas is on a well-deserved summer break. We passed this assignment to our summer intern Olivia Stille. Today, Olivia finishes a 3-month internship with us, during which we met face to face once. She went into the Uppsala office only a few times — to collect a computer and mobile phone, and one other time to film an internal video story for us. Managing teamwork, accepting assignments, learning the business… all while remote? Kudos to Olivia, and thanks for editing this episode.
What we did NOT get to in this episode are incredible stories; for example, the one about genetically modified goats who produce spider silk protein in their milk. Or: do you know what ambergris is? Ambergris — Could be something exotic and expensive; perfume-y. Ambergris is actually whale vomit! Gross enough for you?
How about skatole — the base ingredient in the manufacture of atiprosin, an antihistamine and antihypertension agent…skatole is what makes poo smell like poo.
Perhaps those topics will come up in a future episode. Meanwhile, here’s a list of sources from our episode. Let us know where you get your fix of weird science news.
30.000 year old seeds revived — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3309767/
Pools in the Mexican desert (earth early life) — https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/pools-mexican-desert-are-window-earth-s-early-life
Circoviruses — https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/circovirus & https://explorebiotech.com/50-interesting-facts-biotechnology/
J. Craig Venter creating the first free-living organism — https://www.wired.co.uk/article/j-craig-venter-interview & https://explorebiotech.com/50-interesting-facts-biotechnology/
The DNA in our cells stretched out is twice the diameter of the solar system — https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-long-is-your-dna/
99.1% of our human genome is actually the same — https://www.genome.gov/17516714/2006-release-about-whole-genome-association-studies
Bananas and chimpanzees — https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/people-bananas-share-dna.htm
& https://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/chimp.htm
Viruses that are incorporated in our DNA — https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/science/ancient-viruses-dna-genome.html
Psychobiome — https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/meet-psychobiome-gut-bacteria-may-alter-how-you-think-feel-and-act
