Category: Radio Show

Season 1: Loops – Life-cycle LoopsSeason 1: Loops – Life-cycle Loops

All living creatures on earth reproduce themselves in some way or another. But there are so many different ways to make a baby,  virtually the only commonality is that DNA inside one organism is copied and then passed on to an offspring organism. And usually, the offspring will grow, reproduce, and die in the same way, completing the same loop, as their parent. 

Today K+K, and guest co-host Paul Francis, explore some of the world’s weirdest life-cycles, and the lengths some creatures will go to in order to keep the life-cycle chain unbroken.

He can’t WAIT to tell you about eating his own bones!

Season 1: Loops – Wild Wolves & Feedback LoopsSeason 1: Loops – Wild Wolves & Feedback Loops

Kira and Keera are trying something new: seasons! With themes! In Season 1, they’re exploring the idea that in nature, many processes happen in reoccurring patterns, or more specifically, loops.

In today’s episode, K+K dive into how important, and also difficult, it is to keep ecosystems in balance. They talk to Alma Frankenstein, Project Manager for the Cascadia Systems Institute, about how the natural world keeps itself from completely falling part, through the use of positive and negative feedback loops.

Then they use this knowledge to tackle a debate that has been waging in the U.S. for nearly 100 years: is the big, bad Grey Wolf really bad? Should we continue to guard its population under the Endangered Species Act, or is this dangerous predator a threat that needs to be eradicated?

Come along and ride on a fantastic Science Voyage, and find out!

Re-Release: The Science of Love (Edited & Updated)Re-Release: The Science of Love (Edited & Updated)

Love. Some would say its the reason for being alive. So why does it make you feel sweaty, shaky and nauseous, like someone’s forcing you to jump off a bridge at gunpoint?

Join K+K to discover what’s happening inside your body when you fall in love, why we give out little candy hearts on Valentine’s Day instead of candy brains, and whether or not the characters from Wayne’s World will ever find their true soulmates.

Re-Release: LAVA!! (Edited & Updated)Re-Release: LAVA!! (Edited & Updated)

Kira & Keera explore the immense geological forces that help to shape our planet, and then share some of the places you can go to see them, right here in our own National Parks.

  • LAVA!
  • The discovery of plate tectonic theory
  • The Cascadia Subduction Zone
  • MORE LAVA!
  • Crater Lake
  • Yellowstone geysers and the ocean of magma beneath them
  • The Missoula Floods and the creation of the Columbia Gorge
  • EVEN MORE LAVA!

Re-Release: The Santa Species (Edited & Updated)Re-Release: The Santa Species (Edited & Updated)

If you’re an avid pursuer of rare and unique species, this is a very exciting time for you. Christmas Eve is when you have the best chance of catching a glimpse of the elusive Santius Clausadae, more commonly known as the Santa Claus.

62. Hot-Topics Debate: GMOs and CRISPR62. Hot-Topics Debate: GMOs and CRISPR

What do you get when you take 2 science nerds & 3 radio producers, and put them in a small room to discuss a hotly debated topic like Genetically Modified Organisms and their role in agriculture? Apparently you get today’s episode of Everything is Interesting.

After reading recent news stories explaining that the public should embrace “CRISPRing,” a new(er) technology for engineering DNA, because its different from the topic of GMOs they’ve spent years protesting against (spoiler alert: its not, and CRISPRing isn’t a word)  K+K set out to bring some actual science into the public conversation. With the XRAY crew, they get extremely passionate about:

  • the definition of a GMO
  • how it is that genes change naturally
  • Golden Bullets and other fun ways to get new genes into old organisms
  • how the mass use of GMOs could affect the environment
  • why being strongly for or against all GMOs as a broad category is, frankly, kinda ridiculous

If you want to have an informed debate about GMOs with your friends and neighbors, and we know you do, this is the episode for you!

Re-Release: Hard Labor (Edited & Updated)Re-Release: Hard Labor (Edited & Updated)

Your body is almost always using energy, whether you’re going hard labor, or just sleeping. Play along with our Labor Quiz to see if you know the answers to questions like:

  • True or False: When you sleep your body consumes the caloric equivalent of 1 tablespoon of ketchup.
  • Thinking requires energy, so you burn a lot more calories thinking really hard
  • Celery is a “negative calorie food,” because it takes more calories to digest celery than you absorb from eating it.
  • It takes more energy to digest a sandwich made with whole wheat bread and real cheese than one made of white bread and American cheese.

Re-Release: Science Fiction Movies, In Spaaaaace! (Edited & Updated)Re-Release: Science Fiction Movies, In Spaaaaace! (Edited & Updated)

Science Fiction movies are great. But for us, half the fun of watching them is how blatantly they misrepresent the actual science behind their plots. Its ridiculous, it’s inaccurate, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun to pick apart.

On today’s show, we listen to a few clips from some of our favorite science fiction outer space movies, and focus in on one of the major inaccuracies, then give you three possible reasons why it wouldn’t have happened that way. Only one of the totally-plausible sounding scientific explanations is the right one. Can you figure out which it is before the DJs?

If you take your helmet off in space, you turn to clay.

Re-Release: Metallic or Metallica?! (Edited & Updated)Re-Release: Metallic or Metallica?! (Edited & Updated)

Is it a metal? Or is it METAL?!? (Like, the music. You have to say it with a growl to get the joke.)  In today’s show, K+K attempt to stump the XRAY DJs with phrases that might describe an actual scientific element and its metallic properties, or might be the name of a Metallica song.

Think you know your metals? Play along!