Beyond the Uncanny Valley
The far side of the uncanny valley rises steeply, assaulting our psyche as our artificial human likenesses creep ever closer toward perfection. But what happens when we actually emerge on the other si...
6 Apr 201752min
Into the Uncanny Valley
From bad CGI characters to creepy humanoid robots, everyone knows the uncanny valley effect when they see it. But where did this idea come from and to what extent is it actually a thing? Join Robert a...
4 Apr 201759min
Sexbots: From Objectification to Therapeutic Surrogates
Sex between humans and machines is nothing new in the world of science fiction. Their forms range from angelic mechanoids to victimized humanoids, but the robotic lover is almost always an expression ...
30 Mar 201755min
Fertility, Ovulation and Consumer Decision Making
For 50 percent of the population, ovulation plays a role in human behavior -- but to what extent? Marketing researcher and social psychologist Kristina Durante contends that ovulation plays a large ro...
28 Mar 20171h 5min
Be a Better Guesser With Fermi Estimation
How many eyeballs are in the jar? How many piano tuners ply their trade in Chicago and how many intelligent alien civilizations await us in the universe? These questions might seem overwhelming, but F...
23 Mar 20171h 19min
Far Below: The London Underground Mosquito
Unnatural tunnels worm and weave their way beneath centuries of accumulated London sprawl, and here a few natural creature assume unnatural behaviors -- including the humble mosquito. For wherever hum...
21 Mar 201749min
Two Minutes To Midnight: The Doomsday Clock
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists continues to calculate humanity’s countdown to annihilation, but who calculates the doomsday clock and what factors bring us closer to midnight? Robert and Christ...
16 Mar 201756min
The Necessity of Patient Zero
Patient zero looms large in our collective consciousness. Through carelessness, impropriety or sheer twisted luck, they introduce highly contagious pathogens into new human populations -- if not the h...
14 Mar 201755min
