Science Friday7 Sep 2018

Tick Repellents, Robot Relationships. Aug. 7, 2018, Part 1

If you were given a robot and asked to break it, would you do it? The amount of Furby destruction videos on Youtube suggest it wouldn’t be that hard. But that’s not true for all robots. According to researchers, knowing more about a robot or bonding with it can make you hesitant to harm it. And if the bond between you and a robot is strong enough, you might even go out of your way to protect it. Kate Darling, robot ethicists from the MIT Media Lab, and Heather Knight, robotics researcher from Oregon State University, join Ira to talk about how we become attached to robots, and how this relationship can even influence our behavior.

Plus, our spinoff podcast, Undiscovered, is back! Hosts Elah Feder and Annie Minoff chat about the upcoming season, and give us a sneak preview of the first episode. Can't wait? Listen to the trailer here.

With Lyme disease on the rise, New Hampshire is asking the EPA to speed up the approval process for tick repellant. New Hampshire Public Radio's Annie Ropeik joins Ira to tell us more.

And Gizmodo's Ryan Mandelbaum tells us the top science headlines in this week's News Round-up.

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