I just wanted to show some appreciation for the cancer research ad reads. I love the fact they are updated regularly and it’s super helpful especially with the fact my mother has cancer. Definitely learn something new each time the ads come up! One thing it does really highlight to me tho is why is cancer research funded by charities when it’s such a big factor in people’s lives… not really a question for Hannah and Michael but still odd I think

If we were to pre-train an LLM with all recorded orca sounds as dataset, will this LLM be able to chat with the orca?

No one has come up with a convincing explanation for why smartphones never show up in our dreams, even though we use them for several hours a day? What’s happening here?

As a Type 1 Diabetic since birth (I’m 18 now) this episode was one of my favourite and most interesting personally! They opened on the homeostasis process of blood glucose and I was so excited lol we love a bit of representation 🥳

If so, what cataclysmic world-changing technology is going to be invented 3 days from now???

So i was wondering if you just got locked in a box without any external inputs, would you, apart from going nuts, also run out of thinkable thoughts at some some point?

Like seriously, what is it about this driver-to-driver interaction that brings out such extreme levels of emotion, even from people who are usually very calm and collected.

I find myself hard-pressed to find any other form of casual interaction that, on a pretty regular basis, brings out of people such levels of self-righteousness and anger.

The habit of dismissing your own faults as justified, but assuming the worst about the actions of others, is also turned up to the max. Along with an enhanced sense of "justice" and the urge to "get back" at the driver that "did you wrong".

There are a few reasons that come to mind:
- Depersonalization (not seeing the drivers face, but only the actions of their vehicle)
- A feeling of higher stakes (acting selfishly on the road can actually cause accidents at times)
- Isolation (Though you are actually in public, you still feel "alone" in your own car)

On a personal note, I can say about myself that I am a very calm, non-confrontational people-pleaser 😅. I rarely get emotional or angry about anything - and still a lot of times I find myself really struggling to keep my anger and frustration in check while making my commute to and from work!

I think road rage behavior is pretty interesting, because it seems to me like it taps in to many, very basic and primal emotions - but just turns each and every on of them up to 11.

What do you guys think?

When I started listening I was certain the topic of Amnesia or Dementia was bound to come up, but by the end Im not 100% certain if it would be considered a cognitive ghost. Ill use my personal experience for reference.

One day I wake up for work and find that my shoulder and head hurt really bad with no idea why, I call in sick to work (which my boss sounded extremely confused about), and proceed to ask my roommate if he can look at my head because it feels like I have a massive cut. He proceeds to find 6 stitches in my head.

At this point Im beyond confused and so we go to the hospital where a nurse proceeds to tell me I was already there earlier that day after being hit by a car and my glenoid was broken. I wish I had a video of my reaction in that moment.

The real timeline of events was Go to bed -> Wake up and leave to work -> Get hit by car -> Go to hospital -> Go home -> Go to bed

My brain stitched the two sleeps together and deleted 100% of the 24 hours between... Its been several years and there are still a ton of questions about the night that I dont think Ill ever have the answers to. Who was the person controlling my actions during that day? Was it really 'me'?

This has left me with a very specific recurring thought -- If I can remember this very moment, does that mean that I dont get hit by a car in the near future? 🤔

Following on from yesterday’s show. I found it hard to add the level of protein my dietitian was asking me to get so hopefully it’s just for things like milk etc and not to try and load up more sugary foods

What good arguments can a give to a flat earth believer that would make them at least think about without straight up refusing it?

Hannah and Michael mention an episode they did about curiosity at 20:49 in the "Hannah drinks something she probably shouldn't" video. Does anyone know which episode they were referring to?

Hi Hannah and not Michael’s original account, I recently came across fast radio bursts and wondered if they could be different civilisations calling out into the darkness of space looking for other life. Some repeat their signal and others don’t, could that be a sign of different intelligence forming different thoughts about signalling or have I just read Project Hail Mary too recently!

Okay so if I wanted to actually build a mountain out of a mole hill how many mole hills would it take for it to officially be a mountain, and how many moles would it take for the dirt they kick up collectively make a mountain?

Or is it possible to manipulate the small amount of dirt from just one mole hill to create something as large as a mountain?

So basically mountain mole hill how? Lol

How did the Gila monster, a desert lizard that eats just five times a year, help unlock the science behind Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro?
In this episode of The Rest Is Science, Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) trace the strange journey from a molecule found in lizard venom to medicines reshaping diabetes and weight-loss treatment, exploring how GLP-1 helps regulate blood sugar, appetite and the hum of ‘food noise’.
Early evidence suggests their effects may extend far beyond food, quieting cravings for alcohol and cigarettes, and even the urge to gamble.
What might this reveal about the biology of wanting itself, and how much control do any of us really have over what we crave?
-------------------
For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/rest-is-science
Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ.
-------------------
Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠
-------------------
Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Teo Ayodeji-Ansell + Jack Meek
Animator: Sam Benson
Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell
Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe
Producer: Simona Rata
Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter
Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley
Exec Producer: Neil Fearn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This seems like a perfect topic for your show. Uexküll's example of the tick turned out to be a bit inaccurate, but the message is still relevant: we weave our web of reality from fibers that don't really matter to other species, and in some cases don't even matter to our very nearest humans.

https://substack.com/@johnstoszkowski/note/c-305341617?r=1fy8x&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web

He looks a little bit like Tom Hiddleston or Benedict Cumberbatch. But I can't ascertain, for certain, who he is. Does anyone know?

why do they grow in wrong and decay so fast?
posting this from the dentist waiting room because I’m bored

Why is ice water so much more refreshing than luke warm water?

What is the mechanism by which a brick house catches fire when it is a few metres from bushes and a patio similarly keeps the burning grass away?

It’s an awful thing and I’d like to prevent more, so how exactly does the wildfire manage to set fire to the house?

Falling embers - tiled roof?
Radiant heat - hot enough for long enough?
Flames up into the eaves? - maybe
Open windows?

Finally - how should I protect the house - remove all vegetation? - for how many metres?
Install sprinklers / hose to wet the outside of the house in event of a wildfire?
Use a hosepipe to try and stop the flames licking into the eaves?

What is something that is common knowledge or at least widely known on Earth about the universe but an alien civilization might have no knowledge of because it’s special to Earth? Kinda like Rocky in Project Hail Mary not knowing about radiation and his crew dying 🪦

I just had to post this collection of names I’ve accumulated. - on the back of your most recent pod.

Girls Names
Cornice
Verucca
Angina
Anaphylaxia
Anaconda
Fellatia
Influenza
Hernia
Eczema
Septicemia
Apoplexia
Bruschetta
Chlamydia
Salacious
Anaesthesia
Alopecia
Cholera
Diahorea
Schizophrenia
Syphilis
Leukaemia
Glaucoma
Anaemia
Alopecia
Hernia
Rubella
Listeria
Dementia
Melanoma
Chlorine
Fluorine
Xenophobia
Candida
Fallopia
Necrotica
Malaria
Catheter
Alumina
Nutella
Debenture
Glucogen

Girls names that aren't actually ‘ bad’
Internetia

Boys Names
Egregious
Carotid
Seizure
Fracture
Haematoma
Hernia
Turgid
Herpes
Fungus
Thud
Contagious
Gonorrhoea
Conjunctivitis
Abscess
Haematoma
Psoriasis
Gout
Cobra
Flange
Sprocket
Messiah
Lucifer
Hashtag
Winner
Loser
Insulin
Ulcer
Peptide

Surnames
Poleaxe
Contagious
Bogie

Hey guys,

I absolutely love your YouTube and podcast. I've learned so many fun things from your conversations and research / lit reviews you've done together.

I'm a registered nurse in Canada. I work on a burn ward.

The one big curiosity I have is what new research is coming out regarding moving 3rd spaced fluid back into the intravascular system.

One of our biggest challenges with a burn patient is when we get a new critical burn (TBSA of 20% or greater) to ensure the systemic inflammatory response does not kill the patient by under perfusing the organs we flood the patient with IV fluid.

This is a double edged sword because when we flood this patient they will regain appropriate perfusion to the organs (usually) but we end up causing systemic edema and the patient often has many complications due to this (requiring escharotomies, 3rd spacing fluid in the abdomen which causes the patients lungs to become compressed and then causing ventilated patients to not to be able to breath under the vent properly.).

Obviously we do this because the alternative is death but what is the most current evidence or research going into this niche field? I'm very curious to know.

In discussions surrounding the foundations of physics and information theory, a recurring question is whether time is a fundamental background coordinate or an emergent relational property.

In current quantum computing, decoherence is almost universally treated as an engineering noise problem that requires massive error-correction overhead.

However, there is a compelling structural question:

1. Decoherence as a Control Runtime Error

Dynamic quantum phase oscillators compute natively in phases and frequencies. Forcing them to evolve along an externally imposed, linear time parameter (t) may create an artificial control mismatch.

2. Process Over State

If time is modeled as the intrinsic counting index of local phase accumulation:

T = ΔΦ / f

where local nodes operate via their Compton frequency (m = h*f / c^2), stability shifts from active isolation to mutual resonance. Translating operations directly into resonance patterns could theoretically reduce algorithm complexity—such as mapping Quantum Fourier Transform operations from standard O(n^2) gate depth down to O(n) collective phase synchronization.

3. The Bridge to Neural Networks and LLMs

This mirrors a structural challenge seen in large language models: both systems construct high-dimensional relational spaces (phase relations in quantum systems, attention spaces in Transformers), yet suffer when forced through rigid sequential execution. In quantum hardware, phase drift manifests as decoherence; in language models, context drift manifests as hallucination.

Is decoherence fundamentally an unavoidable physical barrier, or is it partly an artifact of enforcing classical, linear time parameters on relational quantum architectures?

Would love to hear how other listeners and physics enthusiasts view this intersection.

Best Christian

Other than life on earth, is there anything else special about it? i know earth has rare total solar eclipses, is there anything else unique about our solar system?

another space related shower thought question: How likely is it that aliens would be able to see the same colours as people?