Episode Details

Learn about why natural selection favors superstitions; why the way our noses smell is way more complicated than we thought; and where scientists think 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object, came from. How natural selection favors superstitions by Cameron Duke Foster, K. R., & Kokko, H. (2008). The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276(1654), 31–37. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0981  Hájek, A. (2018). Pascal’s Wager (E. N. Zalta (Ed.)). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/index.htmlpascal-wager/index.html  Johnson, D. D. P., Blumstein, D. T., Fowler, J. H., & Haselton, M. G. (2013). The evolution of error: error management, cognitive constraints, and adaptive decision-making biases. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 28(8), 474–481. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2013.05.014  The way our noses smell is way more complicated than we thought by Cameron Duke Making sense of scents: 3-D videos reveal how the nose detects odor combinations. (2020, April 9). Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scents-d-videos-reveal-nose.html Xu, L., Li, W., Voleti, V., Zou, D.-J., Hillman, E. M. C., & Firestein, S. (2020). Widespread receptor-driven modulation in peripheral olfactory coding. Science, 368(6487). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaz5390  Chess, A., Simon, I., Cedar, H., & Axel, R. (1994). Allelic inactivation regulates olfactory receptor gene expression. Cell, 78(5), 823–834. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0092-8674(94)90562-2  Morrison, J. (2014). Human nose can detect 1 trillion odours. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2014.14904 The Scent of a Molecule. (2017, November 17). Science History Institute. https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/the-scent-of-a-molecule We might finally know the origin of the first known interstellar object 'Oumuamua by Grant Currin Origin of the first known interstellar object ’Oumuamua. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-04/caos-oot041220.php  ‌In Depth | Oumuamua – NASA Solar System Exploration. (2019, December 19). NASA Solar System Exploration. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/asteroids-comets-and-meteors/comets/oumuamua/in-depth Davis, N. (2020, April 13). Interstellar object ‘Oumuamua believed to be ‘active asteroid.’ The Guardian; The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/apr/13/interstellar-object-oumuamua-believed-to-be-active-asteroid  PSRD: Active Asteroids. (2019). Hawaii.edu. http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/May19/active-asteroids.html  Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY  See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information.