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Science Diction

Science Friday and WNYC Studios

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What does the word “meme” have to do with evolutionary biology? And why do we call it “Spanish flu” when it was never Spanish? Science Diction is a podcast about words—and the science stories within them. If you like your language with a side of science, Science Diction has you covered. Brought to you by Science Friday and WNYC Studios.
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Playing With Marbles

Vocal Fry Studios, Brain Canada

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Is your relationship with your brain a little... complicated? Playing with Marbles is about the complicated interplay between the brain and the rest of the body. We're investigating how the brain actually works, and how that affects who we are. We have healthy brains, dead brains, brains in jars, and brain power of incredible researchers, doctors, and everyday people. Come and find out what's going on with your marble... for science!
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Support If you’re struggling with your mental health, you’re not alone. If you are in immediate danger of harming yourself or others, call 9-1-1, or head to your nearest emergency room. You can also call or text 9-8-8 to reach the Suicide Crisis Helpline. Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Young people can chat anytime with Kids He…
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The term “dissociation” is a hot topic amongst those who study the brain. An example of dissociation that most of us can relate to is when you’re reading or scrolling through social media and you realize that your mind is elsewhere, that you haven’t actually absorbed the information in front of you. Some researchers have termed these momentary and …
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Diagnosis of personality disorders in youth is relatively new. Before the release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, version 5 (DSM-V), nobody under the age of 18 could receive a diagnosis of a personality disorder, mainly due to the transitional nature of personality in youth, and the degree of stigmatization attached to such a diagnosis. R…
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The definition of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has gone through many changes over the years. Interestingly, the criteria used to diagnose ADHD has actually become broader, encompassing a wider range of ages and a variety of different clinical presentations and symptoms. One thing that’s stayed the same since the release of the DS…
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Anxiety is one of the body’s natural responses to stress. When a person is met with an important event or perceived danger, anxiety can help them to react to that stressor. But when symptoms of anxiety are ongoing or severe, it’s a sign of an anxiety disorder. There are several types of anxiety disorders, with each subtype categorized by how anxiet…
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Being sad or feeling hopeless is a normal part of human existence appearing and disappearing and reappearing with the ebbs and flows of life. But when symptoms of a depressive episode last for more than two weeks, and begin to get in the way of one’s day-to-day life, that’s when a person meets the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder, or MDD, whi…
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Strap in for another exciting season of Playing With Marbles, brought to you by Brain Canada. In past seasons, we learned about all of the cool brain science research coming out of labs in Canada, from mini-brain organoids in petri dishes to women’s health beyond the bikini. We’ve taken a look at the brain at a microscopic level and learned how eac…
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Hey Science Diction listeners! We’re back to tell you about a brand new show from Science Friday. Universe Of Art is a podcast about artists who use science to take their creations to the next level. Hosted by SciFri producer and musician D. Peterschmidt, each episode of Universe Of Art will focus on a different artist (or scientist) about how scie…
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Let’s experience menopause, migraines, and Alzheimer's! Not exactly fun, we know, but they are very common complications of later life, so we’re going to get inside a brain that is experiencing them and show you exactly what’s going onn. We'll explore the benefits and risks of hormone replacement therapy and whether a cure for Alzheimer's is on the…
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Puberty, pregnancy, ovulation, even love… these are all things our body regulates with hormones, and brains love hormones. They are chemical messengers used by the body when one part wants to tell another what to do… and in this episode our protagonist’s brain is stewing in them like a squishy teabag. Follow the show: Twitter: @marblespod Instagram…
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For decades researchers used male bodies as the “default”, and this has led to huge research gaps in our understanding of womens’ brains. This lack of knowledge has real, sometimes deadly consequences when it comes to things like medication doses. So, we’re spending this season following one woman’s brain from birth to death and diving into what we…
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Season 2 of Playing with Marbles is coming Monday June 20th, and this time we’re focusing on the female brain, and what we do and don’t know about it. Scientists have been using male bodies as their “default” research subjects for a long time, so we’re going to take a long look at one woman’s brain, and figure out what we do and don’t know about it…
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Dear Science Diction listeners, It is with sadness that we announce the finale of the Science Diction podcast. Starting with a simple newsletter and a passionate audience, the Science Diction podcast grew to serve up episodes on topics as varied as meme, ketchup, and juggernaut. It has been a joy to share these stories with you for the last two yea…
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We have a favor to ask! We want to know more about what you like, what you don’t, and who you are—it’ll help us make better episodes of Science Diction. Please, take our brief survey. Thank you! At the turn of the 20th century, the American chestnut towered over other trees in Eastern forests. The trees would grow as much as 100 feet high, and 13 f…
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For decades, vocal fry lived a relatively quiet existence. It was known to linguists, speech pathologists and voice coaches, but everyday people didn’t pay much attention to it. But then in 2011, people started noticing it everywhere. So what happened? What is vocal fry? Why does host Johanna Mayer use it? What's her problem? And is it really that …
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In 2014, a grad student in Kolkata named Ujaan Ghosh came across an old book by a Scottish missionary. And as Ghosh paged through the book, he noticed the missionary kept using a word over and over: Juggernaut. But the missionary wasn’t using it the way we do today—to mean an unstoppable, overwhelming force. He was using it to talk about a place: a…
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Head on over to plainlanguage.gov, and you’ll find a helpful table, dedicated to simplifying and demystifying military jargon. On one side of the table, there’s the jargon term, and on the other, its plain language equivalent. “Arbitrarily deprive of life”? Actually just means “kill people.” “Render nonviable”? Also means “kill people.” “Terminate …
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When high schooler Gracie Cunningham posted a TikTok asking where algebra came from, she probably didn’t expect to become a viral sensation. There were the usual Twitter trolls, but some unexpected voices also began piping up, causing a flurry in the math world.Thank you to Chad, the listener who suggested that we do an episode on algebra. If you h…
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CORRECTION: In this episode, we say that there were only two names left on the 2021 list of Atlantic hurricane names until we resume use of the Greek alphabet letters. In March 2021, the World Meteorological Association decided to end the use of the Greek alphabet, and provided a list of supplementary names instead. This episode is a re-broadcast. …
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Sometimes to really find out how brains work you have to get too close for comfort, so we’re looking for brains that have escaped their warm, cozy skulls and made their way into jars and freezers. We even meet something that is very like a brain, but was never inside a skull in the first place. Not AI, but tissue, grown in a lab, for science. Follo…
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When something goes wrong with a brain we can’t just get under the hood and poke around. So how do we figure out what’s going wrong? Well sometimes the answer to that question involves watching monkeys watch TV, so we’re taking a trip to a monkey cinema, and along the way learning about the different ways to see inside your head and find faulty wir…
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Memories are fickle. They’re so important, but so ineffable.. So how do we make memories? And what types of memory are there? We’re finding out what actually happens when we upload something to our squishy storage system, and if there are any ways to hack our memories to be better. We might even be close to implanting new memories, or editing out o…
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Journalists Kevin McLean and Shalina Chatlani join us for a round of Diction Dash, where Johanna tries - and usually fails - to guess the true meaning or origin of a word. If you’re curious about a word, get in touch! Give us a call, leave a message, and we might play it on the show. The number is 929-499-WORD, or 929-499-9673. Or, you can always s…
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When Isabel Briggs Myers imagined that her homegrown personality test would change the world, she couldn’t have pictured this. Today, millions take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator each year. Countless organizations use it, from General Motors to the CIA. But there’s one field that mostly rolls its eyes at the test: psychology. In our final chapter,…
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At first, it seemed like Isabel Briggs Myers would have nothing to do with personality typology. That was her mother Katharine’s passion project, not hers. But when Isabel enters a tumultuous marriage, she discovers that her mother’s gospel of type might just be the thing to save it. In Chapter 2, Isabel picks up her mother’s work, and decides to t…
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If you’re one of the 2 million people who take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator every year, perhaps you thought Myers and Briggs are the two psychologists who designed the test. In reality, a mother-daughter team created the test essentially at their kitchen table. In this episode, we look at the unlikely origins of the Myers-Briggs, going all the w…
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Honeymoon: It just seems like a word that would have a lovely story behind it, doesn’t it? When a listener named Eric emailed us from Centerville, Ohio asking about the word, that’s what we were hoping to find. Instead, we found a more bittersweet origin stretching all the way back to an early modern poem. Plus: We take a look at what’s going on in…
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Every day we are learning more about the brain, but the challenges are complex and answers can’t come quickly enough. We are on a global quest to understand the brain and we believe that new ideas, tested through research and leading to innovation and discovery, will reduce the burden on our health care system and help us live happier, healthier li…
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In 1910, a fruit fly geneticist named Thomas Hunt Morgan noticed something strange in one of his specimens. Out of his many, many fruit flies—all with brilliant red eyes—a single fly had white eyes. This fruit fly turned out to be a very big deal. From those white eyes, Morgan eventually figured out that genes can be sex-linked, confirmed that gene…
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What pigment do we owe to the squid? And what do you name a teeny tiny octopus that’s cute as a button? In this episode of Diction Dash, we’re talking about those clever and often tentacled marine invertebrates: Cephalopods. Diana Montano, Science Friday’s resident trivia maestro, quizzes Johanna. But this time, Johanna calls in reinforcements—from…
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If you read the title of this episode and cringed, you’re not alone. At Merriam-Webster, editors and lexicographers receive countless letters grousing about the addition of certain words to the dictionary. And here at Science Diction, we get our fair share of emails pointing out our linguistic missteps. But the more you dig into the origins of word…
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How did a country's name end up inside the word, “serendipity"? And what’s a “syzygy"? And, more importantly, why does it have so many y’s? Over the past year, several listeners have written to us asking about these two words. Now, we answer—with a little help. Eli Chen and Justine Paradis join us for a round of Diction Dash, where Johanna tries (a…
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Last month, Science Diction received a letter from a listener named Ben. He wanted to know about ambergris, a strange substance that washes up on beaches from time to time. So today, we’re talking about this thing that for centuries, rich people coveted, rubbed on their necks, and even ate, all without having any idea what it really was. If they ha…
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