ArchiveFM

We play some never-released tape from the vault, and reveal a bit about what techniques we used to try and make it sing.  
Duration
30m
Broadcast on
09 Sep 2008
Audio Format
other

We play some never-released tape from the vault, and reveal a bit about what techniques we used to try and make it sing.

 


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WNYC Studios is supported by WISE. WISE, the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the world. With a WISE account, you can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies, with only a few simple taps. Be smart, get WISE. Download the WISE app today. Terms and conditions apply. Radialab is supported by AT&T. We all love to connect via video calls or texts. Right now, at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with iPhone trade-in, any condition. It has the ultimate pro-camera system and big leap in battery life so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Learn how you can trade in your iPhone for the new iPhone 18 Pro, requires trade-in of iPhone 14 or higher, excluding iPhone 16E, an eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change, visit an AT&T store for details. This is Radialab, the podcast, and we're working busily on season 5. We thought, "Wow, we do that. We would bring you a little extra." So, we very recently went to the Cushland Science Museum, run by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. to talk to an audience. There were a bunch of scientists there, but they weren't all scientists. No, they were mostly just people. And we asked those just people to consider three very puzzling radio questions that we have every time we put our show together. So, here is that conversation. So, we figure since this is a science place, you guys are probably science-inclined folk. We would talk about some of the troubles that we run into when we talk about science or try to. Problems like density, like unfriendliness of ideas, but they're great ideas, but how do you somehow make them friendly to people who maybe don't like or don't know that they like science? So, we're going to kind of go through some of our favorite problem-solving techniques. We have hurdles. The most obvious hurdle is when you step into a room to have a conversation with someone who is smart, knowledgeable, very knowledgeable actually, and articulate, and they start talking and you think in the back of your mind, "Uh-oh." And they write papers like, which is going to be the subject of our first clip, selective silencing of cell communication and how it influences interior, posterior pattern formation and sea elegance, which is a heavy collection of words. It's like heavy, like a, like a hippo, which is a, which is a wonderful animal, but heavy. And so, I think one of our, our goals is to take the hippo and strap on some ballet shoes and make it do appear wet. So, here is an example. What you're going to hear is a woman named Cynthia Kenyon, brilliant scientist. She's talking about a little worm that she has, she has figured out she's done something to the worm that allows the worm to live longer than the worm would ordinarily live, not just a little longer, but like twice as long. So, just imagine that you're the one holding the mic, and this is what you hear. The DAF16 gene makes a protein called the DAF16 protein, and that protein binds to the DNA where other genes are, and it, it activates a whole bunch of other genes. So, the way it works is that the hormone binds to the DAF2 receptor, and when that happens, DAF2 receptor kind of squashes the activity of DAF16, it turns it down, okay? So, DAF16 can't bind to its genes in the DNA and make them more active, okay? So, when you come along with a mutation or some other way, and you inhibit the activity of the receptor, now you liberate DAF16, it's free, it springs into action, and it activates about 100 genes in the DNA, and these 100 genes each do a little tiny good thing for the cell. Okay, so, you're sitting there going, oh yeah, you see. As if you know what she's saying. No, I do, I do know what she's saying, but it's interesting, like you're scanning somebody talking like that, and you know, you're hearing the right, you're hearing squish, I think she said squish, I think she said spring. Liberate, she said liberate. Liberate, yeah, so her verbs are very, very useful to me. It's these nouns. DAF2, DAF16. All right, so what do you do with a thing like that? What we've done here is we've used the verbs, we're happy with the verbs, but we've amplified

Transcription truncated.

We play some never-released tape from the vault, and reveal a bit about what techniques we used to try and make it sing.