In this episode of YS, co-hosts Matt Smith and Brian Cross take on the tiniest assassins and the wanderlust of the North Pole. They say "Leggo My LIGO" in another installment of Disappearing Science...and they utilize their full, combined brainpower to decry the unscientific silliness of "Lucy" (the 2014 film) in the newest go-round of Yackety Science Ruins the Movies. And finally, geologist Claude Bolze stops by to talk trilobites, rock hunting, and the only "natural" way to cross the Arkansas River.
Got a question, comment, or correction? Yack right back at us at YacketyScience@gmail.com.
Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessed through FreeMusicArchive.org.; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Production help provided by PRT's Scott Gregory.
Yackety Science is recorded at the studios of Public Radio Tulsa, Kendall Hall, The University of Tulsa, and at the Center for Creativity at Tulsa Community College.
Links:
True Polar Wander:
True Polar Wander Driven by Artificial Water Impoundment: 1835–2011 by Valencic et al. (Geophysical Letters, May 23, 2025)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL115468
Bacterial Assassins:
Antagonism as a foraging strategy in microbial communities by Stubbusch et al. (Science, June 12, 2025)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr8286
Disappearing Science:
LIGO Information from Caltech
‘Killing a newborn baby’: Cuts to LIGO would devastate gravitational wave astronomy
Geological Opportunities:
Tulsa Rock and Mineral Show: July 12 and 13
https://tulsarockandmineralsociety.org/
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