Makes me laugh every time.

Direct Download: Episode 26 – Rambling Catharsis

00:00:00 The Paleopals may be crunched for time and resources but the drinking part of the show is important and taken care of. However, for the first time EVER the Paleopals are all drinking the same thing! Tune in to find out what liquid earned the honor.

00:02:51 The titular Science Heavyweight this week is Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. We talk to him about scientific outreach, what makes science exciting, and of course booze. (He’s also now on Twitter and hopes he isn’t tweeting to much, go reassure him, won’t you?)

00:32:21 The Paleopals needs to unwind after all the excitement of Dr. Tyson. They take a few minutes to reflect before moving on to…

00:35:16 Trailer Trash Talk!! It’s your favorite, and if not it should be. It’s a short on this week, but strong on content… sort of. This week is The Last Airbender.

00:43:06 Ryan represses the giggles as Patrick tries to tell him about bent wood on the international space station. Charlie chimes in (Cause he knows about this space stuff) and finally they design some projects of their own involving reality TV and chimps.

00:54:18 Double-wide PaleoPOW this week to make up for last week’s absence. Ryan is on top of it but the other dudes can barely remember a week ago (probably their rampant alcholism or the fact that they have real jobs, wives, lives, ect.) but they manage to pull it together enough to get the job done. Voicemail too, it really is a doozy this week.

This week’s show was sponsored by Color Storm! for the iPhone & iTouch.

Also last week’s Guest Brian Malow is performing in Santa Cruz with Planet Cruz, check it out!

Direct Download: Episode 25 – Science Heavyweights

Music this week provided by:

• Whiskey & Wine - Matt Costa
• Wonderboy - Tenacious D
• Another Girl Another Planet – blink-182
• Wave on Wave – Pat Green
• Bent – Matchbox Twenty

You never know what you’re gonna get with Science… sort of and this week it’s no exception. Somehow we lost segments and wound up with a longer than usual show, ain’t it whacky!?

Find more about Brian at his various homes on the web:

http://www.sciencecomedian.com/

http://twitter.com/sciencecomedian

Facebook Fan Page

and his incredible (just see the above image) insect photography at http://insectpaparazzi.com/

Books we mention:

• The Gods Themselves – Isaac Asimov
• Replay – Ken Grimwood
• Too Cool to Be Forgotten – Alex Robinson

Music this week provided by:

• The Final Countdown – Europe
• One More Time – Daft Punk
• Help, I’m Alive – Metric
• Queen Bee – Taj Mahal

Direct Download: Episode 24 – Hilarity Ensues

We’re sticking tight to a theme this week. CHANNEL your DISCOVERY of this week’s show with episode 23 – SHARK WEEK!!

Direct Download: Episode 23 – SHARK WEEK!!

00:00 – Ryan, Patrick and Charlie are settling into their roles as the standard paleopal permutation, recording once again in the same tower (err… empty classroom). NASA scientist Shawn Hart is our special guest this week and he complements the entire show. Ryan struggles with the drink… in a funny way not the ‘affecting friends and family’ sort of way. Patrick supports earthquake prone Eureka, CA with his brew selection. Charlie gets creeped out by his beer label. Shawn’s not much of a beer drinker but represents with a classic microbrew favorite.

6:36 – This week starts off science heavy with Shawn telling us all about the benevolent robot camera HiRISE. HiRISE, onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, circles Mars 300 km above the surface and takes pictures at submeter per pixel resolution. It makes one wonder what spy satellites can see on Earth. Find out why HiRISE is the peoples camera and how you can choose where on Mars it should look next. Here’s how to get involved:

• HiRISE: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/
• HiWish: http://www.uahirise.org/suggest/
• HiRISE Online image viewer: http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/
• HiRISE Image targeting Challenge: (this is an ongoing challenge since Spring 2007): http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/challenges/hirise/index.html
• HiRISE Clickworkers : http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top , http://hirise.seti.org/epo/

28:08 – Trailer Trash Talk – Think incessant phone calls from credit card collection agencies are bad? Try missing a payment on your cybernetically enhanced organs. Forest Whitaker and a beefy Jude Law will track you down and kill you. Is Repo Men good Scifi? Is any Scifi good? We hash it all out and more.

40:20 – Next we tread deep into the ‘Uncanny Valley’ – The Uncanny Valley is a pseudo-scientific concept that explains our repulsion to robots that look almost human but not quite. Check out the Popular Mechanics article. In a 1970 paper in the journal Energy, roboticist Masahiro Mori proposed that a robot that’s too human-like can veer into unsettling territory, tripping the same psychological alarms associated with a dead or unhealthy human. Does it really exist or are we being robot bigots? What is with all this anti-robot propaganda anyway? The paleopals get over there initial prejudices and greet creepy robots with open arms. Disclaimer: We still do not like zombies.

54:15 – Shawn’s one of those rare scientists with extensive right brain aptitude. His website, onehundredthmonkey, reveals his eye for aesthetics, art and culture. In his words, ‘this site is an outlet of rad stuff from around the world, and various diatribes and impassioned calls to action (generally not the serious kind). Hope you enjoy it.  …oh and if you’re wondering about the name one hundredth monkey, it’s some pseudoscience theory about crazy brainwaves communicating ideas across the ether.  Ya, don’t even worry about it.’ We paleopals frequent this site and we think the paleoposse would love it.

1:05:10 – Listener Feedback – We were featured on itunes! It ruled. We have a ton of new listeners and a ton of new feedback. Charlie fails at reading a bad review; Patrick succeeds. As it turns out, trailer trash is a whole lot like anchovies, radiolab is a good podcast, and, well, Charlie, Ryan and Patrick are hicks. Ryan reads off a list of the paleoposse elite – they have special prizes coming their way.

This weeks music can be found here:

• House Party – Chomp Chomp < Up and coming indie Band from Bellingham, WA–stay tuned
• High Roller – The Crystal Method
• Guns of Brixton – Nouvelle Vague
• Deceptacon – Le Tigre
• Where It’s At – Beck

Direct download: Ep_22__Science…_sort_of_-_Robot_all_too_robot.mp3

03:42 – We kick off the science this week with a story of a stranded red (planet) rover.  The spirit has finally left the little robot in a pile of sand.  Spirit still works, she just doesn’t get out as much as she used to.

00:13:30 – Trailer Trash Talk – This week we go down the rabbit hole to discuss the Disney/Tim Burton live action Alice in Wonderland. Apparently, this is an extension of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.  Best we can tell, Tim Burton just put the band back together.  Is that a good or a bad thing?  The Paleopals will set you straight.

21:56 – Dinosaurs were a colorful lot, at least according to this story.  Science finds evidence of coloration on dinosaur feathers.  Naturally, this news makes Ryan want a pet Velociraptor even more than he did.  We discuss melanosomes and whether pet theropods are a good idea or not.  Oh, they’re poisonous too, by the way.

36:34 – Tazmanian devils have cancer, so’s their face.  Wait it gets worse, it’s contagious (amongst the devils, not to humans).  As if Australia wasn’t deadly enough already.  The future doesn’t look bright for these guys.  Probably the best thing they can do have lots of sex with partners they aren’t likely to encounter in the first place.  That or quit biting each other.

41:33 – PaleoPOW. We give the Paleoposse their props and close out the show with some poll results on the ethical treatment of steak, I mean cows.

Bump Music this Week

Spinning Wheel -  Blood, Sweat, & Tears

I am the Walrus – The Beatles

Light as a Feather Polka -  Polkastra (More friends of ours, very nearly Grammy nominated but the Grammys dropped the polka category this year )

Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones

Thankyou (for loving me at my worst ) -  The Whitlams (Sorry, this one is an Australian import and as expensive as hell)

Direct download Ep 21

Stream the show

00:54:13 - Terribly Happy is a movie not many will likely be able to see or even want to see but it ties in to a later segment of the show and it’s all done in foreign talk. Has anyone even been to Dane-land? What’s so Great about Danes anyway? Why would you name both a dog and a pastry after them?