We Have Concerns

GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcernsThe Cannonball Run is a simple, and highly illegal, record that despite having no governing body, is infamous within car culture.  To set a Cannonball Run record, you must traditionally start at the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan, then traverse the entire United States of America as fast as possible to finish at the Portofini Inn in Redondo Beach, California.  And now, thanks to open freeways during the COVID19 quarantine, that record has been broken 7 times in 5 weeks.  Anthony and Jeff talk about what it takes to undertake such a feat, and, of course, Burt Reynolds. Then, physicist Stephen Wolfram has published a new paper about a path forward for discovering a fundamental a theory of the universe - and it sounds a lot like a computer program.  Jeff and Anthony work their way through this dense concept and get excited about the possibilities it entails.Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it o

(Sorry about the slight buzz in Anthony's audio this week. OUR BAD)A team of researchers injected human stem cells into mouse embryos. Just over two weeks later, the team had more mature mouse embryos that contained up to 4% human cells.  These cross-species hybrids, called chimeras, are the first time anyone has been able to create an animal that was made up of as many human cells as these mice. Anthony and Jeff talk about how much human is too human for animals, and whether they'd take a heart from a chimera.  Then, a new study, published  in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology argues that beard hair could collectively diffuse the force of a blow and so may have evolved in response to the need to win male-male battles.  Jeff and Anthony, erstwhile beard growers themselves, discuss the usefulness of a beard in a fight, and whether the science bears out.GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://w

A University of Saskatchewan (USask) research team has uncovered how bats can carry the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus without getting sick—research that could shed light on how coronaviruses make the jump to humans and other animals.  Anthony and Jeff discuss why is could have been bats all along, and how we can get that menace out of all of our gotham cities.  Then, a 32-year-old marketer took sheltering in place to the next level when he became trapped in a California ghost town he recently purchased. The problem is: there’s no running water and a snowstorm has him trapped.  Jeff and Anthony decide whether they could be in a haunted place for weeks, and what the best price is for a 22 building sized town.  GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shopHey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen.

If we are all inaccurate perception machines, fallible even in our own ability to process and recall events we experienced, then surely our language should represent how unknowable all things are, right?  Enter E-Prime, a version of the English language that eliminates any form of the verb 'to be'.  Jeff and Anthony discuss how valuable or annoying this could be.  Then, most people see splashes of colors and flashes of light on a not-quite-jet-black background when their eyes are closed. It’s a phenomenon called phosphene, and it and it is because our eyes and brains don’t shut off when denied light.  Anthony and Jeff talk about what they see when their eyes are closed, and why it is important.GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcernsGet all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shopHey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen.Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/

There are more than 2,000 active satellites orbiting Earth. At the end of their useful lives, some will continue circling as "zombie" satellites — neither alive nor quite dead. Steve Tilley, an amateur radio operator living in Canada, has a passion for hunting them down.  Jeff and Anthony discuss his discoveries and whether he deserves the title of Badass.  Then, tales of people being killed by meteorite impacts date back to biblical times. But few deaths, if any, have been documented. Now, Turkish researchers have uncovered the earliest evidence that a meteorite killed one man and paralyzed another when it slammed into a hilltop in what is now Iraq in August 1888.  Anthony and Jeff talk about the odds of that happening, and their own irrational fears.GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcernsGet all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shopHey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever servi

Screens, social media, and the internet... it's destroying the minds of young people, right? Well, a new study aims to answer that very question by comparing kid behavior from 2010 to kid behavior in 1998. Anthony and Jeff discuss the results, and whether the worry is more about the parents than the children. And it isn't often an entire new field of science is invented, but Leda Kobziar of the University of Idaho did just that. Jeff and Anthony learn about pyroaerobiology, and how it might revolutionize our understanding of the world. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Jeff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffcannata Anthony on Twitter: http://tw

Birds. No one likes them. But how can they balance like they do, perched on wires and branches? It turns out scientists have only recently discovered an avian lumbrosacral organ - literally a second balancing mechanism, in the lower spine of birds. Anthony and Jeff try to make sense of this new discovery and sort through their distrust of birds. And it turns out an entire country of readers has been reading a wildly different version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Icelandic translation has only recently been discovered to be divergent from the original in major ways. Jeff and Anthony look into how that could have happened and try to decide if it is cool or diabolical. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns An

Biologists at Tufts University, Douglas Blackiston and Michael Levin have created all programmable organisms called xenobots — golems dreamed in silicon and then written into flesh. The implications of their existence could spill from artificial-intelligence research to fundamental questions in biology and ethics. Jeff and Anthony discuss how these new entities came to be and what they could mean for the future. And new footage has revealed a trailing ribbon of conjoined tentacled clones sweeping the ocean off the coast of Australia. Known in some regions as the "long stringy stingy thingy", siphonophores blur the line between organ and organism. They somehow manage to be both at once. Anthony and Jeff decide if these is one creature and a series of connected ones, and how they contribute to our understanding of the bizarre ecosystem of the deep. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://we

An Australian astrophysicist and research fellow at a Melbourne university injured himself by attempting to invent a device that stops the coronavirus outbreak. Anthony and Jeff discuss the perils and pluck of attempting to help, even outside your own area of expertise. And people living by the East Yorkshire coast were warned about hungry seagulls left wanting by lack of visitors with the country on lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. Jeff and Anthony examine the impact of social distancing on animals, and keep their watchful eye on the vicious pranking pranksters of the sky... birds. They end the show with a story from Anthony about finding hope and connection in the least likely of circumstances. JOIN OUR DISCORD, GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. He

The Patreon: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns The Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WeHaveConcerns/ Anthony on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acarboni Jeff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffcannata

Thanks so much for sticking with us for 600 episodes! We take a look back at what made us laugh (and learn!). In this episode, we introduce the greatest character in the show's history. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORLD CRIME LEAGUE 1920 Hillhurst Ave #425 Los Angeles, CA 90027-2706 Jeff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffcannata Anthony on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acarboni If you’ve seen a story you think belongs on the show, send it to wehaveconcernsshow@gmail.com, post in on our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/WeHaveConcerns/ or leave it on the subreddit: http://

The sheer abundance of stars in the universe suggests that, somewhere, an intelligent lifeform should be warming itself on a distant planet. Even if life evolves rarely, ET should be phoning. Yet, by all appearances, humanity seems to be flying solo in our galaxy, and perhaps the universe. Many solutions have been proposed to solve this riddle, known as the Fermi Paradox. Researchers of Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute believe It’s likely intelligent life doesn’t exist at all, outside of Earth. Jeff and Anthony think we're lacking supporting evidence of such. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: W

Bees seem to understand the idea of zero – the first invertebrate shown to do so. When the insects were encouraged to fly towards a platform carrying fewer shapes than another one, they apparently recognised “no shapes” as a smaller value than “some shapes”. Jeff and Anthony zero in on the topic. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORLD CRIME LEAGUE 1920 Hillhurst Ave #425 Los Angeles, CA 90027-2706 Jeff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffcannata Anthony on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acarboni Today’s story: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142884-bees-are-first-insects-shown-to-unders

If you could taste human flesh in an ethical way, would you? A man was recently in a motorcycle crash that put him face-to-face with the macabre hypothetical. When a car hit his bike and sent him careening into a nearby forest, his foot was shattered to the point that he would never walk on it again. When the doctor asked if he wanted to amputate, his one question was, “Can I keep it?” He invited his closest friends for a very personal dinner. Jeff and Anthony make a pact. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORLD CRIME LEAGUE 1920 Hillhurst Ave #425 Los Angeles, CA 90027-2706 Jeff on Twitte

The Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous and compelling psychological studies of all time, told us a tantalizingly simple story about human nature. This experiment has been included in many, many introductory psychology textbooks and is often cited uncritically. But its findings were wrong. Very wrong. And not just due to its questionable ethics or lack of concrete data — but because of deceit. Jeff and Anthony try the experiment out for themselves and flip a coin to see who gets to be the guard. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORLD CRIME LEAGUE 1920 Hillhurst Ave #425 Los

Hawaii's big island recently got a little bit hairier. Golden filaments resembling human hair measuring up to two feet in length are draped across parts of the island—an unusual effect of the ongoing eruption from Kīlauea volcano. These strands may look like biological matter, but they’re actually made of glass. Jeff and Anthony look into discount Hawaiian vacation packages. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORLD CRIME LEAGUE 1920 Hillhurst Ave #425 Los Angeles, CA 90027-2706 Jeff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffcannata Anthony on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acarboni Today’s story was

Did climate change already kill all the aliens we've been searching for? According to astrophysicist Adam Frank, it's certainly a possibility — and whether humans are doomed to the same fate may already be out of our hands. Jeff and Anthony once again consider the repercussions of running the air conditioner during a recording session. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORLD CRIME LEAGUE 1920 Hillhurst Ave #425 Los Angeles, CA 90027-2706 Jeff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffcannata Anthony on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acarboni Today’s story: https://www.livescience.com/62750-climate-c

In 2015, a psychologist in Italy figured out how to induce a drug-free altered state of consciousness by asking 20 volunteers to sit and stare into each other's eyes for 10 minutes straight. Not only did the deceptively simple task bring on strange 'out of body' experiences for the volunteers, it also caused them to see hallucinations of monsters, their relatives, and themselves in their partner's face. Jeff and Anthony have been recording this podcast for years, facing each other. We finally have an explanation for some of the more unhinged episodes. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORL

NASA is talking to several international companies about forming a consortium that would take over operation of the International Space Station and run it as a commercial space lab, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in an interview. The White House touched off a heated discussion about the future of the orbiting laboratory earlier this year when it said it planned to end direct government funding of the station by 2025, while working on a transition plan to turn the station over to the private sector. Jeff and Anthony are appropriately frustrated. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WO

It turns out those gut feelings or pits in your stomach may actually come from your second brain. Scientists from Australia have discovered that human beings have a second brain, and it is located in the butt. Called the enteric nervous system (ENS), it controls the muscle movement in the colon independently of the central nervous system. Jeff and Anthony try to make it through the episode without butting heads. GET BONUS EPISODES, VIDEO HANGOUTS AND MORE. VISIT: http://patreon.com/wehaveconcerns Get all your sweet We Have Concerns merch by swinging by http://wehaveconcerns.com/shop Hey! If you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate/review it on whatever service you use to listen. Here’s the iTunes link: http://bit.ly/wehaveconcerns And here’s the Stitcher link: http://bit.ly/stitcherwhconcerns Or, you can send us mail! Our address: We Have Concerns c/o WORLD CRIME LEAGUE 1920 Hillhurst Ave #425 Los Angeles, CA 90027-2706 Jeff on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffcannata Anthony on Twitter: http://t