I spoke with Mark Witton for our episode about how paleontologists know what giant pterosaurs looked like. (He was also a co-author on the T-Rex lips paper that we covered in a short last year!) Here's what he had to say about how the Jurassic World movies affect his work as a science communicator.
Check out Mark's il...
2025-06-26 14:00:14 +0000 UTC View PostI had to delve into some animations from a year ago (!) for an episode of the Patreon-affiliated podcast "Digital Spaghetti" (coming out later this month I believe!) ... and so I decided to record a brief behind-the-scenes video.
I detail the frankly gratuitous steps I took in After Effects to try and make a flat shot of Cleo Abram look as three dimensional as possible for the opening of our episode on dog vision.
2025-06-17 12:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostIn this video (and the attached pdf) we take a look at what your generous support has made possible -- and what's to come.
2025-06-09 22:24:58 +0000 UTC View PostWe had a fascinating discussion about therapy and AI this week, hooked on this paper that compared responses from therapists to responses from ChatGPT. Thanks to all who contributed!
Join our Discord to suggest papers for future sessions!
2025-06-03 21:28:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Howtown's Science Paper Book Club meets on Monday, June 2 at noon ET. (Click here for your local time).
A reddit post from a month ago says "ChatGPT has helped me more than 15 years of therapy. No joke." Meanwhile a Rolling Stone 2025-05-26 20:04:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Hello all - Can you believe it's been nearly a year since we published our trailer?
Our latest episode is a collaboration with our old colleague Johnny Harris. He's spent the last few months investigating the fight over deep sea "nodules" — little potato sized nuggets of important metals (cobalt, nickel, copper) that carpet the sea floor. The "Law of the Sea" (which sounds like pirate code but was adopted via UN treaty by most nations in 1994) has so far prevented companies from col...
I spend the last month immersed in reports from the HMS Challenger Expedition - an incredible three year journey to explore the world's oceans. All 50 volumes the expedition produced are available via the Biodiversity Heritage Library, and they are chock full of incredible illustrations. Needless to say, I've bee...
I called up Peter Cook, a cognitive scientist and professor of Marine Mammal Science at the New College of Florida to talk about a special sea lion named Ronan. His study, published recently in Nature Scientific Reports, pits Ronan against 10 undergraduate students at UC Santa Cruz in a test of beat keeping.
<... 2025-05-09 12:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostBig thanks to Marcos for helping out with this one! Continue the discussion on Discord, and here's the paper in case you missed it.
2025-05-05 22:19:37 +0000 UTC View PostBig news for us to chew on, folks! A team of researchers at Cambridge University made headlines around the world last week when they announced the "the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system."
The planet, K2-18b, is 124 light-years away from us, too far to observe directly. So what can their telescope really see? And how confident can we ...
2025-04-25 22:45:01 +0000 UTC View PostHi folks,
Today we have an 18-minute feature video about how lasers are uncovering an ancient Maya megalopolis. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
I relished working on this one because it's a delightful example of how advancements in basic rese...
Adam and I often talk about being haunted by the "russian dolls" in our video scripts. In each piece, we explain "how they know" some things, while other things we just assert as fact. Otherwise every video would fracture and spiral as we chase down the bottom dolls.
See, for airborne lidar to work, you need to know: 1. the speed of light, 2. the location of the plane on the planet, 3. the pitch/yaw/roll of the plane, 4. how to detect photons at nanosecond scale, and 5. how to make a be...
2025-04-17 12:00:19 +0000 UTC View PostWe start with a paper that picks apart "Blue Zones" (places where a surprising number of people live a really long time) ... and end up tackling the converging crises of AI and birth rates. But we keep it fun!
You can find more discussion on our Discord, or feel free to add comments here. Our next session will be on May 5!
2025-04-09 21:49:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey howtownies! At the end of 2024 I came across a paper that showed where various pieces of the earth's surface were 1.8 billion years (and a couple supercontinents) ago. It was fun to imagine being able to walk from Canada to Australia - but it got me wondering ... how do scientists figure all this out? We answer that question in our new episode!2025-03-31 20:53:43 +0000 UTC
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Back in December, a pastor from Colorado named Will Duffy led an expedition of "Flat Earthers" and "Globers" to Antarctica. His goal was to try and confirm the true shape of the earth (and take down the Flat Earth movement) by capturing video of the 24-hour sun. You can watch a bunch of videos about the trip at https://www.youtube.com/@The-Final-Experiment. I'll be honest, I was a little skeptical o...
2025-03-11 17:51:03 +0000 UTC View PostYou can find more discussion on our Discord, or feel free to add comments here. Our next session will be on April 7!
Here's the paper in case you missed it ...
2025-03-04 16:05:59 +0000 UTC View PostHere with some updates and a fresh link to our new feature video: I tried to prove I'm not AI, in which I attempt, with mixed success, to take an authenticated selfie.
This video kicks the tires of "C2PA," a new open-source sys...
2025-02-21 19:20:46 +0000 UTC View PostWhile working on our new video about authenticating content, I uploaded our AI-related YouTube comments to Notebook LM and told it a little bit about our channel. Here's what "they" had to say. *
*I generated two versions of this and edited them down to this excerpt.
2025-02-21 17:58:36 +0000 UTC View PostHey Howtowners, we've been thinking about if/how our channel should be covering the new administration in the US. We know that the majority of our audience lives outside this country. We also know that some of the policy changes happening now will not withstand scrutiny from the courts.
At the same time, we don't want to ignore what is shaping up to be massive changes in how the US government approaches research and data, not to mention the broader rejection of the small-d democratic n...
2025-02-11 18:22:49 +0000 UTC View PostYou can find more discussion on our Discord, or feel free to add comments here. Our next session will be on March 3!
2025-02-03 23:27:14 +0000 UTC View Post
We hope you'll join us on Monday (Feb 3, noon-1 EST) to talk about some of the weird and surprising effects of drugs like Ozempic. We'll send out a link to the google meeting in a few days.
What's the paper?
It's a review paper that found some evidence that these types of drugs (...
2025-01-27 23:11:51 +0000 UTC View PostHappy New Year Howtowners!
It's "Dry January," and so this week we took a look at the sobering and sometimes confusing world of alcohol research. If you've ever been confused about contradictory stream of headlines about moderate drinking - we hope our latest episode brings some clarity.
Last week we hosted...
Big thanks to everyone who joined our first monthly journal club! Everyone raised really apt questions and it was a much richer conversation than if Adam and I had done it alone.
You can find more discussion on our Discord, or feel free to add comments here. Our next session will be on Feb. 3!
-Joss
2025-01-06 21:26:04 +0000 UTC View Post
Science papers can be hard to read, but it's a lot easier (and more fun) when we do it together! We'll gather from noon-1 EST on the first Monday of each month to decipher and discuss a research paper. Our first meeting will be on January 6 and we'll send the meeting link a day in advance.
What's the paper?
This month we'll dive into some social science that asks: "who is susceptible to online misinformation?" They found that age, political party,...
2024-12-27 18:52:04 +0000 UTC View PostWe're both sick but wanted to answer some of the questions we've seen in response to our episode on hot sauce and Scovilles! 🔥
Links:
How Da Bomb Hot Sauce is Made by Lisa Nguyen
ROBLOX_OOF.mp3 by hbomberguy
Hi Howtowners - dropping in to let you know that our latest feature is live on the channel. Link: "The truth about Hot Ones sauces" -- on the science of hot peppers and Scoville heat units. If you enjoy spicy food or enjoy watching celebrities eat spicy food, this one's for you.
In addition to the Season 25 lineup, we tested Da' Bomb Evolution (which is the version of Da Bomb that Heatonist sells in their 10-pack), The Last Dab XXX, The Last Dab Apollo, Blair's Mega Death, Mad Dog 357, and two additional Puckerbutt sauces: Unique Garlique and Extra Mean Green.
We've removed the name of the lab because they preferred to avoid any drama.
2024-12-19 13:01:05 +0000 UTC View PostOur episode about Hot Ones and the Scoville Scale began as a live show (our first!) presented at IMI Fest in Austin on November 16. The event brought together a bunch of really interesting video and audio creators, including artist Bobby Duke, who kindly volunteered to help us try the two hottest sauces in the Hot Ones lineup.
The show was filmed by Roberto Almaraz, Jake Alvarez, and Isabella Huidor, and edited by Dave Yim and Adam Cole.
2024-12-19 13:00:11 +0000 UTC View PostWe launched Howtown six months ago! And we wanted to give you, our beloved backers, a report on our growth, our finances, and our plans for the next six months.
2024-11-26 14:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post
It's the season of giving and we wanted to let you know a new feature here on Patreon: You can now send a Patreon membership to anyone by clicking the “Gift” button on any creator’s page. You pick the tier, you pick the length of the membership, and then you send the link directly to your friend or family member.
This is a great gift idea for the person in your life who likes supporting independent creators and wants to join their communities. We would of course love it if you hel...
2024-11-13 12:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post