Cool Stuff Ride Home
Covering the most interesting and coolest stories that you may have missed around the world in about 15 minutes a day. Cool Stuff Ride Home looks at science, progress, life-hacks, memes, exciting art, and hope. This is the antidote to depressing headlines. Smart stuff in podcast form. Cool news, as a service.
Hosted by Reggie Risseeuw and Marques Pfaff.
851
Wed. 1/27 - Putting Your Money In GameStop is O...
A brief dip into the GameStop Wall Street mayhem. A new water-is-wet kind of study proving that money indeed can buy you happiness. And the story of some students who just found out their new professor this semester has been dead for two years....
14 min
852
Tue. 1/26 - Werner Herzog on Skateboarding
New DNA analysis upends some long held assumptions about the evolutionary background of dire wolves. How Adobe Flash broke an entire railway system. Astronomers have discovered a sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system. Say that six times fast… And...
16 min
853
Mon. 1/25 - The Moon Rock in Biden's Oval Offic...
The word “robot” was coined one hundred years ago today in a play about robots taking over the world. Good thing that hasn’t happened yet! ...right? The story behind the moon rock in President Biden’s newly redesigned Oval Office. And the...
16 min
854
Fri. 1/22 - The Swedish Secret to Happy, Produc...
NASA trained an AI to detect craters on Mars. A possible discovery of giant prehistoric carnivorous worms. A new Swedish practice to adopt. And a mobile site that will match you with your film critic soulmate. Sponsors: NordVPN, Get 68% off a...
14 min
855
Thu. 1/21 - Biophilic Recharge Rooms for Health...
Recharge Rooms are helping frontline healthcare workers cope with the continued toll the pandemic is taking on their well-being. How bats are helping scientists create better biologging instruments and the discoveries being made with the technology....
15 min
856
Wed. 1/20 - Baby Megalodons & The Muppet Gatsby
New findings into the cannibalism and sheer size of baby megalodons. Teaching AIs to become our teachers. And The Great Gatsby has only been in the public domain for twenty days and things are already getting weird. Sponsor: NordVPN, Get 68% off a...
14 min
857
Tue. 1/19 - Should Sea Shanty TikTok Take Its L...
A synthetic cornea implant has successfully helped a legally blind man regain his sight. Team USA and Team Canada women’s hockey players can’t stop falling in love and living happily ever after together. And a deep dive into the briny waters of...
17 min
858
Mon. 1/18 - When the FBI Spied on Martin Luther...
Several of the women who influenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and left their own marks on the civil rights movement. A new documentary tracking the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent Black activists, using...
17 min
859
Fri. 1/15 - Wikipedia As An MMORPG & A Pigeon o...
A couple of stories for the birds today. First, ravens at the Tower of London are living up to their collective name of a conspiracy of ravens by possibly foretelling the fall of Britain. And a pigeon in Australia who was almost sentenced to death by...
15 min
860
Thu. 1/14 - How We Narrowly Avoided an Emoji Sh...
The workaround the Unicode Consortium used to make sure we still get new emojis in 2021, pandemic or not. Facial hair is biologically useless. So why do some humans have it? And the SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule returning this evening will be carrying...
15 min
861
Wed. 1/13 - Pablo Escobar's Hippos Are Out of C...
Pablo Escobar’s pet hippos have multiplied and are ravaging part of Colombia’s capital. An AI that can create very impressive and artistic images from text commands. Maybe a little too impressive. And a discovery in England this week that...
13 min
862
Tue. 1/12 - 16th Century Disease Prevention & B...
The sixteenth-century manual on containing the spread of disease that is eerily reminiscent of current COVID guidelines. Bitcoin millionaires who can’t access their digital wallets due to forgotten passwords. And the guy whose massive beer...
13 min
863
Mon. 1/11 - Tim Berners-Lee's Quest to Restore ...
It’s time for two writers to pay up on a 25-year-old bet about whether tech would destroy civilization. Tim Berners-Lee’s new quest to transform the web into the one he envisioned when he created it. How the most recent COVID-19 Stimulus Bill...
14 min
864
Fri. 1/8 - What Folklore Can Teach Us About Con...
What folklorists can teach us about the structure and resilience of conspiracy theories. The genome of the platypus has been sequenced, and it’s just as weird as you’d expect. And a Swedish film festival that’s sending one person to an abandoned...
14 min
865
Thu. 1/7 - Dude, IceBots on Mars!
A prototype for self-repairing planetary exploration robots made of ice. The surprising history of the word “dude.” And a new Danish children’s cartoon about the misadventures of a man with a huge dong. Yep. Sponsors: NordVPN, Get 68% off plus...
15 min
866
Wed. 1/6 - The 60s Spy Satellite Helping Today'...
Space missions to keep your eye on in 2021. How satellites built to spy on the Soviets have helped unravel environmental mysteries. Why the dark ages aren’t considered so dark anymore. And a completely perplexing auction from David Hasselhoff and...
15 min
867
Tue. 1/5 - A Nanny Cam to Keep You On-Task?
People who are choosing to be surveilled by strangers and productivity nannies in order to stay on task while remote working. A 3D-printed hydrogel inspired by cephalopods that changes shape when exposed to light. And UK officials have arguably messed...
14 min
868
Mon. 1/4 - Time Confetti & the Quantum Internet
What “time confetti” is and how to stop spreading it everywhere. A new development in the teleportation of information that means good things for the possibility of quantum internet. And how TikTokers raised a million dollars for The Actors Fund...
16 min
869
Wed. 12/30 - The Cognitive Case for Talking To ...
Why talking out loud to yourself is actually an important cognitive skill, or so I’m telling myself. A new population of blue whales with a distinct song was recently discovered in the Indian Ocean. And a new AI that will hilariously and viciously...
18 min
870
Tue. 12/29 - How Humans Began to Read and Write
How is it that humans figured out how to read? New cosmological findings that may finally solve the Hubble tension. And, more monoliths continue to pop up, a look at two of the more interesting ones from this past week. Sponsors: Skillshare, get a...
13 min
871
Mon. 12/28 - What If 2020 Was Just One Big MMORPG?
How your brain takes out the trash while you sleep. The English man who crossed the Alps on a space hopper. And a subreddit where over half a million people pretend our world is just one big MMORPG. Sponsors: BitTrust IRA, Waive your signup fee ...
14 min
872
Wed. 12/23 - Leave Out Porridge for Belligerent...
How Star Wars toys have changed over the years and why it may not be a good thing for kids. What if there were tons of alien civilizations elsewhere in the Milky Way but they’re all long since dead? And the Danish tradition of leaving porridge out...
15 min
873
Tue. 12/22 - The Holy Pooper & the Curse of the...
Down the rabbit hole of targeted marketing through the lens of some strange, butt-flap onesie pajamas for adults. Don’t trust the sea foam in Australia. And some Catalonian Christmas traditions that are pretty crappy. Sponsors: BitTrust IRA, Waive...
16 min
874
Mon. 12/21 - How Will Movie Theaters Stay Afloa...
What will movie theaters look like in a post-pandemic world? And what do companies need to do to weather the storm? New research that suggests our early human ancestors could have hibernated. And the pyrotechnic German punch that Atlas Obscura...
15 min
875
Fri. 12/18 - The Business of X-Mas Trees & How ...
Some ways that COVID could change science forever––both good and bad. The business of Christmas trees and why we’re still seeing the effects of the Great Recession in tree prices today. And a site that plays ambient noise from the forests of the...
16 min