Howtown posts
Posts: 47
Files: 85
The problem with Jurassic World
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 illustration work over on his Patreon, which he updates frequently, and his new book King Tyrant: A Natural History of Tyranno...
Into Cleo's eye (making of)
I 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.
State of the Howtown (1 year update!)
In this video (and the attached pdf) we take a look at what your generous support has made possible -- and what's to come.
Replay: Science Paper Book Club, June 2
We 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!
Can ChatGPT do therapy? Let's talk about it on June 2.
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 article reports that people are losing their loved ones to psychosis and delusions induced by ChatGPT. It's clear that millions of AI users have turned to the chatbot for personal insights and advice, but...
New episode: the creatures of the abyss
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 b...
A sea shanty about deep sea biodiversity
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 been in a pretty .... seafaring? ... mood.The themes of our latest episode (the tension between a lust for sunken riches and the u...
Interview: Rhythm and sea lions
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. I used a small portion of our conversation in a Howtown short, but I thought it was so interesting that I'd share the whole interview wi...
Replay: Science Paper Book Club, May 5
Big thanks to Marcos for helping out with this one! Continue the discussion on Discord, and here's the paper in case you missed it.
Science Paper Book Club, May 5: Signs of life on another planet?
Big 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 be that the signal they detected really comes from aliens? We...
New episode: How to find ancient cities hiding under the trees
Hi 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 research end up supercharging investigations in totally different fields. When the laser was developed in the late 1950s—based on a theory Einstein published in 1917 and with public fundingâ...
Deleted scene: Adam 'splains lasers
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 det...
SPBC4: Are super old people frauds?
We 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!
New ep: how to map lost worlds
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!I went a little overboard on the animation, using a combination of real paper stop motion, After...
How to fight Flat Earth
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 of this approach - but I was ...
SPBC3: What to do about Daylight Saving Time
You 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 paperin case you missed it ...
New Video: I tried to prove I'm not AI
Here 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 system designed to let people share information about a digital file's origins. Long story short: it's not there yet. But a coalition of companies and organizations are slowly pushing it forward, and eventu...
an AI podcast about our not-AI channel
While 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.
Poll: Steering the ship through strange times
Hey 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 t...
Replay: Science Paper Book Club, Feb. 3
You can find more discussion on our Discord, or feel free to add comments here. Our next session will be on March 3!
Is Ozempic also an antidepressant? (SPBC)
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 paperthat found some evidence that these types of drugs (GLP-1 receptor agonists, most famous as weight loss drugs) seem to help with depression. But, as always, it's complicated. We've attached the paper to...
New Video: hold my beer
Happy 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 episodebrings some clarity.Last week we hosted our very first Science Paper Book Club - and it led to a lot of really interesting discussion about who's most susceptible t...
Replay: Science Paper Book Club, Jan. 6
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
We're starting a Science Paper Book Club 🤓
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...
Responding to comments & questions
We'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 Madeby Lisa NguyenROBLOX_OOF.mp3by hbomberguyGurbanguly Berdimuhamedov:Last Week Tonight with John OliverPepper X Guinness World Record presentation on Hot OnesNotebookLM Audio Overview
Our Hot Ones Investigation 🔥 and some news
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. I've been watching Hot Ones for ages, and always wondered how they measure the spiciness of the sauces. Turns out, they're not actually measuring it, s...
Hot Ones sauces: Full lab results 🔥
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.
Howtown Live at IMI Fest 🔥
Our 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.
State of the Howtown: 6-month update
We 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.
Give the gift of Howtown
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 commun...
