Carry the One Radio takes on Goggles Optional: Goggles Optional

Our science podcast friends at Stanford’s Goggles Optional have invited us to make a guest appearance on their show. Carry the One Radio team members Sama, Karuna, Liz, and Samantha joined Lisl, Trisha, Diego, and David from Goggles Optional. We had a head-to-head science-podcast-battle in the game categories Weakest Link, Team Real or Fake, and Google’s Optional (not a typo!). We also discussed evolution and fruit fly research.

Goggles Optional is a weekly science podcast based out of Stanford University. They cover a myriad of interesting science topics you won’t hear about in your typical feed, and they are a lot of fun to listen to. We highly recommend you check them out on their website.

Hosted by Osama Ahmed, Karuna Meda, Liz Unger, and Samantha Ancona Esselmann

What fruit flies can tell us about alcohol addiction: Ulrike Heberlein

In this week’s episode we talk to Dr. Ulrike Heberlein, a professor in the department of anatomy at UCSF and baseball aficionado. This year, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors that can be awarded to an American scientist.

Dr. Heberlein is interested in the genes that underlie alcoholism and drug addiction and uses a seemingly unusual animal model to study it—the fruit fly. Using this model, her lab has identified a gene dubbed happyhour that, when mutated, can reduce an organism’s response to alcohol. She discusses how her lab uses the findings in the fly to guide further experiments in rodents and how these discoveries may soon lead to developing treatments for alcohol addicts.

More on the Heberlein Lab's research

Hosted by Sama Ahmed