Implants and IUDs: A Renaissance of Birth Control

Let's talk about sex, baby. Wait, minus the baby. This month, we interviewed a science historian and a current provider, as well as our friends and family, to learn about the scientific and cultural factors that shape contraceptive use in the US.




Hosted by Anna Lipkin and Nancy Cai
Produced by Anna Lipkin, Nancy Cai, Jina Lee, and Iris Bachmutsky
Editing help from the CTOR team

Music in this episode:
"Pulsars," "In My Head," and "Paper Boat" by Podington Bear
"Plague," "Crying Earth," and "Moonlight Reprise" by Kai Engel
"Your Mother's Daughter" and "Candlepower" by Chris Zabriskie
"As I Figure" and "Camille Saint-Saens Danse Macabre--Isolated Harp" by Kevin MacLeod
"Quel Augelin Che Canta" by Claudio Monteverdi, performed by the Tudor Consort
"Siesta" by Jazzhar
"Frozen Egg" by Lame Drivers

Episode Art adapted from NCHS Data Brief No. 188 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db188.htm)

Extending the Thread of Life with Dena Dubal

If you could swallow a pill that would give you twenty extra years of healthy life, would you do it? In this episode of CTOR, we talk to Dr. Dena Dubal, a neurologist and neuroscientist at UCSF. Her research on a protein discovered completely by accident may hold the key to living longer, healthier lives more resilient to heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia.

How is that possible? Listen to this month’s CTOR episode to find out! 


Produced by Peter Chisnell and Sam Ancona Esselmann 
Cover art by Michael Griffin Kelly

 Music:
"As Colorful as Ever" by Broke for Free
"Ice Climb," "Down and Around," "Aim Is True," "Big Blue," and "Onward" by Podington Bear
"Seikilos Epitaph with the Lyre of Apollo" by Lina Palera
"Still On" by VYVCH
"Le Songe d'Hacolhii" by Sunhiilow
"You Know Who You Are" by Alan Singley

Jazz Bands and MRI Scans: How brains are creative

Have you ever wondered what’s going on in a musician’s head while they improvise? In our latest episode, Dr. Charles Limb gives us a window to peer into the process of creativity as it happens: scanning the brains of jazz musicians and rappers as they improvise. Tune in to learn what brain processes allow creative thought, why creativity matters, and whether or not you might compose the next great rock ballad.

Hosted by Ramie Fathy
Produced by Anna Lipkin and Ramie Fathy
Editing by the CTOR Team

Music:
"Maggot Brian" by Funkadelic
"Stormy Blues" by Arne Bang Huseby
"nostalgia of an ex-gangsta rapper" by deef
and original improvisations/compositions by Michael Bruschi

Honey, I Shrunk the Data

The world’s data is stored on millions of computers, or servers, that take up buildings’ worth of space and consume about as much electricity as France. How do we keep up with the increasing amount of data that we are generating? In this episode, we talk to Dina Zielinski, a bioinformatician, about her unexpected solution: storing digital data on DNA.



Music: "Lode Runner" and "Onward" from Poddington Bear.

Clinical Trials and Tribulations: Steve Hauser's quest to cure MS

Photo Credit: NIAID

In this episode, a team of researchers disprove a decades-old dogma. The result? The first ever FDA-approved drug for primary-progressive multiple sclerosis. In this inspiring story spanning decades of research, you’ll hear all the science, and all the dramatic twists, behind this radical new treatment.

If you want to learn more about the science, visit this link to find a list of Dr. Steve Hauser's publications.

Music Used:

El Fuego and The Itis by Polyrhythmics; Juliette, Submerging Blue-Black, Three Colors, Whiplash String Swell, Theme in G, and Sincerely Yours by Podington Bear; Palestrina - Sicut lilium inter spinas by the Tudor Consort; The Temperature of the Air on the Bow of the Kaleetan and Cylinder Nine by Chris Zabriskie; I Knew a Guy by Kevin MacLeod; Morning Four, Take Care and Snow by David Szesztay; Tarantella Lucana by Italian Village Music and Dance; Sunday Lovers by Monday Night Fever; As Colorful As Ever by Broke For Free; Puddle of Infinity by Young And Old Know Love; A String (Instrumental) by Loch Lomond; Samba Whistle by Reinsamba ; PSA audio was from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society

Building Breasts and Brains from the Bottom Up

Scientists usually study biology in animals such as lab rats, but their discoveries do not always translate between species. What if we could study human biology specifically? In this episode, we talk to Dr. Jurgen Knoblich and Dr. Zev Gartner about their efforts to create organoids, which are miniature, simplified versions of organs created from human cells. Using these organoids, Drs. Knoblich and Gartner can study how human organs develop and how they are affected by disease. How do they make these organoids, and what will organoids mean for our future health?

Science against the clock: short talks to ignite your curiosity

In this episode we bring you short talks from ten young, passionate scientists eager to tell you about their cutting-edge discoveries. Each scientist is given just three minutes to launch their audience to new horizons and bring them back to earth, ready for the next exciting journey. Come with us as we explore new horizons in disease prevention, ways that our bodies could one day produce their own treatments, how scary spiders can actually help us reduce pain, and much, much more. Intrigued? Let's begin our countdown to science!

How to Build a Human: Part 2

In Part 2 of “How to Build a Human”, we continue our investigation of our unique features that set us apart from other animals. We spoke to Dr. Nathan Young from the University of California San Francisco, who studies the development of the human skeleton and looks at how the variations in our skeletal structure have contributed to our evolution and the development of human civilization.

Stay tuned at the end of the episode for our newest installment of Headlines, the Carry the One Radio newscast. Each month (give or take), Headlines hosts Nick Weiler and Arezu Sarvestani bring you the latest research news from around UCSF. In this month's episode, guest host Liz Droge-Young fills in while Arezu attends a hacker conference in Las Vegas. Nick and Liz check out stories about why aspirin may help prevent certain forms of cancer, how cutting down on sugar yields remarkable benefits for kids' heart health, and whether pale skin might be the result of evolutionary laziness. Happy Listening!

Music:

• Loll—Podington Bear
• Danse Macabre, Opus 40—University of Chicago Orchestra
• Monkeys Spinning Monkeys—Kevin MacLeod
• Pink Gradient—Podington Bear
• Camp—Podington Bear
• Gathering—Podington Bear
• Firefly—Podington Bear
• Sidecar—Podington Bear
• Patched In—Blue Dot Sessions

Sound Effects:

• “Splash Rock in Lake Sound”—www. Soundbible.com; Public Domain
• “Bite into and Chew Apple”—http://freesfx.co.uk
• “Alien Siren”—www. Soundbible.com; Public Domain

How to Build a Human (Part 1)

We humans like to think of ourselves as pretty different from other animals. Language, philosophy, art, technology - we do things it seems like no other animal is capable of. But what makes us this way? In part one of our investigation, we focus on two features of the brain that seem to be particular to people. We start with Arnold Kriegstein of the University of California, San Francisco, who studies a type of stem cell that does something special during human brain development. We then turn to Kira Poskanzer and Anna Molofsky, also of UCSF, who believe the secret to human-ness might lie with a totally different, often neglected kind of brain cell.

So What? A taste of the scientific process with Charles Zuker

Science journalism generally focuses on new discoveries. But this leaves out a part of the process that will make or break you as a scientist: how do you come up with the right questions to ask in the first place? In today’s episode, we talk to Charles Zuker of Columbia University about this process. Listen to find out the two questions he asks to determine whether an experiment is worth doing.

Stay tuned at the end for our new "Headlines" segment with news out of UCSF, hosted by Nick Weiler and Arezu Sarvestani.

Cracking the Autism Code with Matt State

Our ability to diagnose and treat disorders of the mind lags far behind other medical disciplines. For our latest episode, we talked to Dr. Matthew State about why this is the case, and discussed how his research into the genetics of autism is revealing promising paths to future treatments.

Links

• Dr. Matthew State's Lab
• Atlantic Article about the Largest Mental Hospital (A Jail)
• Article about Estrogen Rescuing Phenotype in Fish: 
• "Estrogens Suppress a Behavioral Phenotype in Zebrafish Mutants of the Autism Risk Gene, CNTNAP2"   
• Article about spatial and temporal convergence of autism associated genes during development
• "Coexpression networks implicate human midfetal deep cortical projection neurons in the pathogenesis of autism"
• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) statistics

 

Music Attribution

• Dry Air by Podington Bear
• TwilightGrandeur by Podington Bear
• Delta by Podington Bear 

• Artist: Chris Zabriskie
• License
• Songs: 
• Heliograph 
• Cylinder Six and Cylinder Eight 
• Land of the Golden Gate 

• Artist: Twin Musicom
• License
• Song: Lightning on a Blue Sky

Attribution Free Music

• Hydra by Huma-Huma
• Juicy by ALBIS
• Eureka by Huma-Huma
• Nevada City by Huma-Huma

My Little Thesis

Ready to get blasted with science? We recorded five different PhD students as they summarized their entire thesis in 3 minutes or less. The challenge was to describe their research with as little jargon as possible, for a general audience. You’ll hear about everything from cancer, to the developing embryo, to how dieting might make you smarter.

The music you heard in this episode includes the following:
Easy Jam by Kevin MacLeod (source, artist)
Ecossaise in E-flat by Kevin MacLeod (source, artist)
Bumper Tag by John Deley
The Creek by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena
About that Oldie by Vibe Tracks
60's Quiz Show (Podington Bear) / CC BY-NC 3.0

Origins

Humankind is fascinated by origin stories. We find them everywhere and they come in many forms... every religion has one, science has lots, they're in biographies, and they're even in superhero movies.

In this episode, Dr. Terry Deacon, a biological anthropologist at UC Berkeley, guides us through a novel perspective on how life itself might have started.

Music:

Attribution:
Constellation - Podington Bear
Dreamlike - Kevin Macleod

Other Public Domain:
USAF Band: Saturn and Neptune

Creative Commons:
Eureka by huma-huma
Elephants by huma-huma
In the Hall of the Mountain King - Edvard Grieg
Rag Time Time - Doug Maxwell/Media Right Productions
Let's Do It - Topher Mohr and Alex Elena

For more information on life's origins:

Deacon reference:
anthropology.berkeley.edu/sites/defaul…6_Deacon.pdf ("Reciprocal Linkage between Self-organizing Processes is Sufficient for Self-reproduction and Evolvability")

Prebiotic evolution:
what-when-how.com/molecular-biolog…lecular-biology/

Cliff Matthews:
DARK MATTER IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM: HYDROGEN CYANIDE POLYMERS

RNA world:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/ori…e-on-earth/ The origin of life on earth, scientific american.

Erratum: Soccer balls have both hexagons and pentagons!

Me, Myself & My Microbiome

On average, five pounds of our body weight is made up of bacteria. But what are they doing there? Do they keep us healthy, make us sick, or are they just along for the ride? In this two-part episode, we will explore the mysterious and complex function of these microscopic critters that collectively make up our micro biome.

In part 1, we talk with Katie Pollard, a UCSF professor who studies the microbiome. Katie explains the current state of microbiome research and how critical her work is to forming appropriate conclusions about 
the relationship between our microbial ecosystem and disease.

In part 2, we take a plunge into a man's toilet bowl! (Not-so-average) Joe Hiatt shares an audio diary of his experiences with two extreme diets and the changes he sees in his microbiome. Join him as he chronicles both his bathroom habits along with his microbial diversity.

Click here for more information about the Pollard lab.

Click here to visit uBiome's company website.

Produced by Lynn Wang, Lay Kodama, Ryan Jones, Kathleen Molnar

With Editing help from Meryl Horn, and Nick Weiler. 

Cover art from the Genetic Science Learning Center, University of Utah, http://learn.genetics.utah.edu

HIV - The Sneaky Intruder

Each summer, The Gladstone Institutes places high school students in some of the best labs for the study of heart disease, brain disorders, virology and immunology. The students work alongside scientists where they learn to conduct cutting-edge experiments,

This past summer, we teamed up with Gladstone to mentor two of the students, Hanan Sinada and Kainat Shaikh. After their day in the lab, they met with our producers Kate Woronowicz and Yelena Kulik to learn how to create a podcast episode about their experience. Today’s episode is written and produced by Kainat, a student at Burton High School. Kainat shares what she learned about HIV, what she called “The Sneak Intruder".

producer: Kainat Shaikh, Burton High School

Launch Episode: What is Carry the One Radio?

Welcome to Carry the One Radio – a series of 10-minute chats with scientists about one question that they are working on. Your host for the program is Sama (Osama Ahmed), a neuroscience graduate student at the University of California – San Francisco. Spread the word about the show. Download the episodes – there will be one new episode every other Wednesday.


If you have any questions, or comments, or you want to support the show: please email CarryTheOneRadio@gmail.com