Videos
Podcasts
Blogs
Quizzes
GamesStuff to Blow Your Mind
Venture down the rabbit hole to the very limits of human understanding.
Podcast Transcript | Listen to the Podcast Now
Comment Now
Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
- How the Philtrum works – the place under your nose where your face comes together
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
- Sailing, Takes Me Away…To The Seychelles
- Cute Animal Tuesday: Black Vulture
- Traveling on the Orient Express
Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
- What happens to our sun once it runs out of fuel?
- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
- Who invented the Christmas card?
- How the Kinsey Report Fueled Whiskey Sales
- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
- The Seven Deadlies: Pride Cometh Before the Brain
- Warhammer 40K: 25 Years of Orks in Space
- A Visit to the Tellus Science Museum
Stuff You Should Know
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
- Amazing Medical Conditions: Maple Syrup Urine Disorder
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Was Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial a little too political?
- Why is NASA studying car safety?
- Tips for in-car Navigation Systems
How-to Stuff
- How to Make the Most of a Gallery Crawl (When You’re on a Shoestring Budget)
- How to Swim with Dolphins (When Deep Water Terrifies You)
- How to Cure a Homemade Cookie Craving Without Turning on the Oven
PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 43: Drag Queens: You Better Work!
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 42: Road Trip!
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 41: Celebrity Couples
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
- Are we rooting for D.B. Cooper?
- Party Time: A Look at Unconventional Politics
Announcer
Welcome to Stuff From the Science Lab, from Howstuffworks.com.
Allison
Hey, guys, and welcome to the podcast. This is Allison Loudermilk, the science editor at Howstuffworks.com.
Robert
And this is Robert Lamb, science writer at Howstuffworks.com.
Allison
Today we’re going to talk about a couple of experiments that have perhaps changed the world.
Robert
Yeah, these are pretty big ones.
Allison
Yeah. So worldwide, billions and billions of dollars are earmarked for scientific research and development. I looked this up. It turns out in 2009 the United States government allotted $114 billion just for research and development awarded to its agencies, so the various government agencies, as you can imagine.
Robert
Yeah. I think that the dude in the Riddler costume on those infomercials told me this.
Allison
Yeah. A lot of that money went to the Department of Defense, as you might -
Robert
Yeah, it always helps if you can kill somebody with your science experiment.
Allison
No doubt. Then a little less than half of that was split between basic research, the kind that’s driven by scientific curiosity or interesting in a particular scientific question, and then applied research, the kinda research that’s designed to solve practical problems, right.
Robert
Yeah. Some of the stuff that goes on is just really cool. I was doing a news article several months back about research into how hammerhead sharks see. The U.S. government was flipping the bill for a lot of that and I have yet to come up with a way that that could be used to kill somebody or really do anything other than understand hammerheads.
Allison
Right. So I was bringing up those numbers just to illustrate how many experiments are going on right now, a lot of which we will never, ever know about, a lot of which won’t get picked in the New England Journal of Medicine. So we decided to highlight a few that particularly stand out. So we’re doing a series, a two-part series in which we highlight a couple of our favorite experiments with the big guns here. We’re talking -
Robert
Yeah. Our first one is Darwin.
Allison
I should mention, in a few instances, we’re going to talk about two closely related experiments as opposed to one single experiment, just because, as you guys know, science stands on the shoulder of giants. It’s hard to sometimes separate out who did what when.
Robert
Sometimes it’s like a short person standing on the shoulder of a giant, then, there’s another giant standing on top of the short person, but if you took the short person out of the mix, then it all falls apart. It’s like Jenga.