Natan Podcast

Natan
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Natural Sciences

In relentless pursuit of truth.

Episodes

  1. Oct 1

    The man on the mission to end traffic once and for all | Dr. Benjamin Seibold | Natan Podcast #5

    00:00 Cold open 00:42 Intro: Dr. Benjamin Seibold and key terms 02:58 Why fully self-driving cars might never happen 06:40 Platooning: automated lanes and truck convoys 10:11 How a fluid dynamicist ended up studying traffic 13:20 Phantom traffic jams: everybody's fault and nobody's fault 15:05 Same math, different worlds: detonations, galaxies, invasive species 17:51 How the research gets done 20:19 Measuring traffic and the Japanese ring road experiment 24:47 The fix: how 5% of cars can smooth traffic for everyone 28:51 CIRCLES: taking the experiment to a real highway 30:18 Should governments pay drivers to smooth traffic? 31:44 How many bad drivers cancel out the good ones? 33:30 What's next: shared mobility and the doubling problem 35:56 Has science made society better or worse?

  2. Sep 15

    The Language of Bees | Dr. James C. Nieh | Natan Podcast #4

    Honeybees are the only animals besides us that tell each other where to find food. Dr. James Nieh has spent thirty years decoding how they do it, from the waggle dance to the "stop signal" he discovered when his first experiment fell apart, and he thinks their language evolved as encryption against enemy spies. THE BOOK The Language of Bees: https://www.amazon.com/Language-Bees-James-C-Nieh/dp/0691204896 THE PLAYLIST Free videos of the waggle dance, stop signal, and colony warfare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEquVG35La0&list=PLeqMCDrvHGdNn10XWL4jmJ1O-42FJVL1H 00:00 – Cold open: bees hear through hairs, and honey burial for kings 00:28 – What a world without bees actually looks like 01:38 – Quitting biology for medieval history, then coming back 02:58 – The waggle dance: direction from the sun, distance from duration 05:12 – Navigating a pitch-black nest (polarized light, ocelli, gravity hairs) 07:15 – Inside a bee's mind: UV vision, vibration, electric charge on flowers 10:16 – A day in the life of a bee researcher 11:48 – Cross-fostering two species: distance dialects and genetic pull-back 14:30 – Bees in religion, honey as medicine, honey burial 19:09 – The failed experiment that became the stop signal 26:01 – Spies, odor trails, and why the dance may be encrypted communication 29:58 – Why bees look the way they do: warning coloration and cheaters 31:54 – The superorganism: queens live years, workers live 40 days 34:58 – Who actually decides when a new queen is made (not the queen) 36:54 – Is there a hive mind? Social vs personal information 39:38 – Why honeycomb is hexagonal, and why wax is expensive 41:41 – Biomimicry: tank armor, aircraft, bulletproof vests 43:22 – Dream scenario: 50 colonies in the tropics and a laser that works 47:46 – Why science needs failure 50:37 – Why the book opens in a cemetery on the Day of the Dead 55:03 – The Language of Bees: where to find the book and the free playlist

  3. Aug 28

    The Man who Speaks Elephant | Dr. Mickey Pardo | Natan Podcast #3

    Elephants call each other by name. Dr. Mickey Pardo spent years in Kenya recording wild elephant rumbles to prove it, and what he found rewrites what we thought we knew about animal communication. 00:00 – Cold open: elephant memory (20+ year recall, beats bloodhounds on scent) 02:44 – Can elephants speak? The "name-like calls" discovery 03:35 – How the study worked: recording known callers/receivers in the wild 05:34 – What an elephant "name" actually sounds like 07:04 – Getting to Samburu with Save the Elephants 09:03 – Elephant society: matriarchs, family groups, bond groups, clans 12:35 – The memory research (dung recognition, urine-position tracking) 25:32 – The technical breakdown: random forest model, 27.5% vs 8% baseline 33:55 – The Matisse story: a newborn calf and the "naming" moment 41:23 – Dream scenario: building an "elephant GPT" transformer model 48:00 – Could humans ever actually talk to elephants? 50:39 – Final takeaway: we keep underestimating animal cognition

  4. Aug 17

    Peptides: Truths, and Lies behind the injections | Dr. Flynn McGuire | Natan Podcast#2

    People are injecting peptides with promising potential and little knowledge behind what it might do. Dr. Flynn McGuire breaks down the truth behind these mystery compounds. 15:15 The actual human evidence: three tiny uncontrolled pilot studies 17:12 Why none of this rules out placebo, no randomized controlled trials exist 17:59 The real danger: mislabeled, contaminated, unregulated vials 19:38 Why people reach for this instead of the slow, boring fix 20:25 Why Big Pharma won't touch it: the patent problem 23:20 GLP-1 took 50 years from discovery to market, a reality check on hype timelines 24:03 The unanswered questions: dose, frequency, route 25:22 The cancer risk nobody's talking about 27:00 Flynn's dream study with unlimited funding 27:37 Anecdote as the weakest form of evidence 28:26 Influencer sponsorships and the incentive to oversell 28:57 The 10 to 20 year outlook: weight loss, anti-aging, skin peptides 30:34 Where Flynn sees legitimate promise (cheaper alternative to PRP and stem cells) 31:17 Closing question: the hardest part of being a scientist 32:35 No silver bullet, time and effort still win 33:15 Outro

  5. Aug 5

    How Trauma Activates Your DNA for Generations | Dr. Ingrid Tulloch | Natan Podcast #1

    Dr. Ingrid K. Tulloch (PhD, biological psychology and behavioral neuroscience, CUNY) explains epigenetics: how experience switches genes on and off without changing the DNA itself. Covers how trauma can pass down as many as six generations, why it's reversible, the role of inflammation and nutrition, and where the supplement industry oversells the science. 0:00 Cold open: shaping our own gene expression, ancestral trauma teaser 0:40 Intro: guest bio, psychoneuroimmunology, 4-part episode roadmap 1:42 Part 1: What epigenetics actually is (gene on/off, not DNA rewriting) 3:34 The "book and punctuation" analogy: comma vs. period 5:53 Natan's analogy tested: the "hit by a car" comma/period example 6:14 Ingrid's scientific origin story: astrophysics to cancer lab to psychology 9:12 The zebra finch dopamine study 10:37 Why zebra finches matter: parallels to human language development 12:10 Why this matters: social, behavioral, and biological health 16:19 Part 2: Can trauma be inherited across generations? 17:09 Resilience vs. PTSD: why the same event affects people differently 17:36 The NYU Holocaust descendants study 19:40 Epigenetic marks are inheritable—but reversible 20:31 Part 3: What reverses it? Nutrition and anti-inflammatories 20:54 What inflammation actually is 22:22 Inflammation's link to Alzheimer's and psychological disorders 23:19 Animal studies vs. humans: correlation and causation 24:57 Turmeric: benefits and limitations 28:39 Why turmeric needs black pepper 31:01 How curcumin works: Toll-like receptor 4 explained 34:02 Saffron: anti-inflammatory and cognitive effects 35:52 The marketing problem: science vs. supplement hype 36:36 Part 4: The evidence against her own research 38:03 Dream experiment: can biology make people kinder? 40:15 AI's role in psychoneuroimmunology 42:03 Should we speed up science? 42:34 Outro

  • 5 Episodes

About

In relentless pursuit of truth.

Information

  • Creator
    Natan
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Natan
  • Show Website
    Natan Podcast