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And then there’s the problematic nature of positioning Serial’s narrative a dead girl, TV-style drama. When announcing the spin off, Ira Glass himself stated: “Our hope is to give you the same experience you get from a great HBO or Netflix series, where you get caught up with the characters and the thing unfolds week after week, and you just have to hear what happens next, but with a story that’s true. And no pictures. Like House of Cards or Game of Thrones but you can enjoy it while you’re driving.” This entertainment factor leaves a bitter taste because Lee isn’t Laura Palmer, she can’t be resurrected in a fictional land of flashbacks and surreal dream sequences. Lee is real and she’s dead.

Stephanie Van Schilt, "Is Serial Podcast Problematic?" (via tractatusappendices)

I always thought it was an irrational, gut-level reaction to be off-put by the high production value of This American Life; to me, it always felt like the aestheticization of human misery, no matter how sympathetic it was to its subjects, or how important its watchdog journalism does.

But now my arational reflex feels oddly vindicated, now that Ira Glass has explicitly stated his desire to emulate prestige cable drama.

(via tractatusappendices)

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explore-blog

It turns out that cultures with a history of dairy farming and milk drinking have a much higher frequency of lactose tolerance – and its associated gene – than those who don’t. Drinking milk is just one of example of the way that traditions and cultural practices can influence the path of our evolution. Culture and genetics are traditionally thought of as two separate processes, but researchers are increasingly realizing that they are intimately connected, each influencing the natural progression of the other. Scientists call it “gene-culture co-evolution.” Why does it matter? If we can pin down how culture influences our genetic makeup – and how the same processes apply to other creatures too – then we can be better understand how the way we act as a society today could influence our future.

BBC explores how culture influences our genes.

Pair with how music and language helped us evolve.

(via explore-blog)

File under "duh"

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headlikeanorange

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The Guillemot is a seabird that lays its eggs on a bare rock ledge on a cliff face. When an egg is accidentally dislodged, its shape causes it to spin in a tight circle, which prevents it from falling off the ledge into the sea. (Springwatch - BBC)

Can we just take a moment to appreciate how fucking awesome this is?

These eggs no doubt started out like all other avian eggs, but they had the problem of rolling off the cliffs. The eggs that were slightly more oblong tended to roll off the cliffs less, and thus the genes contained in those eggs lived to be passed on. Fast forward a few million years, and BAM tight-circle eggs.

Naturally selected for your viewing pleasure.

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Natural selection is a beautiful thing

I think you mean natural sel-EGG-tion.

themorethings

It's also a terrifically random thing. The egg situation could have been alleviated with, oh I don't know, flying away from the cliffs and living someplace else. So instead of the story seeming like the badass "fittest" bird got to live on it's some stupid random mutation oblong-egg layin bird.