Episode 21 - How Does Your Brain Make Your Fingers Move?

Jenna (I hope I spelled your name correctly...) wants to know how your brain controls your fingers. This is a really neat question, and because I am a psychologist, I did not have to ask anyone but myself. One of the very neat things about this is that the left half of your brain controls the right side of your body. Oh, and even though it feels like you move as soon as you want to, it takes at least 300 msec before anything actually happens in your fingers. The key to the whol thing is a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine.

I hope you enjoy episode 21, keep the questions coming!

Episode 20 - Why does the human brain think so much?

Originally I was going to do a few updates on previous shows for episode 20, then this gem of a question came in about neuroscience and psychology, how could I refuse?  

Nikhil Kumar of Bloomington, IL is a student at Northpoint Elementary School.  Nikhil asked, why does the human brain think so much?  WOW that is a great question.  Well part of the reason when you are very small anyway (before you are born) is that if you don't use brain cells they die.  (It turns out this is a good thing, don't worry) and well there is also a lot of thinking you are doing that you are not aware of.

If you have sent me a question I will get to it soon, I promise!

Enjoy episode 20.

Episode 19 - Why Isn't Greenland a Continent?

Vince B. sent in a great question, why isn't Greenland considered a continent?  Well I am no geographer, but I work with a guy who is, Dr. William Osei of the Algoma University Geography Department.

It turns out that the word continent is a pretty arbitrarily defined thing.  Basically, according to Dr. Osei, it is based pretty much on size and convention.  Greenland is actually quite small by continent standards, it is only 1/14th the size of Africa!

Thanks to Isabelle for the new music.

Enjoy episode 19.

An Idea For Episode 20

There must be questions that you think, "Well Dave, that was interesting and all of that, but could you tell me more about......"  For example, I know that in episode 17 I mentioned how fish actually have memories, but, well our questioner wants a bit more info.  (Her Dad ran into me at a podcast meetup and even asked me to tell him more.  I refused, because, well, I thought I would save it for the show :-).  So, is there more you want to know about some topic?  Let me know!

Episode 18 - What was the first type of matter?

Welcome to our new home on the internet.  Here you can submit questions to me via email, as well as comment on the episodes.  Here is the questions for episode 18, Addie from California asks: Where was the first form of structure (dust, stone, etc) formed and what was it?

Do you want the answer?  Listen here.