We Have Concerns

Jeff is intrigued by an interview he read about Nasa's one and only Planetary Protection Officer.  Her job?  To protect OTHER planets from us and ensure the galaxy isn't contaminated by microbes, par…

Park Rangers are asking visitors to state park and forest areas to please stop taking #bearselfies. Anthony and Jeff try to figure out what would possess a person to approach a wild, deadly creature …

Researchers at MIT have developed a new pill that is much more efficient at delivering medicine into the bloodstream.  Instead of a simple spheroid, it is covered in a multitude of tiny spikes, which…

It's counter-intuative and perplexing, but the truth is, the less human beings know about a particular subject, the more they THINK they know about it.  This has become known as The Dunning-Kruger Ef…

A new article describes the benefits of long-form reading and suggests that the tactile feedback of printed books results in better retention than e-readers.  While Jeff and Anthony are definitely on…

On this special Halloween episode, Anthony and Jeff consider the nature of of the trick or treat tradition and the urban legend of poisoned Halloween candy.  Is asking strangers for food an inherentl…

A new Wired article recounts the medieval myth that beavers, when cornered by hunters, would castrate themselves by chewing off their own testicles.  Jeff and Anthony unpack the myth and try to figur…

Previously on We Have Concerns... in the Welcome to the Hoverboard Future episode Anthony mocked Jeff's enthusiasm for a mind-bending new technology that indicated that hoverboards may, in fact be po…

A new article describes a study in which doctors told patients they would just be getting a shot of vitamins, but instead gave them something a thousand times more powerful.  Whether these subjects t…

Anthony found an article that describes the community around the IBM Model M keyboard, a sublimely clicky keyboard that has spawned cult-like devotion and a second hand black market.  It makes him co…

Researchers have discovered that employees are actually more content taking orders from a robot than a human being in the workplace.  This prompts Anthony and Jeff to wonder what it might take to pro…

As a runner himself, Jeff was very impressed to read of James Lawrence, the endurance athlete who is attempting 50 ultra-distance triathlons, in 50 different states, in 50 straight days.  Anthony, on…

Anthony has found a story about a Missouri family fleeing their home because between 4500 and 6000 spiders came "bleeding out of the walls".  To which Jeff of course wonders, "What the #%$#?!"  Spide…

Google's Auto Awesome will take the best areas of slightly different photographs and combine them into one new, never-quite-was best version.  A new article suggests that this kind of artful interpre…

Saturday morning cartoons are no more! And Jeff has decided that this means something really bad for today's youth - but Anthony is certain that it's a good thing, and that Jeff is just a cranky old …

Anthony has been reading about Chaser, the wonder dog who has learned over 1,000 different words, which makes him wonder how smart Jeff believes canines to be.  Is obedience less intelligent than ind…

Shipyard workers in South Korea have been using Exo Suits to assist them in loading and unloading scrap metal, and Jeff and Anthony desperately want to try it out. But why stop there? Why not replace…

An article by Kevin Ashton proposes that saying "no" to things is vital to the creative process.  Anthony and Jeff wonder why they have such a hard time saying "no" and what that might mean about the…

A new article suggests that the Oculus VR headset may be the first step to allowing people to truly experience what it is like to live a different kind of life. This could allow designers to create "…

A woman in Oregon has opened a cuddle service for those looking for a bit of personal contact, but definitely no sexy stuff. Anthony works through his own issues with touching, Jeff determines the fa…