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In the third episode of our wine science series, Out of the Bottle, Dr. Brian Wansink, Director of Cornell University's Food and Brand Lab, explains how expectations, environment, and social cues can fool us into believing that our wine tastes better or worse than it is.
Featuring Dr. Brian Wansink, Director of the Cornell University Food and Brand lab
And author of Mindless Eating (mindlesseating.org), and Slim by Design
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Location provided by Corkbuzz
Prop Master: Phyllis Shalant
Wine Wrangler: Sam Flatow
Additional Stills: Shutterstock, Proxy Design, Derek Skey

http://www.sciencefriday.com/cephalopodweek
We all know that squids use ink to disguise themselves while making a quick getaway, but what other uses might ink serve? Stephanie "Stephalopod" Bush, a scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), suggests that these crafty cephalopods might use ink to attract a mate, repel a predator, or even confuse their prey.
Produced by Christian Baker
Music by Audio Network
Pygmy squid footage courtesy Dr. Noriyosi Sato
Additional Squid Footage by MBARI

These aren't your ordinary garden snails. Tiny cone snails may boast delicate and gorgeous shells, but they pack a powerful—and lethal—punch. The snails' venom can be fatal to various fish and even humans.


But it could also offer a potential cure.

Mandë Holford, a biochemist at Hunter College and the American Museum of Natural History, works with a team to investigate the snails' venom and look for compounds that could be used to treat pain and cancer. Ancient cultures have traditionally used their natural environment to look for cures for the things that ail them, she explains. Now, researchers are investigating how "nature's deadliest cocktail" could create new pathways for treating old problems.

A film by Science Friday

Produced in collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Produced by Emily V. Driscoll and Luke Groskin

Directed and Edited by  Emily V. Driscoll 

Filmed by  Christian Baker and Dusty Hulet 

Animations by M. Gail Rudakewich and Luke Groskin

Music by Audio Network

Additional Photos and Video by
Olivera Lab, Shutterstock, Pond5, NatureFootage, BioPixel, iBiology, Mandë Holford, Gregory S. Herbert
Guillaume van den Bossche, The National Library of Medicine
 
Project Advisors:
Laura A. Helft, Laura Bonetta, Dennis W.C. Liu and Sean B. Carroll - Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Special Thanks to
American Museum of Natural History, Hunter College, Olivera Lab at the University of Utah
Baldomero "Toto" Olivera, Talia Amador, Devin Callahan, Sean Christensen, Mandë Holford
Gregory S. Herbert, My Huynh, Terry Merritt, Aubrey Miller, Kendra Snyder, Danielle Dana, 
Chistian Skotte, Ariel Zych and Jennifer Fenwick

Science Friday/HHMI © 2017

http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions!
Meet the farmers who want to make cheap, environmentally friendly kelp America's next favorite vegetable.

Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage Provided by Kurt Mann /NOAA

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Produced by Luke Groskin
Wine and location provided byCorkbuzz
Music by Audio Network.
Additional photos and footage provided by Shutterstock by Shutterstock, Juan Carlos, Institute Andaluz del Patrimon Historico
Actors - Christopher Intagliata, Leese Katsnelson
Wine Wrangler - Sam Flatow
In the second episode of our wine science series, Out of the Bottle, Dr. Gavin Sacks of Cornell University's Viticulture and Enology Program translates popular wine jargon such as "breathing," "corked," and "wine tears" into chemistry you can understand. He'll also give you some tricks you can use to experience the versatility of wine.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
A behind-the-scenes look at how the cast and crew of Walking - The Arena Spectacular with Dinosaurs brings life-size dinosaurs to life in an theatrical setting.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Footage Provided by Walking With Dinosaurs the Arena Show, Julie Leibach
"Walking with Dinosaurs" Documentary Footage ©BBC
Music by Audio Network

http://www.sciencefriday.com
t's not just generations of children who have pondered how many licks it takes to reach the center of a lollipop. Mathematicians studying fluid dynamics at NYU's Applied Mathematics Lab designed experiments to watch how lollipops dissolve, and in doing so answered this epic childhood question. Help test their results by taking the Science Friday Lollipop Challenge!
Produced by Emily V. Driscoll
Filmed and Narrated by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage by
Jinzi "Mac" Huang, Nicholas Moore, & Leif Ristroph
Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc.
Photographs by
NYU Applied Mathematics Lab
Shutterstock
Featuring
Leif Ristroph
Leo Groskin
Saydi Landon
Melanie Soumbasakis
Thanks to
Barry Bowen
James Devitt
Ellen Gordon
Luke Groskin
Jinzi "Mac" Huang
Elizabeth Delucia Landon
Leif Ristroph
Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc.
Megan Davies Wykes

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Fireflies communicate with a "language of light" that scientists still don't completely understand. James Lloyd and Marc Branham of the University of Florida, Gainesville, discuss unique flash patterns and times for some of the 2,000 types of fireflies that light up the summer nights.
Produced by Emily V. Driscoll

Filmed by
Sakuma Fumio
Rei Ohara
Stavros Basis

Narrated by Ira Flatow

Additional Stills by
Joyce Gross
Bruce Marlin
Shutterstock
YikrazuulMusic by Audio Network

Special Thanks
Marc Branham
"Brilliant Darkness" movie funded by the Zoological Lighting Institute.
James Karl Fischer
Luke Groskin
Misa Kimura
James Lloyd
The Zoological Lighting Institute (http://www.zoolighting.org/)

Composer and instrument builder Paul Rudolph makes music from garbage. He combs recycling centers and scrap yards for what he calls "found object instruments"--propane tanks, film reels, artillery shells and other items that he likes the sound of. Rudolph sometimes modifies the objects and then uses the newly-minted percussive instruments in his music performance group GLANK, which has appeared at the Eagle Rock Music Festival in Los Angeles and Maker Faire in New York City. John Powell, physicist and author of How Music Works, chimes in on the physics of making music.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
Medieval stained glass reveals a lot about life in the Middle Ages, but keeping these artistic works from falling apart is a detailed process. Hanne Roemich from New York University's Conservation Center and Brooklyn-based conservator Mary Clerkin Higgins discuss the science behind glass conservation, and how these centuries-old relics are protected from the natural elements so we can enjoy them for years to come!
Produced by Katie Free and Neel V. Patel
Music by Kevin Macloed via incompetech.com

Bat biologist Nickolay Hristov, of UNC's Center for Design Innovation and Winston-Salem State University, develops new techniques for filming and visualizing bats and the caves they occupy. Some of the tools in his kit include a long-range laser scanner--for modelling bat cave morphology--and portable thermal cameras--to capture bat-life when the lights are off.

Polaroid's 20x24 cameras, built in the late 70s and named for the dimensions of their snapshots--20 by 24 inches, are the largest living Polaroid cameras in the world. (There was once an even bigger one with 40x80 snapshots but the film has run out.) Five of these 20x24 cameras still exist, and one resides in New York City's 20x24 Studio. The Studio's director, artist John Reuter, demonstrated the 235-pound camera, and Christopher Bonanos, author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, explained how this camera fits into Polaroid's history.

Brenda Tan and Matthew Cost, high school seniors from Trinity School in New York City, used a technique called DNA barcoding to find out what species were present in over 200 animal products. Their extracurricular experiment, which they completed with the help of Mark Stoeckle, of The Rockefeller University, suggests that buyers should beware!

Typographer and illustrator Craig Ward heard an urban legend that "using the handrails on the subway is like shaking hands with 100 people." He decided to test that theory by sampling the bacteria on subway lines around New York City and photographing his findings. The results were striking and unconventional "portraits" of NYC commuters.

Produced by Emily V. Driscoll. Filmed by Jeff Nash. Music by Audio Network

Additional Photography © Tasha Sturm, The Mason Lab
The Wall Street Journal and Martin Burch, Chris Canipe,
Madeline Farbman, Rachel Feierman and Robert Lee Hotz

Thanks to Christopher Mason, Craig Ward and Weill Cornell Medical College

75% of Southern California's water supply comes from the snowpack that adorns the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. Keeping track of how much water is contained within the snowpack is a monumental task. Thankfully, NASA has developed the Airborne Snow Observatory, a relatively new program that uses specialized instrumentation to carefully measure the water content.
Produced by Christian Baker
Additional Footage by NASA/JPL-Caltech
Color Correction by Luke Cahill
Music by Audio Network

http://www.sciencefriday.com
For centuries, maple syrup producers across New England and Canada harvested sap by drilling into the bark of fully grown wild trees. While commercial syrup producers have adopted vacuum pumps and plastic tubing to aid these efforts, recent experiments at the University of Vermont's Proctor Maple Research Center may further pull the industry from its pastoral roots. By vacuum-sucking sap directly from the cut tops of juvenile trees, the researchers increased syrup production 5 to 6 times per acre compared to the traditional sap collecting methods.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional Video and Stills by Kieth Silva © Across the Fence, Abby van den Berg, Mark Isselhardt Shutterstock, Leonora Enking, Ben Ramirez, Sally McCay, Jim Hood, Kevstan

http://www.patreon.com/scifri - Please Help Support Our Video Productions!
What happens when you give hundreds of puppies a single bowl of food? Mechanical engineer, David Hu, is trying to solve this problem with physics…and maggots.

Produced by Luke Groskin
Filmed by Brandon Swanson
Music by Audio Network
Additional Footage ands Stills Provided by David Hu, Olga Shishkov,
Grubbly Farms, Pond5, and Levi Anderson (CC BY 2.0)

When Tim White isn't hunting for the remains of our ancestors or working on those fossil-finds at the National Museum of Ethiopia, he's stationed in a museum-like office at the University of California, Berkeley, where he directs the Human Evolution Research Center. From snake skins to ancient skulls, White's office is not short on artifacts.

http://www.sciencefriday.com
With their pungent aromas and vibrant blooms, orchids lure insects, green-thumbs, and romantics alike. Marc Hachadourian, the New York Botanical Garden's curator of orchids, describes some of the deceptive methods orchids use to manipulate species into becoming their pollinators.
Produced by Luke Groskin
Music by Audio Network
Additional stills and video by
Jean Claessens ( https://www.youtube.com/channe....l/UCpcZkcloEtFnOhX8f
Shutterstock, Thomas Williams, Lisa Spink, Esculapio,Orquídeas del Perú, Orchi (C.C. 3.0) , Eric Hunt , Nicolas J. Vereecken (C.C. 3.0) , Gaspar R Avila / Alamy Stock Photo, Ong Poh Teck (Forest Research Institute Malaysia)

Despite their speed and power, Avalanches are not entirely unpredictable forces of nature. Using field tests and deep understanding under how to identify weaknesses in the snow pack, staff from the Utah Avalanche Center forecast avalanches and take preventative measures.
http://www.sciencefriday.com
Produced by Erika Sutter
Filmed by Manjula Varghese
Music by Audio Network
Additional Photos and Video by Shutterstock.com and the Utah Avalanche Center