Life, the Universe & Everything Else - Episode 201: See, I told you so!

Apr 08 2024 75 mins 15

On this episode of Life, the Universe & Everything Else, Ashlyn, Lauren, Gem, and Laura talk about people who were disbelieved but were eventually vindicated. Topics include pilot David Steeves’ missing airplane, singer Sinéad O’Connor public denunciation of the Catholic Church, neurologist Stanley Prusiner’s discovery of prions, and neuropathologist Bennet Omalu’s findings of CTEs in NFL players.

Life, the Universe & Everything Else is a podcast that explores the intersection of science and society.

David Steeves’ Missing Airplane: David A. Steeves (Steeves House Museum) | David Steeves (Wikipedia) | Hero or hoax? Public doubted pilot’s story of survival (Los Angeles Times)

Sinéad O’Connor and the Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal: Sinéad O’Connor: Biography, Singer, Activist (Biography.com) | Sinead O’Connor Cause of Death Revealed: Natural Causes (Rolling Stone) | Sinéad O’Connor (Wikipedia) | Sinéad O’Connor on Saturday Night Live (Wikipedia) | Catholic Church sexual abuse cases (Wikipedia) | Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Wikipedia)

Stanley Prusiner and Prions: Heretical Theory on Brain Diseases Gains New Ground (The New York Times) | Novel Proteinaceous Infectious Particles Cause Scrapie (Science) | Prions (PNAS) | Stanley B. Prusiner (Wikipedia) | Prion (Wikipedia) | Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (Wikipedia) | Kuru (disease) (Wikipedia) | Fatal insomnia (Wikipedia)

Bennet Omalu and CTEs: Doctor behind ‘Concussion’ tackled racism and NFL (Los Angeles Times) | Concussion medic didn’t identify head trauma syndrome as Will Smith film claims, say doctors (The Guardian) | League of Denial: The NFL’s Concussion Crisis (PBS Frontline) | The NFL Tried to Intimidate Scientists Studying the Link between Pro Football and Traumatic Brain Injury (Union of Concerned Scientists) | Bennet Omalu, Concussions, and the NFL: How One Doctor Changed Football Forever (GQ) | CTE doctor Bennet Omalu has profited selling distorted science (Washington Post) | How the Sports World Learned to Ignore CTE (Global Sport Matters)