Christmas in July! Celebrate With Hilarious Research

Short Wave

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🗓️ 31 July 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Would you survive as a doctor in The Sims 4? What's the appropriate amount of free food to take from a public sample station before it's considered greedy? And how much of an impact do clock towers have on sleep?

These are the hard-hitting questions that researchers ask and answer in the Christmas issue of The BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal. What started in 1982 as an experimental roundup of fun research for the holidays has since grown into one of The BMJ's most highly anticipated issues each year. In honor of the July 31 research submission deadline, Short Wave talks to two of its editors about what makes the cut.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.8	Hey, Shortwaveers, Regina Barber here, and I'm joined by two of my favorite producers,
0:10.7	Margaret Serino and Liz Metzger.
0:12.9	Hey, you two.
0:13.9	Hello.
0:14.9	Hey, Tina.
0:15.9	Happy to be here.
0:17.7	We know that you are a lover of all things pop culture.
0:21.5	Yes.
0:22.5	Being a little bit silly.
0:23.5	Mm-hmm.
0:24.5	And, of course, some great scientific papers.
0:27.7	All true.
0:28.7	All true.
0:29.7	We have a little treat for you today, which actually came from a story you and I worked
0:35.2	on, Gina.
0:36.8	Do you remember the Lego poopy head episode?
0:40.9	Of course, of course, I could not forget that one.
0:43.8	It's that academic paper where scientists are trying to publicize if your kid eats a Lego.
0:49.2	Parents don't need to freak out.
0:50.9	And y'all talk to Sabrina Imbler, who's a science journalist who wrote about this paper,
0:56.6	and they said that the research team wrote this paper with kind of this one other intention.
	...

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