This Holiday, Dig Into Some Of The Hilarious Science Of Christmas BMJs Past

Short Wave

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🗓️ 25 December 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Would you survive as a doctor in The Sims 4? What's an appropriate amount of free food to take from a public sample station before it's greedy? And how much do clock towers affect sleep? These are the types of questions answered in the Christmas issue of The BMJ — one of the journal's most highly anticipated issues each year. And we find out the answers in this very episode. So, sit back, relax and prepare to be amused by this ghost of Christmas Past (encore).

Check out what's been published so far in the 2023 issue. (We particularly like the research about the associated health risks and benefits of various Great British Bakeoff Ingredients.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey Shortwaavers, Regina Barbara here, and I'm joined by two of my favorite producers,
0:10.5	Margaret Serino and Liz Metzger.
0:12.8	Hey, you too.
0:13.8	Hello.
0:14.8	Hey, China, happy to be here.
0:17.6	We know that you are a lover of all things pop culture.
0:21.7	Yes.
0:22.1	Being a little bit silly.
0:24.0	And of course, some great scientific papers.
0:27.0	All true, all true.
0:29.0	Well, in light of that, we have a little treat for you today
0:32.0	which actually came from a story you and I worked on, Gina.
0:36.0	Do you remember the LEGO Poppy Head episode?
0:41.0	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
0:48.1	Lego, parents don't need to freak out.
0:50.9	And y'all talked to Sabrina Embler, who's a science journalist who wrote about this paper, and they said that the research team wrote this paper with kind of this one other intention.
1:02.0	They wanted to get sort of a funny paper
1:04.7	into this very famous journal called the Christmas
1:07.6	BMJ.
1:08.5	BMJ, as in the British Medical Journal,
	...

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