Chris Smith

speaker

241 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 14 Aug

Chris Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The Naked Scientists Podcast · Chasing fire clouds, and nanoparticles blitz brain cancers · 31 Jul 2026 podcast

From which they have isolated the DNA of that virus.

Even more compelling is that the virus they've uncovered was an early offshoot of the smallpox family tree, originating exclusively in Europe and disappearing before the virus disseminated farther around the world.

Rachel Ralph spoke with team member Constanza de la Fuente Castro about what they found.

Constanza de la Fuente Castro from the University of Chile, that study just out in science.

She was speaking with Rachel Ralph.

Researchers have found that when they interact, infants' brainwaves sync up with those of their fathers.

But it doesn't happen with a stranger, unless the stranger smells like dad.

Now it's not clear yet how this effect is mediated, but brainwave synchrony would seem to suggest that infants are much more engaged and receptive to input from their fathers compared with other unrelated individuals.

And from an evolutionary standpoint, that stands to reason because you probably want to trust and learn preferentially from a parent compared to someone that you don't know.

Yara Envel Shapira is at the University of Washington.

Got it.

So basically you put the baby with the dad that it should be familiar with the smell of.

You then also put the baby with a stranger who on one occasion smells like dad and on another occasion doesn't smell like dad.

And you're doing this in a random order so you can see do the brain waves match up in the baby and the adult on those different occasions?

And what do you mean by by cognitive synchrony?

So you're you're recording the brainwave activity in both the adult and the infant.

What actually synchronizes then?

Do you know how this is mediated then?

So you're presenting a smell

Uh the baby is obviously familiar with its own dad, so th there must be a message going through the smell system.

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