[Elevator music]
Laurel: I wrote a really cool story about slug slime
and how it's inspiring
better biomedical adhesives.
Kate: One of my favorite stories of 2017
was the March for Science.
Emily: Yeah so for me my favorite story had to be
the collision of two neutron stars
that was detected in gravitational waves
and light at the same time.
It was so much fun reporting that story
because like every scientist that I talked to
about it was just so excited.
They were all totally losing their minds
over this discovery.
Bethany: So I love this one section of the magazine
called 50 years ago,
where we go back
and we look in our back archives.
I think it was the September 28th issue of 1967
We wrote about catching commercial airliners in nets
when they landed,
which I just love.
Maria: The detection of this previously unknown void
inside the Great Pyramid at Giza.
They discovered this void using muon detectors
that pick up these particles called muons
that are created in the upper atmosphere
when cosmic rays smash into atmospheric particles.
It was this sort of crazy, beautiful juxtaposition
of this super high-tech technology that we have now,
in terms of the muon detectors,
and you know, this really ancient technology
of pyramid design and building.
Helen: One of my favorites was definitely Supernova 1987A.
I got to do a video that combined
claymation and glitter,
which are like my two favorite things.
Bruce: How kids in a farming community in Africa
do the marshmallow test
much more effectively than kids
in western countries do.
Bethany: Yeah. I really liked that story.
I thought it was really,
It really highlighted for me
just how much of what we consider
often to be these kind of like
very basic psychological principles
are actually heavily influenced by
the culture that we live in
even when you're dealing with like a four-year old child.
Susan: My favorite story for the year
was your explanation of how hybrids can happen.
Tina: Oh Susan....
Susan: No, no, I mean it's something
that people should know.
It's a really basic thing
that schools don't teach people.
Tina: Well, that's funny because,
my favorite story of the year
is your essay on what a species is.
Maria: The discovery of the seven Earth-sized planets
in the Trappist system
that Ashley Yeager and Lisa Grossman wrote about
for obvious SETI fan-girl reasons.
There's all of this potential real estate out there
for aliens to be living on.
Macon: I like stories where
the public and science come together,
and this year we dug into some provocative issues
like about gun statistics
whether with CRISPR technology
whether, as it goes along
are we going to be obligated to CRISPR our kids?
Tracee: I really loved working on the vampire story.
It was pretty crazy to learn about
all the different animals that are technically vampires.
Kind of blew my mind.
And it was just really fun and really creepy.
Emily: I really liked the story that Laurel Hamers wrote
on scallop eyes.
Which, first of all, I didn't even know that scallops
had eyes, so that's cool to begin with.
But then, the eyes are really intricate
and really amazing
It's like all these tiny, little rectangular
almost like mirrors
that reflect the light and focus it like a telescope.
Mike: I think I'm actually going to go with the
death of Cassini.
It was such a very high-stakes and very emotional,
dramatic moment
and I don't know, I was really into it.
Laurel: Well, Cassini was pretty emotional
But I gotta say, the eclipse was also up there.
Kate: Who didn't get excited about the eclipse?
Emily: The eclipse was mind-blowing!
Susan: Oh, I loved the eclipse.
Tina: I know. The eclipse was awesome.
Tracee: We all got our glasses and went outside
and looked up. It was pretty awesome.
I was with Susan Milius,
and she was having the best time ever.
Susan: I just loved walking around,
looking at how the shadows changed.
Helen: I mean, I feel like everyone was having the best
time ever during the eclipse.
Maria: This is going to be a compilation of people
going eclipse, eclipse, eclipse.
Mike: Part of my job is trolling through a lot
of the comments on our site and making sure
everything is in order and all that.
And there are some regulars I've come
to recognize at this point, and there was a point a
couple months into my job when I realized that they
were mentioning me by name.
So, thanks, uh, thanks Doug, for calling me out
in the comments section.
Yes I do read pretty much every one.
Tina: I had an experience, I was at DragonCon,
which is a big pop-culture extravaganza
where everyone dresses up like their favorite sci-fi
character.
Susan: Oh, what were you wearing?
Tina: Um, at that point, I think I was dressed as
Princess Leia.
I was approached by this girl who was dressed as
as a student at Hogwarts.
and she told me that she was really excited to meet me
because she recognized my name from
two stories that I had written about CRISPR
because she had written a report in her high school
about using CRISPR
and she had used my stories as references.
Laurel: I had a guy from the Netherlands
e-mail me in Dutch to tell me about how he
had an egg explode in his mouth.
after I wrote about exploding eggs.
I really appreciated that reader feedback.
Kate: I feel like 2017 has kind of, it's ended
with some nice big discoveries.
Emily: Lots of graviational waves.
[laughter]
Tina: So 2017? CRISPR.
Which was also 2016, but yeah, 2017 was CRISPR again.
Maria: I wrote about AI doing ... everything this year
from predictive policing, to driving cars,
to sorting resumes
to discovering new exoplanets and new
types of dolphin clicks.
I think AI is really sort of touching everything these days
in science and society, and I'm excited
to see how people continue to grapple with that in 2018.
Susan: Let's meet here next year,
same place, same plant.
Tina: [laughs]
Bethany: So we usually catch planes
on aircraft carriers by hooking their butts
with giant hooks
that are actually wires
stretched across the deck.
Bruce: I think I saw this in the movie "Airplane."
