Color preference in the insane, the red sweat of the hippopotamus, the question of whether The Explorer’s Club served a dinner of thawed, roast woolley mammoth, and how surgeons handle pop-up surprises — all of these turn up in this week’s Improbable Research podcast.
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This week, Marc Abrahams tells about:
- Color preference in the insane. (Siegfried E. Katz, 1931,
‘Color Preference in the Insane.’ Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 26 (2): 203–11. Featuring dramatic readings by Jean Berko Gleason.) - The Red Sweat of the Hippopotamus. (“Refined Structure of Hipposudoric and Norhipposudoric Acids, Pigments of the Red Sweat of the Hippopotamus,”
Takatoshi Matsumoto, Yoko Saikawa, Masaya Nakata, and Kimiko Hashimoto, Chemistry Letters, epub 2015. Featuring dramatic readings by Richard Baguley.) - Did the Explorers Club eat frozen mammoth? (“Was Frozen Mammoth or Giant Ground Sloth Served for Dinner at the Explorers Club?” Matt Davis, Jessica R. Glass, Timothy J. Walsh, Eric J. Sargis, and Adalgisa Caccone, 2015 GSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, USA (1-4 November 2015), Paper No. 327-16. Featuring dramatic readings by Bruce Petschek.)
- Some boys-will-be-boys research. (“What to Do If It Gets ‘Bigger’“, C. Kouriefs and N.A. Watkin, Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, vol. 85, no. 2, March 2003, pp. 126–8.
/ “Serotonin Transporter Promoter Region (5-HTTLPR) Polymorphism is Associated with the Intravaginal Ejaculation Latency Time in Dutch Men with Lifelong Premature Ejaculation,” Journal of Sexual Medicine, Paddy K.C. Janssen, Steven C. Bakker, Janos Réthelyi, Aeilko H. Zwinderman, Daan J. Touw, Berend Olivier, and Marcel D. Waldinger, vol. 6, 2009, pp. 276–84. / “Effect of Different Types of Textiles on Sexual Activity. Experimental Study,” Ahmed Shafik, European Urology, vol. 24, no. 3, 1993, pp. 375–80. / Excrement in the Late Middle Ages— Sacred Filth and Chaucer’s Fecopoetics, Susan Signe Morrison, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008. / 
On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005. / “A Kind Word for Bullshit: The Problem of Academic Writing,” Philip Eubanks and John D. Schaeffer, College Composition and Communication, vol. 59, no. 3, February 2008, pp. 272–88. / “Picadura de Anémona en Pene” [article in Spanish], J.M. Janeiro Pais, et al., Actas Urológicas Españolas, vol. 32, no. 8, September 2008, p. 864. Featuring dramatic readings by Richard Baguley.)
The mysterious John Schedler or the shadowy Bruce Petschek perhaps did the sound engineering this week.
The Improbable Research podcast is all about research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK — real research, about anything and everything, from everywhere —research that may be good or bad, important or trivial, valuable or worthless. CBS distributes it, on the CBS Play.it web site, and on iTunes and Spotify).