This week on UnDisciplined, we're talking about two ideas that fly in the face of conventional thought. One of our guests will tell us about the creatures in our gut — bacteria. The other will talk about an idea in many of our heads about how fake news impacts the political process.
Both say we might not have the picture quite right.
Joining us today is June Round, an associate professor in the department of pathology at the University of Utah. In a recent paper, published in the journal Science, her team identified a specific class of gut bacteria that prevents mice from becoming obese.
With us on the line from Boston, where she is a postdoctoral researcher working on questions of behavior at Northeastern University, is Lisa Friedland. She was one of the authors on a recent paper, also published in Science, that found engagement with fake news sources during the 2016 election cycle was extremely concentrated — perhaps far more than most people think.