Golden Goose

After years of being publicly shamed for “fleecing” the taxpayers with their frivolous and obscure studies, scientists decided to hit back with  … an awards show?! This episode, we gate-crash the Grammys of government-funded research, a.k.a. the Golden Goose Awards. The twist of these awards is that they go to scientific research that at first sounds trivial or laughable but then turns out to change the world. We tell the story of one of the latest winners: a lonely Filipino boy who picked up an ice cream cone that was actually a covert vampire assassin. Decades later, that discovery leads to an even bigger one: an entire pharmacy's worth of new drugs hidden just below the surface of the ocean. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif Nasser and Maria Paz Gutierrez with help from - Ekedi Fausther-Keeys Produced by - Maria Paz Gutierrez and Matt Kielty with help from Ekedi Fausther-Keeys Original music and sound design contributed by Matt Kielty with mixing help from Arianne Wack. Fact-checking by Emily Kriege