Learn about how a fever helps you get better; why the first reliable and widely available pregnancy test was the African clawed frog; and a potential breakthrough in the shockingly complicated traveling salesperson problem.

How Exactly Does Fever Help You Get Better? by Ashley Hamer

• TED-Ed. (2016). The surprising reason you feel awful when you’re sick - Marco A. Sotomayor [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVdY9KXF_Sg
• Mace, T. A., Zhong, L., Kilpatrick, C., Zynda, E., Lee, C.-T., Capitano, M., Minderman, H., & Repasky, E. A. (2011). Differentiation of CD8+ T cells into effector cells is enhanced by physiological range hyperthermia. Journal of Leukocyte Biology, 90(5), 951–962. https://doi.org/10.1189/jlb.0511229

The first reliable and widely available pregnancy test was... a frog? by Cameron Duke

• Tyssowski, K. (2018, August 31). Pee is for Pregnant: The history and science of urine-based pregnancy tests. Science in the News. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/pee-pregnant-history-science-urine-based-pregnancy-tests/#:~:text=The%20late%201920s%20marked%20the
• VAITUKAITIS, J. L. (2004). Development of the Home Pregnancy Test. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1038(1), 220–222. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1315.030
• Wells, G. P. (1978). Lancelot Thomas Hogben, 9 December 1895 - 22 August 1975. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 24, 183–221. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1978.0007
• Yong, E. (2017, May 4). How a Frog Became the First Mainstream Pregnancy Test. The Atlantic; The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/how-a-frog-became-the-first-mainstream-pregnancy-test/525285/

Traveling salesperson update by Cody Gough

• Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record. (2020). Quanta Magazine. https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-scientists-break-traveling-salesperson-record-20201008/
• Karlin, A. R., Klein, N., & Gharan, Shayan Oveis. (2020). A (Slightly) Improved Approximation Algorithm for Metric TSP. ArXiv.org. https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.01409
• Curiosity Daily: Weirdest Types of Lightning, Spotting Audio Lies Easily, and the Traveling Salesman Problem https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-daily/weirdest-types-of-lightning-spotting-audio-lies-ea

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Find episode transcript here: daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-does-fever-help-you-get-better">https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-does-fever-help-you-get-better