Science Friday and WNYC Studios
06 November 2025
As Black Friday approaches, you’re probably being inundated with ads for bigger, better televisions. But just how good is good enough? Are there limits to what our eyes can even make out? Visual perception researcher Maliha Ashraf joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her new study on display resolution—including a display calculator she and her colleagues developed to help you determine the optimal display characteristics for a given room. And retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones joins the conversation to delve into the workings of human vision. Guests: Dr. Maliha Ashraf is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Dr. Bryan W. Jones is a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-4-SCIFRI Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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