Big Picture Science for OCT. 26, Skeptic Check: Stay Skeptical

Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: Stay Skeptical

Whether you call it hooey, codswallop, or malarky, misinformation is not what it used to be. It’s harder to spot now. New-school BS is often cloaked in the trappings of math, science, and statistics. Can you identify which tweets about a new COVID study are fraudulent? Plus, deceptive on-line
advertisements that relentlessly beg for our attention. All in all, it’s a jungle out there. We have tips for getting through it.

Guests:

• Carl Bergstrom – Evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington and author of “Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.”
• Franziska Roesner – Associate Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington
• Eric Zeng – Graduate student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-stay-skeptical

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for OCT. 19, What’s a Few Degrees?

Big Picture Science - What’s a Few Degrees?

Brace yourself for heatwave “Lucifer.” Dangerous deadly heatwaves may soon be so common that we give them names, just like hurricanes. This is one of the dramatic consequences of just a few degrees rise in average temperatures.

Also coming: Massive heat “blobs” that form in the oceans and damage marine life, and powerful windstorms called “derechos” pummeling the Midwest.

Plus, are fungal pathogens adapting to hotter temperatures and breaching the 98.6 F thermal barrier that keeps them from infecting us?

Guests:

• Kathy Baughman McLeod – director and senior vice president of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at The Atlantic Council
• Pippa Moore – Marine ecologist at Newcastle University in the U.K.
• Ted Derouin – Michigan farmer
• Jeff Dukes – Ecologist and director of Purdue Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University.
• Arturo Casadevall – Molecular microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/whats-few-degrees

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for OCT. 12, Geology is Destiny

Big Picture Science - Geology is Destiny

(Repeat) The record of the rocks is not just the history of Earth; it’s your history too.  Geologists can learn about events going back billions of years that influenced – and even made possible – our present-day existence and shaped our society.

If the last Ice Age had been a bit warmer, the rivers and lakes of the Midwest would have been much farther north and the U.S. might still be a small country of 13 states. If some Mediterranean islands hadn’t twisted a bit, no roads would have led to Rome.

Geology is big history, and the story is on-going. Human activity is changing the planet too, and has introduced its own geologic era, the Anthropocene. Will Earthlings of a hundred million years from now dig up our plastic refuse and study it the way we study dinosaur bones?

Plus, the dodo had the bad luck to inhabit a small island and couldn’t adapt to human predators. But guess what? It wasn’t as dumb as you think.

Guests:

• Walter Alvarez – Professor of Geology, University of California, Berkeley, and author of A Most Improbable Journey: A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves
• Eugenia Gold – Instructor, Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University
• David Grinspoon – Senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, and author of Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future

This repeat podcast was previously released on January 16, 2017

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/geology-is-destiny

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.

Big Picture Science for OCT. 05, Talk the Walk

 

  

Big Picture Science - Talk the Walk

Birds and bees do it … and so do fish. In a discovery that highlights the adaptive benefits of walking, scientists have discovered fish that can walk on land. Not fin-flap their bodies, mind you, but ambulate like reptiles.

And speaking of which, new research shows that T Rex, the biggest reptile of them all, wasn’t a sprinter, but could be an efficient hunter by outwalking its prey.

Find out the advantage of legging it, and how human bipedalism stacks up. Not only is walking good for our bodies and brains, but not walking can change your personality and adversely affect your health.

Guests:

• Hans Larsson – Paleontologist and biologist, and Director of the Redpath Museum at McGill University in Montréal.
• Shane O’Mara – Neuroscientist and professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of “In Praise of Walking.”
• Brooke Flammang – Biologists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/talk-the-walk

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.