Big Picture Science for Oct. 25th, 2021 - Skeptic Check: Brain Gain

Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: Brain Gain

Looking to boost your brainpower? Luckily, there are products promising to help. Smart drugs, neurofeedback exercises, and brain-training video games all promise to improve your gray matter’s performance. But it’s uncertain whether these products really work. Regulatory agencies have come down har
 on some popular brain training companies for false advertising. But other brain games have shown benefits in clinical trials. And could we skip the brain workout altogether and pop a genius pill instead?

In our regular look at critical thinking, we separate the pseudo from the science of commercial cognitive enhancement techniques.

Guests:

• Caroline Williams – Science journalist and author of “My Plastic Brain: One Woman’s Yearlong Journey to Discover If Science Can Improve Her Mind”
• Adam Gazzaley – Neuroscientist, University of California, San Francisco, and the executive director of Neuroscape.  His book is “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World.”
• Amy Arnsten – Professor of neuroscience and psychology at Yale Medical School
• Kevin Roose – Journalist for the New York Times.
• Leonard Mlodinow – Physicist and author of “Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change”

This repeat podcast originally aired on August 6, 2018

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-brain-gain

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. 18th, 2021 - Radical Cosmology

 

Big Picture Science - Radical Cosmology

(Repeat) 400 years ago, some ideas about the cosmos were too scandalous to mention. When the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno suggested that planets existed outside our Solar System, the Catholic Inquisition had him arrested, jailed, and burned at the stake for heresy.

Today, we have evidence of thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Our discovery of extrasolar planets has dramatically changed ideas about the possibility for life elsewhere in the universe.

Modern theories about the existence of the ghostly particles called neutrinos or of collapsed stars with unfathomable gravity (black holes), while similarly incendiary, didn’t prompt arrest, of course. Neutrinos and black holes were arresting ideas because they came decades before we had the means to prove their existence.

Hear about scientific ideas that came before their time and why extrasolar planets, neutrinos, and black holes are now found on the frontiers of astronomical research.

Guests:

• Alberto Martínez – Professor of history, University of Texas, Austin, and author of Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo & the Inquisition
• Anne Schukraft – Associate scientist, Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory
• Ephraim Fischbach – Professor of physics and astronomy, Perdue University
• Chris Impey – Professor of astronomy, University of Arizona, and author of Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes

This repeat podcast originally aired on February 18, 2019

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/radical-cosmology

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. 11th, 2021 - Fuhgeddaboudit

Big Picture Science - Fuhgeddaboudit

A thousand years ago, most people didn’t own a single book. The only way to access knowledge was to consult their memory.

But technology – from paper to hard drives – has permitted us to free our brains from remembering countless facts. Alphabetization and the simple filing cabinet have helped to systematize and save information we might need someday.

But now that we can Google just about any subject, have we lost the ability to memorize information? Does this make our brains better or worse?

Guests:

• Judith Flanders – Historian and author, most recently of A Place for Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order
• Craig Robertson – Professor of Media Studies, Northeastern University and author of The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information
• David Eagleman – Neuroscientist and author, Stanford University

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/fuhgeddaboudit

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. 4th, 2021 - Home Invasions

Big Picture Science - Home Invasions

As we struggle to control a viral invader that moves silently across the globe and into its victims, we are also besieged by other invasions. Murder hornets have descended upon the Pacific Northwest, threatening the region’s honeybees. In Africa, locust swarms darken the sky. In this episode, we draw on a classic science fiction tale to examine the nature of invasions, and what prompts biology to go on the move.

Guests:

• Peter Ksander – Associate professor at Reed College in the Department of Theater. Producer of the spring 2020 production of War of the Worlds
• Eva Licht – A senior at Reed College, and producer and director of War of the Worlds
• Chris Looney – Entomologist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture, where he manages its general entomology laboratory
• Nipun Basrur – Neurobiologist at The Rockefeller University
• Amy Maxmen – Reporter at the journal Nature, in which her story about pandemic war games appeared.

This repeat podcast originally aired on August 31, 2020

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/home-invasions

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 Sept. 27th, 2021 - AI: Where Does it End?

Big Picture Science - AI: Where Does it End?

The benefits of artificial intelligence are manifest and manifold, but can we recognize the drawbacks … and avoid them in time?

In this episode, recorded before a live audience at the Seattle meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, we discuss who is making the ethical decisions about how we use this powerful technology, and a proposal to create a Hippocratic Oath for AI researchers.

Guests:

• Oren Etzioni - CEO of The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
• Mark Hill - Professor of computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and chair of the Computing Community Consortium

This repeat podcast originally aired on February 24, 2020

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/ai-where-does-it-end

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 Sept. 20th, 2021 - Skeptic Check: Science Denial

Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: Science Denial

(REPEAT) Climate change isn’t happening. Vaccines make you sick.  When it comes to threats to public or environmental health, a surprisingly large fraction of the population still denies the consensus of scientific evidence. But it’s not the first time – many people long resisted the evidentiary link between HIV and AIDS and smoking with lung cancer.

There’s a sense that science denialism is on the rise. It prompted a gathering of scientists and historians in New York City to discuss the problem, which included a debate on the usefulness of the word “denial” itself. Big Picture Science was there. We report from the Science Denial symposium held jointly by the New York Academy of Sciences and Rutgers Global Health Institute.

Find out why so many people dig in their heels and distrust scientific findings. Plus, the techniques wielded by special interest groups to dispute some inconvenient truths. We also hear how simply stating more facts may be the wrong approach to combating scientific resistance.

Guests:

• Melanie Brickman Borchard - Director of Life Sciences Conferences at New York Academy of Sciences
• Nancy Tomes - professor of history at Stony Brook University
• Allan Brandt - professor of history of science and medicine at Harvard University. Author of “The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America”
• Sheila Jasanoff - Director of Program on Science, Technology and Society and professor of environment, science and technology at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
• Michael Dahlstrom - Associate Director of Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, and associate professor at Iowa State University
• Matthew Nisbet - professor of communication and public policy at Northeastern University
• Arthur (Art) Caplan - professor and founding head of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine

This repeat podcast originally aired on November 12, 2018

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-science-denial

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 Sept. 13th, 2021 - Animals Being Jerks

Big Picture Science - Animals Being Jerks

They’re cute and cuddly. But they can also be obnoxious.

Science writer Mary Roach has numerous tales about how our animal friends don’t always bow to their human overlords and behave the way we’d want. The resulting encounters, such as when gulls disrupt the Vatican’s Easter mass, make for amusing stories. But others, such as wolves threatening farmers’ livestock, can be tragic.

We hear what happens at the messy crossroads of human and wildlife encounters.

Guest:

• Mary Roach – Author of bestselling nonfiction books, most recently “Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.”

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/animals-being-jerks

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 Sept. 6th, 2021 - De-Permafrosting

Big Picture Science - De-Permafrosting

Above the Arctic Circle, much of the land is underlaid by permafrost. But climate change is causing it to thaw. This is not good news for the planet.

As the carbon rich ground warms, microbes start to feast… releasing greenhouse gases that will warm the Earth even more.

Another possible downside was envisioned by a science-fiction author. Could ancient pathogens–released from the permafrost’s icy grip–cause new pandemics? We investigate what happens when the far north defrosts.

Guests:

• Jacquelyn Gill – Associate professor of paleoecology at the University of Maine.
• Jim Shepard – Novelist and short story writer, and teacher of English at Williams College, and author of “Phase Six.”
• Scott Saleska – Global change ecologist, professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona, and co-founder of IsoGenie.

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/de-permafrosting

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 Aug. 30th, 2021 - True Grit

Big Picture Science - True Grit

(REPEAT) Without sand, engineering would be stuck in the Middle Ages. Wooden houses would line mud-packed streets, and Silicon Valley would be, well, just a valley. Sand is the building material of modern cities, and we use more of this resource than any other except water and air. Now we’re running out of it.

Hear why the Roman recipe for making concrete was lost until the 19th century, and about the super-secret mine in North Carolina that makes your smartphone possible.

Plus, engineered sand turns stormwater into drinking water, and why you might think twice about running barefoot on some tropical beaches once you learn about their biological source.

And, a special report from the coast of Louisiana where livelihoods and ecosystems depend on the successful release of Mississippi sand from levees into sediment-starved wetlands.

Guests:

• Vince Beiser – Journalist and author of “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization”
• Joe Charbonnet – Science and policy associate at the Green Science Policy Institute in Berkeley, California
• Pupa Gilbert – Biophysicist and geobiologist, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Rudy Simoneaux – Engineer manager, Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Elizabeth Chamberlain – Post-doctoral researcher in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University

This repeat podcast originally aired on January 14, 2019

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/true-grit

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 Aug. 23rd, 2021 - You've Got Whale

 

Big Picture Science - You've Got Whale

(REPEAT) SMS isn’t the original instant messaging system. Plants can send chemical warnings through their leaves in a fraction of a second.  And while we love being in the messaging loop – frenetically refreshing our browsers – we miss out on important conversations that no Twitter feed or inbox can capture. That’s because eavesdropping on the communications of non-human species requires the ability to decode their non-written signals.

Dive into Arctic waters where scientists make first-ever recordings of the socializing clicks and squeals of narwhals, and find out how climate shifts may pollute their acoustic landscape. Also, why the chemical defense system of plants has prompted one biologist to give greenery an “11 on the scale of awesomeness.” And, you can’t see them, but they sure can sense one another: how communicating microbes plan their attack.

Guests:

• Susanna Blackwell – Bio-acoustician with Greeneridge Sciences. Hear her recordings of narwhals here.
• Simon Gilroy – Professor of botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison. His video of glowing green caterpillar-munched plants can be viewed here.
• Peter Greenberg – Professor of microbiology, University of Washington, Seattle

This repeat podcast originally aired on October 29, 2018

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/youve-got-whale

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 Aug. 16th, 2021 - Phreaky Physics

Big Picture Science - Phreaky Physics

It was a radical idea a century ago, when Einstein said space and time can be bent, and gravity was really geometry. We hear how his theories inspire young minds even today.

At small scales, different rules apply: quantum mechanics and the Standard Model for particles. New experiments suggest that muons – cousins of the electron – may be telling us that the Standard Model is wrong. Also, where the physics of both the large and small apply, and why black holes have no hair.

Guests:

• Hakeem Oluseyi – Astrophysicist, affiliated professor at George Mason University, and author of “A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars”
• Janna Levin – Professor of physics and astronomy, Barnard College at Columbia University
• Mark Lancaster – Professor of particle physics, University of Manchester

New opening theme song, "Kinematics," composed arranged, programmed and produced by Jun Miyake. Musicians: Jun Miyake (Rhodes, keyboards), Andy Bevan (clarinet), Bob Zung (clarinet), Atsuki Yoshida (violins and violas), Masahiro Itami (guitars) Mixing engineer: Philippe Avril.
Other compostions by Dewey Dellay. 

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/phreaky-physics

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 Aug. 9th, 2021 - Skeptic Check: Anti-Vax

 

Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: Anti-Vax

They were developed in a matter of months, and they’re 90 percent effective at stopping infection. They protect against serious illness or death. And yet, roughly one-third of Americans refuse to get the Covid vaccine. How can this be? How could something that our ancestors would have considered a
miracle be refused by so many? The reasons are many, and not all are because of an antivax attitude. We talk to health professionals to learn what’s stopping the public from stopping the pandemic.

Guests:

• Paul Offit – Pediatrician and Director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
• Tanagne Haile-Mariam – Professor of Emergency Medicine, George Washington University School of Medicine
• Nsikan Akpan – Former Health and Science Editor for New York Public Radio

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-anti-vax

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 Aug. 2nd, 2021 - Platypus Crazy

 

Big Picture Science - Platypus Crazy

They look like a cross between a beaver and a duck, and they all live Down Under. The platypus may lay eggs, but is actually a distant mammalian cousin, one that we last saw, in an evolutionary sense, about 166 million years ago.

Genetic sequencing is being used to trace that history, while scientists intensify their investigation of the habits and habitats of these appealing Frankencreatures; beginning by taking a census to see just how many are out there, and if their survival is under threat.

Guests:

• Josh Griffiths – Senior Wildlife Ecologist at Cesaar Australia.
• Jane Fenelon – Research fellow, University of Melbournee.
• Paula Anich – Professor of Natural Resources, Northland College.
• Wes Warren – Professor of Genomics, University of Missouri.
• Phoebe Meagher – Conservation Officer, Taronga Conservation Society, Australia.

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/platypus-crazy

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 July 26th, 2021 - A Twist of Slime

Big Picture Science - A Twist of Slime

(REPEAT) Your daily mucus output is most impressive. Teaspoons or measuring cups can’t capture its entire volume. Find out how much your body churns out and why you can’t live without the viscous stuff. But slime in general is remarkable.

Whether coating the bellies of slithery creatures, sleeking the surface of aquatic plants, or dripping from your nose, its protective qualities make it one of the great inventions of biology. Join us as we venture to the land of ooze!

Guests:

• Christopher Viney - Professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Merced
• Katharina Ribbeck - Bioengineer at MIT
• Anna Rose Hopkins – Chef and partner at Hank and Bean in Los Angeles
• Ruth Kassinger - author of “Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us ”

This repeat podcast originally aired on January 27, 2020

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/a-twist-of-slime

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 July 19th, 2021 - New Water Worlds

Big Picture Science - New Water Worlds

The seas are rising. It’s no longer a rarity to see kayakers paddling through downtown Miami. By century’s end, the oceans could be anywhere from 2 to 6 feet higher, threatening millions of people and property. But humans once knew how to adapt to rising waters. As high water threatens to drown our cities, can we learn do it again.

Hear stories of threatened land: submerged Florida suburbs, the original sunken city (Venice), and the U.S. East Coast, where anthropologists rush to catalogue thousands of low-lying historical and cultural sites in harm’s way, including Jamestown, Virginia and ancient Native American sites.

But also, stories of ancient adaptability: from the First American tribes of the Colusa in South Florida to the ice age inhabitants of Doggerland. And, modern approaches to staying dry: stilt houses, seawalls, and floating cities.

Guests:

• Jeff Goodell – Journalist and author of “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World”
• Brian Fagan – Archaeologist and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara, and author of many books including “The Attacking Ocean: the Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels”
• David Anderson – Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee.  His team’s PLOS ONE paper is “Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction.” His DINAA site can be used to generate maps of where people were living in the past, up to ca. 15,000 years ago.  

This repeat podcast originally aired on August 27, 2018

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/new-water-worlds

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.