Big Picture Science for Nov. 09, 2026: On the Wings of a Butterfly

Big Picture Science: On the Wings of a Butterfly

We can now follow where Monarch butterflies go when they leave our gardens with tiny sensors that track their impressive 3,000-mile migrations from Canada to Mexico. The significant challenges that the journey poses are depicted in a new science exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History featuring artwork by Mad Magazine illustrator and environmentalist Peter Kuper. Their plight highlights the threats that chemicals and habitat loss pose to all insects, but all is not dire. Surprising research into how Monarchs protect themselves from disease shows the remarkable self-healing capacities of not only our colorful, vital pollinators but a diversity of species, from birds to dogs to chimpanzees.

Guests:

• Sean Decatur – President of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City
• Jessica Ware – Entomologist, Chair of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, Curator, Monarch’s Journey at the American Museum of Natural History
• Peter Kuper – Graphic novelist whose work appears regularly in Charlie Hebdo, The New Yorker, The Nation, and Mad Magazine, where he has written and illustrated “Spy vs. Spy” since 1997, illustrator of the AMNH exhibition, Monarch’s Journey
• Mark Moffett – Tropical biologist, research associate at the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution, visiting scholar, Department of Human Evolution, Harvard University
• Jaap de Roode – Biologist, Emory University, author of “Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes, and Other Animals Heal Themselves"

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Big Picture Science for Nov. 02, 2026: Earth's Misunderstood Molecule

Big Picture Science: Earth's Misunderstood Molecule

Carbon dioxide is more than an industrial pollutant driving climate change. The gas also played a pivotal part in the dramatic story of the beginning of all life. Starting in the ocean depths, dissolved CO2 commingled in a turbulent mix of chemicals heated by hydrothermal vents may have kickstarted carbon-based life. As the planet’s thermostat, carbon dioxide has taken the Earth on wild temperature swings, from sweltering toxic hothouses that drove mass extinctions to the frigid Snowball Earth from which early life barely escaped. With life’s growing complexity, CO2’s role evolved. Exhaled by animals and enlisted by plants in photosynthesis, the gas eventually earned its discordant reputation when belched by industrial chimneys. Now, burning fossil fuels have us playing with fire as we test the limit of our stable climate upon which human civilization has flourished.

Guest:

• Peter Brannen – science journalist and author of  “The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything; How Carbon Dioxide Made Our World.”

 
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Big Picture Science for Oct. 26, 2026: Scoping Out the Universe

Big Picture Science: Scoping Out the Universe

REPEAT
Telescopes are like light buckets. The bigger the telescope, the more light collected for astronomers to observe. With recent advances in technology, amateur astronomers can join professionals for a chance to observe stellar nurseries and exoplanets many light-years away. But as our capabilities increase, so do the mysteries, including those around high-energy bursts coming from an otherwise unremarkable part of the universe. Understanding fast radio bursts could turn physics on its head.

From the Vera Rubin Telescope in Chile to the backyard instruments of amateur astronomers, we share what new things we might learn about stars, the Earth, exoplanets, and the potential for life on other worlds.

Guests:

• Clare Higgs – Astronomer working with the public outreach team for the Vera Rubin Observatory
• Franck Marchis – Senior astronomer and director of citizen science at the SETI Institute, chief science officer and co-founder of Unistellar
• Amanda Cook – Postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and member of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration

Originally aired August 04, 2025

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Big Picture Science for Oct. 19, 2026: Our Floral Planet

Big Picture Science: Our Floral Planet

We admire the ornamental beauty of flowers in a garden, but those blooms are more than lush color. The seemingly fragile, delicate petals are part of a resilient, adaptive innovation that arrived on the scene 250 million years ago and transformed life on the planet. Much life, including us, would not have evolved without flowering planets. Yet the power of the petal is often overlooked. How does our perspective on nature’s web change if we give flowers the credit they deserve? Celebrated biologist David Haskell shares the story of how nature’s revolutionaries evolved their vibrant hues and intoxicating scents to lure bees, butterflies and other animals into cooperative partnerships.

Guest:

• David George Haskell – biologist, professor at Emory University, and author of “How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries"

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Big Picture Science for Oct. 12, 2026: On a Collision Course

Big Picture Science: On a Collision Course

Breakthroughs around the detection of cosmic neutrinos — the “ghost” particles that may reveal why matter, not antimatter, fills the universe — recently earned a physicist the Nobel Prize in Physics. But one group of  neutrino hunters isn’t waiting for supernovae to churn up these high-energy particles. A massive new experiment that spans three states will create neutrinos and fire them into liquid argon to better understand their mysterious behavior. And after the better part of a century, scientists may finally have glimpsed the primary component of nearly all matter: dark matter. Are we close to understanding what it is? Finally, we glimpse the proton-smashing at the Large Hadron Collider as it hints at undiscovered physics and puts a stress test on the Standard Model.

Guests:

• Kate Shaw – experimental particle physicist at the University of Sussex who works on the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, DUNE
• Kimberly Palladino – astrophysicist, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, and the project scientist for LUX- ZEPLIN an international collaboration searching for dark matter
• Harry Cliff – particle physicist at the University of Cambridge and a researcher with the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN

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Big Picture Science for Oct. 05, 2026: Skeptic Check: Sunny Daze

Big Picture Science: Skeptic Check: Sunny Daze

A growing online movement of sunscreen skeptics believes that sunblock is toxic, even suggesting that it might cause skin cancer. Medical experts, concerned by rising skin cancer rates, are rushing to push back against these claims. Meanwhile, new research suggests that too little sunlight could be detrimental to health and links it to some cardiovascular disease and cancer. How do we navigate through the darkness of these seemingly conflicting messages about sunlight? We enter the slippery world of skin care to break down the science of sunlight and sunscreen and uncover some surprising effects that UV rays have on our bodies.

Guests:

• Brian Underwood – journalist and Beauty and Grooming Director of Men’s Health and Women’s Health, and author of the article, The Anti-Sunscreen Movement is Coming for You
• Rowan Jacobsen – science writer and the author of “In Defense of Sunlight”
• Dr. Michelle Henry – cosmetic dermatologist and dermatologic surgeon, Clinical Instructor of Dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical College

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Big Picture Science for Sept 28, 2026: The Rights of Rivers.

Big Picture Science: The Rights of Rivers.

REPEAT
Healthy rivers and riparian ecosystems are teaming with life, but should rivers themselves be considered alive? The question is central to the growing rights-of-nature movement that claims that ecosystems and entities, like rivers, have legal rights. After Ecuador enshrined the rights of nature in its constitution, lawyers employed the new personhood status to stop mining companies from clearing a section of the Los Cedros River and its surrounding biodiverse cloud forest. Granting rivers moral standing comes as over-damming, pollution, and climate change have put them in crisis globally. Writer Robert Macfarlane explores how seeing rivers as living beings rather than just resources – a change he calls “a great act of moral imagination” – could help save our watersheds and rivers, upon which all life depends.

Guest:

• Robert Macfarlane – Writer and Professor of Literature and Environmental Humanities at the University of Cambridge, and author of “Is a River Alive?”

Originally aired  June 23, 2025

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Big Picture Science for Sept 21, 2026: How Hot is Too Hot?

Big Picture Science: How Hot is Too Hot?

REPEAT
Extreme heat is taking its toll on the natural world. We use words like “heat domes” and “freakish” to describe our everyday existence. These high temperatures aren’t only uncomfortable - they are lethal to humans, animals, and crops. In search of an answer to our episode’s question, we discuss the dilemma of an ever-hotter world with an author who has covered climate change for more than twenty years.

Guest:

• Jeff Goodell – author of “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.”

Originally aired October 2, 2023

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Big Picture Science for Sept 14, 2026: A Coup de Grace in Space

Big Picture Science: A Coup de Grace in Space

A new space telescope will soon give us an expanded field of view of some of the strangest phenomena in the cosmos. The launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will initiate this instrument’s contributions to the understanding of black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. It will also further the search for exoplanets. The project’s principal and deputy investigators join us to describe the telescope’s science goals, and astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson provides his big picture view of the most exciting recent discoveries in astronomy and cosmology.

Guests:

• Julie McEnery – Astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center and senior project scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
• Jason Rhodes – JPL project scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, focusing on dark energy, dark matter, and cosmic evolution.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson – Astrophysicist and director of New York City’s Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, and author of "Lost in Space: 5,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe".
• Anna de Graaff – Astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

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Big Picture Science for Sept 07, 2026: Malawi: A Path Forward

 

Big Picture Science: Malawi: A Path Forward

The abrupt defunding of USAID in 2025 caused global shockwaves. The cuts thrust recipient countries who were dependent on foreign aid for medical care into health crises. One area that has been particularly hard hit is Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa where doctors and community organizers are struggling to fill the gaps in essential services left in the wake of the USAID cuts. The loss of local outreach clinics and lack of fuel for ambulances has caused severe delays—and sometimes tragic outcomes—in providing care to mothers and children. A year out from the cuts, we look at how Malawi is rethinking its relationship to foreign aid as it considers how to continue providing vital health services.

In the first of a series supported by the nonprofit Pulitzer Center and in collaboration with Science Magazine, we provide an on-the-ground look at the impact of USAID defunding on health services in key spots across the globe.

Guests:

• Catherine Offord – journalist, Science Magazine. Her article, “An Uncertain Path ,” appeared in the July 16 issue of the magazine

Voices heard in the show:

• Fanizo Simenti – community health worker at Katenje Health Post, Kasungu district
• Emily Mvula – former recipient of services provided by USAID MOMENTUM
• Donald Makwakwa – executive director, Family Planning Association of Malawi
• Issah Omar Nicks – nursing officer overseeing the maternity ward at the Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District
• Aran Nkhata – medical clinician in charge of Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District
• Flywell Elenesto – cold chain technician for Salima District, Malawi
• Sungeni Thole – nurse midwife technician at Makiyoni Health Center, Salima District
• Anthony Masamba – MP and chair of The Parliamentary Committee on Health

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Big Picture Science for Aug 31, 2026: Leave it to Beavers

Big Picture Science: Leave it to Beavers

REPEAT
They are known for holding branches in their paws and gnawing on them like corn cobs. They build lodges and dams which occasionally flood roads. Cute, comical, and considered pests, beavers were nearly hunted to extinction for their pelts before conservation efforts allowed their populations to rebound. Now environmentalists and engineers are reintroducing North America’s largest rodent to drought-prone habitats across the country. As the paddle-tailed animals’ dam-building has revealed itself to be a potent bulwark against climate change-induced water scarcity, the beaver is being hailed as an ecological hero.

Join us as we stomp through soggy meadows getting to know the OG geoengineers. From their water pressure-sensing tails to their intricate branch-weaving, find out why, as our nation’s wetlands disappear, and new federal policies strip protection for many of those that remain, many think that partnership with a wild species could help build ecological resiliency.

Guests:

• Leila Philip – Journalist and author of “Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America”
• Denise Burchsted – research scientist, and engineer, Keene State College
• Clay Frazer – restoration ecologist with Native Range Ecological
• Michael Waasegiizhig Price – traditional ecological knowledge specialist at the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission. He is Anishinaabe and a longtime tribal college educator serving at Leech Lake Tribal College and White Earth Tribal and Community College.

Originally aired July 28, 2025

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Big Picture Science for Aug 24, 2026: Measure For Measure

Big Picture Science: Measure For Measure

REPEAT
Whether in miles or pounds, meters or kilograms, we take daily measure out our lives. But how did these units ever come to be, and why do we want to change them? From light-years to leap seconds, we look at the history of efforts to quantify our lives and why there’s always room for greater precision. Plus, we debate the virtues of staying imperial measurements vs. going metric.
 
Guest:

• James Vincent - Author of Beyond Measure, the Hidden History of Measurement

Originally aired March 24, 2023

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Big Picture Science for Aug 17, 2026: Calling All Aliens

Big Picture Science: Calling All Aliens

REPEAT

Are we alone in the universe? Is there other intelligence out there? COSMIC, the most ambitious SETI search yet, hopes to answer that. We hear updates on this novel signal detection project being conducted on the Very Large Array in the desert of New Mexico.

Also, we chat with award-winning science fiction writer Ted Chiang about how he envisions making contact with aliens in his stories, including the one that was the basis for the movie Arrival. And find out why some scientists don’t want only to listen for signals, they want to deliberately transmit messages to aliens. Is that wise and, if we did it, what would we say?

Guests:

• Chenoa Tremblay – Postdoc researcher in radio astronomy for the SETI Institute and member of COSMIC science team
• Ted Chiang – Nebula and Hugo award-winning science fiction writer, best known for his collections, Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation
• Douglas Vakoch – Founder and president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to transmitting intentional signals to extraterrestrial civilizations

Originally aired April 3, 2023

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Big Picture Science for Aug 10, 2026: What Moves Us

Big Picture Science: What Moves Us

REPEAT

What physical activity gives you joy? Whether it’s walking, running, dancing or swimming, your body evolved to do it. We are made for movement. But there’s a cost, as anyone with a sore neck or aching back knows. From the tiny muscles in our skin, which raise the hair on our arms, to the intricate mix of bone, blood vessels, and nerves in our neck, natural selection has struck a delicate and sometimes wacky balance between utility and form. In this episode, we explore how parts of the body - our muscles, neck and feet - came to be, and what forces prompted the evolution of efficient yet imperfect bodies.

Guests:

• Kent Dunlap - Professor of biology at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and author of “The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History”
• Bonnie Tsui - Journalist and author of “On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters”
• Jeremy DeSilva - Anthropologist at Dartmouth College and author of “First Steps, How Upright Walking Made Us Human”

Originally aired June 30, 2025

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Big Picture Science for Aug 03, 2026: Skeptic Check: The Body Electric

Big Picture Science: Skeptic Check: The Body Electric

REPEAT
Electricity plays an important role in our everyday lives, including allowing our bodies to communicate internally. But some research claims electricity may be used to diagnose and treat disease? Could electric pulses one day replace medications?

We speak with experts about the growing field of bioelectric medicine and the evidence for electricity’s healing abilities. Their comments may shock you.

Guests:

• Sally Adee – Science journalist, author of “We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body’s Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds"
• Samantha Payne – Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences at University of Guelph
• Kevin Tracey  – Neurosurgeon and President of the Feinstein Institute at Northwell Health

Originally aired June 5, 2023

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