Big Picture Science for July 01, 2019 - Nailing the Moon Landing

Big Picture Science - Nailing the Moon Landing

Neil, Buzz, and Michael made it look effortless, but the moon landing was neither easy nor inevitable.  Soon after President Kennedy publicly stated the goal of sending Americans to the moon, NASA confessed that the chances of success were only about 50/50.   But on July 20, 1969, despite enormous difficulties, astronauts stepped onto the lunar regolith.

In this special anniversary episode, we go behind the iconic phrases and familiar photos to consider the errors, mishaps, and the Plan B contingencies that dogged the project, as well as hear of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who made Apollo 11 possible.

Guests:

• Charles Fishman -  author of “One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission that Flew Us to the Moon”
• Matt Hayes -  President and CEO of the Museum of Flight, Seattle
• Geoff Nunn – Adjust curator for Space History at the Museum of Flight.
• David Whitehouse –  Journalist, broadcaster, and author of “Apollo 11: The Inside Story”
• Dee O’Hara – NASA’s first aerospace nurse and flight nurse for the Apollo mission
• James Allen Joki – EMU Flight Controller, Apollo Mission Control, Houston.
• Ted Huetter – Museum of Flight public relations manager.

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/nailing-the-moon-landing

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 June 24, 2019 - Animals Like Us

Big Picture Science - Animals Like Us

Laughing rats, sorrowful elephants, joyful chimpanzees.  The more carefully we observe, and the more we learn about animals, the closer their emotional lives appear to resemble our own.  Most would agree that we should minimize the physical suffering of animals, but should we give equal consideration to their emotional stress?  Bioethicist Peter Singer weighs in. Meanwhile, captivity that may be ethical: How human-elephant teamwork in Asia may help protect an endangered species.

Guests:

• Frans de Waal - Primatologist and biologist at Emory University; author of “Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves.”  Watch the video of Mama and Jan Van Hooff.
• Peter Singer – Philosopher, professor of bioethics at Princeton University.
• Jacob Shell - Professor of geography at Temple University, and author of “Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants.”
• Kevin Schneider - Executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project

This podcast will be released this coming Monday at - http://bigpicturescience.org/

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 June 17, 2019 - 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 was previously released on 10/29/2018

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 June 10, 2019 - It's Habitable Forming

Big Picture Science - It's Habitable Forming

(Repeat) There’s evidence for a subsurface lake on Mars, and scientists are excitedly using the “h” word.  Could the Red Planet be habitable, not billions of years ago, but today?  While we wait – impatiently – for a confirmation of this result, we review the recipe for habitable alien worlds. For example, the moon Titan has liquid lakes on its surface.  Could they be filled with Titanites?

Dive into a possible briny, underground lake on Mars … protect yourself from the methane-drenched rain on a moon of Saturn … and cheer on the missed-it-by-that-much planets, asteroids Ceres and Vesta.

Also, do tens of billions of potentially habitable extrasolar planets mean that Earth is not unique?

Guests:

• Nathalie Cabrol – Planetary scientist, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute
• Jack Holt – Geophysicist, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona
• Jani Radebaugh – Planetary scientist and professor of geology, Brigham Young University
• Marc Rayman –  Mission Director and Chief Engineer of NASA’s Dawn Mission
• Phil Plait – Astronomer, blogger, and widely known as the Bad Astronomer

This repeat podcast was previously released on 08/13/2018

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/its-habitable-forming

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 June 03, 2019 - Creature Discomforts

(Repeat) Okay you animals, line up: stoned sloths, playful pandas, baleful bovines, and vile vultures.  We’ve got you guys pegged, thanks to central casting.

Or do we?  Our often simplistic view of animals ignores their remarkable adaptive abilities.  Stumbly sloths are in fact remarkably agile and a vulture’s tricks for thermoregulation can’t be found in an outdoors store.

Our ignorance about some animals can even lead to their suffering and to seemingly intractable problems.  The South American nutria was brought to Louisiana to supply the fur market.  But the species got loose and tens of millions of these rodents are destroying the environment.  It literally has a bounty on its tail.

Hear about research that corrects a menagerie of misunderstandings about our fellow furry, feathered, and scaly animals, and how getting over ourselves to know them better can have practical benefits. Will you still recoil from termites if you learn that they are relevant to the future of robots, global warming, and smart design?

Guests:

• Lucy Cooke – Zoologist, broadcaster and author of “The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife”
• Chris Metzler – Co-director and producer of the film Rodents of Unusual Size
• Lisa Margonelli – Journalist and author of "Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology"

This podcast will be released this coming Monday at - http://bigpicturescience.org/

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.