Big Picture Science for 12/12/11 - Going Viral

Big Picture Science - Going Viral

The term “bird flu” is a misnomer, scientists say, because almost all human influenza originates in our feathered friends. How it lands in you and spreads is another matter …

Hear what it takes for a virus to go global, from a virus hunter who plans to stop epidemics in their tiny DNA tracks with an innovative global surveillance system.

Also, why your genome is littered with fossil viruses of the past … the two largest viruses discovered so far, Mimi and Mega, square off … and, what it takes for ideas to “go viral.”

Guests:

• Nathan Wolfe – Viral Ecologist, Director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative
• Robert Gifford – Evolutionary virologist, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Rockefeller University
• Vincent Racaniello – Virologist at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, host of the podcast, “This Week in Microbiology,” and author of the “Virology Blog”
• Bill Wasik – Senior Editor at Wired, author of And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Going_Viral

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.

Are We Alone for 09/21/09 - Skeptic Check: Waking the Dead

Are We Alone - Skeptic Check: Waking the Dead

The undead, those mindless shambling specters from the grave, are enjoying a cultural (if not literal) resurgence, in films, books, and through strange, urban “zombie crawls.”

Discover the unearthly appeal of these reanimated beings and why playing dead may mirror the real social alienation of our digital lives. Also, how mathematicians use “zombie attacks” to model real disease epidemics, such as swine flu.

Plus – another case of life in suspension: the promise and peril of cryonics.

And, Phil Plait’s vacationing brains swallow a hoax moon-landing-hoax story.

It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it!

• Jim Yount – Chief Operating Officer, American Cryonics Society
• Robert Smith? – Mathematician, University of Ottawa
• Dan Vado – President of SLG Publishing, San Jose, California
• Edward Martinez – Makeup specialist, Hayward, California
• Phil Plait – Keeper of the skeptical website badastronomy.com and author of Death from the Skies!: These Are the Ways the World Will End . . .
• Brendan Riley – Assistant professor of English, Columbia College, Chicago

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Are We A Blog?, the companion blog to the radio show.