Big Picture Science for March 05, 2018 - Space: Why Go There?

Big Picture Science - Space: Why Go There?

It takes a lot of energy and technology to leave terra firma. But why rocket into space when there’s so much to be done on Earth?  From the practical usefulness of satellites to the thrill of exploring other worlds, let us count the ways.

The launch of a NOAA weather satellite to join its twin provides unparalleled observation of storms, wildfires, and even lightning.  Find out what it’s like to watch hurricanes form from space.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen countries want their own satellites to help solve real-world problems, including tracking disease.  Learn how one woman is helping make space accessible to everyone.

Plus, now that we’ve completed our grand tour of the Solar System, which bodies are targets for return missions and which for human exploration?

Guests:

• Sarah Cruddas – Space journalist, broadcaster, and author based in the U.K.
• Jamese Sims – GOES-R Project Manager at NOAA
• Danielle Wood – Assistant professor, MIT Media Lab, Director of the Space Enabled Research Group
• Jim Green – NASA Planetary Science Division Director 

Download this podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/space-why-go-there

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 February 26, 2018 - Meet Your Robot Barista

Big Picture Science - Meet Your Robot Barista

Move over Roomba.  Café robots are the latest in adorable automation. And they may be more than a fad. As robots and artificial intelligence enter the workforce, they could serve up more than machine-made macchiato.  Digital workers are in training to do a wide variety jobs. Will humans be handed the mother of all pink slips?

We sip lattes in a robot café and contemplate the future of work. Some say the workplace will have more machines than people, while others maintain that A.I. will augment, not replace, human workers.

Meanwhile, future intelligent automation may not come from Silicon Valley.  Why China wants to become the global center for A.I.

Plus, NASA’s first bipedal humanoid robot - Valkyrie, a prototype of a construction worker for use on Mars - teaches us that moving like a human is not as easy as it looks.

Guests:

• Martin Ford – Futurist who writes about the impact of robots and artificial intelligence on society; author of “The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future”
• Peter Norvig – Director of research, Google
• Owen Churchill – Journalist; his article “China’s AI dreams” appeared in Nature, January 18, 2018
• Kimberly Hambuchen – Aeronautics engineer; the principal technologist of robotics at NASA’s Johnson Space Center

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/meet-your-robot-barista

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 February 19, 2018 - Quantum: Why We Want 'Em

Big Picture Science - Quantum: Why We Want 'Em

ENCORE: Einstein thought that quantum mechanics might be the end of physics, and most scientists felt sure it would never be useful.  Today, everything from cell phones to LED lighting is completely dependent on the weird behavior described by quantum mechanics.

But the story continues.  Quantum computers may be millions of times faster than your laptop, and applying them to big data could be transformational for biology and health.  Quantum entanglement – “spooky” action at a distance – may not allow faster-than-light communication, but could be important in other ways.  And there’s even the suggestion that quantum mechanics defines the difference between life and death.

Quantum physics.  It’s weird and exotic.  But it’s how the universe works.

Guests:

• Seth Lloyd –  Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Johnjoe McFadden – Lecturer at the University of Surrey, and co-author of Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
• Michael Raymer – Professor of physics at the University of Oregon, and author of Quantum Physics: What Everyone Needs to Know

This encore podcast was first released on 02/06/2017

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/quantum-why-we-want-em

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.

TED Talks: How a blind astronomer found a way to hear the stars - Wanda Diaz Merced

Description from the TED Talks Youtube site for this video published on Jul 13, 2016:


"Wanda Diaz Merced studies the light emitted by gamma-ray bursts, the most energetic events in the universe. When she lost her sight and was left without a way to do her science, she had a revelatory insight: the light curves she could no longer see could be translated into sound. Through sonification, she regained mastery over her work, and now she's advocating for a more inclusive scientific community. "Science is for everyone," she says. "It has to be available to everyone, because we are all natural explorers."

Video Source URL - https://youtu.be/-hY9QSdaReY

Original TED Talks Article 

Big Picture Science for February 12, 2018 - Bacteria to the Future

Big Picture Science - Bacteria to the Future

Why did the chicken take antibiotics?  To fatten it up and prevent bacterial infection. As a result, industrial farms have become superbug factories, threatening our life-saving antibiotics.

Find out how our wonder drugs became bird feed, and how antibiotic resistant bugs bred on the farm end up on your dinner plate.  A journalist tells the story of the 1950s fad of “acronizing” poultry; the act of dipping it in an antibiotic bath so it can sit longer on a refrigerator shelf.

Plus, some ways we can avoid a post-antibiotic era. The steps one farm took to make their chickens antibiotic free… and resurrecting an old therapy: enlisting viruses to target and destroy multi-drug resistant bacteria.  Set your “phages” to stun.

Guests:

• Maryn McKenna - Investigative journalist who specializes in public health and food policy. Author of “Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats.”
• Ryland Young - Biochemist, head of the Center for Phage Technology at Texas A&M University.

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/bacteria-future

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 February 05, 2018 - Creative Brains

Big Picture Science - Creative Brains

Your cat is smart, but its ability to choreograph a ballet or write computer code isn’t great.  A lot of animals are industrious and clever, but humans are the only animal that is uniquely ingenious and creative.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman and composer Anthony Brandt discuss how human creativity has reshaped the world. Find out what is going on in your brain when you write a novel, paint a watercolor, or build a whatchamacallit in your garage.

But is Homo sapiens’ claim on creativity destined to be short-lived?  Why both Eagleman and Brandt are prepared to step aside when artificial intelligence can do their jobs.

Guests:

• Anthony Brandt – Professor of Composition and Theory, Rice University, and co-author of “The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World”
• David Eagleman – Neuroscientist, Stanford University, and co-author, “The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World”

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/creative-brains

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 January 28, 2018 - Skeptic Check: New UFO Evidence

Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: New UFO Evidence

It was a shocker of a story, splashed across the New York Times front page: The existence of a five-year long, hidden Pentagon investigation of UFOs.  With one-third of the American public convinced that aliens are visiting Earth, could this study finally provide the proof?

We consider how this story came to light and what the $22 million program has produced.  Does the existence of a secret study mean there’s now decent proof of extraterrestrial craft in our skies?  We take a look at the evidence made public so far.

And why, six years after the study ended, are we learning about it now?

Guests:

• James Oberg - Space journalist, historian and former NASA employee
• James McGaha - Retired Air Force pilot, astronomer and director of the Grasslands Observatory
• Ben Radford - Deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and a Research Fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-new-ufo-evidence

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 January 22, 2018 - DIY Spaceflight

Big Picture Science - DIY Spaceflight

ENCORE  For a half-century, space has been the playground of large, government agencies.  While everyone could dream of becoming an astronaut, few could actually do so.

Things have changed.  We hear how a geeky son of immigrant parents incentivized the ground-breaking launch of SpaceShipOne, and spawned the commercial rocket industry.

And while you’re waiting for a ticket to ride, why not build your own satellite to keep tabs on the kids or just check out the back forty?  A CubeSat could be your next basement project.

And the hitherto untold story of how black women mathematicians a half-century ago helped get a man into orbit, and astronauts to the moon.

Guests:

• Margot Lee Shetterly – Author of Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race.
• Simon “Pete” Worden – Chairman of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and former Center Director of NASA Ames Research Center
• Julian Guthrie – Journalist and author of How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight
• Eddie Allison – Head of Aviation Services, Orbital Access
• Sean League – Cofounder and Spacecraft Engineering Director, SpaceFab.US
• John Gruener – Planetary Scientist, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston
• Takanori Shibata – Chief Senior Research Scientist and Professor, National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

This encore podcast was first released on 01/30/2017

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/diy-spaceflight

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 January 15, 2018 - Geology is Destiny

Big Picture Science - Geology is Destiny

ENCORE: 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
• David Grinspoon – Senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, and author of Earth in Human Hands: Shaping Our Planet’s Future
• Eugenia Gold – Instructor, Department of Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University

This encore podcast was first released on 01/16/2017

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/are-animals-really-smart

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 January 08, 2018 - Are Animals Really That Smart

Big Picture Science - Are Animals Really That Smart

ENCORE: You own a cat, or is it vice versa?  Family friendly felines have trained their owners to do their bidding.  Thanks to a successful evolutionary adaptation, they rule your house.

Find out how your cat has you wrapped around its paw.  And it’s not the only animal to outwit us.  Primatologist Frans de Waal shares the surprising intellectual capabilities of chimps, elephants, and bats.  In fact, could it be that we’re simply not smart enough to see how smart animals are?

Plus, the discovery of a fossilized dinosaur brain.  Were those lumbering lizards more clever than we thought?

Guests:

• Alex Liu – Paleontologist, University of Cambridge, U.K.
• Abigail Tucker – Author of The Lion in the Living Room: How Housecats Tamed Us and Took Over the World
• Frans de Waal – Primatologist, psychologist, Emory University, and author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

This encore podcast was first released on 12/12/2016

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/are-animals-really-smart

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 January 01, 2018 - Weather Vain

Big Picture Science - Weather Vain

ENCORE: Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it. Not that they haven’t tried.  History is replete with attempts to control the weather, but we’d settle for an accurate seven-day forecast.

Find out how sophisticated technology might improve accuracy, including predicting the behavior of severe storms.  Plus, the age when “weather forecast” was a laughable idea, but why 19th century rebel scientists pursued it anyway.

Also, a meteorologist who was falsely claimed to have “solved” the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle, and a climate scientist recounts the history of trying to control the weather, and the potential future of geoengineering.

Guests:

• Cliff Mass – Professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington.
• Peter Moore – Author of “The Weather Experiment: The Pioneers Who Sought to See the Future.”
• Steven Miller – Meteorologist, Colorado State University Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.
• Alan Robock – Meteorologist and climatologist, Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University, IPCC lead author.

This encore podcast was first released on 11/21/2016

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/weather-vain

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 December 25, 2017 - DIY Diagnosis

Big Picture Science - DIY Diagnosis

ENCORE: Got aches and pains?  Critters in the Cretaceous would have been sympathetic.  A new study reveals that painful arthritis plagued a duck-billed dinosaur.  Scientists impressively diagnosed the animal’s condition without a house call by examining its 70 million-year old bones.

The technology we use for health diagnoses are becoming so sophisticated, some people are prompted to bypass doctors and do it themselves.  Meet a man who had his genome sequenced and then had all 70 gigabytes delivered directly to him so that he could gauge his genetic health.

Also, practitioners who are trying to improve cognitive function using a battery and a few wires. Find out the possible risks and benefits of DIY brain stimulation.

Guests:

• Jennifer Anne - Recent graduate, University of Manchester, studies injuries and diseases in dinosaurs.
• Carl Zimmer - Science writer, author.  National correspondent for STAT, an online magazine that reports on the frontiers of science and medicine.  His weekly column “Matter,” appears in the New York Times.
• Peter Simpson-Young - A graduate student at the University of Sydney studying neuroscience.
• Anna Wexler - Neuroethicist and PhD candidate in the History, Anthropology, Science, Technology and Society program at MIT.

This encore podcast was first released on 8/29/2016

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/diy-diagnosis

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 December 18, 2017 - Rerouting... Rerouting

Big Picture Science - Rerouting... Rerouting

Lost your sense of direction?  Blame your GPS. Scientists say that our reliance on dashboard devices is eroding our ability to create cognitive maps and is messing with our minds in general. We don’t even look at landmarks or the landscape anymore.  We’ve become no more than interfaces between our GPS and our steering wheels.

But in other ways, GPS can spark a new appreciation of the physical world. A real-time flyover app reveals the stunning geological features otherwise invisible from our window seat.

And sensitive electronic sensors let us see where the wild things are and where they go.  Learn how scientists put belts on jellyfish and produce maps that reveal the surprising routes taken by various species – from a single wolf, a group of phytoplankton, or a float of crocodiles.

Plus, one man is not ready to say goodbye to the traditional map.  Find out why this cartographer insists on paper maps, not digital apps.

Guests:

• Julia Frankenstein – Cognitive scientist, Darmstadt Technical University, Germany
• Greg Milner – Journalist, author of “Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and our Minds”
• Amy Myrbo – Earth scientist, University of Minnesota
• Oliver Uberti – Graphic artist and former senior design editor at National Geographic
• James Cheshire – Geographer, University College London.  Co-author, along with Oliver Uberti, of “Where The Animals Go: Tracking Wildlife with Technology in 50 Maps and Graphics.”
• Tom Hedberg – Mapmaker and publisher at Hedberg Maps in Minneapolis, Minnesota

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

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 December 11, 2017 - With All Our Mites

Big Picture Science - With All Our Mites

ENCORE:  You are not alone.  You can’t see ‘em, but your face is a festival of face mites. They’ve   evolved with us for millennia.  And a new study finds that hundreds of different tiny spiders, beetles, and – our favorite - book lice make your home theirs.  But before you go bonkers with the disinfectant, consider: eradicating these critters may do more harm than good.  Some are such close evolutionary partners with humans that they keep us healthy and can even reveal something about our ancestry.

But then there are bed bugs.  Pests without redemption.  However, their newly-sequenced genome may help us end their nightly nuisances.  And of course some microscopic critters are deadly.  So when it comes to bugs: when do we accommodate and when do we attack?

Guests:
Michelle Trautwein – Curator of entomology, California Academy of Sciences
Matt Bertone –  Entomologist, North Carolina State University
Joshua Benoit -- Insect molecular biologist, University of Cincinnati
Thomas McDade – Biological anthropologist, Northwestern University

This encore podcast was first released on 2/15/2016

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/all-our-mites

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 December 04, 2017 - Air Apparent

Big Picture Science - Air Apparent

Whether you yawn, gasp, sniff, snore, or sigh, you’re availing yourself of our very special atmosphere.   It’s easy to take this invisible chemical cocktail for granted, but it’s not only essential to your existence: it unites you and every other life form on the planet, dead or alive.  The next breath you take likely includes molecules exhaled by Julius Caesar or Eleanor Roosevelt.

And for some animals, air is an information superhighway.  Dogs navigate with their noses.  Their sniffing snouts help them to identify their owners, detect trace amounts of drugs, and even sense some diseases.  Find out what a dog’s nose knows, and why no amount of bathing and dousing in perfume can mask your personal smelliness.

Plus, why your own schnoz is key to not only enjoying a fine Bordeaux, but to survival of our species.

Guests:

• Sam Kean – Science writer, author of “Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us”
• Alexandra Horowitz – Dog cognition researcher, Barnard College, author of “Being A Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell”
• Rachel Herz – Cognitive neuroscientist, Brown University, author of “Why You Eat What You Eat,” and “The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell”
• Ken Givich – Microbiologist, Guittard Chocolate company

Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/air-apparent

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.