Is your windshield accumulating less bug splatter? Insects, the most numerous animals on Earth, are becoming scarcer, and that’s not good news. They’re essential, and not just for their service as pollinators. We ask what’s causing the decrease in insect populations, and how can it be reversed. 

Also, the story of how California’s early citrus crops came under attack – a problem that was solved by turning Nature on itself. And how chimpanzee “doctors” use insects to treat wounds.

We investigate the small and the many on “The Latest Buzz.”

Guests:

Martin Kernan – Historian and journalist. His article, “The Bug That Saved California,” appeared in the January-February 2022 issue of the Smithsonian

Alessandra Mascaro – Evolutionary Biologist, currently working at the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project, co-author of the Current Biology paper, “Application of insects to wounds of self and others by chimpanzees in the wild”

Lara Southern – Doctoral student at the University of Osnabruck, co-author of the Current Biology paper, “Application of insects to wounds of self and others by chimpanzees in the wild”

Oliver Milman – Environment correspondent for The Guardian in the U.S. and author of “The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

*Originally aired March 28, 2022

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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The editing tool CRISPR is already being tested on animal and plant cells. It has even been used on humans. How might this revolutionary tool change our lives? On the one hand, it could cure inherited diseases and rid the world of malaria-spreading mosquitoes. On the other hand, scientists using it are accelerating evolution and introducing novel genetic combinations that could transform our biological landscape in unforeseen ways. We explore the ramifications of this revolutionary technology.

Guests:

 Nathan Rose – Molecular biologist and head of malaria programs at U.K. based biotech company, Oxitec.

 Hank Greely – Law professor and director of the Center for Law in the Biosciences at Stanford University and author of “CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans.”

 Antonio Regalado – Senior Editor for Biomedicine, MIT Technology Review.

 Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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It’s not just facts that inform our decisions. They’re also guided by how those facts feel. From deciding whether to buckle our seat belts to addressing climate change, how we regard risk is subjective. In this extended conversation with an expert on the psychology of risk, find out about our exaggerated fears, as well as risks we don’t take seriously enough. Meanwhile, while experts warn society about the dangers of self-aware AI – are those warnings being heeded?

Guest: 

David Ropeik – Professor emeritus Harvard University, and expert on the psychology of risk

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

We've been nominated for a Webby! Our episode "Vaccine Inequity" is in the top 5 of the Technology category. Vote for Big Picture Science! 

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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

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Long before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space, Laika, a stray dog, crossed the final frontier. Find out what other surprising species were drafted into the astronaut corps.

They may be our best friends, but we still balk at giving other creatures moral standing. And why are humans so reluctant to accept the fact that we too are animals?

Guests:

• Jo Wimpenny - Zoologist and writer. Author of “Aesop’s Animals”
• Taylor Maggiacomo - Associate Graphic Editor at National Geographic
• Alexander Stegmaier - Freelance Graphic Editor at National Geographic
• Melanie Challenger - An author who writes on nature, environment and human history. Her latest book: “How to be Animal: A New History of What it Means to be Human”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

*Originally aired January 24, 2022

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Scientists are increasingly finding their expertise questioned by non-experts who claim they’ve done their own “research.” Whether advocating Ivermectin to treat Covid, insisting that climate change is a hoax, or asserting that the Earth is flat, doubters are now dismissed by being told to “do your own research!” But is a Wiki page evidence? What about a YouTube video? What happens to our quest for truth along the way? Plus, a science historian goes to a Flat Earth convention to talk reason.

Guests:

• Yvette Johnson-Walker – epidemiologist at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, and affiliate faculty with the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health.
• Nathan Ballantyne – Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, in New York.
• David Dunning – Social psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan.
• Lee McIntyre – Research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History at Boston University, author of “Post-Truth,” and “How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason.”

*Originally aired February 7, 2022

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Before everything could come up roses, there had to be a primordial flower – the mother, and father, of all flowers. Now scientists are on the hunt for it. The eFlower project aims to explain the sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record, what Darwin called an “abominable mystery.”

Meanwhile, ancient flowers encased in amber or preserved in tar are providing clues about how ecosystems might respond to changing climates. And, although it was honed by evolution for billions of years, can we make photosynthesis more efficient and help forestall a global food crisis?

Guests:

maria.sadowski">Eva-Maria Sadowski - Post doctoral paleobotanist at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin

Regan Dunn - Paleobotanist and assistant Curator at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum

Royal Krieger - Rosarian and volunteer at the Morcom Rose Garden, Oakland, California

Ruby Stephens - Plant ecology PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Australia, and member of the eFlower Project

Stephen Long - Professor of Plant Science, University of Illinois

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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The Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe has ignited fierce debate about bodily autonomy. But it’s remarkable how little we know about female physiology. Find out what studies have been overlooked by science, and what has been recently learned. Plus, why studying women’s bodies means being able to say words like “vagina” without shame ... a researcher who is recreating a uterus in her lab to study endometriosis … and an overdue recognition of medical pioneer Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler.

Guests:

Melody T. McCloud - Obstetrician Gynecologist and Founder and Medical Director of Atlanta Women's Health Care; co-author of “Black Women's Wellness: Your ‘I've Got This!’ Guide to Health, Sex, and Phenomenal Living”

Victoria Gall - Volunteer with the Friends of the Hyde Park Library and the Hyde Park Historical Society

Rachel E. Gross - Science journalist and author of “Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage”

Linda Griffith - Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T., Director of the Center for Gynepathology Research, and author of the Boston Globe article, “‘FemTech’ and a moonshot for menstruation science”

Roshni Babal - Pediatric Asthma and Chronic Disease Program Coordinator at Boston Medical Center

Perri Klass - Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University and Author of “The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

*Originally aired October 31, 2022

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Why create more landfill? Perhaps you should resist the urge to toss those old sneakers, the broken ceiling fan, or last year’s smart phone. Instead, repurpose them! Global junk entrepreneurs are leading the way in turning trash to treasure, while right-to-repair advocates fight for legislation that would give you a decent shot at fixing your own electronic devices. 

And, if you toss food scraps down the drain as you cook, are you contributing to a “fatberg” horror in the sewer?

Guests:

• John Love – Synthetic biologist at the University of Exeter
• Adam Minter – Author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale
• Amanda Preske – Chemist and the owner of Circuit Breaker Labs
• Nathan Proctor – National campaign director for U.S. Public Interest Research Group – (PIRGS) Right to Repair campaign
• Kyle Wiens – CEO of I-Fixit, an Internet repair community

Originally aired December 16, 2019

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Before you check your social media feeds today. And post. And post again. And get into an argument on Twitter, lose track of time and wonder where the morning went, consider that social media was never a natural way to socialize.

A cultural anthropologist weighs in on the evolutionary reasons humans can’t thrive on social media. And we hear about the signs that social media is on its way out. If that’s the case, what’s next? 

Guests:

Max Fisher – Reporter for The New York Times, author of “The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World”

Douglas Rushkoff – Professor of media theory and digital economics at City University of New York, and author of “Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires”

Ian Bogost – Professor of Media Studies and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis and a contributing writer at The Atlantic.

Alex Mesoudi – Professor of Cultural Evolution at the University of Exeter, U.K.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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The zombie eco-thriller “The Last of Us” has alerted us to the threats posed by fungi. But the show is not entirely science fiction. Our vulnerability to pathogenic fungi is more real than many people imagine. 

Find out what human activity drives global fungal threats, including their menace to food crops and many other species. Our high body temperature has long kept lethal fungi in check; but will climate change cause fungi to adapt to warmer temperatures and threaten our health? 

Plus, a radically new way to think about these organisms, how they make all life possible, and how we might find balance again.

Guests:

Emily Monosson – Toxicologist who writes about changes in the natural world. A member of the Ronin Institute and an adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she is the author of “Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic.”

Arturo Casadevall – Microbiologist, immunologist, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

hathaway.html">Michael Hathaway – Anthropologist, director of the Asian Studies Center at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and author of “What a Mushroom Lives For.”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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If you bake, you can appreciate math’s transformative properties. Admiring the stackable potato chip is to admire a hyperbolic sheet. Find out why there’s no need to fear math - you just need to think outside the cuboid. Also, how nature’s geometric shapes inspire the next generation of squishy robots and an argument for radically overhauling math class. The end point of these common factors is acute show that’s as fun as eating Pi.

Guests:

• Eugenia Cheng – Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, tenured at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and author of “How to Bake Pi”
• Shankar Venkataramani – Professor of math at the University of Arizona
• Steven Strogatz – Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University and author of “Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe”
• Daniel Finkel – Mathematician and founder and director of operations at “Math for Love”

Originally aired July 15, 2019

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Hosted by Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from the hit show Morbid.

When 90-year-old Laurence Pilgeram drops dead on the sidewalk outside his condo, you might think that’s the end of his story. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Because Laurence and others like him have signed up to be frozen and brought back to life in the future. And that belief will pull multiple generations of the Pilgeram family into a cryonics soap opera filled with dead pets, gold coins, grenades, fist fights, mysterious packages, family feuds, Hall of Fame baseball legends, and frozen heads — lots of frozen heads. From Wondery, comes a story about life, death, and what comes next.

Follow Frozen Head on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge early and ad-free by subscribing to Wondery+ in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery App.  

Listen to Frozen Head: Wondery.fm/FH_BPS

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The newest Pentagon report on UAPs – or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon – reflects long standing public interest about what’s in our skies. Now, NASA is investigating for themselves.

Should we assume that what we can’t identify is alien visitation? In our regular look at critical thinking, we look at the history of UFO sightings, visit Roswell on the 75th anniversary of the crash, and ask how our desire to believe influences our interpretation of evidence.

Guests:

Paul Hynek - Teacher at Pepperdine University and son of the late astronomer J. Allen Hynek

Roger Launius - Former chief historian for NASA and former Chair of the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum 

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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A radical plan could solve a historic global health inequity. Countries in the global south who waited for more than a year for ample supplies of Covid vaccines have banded together to make mRNA vaccines locally. If successful, they could end a dangerous dependency on wealthy nations and help stop pandemics before they start.

In a special episode, supported by the Pulitzer Center, journalist Amy Maxmen shares her reporting from southern Africa about the inspiring project led by the WHO that’s made fast progress. But it could fail, and a global imbalance will remain, if Big Pharma has its way. Find out what’s at stake.

Guests:

Amy Maxmen - Award-winning science journalist, Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the Nature article, "The Radical Plan for Vaccine Equity"

Petro Terblanche - Managing Director, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines in Cape Town, South Africa

Kondwani Charles Jambo - Senior Lecturer and immunologist at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre, Malawi

Barney Graham - Former deputy director at the Vaccine Research Center at NIH and professor of medicine and microbiology immunology biochemistry at Morehouse School of Medicine

Emile Hendricks - Research technologist at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines in Cape Town, South Africa

Achal Prabhala - Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, Coordinator at AccessIBSA, a medicines-access initiative in Bengaluru, India

Patrick Tippoo - Head of Science and Innovation at Biovac in Cape Town, South Africa, founding member of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative (africa.org/dt_team/2-patrick-tippoo/">AVMI)

Harrison Chauluka - chief of the Mkunda village in Malawi

Agnes Joni - farmer in Chiradzulu, Malawi

Prophet Dauda - translator and writer in Blantyre, Malawi 

Originally aired November 21, 2022

Thanks to the Pulitzer Center for help supporting this episode of Big Picture Science

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Catalytic converters are disappearing. If you’ve had yours stolen, you know that precious and rare earth metals are valuable. But these metals are in great demand for things other than converters, such as batteries for electric cars, wind farms and solar panels.

We need rare earth metals to combat climate change, but where to get them? Could we find substitutes?

One activity that could be in our future: Deep sea mining. But it’s controversial. Can one company’s plan to mitigate environmental harm help?

Guests:

Paul Dauenhauer - Professor of chemical engineering and material science at the University of Minnesota and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow

Chris Leighton - Distinguished University Teaching Professor, Editor, Physical Review Materials, Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota

Renee Grogan - Co-founder and Chief Sustainability Officer, Impossible Mining company

Originally aired January 17, 2022

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay. 

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Climate change isn’t waiting for us to act. We’ve missed several deadlines to mitigate the dangers of this existential threat, which suggests we prefer to avert our gaze rather than deal with the problem. It’s similar to the way society reacts to an incoming comet in the movie “Don’t Look Up!” 

As a major Antarctic ice sheet shows signs of collapse, it’s no wonder we feel some “climate anxiety.” Can we leverage this emotion to spur action? That, and where hope lies, in this episode.

Guests:

Joellen Russell – Oceanographer and climate scientist at the University of Arizona

Katie Mack – Professor of Theoretical Physics at North Carolina State University, and author of “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)”

Jessica Tierney – Professor of Paleoclimatology at the University of Arizona

Susan Clayton – Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies, College of Wooster

Originally aired February 21, 2022

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Animals experience the world differently. There are insects that can see ultraviolet light, while some snakes can hunt in the dark thanks to their ability to sense infrared. Such differences are not restricted to vision: Elephants can hear subsonic sounds, birds navigate by magnetism, and your dog lives in a world marked by odors. In this episode, we speak to science journalist Ed Yong about how other creatures sense the world. Could we ever understand what it’s like to have the hearing of a bat or the sight of a hawk? 

Guest:

Ed Yong – Science writer for The Atlantic whose coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic earned him a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism. He is the author of, “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us.” 

Originally aired September 5, 2022

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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The James Webb Space Telescope has turned its golden eye on the cosmos. The largest, most sensitive telescope put in space since the Hubble Space Telescope is already producing new photos of far-off galaxies and other cosmic phenomena.

In this episode: astronomers share their reactions to these stunning images, the project scientist on JWST describes how infrared cameras capture phenomena that are invisible to shorter wavelengths, and a plan to investigate the very stardust that created everything, including you and me.

Guests:

espinoza.com/">Néstor Espinoza – Assistant astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute, principal investigator for exoplanet atmospheric physics, James Webb Space Telescope

Alyssa Pagan – Science Visuals Developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute

John Mather – Nobel Prize-winning NASA astronomer and Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope

Alex Filippenko – Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley

Originally aired August 8, 2022

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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5G, the latest mobile network standard, is coming. As new cell towers sprout around the world, do we know enough to confidently claim that this new technology is safe? After all, older networking standards relied on microwaves, radiation which has wavelengths of inches to a foot or so. 5G operates at much higher frequencies, with millimeter wavelengths.

Some are worried that being subjected to millimeter radiation could cause cancers. But what does science say? 5G: the promise and the perils.

Guests:

Jon Samet – Pulmonary physician, epidemiologist, and dean of the Colorado School of Public Health.

Claire Parkinson – Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Bob Berman – Astronomer, regular contributor to Astronomy Magazine, and author of “Zapped: From Infrared to X-Rays, the Curious History of Invisible Light”

David Ropeik – Retired Harvard instructor and author of several books about the psychology of risk perception.

Originally aired February 28, 2022

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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A century ago, British archaeologist Howard Carter opened the only surviving intact tomb from ancient Egypt. Inside was the mummy of the boy king Tutankhamun, together with “wonderful things” including a solid gold mask.

Treasure from King Tut’s crypt has been viewed both in person and virtually by many people since. We ask what about Egyptian civilization so captivates us, thousands of years later. Also, how new technology from modern physics allows researchers to “X-Ray” the pyramids to find hidden chambers.

Guests:

Emma Bentley – Postgraduate student in Archeology and Ancient Worlds at the University of Edinburgh in the U.K. 

Sarah Parcak – Archaeologist and Egyptologist, University of Alabama, and author of “Archaeology From Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past.”

Richard Kouzes – Physicist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Salima Ikram – Professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo and head of the Animal Mummy Project at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Modern technology is great, but could we be losing control? As our world becomes more crowded and demands for resources are greater, some people worry about humanity’s uncertain prospects. An eminent cosmologist considers globe-altering developments such as climate change and artificial intelligence. Will we be able to stave off serious threats to our future?

There’s also another possible source of danger: our trendy digital aids. We seem all-too-willing to let algorithms classify and define our wants, our needs, and our behavior. Instead of using technology, are we being used by it – to inadvertently become social media’s product? 

And while we may be skittish about the increased data our technology collects, one sci-fi writer imagines a future in which information is a pervasive and freely available commodity. 

Guests:

Martin Rees – Cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Great Britain’s Astronomer Royal. Author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity.

Douglas Rushkoff – Media theorist and professor of media theory and digital economics, City University of New York. Author of Team Human.

Malka Older – Author and humanitarian worker, author of The Centenal Cycle.

Originally aired February 11, 2019

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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A new theory about life’s origins updates Darwin’s warm little pond. Scientists say they’ve created the building blocks of biology in steaming hot springs. Meanwhile, we visit a NASA lab where scientists simulate deep-sea vent chemistry to produce the type of environment that might spawn life. Which site is best suited for producing biology from chemistry?

Find out how the conditions of the early Earth were different from today, how meteors seeded Earth with organics, and a provocative idea that life arose as an inevitable consequence of matter shape-shifting to dissipate heat. Could physics be the driving force behind life’s emergence? 

Guests:

Caleb Scharf – Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University, New York

Laurie Barge – Research scientist in astrobiology at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Bruce Damer – Research scientist in biomolecular engineering, University of California, 

Jeremy England – Physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Originally aired May 13, 2019

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A radical plan could solve a historic global health inequity. Countries in the global south who waited for more than a year for ample supplies of Covid vaccines have banded together to make mRNA vaccines locally. If successful, they could end a dangerous dependency on wealthy nations and help stop pandemics before they start.

In a special episode, supported by the Pulitzer Center, journalist Amy Maxmen shares her reporting from southern Africa about the inspiring project led by the WHO that’s made fast progress. But it could fail, and a global imbalance will remain, if Big Pharma has its way. Find out what’s at stake.

Guests:

Amy Maxmen - Award-winning science journalist, Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the Nature article, "The Radical Plan for Vaccine Equity"

Petro Terblanche - Managing Director, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines in Cape Town, South Africa

Kondwani Charles Jambo - Senior Lecturer and immunologist at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre, Malawi

Barney Graham - Former deputy director at the Vaccine Research Center at NIH and professor of medicine and microbiology immunology biochemistry at Morehouse School of Medicine

Emile Hendricks - Research technologist at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines in Cape Town, South Africa

Achal Prabhala - Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, Coordinator at AccessIBSA, a medicines-access initiative in Bengaluru, India

Patrick Tippoo - Head of Science and Innovation at Biovac in Cape Town, South Africa, founding member of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative (africa.org/dt_team/2-patrick-tippoo/">AVMI)

Harrison Chauluka - chief of the Mkunda village in Malawi

Agnes Joni - farmer in Chiradzulu, Malawi

Prophet Dauda - translator and writer in Blantyre, Malawi 

Thanks to the Pulitzer Center for help supporting this episode of Big Picture Science

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Declining biodiversity is a problem as fraught as climate change.

Loss of habitat, monoculture crops, and the damming of waterways all lead to massive species extinction. They tear at life’s delicate web, and threaten a balance established by four billion years of evolution.

Can we reassess our relationship to Nature? We consider logging efforts that make elephants part of the work force, and how to leverage the cooperative behavior of trees.

Becoming Nature’s ally, rather than its enemy.

Guests:

• Suzanne Simard – Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and author of “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.”
• Carl Safina – Professor of Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and founder of the Safina Center, and author of “Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.”
• Jacob Shell – Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University, and author of “Giants of the Monsson Forest: Living and Working with Elephants.”

Originally aired November 8, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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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

Originally aired October 11, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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The Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe has ignited fierce debate about bodily autonomy. But it’s remarkable how little we know about female physiology. Find out what studies have been overlooked by science, and what has been recently learned. Plus, why studying women’s bodies means being able to say words like “vagina” without shame ... a researcher who is recreating a uterus in her lab to study endometriosis … and an overdue recognition of medical pioneer Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler.

Guests:

Melody T. McCloud - Obstetrician Gynecologist and Founder and Medical Director of Atlanta Women's Health Care; co-author of “Black Women's Wellness: Your ‘I've Got This!’ Guide to Health, Sex, and Phenomenal Living”

Victoria Gall - Volunteer with the Friends of the Hyde Park Library and the Hyde Park Historical Society

Rachel E. Gross - Science journalist and author of “Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage”

Linda Griffith - Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T., Director of the Center for Gynepathology Research, and author of the Boston Globe article, “‘FemTech’ and a moonshot for menstruation science”

Roshni Babal - Pediatric Asthma and Chronic Disease Program Coordinator at Boston Medical Center

Perri Klass - Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University and Author of “The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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When a Google software engineer claimed that a piece of chatbot software was sentient, it was a major story. Just like your dog is sentient, could it be that some computer code – a chatbot system called LaMDA – has feelings?

But was it truly sentient, or was it pulling algorithmic wool over our eyes? Were we simply being fooled by high-tech mimicry? In this, our regular look at critical thinking: Skeptic Check, we ask what is the evidence that this system is sentient. Also, even A.I. that’s not sentient can still be powerful – and that has serious implications. 

Guests:

Blake Lemoine – Software engineer and artificial intelligence researcher

Oren Etzioni – Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington, and former CEO at the Allen Institute for AI in Seattle

Mark Coeckelbergh – Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology, University of Vienna, and author of “Robot Ethics“

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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T-Rex is having an identity crisis. Rocking the world of paleontology is the claim that Rex was not one species, but actually three. It’s not the first time that this particular dino has forced us to revise our understanding of the past. The discovery of the first T-Rex fossil in the 19th century taught humanity a scary lesson: species eventually go extinct. If it happened to this seemingly invincible apex predator, it could happen to us too.

Hear how the amateur fossil hunter Barnum Brown’s discovery of T-Rex changed our understanding of ourselves, and the epilogue to the dinosaur era: how our mammalian relatives survived the potential extinction bottleneck of an asteroid impact.

Guests:

Thomas Carr - Vertebrate paleontologist and Professor of Biology, Carthage College

Peter Makovicky - Vertebrate paleontologist and Professor of paleontology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota

rex-barnum-brown-dinosaur-collector-history.html">David Randall - Author of “The Monster’s Bones: The Discovery of T Rex and How It Shook Our World”

Steve Brusatte - Personal Chair of Paleontology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh. Author of “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs” and, most recently, “The Rise and Reign of The Mammals”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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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.”

Originally aired September 13, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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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

Originally aired August 16, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Sexist snow plowing? Data that guide everything from snow removal schedules to heart research often fail to consider gender. In these cases, “reference man” stands in for “average human.” Human bias also infects artificial intelligence, with speech recognition triggered only by male voices and facial recognition that can’t see black faces. We question the assumptions baked into these numbers and algorithms.

Guests:

• Caroline Criado-Perez - Journalist and author of “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men”
• Kade Crockford - Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts
• Amy Webb - Futurist, founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute, and author of “The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and There Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity”

Originally aired September 2, 2019

Featuring opening theme by Jun Miyake

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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.

Originally aired September 6, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Every second, lightning strikes 50 to 100 times somewhere. It can wreak havoc by starting wildfires and sometimes killing people. But lightning also produces a form of nitrogen that’s essential to vegetation. In this episode, we talk about the nature of these dramatic sparks. Ben Franklin established their electric origin, so what do we still not know? Also, why the frequency of lightning strikes is increasing in some parts of the world. And, what to do if you find someone hit by lightning.

Guests:

Thomas Yeadaker – Resident of Oakland, California

Chris Davis – Medical doctor and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Wake Forest University and Medical Director for the National Center for Outdoor Adventure Education

Jonathan Martin – Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Steve Ackerman – Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Peter Bieniek – Professor of Atmospheric and Space Science, University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Animals experience the world differently. There are insects that can see ultraviolet light, while some snakes can hunt in the dark thanks to their ability to sense infrared. Such differences are not restricted to vision: Elephants can hear subsonic sounds, birds navigate by magnetism, and your dog lives in a world marked by odors. In this episode, we speak to science journalist Ed Yong about how other creatures sense the world. Could we ever understand what it’s like to have the hearing of a bat or the sight of a hawk? 

Guest:

Ed Yong – Science writer for The Atlantic whose coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic earned him a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism. He is the author of, “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us.” 

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Do we still need doctors? There are umpteen alternative sources of medical advice, including endless and heartfelt health tips from people without medical degrees. Frankly, self-diagnosis with a health app is easier and cheaper than a trip to a clinic. Since we’re urged to be our own health advocate and seek second opinions, why not ask Alexa or consult with a celebrity about what ails us?

Find out if you can trust these alternative medical advice platforms. Plus, lessons from an AIDS fighter about ignoring the findings of medical science.  

And, if AI can diagnose better than an MD, will we stop listening to doctors altogether?

It’s our monthly look at critical thinking … but don’t take our word for it!

Guests:

• Katherine Foley – Science and health reporter at Quartz, and author of the article “Alexa is a Terrible Doctor”
• offit.com/">Paul Offit – Professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of “Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren’t Your Best Source of Health Information”
• Richard Marlink – Director Rutgers Global Health Institute.
• Shinjini Kundu – Research Fellow, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
• Stuart Schlisserman – Internist, Palo Alto, California

originally aired September 24, 2018

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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 Melbourne
• Paula Anich – Professor of Natural Resources, Northland College
• Wes Warren – Professor of Genomics, University of Missouri
• Phoebe Meagher – Conservation Officer, Taronga Conservation Society, Australia

Originally aired August 2, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

A special offer to Big Picture Science listeners: Receive 60% off the first month of a MEL Physics, MEL Chemistry or MEL STEM subscription. Just go to MELscience.com and use the promo code BPS or follow this link: https://melscience.com/sBI3/. You like science, that’s why you listen to Big Picture Science. So why not check out MEL science for your kids?

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Your shower pipes are alive. So are your sinks, books, and floorboards. New studies of our homes are revealing just what species live there – in the thousands, from bacteria to flies to millipedes. Meanwhile, life keeps surprising us by popping up in other unexpected places: the deep biosphere houses the majority of the world’s bacteria and the Arctic tundra has kept worms frozen, but alive, for 40,000 years.

We embrace the multitude of life living on us, in us, and – as it turns out – in every possible ecological niche. Most of it is harmless, some is beneficial, and it’s all testament to the amazing diversity and adaptability of life. In addition, the hardiest organisms suggest where we might find life beyond Earth.

Guests:

• Rob Dunn – Professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University and at the Natural History Museum at the University of Copenhagen. Author of “Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live.”
• Lynn Rothschild – Astrobiologist and synthetic biologist at the NASA Ames Research Center.
• Karen Lloyd – Environmental microbiologist and associate professor at the University of Tennessee.

Originally aired January 21, 2019

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

A special offer to Big Picture Science listeners: Receive 60% off the first month of a MEL Physics, MEL Chemistry or MEL STEM subscription. Just go to MELscience.com and use the promo code BPS or follow this link: https://melscience.com/sBI3/. You like science, that’s why you listen to Big Picture Science. So why not check out MEL science for your kids?

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The James Webb Space Telescope has turned its golden eye on the cosmos. The largest, most sensitive telescope put in space since the Hubble Space Telescope is already producing new photos of far-off galaxies and other cosmic phenomena.

In this episode: astronomers share their reactions to these stunning images, the project scientist on JWST describes how infrared cameras capture phenomena that are invisible to shorter wavelengths, and a plan to investigate the very stardust that created everything, including you and me.

Guests:

espinoza.com/">Néstor Espinoza – Assistant astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute, principal investigator for exoplanet atmospheric physics, James Webb Space Telescope

Alyssa Pagan – Science Visuals Developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute

John Mather – Nobel Prize-winning NASA astronomer and Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope

Alex Filippenko – Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

A special offer to Big Picture Science listeners: Receive 60% off the first month of a MEL Physics, MEL Chemistry or MEL STEM subscription. Just go to MELscience.com and use the promo code BPS or follow this link: https://melscience.com/sBI3/. You like science, that’s why you listen to Big Picture Science. So why not check out MEL science for your kids?

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Ready to become a space emigre? For half a century, visionaries have been talking about our future off-Earth – a speculative scenario in which many of us live in space colonies. So why haven’t we built them? Will the plans of billionaire space entrepreneurs to build settlements on Mars, or orbiting habitats that would be only minutes away from Earth, revive our long-held spacefaring dreams? And is having millions of people living off-Earth a solution to our problems… or an escape from them?

Guests:

Marianne Dyson – Author and former NASA flight controller

Emily St. John Mandel – Author, most recently of “Sea of Tranquility”

John Adams – Deputy Director, Biosphere 2, University of Arizona

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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One of the many shocking aspects of the Capitol attack was that it revealed how thoroughly the nation had cleaved into alternate realities. How did we get to this point? How did misinformation come to create beliefs embraced by millions? 

In this episode, experts in social media, cults, and the history of science join us for a discussion about how these alternative realities formed, why people are drawn to them, and the benefits of a shared reality. 

Guests:

• Joan Donovan – Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and leader of the Technology and Social Change Project.
• Lee McIntyre – Research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School, and author of “Post – Truth.”
• Steven Hassan – Mental health counselor who has written on the subject of mind control. Former member of the Unification Church, and author of “The Cult of Trump.”

Originally aired January 25, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Are you ready to defer all your personal decision-making to machines? Polls show that most Americans are uneasy about the unchecked growth of artificial intelligence. The possible misuse of genetic engineering also makes us anxious. We all have a stake in the responsible development of science and technology, but fortunately, science fiction films can help.

The movies Ex Machina and Jurassic Park suggest where A.I. and unfettered gene-tinkering could lead. But even less popular sci-fi movies can help us imagine unsettling scenarios regarding over-population, smart drugs, and human cloning. 

And not all tales are grim. The 1951 film, The Man in the White Suit, weaves a humorous story of materials science run amok.  

So, grab a bowl of popcorn and join us in contemplating the future of humanity as Hollywood sees it!

Guest:

• Andrew Maynard – Physicist and professor at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, and author of Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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The toilet: A ubiquitous appliance that dates to the time of Shakespeare. But billions of people around the world still lack modern sanitation infrastructure. And the incentive to modernize includes the possibility that recycling human waste could help with conservation efforts, energy generation, and even medicine.

Also, a sixth-grader puts lipstick on cats’ bottoms to map places their tush has touched, and in Michigan, why peeing on the peonies can be a good thing.

Guests:

• Kaeden Henry – Sixth grade student in Tennessee.
• Kerry Griffin – Mother of Kaeden Henry; holds a doctorate in animal behavior.
• Yvette Johnson-Walker – Clinical Instructor in Veterinary Clinical Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• Chelsea Wald – Science and environmental journalist, and author of Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet.
• Nancy Love – Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan

Originally aired Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Standing on your own two feet isn’t easy. While many animals can momentarily balance on their hind legs, we’re the only critters, besides birds, for whom bipedalism is completely normal. Find out why, even though other animals are faster, we’re champions at getting around. Could it be that our upright stance made us human? Plus, why arches help stiffen feet, the argument for bare-footin’, and 12,000-year old footprints that tell a story about an Ice Age mother, her child, and a sloth. 

Guests:

• Daniel Lieberman – Professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.
• Jeremy DeSilva – Professor in the departments of anthropology and biological sciences, Dartmouth College, and author of “First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human.”
• Madhusudhan Venkadesan – Professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, Yale University School of Engineering.
• paleo-fall-2017-bustos-whsa.htm">David Bustos – Chief of Resources at White Sands, National Park, New Mexico.
• Sally Reynolds – Paleontologist at Bournemouth University, U.K.

Originally aired May 24, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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You are getting sleeeepy and open to suggestion. But is that how hypnotism works? And does it really open up a portal to the unconscious mind? Hypnotism can be an effective therapeutic tool, and some scientists suggest replacing opioids with hypnosis for pain relief. And yet, the performance aspect of hypnotism often seems at odds with the idea of it being an effective treatment. 

In our regular look at critical thinking, Skeptic Check, we ask what part of hypnotism is real and what is an illusion. Plus, we discuss how the swinging watch became hypnotism’s irksome trademark.

Guests:

David Spiegel – Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine

Devin Terhune – Reader in the Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths University of London

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Graphic by Shannon Rose Geary

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Thinking small can sometimes achieve big things. A new generation of diminutive robots can enter our bodies and deal with medical problems such as intestinal blockages. But do we really want them swimming inside us, even if they’re promising to help? You might change your mind when you hear what else is cruising through our bloodstream: microplastics! 

We take a trip into the human body, beginning with the story of those who first dared to open it up for medical purposes. But were the first surgeons really cavemen?

Guests:

• Ira Rutkow – Surgeon and writer, and author of “Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery”
• Dick Vethaak – Emeritus professor of ecotoxicology, water quality and health at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Free University, Amsterdam) in The Netherlands
• cuhk.com/people/prof-li-zhang">Li Zhang – Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Michael LaBarbera – Professor in organismal biology, anatomy and geophysical sciences, University of Chicago

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

This episode brought to you in part by DRAGON BALL Z: KAKAROT. Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Do we have physical evidence of the last day of the dinosaurs? We consider fossilized fish in South Dakota that may chronicle the dramatic events that took place when, 66 million years ago, a large asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico and caused three-quarters of all species to disappear. 

Also, what new discoveries have paleontologists made about these charismatic animals, and the director of Jurassic World: Dominion talks about how his film hews to the latest science. Hint: feathers!

It’s deep history, as we look at what happened as terrestrial life experienced its worst day ever.

Guests:

• Colin Trevorrow – Director of Jurassic World: Dominion
• Riley Black – Science writer and author of “The Last Days of the Dinosaurs”
• Anusuya Chinsamy-Turan – Paleontologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa

This episode brought to you in part by DRAGON BALL Z: KAKAROT and Hero Wars. Learn more about Hero Wars at wars.com/">hero-wars.com

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Heredity was once thought to be straightforward. Genes were passed in an immutable path from parents to you, and you were stuck – or blessed – with what you got. DNA didn’t change. 

But now we know that’s not true. Epigenetic factors, such as your environment and your lifestyle, control how your genes are expressed. Meanwhile, the powerful tool CRISPR allows us to tinker with the genes themselves. DNA is no longer destiny.

Hear the results from the NASA twin study and what happened to astronaut Scott Kelly’s DNA after a year on the International Space Station. Plus, whether there’s evidence that epigenetic changes can be passed down. And, if we can wipe out deadly malaria by engineering the mosquito genome for sterility, should we do it?

Guests:

• Scott Kelly – Former military test pilot and astronaut and author of “Infinite Wonder”
• Carl Zimmer – Columnist for The New York Times, author of “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity"
• Christopher Mason – Associate professor of genetics and computational biology at Weill Cornell Medicine
• Michael Snyder – Chair of the genetics department and director of the Center for Genomics and Precision Medicine at Stanford University
• Nicole Gladish – PhD candidate, department of medical genetics, University of British Columbia

Originally aired October 15, 2018

This episode brought to you in part by Hero Wars. Learn more about Hero Wars at wars.com/">hero-wars.com

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Birds have it going on. Many of these winged dinosaurs delight us with their song and brilliant plumage. Migratory birds travel thousands of miles in a display of endurance that would make an Olympic athlete gasp.

We inquire about these daunting migrations and how birds can fly for days without rest. And what can we do to save disappearing species? Will digital tracking technology help? Plus, how 19th century bird-lovers, appalled by feathered hats, started the modern conservation movement.

Guests:

• Scott Weidensaul – Ornithologist and naturalist and author of “A World on the Wing: the Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds.”
• Kassandra Ford – Doctoral candidate in evolutionary biology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
• Michelle Nijhuis – Science journalist and author of “Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction.”

Originally aired May 10, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Nothing lasts forever. Even the universe has several possible endings. Will there be a dramatic Big Rip or a Big Chill­–also known as the heat death of the universe–in trillions of years? Or will vacuum decay, which could theoretically happen at any moment, do us in? Perhaps the death of a tiny particle – the proton – will bring about the end.

We contemplate big picture endings in this episode, and whether one could be brought about by our own machine creations. 

Guests: 

• Anders Sandberg – Researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford
• Katie Mack – Assistant professor of physics at North Carolina State University, and the author of “The End of Everything, Astrophysically Speaking.”
• Brian Greene – Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia, and author of “Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe”

Originally aired May 3, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Back off, you Neanderthal! It sounds as if you’ve just been dissed, but maybe you should take it as a compliment. Contrary to common cliches, our Pleistocene relatives were clever, curious, and technologically inventive. Find out how our assessment of Neanderthals has undergone a radical rethinking, and hear about the influence they have as they live on in our DNA. For example, some of their genes have a strong association with severe Covid 19 infection. Plus, how Neanderthal mini-brains grown in a lab will teach us about the evolution of Homo sapiens.

Guests:

• Svante Pääbo – Evolutionary geneticist and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
• Doyle Stevick – Associate professor of educational leadership and policies at the University of South Carolina.
• Beverly Brown – Professor emerita of anthropology, Rockland Community College, New York.
• Rebecca Wragg Sykes – Paleolithic anthropologist, author of “Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.”
• Alysson Muotri – Neuroscientist and professor of pediatrics, cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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We have too much “bad fire.” Not only destructive wildfires, but the combustion that powers our automobiles and provides our electricity has generated a worrying rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. And that is driving climate change which is adding to the frequency of megafires. Now we’re seeing those effects in “fire-clouds,” pyrocumulonimbus events.

But there’s such a thing as “good fire.” Indigenous peoples managed the land with controlled fires, reaped the benefits of doing so, and they’re bringing them back.

So after millions of years of controlling fire, is it time for us to revisit our attitudes and policies, not just with regard to combustion, but how we manage our wildfires?

Guests:

• David Peterson - Meteorologist, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
• Stephen Pyne - Emeritus professor at Arizona State University, fire historian, urban farmer, author of “The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next”
• Richard Wrangham - Ruth B. Moore Research Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and author of "Catching Fire: How Coooking Made Us Human"
• 10-tribes-good-key-nature-people.html">Margo Robbins - Co-founder and president of the Cultural Fire Management Council (CFMC), organizer of the Cultural Burn Training Exchange (TREX) that takes place on the Yurok Reservation twice a year, and an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Dr. Oz’s personable and folky approach when talking about difficult health subjects has made him a trusted source for medical information. But some of the claims offered on The Doctor Oz Show are clearly questionable, such as the existence of miracle diet pills. Now the show is on hiatus so that “America’s Doctor” can run for the U.S. Senate. 

In our regular look at critical thinking, Skeptic Check, we evaluate Mehmet Oz’s record on presenting evidence-based health and medical information in light of his running for Congress, where he would be empowered to influence health policy.

Guests:

• James McCormack – Professor in the faculty of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of British Columbia. His team’s study evaluating evidence presented on medical television shows was published in the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal)
• Ian Ward – Contributing Editor at POLITICO Magazine, author of the article, “When Dr. Oz Went to the Senate”
• Timothy Caulfield – Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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The world is a colorful place, and human eyes have evolved to take it in – from vermillion red to bright tangerine to cobalt blue. But when we do, are you and I seeing the same thing? 

Find out why color perception is a trick of the brain, and why you and I may not see the same shade of green. Or blue. Or red. Also, platypuses and the growing club of fluorescent mammals, and the first new blue pigment in more than two centuries.  

Guests:

• Paula Anich – Associate Professor of Natural Resources, Northland College
• Michaela Carlson – Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Northland College
• Rob DeSalle – Curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and co-author of “A Natural History of Color: the Science Behind What We See and How We See It”
• Mas Subramanian – Professor of Materials Science at Oregon State University

originally aired March 8, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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We present a grab bag of our favorite recent science stories – from how to stop aging to the mechanics of cooking pasta. Also, in accord with our eclectic theme – the growing problem of space junk.  

Guests:

• Anthony Wyss-Coray – Professor of neuroscience at Stanford University
• Oliver O’Reilly – Professor of mechanical engineering, University of California Berkeley.
• Moriba Jah – Professor of aerospace and engineering mechanics, University of Texas

Originally aired March 1, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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In 1915, Endurance, the ship that took Ernest Shackleton to the Antarctic, was slowly crushed and sank. Shackleton, and the 28 men he brought with him, were camped on the ice near the ship, and watched helplessly as their transport went to a watery grave, two miles down. 

But a recent expedition has found the Endurance, taking the world back to the last hurrah of the heroic age of polar expedition. How was it found, and what will be done with it?

Also, while feats of exploration inspire TV shows and magazine articles, do they have other functions in society? Is modern exploration more than just a nice thing to do?

We go to the bottom of the world on “Finding Endurance.”

Guests:

• Michael Smith – Author and journalist. His book: “Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer”
• Christian Katlein – Sea ice physicist
• Tim Jarvis – Adventurer and environmental scientist

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Solid materials get all the production credit. Don’t get us wrong, we depend on their strength and firmness for bridges, bones, and bento boxes. But liquids do us a solid, too. Their free-flowing properties drive the Earth’s magnetic field, inspire a new generation of smart electronics, and make biology possible. But the weird thing is, they elude clear definition. Is tar a liquid or a solid? What about peanut butter?

In this episode: A romp through a cascade of liquids with a materials scientist who is both admiring and confounded by their properties; how Earth’s molten iron core is making the magnetic north pole high-tail it to Siberia; blood as your body’s information superhighway; and how a spittlebug can convert 200 times its body weight in urine into a cozy, bubble fortress.

Guests:

• Mark Miodownik – Professor of Materials and Society, University College, London, and author of “Liquid rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances that Flow Through Our Lives”
• Arnaud Chulliat – Geophysicist, University of Colorado and Institut de physique du globe du Paris
• Philip Matthews – Comparative physiologist at the University of British Columbia
• Rose George – Journalist and author of “Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood”

originally aired April 8, 2019

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Is your windshield accumulating less bug splatter? Insects, the most numerous animals on Earth, are becoming scarcer, and that’s not good news. They’re essential, and not just for their service as pollinators. We ask what’s causing the decrease in insect populations, and how can it be reversed. 

Also, the story of how California’s early citrus crops came under attack – a problem that was solved by turning Nature on itself. And how chimpanzee “doctors” use insects to treat wounds.

We investigate the small and the many on “The Latest Buzz.”

Guests:

• Martin Kernan – Historian and journalist. His article, “The Bug That Saved California,” appeared in the January-February 2022 issue of the Smithsonian
• Alessandra Mascaro – Evolutionary Biologist, currently working at the Ozouga Chimpanzee Project, co-author of the Current Biology paper, “Application of insects to wounds of self and others by chimpanzees in the wild”
• Lara Southern – Doctoral student at the University of Osnabruck, co-author of the Current Biology paper, “Application of insects to wounds of self and others by chimpanzees in the wild”
• Oliver Milman – Environment correspondent for The Guardian in the U.S. and author of “The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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The nuclear threat is back, and the Doomsday Clock is almost at midnight. How did we end up here again? In the 1930s, German physicists learned that splitting the nuclei of heavy atoms could release tremendous amounts of energy. Such theoretical ideas became relevant when WW II began. 

Today, we try to eliminate nuclear weaponry while exploiting the atom for peaceful uses, such as energy generation. But as the invasion of Ukraine shows, power plants can also be military targets. We lay out some of the questions that scientists and strategists are grappling with considering recent events. 

Guests: 

• John Mecklin – Physicist, and Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
• rosner.php">Robert Rosner – Physicist at the University of Chicago and a former chair of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist’s Science and Security Board.
• Eric Schlosser – Journalist, author of “Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety.”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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DNA is the gold standard of identification. Except when it’s not. In rare cases when a person has two complete sets of DNA, that person’s identity may be up in the air. Meanwhile, DNA ancestry tests are proving frustratingly vague: dishing up generalities about where you came from rather than anything specific. And decoding a genome is still relatively expensive and time-consuming. So, while we refine our ability to work with DNA, the search is on for a quick and easy biomarker test to tell us who we are. 

In this hour: the story of chimeras – people who have two sets of DNA; a reporter whose ancestry tests revealed she is related to Napoleon and Marie Antoinette; and the eyes have it in Somaliland, the first nation to use iris scans in an election. Find out why your irises may be what ultimately distinguishes you from the crowd.

Guests:

• Tina Hesman Saey – Senior writer covering molecular biology for Science News, including a series on genetic testing.
• Carl Zimmer – Columnist for The New York Times, author of, “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity.”
• Kevin Bowyer – Professor of computer science and engineering, University of Notre Dame.

Originally aired July 23, 2018

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There’s no place like “ome.” Your microbiome is highly influential in determining your health. But it’s not the only “ome” doing so. Your exposome – environmental exposure over a lifetime – also plays a role.

Hear how scientists hope to calculate your entire exposome, from food to air pollution to water contamination.

Plus, new research on the role that microbes play in the development of neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s, and the hot debate about when microbes first colonize the body. Could a fetus have its own microbiome?

Also, choose your friends wisely: studies of microbe-swapping gazelles reveal the benefits – and the downsides – of being social.

And, why sensors on future toilets will let you do microbiome analysis with every flush.

Guests:

• Rob Knight – Professor of Pediatrics, Computer Science and Engineering, and Director of the Center for Microbiome Innovation at the University of California, San Diego
• Vanessa Ezenwa – Ecologist at the University of Georgia
• Indira Mysorekar – Microbiologist, formerly at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, now at Baylor
• Gary Miller – Professor of public health at the Rollins School of Public Health and director of the HERCULES Exposome Research Center at Emory University. After August 2018, his lab will be at Columbia University.

Originally aired May 14, 2018

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5G, the latest mobile network standard, is coming. As new cell towers sprout around the world, do we know enough to confidently claim that this new technology is safe? After all, older networking standards relied on microwaves, radiation which has wavelengths of inches to a foot or so. 5G operates at much higher frequencies, with millimeter wavelengths.

Some are worried that being subjected to millimeter radiation could cause cancers. But what does science say? 5G: the promise and the perils.

Guests:

• Jon Samet – Pulmonary physician, epidemiologist, and dean of the Colorado School of Public Health.
• Claire Parkinson – Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
• Bob Berman – Astronomer, regular contributor to Astronomy Magazine, and author of “Zapped: From Infrared to X-Rays, the Curious History of Invisible Light”
• David Ropeik – Retired Harvard instructor and author of several books about the psychology of risk perception.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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Climate change isn’t waiting for us to act. We’ve missed several deadlines to mitigate the dangers of this existential threat, which suggests we prefer to avert our gaze rather than deal with the problem. It’s similar to the way society reacts to an incoming comet in the movie “Don’t Look Up!” 

As a major Antarctic ice sheet shows signs of collapse, it’s no wonder we feel some “climate anxiety.” Can we leverage this emotion to spur action? That, and where hope lies, in this episode.

Guests:

• Joellen Russell – Oceanographer and climate scientist at the University of Arizona
• Katie Mack – Professor of Theoretical Physics at North Carolina State University, and author of “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)”
• Jessica Tierney – Professor of Paleoclimatology at the University of Arizona
• Susan Clayton – Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies, College of Wooster

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Maybe you don’t remember the days of the earliest coal-fired stoves. They changed domestic life, and that changed society. We take you back to that era, and to millennia prior when iron was first smelt, and even earlier, when axe-handles were first fashioned from wood, as we explore how three essential materials profoundly transformed society. 

We were once excited about coal’s promise to provide cheap energy, and how iron would lead to indestructible bridges, ships, and buildings. But they also caused some unintended problems: destruction of forests, greenhouse gases and corrosion. Did we foresee where the use of wood, coal, and iron would lead? What lessons do they offer for our future?

Guests:

• Jonathan Waldman – Author of Rust: The Longest War.
• Ruth Goodman – Historian of British social customs, presenter of a number of BBC television series, including Tudor Monastery Farm, and the author of The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything.
• Roland Ennos – Professor of biological sciences at the University of Hull and author of The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization.

originally aired February 1, 2021

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Scientists are increasingly finding their expertise questioned by non-experts who claim they’ve done their own “research.” Whether advocating Ivermectin to treat Covid, insisting that climate change is a hoax, or asserting that the Earth is flat, doubters are now dismissed by being told to “do your own research!” But is a Wiki page evidence? What about a YouTube video? What happens to our quest for truth along the way? Plus, a science historian goes to a Flat Earth convention to talk reason.

Guests:

• Yvette Johnson-Walker – epidemiologist at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, and affiliate faculty with the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health.
• Nathan Ballantyne – Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, in New York.
• David Dunning – Social psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan.
• Lee McIntyre – Research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History at Boston University, author of “Post-Truth,” and “How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason.”

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You may not feel that your skeleton does very much. But without it you’d be a limp bag of protoplasm, unable to move. And while you may regard bones as rigid and inert, they are living tissue. 

Bones are also time capsules, preserving much of your personal history. Find out how evolutionary biologists, forensic anthropologists, and even radiation scientists read them.

And why won’t your dog stop gnawing on that bone?

Guests: 

• Brian Switek – Pen name of Riley Black, Author of “Skeleton Keys: the Secret Life of Bone.” 
• Ann Ross – Forensic anthropologist at North Carolina State University. Her lab is the North Carolina Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
• Stanley Coren – Professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia, and author of many books about canine behavior including, “Why Does My Dog Act That Way?”
• Doug Brugge – Professor and chair of the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine

Originally aired November 30, 2020

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Long before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space, Laika, a stray dog, crossed the final frontier. Find out what other surprising species were drafted into the astronaut corps.

They may be our best friends, but we still balk at giving other creatures moral standing. And why are humans so reluctant to accept the fact that we too are animals?

Guests:

• Jo Wimpenny - Zoologist and writer. Author of “Aesop’s Animals”
• Taylor Maggiacomo - Associate Graphic Editor at National Geographic Society
• Alexander Stegmaier - Freelance Graphic Editor at National Geographic
• Melanie Challenger - An author who writes on nature, environment and human history. Her latest book: “How to be Animal: A New History of What it Means to be Human”

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake. 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Catalytic converters are disappearing. If you’ve had yours stolen, you know that rare earth metals are valuable. But these metals are in great demand for things other than converters, such as batteries for electric cars, wind farms and solar panels.

We need rare earth metals to combat climate change, but where to get them? Could we find substitutes?

One activity that could be in our future: Deep sea mining. But it’s controversial. Can one company’s plan to mitigate environmental harm help?

Guests:

• Paul Dauenhauer - Professor of chemical engineering and material science at the University of Minnesota and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow
• Chris Leighton - Distinguished University Teaching Professor, Editor, Physical Review Materials, Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota
• Renee Grogan - Co-founder and Chief Sustainability Officer, Impossible Mining company

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay. 

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Have you ever heard worms arguing? Deep-sea scientists use hydrophones to eavesdrop on “mouth-fighting worms.” It’s one of the many ways scientists are trying to catalog the diversity of the deep oceans — estimated to be comparable to a rainforest.

But the clock is ticking. While vast expanses of the deep sea are still unexplored, mining companies are ready with dredging vehicles to strip mine the seafloor, potentially destroying rare and vulnerable ecosystems. Are we willing to eradicate an alien landscape that we haven’t yet visited?

Guests:

• Craig McClain - deep-sea and evolutionary biologist and ecologist, Executive Director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.
• Steve Haddock - senior scientist at the Monetary Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and co-author of a ocean-mining-pollution.html">New York Times op-ed about the dangers of mining.
• Emily Hall - marine chemist at the Mote Marine Laboratory, Sarasota, Florida
• Chong Chen - deep sea biologist with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)

Originally aired November 23, 2020

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Brace yourself for heatwave “Lucifer.” Dangerous deadly heatwaves may soon be so common that we give them names, just like hurricanes. This is one of the dramatic consequences of just a few degrees rise in average temperatures.

Also coming: Massive heat “blobs” that form in the oceans and damage marine life, and powerful windstorms called “derechos” pummeling the Midwest. 

Plus, are fungal pathogens adapting to hotter temperatures and breaching the 98.6 F thermal barrier that keeps them from infecting us?

Guests:

• Kathy Baughman McLeod – director and senior vice president of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at The Atlantic Council
• Pippa Moore – Marine ecologist at Newcastle University in the U.K.
• Ted Derouin – Michigan farmer
• Jeff Dukes – Ecologist and director of Purdue Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University.
• Arturo Casadevall – Molecular microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Originally aired October 19, 2020

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Beneath our feet is a living network just as complex and extensive as the root systems in a forest. Fungi, which evolved in the oceans, were among the first to colonize the barren continents more than a half-billion years ago. They paved the way for land plants, animals, and (eventually) you. 

Think beyond penicillin and pizza, and take a moment to consider these amazing organisms. Able to survive every major extinction, essential as Nature’s decomposers, and the basis of both ale and antibiotics, fungi are essential to life. And their behavior is so complex you’ll be wondering if we shouldn’t call them intelligent!

Guest:

• Merlin Sheldrake – Biologist and the author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds and Shape our Futures.

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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The omicron variant is surging. More contagious than delta, omicron demonstrates how viruses use mutations to quickly adapt.

Mutations drive evolution, although most don’t do much. But occasionally a mutation improves an organism. Omicron, the latest in a string of variants, is bad for us, but good for the virus.

How mutation of viruses ensures their own survival while threatening ours, and the prospect of a universal vaccine that would protect us against all a viruses’ variants.  

Guests:

• Robert Garry – Professor of microbiology and virologist in the Tulane University School of Medicine
• Kevin Saunders – Professor in the Duke University School of Medicine’s Human Vaccine Institute and professor of surgery

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay. 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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The universe is not just expanding; it’s accelerating. Supermassive black holes are hunkered down at the center of our galaxy and just about every other galaxy, too. We talk about these and other big discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, now in orbit for over 30 years.

But two new next-generation telescopes will soon be joining Hubble: the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. Hear what cosmic puzzles they’ll address. Plus, life in a clean room while wearing a coverall “bunny suit”; what it takes to assemble a telescope.

Guests:

• Meg Urry – Professor of physics and astronomy, Director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Yale University
• John Grunsfeld – Former NASA Associate Administrator, and astronaut
• Kenneth Harris – Senior Project Engineer, Aerospace Corporation

Originally aired September 21, 2020

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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The Pentagon’s report on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) said nothing about the possibility that some might be alien spacecraft. Nonetheless, the report has generated heightened interest in figuring out what these UAPs are, and that interest extends to some scientists. We talk to two researchers who want an open and strictly scientific investigation of these phenomena. What should they do and what do they expect to find? And finally, will the possibility of alien visitors ever be resolved?

 Guests: 

• Jacob Haqq-Misra – Senior Research Investigator at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science
• Ravi Kopparapu – Planetary scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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Birds and bees do it … and so do fish. In a discovery that highlights the adaptive benefits of walking, scientists have discovered fish that can walk on land. Not fin-flap their bodies, mind you, but ambulate like reptiles.  

And speaking of which, new research shows that T Rex, the biggest reptile of them all, wasn’t a sprinter, but could be an efficient hunter by outwalking its prey.

Find out the advantage of legging it, and how human bipedalism stacks up. Not only is walking good for our bodies and brains, but not walking can change your personality and adversely affect your health. 

Guests: 

• staff.mcgill.ca/larsson/personalpages/hans_larsson/hans_larsson.htm">Hans Larsson – Paleontologist and biologist, and Director of the Redpath Museum at McGill University in Montréal.
• Shane O’Mara – Neuroscientist and professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of “In Praise of Walking.”
• Brooke Flammang – Biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

originally aired October 5, 2020

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Magic mushrooms – or psilocybin - may be associated with tripping hippies and Woodstock, but they are now being studied as new treatments for depression and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Is this Age of Aquarius medicine or something that could really work? Plus, the centuries-long use of psychedelics by indigenous peoples, and a discovery in California’s Pinwheel Cave offers new clues about the relationship between hallucinogens and cave art.

Guests:

• Merlin Sheldrake - Biologist and the author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds and Shape our Futures.
• Albert Garcia-Romeu - Assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
• David Wayne Robinson - Archeologist in the School of Forensic and Applied Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, U.K.
• Sandra Hernandez - Tejon Indian Tribe spokesperson

Originally aired December 7, 2020

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Life nearby? We’ve not yet found any on our favorite planet, Mars. But even if Mars is sterile, could we ever change that by terraforming it? Or seeding it with life from Earth?

The Red Planet is not the only game in town: A new NASA mission to a Jovian moon may give clues to biology on a world where, unlike Mars, liquid water still exists.

Also, the promise of the James Webb Space Telescope and why the solar system’s largest active volcano offers clues to the habitability of other worlds.

Guests:

• Kate Craft – Planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where she studies icy moons such as Europa.
• Julie Rathbun – Senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute
• Courtney Dressing – Professor of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley
• Chris McKay – Research scientist, NASA Ames Research Center

Life nearby? We’ve not yet found any on our favorite planet, Mars. But even if Mars is sterile, could we ever change that by terraforming it? Or seeding it with life from Earth?

The Red Planet is not the only game in town: A new NASA mission to a Jovian moon may give clues to biology on a world where, unlike Mars, liquid water still exists.

Also, the promise of the James Webb Space Telescope and why the solar system’s largest active volcano offers clues to the habitability of other worlds.

Guests:

• Kate Craft – Planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where she studies icy moons such as Europa.
• Julie Rathbun – Senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute
• Courtney Dressing – Professor of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley
• Chris McKay – Research scientist, NASA Ames Research Center

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Declining biodiversity is a problem as fraught as climate change.

Loss of habitat, monoculture crops, and the damming of waterways all lead to massive species extinction. They tear at life’s delicate web, and threaten a balance established by four billion years of evolution.

Can we reassess our relationship to Nature? We consider logging efforts that make elephants part of the work force, and how to leverage the cooperative behavior of trees.

Becoming Nature’s ally, rather than its enemy.

Guests:

• Suzanne Simard – Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and author of “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.”
• Carl Safina – Professor of Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and founder of the Safina Center, and author of “Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.”
• Jacob Shell – Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University, and author of “Giants of the Monsson Forest: Living and Working with Elephants.”

Declining biodiversity is a problem as fraught as climate change.

Loss of habitat, monoculture crops, and the damming of waterways all lead to massive species extinction. They tear at life’s delicate web, and threaten a balance established by four billion years of evolution.

Can we reassess our relationship to Nature? We consider logging efforts that make elephants part of the work force, and how to leverage the cooperative behavior of trees.

Becoming Nature’s ally, rather than its enemy.

Guests:

• Suzanne Simard – Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and author of “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.”
• Carl Safina – Professor of Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and founder of the Safina Center, and author of “Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace.”
• Jacob Shell – Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University, and author of “Giants of the Monsson Forest: Living and Working with Elephants.”

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Does geoengineering offer a Plan B if nations at the U.N. climate meeting can't reduce carbon emissions? The Glasgow meeting has been called “the last best chance” to take measures to slow down global heating.  But we're nowhere near to achieving the emission reductions necessary to stave off a hothouse planet. We consider both the promise and the perils of geoengineering, and ask who decides about experimenting with Earth’s climate.

Guests:

• Elizabeth Kolbert – Staff Writer at The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Sixth Extinction,” and, most recently, of “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.”
• David Keith – Professor of public policy and applied physics at Harvard University who also participates in the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPex) geoengineering project.
• Kim Cobb – Professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech, and the director of its Global Change Program.

Does geoengineering offer a Plan B if nations at the U.N. climate meeting can't reduce carbon emissions? The Glasgow meeting has been called “the last best chance” to take measures to slow down global heating. But we're nowhere near to achieving the emission reductions necessary to stave off a hothouse planet. We consider both the promise and the perils of geoengineering, and ask who decides about experimenting with Earth’s climate.

Guests:

·       Elizabeth Kolbert – Staff Writer at The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Sixth Extinction,” and, most recently, of “Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future.”

·       David Keith – Professor of public policy and applied physics at Harvard University who also participates in the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPex) geoengineering project.

·       Kim Cobb – Professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech, and the director of its Global Change Program.

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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 hard 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”

Originally aired August 6, 2018

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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 hard 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”

Originally aired August 6, 2018

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
• astronomy.com/">Chris Impey – Professor of astronomy, University of Arizona, and author of Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes

Originally aired February 18, 2019

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
• astronomy.com/">Chris Impey – Professor of astronomy, University of Arizona, and author of Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes

Originally aired February 18, 2019

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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

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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.

Originally aired August 31, 2020

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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

Originally aired February 24, 2020

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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

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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.”

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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.

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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

Originally aired January 14, 2019

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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

Originally aired October 29, 2018

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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

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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 anti-vax 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

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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 Melbourne
• Paula Anich – Professor of Natural Resources, Northland College
• Wes Warren – Professor of Genomics, University of Missouri
• Phoebe Meagher – Conservation Officer, Taronga Conservation Society, Australia

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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”

Originally aired January 27, 2020

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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. 

Originally aired August 27, 2018

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Rip van Winkle snoozed for 20 years, and Sleeping Beauty for 100. But seeds in an underground bottle have easily beaten both these records, germinating long after the scientist who buried them a few feet underground had died. We investigate biology’s long haulers–from seeds to small creatures–who are able to wake up and restart their lives, even after tens of thousands of years. Also, what are those buried 17-year cicadas doing as they wait to come back topside?

Guests:

• simon-lab.eeb.uconn.edu/researchers/">Chris Simon – Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut
• Sarah Dwyer – Chocolatier, Chouquette Chocolates
• Frank Telewski – Director of the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden at Michigan State University, and professor in its department of plant biology
• home-rocco-lab.html">Rocco Mancinelli – Microbial ecologist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay

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