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

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 before April 20, 2023! 

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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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! 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.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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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.

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

Please take our listener survey! Help us get to know you and enter to win a $500 Amazon gift card!

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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.

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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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.

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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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.

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

Please take our listener survey! Help us get to know you and enter to win a $500 Amazon gift card!

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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

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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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.

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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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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices