Big Picture Science

Latest Episodes:

Calling All Aliens Apr 03, 2023

Show notes

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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Make Space for Animals* Mar 27, 2023

Show notes

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!

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

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

Skeptic Check: Do Your Own Research* Mar 20, 2023

Show notes

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!

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

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

Flower Power Mar 13, 2023

Show notes

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:

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!

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

Lady Parts* Mar 06, 2023

Show notes

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!

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

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

Waste Not [rebroadcast] Feb 27, 2023

Show notes

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!

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

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

Post Social Media Feb 20, 2023

Show notes

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

Fungi Fear Feb 13, 2023

Show notes

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.

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.

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

Math's Paths [rebroadcast] Feb 06, 2023

Show notes

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

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

Wondery Presents: Frozen Head Feb 01, 2023

Show notes

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

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

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