Big Picture Science

Latest Episodes:

Skeptic Check: Science Denial [rebroadcast] Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

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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Animals Being Jerks Sep 13, 2021

Show notes

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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De-Permafrosting Sep 06, 2021

Show notes

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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True Grit (rebroadcast) Aug 30, 2021

Show notes

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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You've Got Whale (rebroadcast) Aug 23, 2021

Show notes

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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Phreaky Physics Aug 16, 2021

Show notes

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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Skeptic Check: Anti-Vax Aug 09, 2021

Show notes

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
NsikanAkpan – Former Health and Science Editor for New York Public Radio

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Platypus Crazy Aug 02, 2021

Show notes

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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A Twist of Slime (rebroadcast) Jul 26, 2021

Show notes

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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New Water Worlds (rebroadcast) Jul 19, 2021

Show notes

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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