Big Picture Science

Latest Episodes:

Skeptic Check: Heal Thyself [rebroadcast] Dec 30, 2019

Show notes

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”
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

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

Handling the Holidays Dec 23, 2019

Show notes

The stress of the holidays can make you want to hide under the covers with a warm cup of cocoa. From gift buying to family gatherings, the holidays can feel like being inside a pressure cooker. But don’t despair! Science can help make the holidays a little brighter, from some gift-giving tips from our animal friends to embracing pessimism before a challenging social event to stopping that annoying merry melody on repeat in your head.

Guests:

Adam South – Research assistant professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University
Mitch Ratcliffe – CEO and publisher of Earth911
Julie Norem – Psychology professor at Wellesley College and author of “The Positive Power of Negative Thinking”
Elizabeth Margulis – Music professor at Princeton University and author of “On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind”
Steve Ilardi – Clinical psychology associate professor at the University of Kansas. Read his paper on the effects of sugar here.

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

Waste Not Dec 16, 2019

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 S. Public Interest Research Group – (PIRGS) Right to Repair campaign
Kyle Wiens – CEO of I-Fixit, an Internet repair community

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

Shell on Earth Dec 09, 2019

Show notes

(repeat) We all may retreat to our protective shells, but evolution has perfected the calcite variety to give some critters permanent defense against predators. So why did squids and octopuses lose their shells? Find out what these cephalopods gained by giving up the shell game.

Plus why Chesapeake Bay oyster shells are shells of their former selves. What explains the absence of the dinner-plate sized oysters of 500,000 years ago, and how conservation paleobiology is probing deep time for strategies to bring back these monster mollusks.

Also, was the Earth once encased in a giant, continental shell? A new theory of plate tectonics. Land ho!

Guests:

Rowan Lockwood – Conservation paleobiologist at the College of William and Mary.
Al Tanner – Ph.D. student in paleobiology at the University of Bristol, U.K.
Mike Brown – Professor of Geology, University of Maryland

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

Yule Like This Dec 02, 2019

Show notes

(repeat) Fir tree needles embedded in carpet are a holiday headache. Why not decorate a genetically-modified, needle-retaining tree instead? It’s just another way that science is relevant to the holidays. We have more.

How about science experiments on fruitcake? There’s a competition that includes launching it with a pneumatic device, running a heavy electric current though it, or blasting it with a blowtorch. Meanwhile, physics provides insight into those tricky how-does-he-do-it questions about Santa’s delivery rounds.

Finally, step away from the relatives and consider the implications of the winter solstice.

Enjoy a better holiday through science!

Guests:

Jenna Gallas – Special Event Coordinator, Manitou Springs Chamber of Congress, Colorado
Laura Kramer – Manager of Science Conductors, Science Museum of Virginia, Richmond
Lilian Matallana – Research Associate, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Ben Orlin – Math teacher, and author of “Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas That Shape Our Reality”
Ethan Siegel – Theoretical astrophysicist and owner of “Starts with a Bang!” blog
Andrew Fraknoi – Astronomer and educator, author of “Introduction to Astronomy”

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

Skeptic Check: Betting on Pseudoscience Nov 25, 2019

Show notes

Psychics may not be able to predict the future or sense your thoughts. Nonetheless, they rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. But the harm from pseudoscience can go far beyond your wallet – especially when it promotes unscientific treatments for serious disease. Find out what alarming discovery led one naturopath to quit her practice and why scientific ignorance is not bliss.

It’s our regular look at critical thinking, but don’t take our word for it.

Guests:

Robert Palmer – Member of the Guerilla Skeptics on the Wikipedia editing team and columnist for the Skeptical Inquirer on-line magazine
Lee McIntyre – Research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and lecturer on ethics at Harvard Extension School
Britt Marie Hermes – Former naturopath doctor; now doctoral student in evolutionary genetics at the University of Kiel, Germany

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

Stopping Ebola Nov 18, 2019

Show notes

A new vaccine may help turn Ebola into a disease we can prevent, and a new drug may make it one we can cure. But the political crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo has fueled violence against health workers and Ebola treatment centers. Find out why context matters in the efforts to stop Ebola, what new drugs and vaccines are on the horizon, and whether the world is prepared for the next infectious pandemic. Even if Ebola’s threat is diminishing, what about the next pandemic? Is the world prepared?

Guests:

Richard Preston – Journalist and author of “Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History.”
Yap Boum – Regional representative for Africa for Epicentre, the research arm of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Cameroon.
Amy Maxmen – Senior reporter, Nature. Her most recent piece is "Behind the Front Lines of the Ebola Wars."

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

Radical Cosmology Nov 11, 2019

Show notes

(repeat) 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, Purdue University
Chris Impey – Professor of astronomy, University of Arizona, and author of Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes

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

Supercomputer Showdown Nov 04, 2019

Show notes

Do you have a hard-to-answer question? The Summit, Sierra, Trinity, Frontier, and Aurora supercomputers are built to tackle it. Summit tops the petaflop heap – at least for now. But Frontier and Aurora are catching up as they take aim at a new performance benchmark called exascale.

So why do we need all this processing power? From climate modeling to personalized medicine, find out why the super-est computers are necessary to answer our biggest questions. But is the dark horse candidate, quantum computing, destined to leave classical computing in the dust?

Guests:

Katherine Riley - Director of Science, Argonne National Laboratory
Jack Wells - Director of Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory National Center for Computational Sciences
Katie Bethea - Communications Team Lead, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Jeffrey Hawkins – Technologist and neuroscientist. Co-founder of Palm, Handspring and Numenta
Eleanor Rieffel - Mathematician, NASA Ames Research Center, and co-author of “Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor,” published in Nature magazine

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

Skeptic Check: Rational Lampoon Oct 28, 2019

Show notes

(repeat) Two heads may be better than one. But what about three or more? A new study shows that chimpanzees excel at complex tasks when they work in groups, and their accumulated knowledge can even be passed from one generation to the next.

But group-think also can be maladaptive. When humans rely on knowledge that they assume other people possess, they can become less than rational.

Find out why one cognitive scientist says that individual thinking is a myth. Most of your decisions are made in groups, and most derive from emotion, not rationality.

Also, why we know far less than we think we do. For example, most people will say they understand how an everyday object like a zipper works, but draw a blank when asked to explain it.

Plus, why we have a biological drive to categorize people as “us” or “them,” and how we can override it.

Guests:

Steven Sloman - Professor of cognitive linguistics and psychological sciences at Brown University and editor-in-chief of the journal, Cognition
Robert Sapolsky - Professor of neuroscience at Stanford University and author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Laurance Doyle - Scientist at the SETI Institute

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

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected