Big Picture Science

Latest Episodes:

Do the Math Mar 24, 2014

Show notes

One plus one is two. But what’s the square root of 64, divided by 6 over 12?* Wait, don’t run for the hills! Math isn’t scary. It helps us describe and design our world, and can be easier to grasp than the straight edge of a protractor.

Discover how to walk through the city and number-crunch simultaneously using easy tips for estimating the number of bricks in a building or squirrels in the park. Plus, why our brains are wired for finger-counting … whether aliens would have calculators … and history’s most famous mathematical equations (after e=mc2).

*The answer is 16

Guests:

Ian Stewart – Emeritus professor of Mathematics, University of Warwick, U.K., author of In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World
Michael Anderson – Psychologist and neuroscientist, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
Keith Devlin – Mathematician and Director of the Human Sciences and Technology Advanced Research Institute, Stanford University
John Adam – Mathematician, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, and author of X and the City: Modeling Aspects of Urban Life

Descripción en español

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

We Heart Robots Mar 10, 2014

Show notes

The machines are coming! Meet the prototypes of your future robot buddies and discover how you may come to love a hunk of hardware. From telerobots that are your mechanical avatars … to automated systems for the disabled … and artificial hands that can diffuse bombs.

Plus, the ethics of advanced robotics: should life-or-death decisions be automated?

And, a biologist uses robo-fish to understand evolution.

Guests:

Illah Nourbakhsh – Professor of robotics, Carnegie Mellon University, author of Robot Futures. Check out his Robot Futures blog.
Marco Mascorro – Vice President of Hardware, 9th Sense Robotics, Mountain View, California
Curt Salisbury – Mechanical engineer, senior member, technical staff, Sandia National Laboratories
Joe Karnicky – Retired engineer, Menlo Park, California. Videos of his gadgetry can be found at the bottom of this page.
John Long – Professor of biology and cognitive science at Vassar College and the author of Darwin’s Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology

Descripción en español

First released January 21, 2013

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

Before the Big Bang Feb 24, 2014

Show notes

It’s one of the biggest questions you can ask: has the universe existed forever? The Big Bang is supposedly the moment it all began. But now scientists wonder if there isn’t an earlier chapter to our origin story. And maybe chapters before that! What happened before the Big Bang? It’s the ultimate prequel.

Plus – the Big Bang as scientific story: nail biter or snoozer?

Guests:

Roger Penrose – Cosmologist, Oxford University
Sean Carroll – Theoretical physicist, Caltech, author of The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
Simon Steel – Astronomer, Tufts University
Andrei Linde – Physicist, Stanford University
Jonathan Gottschall – Writer, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Marcus Chown – Science writer and cosmology consultant for New Scientist magazine

Descripción en español

First released December 17, 2012

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

Gene Hack, Man Feb 10, 2014

Show notes

Computers and DNA have a few things in common. Both use digital codes and are prone to viruses. And, it seems, both can be hacked. From restoring the flavor of tomatoes to hacking into the president’s DNA, discover the promise and peril of gene tinkering.

Plus, computer hacking. Just how easy is it to break into your neighbor’s email account? What about the CIA’s?

Also, one man’s concern that radio telescopes might pick up an alien computer virus.

Guests:

George Weinstock – Microbiologist, geneticist, associate director at the Washington University Genome Institute, St. Louis
Jim Giovannoni – Plant molecular biologist, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cornell University campus
Andrew Hessel – Faculty member, Singularity University, research scientist at Autodesk, and co-author of “Hacking the President’s DNA” in the November 2012 issue of The Atlantic
Dan Kaminsky – Chief scientist of security firm DHK
Dick Carrigan – Scientist emeritus at Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois

Descripción en español

First released December 10, 2012

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

Skeptic Check: Zombies Aren't Real Jan 13, 2014

Show notes

Zombies are making a killing in popular culture. But where did the idea behind these mythical, cerebrum-supping nasties come from? Discover why they may be a hard-wired inheritance from our Pleistocene past.

Also, how a whimsical mathematical model of a Zombie apocalypse can help us withstand earthquakes and disease outbreaks, and how the rabies virus contributed to zombie mythology.

Plus, new ideas for how doctors should respond when humans are in a limbo state between life and death: no pulse, but their brains continue to hum.

Meet the songwriter who has zombies on the brain …. and we chase spaced-out animated corpses in the annual Run-For-Your-Lives foot race.

Guests:

Guy P. Harrison – Science writer and author of 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True
Jonathan Coulton – Singer and songwriter
Robert Smith? – Mathematician and epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa, in Canada
Dick Teresi – Science writer and author of The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers—How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death
Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy – - Respectively Senior Editor at Wired Magazine and veterinarian, and the co-authors of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus

Descripción en español

First released November 12, 2012

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

Can We Talk? Jan 06, 2014

Show notes

You can get your point across in many ways: email, texts, or even face-to-face conversation (does anyone do that anymore?). But ants use chemical messages when organizing their ant buddies for an attack on your kitchen. Meanwhile, your human brain sends messages to other brains without you uttering a word.

Hear these communication stories … how language evolved in the first place… why our brains love a good tale …and how Facebook is keeping native languages from going extinct.

Guests:

Mark Moffett – Entomologist, research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, author of Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions
V.S. Ramachandran – Neuroscientist, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego
Clare Murphy – Performance storyteller, Ireland
Mark Pagel – Evolutionary biologist, University of Reading, U.K., and author of Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind
Margaret Noori – Poet and linguist at the University of Michigan, specializing in Ojibwe, and director of the Comprehensive Studies Program

Descripción en español

First released June 11, 2012

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

Animal Instinct Dec 30, 2013

Show notes

Mooooove over, make way for the cows, the chickens … and other animals! Humans can learn a lot from our hairy, feathered, four-legged friends. We may wear suits and play Sudoku, but Homo sapiens are primates just the same. We’ve met the animal, and it is us.

Discover the surprising similarity between our diseases and those that afflict other animals, including pigs that develop eating disorders. Plus, what the octopus can teach us about national security … how monkeying around evolved into human speech … and the origins of moral behavior in humans.

Guests:

Rafe Sagarin – Marine ecologist, Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona, author of Learning From the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease
Barbara Natterson-Horowitz – Professor of cardiology, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, and co-author of Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing
Kathryn Bowers – Writer, co-author of Zoobiquity: What Animals Can Teach Us About Health and the Science of Healing
Asif Ghazanfar – Neuroscientist, psychologist, Princeton University
Christopher Boehm – Biological and cultural anthropologist at the University of Southern California, director of the Jane Goodall Research Center, author of Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame

Descripción en español

First released July 9, 2012

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

Group Think Dec 23, 2013

Show notes

If two is company and three a crowd, what’s the ideal number to write a play or invent a new operating system? Some say you need groups to be creative. Others disagree: breakthroughs come only in solitude.

Hear both sides, and find out why you always have company even when alone: meet the “parliament of selves” that drive your brain’s decision-making.

Plus, how ideas of societies lead them to thrive or fall, and why educated conservatives have lost trust in science.

Guests:

Susan Cain – Author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Keith Sawyer – Psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis and author of Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
David Eagleman – Neuroscientist, Baylor College of Medicine and author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
Gordon Gauchat – Sociologist, University North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Joseph Tainter – Professor, Environment & Society Department, Utah State University and author of The Collapse of Complex Societies

Descripción en español

First released April 30, 2012.

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

Some Like It Cold Dec 16, 2013

Show notes

We all may prefer the goldilocks zone – not too hot, not too cold. But most of the universe is bitterly cold. We can learn a lot about it if we’re willing to brave a temperature drop.

A chilly Arctic island is the closest thing to Mars-on-Earth for scientists who want to go to the Red Planet. Meanwhile, the ice sheet at the South Pole is ideal for catching neutrinos – ghostly particles that may reveal secrets about the nature of the universe.

Comet ISON is comet ice-off after its passage close to the Sun, but it’s still giving us the word on solar system’s earliest years.

Also, scientists discover the coldest spot on Earth. A champion chill, but positively balmy compared to absolute zero. Why reaching a temperature of absolute zero is impossible, although we’ve gotten very, very close.

Guests:

Francis Halzen – Physicist, University of Wisconsin-Madison, principal investigator of The IceCube Neutrino Observatory
Ted Scambos – Glaciologist, lead scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado
Pascal Lee – Planetary scientist, SETI Institute, director, NASA Haughton-Mars Project, and co-founder of the Mars Institute. His new book is Mission: Mars
Andrew Fraknoi – Chair, astronomy department, Foothill College
Vladan Vuletić – Physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Descripción en español

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

Math's Days Are Numbered Dec 02, 2013

Show notes

Imagine a world without algebra. We can hear the sound of school children applauding. What practical use are parametric equations and polynomials, anyway? Even some scholars argue that algebra is the Latin of today, and should be dropped from the mandatory curriculum.

But why stop there? Maybe we should do away with math classes altogether.

An astronomer says he’d be out of work: we can all forget about understanding the origins of the universe, the cycles of the moon and how to communicate with alien life. Also, no math = no cybersecurity + hackers (who have taken math) will have the upper hand.

Also, without mathematics, you’ll laugh < you do now. The Simpsons creator Matt Groening has peppered his animated show with hidden math jokes.

And why mathematics = love.

Guests:

Andrew Hacker – Professor of political science and mathematics at Queens College, City University of New York. His article, “Is Algebra Necessary?”, appeared in The New York Times in 2012.
Bob Berman – Astronomy editor of The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the author of The Sun’s Heartbeat: And Other Stories from the Life of the Star That Powers Our Planet, and columnist for Astronomy Magazine. His article, “How Math Drives the Universe” is the cover story in the December 2013 issue.
Simon Singh – Science writer, author of The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets
Rob Manning – Flight system chief engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab, responsible for NASA’s Curiosity rover
Edward Frenkel – Professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, author of Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality. His article, “The Perils of Hacking Math,” is found on the online magazine, Slate.