Big Picture Science

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Skeptic Check: Science Blunders Nov 25, 2013

Show notes

We’ve all had an “oops” moment. Scientists are no exception. Sometimes science stumbles in the steady march of progress. Find out why cold fusion is a premier example why you shouldn’t hold a press conference before publishing your results. Also, how to separate fumbles from faux-science from fraud.

Plus, why ignorance is what really drives the scientific method.

And our Hollywood skeptic poses as a psychic for Dr. Phil, while our Dr. Phil (Plait) investigates the authenticity of a life-bearing meteorite.

Guests:

Phil Plait – Skeptic and author of Slate Magazine’s blog Bad Astronomy
Michael Gordin – Historian of science at Princeton University, author of The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe
David Goodstein – Physicist, California Institute of Technology
Stuart Firestein – Neuroscientist, chair of the biology department, Columbia University, and author of Ignorance: How It Drives Science
Jim Underdown – Executive Director, Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles

Descripción en español

First released January 28, 2013.

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The Heat is On Nov 18, 2013

Show notes

After the winds and water of Typhoon Haiyan abated, grief and hunger swept though the Philippines, along with the outbreak of disease. Are monster storms the new normal in a warmer world? Some scientists say yes, and if so, climate change is already producing real effects on human life and health.

A hotter planet will serve up casualties from natural disasters, but also higher rates of asthma, allergies and an increase in mosquito-borne diseases. It is, according to one researcher, the greatest challenge of our time, straining health care efforts worldwide. But could a “medical Marshall Plan” save us?

Also, why the conservative estimates from the U.N.‘s climate change group don’t help people prepare for worst-case scenarios. And, a controversial approach to saving our overburdened planet: a serious limit on population growth.

Guests:

• Jeff Masters – Meteorologist, Wunderground

• Linda Marsa – Investigative journalist, contributing editor at Discover, author of Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health — and how we can save ourselves

• Fred Pearce – Freelance author and journalist, environment consultant for New Scientist. His article, “Has the U.N. Climate Panel Outlived It’s Usefulness?” appeared on the website Yale Environment 360

• Alan Weisman – Author, Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?

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Life Back Then Nov 04, 2013

Show notes

Time keeps on ticking, ticking … and as it does, evolution operates to produce remarkable changes in species. Wings may appear, tails disappear. Sea creatures drag themselves onto the shore and become landlubbers. But it’s not easy to grasp the expansive time scales involved in these transformative feats.

Travel through millennia, back through mega and giga years, for a sense of what can occur over deep time, from the Cambrian Explosion to the age of the dinosaurs to the rise of Homo sapiens.

Guests:

Lorna O’Brien – Evolutionary biologist, University of Toronto
Ivan Schwab – Professor of ophthalmology, University of California, Davis. His blog
Don Henderson – Curator of dinosaurs, Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, Canada
Gregory Cochran – Physicist, anthropologist, University of Utah
Todd Schlenke – Biologist, Emory University

Descripción en español

First released April 2, 2012

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Shutting Down Science Oct 28, 2013

Show notes

“Sorry, closed for business.” That sign hung on doors of national laboratories when the US government shut down. What that meant for one Antarctic researcher: her critically important work was left out in the cold.

So just what do we lose when public funds for science fade? The tools for answering big questions about our universe for one, says a NASA scientist … while one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners fears that it is driving our young researchers to pursue their work overseas.

Yet one scientist says public funding isn’t even necessary; privatizing science would be more productive.

Plus, an award-winning public-private research project changes the way we use GPS … and a BBC reporter on the fate of international projects when Americans hang up their lab coats.

Guests:

Jill Mikucki – WISSARD principal investigator and a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee
Max Bernstein – Lead for research at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate
James Rothman – Professor and chairman of the department of cell biology at Yale University, recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine
Alexandre Bayen – Civil engineer and computer scientist, University of California, Berkeley
Pat Michaels – Director for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute
Roland Pease – BBC science reporter

Descripción en español

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Skeptic Check: War of the Worlds Oct 21, 2013

Show notes

It was the most famous invasion that never happened. But Orson Welles’ 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast sure sounded convincing as it used news bulletins and eyewitness accounts to describe an existential Martian attack. The public panicked. Or did it? New research says that claims of mass hysteria were overblown.

On the 75th anniversary of the broadcast: How the media manufactured descriptions of a fearful public and why – with our continued fondness for conspiracies – we could be hoodwinked again.

Plus, journalism ethics in the age of social media. Can we tweet “Mars is attacking!” with impunity?

And why we’re obsessed with the Red Planet.

Guests:

Michael Socolow – Associate professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine
Jesse Walker – Senior editor at Reason Magazineand author of The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory
Katy Culver – Assistant professor at the school of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
Kevin Schindler – Outreach manager at the Lowell Observatory

Descripción en español

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Emergence Oct 14, 2013

Show notes

Your brain is made up of cells. Each one does its own, cell thing. But remarkable behavior emerges when lots of them join up in the grey matter club. You are a conscious being – a single neuron isn’t.

Find out about the counter-intuitive process known as emergence – when simple stuff develops complex forms and complex behavior – and all without a blueprint.

Plus self-organization in the natural world, and how Darwinian evolution can be speeded up.

Guests:

Randy Schekman – Professor of molecular and cell biology, University of California, Berkeley, 2013 Nobel Prize-winner
Steve Potter – Neurobiologist, biomedical engineer, Georgia Institute of Technology
Terence Deacon – Biological anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley
Simon DeDeo – Research fellow at the Santa Fe Institute
Leslie Valiant – Computer scientist, Harvard University, author of Probably Approximately Correct: Nature’s Algorithms for Learning and Prospering in a Complex World

Descripción en español

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You Say You Want an Evolution? Sep 16, 2013

Show notes

Imagine: Your pint-sized pup is descended from a line of predatory wolves. We have purposefully bred a new species – dogs – to live in harmony with us. But interactions between species, known as co-evolution, happen all the time, even without deliberate intervention. And it’s frequently a boon to survival: Without the symbiotic relationship we have with bugs in our gut, one that’s evolved with time, we wouldn’t exist.

Discover the Bogart-and-Bacall-like relationships between bacteria and humans, and what we learn by seeing genes mutate in the lab, real time. Also, the dog-eat-dog debate about when canines were first domesticated, and how agriculture, hip-hop music, and technology can alter our DNA (eventually).

Plus, why some of the fastest humans in history have hailed from one small area of a small Caribbean island. Is there a gene for that?

Guests:

Greger Larsen – Evolutionary biologist, department of archaeology, Durham University
Peter Richerson – Professor emeritus, University of California, Davis, department of Environmental Science and Policy, author of Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
Dave van Ditmarsch – Biologist, post-doctoral researcher, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
David Epstein – Senior writer, Sports Illustrated, author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

Descripción en español

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Skeptic Check: Follywood Science Sep 09, 2013

Show notes

The Day After. 2001. Prometheus. There are sci-fi films a’plenty … but how much science is in the fiction? We take the fact checkers to Hollywood to investigate the science behind everything from space travel to human cloning.

Plus, guess what sci-fi film is the most scientifically accurate (hint: we’ve already mentioned it). Also, why messing with medical facts on film can be dangerous … and the inside scoop from a writer of one of television’s most successful sci-fi franchises.

And, a robot who surpasses even Tinseltown’s lively imagination: a humanoid that may become a surrogate you.

Guests:

David Kirby – Senior lecturer in science communication studies at the University of Manchester in the U.K. and author of Lab Coats in Hollywood: Science, Scientists, and Cinema
Lucas Kavner – Reporter, Huffington Post, author of a piece on the rise of robot surrogates
Wayne Grody – Medical geneticist, director of the DNA diagnostic Laboratory, UCLA Medical Center
Andre Bormanis – Television writer and science consultant for Star Trek

Descripción en español

First released July 30, 2012.

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Catch a Wave Sep 02, 2013

Show notes

Let there be light. Otherwise we couldn’t watch a sunset or YouTube. Yet what your eye sees is but a narrow band in the electromagnetic spectrum. Shorten those light waves and you get invisible gamma radiation. Lengthen them and tune into a radio broadcast.

Discover what’s revealed about our universe as you travel along the electromagnetic spectrum. There’s the long of it: an ambitious goal to construct the world’s largest radio telescope array … and the short: a telescope that images high-energy gamma rays from black holes.

Also, the structure of the universe as seen through X-ray eyes and a physicist sings the praises of infrared light. Literally.

And, while gravity waves are not in the electromagnetic club, these ripples in spacetime could explain some of the biggest mysteries of the cosmos. But first, we have to catch them!

Guests:

Anil Ananthaswamy – Journalist and consultant for New Scientist in London
Harvey Tananbaum – Director of the Chandra X-Ray Center, located in Cambridge Massachusetts at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
David Reitze – Executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), California Institute of Technology
Albert Lazzarini – Deputy director, LIGO, California Institute of Technology
Alan Marscher – Professor of astronomy at Boston University

Descripción en español

First released March 19, 2012

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Rife with Life Jul 22, 2013

Show notes

“Follow the water” is the mantra of those who search for life beyond Earth. Where there’s water, there may be life. Join us on a tour of watery solar system bodies that hold promise for biology. Dig beneath the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa, and plunge into the jets of Enceladus, Saturn’s satellite.

And let’s not forget the Red Planet. Mars is rusty and dusty, but it wasn’t always a world of dry dunes. Did life once thrive here? Also, the promise of life in the exotic hydrocarbon lakes of Titan.

Science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer joins us, and relates how these exotic outposts have prompted imaginative stories of alien life.

Guests:

Robert J. Sawyer – Hugo award-winning science fiction author
Cynthia Phillips – Planetary geologist at the SETI Institute
Alexander Hayes – Planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley
Rachel Mastrapa – Planetary scientist for NASA and the SETI Institute
Robert Lillis – Space and planetary scientist at the Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley

Descripción en español

First released February 27, 2012.

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