Big Picture Science

Latest Episodes:

Blame it on Bacterio Nov 14, 2011

Show notes

Think small! Microbes are tinier than the dot at the end of this sentence, yet they can make humans sicker than dogs, dogs sicker than humans, jump from animal to human and keep scientists guessing when and where the next disease will appear.

Discover how doctors diagnosed one man’s mysterious infection, the role that animals play as hosts for disease, and why the rate of emerging diseases is increasing worldwide.

Also, why your kitchen is a biosafety hazard, and how the Human Microbiome Project will tally all the microbes on – and in - you.

Plus, the extreme places on Earth where microbes thrive and what it suggests for the existence of alien life. And, how one strain of bacteria helped a farmer grow a pumpkin the weight of a small car!

Guests:

Peter Hudson - Biologist, Director of Life Sciences at Penn State University
Peter Krause - Senior research scientist at the Yale School of Public Health
Durland Fish - Epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. Information on his Lyme disease app
David Relman - Stanford University microbiologist and infectious disease clinician
Erich Fleming - Biologist, SETI Institute
O. Peter Snyder - Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management
John Raeside - Oakland, California
Frances Raeside - Oakland, California
Jennifer Kate Arnold - Infectious Disease Clinic, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group
Dave Stelts - Farmer, head of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth
Neil Anderson - Owner, president of Reforestation Technologies International. Find retail products.

Descripción en español

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NASA or What? Nov 07, 2011

Show notes

“Making space for everyone” could be NASA’s motto. But as commercial spaceships get ready to blast off, that populist idea is being tested. Space cowboys in the private sector say they’re the ones who can provide unfettered access to space, for tourists and scientists alike.

Meet a scientist who already has a ticket to ride on SpaceShip Two and discover what he hopes to learn about asteroids during his five minutes of weightlessness.

Plus, NASA in motion: it’s back to the moon as the GRAIL mission probes the interior of our lovely lunar satellite. Also, can you dig it? The rover Curiosity can. It’s headed to Mars to hunt for clues to alien life … with a jackhammer.

Also, as the Hubble Space Telescope shuts down, the James Webb Space Telescope revs up. Or does it? The telescope is designed to study the birth of galaxies and hunt for evidence of water on far away worlds. But will Congress pull the plug?

Guests:

James Oberg - former Space Shuttle Mission Control engineer, and space expert
Maria Zuber - Planetary scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Principal Investigator of NASA’s GRAIL mission
Joy Crisp - Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Principal Investigator on the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity
Massimo Stiavelli - Astronomer at the Space Science Telescope Institute, and Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope
Dan Durda - Planetary scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado
More about the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference

Descripción en español

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Bug Off! Oct 31, 2011

Show notes

What you can’t see … can make you sick. Humans have been battling viruses and bacteria since the beginning of time. The malaria parasite has been keeping deadly company with us for 500,000 years. King Tut had it and so did Julius Caesar. What’s keeping this bug going today?

Also, how disease almost halted the most ambitious engineering project in the world … how elite disease detectives puzzle out perplexing epidemics … And – could tiny bugs from spaaace, ace, ace be our ancestors?

Guests:

Sonia Shah - Author of The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years
Michael Conniff - Historian, director of Global Studies at San Jose State University, and author of Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981 (Pitt Latin American Series)
Mark Pendergrast - Author of Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service
Robert Zubrin - President of the Mars Society

Descripción en español

First aired August 2, 2010

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Happy Daze Oct 17, 2011

Show notes

Calling all pessimists! Your brain is wired for optimism! Yes, deep down, we’re all Pollyannas. So wipe that scowl off your face and discover the evolutionary advantage of thinking positive. Also, enjoy other smile-inducing research suggesting that if you crave happiness, you should do the opposite of what your brain tells you to do.

Plus, why a “well-being index” may replace Dow Jones as a metric for success … a Twitter study that predicts your next good mood … and whether our furry and finned animal friends can experience joy.

Guests:

Frank Drake - Astronomer and author of the Drake Equation
Tali Sharot - Cognitive neuroscientist at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London and the author of The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain
Michael Macy - Sociologist at Cornell University
His team’s Twitter study: http://timeu.se/
Carol Graham - Economist at the Brookings Institution and author of The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being
David DiSalvo - Science and technology writer, author of What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
Robin Ince - U.K.-based comedian
Jonathan Balcombe - Animal behavior scientist and author of The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure

Descripción en español

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Skeptic Check, Beast Of Oct 03, 2011

Show notes

Zombies, aliens, Bigfoot, oh my!! We've covered - or rather uncovered - them all and more on Skeptic Check, our monthly look of critical thinking. And now we've collected enough strange encounters to assemble a sordid retrospective of sorts.

Sharpen your brain, it's Skeptic Check, Beast Of. But don't take our word for it!

Guests:

Phil Plait - Skeptic and keeper of Discover Magazine’s blog, badastronomy.com
Bruce Hood - Cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and author of The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs
Susan Jacoby - Author of The Age of American Unreason
Steve Silberman - Contributing editor, Wired Magazine, author of “The Placebo Problem” in the September 2009 issue
Mary Pope-Handy - Estate Agent, Silicon Valley and keeper of the website hauntedrealestate.com
Jim Underdown - Executive Director, Center for Inquiry, West – Los Angeles
Paul Offit - Pediatrician, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and author of Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure
Stephen Schneider - Climate scientist, Stanford University
Brendan Riley - Assistant professor of English, Columbia College, Chicago

Descripción en español

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Rend Me Your Ears Sep 26, 2011

Show notes

Shh - can you keep it down? Nope. Not unless you want to do away with civilization. Our buzzing, humming, whirling, machine-driven world is a poster child for technological progress, right? As is hearing loss. It’s driven one man to search the world for silence. We’ll hear what he didn’t hear, and what Einstein predicted we should hear in deep space, where gravitational waves may reveal the hidden sounds of the universe, including the birth of black holes.

Guests:

George Foy - Author of Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence
Garret Keizer - Author of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want
Craig Hogan - Director for Particle Astrophysics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Descripción en español

First aired July 5, 2010

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Seth's Tool Shed Sep 05, 2011

Show notes

Anyone who does gardening knows that life is tough. It’s also ancient – the first living things appeared on this planet nearly as soon as our world was habitable. We consider life on real worlds – like Earth and Mars – as well as fictional ones, such as the desert planet from the movie “Dune”. We’ll hear about a new scheme to find Martians, and practical approaches to coping with climate change.

And is Pluto seeking revenge? The unmasking of a fourth moon around this former planet!

We’re making some lively discoveries in Seth’s Tool Shed on Big Picture Science.

Guests:

Philip Duffy - Physicist and senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Kevin Zahnle - Planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center
David Summers - Astrobiologist at the SETI Institute
Christopher Carr - Researcher in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mark Showalter - Research scientist at the SETI Institute

Descripción en español

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Into the Unknown Aug 29, 2011

Show notes

During the great age of exploration men risked their lives to set foot upon unknown lands, whether in the humid jungles of Peru or on the barren ice cap of the South Pole. We'll hear those dramatic tales…

… but also where modern exploration is taking us. Could it be to the deepest, darkest part of the sea?

Or to space? Discover how to build a space suit that will let you move like an athlete on Mars. Also, why some say that the ultimate frontier requires no packing and no travel: voyages into the human brain.

Guests:

Dava Newman - Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering Systems, MIT
David Eagleman - Neuroscientist, Baylor College of Medicine and author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
Mark Adams - Author of Turn Right at Machu Picchu
Edward Larson - Author of An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science
Liz Taylor - President, Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, Alameda, CA

Descripción en español

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Home Brew Science Aug 27, 2011

Show notes

The recipe for being a scientist was easy in the old days… just be born into a rich family, have an interest in nature and plenty of time to indulge yourself. But are the days of gentlemen scientists over? Maybe not.

We go to the Maker Faire and check out how small-scale projects have big-scale ambitions.

Also, how everyday experience often tells us something profound about the universe.

Guests:

Spencer Weart – Former director of the Center for the History of Physics, at the American Institute of Physics
Tim Russ – Actor, and the character Tuvok on Star Trek Voyager
Marcus Chown – Science writer and author of The Matchbox That Ate a Forty-Ton Truck: What Everyday Things Tell Us About the Universe

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Swarm in Here... or Is It Just Me? Aug 22, 2011

Show notes

An ant … can’t … move a rubber tree plant… but the colony can. As a group, ants are an efficient, organized, can-do bunch. And a model for humans trying to manage complex systems.

Find out about the eerie collective intelligence of animals, and how an MIT researcher is hoping to put humans to work collaboratively to solve problems like climate change.

Also … hear how research into flocking behavior helps Hollywood film a herd of stampeding dinosaurs.

Guests:

Steve Strogatz - Applied mathematician at Cornell University and author of Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
Craig Reynolds - Senior researcher for Sony Computer Entertainment
Thomas Malone - Director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT
Iain Couzin - Biologist at Princeton University

Descripción en español

Originally aired June 21, 2010

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