Science, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

Scientist Who Crispr’d Babies Bucked His Own Ethics Policy Nov 29, 2018

Show notes

We said “don’t freak out,” when scientists first used Crispr to edit DNA in non-viable human embryos. When they tried it in embryos that could theoretically produce babies, we said “don’t panic.” Many years and years of boring bench science remain before anyone could even think about putting it near a woman’s uterus. Well, we might have been wrong. Permission to push the panic button granted.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rogue Scientist Says Another Crispr Pregnancy Is Under Way Nov 28, 2018

Show notes

On the second day of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, the last session before lunch was already running long. But the crowd crammed into the Lee Shau Kee Lecture Centre at the University of Hong Kong wasn’t budging. Neither were the 5,500 people around the world glued to their live video feeds. Everyone was waiting to hear from the the final speaker, the man who says he helped make the world’s first gene-edited babies.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Government's Role in the Rise of Lab-Grown Meat Nov 28, 2018

Show notes

Last month, the US Department of Agriculture and FDA convened to debate meat: what it is and isn't, and if plant-based or lab-grown products like those made by Impossible Burger and Memphis Meats should be called meat. Lab-grown meat is still months from market, but vegetarian meats already have the poultry and cattle industries in a tizzy. Sales of meat analogues are growing at steady clip of 23 percent a year, nibbling out a decent market share.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The View From the Control Room: How InSight Landed on Mars Nov 27, 2018

Show notes

In the morning hours before NASA’s InSight spacecraft entered Mars’s atmosphere, roughly 30 employees of Lockheed Martin gathered in the company’s InSight Mission Support Area, in Denver. They all wore the same red button-down shirt adorned with a mission patch. Someone had taped red plastic over some of the fluorescent lights, to lend the room a martian ambience.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Inside the Lab Training Genome Surgeons to Fight Disease Nov 27, 2018

Show notes

Delaney Van Riper was exhausted. It was the summer of 2017 and she’d spent the previous day touring UC Santa Cruz’s cliffside campus, getting her student paperwork in order, and meeting some of her 4,000 fellow incoming Slugs. Now, dressed head-to-toe in sweats, she was ready to nap in the backseat for the ride to her family’s home three hours away in Sacramento.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cities Have Turned Into Fire Bait—But We Can Fix Them Nov 26, 2018

Show notes

The Northern California city of Paradise is gone—the Camp Fire, by far the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history, has reduced home after home to ashes. It conjures images of a tsunami of flame tearing through the town, destroying everything in its path. Curiously, though, trees still stand between burned-out homes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NASA Will Land InSight on Mars With Cunning—and Lots of Cork Nov 26, 2018

Show notes

There's really no way to rehearse landing on Mars. You can simulate it, sure, but the most valuable lessons are learned during actual attempts. When things go poorly, those lessons are also the most expensive. The fact is, most missions to Mars don't make it, though NASA has a better track record than most. The agency has executed seven successful touchdowns on the red planet.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thin, Flexible New Solar Cells Could Soon Line Your Shirt Nov 23, 2018

Show notes

The general rule when developing a new kind of solar technology is to expect progress to be slow. Take silicon solar cells, the most ubiquitous and recognizable form of photovoltaic generations today. When silicon panels were first built in the early 1950s, they could only turn about 6 percent of the light that hit them into electricity. More than 30 years later, that number had inched up to 20 percent, and today—30 years after that—they regularly perform in the mid 20s.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eyes and Ears 3D-Printed From Flesh Could Boost Our Senses Nov 23, 2018

Show notes

Electronics often don’t mesh well with flesh and blood. Cochlear implants can irritate the scalp; pacemaker wires dislodge; VR headsets weigh heavily on the face. That’s why, for the past six years, Michael McAlpine has been Frankensteining alternatives. A mechanical engineer at the University of Minnesota, he creates prototypes of bionic body parts with nice, soft components—some of them alive.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Giant Lasers Bring Distant Twinkling Stars Into Sharp Focus Nov 22, 2018

Show notes

The twinkling of a starry night sky is romantic, sure. But for astronomer Dominika Wylezalek, “it’s a nightmare.” That’s because Wylezalek studies galaxies billions of light-years away, and all that finicky glimmering—she’d call it “turbulence”—gets in the way.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected