Science, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

So Much Genetic Testing. So Few People to Explain It to You Oct 17, 2018

Show notes

When Dan Riconda graduated with a master’s degree in genetic counseling from Sarah Lawrence College in 1988, the Human Genome Project was in its very first year, DNA evidence was just beginning to enter the courts, and genetic health tests weren’t yet on the market. He found one of the few jobs doing fetal diagnostics for rare diseases, which often meant helping young families through the worst time in their lives. What a difference 20 years makes.

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Here's What Astronauts See When a Rocket Aborts Mid-Flight Oct 17, 2018

Show notes

Nick Hague spent 20 years dreaming of getting into space, first as an Air Force test pilot, then as a NASA astronaut since 2013. He got his big chance to blast into orbit last Friday aboard a Soyuz spacecraft launching from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin were expecting a routine six-hour flight to the International Space Station, but two minutes after liftoff, something went wrong.

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Silicon Valley’s Tech Elite Zoom in on Crispr Oct 16, 2018

Show notes

Three hundred and sixty four days ago, Jiwoo Lee’s friends helped her celebrate her 18th birthday by baking her a Rice Crispr cake. They bedecked the gooey, cereal-based treat with blue and red frosted double helixes in honor of her favorite high school hobby—gene editing. Lee, who won top awards at the 2016 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, is one of the youngest champions of the “Crisprize everything!” brigade.

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Climate Change Might Double the Cost of a Beer Oct 16, 2018

Show notes

Beer drinkers might pay more and find less of their favorite beverage as climate change comes for barley. Scientists expect that extreme droughts and heat waves will become more frequent and intense in the regions that grow the grain.

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You’re Expecting Too Much Out of Boston Dynamics’ Robots Oct 15, 2018

Show notes

At the WIRED25 festival in San Francisco Sunday evening, Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robot got onstage and did what no other quadruped robot has done before: It danced the running man like it was born to. It was a bit more, well, robotic than a human, but it illustrated just how far Spot has come: Twenty-five years into both WIRED’s and Boston Dynamics’ lives, robots have finally grown sophisticated enough to dance through our world. And a lot more than that, of course.

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Boston Dynamics Is Prepping Its Robot Dog to Get a Job Oct 15, 2018

Show notes

Late last night Boston Dynamics dropped a new video of its robot dog, SpotMini, in action. It walks up some stairs (no big deal—it’s done that before) and then through some corridors, periodically extending its camera-equipped arm to survey bits of a construction site. Then it walks backwards down some stairs and through a doorway and then … Fade to black.

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Genome Hackers Show No One’s DNA Is Anonymous Anymore Oct 12, 2018

Show notes

In 2013, a young computational biologist named Yaniv Erlich shocked the research world by showing it was possible to unmask the identities of people listed in anonymous genetic databases using only an Internet connection. Policymakers responded by restricting access to pools of anonymized biomedical genetic data. An NIH official said at the time, “The chances of this happening for most people are small, but they’re not zero.

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The Quest to Make California’s Weed the Champagne of Cannabis Oct 12, 2018

Show notes

What’s in a name? For champagne, it’s the expectation of excellence and at the very least, bubbles. It’s even protected by law: To call a liquid champagne, you have to grow it in a certain part of France under certain rules of planting, pressing and even packaging. All the fuss means champagne makers can charge a premium for their product. The same may soon be true for Northern California’s legendary weed.

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How Hurricane Michael Got Super Big, Super Fast Oct 11, 2018

Show notes

Michael introduced itself to North America with 155-mile-per-hour gusts of wind and a barometric pressure of 919 millibars, the third-strongest hurricane to ever make continental US landfall. It was a monster, and it stayed a monster as it rolled through Georgia and then on toward the Carolinas. And monsters are made, not born.

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A Long Goodbye to Baxter, a Gentle Giant Among Robots Oct 11, 2018

Show notes

For a serious research robot, Baxter is a charmer. It’s sports-car red, with two big and deliberate arms. Its face is a flat screen that telegraphs “feelings” like embarrassment (rosy cheeks, upturned eyebrows). If you’re so inclined, you can sit in front of it and make it read your mind to fix its mistakes. Or you can point to objects for it to pick up.

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