STEM-Talk

Latest Episodes:

Episode 99 : Dave Rabin on how psychedelics and wearable devices can help improve people’s lives Nov 26, 2019

Show notes

Dr. David Rabin is the chief innovation officer and co-founder of Apollo Neuroscience. He also is the co-inventor of Apollo, a wearable device designed to improve focus, sleep and access to meditative states by gently delivering layered vibrations to the skin. Dave is a board-certified psychiatrist and translational neuroscientist who for the past decade has been studying resilience and the impact of chronic stress on humans. He received his MD in medicine and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. He trained in psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Dave also has organized the world’s largest controlled study of psychedelic medicines and is well-known for his research into MDMA and its potential to treat posttraumatic stress disorder along with other disorders.

Episode 98: Steven Austad talks about aging and preserving human health Nov 05, 2019

Show notes

Our guest today is Dr. Steven Austad who studies virtually every aspect of aging. He is a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. In addition to being recognized for his aging and longevity research, Steve is also well-known for his background as a New York City cab driver, newspaper reporter and a lion trainer who then decided to become a biologist. His research today involves developing lifestyle and pharmacological approaches to improving and preserving human health. He is particularly focused on figuring out why different species age at different rates. Steve is the author of more than 190 scientific articles. His book, "Why We Age: What Science Is Discovering about the Body’s Journey Through Life," has been translated into nine languages. He also writes newspaper columns and has written for publications like Natural History magazine, Scientific American and International Wildlife.

Episode 97: Francesca Rossi talks about AI ethics and the development of new AI systems Oct 15, 2019

Show notes

Our guest today is Francesca Rossi, who for the past three years has been an AI Ethics Global Leader at IBM Research as well as an IBM Distinguished Research Staff Member. Prior to her time at IBM, she was a professor of computer science at the University of Padova, Italy. Francesca’s AI research interests include constraint reasoning, preferences, multi-agent systems, computational social choice, and collective decision making. Much of her research today is focused on the future of artificial intelligence and the ethical issues surrounding the development and behavior of AI systems. She is a fellow of both the worldwide association of AI (AAAI) and of the European Association of AI. She also has been president of the International Joint Conference on AI and the editor in chief of the Journal of AI Research. Sitting in for Dawn during today’s interview is IHMC colleague Brent Venable, who recently was named the inaugural director of a new Ph.D. program in Intelligent Systems and Robotics that is a partnership between IHMC and the University of West Florida. Brent is a graduate of the University of Padova and had Francesca as her academic advisor.

Episode 96: Dick Despommier discusses vertical farming and fly fishing Sep 24, 2019

Show notes

Today we have part two of our interview with Dr. Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist and ecologist who is the emeritus professor of public and environmental health at Columbia University. Today’s episode focuses on vertical farming, a concept that Dick and his students came up with in 1999. When Dick’s book “Vertical Farms: Feeding the World in the 21st Century” came out in 2010, there were no vertical farms in the world. Today, there are vertical farms throughout the U.S. and around the globe. Part one of our interview, episode 95, covered Dick’s nearly 30 years of research into intracellular parasitism and his focus onTrichinella spiralis, one of the world’s largest intracellular parasites. Dick is the author of five books, including “People, Parasites and Plowshares.” His most recent book, “Waist Deep in Water,” is a memoir of his life-long love of fly fishing, a topic we had so much fun discussing with Dick that we touch on it in today’s episode as well as in part one of our interview with Dick.

Episode 95: Dickson Despommier talks about 30 years of research into intracellular parasitism Sep 11, 2019

Show notes

Our guest today is Dr. Dickson Despommier, a microbiologist and ecologist who is the emeritus professor of Public and Environmental Heath at Columbia University. Our conversation with Dick covered a variety of topics and ran so long that we divided his interview into two parts. Part one covers the nearly 30 years Dick spent conducting research on intracellular parasitism, especially Trichinella spiralis, one of the world’s largest intracellular parasites. Part two of our interview with Dick focuses on vertical farming. In 1999, Dick and his students came up with the idea of raising crops in tall buildings. When his book, “The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21stCentury,” came out in 2010, there were no vertical farms in the world. Today, there are commercial vertical farms not only throughout the United States, but also in Korea, Japan, China, England, Scotland, The Netherlands, France, Russia, Dubai, Canada and a host of other countries. Dick is the author of five books, including “People, Parasites and Plowshares.” His most recent book, “Waist Deep in Water,” is a memoir of his life-long love of fly fishing, a topic we had so much fun discussing that we touch on it in part one and part two of our interview with Dick.

Episode 94: John Newman discusses how the ketogenic diet and fasting regulate the genes and pathways that control aging Aug 27, 2019

Show notes

Our guest today is Dr. John Newman, a geriatrician and researcher who is well-known for a 2017 study that found a ketogenic diet reduced the mid-life mortality of aging mice while also improving their memory and healthspan. John is an assistant professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and a geriatrician in the Division of Geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. He also is a physician who works with older adults in the San Francisco VA Medical Center. At Buck, John studies the molecular details of how diet and fasting regulate the genes and pathways that control aging. He particularly focuses on the ketone body beta-hydroxybutyrate and how its molecular signaling activities involving epigenetics and inflammation regulate aging and memory in mice.

Episode 93: Emma Wilson talks about Toxoplasma gondii infection and its consequences Aug 06, 2019

Show notes

Our guest today is Dr. Emma Wilson, a researcher who has spent the past 15 years studying Toxoplasma gondii, a protozoan parasite that infects about a third of the world’s population. She is a native of Scotland and a professor of biomedical science at the University of California. Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled organism found in all mammals. The primary focus of Emma’s research is the immune response in the brain following Toxoplasma gondii infection. Her 2016 research paper in the online journal PLOS Pathogens connected the Toxoplasma gondii to brain dysfunction.

Episode 92: Megan Roberts discusses the potential of a ketogenic diet to extend healthspan and lifespan Jul 16, 2019

Show notes

Our guest today is Megan Roberts, a research scientist who conducted an interesting study that showeda ketogenic diet extended the longevity and healthspan of adult mice. This study has been discussed in several earlier episodes of STEM-Talk. Megan conducted her research while earning a master’s degree in nutritional biology at the University of California, Davis. Today, she is the scientific director at Nourish Balance Thrive, an online health-coaching company where Megan helps people optimize their heath and performance.

Episode 91: Irina and Michael Conboy explain tissue repair and stem-cell rejuvenation Jul 02, 2019

Show notes

Our guests today are Drs. Irina and Michael Conboy of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California Berkeley. In their lab at Berkeley, the Conboys investigate the process of tissue repair in the body in an effort to determine why damaged tissues do not productively repair as the body ages. In today’s interview, you will hear the Conboys talk about their early research and a fascinating technique they pioneered called heterochronic parabiosis, where the couple took a young mouse and an older mouse and sutured them together so the animals blood and organs. The Conboys found that the older mouse benefited from this fusion, its aged stem cells becoming rejuvenated and its muscle tissues becoming functionally younger. Since then, the Conboys’ follow-up research has provided fascinating insights into stem-cell niche engineering, tissue repair, and stem-cell aging and rejuvenation. In 2015, they published an important study showing that high levels of the protein TGF-β1 impaired the ability of stem cells to repair tissues. While their experiments also showed that giving old animals young blood appeared to have some benefit to old stem cells, the Conboys’ most recent work provides compelling evidence suggesting the more interesting benefits are instead produced by a dilution of harmful signals in old blood. The research coming out of the Conboy lab has profound implications in terms of postponing the onset of age-related diseases as well as the prevention of such degenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis and sarcopenia.

Episode 90: Dawn and Ken answer listener questions Jun 12, 2019

Show notes

Ken and Dawn return in today’s podcast to answer more listener questions. Back at the beginning year, Ken and Dawn hosted their first Ask Me Anything episode. In that episode, they promised not to wait another three years and 83 episodes before once again addressing listeners’ questions. A steady stream of new questions have poured in since that first Ask Me Anything episode. Today, Ken and Dawn take turns answering questions about exogenous ketones, daily allowances of protein, healthy fats, black holes, long-duration space flights, decompression sickness, the future of AI, sloppy science, and much, much more.

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