Unsung Science

Latest Episodes:

How NASA's $2 Billion Rover Landed Itself on Mars: "Seven Minutes of Terror" Nov 12, 2021

Show notes

Perseverance, NASA's latest Mars rover, is a one-ton, $2 billion marvel. The plan was for it to enter the Mars atmosphere going 12,000 miles an hour. The problem: How do you slow it down enough to set it down gently on the surface? You can't use retro rockets, because they'd stir up so much dust, the rover’s cameras and instruments would be ruined. You can’t deliver Perseverance inside a larger spaceship, because the rover wouldn’t be able to drive out of the landing crater. You can’t even control the descent from Earth, because it takes so long for our signals to reach Mars; by the time the rover received a course-correction instruction, there’d be nothing left of it but a smoking wreck. Yet NASA pulled it off—with a nutty, Rube Goldberg-y, multi-stage, seven-minute-long, completely automated system involving a parachute, an airborne launch platform, and a cable.

Guest: Alan Chen, NASA Entry, Descent, and Landing Lead for the Mars 2020 mission.

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Tornado Alley is Shifting Eastward—and We're Not Ready Nov 05, 2021

Show notes

Tornadoes are nasty and dangerous. They appear and disappear so fast, there’s usually no time for evacuation—and the United States gets 75% of all the world’s tornadoes, about 1,300 of them a year. They occur all year ‘round, in all 50 states, but the biggest swarm forms in Tornado Alley, in the southern Plains states like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. In 2018, storm chaser and meteorologist Victor Gensini made a startling discovery: Tornado Alley has been shifting eastward. Their growing frequency in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee is a deadly development, because more people live in these areas, often in flimsy housing. And because there are more trees and buildings, it's much harder to see the devastation coming.

Guest: Victor Gensini, storm chaser and meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University.

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Audio Deepfakes and the End of Trust Oct 29, 2021

Show notes

The media is plenty freaked out about “deepfakes”: Computer-generated videos of famous people saying things they never actually said. But only the video is faked; the audio parts, the voices of those fake celebrities, were supplied by human impersonators. But now, software exists to mimic anyone’s voice, opening a Pandora’s Box of fraud, deception, and what one expert calls “the end of trust.” Fortunately, a new coalition of 60 news organizations and software companies think they have a way to shut down the nightmare before it begins.

Guests: Ragavan Thurairatnam, Dessa. Nina Schick, author and deepfakes expert. Joan Donavan, Harvard Kennedy School. Charlie Choi, CEO of Lovo. Dana Rao, chief counsel, Adobe.

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How We Almost Blew the Vaccine Oct 22, 2021

Show notes

It may seem as though we got the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines incredibly quickly. But Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó had been trying to make mRNA vaccines work for 30 years while fighting scientific gatekeepers who thought her idea was absurd. Her grants were denied, her papers rejected, her speaking invitations withdrawn; eventually, the University of Pennsylvania demoted her. But she still refused to quit, and in 2005, she and collaborator Drew Weissman cracked the code. They figured out how mRNA could direct our own cells to manufacture medicines to order. Their breakthrough saved the world from the worst of the pandemic—and opened a new world of medicines and vaccines for a huge range of diseases.

Guests: Katalin Karikó, senior VP at BioNTech. Drew Weissman, Perelman School of Medicine, U Penn. Derek Rossi, co-founder of Moderna.

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What Happened to the Mosquitoes in Fresno? Oct 15, 2021

Show notes

Mosquitoes are the deadliest creatures on earth; they kill 500,000 people a year—and as the planet warms, more species are spreading North from the tropics. In 2013, a nasty new type, called Aedes Aegypti, arrived in Fresno, California. But traditional tactics, like spraying insecticide and genetic modification, have ugly side effects. So one genius programmer from Google thought up a better solution—that doesn’t involve insecticide; doesn’t mess around with genes; doesn’t require irradiating; makes it impossible for the mosquitoes to develop resistance; can’t affect any other species; and costs less than what governments spend now on treating their citizens for Dengue fever. A lot was at stake in the Fresno experiment; if it worked, the technique could save lives around the world. (Spoiler: It worked.)

Guests: Linus Upson, VP of Engineering at Verily. Leslie Vosshall, professor of neuroscience at Rockefeller University. Jodi Holeman, Fresno Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District. Peter Massaro, Google director of automation. Jacob Crawford, senior scientist, Verily.

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Introducing: Unsung Science with David Pogue Sep 27, 2021

Show notes

The untold stories of mind-blowing achievements in science and tech. Host David Pogue takes you behind the scenes into the worlds of the people who’ve built the best in transportation, entertainment, food, Hear the untold stories of mind-blowing achievements in science and tech. Host David Pogue, five-time Emmy winner and “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent, takes you behind the scenes into the worlds of the people who’ve built the best in transportation, entertainment, food, internet, and health. Creators reveal their inspirations and roadblocks they encountered in bringing their breakthroughs to the public.internet, and health.

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