Alle afleveringen
703 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Let's Take a Paws
30 maart 2020 · 54 min
Humans aren’t the only animals stressed-out by social distancing. Narwhals send out echolocation clicks to locate their buddies and ease their loneliness. And a plant about to be chomped by a caterpillar knows that the world can be a scary place.
In this episode, from dogs to narwhals to plants, we put aside human-centric stories to find out how other living creatures map their world, deal with stress, and communicate.
Guests: Lees meerAlexandra Horowitz – Dog cognition researcher, Barnard College, and author of "Being A Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell.”
Susanna Blackwell – Bio-acoustician with Greeneridge Sciences
Simon Gilroy – Professor of botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison
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How Bad Does It Have to Get?
23 maart 2020 · 54 min
“Climate change at warp speed” is the way one scientist described the coronavirus outbreak.
In a show recorded before a live audience at the Seattle AAAS meeting, and co-presented with the BBC World Service, we discuss out how politics and psychology lead people to tune out inconvenient scientific findings even when the stakes are high – as well as what we can do about it.
Guests: Lees meerRoland Pease – BBC reporter, presenter of “Science in Action.”
Lee McIntyre – Philosopher and Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and author of “The Scientific Attitude” and “Post-Truth”
Reyhaneh Maktoufi – Civic Science Fellow with NOVA PBS at station WGBH, with a focus on science communication
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It's In Material [rebroadcast]
16 maart 2020 · 54 min
Astronauts are made of the “right stuff,” but what about their spacesuits? NASA’s pressurized and helmeted onesies are remarkable, but they need updating if we’re to boldly go into deep space. Suiting up on Mars requires more manual flexibility, for example. Find out what innovative materials might be used to reboot the suit.
Meanwhile, strange new materials are in the pipeline for use on terra firma: spider silk is kicking off the development of biological materials that are inspiring ultra-strong, economical, and entirely new fabrics. And, while flesh-eating bacteria may seem like an unlikely ally in materials science, your doctor might reach for them one day. The bacterium’s proteins are the inspiration for a medical molecular superglue.
Plus, an overview of more innovative materials to come, from those that are 3D printed to self-healing concrete.
Guests: Lees meerNicole Stott– Retired NASA astronaut, artist
Dava Newman– Professor of Astronautics and Engineering Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrew Dent– Vice President of Library and Materials Research, Material ConneXion
Mark Howarth– Biochemist, Oxford University
Mark Miodownik– Materials scientist, University College London, author of “Stuff Matters; Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shape Our Man-Made World”
Originally aired October 2, 2017
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Skeptic Check: Pandemic Fear
9 maart 2020 · 54 min
Contagion aside, coronavirus is a powerful little virus. It has prompted a global experiment in behavior modification: elbow bumps instead of handshakes, hand sanitizer and mask shortages, a gyrating stock market.
Pragmatism motivates our behavior toward the spread of this virus, but so do fear and panic. In 1918, amplified fear made the Spanish Flu pandemic more deadly.
Can we identify when we’re acting sensibly in the face of COVID-19, or when fear has hijacked our ability to think rationally and protect ourselves?
Guests: Lees meerPeter Hall - Professor of public health and health systems at the University of Waterloo
David DeSteno - Social psychologist and professor of psychology at Northeastern University
David Smith - Virologist and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, University of California, San Diego
John Barry - writer, adjunct faculty at the Tulane School of Tropical Medicine and author of The Great Influenza; The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
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DecodeHer [rebroadcast]
2 maart 2020 · 54 min
They were pioneers in their fields, yet their names are scarcely known – because they didn’t have a Y chromosome. We examine the accomplishments of two women who pioneered code breaking and astronomy during the early years of the twentieth century and did so in the face of social opprobrium and a frequently hostile work environment.
Henrietta Leavitt measured the brightnesses of thousands of stars and discovered a way to gauge the distances to galaxies, a development that soon led to the concept of the Big Bang.
Elizabeth Friedman, originally hired to test whether William Shakespeare really wrote his plays, was soon establishing the science of code breaking, essential to success in the two world wars.
Also, the tech industry is overwhelmingly male. Girls Who Code is an initiative to redress the balance by introducing girls to computer programming, and encouraging them to follow careers in tech.
Guests: Lees meerJason Fagone – Author of “The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies”
Lauren Gunderson – Playwright of Silent Sky, which is being performed all over the world, form the First Folio Theatre to the Repertory Philippines
Reshma Saujani – Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, and the author of "Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder”
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AI: Where Does it End?
24 februari 2020 · 54 min
The benefits of artificial intelligence are manifest and manifold, but can we recognize the drawbacks … and avoid them in time?
In this episode, recorded before a live audience at the Seattle meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, we discuss who is making the ethical decisions about how we use this powerful technology, and a proposal to create a Hippocratic Oath for AI researchers.
Guests: Lees meerOren Etzioni - CEO of The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Mark Hill - Professor of computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and chair of the Computing Community Consortium
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Climate Changed
17 februari 2020 · 54 min
Have you adapted to the changing climate? Rising waters, more destructive wildfires, record-breaking heatwaves. Scientists have long predicted these events, but reporting on climate change has moved from prediction to description. There’s no time for dwelling on “we should haves.” Communities and organizations are being forced to adapt. Find out what that means, the role of the new “resilience officers,” and the unique response of Native American cultures. Plus, is the coronavirus outbreak made worse by climate change?
Guests: Lees meerJames Randerson – Professor of Earth Science, University of California, Irvine
Victor Rodriguez – PhD student, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Engineering and Public Policy
Kyle Whyte – Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Community Sustainability, and tribal member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation
Tracey Goldstein – Professor in the Department of Pathology, Immunology, and Microbiology, University of California, Davis
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Frogs' Pants (Rebroadcast)
10 februari 2020 · 54 min
It’s one of the most bizarre biological experiments ever. In the 18th century, a scientist fitted a pair of tailor-made briefs on a male frog to determine the animal’s contribution to reproduction. The process of gestation was a mystery and scientists had some odd-ball theories.
Today, a 5th grader can tell you how babies are made, but we still don’t know exactly what life is. In our quest to understand, we’re still at the frogs’ pants stage.
Find out why conception took centuries to figure out. Also, why the 1970s Viking experiments, specifically designed to detect life on Mars, couldn’t give us a definitive answer. Plus, can knowing where life isn’t help define what it is? Take a tour of the world’s barren places.
Guests: Lees meerJay Gallentine - Author of books about space and space history.
Edward Dolnick - Author and former science writer at the Boston Globe. His book is The Seeds of Life: From Aristotle to Da Vinci, from Shark’s Teeth to Frogs’ Pants.
Chris McKay - Planetary scientist, NASA Ames Research Center.
Originally aired July 10, 2017
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Skeptic Check: Science Denial (rebroadcast)
3 februari 2020 · 54 min
Climate change isn’t happening. Vaccines make you sick. When it comes to threats to public or environmental health, a surprisingly large fraction of the population still denies the consensus of scientific evidence. But it’s not the first time – many people long resisted the evidentiary link between HIV and AIDS and smoking with lung cancer.
There’s a sense that science denialism is on the rise. It prompted a gathering of scientists and historians in New York City to discuss the problem, which included a debate on the usefulness of the word “denial” itself. Big Picture Science was there. We report from the Science Denial symposium held jointly by the New York Academy of Sciences and Rutgers Global Health Institute.
Find out why so many people dig in their heels and distrust scientific findings. Plus, the techniques wielded by special interest groups to dispute some inconvenient truths. We also hear how simply stating more facts may be the wrong approach to combating scientific resistance.
Guests: Lees meerMelanie Brickman Borchard - Director of Life Sciences Conferences at New York Academy of Sciences
Nancy Tomes - professor of history at Stony Brook University
Allan Brandt - professor of history of science and medicine at Harvard University. Author of “The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America”
Sheila Jasanoff - Director of Program on Science, Technology and Society and professor of environment, science and technology at Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Michael Dahlstrom - Associate Director of Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, and associate professor at Iowa State University
Matthew Nisbet - professor of communication and public policy at Northeastern University
Arthur (Art) Caplan - professor and founding head of medical ethics at NYU School of Medicine
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A Twist of Slime
27 januari 2020 · 54 min
Your daily mucus output is most impressive. Teaspoons or measuring cups can’t capture its entire volume. Find out how much your body churns out and why you can’t live without the viscous stuff. But slime in general is remarkable. Whether coating the bellies of slithery creatures, sleeking the surface of aquatic plants, or dripping from your nose, its protective qualities make it one of the great inventions of biology. Join us as we venture to the land of ooze!
Guests: Lees meerChristopher Viney - Professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Merced
Katharina Ribbeck - Bioengineer at MIT
Anna Rose Hopkins – Chef and partner at Hank and Bean in Los Angeles
Ruth Kassinger - author of “Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us”
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The Ears Have It
20 januari 2020 · 54 min
What’s the difference between a bird call and the sound of a pile driver? Not much, when you’re close to the loudest bird ever. Find out when it pays to be noisy and when noise can worsen your health. Just about everyone eventually suffers some hearing loss, but that’s not merely aging. It’s an ailment we inflict on ourselves. Hear how a team in New York City has put sensors throughout the city to catalog noise sources, hoping to tame the tumult.
And can underwater speakers blasting the sounds of a healthy reef bring life back to dead patches of the Great Barrier Reef?
Guests: Lees meerMark Cartwright – Research Assistant Professor at New York University’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Charles Mydlarz – Research Assistant Professor at New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and the Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL)
David Owen – Staff writer at The New Yorker, and author of Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World
Jeff Podos – Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Steve Simpson – Professor of Marine Biology and Global Change, Exeter University, U.K.
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Perpetual Emotion Machine [rebroadcast]
13 januari 2020 · 54 min
Get ready for compassionate computers that feel your pain, share your joy, and generally get where you’re coming from. Computers that can tell by your voice whether you’re pumped up or feeling down, or sense changes in heart rate, skin, or muscle tension to determine your mood. Empathetic electronics that you can relate to.
But wait a minute – we don’t always relate to other humans. Our behavior can be impulsive and even self-sabotaging – our emotions are often conflicted and irrational. We cry when we’re happy. Frown when we’re pensive. A suite of factors, much of them out of our control, govern how we behave, from genes to hormones to childhood experience.
One study says that all it takes for a defendant to receive a harsher sentence is a reduction in the presiding judge’s blood sugar.
So grab a cookie, and find out how the heck we can build computers that understand us anyway.
Guests: Lees meerRosalind Picard – Professor at the MIT Media Lab and co-founder of the companies Affectiva and Empatica.
Robert Sapolsky – Professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, and author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst.
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Your Brain's Reins [rebroadcast]
6 januari 2020 · 54 min
You are your brain. But what happens when your brain changes for the worse – either by physical injury or experience? Are you still responsible for your actions?
We hear how the case of a New York man charged with murder was one of the first to introduce neuroscience as evidence in court. Plus, how technology hooks us – a young man so addicted to video games, he lacked social skills, or even a desire to eat. Find out how technology designers conspire against his digital detox.
Also, even if your brain is intact and your only task is choosing a sock color, are you really in control? How your unconscious directs even mundane behavior … and how you can outwit it.
Guests: Lees meerKevin Davis – Author of The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America’s Courtrooms
Hilarie Cash – Co-founder and chief clinical officer of reSTART, an internet addiction recovery program
Adam Alter – Assistant professor of marketing and psychology at New York University, Stern School of Business, and author of Irresistible: the Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
Peter Vishton – Psychologist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia
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Skeptic Check: Heal Thyself [rebroadcast]
30 december 2019 · 54 min
Do we still need doctors? There are umpteen alternative sources of medical advice, including endless and heartfelt health tips from people without medical degrees. Frankly, self-diagnosis with a health app is easier and cheaper than a trip to a clinic. Since we’re urged to be our own health advocate and seek second opinions, why not ask Alexa or consult with a celebrity about what ails us?
Find out if you can trust these alternative medical advice platforms. Plus, lessons from an AIDS fighter about ignoring the findings of medical science.
And, if AI can diagnose better than an MD, will we stop listening to doctors altogether?
It’s our monthly look at critical thinking … but don’t take our word for it!
Guests: Lees meerKatherine Foley – Science and health reporter at Quartz, and author of the article “Alexa is a Terrible Doctor”
Paul Offit – Professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of “Bad Advice: Or Why Celebrities, Politicians, and Activists Aren’t Your Best Source of Health Information”
Richard Marlink – Director Rutgers Global Health Institute.
Shinjini Kundu – Research Fellow, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Stuart Schlisserman – Internist, Palo Alto, California
originally aired September 24, 2018
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Handling the Holidays
23 december 2019 · 54 min
The stress of the holidays can make you want to hide under the covers with a warm cup of cocoa. From gift buying to family gatherings, the holidays can feel like being inside a pressure cooker. But don’t despair! Science can help make the holidays a little brighter, from some gift-giving tips from our animal friends to embracing pessimism before a challenging social event to stopping that annoying merry melody on repeat in your head.
Guests: Lees meerAdam South – Research assistant professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University
Mitch Ratcliffe – CEO and publisher of Earth911
Julie Norem – Psychology professor at Wellesley College and author of “The Positive Power of Negative Thinking”
Elizabeth Margulis – Music professor at Princeton University and author of “On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind”
Steve Ilardi – Clinical psychology associate professor at the University of Kansas. Read his paper on the effects of sugar here.
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Waste Not
16 december 2019 · 54 min
Why create more landfill? Perhaps you should resist the urge to toss those old sneakers, the broken ceiling fan, or last year’s smart phone. Instead, repurpose them! Global junk entrepreneurs are leading the way in turning trash to treasure, while right-to-repair advocates fight for legislation that would give you a decent shot at fixing your own electronic devices.
And, if you toss food scraps down the drain as you cook, are you contributing to a “fatberg” horror in the sewer?
Guests: Lees meerJohn Love – Synthetic biologist at the University of Exeter
Adam Minter – Author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale
Amanda Preske – Chemist and the owner of Circuit Breaker Labs
Nathan Proctor – National campaign director for S. Public Interest Research Group – (PIRGS) Right to Repair campaign
Kyle Wiens – CEO of I-Fixit, an Internet repair community
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Shell on Earth
9 december 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) We all may retreat to our protective shells, but evolution has perfected the calcite variety to give some critters permanent defense against predators. So why did squids and octopuses lose their shells? Find out what these cephalopods gained by giving up the shell game.
Plus why Chesapeake Bay oyster shells are shells of their former selves. What explains the absence of the dinner-plate sized oysters of 500,000 years ago, and how conservation paleobiology is probing deep time for strategies to bring back these monster mollusks.
Also, was the Earth once encased in a giant, continental shell? A new theory of plate tectonics. Land ho!
Guests: Lees meerRowan Lockwood – Conservation paleobiologist at the College of William and Mary.
Al Tanner – Ph.D. student in paleobiology at the University of Bristol, U.K.
Mike Brown – Professor of Geology, University of Maryland
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Yule Like This
2 december 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Fir tree needles embedded in carpet are a holiday headache. Why not decorate a genetically-modified, needle-retaining tree instead? It’s just another way that science is relevant to the holidays. We have more.
How about science experiments on fruitcake? There’s a competition that includes launching it with a pneumatic device, running a heavy electric current though it, or blasting it with a blowtorch. Meanwhile, physics provides insight into those tricky how-does-he-do-it questions about Santa’s delivery rounds.
Finally, step away from the relatives and consider the implications of the winter solstice.
Enjoy a better holiday through science!
Guests: Lees meerJenna Gallas – Special Event Coordinator, Manitou Springs Chamber of Congress, Colorado
Laura Kramer – Manager of Science Conductors, Science Museum of Virginia, Richmond
Lilian Matallana – Research Associate, Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Ben Orlin – Math teacher, and author of “Math with Bad Drawings: Illuminating the Ideas That Shape Our Reality”
Ethan Siegel – Theoretical astrophysicist and owner of “Starts with a Bang!” blog
Andrew Fraknoi – Astronomer and educator, author of “Introduction to Astronomy”
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Skeptic Check: Betting on Pseudoscience
25 november 2019 · 54 min
Psychics may not be able to predict the future or sense your thoughts. Nonetheless, they rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. But the harm from pseudoscience can go far beyond your wallet – especially when it promotes unscientific treatments for serious disease. Find out what alarming discovery led one naturopath to quit her practice and why scientific ignorance is not bliss.
It’s our regular look at critical thinking, but don’t take our word for it.
Guests: Lees meerRobert Palmer – Member of the Guerilla Skeptics on the Wikipedia editing team and columnist for the Skeptical Inquirer on-line magazine
Lee McIntyre – Research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and lecturer on ethics at Harvard Extension School
Britt Marie Hermes – Former naturopath doctor; now doctoral student in evolutionary genetics at the University of Kiel, Germany
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Stopping Ebola
18 november 2019 · 55 min
A new vaccine may help turn Ebola into a disease we can prevent, and a new drug may make it one we can cure. But the political crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo has fueled violence against health workers and Ebola treatment centers. Find out why context matters in the efforts to stop Ebola, what new drugs and vaccines are on the horizon, and whether the world is prepared for the next infectious pandemic. Even if Ebola’s threat is diminishing, what about the next pandemic? Is the world prepared?
Guests: Lees meerRichard Preston – Journalist and author of “Crisis in the Red Zone: The Story of the Deadliest Ebola Outbreak in History.”
Yap Boum – Regional representative for Africa for Epicentre, the research arm of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Cameroon.
Amy Maxmen – Senior reporter, Nature. Her most recent piece is "Behind the Front Lines of the Ebola Wars."
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Radical Cosmology
11 november 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) 400 years ago, some ideas about the cosmos were too scandalous to mention. When the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno suggested that planets existed outside our Solar System, the Catholic Inquisition had him arrested, jailed, and burned at the stake for heresy.
Today, we have evidence of thousands of planets orbiting other stars. Our discovery of extrasolar planets has dramatically changed ideas about the possibility for life elsewhere in the universe.
Modern theories about the existence of the ghostly particles called neutrinos or of collapsed stars with unfathomable gravity (black holes), while similarly incendiary, didn’t prompt arrest, of course. Neutrinos and black holes were arresting ideas because they came decades before we had the means to prove their existence.
Hear about scientific ideas that came before their time and why extrasolar planets, neutrinos, and black holes are now found on the frontiers of astronomical research.
Guests: Lees meerAlberto Martínez – Professor of history, University of Texas, Austin, and author of Burned Alive: Giordano Bruno, Galileo & the Inquisition
Anne Schukraft – Associate scientist, Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory
Ephraim Fischbach – Professor of physics and astronomy, Purdue University
Chris Impey – Professor of astronomy, University of Arizona, and author of Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes
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Supercomputer Showdown
4 november 2019 · 54 min
Do you have a hard-to-answer question? The Summit, Sierra, Trinity, Frontier, and Aurora supercomputers are built to tackle it. Summit tops the petaflop heap – at least for now. But Frontier and Aurora are catching up as they take aim at a new performance benchmark called exascale.
So why do we need all this processing power? From climate modeling to personalized medicine, find out why the super-est computers are necessary to answer our biggest questions. But is the dark horse candidate, quantum computing, destined to leave classical computing in the dust?
Guests: Lees meerKatherine Riley - Director of Science, Argonne National Laboratory
Jack Wells - Director of Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory National Center for Computational Sciences
Katie Bethea - Communications Team Lead, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Jeffrey Hawkins – Technologist and neuroscientist. Co-founder of Palm, Handspring and Numenta
Eleanor Rieffel - Mathematician, NASA Ames Research Center, and co-author of “Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor,” published in Nature magazine
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Skeptic Check: Rational Lampoon
28 oktober 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Two heads may be better than one. But what about three or more? A new study shows that chimpanzees excel at complex tasks when they work in groups, and their accumulated knowledge can even be passed from one generation to the next.
But group-think also can be maladaptive. When humans rely on knowledge that they assume other people possess, they can become less than rational.
Find out why one cognitive scientist says that individual thinking is a myth. Most of your decisions are made in groups, and most derive from emotion, not rationality.
Also, why we know far less than we think we do. For example, most people will say they understand how an everyday object like a zipper works, but draw a blank when asked to explain it.
Plus, why we have a biological drive to categorize people as “us” or “them,” and how we can override it.
Guests: Lees meerSteven Sloman - Professor of cognitive linguistics and psychological sciences at Brown University and editor-in-chief of the journal, Cognition
Robert Sapolsky - Professor of neuroscience at Stanford University and author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Laurance Doyle - Scientist at the SETI Institute
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Nobel Efforts
21 oktober 2019 · 54 min
For two Swiss astronomers, it’s “Stockholm, here we come.” Their first-ever discovery of a planet orbiting another star has been awarded the most prestigious prize in science. Find out how their exoplanet discovery led to 4,000 more and how that changes the odds of finding life beyond Earth. Also, the Nobel committee is not alone in finding distant worlds inspirational: a musician is translating their orbital signatures into sound.
Guests: Lees meerRoy Gould - Biophysicist and researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Author of “Universe in Creation”
Jeffrey Smith - Data scientist and a principal investigator for TESS at the SETI Institute
David Ibbett - Composer and director of the Multiverse Concert Series
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Go With the Flow
14 oktober 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Solid materials get all the production credit. Don’t get us wrong, we depend on their strength and firmness for bridges, bones, and bento boxes. But liquids do us a solid, too. Their free-flowing properties drive the Earth’s magnetic field, inspire a new generation of smart electronics, and make biology possible. But the weird thing is, they elude clear definition. Is tar a liquid or a solid? What about peanut butter?
In this episode: A romp through a cascade of liquids with a materials scientist who is both admiring and confounded by their properties; how Earth’s molten iron core is making the magnetic north pole high-tail it to Siberia; blood as your body’s information superhighway; and how a spittlebug can convert 200 times its body weight in urine into a cozy, bubble fortress.
Guests: Lees meerMark Miodownik – Professor of Materials and Society, University College, London, and author of “Liquid rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances that Flow Through Our Lives”
Arnaud Chulliat – Geophysicist, University of Colorado and Institut de physique du globe du Paris
Philip Matthews – Comparative physiologist at the University of British Columbia
Rose George – Journalist and author of “Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood”
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Battling Bacteria
7 oktober 2019 · 54 min
We can’t say we weren’t warned. More than 75 years ago, bacteriologist Rene Dubos cautioned that misuse of antibiotics could breed drug-resistant bacteria – and he has been proved prescient. In this episode: the rise of superbugs, why we ignored the warnings about them, how some are enlisting an old therapy to fight back, and whether we’ll heed history’s lessons in the face of a future pandemic. Plus, a weird unforeseen effect of antibiotics being investigated at the Body Farm.
Guests: Lees meerFred Turek - Director of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology, Department of Neurobology, Northwestern University
Jennifer DeBruyn - Microbiologist at the University of Tennessee, who also works at the Anthropology Research Facility, a.k.a. the Body Farm
Steffanie Strathdee - Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author (with Tom Patterson) of “The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug”
Tom Patterson - Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author (with Steffanie Strathdee) of “The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug”
Mark Honigsbaum - Medical Historian, journalist, and lecturer at City University, London, and author of “The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris”
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Headed For Trouble
30 september 2019 · 54 min
The stone heads on Easter Island are an enduring mystery: why were they built and why were they abandoned and destroyed? The old ideas about cultural collapse are yielding to new ones based on careful investigation on the ground - but also from above. What surprising explanations have we found and are we off base to think that ancient societies such as the Easter Islanders or the classical Egyptians were, in the end, failures? Can what we learn from these histories help predict which societies will survive?
Guests: Lees meerJames Grant Peterkin – Tour guide, resident, and British Honorary Consul on Easter Island
Sarah Parcak – Archaeologist, Egyptologist, remote sensing expert, professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and author of Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past
Carl Lipo – Anthropologist and professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York
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Keeping Humans in the Loop
23 september 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Modern technology is great, but could we be losing control? As our world becomes more crowded and demands for resources are greater, some people worry about humanity’s uncertain prospects. An eminent cosmologist considers globe-altering developments such as climate change and artificial intelligence. Will we be able to stave off serious threats to our future?
There’s also another possible source of danger: our trendy digital aids. We seem all-too-willing to let algorithms classify and define our wants, our needs, and our behavior. Instead of using technology, are we being used by it – to inadvertently become social media’s product?
And while we may be skittish about the increased data our technology collects, one sci-fi writer imagines a future in which information is a pervasive and freely available commodity.
Guests: Lees meerMartin Rees – Cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Great Britain’s Astronomer Royal. Author of On the Future: Prospects for Humanity.
Douglas Rushkoff – Media theorist and professor of media theory and digital economics, City University of New York. Author of Team Human.
Malka Older – Author and humanitarian worker, author of The Centenal Cycle.
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Rip Van Winkle Worm
16 september 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Your shower pipes are alive. So are your sinks, books, and floorboards. New studies of our homes are revealing just what species live there – in the thousands, from bacteria to flies to millipedes. Meanwhile, life keeps surprising us by popping up in other unexpected places: the deep biosphere houses the majority of the world’s bacteria and the Arctic tundra has kept worms frozen, but alive, for 40,000 years.
We embrace the multitude of life living on us, in us, and – as it turns out – in every possible ecological niche. Most of it is harmless, some is beneficial, and it’s all testament to the amazing diversity and adaptability of life. In addition, the hardiest organisms suggest where we might find life beyond Earth.
Guests: Lees meerRob Dunn – Professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University and at the Natural History Museum at the University of Copenhagen. Author of “Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live.”
Lynn Rothschild – Astrobiologist and synthetic biologist at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Karen Lloyd – Environmental microbiologist and associate professor at the University of Tennessee.
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For Good Measure
9 september 2019 · 54 min
The reign of Le Grand K has come to an end. After 130 years, this hunk of metal sitting in a Parisian vault will no longer define the kilogram. The new kilogram mass will be defined by Planck’s constant, joining three other units for redefinition by fundamental constants. But as we measure with increasing precision – from cesium atomic clocks to gravitational wave detectors able to measure spacetime distortions to 1/1000th the width of a proton – is something fundamental lost along the way? Meanwhile, the BiPiSci team accepts the banana-measurement challenge.
Guests: Lees meerJon Pratt – Mechanical engineer and engineer and Chief of the Quantum Measurement Division of the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Wolfgang Ketterle – Physicist at MIT, Nobel Laureate
Simon Winchester – Author of “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World”
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Skeptic Check: Data Bias
2 september 2019 · 54 min
Sexist snow plowing? Data that guide everything from snow removal schedules to heart research often fail to consider gender. In these cases, “reference man” stands in for “average human.” Human bias also infects artificial intelligence, with speech recognition triggered only by male voices and facial recognition that can’t see black faces. We question the assumptions baked into these numbers and algorithms.
Guests: Lees meerCaroline Criado-Perez - Journalist and author of “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men”
Kade Crockford - Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts
Amy Webb - Futurist, founder and CEO of the Future Today Institute, and author of “The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and There Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity”
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Skeptic Check: Brain Gain
26 augustus 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Looking to boost your brainpower? Luckily, there are products promising to help. Smart drugs, neurofeedback exercises, and brain-training video games all promise to improve your gray matter’s performance. But it’s uncertain whether these products really work. Regulatory agencies have come down hard on some popular brain training companies for false advertising. But other brain games have shown benefits in clinical trials. And could we skip the brain workout altogether and pop a genius pill instead?
In our monthly look at critical thinking, we separate the pseudo from the science of commercial cognitive enhancement techniques.
Guests: Lees meerCaroline Williams– Science journalist and author of “My Plastic Brain: One Woman’s Yearlong Journey to Discover If Science Can Improve Her Mind”
Adam Gazzaley– Neuroscientist, University of California, San Francisco, and the executive director of Neuroscape. His book is “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World.”
Amy Arnsten– Professor of neuroscience and psychology at Yale Medical School
Kevin Roose– Journalist for the New York Times.
Leonard Mlodinow– Physicist and author of “Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change”
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True Grit
19 augustus 2019 · 54 min
Without sand, engineering would be stuck in the Middle Ages. Wooden houses would line mud-packed streets, and Silicon Valley would be, well, just a valley. Sand is the building material of modern cities, and we use more of this resource than any other except water and air. Now we’re running out of it.
Hear why the Roman recipe for making concrete was lost until the 19th century, and about the super-secret mine in North Carolina that makes your smartphone possible.
Plus, engineered sand turns stormwater into drinking water, and why you might think twice about running barefoot on some tropical beaches once you learn about their biological source.
And, a special report from the coast of Louisiana where livelihoods and ecosystems depend on the successful release of Mississippi sand from levees into sediment-starved wetlands.
Guests: Lees meerVince Beiser – Journalist and author of “The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization”
Joe Charbonnet – Science and policy associate at the Green Science Policy Institute in Berkeley, California
Pupa Gilbert – Biophysicist and geobiologist, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Rudy Simoneaux – Engineer manager, Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Elizabeth Chamberlain – Post-doctoral researcher in Earth and Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University
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Granting Immunity
12 augustus 2019 · 54 min
“Diversity or die” could be your new health mantra. Don’t boost your immune system, cultivate it! Like a garden, your body’s defenses benefit from species diversity. Find out why multiple strains of microbes, engaged in a delicate ballet with your T-cells, join internal fungi in combatting disease. Plus, global ecosystems also depend on the diversity of its tiniest members; so what happens when the world’s insects bug out?
Guests: Lees meerMatt Richtel – Author, most recently, of “An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of The Immune System”
Rob Dunn – Biologist and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University. Author of “Never Home Alone”
David Underhill – Professor of medicine, Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles, California
Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson – Professor in conservation biology at the Institute for Ecology and Nature Management at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Author of “Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects”
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Sci-Fi From the Future
5 augustus 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Are you ready to defer all your personal decision-making to machines? Polls show that most Americans are uneasy about the unchecked growth of artificial intelligence. The possible misuse of genetic engineering also makes us anxious. We all have a stake in the responsible development of science and technology, but fortunately, science fiction films can help.
The movies Ex Machina and Jurassic Park suggest where A.I. and unfettered gene-tinkering could lead. But even less popular sci-fi movies can help us imagine unsettling scenarios regarding over-population, smart drugs, and human cloning.
And not all tales are grim. The 1951 film, The Man in the White Suit, weaves a humorous story of materials science run amok.
So, grab a bowl of popcorn and join us in contemplating the future of humanity as Hollywood sees it!
Guest: Lees meerAndrew Maynard – Physicist and professor at the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University. Author of Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies.
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Skeptic Check: Flat Earth
29 juli 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) The Earth is not round. Technically, it’s an oblate spheroid. But for some people, the first statement is not even approximately correct. Flat Earthers believe that our planet resembles – not a slightly squashed grapefruit – but a thick pancake. A journalist who covered a Flat Earth convention describes the rationale behind this ever-more popular belief.
So how do you establish science truth? We look at the difference between a truly scientific examination of extraordinary claims and approaches that feel and look science-y but aren’t.
Find out how one man will use telescopes and balloons in the desert to demonstrate that the Earth is a globe, while a biologist runs a test on the waters of Loch Ness to see if it contains prehistoric reptile DNA.
And what happens when amateur investigators chase ghosts, UFOs, and Bigfoot with science instruments, but without an understanding of the scientific method.
Guests: Lees meerJames Underdown– Executive Director of the Center for Inquiry in Los Angeles and of the Independent Investigations Group. The results of his experiment will be posted here.
Alex Moshakis– Journalist who writes for the Observer, the Guardian, and Esquire. His article on the U.K.’s first Flat Earth convention appeared in May, 2018 in the
Harry Dyer– Lecturer in education at the University of East Anglia. His article about the flat earth convention is titled "I Watched an Entire Flat Earth Convention for my Research, Here is What I Learned."
Neil Gemmell– Professor in the Department of Anatomy, University of Otago, New Zealand
Sharon Hill– Geologist, science writer, speaker, and author of "Scientifical Americans: The Culture of Amateur Paranormal Researchers."
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Let's Stick Together
22 juli 2019 · 54 min
Crowded subway driving you crazy? Sick of the marathon-length grocery store line? Wish you had a hovercraft to float over traffic? If you are itching to hightail it to an isolated cabin in the woods, remember, we evolved to be together. Humans are not only social, we’re driven to care for one another, even those outside our immediate family.
We look at some of the reasons why this is so – from the increase in valuable communication within social groups to the power of the hormone oxytocin. Plus, how our willingness to tolerate anonymity, a condition which allows societies to grow, has a parallel in ant supercolonies.
Guests: Lees meerAdam Rutherford – Geneticist and author of “Humanimal: How Homo sapiensBecame Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature – a New Evolutionary History”
Patricia Churchland – Neurophilosopher, professor of philosophy emerita at the University of California San Diego, and author most recently of “Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition”
Mark Moffett – Tropical biologist, Smithsonian Institution researcher, and author of “The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive and Fall”
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Math's Paths
15 juli 2019 · 54 min
If you bake, you can appreciate math’s transformative properties. Admiring the stackable potato chip is to admire a hyperbolic sheet. Find out why there’s no need to fear math - you just need to think outside the cuboid. Also, how nature’s geometric shapes inspire the next generation of squishy robots and an argument for radically overhauling math class. The end point of these common factors is acute show that’s as fun as eating Pi.
Guests: Lees meerEugenia Cheng – Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, tenured at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and author of “How to Bake Pi”
Shankar Venkataramani – Professor of math at the University of Arizona
Steven Strogatz – Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University and author of “Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe”
Daniel Finkel – Mathematician and founder and director of operations at “Math for Love”
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DNA is Not Destiny
8 juli 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Heredity was once thought to be straightforward. Genes were passed in an immutable path from parents to you, and you were stuck – or blessed – with what you got. DNA didn’t change.
But now we know that’s not true. Epigenetic factors, such as your environment and your lifestyle, control how your genes are expressed. Meanwhile, the powerful tool CRISPR allows us to tinker with the genes themselves. DNA is no longer destiny.
Hear the results from the NASA twin study and what happened to astronaut Scott Kelly’s DNA after a year on the International Space Station. Plus, whether there’s evidence that epigenetic changes can be passed down. And, if we can wipe out deadly malaria by engineering the mosquito genome for sterility, should we do it?
Guests: Lees meerScott Kelly – Former military test pilot and astronaut and author of “Infinite Wonder”
Carl Zimmer – Columnist for The New York Times, author of “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity"
Christopher Mason – Associate professor of genetics and computational biology at Weill Cornell Medicine
Michael Snyder – Chair of the genetics department and director of the Center for Genomics and Precision Medicine at Stanford University
Nicole Gladish – PhD candidate, department of medical genetics, University of British Columbia
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Nailing the Moon Landing
1 juli 2019 · 54 min
Neil, Buzz, and Michael made it look effortless, but the moon landing was neither easy nor inevitable. Soon after President Kennedy publicly stated the goal of sending Americans to the moon, NASA confessed that the chances of success were only about 50/50. But on July 20, 1969, despite enormous difficulties, astronauts stepped onto the lunar regolith.
In this special anniversary episode, we go behind the iconic phrases and familiar photos to consider the errors, mishaps, and the Plan B contingencies that dogged the project, as well as hear of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who made Apollo 11 possible.
Guests: Lees meerCharles Fishman - author of “One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission that Flew Us to the Moon”
Matt Hayes - President and CEO of the Museum of Flight, Seattle
Geoff Nunn – Adjunct curator for Space History at the Museum of Flight.
David Whitehouse – Journalist, broadcaster, and author of “Apollo 11: The Inside Story”
Dee O’Hara – NASA’s first aerospace nurse and flight nurse for the Apollo mission
James Allen Joki – EMU Flight Controller, Apollo Mission Control, Houston.
Ted Huetter – Museum of Flight public relations manager.
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Animals Like Us
24 juni 2019 · 54 min
Laughing rats, sorrowful elephants, joyful chimpanzees. The more carefully we observe, and the more we learn about animals, the closer their emotional lives appear to resemble our own. Most would agree that we should minimize the physical suffering of animals, but should we give equal consideration to their emotional stress? Bioethicist Peter Singer weighs in. Meanwhile, captivity that may be ethical: How human-elephant teamwork in Asia may help protect an endangered species.
Guests: Lees meerFrans de Waal - Primatologist and biologist at Emory University; author of “Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves.” Watch the video of Mama and Jan Van Hooff.
Peter Singer – Philosopher, professor of bioethics at Princeton University.
Jacob Shell - Professor of geography at Temple University, and author of “Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants.”
Kevin Schneider - Executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project
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You've Got Whale
17 juni 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) SMS isn’t the original instant messaging system. Plants can send chemical warnings through their leaves in a fraction of a second. And while we love being in the messaging loop – frenetically refreshing our browsers – we miss out on important conversations that no Twitter feed or inbox can capture. That’s because eavesdropping on the communications of non-human species requires the ability to decode their non-written signals.
Dive into Arctic waters where scientists make first-ever recordings of the socializing clicks and squeals of narwhals, and find out how climate shifts may pollute their acoustic landscape. Also, why the chemical defense system of plants has prompted one biologist to give greenery an “11 on the scale of awesomeness.” And, you can’t see them, but they sure can sense one another: how communicating microbes plan their attack.
Guests: Lees meerSusanna Blackwell – Bio-acoustician with Greeneridge Sciences. Hear her recordings of narwhals here.
Simon Gilroy – Professor of botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison. His video of glowing green caterpillar-munched plants can be viewed here.
Peter Greenberg – Professor of microbiology, University of Washington, Seattle
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It's Habitable Forming
10 juni 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) There’s evidence for a subsurface lake on Mars, and scientists are excitedly using the “h” word. Could the Red Planet be habitable, not billions of years ago, but today? While we wait – impatiently – for a confirmation of this result, we review the recipe for habitable alien worlds. For example, the moon Titan has liquid lakes on its surface. Could they be filled with Titanites?
Dive into a possible briny, underground lake on Mars … protect yourself from the methane-drenched rain on a moon of Saturn … and cheer on the missed-it-by-that-much planets, asteroids Ceres and Vesta.
Also, do tens of billions of potentially habitable extrasolar planets mean that Earth is not unique?
Guests: Lees meerNathalie Cabrol – Planetary scientist, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute
Jack Holt – Geophysicist, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona
Jani Radebaugh – Planetary scientist and professor of geology, Brigham Young University
Marc Rayman – Mission Director and Chief Engineer of NASA’s Dawn Mission
Phil Plait – Astronomer, blogger, and widely known as the Bad Astronomer
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Creature Discomforts
3 juni 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) Okay you animals, line up: stoned sloths, playful pandas, baleful bovines, and vile vultures. We’ve got you guys pegged, thanks to central casting.
Or do we? Our often simplistic view of animals ignores their remarkable adaptive abilities. Stumbly sloths are in fact remarkably agile and a vulture’s tricks for thermoregulation can’t be found in an outdoors store.
Our ignorance about some animals can even lead to their suffering and to seemingly intractable problems. The South American nutria was brought to Louisiana to supply the fur market. But the species got loose and tens of millions of these rodents are destroying the environment. It literally has a bounty on its tail.
Hear about research that corrects a menagerie of misunderstandings about our fellow furry, feathered, and scaly animals, and how getting over ourselves to know them better can have practical benefits. Will you still recoil from termites if you learn that they are relevant to the future of robots, global warming, and smart design?
Guests: Lees meerLucy Cooke – Zoologist, broadcaster and author of “The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife”
Chris Metzler – Co-director and producer of the film Rodents of Unusual Size
Lisa Margonelli – Journalist and author of "Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology"
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Skeptic Check: Worrier Mentality
27 mei 2019 · 54 min
Poisonous snakes, lightning strikes, a rogue rock from space. There are plenty of scary things to fret about, but are we burning adrenaline on the right ones? Stepping into the bathtub is more dangerous than flying from a statistical point of view, but no one signs up for “fear of showering” classes.
Find out why we get tripped up by statistics, worry about the wrong things, and how the “intelligence trap” not only leads smart people to make dumb mistakes, but actually causes them to make more.
Guests: Lees meerEric Chudler – Research association professor, department of bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle and co-author of “Worried: Science Investigates Some of Life’s Common Concerns”
Lise Johnson – Director of the Basic Science Curriculum, Rocky Vista University, and co-author of “Worried: Science Investigates Some of Life’s Common Concerns”
Willie Turner – Vice President of Operations at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, CA
Charles Wheelan – Senior Lecturer and Policy Fellow, Dartmouth College, and author of “Naked Statistics”
David Robson – Commissioning Editor for the BBC and author of “The Intelligence Trap: Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes”
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New Water Worlds
20 mei 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) The seas are rising. It’s no longer a rarity to see kayakers paddling through downtown Miami. By century’s end, the oceans could be anywhere from 2 to 6 feet higher, threatening millions of people and property. But humans once knew how to adapt to rising waters. As high water threatens to drown our cities, can we learn do it again.
Hear stories of threatened land: submerged Florida suburbs, the original sunken city (Venice), and the U.S. East Coast, where anthropologists rush to catalogue thousands of low-lying historical and cultural sites in harm’s way, including Jamestown, Virginia and ancient Native American sites.
But also, stories of ancient adaptability: from the First American tribes of the Colusa in South Florida to the ice age inhabitants of Doggerland. And, modern approaches to staying dry: stilt houses, seawalls, and floating cities.
Guests: Lees meerJeff Goodell– Journalist and author of “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World”
Brian Fagan– Archaeologist and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara, and author of many books including “The Attacking Ocean: the Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels”
David Anderson– Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee. His team’s PLOS ONE paper is “Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction.” His DINAA site can be used to generate maps of where people were living in the past, up to ca. 15,000 years ago.
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Is Life Inevitable?
13 mei 2019 · 54 min
A new theory about life’s origins updates Darwin’s warm little pond. Scientists say they’ve created the building blocks of biology in steaming hot springs. Meanwhile, we visit a NASA lab where scientists simulate deep-sea vent chemistry to produce the type of environment that might spawn life. Which site is best suited for producing biology from chemistry?
Find out how the conditions of the early Earth were different from today, how meteors seeded Earth with organics, and a provocative idea that life arose as an inevitable consequence of matter shape-shifting to dissipate heat. Could physics be the driving force behind life’s emergence?
Guests: Lees meerCaleb Scharf – Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University, New York
Laurie Barge – Research scientist in astrobiology at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Bruce Damer – Research scientist in biomolecular engineering, University of California,
Jeremy England – Physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Rethinking Chernobyl
6 mei 2019 · 54 min
The catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986 triggered the full-scale destruction of the reactor. But now researchers with access to once-classified Soviet documents are challenging the official version of what happened both before and after the explosion. They say that the accident was worse than we thought and that a number of factors – from paranoia to poor engineering – made the mishap inevitable. Others claim a much larger death toll from extended exposure to low levels of radiation. But with nuclear energy being a possibly essential component of dealing with rising carbon dioxide emissions, how do we evaluate risk under the long shadow of Chernobyl?
Guests: Lees meerAdam Higginbotham – Author of “Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster”
Kate Brown – Historian of Environmental and Nuclear History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide for the Future”
James Smith – Professor in the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth, U.K. He was interviewed for and has written a review of "Manual for Survival"
Ted Nordhaus – Founder and Executive Director of The Breakthrough Institute, Berkeley, California
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Identity Crisis
29 april 2019 · 54 min
(repeat) DNA is the gold standard of identification. Except when it’s not. In rare cases when a person has two complete sets of DNA, that person’s identity may be up in the air. Meanwhile, DNA ancestry tests are proving frustratingly vague: dishing up generalities about where you came from rather than anything specific. And decoding a genome is still relatively expensive and time-consuming. So, while we refine our ability to work with DNA, the search is on for a quick and easy biomarker test to tell us who we are.
In this hour: the story of chimeras – people who have two sets of DNA; a reporter whose ancestry tests revealed she is related to Napoleon and Marie Antoinette; and the eyes have it in Somaliland, the first nation to use iris scans in an election. Find out why your irises may be what ultimately distinguishes you from the crowd.
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Gained in Translation
22 april 2019 · 54 min
Your virtual assistant is not without a sense of humor. Its repertoire includes the classic story involving a chicken and a road. But will Alexa laugh at your jokes? Will she groan at your puns?
Telling jokes is one thing. Teaching a computer to recognize humor is another, because a clear definition of humor is lacking. But doing so is a step toward making more natural interactions with A.I.
Find out what’s involved in tickling A.I.’s funny bone. Also, an interstellar communication challenge: Despite debate about the wisdom of transmitting messages to space, one group sends radio signals to E.T. anyway. Find out how they crafted a non-verbal message and what it contained.
Plus, why using nuanced language to connive and scheme ultimately turned us into a more peaceful species. And yes, it’s all gouda: why melted cheese may be the cosmic message of peace we need.
Guests: Lees meerJulia Rayz – Computer scientist and associate professor at Purdue University’s Department of Computer and Information Technology
Steve Adler – Mayor of Austin, Texas
Doug Vakoch – Psychologist and president of the non-profit organization METI International
Richard Wrangham – Biological anthropologist at Harvard University and author of “The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution”
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