Podcast
Big Picture Science
Hosted by Big Picture Science · EN
The surprising connections in science and technology that give you the Big Picture. Astronomer Seth Shostak and science journalist Molly Bentley are joined each week by leading researchers, techies, and journalists to provide a smart and humorous take on science. Our regular "Skeptic Check" episodes cast a critical eye on pseudoscience.
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2024: Our Space Odyssey
Dec 16, 2024Tap to summarizeThis year has been a spectacular one for celestial phenomena. The northern lights delighted in unexpected ways while a total solar eclipse cast a shadow across North America. Those events were enough to make it a memorable year, but 2024 also shook up our understanding of the universe. A new reading of Voyager 2 data may explain Uranus’s weird magnetic field. And the impressive James Webb Space Telescope has detected an early and incredibly distant galaxy. Join us in our look back at some of the top space news from 2024.Guests:Andrew Fraknoi – Professor of Astronomy at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco and SETI board member Jamie Jasinski - space plasma physicist for the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and author of a recent paper re-examining data from the Voyager 2 mission, published in Nature.Phil Plait - astronomer, author, science communicator and frequent contributor at Scientific American.Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Battling Bacteria
Oct 7, 2019Tap to summarizeWe 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: Fred 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” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Since Sliced Bread
Apr 7, 2014Tap to summarizeHappy Birthday, World Wide Web! The 25-year-old Web, along with the Internet and the personal computer, are among mankind’s greatest inventions. But back then, who knew?A techno-writer reminisces about the early days of the WWW and says he didn’t think it would ever catch on.Also, meet an inventor who claims his innovation will leave your laptop in the dust. Has quantum computing finally arrived?Plus, why these inventions are not as transformative as other creative biggies of history: The plow. The printing press. And… the knot?And, why scientific discoveries may beat out technology as the most revolutionary developments of all. A new result about the Big Bang may prove as important as germ theory and the double helix.Guests: Kevin Kelly – Senior maverick, Wired, author of What Technology Wants Eric Ladizinsky – Physicist, co-founder and the chief scientist of D-Wave Systems Palo Alto, California Aaron Gardner – Bakery manager, Hy-Vee Store, Chillicothe, Missouri George Dyson – Historian of technology, author of Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe and Darwin Among The Machines: The Evolution Of Global Intelligence Rob Shostak – Brother and founder of Vocera Communications, San Jose, California Jamie Bock – Physicist at the California Institute of Technology Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Physics Phrontiers
May 16, 2011Tap to summarizePhysics means getting physical if you’re tackling the biggest, most mysterious questions in the universe. Stoic scientists endure the driest, darkest, coldest spots on the planet to find out how it all began and why there’s something rather than nothing. From the bottom of an old iron mine to the top of the Andes, we’ll hear their stories.Plus, Steven Weinberg on this weird stuff called dark energy, and Leonard Susskind sees double, no, triple, no, …infinite universes.Guests: Anil Ananthaswamy - Corresponding editor for New Scientist magazine in London and author of The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe Steven Weinberg - Nobel Prize-winning physicist at University of Texas at Austin and author of Lake Views: This World and the Universe Leonard Susskind - Professor of theoretical physics, Stanford University André de Gouvêa - Associate professor of physics, Northwestern University Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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