Big Picture Science

The moon jellyfish has remarkable approach to self-repair. If it loses a limb, it rearranges its remaining body parts to once again become radially symmetric. Humans can’t do that, but a new approach that combines biology with nanotechnology could give our immune systems a boost. Would you drink a beaker of nanobots if they could help you fight cancer? Also, materials science gets into self-healing with a novel concrete that fixes its own cracks.  Plus, why even the most adaptive systems can be stretched to their limit. New research suggests that the oceans will take a millennium to recover from climate change.  Guests: •  Lea Goentoro – Professor of biology, California Institute of Technology •  Michael Abrams - Biologist, California Institute of Technology •  Sarah Moffitt – Paleo-oceanographer, Bodega Marine Laboratory, University of California, Davis •  Mark Miodownik – Materials scientist, director of the Institute of Making, University College, London. Author of “Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous

Shhh. Is someone coming? Okay, we’ll make this quick. There are a lot of scary things going on in the world. Naturally you’re fearful. But sometimes fear has a sister emotion: suspicion. A nagging worry about what’s really going on. You know, the stuff they aren’t telling you. Don’t share this, but we have evidence that both our fear response and our tendency to believe conspiracy theories are evolutionarily adaptive.  A sociologist who studies fear tells us why we’re addicted to its thrill when we control the situation, and how the media exploit our fear of losing control to keep us on edge. Plus, we examine some alien “cover-ups” and discover why it’s not just the tinfoil hat crowd that falls for outrageous plots. It’s Skeptic Check …. but you didn’t hear it from us! Guests: Margee Kerr – Sociologist who studies fear, author of Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear Rob Brotherton – Psychologist, adjunct assistant professor at Barnard College, and author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe

What you can’t see may astound you. The largest unexplored region of Earth is the ocean. Beneath its churning surface, oceanographers have recently discovered the largest volcano in the world – perhaps in the solar system. Find out what is known – and yet to be discovered – about the marine life of the abyss, and how a fish called the bristlemouth has grabbed the crown for “most numerous vertebrate on Earth” from the chicken. Plus, the menace of America’s Cascadia fault, which has the potential to unleash a devastating magnitude 9 earthquake.  Follow Dr. Sager’s voyage back to Tamu Massif in Fall 2015. Guests  • Bruce Robison – Deep sea biologist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute • William Sager – Marine geophysicist, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston • Chris Goldfinger  - Marine geologist, geophysicist, paleo-seismologist, Oregon State University  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earth may be the cradle of life, but our bodies are filled with materials cooked up billions of years ago in the scorching centers of stars. As Carl Sagan said, “We are all stardust.” We came from space, and some say it is to space we will return. Discover an astronomer’s quest to track down remains of these ancient chemical kitchens. Plus, a scientist who says that it’s in our DNA to explore – and not just the nearby worlds of the solar system, but perhaps far beyond. But would be still be human when we arrive? Hear what biological and cultural changes we might undergo in a multi-generational interstellar voyage. Guests:  •   Timothy Beers – Astronomer, University of Notre Dame •  Chris Impey – Astronomer, University of Arizona, author of Beyond: Our Future in Space •  Cameron Smith – Archaeologist, Portland State University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Archaeologists continue to hunt for the city of Atlantis, even though it may never have existed. But, what if it did? Its discovery would change ancient history. Sometimes when we dig around in the past, we can change our understanding of how we got to where we are. We thought we had wrapped up the death of the dinosaurs: blame it on an asteroid. But evidence unearthed in Antarctica and elsewhere suggests the rock from space wasn’t the sole culprit. Also, digging into our genetic past can turn up surprising – and sometimes uncomfortable truths – from ancestral origins to genes that code for disease. But do we always want to know? Guests: •  Mark Adams – author, Meet Me in Atlantis: My Obsessive Quest to Find the Sunken City •  David Morrison – Senior scientist, NASA Ames Research Center •  Peter Ward – Paleontologist, University of Washington, author of A New History of Life: The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth •  Christine Kenneally – Journalist and author

"If it bleeds, it leads” is the tried and true tenet of news. Indeed, headlines are often no more than a long list of moral atrocities. Yet one man argues that we’re living in the most civilized era in history. And he credits this to scientific thought and reason.  Hang on! Our executive function isn’t enough to promote ethical behavior, says a psychologist. The real fuel behind our drive to be good? Anger, compassion, pride: your emotions! But whether or not you’re a pillar of the community, good intentions might all be for naught when future ethical decisions are made by our silicon successors. Get ready for moral machines. Or not. Guests: •  Michael Shermer - Publisher of Skeptic Magazine, author of The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom •  David DeSteno – Psychologist, Northeastern University, author of The Truth About Trust •  Colin Allen – Historian, philosopher of science and cognitive science, Indiana University. Co-author of Moral Machines: Teaching

This year’s election is divisive, but one subject enjoys some consensus: science and technology policies are important. So why aren’t the candidates discussing these issues? The answers might surprise you. The organizer of Science Debate, who wants a live debate devoted to science and technology, describes one obstacle to meaningful discussion. He also shares how the candidates responded to probing questions about science.  Communication expert Kathleen Hall Jamieson looks back to the televised debate of Kennedy and Nixon to discern trends that have made productive discussion about science nearly impossible today (it didn’t start out that way!) And, the unique situation in which the man at the top of one political ticket is flat out wrong about science: a physicist describes how Donald Trump’s anti-science position affects the election.  Guests: Shawn Otto - co-founder of sciencedebate.org, and the author of “The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It"   Lawrence Kraus

Are you skeptical? Sure, you raise an eyebrow when some Nigerian prince asks for your bank numbers, or when a breakfast cereal claims that it will turn your kid into a professional athlete overnight. But what do you really know about the benefits of organic milk? Or the power of whitening ingredients in your toothpaste? How credible is what you read on Twitter? Today, information overwhelms us, and the need to keep our skeptical wits about us has never been greater. We follow Seth around as he faces the daily onslaught of hype and hokum. It’s Skeptic Check, our monthly look at critical thinking … but don’t take our word for it! Guests:  •  Steven Novella  – Assistant professor of neurology at Yale University School of Medicine and host of the “Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe” podcast •  Guy P. Harrison – journalist and author. His latest book, Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser, will be in bookstores in October 2015.  •  Andrew Maynard – Professor in the School

Darwinian evolution is adaptive and slow … millennia can go by before a species changes very much. But with the tools of genetic engineering we can now make radical changes in just one generation. By removing genes or inserting new ones, we can give an organism radically different traits and behaviors. We are taking evolution into our own hands. It all began with the domestication of plants and animals, which one science writer says created civilization. Today, as humans tinker with their own genome, is it possible we will produce Homo sapiens 2.0? Also, what happens to those species who can’t control their destiny? How climate change is forcing the biggest genetic reshuffling in recorded history. Guests: •  Richard Francis – Science writer, author of Domesticated: Evolution in a Man-Made World •  Juan Enriquez – Academic, businessman, author, founding director of the Life Sciences Project, Harvard Business School, managing director, Excel Venture Management, and author of Evolving Ourselves: How Unnatur

Everyone knows that a big rock did in the dinosaurs, but smaller asteroids are millions of times more common and can also make a violent impact.  Yet unlike the bigger asteroids, we’re not tracking them. Find out what we’d need to keep an eye on the size of space rocks such as that which exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia.  And how an asteroid whizzed by Earth in late August 2016, only hours after it had been spotted. Asteroids are the one natural disaster we can defend against, but an economist explains why humans are reluctant to invest in protection against “low probability, high impact” threats.  Also, how to authenticate that chunk of asteroid that you found in a field and NASA’s first ever return mission to an asteroid. It plans to bring some fresh samples back to Earth.  Guests: Peter Jenniskens – Senior Research Scientist, SETI Institute David Morrison – Senior Scientist of the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, NASA Ames Research Center Alex Tabarrok – Economist, George Mason U

You’re a private person. But as long as you’re on-line and have skin and hair, you’re shedding little bits of data and DNA everywhere you go. Find out how that personal information – whether or not it’s used against you – is no longer solely your own. Are your private thoughts next? A security expert shares stories of ingenious computer hacking … a forensic scientist develops tools to create a mug shot based on a snippet of DNA … and from the frontiers of neuroscience: mind reading may no longer be the stuff of sketchy psychics. Guests: •  Marc Goodman – Global security advisor, founder, Future Crimes Institute, author of Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It •  Susan Walsh – Forensic geneticist, Indiana University – Purdue University in Indianapolis •  Marvin Chun – Psychologist, Yale University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When astronaut Gene Cernan stepped off the moon in 1972, he didn’t think he’d be the last human ever to touch its surface. But no one’s been back. Hear astronaut Cernan’s reaction to being the last man on the moon, the reasons why President Kennedy launched the Apollo program, and why Americans haven’t returned. Now other countries – and companies – are vying for a bigger piece of the space pie. Find out who – or what – will be visiting and even profiting. Will the moon become an important place to make money?   Plus, the moon landing was a great step for “a man,” and “men not machines” make space history. But what about women? More than a dozen were qualified for space flight in the early 1960s. Hear from one of these original “Mercury 13,” and find out why NASA grounded them.  Guests: Gene Cernan – Retired American naval officer, former NASA Astronaut.  John Logsdon – Professor emeritus, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University Al Hallonquist – Aerospace historian Robert Richards – Foun

There are few enduring truths, but one is that no one gets out of life alive. What’s less certain is what comes next. Does everything stop with death, or are we transported to another plane of existence? First-hand accounts of people who claim to have visited heaven are offered as proof of an afterlife. Now the author of one bestseller admits that his story was fabricated. We’ll look at the genre of “heaven tourism” to see if it has anything to say about the possible existence of the hereafter, and why the idea of an afterlife seriously influences how we live our lives on Earth. Also, a neurologist describes what is going on in the brain during near-death and other out-of-body experiences. It’s Skeptic Check, our monthly look at critical thinking … but don’t take our word for it! Guests: •  Ben Radford – Paranormal investigator, research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and deputy editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, and author of the Discovery News article, “Why People Believed Boy’s ‘Visit to He

We all try to fight it: the inexorable march of time. The fountain of youth doesn’t exist, and all those wrinkle creams can’t help. But modern science is giving us new weapons in the fight against aging. So how far are we willing to go? Hear when aging begins, a summary of the latest biotech research, and how a lab full of youthful worms might help humans stay healthy. Also, a geneticist who takes a radical approach: collect the DNA that codes for longevity and restructure our genome. He finds inspiration – and perhaps genes as well – in the bi-centenarian bowhead whale. But what if age really is mind over matter? A psychologist’s extraordinary thought experiment with septuagenarian men turns back the clock 20 years. Will it work on diseases such as cancer as well?  Guests: Gordon Lithgow – Geneticist, Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, California Manish Chamoli – Post-doctoral researcher, Buck Institute for Research on Aging George Church – Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, aut

You are what you eat. Whether you dine on kimchi, carnitas, or corn dogs determines which microbes live in your stomach. And gut microbes make up only part of your total micro biome.  Find out how your microbes are the brains-without-brains that affect your health and even your mood. Also, why you and your cohorts are closer than you thought: new research suggests that you swap and adopt bugs from your social set. Plus, the philosophical questions that are arise when we realize that we have more microbial DNA than human DNA. And a woman who skipped soap and shampoo for a month to see what would grow on her. Guests: Bill Miller – Physician and author of The Microcosm Within: Evolution and Extinction in the Hologenome Beth Archie – Biologist at the University of Notre Dame Nada Gligorov – Assistant professor of medical education at Mount Sinai Hospital Julia Scott – Freelance reporter working in San Francisco. Her article, “A Wash on the Wild Side” appeared in the May 22, 2014 issue of the New York T

Don’t believe everything you see on TV or the movies. Science fiction is just a guide to how our future might unfold. It can be misleading, as anyone who yearns for a flying car can tell you. And yet, sometimes fantasy becomes fact. Think of the prototype cellphones in Star Trek. We take a look at science that seems inspired by filmic sci-fi, for example scientists manipulating memory as in Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And despite his famous film meltdown, Charleton Heston hasn’t stopped the Soylent company from producing what it calls the food of the future. Plus, why eco-disaster films have the science wrong, but not in the way you might think. And, what if our brains are simply wired to accept film as fact? Guests: Steve Ramirez -Neuroscientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Rob Rhinehart – CEO and founder of Soylent Jason Mark – Editor of Earth Island Journal Jeffrey Zacks – Cognitive Neuroscientist, Washington University, St. Louis, and author of Flicker: Your Brain on Movies Firs

Wondering whether to vaccinate your children? The decision can feel like a shot in the dark if you don’t know how to evaluate risk. Find out why all of us succumb to the reasoning pitfalls of cognitive and omission bias, whether we’re saying no to vaccines or getting a tan on the beach. Plus, an infectious disease expert on why it may take a dangerous resurgence of preventable diseases – measles, whooping cough, polio – to remind us that vaccines save lives. Also, a quaint but real vaccine fear: that the 18th century smallpox vaccine, made from cowpox, could turn you into a cow! It’s our monthly look at critical thinking … but don’t take our word for it! Guests: Paul Offit – Infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Neil deGrasse Tyson – Astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City Adam Korbitz – Lawyer specializing in space law Andrew Maynard – Professor of environmental health science, director, Risk Science Center, University of Michigan Lear

The world is hot, and getting hotter. But higher temperatures aren’t the only impact our species is having on mother Earth. Urbanization, deforestation, and dumping millions of tons of plastic into the oceans … these are all ways in which humans are leaving their mark. So are we still in the Holocene, the geological epoch that started a mere 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age? Some say we’ve moved on to the age of man – the Anthropocene. It’s the dawn of an era, but can we survive this new phase in the history of our planet? Guests: Pat Porter - Relative Jonathan Amos – Science writer for the BBC in London Gaia Vince – Writer, broadcaster, former editor for New Scientist, news editor of Nature, and author of Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made David Grinspoon – Astrobiologist, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona Francisco Valero – Emeritus physicist and research scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanogr

"Dear E.T. …” So far, so good. But now what? Writing is never easy, but what if your task was to craft a message to aliens living elsewhere in the universe, and your prose would represent all humankind? Got writer’s block yet? What to say to the aliens was the focus of a recent conference in which participants shifted their attentions away from listening for extraterrestrial signals to transmitting some. In this show, we report on the “Communicating Across the Cosmos” conference held at the SETI Institute in December 2014.  Find out what scientists think we should say. Also, how archeology could help us craft messages to an unfamiliar culture. Plus, why journalists might be well-suited to writing the message. And, a response to Stephen Hawking’s warning that attempting to contact aliens is too dangerous. Guests: Douglas Vakoch – Director of interstellar message composition, SETI Institute Paul Wason – Archaeologist, anthropologist and vice president for the life sciences and genetics program at the Templ

Electricity is so 19th century. Most of the uses for it were established by the 1920s. So there’s nothing innovative left to do, right? That’s not the opinion of the Nobel committee that awarded its 2014 physics prize to scientists who invented the blue LED. Find out why this LED hue of blue was worthy of our most prestigious science prize … how some bacteria actually breathe rust … and a plan to cure disease by zapping our nervous system with electric pulses. Guests: Siddha Pimputkar – Postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Department of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center under Shuji Nakamura, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara Jeff Gralnick – Associate professor of microbiology at the University of Minnesota Kevin Tracey – Neurosurgeon and president of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York First released December 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices