Big Picture Science

We all want to turn back time. But until we build a time machine, we’ll have to rely on a few creative approaches to capturing things as they were – and preserving them for posterity. One is upping memory storage capacity itself. Discover just how much of the past we can cram into our future archives, and whether going digital has made it all vulnerable to erasure.

Plus – scratch it and tear it – then watch this eerily-smart material revert to its undamaged self. And, what was life like pre-digital technology? We can’t remember, but one writer knows; he’s living life circa 1993 (hint: no cell phone).

Also, using stem cells to save the white rhino and other endangered species. And, the arrow of time itself – could it possibly run backwards in another universe?

Guests:

• Michael S. Malone – Professor of professional writing at Santa Clara University and the author of The Guardian of All Things: The Epic Story of Human Memory
• Oliver Ryder – Director of genetics, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research
• Michael E. Smith – Chemist, Arkema, Inc
• Sean Carroll – Theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, author of The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
• Pico Iyer – Writer, author of The Man Within My Head and the New York Times article, “The Joy of Quiet”

Descripción en español

First released October 29, 2012.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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:

Eric Chudler – Research associate 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”

*Originally aired May 27, 2019

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] 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

Back off, you Neanderthal! It sounds as if you’ve just been dissed, but maybe you should take it as a compliment. Contrary to common cliches, our Pleistocene relatives were clever, curious, and technologically inventive. Find out how our assessment of Neanderthals has undergone a radical rethinking, and hear about the influence they have as they live on in our DNA. For example, some of their genes have a strong association with severe Covid 19 infection. Plus, how Neanderthal mini-brains grown in a lab will teach us about the evolution of Homo sapiens.

Guests:

• Svante Pääbo – Evolutionary geneticist and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
• Doyle Stevick – Associate professor of educational leadership and policies at the University of South Carolina.
• Beverly Brown – Professor emerita of anthropology, Rockland Community College, New York.
• Rebecca Wragg Sykes – Paleolithic anthropologist, author of “Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.”
• Alysson Muotri – Neuroscientist and professor of pediatrics, cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine

Originally aired March 22, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] 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

Maybe you don’t remember the days of the earliest coal-fired stoves. They changed domestic life, and that changed society. We take you back to that era, and to millennia prior when iron was first smelt, and even earlier, when axe-handles were first fashioned from wood, as we explore how three essential materials profoundly transformed society.

We were once excited about coal’s promise to provide cheap energy, and how iron would lead to indestructible bridges, ships, and buildings. But they also caused some unintended problems: destruction of forests, greenhouse gases and corrosion. Did we foresee where the use of wood, coal, and iron would lead? What lessons do they offer for our future?

Guests:

Jonathan Waldman – Author of Rust: The Longest War.

Ruth Goodman – Historian of British social customs, presenter of a number of BBC television series, including Tudor Monastery Farm, and the author of The Domestic Revolution: How the Introduction of Coal into Victorian Homes Changed Everything.

Roland Ennos – Professor of biological sciences at the University of Hull and author of The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization.

**Originally aired February 1, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] 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

Ready to become a space emigre? For half a century, visionaries have been talking about our future off-Earth – a speculative scenario in which many of us live in space colonies. So why haven’t we built them? Will the plans of billionaire space entrepreneurs to build settlements on Mars, or orbiting habitats that would be only minutes away from Earth, revive our long-held spacefaring dreams? And is having millions of people living off-Earth a solution to our problems... or an escape from them?

Guests:

Marianne Dyson – Author and former NASA flight controller

Emily St. John Mandel – Author, most recently of “Sea of Tranquility”

John Adams – Deputy Director, Biosphere 2, University of Arizona

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

*Originally aired July 25, 2022

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] 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