STEM-Talk

Today’s episode features the second of Dawn Kernagis’ two-part interview with her STEM-Talk co-host and IHMC Director Ken Ford. This episode marks a milestone for STEM-Talk. It’s our 50th episode and follows Ken’s formal induction into the Florida Inventor’s Hall of Fame. In part one of Dawn’s interview, listeners learned about Ken’s childhood and his years as a rock and roll promoter back in the ‘70s. Ken even shared an interesting story about how he went from being a philosophy major to a computer scientist. He also talked about his work in AI and the creation of IHMC and the pioneering work underway at the institute. If you missed episode 49, be sure to check it out. Part two of Ken’s interview focuses more on his research and personal experience with the ketogenic diet, ketone esters, exercise and ways to extend health span and perhaps longevity. Dawn and Ken also discuss the nature of technical progress As listeners learned in part one, Ken has a varied background. He is a co-founder of IHMC, which has grown into one of the nation’s premier research organizations with world-class scientists and engineers investigating a broad range of topics. He also is the author of hundreds of scientific papers and six books. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tulane University. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, and the National Association of Scholars. In 2012, Tulane University named Ford its Outstanding Alumnus in the School of Science and Engineering. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence named Dr. Ford the recipient of the 2015 Distinguished Service Award. Also in 2015, Dr. Ford was elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In January 1997, Dr. Ford was asked by NASA to develop and direct its new Center of Excellence in Information Technology at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he also served as Associate Center Director. In July 1999, Dr. Ford was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. That same year, Ford returned to private life in Florida and to IHMC. In October 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Ford to serve on the National Science Board (NSB). In 2005, Dr. Ford was appointed and sworn in as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In 2007, he became a member of the NASA Advisory Council and on October 16, 2008, Dr. Ford was named as chairman – a capacity in which he served until October 201l. In August 2010, Dr. Ford was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal – the highest honor the agency confers. In February 2012, Dr. Ford was named to a two-year term on the Defense Science Board and in 2013, he became a member of the Advanced Technology Board which supports the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Links: IHMC website: http://www.ihmc.us Ken Ford web page: http://www.ihmc.us/groups/kford/ Florida Inventors Hall of Fame website: http://www.floridainvents.org Outside magazine story on Ken Ford and ketogenic diet: https://www.outsideonline.com/2113406/high-carb-low-fat-ketone-diet Blood Flow Restriction Device. 15% discount code: IHMC https://www.gobstrong.com/what-is-b-strong/ BhB Ketone Ester https://hvmn.com Powerdot Muscle Stimulator https://www.powerdot.com/products/powerdot-muscle-stimulator Papers: Suppression of Oxidative Stress by b-Hydroxybutyrate, an Endogenous Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Verdin_2013.pdf Ketone Bodies as Signaling Metabolites http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/TEM-Ketone-bodies-as-signaling-metabolites-2014.pdf Ketogenic Diet Reduces Midlife Mortality and Improves Memory in Aging Mice http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Verdin-Ketogenic-Mouse-Longevity-Cell-Metab-9-17-1.pdf A Ketogenic Diet Extends Longevity and Healthspan in Adult Mice http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Ramsey-Mouse-Longevity-Cell-Metab-9-17.pdf Ketone Bodies Mimic the Life Span Extending Properties of Caloric Restriction http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Ketone-bodies-mimic-lifespan-extending-properties-of-CR_Veech_Review_2017.pdf Show notes: 7:06: Dawn begins part two of her interview with Ken by pointing out that some of the work IHMC is doing in terms of human performance is focused on nutritional approaches, including ketogenic diets and ketone esters. Dawn mentions that Ken was an early adopter of the ketogenic diet and that some people even refer to him as “the keto guy.” She then asks him when he first embraced a ketogenic diet and what attracted him to it. 8:06:  Ken Talks about his long experience with the ketogenic diet and its effect on body composition. 10:30: Ken discusses how he became interested in ketone esters. 12:34: Dawn asks about research that seems to show that elevated levels of circulating ketone bodies have the potential to protect people from some of the diseases of aging. 12:47:  Ken discusses healthspan, lifespan, and bending the aging curve. 14:04:  Ken notes that, in his view, it should not be surprising that shifting something as fundamental as the fuel substrate for our metabolism would have widespread effects. 14:19:  Ken talks about the epidemic of insulin resistance, diabetes, and obesity. 15:20:  Dawn asks Ken to discuss the relatively newly discovered effects of ketone bodies which go well beyond their well-appreciated metabolic roles … and that might have various anti-aging effects. 16:59:  Ken asserts that many of the most exciting effects of ketones are not only those arising from their role as an energy source but also that they play critically important signaling functions.  Ken talks about the research showing that the ketone bodies are HDAC inhibitors and seem to link environmental cues, such as diet, to the regulation of aging. 17:23:  Ken explains how HDACs inhibit BDNF and as mentioned above, ketones inhibit HDACs … thereby increasing BDNF. 18:20: Ken discusses two new papers showing a substantial extension of healthspan and lifespan in adult mice. 20:57: Dawn asks about the effect of the ketogenic diet on the maintenance of muscle and strength as people age. 24:48:  Dawn asks Ken about the ketogenic diet and IGF-1. 26:45:  Dawn notes that stem cells become less effective with age and asks about the implications of this phenomenon for maintenance of muscle. 27:37: Ken explains what the ketogenic diet is. 29:48: Dawn points out the Google search term “ketogenic diet” now outnumbers searches for Paleo diets. She asks Ken if he thought this would be the case back in 2006 when he first returned to a ketogenic diet. 31:18: Dawn asks Ken about what he sees as the primary benefit of blood-flow restriction training and how he uses it in his training. 34:25: Dawn asks Ken about what other exercise methods he employs in his training to optimize muscle mass and minimize potential injury. 34:38:  Ken mentions electrical muscle stimulation (PowerDot), kettlebells, resistance training, Tabata sessions, and hiking in Wyoming and Maine. 35:37:  Ken discusses hierarchical sets as employed in resistance training. 36:27:  Dawn ask Ken if he “goes to failure” when engaged in resistance training. 37:13:  Dawn asks Ken if has any thoughts on eccentric movements when engaged in resistance training. 38:50:  Dawn asks Ken about NASA funded research at IHMC, led by Peter Neuhaus, aimed at developing technology to enable exercise devices for use on long-duration deep space missions. 39:41: Dawn mentions that when she first met Ken that she was doing research on apolipoprotein E in a neurocritical care laboratory. She asks Ken for his take on APOE in athletics and other approaches when it comes to harnessing people’s genetic information for optimized health. 42:03: Dawn asks Ken to describe a typical day and a typical week in the life of Ken Ford, including what his diet looks like and what he typically eats for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 44:03: Dawn wonders how many expressos, which Ken refers to as the elixir of the mind, he drinks in a day. 45:06: Dawn asks Ken about his time at NASA’s Ames Research Center. 46:06:  She asks Ken to talk about his experience on the National Science Board and whether there were any stories he could share. 48:48:  Dawn asks Ken to discuss his service on the NASA Advisory Council. 50:04: Dawn mentions that Ken has been a member of the National Science Board, NASA Advisory Council, Air Force Science Advisory Board, the Advanced Technology Board for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Defense Science Board. She asks Ken for his takeaways from serving on those boards and councils. 52:10:  Dawn notes that during Apollo, NASA annually accounted for roughly 4% of Federal spending and asks Ken if he knows the percentage currently? 52:55:  Ken laments that public service is becoming increasingly unpleasant … and that the best people invariably leave as a result. 54:05: Dawn asks Ken to talk about the accelerating rate of technological progress and its effects on society and the individual. 54:25:  Ken distinguishes between “technological change” and “progress.” 57:11:  Dawn asks, if taken from a purely technological perspective, are we not advancing faster than ever before? 1:00:54: Dawn plays an audio clip of Ken talking about the zombie apocalypse, which she describes as one of her favorite stories, and asks him to expand upon on it. 1:04:20: Dawn thanks Ken for sitting down for an interview.  

On the eve of Ken Ford’s induction into the Florida Inventor’s Hall of Fame, co-host Dawn Kernagis convinced IHMC’s director and CEO that it was the perfect time to have the chairman of STEM-Talk’s double secret selection committee take a turn as a guest on the podcast. Today’s show features part one of Dawn’s two-part interview with her STEM-Talk co-host Ken Ford. Listeners will learn about Ken’s childhood and background; his early work in computer science and research into AI; as well as the creation of IHMC, which, as our regular listeners know, is a “not-for-profit research lab pioneering groundbreaking technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience.” In this episode, Ken will share some of the pioneering work underway at IHMC. Dawn also asks Ken about highly vocal critics of AI such as Elon Musk. Episode 50, the second part of Dawn’s interview with Ken, will transition to a conversation about Ken and IHMC’s research into human performance. Their conversation will cover exercise, the ketogenic diet and ketone esters with the goal of extending health span and perhaps longevity. In terms of background, Dr. Ken Ford is a co-founder of IHMC, which has grown into one of the nation’s premier research organizations with world-class scientists and engineers investigating a broad range of topics. Ken is the author of hundreds of scientific papers and six books. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tulane University. He is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the IEEE Computer Society, and the National Association of Scholars. In 2012, Tulane University named Ford its Outstanding Alumnus in the School of Science and Engineering. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence named Dr. Ford the recipient of the 2015 Distinguished Service Award. Also in 2015, Dr. Ford was elected as  a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In January 1997, Dr. Ford was asked by NASA to develop and direct its new Center of Excellence in Information Technology at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, where he also served as Associate Center Director. In July 1999, Dr. Ford was awarded the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. That same year, Ford returned to private life in Florida and to IHMC. In October 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Dr. Ford to serve on the National Science Board (NSB). In 2005, Dr. Ford was appointed and sworn in as a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. In 2007, he became a member of the NASA Advisory Council and on October 16, 2008, Dr. Ford was named as chairman – a capacity in which he served until October 201l. In August 2010, Dr. Ford was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal – the highest honor the agency confers. In February 2012, Dr. Ford was named to a two-year term on the Defense Science Board and in 2013, he became a member of the Advanced Technology Board which supports the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Links: IHMC website: http://www.ihmc.us Ken Ford web page: http://www.ihmc.us/groups/kford/ Florida Inventors Hall of Fame website: http://www.floridainvents.org Outside magazine story on Ken Ford and ketogenic diet: https://www.outsideonline.com/2113406/high-carb-low-fat-ketone-diet Cognitive Orthoses PDF Bulletin Atomic Scientists 2014 Show notes: 6:41: Dawn welcomes Ken to the show. 7:04: Dawn asks Ken to talk about his childhood 8:12: Dawn points out that Ken moved around a lot because his father was in the Navy and asks him what that was like. 8:20: Dawn mentions that Ken lived in Guantanamo, also known as GITMO. She asks him what it was like to live there as a young child. 8:56: Dawn talks about how when Ken started high school, he became passionate about wrestling and began shaving off weight by cutting back on carbs. She asks Ken what drew him to wrestling in the first place. 9:48: Dawn asks Ken to discuss the mental aspect of wrestling. 10:33: Dawn asks Ken if he was always interested in science. 11:15: Dawn asks Ken if he had any influential teachers in high school. 13:56: Dawn discusses how before Ken became a scientist, he was a rock and roll promoter. She then asks Ken how this happened. 16:06: Dawn asks Ken if it was during this time that he met Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, previously interviewed on STEM-Talk. 16:37: Dawn shares a funny story about how her sister used to work with Richard “Paco” Zimmer, one of the best in the business. 17:25: Dawn discusses how Ken enlisted in the Navy after promoting rock and roll. She goes on to say how this is what led to Ken becoming interested in computer science, even though he thought computers were about the most “unfun thing that the Navy could assign him to do.” She then asks Ken to talk about how the Navy pushed him into computer science. 21:38: Dawn discusses how Ken did his Masters in System Science, while in the Navy, at the University of West Florida. He then went to Tulane for his doctorate. Dawn asks Ken how an ex-athlete and philosophy major decides to get a doctorate in computer science, and whether or not people thought he was crazy. 22:46: Dawn says that after Tulane, Ken returned to the University of West Florida in 1988 and became the assistant professor in computer science, and then rather quickly became a full professor. She then asks Ken what research in AI looked like at the time. 23:57: Dawn asks Ken what the focus of his AI research was back then. 28:55: STEM-Talk Blurb 29:21: Dawn discusses how Ken is not a fan of the term artificial intelligence, and that he says that amplified intelligence is a better way to refer to AI. She then asks Ken to talk about this. 30:54: Dawn says that Ken and his colleague, Pat Hayes, have said that the Turing test has misdirected the ambitions of people working in AI and has confused the public, particularly the media. She then asks Ken to describe the Turing test and talk about why it has become problematic. 33:38: Dawn discusses how AI techniques like machine learning are now used for many other applications. She then asks Ken if he could have ever imagined this kind of future when he began working with AI in the 1980s. 35:54: Dawn references a story from the New York Times that discusses a meeting Elon Musk had with governors, where he said that they should adopt AI legislation before “robots start going down the street and killing people.” He also tweeted that AI going rogue was more of a risk than North Korea. Dawn asks Ken his opinion on this. 39:21: Dawn reads Ken a quote from the co-founder of the Center for Complex Systems Research at the University of Illinois. She then asks Ken what he thinks about the comment. 41:50: Dawn then discusses a story from David Fries about the brilliancy of the name Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. Dawn asks Ken if he intentionally placed the word human before machine in the institute’s name. 42:42: Dawn comments on how impressed she is by the range of research done at IHMC. She asks Ken to give listeners an overview of the work. 43:44: Dawn shares an audio clip about self-reinvention from a video produced for Ken’s induction into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame. 44:22: Dawn asks Ken to talk about how he has constantly reinvented himself. 45:13: Dawn discusses how Ken has created a supportive framework at IHMC that is flexible enough so that the researchers and scientists there can also reinvent themselves. She then asks Ken how he came up with this concept. 48:04: Dawn comments how one of the things that makes it possible is the flat structure of IHMC and asks Ken to elaborate on this. 49:18: Dawn discusses how IHMC has begun doing research on human performance in extreme environments. She then asks Ken what brought about the interest in human performance in extreme environments, and that evolved into an arm of IHMC.

Today’s episode features the second of our two-part interview with Dr. Tommy Wood, a U.K. trained MD/PhD who now lives in the U.S. Part one covered Tommy’ background and education and what led him spend most of his academic career studying multiple sclerosis and ways to treat babies with brain injuries. Part two of our interview focuses on Tommy’s other passions: nutritional approaches to sports performance and metabolic disease. But before we get into Tommy’s background, we want to take a moment to thank our listeners for helping STEM-Talk win first place in the science category of the 12th Annual People’s Choice Podcast Awards. The international competition featured more than 2,000 nominees in 20 categories. STEM-Talk also was a runner-up in the People’s Choice Award, the grand prize of the competition. As we mentioned earlier, Tommy is U.K. trained MD/PhD who received an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge before attending medical school at the University of Oxford. He recently completed a PhD in physiology and neonatal brain metabolism at the University of Washington. He is now a senior fellow at the university researching neonatal brain injury. In part one of his STEM-Talk interview, Tommy also talked about how he is the incoming president of the Physicians for Ancestral Health, an international organization of physicians, healthcare professionals and medical students that specializes in ancestral health principles for the prevention and treatment of illness. Tommy’s interest sports performance stems from his background as an experienced rowing, endurance, and strength coach who combines evolutionary principles with modern biochemical techniques to optimize performance. He primarily performs this work with Nourish Balance Thrive, a functional medicine clinic based in California that works largely with athletes, where he is the chief medical officer. Links: Physicians for Ancestral Health – http://ancestraldoctors.org Physicians for Ancestral Health – http://ancestraldoctors.org Nourish Balance Thrive – http://www.nourishbalancethrive.com NBT automated performance analysis: http://nbt.ai Primal Endurance podcast (ketogenic diets, athletic longevity, etc.): http://primalendurance.libsyn.com/101-dr-tommy-wood 2) High Intensity Health podcast (ketogenic diets and gut health): http://highintensityhealth.com/tommy-wood-keto-diet-endotoxin-gut-health-bacterial-diversity/ Show notes: 3:37: The interview resumes. 3:43: Ken discusses how many, perhaps even most, adults are now insulin resistant to some degree, which negatively impacts many aspects of both health and performance, and is associated with most modern chronic diseases. Ken then asks Tommy if there are any underlying processes that he can see that tie these diseases together. 7:27: Ken comments on how in 1927 they had the sensible practice of starting a diabetic patient on a low-carb diet, which is still not current practice now in many places. 8:04: Tommy discusses how it is good to have symptom control with diabetes. Ken and Tommy discuss the many advantages of donating blood. 10:16: Ken asks Tommy if he has any issues giving blood in the United States given that he is from the UK which experienced mad-cow disease. 11:40: Ken asks Tommy if he checks his athletes’ ferritin levels and tries and keep them in a certain range, and if so, if he has a preferred range. 12:17: Dawn discusses how in addition to Tommy’s academic work at the University of Washington, he is also very active as the Chief Scientific Officer of Nourish Balance Thrive (NBT), an online company using advanced biochemical testing to optimize performance in athletes. Dawn asks Tommy to discuss Nourish Balance Thrive, and how the company works to optimize the health and performance of athletes. 14:41: Ken comments on how Tommy has a relatively homogeneous population if he is focused on endurance athletes, making it particularly interesting because people often confuse athletic performance with health. 15:37: Dawn mentions how Chris at NBT has been training machine-learning algorithms to predict biochemical patterns in athletes. She then asks Tommy to talk about how this fits in with his current work and why he thinks it is an important approach for the future of medicine in general. 17:52: Ken comments on how Chris is using XG Boost, a well-regarded open-source software library, as the machine learning tool. Ken mentions that XG Boost is an implementation of gradient boosting which is a form of supervised learning which has enjoyed broad success.  Another nice feature of XG Boost is that its open source, allowing one to integrate it with a variety of other software packages. 19:25: Ken says how a sensible next step may be to identify another relatively homogeneous population and do it again. 20:48: Dawn comments on how over-training, under-recovery, nutrient deficiencies, or hormonal imbalances seem to be much more prevalent today. She then asks Tommy if this is because we can spot or diagnose these more regularly, because athletes are training at a higher intensity and volume, or because of changes in the environment. 22:39: Dawn asks Tommy how NBT’s biomarker panel was developed in the first place, and how he chose the specific markers and data that he is collecting for the panel. 25:16: Dawn discusses how she has done a fair amount of work looking at biomarkers of different disease processes and injury, and how one topic that arose several times was variability. She then asks Tommy how he can address this potential for variability, and if he is collecting data for long-term analysis. 27:14: Ken and Tommy briefly discuss the ŌURA Ring. 28:32: Dawn asks Tommy if he sees genetic testing playing a larger future role in his work with athletes. 29:47: Ken comments on how this is going to be a growing area. It was initially over-hyped, such as people looking at a particular gene that would determine effectiveness in a sport. However, more variants of specific genes are being validated with respect to human performance and resilience. 31:33: Dawn notes that it is sometimes difficult to get actionable results from genetic testing. 32:03: Dawn asks Tommy how he might use carbohydrate restriction in his work with athletes, and if there are any contexts where the low carbohydrate diet could be detrimental. 34:33: Ken comments on how the discussion reminds him of Jeff Volek’s phrase, “well-formulated ketogenic diet.”  Ken also stressed the importance of blood testing for ketone levels. 35:58: STEMTALK BLURB 36:29: Dawn comments on how Tommy and Chris have developed a product called Phat Fibre. She then asks Tommy to discuss why he prefers it to other MCT oils and powders found in the market. 38:34: Ken comments how he is a huge fan of Phat Fibre, and how he shared the product with his friend who is a cyclist. 38:57: Dawn asks Tommy to discuss another product he and Chris created, Hormetea. 42:10: Dawn asks Tommy to talk about Nourish Balance Thrive’s podcast. 43:05: Ken discusses how ketogenic diets naturally bring insulin down in many athletes, and as a result, they experience a decrease in electrolyte retention. Ken then asks Tommy if he has also seen this decrease in electrolyte retention and the need for many athletes to supplement electrolytes. 44:23: Ken asks Tommy about carnitine supplementation for those on a ketogenic diet. 45:21: Ken asks Tommy if he usually recommends both common forms of carnitine supplementation for his athletes. 45:40: Dawn asks Tommy if he has any thoughts on the supposedly ‘lifespan” or “healthspan” enhancing supplements, such as NAD or nicotinamide riboside to increase NAD+ levels? 48:11: Dawn comments on how there are now ketone salts on the market and there will soon be ketone esters also. She then asks Tommy what his thoughts are on exogenous ketones in the context of human performance, health span, and disease. 51:47: Ken comments on how it would be surprising if the effects of ketogenic diets and exogenous ketones are identical. He goes on to assert that this is an area where the research needs to happen soon and asks Tommy about his thoughts on this. 54:02: Dawn discusses how Tommy has mentioned that exercise is a key trigger for longevity and yet there are people who assert that exercise is detrimental to lifespan. She then asks Tommy what he would say to those people and if there are any types of exercise that have the upside without the negatives associated with some forms of exercise. 56:40: Dawn asks Tommy what he would propose as an approach for investigating whether an intervention has an impact on human longevity. 1:00:56: Ken says there may be a placebo effect for someone who is convinced that they exercise more than their peers. 1:01:13: Ken asks Tommy about ruinous empathy. 1:03:06: Ken says that he would note that context is important when engaging in radical candor. 1:03:42: Ken asks Tommy if he thinks there is a dogma displacement inertia problem in science and medicine, and if so, whether there anything to do about it other than be patient. 1:06:19: Ken and Dawn thank Tommy for joining them.  

Dr. Tommy Wood is a U.K. trained MD/PhD who now lives in the U.S. He has spent most of his academic career studying ways to treat babies with brain injuries, but has also published papers on multiple sclerosis, as well as nutritional approaches to sports performance and metabolic disease. Today’s conversation is the first of a two-part interview we did with Tommy. Part two will upload to iTunes on Oct. 10. Tommy received an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge before attending medical school at the University of Oxford. He recently completed a PhD in physiology and neonatal brain metabolism at the University of Washington. He is now a Senior Fellow at the university researching neonatal brain injury. He also is the incoming president of the Physicians for Ancestral Health, an international organization of physicians, healthcare professionals and medical students that specializes in ancestral health principles for the prevention and treatment of illness. Tommy is also an experienced rowing, endurance, and strength coach who combines evolutionary principles with modern biochemical techniques to optimize performance. He primarily performs this work with Nourish Balance Thrive, a functional medicine clinic based in California that works largely with athletes, where he is the Chief Medical Officer. Links: Physicians for Ancestral Health – http://ancestraldoctors.org Nourish Balance Thrive – http://www.nourishbalancethrive.com NBT automated performance analysis: http://nbt.ai Primal Endurance podcast (ketogenic diets, athletic longevity etc): http://primalendurance.libsyn.com/101-dr-tommy-wood 2) High Intensity Health podcast (ketogenic diets and  gut health): http://highintensityhealth.com/tommy-wood-keto-diet-endotoxin-gut-health-bacterial-diversity/ Show notes:  03:30: Ken and Dawn welcome Tommy to the show. 03:48: Tommy talks about growing up in the U.K. and also spending time in Iceland, Germany and France. 04:43: Ken asks Tommy if he was more interested in science or sports as a youth. 05:48: Tommy talks about his time the captain of a rowing club and how he became interested in ultra-endurance sports and Crossfit training. 07:33: Dawn points out that Tommy follows a Paleo style diet, but understands that wasn’t the case when he was on a rowing team at Cambridge. She asks Tommy what caused him to change his diet. 09:51: Tommy worked as junior doctor in central London for two years after medical school before moving to Norway to get a PhD in physiology and neuroscience at the University of Oslo.  Dawn asks Tommy what motivated him to change his field of work? 11:39: Dawn asks Tommy why he has devoted so much of his research looking into multiple sclerosis. 13:23: Dawn mentions that Tommy is the incoming president of Physicians for Ancestral Health and asks him how he came involved with the organization. 15:40: Physicians for Ancestral Health work to identify natural dietary, nutritional and environmental interventions that complement standard medical therapies. Dawn asks Tommy to describe examples of natural interventions. 17:11: Tommy’s PhD focused on the physiology of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in newborn babies using a rat model. Kens asks Tommy to talk about the disease and how it is studied in the lab. 19:25: Dawn points out that the current treatment for infants with brain injuries is therapeutic hypothermia. Dawns asks Tommy to talk about the treatment and how it works. 23:00: STEM-Talk blurb. 23:24: Considering that hypothermia was already standard of care by the time Tommy started his PhD, Ken asks what made Tommy want to focus on studying hypothermia further during his PhD. 24:45: Dawns asks Tommy how he would research the optimization of hypothermia treatment in humans? 28:29: Ken asks Tommy how he became a senior fellow in the Pediatrics Department at the University of Washington. 29:53: Tommy’s postdoc work at the University of Washington involves developing a ferret model of brain injury in premature babies. Ken asks Tommy why he chose ferrets. 32:52: Ken talks about Xenon, a noble gas that has many applications from headlights to spacecraft propulsion to biological aspects. Dawn points out that while Ken was at NASA, that Xenon was used as a fuel for a spacecraft called Deep Space 1. Ken then asks Tommy to talk about the use of Xenon in helping people suffering hypoxic-ischemic brain injuries. 36:12: Ken points out that Xenon’s activation of HIF-1alpha makes Xenon potentially ergogenic and, in some circles, regarded as a performance-enhancing substance.  The Russians admitted to using Xenon in their athletes up until WADA banned it and Argon. Ken asks Tommy for his thoughts on Xenon’s effectiveness in enhancing performance. 40:06: Dawn mentions that Xenon has been shown to increase heart and lung capacity, reduce muscle fatigue, boost testosterone and cause an improvement in mood. 40:32: Dawn talks about how Tommy has been involved in collaborative work with people in a number of fields using what Tommy has referred to as a “systems analysis approach” to look at the etiology of disease processes in multiple sclerosis and insulin resistance, as well as the application of nanotechnology to drug delivery in neurological diseases. Dawn asks Tommy to expand upon that. 42:29: In reviewing some of Tommy’s work, Ken says it seemed as if Tommy was employing a “systems approach” to avoid the dangers of reductionist thinking in medicine. Tommy agrees, and then shares a story about aliens coming to Earth and discovering the game Angry Birds to illustrate his point. 45:37: Part one of Tommy’s two-part interview ends. Part two will upload to iTunes on Tuesday, Oct. 10.

Today’s guest on STEM-Talk is Dr. Chris McKay, a leading astrobiologist and planetary scientist with the Space Science Division of the NASA Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Chris’s interview covers a diverse range of topics ranging from the origins of life to the possibility of manned missions to Mars. For the past 30 years, Chris has been advancing our understanding of planetary science. He graduated from Florida Atlantic University in 1975 with a degree in physics and earned a doctorate in astrogeophysics at the University of Colorado in 1982. He was a co-investigator on the Huygens probe to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005, the Mars Phoenix lander mission in 2008, and the current Mars Science Laboratory mission. His research at NASA has focused on the evolution of the solar system and the origin of life. He also has been heavily involved in NASA’s Mars missions including the current Mars rover — Curiosity.  In addition, Chris has thought deeply about the human exploration of Mars. He has spent considerable time studying polar and desert environments to better understand how humans might survive in Mars-like environments. His research has taken him to the Antarctic Dry Valleys, the Atacama Desert, the Arctic, and the Namib Desert. In 2015, the Desert Research Institute named Chris the Nevada Medalist, which is the highest scientific honor in the state. Links: STEM-Talk Episode 33, interview with NASA’s Natalie Batalha – http://www.ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-33/ Chris McKay’s NASA profile page – https://spacescience.arc.nasa.gov/staff/chris-mckay/ Show Notes 3:53: Ken and Dawn welcome Chris to the show. 4:05: Dawn asks Chris if it is true that the television series Star Trek inspired him to take up science and start studying planets as a kid. 4:34: Dawn comments on how Apollo happened almost 50 years ago when Chris was a teenager and asks him where he was for Apollo 11 and what it meant to him. 5:24: Ken asks Chris how he learned about Florida Atlantic University, as it was a relatively new university at the time, and asks Chris why he chose it. 6:54: Dawn asks Chris if he was thinking about becoming an astronaut when he decided to major in physics. 7:27: Ken asks Chris what it was like to be a summer intern in the Planetary Biology program at the NASA Ames Research Center around 1980. 8:52: Dawn asks Chris how he chose the University of Colorado, where he earned a PhD in astrogeophysics. 10:42: Dawn asks Chris to discuss his transition from mechanical engineering to astrogeophysics. 12:11: Ken discusses how Chris ended up back at NASA Ames as an astrobiologist and planetary scientist after graduate school. 13:53: Dawn comments how Chris’s research is taking him to extreme places, and asks him to explain what extremophiles are and what their relevance is in the search for life beyond Earth. 17:26: Dawn comments on her experiences searching for extremophiles while working on cave diving projects. 18:12: Dawn asks Chris what his most recent search experience for extremophiles on our planet was. 19:49: Dawn asks Chris what he takes to be the most exciting extremophile discovery out of all of the work he has done. 22:40: Dawn asks Chris to talk about his favorite and least favorite aspects of field research. 24:06: Ken asks Chris to define some terms related to the search for life beyond Earth. Specifically,  whether we have a definition for life itself and if not, what exactly we are searching for when we say we are searching for life. He also asks Chris to talk about alien life and how it differs from life on Earth. 26:21: Ken asks Chris how tough it would be to recognize alien life if it is based on fundamentally different chemistry than life on Earth. 29:16: Ken asks Chris where NASA’s secret alien life storage room is. 31:03: Ken asks Chris what the scientific importance of discovering life in another world is. 32:49: Dawn asks Chris where the most likely environment to hold life beyond Earth in our solar system is. 33:47: Dawn asks Chris what makes Mars an ideal candidate for life beyond Earth. 36:47: Ken discusses how we have been searching for life on Mars for decades, but how Chris questions the way we have been going about this. Chris was quoted to say, “If we are going to search for life, let’s search for life.” Ken asks Chris to explain what he means by this. 39:07: Dawn asks Chris what he thinks would happen if we did discovered life on Mars, and whether he thinks there would be a profound societal reaction. 40:57: Ken asks Chris if it is likely that life on Earth may have seeded life on Mars, or perhaps vice versa. 42:57: Dawn asks Chris what motivated his interest in the atmospheres of Titan. 45:14: STEMTALK BLURB 45:39: Ken asks Chris to talk about the search for life on Europa. 47:06: Ken comments that Chris has noted that life chooses, chemistry does not. He then asks Chris when we will be able to send capable robots to examine the chemistry of Titan or the other frigid satellites mentioned. 50:23: Ken asks Chris if the evidence for life on Titan is compelling enough to devote the resources to actually send a mission to look for it. 53:04: Dawn discusses how Chris has spent a lot of time over the past 30 years looking into the origin and evolution of life. She then asks Chris how his understanding of the origin of life has changed over these three decades. 54:46: Dawn asks Chris which place he thinks has the highest probability of having life beyond Earth. 56:19: Dawn asks Chris how returning samples from Mars would fit into human exploration. 58:18: Ken comments on how it makes sense that more experience with entry, descent, and landing on Mars would make the astronauts more comfortable. 58:29: Dawn asks Chris which he believes is going to happen first: discovering life elsewhere in the solar system or receiving a message from an extraterrestrial civilization. 1:00:12: Ken asks Chris to briefly discuss the Drake equation, a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. 1:02:19: Ken discusses how he interviewed Chris’s colleague, Dr. Natalie Batalha, about the Kepler mission, exoplanets, and the possibility of life on STEM-Talk episode 33. He then asks Chris what he sees as the prospects for finding life on extra solar planets. 1:04:46: Dawn asks Chris if he has a favorite book about the search for extraterrestrial life. 1:05:56: Dawn comments on how Chris is an advocate of human exploration of Mars and asks him to discuss his reasons for that position. 1:07:18: Dawn asks Chris what his thoughts are on planetary protection, particularly the controversy regarding humans “contaminating” the surface of Mars. 1:09:19: Ken discusses how he believes that it is unfortunate that some regard any human expansion into the solar system as being an undesirable human infestation of previously pristine places. 1:11:40: Dawn asks Chris if humans were to live elsewhere in the solar system, where he thinks would be the most promising destination. 1:12:40: Ken comments on how Chris has given the notion of terraforming Mars a lot of thought and asks him to explain the concept of terraforming. 1:14:41: Ken asks Chris what it will take to terraform Mars, and whether or not Chris sees this as a realistic possibility. 1:17:03: Dawn discusses how Chris has nurtured an entire generation of students and asks him what it has been like for him to work with them. 1:18:32: Dawn asks Chris to explain what Mars Underground is, as he is one of the cofounders. 1:19:45: Dawn asks Chris what he would propose if he were in charge of NASA’s Mars strategy. 1:20:21: Ken and Dawn thank Chris for joining them on the show.          

 Today’s interview features one of the nation’s foremost hypnotists who is also the associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University Medical School. In this episode, Dr. David Spiegel talks about how hypnosis can help people not only quit smoking and lose weight, but also relieve chronic pain and reduce people’s dependency on medications. David earned his Bachelor’s at Yale College and graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1971. His mother and father were psychiatrists and his father started practicing hypnosis just before World War II. David now has more than 45 years of clinical and research experience studying psycho-oncology, stress and health, pain control and hypnosis. In addition to his role as the Willson Professor and associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford, he is also the director of the Center on Stress and Health and the medical director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. David has published 12 books, including one with his father. He has written more than 380 scientific journal articles and 167 book chapters on topics ranging from hypnosis to psychosocial oncology to trauma to psychotherapy. Last year David was featured in Time magazine about the therapeutic uses of hypnosis. In terms of the nation’s escalating opiate problem, David has gone on record saying that hypnosis can and should be used instead of painkillers in many cases. “There are things we could be doing that are a lot safer, cheaper and more effective,” said David, “but we’re not because as a society we have the prejudice that hypnosis is voodoo and pharmacology is science.” David’s research has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Aging, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Dana Foundation for Brain Sciences. David is the past president of the American College of Psychiatrists and the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. Links:  David Spiegel Stanford profile page “Group Therapy for Cancer Patients” — http://amzn.to/2wd7c39 “Living Beyond Limits” — http://amzn.to/2vlTzzZ Show Notes     3:42: Ken and Dawn welcome David to the show. 3:56: Dawn comments on how both of David’s parents were psychiatrists, and how his father started practicing hypnosis just before WWII. She then asks David if it was always his plan to follow in his parents’ footsteps. 4:53: Dawn discusses how David got his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and then decided to attend Harvard Medical School. She asks David why he decided to specialize in hypnosis. 7:26: After graduating from medical school, David made news for refusing pain medication after his operation. Ken asks David to describe what he did. 8:51: Dawn asks David to give an overview of hypnosis. 11:48: David talks about how hypnosis and mindfulness are similar and different. 13:48: Ken asks David if people who are easily hypnotized are also more likely to be able to successfully practice meditation or mindfulness. 14:44: Dawn discusses how she has colleagues that are interested in studying mindfulness for conditions such as PTSD or pain management, but they have had trouble finding funding on these topics. She then asks David who typically funds the work that he does. 15:31: Dawn comments on how David has written about how hypnosis is the oldest western conception of psychotherapies and asks him to give a short historical tour of hypnosis. 20:35: Dawn discusses how David has had more than 40 years of clinical and research experience studying hypnosis, psycho oncology, pain control, psychoneuroendocrinology, and the use of hypnosis in the treatment of PTSD. Specifically, David was involved in two studies that showed that Vietnam veterans with PTSD had higher than normal tendencies to be hypnotized. Dawn then asks David to discuss these studies and the utility of hypnosis as a treatment for stress and physical trauma. 24:09: Ken asks David if he has found hypnosis to be an effective treatment for PTSD. 24:35: Ken asks David about using hypnosis to treat phobias. 26:32: Ken asks David if hypnotherapy can be used to reveal suppressed or impaired eyewitness memories and whether the courts raise questions about it. 29:17: Ken discusses a landmark study, published in the late 1990s by Pierre Rainville, looking at hypnotized people who placed their hands in really hot water. Many have said that this study changed the whole landscape of hypnosis. Ken then asks David to discuss this study and its importance. 31:06: Ken comments on how not everyone can be hypnotized, and how David has used functional MRI scans to figure out why some people are not susceptible to hypnosis. In 2012, David shared results of a study that showed hypnosis changes the way blood flows to different areas of the brain. Ken asks David to share the importance of this finding and what it revealed to him. 34:02: Dawn discusses how David has also found research that shows that hypnotizability correlates with dopamine levels in the brain. Dawn then asks if that means that dopamine is a key driver of the ability to be hypnotized, and if so why. 35:08: Dawn asks if the effect of dopamine is linear, with those with the highest levels of dopamine being the most hypnotizable. 37:04: STEMTALK BLURB 37:27: Ken asks David to talk about Parkinson’s in the context of hypnosis. 39:09: Ken asks David if there is a practical way to gauge whether someone will be receptive to hypnosis. 40:07: Ken asks David if it is possible to change people’s susceptibility to hypnosis. 41:38: Dawn asks if someone who does not believe in hypnosis can be hypnotized. 42:21: Dawn comments on David’s work in a children’s hospital and asks him if it seems like children are more susceptible to hypnosis than adults. 43:16: Dawn asks David how effective self-hypnosis is and if there are any notable limitations. 44:41: Ken asks David if response to the placebo effect is associated with hypnotizability, and if so, if people who are easily hypnotized are more likely to benefit from any placebo effects of hypnosis. 46:12: Dawn comments that the placebo effect is unable to directly change underlying physiology, and asks if there is any evidence that hypnosis can directly alter disease states themselves. 48:00: Dawn discusses how Robert Sapolsky would say that dopamine is produced to provide motivation to achieve a goal, and that it is even greater when the result is uncertain. She then asks David how this view of dopamine ties into the ability to be hypnotized, and whether there are physiological effects that are related. 49:48: Ken asks David if there are environmental factors that might make it easier to achieve a hypnotic state, and whether hallucinogens and other drugs have a role in hypnosis. 52:11: Dawn comments on how acupuncture can be blocked with opioid receptor blockers and asks David if there are any receptor blockers that inhibit hypnosis. 53:06: Dawn asks David which technique with hypnosis is generally most effective or whether it depends on the individual. 54:40: Ken asks David if there are any notable potential hazards associated with hypnosis or its practice. 56:04: Dawn asks David if there have been any studies looking at molecular level changes that have been associated with hypnosis and if he has an animal model equivalent that can be used for studies of brain tissue specifically. 57:04: Ken asks David if we see a true hypnotic effect in animals other than humans. 57:55: Ken discusses how over the years David has worked with hospital physicians on ways to use hypnosis in addition to anesthesia in the operating room. Ken then asks David to talk about his findings on hypnotized subjecting using less medication, experiencing less pain, and feeling less anxious than other groups who were not hypnotized. 1:00:22: Dawn comments on how radiologist Elvira Lang at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Lang has gone on to continue these studies on hypnotized patients having better results. 1:01:11: Dawn asks David why many physicians remain skeptical of hypnosis, despite David’s research findings. 1:03:44: Ken asks David if there has been any research done on the efficacy of hypnosis in the context of elite sports or tier-one military units, with respect to recovery or overtraining. 1:06:04: Ken asks David whether heart rate variability could be improved via hypnosis. 1:06:51: Dawn asks David to talk about some of the ongoing areas of research in his field. 1:08:16: Dawn asks David if there are any large scale clinical trials that address hypnosis as a potential therapeutic approach. 1:10:33: Ken comments on how there appears to be a renaissance on medicine built from two metaphorical houses. Ken then asks David what might be the evolutionary imperatives that brought about the ability to experience hypnosis, and what its purpose is. 1:14:15: Ken makes a comment about his own research in AI in regards to the belief in machines replacing physicians. 1:15:14: Dawn asks David what his thoughts are on the likelihood of insurance companies starting to support hypnosis therapy. 1:17:10: Ken and Dawn thank David for joining them on the show.

Today’s podcast features Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis interviewing their colleague, Dr. Jerry Pratt, a senior research scientist at IHMC who heads up the institute’s robotics group. In 2015, Jerry led an IHMC team that placed second out of 23 teams from around the world in the first-ever DARPA Robotics Challenge. IHMC also placed first in the competition which featured humanoid robots that primarily walked bipedally and first among all U.S. teams. Jerry is a graduate of MIT, where he earned a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science in 2000. As a graduate student at MIT, Jerry built his first robot which was also one of the first bipedal robots that could compliantly walk over rough terrain. As you will learn in today’s interview, it was called “Spring Turkey” and is on display in MIT’s Boston museum. The second robot he built as a graduate student was called “Spring Flamingo,” and is on display in the lobby of IHMC’s Fred Levin Center in Pensacola. After graduation, Jerry and some MIT colleagues founded a small company called Yobotics, which specialized in powered prosthetics, biomimetic robots, simulation software and robotic consulting. He joined IHMC in 2002 and has become a well-known expert in bipedal walking. His algorithms are used in various robots around the world. Recent work on fast-running robots has resulted in ostrich-inspired running models and robot prototypes that are currently believed to be the fastest running robots in the world. Jerry has six U.S. patents and was inducted into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015. He lives in Pensacola with his wife Megan and their two children. He and he wife founded a science museum called the Pensacola MESS Hall, which stands for math, engineering, science, and stuff. The MESS Hall is a hands-on science museum for all ages that just celebrated it’s five-year anniversary. Show notes: 4:37: Ken and Dawn welcome Jerry to the show 4:54: Dawn asks Jerry to talk about the time he once stole a science book from school. 5:45: Dawn asks Jerry to discuss his first invention, the knockout keyless door lock, that he came up with for his tree fort when he was a teen. 6:21: Dawn asks Jerry if he recalls his first computer program he wrote on the Commodore 64. 6:47: Ken comments on how in addition to writing computer programs, Jerry had an interest in electronics, particularly Heathkits. 7:08: Dawn discusses how Jerry played a lot of sports as a kid, going on to run varsity track and cross country at MIT. 7:46: Dawn asks Jerry if it was as an undergrad or a graduate student that he first became interested in robotics. 8:20: Ken discusses the first two robots Jerry put together: Spring Turkey then Spring Flamingo. He then asks Jerry to talk about the machines and how he came up with the names. 9:16: Dawn comments on how a few of Jerry’s colleagues have mentioned that much of our understanding of dynamic walking is still based on some of the original work Jerry did at MIT, and she then asks Jerry to talk about that work. 10:03: Ken asks Jerry to talk about how he and his wife, Megan Benson, met. 10:54: Ken asks Jerry to discuss the experience of co-founding Yobotics, which specialized in powered prosthetics, biomimetic robots, simulation software, and robot consulting, with his colleagues at MIT. 11:36: Dawn discusses the growth of robotics at IHMC since Jerry joined the team. She then asks Jerry to give a summary on the types of robots that he and his colleagues have been working on over the last 14 years at IHMC. 13:55: Dawn asks Jerry to talk about the books he often reads on organizational culture and teambuilding. 15:08: Dawn comments on how she has heard that Jerry is one of the worst motivational speakers ever and asks if it is true. 15:28: Ken comments on all of the work that Jerry and the IHMC team put into the DARPA Robotics Challenge, where they placed second in the world and first among the United States teams. He then asks Jerry to describe the experience. 16:24: Ken asks Jerry what it would look like if he were designing a new challenge focused on robotic mobility. 17:03: Dawn comments on a story about Jerry’s daughter Annie telling her kindergarten teacher that her daddy builds robots that fall down. 17:42: Dawn discusses how Jerry has spent most of his career thinking about how humans balance themselves to keep from falling, and how we use these strategies to help balance robots. She then asks Jerry to walk through that process. 18:35: Dawn asks Jerry what happens when a robot recovers its balance. 19:13: Dawn comments on how Jerry’s focus has been on bipedal walking. She then goes on to ask why engineers design robots with legs, and even more specifically, two legs. 20:03: Ken states that one of the advantages of a humanoid robot or bipedal robot is that the physical built world was built assuming our human form factor. 21:02: Ken comments on how Jerry mentioned that walking can be thought of as modeled by an inverted pendulum and asks Jerry when this approximation is valid and under what conditions this simplification breaks down. 21:47: Dawn asks Jerry which is a more limiting factor in having a bipedal robot perform as well as a human: the software or the hardware. 22:29: Dawn comments on how bipedal robots are able to walk but asks Jerry what the challenges are in getting them to run. 23:22: Ken discusses how our robots are comprised of lots of actuators and sensors and perform many complicated hundreds and perhaps thousands of calculations per second. He then asks Jerry how practical and robust this approach is in the real world and how their fundamental research into open-loop running robots such as the planar elliptical runner could be leveraged into advances in humanoid robots, or whether they are distinctly separate tracks with no cross talk. 24:54: Jerry talks about  how his group is looking at how to use robots to do other things in the real world than just walking, such as going up to valves, turning valves and flipping switches. And because this needs to be done super reliably, the group is using more mathematically reliable techniques to create systems and controllers that exploit natural dynamics. 25:18: Dawn asks Jerry to explain some of the potentially practical applications of bipedal robots. 25:49: Ken comments that he has noticed that Jerry and others have been working to get a humanoid robot, Atlas, to walk across a plank of wood that seesaws up and down. He then asks Jerry why he is doing that. 26:37: Dawn asks what some of the most efficient gates are as far as different animals go and how bipedal walking and programmability compare to some of those gates in terms of efficiency. 28:49: STEM-TALK BLURB 29:16: Ken discusses how Jerry has been spending a lot of time thinking about how robots can help us explore Mars. He goes on to comment that the robots currently on Mars are all wheeled or tracked machines, and asks Jerry if he sees the need for robots with legs on Mars, and why. 30:16: Ken asks Jerry how walking and running differs on Earth versus different gravity environments like Mars. 31:24: Ken asks Jerry if we would walk on Mars or hop, or if it would partially be a function of the spacesuit design. 32:52: Ken comments that as far as sensory input goes, the skin is our largest sensory organ that we have as humans. He then asks Jerry if he sees the ability to integrate things like synthetic skin with robots to improve their interaction with the environment. 34:22: Dawn discusses how in undersea robotics one of the major issues is developing a hand with dexterity that simulates a human is very difficult. She then asks Jerry the challenges in this and where the field stands with respect to developing a good hand. 35:57: Ken comments that understanding robotics and AI doesn’t seem to diminish our appreciation for humanity, but rather seems to elevate it. 36:21: Dawn states that when Jerry and his wife Megan moved to Pensacola 14 years ago they had a dream of creating a science museum. She then asks how he managed to make this happen. 38:36: Ken asks Jerry in what ways mechanical mobility is starting to surpass human mobility, and where Jerry sees the next breakthroughs coming in machine mobility. 40:27: Dawn comments on how about 10 years ago researchers set a goal that we would have a robot soccer team that would beat a human team by 2050, and she then asks Jerry if he thinks that this is still possible. 41:50: Ken discusses how Jerry’s team also works on powered exoskeletons for people with paralysis, but all of the balance is provided by the user. He then asks if there are ways to utilize Jerry’s work on walking and balancing algorithms in powered exoskeleton developments, so that the exoskeleton itself can be a more active partner in balance. 42:51: Dawn asks Jerry what his advice is to a race walker who wants to do well without cheating. 44:56: Dawn asks Jerry about the role of AI techniques in helping to advance mobility. 45:25: Jerry talks about how the deep reinforcement learning community may start looking at bipedal walking as one of its next big challenges. 46:45: Ken comments how deep learning algorithms are an ideal for bipedal walking because one doesn’t have to explain how the capability to walk was arrived at. 48:03: Jerry agrees but talks about how deep learning might someday help us understand walking in a new way and afford new insights. 48:37: Dawn asks Jerry what he sees as the emerging commercial opportunities for robotics. 50:02: Dawn asks Jerry about opportunities for entertainment. 50:43: Ken asks Jerry to give a quick update and sketch on IHMC’s role in the MegaBot adventure. 51:17: Dawn asks Jerry to talk about his pleasure in puzzles and games, and proving the odds of them. 52:00: Ken and Dawn thank Jerry for joining them.

Today’s episode features an important interview with Dr. Jeff Volek, a researcher who has spent the past 20 years studying how humans adapt to carbohydrate-restricted diets.  His most recent work, which is one of the key topics of today’s interview, has focused on the science of ketones and ketogenic diets and their use as a therapeutic tool to manage insulin resistance. In 2014, Volek became a founder and the chief science officer of Virta Health, an online specialty medical clinic dedicated to reversing diabetes, a chronic disease that has become a worldwide epidemic. The company’s ambitious goal is to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people by 2025. Earlier this year, The JMIR Diabetes Journal published a study coordinated by Volek and Virta that showed people with type 2 diabetes can be taught to sustain adequate carbohydrate restriction to achieve nutritional ketosis, thereby improving glycemic control, decreasing medication use, and allowing clinically relevant weight loss. These improvements happened after just 10 weeks on the program that Virta designed for people. In addition to his role at Virta, Volek is a registered dietitian and full professor in the department of human sciences at Ohio State University. He is a co-author of “The New Atkins for a New You,” which came out 2010 and spent 16 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. The book is an updated, easier-to-use version of Dr. Robert Atkins’ original 1972 book, “Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution.” Volek has co-authored four other books, including “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” and “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance.” Both books are co-authored with and delve somewhat deeper than “The New Atkins” did into the science and application of low-carb diets. Volek received his bachelor’s degree in dietetics from Michigan State University in 1991. He went on to earn a master’s in exercise physiology and a PhD in kinesiology and nutrition from Pennsylvania State University. He has given more than 200 lectures about his research at scientific and industry conferences in a dozen countries. In addition to his five books, he also has published more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Although numerous studies have confirmed the validity and safety of low-carb and ketogenic diets, Volek and others who support carbohydrate restriction are often criticized for being so one-sided that their work comes across as more advocacy than science. But in “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living,” Volek writes: “What is the proper response when three decades of debate about carbohydrate restriction have been largely one-sided and driven more by cultural bias than science? Someone needs to stand up and represent the alternate view and science.” As Volek explains in episode 42 of STEM-Talk, this has become his mission. Links: “New Atkins for a New You” — http://amzn.to/2uOjLkF “The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living”– http://amzn.to/2hh1W9k “The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Performance” — http://amzn.to/2f2oPMV New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/well/live/tackling-weight-loss-and-diabetes-with-video-chats.html?_r=0 JMIR DIABETES paper: http://assets.virtahealth.com/docs/Virta_Clinic_10-week_outcomes.pdf https://www.virtahealth.com Show notes: 3:016: Ken and Dawn welcome Jeff to the show. 3:32: Dawn asks Jeff when and how he first became interested in science. 5:24: When Jeff was studying to be a dietitian, he was looking at a low-fat, high-carb diet. But when he began to work with diabetics, something did not seem right. Dawn asks Jeff if that is what led him to begin studying low-carb diets. 6:39: Ken comments on how diabetes is perhaps the greatest healthcare challenge we face as a society, which drives costs to more than $300 billion a year. 7:59: Dawn asks Jeff about the effectiveness of traditional treatment and management approaches for people with diabetes. 8:27: Dawn asks Jeff to talk about Virta Health, a company Jeff helped found, and a recent paper and JMIR Diabetes Journal. The paper reported on the results of a study that looked at whether sustained carbohydrate restriction and nutritional ketosis could be part of a comprehensive intervention that would allow people with type 2 diabetes to improve their health. 11.54: Dawn asks Jeff why this approach would work at the cellular level, whether it is the reduction in glucose alone or if the ketone bodies are playing a role. 14:13: Ken asks Jeff why he thinks some patients respond so remarkably and others not as much. 16:27: Dawn discusses how Virta’s mission is to reverse diabetes for 100 million people by 2025. She asks Jeff if this is a realistic number or a stretch goal. 18:28: Ken asks Jeff to briefly talk about the business model of this process and how he sees it shaking out. 20:09: Dawn asks Jeff how he and Sami Inkinen, founder of Trulia and another co-founder of Virta, crossed paths. 22:00: Dawn asks Jeff what his thoughts are on the possible epigenetic effects of the ketogenic diet, with respect to general health and wellness. 25:46: Dawn talks about an athletic friend of hers with Crohn’s disease and how she had positive health outcomes from following a ketogenic diet. She then asks Jeff if anyone has seen improvements to conditions like Crohn’s disease or rheumatoid arthritis when considering the inflammatory nature of these diseases processes. 27:54: STEMTALK BLURB 28:23: Dawn comments on how she has been a vegetarian for more than 20 years, and how it is difficult to be on a ketogenic diet with no meat as a fat source. She then discusses how “The New Atkins for a New You,” has a chapter devoted to a low-carb diet for vegetarians and asks Jeff if he has any tips to share for vegetarians or vegans. 29:59: Ken discusses a conversation he had with a woman about the difficulty of a ketogenic diet for someone who is fat-phobic. She has the idea that if she eats fat it will soon be on her. Ken then asks Jeff if this “fat fear” is something that he finds in working with patients. 32:30: Ken comments on how Rob Wolff reports that lipidologists are quite wary of the LDL-P, the particle numbers that they see in some people trying the ketogenic diet. As a result, these people have to increase their carb intake. Ken then asks Jeff what his thoughts on this are. 35:33: Ken discusses how LDL-P is more strongly correlated with heart disease than LDL cholesterol in the literature. 41:02: Dawn asks Jeff if he thinks that someone on a ketogenic diet would need a different amount of fiber per day compared to what has been recommended by the Institute of Medicine. 41:44: Dawn discusses how for decades recreational and competitive athletes have religiously consumed a diet rich in carbohydrates to fuel their performance, and the conventional wisdom has been to avoid fatty foods. However, in recent years these beliefs have been questioned. Dawn asks Jeff to give an overview of this trend. 44:58: Dawn asks Jeff to expand on why he thinks there was no difference in muscle glycogen between the two groups. 47:56: Dawn discusses a recent paper published in The Journal of Physiology where Louise Burke looked at elite race walkers while on the ketogenic diet. The team found that this diet impaired performance in elite endurance athletes “despite a significant improvement in peak aerobic capacity.” Her primary point was that race walkers showed increased oxygen demand for a given speed. Dawn then asks Jeff to share his thoughts on this paper. 49:40: Ken asks Jeff to briefly explain the role of PDH, and whether Jeff looked at this enzyme in his studies on athletes who were keto-adapted. 51:40: Ken discusses how in contrast to endurance sports, some more power-oriented athletes have reported that when on a ketogenic diet they experience low energy levels during the most demanding moments in the sport, but others do not experience this at all. Ken asks Jeff if he has any thoughts on power athletes on a ketogenic diet. 56:29: Dawn discusses how Jeff has spent a good amount of time studying keto-adapted elite ultra-runners, such as the western states 100 record holder, Tim Olson. Dawn asks Jeff what he learned at this event with regards to a low-carb endurance athlete, and how this informs recommendations he would make to athletes when they are fueling for a competition of this kind. 59:07 Dawn asks Jeff if he sees more athletes shifting towards a low-carb diet. 1:00:37: Ken discusses the use of exogenous ketone esters in the Tour de France races. He then asks Jeff for his opinion on this and to briefly address the confusion on this topic 1:04:01: Ken comments on how Jeff wrapped up the confusion nicely. 1:05:14: Ken and Dawn thank Jeff for joining them.

Frequent STEM-Talk listeners will more than likely recognize today’s guest, veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who joins us today to talk about the threat of near-Earth asteroids. Tom occasionally helps co-host STEM-Talk. But for episode 42, regular co-hosts Ken Ford and Dawn Kernagis turn the microphone around to interview Tom about his days as an astronaut, planetary defense and asteroids. It’s a topic, as you will hear, that Tom is quite passionate about.  He also has a great deal of expertise in the field. Before he became an astronaut, Tom earned a doctorate in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 1988. He’s also a graduate of the United States Airforce Academy. His research interests range from the remote sensing of asteroids to meteorite spectroscopy to applications of space resources. He became an astronaut in 1991 and received the NASA Space Flight Medal in 1994, 1996, and 2001. He also received the NASA Exceptional Service Award in 1997 and again in 2000. In 1995, he received the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. Tom logged 52 days in space, including three space walks totaling more than 19 hours. He is the author of several books, including Sky Walking: An Astronauts Memoir, which the Wall Street Journal named as one of the five best books about space. His latest book is Ask the Astronaut: A Galaxy of Astonishing Answers to Your Questions about Space. Below are links to Tom’s books as wells the STEM-Talk interview with Pascal Lee, which Ken refers to while interviewing Tom. Links: Pascal Lee interview: http://www.ihmc.us/stemtalk/episode-17/ New Yorker article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/02/28/vermin-of-the-sky TFPD Report: http://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/TFPD-FINAL-Report-to-NAC-10-6-10_v2.pdf Tom Jones books: “Sky Walking” – http://amzn.to/2t8dSQn “Ask the Astronaut” – http://amzn.to/2vhUxZD “Complete Idiots Guide to NASA” – http://amzn.to/2uWZHun “Planetology” – http://amzn.to/2unXgnP Show notes: 3:36: Ken and Dawn welcome Tom to the show. 4:11: Ken comments on the interesting path that Tom has travelled throughout his life and asks Tom to give a synopsis of his path of reinvention. 6:56: Dawn asks Tom to talk about the goals and highlights of the four shuttle missions he went on. 3:39: Dawn welcomes Tom as a guest on STEM-Talk. 9:23: Dawn comments on how Tom no longer flies in space, but he and some of his colleagues are now involved in another space mission that could save the Earth or a large part of it from destruction. Dawn then asks Tom how he became interested in planetary defense from asteroids. 11:30: Ken asks Tom to explain the differences between asteroids, comets, meteoroids, meteors, and meteorites. 13:37: Ken asks Tom how he would define a near-earth asteroid. 14:06: Dawn asks Tom how frequently asteroids strike the Earth. 16:27: Dawn asks Tom how likely she is to die in an asteroid catastrophe, statistically speaking. 18:27: Dawn discusses an article on planetary defense titled, Vermin of the Sky, published in The New Yorker in February of 2011. She comments on how Ken is quoted in the article as saying, “The very short perspective we have as humans makes the threat of asteroids seem smaller than it is. People of all sorts find it easier to kick the can down the road and hope for a mystical solution.” 20:04: Ken comments on how in the same article Clark Chapman notes that “Unlike Hurricane Katrina, we can do something about an asteroid, the question is whether we would rather be wrong in overprotecting or wrong in under protecting”. Ken then points out that one can imagine a near societal collapse should it be announced that, with high confidence, an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, and that as a society we have no means to deflect it. Humans, Ken adds, would come to envy the dinosaurs who had no time to ruminate about their fate. Ken asks Tom if he can even imagine the societal disruption of such an announcement. 21:50: Dawn discusses how in January of this year the U.S. Government released a strategy for preparing for a Near-Earth Object (NEO) impact. She then asks Tom if he thinks the strategy is on the right track. 23:29: Dawn asks Tom to give a sense of how NASA deals with the asteroid hazard today. 25:04: Dawn asks Tom if he thinks that as NASA’s interests in asteroids has increased, if it is striking the right balance between science, exploration, and planetary defense. 26:59: Ken discusses how Tom and Rusty Schweickart co-chaired the NASA Advisory Council’s Ad Hoc Task Force on planetary defense, and how in October of 2010, their task force made five primary recommendations. Ken asks Tom to review them and briefly discuss what has transpired in the years since in a lightning round. Recommendation number one: organize for effective action on planetary defense. 28:17: Recommendation number two: acquire essential search, track, and warning capabilities. 29:10: Recommendation number three: investigate the nature of the impact threat. 29:41: Recommendation number four: prepare to respond to impact threats. 30:39: Recommendation number five: lead U.S. planetary defense effort in national and international forms. 32:05: Ken praises Tom on the successful lightning round. 32:08: Dawn asks Tom what the current score card is on our detection of NEOs and how the percentage of the NEO population discovered is. 33:49: Dawn asks Tom why we do not get more notice of the approaching objects. 34:53: Dawn comments on how Tom talked about the limitations of the ground-based detection. She then asks Tom to discuss why ground-based detection has these limitations. 36:10: Dawn asks Tom to talk about some of the cons of these space-based detection missions and whether or not there are solutions to these cons. 38:16: STEMTALK BLURB 38:42: Dawn asks Tom what we learned from the Chelyabinsk impact in 2013. 40:36: Dawn asks Tom how much it will cost to deal with the asteroid threat effectively. 41:55: Ken comments that clearly these relatively modest preventive costs would be entirely dwarfed by several orders of magnitude for any significant impact on Earth in a populated area. 42:57: Ken states that to put it in perspective, the initial annual cost estimated in the report is essentially the cost of a single, frontline jet fighter. 43:27: Dawn discusses Tom’s role as a science advisor for the B612 Foundation that is now creating a new asteroid institute at the University of Washington. She then asks Tom what his take is on the new activities that this institute will be enabling, aside from searching for NEOs. 45:05: Dawn comments on how Tom is associated with the Association of Space Explorers and asks why they are interested in planetary defense. 46:16: Ken asks Tom to imagine that we have detected an NEO that seems to be on a collision course with Earth. He then asks Tom to review the leading proposed ideas on how humanity might deflect it sufficiently for it to actually miss the Earth. 49:45: Ken asks Tom if once we divert an asteroid collision whether or not it is gone for good. More specifically, how we can prevent an asteroid on its elliptical orbit from passing through a gravitational keyhole and returning to threaten Earth again. 52:37: Dawn comments on how ESA and NASA have been discussing a joint-asteroid deflection demonstration mission. She then asks Tom what the prospects are for that mission. 54:36: Dawn asks Tom if he thinks that the UN is the best organization to plan for a public safety hazard of this magnitude. 56:32: Ken asks Tom to talk about the natural uncertainty associated with projecting the exact place of impact on Earth and the implications for planning a deflection mission. 59:30: Dawn asks why it is that the topic of NEOs seems to fly under the radar and be of so little interest in comparison to other threats of much less gravity. 1:01:20: Ken comments on how he believes that this topic suffers from the sky is falling syndrome, evoking the story of Chicken Little. Also, that political leaders tend to think in terms of best election cycles and that it is hard to get them excited about potentially cataclysmic events that are nearly certain to happen in the long run. 1:02:50: Dawn discusses how NASA’s 2017 budget eliminates funding for the asteroid redirect mission, which is to return a boulder from a Near-Earth Asteroid and put it on the moon. She then asks Tom if this cancellation affects our planetary defense efforts in any real sense. 1:04:10: Dawn asks Tom how we can use Near-Earth Asteroids and their resources to aid our human space flight exploration efforts. 1:05:13: Ken comments on how he finds Phobos and Deimos, moons of Mars, absolutely fascinating. He goes on to state that these may in fact be asteroids. He then asks Tom to talk about Phobos and Deimos and why they are of such great interest. 1:07:56: Ken recommends that the listeners interested in Phobos and Deimos check out an earlier STEM-Talk podcast with Pascal Lee. (See link above.) 1:08:14: Ken asks Tom what he sees as the role and timing of the lunar activity in the larger scheme of human space exploration. 1:09:53: Ken asks Tom what he sees as the best way for government to conduct its programs so as to help enable the success of commercial space products and service providers without directly subsidizing them. 1:11:39: Dawn comments on how Tom has had a very impressive career path and asks him what advice he would give to others who would like to someday work in space or explore the solar system. 1:14:03: Dawn discusses the four books Tom has written on space flight: “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to NAS;” “Sky Walking: An Astronauts Memoir;” “Planetology: Unlocking the Secrets of the Solar System,” and “Ask the Astronaut: A Galaxy of Astonishing Answers to Your Questions about Space Flight.” 1:15:23: Dawn asks Tom if he deals with the asteroid hazard or planetary defense in any of these books. 1:16:19: Ken comments that Tom should heavily distribute The Complete Idiot’s Guide to NASA in certain quarters of D.C. 1:16:46: Dawn asks Tom what other interests he pursues in addition to space. 1:17:31: Ken and Dawn thank Tom for joining them.

Dr. David Diamond, a USF professor, discusses his research on fat, cholesterol, and statin drugs in heart disease. He challenges the low-fat, high-carb diet and highlights the flaws in medical research. The podcast covers optimizing cardiovascular health through diet and exercise, addressing misconceptions about inflammation and fats, and the controversy surrounding statin drugs.