Big Picture Science

Drinking a cup of coffee is how billions of people wake up every morning. But climate change is threatening this popular beverage. Over 60% of the world’s coffee species are at risk of extinction. Scientists are searching for solutions, including hunting for wild, forgotten coffee species that are more resilient to our shifting climate. Find out how the chemistry of coffee can help us brew coffee alternatives, and how coffee grounds can be part of building a sustainable future. Guests: Christopher Hendon - Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Chemistry, University of Oregon Shannon Kilmartin-Lynch - Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Australia Aaron Davis - Senior Research Leader of Crops and Global Change, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew Descripción en español Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What physical activity gives you joy? Whether it’s walking, running, dancing or swimming, your body evolved to do it. We are made for movement. But there’s a cost, as anyone with a sore neck or aching back knows. From the tiny muscles in our skin, which raise the hair on our arms, to the intricate mix of bone, blood vessels, and nerves in our neck, natural selection has struck a delicate and sometimes wacky balance between utility and form. In this episode, we explore how parts of the body - our muscles, neck and feet - came to be, and what forces prompted the evolution of efficient yet imperfect bodies. Guests: Kent Dunlap - Professor of biology at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and author of “The Neck: A Natural and Cultural History” Bonnie Tsui - Journalist and author of “On Muscle: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters” Jeremy DeSilva - Anthropologist at Dartmouth College and author of “First Steps, How Upright Walking Made Us Human” Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Healthy rivers and riparian ecosystems are teaming with life, but should rivers themselves be considered alive? The question is central to the growing rights-of-nature movement that claims that ecosystems and entities, like rivers, have legal rights. After Ecuador enshrined the rights of nature in its constitution, lawyers employed the new personhood status to stop mining companies from clearing a section of the Los Cedros River and its surrounding biodiverse cloud forest. Granting rivers moral standing comes as over-damming, pollution, and climate change have put them in crisis globally. Writer Robert Macfarlane explores how seeing rivers as living beings rather than just resources – a change he calls “a great act of moral imagination” – could help save our watersheds and rivers, upon which all life depends.   Guest: Robert Macfarlane – Writer and Professor of Literature and Environmental Humanities at the University of Cambridge, and author of “Is a River Alive?” Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The discovery of a massive amount of lithium under the Salton Sea could make the U.S. lithium independent. The metal is key for batteries in electric vehicles and solar panels. But the area is also a delicate ecosystem. We go to southern California to hear what hangs in the balance of the ballooning lithium industry, and also how we extract other crucial substances  – such as sand, copper and iron– and turn them into semiconductors, circuitry and other products upon which the modern world depends. Guests: Ed Conway – economics and data editor of Sky News and columnist for the Times in London.  He’s the author of “Material World, The Six Raw Materials that Shape Modern Civilization“. Frank Ruiz – Audubon California Salton Sea Program Director.  Michael McKibben – Geologist, University of California, Riverside.  Descripción en Español Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Originally aired February 19, 2024 You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whales are aliens on Earth; intelligent beings who have skills for complex problem-solving and their own language. Now in what’s being called a breakthrough, scientists have carried on an extended conversation with a humpback whale. They share the story of this remarkable encounter, their evidence that the creature understood them, and how the experiment informs our Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. After all, what good is it to make contact with ET if we can’t communicate? Guests: Brenda McCowan – Research behaviorist at the University of California Davis in the School of Veterinary Medicine who studies the ecological aspects of animal behavior and communication.  Fred Sharpe – Whale biologist with the Templeton WhaleSETI Team and field ecologist with Olympic Peninsula Prairies. Laurance Doyle – Astrophysicist and information theory researcher at the SETI Institute.  Descripción en español. Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Originally aired February 12, 2024 You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A big challenge during a hurricane or other disaster is keeping lines of communication open when the power goes out. In this episode, the second in our series tied to the 20th anniversary of hurricane Katrina, we report from the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans about a technology used in 2005, and still employed today, to provide vital information during a crisis. In our age of growing reliance on cellphones and funding cuts to federal agencies tasked with disaster communications, could ham radio be our last antenna standing during a chaotic catastrophe? “Hams” talk about their ability to keep information flowing during a storm. Meanwhile, a very recent technology, artificial intelligence, is playing a growing role in hurricane preparedness. Emergency responders tell us how they use AI to issue warnings, describe the limits of the technology, and why – and when – humans should step in.  Guests: Bobby Graves – Network manager for Hurricane Watch Net amateur radio.  His call sign is KB5HAV. Julio Ripoll – A coordinator and founder of the National Hurricane Center amateur radio station, WX4NHC in Miami, Florida where he has been a volunteer for 45 years. Matt Anderson – Call sign KT5KNZ, volunteer at the Louisiana State Emergency Operations Center for two decades.  He was active during hurricane Katrina. Todd Devoe – Emergency management coordinator for the city of Inglewood, California. Brian Head – Chair of the fire rescue law enforcement and military track for the National Hurricane Conference; executive director with Buffalo Computer Graphics, former employee with the New York State Emergency Management Office. Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the twenty years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, powerful hurricanes such as Sandy, Irma, Maria and Helene have caused immense property destruction and led to thousands of deaths. If Katrina taught us anything, it was to be prepared for the unimaginable. But have we learned that lesson?  In this episode, part of a series tied to the 20th anniversary of Katrina, we report from the National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans about what we’ve learned in the years since. Emergency management teams from the Virgin Islands reflect on the two Category 5 hurricanes that hit within just two weeks of each other in 2017, scientists describe how climate change is reshaping hurricanes and our new tools for forecasting them. Meanwhile dark clouds are gathering. As we head into hurricane season, the administration proposes to slash funding for agencies that are tasked with helping us prepare and recover from natural disasters, such as NOAA and the National Weather Service. Guests: Yvette Henry – Community Affairs Coordinator at the Department of Human Services in the US Virgin Islands Abigail Hendricks – Emergency Support Function #6 coordinator on the island of St John, Virgin Islands Meaghan Enright – executive director of the nonprofit, Love City Strong that works on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery on the island of St John, Virgin Islands Rebeca Mueller – Director of media coordination, National Hurricane Conference Michael Brennan – Director, National Hurricane Center, Miami, Florida Julie Roberts – Former director of communications and Deputy Chief of Staff for NOAA during the first Trump administration. Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some call it your sixth sense. You refer to it when you have a “gut feeling.” With a vast fiber network running throughout your body, the vagus nerve knows about and helps regulate every critical function in it, from heart rate to digestion to your immune system. Now bioelectric medicine is tapping into that bodily omniscience by using tiny electrical pulses on the vagus nerve to help treat diseases as diverse as epilepsy, diabetes, stroke, Parkinson’s, and even depression. In the coming months, the FDA is set to make a decision about a vagus nerve stimulation device, which, if approved, could provide first-of-its-kind treatment for an autoimmune disease that affects millions of Americans. We consider the groundbreaking potential of vagus nerve stimulation and ask whether electricity could one day replace medications. Guest: Kevin Tracey – Neurosurgeon, president of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health, and author of “The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes”  Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The White House has proposed unprecedented cuts to NASA’s budget - the largest in the agency’s history. If approved, this withdrawal of funding would force the cancellation of many major programs, including the long anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope as well as others involved in the search for life in the universe. It would also impact the agency’s ability to do fundamental research. We look at what the loss of NASA programs could mean for the future of space science and exploration. Plus, an intriguing discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope underscores the progress we’ve made - and could lose - when it comes to searching for potential biosignatures in the universe. Guests: Leonard David – Space journalist and author Nadia Drake – Freelance science journalist Carl Zimmer – New York Times science columnist Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By one estimate the average American home has 300,000 objects. Yet our ancient ancestors had no more than what they could carry with them. How did we go from being self-sufficient primates to nonstop shoppers? We examine the evolutionary history of stuff through the lens of archeology beginning with he ancestor who first picked up a palm-sized rock and made it into a tool.    Guest: Chip Colwell - archeologist and former Curator of Anthropology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, editor-in-chief of the digital magazine Sapiens, and author of “So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything.” Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Originally aired February 5, 2024 You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices