Big Picture Science

Runny nose. Itchy, watery eyes. Sneezing. If you don’t have allergies, you probably know someone who does. The number of people with allergies, including food allergies and eczema, is increasing. What is going on? A medical anthropologist describes how our hygiene habits, our diets, and our polluted environment are irritating our bodies. Also, the case for skipping your shower. Is skin healthier when we stop lathering?Guests:James Hamblin – Preventive medicine physician and a lecturer in public health at Yale and author of Clean: the New Science of SkinTheresa MacPhail – medical anthropologist, professor of science and technology studies at Stevens Institute of Technology and author of Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World.Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you have what it takes to survive on Mars? Beginning this month, four people will spend a year in a prototype Martian habitat meant to simulate living on the Red Planet. It’s part of NASA’s efforts to prepare us for real human missions to Mars. Find out how well we can replicate that world on Earth and what we might learn from doing so.Also, a new robotic mission aims to be the first to bring back a piece of the Red Planet, and why Mars has enchanted us for centuries.Guests:Scott Smith – Lead for the nutritional biochemistry lab at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, and member of the CHAPEA team.Matthew Shindell – Historian of science and Curator of Planetary Science and Exploration at the National Air and Space Museum. Author of For the Love of Mars; a Human History of the Red Planet.Pascal Lee – Planetary scientist at the SETI Institute, principal investigator of the Haughton-Mars Project, and co-founder of The Mars InstituteMichela Muñoz Fernández – Program Executive for NASA’s Mars Sample Return MissionFeaturing music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NASA is studying more than 800 sightings of unidentified objects in our sky as part of its investigation into the UFO phenomenon. We get an update on the agency’s study in a conversation with a member of the NASA UAP panel. We also hear why the belief that aliens exist has broad consensus, but that’s not the same as saying they routinely visit Earth. Plus, a UFO investigator analyzes the startling claim that the military is hiding evidence of alien technology. Guests:Nadia Drake – Science journalist and member of NASA’s UAP groupMick West – Science writer, skeptical debunker, former video game programmer. Author of “Escaping the Rabbit Hole” Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s the difference between a bird call and the sound of a pile driver? Not much, when you’re close to the loudest bird ever. Find out when it pays to be noisy and when noise can worsen your health. Just about everyone eventually suffers some hearing loss, but that’s not merely aging. It’s an ailment we inflict on ourselves. Hear how a team in New York City has put sensors throughout the city to catalog noise sources, hoping to tame the tumult.And can underwater speakers blasting the sounds of a healthy reef bring life back to dead patches of the Great Barrier Reef?Guests:Mark Cartwright – Research Assistant Professor at New York University’s Department of Computer Science and EngineeringCharles Mydlarz – Research Assistant Professor at New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and the Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL)David Owen – Staff writer at The New Yorker, and author of Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening WorldJeff Podos – Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, AmherstSteve Simpson – Professor of Marine Biology and Global Change, Exeter University, U.K.Originally aired January 20, 2020Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Electricity plays an important role in our everyday lives, including allowing our bodies to communicate internally. But some research claims electricity may be used to diagnose and treat disease? Could electric pulses one day replace medications?We speak with experts about the growing field of bioelectric medicine and the evidence for electricity’s healing abilities. Their comments may shock you.Guests:Sally Adee – Science journalist, author of “We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body’s Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds"Samantha Payne – Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences at University of GuelphKevin Tracey – Neurosurgeon and President of the Feinstein Institute at Northwell HealthFeaturing music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Spewing lava and belching noxious fumes, volcanoes seem hostile to biology. But the search for life off-Earth includes the hunt for these hotheads on other moons and planets, and we tour some of the most imposing volcanoes in the Solar System. Plus, a look at how tectonic forces reshape bodies from the moon to Venus to Earth. And a journey to the center of our planet reveals a surprising layer of material at the core-mantle boundary. Find out where this layer was at the time of the dinosaurs and what powerful forces drove it deep below.Guests:Samantha Hansen – Geologist at the University of AlabamaPaul Byrne – Associate professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. LouisRobin George Andrews – Science journalist and author of “Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond”Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crowded subway driving you crazy? Sick of the marathon-length grocery store line? Wish you had a hovercraft to float over traffic? If you are itching to hightail it to an isolated cabin in the woods, remember, we evolved to be together. Humans are not only social, we’re driven to care for one another, even those outside our immediate family.  We look at some of the reasons why this is so – from the increase in valuable communication within social groups to the power of the hormone oxytocin. Plus, how our willingness to tolerate anonymity, a condition which allows societies to grow, has a parallel in ant supercolonies.Guests:Adam Rutherford – Geneticist and author of “Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature – a New Evolutionary History”Patricia Churchland – Neurophilosopher, professor of philosophy emerita at the University of California San Diego, and author most recently of “Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition”Mark Moffett – Tropical biologist, Smithsonian Institution researcher, and author of “The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive and Fall”*Originally aired July 22, 2019Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Magic mushrooms – or psilocybin – may be associated with tripping hippies and Woodstock, but they are now being studied as new treatments for depression and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Is this Age of Aquarius medicine or something that could really work? Plus, the centuries-long use of psychedelics by indigenous peoples, and a discovery in California’s Pinwheel Cave offers new clues about the relationship between hallucinogens and cave art.Guests:Merlin Sheldrake - Biologist and the author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds and Shape our Futures.Albert Garcia-Romeu - Assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of MedicineDavid Wayne Robinson - Archeologist in the School of Forensic and Applied Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, U.K.Sandra Hernandez - Tejon Indian Tribe spokespersonOriginally aired December 7, 2020Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We have too much “bad fire.” Not only destructive wildfires, but the combustion that powers our automobiles and provides our electricity has generated a worrying rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. And that is driving climate change which is adding to the frequency of megafires. Now we’re seeing those effects in “fire-clouds,” pyrocumulonimbus events.But there’s such a thing as “good fire.” Indigenous peoples managed the land with controlled fires, reaped the benefits of doing so, and they’re bringing them back.So after millions of years of controlling fire, is it time for us to revisit our attitudes and policies, not just with regard to combustion, but how we manage our wildfires?Guests:David Peterson - Meteorologist, U.S. Naval Research LaboratoryStephen Pyne - Emeritus professor at Arizona State University, fire historian, urban farmer, author of “The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next”Richard Wrangham - Ruth B. Moore Research Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and author of "Catching Fire: How Coooking Made Us Human"Margo Robbins - Co-founder and president of the Cultural Fire Management Council (CFMC), organizer of the Cultural Burn Training Exchange (TREX) that takes place on the Yurok Reservation twice a year, and an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe*Originally aired May 9, 2022Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun MiyakeBig Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1915, Endurance, the ship that took Ernest Shackleton to the Antarctic, was slowly crushed and sank. Shackleton, and the 28 men he brought with him, were camped on the ice near the ship, and watched helplessly as their transport went to a watery grave, two miles down. But a recent expedition has found the Endurance, taking the world back to the last hurrah of the heroic age of polar expedition. How was it found, and what will be done with it?Also, while feats of exploration inspire TV shows and magazine articles, do they have other functions in society? Is modern exploration more than just a nice thing to do?We go to the bottom of the world on “Finding Endurance.”Guests:Michael Smith – Author and journalist. His book: “Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer”Christian Katlein – Sea ice physicistTim Jarvis – Adventurer and environmental scientistFeaturing music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake*Originally aired April 8, 2022Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices