Big Picture Science

Before everything could come up roses, there had to be a primordial flower – the mother, and father, of all flowers. Now scientists are on the hunt for it. The eFlower project aims to explain the sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record, what Darwin called an “abominable mystery.”Meanwhile, ancient flowers encased in amber or preserved in tar are providing clues about how ecosystems might respond to changing climates. And, although it was honed by evolution for billions of years, can we make photosynthesis more efficient and help forestall a global food crisis?Guests:Eva-Maria Sadowski - Post doctoral paleobotanist at the Museum für Naturkunde, BerlinRegan Dunn - Paleobotanist and assistant Curator at the La Brea Tar Pits and MuseumRoyal Krieger - Rosarian and volunteer at the Morcom Rose Garden, Oakland, CaliforniaRuby Stephens - Plant ecology PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Australia, and member of the eFlower ProjectStephen Long - Professor of Plant Science, University of IllinoisFeaturing 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!Please take our listener survey! Help us get to know you and enter to win a $500 Amazon gift card!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe has ignited fierce debate about bodily autonomy. But it’s remarkable how little we know about female physiology. Find out what studies have been overlooked by science, and what has been recently learned. Plus, why studying women’s bodies means being able to say words like “vagina” without shame ... a researcher who is recreating a uterus in her lab to study endometriosis … and an overdue recognition of medical pioneer Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler.Guests:Melody T. McCloud - Obstetrician Gynecologist and Founder and Medical Director of Atlanta Women's Health Care; co-author of “Black Women's Wellness: Your ‘I've Got This!’ Guide to Health, Sex, and Phenomenal Living”Victoria Gall - Volunteer with the Friends of the Hyde Park Library and the Hyde Park Historical SocietyRachel E. Gross - Science journalist and author of “Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage”Linda Griffith - Professor of Biological and Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T., Director of the Center for Gynepathology Research, and author of the Boston Globe article, “‘FemTech’ and a moonshot for menstruation science”Roshni Babal - Pediatric Asthma and Chronic Disease Program Coordinator at Boston Medical CenterPerri Klass - Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University and Author of “The Best Medicine: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future”Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake*Originally aired October 31, 2022Big 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!Please take our listener survey! Help us get to know you and enter to win a $500 Amazon gift card!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why create more landfill? Perhaps you should resist the urge to toss those old sneakers, the broken ceiling fan, or last year’s smart phone. Instead, repurpose them! Global junk entrepreneurs are leading the way in turning trash to treasure, while right-to-repair advocates fight for legislation that would give you a decent shot at fixing your own electronic devices. And, if you toss food scraps down the drain as you cook, are you contributing to a “fatberg” horror in the sewer?Guests: John Love – Synthetic biologist at the University of Exeter Adam Minter – Author of Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale Amanda Preske – Chemist and the owner of Circuit Breaker Labs Nathan Proctor – National campaign director for U.S. Public Interest Research Group – (PIRGS) Right to Repair campaign Kyle Wiens – CEO of I-Fixit, an Internet repair community Originally aired December 16, 2019Big 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!Please take our listener survey! Help us get to know you, and enter to win a $500 Amazon gift card!   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before you check your social media feeds today. And post. And post again. And get into an argument on Twitter, lose track of time and wonder where the morning went, consider that social media was never a natural way to socialize.A cultural anthropologist weighs in on the evolutionary reasons humans can’t thrive on social media. And we hear about the signs that social media is on its way out. If that’s the case, what’s next? Guests:Max Fisher – Reporter for The New York Times, author of “The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World”Douglas Rushkoff – Professor of media theory and digital economics at City University of New York, and author of “Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires”Ian Bogost – Professor of Media Studies and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis and a contributing writer at The Atlantic.Alex Mesoudi – Professor of Cultural Evolution at the University of Exeter, U.K.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

The zombie eco-thriller “The Last of Us” has alerted us to the threats posed by fungi. But the show is not entirely science fiction. Our vulnerability to pathogenic fungi is more real than many people imagine. Find out what human activity drives global fungal threats, including their menace to food crops and many other species. Our high body temperature has long kept lethal fungi in check; but will climate change cause fungi to adapt to warmer temperatures and threaten our health? Plus, a radically new way to think about these organisms, how they make all life possible, and how we might find balance again.Guests:Emily Monosson – Toxicologist who writes about changes in the natural world. A member of the Ronin Institute and an adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she is the author of “Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic.”Arturo Casadevall – Microbiologist, immunologist, professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.Michael Hathaway – Anthropologist, director of the Asian Studies Center at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and author of “What a Mushroom Lives For.”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

If you bake, you can appreciate math’s transformative properties. Admiring the stackable potato chip is to admire a hyperbolic sheet. Find out why there’s no need to fear math - you just need to think outside the cuboid. Also, how nature’s geometric shapes inspire the next generation of squishy robots and an argument for radically overhauling math class. The end point of these common factors is acute show that’s as fun as eating Pi.Guests: Eugenia Cheng – Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, tenured at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and author of “How to Bake Pi” Shankar Venkataramani – Professor of math at the University of Arizona Steven Strogatz – Professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University and author of “Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe” Daniel Finkel – Mathematician and founder and director of operations at “Math for Love” Originally aired July 15, 2019Featuring 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

Hosted by Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquhart from the hit show Morbid.When 90-year-old Laurence Pilgeram drops dead on the sidewalk outside his condo, you might think that’s the end of his story. But, really, it’s just the beginning. Because Laurence and others like him have signed up to be frozen and brought back to life in the future. And that belief will pull multiple generations of the Pilgeram family into a cryonics soap opera filled with dead pets, gold coins, grenades, fist fights, mysterious packages, family feuds, Hall of Fame baseball legends, and frozen heads — lots of frozen heads. From Wondery, comes a story about life, death, and what comes next.Follow Frozen Head on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge early and ad-free by subscribing to Wondery+ in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery App.  Listen to Frozen Head: Wondery.fm/FH_BPS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The newest Pentagon report on UAPs – or Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon – reflects long standing public interest about what’s in our skies. Now, NASA is investigating for themselves.Should we assume that what we can’t identify is alien visitation? In our regular look at critical thinking, we look at the history of UFO sightings, visit Roswell on the 75th anniversary of the crash, and ask how our desire to believe influences our interpretation of evidence.Guests:Paul Hynek - Teacher at Pepperdine University and son of the late astronomer J. Allen HynekRoger Launius - Former chief historian for NASA and former Chair of the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum 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

A radical plan could solve a historic global health inequity. Countries in the global south who waited for more than a year for ample supplies of Covid vaccines have banded together to make mRNA vaccines locally. If successful, they could end a dangerous dependency on wealthy nations and help stop pandemics before they start.In a special episode, supported by the Pulitzer Center, journalist Amy Maxmen shares her reporting from southern Africa about the inspiring project led by the WHO that’s made fast progress. But it could fail, and a global imbalance will remain, if Big Pharma has its way. Find out what’s at stake.Guests:Amy Maxmen - Award-winning science journalist, Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the Nature article, "The Radical Plan for Vaccine Equity"Petro Terblanche - Managing Director, Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines in Cape Town, South AfricaKondwani Charles Jambo - Senior Lecturer and immunologist at the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre, MalawiBarney Graham - Former deputy director at the Vaccine Research Center at NIH and professor of medicine and microbiology immunology biochemistry at Morehouse School of MedicineEmile Hendricks - Research technologist at Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines in Cape Town, South AfricaAchal Prabhala - Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, Coordinator at AccessIBSA, a medicines-access initiative in Bengaluru, IndiaPatrick Tippoo - Head of Science and Innovation at Biovac in Cape Town, South Africa, founding member of the African Vaccine Manufacturing Initiative (AVMI)Harrison Chauluka - chief of the Mkunda village in MalawiAgnes Joni - farmer in Chiradzulu, MalawiProphet Dauda - translator and writer in Blantyre, Malawi Originally aired November 21, 2022Thanks to the Pulitzer Center for help supporting this episode of Big Picture ScienceFeaturing 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

Catalytic converters are disappearing. If you’ve had yours stolen, you know that precious and rare earth metals are valuable. But these metals are in great demand for things other than converters, such as batteries for electric cars, wind farms and solar panels.We need rare earth metals to combat climate change, but where to get them? Could we find substitutes?One activity that could be in our future: Deep sea mining. But it’s controversial. Can one company’s plan to mitigate environmental harm help?Guests:Paul Dauenhauer - Professor of chemical engineering and material science at the University of Minnesota and a 2020 MacArthur FellowChris Leighton - Distinguished University Teaching Professor, Editor, Physical Review Materials, Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of MinnesotaRenee Grogan - Co-founder and Chief Sustainability Officer, Impossible Mining companyOriginally aired January 17, 2022Featuring music by Dewey Dellay. Big 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