Big Picture Science

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

Climate change isn’t waiting for us to act. We’ve missed several deadlines to mitigate the dangers of this existential threat, which suggests we prefer to avert our gaze rather than deal with the problem. It’s similar to the way society reacts to an incoming comet in the movie “Don’t Look Up!” As a major Antarctic ice sheet shows signs of collapse, it’s no wonder we feel some “climate anxiety.” Can we leverage this emotion to spur action? That, and where hope lies, in this episode.Guests:Joellen Russell – Oceanographer and climate scientist at the University of ArizonaKatie Mack – Professor of Theoretical Physics at North Carolina State University, and author of “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)”Jessica Tierney – Professor of Paleoclimatology at the University of ArizonaSusan Clayton – Professor of Psychology and Environmental Studies, College of WoosterOriginally aired February 21, 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!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Animals experience the world differently. There are insects that can see ultraviolet light, while some snakes can hunt in the dark thanks to their ability to sense infrared. Such differences are not restricted to vision: Elephants can hear subsonic sounds, birds navigate by magnetism, and your dog lives in a world marked by odors. In this episode, we speak to science journalist Ed Yong about how other creatures sense the world. Could we ever understand what it’s like to have the hearing of a bat or the sight of a hawk? Guest:Ed Yong – Science writer for The Atlantic whose coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic earned him a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism. He is the author of, “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us.” Originally aired September 5, 2022Featuring 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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The James Webb Space Telescope has turned its golden eye on the cosmos. The largest, most sensitive telescope put in space since the Hubble Space Telescope is already producing new photos of far-off galaxies and other cosmic phenomena.In this episode: astronomers share their reactions to these stunning images, the project scientist on JWST describes how infrared cameras capture phenomena that are invisible to shorter wavelengths, and a plan to investigate the very stardust that created everything, including you and me.Guests:Néstor Espinoza – Assistant astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute, principal investigator for exoplanet atmospheric physics, James Webb Space TelescopeAlyssa Pagan – Science Visuals Developer at the Space Telescope Science InstituteJohn Mather – Nobel Prize-winning NASA astronomer and Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space TelescopeAlex Filippenko – Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, BerkeleyOriginally aired August 8, 2022Featuring 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

5G, the latest mobile network standard, is coming. As new cell towers sprout around the world, do we know enough to confidently claim that this new technology is safe? After all, older networking standards relied on microwaves, radiation which has wavelengths of inches to a foot or so. 5G operates at much higher frequencies, with millimeter wavelengths.Some are worried that being subjected to millimeter radiation could cause cancers. But what does science say? 5G: the promise and the perils.Guests:Jon Samet – Pulmonary physician, epidemiologist, and dean of the Colorado School of Public Health.Claire Parkinson – Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterBob Berman – Astronomer, regular contributor to Astronomy Magazine, and author of “Zapped: From Infrared to X-Rays, the Curious History of Invisible Light”David Ropeik – Retired Harvard instructor and author of several books about the psychology of risk perception.Originally aired February 28, 2022Featuring 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