Big Picture Science

They look like a cross between a beaver and a duck, and they all live Down Under. The platypus may lay eggs, but is actually a distant mammalian cousin, one that we last saw, in an evolutionary sense, about 166 million years ago.Genetic sequencing is being used to trace that history, while scientists intensify their investigation of the habits and habitats of these appealing Frankencreatures; beginning by taking a census to see just how many are out there, and if their survival is under threat.Guests:  Josh Griffiths – Senior Wildlife Ecologist at Cesaar Australia. Jane Fenelon – Research fellow, University of Melbourne Paula Anich – Professor of Natural Resources, Northland College Wes Warren – Professor of Genomics, University of Missouri Phoebe Meagher – Conservation Officer, Taronga Conservation Society, Australia   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your daily mucus output is most impressive. Teaspoons or measuring cups can’t capture its entire volume. Find out how much your body churns out and why you can’t live without the viscous stuff. But slime in general is remarkable.Whether coating the bellies of slithery creatures, sleeking the surface of aquatic plants, or dripping from your nose, its protective qualities make it one of the great inventions of biology. Join us as we venture to the land of ooze!Guests: Christopher Viney - Professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Merced Katharina Ribbeck - Bioengineer at MIT Anna Rose Hopkins – Chef and partner at Hank and Bean in Los Angeles Ruth Kassinger - author of “Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us” Originally aired January 27, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The seas are rising. It’s no longer a rarity to see kayakers paddling through downtown Miami. By century’s end, the oceans could be anywhere from 2 to 6 feet higher, threatening millions of people and property. But humans once knew how to adapt to rising waters. As high water threatens to drown our cities, can we learn do it again.Hear stories of threatened land: submerged Florida suburbs, the original sunken city (Venice), and the U.S. East Coast, where anthropologists rush to catalogue thousands of low-lying historical and cultural sites in harm’s way, including Jamestown, Virginia and ancient Native American sites. But also, stories of ancient adaptability: from the First American tribes of the Colusa in South Florida to the ice age inhabitants of Doggerland. And, modern approaches to staying dry: stilt houses, seawalls, and floating cities.Guests:·       Jeff Goodell – Journalist and author of “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World”·       Brian Fagan – Archaeologist and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of California Santa Barbara, and author of many books including “The Attacking Ocean: the Past, Present, and Future of Rising Sea Levels” ·       David Anderson – Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee. His team’s PLOS ONE paper is “Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction.” His DINAA site can be used to generate maps of where people were living in the past, up to ca. 15,000 years ago.  Originally aired August 27, 2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rip van Winkle snoozed for 20 years, and Sleeping Beauty for 100. But seeds in an underground bottle have easily beaten both these records, germinating long after the scientist who buried them a few feet underground had died. We investigate biology’s long haulers–from seeds to small creatures–who are able to wake up and restart their lives, even after tens of thousands of years. Also, what are those buried 17-year cicadas doing as they wait to come back topside?Guests: Chris Simon – Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut Sarah Dwyer – Chocolatier, Chouquette Chocolates Frank Telewski – Director of the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden at Michigan State University, and professor in its department of plant biology Rocco Mancinelli – Microbial ecologist, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute Featuring music by Dewey Dellay  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the government announced it would release a report about strange aerial phenomena, public excitement and media coverage took off like a Saturn V rocket. But what’s really in the report? Do we finally have the long-awaited evidence of alien visitation? We discuss the report’s content and implications with both a former U.S. Air Force pilot and a skeptical investigator. And if it hasn’t proven alien presence, what happens next with those who nonetheless think Earth is being visited?Guests: James McGaha - Retired USAF pilot, astronomer, and director of the Grasslands Observatory. Founder and chairman of the Tucson Skeptics and a Scientific Consultant to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.  Mick West - Science writer, skeptical debunker, former video game programmer. Author of “Escaping the Rabbit Hole.”   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The scientific method is tried and true. It has led us to a reliable understanding of things from basic physics to biomedicine. So yes, we can rely on the scientific method. The fallible humans behind the research, not so much. And politicians? Don’t get us started. Remember when one brought a snowball to the Senate floor to “prove” that global warming was a hoax? Oy vey.We talk to authors about new books that seem to cast a skeptical eye on the scientific method… but that are really throwing shade on the ambitious labcoat-draped humans who heat the beakers and publish the papers … as well as the pinstriped politicians who twist science to win votes.Find out why the hyper-competitive pursuit of results that are “amazing” and “incredible” is undermining medical science… how a scientific breakthrough can turn into a societal scourge (heroin as miracle cure)… and what happens when civil servants play the role of citizen scientists on CSPAN.Guests: Richard Harris - NPR science correspondent, author of Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions.  Paul Offit - Professor of pediatrics, attending physician, Division of Infectious Diseases, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, author of Pandora’s Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong. Dave Levitan - Science journalist, author of Not a Scientist; How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent and Utterly Mangle Science.    Originally aired May 22, 2017 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone is familiar with the immediate consequences of a pandemic – sickness and death. But the long-term ramifications can be just as dramatic: a breakdown of the family and society, shifts in political power, and widespread appeals to magical thinking.Plagues are societal disrupters. Their effects can linger long after the pathogens have gone.Also, hear how art responded to a pandemic and how the Louisiana Purchase was made possible by an outbreak of fever in the Caribbean.Guest: Frank Snowden – Professor of History and the History of Medicine at Yale University, and author of Epidemics and Society.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The toilet: A ubiquitous appliance that dates to the time of Shakespeare. But billions of people around the world still lack modern sanitation infrastructure. And the incentive to modernize includes the possibility that recycling human waste could help with conservation efforts, energy generation, and even medicine.Also, a sixth-grader puts lipstick on cats’ bottoms to map places their tush has touched, and in Michigan, why peeing on the peonies can be a good thing.Guests: Kaeden Henry – Sixth grade student in Tennessee. Kerry Griffin – Mother of Kaeden Henry; holds a doctorate in animal behavior. Yvette Johnson-Walker – Clinical Instructor in Veterinary Clinical Medicine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chelsea Wald – Science and environmental journalist, and author of Pipe Dreams: The Urgent Global Quest to Transform the Toilet. Nancy Love – Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan   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 Engineering Charles 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 World Jeff Podos – Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Steve Simpson – Professor of Marine Biology and Global Change, Exeter University, U.K. Originally aired January 20, 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you yawn, gasp, sniff, snore, or sigh, you’re availing yourself of our very special atmosphere. It’s easy to take this invisible chemical cocktail for granted, but it’s not only essential to your existence: it unites you and every other life form on the planet, dead or alive. The next breath you take likely includes molecules exhaled by Julius Caesar or Eleanor Roosevelt.And for some animals, air is an information superhighway. Dogs navigate with their noses. Their sniffing snouts help them to identify their owners, detect trace amounts of drugs, and even sense some diseases. Find out what a dog’s nose knows, and why no amount of bathing and dousing in perfume can mask your personal smelliness.Plus, why your own schnoz is key to not only enjoying a fine Bordeaux, but to survival of our species.Guests: Sam Kean – Science writer, author of “Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us”  Ken Givich – Microbiologist, Guittard Chocolate company Alexandra Horowitz – Dog cognition researcher, Barnard College, author of “Being A Dog: Following the Dog Into a World of Smell”  Rachel Herz – Cognitive neuroscientist, Brown University, author of “Why You Eat What You Eat,” and “The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell”   Originally aired December 4, 2017 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices