Big Picture Science

Mom and apple pie. Computers and silicon. Martians and death rays. Some things just go together naturally. But how about science and politics? Science and religion? Science and fiction? These pairings are often unnatural and contentious … but they don’t have to be.Discover how science can team up with other endeavors in productive, if surprising, symbiosis.Meet a particle physicist, turned U.S. Congressman, who calls for more scientists on Capitol Hill. Also, a tour of the Golden Age of Islamic Science.Plus, scientists named Elmo and Super Grover 2.0 teach small children to conduct experiments with the help of chickens and dancing penguins.And, it’s not quite science but it’s not entirely fiction either: how sci-fi helps shape our cultural debates about the future.Guests: Bill Foster - Physicist and former U.S. representative from Illinois Carol-Lynn Parente - Executive Producer, Sesame Street Ranjana Mehra - Docent at The Tech Museum, San Jose, California Brooks Peck - Curator, EMP Museum, Seattle, Washington Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s no harm talking to your houseplant, but will your chatter really help it grow? We look at various biological claims, from whether plants feel pain to the ability of cats to predict earthquakes. Feline forecasters, anyone?Also, when does understanding biology have important implications for health and policy? The arguments for and against genetically modified foods, and the danger of “pox parties” as a replacement for childhood vaccination.Plus, the history and current state of scientific literacy in the United States. When did we stop trusting science?Guests: Andy Michael - Seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California Ron Lindsay - President of the Center for Inquiry, headquartered in Amherst, NY Steven Novella - Clinical neurologist and Director of General Neurology at Yale University School of Medicine; host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast Shawn Lawrence Otto - Author of Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America Chelsea Specht - Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wish you could ditch computers? There’s no escape button for that. Computers are not only a part of your daily grind, they may soon be a part of you. We’ll hear from the world’s first cyborg about why we should make nice in our arms race with machines.Also, the secret behind the extraordinary breakthroughs that DARPA scientists are making – from building autonomous cars to wiring robotic surgeons.Plus, making space for humans… and their bodily functions: the engineering tricks of toiletry. And, a carbon-based astronaut on the view of Earth from orbit.Guests: Kevin Warwick - Professor of Cybernetics at University of Reading in the U.K. Santiago Bilinkis - Student at the Singularity University Mary Roach - Writer and author of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Tom Jones - United States astronaut, space consultant, and veteran of four Space Shuttle flights Michael Belfiore - Space and Technology writer, and author of The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs Descripción en españolFirst aired August 23, 2010. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Think small! Microbes are tinier than the dot at the end of this sentence, yet they can make humans sicker than dogs, dogs sicker than humans, jump from animal to human and keep scientists guessing when and where the next disease will appear.Discover how doctors diagnosed one man’s mysterious infection, the role that animals play as hosts for disease, and why the rate of emerging diseases is increasing worldwide.Also, why your kitchen is a biosafety hazard, and how the Human Microbiome Project will tally all the microbes on – and in - you.Plus, the extreme places on Earth where microbes thrive and what it suggests for the existence of alien life. And, how one strain of bacteria helped a farmer grow a pumpkin the weight of a small car!Guests: Peter Hudson - Biologist, Director of Life Sciences at Penn State University Peter Krause - Senior research scientist at the Yale School of Public Health Durland Fish - Epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health. Information on his Lyme disease app David Relman - Stanford University microbiologist and infectious disease clinician Erich Fleming - Biologist, SETI Institute O. Peter Snyder - Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management John Raeside - Oakland, California Frances Raeside - Oakland, California Jennifer Kate Arnold - Infectious Disease Clinic, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group Dave Stelts - Farmer, head of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth Neil Anderson - Owner, president of Reforestation Technologies International. Find retail products. Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Making space for everyone” could be NASA’s motto. But as commercial spaceships get ready to blast off, that populist idea is being tested. Space cowboys in the private sector say they’re the ones who can provide unfettered access to space, for tourists and scientists alike.Meet a scientist who already has a ticket to ride on SpaceShip Two and discover what he hopes to learn about asteroids during his five minutes of weightlessness.Plus, NASA in motion: it’s back to the moon as the GRAIL mission probes the interior of our lovely lunar satellite. Also, can you dig it? The rover Curiosity can. It’s headed to Mars to hunt for clues to alien life … with a jackhammer.Also, as the Hubble Space Telescope shuts down, the James Webb Space Telescope revs up. Or does it? The telescope is designed to study the birth of galaxies and hunt for evidence of water on far away worlds. But will Congress pull the plug?Guests: James Oberg - former Space Shuttle Mission Control engineer, and space expert Maria Zuber - Planetary scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Principal Investigator of NASA’s GRAIL mission Joy Crisp - Geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Principal Investigator on the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity Massimo Stiavelli - Astronomer at the Space Science Telescope Institute, and Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope Dan Durda - Planetary scientist, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado More about the Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What you can’t see … can make you sick. Humans have been battling viruses and bacteria since the beginning of time. The malaria parasite has been keeping deadly company with us for 500,000 years. King Tut had it and so did Julius Caesar. What’s keeping this bug going today?Also, how disease almost halted the most ambitious engineering project in the world … how elite disease detectives puzzle out perplexing epidemics … And – could tiny bugs from spaaace, ace, ace be our ancestors?Guests: Sonia Shah - Author of The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years Michael Conniff - Historian, director of Global Studies at San Jose State University, and author of Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904-1981 (Pitt Latin American Series) Mark Pendergrast - Author of Inside the Outbreaks: The Elite Medical Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service Robert Zubrin - President of the Mars Society Descripción en españolFirst aired August 2, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Calling all pessimists! Your brain is wired for optimism! Yes, deep down, we’re all Pollyannas. So wipe that scowl off your face and discover the evolutionary advantage of thinking positive. Also, enjoy other smile-inducing research suggesting that if you crave happiness, you should do the opposite of what your brain tells you to do.Plus, why a “well-being index” may replace Dow Jones as a metric for success … a Twitter study that predicts your next good mood … and whether our furry and finned animal friends can experience joy.Guests: Frank Drake - Astronomer and author of the Drake Equation Tali Sharot - Cognitive neuroscientist at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at the University College London and the author of The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain Michael Macy - Sociologist at Cornell University His team’s Twitter study: http://timeu.se/ Carol Graham - Economist at the Brookings Institution and author of The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being David DiSalvo - Science and technology writer, author of What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite Robin Ince - U.K.-based comedian Jonathan Balcombe - Animal behavior scientist and author of The Exultant Ark: A Pictorial Tour of Animal Pleasure Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Zombies, aliens, Bigfoot, oh my!! We've covered - or rather uncovered - them all and more on Skeptic Check, our monthly look of critical thinking. And now we've collected enough strange encounters to assemble a sordid retrospective of sorts.Sharpen your brain, it's Skeptic Check, Beast Of. But don't take our word for it!Guests: Phil Plait - Skeptic and keeper of Discover Magazine’s blog, badastronomy.com Bruce Hood - Cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol in the U.K. and author of The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs Susan Jacoby - Author of The Age of American Unreason Steve Silberman - Contributing editor, Wired Magazine, author of “The Placebo Problem” in the September 2009 issue Mary Pope-Handy - Estate Agent, Silicon Valley and keeper of the website hauntedrealestate.com Jim Underdown - Executive Director, Center for Inquiry, West – Los Angeles Paul Offit - Pediatrician, Chief of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and author of Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure Stephen Schneider - Climate scientist, Stanford University Brendan Riley - Assistant professor of English, Columbia College, Chicago Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shh - can you keep it down? Nope. Not unless you want to do away with civilization. Our buzzing, humming, whirling, machine-driven world is a poster child for technological progress, right? As is hearing loss. It’s driven one man to search the world for silence. We’ll hear what he didn’t hear, and what Einstein predicted we should hear in deep space, where gravitational waves may reveal the hidden sounds of the universe, including the birth of black holes.Guests: George Foy - Author of Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute Silence Garret Keizer - Author of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want Craig Hogan - Director for Particle Astrophysics at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Descripción en españolFirst aired July 5, 2010 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anyone who does gardening knows that life is tough. It’s also ancient – the first living things appeared on this planet nearly as soon as our world was habitable. We consider life on real worlds – like Earth and Mars – as well as fictional ones, such as the desert planet from the movie “Dune”. We’ll hear about a new scheme to find Martians, and practical approaches to coping with climate change.And is Pluto seeking revenge? The unmasking of a fourth moon around this former planet!We’re making some lively discoveries in Seth’s Tool Shed on Big Picture Science.Guests: Philip Duffy - Physicist and senior scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Kevin Zahnle - Planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center David Summers - Astrobiologist at the SETI Institute Christopher Carr - Researcher in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mark Showalter - Research scientist at the SETI Institute Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices