Big Picture Science

Physics means getting physical if you’re tackling the biggest, most mysterious questions in the universe. Stoic scientists endure the driest, darkest, coldest spots on the planet to find out how it all began and why there’s something rather than nothing. From the bottom of an old iron mine to the top of the Andes, we’ll hear their stories.Plus, Steven Weinberg on this weird stuff called dark energy, and Leonard Susskind sees double, no, triple, no, …infinite universes.Guests: Anil Ananthaswamy - Corresponding editor for New Scientist magazine in London and author of The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth's Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe Steven Weinberg - Nobel Prize-winning physicist at University of Texas at Austin and author of Lake Views: This World and the Universe Leonard Susskind - Professor of theoretical physics, Stanford University André de Gouvêa - Associate professor of physics, Northwestern University Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Memories are slippery things – some are crystal clear, others more like a muddy pool, and some… well, they seem to vanish completely.Scientists admit that memory is all very complicated, but one piece of the puzzle lies in how we age – we’ll hear the latest research.Meanwhile, meet the man who digitally logged his every waking moment - and why maybe the secret to happiness isn’t in remembering but in forgetting.Plus, the case for deleting data from your hard-drive… and from your brain itself.Guests: Adam Gazzaley - Director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center at University of California, San Francisco Gordon Bell - Principal researcher at Microsoft Research Jim Gemmell - Senior researcher at Microsoft Research James McGaugh - Neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine Viktor Mayer-Schönberger - Director of the Information and Innovation Policy Research Center at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and the author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age Todd Sacktor - Neurologist, SUNY Downstate Medical Center Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The end is nigh. Only, on which nigh should we rely? According to billboards, Judgment Day is in May and the end of the world follows months later. But other authorities claim 2012 as the apocalyptic year, as predicted by the ancient Mayans. It’s a busy time for doomsday prophecy.Find out what’s driving these pessimistic predictions and whether it’s time to cash in your stock portfolio.Meanwhile, a survey of the real threats to Earth, and indeed to the universe, from asteroids, exploding stars, or a big cosmic rip. And the lingering menace of atomic weapons... Is nuclear war inevitable or can intelligence and political will forestall atomic Armageddon?Finally, why everything’s going to be alright! An optimist’s tour of the future.It’s Skeptic Check, our monthly look at critical thinking on Are We Alone.Guests: Phil Plait - Astronomer, and author of the Bad Astronomy blog at Discover Magazine Ron Rosenbaum - Author of How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III Catherine Wessinger - Professor of religious studies at Loyola University in New Orleans Mark Stevenson - Author of An Optimist's Tour of the Future: One Curious Man Sets Out to Answer "What's Next?" Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The universe is big – really big.* Galaxies, for instance, are often large enough to hold a trillion stars. But how did these heavenly heavyweights come to be? Hear how still-mysterious dark matter is implicated in the birth of galaxies.Also, gamma ray bursts - explosions more energetic than anything since the Big Bang - take place somewhere in the visible universe every day. What are they, and could they obliterate life on Earth?And, the biggest cosmic mystery de jour: dark energy. Why new, super-size telescopes may finally reveal just what it is.We’re living large on “Big, Really Big.”*appreciative nod to Douglas AdamsGuests: George Djorgovski - Astronomer, California Institute of Technology Sandra Faber - Astronomer and Chair of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California at Santa Cruz; leads the CANDELS survey that uses the Hubble Space Telescope to image more than 250,000 distant galaxies Daniel Perley - Astronomer, University of California at Berkeley Ed Stone - Former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and physicist at the California Institute of Technology Richard Panek - Author of The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Public distrust of science is higher than at any time since the Enlightenment. New Yorker writer Michael Specter argues how our anti-science bias and our irrationalism about everything from genetically modified foods to climate change to childhood vaccines endangers our future.And remember when… a look back at scientists who at first pooh-poohed plate tectonics... meteorites, and quantum physics. How the evidence turned them around.It’s Skeptic Check… but don’t take our word for it.Guests: Michael Specter - Writer for The New Yorker and author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives Read Montague - Director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine and author of Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions Spencer Weart - Historian of science Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Birds do it. Bees do it. But no one sings about how they do it. And frankly, not even Cole Porter can make bedroom behavior that involves decapitating your mate sound romantic. And what rhymes with “cannibalism?” But the animal world abounds with bizarre sexual behavior… and it’s all perfectly normal.Find out how female spiders lure males to their doom… why dolphins are the friskiest of mammals… whether E.T. would have sex… and why sexual reproduction evolved in the first place.Also, why the marketing gurus have it all wrong: driving a Hummer or wearing Gucci won’t help you land a mate. Find out what will.Guests: Olivia Judson - Evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London and author of Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex Lori Marino - Evolutionary Biologist at Emory University Sharon Moalem - Neuro-geneticist, evolutionary biologist and author of How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do Geoffrey Miller - Evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico and author of Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Being first counts in science. Land that coveted spot and you’ll make history, whether it’s with the first steam engine or the discovery of our earliest human ancestor.But what does “first” mean when technological invention so heavily builds on what’s come before... and evolution represents continuous change?Find out how “publish or perish” made Darwin famous… why we’ll never find the first human fossil… and how powerful new telescopes are allowing us to see the earliest galaxies.Plus, the chicken and egg battle it out in line.Guests: Garth Illingworth - Astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz Sean B. Carroll - Molecular biologist and geneticist at the University of Wisconsin Madison and author of Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species Leslea Hlusko - Paleontologist at the University of California- Berkeley. Read more about Ardi Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the double-helix to the expansion of the universe, great scientific discoveries reshape our understanding of who we are and how things work. But great discoveries require more than just a great mind. We tour brainy breakthroughs from Archimedes to Darwin, and find out what made their revolutionary insights possible.Also, why you need more than a stratospheric I.Q. to be a super-achiever. And how the invention of reading re-directed the course of civilization and re-wired our brains in the process.Guests: Alan Hirshfeld - Professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and author of Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes Richard Holmes - Author of The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science Angela Duckworth - Psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Her grit study can be found here Stanislas Dehaene - Cognitive neruoscientist at the the Collège de France in Paris, and author of Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention Descripción en español Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The weaker the mixture, the stronger the potency. That paradox is a central tenet of homeopathy. More than 200 years old and developed long before germ theory, the practice is the fastest growing form of alternative medicine worldwide.Proponents say its diluted remedies cure disease. Most scientists maintain there’s nothing in homeopathic solution but water. We’ll hear the arguments, and also the role placebos might be playing in the cure.Plus, skeptic Phil Plait voyages to the edge of the solar system where a new planet has been discovered … maybe!And, consider our brains: the product of millions of years of evolution. So why aren’t we more consistent in our reasoning?It’s Skeptic Check…. but don’t take our word for it.Guests:• Iris Bell – Psychiatrist and researcher in alternative medicine at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine•  Simon Singh – Science writer based in the U.K., author of Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine•  Phil Plait – Astronomer, skeptic, and keeper of the web site badastronomy.com•  Jim Underdown – Executive Director, Center for Inquiry, Los Angeles•  Gordy Slack – Science writer and keeper of the neuroscience web site, "Brainstorm”•  Robert Kurzban – Associate professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earth may not be rare after all. New data from NASA’s Kepler mission suggests that the universe is chock-a-block with planets. More than a thousand new possible planets have just been found, and more than fifty of these might be suitable for life. Ready for cosmic company? We discuss the results of the Kepler mission in a roundtable with some of its top scientists.Meanwhile, the Voyager spacecraft continues to be humanity’s point man in the race to interstellar space. Poised to leave our solar system, we reflect on the mission – including its on-board messages for aliens.Plus, out-of-this world science. From lab coats to warp speed: does Hollywood get it right? Does it matter?Guests:•  Jon Jenkins – Co-principal investigator for the Kepler Mission•  Doug Caldwell – Co-investigator and instrument scientist for the Kepler Mission•  Jessie Christiansen – Data scientist working on the Kepler mission•  Ed Stone – Professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, and former Director of the Jet Propulsion LaboratoryJennifer Ouellette – Writer and former director, National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices