Big Picture Science

19/11/2019

Riveting account of what Ebola does to the body, the gains and setbacks in fighting the disease. Author Richard Preston, journalist for Nature Amy Maxmenand Yap Boum from Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)whom we spoke with the day after the new Ebola vaccine was announced. http://bit.ly/37h4n1r

A new vaccine may help turn Ebola into a disease we can prevent, and a new drug may make it one we can cure. But the political crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo has fueled violence against health workers and Ebola treatment centers. Find out why context matters in the efforts to stop Ebola,...

23/10/2019

Did the discovery of exoplanets deserve a Nobel Prize in Physics? How subsequent discoveries changes the hunt for alien life, and a scientist-musician duo puts the sounds of exoplanet chemistry to music! Hear it all here.

For two Swiss astronomers, it’s “Stockholm, here we come.” Their first-ever discovery of a planet orbiting another star has been awarded the most prestigious prize in science. Find out how their exoplanet discovery led to 4,000 more and how that changes the odds of finding life beyond Earth. A...

03/09/2019

What assumptions drive the numbers and algorithms? Take a listen!

Big Picture Science – Skeptic Check: Data Bias Sexist snow plowing? Data that guide everything from snow removal schedules to heart research often fail to consider gender. In these cases, “re…

13/08/2019

Are you making the most of your immune system? Find out how microbes in you and on you work with your T-cells, and meet the latest subset of the microbiome: fungi. A fungus among us! Listen here (or wherever you get your podcasts)!

“Diversity or die” could be your new health mantra. Don’t boost your immune system, cultivate it! Like a garden, your body’s defenses benefit from species diversity. Find out why multiple strains of microbes, engaged in a delicate ballet with your T-cells, join internal fungi in combatting d...

15/07/2019

From Baking with Pi to how calculus reveals the wonders of the universe, see how it all adds* up. Listen to our latest episode here!

* we know - arithmetic is technically a small branch of mathematics!

Big Picture Science – Math’s Paths If you bake, you can appreciate math’s transformative properties. Admiring the stackable potato chip is to admire a hyperbolic sheet. Find out why the…

02/07/2019

Our episode about Apollo 11 has landed! Listen here!

Big Picture Science – Nailing the Moon Landing Neil, Buzz, and Michael made it look effortless, but the moon landing was neither easy nor inevitable. Soon after President Kennedy publicly sta…

24/06/2019

What are the ethical ramifications of complex emotions in nonhuman animals? Primatologist Frans de Waal and bioethicist Peter Siniger in this week's episode.

Big Picture Science – Animals Like Us Laughing rats, sorrowful elephants, joyful chimpanzees. The more carefully we observe, and the more we learn about animals, the closer their emotional li…

13/05/2019

From hydrothermal vents recreated in a NASA lab to warm ponds at Yellowstone, we explore two front-runner sites for life's origins. Listen here!

Big Picture Science – Is Life Inevitable? A new theory about life’s origins updates Darwin’s warm little pond. Scientists say they’ve created the building blocks of biology in steaming hot sp…

06/05/2019

Researchers with access to once-classified Soviet documents challenge the official version of what happened both before and after the explosion. Listen here!

Big Picture Science – Rethinking Chernobyl The catastrophic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986 triggered the full-scale destruction of the reactor. But now researche…

22/04/2019

Talking to aliens, tickling AI's funny bone, ancient hominids using rhetoric to quell violence. Find out what's Gained in Translation!

Big Picture Science – Free Range Dinosaursclick to listen! Your virtual assistant is not without a sense of humor. Its repertoire includes the classic story involving a chicken and a road. Bu…

09/04/2019

From blood to spittle to peanut butter (yes, it's a liquid), we explore the strange properties of matter that flows. Take a listen. Water you waiting for?

Big Picture Science – DecodeHer Solid materials get all the production credit. Don’t get us wrong, we depend on their strength and firmness for bridges, bones, and bento boxes. But liquids do…

03/04/2019

The 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt led Hubble to conclude that the universe was expanding. Pioneering codebreaking work of Elizebeth Friedman during WWII helped bust N**i gangs in Argentina. Our episode: DecodeHer

20/02/2019

From heretical astronomy to cutting-edge science. Listen here!

Big Picture Science – Radical Cosmology 400 years ago, some ideas about the cosmos were too scandalous to mention. When the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno suggested that planets existed outsi…

11/02/2019

Auto-correct. Autonomous cars. Artificial intelligence. Are clever technologies out-pacing us? How to help be sure that humans stick around, in this week's episode: "Keeping Humans in the Loop" https://goo.gl/D4gFkZ

04/02/2019

Why is belief about astrology on the rise? Listen here!

Big Picture Science – Astrology Ascending The fault is in our stars. And according to astrology, so is our destiny, our moods, and our character. Mars may be in retrograde, but interest in th…

22/01/2019

A worm frozen for 40,000 years is still alive ... as is your home with multitude bacteria and insects. Stories of life's amazing adaptability in our latest episode "Rip Van Winkle Worm." Listen here!

Big Picture Science – Rip Van Winkle Worm Your shower pipes are alive. So are your sinks, books, and floorboards. New studies of our homes are revealing just what species live there – in the …

14/01/2019

We use sand more than any other natural resource except air and water. And now we're running out of it.

Big Picture Science – True Grit Without sand, engineering would be stuck in the Middle Ages. Wooden houses would line mud-packed streets, and Silicon Valley would be, well, just a valley. San…