If there is only one show you hear about the end of the world, let it be this one. Recorded before a live audience at the Computer History Museum on October 27^th, 2012, this two-part special broadcast of Big Picture Science separates fact from fiction in doomsday prediction.

In this second episode: a global viral pandemic … climate change … and the threat of assimilation by super-intelligent machines.

Presented as part of the Bay Area Science Festival.

Find out more about our guests and their work.

Guests:

• Kirsten Gilardi – Wildlife veterinarian at the University of California, Davis. leader of the Gorilla Doctors program, and team leader for the US-AID Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT program
• Ken Caldeira – Climate scientist, Carnegie Intuition for Science at Stanford University
• Luke Muehlhauser – Executive Director of the Singularity Institute
• Bradley Voytek – Neuroscience researcher at the University of California, San Francisco

Descripción en español

If there is only one show you hear about the end of the world, let it be this one. Recorded before a live audience at the Computer History Museum on October 27^th, 2012, this two-part special broadcast of Big Picture Science separates fact from fiction in doomsday prediction. In this episode: Maya prophesy for December 21, 2012 … asteroid impact and cosmic threats …. and alien invasion.

Presented as part of the Bay Area Science Festival.

Find out more about our guests and their work.

Guests:

• Guy P. Harrison – Science writer and author of 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True
• Andrew Fraknoi – Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California

Descripción en español

Zombies are making a killing in popular culture. But where did the idea behind these mythical, cerebrum-supping nasties come from? Discover why they may be a hard-wired inheritance from our Pleistocene past.

Also, how a whimsical mathematical model of a Zombie apocalypse can help us withstand earthquakes and disease outbreaks, and how the rabies virus contributed to zombie mythology.

Plus, new ideas for how doctors should respond when humans are in a limbo state between life and death: no pulse, but their brains continue to hum.

Meet the songwriter who has zombies on the brain …. and we chase spaced-out animated corpses in the annual Run-For-Your-Lives foot race.

Guests:

• Guy P. Harrison – Science writer and author of 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True
• Jonathan Coulton – Singer and songwriter
• Robert Smith? – Mathematician and epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa, in Canada
• Dick Teresi – Science writer and author of The Undead: Organ Harvesting, the Ice-Water Test, Beating Heart Cadavers—How Medicine Is Blurring the Line Between Life and Death
• Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy – - Respectively Senior Editor at Wired Magazine and veterinarian, and the co-authors of Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus

The Internet is not the only globally-uniting phenomenon. Viruses and bacteria can circle the globe as fast as we can, and the effects can be devastating. Discover what it takes for an animal disease to become a human pandemic. Also, was hurricane Sandy a man-made disaster? The future of severe storms and climate change.

Plus, the view of our science from abroad: why Brits have no trouble accepting the theory of evolution but Americans do. And what about a new annex for Silicon Valley – 12 miles out to sea?

Guests:

• Jerry Meehl – Senior scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO
• Alok Jha – Science correspondent, The Guardian
• David Quammen – Science journalist and author, most recently of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
• Max Marty – Co-founder and CEO of Blueseed

We all want to turn back time. But until we build a time machine, we’ll have to rely on a few creative approaches to capturing things as they were – and preserving them for posterity. One is upping memory storage capacity itself. Discover just how much of the past we can cram into our future archives, and whether going digital has made it all vulnerable to erasure.

Plus – scratch it and tear it – then watch this eerily-smart material revert to its undamaged self. And, what was life like pre-digital technology? We can’t remember, but one writer knows; he’s living life circa 1993 (hint: no cell phone).

Also, using stem cells to save the white rhino and other endangered species. And, the arrow of time itself – could it possibly run backwards in another universe?

Guests:

• Michael S. Malone – Professor of professional writing at Santa Clara University and the author of The Guardian of All Things: The Epic Story of Human Memory
• Oliver Ryder – Director of genetics, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research
• Michael E. Smith – Chemist, Arkema, Inc
• Sean Carroll – Theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, author of The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World
• Pico Iyer – Writer, author of The Man Within My Head and the New York Times article, “The Joy of Quiet”

If you’re itching it get away from it all, really get away from it all, have we got some exotic destinations for you. Mars … Jupiter’s moon Europa … asteroids . Tour some enticing worlds that are worlds away, but ripe for exploration.

Also, why private spaceships may be just the ticket for getting yourself into space, unless you want to wait for a space elevator.

And, why one science journalist boasts of an infectious, unabashed, and unbridled enthusiasm for space travel.

Guests:

• Cynthia Phillips – Planetary geologist, SETI Institute
• Britney Schmidt – Research scientist, University of Texas, Austin
• Paul Abell – Planetary geologist, NASA’s Johnson Space Center
• Richard Hollingham – Science journalist, producer of Space Boffins podcast, living in the U.K.
• Barry Matsumori – Senior vice president for commercial sales and business development, SpaceX Corporation
• Peter Swan – Space System Engineer and Vice President, International Space Elevator Consortium

Stuttering speech and facial tics are among the strange symptoms that swept through a New York high school. Discover what’s behind the odd outbreak, and why one sociologist sees parallels to Salem, Massachusetts 300 years ago.

Also, an update on the cellphone cancer debate, and why one congressman wants warning labels on all new phones.

Plus, the ultimate cleanse: giving up on food to survive on light and air. We investigate the claims of Breatharians.

It’s Skeptic Check … but don’t take our word for it!

Guests:

• Dennis Kucinich – U.S. Representative, Ohio’s 10^th congressional district
• Joshua Muscat – Epidemiologist, professor of public health sciences, Penn State at Hershey College of Medicine
• Michael Wyde – Toxicologist, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
• Robert Bartholomew – Sociologist, Botany College, Auckland, New Zealand, author of Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior
• Gordy Slack – Science writer
• Benjamin Radford – Deputy editor, Skeptical Inquirer magazine

It’s all in the numbers. The trick is, finding what you’re looking for. But that’s the name of the game with big data. We have a giga-gigabyte of information, and combing through it will lead to new cures for disease, new discoveries about the cosmos, or clues to our social and economic behavior.

But is big data Big Brother? You leave a little bit of yourself behind with each mouse click. Discover how surveillance and privacy issues bubble out of the mix, as the terabytes keep flowing in.

Plus one man’s quest to know himself through the numbers as he records everything – and we do mean everything – about his body.

Guests:

• Atul Butte – Associate professor, division chief, systems medicine, Stanford University
• Larry Smarr – Professor of computer science, University of California, San Diego, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, (Calit2)
• Karen Nelson – Microbiologist, director of the Rockville Campus of the J. Craig Venter Institute
• Gerry Harp – Physicist, and Director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute
• Deirdre Mulligan – Assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information and faculty director of the Berkeley Center of Law and Technology
• Ken Goldberg – Professor of engineering, information and art at the University of California, Berkeley

Before you chase it with a broom, consider this – without the rat, we might miss critical insights into the nature of stress, cancer … and even love. These furry, red-eyed rodents have a unique role in medical research – and a ubiquitous companion to our urban lives.

Discover the origins of the albino laboratory rat … what rat laughter sounds like, and why these four-legged fur balls don’t fall victim to the pressure of the rat race … but we do.

Guests:

• Kelly Lambert – Behavioral Neuroscientist, Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia, author of The Lab Rat Chronicles: A Neuroscientist Reveals Life Lessons from the Planet’s Most Successful Mammals
• Michael Gould – Professor of Oncology and Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Jaak Pankseep – Neuroscientist, Veterinary College, Washington State University, author of The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)
• Pico Iyer – Writer, author of The Man Within My Head and the New York Times article The Joy of Quiet

Descripción en español

To need air is human. Our lungs thank us for each breath we take. But air is more than a transporter of O². It shapes our weather, keeps birds aloft and moves spores from here to there. A cubic foot of air is anything but “empty” (hot dog grease particles, anyone?).

The same goes for space (minus the hot dog grease). It’s a happening place. Discover why interstellar space is more than a whole lot o’ nothing; and what happens when the Voyager spacecraft leaves our solar system. Plus, catch a skydiver in action!

Guests:

• Mako Igarashi – Skydiving instructor, Skydive Hollister, Hollister, CA
• Rhett Allain – Physicist at Southeastern Louisiana University, blogger for Wired.com
• William Bryant Logan – Author of Air: The Restless Shaper of the World
• Robert Wagoner – Emeritus professor of physics, Stanford University
• Alex Filippenko – Astronomer, University of California, Berkeley
• Ed Stone – Physicist at CalTech, former Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, project scientist for the Voyager mission