The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott Al Scott

This is another cool science episode. Today I'm interviewing successful science outreach personality, cosmologist, and podcaster Dr. Paul Sutter.
Paul M. Sutter is a theoretical cosmologist at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University and a guest researcher at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute in NYC.
He is an award-winning science communicator, having authored two books, Your Place in the Universe and How to Die in Space, and hosting several TV shows, including How the Universe Works, Space Out, and The Edge of Knowledge. He also writes and hosts his own Ask a Spaceman podcast, which has been downloaded over 7 million times.
Lastly, Paul is a globally-recognized leader in the intersection of art and science. His latest collaboration is a production with Syren Modern Dance that explores the nature of time, which he recently performed as a United States Cultural Ambassador at the World Expo in Dubai.
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In this episode I am returning to explore the truth about the Chernobyl disaster. I have the great fortune to interview one of the doctors who treated the exposed workers in Moscow following the explosion.  Let’s see what he thinks of the health risks of nuclear power.
Robert Peter Gale was born in New York in 1945. He received his MD from the State University of New York at Buffalo and PhD in microbiology and immunology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After that Gale was on the faculty of the UCLA School of Medicine, and served as Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research, and later chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the Center for Advanced Studies in Leukemia. He was President of the Armand Hammer Center for Advanced Studies in Nuclear Energy and Health.
Gale is currently Visiting Professor of Haematology at Sun Yat-sen Cancer Centre, Guangzhou, China and Honorary Professor of Hematology at the Institute of Hematology at Peking Union Medical College. He is the Editor-in-Chief of LEUKEMIA, Associate Editor of CLINICAL TRANSPLANTATION, Executive Editor of BONE MARROW TRANSPLANTATION and a reviewer for many scientific journals in hematology, oncology, immunology, transplantation, radiation biology and internal medicine.
Prof. Gale is also an expert on the medical response to nuclear and radiation accidents. From 2007-2019 he was executive director of clinical research and development at Celgene Corp and an honorary member of the Russian and Chinese Academies of Medical Science. He is the recipient of several distinguished awards and honorary degrees including the Presidential Award, and an Emmy award.
Gale has published over 1,350 scientific articles and 25 books on medical topics, nuclear energy and weapons and politics of US-Russian relations and received an Emmy award. His latest book is “Radiation: What it is, What you need to Know”.
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In this episode I continue my exploration of the science of nutrition and food by exploring one of the most controversial money-making phenomena to exist. Diets. Body image is a central problem to a large fraction of the population, and people are willing to spend a lot of money trying to get thin and be more attractive.  In this episode I interview a leading expert on the science of dieting to cut through the flab and get to the firm core of this issue.
Traci Mann is Professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She received her PhD in 1995 from Stanford University, spent ten years on the faculty at UCLA, then moved to the University of Minnesota and started the Health and Eating Lab. She is interested in basic science questions about cognitive mechanisms of self-control, in applying social psychology research to promoting healthy behavior, and in busting commonly accepted myths about eating. Her research has been funded by NIH, NASA, and the USDA. Her book, Secrets from the Eating Lab, was the 2016 winner of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Book Prize.
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In this episode I want to dig into the impacts of alcohol on health. Many of us have heard news stories saying that a glass of red wine every day can help you live longer. This was used to explain why people with a Mediterranean diet seem to live longer than people on a North American diet, for example. The Resveratrol in the red wine is an anti-oxidant that supposedly helps to prevent cell damage.  One can search the literature to find examples of studies that show people who drink a moderate amount of alcohol have longer lives. Until recently, Canadian health guidelines have suggested that one or two alcoholic beverages a day are not dangerous.  New advice now suggests one or two drinks a week should be the goal. My guest today has been directly involved with the evolving health guidelines associated with alcohol consumption.
Dr. Peter Butt is a Certificant and Fellow with the College of Family Physicians of Canada, with Special Competency in Addiction Medicine. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan and served as a consultant in Addiction Medicine in the Saskatchewan Health Authority. His research has included guideline development and knowledge translation. He chaired the original development of Canada’s Low Risk Drinking Guidelines (2011), co-chaired the Canadian Guidelines on Alcohol Use Disorder Among Older Adults (2019) and co-chaired the 2023 Canadian Guidance on Alcohol and Health with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.
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In this episode I continue my investigation into the science of nutrition and food. Today I’m interviewing a physician who has been focusing on a critical evaluation of so-called alternative medicine or SCAM. I want to investigate with him the science behind various detox diets and claims made by nutrition specialists. I expect to receive a very skeptical viewpoint based on his many blog posts suggesting that claims of detoxing are a scam.
Edzard Ernst studied psychology and medicine at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. In 1977, he qualified as a physician and completed his MD and PhD theses. He was Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Hannover Medical School and Head of the PMR Department at the University of Vienna (Austria). He established the world’s first Chair in complementary medicine at Exeter University in 1993. Since 2012, he is Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter and now lives in Cambridge, UK as well as in Brittany, France.
Professor Ernst is/was founder/Editor-in-Chief of three medical journals and has been a columnist for many publications. His work has been awarded 17 scientific awards and two Visiting Professorships. He served on the ‘Medicines Commission’ of the British ‘Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’.
During the last 25 years, Prof Ernst’s research focused on the critical evaluation of most aspects of so-called alternative medicine or SCAM.
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In this episode I’d like to explore the impacts of the precautionary principle in public policy.  Many people think that the precautionary principle is the safest way forward. We shouldn’t use a tool until we’re sure that it won’t harm us. This just makes sense, doesn’t it? The application of the precautionary principle in European energy policy, for example, has lead to the shut down of Germany’s nuclear fleet, strong labelling laws for GMO products, and many other decisions of which I am not yet aware. Today I’ll be interviewing an economist who has a unique interdisciplinary perspective on the environment, health, and labor economics to get an expert opinion on this topic. I came across his insightful work as references in a Freakonomics podcast episode titled, “nuclear energy isn't perfect. Is it good enough?’.
Matthew Neidell is an economics professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.  He is also a faculty member with the Earth Institute and the Columbia Population Research Center. Neidell received his PhD in economics from UCLA and has performed policy work for various organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Institute of Medicine, Rockefeller Foundation, and World BankHe specializes in environmental, health, and labor economics, applying the latest empirical methods to examine the relationship between the environment and a wide range of measures of well-being, including worker productivity and human capital, and how human behavior affects these relationships.
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