517 episodes
Big Picture Science SETI Institute
-
- Science
-
-
4.6 • 825 Ratings
-
The surprising connections in science and technology that give you the Big Picture. Astronomer Seth Shostak and science journalist Molly Bentley are joined each week by leading researchers, techies, and journalists to provide a smart and humorous take on science. Our regular "Skeptic Check" episodes cast a critical eye on pseudoscience.
-
Skeptic Check: The Body Electric
Electricity plays an important role in our everyday lives, including allowing our bodies to communicate internally. But some research claims electricity may be used to diagnose and treat disease? Could electric pulses one day replace medications?
We speak with experts about the growing field of bioelectric medicine and the evidence for electricity’s healing abilities. Their comments may shock you.
Guests:
Sally Adee – Science journalist, author of “We Are Electric: Inside the 200-Year Hunt for Our Body’s Bioelectric Code, and What the Future Holds"
Samantha Payne – Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences at University of Guelph
Kevin Tracey – Neurosurgeon and President of the Feinstein Institute at Northwell Health
Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake
Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.
You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Life in the Solar System
Spewing lava and belching noxious fumes, volcanoes seem hostile to biology. But the search for life off-Earth includes the hunt for these hotheads on other moons and planets, and we tour some of the most imposing volcanoes in the Solar System.
Plus, a look at how tectonic forces reshape bodies from the moon to Venus to Earth. And a journey to the center of our planet reveals a surprising layer of material at the core-mantle boundary. Find out where this layer was at the time of the dinosaurs and what powerful forces drove it deep below.
Guests:
Samantha Hansen – Geologist at the University of Alabama
Paul Byrne – Associate professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis
Robin George Andrews – Science journalist and author of “Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond”
Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake
Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact sales@advertisecast.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.
You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Let's Stick Together*
Crowded subway driving you crazy? Sick of the marathon-length grocery store line? Wish you had a hovercraft to float over traffic? If you are itching to hightail it to an isolated cabin in the woods, remember, we evolved to be together. Humans are not only social, we’re driven to care for one another, even those outside our immediate family.
We look at some of the reasons why this is so – from the increase in valuable communication within social groups to the power of the hormone oxytocin. Plus, how our willingness to tolerate anonymity, a condition which allows societies to grow, has a parallel in ant supercolonies.
Guests:
Adam Rutherford – Geneticist and author of “Humanimal: How Homo sapiens Became Nature’s Most Paradoxical Creature – a New Evolutionary History”
Patricia Churchland – Neurophilosopher, professor of philosophy emerita at the University of California San Diego, and author most recently of “Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition”
Mark Moffett – Tropical biologist, Smithsonian Institution researcher, and author of “The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive and Fall”
*Originally aired July 22, 2019
Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake
Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.
You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Skeptic Check: Shroom With a View*
Magic mushrooms – or psilocybin – may be associated with tripping hippies and Woodstock, but they are now being studied as new treatments for depression and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Is this Age of Aquarius medicine or something that could really work? Plus, the centuries-long use of psychedelics by indigenous peoples, and a discovery in California’s Pinwheel Cave offers new clues about the relationship between hallucinogens and cave art.
Guests:
Merlin Sheldrake - Biologist and the author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds and Shape our Futures.
Albert Garcia-Romeu - Assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
David Wayne Robinson - Archeologist in the School of Forensic and Applied Sciences, University of Central Lancashire, U.K.
Sandra Hernandez - Tejon Indian Tribe spokesperson
Originally aired December 7, 2020
Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake
Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.
You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Catching Fire*
We have too much “bad fire.” Not only destructive wildfires, but the combustion that powers our automobiles and provides our electricity has generated a worrying rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. And that is driving climate change which is adding to the frequency of megafires. Now we’re seeing those effects in “fire-clouds,” pyrocumulonimbus events.
But there’s such a thing as “good fire.” Indigenous peoples managed the land with controlled fires, reaped the benefits of doing so, and they’re bringing them back.
So after millions of years of controlling fire, is it time for us to revisit our attitudes and policies, not just with regard to combustion, but how we manage our wildfires?
Guests:
David Peterson - Meteorologist, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
Stephen Pyne - Emeritus professor at Arizona State University, fire historian, urban farmer, author of “The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next”
Richard Wrangham - Ruth B. Moore Research Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and author of "Catching Fire: How Coooking Made Us Human"
Margo Robbins - Co-founder and president of the Cultural Fire Management Council (CFMC), organizer of the Cultural Burn Training Exchange (TREX) that takes place on the Yurok Reservation twice a year, and an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe
*Originally aired May 9, 2022
Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake
Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.
You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices -
Finding Endurance*
In 1915, Endurance, the ship that took Ernest Shackleton to the Antarctic, was slowly crushed and sank. Shackleton, and the 28 men he brought with him, were camped on the ice near the ship, and watched helplessly as their transport went to a watery grave, two miles down.
But a recent expedition has found the Endurance, taking the world back to the last hurrah of the heroic age of polar expedition. How was it found, and what will be done with it?
Also, while feats of exploration inspire TV shows and magazine articles, do they have other functions in society? Is modern exploration more than just a nice thing to do?
We go to the bottom of the world on “Finding Endurance.”
Guests:
Michael Smith – Author and journalist. His book: “Shackleton: By Endurance We Conquer”
Christian Katlein – Sea ice physicist
Tim Jarvis – Adventurer and environmental scientist
Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake
*Originally aired April 8, 2022
Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.
You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Customer Reviews
This is a great balanced science program
Really like the presentation style. Like the little 2-3 parts in a program that really ties together at the end
UAP episode
This is an agenda driven episode, mischaracterizing many who have an open mind about UAPs and associated phenomena. Misstates that there was nothing in the public consciousness about UFO/UAPs prior to 1947-please see the airship flap of the late 1890s, and others. Although this may not be an area of SETI's research, perhaps you could examine the work of proper scientists in this area rather than characterize this phenomena, and those interested in it, at the lowest level of application of critical thinking.
Filled with ads and ‘recast’ episodes
Over the years it became rife with ads and each notices seems to be a recast. Finally I get a new episode on its first run and it’s a ‘special’ that’s pushing big pharma propaganda even though other science shows have been identifying issues with the very topic for the last 6 months.
We’re watching large groups of scientists rapidly grow all around the world to fight an issue of, not regulator capture, but regulatory Stockholm Syndrome. I’ll change my review when you begin covering the topic and interview the scientists and organizations involved. If you’re too afraid to lose some of those advertisers or perhaps you’re receiving some of the far reaching ‘media grants to educa…’ that dries up the moment you acknowledge what’s happening… well maybe just change your title from “Picture” to “Establishment”.
BES does roll off the tongue easier that BPS, you wouldn’t have integrity but at least you’ll have that.
Top Podcasts In Science
You Might Also Like
More by Wizzard Media