Big Picture Science SETI Institute

The world is a colorful place, and human eyes have evolved to take it in – from vermillion red to bright tangerine to cobalt blue. But when we do, are you and I seeing the same thing? 
Find out why color perception is a trick of the brain, and why you and I may not see the same shade of green. Or blue. Or red. Also, platypuses and the growing club of fluorescent mammals, and the first new blue pigment in more than two centuries.  
Guests:
Paula Anich – Associate Professor of Natural Resources, Northland College
Michaela Carlson – Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Northland College
Rob DeSalle – Curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and co-author of “A Natural History of Color: the Science Behind What We See and How We See It”
Mas Subramanian – Professor of Materials Science at Oregon State University
originally aired March 8, 2021
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!
 
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T-Rex is having an identity crisis. Rocking the world of paleontology is the claim that Rex was not one species, but actually three. It’s not the first time that this particular dino has forced us to revise our understanding of the past. The discovery of the first T-Rex fossil in the 19th century taught humanity a scary lesson: species eventually go extinct. If it happened to this seemingly invincible apex predator, it could happen to us too.
Hear how the amateur fossil hunter Barnum Brown’s discovery of T-Rex changed our understanding of ourselves, and the epilogue to the dinosaur era: how our mammalian relatives survived the potential extinction bottleneck of an asteroid impact.
Guests:
Thomas Carr - Vertebrate paleontologist and Professor of Biology, Carthage College
Peter Makovicky - Vertebrate paleontologist and Professor of paleontology in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota
David Randall - Author of “The Monster’s Bones: The Discovery of T Rex and How It Shook Our World”
Steve Brusatte - Personal Chair of Paleontology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh. Author of “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs” and, most recently, “The Rise and Reign of The Mammals”
Originally aired October 17, 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

Back off, you Neanderthal! It sounds as if you’ve just been dissed, but maybe you should take it as a compliment. Contrary to common cliches, our Pleistocene relatives were clever, curious, and technologically inventive. Find out how our assessment of Neanderthals has undergone a radical rethinking, and hear about the influence they have as they live on in our DNA. For example, some of their genes have a strong association with severe Covid 19 infection. Plus, how Neanderthal mini-brains grown in a lab will teach us about the evolution of Homo sapiens.
Guests:


Svante Pääbo – Evolutionary geneticist and Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.


Doyle Stevick – Associate professor of educational leadership and policies at the University of South Carolina.


Beverly Brown – Professor emerita of anthropology, Rockland Community College, New York.


Rebecca Wragg Sykes – Paleolithic anthropologist, author of “Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art.”


Alysson Muotri – Neuroscientist and professor of pediatrics, cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine

Originally aired March 22, 2021
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

Owls are both the most accessible and elusive of birds. Every child can recognize one, but you’ll be lucky to spot an owl in a tree, even if you’re looking straight at it. Besides their camouflage and silent flight, these mostly nocturnal birds, with their amazing vision and hearing, are most at home in the dead of night, a time humans find alien and scary. Ecologist Carl Safina got to know an injured baby screech owl well. Their relationship saved the owl’s life and gave Safina insider’s wisdom about these aerial hunters of the night.
Guests:
Carl Safina – ecologist at Stony Brook University, head of the non-profit Safina Center, and author of “Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe”
Tom Damiami – natural resources interpreter, singer on Long Island, NY and leader of the Shelter Island Owl Prowl
Gordy Slack – science writer, former senior editor of California Wild, the science and natural history magazine published by the California Academy of Sciences
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!
 
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“To live is to count and to count is to calculate.” But before we plugged in the computer to express this ethos, we pulled out the pocket calculator. It became a monarch of mathematics that sparked a computing revolution. But it’s not the only deceptively modest innovation that changed how we work and live. Find out how sewing a scrap of fabric into clothing helped define private life and how adding lines to paper helped build an Empire. Plus, does every invention entail irrevocable cultural loss?
Guests:
Keith Houston – author of “Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator.”
Hannah Carlson – teaches dress history and material culture at the Rhode Island School of Design, author of “Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.”
Dominic Riley – bookbinder in the U.K.
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!
 
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Every second, lightning strikes 50 to 100 times somewhere. It can wreak havoc by starting wildfires and sometimes killing people. But lightning also produces a form of nitrogen that’s essential to vegetation. In this episode, we talk about the nature of these dramatic sparks. Ben Franklin established their electric origin, so what do we still not know? Also, why the frequency of lightning strikes is increasing in some parts of the world. And, what to do if you find someone hit by lightning.
Guests:
Thomas Yeadaker – Resident of Oakland, California
Chris Davis – Medical doctor and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Wake Forest University and Medical Director for the National Center for Outdoor Adventure Education
Jonathan Martin – Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Steve Ackerman – Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Peter Bieniek – Professor of Atmospheric and Space Science, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
*Originally aired September 12, 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