Knowable Knowable Magazine

A key report to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 warned that humankind was “unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment” through the burning of fossil fuels and a consequent buildup of “the invisible pollutant” — carbon dioxide — in the atmosphere. Here’s the story of what happened next to that report — and what didn’t, and why.
Host Adam Levy speaks with Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes, coauthor of the book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. And he talks with environmental scientist Dana Nuccitelli, research coordinator for Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which aims to build political will for climate solutions through citizen volunteers. 
Find the transcript and additional resources at knowablemagazine.org/podcast

Serendipitous discoveries led to drugs like Prozac and to new insights into the physical basis of this debilitating disorder. But scientists continue to search for deeper understandings and therapies that will bring relief to those who still struggle. 

PODCAST: They started out so small, one could fit on the palm of your hand, but to make groundbreaking discoveries, physicists had to think really big — as in, vast machines with the power and capacity to reveal the tiniest building blocks of our universe.

Digging — quite literally — into our planet’s past to study its paleoclimate has shed light on bygone ice ages and hints at trouble ahead for our now-warming planet.

The journey to understanding these critically important molecules, in their thousands of different flavors, began with a chance discovery. Today, after decades of painstaking lab work and dizzying technological leaps, the field of protein science is exploding.

Not that long ago, scientists found evidence that our Sun wasn’t unique — other stars have their own orbiting bodies. It was a discovery centuries in the making. What does this mean for Earth today and our place in the universe? (Season 2/Episode. 2)
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