Big Picture Science

By one estimate the average American home has 300,000 objects. Yet our ancient ancestors had no more than what they could carry with them. How did we go from being self-sufficient primates to nonstop shoppers? We examine the evolutionary history of stuff through the lens of archeology beginning with he ancestor who first picked up a palm-sized rock and made it into a tool.    Guest: Chip Colwell -...

With planets and moons, it’s what’s inside that counts. If we want to understand surface features, like volcanoes, or their history, such as how the planet formed or whether it’s suitable for life, we study their interiors. Astronomer Sabine Stanley takes us on a journey to the centers of Venus, Saturn’s large moon Titan, Jupiter’s moon Io, and of course Earth, to help us understand how they, and...

Worried that AI will replace you? It may not seem like the Hollywood writers’ strike has anything in common with the Luddite rebellion in England in 1811, but they are surprisingly similar. Today we use the term “Luddite” dismissively to describe a technophobe, but the original Luddites – cloth workers – organized and fought Industrial Revolution automation and the factory bosses who were replacin...

Bigfoot could get official status if proposed legislation passes making it the state cryptid of California. If nothing else, the effort shows that fascination with cryptids has an outsized footprint on our culture. We look at why mythical creatures continue to capture imaginations - as well as passions - of die-hard believers, despite no evidence for their existence. An author uncovers the origin...

Self-driving cars, once a thing of science fiction, have become a reality in a handful of cities across the country. As our vehicles gain autonomy, they may provoke a profound shift not unlike the introduction of the first car in the late1800s and raise the question of whether the human driver will soon be obsolete. For a glimpse into the future of self-driving cars, we take a spin through the his...

Asteroids are rich in precious metals and other valuable resources. But mining them presents considerable challenges. We discuss these, and consider how these spinning, rocky resources might be the key to a space-faring future. But an economist points out the consequences of bringing material back to Earth, and a scientist raises an ethical question; do we have an obligation to keep the asteroids...

Firing federal workers and freezing grants has upended research institutions, prompting uncertainty about their futures. We look at the real-world impacts these policy changes may have for our mechanisms for collecting and sharing important data. An NIH grant recipient considers the future of her lab’s ability to do basic research, including studying complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s and heart...

What’s it like to live on a block of ice, especially when it thaws? An environment writer shares his forty-year experience in the Arctic, including the time a paddling polar bear tracked him on a river. He describes the stunning beauty of America’s last truly wild place and the dramatic changes to the landscape he recently witnessed. Recent research has backed up his eyewitness accounts, as an arc...

Two infectious diseases that we’ve been able to prevent for a half-century are re-emerging. One of the most contagious viruses in the world, measles, is spreading in the United States. Anti-vax sentiment has driven vaccination rates down leading to outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico. The U.S. has also seen an uptick in cases of tuberculosis which has reclaimed its position as the deadliest infectio...

By one estimate we spend a fifth of our lives watching movies or TV. In fact, we consume entertainment almost as habitually as we eat or sleep, activities that receive scientific scrutiny and study. So why not consider the effects that watching movies and TV have on our minds and bodies too? When we do, we find that they are not mere escapism. A data scientist reveals why we are what we watch, and...

Is your windshield accumulating less bug splatter? Insects, the most numerous animals on Earth, are becoming scarcer, and that’s not good news. They’re essential, and not just for their service as pollinators. We ask what’s causing the decrease in insect populations, and how can it be reversed .  Also, the story of how California’s early citrus crops came under attack – a problem that was solved b...

When the Chinese developer of DeepSeek released its model R1, a rift opened up in Silicon Valley. The company, a relatively unknown player, appeared to have created a better and cheaper model than its American competitors. Some big voices in the tech world called it a “Sputnik moment.” Others worried that the open-source model would allow malicious actors to harness the power of this AI technology...

Everyone knows that a big rock wiped out the dinosaurs. But the danger from an asteroid hitting Earth is not limited to ancient history. To deal with this threat, scientists recently ran an experiment to deflect a potential “city killer.” We’ll hear the results of that experiment, and about a visit to another asteroid. In the dusty material NASA brought back from the asteroid Bennu, scientists fou...

Animals experience the world differently. There are insects that can see ultraviolet light, while some snakes can hunt in the dark thanks to their ability to sense infrared. Such differences are not restricted to vision: Elephants can hear subsonic sounds, birds navigate by magnetism, and your dog lives in a world marked by odors. In this episode, we speak to science journalist Ed Yong about how o...

We have an update to our recent episode, Skeptic Check: Drone Panic. If you remember, our guest astronomer Andrew Franknoi recalled the story of Jimmy Carter having seen something mysterious in the sky when he was governor of Georgia in 1969. Astronomers at the time suggested it was likely Venus, as has been the case with other sightings, and for decades that was a widely accepted understanding of...

When several mysterious objects were spotted flying over New Jersey, their unknown identity led to frightening rumors, and triggered frustration and alarm among some residents of the Garden State. What were these objects, and if they were drones, as some appeared to be, were they friendly or foe? Many of the objects have now been identified. We talk about what happened when calmer heads prevailed...

While humans were leaving the Stone Age and entering the Bronze, some Bristlecone pine trees grew from seeds to sprouts. They’ve been growing ever since. These 5,000-year-old pines are among the oldest organisms on Earth. Superlatives are also appropriate for the towering redwoods. Trees are amazing in many ways. They provide us with timber and cool us with shade, they sequester carbon and release...

After helping to sequence the human genome more than twenty years ago, biochemist Craig Venter seemed to recede from the public eye. But he hadn’t retired. He had gone to sea and taken his revolutionary sequencing tools with him. We chatted with him about his multi-year voyage aboard the research vessel Sorcerer II, its parallels to Darwin’s voyage, and the surprising discoveries his team made abo...

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 inj...

Our information age is increasingly the disinformation age. The spread of lies and conspiracy theories has created competing experiences of reality. Facts are often useless for changing minds or even making compelling arguments. In this episode, author Naomi Klein and science philosopher Lee McIntyre discuss why the goal – not simply the byproduct - of spreading disinformation is to polarize socie...

“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 addi...

The SETI Institute’s search for alien biosignatures and technosignatures depends on radio telescopes. You may have seen the stunning photos of massive telescope arrays in the desert, but what types of alien signals might help researchers actually detect with those giant dishes? In this fourth episode, Brian Edwards talks with physicist Chenoa Tremblay, a COSMIC Project Scientist who is based at th...

This year has been a spectacular one for celestial phenomena. The northern lights delighted in unexpected ways while a total solar eclipse cast a shadow across North America. Those events were enough to make it a memorable year, but 2024 also shook up our understanding of the universe. A new reading of Voyager 2 data may explain Uranus’s weird magnetic field. And the impressive James Webb Space Te...

Just because something is invisible doesn’t mean it isn’t there. We can’t see gases in our atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen, but we benefit from their presence with every breath we take. From the bubbles that effervesce in soda to the vapors that turn engines, gases are part of our lives. They fill our lungs, give birth to stars, and… well, how would we spot a good diner wi...

Imagine life without animals, trees, and fungi. The world would look very different. But while the first life was surely single-celled, we don’t know just how it evolved to multicellular organisms. Two long-term experiments hope to find out, and one has been running for more than 35 years. Hear about the moment scientists watched evolution take off in the lab, and how directed evolution was used t...