Science Talk

James Flynn studies intelligence at the University of Otago in New Zealand. And he features prominently in an article called “Can We Keep Getting Smarter?” in the September issue of Scientific American magazine. Back on July 10, Flynn visited the SA offices, where he chatted with a group of editors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American contributor David Appell talks with Mars Science Lab Project leader John Grotzinger, professor of geology at Caltech, about the plans for the rover on the Martian surface Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Less than an hour after NASA received confirmation that the Curiosity rover was safely on the Martian surface, some principal members of the mission briefed the press. This is an edited presentation of that briefing, which started at about 11:20 P.M, Pacific time on August 5th. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Chamovitz, director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University, talks about his new book What a Plant Knows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dimitar Sasselov, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and the founder and director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, talks about his new book The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Anderson, author of the book The Day The World Discovered the Sun, talks about the transit of Venus coming up on June 5th or 6th in different parts of the world and how it will be of use to astronomers searching for exoplanets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With a transit of Venus coming up on June 5th or 6th in different parts of the world, Mark Anderson, author of the book The Day The World Discovered the Sun, talks about the great efforts to track the transits of Venus in the 1760s and the science they would produce Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bruce Walker, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, M.I.T. and Harvard, talks about his article in the July issue of Scientific American magazine called "Controlling HIV," about rare individuals who never develop AIDS after being infected by the virus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NFL Hall of Famer Harry Carson joins former NBC anchor Stone Phillips and pathologist Bennet Omalu for a discussion of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among football players. Recorded May 12th at the Ensemblestudiotheatre.org, site of the new play Headstrong about the brain injury issue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American editor Kate Wong talks about the recent conference of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Portland, Ore., where subjects included killer chimps, unprecedented fossil sharing among researchers and divergent hominid foot forms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American editor Christine Gorman talks about the recent conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists, including Jimmy Carter's efforts against guinea worm and trachoma, and Rosalynn Carter's mental health initiatives Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American Science of Health columnist Maryn McKenna talks about the new understanding that food poisoning can have long-lasting negative health effects Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American editor David Biello takes us through newly released audio from the first week of the nuclear meltdown crisis at Fukushima Daiichi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American editors Mark Fischetti and Michael Moyer discuss some of the sessions they attended at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Subjects covered include fracking, cetacean rights, the Higgs boson and Twitter's truthiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social scientist Roly Russell, of the Sandhill Institute in British Columbia, talked with Scientific American's Mark Fischetti at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science about potentially better measures than GDP of a nation's well-being Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Digital innovators Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Danny Hillis, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, talk with Scientific American Executive Editor Fred Guterl about the technological "Entanglement" and the attempts to build the other, hardier Internet Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In part 2 of our conversation with journalist and author Maryn McKenna, she talks about antibiotic resistance in agriculture and human health, MRSA, and offers a brief coda on the subject of fecal transplants Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and author Maryn McKenna talks about fecal transplants, which have proved to be exceptionally effective at restoring a healthy intestinal microbiome and curing C. diff infections, yet remain in regulatory limbo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About six minutes of President Obama's State of the Union address dealt with research, technology and energy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative to help climate science education Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Actor, playwright and journalist Anna Deavere Smith talks about the health care crisis and her play about people dealing with illness, health and the health care system, Let Me Down Easy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hagen Schroeter, the director of fundamental health and nutrition research at Mars, Inc., talks about research on bio-active food compounds and the search for why a healthful diet is good for you Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're 14 to 18 years old, you still have until December 14th to prepare a two-minute video of a suggestion for an experiment to be performed at the International Space Station and upload it to youtube.com/spacelab. Winners will see their experiment performed in space Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thomas LeCompte of Argonne National Lab was the physics coordinator for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He talks about the instrument and its future, as we await the December 13th announcement as to whether the LHC has found the Higgs particle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ocean and climate scientist Eelco Rohling talks with Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti about updated calculations of sea-level rise as a function of climate change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices