This is a Science Show

In this episode I had the opportunity to chat with the head of the Common Voice project, Kelly Davis. Kelly is a trained physicist who studied string theory before getting hooked on artificial intelligence in the late ‘90s. We talk about AI art collectives, his fascination with creating an intelligent agent, project Common Voice, and a little about the future of humanity.

Nuclear fusion technology could herald a golden age of energy that will make the fossil fuel age look like the stone age! That’s right, limitless carbon-free energy for everyone, all thanks to the hard work of genius nuclear physicists and engineers! MIT recently announced that their fusion reactor project is only about 15 years away. http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-newly-formed-company-launch-novel-...

Are we headed for nuclear apocalypse? Everybody’s favorite crony capitalist and democratically elected dictator Vladimir Putin just announced an all-new nuclear-powered cruise missile that can hit any target on earth. The missile can, according to Putin, fly under any existing US missile defense systems undetected. It’s a bizarre announcement, because Russia already has more than 1,900 nuclear mis...

Barbra Streisand cloned her favorite dog and things didn’t turn out as expected. Why? And How? And, most importantly, Whuuuuuuuut? First, Streisand revealed in a recent interview with Variety Magazine that she had her recently deceased dog Samantha cloned—twice. Well, she had two clones made. According to the world-renown singer, the dogs have different personalities than Samantha and aren’t exact...

In science fiction they call it gray goo - nanobots that replicate without limits until eventually everything on the planet is a featureless gray goo. It’s the first thing that came to mind when I read a recent article in the NY Times about a new species of crayfish that clones itself and is taking over Europe. The species emerged just 25 years ago as a mutation. Normally, animals have two chromos...

That’s right, naked mole rats may be the true underlords of this planet, shriveled immortals lurking beneath our feet, sewing discontent throughout society until humanity is on the verge of collapse. Explains the current state of the world quite well, I’d say. But unfortunately we can’t pin humanity’s failings on the machinations of mole rats. We may, however, learn how to extend our misery indefi...

Detroit’s hottest dubstep DJs Spectre and Meltdown live at the Music Institute Thursday, January 4th 2018. Get your tickets today at ticketmeister.org. Spectre and Meltdown are actually two serious security vulnerabilities discovered in nearly every computer processor made since 1995. So what does it mean? Is this the end of computing? Should we throw our computers on the campfire and live among m...

In this, the very first podcast, I chat with Amy Koski at the Oregon Health and Science University about CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing. Amy is the lab manager at the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at OHSU. The lab made headlines in August 2017 when they successfully repaired heart disease genes in human embryonic cells using CRISPR/Cas9.