It’s not just facts that inform our decisions. They’re also guided by how those facts feel. From deciding whether to buckle our seat belts to addressing climate change, how we regard risk is subjective. In this extended conversation with an expert on the psychology of risk, find out about our exaggerated fears, as well as risks we don’t take seriously enough. Meanwhile, while experts warn society about the dangers of self-aware AI – are those warnings being heeded?

Guest: 

David Ropeik – Retired Harvard University instructor, and expert on the psychology of risk

Descripción en Español

Originally aired April 10, 2023

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Great news! We've been nominated for a Webby Award!

Our three-part Katrina series is a finalist for Best News & Politics limited series podcast. Now, we need your help. Voting ends Thursday, April 16!

Cast your vote at bit.ly/webbybipisci 

Antarctic scientists have long known the region’s ice sheet holds clues to the planet’s ancient past. Yet even the field’s foremost experts were shocked when they extracted a six-million-year-old ice core — twice as old as expected and the oldest recorded so far. Researchers say it will provide one of our best looks ever into Earth's climatological record. In a relatively more recent past, the discovery of 40,000-year-old notches and lines carved into artifacts and cave walls in Germany, examples of protowriting, suggest humans began documenting ideas thousands of years earlier than thought. Those timescales pale however, when compared to the age of the Earth’s most ancient rocks, which have a story to tell too. Find out how the planet’s most venerable rocks, formed billions of years ago, reveal the geological conditions that allowed life to get a foothold. 

Guests:

Huw Groucutt – Archeologist, Department of Classics and Archeology, University of Malta

Ed Brook – Paleoclimatologist and professor of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University

Simon Lamb – Earth scientist and professor of geography in the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University at Wellington, New Zealand.   Author of “The Oldest Rocks on Earth: A Search for the Origins of Our World.”

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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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 arctic scientist presents the latest data collected from a part of world warming four times faster than the rest of the planet.

Guests:

Jon Waterman – Author of Into the Thaw: Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis

Twila Moon – Deputy Lead Scientist and Science Communication Liaison at the National Snow and Ice Data Center

Descripción en español

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Originally aired March 17, 2025

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Before everything could come up roses, there had to be a primordial flower – the mother, and father, of all flowers. Now scientists are on the hunt for it. The eFlower project aims to explain the sudden appearance of flowering plants in the fossil record, what Darwin called an “abominable mystery.”

Meanwhile, ancient flowers encased in amber or preserved in tar are providing clues about how ecosystems might respond to changing climates. And, although it was honed by evolution for billions of years, can we make photosynthesis more efficient and help forestall a global food crisis?

Guests:

Eva-Maria Sadowski - Post doctoral paleobotanist at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin

Regan Dunn - Paleobotanist and assistant Curator at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum

Royal Krieger - Rosarian and volunteer at the Morcom Rose Garden, Oakland, California

Ruby Stephens - Plant ecology PhD candidate at Macquarie University in Australia, and member of the eFlower Project

Stephen Long - Professor of Plant Science, University of Illinois

Descripción en español

Originally aired March 13, 2023

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Thinking small can sometimes achieve big things. A new generation of diminutive robots can enter our bodies and deal with medical problems such as intestinal blockages. But do we really want them swimming inside us, even if they’re promising to help? You might change your mind when you hear what else is cruising through our bloodstream: microplastics! 

We take a trip into the human body, beginning with the story of those who first dared to open it up for medical purposes. But were the first surgeons really cavemen?

Guests:

Ira Rutkow – Surgeon and writer, and author of “Empire of the Scalpel: The History of Surgery”

Dick Vethaak – Emeritus professor of ecotoxicology, water quality and health at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Free University, Amsterdam) in The Netherlands

Li Zhang – Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Michael LaBarbera - Professor in organismal biology, anatomy and geophysical sciences, University of Chicago

Descripción en español

originally aired June 20, 2022

Opening theme by Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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As protagonist Ryland Grace fights to save Earth - and possibly the universe - in Project Hail Mary, author Andy Weir discusses the science behind his sci-fi story and what it’s like to see it adapted for the big screen. From a diversity of aliens thriving in extreme environments, to our sun’s shortening lifespan, to the conundrum of keeping astronauts alive during intergalactic missions, we consider the possibility of science fiction becoming future reality. A NASA astrobiologist who consulted on the book weighs in on how Earthly creatures have inspired some of our favorite science fiction aliens. Plus, science fiction author Becky Chambers discusses how she balances science fact with fiction in her work.

Guests:

Andy Weir – science fiction writer, author of Project Hail Mary, The Martian, and Artemis

Andy Fraknoi – professor of astronomy at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco

Becky Chambers – science fiction writer, author of To Be Taught if Fortunate, the Wayfinders series, and the Monk and Robot novellas

Shawn Domagal-Goldman – NASA acting director, astrophysics division 

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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As NASA’s Artemis program promises to take us back to the moon for the first time in fifty years, we consider what it means that as many as 10% of Americans don’t believe we went there in the first place. Why, despite all the evidence, has the faked moon landing conspiracy persisted? We explore why this falsehood has such staying power and what it reveals about our relationship with science and its findings.  

Meanwhile, lunar science continues unabated. Scientists open a lunar soil sample that’s been vacuumed sealed for a half-century and receive a blast of four and a half billion-year-old solar wind. 

Guests:

Peter Knight – professor of American Studies, English and American Studies and conspiracy expert at the University of Manchester, U.K.

Ryan Zeigler – planetary scientist and NASA’s Lunar Sample Curator at Johnson Space Center

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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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 found the chemical building blocks of life, including many of the amino acids that are found in our cells. Could an asteroid have brought the ingredients for life to ancient Earth? In this episode, we look at our paradoxical relationship with the space rocks that taketh way – and may help giveth - life.

Guests:

Scott Sandford - Astrophysicist and Research Scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center

Robin George Andrews - Science journalist, volcanologist, and author of "How to Kill an Asteroid: The Real Science of Planetary Defense"

Descripción en español

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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With only a microscope and a collection of birds, taxidermist Roxie Laybourne became the world’s first forensic ornithologist. The “feather detective” was on the case, examining pieces of plumage to solve mysteries. From bird strikes that caused plane accidents to homicide investigations, no case was too big. In the process, Roxie changed the world of aviation safety and crime investigation forever. Even now, feathers are unraveling a new type of mystery, as scientists from the Bird Genoscape Project use them to map the migratory routes of birds.

Guests:

Chris Sweeney – Journalist and author of “The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne”

Kristen Ruegg – Co-Director of the Bird Genoscape Project and Associate Professor of Biology at Colorado State University

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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We’re going back to the Moon. The planned March 2026 launch of Artemis II is the first crewed mission to the moon since 1972. Historic as it is, it isn’t the only lunar event creating a stir at NASA. Two seismometers are to be delivered to Schrödinger’s Crater in a mission called The Farside Seismic Suite, in which the instruments will measure moonquakes and record the possible impact of asteroid 2024 YR4 on lunar surface. Meanwhile, studies of the sun are heating up. The so-called PUNCH mission, a four-satellite constellation that will create an image of the sun’s corona and solar winds, may help us better understand what drives solar storms and how we can protect Earth from their energetic blasts.

Guests: 

Eugene Cernan – Apollo 17 astronaut

Harrison "Jack" Schmitt – Geologist and Apollo 17 astronaut

Andrew Rivkin – Planetary astronomer at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University

Ceri Nunn – Lunar seismologist and planetary scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Ryan French – solar physicist, at the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics, Boulder, Colorado, and author of “Space Hazards: Asteroids, Solar Flares and Cosmic Threats”

Craig DeForest – Heliophysicist, Southwest Research Institute, principal investigator on NASA’s  PUNCH mission

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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There are benefits to chilling out. When we cool superconductors to 460℉ degrees below zero, they acquire extraordinary properties that help run quantum computers. Can artificially cooling human bodies also provide profound benefit? Some cryonics startup companies say yes, promising “life after death” through cryogenic freezing. While it’s one thing to freeze all the cells in a body, it is another to revive them. What happens, for instance, to memories when brains thaw? While we gauge how low human body temperatures can go, new research suggests another form of life could find home in the cooler temperatures of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Find out how NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will investigate whether that moon could support alien microbes. 

Guests:

Steve Austad – Distinguished Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Scientific Director of the American Federation for Aging Research

Olivia Lanes – Global Lead for Quantum Content and Education at IBM Quantum

Austin Green – Post doctoral research associate at Virginia Tech University, and former JPL postdoctoral fellow and affiliate scientist on Europa Clipper

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] 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!

Correction: An editing error caused a mistake in describing how cold affects inflammation. Contrary to popular belief, at least one study found that cold increases inflammation, at least in the short term.

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