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This week's show

Jan 25, 2021

Skeptic Check: Shared Reality
Fighting lies and misinformation.

Download audio

One of the many shocking aspects of the Capitol attack was that it revealed how thoroughly the nation had cleaved into alternate realities. How did we get to this point? How did misinformation come to create beliefs embraced by millions?

In this episode, experts in social media, cults, and the history of science join us for a discussion about how these alternative realities formed, why people are drawn to them, and the benefits of a shared reality.

Guests:

Joan Donovan – Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and leader of the Technology and Social Change Project.
Lee McIntyre – Research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, Instructor in Ethics at Harvard Extension School, and author of “Post – Truth.”
Steven Hassan – Mental health counselor who has written on the subject of mind control. Former member of the Unification Church, and author of “The Cult of Trump.”

Segments:
Part 1: Disinformation Creation
Part 2: Disinformation Dissemination
Part 3: Disinformation Eradication

Descripción en español

Jan 18, 2021 Supercomputer Showdown Life at the supercomputing top. Download audio Do you have a hard-to-answer question? The Summit, Sierra, Trinity, Frontier, and Aurora supercomputers are built to tackle it. Summit tops the petaflop heap – at least for now. But Frontier and Aurora are catching up as they take aim at a new performance benchmark called exascale. So why do we need all this processing power? From climate modeling to personalized medicine, find out why the super-est computers are necessary to answer our biggest questions. But is the dark horse candidate, quantum computing, destined to leave classical computing in the dust? Guests: Katherine Riley - Director of Science, Argonne National Laboratory Jack Wells - Director of Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory National Center for Computational Sciences Katie Bethea - Communications Team Lead, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Jeffrey Hawkins - Technologist and neuroscientist. Co-founder of Palm, Handspring and Numenta Eleanor Rieffel - Mathematician, NASA Ames Research Center, and co-author of “Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor,” published in Nature magazine Segments: Part 1: What is a supercomputer? Part 2: What is FLOPS? Part 3: Supercomputers and AI Part 4: Quantum Supremacy Descripción en español originally aired November 4, 2019
Jan 11, 2021 Skeptic Check: Betting on Pseudoscience When snake oil harms. Download audio Psychics may not be able to predict the future or sense your thoughts. Nonetheless, they rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. But the harm from pseudoscience can go far beyond your wallet – especially when it promotes unscientific treatments for serious disease. Find out what alarming discovery led one naturopath to quit her practice and why scientific ignorance is not bliss. It’s our regular look at critical thinking, but don’t take our word for it. Guests: Robert Palmer – Member of the Guerilla Skeptics on the Wikipedia editing team and columnist for the Skeptical Inquirer on-line magazine Lee McIntyre – Research fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and lecturer on ethics at Harvard Extension School Britt Marie Hermes – Former naturopath doctor; now doctoral student in evolutionary genetics at the University of Kiel, Germany Segments: Part 1: Robert Palmer / Psychic Pscam Part 2: Lee McIntyre / The Rise of Denial Part 3: Lee McIntyre / Engaging Disbelievers Part 4: Britt Hermes / Science Convert Descripción en español originally aired November 25, 2019
Jan 04, 2021 Headed For Trouble The Fate of Civilizations Download audio The stone heads on Easter Island are an enduring mystery: why were they built and why were they abandoned and destroyed? The old ideas about cultural collapse are yielding to new ones based on careful investigation on the ground - but also from above. What surprising explanations have we found and are we off base to think that ancient societies such as the Easter Islanders or the classical Egyptians were, in the end, failures? Can what we learn from these histories help predict which societies will survive? Guests: James Grant Peterkin – Tour guide, resident, and British Honorary Consul on Easter Island Sarah Parcak – Archaeologist, Egyptologist, remote sensing expert, professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and author of Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past Carl Lipo – Anthropologist and professor at Binghamton University, State University of New York Segments: Part 1: Seth Goes to Easter Island Part 2: Sarah Parcak / Space Archaeology Part 3: Carl Lipo / No Such Collapse Descripción en español originally aired September 30, 2019
Dec 28, 2020 For Good Measure The new kilogram. Download audio The reign of Le Grand K has come to an end. After 130 years, this hunk of metal sitting in a Parisian vault will no longer define the kilogram. The new kilogram mass will be defined by Planck’s constant, joining three other units for redefinition by fundamental constants. But as we measure with increasing precision – from cesium atomic clocks to gravitational wave detectors able to measure spacetime distortions to 1/1000th the width of a proton – is something fundamental lost along the way? Meanwhile, the BiPiSci team accepts the banana-measurement challenge. Guests: Jon Pratt – Mechanical engineer and engineer and Chief of the Quantum Measurement Division of the Physical Measurement Laboratory (PML) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology Wolfgang Ketterle – Physicist at MIT, Nobel Laureate Simon Winchester – Author of “The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World” Segments: Part 1: The Banana Challenge Part 2: Jon Pratt / The Old Kilogram Part 3: Wolfgang Ketterle / The New Kilogram Part 4: Simon Winchester / The Price of Precision Descripción en español originally aired September 9, 2019

Can Newspaper Reporting Uncover Flood Risk?

In areas of low or no flood monitoring, archival coverage of historical flooding can help scientists make better risk predictions.

The latest article for EOS by BiPiSci's Sarah Derouin

Radioactive Bookkeeping of Carbon Emissions

A new sampling method uses carbon-14 to single out which carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere derive from fossil fuels. The method could help track emissions goals for climate mitigation.

The latest article for EOS by BiPiSci's Sarah Derouin

Seth Shostak Host and Producer, Big Picture Science
Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute

Molly Bentley Executive Producer and Co-Host, Big Picture Science

BiPiSci is getting bigger. Become an underwriter of the show!

Hi BiPiSci fans!

This week's show

Skeptic Check: Shared Reality Fighting lies and misinformation.

Skeptic Check: Shared Reality
Fighting lies and misinformation.