Elizabeth Fernandez

What is time? Why do we see time only run in one direction? Is time travel possible? And what happened “before” the Big Bang? We talk to Dr. Jonathan Tallant about the philosophy of time, and how these ideas stand up to modern science.

Some locations are so remote it’s hard to deliver materials to build houses and infrastructure. Today we talk to Keegan Kirkpatrick from RedWorks, a company that seeks to use 3D printers to print an entire building using in-situ material, both on Earth and on Mars.

Agriculture in Africa has its share of challenges.  Today we talk to Samantha Salimu on technology being employed right now to make food more nutritious and plentiful, and how changes in technology, economic policy, and women’s rights can transform how farming is done in Africa.

Today we talk to Dr. Sarah Evanega from the Alliance for Science about the safety of GMO crops and how they view GMOs in the developing world.

From Rosie to RoboCop, robots are reinforcing gender roles within society.  Robotic designers and even users see “female” or “male” robots very differently.  We talk to Dr. Jennifer Robertson, an expert on robotics and culture, about robots and sexism, religion, family, and culture.   

Transportation is responsible for 23% of global emissions.  If we could make getting from point A to point B cleaner, it would go a long way in combatting climate change.  Today, we talk to Dr. Ryan Allard, a transportation specialist from Project Drawdown.  Project Drawdown is a no-profit organization focused on using existing technology to slow, and even reverse, climate change.

If someone didn’t like the same ice cream flavor as you, chances are you wouldn’t stop being friends with them.  But you might if you found out that they were a Nazi sympathizer.  What we see as moral choices are fundamentally different than other preferences.  In today’s podcast with Dr. P. Kyle Stanford of UC Irvine, we discuss how they may have been a basis on which modern society was created.    

Billions of years ago, the first star was born, and the Universe would never be the same. But how do we know what these first stars were like?  How did the stars change the Universe to what we see today?  Today we are joined by Dr. Harish Vedantham to discuss how we can observe these first stars, the radio array LOFAR, and how hard it is to see back in time.

Humans are affecting the Earth on a global scale, and this change will be remembered in the rocks. I talk to Dr. David Grinspoon on how humans are affecting the planet: from new minerals to a shift in the climate to our presence in space.  Humankind may be responsible for the planet entering a new geological time period: the Anthropocene. 

Can science help us live forever? Can it provide a way to stop aging in its tracks? Perhaps the fountain of youth will be obtained within our lifetimes. Today we talk to Dr. Aubrey de Grey from the SENS Research Foundation on therapy that can keep us young and what a world without aging would look like.

Subglacial lakes far beneath the Canadian ice are defying all expectations. We are joined by Anja Rutishauser of the University of Alberta, who discovered these lakes. They could be a terrestrial analog to the under-ice oceans of moons like Europa, and could help us to understand any potential life that exists there.

Machine learning algorithms can make inferences about our habits. But can these algorithms be biased against certain people or groups of people? Where does this bias come from?  And how can we improve these algorithms? We are joined by Dr. Joshua Kroll from the University of California at Berkeley to discuss bias in machine learning algorithms in everything from your grocery store’s frequent buyer card to the Trump administration’s Extreme Vetting Initiative.

Is there really a toothbrush orbiting the Earth? And does Earth really have a ring – made of copper? Dr. Lisa Ruth Rand joins us on the podcast today to talk about space junk, the Cold War, trash and the Moon landing, and how debris in space may outlive us all.

Is color just a physical property of objects? If it is, how would we explain why so many people got in arguments about the color of the infamous “dress”? It turns out, color is not just in the world – it’s also in our minds.  Today we talk to Dr. Mazviita Chirimuuta about how much our brains are involved in understanding the colorful world around us.

Can AI be creative? Today we talk with Dr. Maya Ackerman about AI creativity in the form of songwriting, and even listen to a song composed with artificial intelligence!

Have you ever been deceived by fake news? Couldn’t resist that click-bait? With more and more news sources, it sometimes becomes hard to tell the truth from the lies. Today we are joined by Dr. Victoria Rubin and her group, who discuss using Natural Language Processing to detect various types of deceptive news.

What is the self?  Is the self an entity, or is it a process, continually being created?  In today’s podcast, Dr. Evan Thompson joins me to discuss how two very different schools of thought – neuroscience and Eastern spirituality – grapple with the concept of the self.