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

Physicist Brian Greene, host of the NOVA series The Fabric of the Cosmos, addresses the question of faster-than-light neutrinos at a Q&A session after the debut of the PBS series Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eric J. Nestler, director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, talks about his article in the December issue of Scientific American magazine on epigenetics and human behavior, called "Hidden Switches in the Mind" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to the announcement of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, to Daniel Shechtman of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Then hear comments from the president of the American Chemical Society, Nancy Jackson, of Sandia National Laboratories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen to the announcement of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, to Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Following the formal announcement comes an explanation of the research, which tracked type Ia supernovae to discover that the expansion of the universe was accelerating, and a phone conversation with new Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eric von Hofe, cancer researcher and president of the biotech company Antigen Express talks about his article in the October issue of Scientific American called "A New Ally against Cancer," about cancer vaccines Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christian de Duve, 1974 Nobel laureate for physiology or medicine, talks about going from a cell biologist to a theorist on evolution and the origin of life Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In part 2 of our interview, award-winning author Carl Zimmer talks about his latest books, and a new study that shows how Toxoplasma influences the behavior of rats--and maybe of us Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The annual Scientific American September single-topic issue is all about cities. And award-winning author Carl Zimmer recently penned a piece on evolution research in the urban environment for The New York Times. In part 1 of this interview, he talks about urban evolution Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.C. Berkeley School of Law professor Franklin Zimring talks about his article, "How New York Beat Crime," in the August issue of Scientific American Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nobel laureate Avram Hershko, who determined cellular mechanisms for breaking down proteins, talks about his research in a conversation recorded at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany. And Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina discusses the recent inaugural Google Science Fair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peter Agre, 2003 Chemistry Nobel laureate for his work on aquaporins, the proteins that allow water into and out of cells, talks about his research, his upbringing and why he almost ran for the Senate, in a conversation recorded at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American math and physics editor Davide Castelvecchi revisits the Monty Hall problem, so you can know whether you're better off holding on to your original pick or switching when new information presents itself Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Award-winning author Douglas Fox talks about his cover story in the July issue of Scientific American on The Limits of Intelligence, placed there by the laws of physics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward Larson talks about his article "Greater Glory" in the June issue of Scientific American on the forgotten science of the doomed Scott expedition a hundred years ago Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Jeffrey Bartholet talks about his June Scientific American magazine article on the attempts to grow meat in the lab, and Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina talks about the cover piece in the May issue on radical energy solutions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the eve of the launch of the penultimate space shuttle mission, STS-134, Scientific American astronomy editor George Musser talks to veteran astronaut Stanley Love about being in space and the future of spaceflight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American editors Christine Gorman, Robin Lloyd, Michael Moyer and Kate Wong talk about their recent trips to different science conferences: the meetings of the Association for Health Care Journalists, the Paleoanthropology Society, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists and an M.I.T. 150th-anniversary conference called Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researcher Kathleen Barnes talks about the hygiene hypothesis, which raises the possibility that our modern sterile environment may contribute to conditions such as asthma and eczema Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Charles Choi talks about work being done to make robots self-aware. Plus, we test your knowledge about some recent science in the news Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Podcast host Steve Mirsky talks with Scientific American magazine Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina, news editor Anna Kuchment, feature editor Mark Fischetti and online news editor Robin Lloyd about various sessions at the recently completed annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nancy Conrad, chair of the Conrad Foundation, talks about the Spirit of Innovation competition for high school students, and about her late husband, Pete Conrad, the third man to walk on the moon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former Scientific American editor in chief and current Gleaming Retort blogger John Rennie, blogger and Scientific American blogs network director Bora Zivkovic, and Scientific American online news editor Robin Lloyd talk about the future of science news Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Biologist and author Lee Dugatkin talks about his article "Jefferson's Moose" in the February issue of Scientific American, the story of Jefferson's battle against the European theory of American biological degeneracy. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American editor Michael Moyer talks about the sneak preview he caught of IBM's Watson Jeopardy!-playing computer. And ScientificAmerican.com's Larry Greenemeier spoke with Ford's Brad Probert about the new all-electric Focus at the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Clean technology investor Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, talks with Scientific American editor Mark Fischetti about the energy payoffs to be had by reinventing mainstream technologies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices