Archive for the ‘Podcasts’ Category
Oct
18
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
October 18, 2014
Published on Oct 16, 2014
Streamed live on 16 October 2014.
In this episode we talked everything molecules: organic and inorganic chemistry, honey & high-fructose corn syrup, pigments, sodium ducks, and knitted sheep butts. Our guests were Theodore Gray, author, and Nick Mann, photographer, of the beautiful, informative, and entertaining book Molecules : The Elements and the Architecture of Everything.
Visit Theo Gray’s apps website : http://apps.theodoregray.com/.
To like “Read Science!” on Facebook : http://facebook.com/ReadScience.
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Sep
27
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
September 27, 2014
Streamed live 25 September 2014.
For this episode, we not only Read Science, we Make Science! Our guest was Liz Heinecke, the Kitchen Pantry Scientist and author of Kitchen Science Lab for Kids. We talked about engaging kids and their parents with science through hands-on science fun in the kitchen–and outdoors, for the messier experiments.
In a “Read Science!” first, we had several live demonstrations from Liz’s book, in Liz’s kitchen, with two cameo appearances by Liz’s daughters to demonstrate the fun. We made green slime, litmus paper with beet juice, and demonstrated the effects of air pressure with a hard-cooked egg. Join us for the fun!
Visit Liz’s “Kitchen Pantry Scientist” website : http://kitchenpantryscientist.com/.
To like “Read Science!” on Facebook : http://facebook.com/ReadScience.
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Sep
10
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
September 10, 2014
Streamed live on 9 September 2014.
Today we had a lively discussion with Lynn Sherr about her outstanding biography, Sally Ride : America’s First Woman in Space. We talked quite a bit about the sexist barriers that Sally (and Lynn Sherr, herself) help to break down in the early 1980s, listened to stories, and tried to understand what a different time it was when Sally joined NASA in 1978, and what a different place the USA was back then.
To “like” us on Facebook, visit https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience .
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Jun
24
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
June 24, 2014
Streamed live on 24 June 2014.
Marketing and public relations aren’t our usual subjects on “Read Science!”, but in this episode they very much WERE rocket science, when we talked about the new book Marketing the Moon : The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program, with its authors, David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek.
To make a colossal program like Apollo get off the ground, it took the backing of the American people. To gain public support and trust, NASA took the unprecedented step of doing their work very openly, with lots of outreach and educational activities, and “”news releases, not publicity releases”. It’s a fascinating, never-told-before story. You’ll be glad you listened!
To “like” us on Facebook, visit https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience .
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Jun
24
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
June 24, 2014
Streamed live on 20 June 2014.
Joanne and Jeff had a lively discussion centered on what dogs, bunnies, and squirrels have to do with general relativity and quantum mechanics, with our guest Chad Orzel, author of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog and How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog.
To “like” us on Facebook, visit https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience .
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May
07
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
May 7, 2014
Zoonoses, or infectious diseases that can pass from animals to humans, are commonplace and a danger to public health; the list of zoonotic diseases includes Ebola, influenza, SARS, MARS, HIV to name only a few. They are also the subject of David Quammen’s book “Spillover : Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic”, and the series of short videos produced by The Weather Channel, called “The Virus Hunters”.
In this RS! hangout we had our usual lively and wide-ranging discussion about these diseases, how to write about important scientific subjects without sensationalism, and all the other things that might come up in that conversation.
We recorded this episode in collaboration with Scientific American, and we are grateful to them for their support and most excellent production help. (Btw, Google’s autoswitching of the camera wasn’t working again, so our producer was doing it all by hand, and did a splendid job!)
To “like” us on Facebook, visit https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience.
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Apr
22
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
April 22, 2014
Streamed live on 22 April 2014.
In this episode we talked with paleontologist, author, and television presenter Neil Shubin, author of “Your Inner Fish : A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body”; and scientific illustrator Kalliopi Monoyios, who illustrated “Your Inner Fish”. We talked about the discovery of the Tiktaalik fossil by Shubin’s team (and saw a neat cast of its skull), most every scientific discipline you can think of an how they’re related, and the importance of art in science and science communication. We probably mentioned teeth, too, because who can talk about fossils without mentioning teeth?
We recorded this episode in collaboration with Scientific American, and we are grateful for their support and most excellent production help.
To “like” us on Facebook, visit https://www.facebook.com/ReadScience.
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Mar
20
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
March 20, 2014
Streamed live on 13 March 2014
We started our 2014 season conversing with a science-communication power couple : Jennifer Ouellette and Sean M. Carroll, who happen to be married to each other. The books providing discussion material were Jennifer Ouellette’s Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self, and Sean Carroll’s The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World. As usual, we ran out of time before we ran out of conversation.
We recorded this episode in collaboration with “Scientific American”, and we are grateful to them for their support and most excellent production help.
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Nov
25
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
November 25, 2013
Streamed live on 25 November 2013
I refuse to be drawn into cliché : I will not say that this episode was for the dogs, but working dogs, what they do, how they do it, and what they think about it, was the topic for today’s episode. We had two splendid guests, knowledgeable on the topic : Virginia Morell, author of “Animal Wise : The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures”, and Cat Warren, author of “What the Dog Knows : The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs”. We talked about dogs, their human companions, and many of their animal compatriots, with lots of stories, humor, and science. It was a nice treat talking about our species’ best friend.
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Nov
14
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
November 14, 2013
Streamed live on 14 November 2013
Our conversation today was out of this world (go on, try to avoid that pun) when our very special guest was Canadian Astronaut, recent Commander of an ISS Expedition, Twitter phenomenon, and Space Rock-Star Chris Hadfield. We talked about his new book, “An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth : What Going to Space Taught Me about Ingenuity, Determination and Being Prepared for Anything”. As is our habit, we talked about science, and science outreach, and being prepared for life and everything that might come along, space toilets, and the fact that “it’s all going to be on the quiz” sooner or later.
For this conversation we were joined by Clara Moskowitz, associate editor at Scientific American, covering space and physics, We recorded this episode in collaboration with Scientific American, and we are grateful to them for their support and most excellent production help.
(Yes, for this episode the Google software for the Hangout was not switching the big image to match the speaker, but the audio is good, so bear with us.)
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Nov
05
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
November 5, 2013
Streamed live on 5 November 2013
Our topic today was all the natural disasters that Earth is prone to : earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, landslides, volcanoes — all the stuff that disaster movies thrive on, only we were more interested in the reality and the geology that’s behind all those disastrous events, not to mention how to communicate that reality to the public.
All of those things were things done very well by today’s guest, geologist Susan W. Kieffer, in her book “The Dynamics of Disaster”, and we discussed quite a bit of that plus some other things as we are wont to do.
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Oct
17
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
October 17, 2013
Streamed live 17 October 2013
In this episode we talked about everything that makes our world so wonderful with the guy who wrote the book about (nearly) everything: Marcus Chown, author of “What a Wonderful World : One Man’s Attempt to Explain the Big Stuff”. And, indeed, there’s some big stuff in this book — and our conversation. Cosmology, cell biology, mathematics, evolution, physics, just to name a few. As always, we had a lively, fun, and informative conversation.
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Oct
10
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
October 10, 2013
Streamed live on 10 October 2013
Our conversation was almost as large as the universe when we talked with Lee Billings, discussing his book “Five Million Years of Solitude : The Search for Life among the Stars”. In addition to the scientists and the technology–and the results!–of searching for the existence of planets beyond our own solar system, we pretty much touched on questions relating to life, the universe, and everything, including communicating science, of course. As usual, we had a lively conversation about lots of interesting ideas.
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Sep
19
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
September 19, 2013
Streamed live on 19 September 2013
Our especially brave guest for our lucky-thirteenth show was David Epstein, author of “The Sports Gene : Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance.” As always we had a wide-ranging conversation that included not only engaging topics, amusing anecdotes, and fascinating facts from his book, but a discussion about how to communicate necessary and interesting stories — about science or most anything else worthy of the time — that take some time to tell. We had something for sports enthusiasts and science enthusiasts, and for those who happen to be both, all in one great conversation.
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Sep
09
Posted by jnshaumeyer on
September 9, 2013
Streamed live on 9 September 2013
We talked with Temple Grandin and Richard Panek, authors of “The Autistic Brain : Thinking Across the Spectrum” about autism and sensory disorders and neurological brain-imaging tools and thinking in pictures and thinking in patterns, and lots of other stuff too. As Richard put it, we covered a lot of ground, and our guests were generous with amusing anecdotes and amazing insights.
We recorded this episode in collaboration with Scientific American, and we are grateful to them for their support and most excellent production help.
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