In this episode we have a lively discussion about the genetic roots of cancer, how carcinogens get involved, how to communicate that to the public, and how the public can arm themselves against those who try to manipulate science to suit their own ends.
And we did this with two great writers on the subject: Dan Fagin, author of “Toms River : A Story of Science and Salvation”, and Jessica Wapner, author of “The Philadelphia Chromosome : A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level”.
Today we talked to wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas about combining science and art in her series of books with stories and images about the life of animal families on the African Savanna, as well as her keen interest in conservation and lending her support to small conservation groups doing big jobs around the world. Plus the usual assortment of related and unrelated topics.
In this RS! episode we talked with famed moon-walker and space visionary, Buzz Aldrin, about his book, “Mission to Mars”, and his vision for establishing a permanent human presence on Mars. Later in the episode we were joined by Leonard David, Buzz’s co-author on the book, to talk some about their experiences with spreading the idea and engaging the public with the excitement of space exploration.
We teamed up with award-winning filmmaker — and secret evolutionary biologist — Lucy Cooke, for a high-energy discussion about sloths, and frogs, and many other down-trodden and unloved species of animals; making films that entertain and educate; and all sorts of other stuff, including some insider talk about Richard Dawkins & David Attenborough. We also were briefly reminded of the limits of technology and laptop battery lives.
To find out about Lucy’s larger documentaries that have been produced and broadcast in many venues, an online search should amply reward you. Smaller videos that she posts online can be found here: http://vimeo.com/user2714304/videos .
They physicists gang up on Joanne, when we’re joined by Mario Livio, whose most recent book is “Brilliant Blunders : From Darwin to Einstein – Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe”, and Michael Brooks, whose most recent book is “Free Radicals : The Secret Anarchy of Science”. We discuss the audacious idea that scientists are actually people, too, and that science is a human enterprise and mistakes regularly happen.
For this discussion of “Poop & Pipes” (as guest Scott Huler put it) we were joined by Rose George, whose most recent book is “The Big Necessity : The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters”, and Scott Huler, whose newest book is “On the Grid : A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make our World Work”. I’ll avoid all puns involving the word “sh*t” and merely say: Who knew sewers & sanitation could be so interesting!
(The cheering at the beginning, by the way, happened when we apparently overcame a Google+ technical glitch that kept our Hangout from going “on air”.)
In our second conversation on “Read Science!”, we talked dinosaurs with Brian Switek, whose recent book is “My Beloved Brontosaurus”, and Daniel Loxton, whose recent book is for children, called “Pterosaur Trouble”.
Mary Roach, author of the books “Stiff”, “Spook”, “Bonk”, “Packing for Mars” and her latest, “Gulp”, was our guest today on Read Science! Where we conversed about how she writes her science to engage the audience. We discovered that she is “a gateway drug to science” and enjoys the idea of limiting yourself to one idea or concept and seeing how far you can take that topic in writing.