Category: Podcast

Snorkeling with Some Wild Dolphin Friends – or Another Day in the Office for Denise Herzing

07.16.18.

For more than three decades, behavioral biologist Denise Herzing has tracked and observed a pod of wild spotted dolphins that live in the warm clear waters of the Bahamas. She’s learned an awful lot about their behaviors and their communication–or is it a language? Denise has as good a chance as anyone to find out…
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The Blessing and Curse of Methane – Hash it Out

07.11.18.

Methane is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of gas: on one hand, it is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. On the other, if it leaks, methane itself is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. In this special Hash It Out episode, Brian and Fedor go from 18th century Italian methane guns…
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Inside the Legal Battle to Ban a Deadly Neurotoxin – with Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky

07.03.18.

For several years, environmental advocacy groups have been fighting to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos from agricultural use. A turnover in leadership at the EPA has led to a moment of indecision on what to do about the chemical. Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist who’s spent a long time assisting in the legal battle against chlorpyrifos.…
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The Chemical Ban That Got a Reprieve from Trump’s EPA – with Miriam Rotkin-Ellman of the Natural Resources Defense Council

06.25.18.

After years of exhaustive research linking the pesticide chlorpyrifos to a host of developmental and cognitive deficiencies in children, the EPA was poised to ban the chemical in November 2016. But something else happened that same month: the election of Donald Trump. As a result, this potent neurotoxin is still in use. Miriam Rotkin-Ellman is…
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The Promise and Peril of AI – Hash it Out with Tech Entrepreneur Lars Perkins

06.19.18.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not off in the distant future… in some ways it is already here. How is AI already changing our lives? Does it work independently of us or does it also have our all-too-human biases? After hashing out machine learning on Episode 19, Brian and Fedor sit down with Picasa founder and…
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Welcome to the Madhouse – with Michael Mann and Tom Toles

06.11.18.

Communicating the science of climate change, with its overwhelming expert consensus, seems like it should be easy. However, a science-averse media and strong fossil fuel lobby make it exceedingly difficult. Climatologist Michael Mann and cartoonist Tom Toles have teamed up to put climate change in context in their new book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate…
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