Help us improve this podcast: take our short survey. Marvin Minsky is often regarded as the father of modern AI, but when Miles visited him in 2010, Minsky wasn’t a proud father. In fact, Minsky was disappointed with … LISTEN NOW »
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How and why we’re sampling asteroid Bennu – with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx team
Help us improve this podcast: take our short survey. How did our early solar system form? What are the origins of life? How likely are we to get hit by a dangerous asteroid? A daring NASA mission called OSIRIS-REx hopes … LISTEN NOW »
Why Europa is the most likely spot we’ll find aliens – with NASA’s Kevin Peter Hand
Jupiter has many moons, but none are quite like Europa: it has a thick crust of ice and a huge amount of liquid saltwater underneath its surface. In fact, many believe it’s the best place in the Solar System that we … LISTEN NOW »
How Average Americans are Fighting Climate Change – with Clean Air Carolina’s June Blotnick
Hurricane Florence was a perfect example of how climate change supercharges extreme weather events. But climate change also affects us in other more subtle, interconnected, and difficult to manage ways. Thankfully, … LISTEN NOW »
Steve Squyres – On Exploring Mars, and Other Celestial Objects
Steve Squyres is the principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Program, which gave us the plucky and productive rovers Spirit and Opportunity. With the latter on life support and the former no longer with us, … LISTEN NOW »
The Murky World of Science Transparency – Hash it Out with NYU Professor George D. Thurston
There are calls in the EPA and in Congress for the use of more transparent science. But what does that mean? Why do scientists seem united against these regulations? And what would it mean if they went into effect? In … LISTEN NOW »
Snorkeling with Some Wild Dolphin Friends – or Another Day in the Office for Denise Herzing
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 … LISTEN NOW »
The Blessing and Curse of Methane – Hash it Out
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 … LISTEN NOW »
Inside the Legal Battle to Ban a Deadly Neurotoxin – with Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky
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 … LISTEN NOW »
The Chemical Ban That Got a Reprieve from Trump’s EPA – with Miriam Rotkin-Ellman of the Natural Resources Defense Council
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 … LISTEN NOW »
The Promise and Peril of AI – Hash it Out with Tech Entrepreneur Lars Perkins
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? … LISTEN NOW »
Welcome to the Madhouse – with Michael Mann and Tom Toles
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 … LISTEN NOW »
What is Machine Learning and How is it Used? – Hash it Out with Cameron Hickey
What is machine learning? How does it work? What are these artificially intelligent algorithms useful for? Considering they are used by Amazon, Google, Netflix, Facebook and many other companies we interact with on a … LISTEN NOW »
Searching for Methane, the Other Greenhouse Gas – with Robert Green of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Methane is a much more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It is more short lived than CO2 (about a decade as opposed to a century) but it is 85 times more effective at warming. Rob Green is a world … LISTEN NOW »
The Software We Wrote to Understand Junk News – with Producer Cameron Hickey
In the final episode in our series on Junk News, some wisdom from one of the leading experts in the murky world of online misinformation. He also happens to be the producer of the series that we aired on the PBS … LISTEN NOW »
Inside Facebook – with Tessa Lyons, Head of News Feed Integrity
Facebook was created for people to share family photos and memories. But as ads entered the mix, the platform was refined to hold our attention for as long as possible. Quality was not a consideration - until recently. … LISTEN NOW »
Inside the Filter Bubble – with Eli Pariser, the man who coined the phrase.
The Internet was supposed to provide a utopian virtual world where all of us could come together in peace, love and harmony to better understand each other and our differing viewpoints... But we got derailed on the … LISTEN NOW »
Understanding the Eruption at Kilauea – with Geologist Mike Garcia
As Hawaii trembles with earthquakes and the Kilauea volcano continues to spew forth lava and gas, residents and the wider world watch and wonder: how long will this renewed activity continue? To find out, we turn to Mike … LISTEN NOW »
A Junk News Pioneer – with Cyrus Massoumi, Part 2
Russian actors may have run an online disinformation campaign during the 2016 US presidential elections, but they likely learned their tactics from Americans. As part of our investigation, PBS NewsHour series producer … LISTEN NOW »
A Junk News Pioneer – with Cyrus Massoumi, Part 1
Russian actors may have run an organized online disinformation campaign during the 2016 US presidential elections, but they likely learned their clickbait tactics from Americans. In our ongoing investigation of junk … LISTEN NOW »
Mapping Misinformation and Russian Influence Online – with Data Journalist Jonathan Albright
Top US intelligence agencies agree that Russia meddled in the 2016 US Presidential election using an organized campaign of online trolling and misinformation. The details of exactly how are harder to uncover. Jonathan … LISTEN NOW »
Whose Best Interest – Can Facebook’s Business Model Be Repaired?
The Cambridge Analytica scandal has placed Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook at the center of the data privacy debate. But is Facebook’s ad-driven business model fundamentally incompatible with protecting users’ personal … LISTEN NOW »
Aviation and the “Tombstone Mentality” – How Southwest 1380 Could Have Been Avoided
The uncontained engine failure of Southwest flight 1380 reminds us once again that commercial aviation is a business that does not always put safety first - and regulators seem reluctant to change that. Jennifer … LISTEN NOW »
Just the Facts – an interview with Brooke Binkowski of Snopes.com
Long before Facebook, Twitter or even Google existed, the fact checking website Snopes.com was running down the half-truths, misinformation, and outright lies that ricochet across the Internet. Today it remains … LISTEN NOW »
Misinformation on the Internet – Untangling the Web, an interview with danah boyd.
How did the internet become a tangled web of misinformation? Miles speaks to danah boyd, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of Data & Society, and Visiting Professor at New York University. boyd … LISTEN NOW »
How does the Facebook News Feed work? An interview with Dan Zigmond, head of Facebook News Feed analytics.
Who or what determines what's in your Facebook News Feed? It's a complex algorithm that aims to put what interests you most at the top of the queue. Increasingly, Facebook is focused on trying to determine what … LISTEN NOW »
What does a year in space do to your DNA? A conversation with astronaut Scott Kelly.
In this episode of Miles To Go, Miles catches up with astronaut Scott Kelly and learns about what it’s like to spend a year in space. Kelly talks about the physical and emotional toll of his historic mission, the … LISTEN NOW »
Entering A New Dimension in 3D Printing
When you think of 3D printing, you may envision useless trinkets, a cheesy iPhone cover, or extruded cheese doodles. But that would be so 2014 of you! In this episode of Miles To Go, Miles sits down with John Hart, an … LISTEN NOW »
Inside North Korea’s Nuclear Complex
Siegfried Hecker is a Metallurgist and Nuclear Scientist. He served as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997 and is a professor at The Center For International Cooperation at Stanford … LISTEN NOW »
What Happens After The Garbage Truck Takes Away Your Trash?
Eugene Tseng describes himself as the most “overeducated garbage man” in the world. An environmental engineer and lawyer who teaches at UCLA and Cal State Northridge, he has spent decades understanding what we throw away … LISTEN NOW »
Pilot Episode: The Worst Airline Accident That Nearly Happened
In July of 2017, an Air Canada passenger jet loaded with 135 passengers and 5 crewmembers nearly landed on a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport, where four jets were waiting to take off. At the last … LISTEN NOW »