Ben spearheaded this show where our guest was Dr. Jennifer Moon, whose website, www.greenseedling.com, web publishes student-written plant biology news. The site had a special topic week on marijuana and the neurobiology of cannabis the day we spoke to her, so the show is a combination of an introduction to the website as a teachable unit in science writing, and a sort-of tongue in cheek tribute to "a topic that will engage students" - I don't think we ever would have done a 420 show unless a professor had generated the idea. I think.
This show's really short. A combination of an abundance of PSAs, an unbeknownst phone off the hook, and a locked door.
Once we got the ball rolling, our guest was Josh Russell, erstwhile Molecular Biology core facility electron microscope expert and current first-year graduate student. His Art and Science club is a newly formed, loose collective of people who are scientists or artists or some combination of both, who are interested in new ways to combine the two and reach out to people who aren't yet similarly inspired.
We talked about how scientists can best inspire others to share our curiosity or at least see the scientific process as a creative one, especially young kids.
Also:
"Do scientists have to 'prostitute' their work more or less than others?
Why are people (me) scared of the determinism that guides neuroscience, genetic engineering, or, say, Pandora?
How good of an idea is Christian Bok's?
Also, I try to make an analogy between scientific reductionism and Coco Chanel's famous quote: "When accessorizing, always take off the last thing you put on." And no one gets what I'm talking about.
Lastly, I force Josh to talk about the music that he makes even though I know I am terrible at talking about music.
This show is Ben's first at the helm - he chose the stories (except for the ridiculous one about the octopus flooding it's own aquarium) and guided the conversation. The stories were directly from news sources and/or the UT website, other than the first, which came from a neuroscience journal. From my perspective, the half-hour flew by, and it was interesting to see what someone else gleans from the science headlines and decides would be the best to discuss.
This show also contains Ben's memorable turn of phrase "one-on-one rat party" and my use of There Will Be Blood to talk about global water rights.
1."The Consequence of Fetal Ethanol Exposure and Adolescent Odor Re-Exposre on the Response to Ethanol Odor in Adolescent and Adult Rats" - Eade, AM et al. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 5:3, 2009.
2."Earth Critters Take a Trip to Phobos" - Irene Klotz, ABC News in Science, March 4, 2009.
3."Chang'e-1 hits moon after 16-month movement" - Du Guodong, Xinhua, March 1, 2009.
4."Troubled Waters" - Lee Clippard and Marc Airheart, University of Texas at Austin Press Release, March 2008.
5. "Octopus Floods Santa Monica Pier Aquarium" - Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2009.
I was really excited to read the paper that prompted this interview and realize that it was written by someone who works just down the block from me at UT. Then, I was really disappointed to get sick and lose my voice the day of the interview. It is one my my favorite shows though... the other one being the March 17 2008 episode in which I only speak on air twice. Seems like a pattern.
Our guest was Dr. Jennifer Whitson, a professor in the McCombs School of Business. The paper, entitled "Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception" was published in Science late last year. Dr. Whitson does a great job in this interview talking about her motivation for investigating this phenomenon, and the state of the people's understanding about the human desire to feel control today, in 2009. Had I been there, I might have wanted to talk about eating disorders, obsessive-compulsivity, and the paper we discussed a few weeks earlier about anxiety affecting people's political views, especially when Ben touches on the idea of how a feeling of "lack of control" differs from flat-out "fear."
This was the first four-on-one interview we had on the show, and I think it ended up being overkill, particularly because I think we had 3 working mikes for 5 people (there is a bit edited out where our interviewee is unintelligible, but I think the interview arc is still preserved.) The levels are all over the place, and for that I apologize.
We interviewed Dr. Jim Bryant, a professor of biostatistics at UT Austin. His recent lecture on campus had been entitled "Sherlock Holmes: Probably One of The Greatest Statisticians, That Never Lived." Although he began his scientific career doing stem cell research, he now runs a group of students who study how to use statistics skills to find effective studying strategies.
I think having so many people in the room, or at least we particular people, prevented a natural conversation - I ended up surrendering my mike, and I think the other cohosts ended up waiting for others to speak, resulting in some weird pauses. I personally find the metaphor of Sherlock Holmes as statistician overly complex, but then again, I often find mystery stories unrealistically baroque too.
My favorite part of the interview is near the middle when Dr. Bryant reveals the secret, statistically proven way to do well in a class - attend it.
Another news show with Chase, Ben and I. Probably because I had chosen the articles this week and they appealed to my sense of ... humor, I guess it would be, I seem to be laughing throughout most of the show. My joke about going to a banana rave, I think, is the highlight of the show. I realized only this PAST week what it feels like to be on the other end, discussing someone else's choice of topics at a round table. It is a tiny bit less fun. Not that I go around cutting off people's mikes when they don't agree with me, but it is fun to steer the conversation. You can hear a definite change in tone when you listen to the March 2 show, hosted by Ben, when I post it soon.
1. "Blue Luminescence of Ripening Bananas" - Moser, S. et al., Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2008 47 (46) 8954-8957.
2. "Peanut Case Shows Holes in Safety Net" - New York Times, February 8 2009.
3. "Earth's Degassing: A Missing Ethane and Propane Source" - Etiope, G. and Paolo Ciccioli. Science 2009 323 (5913), 478.
4. "The Spreading of Disorder" - Keiser, K., Lindenberg, S. and Linda Steg. Science 2008 322 (2908) 1681-1685.
This is the first show with our new co-hosts/hopefully heirs, DJ Stir Bar and DJ Ganglion. I much appreciate having three heads in the room - it's still a few weeks from our first 4-headed show. In listening to this it suprises me that I have finally become the least wonky head in the room and hope that's a skill and not a weakness.
1."Visual Detection of Copper(II) by Azide- and Alkyne-Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles Using Click Chemistry" Zhou, Y, et al. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2008 47 (39) 7454-7456.
2. "Bioactive Contaminants Leach from Disposable Laboratory Plasticware" McDonald, G.R. et al. Science 2008 322, 917.
3. "Exceptional longevity does not result in excessive levels of disability" Christensen, Kaare et al. PNAS 2008 open access from late summer.
4. "Antimicrobial strategies in burying beetles breeding on carrion" D. E.
Rozena, et al. PNAS 2008 105 (46), 17890-17895.
Hurricane Ike knocked out a lot of the work being done at one of our sister campuses, UT's medical school in Galveston. For almost two months, the doctors whose syndicated medical research clips we run were displaced, so this podcast is extremely short after I edited out the big backlog of "Medical Discovery News" that we finally ran during this half-hour.
Adriana tries an on-air riddle contest, which didn't really work the way she hoped (I don't think I ever found out the answer either). I now understand why they have you mail in a postcard for the Car Talk Puzzler - decoupling the contest from the live show prevents an awkward pause when no one wants to guess.
1."Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey?" Baikouzis, Constantino and Marcelo Magnasco. PNAS 2008 105 (26), 8823-8828.
2."Life-history change in disease-ravaged Tasmanian devil populations" Jones, Menna et al. PNAS , 2008 (an undated early edition from the summer).
Near the end, I call this a "good show about strange things" - the first part of that statement is up to you to decide, but it is a completely-biology based show, and animal behavior is always rich with things that seem "weird"... until they don't anymore.
At the 25 minute mark or so, I pasted in a promo that's actually from October 6th's show, just because I thought it was funny, and didn't have space for it in that file.
1."The virophage as a unique parasite of the giant mimivirus" La Scola, Bernard, et al. Nature (2008) 455, 100-104.
2."Primate hunting by bonobos at LuiKotale, Salonga National Park" Surbeck, Martin and Gottfried Hohmann. Current Biology (2008) 18 (19), R906-R907.
3."The evolutionary origin of flatfish asymmetry" Friedman, Matt. Nature (2008) 454, 209-212.
