What is lightning? What do we know–and not know–about how it works? What is the relationship between lightning and space-based nuclear weapons treaty compliance monitoring? Physicist Tess Light will tell you all this and more…
… is the new book by forensic psychiatrist and former CIA officer Marc Sageman, who analyzes the backgrounds and motivations of neojihadist terrorists, and maps a path forward based on social science rather than political posturing.
That’s right, seven of them–from HIV/AIDS to resistant strains of bacteria, viruses, flus, and lyme disease. Dr. Mark Jerome Walters talks about the human role in causing and aggravating those diseases by our poor handling of ecosystems.
Anthropologist Paul Hooper has lived with the Tsimane people of Bolivia and reports on their extraordinary health and athleticism, and their way of life which includes entirely home-grown beer and barbecue.
Anthropologist Barbara King writes about food animals–insects, octopuses, chickens, and various mammals–not to get you to stop eating them, but to open a discussion about about the lives of animals and cruelty in the industrial food system.
Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky makes the case that the language–or languages–we speak deeply affect who we are and how we engage with the world.
… of science, of understanding, of language, of mathematics… a philosophical conversation about science with David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute.
Science writer Julie Rehmeyer found out she had chronic fatigue syndrome, and went on a journey to find a cure that took her from doctors to Death Valley.
Cancer researcher Ludmil Alexandrov talks about the CSI of cancer–how to find out, on a cellular level, what are the external factors that cause cancer, and what that means for prevention.
Climate scientist and mountaineer John All talks about the risks and rewards trekking to the highest peaks of the Himalayas, the jungles of Central America, and the wilds of southern Africa to collect scientific data.