Catastrophic fires and natural fires: the science and policy behind wildfire management
Fire scientist Rod Linn and firefighter and journalist Kyle Dickman, the human and ecological costs and benefits of fighting fires, and of letting them burn.
Lightning and thunder… explained
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…
Misunderstanding Terrorism
… 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.
We are the cause of our own…plagues.
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.
Hunting, farming, and surviving between worlds…
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.
The lives of animals before they’re food
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.
My language, my soul…
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.
Take me to the limit…
… of science, of understanding, of language, of mathematics… a philosophical conversation about science with David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute.
Not just tired but sick…
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’s Fingerprints
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.