Little Atoms Road Trip

Little Atoms Road Trip 31 – Sara Seager

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 22:45:25 +0000

On a rainy afternoon in Boston, Neil recorded the last interview of his month long American road trip, with astrophysicist Sara Seager.Â Sara SeagerÂ is theÂ Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Science and Physics at MIT. Her science research focuses on theory, computation, and data analysis of exoplanets. Her research has introduced many new ideas to the field of exoplanet characterization, including work that led to the first detection of an exoplanet atmosphere. Before joining MIT in 2007, Professor Seager spent four years on the senior research staff at the Carnegie Institution of Washington preceded by three years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Her PhD is from Harvard University. She is on the advisory board for Planetary Resources and the Rosalind Franklin Society. She was the 2012 recipient of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in the Physical Sciences and the 2007 recipient of the American Astronomical Society’s Helen B. Warner Prize.

Little Atoms Road Trip 30 – Seth Mnookin

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:40:56 +0000

During his time in Boston, Neil spent as Morning at MIT visiting with Seth Mnookin.Â Seth MnookinÂ is the Co-Director ofÂ MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing. His most recent book,Â The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy, won the National Association of Science Writers 2012 â€œScience in Societyâ€ Award. He is also the author of the 2006 New York Times bestsellerÂ Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top. His first book, 2004sÂ Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Since 2005, Seth has been a contributing editor atÂ Vanity Fair, and in 2002 and 2003, he was a senior writer at Newsweek, where he wrote the media column â€œRaw Copyâ€ and also covered politics and popular culture. HisÂ blog on science, medicine, and mediaÂ is part of the Public Library of Science (PLOS) Blog Network.

Little Atoms Road Trip 29 – Lucianne Walkowicz

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:38:56 +0000

On a warm spring day in Brooklyn, Neil attempts to interview astrophysicist Lucianne Walkowicz in the sculpture garden of the Pratt Institute, until the weather intervenes.

Lucianne WalkowiczÂ is the Henry Norris Russell Fellow in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton, and aÂ 2012 TED Senior Fellow. She studies stellar magnetic activity and its effects on planetary habitability using data from NASA’s Kepler Mission. She’s a leader in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a new project that will scan the sky every night for 10 years to create a huge cosmic movie of our Universe. And she’s alsoÂ an artist, working in a variety of media, from comics, to oil paint, to sound.

Little Atoms 259 – Road Trip 28 – The American Museum of Natural History

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:07:33 +0000

This show was recorded behind the scenes at theÂ American Museum of Natural HistoryÂ at Central Park West in New York. There are three interviews with curators working at the museum.

Ross MacPheeÂ is a curator ofÂ Vertebrate Zoology in the Department of MammalogyÂ at the American Museum of Natural History. Known for his paleomammalogical research on island extinctions, he has focused his most recent work on how extinctions occur, particularly those in which humans are thought to have been implicated during the past 100,000 years. In 1998, in collaboration with colleagues from the Russian Academy of Scientists, Dr. MacPhee collected the remains of woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island in the Chukchi Sea to determine how this last-surviving mammoth population was wiped out. Recently, Dr. MacPhee worked with geneticists and molecular biologists to develop the new tool of “ancient DNA” as a means for studying the population structure and ultimate collapse of Pleistocene mammals. He was a member of the scientific team that published a major new study of the genome of the woolly mammoth inÂ ScienceÂ in early 2006. He has been involved in several television documentaries on mammoths and their world, including “What Killed the Megabeasts?” for Channel 4.

Peter WhiteleyÂ is a curator of North American Ethnology in theÂ Department of AnthropologyÂ at the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Whiteley studies the cultures, social structures, social histories, and environmental relations in Native North America from the 17th century to the present. His research focuses on a number of areas, including Hopi society, culture, and polity in northern Arizona, based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research over the last two decades, and Eastern and Western Pueblo intercultural relations and sociopolitical transformations during and after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

John FlynnÂ is Dean of theÂ Richard Gilder Graduate SchoolÂ and Frick Curator of Fossil Mammals in theÂ Department of PaleontologyÂ at the American Museum of Natural History. Author of more than 125 scientific publications, Flynn’s research focuses on the phylogeny and evolution of mammals and Mesozoic vertebrates, geological dating, plate tectonics, and biogeography. Dr. Flynn has led more than 50 paleontological expeditions to Chile, PerÃº, Colombia, Madagascar, Angola, India, and the Rocky Mountains. In 2001 John Flynn received a Guggenheim Fellowship for a year of research, writing and expeditions in South America and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009.

Little Atoms 257 – Road Trip 27 – Leslie Brunetta

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:23:07 +0000

In Cambridge, Mass. on his last day recording interviews, Neil paid a visit to writer Leslie Brunetta.Â Leslie BrunettaÂ is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, as well as on NPR and elsewhere. An English graduate of both Princeton and St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, she is the co-author ofÂ Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and MatingÂ with Catherine L. Craig, who is an internationally recognized evolutionary biologist, arachnologist, and authority on silk.

Little Atoms 256 – Road Trip 26 – Misha Angrist

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 17:13:59 +0000

While passing through North Carolina, Neil paid a visit to Duke University in Durham, and spent a great afternoon talking to geneticist Misha Angrist.Â Misha AngristÂ is an assistant professor at theÂ Duke University Institute for Genomic Sciences and Policy. His doctoral and postdoctoral work was in human genetics, and he was formerly a board-eligible genetic counselor. Misha also writes fiction, which has appeared in numerous literary journals. In 2007, Misha Angrist became theÂ fourth subjectÂ in George Church’s ambitiousÂ Personal Genome Project, and he wrote a book,Â Here is a Human Being: At the Dawn of Personal Genomics, about that experience.

Little Atoms 254 – Road Trip 25 – George Church

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 13:59:39 +0000

While in Boston, Neil spent an afternoon at the Church Lab at Harvard Medical School.Â George ChurchÂ is aÂ Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical SchoolÂ and Professor of Health Sciences & Technology at Harvard and MIT, As well as a director of theÂ U.S. Department of Energy Center on BioenergyÂ at Harvard & MIT and Director of theÂ Center for Computational GeneticsÂ at Harvard Medical School. He co-developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984 which helped initiate theÂ Human Genome ProjectÂ and resulted in the first commercial genome sequence of the human pathogenÂ Helicobacter pyloriÂ in 1994. His revolutionary approach pioneered the use of automation to analyze millions of genetic sequences in one run, and his current research focuses on new technologies in personal genomics leading to his initiation of theÂ Personal Genome ProjectÂ in 2005. George Church sits on the advisory board of more than 14 biotech companies, including personal genomics startupÂ 23andMeÂ and biofuel pioneersÂ LS9.

Little Atoms 250 – Road Trip 24 – Paul Offit

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 10:07:56 +0000

On the journey from Washington DC to New York City, Neil stopped in at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to chat with Paul Offit.Â Paul Offit MDÂ is the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of theÂ Vaccine Education CenterÂ at theÂ Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. A pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases and an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology . He is the co-inventor of aÂ rotavirus vaccineÂ that has been credited with saving hundreds of lives every day. He has been a member of theÂ Centers for Disease ControlÂ (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and was a Founding Board Member of theÂ Autism Science Foundation. Paul Offit is the author ofÂ Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens us All.

Little Atoms 245- Road Trip 23 – Priya Natarajan

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:00:15 +0000

While in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Neil spent an afternoon talking cosmology at the apartment of the theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan.Â Priya NatarajanÂ is a Professor in theÂ Departments of Astronomy and PhysicsÂ at Yale University. Her research is focused on exotica in the Universe -Â dark matter, dark energy and black holes. She is noted for her key contributions to two of the most challenging problems in cosmology: mapping the distribution of dark matter and tracing the growth history of black holes. Her work using gravitational lensing has provided a deeper understanding of the granularity of dark matter in clusters of galaxies and offers a novel way to unravel the nature of dark matter. Priya also works on the assembly and accretion history of black holes. She is currently exploring a new channel for the formation of the first black holes and its observational consequences at high and low redshift.

Priya is the current chair of theÂ Womens Faculty ForumÂ (WFF) at Yale, and is deeply interested in Gender Parity issues in the Academy. Previously Priya was the Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and was the first woman in Astrophysics to be elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She also holds the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Professorship at theÂ Dark Center, Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Little Atoms 243 – Road Trip 22 – Dr Stephen Barrett

littleatomspodcast@gmail.com (Neil Denny) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 05:00:08 +0000

In this episode, Neil drives to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and visits with Dr Stephen Barrett.Â Dr Stephen BarrettÂ is a retired psychiatrist who has achieved national renown as an author, editor, and consumer advocate. An expert in medical communications, Dr. Barrett operatesÂ Quackwatch,Â Autism Watch, and a number of other Web sites and edits Consumer Health Digest (a free weekly electronic newsletter). He has written more than 2,000 articles and delivered more than 300 talks at colleges, universities, medical schools, and professional meetings. His 50 books includeÂ The Health Robbers: A Close Look at Quackery in AmericaÂ and seven editions of the college textbookÂ Consumer Health: A Guide to Intelligent Decisions. He received the 2001 Distinguished Service to Health Education Award from the American Association for Health Education. His media appearances include Dateline, the Today Show, Good Morning America, ABC Prime Time, Donahue, CNN, National Public Radio, and more than 200 radio and television talk show interviews.