Little Atoms Road Trip

During his visit to Caltech in Pasadena, Neil spoke briefly to Theoretical Physicist Kip Thorne. Kip Thorne was a student of the late John Wheeler, the renowned Princeton physicist who coined the term ‘black hole’. he was the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009 and one of the world’s leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Kip and fellow Wheeler student Charles Misner are the authors of the extremely influential textbook Gravitation, which has become the bible of those wanting to learn and apply general relativity to astrophysics. Kip’s research has covered almost all aspects of the subject from the accretion discs around black holes to the X-rays they emit. He has for many years been a forceful and effective advocate of LIGO, the project to detect gravitational radiation using large-scale laser interferometers. Apart from technical papers and books Kip has written a highly successful popular book, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy. Kip is currently working on a number of film projects, one of which is to be directed by Steven Spielberg.

While in New York City, Neil pays a visit to the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, where he talks with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson was born and raised in New York City where he was educated in the public schools right through to his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. Tyson went on to earn his BA in Physics from Harvard and his PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia. He is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose Directorship of the Hayden Planetarium. His professional research interests are broad, but include star formation, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies, and the structure of our Milky Way. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the recipient of nine honorary doctorates and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. His contributions to the public appreciation of the cosmos have been recognized by the International Astronomical Union in their official naming of asteroid “13123 Tyson”. He has served on two separate presidential commisions on the future of the American Aerospace industry. Neil is the author of a number of books, including The Sky is not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist, Death By Black Hole, The Pluto Files, and most recently Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. He is the host of Startalk Radio show and podcast.

This episode sees Neil making a visit to Asheville in North Carolina and talking with writer DeLene Beeland. DeLene Beeland is a freelance writer on science and nature, and the author of The Secret World of Red Wolves: A True Story of North America’s Other Wolf. This explores the natural history of red wolves from their evolutionary origins, to their near extinction and reintroduction to a small peninsula in coastal North Carolina. It will be released in spring 2013 through the University of North Carolina Press.

In this episode, Neil Travels to Glen Ellen, in Northern California and meets with musician and naturalist Bernie Krause. A former member of seminal folk band The Weavers, (he replaced Pete Seeger as guitarist), Bernie Krause became a pioneer of electronic music, studying at Mills College under Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pauline Oliveros, and later popularised the Moog synthesizer. As part of the duo Beaver & Krause, he worked on the soundtrack for many iconic 70’s films, such as Apocalypse Now, Rosemary’s Baby and Performance. For more than forty years Krause has traveled the World recording and archiving the sounds of creatures and environments large and small. He has recorded more than fifteen thousand species and four thousand hours of wild soundscapes, over half of which no longer exist in nature due to encroaching noise and human activity. Bernie Krause is the author of The Great Animal Orchestra. Inspired by Bernie, Neil has added a selection of wild soundscapes to this interview, recorded on a walnut farm belonging to the anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, in Winters, California.

In this Road Trip podcast, Neil Denny pays a visit to Leonard Susskind in Palo Alto, California. Leonard Susskind has been the Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University since 1978. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous prizes including the science writing prize of the American Institute of Physics for a Scientific American article on black holes. He is the author of a number of books of popular science, including The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design and the book we look at in this interview, The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics. His contributions to physics include the discovery of string theory, and the holographic principle, both of which have completely changed the landscape of modern theoretical physics. Outside of physics, Susskind has been a lifelong advocate of progressive politics, something else we touch upon in this interview.

In this episode, Neil visits the University of Chicago and spends some time in the company of Jerry Coyne. Jerry Coyne is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, where he works on diverse areas of evolutionary genetics. His research focuses on the origin of new species, using the fruit fly (Drosophila) as mode organism. A former student of the distinguished Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin, Coyne has taught evolutionary biology for more than 25 years, and has contributed frequently to the public debate concerning evolution and creationism. He has published widely in research journals and is the author, with Allen Orr, of Speciation, now the standard academic text in the subject. He was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. Jerry is the author of Why Evolution is True.

In this episode, Neil pays a visit to the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. BEYOND is a pioneering center devoted to investigating the big questions of science and philosophy. Things like how the universe came to exist, where the laws of nature came from, how life began. The center is led by the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, and this show features an iterview with Paul, and with BEYOND’s Post-Doctoral fellow Sara Imari Walker. Sara Imari Walker is a NASA Astrobiology Institute postdoctoral fellow. She received her PhD in Physics from Dartmouth College and worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Chemical Evolution at Georgia Tech. She is fascinated by all questions regarding the nature of life in the universe. Her research focuses on the origin of life, combining techniques from theoretical physics, chemistry, and information science, to uncover how the first living systems might have arisen on a lifeless planet. Paul Davies is the Director of BEYOND Center, Director of the Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology. A theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author. His research ranges from the origin of the universe to the origin of life, and includes the properties of black holes, the nature of time and quantum field theory. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1995 Templeton Prize, the 2002 Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society and the 2011 Robinson prize in Cosmology. He is the author of many books including The Goldilocks Enigma and The Eerie Silence.

While spending the day at Caltech, in Pasadena, CA. Neil spent some time talking with the former Director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Edward Stone. Edward Stone joined Caltech as a research fellow in physics after receiving his Master of Science degree and Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago. Over the years, he held a variety of positions, from assistant professor to Vice President for Astronomical Facilities. In 1972 he became project scientist for the Voyager mission, a position he currently still holds. He was the Director of JPL from January 1991 to April 2001, when he went back to teaching at Caltech. While Stone was Director, JPL’s Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover sent back images that were seen by millions of people on television and the Web. Among other successes were the Mars Global Surveyor, Deep Space 1, TOPEX/Poseidon, NASA Scatterometer, and the launch of  Cassini, Stardust, and 2001 Mars Odyssey.

The annual conference of the Orange County Freethought Alliance took place over the weekend of May 19th and 20th 2012 at the University of California, Irvine. Neil Denny attended the conference on the Saturday 19th May and talked to some of the speakers. This podcast features five short interviews.  Richard Carrier is a writer for Internet Infidels and a historian of the historical Jesus,  Aron Ra is an internet activist who uses phylogenetics to counter the claims of creationists,  Heina Dadabhoy is a former muslim and a current writer for Skepchick,  Dave Silverman is the president of American Atheists and organiser of the Reason Rally,  and Brian Dunning is the producer and presenter of the seminal podcast Skeptoid.

In this episode, Neil visits the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and talks to theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. Sean Carroll has written papers on Dark Energy, Dark Matter, the physics of extra dimensions and alternative theories of gravity. He is also one of the founders of the group blog cosmicvariance, named one of the five top science blogs by Nature. Sean is the author of From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time.

While still in Oakland, California, Neil visits the office of science writer Mary Roach. Mary Roach has written for the Guardian, Vogue, GQ, Salon, Wired, National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. She is the author of Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Sex and Science. Her latest book, which we talk about in this interview, is Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in Space.

In this week’s podcast, Neil Denny travels to Oakland, California, to the headquarters of the National Center for Science Education to talk to Eugenie Scott. Eugenie Scott is Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education. She has written extensively on the evolution-creationism controversy and is a past president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. She is the author of Evolution vs. Creationism: An Introduction.

Andrew Snelling has a degree in applied geology from the University of New South Wales, and a doctorate in geology from the University of Sydney. He worked for the Australian mining industry for a number of years, before devoting his life to the study of “creation science“. He joined the Institute for Creation Research in 1998, and began working for Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum in 2007.

In this episode, Neil gets a guided tour of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and talks to JPL scientist Kevin Hand. Kevin Hand is Deputy Chief Scientist of Solar System Exploration at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is an astrobiologist and a planetary scientist, most concerned with studying the Jovian moon Europa. This has led him to Antarctica, and to deep sea hydro-thermal vents, which he did as part of the team on James Cameron’s 2005 IMAX documentary Aliens of the Deep. He was also a scientist on Cameron’s record breaking 2012 Challenger Deep expedition.

In the first Interview of the Little Atoms Road Trip series, Neil Denny travelled to Mountain View, In the heart of Silicon Valley, to the SETI Institute, to meet Seth Shostak. Seth Shostak is Senior Astronomer at the SETI (The Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) Institute. He is a frequent presenter of the Institute’s work in the media, through lectures, and via the Institute’s weekly radio show Big Picture Science, for which he’s the host.