Inquiring Minds

Most expecting women ask their doctors whether it's okay to eat blue cheese, or have the odd glass of wine, while they're pregnant. Or maybe whether to stay away from fish, because of the mercury. When she was pregnant with her daughter several years ago, though, MythBusters' Kari Byron took her maternal Q & A to a whole different level. "I'd be going to my doctor saying, 'All right, so, when do I have to stop shooting guns because she has ears?'" recalls Byron on this week’s episode. "And the doctor would say, 'Hmm, I have never, ever had that question before. I'll get back to you.' I come back a little later: 'How far away do I need to be from an explosion of this much C-4?' 'Huh, I've never had that question asked. I have no idea, I don't even know where to refer you right now, I'll get back to you.'" As a co-host of arguably the most successful science-based show on television, Byron has developed a reputation as a courageous and fun-loving guide to testing the truth behind so many ideas that we take for granted. On Inquiring Minds this week, we talk to Byron about Mythbusters, bear repellents, zombie escapes, and how an artist can make you love science. This episode also features a report by Mother Jones' Brett Brownell on our growing ability to detect extra-solar planets, and a discussion of, yes, the myth that antioxidant vitamins protect against cancer. iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 RSS: feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds Stitcher: stitcher.com/podcast/inquiring-minds

In recent decades, there have been countless infringements, and attempted infringements, upon accurate science education across the country. The "war on science" in national politics has nothing on the war playing out every day in public schools, even if the latter is usually less visible. The attacks are diverse and ever-changing, showing an array of tactics and strategies that almost rivals biological life itself. "If nothing else evolves," explains evolution defender Eugenie Scott on this week’s episode, "religion does. Creationism does." Scott spoke to us on an auspicious occasion: She is stepping down as the director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), an organization she founded in her basement 27 years ago, and that has since become the chief tracker of attacks on science education across the US. Joining the conversation was Scott's successor Ann Reid, who led the sequencing of the 1918 flu virus at the Army Institute of Pathology in the mid 2000s, and most recently served as director of the American Academy of Microbiology. This week’s episode also features a discussion looking back at the science in the last three State of the Union addresses, and examines a recent science-of-memory study, which suggests walking through doorways might actually be making us forget things. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

The Paleo diet is hot. Those who follow it are attempting, they say, to mimic our ancient ancestors—minus the animal-skin fashions and the total lack of technology, of course. The adherents eschew what they believe comes from modern agriculture (wheat, dairy, legumes, for instance) and rely instead on meals full of meat, nuts, and vegetables—foods they claim are closer to what hunter-gatherers ate. The trouble with that view, however, is that what they’re eating is probably nothing like the diet of hunter-gatherers, says Michael Pollan, author of a number of best-selling books on food and agriculture, including Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. "I don't think we really understand well the proportions in the ancient diet," argues Pollan on this week’s episode. "Most people who tell you with great confidence that this is what our ancestors ate—I think they're kind of blowing smoke." This week on the show, guest host Cynthia Graber has a wide-ranging conversation with Pollan that covers the science and history of cooking, the importance of microbes—tiny organisms such as bacteria—in our diet, and surprising new research on the intelligence of plants. This episode also features a discussion of the new popular physics book Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn, by Amanda Gefter, and new research suggesting that the purpose of sleep is to clean cellular waste substances out of your brain. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

As a writer, Deborah Blum says she has a "love of evil chemistry." It seems that audiences do too: Her latest book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, was not only a bestseller, but was just turned into a film by PBS. The book tells the story of Charles Norris, New York City's first medical examiner, and Alexander Gettler, his toxicologist and forensic chemist. They were a scientific and medical duo who brought real evidence and reliable forensic techniques to the pressing task of apprehending poisoners, who were running rampant at the time because there was no science capable of catching them. On the show this week we talk to Blum about this “golden age for poisoners” and the science that goes along with it. This episode also features an interview with Quartz meteorology writer Eric Holthaus about whether global warming may be producing more extreme cold weather in the mid-latitudes, just like what much of America experienced this week. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

For Mark Ruffalo, environmental activism started out with something to oppose, to be against: Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. It all began when the actor, perhaps best known for his role as Bruce Banner (The Hulk) in Marvel's The Avengers, was raising three small children in the town of Callicoon, in upstate New York. At that time the Marcellus shale fracking boom was coming on strong, even as the area also saw a series of staggering floods, each one seemingly more unprecedented than the last. In response, Ruffalo launched Water Defense, a nonprofit that takes on fracking and extreme or unconventional energy extraction in general (from mountaintop removal mining to deep sea drilling), and does so with a focus on grassroots activism. In the process, he's become quite the visible spokesman. But if you think Ruffalo is just another celeb with an anti-corporate tilt, you're missing the story. His true passion is promoting a clean energy solution to our climate and water problems, and demonstrating how feasible it is. Today. Like, now. On the show this week we talk to Ruffalo about his vision for a clean energy future, what he’s doing about it, and how you can help. This episode also features a discussion of what the year 2013 meant for climate and energy. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

On Valentine's Day 1990, from more than four billion miles away, the Voyager 1 spacecraft snapped our photo. From that distance, there wasn't much to see; the resulting shot simply showed several light beams with a tiny speck in one of them. Earth. But that didn't stop the late celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan from writing rapturously about the meaning of this image, which he famously dubbed the "Pale Blue Dot." "To me," Sagan wrote of the picture, "it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." Sagan infused the "Pale Blue Dot" with significance, but the truth is that, thanks in part to the difficulty of the shot, it was never a very good image. Enter planetary scientist Carolyn Porco, one of Sagan's scientific disciples and head of imaging science for the Cassini spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around Saturn and sending us back stunning images on a regular basis. "From day one," explains Porco, in this week’s episode, "I had it in my mind that I wanted to do that picture, only better. I wanted to make it beautiful." In our interview with Porco, she talks about the new Pale Blue Dot image she unveiled last month—appropriately enough, at a celebration for Sagan, dedicating his papers to the Library of Congress; and more broadly, why seeing Earth from space matters. This episode also features a discussion of the psychology of New Years' Eve: When do New Years' resolutions to lose weight actually work, and when do they fail? And what does marking time through significant dates (birthdays, anniversaries, and years' ends) do to the identities that we create for ourselves? Chris and Indre discuss the latest research on both topics. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

Americans don't like atheists much. It's something we get reminded of every December, as Fox News commentators decry a secularist "war on Christmas." But the distrust spans seasons: Barely half of Americans say they would vote for an atheist for president; forty eight percent, meanwhile, would disapprove of their child marrying one. Still, atheist America is growing: One fifth of the public is now religiously unaffiliated. So how do you build an atheist? Or a whole country of them like the Czech Republic, where 48 percent of the public opts for the description "not a religious person" and another 30 percent is a "convinced atheist"? In the last decade, a growing body of research has begun to home in on an answer. In this week’s show we cover all of that and more with Ara Norenzayan, a pioneering researcher on the psychology of religion. This special Christmas episode also features a discussion of whether buying your kids tablets for Christmas so they can play lots of video games is bad for their brains (you'll be surprised at the answer), and how Santa Claus will soon be Canadian if Canada succeeds in its dastardly plan to claim the North Pole. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

It's an old distinction: Science tells us what the world is like, but it can never tell us how we ought to behave in such a world. That's the realm of morality, and here we consult ethicists or perhaps priests—but something other than just data. It's pretty tough to keep science hemmed in, though; and in the past decade a group of researchers have begun to transform how we think about morality. They've put our sense of right and wrong in lab, and even in the fMRI machine. And while their findings may or may not ultimately tell you what you ought to do, they dramatically illuminate how we make such decisions...and, perhaps, fundamentally redefine what morality is in the first place. Harvard's Joshua Greene, a leader in this new wave of research and author of the new book Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them, is our guest on this week’s show. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

It's flu season. And we're all about to crisscross the country to exchange hugs, kisses and germs. We're going to get sick. And when we do, many of us will run to our doctors and, hoping to get better, demand antibiotics. And that's the problem: Antibiotics don't cure the flu (which is viral, not bacterial), but the over-prescription of antibiotics imperils us all by driving antibiotic resistance. This threat is growing, so much so that in a recent widely read Medium article, Wired science blogger and self-described "scary disease girl" Maryn McKenna painted a disturbingly plausible picture of a world in which antibiotics have become markedly less effective. That future is the focus of the interview in this week's show. This episode also features a discussion of the surprising reasons that US students are so bad at math (just 26th in the world, in a recent study). Plus, Indre takes apart a highly controversial new study purporting to show that male-female gender stereotypes are rooted in different wiring of our brains. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

Simon Singh isn't exactly your average fan of Fox's The Simpsons. He has a Ph.D. in particle physics from Cambridge, and made an award-winning documentary about Fermat's Last Theorem. Let's be frank: He's a math geek. But then, so are a surprisingly large number of the show's writers. You may not have realized it, but as Singh shows in his new book, The Simpsons and their Mathematical Secrets, a seemingly endless supply of mathematical jokes and references are crammed into each Simpsons episode. We talk to Singh about The Simpsons, as well as his work in science advocacy and libel reform. This episode also features a discussion of some of the science behind Thanksgiving: Why gratitude is good for us, and what kinds of food safety issues you should know about when it comes to Thanksgiving leftovers. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

On the show this week we talk to climate researcher Michael Mann about how he, as a self-described math and computer nerd working in an esoteric field known as paleoclimatology, wound up front and center in a nationally watched political campaign. His situation traces back to the world famous "hockey stick" graph, originally published by Mann and his colleagues in a 1998 scientific paper, and then prominently displayed by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2001 Third Assessment Report. Because of its stark depiction of just how dramatically humans have altered the climate in a relatively short time period, the figure may well be the most controversial chart in history. Not scientifically controversial, mind you: politically controversial. This episode also features a discussion of the myth that left-brained people are logical and right brained people are creative, and the legacy of Carl Sagan and its lessons for today's science wars. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

This week we feature a conversation with psychologist Alison Gopnik, recorded live at the 2013 Bay Area Science Festival. Gopnik talks about her latest book, The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. She explains that babies are natural explorers, and way smarter than we used to think. But along the way, we lose that cognitive flexibility and openness—some of us more than others. This episode also features a discussion about a recent study that shows different cells—different cells in the same brain—can have different DNA; and a recent New York Times story that draws attention to the fact that now more than ever, many people who get Ph.Ds don’t get jobs afterwards. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

This week, we speak with veteran science journalist George Johnson, whose new book The Cancer Chronicles: Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery helps turn much traditional thinking about cancer on its head. It's a provocative and also a personal exploration of the myths and misunderstandings that surround this most formidable enemy to our health and well being. This episode also features a discussion of the science of hangovers (timed just for Halloween weekend, we know) and new findings about the origins of the SARS virus. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

Why is America so polarized? Why are our politicians so dysfunctional? Why do they sometimes even seem to downright hate each other? In this episode of Inquiring Minds, moral psychologist and bestselling The Righteous Mind author Jonathan Haidt explains that our differences are, at root, the result of sharply contrasting moral systems and the emotions that underlie them. These emotions differ from left to right. And in politics, we feel first and think later. As a result, even though political partisans today tend to think their adversaries are wrong and immoral, the truth is actually that they are too moral, albeit in a far more visceral than intellectual sense. This episode also contains a discussion of Glenn Beck's recent flubbing of basic statistics, and of why a primate species—the marmoset—may in some ways be better at communicating than today's Democrats and Republicans. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds

As two top researchers studying the science of science communication—a hot new field that combines psychology with public opinion research—Dan Kahan and Stephan Lewandowsky agree about most things. There's just one problem. The little thing that they disagree on—whether it actually works to tell people, and especially political conservatives, that there's a "scientific consensus" on climate change—has huge practical significance. In this episode, Kahan and Lewandowsky debate the issue. It also features a discussion of the strange and disturbing disappearance of moose across much of the United States, and of Oprah's recent claim that self-described atheist swimmer Diana Nyad isn't actually an atheist. Subscribe: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/inquiring-minds/id711675943 feeds.feedburner.com/inquiring-minds