Razib discusses the new book Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity with one of the authors.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Insitome: Your guide to the story of you, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
In this episode of the Voices from DARPA podcast, Tom Rondeau, a program manager since 2016 — first in the agency’s Microsystems Technology Office before switching over this year to the Strategic Technology Office— takes listeners on a kaleidoscopic tour of his efforts to usher wireless technology into a new era. Anchored in an emerging technology arena known as software-defined radio (SDR), his programs dive deeply into the pathbreaking hardware, software, computational techniques, power efficiencies, and innovation communities that it will take to do more with the electromagnetic spectrum than ever before. Think of every cellphone call ever made, of satellite communication, and now of billions of devices communicating wirelessly via apps and the internet. And now think beyond all of that. The tattoos of Maxwell’s Equations — which famously capture the behavior of electromagnetic waves as discerned by the 19th century physicist James Clerk Maxwell — on Tom’s forearms reveal just how devoted he is to his technology-development mission. “I look down at those every day and have a moment of awe about what we have been able to do,” he tells listeners. And then he has another moment of awe as he imagines how much more he might be able to pull off as a DARPA program manager.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from DARPA, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
Forest firefighter and conservation biologist Jon Trapp talks about analyzing wildfires, close calls with endangered wolves, and the urgency of global warming.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Union of Concerned Scientists, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
Postdocs and other career researchers need better trained lab leaders, not just nicer ones, Julie Gould discovers.
Calls to change the research culture have grown louder in 2020 as COVID-19 lockdowns led to extended grant application and publication deadlines.
As the world emerges from the pandemic, will researchers adopt more respectful ways of communicating, collaborating and publishing?
Anne Marie Coriat, head of the UK and Europe research landscape at the funder Wellcome, tells Julie Gould about the organisation’s 2019 survey of more than 4,000 researchers. The results were published in January this year.
She adds: “We know that not everything is completely kind, constructive, and conducive to encouraging and enabling people to be at their best.
“We tend to count success as things that are easy to record. And so inadvertently, I think funders have contributed to hyper competition, to the status of the cult hero of an individual being, you know, the leader who gets all the accolades.”
But what else is needed, beyond a kinder culture? In June 2020 Jessica Malisch, an assistant professor of physiology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, co-authored an opinion article calling for new solutions to ensure gender equity in the wake of COVID-19. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/27/15378 She says “We can’t rely on kindness and good intentions to correct the systemic inequity in academia.
Katie Wheat, head of engagement and policy at the researcher development non-profit Vitae, tells Gould that researchers who feel that they’re their manager or their supervisor is supportive and available for them during the pandemic have better indicators of wellbeing than those who are not getting that support.
“A PI might also be in a relatively precarious situation, reliant on grant income for their own salary, and for their team’s salary.
“You can be in a scenario where the individualistic markers of success put everybody in a competitive situation against everybody else, rather than a more collaborative and collegial situation where, where one person’s success is everybody’s success.”
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Nature Careers, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
Scientific knowledge is always contingent and uncertain, even when it’s the best we have. Should that factor into how we communicate science to the public, and if so, how? We discuss a recent article about the effects of communicating uncertainty on people’s trust in scientific findings and scientists. When should and shouldn’t scientists communicate uncertainty, and how should they do it? How should scientists prioritize keeping people’s trust versus being up front about what they don’t know? What are the different sources of uncertainty in scientific knowledge, and how should scientists deal with all of them? Plus, we get a followup letter from someone who asked about career support for a nonacademic partner – and they share what they learned and how things worked out.
Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license. Our logo was created by Jude Weaver.
This is episode 79. It was recorded on April 27, 2020.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
It took Lisa Piccirillo less than a week to answer a long-standing question about a strange knot discovered over half a century ago by the legendary John Conway.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Quanta Magazine, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
In part 2 of this episode, we’ll explore the theme of cooperation further with two more stories, from a volunteer and an organizer.
Our first story is from neuroscientist (and Story Collider senior producer!) Paula Croxson. Longing for connection, Paula decides to volunteer at a local hospital, despite her anxiety about the risks.
In our second story, organizer Kiani Conley-Wilson struggles to figure out how she can effect change during the pandemic.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Erin Barker, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
For our fourth episode, the PIA crew interviewed Dr. Brian Knutson, a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Stanford University. We explored strategies to get an “under the hood” view of human emotions, including a discussion of neuroeconomics, insights into addiction science, and how brain reactivity can predict future decision making.
The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Psychology In Action Podcast, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
