The Weekly Weinersmith: Recent Episodes
Brachiolope Media Network
In today's episode Kelly interviews Dr. Judy Illes to learn more about the latest work being done addressing the ethics of brain-computer interfaces. Dr. Illes is the Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics, and Director of Neuroethics Canada at the University of British Columbia.
In this week's show Kelly talks to Dr. Bryan Caplan about the impact of automation on jobs, and talks to Zach about his collaboration with Bryan on a graphic novel called "Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration".
Also - if you visit WeeklyWeinersmith.com you can download a chapter on Advanced Nuclear Reactors! This chapter was cut from Soonish due to page limits, and is now available for download for free.
Dr. Jordan Miller and his collaborators recently published a paper where they use a gel that hardens in response to light to create structures that are non-toxic, and so should be compatible with the human body. The paper made the front cover of Science! Check out this week's episode to learn more about the bioengineering work happening in the Physiologic Systems Engineering and Advanced Materials Laboratory at Rice University.
In this week's episode, Kelly interviews Rosario Ballesteros-Casas, the Chief Executive Officer of VRAmericas. VRAmericas is working on AR and VR (virtual reality) applications to help train our workforce.
In today’s episode we’re going to chat about some of the cool projects happening at MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, which is the lab for which our interviewee (Professor Skylar Tibbits) is the Founder and co-Director.
On today’s show Joy Dunn joins us to discuss Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Ms. Dunn spent about 10 years at SpaceX, where she worked on and led teams working on the Dragon spacecrafts, and became known as the “Mother of Dragons”. She is currently Head of Manufacturing at Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton joins Kelly to talk about how we go about learning about asteroids, and about the Psyche mission in particular. We also spoke with Dr. Elkins-Tanton about the role of artists in communicating space research to the general public in ways that scientists can't.
Welcome to the reboot of The Weekly Weinersmith, celebrating the paperback release of our book Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.
In this podcast series, we’re going to revisit each of the 10 technologies discussed in Soonish, expanding on topics touched on in the book, exploring related matters, and checking out new advances since the book came out.
That is - the stuff in the podcast will be different from the book, so go buy it.
The first chapter in Soonish is on Cheap Access to Space, and it was one of the hardest ones to write, because private launch companies were making advances so quickly it was hard to keep up.
But at some point, we had to put our pencils down, and we submitted the book to our editor in 2016.
A few months before our book came out in hardback in 2017 a company called Rocket Lab completed a test flight of its Electron rocket.
They’ve now entered high frequency launch operations, and as of May 5, 2019, they’ve launched 28 satellites into space.
Amazingly, Peter Beck, the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab (!), took the time to talk to me about how his company is democratizing space launch.
Welcome to the reboot of The Weekly Weinersmith, celebrating the paperback release of our book Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.
In this podcast series, we’re going to revisit each of the 10 technologies discussed in Soonish, expanding on topics touched on in the book, exploring related matters, and checking out new advances since the book came out.
The first chapter in Soonish is on Cheap Access to Space. We mostly talk about ways to reduce the price of launching things into space, but reducing launch costs is only one part of a current movement called "NewSpace".
In this first podcast episode, we interview Dr. Elizabeth Frank about NewSpace. Dr. Frank earned her PhD at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and did her postdoc at the Carnegie Institution for Science (working on NASA's Messenger, which orbited Mercury). She then spent 2 years working at Planetary Resources, Inc., and is now an Applied Planetary Scientist at First Mode.
Kelly and Zach discuss Zach's new book "Science - Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness"
Zach and Kelly are BACK! Well, for now. Turns out we haven't just been sitting by the beach instead of recording podcasts - we've been writing a book! That book is called Soonish - Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/Or Ruin Everything, and it's coming out through Penguin Press in the US and Particular Books in the UK on October 17th. This episode gives you a flavor of what the book is about, and some insights into the harrowing tale of what we went through to write this book while working our "normal" jobs and raising 2 kids. You can preorder the book here.
This week we interview Melanie Martin, a PhD student at the University of California Santa Barbara, about her research on breastfeeding.
We're back! We've been super busy lately (moving across the country, having a baby, applying for jobs, finishing a dissertation, running a Kickstarter, etc), but we're striving for more regular updates. While hitting a weekly goal is unlikely, we're going to strive to update once or twice a month. Thanks for sticking with us!
This week we interview Dr. Elizabeth Iorns of Science Exchange about Science Exchange's research on collaboration.
As you have probably noticed, Weekly Weinersmith updates have been few and far between in the past few months. I really love doing this podcast, but this is the last year of my PhD and I have had to prioritize my dissertation experiments, manuscript writing, and applying for postdoc positions. I was hoping I would still have time to podcast, but my schedule simply isn’t allowing it. The experiment ends and all of my postdoc applications are due by early January, so our intention is to start back up again around that time. Zach and I look forward to bringing your more nerdiness ASAP!
This week Zach and I talk with Dr. Joan Strassman about Dictyostelium discoideum, a social amoeba.
This week Zach and Kelly talk about cheating in bacterial biofilms, and how the microbiome influences susceptibility to disease in bumble bees.
This week we let Ryan Haupt and Benjamin Tippett take over the show. Ryan and Ben are co-hosts on the Science...sort of podcast, and Ben is host of The Titanium Physicists podcast. Both of these podcasts are part of the Brachiolope Media Network, the podcast network to which the Weekly Weinersmith belongs. Ryan and Ben will talk about....well....you'll see.
This podcast is probably not appropriate for a younger audience (you know, as usual).
This week Zach and Kelly talk with Dr. Christopher Dana Lynn, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama who studies the relationship between glossolalia and stress in Apostolic Pentecostals.
This week Zach and Kelly talk about how the smell of coffee changes gene expression and protein production in rat brains, and discuss a study that hooked rat brains up to one another so the rats could share information and perform tasks together.
For Valentine’s Day, Zach and Kelly talk whether or not brazilian waxing is causing the extinction of pubic lice, and about how housework influences the frequency of sex.
*This week Zach and Kelly discuss a study that used infusion of donor feces to treat a bacterial infection, and a second study that found that light is important for eye development in fetal mice.*
This week Zach and Kelly talk about how fear and/or awe of math differs between academic fields.
This week Zach and Kelly bring back Dr. Elizabeth Iorns to talk about the Reproducibility Initiative through Science Exchange. Elizabeth was recently named one of Nature’s 10 People Who Mattered This Year!
This week Zach and Kelly talk about National Institute of Health (NIH) funding practices, and the increasing administrative burdens placed on academic scientists.
This week Zach and Kelly talk to Jessica Richman, a PhD student at Oxford University, and Dr. William Ludington, the Bowes Fellow at the University of California Berkeley, about uBiome. uBiome is a project that connects citizens to scientists in an attempt to better understand the microbiome.
This week Kelly and Zach talk to Trevor Bekolay about his work on a large-scale brain simulator. Trevor is a PhD student in the Computational Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Waterloo.
This week Zach and Kelly discuss how the way one responds to stressors can have long-lasting implications for health, and recent research on a link between a rare gene variant and Alzheimer's disease.
This week Zach and Kelly talk about how the blood of young mice makes old mice brains look young again, and whether or not genomics can help to predict the kinds of antidepressants to which a person will respond.
This week Zach and Kelly discuss research on how to eliminate certain types of anxiety, and chat about Bisphenol A (BPA).
This week Zach and Kelly talk to Dr. Scott Commins of the University of Virginia about his research on tick-induced meat allergies.
This week Zach and Kelly bring back Dr. Michael Munger of Duke University to discuss how people parasitize economies and how parasites economize people.
Today Zach and Kelly talk to Dr. Jordan Miller, a postdoctoral student in Dr. Christopher Chen's Tissue Microfabrication Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, about his recent breakthrough using 3D printing to create blood vessels.
This week Zach and Kelly talk to Dillon McDowell, Josh Marion, and Melissa Loving about nanomagnets. All guests are past or current members of the Lewis Lab at Northeastern University.
This week Kelly and Zach talk to Dr. Christian Eggers about whether or not viruses should qualify as being "alive", and the importance of viruses in evolution.
This week Zach and Kelly are on an immune system kick, and discuss the potential downsides of new drug treatments and a new use for a previously existing drug.
This week Zach and Kelly talk to Elise Novitski, a PhD student studying CPT symmetry and the fine-structure constant in Dr. Gerald Gabrielse’s lab at Harvard.
On this week's episode Kelly and Zach talk to Dr. Ryan Earley about why so many species reproduce sexually rather than asexually. We then talk to Elizabeth Lee and Robert Denton, whose #SciFund projects focus on animals with uncommon reproductive systems.
This week Zach and Kelly talk to Dr. Jennifer Sheridan about her research on the impacts of oil palm farming on amphibian populations in Borneo.
This week Zach and Kelly interview Dr. Sanna Sokolow, a post-doc in UCSB's Ecological Parasitology Lab and Projet Crevette scientist. Sanna talks about her research on the use of freshwater prawns to control schistosomiasis in West Africa.
This week Zach and Kelly take a break due to ROFLCon and field work, respectively. Instead of a new Weekly Weinersmith episode, we present to you Zach's appearance on our sister's podcast, The Titanium Physicists!
This week Zach and Kelly talk about the surprising lack of scientific evidence supporting the lifestyle changes suggested by doctors to people with gastroesophageal reflux disease (AKA acid reflux disease). Elizabeth Iorn's blog post on Science Exchange starts a discussion on the importance of reproducibility in scientific research, and factors explaining the recent rise in retractions of scientific articles.
Kelly and Zach talk to MIT's Dr. Bruce Lipschultz and Daniel Brunner about fusion, Alcator C-Mod, and the future of fusion research in the United States.
This week Kelly and Zach talk to Dr. Michael Munger about Chilean politics, modeling in economics, and areas where economists and the general public tend to disagree.
This week Zach and Kelly talk about nodding disease and a simulation looking at the potential for transfer of life between planets.
This week Kelly and Zach speak with Dr. R. Douglas Fields about his book "The Other Brain".
Zach and Kelly interview Dr. Elizabeth Iorns about Science Exchange, an online marketplace connecting scientists and laypeople to research facilities.