Lab Out Loud » TV

Episode 67 – Take a Field Trip…In Your Classroom

Brian — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 05:30:30 +0000

Jamie Loizzo

Our guest this week is Jamie Loizzo, project manager for Purdue zipTrips™. A zipTrip is an electronic, interactive field trip that connects students across the country to scientists at Purdue University. Through the experience, students are able to observe real-life science laboratories, research and science careers. Listen to the interview and take your kids on a zipTrip!

Links

Purdue zipTrips™
Follow zipTrips on Twitter
Find zipTrips on Facebook
zipTrips on YouTube
Jamie Loizzo, Project Manager
zipTrips: Behind the Scenes (EzineMark.com)
“Field Trips Go Electronic” from Post-Tribune
“Electronic Field Trip Brings Science to Students“ (Farm and Dairy)

To listen to this episode, download the mp3 directly, find us on iTunes, or use the player below.

Episode 62 – The Sitcom Experiment

Dale — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:30:24 +0000

Bill Prady

Bill Prady, Executive Producer and co-creator of the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, joins us to talk about one of our favorite science shows.

Links:

Direct download: LOL62.mp3

Episode 50 – Science We Can Watch

Dale — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 05:30:09 +0000

Kari Byron

This week we discuss our favorite new science shows and talk to Mythbuster Kari Byron about her new show Head Rush on The Science Channel. Airing after school and Saturdays, Head Rush provides a commercial free hour of MythBusters mashups.

What science do you watch? Comment below and share your favorite science TV shows, internet clips or other science media.

Join us in two weeks (October 18) as we talk with Rhett Allain. Rhett is an Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University. Rhett discusses science teaching and his popular blog: Dot Physics.

Links:

Science Shows:

Head Rush Teaser:

Direct download: LOL50.mp3

Episode 46 – Paleontologist Scott from “Dinosaur Train”

Brian — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 05:15:13 +0000

Paleontologist Scott

You may know this week’s guest as Paleontologist Scott from the PBS hit show “Dinosaur Train”. In episode 46, Paleontologist Scott talks about the show, being a paleontologist, and his new book Dinosaur Odyssey.

Links:

Scott Sampson’s Website
Purchase Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life
Dinosaur Train (PBS)
Dinsosaur Train Videos
Dinosaur Train (Wikipedia Entry)
Dinosaur Fossil Reveals True Feather Colors (wired.com)
Listen to Colouring in Dinosaurs (Quirks and Quarks)
Masiakausaurus
Dinosaur Planet (IMDB)

Dinosaur Train Characters "Buddy" and "Tiny"

Direct download: LOL46.mp3

Episode 28 – Who watches the Watchmen? Scientists Do!

Brian — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:16:56 +0000

Jennifer Ouellette

Our guest this week is Jennifer Ouellette, director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. The Exchange provides entertainment industry professionals with access to top scientists and engineers to help bring the reality of cutting-edge science to creative and engaging storylines.

Jennifer talks to us about her work with the Exchange, in how scientists advise pop culture – including movies like The Watchmen, and TV shows such as Fringe and The Big Bang Theory.

About Jennifer Ouellette
In addition her work with the Science and Entertainment Exchange, Jennifer is the author of Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics and The Physics of the Buffyverse. Her work has also appeared in New Scientist, Discover, Salon, Symmetry, and Physics World, among other publications.

Science is not something only smart nerdy people do. It’s central to all our lives, and it’s all around us, all the time. Reveling in one’s ignorance of this fact is just — well, kinda sad. (from “Shame on Gawker” post)

Links

Advising Science in ‘Watchmen’

Direct download: LOL28.mp3

Episode 20 – Ed Begley Jr. on Science and the Environment

Brian — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 06:16:52 +0000

Ed Begley, Jr.

In this episode, we talked with Ed Begley Jr. Ed talks to us about science, the environment and his show Living with Ed.

Preview from the Show:

I think when people are armed with good knowledge about science, I think we’ve really got a shot. It’s amazing to me when I talk to people – adults, people my age – about simple things – the boiling point of water, how many planets are in the solar system and in what order they are aligned – people don’t have a lot of knowledge about the basics of electricity and things that really affect their lives. Let me just remove it even from planetary movements and more arcane things like that in people’s lives (that are very meaningful to me) and a lot of people can’t talk about nuts and bolts things like where water comes from and where it goes to, how electricity works, Ohm’s law – things that would really be helpful if they knew it, and precious few people that I know, know much about it.

If you hear claims about something – let’s say an issue like loss of coral reefs, or ozone depletion, or global warming – go online. And I say to you and to the students, stay away from fringe information from anybody. I’m not saying go to environmental sites or some AM talk radio site. Go to good people like National Geographic, Science Magazine, Nature Magazine, Princeton University, Columbia University. Go to people like that – people with Ph.D. after their name. And I’ll roll the dice on that. You need someone good with peer reviewed studies. If it says something other than what I believe, I’m going to listen, because I believe in peer reviewed studies.

In response to: “What do you want our kids of the future to know?”
I want them to develop an interest in science if they don’t have one, to cultivate an interest in science if they do have one, and something that they should continue to pursue the rest of their days. I think it’s a wonderful thing in our pursuit of knowledge to know things about science. I’m all for learning about art and literature… In addition to that, we also need to be grounded in some sense to scientific knowledge, have some modicum of scientific knowledge, and the more the better. I would urge everybody, no matter what your passion is…, to have a bit of your life grounded in science, and you’ll be all the better for it.

Links:

Direct download: LOL20.mp3

Episode 14 – Bill Nye Talks About Energy and More

Dale — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:51:18 +0000

Bill Nye

For our contribution to Earth Day, we had the opportunity to chat with Bill Nye about his new show on the new Planet Green channel called Stuff Happens.

Preview from the Show:

I’m doing this other thing called “Stuff Happens? for the Discovery Channel. It’s strictly for a new channel Discovery is re-purposing – they’re calling it “Planet Green”. So all the programming is green, or about environmental issues and stuff. And so this show is about consumer choices that you can make to live a more environmentally responsible life.

I am a serious hobbyist. I have four kilowatts of solar panels and I have a solar water heating system that I, if you will, designed – along with a guy who’s worked in solar in southern California for many, many years…I hired him, and two very good plumbers, and these guys who were good with gas mains, and we re-rigged the whole house. So now I have solar hot water that pre-heats the water before it runs through two tankless hot water heaters. So my gas bill in the summer is less than $10.

There’s an old supply chain from the South American Western Coast to North American farmers. And what is supplied is fish feed made from anchovies. So, American bacon pigs are fed fish from South American oceans. And so many fish are fished so aggressively that penguins are going out of business. The penguin ecosystem has been devastated, and penguin populations have been decimated by this practice. So we encourage you – the listener, the viewer – to buy…organic, grain-fed bacon. That’s what we want you to do to reduce the market for this anchovy feed. And it’s just something that humans are kind of doing by accident, but on such an enormous scale that’s it’s screwing up an entire ecosystem in the south western Pacific.

The baby steps are important. The hardest thing for everyone to understand about the environment is that every single thing you do affects everybody in the whole world. And the reason, nominally, is that we only have one atmosphere. We can only breath from one source of air – we all share the air. So this is a fundamental idea that’s hard to get; it just doesn’t seem possible. I throw out this magazine and instead of recycling it, yeah – you’re lowering the quality of life of everyone on earth.

So you go to the store and you buy one [compact fluorescent light bulb]. Ok, but if you replace every lamp in your house, or every lamp in the main rooms… Replace every one of those lamps, and you will see your power bill go down… Now there are some whining, unbelievable-freakin’ whiners out there who tell you that we can’t change to compact fluorescent because of the mercury – “there’s no way to get rid of the mercury that’s in those lights and it’s gonna kill everybody.” So let’s keep in mind that it was the year 1951 when American industry went to buying more fluorescent lamps than incandescent lamps. That is to say, if you work at any sort of factory anywhere, they have fluorescent lights – ‘cuz it’s so much cheaper. And so those lights are required by law to be recycled and the mercury recovered. And there are services that recover the lights and recover the mercury. So we just gotta do the same thing for domestic consumers – for people that buy ‘em for their houses. For cryin’ out loud – this is not, if I may, rocket surgery. This is actually a little more complicated that: trying to motivate everyone to do the right thing with regard to their old lamps. And of course it can be done; it’s a metal. Who doesn’t want to recover a metal? It’s valuable, it’s shiny, you can see it – of course you can do it.

Politically, [a scientific debate] is an unsophisticated idea. None of the three candidates remaining would ever consent to a science debate. None of them are scientists. None of them would admit to being experts in any way about anything about science. So of course they’re going to say no; they have to say no. This pursuit of science debate is an exercise in futility. Instead, we need to rephrase it – in my opinion. My best idea so far, is to rename it something else – the “nondependence on foreign oil” debate, the “health” debate, the “energy” debate, the “competitiveness” debate – that’s pretty good… But naming this thing the “science” debate sabotages it from the get-go. And of course I support the idea, but the best correction I can think of it to rename it. The “competitiveness” debate – yes.

Links:

Planet Green
Bill Nye the Science Guy
Nye Labs
Eyes of Nye
Bill Nye on Wikipedia
Greener Pastures from the New York Times
The Science Channel: 100 Greatest Discoveries

Direct download: nstalol14.mp3

Episode 6 – Adam Rogers from WIRED Science

Brian — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:30:29 +0000

Wired Science

Adam Rogers discusses the new PBS show titled WIRED Science.

Links

Direct download: nstalol6.mp3