In this episode of Cool Science Radio hosts John Wells and Lynn Ware Peek welcome Mark Honigsbuam who, over a year ago wrote The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris . It was an ample foreshadowing of 2020 and he joins us again to talk about the new chapter he has just added to his book, about Coronavirus.

Cool Science Radio hosts John Wells and Lynn Ware Peek interview Anthony Townsend, an author and consultant working at the intersection of urbanization and digital technology who joins the show. When self-driving technology infects buses, bikes, delivery vans, and even buildings…a wild, woollier, future awaits. Anthony has written Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car .

This week on Cool Science Radio, Lynn and John are joined by Steve Burns, CEO, and President of the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. Burns talks about what you can see in person and virtually at the zoo. Burns will also talk about the July 6 birth of a baby girl gorilla. This is the first successful birth of a Western Lowland Gorilla in the Zoo’s 89-year history.

Dave Kieda, Dean, The Graduate School and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Utah and Nolan Matthews, graduate research assistant at the University of Utah join Lynn and John this week on Cool Science Radio . They are part of a team of scientists and educators that have developed an array of telescopes that will provide unparalleled resolution and detail that will help to improve our understanding of faraway stellar systems.

Writer, speaker, and academic, Colin Dickey joins Cool Science Radio this week. Dickey has written, The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, And Our Obsession With The Unexplained. In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational and one the fringe is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on.

David Quammen joins Lynn and John on Cool Science Radio this week. Quammen is an author and journalist whose books include The Song of the Dodo , The Reluctant Mr. Darwin , The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life. Quammen was interviewed on Cool Science Radio back in 2018 about The Tangled Tree. He also wrote Spillover in 2012, which predicts a COVID-19 type world pandemic as animal viruses have the ability to spillover to humans.

This week on Cool Science Radio, John and Lynn are joined by James Hamblin. Hamblin has written the book, CLEAN: The New Science of Skin . Keeping skin healthy is a booming industry, and yet it seems like almost no one agrees on what actually works. Confusing messages from health authorities and ineffective treatments have left many people desperate for reliable solutions. In his new book, James Hamblin explores how we got here, examining the science and culture of how we care for our skin today

New York Times bestselling author and New Yorker contributor Maria Konnikova joins Lynn and John on Cool Science Radio . Konnikova had never actually played poker before and didn’t even know the rules when she approached Erik Seidel , Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars in earnings, and convinced him to be her mentor. Maria parlayed a strong grasp of the science of human decision-making and a woeful ignorance of cards into a life-changing run as a professional

Joining Lynn and John on Cool Science Radio is, Eric Miller, President, and CEO of Park City-based Avi-on Labs . Avi-on designs and builds a family of Bluetooth® enabled lighting products that are reliable, state of the art, easy to configure and manage with any smartphone or tablet.

Joining Lynn and John on Cool Science Radio this week is Dr. Dalia Kirschbaum, a Research Physical Scientist in the Hydrological Sciences Lab at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center , in Greenbelt, MD. Dr. Kirschbaum has a number of responsibilities in the study of landslides including developing new techniques for rainfall-triggered landslide hazard assessment and forecasting. She is also the Associate Deputy Project Scientist for Applications for the GPM Mission. GPM stands for Global