Cool Science Radio

John Wells and Lynn Ware Peek speak with Dr. Joe Schwarcz, the director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Montreal. He’s also the author of 16 bestselling popular science books and he regularly demystifies the chemistry of everyday life. He speaks about his new book, A Feast of Science: Intriguing Morsels from the Science of Everyday Life. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/

Joining Cool Science Radio from NASA Goddard Space Center is Dr. Eric Christian, the Deputy Principal Investigator for the instrumentation package that will be on the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft that will launch in early August. The Parker Solar Probe Mission will fly closer to the Sun than any human-made object has ever gone. A mission 60 years in the making, Parker Solar Probe will make an historic journey to the sun's corona, a region of the solar atmosphere. With the help of its

Cool Science Radio speaks with Bill Andrews, Senior Associate Editor for Discover Magazine . Discover’s July/August issue features a section titled "Everything Worth Knowing," and covers a broad range of topics about the Giza pyramids, clouds, personality, the Milky Way, mass extinctions, the science of music, octopuses, autonomous cars and more.

Dan Strickman is a medical entomologist for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the author of an article called Buzzkill in the July edition of Scientific American . In it he talks about mosquitos, the creature everyone hates! There’s good reason to have disdain for them, the mosquito is responsible for 725,000 deaths annually, making it the deadliest creature on the planet. But scientists are fighting back with new poisons, traps, and genetic engineering techniques.

Senior editor of Scientific American Josh Fischman discusses his article, Battle of the Brains . In new scientific studies to measure cognitive power it's found that dogs beat their domesticated rivals, cats. It's not about the size of the brain, but Fishman shares what it is about.

(Rebroadcast) - Revered author Simon Winchester joins the program. Winchester is a NY Times bestselling author whose books include The Professor and the Madman and The Map that Changed the World . He joins us to talk about his new book which is The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World. Winchester traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement—precision.

(Rebroadcast) - Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.) who has written Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World Oceans. A retired 4-star admiral with 35 years of active service in the Navy, Stavridis served as the Supreme Allied Commander for Global Operations at NATO from 2009 to 2013. We will speak with Admiral Stavridis about navel technology 50 years ago, today and into the future and we will speak with him about rising sea waters, piracy and political hot spots in China and Russia.

Cool Science Radio speaks with Gina Bria who, along with Dana Cohen, wrote QUENCH: Beat Fatigue, Drop Weight, and Heal Your Body Through the New Science of Optimum Hydration. We talk with Bria about why in scientific terms, drinking eight glasses of water per day is not optimal for hydration and why hydration absorbed, and then distributed through micromovement, is the complete formula for hydration.

Dr. Andrew Shapiro joins Cool Science Radio. Shapiro is the Manager of Technology Formulation for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Shapiro is the manager of early-stage innovation for the Space Technology Office. We talk with him about new technological concepts and what it's like to manage a lab where ideas become concepts, possibly projects and even part of a mission for robotic and manned space exploration.

This morning John and Lynn speak first with New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer who also teaches science writing at Yale University. He joins us for a deep dive into genetics; his new book is, She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity.