Futureproof Extra

Here Jonathan McCrea speaks with Jared Farmer, historian, geohumanist and author of “Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees”, who studies landscapes and environments.

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Now, while we may not be aware of it, each and every one of us is a slave to an unseen and unknowable master. It rules the sun and the earth, roving the cosmos with indifference - presiding over the birth and death of stars and galaxies and every living thing.It is Time. And, consequently, we have a long-standing obsession with measuring it. But just how far back does that obsession go?

Chad Orzel, Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College in Schenectady, NY, and author of ‘A Brief History of Timekeeping – The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks’ joined Jonathan to discuss.

Listen and subscribe to Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

  

Download, listen and subscribe on the Newstalk App.

   

You can also listen to Newstalk live on newstalk.com or on Alexa, by adding the Newstalk skill and asking: 'Alexa, play Newstalk'.

Now, when you lay your heads down to sleep at night, you might do so with the lingering hope that you’ll have sweet, and pleasant dreams. But so often dreams are bizarre and non-sensical,  but why do we do it?

What is it that causes us to hallucinate while unconscious?

Is it some sort of biological inheritance that serves no function or are we being trained by our minds to expect anomaly and change?

Erik Hoel is a neuroscientist, neuro-philosopher and author of the novel ‘The Revelations’. He joined Jonathan to discuss Dreams and how they are more than simply images that accost us when we go to sleep. He argues that dreams serve a much more important purpose than they have previously been credited with, not so much random images and scenarios but something else entirely.

Listen and subscribe to Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

  

Download, listen and subscribe on the Newstalk App.

   

You can also listen to Newstalk live on newstalk.com or on Alexa, by adding the Newstalk skill and asking: 'Alexa, play Newstalk'.

Photo by Merlin lightpainting from Pexels

In the animal kingdom "Strangers are Danger!" So how is it then that humans are tolerant? How do we build a society where strangers feel safe among us and we among them?

Well to answer those questions, Johnathan McCrea was joined by Mark Moffett - Research Biologist at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian and the author of ‘The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall’

Listen and subscribe to Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

  

Download, listen and subscribe on the Newstalk App.

   

You can also listen to Newstalk live on newstalk.com or on Alexa, by adding the Newstalk skill and asking: 'Alexa, play Newstalk'.

Brad Pitt is white. Serena Williams is black. 

For better or worse we humans seem to have this compulsion to categorize ourselves in these terms

But what, if any, merit do these categories of race have?

 

Gavin Evans is the author of Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race. H

What if we managed cancer treatment like a chronic disease?

Bob A. Gatenby, chairman of the Department of Radiology at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Co-Director of the Cancer Biology and Evolution Program is on the program to discuss his work and a different approach to treating cancer.

How can something be in two places at once? How can objects in completely different locations affect each other instantaneously?

These are just some of the questions that quantum physicists must try to answer? And indeed, many have tried!

So what conclusions have they arrived at?

Jonathan asks Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at the University of Sussex and Author of Six Impossible Things, John Gribbin for some answers.

Medical science is one of our greatest accomplishments as a species.

The ability to fight disease and infection is perhaps one of the primary reasons we have managed not just to survive but to flourish.

But what if the ability to combat disease was not just one we humans had? What if insects could do the same?

Jonathan is joined by Jaap de Roode, Associate Professor of Biology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss his work on Monarch butterflies and what we can learn from these small but fascinating creatures.

Humans have an instinctive fear of large cats, or bears, or crocodiles, essentially anything big enough to maul us to death. It makes sense.

But why are we afraid of spiders, snakes or insects?

It almost certainly comes down to one of evolution’s great levellers. Venom.

So what exactly is Venom? How does it work and how can we turn it to our advantage?

Jonathan is joined by John Dunbar from the School of Natural Sciences at the Ryan Institute in NUI Galway

When you think of a telescope you might picture a long tube with lenses, mirrors and a tripod picking up the light that is visible to us.

But there are actually several different types that pick up other wavelengths we can’t see.

Dotted across Europe, the The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope network is attempting to map the entire night sky, and one of them located right here in Ireland.

Sean Mooney, PhD student at UCD School of Physics and member of the LOFAR Surveys Key Science Project joins Jonathan in studio to discuss.