Matt Jackson is a Professor of Earth Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He probes the chemical composition of the mantle by analyzing trace elements and isotopes in hot-spot lavas from around the world.  In the podcast, he describes the intriguing heterogeneity among the hot-spots of the so-called “hot-spot highway” in the western Pacific.  The heterogeneity there, as well as on larger spatial scales is challenging our ideas about the motions of the mantle over the billions of years of Earth history.