SparkDialog

Food in space leaves a lot to be desired. But if we want to have a sustained presence in space, this will have to change. Today I’m joined with Sebastian Marcu and Neil Jaschinski of a company called Bake In Space, seeking not only to make bread safe to eat in space, but to actually bake it there as well! What challenges do they have to overcome? Find out!

Augmented Reality - It could be games like Pokémon Go. It could also mean talking to an old friend a world away, but it looks like they are siting in the chair besides you. It's exciting, but what ethical and privacy issues come along with augmented reality? Today we talk to Liv Erickson, a software engineer at High Fidelity who works on VR and AR, about the implications of augmented reality.

When we think of sustainability, we often think of making a better world for our children. In today's podcast, hopefully you will be encouraged to look at the even bigger picture. We are joined by Dr. Oliver Putz, a member of a sustainability think tank, to discuss how climate change and the ecological crisis are affecting plants, animals, and people a world away from us, and how, by thinking globally, we can find deeper meaning.

What do you do when landfills are full of recyclables and prone to fires? Design a robot of course! Today we talk to the young entrepreneur Jaidev Shah, who designed robots that can go into the landfills of India. These robots search and collect recyclables and can locate landfill fires before they become too large. His robots promise to help those who currently live in and around the landfills have better lives.

With great power comes great responsibility. The gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 has tremendous promise, from creating a malaria-proof mosquito to making our crops more pest-resistant. It can even be used on humans. But when we edit the genome, are we playing with fire? Here to talk with us about the ethics (and promise) of CRISPR is Dr. Leila Jamal, a bioethicists who is intimately aware of the ethical conundrums of CRISPR.

Your body is a delicate machine, and space is a harsh environment. Today we talk to Dr. Ronke Olabisi, a biomedical engineer, about the challenges that the human body has to withstand in space and ways to overcome them. These advances will make space safer for astronauts, and can make life on Earth healthier as well!

It's time to reimagine the carbon cycle. It's time to rethink where we get our energy from. Renewable energy not only keeps our environment cleaner, but can also be cheaper in the long-run. And new carbon-negative technologies can create energy and generate products, all when removing carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere. Today we talk to Dr. David Babson, a technology manager in the US Department of Energy, about steps to combat the global energy crisis and climate change.

Can children in the developing world, in areas where internet is scarce or nonexistent, have access to educational materials on the web? Today we talk to Dr. Laura Hosman, who has traveled around the world to places like Senegal or Tonga. She is working to bring these children a web-like educational experience through a small ruggedized computer called a SolarSPELL.

Many Tibetan monks are not familiar with modern math and science, despite the Dalai Lama’s love of the subjects. To remedy this, the program Science for Monks was born - a program that helps Tibetan monks learn astronomy, physics, math, and biology. Today, we are joined by one of the teachers of this program - astronomer Dr. Chris Impey. He talks to us about his experience, what he taught the monks, and what they taught him in return.

What does it take to make a planet habitable? Of course, distance to the star is perhaps the most important variable that controls the planet’s temperature and allows liquid water to exist. But what about conditions on the planet itself? Today we talk to Dr. Ramses Ramirez about how things like volcanism and tectonic activity helps a planet develop and maintain an atmosphere to keep it warm, and how the habitable zone might be bigger than we previously thought.