Mon, 3 November 2008 Find show notes at www.laboutloud.com |
Mon, 20 October 2008 See Show Notes at: http://www.laboutloud.com/episodes/ |
Mon, 19 May 2008  For this episode, we chatted with Dr. Karen Harpp, Associate Professor in Geology
at Colgate University in New York. Dr. Harpp talked with us about
her research, science outreach and creating connections between science
teachers and researchers.
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Mon, 5 May 2008 
In response to the movie Expelled:
No Intelligence Allowed, we decided to talk with someone who
has invested her life defending evolution. Dr.
Eugenie Scott, Director for the National
Center for Science Education, talks to us about the movie,
the NCSE response, and the place of evolution in science education.Comments[0] |
Mon, 21 April 2008 
For our contribution to Earth Day, we had the opportunity to chat with Bill Nye about his new show on the new Planet Green channel called Stuff Happens. Preview from the Show: I’m doing this other thing called “Stuff Happens� for the Discovery Channel. It’s strictly for a new channel Discovery is re-purposing – they’re calling it "Planet Green". So all the programming is green, or about environmental issues and stuff. And so this show is about consumer choices that you can make to live a more environmentally responsible life. I am a serious hobbyist. I have four kilowatts of solar panels and I have a solar water heating system that I, if you will, designed – along with a guy who’s worked in solar in southern California for many, many years…I hired him, and two very good plumbers, and these guys who were good with gas mains, and we re-rigged the whole house. So now I have solar hot water that pre-heats the water before it runs through two tankless hot water heaters. So my gas bill in the summer is less than $10. There’s an old supply chain from the South American Western Coast to North American farmers. And what is supplied is fish feed made from anchovies. So, American bacon pigs are fed fish from South American oceans. And so many fish are fished so aggressively that penguins are going out of business. The penguin ecosystem has been devastated, and penguin populations have been decimated by this practice. So we encourage you – the listener, the viewer – to buy…organic, grain-fed bacon. That’s what we want you to do to reduce the market for this anchovy feed. And it’s just something that humans are kind of doing by accident, but on such an enormous scale that’s it’s screwing up an entire ecosystem in the south western Pacific. The baby steps are important. The hardest thing for everyone to understand about the environment is that every single thing you do affects everybody in the whole world. And the reason, nominally, is that we only have one atmosphere. We can only breath from one source of air – we all share the air. So this is a fundamental idea that’s hard to get; it just doesn’t seem possible. I throw out this magazine and instead of recycling it, yeah – you’re lowering the quality of life of everyone on earth. So you go to the store and you buy one [compact fluorescent light bulb]. Ok, but if you replace every lamp in your house, or every lamp in the main rooms… Replace every one of those lamps, and you will see your power bill go down… Now there are some whining, unbelievable-freakin’ whiners out there who tell you that we can’t change to compact fluorescents because of the mercury - "there’s no way to get rid of the mercury that’s in those lights and it’s gonna kill everybody." So let’s keep in mind that it was the year 1951 when American industry went to buying more fluorescent lamps than incandescent lamps. That is to say, if you work at any sort of factory anywhere, they have fluorescent lights – ‘cuz it’s so much cheaper. And so those lights are required by law to be recycled and the mercury recovered. And there are services that recover the lights and recover the mercury. So we just gotta do the same thing for domestic consumers – for people that buy ‘em for their houses. For cryin’ out loud – this is not, if I may, rocket surgery. This is actually a little more complicated that: trying to motivate everyone to do the right thing with regard to their old lamps. And of course it can be done; it’s a metal. Who doesn’t want to recover a metal? It’s valuable, it’s shiny, you can see it – of course you can do it. Politically, [a scientific debate] is an unsophisticated idea. None of the three candidates remaining would ever consent to a science debate. None of them are scientists. None of them would admit to being experts in any way about anything about science. So of course they're going to say no; they have to say no. This pursuit of science debate is an exercise in futility. Instead, we need to rephrase it - in my opinion. My best idea so far, is to rename it something else - the "nondependence on foreign oil" debate, the "health" debate, the "energy" debate, the "competitiveness" debate - that's pretty good... But naming this thing the "science" debate sabotages it from the get-go. And of course I support the idea, but the best correction I can think of it to rename it. The "competitiveness" debate - yes. Links: Comments[0] |
Mon, 7 April 2008  This week we talk to Terry Devitt from WhyFiles.org.Preview from the Show: Subscribe to The Why Files with their RSS Feed Comments[0] |
Mon, 17 March 2008  Today's guest calls himself the Bad Astronomer. Phil Plait is an astronomer, an author, and a well-known blogger at www.badastronomy.com. Phil talks to us about myths and skepticism in the science classroom.Special Announcement: Don't miss Lab Out Loud's Conference Coverage live from the NSTA conference in Boston! Preview from the show: Plait: I am in fact a skeptic. In the public mind - if you ask somebody "what's a skeptic" - most people think it's a cynic or a denier, somebody who just doesn't believe in anything. And that's not strictly true. All a skeptic is, is someone who demands evidence for a claim. If you come up to me and say the sky is pink, I'm going to say "what is your evidence for this?". Or I'll say, "that's an interesting claim, but here's the evidence against it." It's someone who applies critical thinking, logic, evidence, observation, the scientific method to any sort of claim. Science is all about skepticism. They are hardly different - I mean skepticism is a tool of science. Richard Feynman (the physicist) said "science is a way of not fooling ourselves. It's a way of figuring what's out what's really going on". And skepticism is just a way of looking at things. It's making sure that if you're thinking about something, if there's a claim that's being made - whether it's by a person or even yourself, there's a way of examining it so that you can test its reality or not. And the problem is, it's not something we teach our kids. In fact, we teach them exactly the opposite. We teach them to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. We go to movies where the skeptic is always a jerk, and the end is always the supenatural cause or trust in humanity or whatever." Plait: Scooby Doo was a great cartoon because in the end, it really wasn't a ghost or whatever, it was always old man Marley wearing a mask, who didn't want the developers to come in and destroy his farm or whatever." Plait: When you're teaching kids to the test, and you're saying "here's how you do the math" without explaining why, "here's what you're supposed to get in the results in the lab" without explaining why, we're not teaching our kids science. We're teaching them nothing, we're teaching them belief, faith - and that's not what science is about. Science is not about belief, science is about evidence. Follow the Bad Astronomer: Posts from badastronomy.com discussed on the show:
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Mon, 18 February 2008 
Get a preview of what's in store for you at the 2008 National Conference on Science Education, as we chat with conference chair Joyce Croce. New to an NSTA Conference?
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Mon, 17 December 2007  Adam Rogers discusses the new PBS show titled WIRED Science.
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Mon, 19 November 2007 This week we talk with Vivek Wadhwa, columnist for Business Week, Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University. Wadhwa will be discussing his recent article (The Science Education Myth) regarding science education in the United States. Quotes from the show:
Links:
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Mon, 8 October 2007 Meet the hosts of NSTA's Lab Out Loud podcast - Dale Basler and Brian Bartel. Later, we chat with NSTA Executive Director Gerry Wheeler, as he reflects on Sputnik and its impact on science education, the importance of science literacy and 21st century skills, and how NSTA is helping science teachers both young and old. WSST Gerry Wheeler Reflects on Sputnik:
www.nsta.org NSTA's New Science Teacher Academy With support from The Amgen Foundation, the program will support new middle and secondary school science educators by providing opportunities for professional development such as online mentoring and financial support to attend NSTA’s national conference.
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