Tag Archives: Podcasts

Top Health Podcasts: Dubious Coronavirus Content, Funding Fears

Coronapod ReportWith questionable coronavirus content flooding airwaves and online channels, what’s being done to limit its impact?

In this episode:

00:57 The epidemiology of misinformation

As the pandemic spreads, so does a tidal wave of misinformation and conspiracy theories. We discuss how researchers’ are tracking the spread of questionable content, and ways to limit its impact.

News: Anti-vaccine movement could undermine efforts to end coronavirus pandemic, researchers warn

Nature Video: Infodemic: Coronavirus and the fake news pandemic

 

17:55 One good thing

Our hosts pick out things that have made them smile in the last week, including walks in new places, an update on the Isolation Choir, and a very long music playlist.

Video: The Isolation Choir sing What a Wonderful World

Spotify: Beastie Boys Book Complete Songs

22:30 Funding fears for researchers

Scientists around the world are concerned about the impacts that the pandemic will have on their funding and research projects. We hear from two who face uncertainty, and get an update on the plans put in place by funding organisations to support their researchers.

Top New Science Podcasts: Inequality In Pandemics, Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Volcano Earthquakes

science-magazine-podcastsContributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of inequality in past pandemics. Evidence from medical records and cemeteries suggests diseases like the 1918 flu, smallpox, and even the Black Death weren’t indiscriminately killing people—instead these infections caused more deaths in those with less money or status. 

Also this week, Aaron Wech, a research geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, joins Sarah to talk about recordings of more than 1 million earthquakes from deep under Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano, which hasn’t erupted in 4500 years. They discuss how these earthquakes, which have repeated every 7 to 12 minutes for at least 20 years, went undetected for so long.

Top New Science Podcasts: Image Manipulation, Tully Monster & Air Pollution

nature-podcastsThis week, Elisabeth Bik tells us about her work uncovering potential image manipulation, and a new route for particulate pollution formation.

In this episode:

00:45 Seeing double

Elisabeth Bik spends her days identifying duplicated images in science papers. She tells us about her efforts, and why they’re important. Feature: Meet this super-spotter of duplicated images in science papersNews: Publishers launch joint effort to tackle altered images in research papers

08:11 Research Highlights

New insights on the mysterious Tully Monster, and how football fans can stoke air pollution. Research Highlight: Unmasking the Tully Monster: fossils help to tackle a decades-old mysteryResearch Highlight: The meaty link between a city’s football matches and its foul air

10:29 Understanding air pollution

Particulate pollution is a serious threat to human health, but the way that new particles form is poorly understood. This week, new research suggests a new mechanism for it to happen. Research article: Wang et al.News and Views: Airborne particles might grow fast in cities

15:09 Pick of the Briefing

We pick some highlights from the Nature Briefing, including the closest discovered black hole to Earth, and how wriggly worms are helping physicists model microscopic processes. National Geographic: Closest black hole to Earth found ‘hiding in plain sight’Physics: Worm Viscosity

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

Art History: “The Lives of Caravaggio” (The Getty)

Art + Ideas - Getty PodcastsMichelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is one of the most admired painters of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Known for his powerful, dramatically lit compositions, Caravaggio depicted violence and the human form with a degree of realism unprecedented at the time. He was among the most famous painters in Rome—but not only because of his skill as an artist.

Michelangelo Merisi da CaravaggiCaravaggio was also notorious for his wild life and shocking temper. After being sentenced to death for murder, he fled Rome and died in exile at age 38 . Three biographies written in the decades after his death constitute nearly all that is known about the enigmatic artist.

In this episode, Getty curator and expert on Italian painting Davide Gasparatto discusses Caravaggio and the role these early biographies, by Giulio Mancini, Giovanni Baglione, and Giovanni Pietro Bellori, played in defining Caravaggio’s legacy.

Economy: “The U.S. Is Racking Up Debt. Will It Be a Problem?” (WSJ Podcast)

The Journal WSJ PodcastsThe federal government is spending big to combat the economic damage of the coronavirus crisis, and federal debt has climbed to record levels. 

WSJ’s Jon Hilsenrath explains the debate over the impact of all that debt.

 

Interviews: Indonesian Cookbook “Coconut & Sambal” Author Lara Lee

Monocle 24 The MenuLara Lee, the author of the new cookery book ‘Coconut & Sambal’, shares one of her favourite recipes.

About Coconut & Sambal

Coconut & SambalBe transported to the bountiful islands of Indonesia by this collection of fragrant, colourful and mouth-watering recipes.

‘An exciting and panoramic selection of dishes and snacks’
– Fuchsia Dunlop, author of The Food of Sichuan


‘Start with Lara’s fragrant chicken soup, do lots of exploring on the way whilst dousing everything with spoonfuls of sambal, and end with her coconut and pandan sponge cake’
 Yotam Ottolenghi, author of SIMPLE

Coconut & Sambal reveals the secrets behind authentic Indonesian cookery. With more than 80 traditional and vibrant recipes that have been passed down through the generations, you will discover dishes such as Nasi goreng, Beef rendang, Chilli prawn satay and Pandan cake, alongside a variety of recipes for sambals: fragrant, spicy relishes that are undoubtedly the heart and soul of every meal.Lara uses simple techniques and easily accessible ingredients throughout Coconut and Sambal, interweaving the recipes with beguiling tales of island life and gorgeous travel photography that shines a light on the magnificent, little-known cuisine of Indonesia.

What are you waiting for? Travel the beautiful islands of Indonesia and taste the different regions through these recipes.

Read more or purchase

Top Podcasts: “The Future Of Air Travel” (NPR 1A)

NPR 1A PodcastAirlines were soaring towards record travel numbers at the start of this year. Then, COVID-19 hit like a lightning bolt.

The average number of passengers on a domestic flight is now about 17. That’s about a single passenger per row. And American taxpayers gave U.S. airlines a $50 billion bailout to help pull the industry out of a financial nose-dive. Will that be enough?

And what will the future of air travel look like in a post-pandemic world?

Read more

GLOBAL NEWS: A Dangerous Gap, Covid-19 Research & Companionship (Podcast)

The Economist Editors Picks Podcast logoA selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the dangerous gap between Wall Street and Main Street in America, (10:22) high-speed science—new research on the coronavirus is being released in a torrent. (21:00) And, casual sex is out, companionship is in.

Interviews: 86-Year Old British Author Michael Frayn – “Magic Mobile”

Monocle 24 'Meet The Writers' PodcastBritish author, playwright and translator Michael Frayn is best known for his farcical comedy ‘Noises Off’ and ‘Copenhagen’, which details a 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. 

He is also a translator of Russian and has written several English translations of Chekhov. He spoke to us about his prolific career and his latest book, ‘Magic Mobile’.

With the whole world at the touch of your finger – why ever leave the imaginary realm of your mobile phone? This book of short comedic vignettes might give you a reason ―Magic Mobile is the latest offering of comic genius from Michael Frayn, award-winning author of the plays Noises Off and Copenhagen and novels The Tin Men, Towards the End of the Morning, and Headlong.

Website

Interviews: American Poet & Writer Cynthia Zarin On Her New Book “Two Cities”

Cythia Zarin Two Cities VeniceA conversation with the acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin that transports us to two of her favorite cities, Venice and Rome, in a celebration of Italy as the country begins to loosen the longest coronavirus-related lockdown in Europe. The episode features evocative readings from her forthcoming book,Two Cities, which captures the meditative yet constantly surprising nature of travel from a deeply personal point of view. 

David Zwirner Books Logo

From acclaimed poet and New Yorker writer Cynthia Zarin comes a deeply personal meditation on two cities, Venice and Rome—each a work of art, both a monument to the past—and on how love and loss shape places and spaces.

Here we encounter a writer deeply engaged with narrative in situ—a traveler moving through beloved streets, sometimes accompanied, sometimes solo. With her, we see, anew, the Venice Biennale, the Lagoon, and San Michele, the island of the dead; the Piazza di Spagna, the Tiber, the view from the Gianicolo; the pigeons at San Marco and the parrots in the Doria Pamphili. As a poet first and foremost, Zarin’s attention to the smallest details, the loveliest gesture, brings Venice and Rome vividly to life for the reader.

READ AN EXCERPT HERE

The sixteenth book in the expanding, renowned ekphrasis series, Two Cities creates space for these two historic cities to become characters themselves, their relationship to the writer as real as any love affair.

ekphrasis

Dedicated to publishing rare, out-of-print, and newly commissioned texts as accessible paperback volumes the ekphrasis series is part of David Zwirner Books’s ongoing effort to publish new and surprising pieces of writing on visual culture.

Cynthia Zarin

Cynthia Zarin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Orbit (2017), as well as five books for children and a collection of essays, An Enlarged Heart: A Personal History (2013). Her honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship for Literature, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. A longtime contributor to The New Yorker, Zarin teaches at Yale University.

Read more or purchase book