The DemystifySci Podcast

It’s week 5 on the road, and we’re deep in the weeds about the question of what we, as scientists, owe the world. Technological progress alone seems like a weak orienting principle, as does abandoning the pursuit of knowledge completely. So how do we hew a path that makes sense, when it seems like the institutions and organizations around us have gone astray? To help us make se

Marcell Fóti is an ancient mysteries researcher who is trying to figure out how the ancient Egyptians and other cultures were able to carve stones with sub-millimeter precision with relatively primitive bronze tools. Fóti’s experiments with geopolymers - ceramic polymers that can easily be mistaken for natural stone - have led him to the conclusion that the inexplicable stonewo

On the road between Austin and Santa Fe we make a pit stop in Roswell, New Mexico and sit down to make heads or tails of the UAP phenomena. Both of us are skeptics who want to believe, but are cursed by a nature that prevents us from committing to a single perspective. Instead, we dive into the mythological signifiers that surround the phenomenon, the deep yearning for someone who

Dr. Steven Koonin is a theoretical physicist, former Chief Scientist at BP, former Under Secretary for Science at the Department of Energy in the Obama administration, and is currently a professor of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU. He is also the author of Unsettled, a book about the abilities and limits of climate science. We talk with him about the great distance between the

Get your DEMYSTICON 2024 tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demysticon-2024-tickets-727054969987 Sign up for a yearly Patreon membership for discounted conference tickets: https://bit.ly/3lcAasB Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.

Get your DEMYSTICON 2024 tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demysticon-2024-tickets-727054969987 This is our second week on the road and we're broadcasting from uber-sunny Joshua Tree, California. Today we start out with the observation that a dominant faction of the techno-futurist community seems to believe that if our civilization maximizes intelligence, everything w

Get your DEMYSTICON 2024 tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demysticon-2024-tickets-727054969987 Today we are hanging out with our friend Dr. Michael Hughes, a post-doctoral fellow at St. Jude's Research Hospital in Memphis. Michael has a long history of trying to understand the role that water plays in fundamental biological operations from structural assembly to disea

Get your DEMYSTICON 2024 tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demysticon-2024-tickets-727054969987 We are finally en route to DEMYSTICON 2024! While we're on the road we've decided to take a moment each week to review and articulate our own insights the past year's podcast conversations. In our first On Tour Solo Edition we're examining how a theorist's me

Get your DEMYSTICON 2024 tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demysticon-2024-tickets-727054969987 Dr. Michel Barsoum is a materials scientist at Drexel University who is the champion of a controversial theory about the great pyramids of Giza, which says the pyramids were not fully carved from natural stone, but were cast from a geopolymer concrete mixture. For decades, Egypt

Get your DEMYSTICON 2024 tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/demysticon-2024-tickets-727054969987 In this episode we are exploring the origins of the metaphysics that underpin the modern approach to a scientific understanding of nature with Dr. Helen De Cruz, who is the Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University. Professor De Cruz' research focuses on phi