SparkDialog

Time is really weird. You may be inclined to say only the present is real, while the future and past have a sort of “unreality” to them. Or perhaps you think only the past and present are real, while the future is unwritten. Philosophers have tried to understand how time, religion, and physics relate throughout […] The post Ep 100: Memories, The Here and Now, and Our Future – Time, Religion, and Physics – with Dr. Timothy Maness appeared first on SparkDialog.

What would it be like if New York City was partially underwater?  What would it feel like, what would it taste like?  How would the economy continue to tick, how would commuters reach their jobs?  To answer this, our guest today uses art to tell the narrative of climate change.   We aren’t all numbers people.  […] The post Ep 99: New York Underwater: Art and Climate Change – with guest Carolyn Hall appeared first on SparkDialog.

AI in healthcare can do amazing things.  It can help doctors diagnose their patients.  It can streamline patient care, and can help people to receive the best care possible.  But what happens when AI in healthcare goes awry? Today, our guest is Dr. Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad.  Muhammad  discusses the promise of healthcare, but also reminds […] The post Ep 98: The Problems and Promise of AI in Healthcare – with guest Dr. Muhammad Ahmad appeared first on SparkDialog.

There are places where climate change cannot be considered a myth.  The effects of climate change can never be ignored – with floods, heat waves, extreme storms, or literal rising waters.  Such a place is India – particularly, North Bihar.  The floods in India are so extreme that hundreds of villages and thousands of farms […] The post Ep 97: Floods in India – A View of Climate Change from Under the River – with guest Dr. Luisa Cortesi appeared first on SparkDialog.

Artificial Intelligence is not just the stuff of science fiction. It’s found all around us – from deciding what movie shows up next on your Netflix screen to determining if you are approved for a loan for your new house. And with AI integrated with more and more of our everyday lives, it also has […] The post Ep 96: AI, Ethics, and the Vatican – with guest Dr. Brian Patrick Green appeared first on SparkDialog.

Grief in the time of COVID is a very real thing. COVID has changed the way we interact with each other and the world. But perhaps most poignantly, it has introduced new types of grief in our lives. The grief of the dying, not allowed to touch or even see family members one last time. […] The post Ep 95: Grief in the Time of COVID: with guest Dr. Kristel Clayville appeared first on SparkDialog.

Today, we’re talking about two deep subjects – quantum entanglement and consciousness. If physics has taught us anything, it is that the world in which we live in is really weird. Just look at quantum physics.  Schrödinger said – put in a cat in a box, and he could be alive and dead at the […] The post Ep 94: Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness, and the Nature of Reality: with guest Dr. Eric Cavalcanti appeared first on SparkDialog.

We are a COVID-weary people.  It’s been about a year since lockdown really began.  Happy quarantine-versary?  But in all seriousness, we often have been talking about COVID, but we rarely talk about gratefulness and COVID in the same sentence. Yet, while teaching us how to properly wash our hands and all sorts of ways to […] The post Ep 93: Gratefulness, Hope, and COVID – with guest John Van Sloten appeared first on SparkDialog.

If you lost a limb, would you use technology to help you regain some of your ability? What if you were deaf? Chances are, if technology could help you, you probably would jump at the opportunity. But how about taking it one step farther. What if technology could make you smarter than you already are? […] The post Ep 92: Merging Man and Machine: Transhumanism and Religion – with guest Seth Villegas appeared first on SparkDialog.

Why do some people believe, and others do not?  Does it come down to experiences, the way you were raised, your DNA?  In short, what is the neuroscience behind belief?  While there is no one reason why some people believe, advances in neuroscience are beginning to shed light on the similarities of the brains of […] The post Ep 91: Seeing Patterns, Seeing God: The Neuroscience of Belief – with guest Dr. Adam Weinberger appeared first on SparkDialog.

Last month, scientists published word that an incredible discovery was made on Venus.  They found what is called a “biomarker” in the clouds of Venus.  Now, a biomarker is not life, but a chemical that may indicate life is present. In Venus’ case, this chemical is phosphine. It’s hard to explain why phosphine would exist […] The post Ep 90: How Can We Find Life Within the Solar System?: with guest Dr. Niels Ligterink appeared first on SparkDialog.

We all understand that with technology today, a certain amount of our privacy has evaporated. Our phones track our location. Stores know what we are looking at – both when we are browsing in store or on-line. But do you realize how much of our privacy is compromised? Do you realize how much various organizations […] The post Ep 89: Can Online Privacy Exist Today? – with guest Rob Shavell appeared first on SparkDialog.

People feel better when they are in nature. There’s something about putting your hands in garden dirt, taking a walk in the forest, or camping that makes people feel more at peace, more balanced, less depressed, and happier. We need nature. Today on the podcast, we talk about what is actually going on in our […] The post Ep 88: Why We Need Nature – with guest Dr. Peter Kahn appeared first on SparkDialog.

From islands in the South Pacific that are drowning under rising waters to communities like Flint, Michigan, communities of color, both in the US and around the world, are hit harder from climate change. It’s something called environmental racism.  Sadly, sometimes these communities do little to contribute to climate change. But surprisingly, some people within […] The post Ep 87: Environmental Racism and Climate Change – with guest Dr. Gregory Simpson appeared first on SparkDialog.

The world you see is not really the world that exists. Your eyes and your brain are working together to “lie” to you all the time.  But, they don’t do this with some evil vendetta in mind.  In reality, they do it to make sense of the enormous amount of information flowing in from the […] The post Ep 86: The Science of Subjectivity: The World Your Brain Creates – with guest Dr. Jorge Morales appeared first on SparkDialog.

There’s a lot of opinions about the current Paleo diet. Some proponents say eat what our ancestors ate – meat, veggies, fruit, nuts. But what about things like lentils? Beans? Milk or wheat? Are those allowed in the Paleo diet? There are differing opinions. How do we really know what our ancestors ate? Stomachs don’t […] The post Ep 85: How Paleolithic is the Paleo Diet? What did our Ancestors Eat Anyways? – with guest Dr. Briana Pobiner appeared first on SparkDialog.

To say we live in changing times is an understatement. The world right now is a pressure cooker. Already, people around the world were losing their jobs, their lives, and their ability to even venture into public places with the coronavirus outbreak. But then add to that the tragic murder of George Floyd by the […] The post Ep 84: The Coronavirus, Social Media, Online Dating and Black Lives Matter – with guest Dr. Shantel Buggs appeared first on SparkDialog.

With the wildfires in California, extreme insect infestations in forests, and the duration between rainstorms lengthening, the western United States is in the midst of a drought.  But this drought could be the part of something larger – a so-called “megadrought”, which the United States has not seen the likes of for four hundred years. […] The post Ep 83: The West: On the Cusp of a MegaDrought – with guest Dr. Kasey Bolles appeared first on SparkDialog.

When did language originate?  It’s a tricky question to answer.  We can’t go back in time.  We can’t even look at “fossilized brains” to see how they worked.  So how can we understand the origins of language? Scientists have a few ways to do this.  One way is to scan the brains of living animals […] The post Ep 82 : The Origins of Language May Go Much Farther Back Than We Thought – with guests Dr. Chris Petkov and Dr. Ben Wilson appeared first on SparkDialog.

If the COVID-19 pandemic had hit even ten years ago, we would be in a very different situation than today. We wouldn’t be able to video conference over Zoom.  We wouldn’t have Facebook Portals to feel like we’re in the room with one another.  Technology that sometimes seems to drive us apart (what’s so social […] The post Ep 81: Staying Connected During COVID-19 (with Technology!) – with guest Eric Elnes appeared first on SparkDialog.

You’ve probably seen them. You’ve probably used them. Popular in Gmail and other messages platform like Slack or LinkedIn, they provide you with handy, if bland, suggested replies. Just a quick click sends a response, and you are on your way to sailing through your email inbox. But are smart replies really all that they […] The post Ep 80: Smart Replies Aren’t So Smart – with guest Jess Hohenstein appeared first on SparkDialog.

When it comes to the teaching of science, one of the most controversial topics is evolution, and one of the most controversial areas where it is taught is the deep south of the United States.  Teaching evolution in the south has been challenging.  Teachers skip it, and those that do teach it at best have […] The post Ep 79: Evolution in the South – with guest Dr. Amanda Glaze-Crampes appeared first on SparkDialog.

Listeners, I can say with about 100% certainty that you are being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (unless you were on the German TV show Big Brother).  I bet your world has been turned upside down.  I just want to say – you’re not alone. Today I bring you just a short message.  I hope […] The post Ep 78: This Is Not A Normal Podcast Episode appeared first on SparkDialog.

More than one million people live in poverty in this world, and many of those are malnourished.  Meanwhile, the population of the world keeps increasing.  Simply cutting down forests to make more farmland is not the solution to feed the world = as deforestation leads to increasing climate change and more and more species going […] The post Ep 77: Yes, It’s Possible To Feed The World – with guest Prof. Dieter Gerten appeared first on SparkDialog.

It sounds crazy when you say it out loud.  Meteors are rocks from SPACE burning up in the atmosphere.  How did people ever figure THAT out?  Today, I’m talking about the history of meteor showers and discussing the fascinating journey of how people finally figured out what meteors were.   From those initial moments of terror […] The post Ep 76: How We Found Out Meteors Are Actually Little Rocks From Space Burning Up In The Atmosphere appeared first on SparkDialog.

Are you looking forward to self-driving cars? Perhaps you love taking the curves of the road yourself, but more likely, you would relish a commute where you could read or catch up on the latest episode of “Mandalorian“.  But do you trust your self-driving car to get you to your destination safely?  What happens if […] The post Ep 75: From Self-Driving Cars to Autonomous Weapons Systems – Can We Trust AI? – with guest Dr. David Danks appeared first on SparkDialog.

The statistics are staggering.  One million species are close to extinction.  No ecosystem is left untouched.  Corals in the sea, forests on a windy bluff, jungles, deserts.  The biodiversity of the Earth is declining at worrying rates. What is causing this decline? Is it due to climate change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources, or something else? […] The post Ep 74: Is the Biodiversity of Earth Doomed? with guests Dr. Pamela McElwee, Dr. Kai Chan, and Dr. Alex Pfaff appeared first on SparkDialog.

The newest seekers of immortality are on a radical quest: mind uploading.  These people think that it may be possible to take all of the information locked within the folds of creases of their brains and upload it to the internet.  Decoupled from their mortal bodies, they would be free forever. Free from suffering, free […] The post Ep 73: Mind Uploading: The Key to Eternal Life? with guest Dr. Michael Hauskeller appeared first on SparkDialog.

In 2015, the world came together and drafted the Paris Agreement.  We agreed to try to limit our emissions so that the overall global warming would not exceed two degrees.  An even more ambitious goal: warming would not exceed 1.5 degrees.  This doesn’t sound like much, but going over such a small increase on a […] The post Ep 72: Reversing Climate Change: Turning CO2 Into Rock – with guests Dr. Kári Helgason and Dr. Bergur Sigfússon appeared first on SparkDialog.

Imagine that you have a mystical experience that changes your life.  Perhaps you see the face of Jesus, Muhammad, or Buddha.  Perhaps you feel the Universe pouring out love into your being.  Or perhaps you just feel immense peace. Now imagine that this experience is actually the result of an epileptic seizure.  This is the […] The post Ep 71: Epileptics with Mystical Experiences – with guest Dr. Joseph Tennant appeared first on SparkDialog.

Dr. Marie Moe is a cyborg.  She has a pacemaker that controls the beating of her heart, and without it, she would die.  But Marie also has a PhD in information security, and worked on cybersecurity for the Norwegian government.  So she wondered if this new piece of tech within her could be compromised.  She […] The post Ep 70: Hack My Heart – with guest Dr. Marie Moe appeared first on SparkDialog.

What if you could build cameras that can see around corners or through walls?  It sounds like something out of a spy movie, and completely unrealistic.  But sometimes, what seems like science fiction is actually possible. Today we talk to David Lindell, a PhD student in the Stanford Computational Imaging Lab.  David is heading a […] The post Ep 69: Cameras that can See Around Corners – with guest David Lindell appeared first on SparkDialog.

What would happen if we found a message from a civilization on another planet? Chances are, they won’t be speaking English. We can’t talk to dolphins, dogs, or trees. What makes us think we ever would able to understand a message from not only another species, but from another planet? How would we go about […] The post Ep 68: They’re Not Speaking English – Decoding a Message from ET – with guest Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen appeared first on SparkDialog.

It’s been 50 years since we’ve first set foot on the moon.  That moment, the human species was brought together – our dreams, our goals, our visions of a future not just confined to one pale blue dot, but one that is constantly expanding outwards. A lot has changed in those 50 years.  Some people […] The post Ep 67: Space Industry – A Future in the Stars – with guest Dr. Jim Bell appeared first on SparkDialog.

No one knows what the future may hold.  Or can they?  Today on the podcast, we talk to Brian David Johnson, a futurist.  Brian’s business is the future and predicting the future of technology.  Weaving together a mix of ethnography, culture, trends, technology, and science, he helps businesses and enterprises forecast what the next decades […] The post Ep 66: What the Future May Hold: The Future of Technology – with guest Brian David Johnson appeared first on SparkDialog.

Come on, that can’t really happen, can it?  How often have you torn apart science fiction movies for their sheer implausibility?  Today, we take a look at several implausible science fiction concepts and ask – can they happen in real life? We’ll span the gamut with all types of movies.  We’ll talk about some pretty […] The post Ep 65: The Plausibility of Implausible Science Fiction appeared first on SparkDialog.

Living with autism has many challenges.  One of these is making a living as an adult.  Especially for individuals with severe autism, this can seem like a challenging, insurmountable task.  Today we talk to two individuals who have their own personal experiences with autism and thriving with autism. Colin Weiss is a Research Assistant for the […] The post Ep 64: Thriving with Autism through Art: with guests Colin Weiss and Harish Bikmal appeared first on SparkDialog.

Many disorders of the mind are commonly treated by medication.  But what if you could alter the brain itself, treating the problem at the source?  This is exactly what deep brain stimulation does.  These are implants that are placed deep within the folds of the brain and can treat all sorts of things – from […] The post Ep 63: Deep Brain Stimulation: with guest Dr. Laura Cabrera appeared first on SparkDialog.

No women should ever die of cervical cancer.  It grows very slowly, giving time for detection.  In a perfect world, it would be discovered before it grows into its deadly form.  But in reality, there are many barriers to women’s healthcare.  Lack of access.  Cost.  Misinformation.  And shame when talking about the female body.  Let’s […] The post Ep 62: Improving Women’s Healthcare: The Calla Campaign: with guests Libby Dotson and Andrea Kim appeared first on SparkDialog.

On the evening of April 15th, the entire world watched with shock and horror as Notre Dame cathedral burned.  At the time, it was unclear how much of the cathedral would survive.  Now, with the roof and the iconic spire gone, how will it be rebuilt?  Today on the podcast we discuss why Notre Dame […] The post Ep 61: Technology and the Notre Dame Fire: with guest Dr. Stephen Murray appeared first on SparkDialog.

Are science and religion compatible?  For some, the answer is a resounding yes!  Others see nothing but conflict, especially, it seems, around evolution.  Today, we talk about science, religion, and evolution, from the points of view of a Jewish rabbi, a Humanist chaplain, a Christian pastor, and a Buddhist sensei.  We also talk about The […] The post Ep 60: Science, Religion, and Evolution appeared first on SparkDialog.

The Earth is not the only planet to undergo radical changes in its climate.  Even if we look at the nearby solar neighborhood, we can see that Venus and Mars underwent significant changes in their climate in the past.   Venus is a textbook example of the greenhouse effect gone haywire.  Mars most likely had flowing […] The post Ep 59: Climate Change on Alien Worlds: with guest Dr. Adam Frank appeared first on SparkDialog.

Millions of people worldwide are suffering from the brain diseases Alzheimer’s and dementia.  These diseases take a toll not just on the patients, but also their loved ones.  These spouses, children, and friends  may be forgotten, left by themselves to question where this leaves their relationship.  In some cases, they might even think that their […] The post Ep 58: Who Are You Anyways? Does Dementia and Alzheimer’s Change Who You Are?: with guest Dr. Nina Strohminger appeared first on SparkDialog.

Everything changes. Even the stars, that seem so constant, will one day burn out. The sky will change. Today, we’re going on a journey to the very distant future of the Universe to see what is in store for us all. The time scales we will be talking about are truly mind-blowing. We’ll see what […] The post Ep 57: The Future of the Universe: with guests Dr. Avi Loeb and Dr. Ethan Siegel appeared first on SparkDialog.

What is time?  We may not fully understand it, but we do know this: time has some very odd qualities.  Today, we discuss our current understanding the philosophy of time. So what makes time so strange?  It’s not like the other dimensions.  It only flows in one direction.  We can go forward into the future, but […] The post Ep 56: It’s About Time – A Podcast in the Fourth Dimension: with guest Dr. Jonathan Tallant appeared first on SparkDialog.

Building any type of infrastructure is challenging, whether it be a house or a skyscraper.  The difficulty is only compounded when you are building in the remote desert, a coastal town recently hit by a hurricane, or even an observatory on a high mountain.  In some locations, it is difficult and downright expensive to bring […] The post Ep 55: 3D Printed Buildings – From Earth to Mars: with guest Keegan Kirkpatrick appeared first on SparkDialog.

Agriculture in Africa has its share of challenges. Sometimes it’s the drought, other times, it’s soil quality. Things like climate change and unpredictable rainfall has made things worse.   However, it’s possible that agriculture in Africa can be revolutionized through the use of technology. From drones used to monitor farms to apps on cell phones, farmers are […] The post Ep 54: Transforming Agriculture in Africa: with guest Samantha Salimu appeared first on SparkDialog.

When you think of ways general science is communicated to the public, you probably think of a PBS documentary, a fun youtube video, the science section of Barnes and Nobel, or maybe even your favorite podcast (wink wink). But can scientific comics be an equally effective way at communicating science?   Matteo Farinella thinks so. Matteo […] The post Ep 53: Down the Rabbit Hole: Scientific Comics and Storytelling – with guest Dr. Matteo Farinella appeared first on SparkDialog.

I’m sure you heard about the debate, and you probably have an opinion about it.  Should genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, be part of our food supply?  Have you ever refused to buy a product because it was labeled “Partially produced with genetic engineering”?  What exactly does GM mean?  What is the benefit of GMOs […] The post Ep 52: To GM or not to GM: GMOs in a Changing World – with guest Dr. Sarah Evanega appeared first on SparkDialog.

It may not seem like it when you glance at your Roomba, but robots are influencing gender roles, family, and even religion.  From Rosie to RoboCop, robots and gender have a connection in both science fiction and reality.  “Female” robots are often small, with almond shaped eyes and light colors, while “male” robots are burly, with […] The post Ep 51: Rosie to RoboCop: Gender, Religion, and Robots – with guest Dr. Jennifer Robertson appeared first on SparkDialog.

There is not a new episode of SparkDialog Podcast this week due to Hurricane Florence. We’ll be back in two weeks with a new episode. In the meantime check out sparkdialog.com for more episodes. The post Hurricane Florence appeared first on SparkDialog.