In today's episode Kelly interviews Dr. Judy Illes to learn more about the latest work being done addressing the ethics of brain-computer interfaces. Dr. Illes is the Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics, and Director of Neuroethics Canada at the University of British Columbia.

In this week's show Kelly talks to Dr. Bryan Caplan about the impact of automation on jobs, and talks to Zach about his collaboration with Bryan on a graphic novel called "Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration". 

Also - if you visit WeeklyWeinersmith.com you can download a chapter on Advanced Nuclear Reactors! This chapter was cut from Soonish due to page limits, and is now available for download for free. 

Dr. Jordan Miller and his collaborators recently published a paper where they use a gel that hardens in response to light to create structures that are non-toxic, and so should be compatible with the human body. The paper made the front cover of Science! Check out this week's episode to learn more about the bioengineering work happening in the Physiologic Systems Engineering and Advanced Materials Laboratory at Rice University. 

In this week's episode, Kelly interviews Rosario Ballesteros-Casas, the Chief Executive Officer of VRAmericas. VRAmericas is working on AR and VR (virtual reality) applications to help train our workforce.

In today’s episode we’re going to chat about some of the cool projects happening at MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, which is the lab for which our interviewee (Professor Skylar Tibbits) is the Founder and co-Director.

On today’s show Joy Dunn joins us to discuss Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Ms. Dunn spent about 10 years at SpaceX, where she worked on and led teams working on the Dragon spacecrafts, and became known as the “Mother of Dragons”. She is currently Head of Manufacturing at Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton joins Kelly to talk about how we go about learning about asteroids, and about the Psyche mission in particular. We also spoke with Dr. Elkins-Tanton about the role of artists in communicating space research to the general public in ways that scientists can't.

Welcome to the reboot of The Weekly Weinersmith, celebrating the paperback release of our book Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.

In this podcast series, we’re going to revisit each of the 10 technologies discussed in Soonish, expanding on topics touched on in the book, exploring related matters, and checking out new advances since the book came out.

That is - the stuff in the podcast will be different from the book, so go buy it.

The first chapter in Soonish is on Cheap Access to Space, and it was one of the hardest ones to write, because private launch companies were making advances so quickly it was hard to keep up.

But at some point, we had to put our pencils down, and we submitted the book to our editor in 2016.

A few months before our book came out in hardback in 2017 a company called Rocket Lab completed a test flight of its Electron rocket.

They’ve now entered high frequency launch operations, and as of May 5, 2019, they’ve launched 28 satellites into space.

Amazingly, Peter Beck, the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab (!), took the time to talk to me about how his company is democratizing space launch.

Welcome to the reboot of The Weekly Weinersmith, celebrating the paperback release of our book Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.

In this podcast series, we’re going to revisit each of the 10 technologies discussed in Soonish, expanding on topics touched on in the book, exploring related matters, and checking out new advances since the book came out.

The first chapter in Soonish is on Cheap Access to Space. We mostly talk about ways to reduce the price of launching things into space, but reducing launch costs is only one part of a current movement called "NewSpace".

In this first podcast episode, we interview Dr. Elizabeth Frank about NewSpace. Dr. Frank earned her PhD at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and did her postdoc at the Carnegie Institution for Science (working on NASA's Messenger, which orbited Mercury). She then spent 2 years working at Planetary Resources, Inc., and is now an Applied Planetary Scientist at First Mode.

Zach and Kelly are BACK! Well, for now. Turns out we haven't just been sitting by the beach instead of recording podcasts - we've been writing a book! That book is called Soonish - Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve And/Or Ruin Everything, and it's coming out through Penguin Press in the US and Particular Books in the UK on October 17th. This episode gives you a flavor of what the book is about, and some insights into the harrowing tale of what we went through to write this book while working our "normal" jobs and raising 2 kids. You can preorder the book here. 

This week we interview Melanie Martin, a PhD student at the University of California Santa Barbara, about her research on breastfeeding.

This week Zach and Kelly talk about deep sea ecology with Dr. Andrew David Thaler.

We're back! We've been super busy lately (moving across the country, having a baby, applying for jobs, finishing a dissertation, running a Kickstarter, etc), but we're striving for more regular updates. While hitting a weekly goal is unlikely, we're going to strive to update once or twice a month. Thanks for sticking with us!

This week we interview Dr. Elizabeth Iorns of Science Exchange about Science Exchange's research on collaboration.

This week Kelly and Zach talk to Trevor Bekolay about his work on a large-scale brain simulator. Trevor is a PhD student in the Computational Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Waterloo.

Zach and Kelly interview Dr. Elizabeth Iorns about Science Exchange, an online marketplace connecting scientists and laypeople to research facilities.

Zach and Kelly discuss another amazing case of horizontal gene transfer, and a study exploring whether winners or losers are more aggressive. 

This week Zach and Kelly catch up on their recent adventures, and discuss the predominance of W.E.I.R.D. (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) subjects in psychology studies. 

This week Kelly and Zach talk to Dr. Zen Faulkes about zombie shrimp, puzzlingly slow crayfish, and his upcoming field expedition (which you can help fund!). 

This week Kelly and Zach talk to Ben Peters of MIT's Media Lab about 3-D printing!

This week Zach and Kelly discuss why the trillions of bacteria living in and on your body are good, bad, and, sometimes, gross.

This week Zach and Kelly talk to blogger, author, and astronomer Phil Plait about the Jame Web Space Telescope and funding for space research. 

Kelly and Zach revisit the mushroom story from episode 1, but this time with an expert! 

Zach and Kelly discuss open access journals, bad science on potentially good drugs, and why your mom should have held you more.