Cool Science Radio

Lynn Ware Peek and guest co-host Chris Cherniak speak with journalist Zach Schonbrun about his new book, The Performance Cortex: How Neuroscience is redefining Athletic Genius. Whether it is timing a 95-mph fastball or reaching for a coffee mug, movement requires extraordinary computation that many take for granted--until now. The Performance Cortex ushers in a new way of thinking about the athletic gifts we strain to see in our cavernous arenas. It's not about the million-dollar arm anymore. It's about the million-dollar brain.

John and Lynn speak with Eric Miller, President and CEO for Avi-on Labs here in Park City. Avi-on designs and builds a family of professional-grade Bluetooth® enabled lighting products. Since we last visited with Avi-on a year ago they have received patents for their proprietary software and a special private label agreement with a global lighting company that will distribute their products worldwide.

Cool Science Radio speaks with Dr. Glenn Ricart whose accomplishments include naming to the Internet Hall of Fame for his work on putting the "inter" in "internet." He's now the Founder and CTO of US Ignite, a non-profit that helps to accelerate new wired and wireless networking advances to create smart communities. He also speaks in Park City on Saturday, April 14, as part of the 2018 March for Science.  

Writer Jamie Bartlett joins the show to discuss his new book, The People Vs Tech: How the Internet is Killing Democracy and How We Save It. He warns that technology in interrupting our democracy and unless we do something about is, we may risk losing democracy for good.  

Chad Mann joins the program. Mann is the Founder and CEO of MannMade Innovations, a technology incubator for apps and development software. His company develops engineering, software, and business models for companies trying to bring a product to market; from drones to software to creative lighting solutions. MannMade Innovations is part of the growing base of technology in Utah. 

This morning, Menno Schilthuizon talks about his new book, Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution, which explains how plants and animals are adapting to the seemingly hostile environments of asphalt and steel. Next up is Park City resident Chris Fischer, who hosted the Emmy-winning television series Offshore Adventures, a chronicle of a life at sea: fishing, free diving and conservation.

The first guest on Cool Science Radio is Andras Tilcsik  who explores the complexity and failure of our modern systems - from social media to air travel - in a book called Meltdown: Why Our Systems Fail and What We Can do About It. Then, Geoff Atkinson of Huckabuy,  a tech company based on Main Street in Park City, will give an update, and finally we talk with scientist, professor and mountaineer John All who talks about climate science at high altitudes in his book Icefall: Adventures at the Wild Edges of Our Dangerous, Changing Planet.

On Cool Science Radio, Dave and John’s first guest is Dr. One Pagan who has written Strange Survivors...How organisms attack and defend in the game of life. In Strange Survivors, biologist One Pagan takes us on a tour of the improbable, the ingenious, and the just plain bizarre ways that creatures fight for life. Dave and John's second guest is Michael Horkachuck. Michael and his group at NASA are working towards certification of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon that will allow SpaceX to fly manned missions to the International Space Station.

We start with a preview of the “March For Science,” scheduled for April 14 in Park City, from Josh Hobson, the event’s organizer. Then we hear from Carl Hoffman, who writes about The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure. Finally, John and Lynn speak with Sang-Hee Lee, South Korea's first paleoanthropologist and a professor at the University of California, Riverside, who investigates our evolving species in her new book, Close Encounters with Humankind.

Today’s first guest is Tim Walsh, acting program director for NASA's new series of advanced weather satellites, one of which -- the GOES-S -- was successfully launched into orbit last week. GOES-S will be a game changer for better and more timely forecasting. Next up is Clifford Johnson, a physics professor at the University of Southern California, who recently wrote and illustrated a fascinating book titled The Dialogues: Conversations about the Nature of the Universe.