Considered the founding father of the electronic communication age, Claude Shannon's work ushered in the Digital Revolution. This fascinating program explores his life and the major influence his work had on today's digital world through interviews with his friends and colleagues.

Summertime in San Diego means the return of leopard sharks to La Jolla Shores. Contrary to popular belief, these sharks 97% of which are pregnant females are not giving birth or mating during their stay. Join Andy Nosal, a Scripps Ph.D. student who studies local leopards, to find out what scientists really think is going on. Discover what gadgets Nosal uses to track the sharks and learn what makes La Jolla the animals' preferred hang out. Find out why this shark population is particularly vulnerable and how the local no-take marine reserve protects it.

Immunologist Erica Ollman Saphire, an expert who has worked on the front lines in west Africa battling viral hemorrhagic fevers, gives a fascinating and sometimes frightening on-the-ground account of how the VIC global consortium developed the only effective strategy to fight the Ebola virus. Recorded on 04/23/2016.

Joseph Polchinski explores the battle in physics: either quantum mechanics must break down, or our understanding of spacetime must be wrong. The latest is the 'firewall' paradox: if quantum mechanics is to be saved, then an astronaut falling into a black hole will have an experience very different from what Einstein's theory predicts. This has led to many new ideas that may lead to the unification of these two great theories. Recorded on 07/15/2015.

UC Carbon Slam 2016 brought students from all 10 campuses to Silicon Valley to present their climate science and carbon reduction research in three-minute pitches and posters at a live competition before a panel of esteemed judges and guests. These ten graduate students present short pitches about their research in carbon reduction strategies. Recorded on 05/23/2016.

Long term, sustained ocean observations provide scientists with much needed insight into natural and human induced changes in the world ocean. Join NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center Director Francisco Werner as he provides a broad perspective on ocean observing and its scientific value and application, as well as a close up look at the important monitoring effort in our own coastal ocean, the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations. Recorded on 11/14/2016.

In this candid and heartwarming interview, Tam O'Shaughnessy, the life partner of the late astronaut Sally Ride, describes her long relationship with the first American woman in space. From their days on the teen tennis circuit in California through Sally's historic flights on the Space Shuttle Challenger to their parallel academic careers and later, founding their own company, Tam tells how their deep friendship blossomed over time into a romance that ended with Sally's death from cancer in 2012. As the Executive Director of Sally Ride Science@UC San Diego, Tam continues to inspire girls to embrace STEM, and shares her profound pride as the sponsor of the newly commissioned R/V Sally Ride, the first Naval academic research vessel ever named for a woman, now operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Despite being diminutive in size, iChips have the potential to make big impacts on drug development and medical treatment testing. Lawrence Livermore National Lab is replicating the human body on a miniature scale, specifically focusing on brain physiology. Capturing human physiology outside the body allows scientists to probe and understand the human body without using human subjects. Staff scientist Elizabeth Wheeler describes how her group is using biology, 3D bioprinting, microchips and other technology to recreate human physiology outside the body. Recorded on 02/13/2016.

2016 was a good and bad year for efforts to tackle climate change. The good news is that 120 parties have ratified the Paris Convention; the bad news is the emergence of post-truth politics and the associated denial of the evidence that climate change is a threat to our future. Leading environmentalist and Member of UK House of Lords John Krebs discusses the trends and their implications for global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recorded on 01/25/2017.

In the last decade, the scientific foundations of a number of traditional forensic methods have come under increasing criticism by the scientific community, leading to their discontinuation or reduced effectiveness in criminal prosecutions. These challenges raise questions about the admissibility of certain type of evidence in current cases and the validity of previous convictions. We will discuss the basis of these issues and describe some of the work ongoing at LLNL to try and address some of them. In particular we will describe an entirely new science-based approach to human identification.

Why just read about ancient Rome when you can walk the cobbled streets as if you were really there? That's the promise of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality in today's classrooms. While the idea of strapping on goggles to virtually visit the Colosseum or go inside a molecule sounds like the stuff of science fiction, the technology to do just that is becoming more popular and available every day. Yes, there are plenty of obstacles from cost to teacher training but using virtual reality as an educational tool offers considerable benefits. Not only can it boost visual and technology literacy, but it also improves students' attention and engagement. Learn how this technology has the possibility to transform K-12 education from educators and engineers gathered by UC San Diego. Recorded on 09/13/2017.

Our neurons talk to each other but the language they use can change depending on what is happening in the environment around them. If the brain can adapt to our world in this way, what are the bigger implications? Nick Spitzer, Division of Biological Sciences, UC San Diego, explains neurotransmitter switching and how that process impacts our physical abilities, disease processes, and more. 

We are now at a point in the United States in which, in a range of areas, evidence-based policy making no longer enjoys the degree of even rhetorical support that it once did. Dale Jamieson, Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at NYU, reviews the history that led to the Paris Agreement and explores the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures of the evidence-based approach to ask how we might make progress on climate change in the years ahead. Recorded on 05/24/2017.

It's not often that the California State Treasurer makes national news, but that's exactly what happened when John Chiang suspended ties with Wells Fargo last year over the bank's creation of some two million fraudulent accounts. With its $75 billion portfolio, Chiang describes how California sets the example for holding partners to high ethical standards and for public investing in policies that lead to better lives for its residents, reductions in income inequality, and effective responses to climate change. Chiang is the 2017 speaker for Michael Nacht Distinguished Lecture in Politics and Public Policy presented by the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Forum at UC Berkeley. Recorded on 09/18/2017.