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Is Science Fiction Science?
Science Fiction enables scientific creativity to break free, unrestricted by the laws of nature as we know them, and allows contemporary issues to be explored in radically different environments than the normal trappings. By definition, Science Fiction is a genre that creates alternate scenarios and then watches them play out.
Participants
 | | Michael Crichton
Author, Producer, Director |
| | David Brin, Ph.D.
Author, Physicist |
| | Octavia E. Butler
Author, MacArthur Fellow |
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Can We Believe in Both Science and Religion?
Science and Religion have long been considered adversaries on the battlefield of grand worldviews because at the most fundamental level they both claim to do much the same thing: provide deep insight into the nature of the world around us and give a profound sense of our place or purpose in the universe. Science is founded on empiricism and analysis; religion on revelation and faith -- and some say they exist in such different spheres that they neither contradict nor interact.
Participants
| | Muzaffar Iqbal Ph.D.
President/Founder: Center for Islam & Science |
| | Nancey Murphy Ph.D., Th.D.
Professor, Fuller Theological Seminary |
| | Michael Shermer Ph.D.
President, The Skeptics Society, Author, Publisher |
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How Does the Autistic Brain Work?
Crammed into our craniums, the three-pound human brain may be the most complex matter in the universe. And scientists are learning more about how it works by investigating how it doesn't work. A 13 year-old young man named Tito Mukhopadhyay may be the Rosetta stone for autism, revealing what it feels like to be autistic.
Participants
| | Eric Courchesne, Ph.D.
Prof. Neuroscience, UC San Diego |
| | Portia Iversen
Cure Autism Now Foundation |
| | Tito Mukhopadhyay
Autistic Youth, Author, Poet |
| | Soma Mukhopadhyay
Teacher, Mother |
| | Erin Schuman, Ph.D.
Assoc. Prof. Biology, Caltech |
| | Terrence Sejnowski, Ph.D.
Dir., Computational Biology lab, Salk Institute |
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How Weird is the Cosmos?
The Cosmos is weirder that we think. It's so weird that four experts can only sit around and laugh as they outdo each other in trading stories about amazing findings and discoveries.
Participants
| | Roger Blandford Ph.D.
Theoretical Astrophysics, Caltech |
| | David Goodstein Ph.D.
Vice Provost, Caltech, Prof. of Physics & Applied Physics |
| | Alan Guth Ph.D.
Physics, MIT |
| | Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ph.D.
Astrophysicist, Director, Hayden Planetarium |
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Microbes -- Friend or Foe?
Bacteria become resistant to our antibiotics. Viruses evolve with blinding speed. Prions may lurk in our meat. Anthrax is put into our mail. Stranger yet, could microbes be causing other illnesses, like cancers and heart attacks?
Participants
| | Agnes Day, Ph.D.
Assoc. Prof. Howard University |
| | Paul Ewald , Ph.D.
Prof. Biology, U. Kentucky |
| | Alice S. Huang, Ph.D.
Microbiologist, Sr. Councilor, External Relations, Caltech |
| | Lucy Shapiro, Ph.D.
Cell biologist, Dir. Beckman Ctr. for Molecular & Genetic Med., Stanford |
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