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Videos

  • The Importance of Feedback

    Due to a freak spinal infection, Ian Waterman lost all proprioception, his body’s sense of position in space, as well as all feeling. In order to do the everyday things we take...

  • Ian Waterman’s Missing Body

    Ian Waterman woke up one morning and realized that his body was gone. In reality, it was still there, but Ian had lost all proprioception—the body’s awareness of positioning in...

  • Do You Want to Live Forever?

    What happens to life if you remove death? How do our decisions change when the “long term” becomes “indefinite”? These are the sort of things that one asks themselves when...

  • Longevity: Differences in Emphasis

    When you work in a highly experimental field, you’re bound to disagree with your colleagues now and then. Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey and evolutionary biologist...

  • Using the Tools at Our Disposal

    Leonard Guarente, a molecular biologist, has a slightly different approach to the science of aging. He sees mechanisms for longevity all around him in sea anemones that don’t age...

  • A Bona Fide New You

    Will the future of age reversal lie in our ability to revitalize—or even replace—our ailing parts? Making an analogy to those who fix up classic cars, Aubrey de Grey and...

  • The Promise of Regenerative Medicine

    Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey has famously predicted that the first person to live to a thousand has already been born. He explains that the key may be in regenerative...

  • The Flourishing Affliction of Old Age

    The relationship between cancer and aging is puzzling. It is well-understood that as we all get older, the chances of getting cancer increase. But cancer’s destructive effects...

  • Spotlight: From Math to Ants

    Strip away the trimmings of a traditional science presentation, add cocktails, and you have WSF Spotlight. As a young girl, Corina Tarnita found herself with a talent for...

  • Moth: Why I Teach

    In 1989, the use of DNA evidence in criminal cases was nearly unheard of. That year, two lawyers pressed an incredibly busy Eric Lander—a leading contributor to the Human Genome...

  • The Birds and the Bees across Species

    During his research into pleasure centers in the brain, neuroscientist Jim Pfaus noticed that the same areas of the brain activate with clitoral stimulation—regardless of...

  • The Many Faces of Human Sexuality

    When were you first aware of your sexuality? Where did the notion of a defined sexuality come from? Join us as we explore the cultural, biological, psychological, and historical...

  • Is Sexuality a Choice?

    How much is choice a factor in our sexual orientation? Can we choose our behaviors, who we are, or what we’re attracted to? Neuroscientists Paul Vasey, Jim Pfaus, and psychologist...

  • A Culture of Human Cheese

    Smell is one of those senses where context can play a huge role. A fine cheese and a dirty foot share the same molecular smells, yet one is a delicacy and other is repulsive. In...

  • How Do We Smell?

    Take a deep breath. What do you smell? At that moment, millions of molecules are rushing into your nose and caressing the nerve endings of your brain’s olfactory bulb. But how...

  • Adventures inside an Acorn

    Mark Moffett is an ecologist and photographer, but he sees his work primarily as the search for stories. There are stories to be found and adventures to be had everywhere around...

  • A Biologist’s Mother Day Song

    Singer/Songwriter Adam Cole performs live “A Biologist’s Mother Day Song,” a touching, quirky, and hilarious ode to the genetic wealth his mom has given him. Performed as part of...

  • How We Hear

    Have you ever wondered how we hear? Harvard physicist and auditory physiologist Christopher Shera explains that the inner workings of the ear. He simply explains how the bones and...

  • Cool Job: The Medical Ecologist

    Cool Jobs: Meet the people with the coolest jobs in the world. Medical ecologist Dickson Despommier describes the Vertical Farm Project, a movement to promote urban renewal while...

  • Cool Job: The Amphibian Biologist

    Cool Jobs: Meet the people with the coolest jobs in the world. Amphibian biologist Tyrone Hayes describes the development of frogs from eggs into tadpoles into fully grown adults,...

  • Cool Job: The Cave Microbiologist

    Cool Jobs: Meet the people with the coolest jobs in the world. Microbiologist Hazel Barton goes spelunking in sticky mud, camping underground, and rope climbing in a atrium—all...

  • Cool Job: The Aquatic Biologist

    Cool Jobs: Meet the people with the coolest jobs in the world. Pamela Schaller, the head aquatic biologist for African penguins at the Steinhart Aquarium, racks up a colorful...

  • !@#$% Traffic: From Insects to Interstates

    Can marching ants, schooling fish, and herding wildebeests teach us something about the morning commute? Robert Krulwich guides this unique melding of mathematics, physics, and...

Blog Posts

  • A New Cure for the Aging Brain?

    During the 2011 Festival's Longevity program, molecular biologist Leonard Guarente stressed the the need to address the afflictions of the aging brain. In particular, he singled out Alzheimer's disease as a key obstacle in the road to healthy longevity. Now, an already...

  • The New Science of Aging

    Recently, we have been unveiling new clips from the 2011 Festival's Longevity program, where the top researchers in the burgeoning field of gerontology have been tackling humanity's most exasperating problem: Mortality.

  • Diary of an Adventurer

    Today on WSFtv, we are featuring clips of legendary adventurer Mark Moffett. An ecologist and photographer by trade, and once called “the Indiana Jones of Entomology,” Moffett's work has graced the pages of countless books and publications including National Geographic and...

  • Of Math and Ants

    As a young girl, Corina Tarnita always had talent for mathematics, something she had thought was the norm. As she grew up, however, she quickly realized the difficulties of being a woman in a male-dominiated field.

  • Sexual Orientation in 2011

    What is sexual orientation? What criteria can you use to define it? Is it behavior? Is it psychology? How have these notions changed over time?

  • Full Program: Scents and Sensibiities

    What does fear smell like? Love? Can we use scent to control behavior? Do humans really sense pheromones? What if you could diagnose diseases just by smelling them? And exactly how does our brain convert floating organic molecules into chemical signals that our brain processes...

  • Love Is in the Air

    Hormonal changes in the body can often give off scent cues, whether we’re aware of them or not.

  • Are Flowers Smelling You Back?

    Animals utilize their sense of smell to explore their surroundings. But what about plants? When you smell a flower, is it smelling you back? Is it trying to figure out if your nose would make a good pollinator? Chemical ecologist Consuelo De Moraes shows us a parasitic vine that...

  • Instant Reaction: Cool Jobs

    What happens when you take a comic-book inspired climbing device, prehistoric mammoth remains, a wisecracking robot, and a six pound frog—then wrap them in a beatboxed, lyrical package? You get some really cool jobs.

  • The Great Escape: Science’s Oldest Dream

    When you hang around with great biologists, you hear conversations that change your sense of what it means to be alive. In the 1990s I happened to be present at a lab in California when a legendary molecular biologist began musing about a new interest: the possibility of a cure...

  • What if Science Were Like Sports?

    Christina Agapakis joins us from the ever-inspired Oscillator, her synthetic biology blog at ScienceBlogs. When she’s not reshuffling DNA sequences in her lab at Harvard, she’s usually there making Lady Gaga video spoofs, or something obvious like that. I'm almost embarrassed...

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