Podcasts by Miles To Go

Black Box Episode 3: Inside the Cockpit of JAL 123, The Worst Single Aircraft Accident in History - Part 3 from 2022-04-19T09:00:38

In this three part miniseries, Miles O'Brien and Lars Perkins - along with several special guests - investigate the bizarre circumstances that led to one of the most fatal plane crashes of all t...

Black Box Episode 2: Inside the Cockpit of JAL 123, The Worst Single Aircraft Accident in History - Part 2 from 2022-04-11T09:00:28

In this three part miniseries, Miles O'Brien and Lars Perkins - along with several special guests - investigate the bizarre circumstances that led to one of the most fatal plane crashes of all t...

Black Box Episode 1: Inside the Cockpit of JAL 123, The Worst Single Aircraft Accident in History - Part 1 from 2022-04-04T09:00:45

In this three part miniseries, Miles O'Brien and Lars Perkins - along with several special guests - investigate the bizarre circumstances that led to one of the most fatal plane crashes of all time...

Episode 32: What Happened to China Eastern Flight MU5735 from 2022-03-24T18:17:23

Miles to Go returns after a long hiatus. In this “black box” special, Miles O’Brien talks with two pilots to try and understand why the 737 plummeted to the ground so suddenly and precipitously. Wa...

Episode 31: The Challenge of Robots and Artificial Intelligence, a Retrospective – with AI Pioneer Marvin Minsky from 2018-12-17T12:00

Marvin Minsky is often regarded as the father of modern AI, but when Miles visited him in 2010, Minsky wasn’t a proud father. In fact, Minsky was disappointed wit...

Episode 30: How and Why We’re Sampling Asteroid Bennu – with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Team from 2018-12-05T21:11:35

How did our early solar system form? What are the origins of life? How likely are we to get hit by a dangerous asteroid? A daring NASA mission called Listen

Episode 29: Why Europa is the Most Likely Spot We’ll Find Aliens – with NASA’s Kevin Peter Hand from 2018-11-26T18:29:45

Jupiter has many moons, but none are quite like Europa: it has a thick crust of ice and a huge amount of liquid saltwater underneath its surface. In fact, many be...

Episode 28: How Average Americans are Fighting Climate Change – with Clean Air Carolina’s June Blotnick from 2018-10-29T18:05:45

Hurricane Florence was a perfect example of how climate change supercharges extreme weather events. But climate change also affects us in other more subtle, inter...

Episode 27: Steve Squyres – On Exploring Mars, and Other Celestial Objects from 2018-10-23T11:00

Steve Squyres is the principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Program, which gave us the plucky and productive rovers Spirit and Opportunity. With the latter on life support and the...

Episode 25: Snorkeling with Some Wild Dolphin Friends – or Another Day in the Office for Denise Herzing from 2018-07-16T11:00

For more than three decades, behavioral biologist Denise Herzing has tracked and observed a pod of wild spotted dolphins that live in the warm clear waters of the...

Episode 24: The Blessing and Curse of Methane – Hash it Out from 2018-07-11T19:02:25

Methane is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of gas: on one hand, it is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. On the other, if it leaks, methane itself is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon ...

Episode 23: Inside the Legal Battle to Ban a Deadly Neurotoxin - with Neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky from 2018-07-02T17:20:10

For several years, environmental advocacy groups have been fighting to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos from agricultural use. A turnover in leadership at the EPA h...

Episode 22: The Chemical Ban That Got a Reprieve from Trump’s EPA – with Miriam Rotkin-Ellman of the Natural Resources Defense Council from 2018-06-25T16:19:33

After years of exhaustive research linking the pesticide chlorpyrifos to a host of developmental and cognitive deficiencies in children, the EPA was poised to ban the chemical in November 2016. ...

Episode 21: The Promise and Peril of AI – Hash it Out with Tech Entrepreneur Lars Perkins from 2018-06-19T11:00

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not off in the distant future... in some ways it is already here. How is AI already changing our lives? Does it work independently of us or does it also have our ...

Episode 20: Welcome to the Madhouse – with Michael Mann and Tom Toles from 2018-06-11T11:00

Communicating the science of climate change, with its overwhelming expert consensus, seems like it should be easy. However, a science-averse media and strong fossil fuel lobby make it exceedingl...

Episode 19: What is Machine Learning and How is it Used? – Hash it Out with Cameron Hickey from 2018-06-07T11:00

What is machine learning? How does it work? What are these artificially intelligent algorithms useful for? Considering they are used by Amazon, Google, Netflix, Facebook and many other companies...

Episode 18: Searching for Methane, the Other Greenhouse Gas - with Robert Green of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 2018-06-04T11:00

Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide. It is more short-lived than CO2 (about a decade as opposed a century), but it is 85 times more effective at warming. Robert Gree...

Episode 17: The Software We Wrote to Understand Junk News - with Producer Cameron Hickey from 2018-05-28T11:00

In the final episode in our series on Junk News, some wisdom from one of the leading experts in the murky world of online misinformation. He also happens to be the producer of the series that we...

Episode 16: Inside Facebook - with Tessa Lyons, Head of News Feed Integrity from 2018-05-21T11:00

Facebook was created for people to share family photos and memories. But as ads entered the mix, the platform was refined to hold our attention for as long as possible. Quality was not a conside...

Episode 15: Inside the Filter Bubble - with Eli Pariser, the man who coined the phrase from 2018-05-15T11:00

The Internet was supposed to provide a utopian virtual world where all of us could come together in peace, love and harmony to better understand each other and our differing viewpoints…

B...

Episode 14: Understanding the Eruption at Kilauea – with Geologist Mike Garcia from 2018-05-08T14:43:46

As Hawaii trembles with earthquakes and the Kilauea volcano continues to spew forth lava and gas, residents and the wider world watch and wonder: how long will th...

Episode 13: A Junk News Pioneer - with Cyrus Massoumi, Part 2 from 2018-05-03T19:48:04

Russian actors may have run an online disinformation campaign during the 2016 US presidential elections, but they likely learned their tactics from Americans. As part of our investigation, PBS N...

Episode 12: A Junk News Pioneer - with Cyrus Massoumi, Part 1 from 2018-05-02T20:24:55

Russian actors may have run an online disinformation campaign during the 2016 US presidential elections, but they likely learned their tactics from Americans. As part of our investigation, PBS N...

Episode 11: Mapping Misinformation and Russian Influence Online – with Data Journalist Jonathan Albright from 2018-04-25T19:06:35

Top US intelligence agencies agree that Russia meddled in the 2016 US Presidential election using an organized campaign of online trolling and misinformation. The details of exactly how are hard...

Episode 9: Aviation and the “Tombstone Mentality” - How Southwest 1380 Could Have Been Avoided from 2018-04-19T15:40:47

The uncontained engine failure of Southwest flight 1380 reminds us once again that commercial aviation is a business that does not always put safety first - and regulators seem reluctant to chan...

Episode 8: Just the Facts - with Brooke Binkowski of Snopes.com from 2018-04-16T20:50:34

Long before Facebook, Twitter or even Google existed, the fact checking website Snopes.com was running down the half-truths, misinformation and outright lies that ricochet across the Internet. T...

Episode 7: Misinformation on the Internet - Untangling the Web from 2018-04-10T20:31:38

How did the internet become a tangled web of misinformation? Miles speaks to danah boyd, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of Data & Society, and Visiting Professor at New York...

Episode 6: How Your Facebook Newsfeed Works from 2018-03-30T16:15:56

Who or what determines what's in your Facebook Newsfeed? It's a complex algorithm that aims to put what interests you most at the top of the queue. Increasingly, Facebook is focused on trying to...

Episode 5: Astronaut Scott Kelly's Guide To The Universe from 2018-03-14T17:42:07

Miles catches up with Astronaut Scott Kelly and learns about what it’s like to spend a year in space. Kelly talks about the physical and emotional toll of his historic mission, the challenges of...

Episode 4: Entering A New Dimension In 3D Printing from 2018-03-05T21:46:01

When you think of 3D printing, you may envision useless trinkets, a cheesy iPhone cover, or extruded cheese doodles. But that would be so 2014 of you!

In this episode of Miles To Go, Mile...

Episode 3: Inside North Korea's Nuclear Complex from 2018-02-13T03:09:22

Siegfried Hecker is a Metallurgist and Nuclear Scientist. He served as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997 and is a professor at The Center For International Cooper...

Episode 2: Talking Trash from 2017-12-07T04:16:19

Eugene Tseng describes himself as the most “overeducated garbage man” in the world. An environmental engineer and lawyer who teaches at UCLA and Cal State Northridge, he has spent decades unders...

Pilot Episode: The Worst Airline Accident That Nearly Happened from 2017-11-07T23:03:43

In July of 2017, an Air Canada passenger jet loaded with 135 passengers and 5 crewmembers nearly landed on a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport, where four jets were waiting to take ...

Pilot Episode: The Worst Airline Accident That Nearly Happened from 2017-11-07T23:03:43

In July of 2017, an Air Canada passenger jet loaded with 135 passengers and 5 crewmembers nearly landed on a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport, where four jets were waiting to take ...

Pilot Episode: The Worst Airline Accident That Nearly Happened from 2017-11-07T23:03:43

In July of 2017, an Air Canada passenger jet loaded with 135 passengers and 5 crewmembers nearly landed on a taxiway at San Francisco International Airport, where four jets were waiting to take ...