It was a radical idea a century ago, when Einstein said space and time can be bent, and gravity was really geometry. We hear how his theories inspire young minds even today.

At small scales, different rules apply: quantum mechanics and the Standard Model for particles. New experiments suggest that muons – cousins of the electron – may be telling us that the Standard Model is wrong. Also, where the physics of both the large and small apply, and why black holes have no hair.

Guests:

Hakeem Oluseyi – Astrophysicist, affiliated professor at George Mason University, and author of “A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars”

Janna Levin – Professor of physics and astronomy, Barnard College at Columbia University

Mark Lancaster – Professor of particle physics, University of Manchester

Originally aired August 16, 2021

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Extremophiles Go to The End of the Earth—and Thrive There

In this episode, we talk avian flu, the importance of not sitting, strangers knowing you better than you think, and a very strange library of evocative human sounds.

In January 1995, the New York Times Magazine published a bombshell story with the headline: “THE GREAT IVY LEAGUE NUDE POSTURE PHOTO SCANDAL.” The article revealed that, from the 1940s through the 1960s, elite colleges had taken naked photos of thousands of freshmen, including future luminaries like George Bush, Bob Woodward, Meryl Streep, and Hillary Rodham. For years, the schools had teemed with anxious, tawdry rumors about both the purpose and fate of the photos. Who had them? What were they really for? And where did they end up? On this episode, we get the real story behind the photos from science historian Beth Linker, whose new book, “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America,” dives deep into the era’s widespread obsession with standing up straight, and how researchers tried to connect posture to people’s health and character. We also hear from historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela about how America came to be both more obsessed with exercise than ever — and, yet, also unhealthier. Her book is "Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession."

A decades-old lunar mystery gets an update in this week's Planetary Radio. Matt Siegler from the Planetary Science Institute shares his team's surprising findings about the granite formation that might lie beneath Compton-Belkovich, a thorium-rich hot spot on the far side of the Moon. Then Bruce Betts, chief scientist of The Planetary Society, shares What's Up in the night sky.