science – Page 17

Uvula Audio: Divers Down! Adventure Under Hawaiian Seas by Hal Gordon

SFFaudio Online Audio

James J. Campanella, podcaster, audiobook narrator, science popularizer and lecturer writes in to say:

Uvula Audio is starting a new bookcast this week. It is a science fiction book only in the sense that it has science in it and it is a fictional story, but it is an excellent young adult novel from 1971 which is now rare and long out of print. Starting tomorrow, we will be presenting Divers Down! Adventure Under Hawaiian Seas by Hal Gordon.

This was one of my favorite books in my youth and one of the books that pushed me in the direction of science as a career.

Divers Down! Adventure Under Hawaiian Seas
By Hal Gordon; Read by James J. Campanella
Podcast – [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Uvula Audio Bookcast
Podcast: May 2009 –
The story concerns Kip Morgan, a student from Connecticut with an interest in undersea engineering. He comes to Hawaii to take part in the Makapuu Oceanic Center’s summer program. There he meets a number of other young scientists, including several from Hawaii, and gets involved in raising the “Ilikai,” a large canoe that sank in the 1860s while carrying a huge stone idol, a representation of the Hawaiian god Kane. Along the way, Kip’s friendship with archaeologist Julie turns romantic, he develops a rivalry with another summer student, and he has adventures under the beautiful Pacific.The story is also an excellent introduction to scuba diving and the Hawaiian language.

Here’s the first file |MP3|. Look for more in the feed soon!

Podcast feed:

http://www.uvulaaudio.com/kids/Kids.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Dan Ariely on ABC:RN’s All In The Mind – That’s the Irrational MIND

SFFaudio Online Audio

Science Fiction is great but my iPod is mostly tuned to Science Fact. I only have 4gb and real estate is slim. Jesse’s chuckles have turned to belly laughs when he “catches” me in the act of listening to “MY” podcasts. “Put it on your BLOG” has been his standard retort when I comment enthusiastically about whatever has caught my fancy. He changed his tune recently and now it’s “POST IT ON SFFAUDIO” so beware… here they come.

My favorite weekly PODCAST is ABC Radio National‘s All In The Mind with host Natasha Mitchell. Natasha is brilliant. She came to journalism by default… with a first class honours degree in engineering and midway to completion of a PhD in materials engineering. She has been the producer of All In The Mind since 2002, and all shows are available on the ABC website for download.

Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University as well as the head of eRationality research group at MIT. He has conducted research into the human decision making processes. In this podcast Dan describes experiments which include masturbation, freebies, expectations, placebos and price.

My favorite of Natasha’s comments for this interview was when Dan described some of his experiments, Natasha expressed her amazement at how he managed to get these approved by ethics committees. He responds: “You know I have a lot of experience with them and slowly they trust me more and more. I think that’s one of the benefits.” (Are the ethics committees irrational?)

There is no doubt, after listening to Dan Ariely, that humans are irrational. Can one become more rational when one is aware of one’s irrationality?

Have a listen |MP3|.

Posted by Elaine Willis

ABC RN’s Philosopher’s Zone on Frankenstein

SFFaudio Online Audio

ABC Radio National has some of the best podcast radio shows. It rivals the Canadian Podcasting Corporation’s own terrific podcasts in many respects. One show I get to talk about here every once in a while is The Philosopher’s Zone. The latest show to makes me say: “Hey, check it out.” is…

|MP3| It’s alive! Frankenstein, science and philosophy in the Romantic period

The show talks about a new collection of essays about Mary Shelly’s novel and the science of her era.

I took a Women’s Studies course that talked a lot about the feminist interpretations of the novel. The arguments made, made a lot of sense, and still do. But, this show delivers other arguments.

Subscribe to the podcast feed:

http://abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/pze.xml

Posted by Jesse Willis

Five Free Favourites #8

SFFaudio Online Audio

I’m Scott Danielson, and I’m currently not under investigation for a single impropriety. I’m one of the original members of the team here, and am the Reviews Editor. I love a great novel read by a great narrator – can’t get enough – and I also love great audio drama. Most of my listening time is spent with commercial audiobooks, and below are some of my favourites amongst the high-quality stuff I’ve found on the web for free.

Five Free Favourites

1.
Krulwich on Science (NPR)
In a highly entertaining and wonderfully sounding manner, Robert Krulwich covers the world of science at the rate of one story per month. As a sample, I picked a story called “Lucy’s Laugh Enlivens the Solar System”, which is about what really happens to the radio noise we humans pump out into space. Find it here and enjoy!

2.
The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate by Ted Chaing (StarShipSofa)
Jesse picked this one in his first Five Free Favourites, but I simply can’t help picking it again. Ted Chiang is easily my favorite active short fiction writer. Highest on my audio wishlist is a well-narrated version of Stories of Your Life and Others. This story is well-narrated, with James Campanella performing. Go get it here.

3.
The 43 Antarean Dynasties by Mike Resnick (Escape Pod Episode 101)
I haven’t subscribed to Escape Pod for a while, because I simply don’t have the time to keep up with all the audio fiction being published nowadays, but I always keep my eye on them and grab stories that interest me. “The 43 Antarean Dynasties” by Mike Resnick is an absolute gem about some self-centered humans taking a tour of an alien site. Steven Burley and Gregg Taylor of the Decoder Ring Theatre turn in a fine narration. Find this one here.

4.
A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman (Audible.com)
Neil Gaiman is an example of an author who does an excellent job reading his own material. This story won a Hugo Award and is available at no cost through Audible. Sherlock Holmes, Cthulhu, Neil Gaiman… what are you waiting for? Find it here.

5.
Earshot! by Audiofile Magazine (podcast)
Earshot is a great way to keep up with what’s hot in the audiobook world as a whole (not just science fiction and fantasy). The daily short excerpts, provided by Audiofile Magazine help me discover new narrators and new audiobooks. Find the podcast here.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Torchwood: Lost Souls

SFFaudio Online Audio

BBC Radio 4 Torchwood: Lost Souls
Time: Wednesday 10th September, 2:15PM
Writer: Joseph Lidster
Producer/Director: Kate McAll

As part of BBC 4’s Big Bang Day, celebrating the activation of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Lost Souls, a specially-commisioned audio drama spin-off from the Torchwood television series, is being presented on September 10 at 2:15PM GMT.

Here’s the skinny from the Lost Souls webpage:

The Torchwood Institute was founded by Queen Victoria in 1879 to protect the British Empire against the threat of alien invasion. By 2008, all that remains of the organisation is a small team based in Cardiff. And now, following the tragic deaths of two of their colleagues, the remaining three – Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones – have to protect the human race against another unknown force from the darkness.

Martha Jones, ex-time traveller and now working as a doctor for a UN task force, has been called to CERN – the world’s largest particle physics laboratory in Geneva – where they’re about to activate the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC is a particle accelerator, which has been built deep underground in a 27 km tunnel under Switzerland and France. Once activated the Collider will fire beams of protons together recreating conditions a billionth of a second after the Big Bang – and potentially allowing the human race a greater insight into what the Universe is made of. But so much could go wrong – it could open a gateway to a parallel dimension, or create a black hole – and now voices from the past are calling out to people and scientists have started to disappear…

Where have the missing scientists gone? What is the secret of the glowing man? What is lurking in the underground tunnel? And do the dead ever really stay dead?

Intriguing, and since I worry about most of these questions myself every day, I’ll be tuning in. All I wonder is, should we celebrate turning on the LHC? You saw the movie The Mist, right? Yikes!

Posted by RC of RTSF

The science behind Singularity and the Tunguska Event

SFFaudio Online Audio

Today is the 100th anniversary of The Tunguska Event, a huge and mysterious explosion in Siberia. To mark the occasion, Podiobooks.com is releasing Doctor Jack’s Soapbox Seminars, a series of lectures designed to explain and discuss the event. This is a work inspired in part by Bill DeSmedt’s SFFaudio Essential Singularity. Check out the promo |MP3| and subscribe on Podiobooks.com!

Posted by Jesse Willis