Scientista

Idaho has sun, wind, geothermal heat, and wide open land. It also has a shrinking aquifer and data center developers who want its power and water. In this episode of the Scientista Podcast, Monica sits down with Aimée Christensen, founder of the Sun Valley Forum, to talk about the trade-offs that come with that boom. Aimée argues that communities deserve clear information and a real say before projects break ground. She also wants Idaho's water laws to reflect what each use of water is actual...

In this episode of the Scientista Podcast, Sweta and Monica sit down with Sally Fouts, who leads The Climate Pledge at Amazon. Sally started out as a journalism major, worked on the Prime Video and Amazon Studios launches, and moved over to the Pledge three days before the world shut down in March 2020. She thought she had ruined her career. Instead, she helped grow the Pledge into a coalition of more than 700 companies committed to 2040. We talk about what actually changes inside a company o...

Kate Marvel spent years studying the entire universe. Her conclusion: most of it is garbage, and Earth is the only good planet. So the astrophysicist became a climate scientist, and in this live conversation from Aspen Ideas Climate in Chicago, she explains why she makes no apologies for being an Earth supremacist. Sweta and Monica talk with Kate about her new book, Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet, named a best book of the year by Scientific American. Kate makes the ...

Forty-three percent. That's how much research funding Johns Hopkins has lost in the past year, and Dr. Amita Gupta can tell you exactly what disappears with it: HIV treatment programs, clinical trials mid-stream, 600 jobs, and decades of trust built between nations. Gupta is the Florence Sabin Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and founder of the Gupta Klinski India Institute. She joins Sweta and Monica to explain why infectious diseases know no borders, ...

What happens when a lung and critical care physician trades the exam room for the House floor? For Congresswoman Maxine Dexter of Oregon, the answer is a kind of governing most politicians never learn to do: form a hypothesis, act on the evidence, then go back and check whether it actually worked. In this episode, hosts Dr. Sweta Chakraborty and Monica Medina talk with Dexter about the throughline connecting her most urgent fights — and why she believes science is "a universal equalizer...