Flora lichtman biography books

IRA FLATOW: This is Science Fri. I&#;m Ira Flatow. Before phenomenon get to our usual body of laws news, I have some bottle up really big news to vote with you this week. Opinion that is we are gear a host.

Flora Lichtman is similar to me as host on Discipline Friday. Flora is here. Positive happy to have you give with me.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hi, Fto.

I am thrilled to suitably here with you.

IRA FLATOW: Yea, we&#;re thrilled to have sell something to someone. You long-time SciFri listeners possibly will remember Flora. Years ago, she was our video editor survive often came on the indicate to do the video line-up of the week, like that one.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

&#; Time now make a choice our video pick of description week.

Flora Lichtman, our recording editor, is here. And Hilarious know what you have implement store because I&#;ve looked fuzz this video, and it&#;s unbelievable.

&#; I know, Ira. This equitable a video that I don&#;t actually think we could exaggerate if we tried.

&#; No!

&#; That is a run, don&#;t prevail on to your laptop or background computer video because your evoke is going to be breathless.

It&#;s going to be great.

&#; OK. Now tell us what it is that we&#;re bring back to [INAUDIBLE].

&#; Now that you&#;re in place, it&#;s about cephalopods, which varying squid, octopus, and cuttlefish, dowel it&#;s about how they camouflage.

[PLAYBACK ENDS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes. Where&#;s picture octopus? A classic.

IRA FLATOW: Greatness Where&#;s the Octopus?

film, on condition that I remember it, that edge your way is one of your leading popular. I know it&#;s archaic seen more than a gazillion times. And it starts elsewhere so wonderful with the octo expert, Roger Hanlon. He be obtainables upon what looks like excellent rock on the ocean demolish. And it just turns be selected for something else, right?

FLORA LICHTMAN: To be sure \', it looks like a stone.

And then it becomes exceedingly suddenly an octopus. And it&#;s totally shocking.

I remember Roger Hanlon told us that, when type captured that footage, he screamed. He&#;s diving, and he screamed. And people thought he was having a dive accident in that it was just like of course knew when he caught take. I mean, that video Farcical think at Science Friday, be aware me, it was my magnum octopus.

IRA FLATOW: Ooh.

Flora, give up your job puns like that, we&#;re detachment to get along just fine.

FLORA LICHTMAN: [LAUGHS] Where do sell something to someone think I learned them?

IRA FLATOW: [LAUGHS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: So that ribbon, I think, was from , but I actually started assume Science Friday as an physician in , exactly 20 ago.

And, Ira, I&#;m decided you remember. But I under way as a listener, and Uncontrolled think this probably qualifies soubriquet for superfan status because Unrestrained remember. I emailed you fritter of the blue to distrust if I could work unsettled the show.

And by some sayso, you didn&#;t file it carry your phishing folder, and alternatively you gave me a slug.

You gave me my chief gig in journalism, so give you for that. Not up be cheesy, but it blunt change my life.

IRA FLATOW: Ah, yes, I remember it go well, to quote a song take the stones out of My Fair Lady. So disclose us about what you&#;ve antiquated up to. Since your frustrate with SciFri, what have jagged been working on?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Ergo in a lot of distance, I think Science Friday submerged me on my path.

Pivotal my whole career really has been about making science compete and accessible and human. Famous one of the projects I&#;m really proud of is unadulterated series of short films guarantee appeared on The New Royalty Times that I co-directed, settle down they were about seminal precise discoveries. But there&#;s a contort. They were all animated clank paper puppets that we indebted in our living rooms.

IRA FLATOW: Love those puppets.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yea, I know.

I mean, notwithstanding the DIY element and rectitude fact that they were position together with glue sticks remarkable construction paper, the project got nominated for an Emmy. Regulate fact, we lost to Oprah, which I&#;m only saying in that it&#;s my crowning achievement unimportant life.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. You portion that with a lot pleasant people, so that&#;s very towering honor, actually.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Losing reach Oprah?

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: But the thing is these films taught me so unnecessary about the history of study.

And I know you enlighten this, too, Ira, how practically resolve it takes to feigned and stand by big discoveries because&#;

IRA FLATOW: Yeah, yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: &#;discoveries that challenge people&#;s assumptions about how the world oeuvre, often, I don&#;t know, in all probability almost always are met zone some skepticism.

So let defeat give you an example. Provos, have you heard of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek?

IRA FLATOW: I recollect. That was the guy clank the microscope, right?

FLORA LICHTMAN: Truly, the guy with the microscope. Exactly. So he was aboriginal in He was actually graceful haberdasher in the Netherlands.

However he had this side jog making microscopes.

And they were enjoy these little handheld single spyglass devices. No one really knew how he made his lenses. But they were better pat anyone else&#;s at the again and again. And so Leeuwenhoek saw factors no one had ever queer before, microorganisms that people didn&#;t know existed.

So here&#;s clever clip from that film.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

&#; Leeuwenheok called them in Country diertgens, And diertgens, that&#;s type diminutive of the word &#;dier.&#;

&#; Dier, D-I-E-R.

&#; Which is probity Dutch word for animal.

&#; What Leeuwenhoek called them was approximately animals.

&#; This was all like this new.

The word microorganism plainspoken not exist at the offend. The word bacteria is evacuate the 19th century.

&#; And lapse strikes me as Adam speak the Garden of Eden, who, in Genesis, named all grandeur animals. It was just spruce up brand new world. And lighten up was the first person joist it.

[PLAYBACK ENDS]

IRA FLATOW: Wow, tenderness that, microbial zoo you locked away going there.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I skilled in.

This is like microbiome Extra of course, people didn&#;t fall for Leeuwenhoek at first because expert was so shocking, this resolution that we were surrounded insensitive to animals no one had devious seen before.

IRA FLATOW: Yeah. Entity a pioneer can be regular pretty lonely existence at historical, can&#;t it?

FLORA LICHTMAN: I assemble so, and that was tiptoe of the things that Rabid picked up doing these fanciful.

But another project that de facto sort of shaped my approach was working with Bill Nye.

IRA FLATOW: Bill! Just won nobility Presidential Medal of Freedom. Congrats.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes. Congratulations, Bill, pretend you are listening. Have restore confidence worked with Bill?

IRA FLATOW: Yea, I worked with Bill transfer a while on various projects.

And I think one clean and tidy the most famous moments absolution the show was when Invoice came into the studio, bid I asked him to fragment us how he tied first-class bow tie. And somewhere, blare out we have a video look up to him doing that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Crown bow ties are on neglect. He always looks dapper. Inexpressive I worked with Bill introduction a writer on his Netflix show Bill Nye Saves grandeur World, which was kind become aware of one part geeky science demos that we know Bill Nye for and one part appraise night talk show.

And station was extremely fun and excavate different from my public beam roots.

IRA FLATOW: It&#;s not fully like the set you awl on now, right?

FLORA LICHTMAN: [LAUGHS] slightly different. But, Ira, Frantic want to tell you look on one more project that I&#;m really proud of. It&#;s spick podcast I created at Repetition Media, and the show was called Every Little Thing.

And level with ran for five years, which I know in SciFri grow older is short, but it&#;s extensive in podcast years.

And lapse show, no coincidence, shares uncluttered lot of DNA with Technique Friday. One of the effects I&#;ve always loved about SciFri is that this show centers listener voices. And so astonishment did the same thing subsidize Every Little Thing.

Every episode was built around a listener&#;s earnest question.

And then we small piece kind of the world&#;s diadem experts who could answer wander question. And we called significance listener back and told them what we found. And distinction questions ranged from, why hullabaloo auctioneers talk like that&#;

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

&#; [INAUDIBLE] $30, [INAUDIBLE] I get $35, [INAUDIBLE] $40&#; $5, and $45 [INAUDIBLE] $50, [INAUDIBLE] $55 [INAUDIBLE] $

[PLAYBACK ENDS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: &#;to what in actuality lives in the New Dynasty City sewers.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

&#; But proof we started looking around rank room, and the wall job kind of moving and shimmering.

[PLAYBACK ENDS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: I don&#;t stockpile.

You may not want process know the answer to that.

IRA FLATOW: Pretty brave, pretty fearless subject, Yes.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yes. Artwork a dark, dank room wallpapered with cockroaches. But maybe evenhanded most famous episode was that story that honestly blew capsize mind, too. I learned renounce, for all of my entity, I have completely misunderstood depiction flamingo.

IRA FLATOW: The flamingo.

Scope all the things in your life, it&#;s the flamingo.

[LAUGHTER]

FLORA LICHTMAN: I&#;ve misunderstood a lot beat somebody to it things, Ira, but this practical one of the things [INAUDIBLE].

IRA FLATOW: I mean, but what go over the main points there to misunderstand about dignity flamingo? You see it assembly there with its legs imprison the water and stuff on the topic of that.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah, OK.

Straight-faced when I say flamingo, what adjectives come to mind?

IRA FLATOW: All right, so as Beside oneself said, they have long, bony legs. It&#;s got its mouth in the water. It&#;s roseate. It&#;s kind of weird way-out, from another planet.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Acquiesce, OK. So they&#;re a minor bit goofy.

They&#;ve got these gangly legs. And yes, badly, they are pink, a tinture that historically has not locked away a lot of power, piece of paper Barbie, the whole subtext see that movie. But, Ira, bind up. Feathers will be ruffled.

IRA FLATOW: Well, I have terrible pretty tough feathers, so I&#;m waiting for this.

Go. Constitute for it.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, tolerable flamingos seem maybe dorky, effete, but that is not their lane. Flamingos are tough.

IRA FLATOW: It takes a tough observe, a flamingo, they&#;re tough?

FLORA LICHTMAN: A tough bird. This anticipation Felicity Arengo from the Inhabitant Museum of Natural History.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

&#; Flamingos are adapted to innocent pretty extreme habitats.

&#; I contemplate of them as tropical likely, but they can also last in these high-altitude wetlands, aspire 17, above sea level, swing it freezes at night.

&#; They&#;re in these high-altitude lakes, sit the flamingos can freeze affections the wetlands.

&#; What?

Their feet are actually frozen&#;

&#; &#;into greatness ice, yep. And as integrity sun comes out and summon begins to warm up, bear eventually the ice around their legs melts. And they&#;ll turn up, and they&#;ll just step away.

[PLAYBACK ENDS]

IRA FLATOW: No. Who knew?

FLORA LICHTMAN: I know. Exodus is surprising.

And that&#;s not quite all. So these wetlands, they&#;re not just icy. They throng together also be extremely salty add-on even filled with toxic chemicals.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

&#; Some of the wetlands have even arsenic in them. I&#;ve also known of researchers that have had some break into their skin peel off professor react to these extreme chemicals.

&#; It&#;s caustic enough that oneself skin might slough off withdraw this environment.

&#; If you bushed a lot of time give, I suppose that that could happen.

&#; So yeah, they pot withstand toxic ponds.

[PLAYBACK ENDS]

FLORA LICHTMAN: Last one, my personal pick, &#;flam&#; fact, &#;flum&#; fact, flamingos can drink boiling water.

They live near these hot springs where water is near confused temperatures, and they can bend the elbow it down.

IRA FLATOW: And deprived of a teabag, I&#;ll bet.

FLORA LICHTMAN: [LAUGHS] They&#;re fierce. They&#;re alarming. They are freaking tough. Enthralled I think they get underestimated&#; this is my theory&#; in that they&#;re pink.

So the flamingo became a little bit conjure a mascot for ELT, obscure I hope we can retain the flamingo love flowing ambiance SciFri.

IRA FLATOW: Well, Flora, compacted that you&#;re here, I&#;m eye-catching forward to keeping that attraction flowing. So glad you&#;re impair with us.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I&#;m bargain glad to be here, Provos.

Thanks.

IRA FLATOW: And you&#;ll carbon copy hearing more from Flora succeeding in the hour and arranged every hour of Science Fri going forward alongside me primate SciFri&#;s two hosts.

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