Interviews
drorzel | May 19, 2011In keeping with this week's unofficial theme of wibbling about academia, there's an article at The Nation about the evils of graduate school that's prompted some discussion. Sean says more or less what I would, though maybe a little more nicely than I would.
I wouldn't bother to comment further, except this spurred Sean to solicit career advice for scientists looking to leave the academic track. Which reminded me that a couple of years ago, I did a bloggy Project for Non-Academic Science (name chosen to have the same acronym as a prestigious journal, because it amused me to do so), where I…
neurophilosophy | March 9, 2011I visited Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's lab at the University of California, San Diego recently, and interviewed him and several members of his lab about their work. Rama and I talked, among other things, about the controversial broken mirror hypothesis, which he and others independently proposed in the early 1990s as an explanation for autism. I've written a short article about it for the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), and the transcript of that part of the interview is below. I also wrote an article summarizing the latest findings about the molecular genetics of autism…
neurophilosophy | December 9, 2010SUZANNE Corkin is a professor of behavioural neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who worked with the famous amnesic patient H.M. for more than 45 years. I interviewed her at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego last month, for this article I wrote for The Dana Foundation. We talked about her work with H.M., and about the project to examine his brain now that he has died, which was partly funded by Dana. The transcript of our conversation is below.
How long did you work with H.M.? Did he ever know who you were? What was he like?
I started…
laelaps | December 8, 2009Long before I signed up with ScienceBlogs.com I started blogging on the website ProgressiveU.org as part of the "Blogging For Progress" scholarship contest. I was one of the winners selected for the fall of 2006, and some of the folks at ProgressiveU recently caught up with me about what I have been up to since then. Science blogging, the public's fascination with dinosaurs, "Ida", Written in Stone, and more covered in the two-part interview, which can be viewed here and here. Enjoy!
laelaps | October 22, 2009If you have not heard enough about fossil primates in the past month already, I will be on today's edition of BBC Radio 4's "Material World" to talk about Ida and Afradapis. My interview will follow one about Ardipithecus ramidus with Tim White and Yohannes Haile-Selassie, so if you are interested in primate evolution you should definitely tune in. The program airs in the afternoon in the UK, but in case you miss it it should be available through the show's website.
laelaps | August 24, 2009
Earlier this month I shared with you a review of Stories in Stone, a new book on urban geology by David Williams. It was a very enjoyable read, but I had a few questions about it. Fortunately David was glad to answer them, and you can see my interview with him below;
[Brian Switek] What got you interested in geology in the first place, and urban geology in particular? When did the idea for Stories in Stone first strike you?
[David Williams] An intro to physics class sparked my interest in geology. After getting a 16% on a three-hour quiz, I realized I wasn't cut out for physics.…
laelaps | August 7, 2009Over at Dinosaur Tracking I have an interview with paleontologist extraordinaire David Hone. Among other things he talks about working in the field, science blogging, and why large predatory dinosaurs might have preferred tasty young herbivores at mealtime. This interview has been a long time coming, and I appreciate David's enthusiasm and patience during the process. Go check it out!
neurophilosophy | August 3, 2008Last month, I travelled to Bristol to meet 37-year-old Heather Perry, one of a very small number of people to have voluntarily undergone trepanation for non-medical reasons. As we ate a pub lunch, I asked Heather about her experience. Below is a transcript of our conversation.
M: How did you first hear about trepanation, and why did you decide to have it done?
HP: The first time I heard about trepanation was when I was a kiddie. I was really into Bob Dylan and John Lennon, and I remembered that Lennon had mentioned that he wanted it done. He had spoken to Bart Huges about it, and Bart had…
laelaps | August 2, 2008Forms Most Beautiful has an absolutely excellent interview with Kevin Zelnio. It's one of the best I've read in a long time and I urge you to check it out. Now where's my interview?
laelaps | July 27, 2008Here are a few other YouTube gems I just happened across; interviews with Stephen Jay Gould, Ernst Mayr, and E.O. Wilson conducted in the year 2000.
Stephen Jay Gould
Ernst Mayr
E.O. Wilson (part 1)
E.O. Wilson (part 2)
laelaps | June 9, 2008I'm not the only one interviewing paleontologists; David Hone has embarked on his own series, asking researchers about their thoughts on the current state of paleontology. There is more to come, but you can check out the first four installments here; 1 - 2 - 3 - 4.
laelaps | June 9, 2008
This past fall my friends Julia and Neil were kind enough to obtain a signed copy of the new book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters for me from the annual SVP meeting. Although I had not heard of the author, Dr. Donald Prothero, prior to reading the book I was certainly impressed with the wide selection of subjects he ably covered in the text. Little did I know that he is been a prolific author and researcher, some of his other recent published work being After the Dinosaurs and The Evolution of Artiodactyls. From microfossils to mammals, Prothero has studied a wide variety…
laelaps | May 27, 2008Paleo-artist Michael SkrepnickIt is difficult for me to pick up a book about dinosaurs and not find some gorgeous artwork by artist Michael Skrepnick gracing the pages, if not the cover, of the book. He has created beautiful restorations of the distant past for Nature, National Geographic, Project Exploration, and many books about prehistoric life, making him one of the most hard-working and well-known paleo-illustrators around today. (For those who have been itching to see some of his new artwork, Michael has some good news for you. His website is going to be rebuilt and stocked up with new…
laelaps | May 26, 2008Tomorrow I'll be putting up the next installment of my series of paleo interviews, this time with artist Michael Skrepnick. In the meantime, why not check out his website for a look at some of his work, which includes a restoration of the recently announced Gerobatrachus hottoni.
laelaps | May 19, 2008
Last month I posted an interview with paleontologist Bob Bakker, and while the scientific questions I asked stirred some discussion (including a response to some of the points from Jack Horner) a number of readers got hung up on the last part of the interview dealing with science & religion. Many of the comments on the original post disagreed with Bakker's criticism of Richard Dawkins, while creationists elsewhere on the web quote-mined the interview to support of their own views (see here and here, for example).
Just this past weekend Bakker sent me a reply to the comments that centered…
laelaps | May 15, 2008
As regular readers of this blog know, I have an extreme affinity for museums and always welcome the news of a long-lost specimen that was locked away in storage turning out to be something new and significant. In 2006 one such discovery occurred when Mike Taylor (seen left, holding the specimen) came across a sauropod vertebra named BMNH R2095, a fossil that would turn out to be something so entirely different that one year later it was assigned the name Xenoposeidon. Mike Taylor has done much more than bring Xenoposeidon to light, however, and I caught up with him to ask a few questions…
laelaps | April 24, 2008
In the first two installments of this series I had the chance to interview two of the most famous paleontologists in the field today, but there are many, many other skilled scientists that you may never have heard of. Dr. Jerry Harris, Director of Paleontology at Dixie State College, is an outstanding scientist (and friend) who has studied a variety of fossil vertebrates from Mesozoic bird tracks to enormous sauropods. Even though I botched some of the questions, Dr. Harris took the time to come up with some excellent responses about his work.
[Brian Switek] What fascinates you about…
laelaps | April 11, 2008
Dr. Jack Horner is one of the most recognized paleontologists working in the field today, and is presently the Ameya Preserve Curator of Paleontology and Montana State University Regents' Professor of Paleontology. He has authored numerous books, papers, and popular articles, and during his career has named the dinosaurs Maiasaura peeblesorum, Orodromeus makelai, Hypacrosaurus stebingeri, Prosaurolophus blackfeetensis, Gryposaurus latidens, and Brachylophosaurus goodwini, although he is probably most well-known for his studies of the eggs & young of Maiasaura. This week I had the chance…
laelaps | April 10, 2008This has been a big week for Laelaps. On Monday I posted an interview with Bob Bakker, and I'll close out the work week with an interview I just conducted with Jack Horner. I'll have it up early tomorrow, so be sure to check back here to see it for yourself!
laelaps | April 7, 2008
Dr. Robert Bakker is one of the most famous paleontologists working today, an iconoclastic figure who has played a leading role of rehabilitating our understanding of dinosaurs from the inception of the "Dinosaur Renaissance" through the present. He is currently the curator of paleontology for the Houston Museum of Natural Science and the Director of the Morrison Natural History Museum in Colorado, and has recently been involved in the study of the hadrosaur mummy "Leonardo." In 1986 he published the classic book The Dinosaur Heresies, fully bringing his revolutionized vision of dinosaurs to…