Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature
    Unavailable
    Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature
    Unavailable
    Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature
    Ebook419 pages6 hours

    Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature

    By Ira Flatow

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Veteran NPR® science correspondent and award-winning radio and TV journalist Ira Flatow's enthusiasm for all things science has made him a beloved on-air journalist. For more than thirty-five years, Flatow has interviewed the top scientists and researchers on many NPR and PBS programs, including his popular Science Friday® spot on Talk of the Nation. In Present at the Future, he shares the groundbreaking revelations from those conversations, including the latest on nanotechnology, space travel, global warming, alternative energies, stem cell research, and using the universe as a super–super computer. Flatow also further explores his favorite topic of the science of everyday life with explanations on why the shower curtain sticks to you, the real story of why airplanes fly, and much more.

    From dark matter and the human consciousness to the surprising number of scientists who believe in a Creator, Present at the Future reveals the mysteries of science, nature, and technology that shape our lives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061750137
    Unavailable
    Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature
    Author

    Ira Flatow

    Ira Flatow is the host and executive producer of Talk of the Nation: Science Friday®. He is the author of Rainbows, Curve Balls, and They All Laughed. He lives in Connecticut.

    Read more from Ira Flatow

    Related to Present at the Future

    Related ebooks

    Science & Mathematics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Spirit Of The Inquisition Lives In Science

      Jun 20, 2019

      I’ve been talking to Jerome Cardano for years now. What’s more, he talks back to me—in a voice that often drips with gentle mockery. He clearly thinks my sanity is as precarious as his always was. Jerome was Europe’s pre-eminent inventor, physician,

      10 min read

    • Article

      The End Of Life On Earth?

      Jan 23, 2018

      The End Of Life On Earth?
      11 min read

    • Article

      Feedback

      Sep 14, 2023

      reply@sciencefocus.com BBC Science Focus, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST @sciencefocus www.facebook.com/sciencefocus @bbcsciencefocus I was very pleased to read William Rawlings letter regarding climate change (Summer, p11). He is 14 and I am 75, but

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Nov 3, 2022

      When I read David Hambling’s article ‘Listening to the voice within’ [FT423:16], I became conscious that my ‘inner voice’ was reading the piece aloud in my mind. Obviously I’ve had this realisation before; I decided to ask my wife if she also had an

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Making of Genius

      Nov 27, 2017

      The Making of Genius
      9 min read

    • Article

      Kim Stanley Robinson Holds Out Hope

      Oct 7, 2020

      There’s something about stories. We cherish them. Teach them. Pass them down to the next generation. Stories create a sacred space that humans have always respected. And science fiction takes us one step further. It gives us the space to imagine what

      8 min read

    • Article

      Five Veteran Scientists Tell Us What Most Surprised Them: Fifty years ago, who knew we’d learn to clone genes and find water on Mars?

      Sep 24, 2015

      Turn back the clock to 1965. Science appeared to be marching forward at an unrelenting pace. Biochemists had cracked the genetic code (how DNA translates into proteins), inspiring Life magazine to envision “superbabies with improved minds and bodies.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Call Of The UFO

      Mar 21, 2024

      Many years ago when I was running the investigations department at BUFORA – the largest UFO group in the UK – I was presented with a new challenge – UFO Call. This was a telephone ‘hotline’ for UFO reports, and it started exactly 35 years ago as I am

      4 min read

    • Article

      The First Gentleman Of BUFORA

      Jun 16, 2022

      Sadly, this month’s column must report the death of a friend, Norman Oliver, who inspired my early days in British ufology. Norman died at the age of 95 just hours after the 57th anniversary of a case with which he became forever associated – the Sco

      4 min read

    • Article

      Thomas Kuhn Threw an Ashtray at Me

      Aug 23, 2018

      Errol Morris feels that Thomas Kuhn saved him from a career he was not suited for—by having him thrown out of Princeton. In 1972, Kuhn was a professor of philosophy and the history of science at Princeton, and author of The Structure of Scientific Re

      11 min read

    • Article

      Robin Ince Is On The Road

      Oct 23, 2023

      With age, and a small amount of prescription medicine, I have become better at talking to friendly people on public transport. As the train departs from Birmingham New Street, I have appeared friendly enough for the stranger next to me to start a con

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Admiral of the String Theory Wars: After a decade, Peter Woit still thinks string theory is a gory mess.

      May 7, 2015

      Watching Peter Woit lecture on quantum mechanics to a class at Columbia University—speaking softly, tapping out equations on a blackboard—it’s hard to imagine why a Harvard physicist once publicly compared him to a terrorist and called for his death.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Do You Know These Scientific Pioneers?

      Nov 25, 2020

      It’s easy to name science and math geniuses. I can just flip open my old book from the 1960s, which lists “100 Great Scientists”; it contains all the names you’d find on most popular lists of scientific geniuses: Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Gauss, Boh

      5 min read

    • Article

      Chris Hadfield I REMEMBER…

      Sep 19, 2023

      Chris Hadfield I REMEMBER…
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Global Warning

      Mar 1, 2023

      A Global Warning
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Rebel Issue

      Apr 8, 2024

      Greetings, Nautilus readers, and welcome to The Rebel Issue. Starting today through the end of April we’re going to bring you stories that revolve around the meaning of rebel. In our own happy rebellion against the conventions of science writing, we’

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 28, 2021

      As an alumnus of Christ Church Oxford, I was heartened by Jonathan Aitken’s exposé of goings on at our common alma mater. Amusing though he made it sound, we should take serious account of what he describes. He probably understates the likely effect

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Charmed Life of Frank Wilczek

      Mar 17, 2021

      Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek’s new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality, is both a way of thinking about the abundance that characterizes our exterior and interior worlds, and a kind of alternative to traditional religion, a way of being “born aga

      13 min read

    • Article

      Cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton: ‘Our Universe Is One Tiny Grain Of Dust In A Beautiful Cosmos’

      Aug 27, 2022

      Laura Mersini-Houghton was born in Albania and grew up under a totalitarian communist regime which, until its collapse in 1991, cut the country off from the rest of the world. Influenced by her father, Nexhat Mersini, a mathematician, she developed a

      5 min read

    • Article

      It’s Personal: Five Scientists on the Heroes Who Changed Their Lives: Meet the inspiring people—none named Einstein—who helped these scientists find their calling.

      Dec 1, 2016

      The Man Who Loved PhysicsBy Alan Lightman Several years ago, I attended a Buddhist retreat in which I was introduced to the idea of the “retinue,” a constellation of influential and supportive people whom one imagines in an enveloping cloud as one me

      20 min read

    • Article

      Splicing the Mainbrace, Part Two

      Dec 1, 2022

      “You can’t tell the people,” UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously said about UFOs to researcher Georgina Bruni. But you cannot avoid people becoming aware something has happened when events are as visible as those of the summer of 1952. Start

      4 min read

    • Article

      What Impossible Meant to Feynman

      Jan 31, 2019

      Impossible! The word resonated throughout the large lecture hall. I had just finished describing a revolutionary concept for a new type of matter that my graduate student, Dov Levine, and I had invented. The Caltech lecture room was packed with scien

      9 min read

    • Article

      What Impossible Meant to Richard Feynman

      Nov 24, 2021

      Impossible! The word resonated throughout the large lecture hall. I had just finished describing a revolutionary concept for a new type of matter that my graduate student, Dov Levine, and I had invented. The Caltech lecture room was packed with scien

      9 min read

    Reviews for Present at the Future

    3/5

    1 rating1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      You know Ira Flatow as host of Science Friday on NPR. I don't often get to listen "live" because the broadcasts occur while I am (supposed to be) working, but I subscribe to the podcasts and catch up on them later from an RSS feed. "Present at the Future" is a collection of essays inspired by conversations with recent guests on the show, and it is written from the point of view that Ira (I call him Ira because I met him once and am therefore entitled) brings to his program - that of an interested and well-read layman. The topics in the book are all over the map - nanotechnology to wind power, and cognitive science to why an airplane flies (not the Bernoulli explanation). The book is as eclectic as the radio show. You will surely find something of interest in it, and it would be appropriate to recommend to students.

      2 people found this helpful