For the past several months I’ve been working on a television show for The Weather Channel. Hacking the Planet is the brainchild of my friend John Rennie, former editor in chief of Scientific American, and it features me and Cara Santa Maria, senior science correspondent for The Huffington Post. As host, John flies around the globe, talking [...]

Jill, a 60-year-old woman in Milwaukee, has overcome extreme poverty. So, now that she has enough money to put food in the fridge, she fills it. She also fills her freezer, her cupboard and every other corner of her home. “I use duct tape to close the freezer door sometimes when I’ve got too many [...]

For years manufacturers have tantalized consumers with the promise of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) televisions capable of delivering more brilliant colors (including deeper blacks), and greater levels of contrast and brightness than any other television screen—all with rapid video response rate. OLEDs are already in regular use to provide crystal-clear screens for smart phones, car [...]

The television show “Revolution” is getting ready to start, with its plot based on the failure of the electrical grid. That’s nothing new, though — the most recent Batman movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” and Spiderman movie, “The Amazing Spiderman,” came out this summer, each with significant events or  themes involving infrastructure systems. Half of the [...]

As a little girl, some of my fondest memories were watching science and nature shows on American public television with my family: NOVA, National Geographic, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. I recall as a preteen being transfixed as I watched an episode of NOVA that demonstrated a magnified [...]

Paris is often called the city of love and lights. And if you love science, Pariscience: The International Science Film Festival could really have you loving Paris even more! Since 2005, The Association Science and Television (AST) has organized the International Science Film Festival, PARISCIENCE, every year in October. It hosts 8,500 viewers for an [...]

Two decades ago, a team of researchers led by psychologist John Gottman set out to determine one thing: Why do couples get divorced? Gottman decided to answer this question by trying something very simple: Recording married couples talking for 15 minutes about a recent conflict that they were having in their relationship, and then carefully [...]

What responsibilities do filmmakers have in terms of scientific accuracy? Usually, I argue that filmmakers are storytellers first, and while scientific accuracy (or plausibility) can often support a narrative, the first responsibility of the filmmaker is to weave a captivating tale. But what happens when the film (or TV series) in question is overtly scientific [...]

Last week saw the third-to-last episode of Fox’s sci-fi family drama Fringe. Despite the somewhat wonky fifth season, for me Fringe has represented the best sci-fi offering on network television since Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse was cancelled. For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of background (lots more here) required for today’s pedantic adventure. Warning if you [...]

Television has a bad side. According to a report from the University of Michigan, the average American child has seen sixteen thousand murders on TV by age 18. Indeed, programs explicitly designed for kids often contain more violence than adult programming, and that violence is often paired with humor. Every single animated feature film produced [...]