Point of Discovery

About Point of Discovery

Behind every scientific discovery is a scientist (or 12) and a story. “Point of Discovery” takes you on a journey beyond WHAT we know to HOW we know it. Along the way, listeners will meet the sometimes quirky, always passionate people whose curiosity unlocks hidden worlds. Music by: Podington Bear. Learn more at: http://pointofdiscovery.org DISCLAIMER Point of Discovery is part of the Texas Podcast Network, which is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Publisher

University of Texas at Austin, College of Natural Sciences, Marc Airhart

Category

science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

1 Jun 2015

Latest episode

22 May 2025

Latest episodes

1 of 62 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   22 May 2025

   Can Tiny Bubbles Help Save the Planet?

   A marine biologist and an engineer may have found one weird trick to measuring how much carbon a seagrass bed stores. A hint: it involves the sound of tiny bubbles.

2. 

   30 May 2024

   Introducing: AI for the Rest of Us

   We’re celebrating the launch of “AI for the Rest of Us”, a podcast to help get you up to speed on the essentials of artificial intelligence. Every two weeks, we’ll sit down with UT faculty experts and get them talking, in simple terms, about how AI might transform healthcare, work, the ways we learn and how we make big decisions. Co-hosts are Marc Airhart, science writer and podcaster in the College of Natural Sciences and Casey Boyle, associate professor of rhetoric and director of UT’s Digital Writing & Research Lab (http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/). Listen via Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-for-the-rest-of-us/id1749168252), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/2Z3Ut7PMH5RmRcr45wI1A7), Amazon Podcasts (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1197b991-2383-42f1-af69-e88138facaf2/ai-for-the-rest-of-us), RSS (https://feeds.simplecast.com/ak__gU6w), or anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also listen on the web at aifortherest.net (http://aifortherest.net/). About Point of Discovery Point of Discovery (http://pointofdiscovery.org/) is a production of the University of Texas at Austin's College of Natural Sciences and is a part of the Texas Podcast Network (https://www.utexas.edu/texas-podcast-network). The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts and guests, and not of The University of Texas at Austin. You can listen via Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/point-of-discovery/id1036884430), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4bWQkQ9jBV0cyKeyqeKwdA), RSS (https://feeds.simplecast.com/ehW1NEHP), Amazon Podcasts (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/042e048f-865c-496b-96a5-8990f2aece95/Point-of-Discovery), and more. Questions or comments about this episode or our series in general? Email Marc Airhart (mailto:mairhart@austin.utexas.edu).

3. 

   11 Apr 2024

   Is Cosmology in Crisis?

   Over the past year and a half, data and images from the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, have been flooding in. And floating around in that sea of data (and from other instruments over the past 20 years) are at least three big problems: There appear to be too many big, bright galaxies, too soon after the Big Bang. No one can agree on how fast the universe is (or was) expanding. And we don’t know what most of the universe is made of. The University of Texas at Austin brought together a panel of astronomy and physics faculty members to debate and discuss the meaning of these emerging problems in the data. The panelists were Kim Boddy, Mike Boylan-Kolchin, Karl Gebhardt, Can Kilic and Julian Muñoz. Have a listen and then decide: is cosmology really in crisis? For a deeper dive into some of the issues raised in this episode, head over to this recently released video from the American Museum of Natural History’s Isaac Asimov Panel Debate, titled: “JWST’s Cosmic Revolution (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK4EZiIpC14).” It features Mike Boylan-Kolchin, UT alum Neil DeGrasse Tyson and others. Research related to today’s debate: James Webb Space Telescope Images Challenge Theories of How Universe Evolved (https://cns.utexas.edu/news/research/james-webb-space-telescope-images-challenge-theories-how-universe-evolved) Cosmic Dawn: The JWST is Changing our Calculus of the Cosmos (https://www.texasscientist.cns.utexas.edu/articles/cosmic-dawn) Hobby-Eberly Telescope Reveals Galaxy Gold Mine in First Large Survey (https://cns.utexas.edu/news/research/hobby-eberly-telescope-reveals-galaxy-gold-mine-first-large-survey) Did the James Webb telescope ‘break the universe’? Maybe not (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/james-webb-hubble-universe) Episode credits Our theme music was composed by Charlie Harper (https://www.charlieharpermusic.com/) Other music for today’s show was produced by: Podington Bear (https://www.podingtonbear.com/) Cover image: JWST’s image of spiral galaxy NGC 628, which is 32 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces. The spiraling filamentary structure looks somewhat like a cross section of a nautilus shell. Read more (https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-depicts-staggering-structure-in-19-nearby-spiral-galaxies). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Janice Lee (STScI), Thomas Williams (Oxford), and the PHANGS team. About Point of Discovery Point of Discovery (http://pointofdiscovery.org/) is a production of the University of Texas at Austin's College of Natural Sciences and is a part of the Texas Podcast Network (https://www.utexas.edu/texas-podcast-network). The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts and guests, and not of The University of Texas at Austin. You can listen via Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/point-of-discovery/id1036884430), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4bWQkQ9jBV0cyKeyqeKwdA), RSS (https://feeds.simplecast.com/ehW1NEHP), Amazon Podcasts (https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/042e048f-865c-496b-96a5-8990f2aece95/Point-of-Discovery), and more. Questions or comments about this episode or our series in general? Email Marc Airhart (mailto:mairhart@austin.utexas.edu).

Inside a recent episode

Can We Build Machines that are Less Biased Than We Are?

Published 6 Sept 2018 · Transcript excerpt

[…] Scott says, you have to choose your training data carefully. Another important factor for the field of artificial intelligence is addressing who is doing the programming. Computer scientists are overwhelmingly white and male. It's one reason that a lot of the tech industry is talking about the need for greater diversity. In fact, Scott says one of the biggest open research areas in AI right now is how to make algorithms that don't just replicate our biases, but can actually give us feedback on them and help us learn to correct our biases and help us learn to build decision -making protocols that are potentially radically better than the biased riddled ones that we have right now. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

19 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 51 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

66

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

90

Contact Point of Discovery

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.