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Inquiring Minds

71 Ed Boyden - Blowing Up the Brain

Inquiring Minds

Inquiring Minds

Science, Society & Culture, Neuroscience, Female Host, Interview, Social Sciences, Critical Thinking

4.4848 Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2015

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ed Boyden is the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Synthetic Neurobiology research group and he wants blow up the brain. Sort of. He and his team have discovered a way to examine brain tissue by physically expanding it—a process that lets them look at tissue which would normally be extremely difficult to see even under a microscope. Boyden explains how it all works—and a lot more—on this week’s episode.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/inquiringminds

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's Friday, January 30th, 2015, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

0:08.1

And I'm Kishor Hari.

0:09.6

Each week, we bring you a new in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

0:15.4

We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

0:19.4

You can find us on Twitter at Inquiring

0:21.9

show, on Facebook at slash Inquiring Minds podcast, and you can subscribe to the show on iTunes

0:28.0

or any other podcasting app.

0:35.1

This episode is brought to you by PBS and the premiere of Earth A New Wild on February 4th.

0:41.3

This new five-part series takes you on a journey to explore humankind's relationship with the planet's wildest places and most fascinating species.

0:50.0

From reintroducing giant pandas to the wild to bringing technology deep into the Amazon rainforests,

0:56.4

host Dr. M. Sanjayan reveals that when humans and animals get together, wild things happen.

1:02.2

Don't miss the premiere of Earth a New Wild Wednesday, February 4th at 9.8 Central, only on PBS.

1:09.0

This episode is also sponsored by Ottawa.com, a leading provider of spoken

1:13.9

audio, information and entertainment with over 150,000 titles to choose from, and they're offering

1:19.3

Inquiring Minds listeners a free audiobook. Yep, totally free. To get it, just go to audiblepodcast.com

1:25.6

slash inquiring minds. Again, that's audiblepodcast.com slash inquiring minds.

1:31.1

This week's episode was inspired by a paper that I read in the journal Science that describes a completely new method of looking at very, very small things.

1:40.5

Now, you might remember in 2014, just last year, the Nobel Prize in chemistry

1:45.6

went to a few scientists who discovered a new way of looking at very small things. But now,

1:53.3

in this new science paper, that way seems totally outdated. So Ed Boyden, who's a professor at

2:00.0

MIT, and he's the head of the synthetic

2:03.4

neurobiology research group at the Media Lab, develops tools for looking at the brain that

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