To celebrate this year's World Environment Day, IFAD partnered with Italian celebrity chef, Carlo Cracco, to bring attention to the impact that climate change is having on many of the world's traditional foods.

Luke Wiseman of the Scripps Research Institute chronicles his experiences and growth as a scientist - from childhood to his present day research in finding potential treatments for diseases caused by faulty regulation of protein folding. Recorded on 10/21/2017.

In his role as a Scripps Oceanography shark research biologist, Daniel Cartamil has traveled the Pacific coast of Baja California for over a decade. He discovered a fragile paradise of remote landscapes, wildlife, and cultural treasures, on the verge of being overtaken by modern civilization. Science and art converge as we take a photographic journey through western Baja California illustrated with breathtaking photography from Cartamil's new book, "Baja's Wild Side." Recorded on 07/11/2017.

Michael Green, neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA, has been fascinated with the human brain, behavior and mental illness since his undergraduate days. In particular, his research focuses on schizophrenia, a chronic brain disorder that affects about 1 percent of the population. In this UCLA Faculty Research Lecture, he describes how his lab uses discoveries in psychology and social neuroscience about normal brain functioning to inform his schizophrenia research. And now, Green and his colleagues are moving into new territory, studying the causes of social isolation among people who do not have schizophrenia. You'll learn about the tools they use such as functional MRI, that measures and maps brain activity, and EEG, that detects electrical activity in the brain, and how they do research to answer questions about social isolation in the general public. Recorded on 11.06.2017.

The earth's climate is dynamic and complex. Large changes in climate are recorded in ice cores, ocean mud and over the last two centuries, instrumental records. However, to understand the large scale patterns in climate and their changes and drivers, climate models are not only useful, but increasingly necessary to make skillful predictions for the future. Though critically important, understanding the role of climate models is often misunderstood or distorted. Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt discusses how climate models are not only useful, but increasingly necessary. Recorded on 01/10/2018.

Cosmologist and author of "Losing the Nobel Prize" Brian Keating tells the inside story of BICEP2's mesmerizing discovery and the scientific drama that ensued in this interview with science fiction author David Brin. Keating describes a journey of revelation and discovery, bringing to life the highly competitive, take-no-prisoners, publish-or-perish world of modern science. Along the way, he provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation. In a thoughtful reappraisal of the wishes of Alfred Nobel, Keating offers practical solutions for reforming the prize, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may, finally, be able to see all the way back to the very beginning. Recorded on 04/25/2018.

Beth Shapiro, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz, explains her work on using ancient DNA to infer evolutionary history and processes. She is the MacArthur Award-winning author of "How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction," which considers the feasibility and desirability of bringing back passenger pigeons, steppe bison, mammoth and other currently extinct species. This program is presented by the Institute for Practical Ethics in the Division of Arts and Humanities at UC San Diego.

Scripps Geological Collections are an important cornerstone of Scripps Oceanography's invaluable scientific collections. Join collections manager Alex Hangsterfer and curator Richard Norris as they reveal the treasure trove of samples housed at Scripps. Hear some of the fascinating stories behind how these samples were collected and learn about the incredible variety of investigations that they enable from plate tectonics to earthquakes to archaeology. Recorded on 11/19/2018.

How it is possible for imagination to have practical social effects? The great potential size of human societies, in contrast to those of other primates, is due to a kind of shared imagination of which kinship and religion are important examples, says Maurice Bloch, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Bloch says that the shared imaginary emerges in normal life at certain moments yet is still governed by the potential of imagination. The lecture is illustrated by Bloch's experience of an isolated village in Madagascar. Recorded on 06/04/2018.

Jack Feldman, a distinguished professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, shares the series of remarkable revelations he has made about breathing and the brain. Recorded on 10/17/2018.

Across the tree of life, we can trace cancer vulnerabilities back to the origins of multicellularity. Cancer is observed in almost all multicellular phyla, including lineages leading to plants, fungi, and animals. However, species vary remarkably in their susceptibility to cancer. Amy Boddy (UCSB Integrated Anthropological Sciences Unit) discusses how this variation in cancer susceptibility is characterized by life history trade-offs, as cancer defense mechanisms are a major component of a body's maintenance. She also looks at how understanding these trade-offs in the context of evolution may help explain the variability we see in cancer susceptibility across human populations. Recorded on 07/18/2018.

Olivier George researches addiction at the Scripps Research Institute. He describes the effects of drugs on the brain, including alcohol, nicotine, cocaine and opioids; why some people, but not others, develop an addiction; and highlights new therapeutic strategies to fight addiction. Recorded on 11/17/2018.