Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show

Send us Fan MailProfessor Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University. He joined Harvard University in 1993 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astronomy, where he was tenured three years later. Prof. Dr. Loeb received his PhD in plasma physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24, led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative / "Star Wars" program, and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Prof. Dr. Loeb has written 8 books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, and about 800 papers on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the Universe. Prof. Dr. Loeb had been the longest serving Chair of Harvard's Department of Astronomy, Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative, and Director of the Institute for Theory and Computation within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Prof. Dr. Loeb serves as Chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies and is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. Prof. Dr. Loeb is a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology at the White House and a member of the Advisory Board for "Einstein: Visualize the Impossible" of the Hebrew University. Prof. Dr. Loeb also chairs the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative and serves as the Science Theory Director for all Initiatives of the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. In 2012, TIME magazine selected Prof. Dr. Loeb as one of the 25 most influential people in space and in 2020 he was selected among the 14 most inspiring Israelis of the last decade. Support the show

Send us Fan MailMs. Stephanie Stuckey is an American businesswoman, environmental lawyer, former 14-year member of the Georgia House of Representatives, former Director of Sustainability and Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Atlanta, and the current CEO of the Stuckey's Corporation (https://stuckeys.com/​), a roadside convenience store chain found on highways throughout the United States, concentrated in the Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest, although operations have existed as far east as Connecticut, and as far west as Oregon. Ms. Stuckey received both her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Georgia. A cum laude graduate from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1992, she served as a public defender and then went into private practice before being elected to the Georgia General Assembly in 1999. Ms. Stuckey served as a State Representative from the Decatur area for 14 years, during which time she was a member of the Judiciary and Natural Resources Committees. She then went on to serve as Executive Director of GreenLaw, an Atlanta-based public interest law firm dedicated to giving Georgia’s environment its day in court. In May 2015, she was appointed by Mayor Kasim Reed to be Director of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta. In November 2016, Ms. Stuckey was named the Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Atlanta. She has also served as director of sustainability services for the Southface Institute, an Atlanta-based environmental nonprofit. In late 2019, Ms. Stuckey became the third-generation CEO of Stuckey's Corporation, where she has been focusing on store and brand growth, promoting the health benefits of pecans, and supporting the importance of the "great American road trip” in our society. Stuckey's Baseball Hat Giveaway for Progress, Potential, and Possibilities audience!: https://mailchi.mp/stuckeys/i0hbf6khq2​ Stuckey's Social Links: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StuckeysCorp...​ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/3013...​ Instagram: @Stuckeys_Pecans Twitter: @Stuckeys_Pecans Pinterest: pinterest.com/stuckeys_pecans YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoQX4fpXgq3IbFxEkTLnttw%E2%80%8BSupport the show

Send us Fan MailAs we approach the end of 2020, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), we have had approximately 1,806,590 new cases of cancer diagnosed in the United States, with 606,520 deaths. Cancer continues to be the leading causes of death worldwide. In 2018, there were 18.1 million new cases and 9.5 million cancer-related deaths worldwide. By 2040, the number of new cancer cases per year is expected to rise to 29.5 million and the number of cancer-related deaths to 16.4 million. Dr. Azra Raza, MD, is the Chan Soon-Shiong Professor of Medicine, in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology / Oncology, and Director of the Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) Center, at the Columbia University Medical Center. Previously, Dr. Raza was the Chief of Hematology-Oncology and the Gladys Smith Martin Professor of Oncology at the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Raza is an international authority on pre-leukemia / MDS, and acute leukemia, and is both a physician and scientist who divides her time equally between caring for patients and supervising a state-of-the-art basic research lab which is well-funded by multiple large grants. Dr. Raza started collecting blood and marrow samples on her patients in 1984 and now her Tissue Bank, the largest and oldest in the country with over 60,000 samples, is considered a unique national treasure. Dr. Raza has published her original clinical and basic research comprising over 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts in high profile journals like Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Cell, Molecular Cell, Cancer Research, Blood, Leukemia. She has published over 1,000 abstracts, dozens of book chapters and edited a book devoted to MDS, entitled "Myelodysplastic Syndromes & Secondary Acute Myelogenous Leukemia: Directions for the New Millennium". Dr. Raza is the recipient of numerous awards including The Hope Award in Cancer Research 2012 (shared with the Nobel Laureate Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn). She was named as one of the 100 Women Who Matter by Newsweek Pakistan. Dr. Raza is a member of the Founder Group designing Breakthrough Developments in Science and Technology with President Bill Clinton, and was involved with Vice President Joe Biden to discuss the Cancer Moonshot initiative. Dr. Raza is the author of the recently published book "The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last". In addition to her scientific accomplishments, Dr. Raza is a dedicated reader of Urdu literature, and co-authored a book on the poems of the 19th century Indian poet Ghalib, entitled "Ghalib: Epistemologies of Elegance". Support the show

Send us Fan MailAs we sit here in 2020, in the middle of a major viral pandemic, we can’t forget the fact that a century after the first antibiotics were created, drug resistant bacterial infections have become a major threat around the globe, exactly at the same time that the antibiotic pipelines of pharma companies have either dried up, or they have gotten out of the business. In the U.S. alone, Centers For Disease Control (CDC) estimates that antibiotic resistance causes more than 2 million infections, several million hospital stay days, and over 35,000 deaths per year. Worldwide, such infections cause 750,000 deaths every year. And a recent United Nations (UN) report concluded that by 2050, "super bugs" could kill 10 million people globally every year, if no action is taken to combat the problem. A solution to this emerging threat lies in the area of bacteriophage therapy (or "phage" for short), which is a type of virus that infects, replicates within, and are very good at killing bacteria. Interestingly, phages have been used for over 90 years as an alternative to antibiotics in the former Soviet Union and Central Europe as well as in France. They are seen as a possible therapy against multi-drug-resistant strains of many bacteria and have been shown to interfere not just with bacteria life cycles, but also with biofilm production and quorum sensing involved bacterial colonization processes. Dr. Robert Schooley, MD, is a Professor of Medicine, in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, at UC San Diego, the Co-Director of their Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH), as well as Interim Faculty Director, Global Education and Senior Director, International Initiatives. Dr. Schooley is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and infectious disease fellowships at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in 1981 and shifted his research focus from herpes group viruses as recognition of the AIDS epidemic developed. Dr. Schooley was then recruited to the University of Colorado in 1990 as Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases where he developed an integrated HIV program clinical care and research program. He was elected Chair of the NIH’s AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) in 1995 and led that group until 2002 during which time the ACTG performed many of the seminal studies that defined modern anti-retroviral chemotherapy. Dr. Schooley led the ACTG in its expansion from a domestic US research operation into one with a global reach with research units in Africa, India, Thailand, Haiti and Latin America. In 2005, he joined the faculty at the University of California San Diego where he served as Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases until 2017. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Infectious Diseases. His research interests are in the diagnosis, pathogenesis and therapy of viral infections and in global health. Support the show

Send us Fan MailRyland Engelhart, is Executive Director & Co-Founder of Kiss The Ground (https://kisstheground.com/​), a non-profit organization dedicated to planetary regeneration, and is the producer of Kiss The Ground, the Movie, recently released on Netflix. Mr. Engelhart has spent the last 15 years as an entrepreneur working in hospitality and building a family business of organic, plant-based restaurants called Cafe Gratitude and Gracias Madre, located in Southern California. He is also a co-creator of the award-winning, documentary film, “May I Be Frank” on the transformational aspects of a vegan lifestyle. Mr. Engelhardt is a public speaker and community organizer and works to inspire more love & gratitude in his organizational culture and culture at large. He speaks on the topics of sacred commerce, gratitude, love as an inside job, 10 tools for building community, and planetary regeneration, and is the host of Kiss the Ground's "We Can Do This Podcast". Mr. Engelhardt is also a husband and father and lives on a 17-acre regenerative farm in Fillmore, CA where he learns to practice what he preaches.Support the show

Send us Fan MailBrett Vaughan is the U.S. Navy Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer and AI Portfolio Manager at the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Mr. Vaughan has 30 years of Defense Intelligence and Technology expertise with strengths in military support, strategic communications, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), Naval Intelligence and Navy R&D. He spent two decades in various roles at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), an additional 10 years in intelligence roles in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and was recently appointed to his current role in 2019. Mr. Vaughan has Master's Degrees in Environmental Science from Johns Hopkins University, and in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College, as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Geography and Cartography, from University of Mary Washington. The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan, foster, and encourage scientific research to maintain future naval power and preserve national security. The Office of Naval Research carries out its mission through funding and collaboration with universities, other government laboratories, nonprofit and for-profit organizations, and also oversees the Naval Research Laboratory, the corporate research laboratory for the Navy and Marine Corps, which conducts a broad program of scientific research, technology and advanced development, and has a prestigious history, including the development of the first U.S. radar system, synthetic lubricants, and surveillance satellites. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail A "food desert" is an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food, and the designation considers both the type and quality of food available, as well as the accessibility of the food through the size and proximity of the food stores. In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that 23.5 million people in the U.S. lived in food deserts, meaning that they live more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas. Food deserts tend to be inhabited by lower-income residents with reduced mobility, making them a less attractive market for large supermarket chains and available foods are often of the highly processed type, high in sugars and fats, which are known contributors to the proliferation of obesity and other chronic diseases. It’s estimated that the contribution of food deserts to healthcare costs in the U.S. is over $70 billion annually. Top Box Foods is a non-profit, community-based, social business, with an innovative model of getting healthy and affordable grocery boxes to food-insecure neighborhoods, creating year round access to fresh fruits, vegetables, and proteins, in communities in Chicago, and Lake County, IL, as well as in New Orleans, LA. Mr. Christopher Kennedy, along with his wife Sheila Kennedy, is a co-founder of Top Box Foods. In addition to Top Box Foods, Mr. Kennedy is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises, Inc., treasurer of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, serves on the public boards of Interface, Inc., and Knoll Inc., and is a trustee for the Marine Biological Laboratory at University of Chicago. Mr. Kennedy earned his BA from Boston College and his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, where he serves on their Global Advisory Board. Mr. Kennedy has also served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for the University of Illinois, and president of Merchandise Mart Properties, a commercial property management firm based in Chicago. Mr. Kennedy is one of the children of Ethel Kennedy and the late U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Nicole Prause, PhD is an American neuroscientist researching human sexual behavior, addiction, and the physiology of sexual response. She is also the founder of Liberos LLC, an independent research institute and biotechnology company. Dr. Prause obtained her doctorate in 2007 at Indiana University Bloomington, with joint supervision by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, with her areas of concentration being neuroscience and statistics. Her clinical internship, in neuro-psychological assessment and behavioral medicine, was with the VA Boston Healthcare System's Psychology Internship Training Program. Her research fellowship was in couples' treatment of alcoholism was at Harvard University. Dr. Prause became a tenure track faculty member at Idaho State University at the age of 29. After three years there, she accepted a position as a Research Scientist at the Mind Research Network, a neuro-imaging facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2012, Dr. Prause was elected a full member of the International Academy of Sex Research and accepted a position as a Research Scientist on faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles in the David Geffen School of Medicine. While there, she was promoted to Associate Research Scientist in 2014. Dr. Prause founded Liberos LLC in 2015 and she continues to practice as licensed psychologist in California. Support the show

Send us Fan Mail When one mentions the topic of “head transplantation” (or a related topic – the “brain transplant”), for most people, it remains a topic purely in the context and sphere of science fiction. Yet most people are unaware of the following history: In 1908, Nobel Prize winner Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon who had developed surgical methods to connect blood vessels in the context of organ transplantation, collaborated with the American Charles Claude Guthrie perform the first head grafts between dogs. In 1954, Vladimir Demikhov, a Soviet surgeon who conducted important work to improve coronary bypass surgery, performed experiments in which he grafted a dog's head and upper body, onto another dog; the effort was focused on how to provide blood supply to the donor head and upper body. In 1965 American neurosurgeon Robert J. White did a series of experiments in which he attempted to graft the vascular system of isolated dog brains onto existing dogs monitoring brain activity with EEG and also monitored metabolism, and showed that he could maintain high levels of brain activity and metabolism by avoiding any break in the blood supply. In 1970 he did four experiments in which he cut the head off of a monkey and connected the blood vessels of another monkey head to it. From 1970-1994, Paul A. Pietsch was a Professor in the School of Optometry and an Adjunct Professor of Anatomy at Indiana University, and conducted and published on a long series of "brain shuffling" / transplantation experiments in regenerative organisms between salamanders and frogs. Related "brain switching" experiments have routinely taken place in the world of embryology to this current day, between species such as chickens and ducks, and quails and finches. Dr. Ren Xiaoping, is an orthopedic surgeon from China, and is most well known for being part of the team that achieved the first hand transplant in China. Dr. Ren attended the Harbin Medical University in Harbin, China, and received his M.D. in 1984. From 1996 to 2000, he continued his education, performing research relating to anatomy and hand surgery. During this period, specifically on January 25, 1999, the first hand transplant was performed on Matthew Scott, and Ren was an influential figure in this achievement. He is currently a partner with Italian neurosurgeon Dr. Sergio Canavero in a project (HEAVEN - Head Anastomosis Venture) to plan and attempt the first human head transplant, known as a Cephalosomatic Anastomosis, an operation that has never been done before. Support the show

Send us Fan MailDr. Graham Ryan, is the Director at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO), in Montserrat, WI. Dr. Ryan has 17 years’ experience in volcanology and geothermal geophysics, using his skills to better understand the nature and behavior of magmatic systems and fluid flow through geothermal systems. His current interests include ground deformation associated with the volcanic systems of the Eastern Caribbean and the use of joint interpretation and inversion to determine the architecture of geothermal and magmatic systems in the region. With a masters in Physics at The University of Manchester and a PhD in volcanology at Lancaster University (during which he performed controlled explosions in the laboratory to simulate repetitive volcanic explosions and magma flow in volcanic conduits), he has published over 20 articles and book chapters in peer-reviewed international publications. In addition to his work at Montserrat Volcano Observatory Dr. Ryan also spent six years at the University of Auckland in New Zealand studying fluid flow pathways in geothermal systems, particularly with an eye to targeting geothermal wells for energy production. Whilst based in New Zealand he worked on systems in several countries including Montserrat, New Zealand, Rwanda, Chile and the USA, developing novel methodologies for modelling subsurface geothermal systems using joint interpretation of data sets. Dr. Ryan also developed expertise in electromagnetic induction, particularly the magnetotelluric technique, a useful technique for imaging systems deep within the Earth’s crust. He also taught short courses in both general geothermal technology and magnetotellurics. Support the show