Conversations on Science: Extracting DNA: The Power to Restore Life

Imagine a future with mammoths and sabre tooth tigers. Is it possible? Is it ethical? A National Geographic emerging explorer, MacArthur Fellow and professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, Beth Shapiro aims to better understand how populations and species change through time in response to changes in their habitat. Through her explorations of prehistoric DNA, Shapiro develops important new approaches for inferring the factors that shape the dynamics of species' populations. She is able to observe mammoths and dodos, witness the last ice age and study the eventual arrival of humans in North America. Her research with ancient DNA takes her on a journey through time that gives science and society a whole new view of our tumultuous past and a potentially life changing reality for our future.

Beth Shapiro will be in conversation with Michael Krasny who is the host of the KQED radio program Forum. He is also a professor of English at San Francisco State University and the author of Spiritual Envy: an Agnostic's Quest and Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life. His many stage interviews include Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, and Brian Greene.