DJs and Presenters
Meet the hosts of Big Picture Science
Molly Bentley, Executive Producer and Co-Host
Molly is the co-host and executive producer of Big Picture Science. She oversees the
production of the program, including devising the show’s themes, booking guests,
conducting interviews, editing, and coordinating the final audio product.
She has worked in public radio for 20 years, half of that as a science journalist BBC
Science Radio, including World Service, Radio 4 and Science/Nature Online. She has
also written for New Scientist. For ten years, she taught a course on writing for radio and
producing podcasts at the University of California, Santa Cruz Science Writing Program.
She has been an invited participant to a number of workshops about helping scientists
communicate more effectively with science journalists, including: the Aldo Leopold
Leadership Program, Switzer Environmental Fellowship workshop, and the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography Science Communication Workshop, sponsored by the
Metcalf Institute and funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
She has attended two of M.I.T.’s Knight Science Journalism workshops. Her radio career
began when she wandered into Wisconsin Public Radio one day and landed a job
answering the phones for the early-morning call-in show, then graduated on to assistant
producer of the national radio magazine, To the Best of Our Knowledge.
Seth Shostak
Seth is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute. For years, he used radio telescopes around
the world to study galaxies, and has degrees in physics in astronomy from Princeton and Caltech.
He is currently working with the radio and optical SETI teams at the Institute as part of their
continuing effort to find signals that would betray the presence of intelligence on distant worlds.
In addition to this research, Seth is keen on outreach activities: He greatly enjoys interesting the
public – and especially young people – in science in general, and astrobiology in particular. He’s
co-authored the most popular college textbook on astrobiology, and has written three trade books
on SETI. In addition, he’s published more than 500 popular articles on science, and is a frequent
contributor to the NBC News/Mach web site. He also pens a monthly column in Shutterbug
Magazine.
Seth gives approximately 60 talks annually, and is the host of the SETI Institute’s weekly science
radio show, “Big Picture Science” This show is podcast, but also carried by more than 100 NPR
stations nationwide. Podcast downloads have doubled in the past year, and are now more than a
quarter million each month.
Seth appears on approximately three radio or TV shows weekly. He’s been interviewed on Larry
King Live, The Colbert Report, Star Talk, Hardball, CNN News, and many Discovery Channel,
National Geographic and Learning Channel programs.
He is a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and
the SETI Institute. He has won the Klumpke-Roberts Award for the popularization of
astronomy, and the Carl Sagan Prize for science popularization.
MATT KAPLAN OF PLANETARY RADIO
Planetary Radio is a weekly radio show devoted to space exploration and astronomy, hosted and produced by Mat Kaplan and The Planetary Society. The show's programming consists mostly of interviews and telephone-based conversations with scientists, engineers, project managers, artists, writers, astronauts and many other professionals who can provide some insight or perspective into the current state of space exploration.