Molly Bentley
Executive Producer and Co-Host, Big Picture Science
510-644-2669
bigpicturescience@seti.org
Molly oversees the production of Big Picture Science. She has worked as a science journalist for the BBC, including World Service, Radio 4 and Science/Nature Online. She has also written for New Scientist. She teaches a course on radio writing and podcast production at the University of California, Santa Cruz Science Writing Program.
She’s been an invited participant to a number of workshops about helping scientists communicate more effectively with reporters, 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 attended M.I.T.’s Knight Science Journalism workshops in 2007 and 2010. Her radio career began when she wandered into Wisconsin Public Radio and landed a job answering the phones for the early-morning call-in show, then graduated on to less insane hours as assistant producer of the national radio magazine, To the Best of Our Knowledge.
Seth Shostak
Host and Producer, Big Picture Science
Senior Astronomer, SETI Institute
650-961-6633
bigpicturescience@seti.org
Seth is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately fifty papers in professional journals. He also founded and ran a company producing computer animation for TV.
Seth has written several hundred popular magazine and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film and television. He has edited and contributed to a half dozen books. His first popular tome, “Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life” appeared in 1998. He has also authored “Life in the Universe” (2006, 2nd edition, textbook, with Jeff Bennett) and “Cosmic Company” (2003, with Alex Barnett). His most recent book is “Confessions of an Alien Hunter” (2009).
Gary Niederhoff
Producer, Big Picture Science
650-960-4596
bigpicturescience@seti.org
Gary Niederhoff is a member of a group of visitors from Vega who are tired of being referred to as “vegans” (the preferred term is “Vegamatic”).
Gary joined the staff of Big Picture Science in order to learn more about both the human understanding of science and the basics of pun construction. Seth and Molly have learned that he will also edit audio, write blog posts, and book guests in exchange for coffee and M&M’s. His voice is frequently heard on the show, sometimes depicting historical figures such as Galileo, Einstein, and Archimedes, and other times portraying such lovable characters as ‘spacey lawyer’, ‘Dan the computer’, and ‘egg’.
Gary has worked in community radio in the bay area for nearly 20 years, producing on-air programs as well as administering fund raising activities and station events. He spends his spare time communicating telepathically with his cats, from which he’s learned that birds are very interesting and that tuna is delicious.
Shannon Rose Geary
Assistant Producer, Big Picture Science
bigpicturescience@seti.org
Shannon is a science journalist who focuses on healthcare, the environment, and LGBTQ issues. She graduated from Tufts University in 2019 with a degree in Biochemistry and spent two years working a hodge-podge of jobs, including being a barista and a civic scientist. She is committed to making the wild and wonderful world of science more accessible for and accountable to the wider public.
In 2022, Shannon journeyed to NYC to get a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and to see if bagels really were better in New York (they are). In her free time, Shannon loves reading comic books, painting fresh flowers, and scouting the internet for up and coming queer artists she can write about.
Brian Edwards
Assistant Producer, Big Picture Science
bigpicturescience@seti.org
Brian is an investigative reporter who has covered issues like technology, climate change, labor, criminal justice and all levels of the government, from local to federal. He believes journalism should hold the powerful to account and seeks out stories that provide a glimpse into our society’s mechanisms of influence.
He got his bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Minnesota before moving to Montgomery, Alabama for two years to be a city and county politics reporter. The lack of four distinct seasons disturbed him, so he moved to New York City and got his master’s degree in investigative journalism at Columbia University. Despite the zigzag across the country, his heart (and hockey stick) remains in his home state of Minnesota.
Nsikan Akpan
Contributor, Big Picture Science
bigpicturescience@seti.org
Nsikan Akpan is the managing editor for Think Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He previously worked for New York Public Radio as the health and science editor for the WNYC/Gothamist newsroom, where his team won a 2022 New York Press Club Award for an investigative series into how the NYC school system invested in ventilation to combat COVID-19.
Before NYPR, he worked at National Geographic as a science editor overseeing its COVID-19 coverage, and as a science producer for PBS NewsHour, where he co-created an award-winning video series named ScienceScope. He shared a 2020 Emmy for the PBS NewsHour series “Stopping a Killer Pandemic” and in 2019 received a George Foster Peabody Award for the PBS NewsHour series “The Plastic Problem.”
Nsikan has also worked for NPR, Science News Magazine, Science Magazine, KUSP Central Coast Public Radio, the Santa Cruz Sentinel and as a writer at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University.
He holds a doctorate in pathobiology from Columbia University and is an alum of the science communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
