Today we are extremely honored to get the opportunity to discuss all things geoscience and National Defense with Dr. Stefanie Tompkins, the Director of DARPA! Dr. Tompkins is the first Presidential Appointee we have ever had on our podcast and in this interview she clearly shows why she has achieved such an incredible level of success in her career. With Dr. Tompkins we discuss the value of geoscience training, the role of research funding, and how varied geoscience careers can become. W...

A Geologist in National Defense - Dr. Stefanie Tompkins - Director of DARPA

A Geology and Earth Science Podcast. Join Chris, an award-winning geology teacher, and Jesse, a geoscience professor, in discussing the amazing features of our planet and their impact on your everyday life. No prior knowledge required. New episodes coming at you every week. Listen, subscribe, share with someone you know!

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Some Rocks You SHOULD Know - Metamorphism and Plate Tectonics

Today we really go into the weeds. Jesse and a colleague just published a paper in the journal Nature that proposes a new model for how continents became stable. Stable continents have all the granite at the surface, which contains all the heat producing elements like U and Th and K - elements that decay away. Today, we discuss that paper in detail, and along the way learn a bit about the early Earth, what we know and don't know! Here is a link to the paper, which is open access and can be do...

When Continents Became Stable

Today, Chris and Jesse get into a discussion about Earth’s oldest material.  Earth is 4.568 Billion years old.  First of all, that’s amazing the geochronologists have refined this down to 3 decimal places.  How do we know this?  The oldest grains ever found are 4.38 billion years old.  If that’s the case, then how do we know the Earth is significantly older than that?  Join us as we answer that and many other important questions about Earth’s oldest stuff.  ...

Earth's Oldest Stuff

In this episode, we tackle a listener question regarding planning a geology trip for students.  Both Chris and Jesse have quite a bit of experience in planning and executing field excursions for students.  We believe that seeing geology in the field is one of the most powerful learning opportunities for students of all levels.  In our discussion, we talk about the difficulties in convincing the higher-ups that this is actually a good idea.  We also get into some of the str...

A Geologist in National Defense - Dr. Stefanie Tompkins - Director of DARPA

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