Particles of Thought

Brent Minchew could have a plan to stop Thwaites Glacier, AKA the “Doomsday Glacier”, cold in its tracks. That’s good news because if this one glacier slips into the sea, it could flood coasts across the planet. The Caltech glaciologist covers what makes the “Doomsday Glacier” the single biggest wild card in sea level rise, the simple idea that could freeze it back to its bed, and his own improbable journey from 9/11 first responder to two of the world's top science institutions. It's a conversation about glaciers, courage, and what it takes to change the story.
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Guest Bio:
Brent Minchew is a glaciologist and geophysicist at Caltech, where he leads research on the dynamics of ice sheets and sea level rise, and Chief Scientist at Arête Glacier Initiative. A former U.S. Marine, he now co-leads efforts to test real-world interventions that could stabilize the world's most vulnerable glaciers.

Brent Minchew responded to the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. Before he was a glaciologist at Caltech, he was a marine aboard the Marine One presidential helicopter and was one of the first on sight after the deadly attack. Brent joins Hakeem to trace his unlikely path from a working-class upbringing in Texas to a career studying the world's most extreme ice sheets. And he traces how his experience in the military informs his scientific mission planning and decision making. 

Learn more about NOVA and visit our YouTube channel.
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Guest Bio:
Brent Minchew is a glaciologist and geophysicist at Caltech, where he leads research on the dynamics of ice sheets and sea -level rise, and Chief Scientist at Arête Glacier Initiative. A former U.S. Marine, he now co-leads efforts to test real-world interventions that could stabilize the world's most vulnerable glaciers.

Brent Minchew has a plan that could  stop the “Doomsday Glacier” in its tracks, and we don’t even need new technology to do it. The Caltech glaciologist returns to unveil an intervention that could save coasts around the world: refreezing Thwaites Glacier to its own bedrock using passive principles of physics. Brent walks Hakeem through the natural process that slows glaciers down, and lays out a plan to investigate if they can truly deploy it on the world's most precarious glacier.

Learn more about NOVA and visit our YouTube channel.
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Guest Bio:
Brent Minchew is a glaciologist and geophysicist at Caltech, where he leads research on the dynamics of ice sheets and sea -level rise, and Chief Scientist at Arête Glacier Initiative. A former U.S. Marine, he now co-leads efforts to test real-world interventions that could stabilize the world's most vulnerable glaciers.

Brent Minchew is an expert on the glacier that could devastate the world’s coastlines. As a glaciologist at Caltech, he's spent his career tracking Thwaites Glacier, AKA the "Doomsday Glacier." It’s roughly the size of Florida and already losing 50 billion tons of ice a year. Brent joins Hakeem to break down what scientists know – and don’t know – about the glacier that could determine our future. How certain is that “doom,” and how fast could it happen? They nerd out about what happens as glaciers slip into the sea, how satellites can measure glacier movement down to the millimeter from orbit, and how Thwaites might be the single most important glacier on the planet.

Learn more about NOVA and visit our YouTube channel.
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Guest Bio:
Brent Minchew is a glaciologist and geophysicist at Caltech, where he leads research on the dynamics of ice sheets and sea -level rise, and Chief Scientist at Arête Glacier Initiative. A former U.S. Marine, he now co-leads efforts to test real-world interventions that could stabilize the world's most vulnerable glaciers.

Jordan Ellenberg tells Hakeem that math isn't just about numbers. It's about everything. The mathematician and bestselling author shares how AI models are trained through trial and error, why geometry secretly governs everything from family trees to statistical correlation, and why uncertainty, not certainty, is the true language of the universe. From new dimensions to hurricanes we can't quite predict, Jordan and Hakeem trace math's fingerprints across physics, language, and daily life in a preview of his upcoming book, Don't Be Too Sure.

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Guest Bio:
Learn more about NOVA and visit our YouTube channel.
Jordan Ellenberg is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, specializing in number theory and arithmetic algebraic geometry. He is the New York Times bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong and Shape, and his forthcoming book, Don't Be Too Sure, arrives in 2027