Over the past weeks and months we have all learned how distance and lack of proximity with one another impacts our lives, our relationships, our children’s schooling and our work. We are continuing to learn — both as individuals and as a society — what it means to be alone. Throughout this period of isolation, we have also been challenged to experiment with new, socially distanced ways of connecting and interacting with one another.While all of us at swissnex Boston have embraced various online webinar and conferencing tools, you may have noticed that over the past month we also did some experimenting with creating new forms of human connections – via robots. In this episode of experiment_podcast we would like to share the perspectives of the artists behind "Handshake," as well as those of 4 experts in and around the field of robotics. Guests (in order of appearance)AATBNick Sermuksnis & Juliette Thibaud-RebaudSteve Rader, NASAJamie Paik, EPFLAndra Keay, Silicon Valley RoboticsRoland Siegwart, ETH Zurich

Imagine living in a geodesic dome with five other people in the volcanic wilderness of Hawaii, or living and working at a remote research outpost in Antarctica through the brutal 8 month long winter. Can't imagine it? Take a listen to writer and HI-SEAS mission participant Kate Greene and extreme environments researcher and organizational psychologist Pedro Marques-Quinteiro, as they share their stories and lessons learned of solitude, confinement and isolation while working in extreme environments.