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Science Magazine Podcast
Will your family turn you into a chatbot after you die? Plus, synthetic squid skin, and the sway of matriarchs in ancient Anatolia
2025/06/26
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First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a pair of Science papers on kinship and culture in Neolithic Anatolia. The researchers used ancient DNA and isotopes from 8000 to 9000 years ago to show how maternal lines were important in Çatalhöyük culture.
● E. Yüncü et al., Female lineages and changing kinship patterns in Neolithic Çatalhöyük, 2025
● D. Koptekin et al., Out-of-Anatolia: Cultural and genetic interactions during the Neolithic expansion in the Aegean, 2025
Next on the show, researchers were able to make a synthetic material that changes color in the same way squids do. Georgii Bogdanov, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, talks about how his lab was able to discover the subcellular arrangement of proteins in the squid cells and mimic this structure synthetically using titanium dioxide deposition.
Finally, the latest book in our series on science and death. Books host Angela Saini talks with Tamara Kneese about her book Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond and whether our families can turn us into chatbots after we die.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry; Angela Saini
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How effective are plastic bag bans? And a whole new way to do astronomy
2025/06/19
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First up on the podcast, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is just coming online, and once fully operational, it will take a snapshot of the entire southern sky every 3 days. Producer Meagan Cantwell guides us through Staff Writer Daniel Clery’s trip to the site of the largest camera ever made for astronomy.
Next on the show, probing the impact of plastic bag regulations. Environmental economist Anna Papp joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her work comparing litter collected by shore cleanup efforts before and after the onset of plastic bag bans.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, senior editor of custom publishing, interviews professors Deepak Bhatt and Filip Swirski about advances in the science of heart health. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Daniel Clery
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Why peanut allergy is so common and hot forests as test beds for climate change
2025/06/12
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First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about how scientists are probing the world’s hottest forests to better understand how plants will cope with climate change. His story
is part of a special issue on plants and heat, which includes reviews and perspectives on the fate of plants in a warming world.
Next on the show, “convergent” antibodies may underlie the growing number of people allergic to peanuts. Sarita Patil, co-director of the Food
Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, joins the podcast to discuss her research on allergies and antibodies. She explains how different people appear to create antibodies with similar gene sequences and 3D structures that react to peanut proteins—a big surprise given the importance of randomness in the immune system’s ability to recognize harmful invaders.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
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Farming maize in ice age Michigan, predicting the future climate of cities, and our host takes a quiz on the sounds of science
2025/06/05
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First up on the podcast, we hear from Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the tricky problem of regional climate prediction. Although global climate change models have held up for the most part, predicting what will happen at smaller scales, such as the level of a city, is proving a stubborn challenge. Just increasing the resolution of global models requires intense computing power, so researchers and city planners are looking
to other approaches to find out what’s in store for cities.
Next on the show, a visit to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where researchers have found evidence that the Indigenous Menominee people cultivated maize for 600 years, even during an ice age. Madeleine McLeester, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Dartmouth College, talks about using lidar to search among the heavily forested lands for striations that indicate corn farming and the anthropological conundrums raised by such extensive agriculture without nearby urban centers.
Finally in this episode, producer Kevin McLean quizzes host Sarah Crespi on some mysterious sounds that have appeared on the site as part of news stories. No clues here so be sure to play along.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Kevin McLean
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Tickling in review, spores in the stratosphere, and longevity research
2025/05/29
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First up on the podcast, Online News Editor Michael Greshko joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about stories set high above our heads. They discuss capturing fungal spores high in the stratosphere, the debate over signs of
life on the exoplanet K2-18b, and a Chinese contender for world’s oldest star catalog.
Next on the show, a look into long-standing questions
on why and how our bodies respond to tickling. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks to Konstantina Kilteni, an assistant professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour and the Department of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute. They discuss how standardizing
approaches to testing tickling in the lab could get us closer to answers.
Finally in this episode, the first in our book series
on the science of death, with books host Angela Saini. Saini interviews Nobel Prize–winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan about developments in longevity research and his book Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for
Immortality.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Michael Greshko, Meagan Cantwell
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Strange metals and our own personal ‘oxidation fields’
2025/05/22
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First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the strange metal state. Physicists are probing the
behavior of electrons in these materials, which appear to behave like a thick soup rather than discrete charged particles. Many suspect insights into strange metals might lead to the creation of room-temperature superconductors, highly desired materials that promise lossless energy delivery and floating trains.
A few years ago, researcher Nora Zannoni came on the show to talk about our oxidation fields: zones of highly reactive radicals our bodies naturally produce that surround us and interact with nearby chemicals.
Now she’s back to discuss how our personal oxidation fields interact with personal care products—such as hand lotion, for example—and the resulting effects those products can end up having on the air
we breathe indoors.
Zannoni is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of Italy’s National Research Council. The work for the paper was done when she was a postdoc scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky
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A horse science roundup and using dubious brain scans as evidence of crimes
2025/05/15
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First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Jonathan Moens talks with host Sarah Crespi about a forensic test called brain electrical oscillation signature (BEOS) profiling, which police in India are using along with other techniques to try to tell whether a suspect participated in a crime, despite these technologies’ extremely shaky scientific grounding.
Next on the show, scientists have recently made strides in our understanding of horses, from identifying the mutations that make horses amazing athletes to showing how climate shaped intercontinental horse migrations 50,000 years ago. Science life sciences editor Sacha Vignieri joins us to discuss new horse-related studies published in Science—and how equine research has broader implications.
Other papers mentioned in this segment:
W. Taylor et al., Science 2023
C. Gaunitz et al., Science 2018
A. Outram et al., Science 2009
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sacha Vignieri; Jonathan Moens
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Analyzing music from ancient Greece and Rome, and the 100 days that shook science
2025/05/08
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First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell worked with the Science News team to review how the first 100 days of President
Donald Trump’s administration have impacted science. In the segment, originally produced for video, we hear about how the workforce, biomedical research, and global health initiatives all face widespread, perhaps permanent damage, with News staffers David Malakoff, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Rachel Bernstein.
Next on the show, acoustical analysis of ancient music from Greece and Rome shows different musical notation styles for different instruments. Dan Baciu, a professor at the Münster School of Architecture at the Münster University of Applied Sciences, talks with host Sarah Crespi about his analysis.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; David Malakoff; Jocelyn Kaiser; Rachel Bernstein
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Tales from an Italian crypt, and the science behind ‘dad bods’
2025/05/01
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First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about his visit to 17th century crypts under an old hospital in Italy. Researchers are examining tooth plaque, bone lesions, and mummified brains to learn more about the health, diet, and drug habits of Milan’s working poor 400 years ago.
Next on the show, a mechanism for driving growth in fat stores with age. Or, the source of the “dad bod” trope. Producer Zakiya Whatley talks with Qiong “Annabel” Wang, associate professor in the department of molecular and cellular endocrinology at City of Hope, about her work showing how middle-age mice gain fat via dedicated progenitor cells that actually become more active as the animals age. Similar cells are also present in people, suggesting it’s not just lack of willpower or sedentary habits that give us gains as we get older.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zakiya Whatley; Andrew Curry
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A caterpillar that haunts spiderwebs, solving the last riddles of a famed friar, and a new book series
2025/04/24
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First up on the podcast, bringing Gregor Mendel’s peas into the 21st century. Back in the 19th century Mendel, a friar and naturalist, tracked traits in peas such as flower color and shape over many generations. He used these observations to identify basic concepts about inheritance such as recessive and dominant traits. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about the difficulty of identifying genes for these phenotypes all these years later. We also hear some other stories from the plant world, including evidence that wavy fields are more attractive to insects and a tree benefits from being struck by lightning.
Next on the show, a carnivorous caterpillar that haunts spiderwebs, camouflaged in its insect prey’s body parts. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Daniel Rubinoff, a professor in the department of plant and environmental protection sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, about how such an adaptation might have evolved and the overlooked importance of insect conservation.
Finally, we kick off our 2025 books series on the science of death and dying. Books host Angela Saini and books editor Valerie Thompson talk about the challenges of putting this year’s list together and the reads they are looking forward to.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad; Kevin McLean; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini
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Linking cat domestication to ancient cult sacrifices, and watching aurorae wander
2025/04/17
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First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how an Egyptian cult that killed cats may have also tamed them.
Next on the show, we hear about when the aurorae wandered. About 41,000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic poles took an excursion. They began to move equatorward and decreased in strength to one-tenth their modern levels. Agnit Mukhopadhyay, a research affiliate at the University of Michigan, talks about how his group mapped these magnetic changes, and what it would be like if such a big change took place today.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm
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The metabolic consequences of skipping sleep, and cuts and layoffs slam NIH
2025/04/10
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First up on the podcast, ScienceInsider Editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss big changes in science funding and government jobs this month, including an order to cut billions in contracts, lawsuits over funding caps and grant funding cancellations, and mass firings at the National Institutes of Health.
Next on the show, taking sleep loss more seriously. Jennifer Tudor, an associate professor of biology at Saint Joseph’s University, talks about how skipping out on sleep has many metabolic consequences, from reducing protein synthesis in our brains to making our muscles less efficient at using ATP. Her new review in Science Signaling suggests that given these impacts, we should stop putting sleep last on our to-do lists.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser
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Talking about engineering the climate, and treating severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy
2025/04/03
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Geoengineering experiments face an uphill battle, and a way to combat the pregnancy complication hyperemesis gravidarum
First up on the podcast, climate engineers face tough conversations with the public when proposing plans to test new technologies. Freelance science journalist Rebekah White joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the questions people have about these experiments and how researchers can get collaboration and buy-in for testing ideas such as changing the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight or altering the ocean to suck up more carbon dioxide.
Next on the show, hyperemesis gravidarum—severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy—is common in many pregnant people and can have lasting maternal and infant health effects. This week, Marlena Fejzo wrote about her path from suffering hyperemesis gravidarum to finding linked genes and treatments for this debilitating complication. For her essay, Fejzo was named the first winner of the BioInnovation Institute & Science Translational Medicine Prize for Innovations in Women’s Health. Fejzo is a scientist at the Center for Genetic Epidemiology in the department of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rebekah White
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Studying urban wildfires, and the challenges of creating tiny AI robots
2025/03/27
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First up this week, urban wildfires raged in Los Angeles in January. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall discusses how researchers have come together to study how pollution from buildings at such a large scale impacts the environment and health of the local population.
Next on the show, Mingze Chen, a graduate student in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Michigan, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the challenges of placing artificial intelligence in small robots. As you add more sensors and data, the demand for computing power and energy goes up. To reduce the power demand, Chen’s team tried a different kind of physics for collecting and processing data using a type of resistance switching memory device called a “memristor.”
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall
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Why seals don’t drown, and tracking bird poop as it enters the sea
2025/03/20
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First up this week, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss stories from the sea, including why scientists mounted cameras on seabirds, backward and upside-down; newly discovered organisms from the world’s deepest spot, the Mariana Trench; and how extremely venomous, blue-lined octopus males use their toxin on females in order to mate. Read more or subscribe at science.org/scienceadviser.
Next on the show, J. Chris McKnight, a senior research fellow in the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews, talks about testing free-living seals to see how they respond to different carbon dioxide or oxygen levels in the air. It turns out they don’t respond like other mammals, which go into panic under high carbon dioxide; instead, seals appear to directly detect oxygen, a safer bet when your life is mostly spent diving deep underwater.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox
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Why sign language could be crucial for kids with cochlear implants, studying the illusion of pain, and recent political developments at NIH
2025/03/13
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First up this week, science policy editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the latest news about the National Institutes of Health—from reconfiguring review panels to canceled grants to confirmation hearings for a new head, Jay Bhattacharya.
Next, although cochlear implants can give deaf children access to sound, it doesn’t always mean they have unrestricted access to language. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady about why some think using sign language with kids with cochlear implants gives them the best chance at communicating fully and fluently.
Finally, using a pain illusion to better understand how the brain modulates pain. Francesca Fardo, an associate professor in the department of clinical medicine at Aarhus University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of learning and uncertainty in pain perception. It turns out, the more uncertain we are about a sensation that could be painful, the more pain we feel.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Cathleen O’Grady; Jocelyn Kaiser
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Intrusive thoughts during pregnancy, paternity detectives, and updates from the Trump Tracker
2025/03/06
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First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the most recent developments in U.S. science under Donald Trump’s second term, from the impact of tariffs on science to the rehiring of probationary employees at the National Science Foundation.
Next, we tackle the question of extra-pair paternity in people—when marriage or birth records of parentage differ from biological parentage. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry writes about researchers looking into the question of how often children are genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers by using genealogy and genetic testing.
Finally, Susanne Schweizer, Scientia associate professor at the University of New South Wales, talks about her article on intrusive thoughts in the perinatal period as part of a special issue on women’s health in Science Advances. Almost all pregnant and recent mothers experience intrusive thoughts about harm coming to their offspring. Schweizer and colleagues suggest gaining a better understanding of intrusive thoughts during this highly predictable window could help explain the phenomenon more broadly.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
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Keeping transgenic corn sustainable, and sending shrunken heads home
2025/02/27
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First up this week, Kata Karáth, a freelance journalist based in Ecuador, talks with host Sarah Crespi about an effort to identify traditionally prepared shrunken heads in museums and collections around the world and potentially repatriate them.
Next, genetically modified Bt corn has helped farmers avoid serious crop damage from insects, but planting it everywhere all the time can drive insects to adapt to the bacterial toxin made by the plant. Christian Krupke, an entomology professor at Purdue University, talks about the economics of planting Bt corn and how farmers could save money and extend the usefulness of this transgenic plant by being selective about where and when they plant it.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kata Karáth
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Shrinking AI for use in farms and clinics, ethical dilemmas for USAID researchers, and how to evolve evolvability
2025/02/20
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First up this week, researchers face impossible decisions as U.S. aid freeze halts clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how organizers of U.S. Agency for International Development–funded studies are grappling with ethical responsibilities to trial participants and collaborators as funding, supplies, and workers dry up.
Next, freelance science journalist Sandeep Ravindran talks about creating tiny machine learning devices for bespoke use in the Global South. Farmers and medical clinics are using low-cost, low-power devices with onboard machine learning for spotting fungal infections in tree plantations or listening for the buzz of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.
Finally, Michael Barnett, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, joins the podcast to discuss evolving evolvability. His team demonstrated a way for organisms to become more evolvable in response to repeated swings in the environment.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran; Martin Enserink
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Training AI to read animal facial expressions, NIH funding takes a big hit, and why we shouldn’t put cameras in robot pants
2025/02/13
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First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins the podcast to discuss the big change in NIH’s funding policy for overhead or indirect costs, the outrage from the biomedical community over the cuts, and the lawsuits filed in response.
Next, what can machines understand about pets and livestock that humans can’t? Christa Lesté-Lasserre, a freelance science journalist based in Paris, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss training artificial intelligence on animal facial expressions. Today, this approach can be used to find farm animals in distress; one day it may help veterinarians and pet owners better connect with their animal friends.
Finally, Keya Ghonasgi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks about a recent Science Robotics paper on the case against machine vision for the control of wearable robotics. It turns out the costs of adding video cameras to exoskeletons—such as loss of privacy—may outweigh the benefits of having robotic helpers on our arms and legs.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Lesté-Lasserre; David Malakoff
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How the mantis shrimp builds its powerful club, and mysteries of middle Earth
2025/02/06
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First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about recent policy stories on NASA’s reactions to President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive orders.
Next, the mantis shrimp is famous for its powerful club, a biological hammer it uses to crack open hard shells. The club applies immense force on impact, but how does it keep itself together blow after blow? Nicolas Alderete is an associate researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but at the time of the work he was a graduate researcher in theoretical and applied mechanics at Northwestern University. He joins the podcast to discuss the makeup of the mantis shrimp’s club and how it uses “phononics”—specialized microstructures that can reduce or change high-frequency vibrations—to reduce wear and tear when smashing and bashing.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
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Why it pays to scratch that itch, and science at the start of the second Trump administration
2025/01/30
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First up this week, we catch up with the editor of ScienceInsider, Jocelyn Kaiser. She talks about changes at the major science agencies that came about with the transition to President Donald Trump’s second administration, such as hiring freezes at the National Institutes of Health and the United States’s departure from the World Health Organization.
Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Dan Kaplan, a professor in the departments of immunology and dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh, about why it sometimes pays to scratch that itch. It turns out scratching may be our bodies’ end run around pests and pathogens attempting to steal blood or invade the body.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jocelyn Kaiser
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Unlocking green hydrogen, and oxygen deprivation as medicine
2025/01/23
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First up this week, although long touted as a green fuel, the traditional approach to hydrogen production is not very sustainable. Staff writer Robert F. Service joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss how researchers are aiming to improve electrolyzers—devices that split water into hydrogen and oxygen—with more efficient and durable designs.
Next, Robert Rogers, who was a postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology at Massachusetts General Hospital when this work was conducted, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the idea of chronic hypoxia as medicine. Efficacious in mouse disease models, the big question now is whether long-lasting reduced oxygen could help people with certain serious conditions, such as mitochondrial defects or brain inflammation. The pair discuss what we know so far about this potential treatment and the challenges of delivering low levels of oxygen around the clock.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Robert Service
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Rising infections from a dusty devil, and nailing down when our ancestors became meat eaters
2025/01/16
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First up this week, growing numbers of Valley fever cases, also known as coccidioidomycosis, has researchers looking into the disease-causing fungus. They’re exploring its links to everything from drought and wildfires to climate change and rodent populations. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her visit to a Valley fever research site in the desert near Bakersfield, California, where researchers are sampling air and soil for the elusive fungus.
Next up, scientists are trying to pin down when meat eating became a habit for human ancestors. It’s long been hypothesized that eating meat drove big changes in our family tree—such as bigger brains and more upright posture. Tina Lüdecke, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and honorary research fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, investigated the diet of our ancient hominin relatives Australopithecus. Her team used nitrogen isotope ratios from the tooth enamel in seven Australopithecus individuals in South Africa to determine what predominated in their diets at the time—meat or veg.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zulg8oo
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Bats surf storm fronts, and public perception of preprints
2025/01/09
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First up this week, as preprint publications ramped up during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so did media attention for these pre–peer-review results. But what do the readers of news reports based on preprints know about them? Associate News Editor Jeff Brainard joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss studies that look at the public perception of preprints in the news and how to inject skepticism into stories about them.
Next, placing tiny tags on bats to follow them across central Europe. Former Science intern Edward Hurme—now a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Migration at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior—revisits the podcast after 13 years. He discusses the difficulty of tracking bats as they fly long distances at night and what new tagging technology is revealing about their migration patterns.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jeff Brainard
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On the trail with a truffle-hunting dog, and why we should save elderly plants and animals
2025/01/02
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First up this week, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about truffle hunting for science. Wilcox accompanied Heather Dawson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon, and her sister Hilary Dawson, a postdoctoral researcher at Australian National University, on a hunt for nonculinary truffles—the kind you don’t eat—with the help of a specially trained dog. These scientists and their dog are digging up many new species of these hard-to-find fungi with the ultimate aim of cataloging and conserving them.
Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with R. Keller Kopf, an ecologist and lecturer at Charles Darwin University, about the importance of conserving older plants and animals. For example, as certain fish age they produce many more eggs than younger fish. Or in a forest, older trees may provide different ecosystem services than saplings.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox; Ariana Remmel
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Top online stories of the year, and revisiting digging donkeys and baby minds
2024/12/19
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First up this week, Online News Editor David Grimm shares a sampling of stories that hit big with our audience and staff in this year, from corpse-eating pets to the limits of fanning ourselves.
Next, host Sarah Crespi tackles some unfinished business with Producer Kevin McLean. Three former guests talk about where their research has taken them since their first appearances on the podcast.
Erick Lundgren, a researcher at the Centre for Open Science and Research Synthesis at the University of Alberta, revisits his paper on donkeys that dig wells in deserts. Lundgren first appeared on the podcast in April 2021.
Katie Hampson, a professor of infectious disease ecology at the University of Glasgow, discusses where her Tanzanian rabies research has spread. Hampson first appeared on the podcast in April 2022.
Ashley Thomas, an assistant professor of psychology in the Laboratory for Development Studies at Harvard University, talks about why it’s important to plumb the depths of baby minds and the big questions behind her work on children’s understanding of social relationships. Thomas first appeared on the podcast in January 2022.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm
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Science’s Breakthrough of the Year, and psychedelic drugs, climate, and fusion technology updates
2024/12/12
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First up this week, Breakthroughs Editor Greg Miller joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year. They also discuss some of the other scientific achievements that turned heads this year, from ancient DNA and autoimmune therapy, to precision pesticides, and the discovery of a new organelle.
Next, host Sarah Crespi is joined by news staffers to catch up on threads they’ve been following all year. First a bumpy road for certain medicines. Editor Kelly Servick discusses the regulatory hurdles for psychedelic drugs and immunotherapy treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Then we hear from Staff Writer Paul Voosen about why scientists think this will be the hottest year on record. Finally, what happened with fusion power this year? Staff Writer Daniel Clery brings updates.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Greg Miller; Meagan Cantwell; Kelly Servick; Daniel Clery; Paul Voosen
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Making Latin American science visible, and advances in cooling tech
2024/12/05
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First up this week, freelance science journalist Sofia Moutinho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss making open-access journals from South and Latin America visible to the rest of the world by creating platforms that help with the publishing process and discovery of journal articles. This story is part of a News series about global equity in science.
Next on the show, departing Physical Sciences Editor Brent Grocholski discusses highlights from his career at Science, particularly his work on cooling technologies. Related papers:
● A self-regenerative heat pump based on a dual-functional relaxor ferroelectric polymer
● High cooling performance in a double-loop electrocaloric heat pump
● High-performance multimode elastocaloric cooling system
● Colossal electrocaloric effect in an interface-augmented ferroelectric polymer
● Sizing up caloric devices
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Brent Grocholski; Sofia Moutinho
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Leaf-based computer chips, and evidence that two early human ancestors coexisted
2024/11/28
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First up this week, making electronics greener with leaves. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox about using the cellulose skeletons of leaves to create robust, biodegradable backings for computer chips. This sustainable approach can be used for printing circuits and making organic light-emitting diodes and if widely adopted, could massively reduce the carbon footprint of electronics.
Next on the show, Kevin Hatala, a biology professor at Chatham University, joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss fossil footprints unearthed in the Turkana Basin of Kenya. A 13-step long track with three perpendicular footprints likely show two different species of early humans, Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei, walked on the same shorelines.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Christie Wilcox
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Testing whales’ hearing, and mapping clusters of extreme longevity
2024/11/21
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First up this week, where on Earth do people live the longest? What makes those places or people so special? Genes, diet, life habits? Or could it be bad record keeping and statistical flukes? Freelance science journalist Ignacio Amigo joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the controversies around so-called blue zones—regions in the world where clusters of people appear to have extreme longevity.
Next on the show, producer Kevin Mclean talks with Dorian Houser, director of conservation biology at the National Marine Mammal Foundation. Houser and colleagues temporarily captured juvenile minke whales and tested their hearing. It turns out these baleen whales have more sensitive hearing than predicted from vocalizations and anatomical modeling, which could change our understanding of how they are affected by underwater noise pollution.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ignacio Amigo; Kevin McLean
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Resurrecting a ‘flipping ship,’ and solving the ‘bone paradox’ in ancient remains
2024/11/14
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First up this week, a ship that flips for science. Sean Cummings, a freelance science journalist, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the resurrection of the Floating Instrument Platform (R/V FLIP), a research vessel built by the U.S. Navy in the 1960s and retired in 2023. FLIP is famous for turning vertically 90° so the bulk of the long ship is underwater, stabilizing it for data gathering. Additional audio from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Watch FLIP flipping here.
Next on the show, viewing past lives using bones from medieval London cemeteries. Samantha Yaussy, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at James Madison University, joins Sarah to talk about a bony paradox. Do lesions or scars on buried bones mean the person was frail and ill when they lived or were they strong and resilient because they survived long enough for disease to damage their bones?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sean Cummings
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Watching continents slowly break apart, and turbo charging robotic sniffers
2024/11/07
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First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about his travel to meet up with a lead researcher in the field, Folarin Kolawole, and the subtle signs of rifting on the African continent.
Next on the show, Nik Dennler, a Ph.D. student in the Biocomputation Group at the University of Hertfordshire and the International Center for Neuromorphic Systems at Western Sydney University, discusses speeding up electronic noses. These fast sniffing devices could one day be mounted on drones to help track down forest fires before they are large enough to spot with a satellite.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
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The challenges of studying misinformation, and what Wikipedia can tell us about human curiosity
2024/10/31
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First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the difficulties of studying misinformation. Although misinformation seems like it’s everywhere, researchers in the field don’t agree on a common definition or shared strategies for combating it.
Next, what can Wikipedia tell us about human curiosity? Dani Bassett, a professor in the department of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, observed three different curiosity styles in people browsing the online encyclopedia—hunter, busybody, and dancer. They explain characteristics of each style and how which approach you use could depend on where you live.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpuwynf
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt
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Paleorobotics, revisiting the landscape of fear, and a book on the future of imagination
2024/10/24
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Using robots to study evolution, the last installment of our series of books on a future to look forward to, and did reintroducing wolves really restore an ecosystem?
First up this week, a new study of an iconic ecosystem doesn’t support the “landscape of fear” concept. This is the idea that bringing back apex predators has a huge impact on the behavior of their prey, eventually altering the rest of the ecosystem. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Virginia Morell about the findings.
Next, using bioinspired robotics to explore deep time. Michael Ishida, a postdoctoral researcher in the Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab at the University of Cambridge, talks about studying key moments in evolutionary history, such as the transition from water to land by creating robotic versions of extinct creatures.
Finally in the last in our series of books on an optimistic future, books host Angela Saini talks with
Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and recently named MacArthur Fellow. The two discuss Benjamin’s latest book, Imagination: A Manifesto, which explores the part that imagination plays in creating new and radical futures.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zu8ch5j
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Virginia Morell
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How to deal with backsliding democracies, and balancing life as a scientist and athlete
2024/10/17
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First up this week, host Sarah Crespi talks to Jon Chu, a presidential young professor in international affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, about how people around the world define democracy. Does democracy mean elections, freedom of the press, social mobility, or something else? Chu’s team found there was common ground across six countries. In many places with backsliding democracies, leaders may be tempted to change the definition of democracy to their own ends—this study suggests the people they rule won’t be fooled.
Next, when staying at home meant choosing between chemistry and basketball, Lena Svanholm sought an opportunity in the U.S. to pursue both. She joins producer Kevin McLean to discuss her next steps in balancing dual careers in science and professional sports.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of Custom Publishing, interviews Michal Elovitz about gaps in women’s health research. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Lena E. H. Svanholm
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Graphene’s journey from hype to prime time, and harvesting lithium from briny water
2024/10/10
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First up this week, we celebrate 20 years of graphene—from discovery, to hype, and now reality as it finally finds its place in technology and science. Science journalist Mark Peplow joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss graphene’s bumpy journey.
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Seth Darling, chief science and technology officer for the Advanced Energy Technologies Directorate at Argonne National Laboratory, about two new ways to harvest lithium from water. One approach harnesses sunlight to pull water up through a membrane and collect lithium, whereas the other uses an electrochemical cell to selectively suck lithium up. Finding efficient ways to extract lithium from sources where it’s lower in concentration, such as the ocean, will be crucial as demand increases.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Mark Peplow
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zn17zjt
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Scientific evidence that cats are liquids, and when ants started their fungus farms
2024/10/03
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First up this week, online editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how cats think about their own bodies. Do cats think of themselves as a liquid, as much the internet appears to believe? New experiments suggest they may—but only in one dimension.
Next, freelance producer Ariana Remmel is joined by Ted Schultz, a research entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution, to discuss the evolution of ant-fungus farming. It turns out, ants and fungus got together when the earth was going through some really tough times around 66 million years ago.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zlav1o2
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Burying trees to lock up carbon, notorious ‘Alzheimer’s gene’ fuels hope, and a book on virtual twins
2024/09/26
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The gene variant APOE4 is finally giving up some of its secrets, how putting dead trees underground could make carbon sequestration cheap and scalable, and the latest in our series of books on an optimistic future
First up this week, Staff Writer and Editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss APOE4, a gene linked with a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. They talk about new research into why APOE4 might be a good target for preventing or treating this dreaded neurodegenerative disease.
Next, Ning Zeng, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science and at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland, joins the show to discuss an unusual approach to carbon sequestration and a very old piece of wood. He talks about how an unearthed 3000-year-old log that has held on to most of its carbon is pretty good proof that we can efficiently put carbon underground at low cost by burying trees.
Finally, we have the latest in our series of books on a future to look forward to. Books host Angela Saini talks with Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, the two authors of the book Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z8oerdq
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser; Angela Saini
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Looking for life on an icy moon, and feeling like a rat
2024/09/19
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First up this week, a preview of a NASA mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Science journalist Robin Andrews joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the Clipper mission and what it could reveal about the habitability of the world that lies beneath Europa’s chaotic, icy surface.
Next, what does it feel like to be a rat? This week Science has a special issue on rats, focusing on their contributions to science, their history as invasives and disease carriers, and more. But Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, a professor in the School of Psychological Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, is here to talk about their capacity for empathy and other positive emotions.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews University of Manchester professor Sarah Haigh about the past, present, and future of graphene. This segment is sponsored by Zeiss.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Robin Andrews
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zapddvc
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Hail finally gets its scientific due, and busting up tumors with ultrasound
2024/09/12
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Why don’t we know what is happening with hail? It’s extremely destructive and costs billions of dollars in property damage every year. We aren’t great at predicting hailstorms and don’t know much about how climate change will affect them, but scientists are working to change that. News Intern Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss deploying new technologies in this long-neglected area of research.
Next on the show, ultrasound—it’s not just for looking inside the body anymore. Meaghan O’Reilly is a senior scientist in physical sciences at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, an associate professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto, and is the Canada Research Chair in biomedical ultrasound. She talks about how researchers are using focused sound waves to disrupt tumors, change the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, stimulate the immune system, and more.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Hannah Richter
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zm3x6zq
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Linking long lives with smart brains, and India’s science education is leaning into its history and traditions—but at what cost?
2024/09/05
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The latest in our series on global equity in science, and how better memory helps chickadees live longer
First up this week, as part of our series on global equity in science, Contributing Correspondent Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about an initiative in India intended to increase education about early “Indian knowledge systems” amid concerns about homogenization and misinformation.
Next, producer Kevin McLean climbs a mountain to visit a test bed for intelligence. He met up with Joe Welklin and Vladimir Pravosudov of the University of Nevada, Reno to talk about their research on how memory helps mountain chickadees survive.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zbfmymg
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A fungus-driven robot, counting snow crabs, and a book on climate capitalism
2024/08/29
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First up this week on the podcast, the latest conservation news with Staff Writer Erik Stokstad. Stokstad and host Sarah Crespi talk about the fate of snow crabs in the Bering Sea, how much we have been overestimating fishing stocks worldwide, and invasive snakes in Guam that bite off more than they can chew.
Next, a fungus takes the wheel. Anand Mishra, a research associate in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University, discusses a method of integrating electronics with fungal cells in a biohybrid robot. By using the hardy cells from a mushroom instead of the delicate cells of an animal, Mishra and colleagues hope to durably introduce the sensing and signaling capacity of these living organisms into robots.
Finally, the fourth installment of our six-part series on books that look to an optimistic future. This month, host Angela Saini talks with science writer Akshat Rathi about how capitalism might just save us from climate change and his book Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad; Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zt21ifv
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Saving wildlife with AI, and randomized trials go remote
2024/08/22
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First up this week on the show, uncounted kilometers of fences are strung across the globe. Researchers know they interfere with wildlife migrations and sometimes make finding food and safety difficult for animals. But they don’t know where all these fences are. Freelancer science journalist Christine Peterson joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how artificial intelligence and aerial photos could help create fence inventories and eventually reopen spaces for native species.
Next, Azizi Seixas, interim chair of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s department of informatics and health data science and a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, discusses his review on decentralized randomized trials. Randomized, controlled trials based in a research center or centers have long been the gold standard for determining the effectiveness of a medical intervention. This week on the podcast, Seixas argues that distributed research designs with home-based measurements and reporting have the potential to speed up research, allow greater participation, and make the results of studies more equitable.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Christine Peterson
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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The origins of the dino-killing asteroid, and remapping the scientific enterprise
2024/08/15
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First up this week, Deputy News Editors Elizabeth Culotta and Shraddha Chakradhar join host Sarah Crespi to talk about the launch of a new series highlighting the latest in postcolonial science. They cover how researchers around the world, but especially in the Global South, are reckoning with colonial legacies and what is in store for the rest of the series.
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Mario Fischer-Gödde, a research scientist at the University of Cologne about the origins of the giant asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Elizabeth Culotta, Shraddha Chakradhar, Meagan Cantwell
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zjugpvu
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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The humidity vs. heat debate, and studying the lifetime impacts of famine
2024/08/08
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Researchers debate if humidity makes heat more deadly, and finding excess diabetes cases in Ukrainian people that were born right after the 1930s famine
First up this week, which is worse: the heat or the humidity? Staff writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about conflicting reports on the risk of increased mortality when humidity compounds heat, and how to resolve the debate in the field.
Next, LH Lumey, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center, discusses what the catastrophe of a famine can teach us about the importance of maternal and fetal health for the long term. His work focuses on records of a 1930s Ukrainian famine painstakingly reconstructed by Ukrainian demographers after being obscured by the former Soviet Union. The famine records combined with newer data show that babies gestated during famine are more likely to acquire type 2 diabetes later in life.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Meredith Wadman
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z6yms94
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Iron-toothed dragons, and improving electron microscopy
2024/08/01
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First up this week, we hear about caves on the Moon, a shake-up at Pompeii, and the iron-lined teeth of the Komodo dragon. Reporter Phie Jacobs joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these news stories and more from our daily newsletter, ScienceAdviser.
Next on the show, electron microscopes allow us to view a world inaccessible to light—at incredible resolution and tiny scales. But bombarding samples with a beam of electrons has downsides. The high-energy electrons used for visualizing minute structures can cause damage to certain materials. Jonathan Peters, a research fellow in the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin, joins the podcast to talk about a new approach that protects samples while keeping resolution sharp.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Phie Jacobs,
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zeecyfw
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Targeting dirty air, pollution from dead satellites, and a book on embracing robots
2024/07/25
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Tackling air pollution—indoors and outdoors, how burned-up satellites in the atmosphere could destroy ozone, and the latest in our series of books on a future to look forward to
First up this week, Science Senior Editor Michael Funk joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the magazine’s special issue on air pollution. The two discuss the broad scope of air pollution, from home cooking to transmissible disease.
Next, how burned-up satellites may cause pollution problems as megaconstellations take to the skies. Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks about how metals from deorbiting spacecrafts might change the chemistry of the upper atmosphere.
Finally, books host Angela Saini is joined by author Daniela Rus, a roboticist and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They discuss Rus’s book The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots for this year’s books series that takes an optimistic look at the future.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Micheal Funk, Angela Saini; Daniel Clery
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z01x70o
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New treatments for deadly snake bites, and a fusion company that wants to get in the medical isotopes game
2024/07/18
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First up this week, Staff Writer Adrian Cho talks with host Sarah Crespi about a fusion company that isn’t aiming for net energy. Instead, it’s looking to sell off the high-energy neutrons from its fusion reactors for different purposes, such as imaging machine parts and generating medical isotopes. In the long run, the company hopes to use money from these neutron-based enterprises for bigger, more energetic reactors that may someday make fusion energy.
Next, we hear from Tian Du, a Ph.D. candidate in the Dr John and Anne Chong Lab for Functional Genomics at the University of Sydney. She talks about finding antivenom treatments by screening all the genes in the human genome. Her Science Translational Medicine paper focuses on a strong candidate for treating spitting cobra bites, but the technique may prove useful for many other venomous animal bites and stings, from jellyfish to spiders.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Adrian Cho
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How rat poison endangers wildlife, and using sound to track animal populations
2024/07/11
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Rodenticides are building up inside unintended targets, including birds, mammals, and insects; and bringing bioacoustics and artificial intelligence together for ecology
First up this week, producer Kevin McLean and freelance science journalist Dina Fine Maron discuss the history of rodent control and how rat poisons are making their way into our ecosystem.
Next on the episode, host Sarah Crespi talks with Jeppe Rasmussen, a postdoctoral fellow in the behavior ecology group at the University of Copenhagen, about why researchers are training artificial intelligence to listen for seals, frogs, and whales.
Additional sound in this segment (some played, some mentioned):
· Monk seal noises care of Jeppe Rasmussen
· Frog and crickets from Pond5
· Lyrebird sounds (Youtube link)
· Cod fish sounds (Fishbase link)
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Kevin McLean, Sarah Crespi, Dina Fine Maron
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zq42hy5
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What’s new in the world of synthetic blood, and how a bacterium evolves into a killer
2024/07/04
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First up this week, guest host Kevin McLean talks to freelance writer Andrew Zaleski about recent advancements in the world of synthetic blood. They discuss some of the failed attempts over the past century that led many to abandon the cause altogether, and a promising new option in the works called ErythroMer that is both shelf stable and can work on any blood type.
Next on the episode, producer Zakiya Whatley talks to Aaron Weimann from the University of Cambridge about the evolutionary history of the deadly bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They discuss how more than a century’s worth of samples from all over the world contributed to new insights on the emergence and expansion of the pathogen known for its ability to develop antimicrobial resistance.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Kevin McLean, Andrew Zaleski, Zakiya Whatley
Episode Page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z1jhbqi
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
[Image: Matt Roth, Music: Jeffrey Cook and Nguyen Khoi Nguyen]
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Targeting crop pests with RNA, the legacy of temporary streams, and the future of money
2024/06/27
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Guest host Meagan Cantwell talks to Staff Writer Erik Stokstad about a new weapon against crop-destroying beetles. By making pesticides using RNA, farmers can target pests and their close relatives, leaving other creatures unharmed.
Next, freelance producer Katherine Irving talks to hydrologist Craig Brinkerhoff about a recent analysis of ephemeral streams—which are only around temporarily—throughout the United States. Despite their fleeting presence, Brinkerhoff and his colleagues found these streams play a major role in keeping rivers flowing and clean. Brinkerhoff is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, and completed this work as a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Finally, the next segment in our books series on a future to look forward to. Books host Angela Saini talks with author Rachel O’Dwyer about her recent book Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform. They’ll discuss new and old ideas of currency, and what it means to have our identities tied to our money as we move toward a more cashless society.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
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The hunt for habitable exoplanets, and how a warming world could intensify urban air pollution
2024/06/20
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On this week’s show: Scientists are expanding the hunt for habitable exoplanets to bigger worlds, and why improvements in air quality have stagnated in Los Angeles, especially during summer, despite cleaner cars and increased regulations
Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins producer Meagan Cantwell to talk through the major contenders for habitable exoplanets—from Earth-like rocky planets to water worlds. Preliminary results from two rocky exoplanets have some researchers concerned about whether they will be able to detect atmospheres around planets orbiting turbulent stars.
Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with Eva Pfannerstill, an atmospheric chemist at the Jülich Research Center, about how volatile organic compounds, mostly from plants, are causing an increase in air pollution during hot days in Los Angeles.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Daniel Clery; Meagan Cantwell; Arianna Remmel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zxi
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How dogs’ health reflects our own, and what ancient DNA can reveal about human sacrifice
2024/06/13
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On this week’s show: Companion animals such as dogs occupy the same environment we do, which can make them good sentinels for human health, and DNA gives clues to ancient Maya rituals and malaria’s global spread
Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss two very different studies that used DNA to dig into our past. One study reveals details of child sacrifices in an ancient Maya city. The other story is on the surprising historical reach of malaria, from Belgium to the Himalayas to South America.
Next on the show, using our canine companions to track human health. Courtney Sexton, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, talks about what we can learn from these furry friends that tend to be exposed to many of the same things we are such as pesticides and cleaning chemicals.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor of custom publishing, interviews professors Miriam Merad and Brian Brown about the evolution of immunology in health care. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zxgwbqo
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Putting mysterious cellular structures to use, and when brown fat started to warm us up
2024/06/06
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Despite not having a known function, cellular “vaults” are on the verge of being harnessed for all kinds of applications, and looking at the evolution of brown fat into a heat-generating organ
First on this week’s show, Managing News Editor John Travis joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mysterious cellular complexes called “vaults.” First discovered in the 1980s, scientists have yet to uncover the function of these large, common, hollow structures. But now some researchers are looking to use vaults to deliver cancer drugs and viruses for gene therapy.
Next, what can we learn about the evolution of brown fat from opossums? Unlike white fat, which stores energy in many mammals, brown fat cells use ATP to generate heat, helping babies maintain their body temperature and hibernators kick-start their summers. Susanne Keipert, a researcher in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at Stockholm University’s Wenner-Gren Institute, talks about when in evolutionary history brown fat took on this job of burning energy.
Finally, this week we are launching our music refresh! If you are interested in what happened to our music—where it came from and how it’s different (and the same)—stay tuned for a chat with artist Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; John Travis
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpoy92t
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Restoring sight to blind kids, making babies without a womb, and challenging the benefits of clinical trials
2024/05/30
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Studying color vision in with children who gain sight later in life, joining a cancer trial doesn’t improve survival odds, and the first in our books series this year
First on this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the pros and cons of participating in clinical trials. Her story challenges the common thinking that participating in a trial is beneficial—even in the placebo group—for cancer patients.
Next, Lukas Vogelsang, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about research into color vision with “late-sighted” kids. Studying children who were born blind and then later gained vision gave researchers new insights into how vision develops in babies and may even help train computers to see better.
Last up on the show is the first in our series of books podcasts on a future to look forward to. Books host Angela Saini talks with author Claire Horn, a researcher based at Dalhousie University’s Health Justice Institute. They discuss the implications of growing babies from fertilized egg to newborn infant—completely outside the body—and Horn’s book Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z6gdgb4
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Stepping on snakes for science, and crows that count out loud
2024/05/23
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A roundup of online news stories featuring animals, and researchers get crows to “count” to four
This week’s show is all animals all the time. First, Online News Editor Dave Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss stepping on venomous snakes for science, hunting ice age cave bears, and demolishing lizardlike buildings.
Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Diana Liao, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, about teaching crows to count out loud. They discuss the complexity of this behavior and how, like the famous band, these counting corvids have all the right vocal skills to do it.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ztje4j6
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How the immune system can cause psychosis, and tool use in otters
2024/05/16
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On this week’s show: What happens when the body’s own immune system attacks the brain, and how otters’ use of tools expands their diet
First on the show this week, when rogue antibodies attack the brain, patients can show bizarre symptoms—from extreme thirst, to sleep deprivation, to outright psychosis. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the hunt for biomarkers and treatments for this cluster of autoimmune disorders that were once mistaken for schizophrenia or even demonic possession.
Next on this episode, producer Katherine Irving talks with Chris Law, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington and the University of Texas at Austin, about how sea otters gain energy benefits (and dental benefits) when they use tools to tackle tougher prey such as snails or large clams.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Richard Stone; Katherine Irving
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4pdg62
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A very volcanic moon, and better protections for human study subjects
2024/05/09
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Jupiter’s moon Io has likely been volcanically active since the start of the Solar System, and a proposal to safeguard healthy human subjects in clinical trials
First on the show this week, a look at proposed protections for healthy human subjects, particularly in phase 1 clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risks healthy participants face when involved in early testing of drugs for safety and tolerance. Then, we hear about a project to establish a set of global standards initiated by the Ethics Committee of France’s national biomedical research agency, INSERM.
Next on this episode, a peek at the history of the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, Jupiter’s moon Io. Because the surface of Io is constantly being remodeled by its many volcanoes, it’s difficult to study its past by looking at craters or other landmarks. Katherine de Kleer, assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, talks about using isotopic ratios in the moon’s atmosphere to estimate how long it’s been spewing matter into space.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zyq2ig8
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Improving earthquake risk maps, and the world’s oldest ice
2024/05/02
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Bringing historical seismic reports and modern seismic risk maps into alignment, and a roundup of stories from our newsletter, ScienceAdviser
First on the show this week, a roundup of stories with our newsletter editor, Christie Wilcox. Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about the oldest ice ever found, how well conservation efforts seem to be working, and repelling mosquitoes with our skin microbes.
Next on this episode, evaluating seismic hazard maps. In a Science Advances paper this week, Leah Salditch, a geoscience peril adviser at risk and reinsurance company Guy Carpenter, compared modern seismic risk map predictions with descriptions of past quakes. The analysis found a mismatch: Reported shaking in the past tended to be stronger than modern models would have predicted. She talks with Crespi about where this bias comes from and how to fix it.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfj31xo
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The science of loneliness, making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions safer, and a new book series
2024/04/25
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Researchers try to identify effective loneliness interventions, making the Sandmeyer safer, and books that look to the future and don’t see doom and gloom
First up on the show, Deputy News Editor Kelly Servick explores the science of loneliness. Is loneliness on the rise or just our awareness of it? How do we deal with the stigma of being lonely?
Also appearing in this segment:
● Laura Coll-Planas
● Julianne Holt-Lunstad
● Samia Akhter-Khan
Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with Tim Schulte, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and RWTH Aachen University, about making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions—the Sandmeyer reaction—both safer and more versatile.
Finally, we kick off this year’s book series with books editor Valerie Thompson and books host Angela Saini. They discuss this year’s theme: a future to look forward to.
Book segments come out the last episode of the month. Books in the series:
● Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth by Claire Horn (May)
● Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform by Rachel O’Dwyer (June)
● The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone (July)
● Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age by Akshat Rathi (August)
● Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield (September)
● Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin (October)
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Ariana Remmel; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini
LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zqubta7
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Ritual murders in the neolithic, why 2023 was so hot, and virus and bacteria battle in the gut
2024/04/18
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A different source of global warming, signs of a continentwide tradition of human sacrifice, and a virus that attacks the cholera bacteria
First up on the show this week, clearer skies might be accelerating global warming. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as air pollution is cleaned up, climate models need to consider the decrease in the planet’s reflectivity. Less reflectivity means Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun and increased temps.
Also from the news team this week, we hear about how bones from across Europe suggest recurring Stone Age ritual killings. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks about how a method of murder used by the Italian Mafia today may have been used in sacrifices by early farmers, from Poland to the Iberian Peninsula.
Finally, Eric Nelson, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, joins Sarah to talk about an infectious bacteria that’s fighting on two fronts. The bacterium that causes cholera—Vibrio cholerae—can be killed off with antibiotics but at the same time, it is hunted by a phage virus living inside the human gut. In a paper published in Science, Nelson and colleagues describe how we should think about phage as predator and bacteria as prey, in the savanna of our intestines. The ratio of predator to prey turns out to be important for the course of cholera infections.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Andrew Curry
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zhgw74e
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Trialing treatments for Long Covid, and a new organelle appears on the scene
2024/04/11
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]Researchers are testing HIV drugs and monoclonal antibodies against long-lasting COVID-19, and what it takes to turn a symbiotic friend into an organelle
First up on the show this week, clinical trials of new and old treatments for Long Covid. Producer Meagan Cantwell is joined by Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and some of her sources to discuss the difficulties of studying and treating this debilitating disease.
People in this segment:
· Michael Peluso
· Sara Cherry
· Shelley Hayden
Next: Move over mitochondria, a new organelle called the nitroplast is here. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Tyler Coale, a postdoctoral scholar in the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Ocean Sciences Department, about what exactly makes an organelle an organelle and why it would be nice to have inhouse nitrogen fixing in your cells.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zof5fvk
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When did rats come to the Americas, and was Lucy really our direct ancestor?
2024/04/04
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Tracing the arrival of rats using bones, isotopes, and a few shipwrecks; and what scientists have learned in 50 years about our famous ancestor Lucy
First on the show: Did rats come over with Christopher Columbus? It turns out, European colonists weren’t alone on their ships when they came to the Americas—they also brought black and brown rats to uninfested shores. Eric Guiry, a researcher in the Trent Environmental Archaeology Lab at Trent University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how tiny slices of bone from early colony sites and sunken shipwrecks can tell us when these pesky rodents arrived.
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons about what has happened in the 50 years since anthropologists found Lucy—a likely human ancestor that lived 2.9 million to 3.3 million years ago. Although still likely part of our family tree, her place as a direct ancestor is in question. And over the years, her past has become less lonesome as it has become populated with other contemporaneous hominins.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons
LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4scrgk
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Teaching robots to smile, and the effects of a rare mandolin on a scientist’s career
2024/03/28
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Robots that can smile in synchrony with people, and what ends up in the letters section
First on this week’s show, a robot that can predict your smile. Hod Lipson, a roboticist and professor at Columbia University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how mirrors can help robots learn to make facial expressions and eventually improve robot nonverbal communication.
Next, we have Margaret Handley, a professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics and medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She shares a letter she wrote to Science about how her past, her family, and a rare instrument relate to her current career focus on public health and homelessness. Letters Editor Jennifer Sills also weighs in with the kinds of letters people write into the magazine.
Other Past as Prologue letters:
A new frontier for mi familia by Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony
A uranium miner’s daughter by Tanya J. Gallegos
Embracing questions after my father’s murder by Jacquelyn J. Cragg
A family’s pride in educated daughters by Qura Tul Ain
One person’s trash: Another’s treasured education by Xiangkun Elvis Cao
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Sills
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zy9w2u0
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Hope in the fight against deadly prion diseases, and side effects of organic agriculture
2024/03/21
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New clinical trials for treatments of an always fatal brain disease, and what happens with pests when a conventional and organic farm are neighbors
First up on this week’s show, a new treatment to stave off prion disease goes into clinical trials. Prions are misfolded proteins that clump together and chew holes in the brain. The misfolding can be switched on in a number of ways—including infection with a misfolded prion protein from an animal or person. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about new potential treatments—from antisense nucleotides to small molecules that interfere with protein production—for these fatal neurodegenerative diseases.
Next on the show: Freelance producer Katherine Irving talks with Ashley Larsen, associate professor of agricultural and landscape ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about the effects of organic farms on their neighbors. If there are lots of organic growers together, pesticide use goes down but conventional farms tend to use more pesticides when side by side with organic farms.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving; Meredith Wadman
LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z91m76v
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Why babies forget, and how fear lingers in the brain
2024/03/14
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Investigating “infantile amnesia,” and how generalized fear after acute stress reflects changes in the brain
This week we have two neuroscience stories. First up, freelance science journalist Sara Reardon looks at why infants’ memories fade. She joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss ongoing experiments that aim to determine when the forgetting stops and why it happens in the first place.
Next on the show, Hui-Quan Li, a senior scientist at Neurocrine Biosciences, talks with Sarah about how the brain encodes generalized fear, a symptom of some anxiety disorders such as social anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Sara Reardon
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z9bqkyc
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A dive into the genetic history of India, and the role of vitamin A in skin repair
2024/03/07
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What modern Indian genomes say about the region’s deep past, and how vitamin A influences stem cell plasticity
First up this week, Online News Editor Michael Price and host Sarah Crespi talk about a large genome sequencing project in India that reveals past migrations in the region and a unique intermixing with Neanderthals in ancient times.
Next on the show, producer Kevin McLean chats with Matthew Tierney, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, about how vitamin A and stem cells work together to grow hair and heal wounds.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Michael Price
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfhqarg
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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The sci-fi future of medical robots is here, and dehydrating the stratosphere to stave off climate change
2024/02/29
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Keeping water out of the stratosphere could be a low-risk geoengineering approach, and using magnets to drive medical robots inside the body
First up this week, a new approach to slowing climate change: dehydrating the stratosphere. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risks and advantages of this geoengineering technique.
Next on the show, Science Robotics Editor Amos Matsiko gives a run-down of papers in a special series on magnetic robots in medicine. Matsiko and Crespi also discuss how close old science fiction books came to predicting modern medical robots’ abilities.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Amos Matsiko
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zvvddhw
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What makes snakes so special, and how space science can serve all
2024/02/22
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On this week’s show: Factors that pushed snakes to evolve so many different habitats and lifestyles, and news from the AAAS annual meeting
First up on the show this week, news from this year’s annual meeting of AAAS (publisher of Science) in Denver. News intern Sean Cummings talks with Danielle Wood, director of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the sustainable use of orbital space or how space exploration and research can benefit everyone.
And Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi with an extravaganza of meeting stories including a chat with some of the authors of this year’s Newcomb Cleveland Prize–winning Science paper on how horses spread across North America.
Voices in this segment:
William Taylor, assistant professor and curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Museum of Natural History
Ludovic Orlando, director of the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse
University of Oklahoma archaeologists Sarah Trabert and Brandi Bethke
Yvette Running Horse Collin, post-doctoral researcher Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse III)
Next on the show: What makes snakes so special? Freelance producer Ariana Remmel talks with Daniel Rabosky, professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, about the drivers for all the different ways snakes have specialized—from spitting venom to sensing heat.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; Christie Wilcox; Sean Cummings
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zabhbwe
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What makes blueberries blue, and myth buster Adam Savage on science communication
2024/02/15
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Why squeezing a blueberry doesn’t get you blue juice, and a myth buster and a science editor walk into a bar
First up on the show this week, MythBusters’s Adam Savage chats with Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp about the state of scholarly publishing, better ways to communicate science, plus a few myths Savage still wants to tackle.
Next on the show, making blueberries without blue pigments. Rox Middleton, a postdoctoral fellow at the Dresden University of Technology and honorary research associate at the University of Bristol, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how blueberries and other blue fruits owe their hue to a trick of the light caused by specialized wax on their surface.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews professor Jim Wells about organoid therapies. This segment is sponsored by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z7ye2st
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A new kind of magnetism, and how smelly pollution harms pollinators
2024/02/08
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More than 200 materials could be “altermagnets,” and the impact of odiferous pollutants on nocturnal plant-pollinator interactions
First up on the show this week, researchers investigate a new kind of magnetism. Freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about recent evidence for “altermagnetism” in nature, which could enable new types of electronics.
Next on the show, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples Federico II, about how air pollution can interfere with pollinator activities—is the modern world too smelly for moths to do their work?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Zack Savitsky
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zz09cbu
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A new way for the heart and brain to ‘talk’ to each other, and Earth’s future weather written in ancient coral reefs
2024/02/01
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A remote island may hold clues for the future of El Niño and La Niña under climate change, and how pressure in the blood sends messages to neurons
First up, researchers are digging into thousands of years of coral to chart El Niño’s behavior over time. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about his travels to the Pacific island of Vanuatu to witness the arduous task of reef drilling.
Next on the show, host Sarah Crespi talks with Veronica Egger, a professor of neurophysiology at the Regensburg University Institute of Zoology, about an unexpected method of signaling inside the body. Egger’s work suggests the pulse of the blood—the mechanical drumming of it—affects neurons in the brain. The two discuss why this might be a useful way for the body to talk to itself.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z1hqrn2
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A hangover-fighting enzyme, the failure of a promising snakebite treatment, and how ants change lion behavior
2024/01/25
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On this week’s show: A roundup of stories from our daily newsletter, and the ripple effects of the invasive big-headed ant in Kenya
First up on the show, Science Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about snake venom antidotes, a surprising job for a hangover enzyme, and crustaceans that spin silk.
Next on the show, the cascading effects of an invading ant. Douglas Kamaru, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Zoology & Physiology at the University of Wyoming, discusses how the disruption of a mutually beneficial relationship between tiny ants and spiny trees in Kenya led to lions changing their hunting strategies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zd5mbue
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Paper mills bribe editors to pass peer review, and detecting tumors with a blood draw
2024/01/19
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Investigation shows journal editors getting paid to publish bunk papers, and new techniques for finding tumor DNA in the blood
First up on this week’s episode, Frederik Joelving, an editor and reporter for the site Retraction Watch, talks with host Sarah Crespi about paper mills—organizations that sell authorship on research papers—that appear to be bribing journal editors to publish bogus articles. They talk about the drivers behind this activity and what publishers can do to stop it.
Next, producer Zakiya Whatley of the Dope Labs podcast talks with researcher Carmen Martin-Alonso, a graduate student in the Harvard–Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program in Health Sciences and Technology, about improving liquid biopsies for cancer. They discuss novel ways to detect tumor DNA circulating in the blood.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zakiya Whatley; Richard Stone
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zahpt8h
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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The environmental toll of war in Ukraine, and communications between mom and fetus during childbirth
2024/01/11
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Assessing environmental damage during wartime, and tracking signaling between fetus and mother
First up, freelance journalist Richard Stone returns with news from his latest trip to Ukraine. This week, he shares stories with host Sarah Crespi about environmental damage from the war, particularly the grave consequences of the Kakhovka Dam explosion.
Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with researcher Nardhy Gomez-Lopez, a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology and pathology and immunology in the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The two discuss signaling between fetus and mother during childbirth and how understanding this crosstalk may one day help predict premature labor.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Andrew Pospisilik, chair and professor of epigenetics at the Van Andel Institute, about his research into how epigenetics stabilizes particular gene expression patterns and how those patterns affect our risk for disease. This segment is sponsored by the Van Andel Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Rich Stone
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z5jiifi
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The top online news from 2023, and using cough sounds to diagnose disease
2024/01/04
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Best of online news, and screening for tuberculosis using sound
This week’s episode starts out with a look back at the top 10 online news stories with Online News Editor David Grimm. There will be cat expressions and mad scientists, but also electric cement and mind reading. Read all top 10 here.
Next on the show, can a machine distinguish a tuberculosis cough from other kinds of coughs? Manuja Sharma, who was a Ph.D. student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington at the time of the work, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her project collecting a cough data set to prove this kind of cough discrimination is possible with just a smartphone.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm
Audio credit for human infant cries: Nicolas Grimault, Nicolas Mathevon, Florence Levréro; Neuroscience Research Center, ENES and CAP team. UJM, CNRS, France.
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpuo5vn
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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The hunt for a quantum phantom, and making bitcoin legal tender
2023/12/22
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Seeking the Majorana fermion particle, and a look at El Salvador’s adoption of cryptocurrency
First up on the show this week, freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky and host Sarah Crespi discuss the hunt for the elusive Majorana fermion particle, and why so many think it might be the best bet for a functional quantum computer. We also hear the mysterious tale of the disappearance of the particle’s namesake, Italian physicist Ettore Majorana.
Next in the episode, what happens when you make a cryptocurrency legal tender? Diana Van Patten, professor of economics in the Yale University School of Management, discusses the results of El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin in 2021.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zjvhsy8
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Science’s Breakthrough of the Year, and tracing poached pangolins
2023/12/14
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Top science from 2023, and a genetic tool for pangolin conservation
First up this week, it’s Science’s Breakthrough of the Year with producer Meagan Cantwell and News Editor Greg Miller. But before they get to the tippy-top science find, a few of this year’s runners-up. See all our end-of-year coverage here.
Next, Jen Tinsman, a forensic wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss using genetics to track the illegal pangolin trade. These scaly little guys are the most trafficked mammals in the world, and researchers can now use DNA from their scales to find poaching hot spots.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Greg Miller
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zk0pw91
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Farm animals show their smarts, and how honeyguide birds lead humans to hives
2023/12/07
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A look at cognition in livestock, and the coevolution of wild bird–human cooperation
This week we have two stories on thinking and learning in animals. First, Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about a reporting trip to the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in northern Germany, where scientists are studying cognition in farm animals, including goats, cows, and pigs. And because freelance audio producer Kevin Caners went along, we have lots of sound from the trip—so prepare yourself for moos and more.
Voices in this story:
Christian Nawroth
Annkatrin Pahl
Jan Langbein
Next, audio producer Katherine Irving talks with Claire Spottiswoode, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, about her research into cooperation between honeyguide birds and human honey hunters. In their Science study, Spottiswoode and her team found honeyguides learn distinct signals made by honey hunters from different cultures suggesting that cultural coevolution has occurred.
Read a related Perspective.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Katherine Irving
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zr3zfn1
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Basic geoengineering, and autonomous construction robots
2023/11/30
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Raising the pH of the ocean to reduce carbon in the air, and robots that can landscape
First up on this week’s show, Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall discusses research into making oceans more alkaline as a way to increase carbon capture and slow climate change. But there are a few open questions with this strategy: Could enough material be dumped in the ocean to slow climate change? Would mining that material release a lot of carbon? And, would either the mining or ocean changes have big impacts on ecosystems or human health?
Next, we hear from Ryan Luke Johns, a recent Ph.D. graduate from ETH Zürich, about why we want robots building big rocky structures from found materials: It reduces energy costs and waste associated with construction, and it would allow us to build things remotely on Mars.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z66mytn
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Exascale supercomputers amp up science, finally growing dolomite in the lab, and origins of patriarchy
2023/11/23
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A leap in supercomputing is a leap for science, cracking the dolomite problem, and a book on where patriarchy came from
First up on this week’s show, bigger supercomputers help make superscience. Staff Writer Robert F. Service joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how the first exascale computer is enabling big leaps in scientists’ models of the world.
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with the University of Michigan’s Wenhao Sun, professor of materials science and engineering, and graduate student Joonsoo Kim. They discuss solving the centuries-old problem of growing the common mineral dolomite in the lab.
Finally, books host Angela Saini is back but this time she’s in the hot seat talking about her own book, The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality. Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson and host Sarah Crespi chat with Angela about what history, archaeology, and biology reveal about where and when patriarchy started. See our whole series of books podcasts on sex, gender, and science.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini; Robert Service
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn0660
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AI improves weather prediction, and cutting emissions from landfills
2023/11/16
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What it means that artificial intelligence can now forecast the weather like a supercomputer, and measuring methane emissions from municipal waste
First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how artificial intelligence has become shockingly good at forecasting the weather while using way fewer resources than other modeling systems. Read a related Science paper.
Next, focusing on municipal solid waste—landfills, compost centers, garbage dumps—may offer a potentially straightforward path to lower carbon emissions. Zheng Xuan Hoy, a recent graduate from the new energy science and engineering department at Xiamen University Malaysia, discusses his Science paper on this overlooked source of methane and some plausible solutions for reducing these emissions.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm9783
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The state of Russian science, and improving implantable bioelectronics
2023/11/09
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First up on this week’s show: the future of science in Russia. We hear about how the country’s scientists are split into two big groups: those that left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and those that stayed behind. Freelance journalist Olga Dobrovidova talks with host Sarah Crespi about why so many have left, and the situation for those who remain.
Next on the show: miniature, battery-free bioelectronics. Jacob Robinson, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, discusses how medical implants could go battery-free by harvesting energy from the human body and many other potential innovations in store for these internal medical devices.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Olga Dobrovidova
LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm8195
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Turning anemones into coral, and the future of psychiatric drugs
2023/11/02
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Why scientists are trying to make anemones act like corals, and why it’s so hard to make pharmaceuticals for brain diseases
First up on this week’s show, coaxing anemones to make rocks. Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the difficulties of raising coral in the lab and a research group that’s instead trying to pin down the process of biomineralization by inserting coral genes into easy-to-maintain anemones.
Next on the show, a look at why therapeutics for both neurodegenerative disease and psychiatric illness are lagging behind other kinds of medicines. Steve Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, talks with Sarah about some of the stumbling blocks to developing drugs for the brain—including a lack of diverse genome sequences—and what researchers are doing to get things back on track.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, associate editor Jackie Oberst discusses with Thomas Fuchs, dean of artificial intelligence (AI) and human health and professor of computational pathology and computer science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the potential and evolving role of AI in health care. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Christie Wilcox; Sarah Crespi
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm6756
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Making corn shorter, and a book on finding India’s women in science
2023/10/26
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First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about why it might make sense to grow shorter corn. It turns out the towering corn typically grown today is more likely to blow over in strong winds and can’t be planted very densely. Now, seedmakers are testing out new ways to make corn short through conventional breeding and transgenic techniques in the hopes of increasing yields.
Next up on the show, the last in our series of books on sex and gender with Books Host Angela Saini. In this installment, Angela speaks with Nandita Jayaraj and Aashima Dogra about their book Lab Hopping: A Journey to Find India’s Women in Science.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5269
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The consequences of the world's largest dam removal, and building a quantum computer using sound waves
2023/10/19
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Restoring land after dam removal, and phonons as a basis for quantum computing
First up on this week’s show, planting in the silty soil left behind after a dam is removed and reservoirs recede. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the world's largest dam removal project and what ecologists are doing to revegetate 36 kilometers of new river edge.
Next up on the show, freelance producer and former guest Tanya Roussy. She talks with Andrew Cleland, a professor at the University of Chicago, about a Science paper from this summer on using the phonon—a quantum of sound energy—as the basis of quantum computers.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Tanya Roussy, Warren Cornwall
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl4219
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Mysterious objects beyond Neptune, and how wildfire pollution behaves indoors
2023/10/13
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The Kuiper belt might be bigger than we thought, and managing the effects of wildfires on indoor pollution
First up on this week’s show, the Kuiper belt—the circular field of icy bodies, including Pluto, that surrounds our Solar System—might be bigger than we thought. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the distant Kuiper belt objects out past Neptune, and how they were identified by telescopes looking for new targets for a visit by the New Horizons spacecraft.
Next up on the show, the impact of wildfire smoke indoors. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Delphine Farmer, a chemist at Colorado State University, about an experiment to measure where particulates and volatile organic compounds end up when they sneak inside during a wildfire event.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Jens Nielsen, CEO of the BioInnovation Institute—an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark—about the next big leap in biology: synthetic biology. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Paul Voosen, Kevin McLean
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl3178
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How long can ancient DNA survive, and how much stuff do we need to escape poverty?
2023/10/05
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Pushing ancient DNA past the Pleistocene, and linking agriculture to biodiversity and infectious disease
First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad brings a host of fascinating stories, from the arrival of deadly avian flu in the Galápagos to measuring the effect of earthworms on our daily bread. He and host Sarah Crespi start off the segment discussing just how much stuff you need to avoid abject poverty and why measuring this value can help us balance human needs against planetary sustainability.
Other stories from Erik mentioned in this segment:
● Elephant trunk’s ‘stunning’ microscopic musculature may explain its dexterity | Science
● ‘Mind-boggling’ sea creature spotted off Japan has finally been identified | Science
Next up on the show, as part of a special issue on ancient DNA, freelance producer Katherine Irving talks with Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University. They talk about the longevity of ancient DNA and what it would take to let us see back even further. See the whole ancient DNA special issue here.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Erik Stokstad, Katherine Irving
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl1587
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Visiting utopias, fighting heat death, and making mysterious ‘dark earth’
2023/09/28
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A book on utopias and gender roles, India looks to beat climate-induced heat in cities, and how ancient Amazonians improved the soil
First up on this week’s show: the latest in our series of books on sex, gender, and science. Books host Angela Saini discusses Everyday Utopia: In Praise of Radical Alternatives to the Traditional Family Home with ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee, professor of Russian and Eastern European studies at the University of Pennsylvania. See this year’s whole series here.
Also this week, as part of a special issue on climate change and health, host Sarah Crespi speaks with Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, a freelance journalist based in Mumbai, India. They talk about how India is looking to avoid overheating cities in the coming decades, as climate change and urbanization collide.
Finally, we hear about how ancient Amazonians created fertile “dark earth” on purpose. Sarah is joined by Morgan Schmidt, an archaeologist and geographer at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. They discuss recent research published in Science Advances on the mysterious rich soil that coincides with ancient ruins, which may still be produced by modern Indigenous people in Brazil.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0606
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Reducing cartel violence in Mexico, and what to read and see this fall
2023/09/21
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The key to shrinking cartels is cutting recruitment, and a roundup of books, video games, movies, and more
First up on this week’s show: modeling Mexico’s cartels. Rafael Prieto-Curiel, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how modeling cartel activities can help us understand the impact of potential interventions such as increased policing or reducing gang recruitment.
Lisa Sanchez, executive director of México Unido Contra la Delincuencia, talks with Sarah about just how difficult it would be to make the model results—which show that reducing recruitment is key—a reality.
Next on the show, Science books editor Valerie Thompson and books intern Jamie Dickman discuss a huge selection of science books, movies, video games, and even new exhibits—all due out this fall. See the complete roundup here.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Valerie Thompson, Jamie Dickman
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk9453
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Why cats love tuna, and powering robots with tiny explosions
2023/09/14
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Receptors that give our feline friends a craving for meat, and using combustion to propel insect-size robots
First up on this week’s episode, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about why despite originating from a dry, desert environment cats seem to love to eat fish.
Next on the show, bugs such as ants are tiny while at the same time fast and strong, and small robots can’t seem to match these insectile feats of speed and power. Cameron Aubin, a postdoc at Cornell University who will shortly join the University of Michigan, discusses using miniscule combustion reactions to bring small robots up to ant speed.
Finally in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Bobby Soni, chief business officer at the BioInnovation Institute, an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark, what it takes to bring a product from lab to market and how to make the leap from scientist to entrepreneur. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk8409
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Extreme ocean currents from a volcano, and why it’s taking so long to wire green energy into the U.S. grid
2023/09/07
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How the Tonga eruption caused some of the fastest underwater flows in history, and why many U.S. renewable energy projects are on hold
First up on this week’s show, we hear about extremely fast underwater currents after a volcanic eruption. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with sedimentary geologist Michael Clare and submarine volcanologist Isobel Yeo, both at the U.K. National Oceanography Centre. They discuss the complex aftermath of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption, including fast and powerful ocean currents that severed seafloor cables.
Watch a related video on last year’s eruption by Meagan: How the Tonga volcanic eruption rippled through the earth, ocean and atmosphere.
Next on the show, an unexpected slowdown in connecting renewable power to the electrical grid. Freelance journalist Dan Charles joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how problems with modeling energy flow in the electrical grid are holding up wind and solar power projects across the country.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Meagan Cantwell; Dan Charles
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk7170
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Reducing calculus trauma, and teaching AI to smell
2023/08/31
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How active learning improves calculus teaching, and using machine learning to map odors in the smell space
First up on this week’s show, Laird Kramer, a professor of physics and faculty in the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University (FIU), talks with host Sarah Crespi about students leaving STEM fields because of calculus and his research into improving instruction.
We also hear from some Science staffers about their own calculus trauma, from fear of spinning shapes to thinking twice about majoring in physics (featuring Kevin McLean, Paul Voosen, Lizzie Wade, Meagan Cantwell, and FIU student and learning assistant Carolyn Marquez).
Next on the show, can a computer predict what something will smell like to a person by looking at its chemical structure? Emily Mayhew, a professor in the department of food science and human nutrition at Michigan State University, talks about how this was accomplished using a panel of trained smellers, and what the next steps are for digitizing the sense of smell.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen; Lizzie Wade
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk6142
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The source of solar wind, hackers and salt halt research, and a book on how institutions decide gender
2023/08/24
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A close look at a coronal hole, how salt and hackers can affect science, and the latest book in our series on science, sex, and gender
First up on this week’s show, determining the origin of solar wind—the streams of plasma that emerge from the Sun and envelope the Solar System. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, about how tiny jets in so-called coronal holes seem to be responsible. Sarah also talks with Science Editor Keith Smith about the source of the data, the Solar Orbiter mission. Read a related Perspective.
Next, two stories on unlikely reasons for slowing science. First, cyberattacks on telescopes scramble ground-based astronomy in Hawaii and Chile, with Diverse Voices Interns Tanvi Dutta Gupta and Celina Zhao. Also, we hear about an unparalleled water crisis in Uruguay that has left scientists high and dry, with science journalist María de los Ángeles Orfila.
Finally, in this month’s books segment in our series on science, sex, and gender, host Angela Saini talks with author and political scientist Paisley Currah about his book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, on why and how government institutions categorize people by sex and gender.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini; María de los Ángeles Orfila; Celina Zhao; Tanvi Dutta Gupta
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4714
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What killed off North American megafauna, and making languages less complicated
2023/08/17
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Ancient wildfires may have doomed Southern California’s big mammals, and do insular societies have more complex languages?
First up on this week’s show, what killed off North America’s megafauna, such as dire wolves and saber-toothed cats? Online News Editor Mike Price joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the likely culprits: climate or humans, or one that combines both—fire. They discuss how the La Brea Tar Pits are helping researchers figure this out. Read the related Science paper.
Next up, do languages get less complex when spoken in multilingual societies? Olena Shcherbakova, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, joins Sarah with a broad look at how the complexity of languages changes under different social and linguistic environments.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Trine Bartholdy, chief innovation officer at the BioInnovation Institute, an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark, about the continued disparity in women’s health research and funding and ways in which these challenges are being overcome. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Mike Price
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3475
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Why some trees find one another repulsive, and why we don’t know how much our hands weigh
2023/08/10
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First up on this week’s show, we hear about the skewed perception of our own hands, extremely weird giant viruses, champion regenerating flatworms, and more from Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox. Christie also chats with host Sarah Crespi about her work on a daily newsletter and what it takes to do it 5 days a week. Read more newsletters and sign up for your daily dose of Science and science.
Next on the show, AAAS Intern Andrew Saintsing learns about why trees are repulsive—to one another. Michael Kalyuzhny, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses his Science paper on why trees of the same species avoid living close together in diverse habitats such as rainforests.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Andrew Saintsing, Christie Wilcox
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk2064
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Tracing the genetic history of African Americans using ancient DNA, and ethical questions at a famously weird medical museum
2023/08/03
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Bringing together ancient DNA from a burial site and a giant database of consumer ancestry DNA helps fill gaps in African American ancestry, and a reckoning for Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum
First up on this week’s show, ancient DNA researchers and ancestry giant 23andMe joined forces to uncover present day ties to a cemetery at the Catoctin Furnace ironworks in Maryland, where enslaved people were buried. Contributing producers and hosts of the Dope Labs podcast Titi Shodiya and Zakiya Whatley spoke with authors Éadaoin Harney and David Reich about the historical significance of this work and how it may help some African American communities recover parts of their lost genealogy. Our News team also covered the paper here.
Next we have a conversation with Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega about Philadelphia’s famously creepy Mütter Museum. He talks to producer Kevin McLean about his recent story on the ethics of showcasing the various medical curiosities that the museum is known for.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean, Titi Shodiya, Zakiya Whatley, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1038
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Researchers collaborate with a social media giant, ancient livestock, and sex and gender in South Africa
2023/07/27
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On this week’s show: evaluating scientific collaborations between independent scholars and industry, farming in ancient Europe, and a book from our series on sex, gender, and science.
First up on this week’s show, a look behind the scenes at a collaboration between a social media company and 17 academics. Host Sarah Crespi speaks with Michael Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication who acted as an impartial observer for Meta’s U.S. 2020 election project. Wagner wrote a commentary piece about what worked and what didn’t in this massive project, which will spawn more than 15 papers, three of them out this week in Science.
Then, producer Meagan Cantwell speaks with Silvia Valenzuela Lamas about her talk about how sociopolitical changes shaped livestock in ancient Europe. Her talk was part of a session on migrations and exchanges in ancient civilizations from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting.
Also this week, the latest in our book series on sex, gender, and science. Host Angela Saini talks with author Amanda Lock Swarr about her book: Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
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Adding thousands of languages to the AI lexicon, and the genes behind our bones
2023/07/20
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A massive effort by African volunteers is ensuring artificial intelligence understands their native languages, and measuring 40,000 skeletons
Our AI summer continues with a look at how to get artificial intelligence to understand and translate the thousands of languages that don’t have large online sources of text and audio. Freelance journalist Sandeep Ravindran joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss Masakhane, a volunteer-based project dedicated to spurring growth in machine learning of African languages. See the whole special issue on AI here.
Also this week on the show, Eucharist Kun, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues used machine learning to take skeletal measurements from x-rays stored in the UK Biobank. Kun discusses links from these body proportions to genes, evolution, and disease.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews Aysha Akhtar, co-founder and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, about how the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act 2.0 along with advances in technology are clearing the way for alternatives to animal testing in the development of new drugs. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7646
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The AI special issue, adding empathy to robots, and scientists leaving Arecibo
2023/07/13
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Science’s NextGen voices share their thoughts on artificial intelligence, how to avoid creating sociopathic robots, and a visit to a historic observatory as researchers pack their bags
As part of a Science special issue on finding a place for artificial intelligence (AI) in science and society, Producer Kevin McLean shares voices from the next generation of researchers. We hear from students about how they think human scientists will still need to work alongside AI in the future.
Continuing the AI theme, we learn about instilling empathy to get better decisions from AI. Researcher Leonardo Christov-Moore, a neuroscientist at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, discusses his Science Robotics piece on the importance of feelings for future iterations of AI with host Sarah Crespi.
Finally, the status of the Arecibo Observatory. Sarah talks with Contributing Correspondent Claudia López Lloreda in Puerto Rico about scientists wrapping up their work at the facility, and the uncertain future of both their work prospects and the site itself.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Claudio Lopez Lloreda
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7011
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Putting the man-hunter and woman-gatherer myth to the sword, and the electron's dipole moment gets closer to zero
2023/07/06
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Worldwide survey kills the myth of “Man the Hunter,” and tightly constraining the electric dipole moment of the electron
First up this week on the show, freelance science writer Bridget Alex joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss busting the long-standing myth that in our deep past, virtually all hunters were men and women tended to be gatherers. It turns out women hunt in the vast majority of foraging societies, upending old stereotypes.
After that, we learn about a hunt for zero. Tanya Roussy, a recent Ph.D. graduate in quantum physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, discusses her work trying to constrain the electric dipole moment of the electron. She also talks about why the dipole moment being zero could be just as interesting as not zero to people studying the big mysteries of the universe—such as why matter and antimatter didn’t wipe each other out at the beginning of the universe. Read a related commentary.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Bridget Alex
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj5600
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Putting organs into the deep freeze, a scavenger hunt for robots, and a book on race and reproduction
2023/06/29
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On this week’s show: Improvements in cryopreservation technology, teaching robots to navigate new places, and the latest book in our series on sex and gender
First up this week on the show, scientists are learning how to “cryopreserve” tissues—from donor kidneys to coral larvae. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the latest in freezing and thawing technology.
Next up: How much does a robot need to “know” about the world to navigate it? Theophile Gervet, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses a scavenger hunt–style experiment that involves bringing robots to Airbnb rentals.
Finally, as part of our series of books on sex, gender, and science, host Angela Saini interviews author Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, about her book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Warren Cornwall
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj4684
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A space-based telescope to hunt dark energy, and what we can learn from scaleless snakes
2023/06/22
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On this week’s show: Euclid, a powerful platform for detecting dark energy, and a slithery segment on how snakes make scales
First up on the show this week, we’re taking the hunt for dark energy to space. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new space-based telescope called Euclid, set to launch next month. Euclid will kick off a new phase in the search for dark energy, the mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe.
Also on this week’s show, snakes reveal a new way to pattern the body. Athanasia Tzika, a senior lecturer in the genetics and evolution department at the University of Geneva, talks about her Science Advances paper on the novel way snakes organize their scales.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
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Why it’s tough to measure light pollution, and a mental health first aid course
2023/06/15
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A special issue on light pollution, and first aid for mental well-being
First up this week, cleaning up the night skies. As part of a special issue on light pollution, host Sarah Crespi talks with Stefan Wallner, a researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, about why light pollution is so difficult to measure and how coordination efforts between disciplines will help us darken the nights.
Also on this week’s show, a mental health first aid course for scientists. Azmi Ahmad, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Medicine, joins Sarah to discuss steps for supporting mental health day to day and during a crisis.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj2212
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Contraception for cats, and taking solvents out of chemistry
2023/06/08
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A single-shot cat contraceptive, and a close look at “dry” chemistry
First up this week: an innovation in cat contraception. Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about a nonsurgical pregnancy prevention technique for cats and why such an approach has been a long-term goal for cat population control.
Also on this week’s show, we hear about new insights into mechanical chemistry—using physical force to push molecules together. Science Editor Jake Yeston and Yerzhan Zholdassov, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry at the City University of New York, join Sarah to discuss why pushing things together works and how it might herald an era of solvent-free chemistry. Read a related commentary article.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Jake Yeston
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0996
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How we measure the world with our bodies, and hunting critical minerals
2023/06/01
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Body-based units of measure in cultural evolution, and how the geologic history of the United States can be used to find vital minerals
First up this week, we hear about the advantages of using the body to measure the world around you. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Roope Kaaronen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, about how and why cultures use body-based measurements, such as arm lengths and hand spans. Read the related commentary.
Also on this week’s show, the United States starts a big hunt for useful minerals. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins me to discuss the country’s Earth MRI project, which seeks to locate rare earth elements and other minerals critical to sustainable energy and technology within its borders.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi9883
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Talking tongues, detecting beer, and shifting perspectives on females
2023/05/25
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Why it’s so hard to understand the tongue, a book on a revolutionary shift toward studying the female of the species, and using proteomics to find beer in a painting
First on the show this week, Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to talk tongues: Who has them, who doesn’t, and all their amazing elaborations.
We also have the first in a new six-part series on books exploring the science of sex and gender. For this month’s installment, host Angela Saini talks with evolutionary biologist Malin Ah-King about her book The Female Turn: How Evolutionary Science Shifted Perceptions About Females.
Finally, detecting beer in early 19th century Danish paintings. Heritage scientist Fabiana Di Gianvincenzo of the Heritage Science Laboratory at the University of Ljubljana talks about her Science Advances paper on using proteomics to dig out clues to artistic practices of the day and how they fit in with the local beer-loving culture.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Elizabeth Pennisi
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi8592
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The earliest evidence for kissing, and engineering crops to clone themselves
2023/05/18
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Cloning vigorous crops, and finding the first romantic kiss
First up this week, building resilience into crops. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss all the tricks farmers use now to make resilient hybrid crops of rice or wheat and how genetically engineering hybrid crop plants to clone themselves may be the next step.
After that we ask: When did we start kissing? Troels Pank Arbøll is an assistant professor of Assyriology in the department of cross-cultural and regional studies at the University of Copenhagen. He and Sarah chat about the earliest evidence for kissing—romantic style—and why it is unlikely that such kisses had a single place or time of origin.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi7436
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Debating when death begins, and the fate of abandoned lands
2023/05/11
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A new approach promises to increase organ transplants but some question whether they should proceed without revisiting the definition of death, and what happens to rural lands when people head to urban centers
First up this week, innovations in organ transplantation lead to ethical debates. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and several transplant surgeons and doctors about defining death, technically. Also in this segment:
Anji Wall, abdominal transplant surgeon and bioethicist at Baylor University Medical Center
Marat Slessarav, consultant intensivist and donation physician at the London Health Sciences Centre and assistant professor in the department of medicine at Western University
Nader Moazami, surgical head of heart transplantation at New York University Langone Health
Next up, what happens to abandoned rural lands when people leave the countryside for cities? Producer Kevin McLean talks with Gergana Daskalova, a Schmidt Science Fellow in the Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, about how the end of human activities in these places can lead to opportunities for biodiversity.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Additional music provided by Looperman.com
About the Science Podcast
[Image: Martin Cathrae/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: partially collapsed old barn with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi6336
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Building big dream machines, and self-organizing landscapes
2023/05/04
The value of new voices in science and journalism, and what makes something memorable
2023/04/27
Mapping uncharted undersea volcanoes, and elephant seals dive deep to sleep
2023/04/20
More precise radiocarbon dating, secrets of hibernating bear blood, and a new book series
2023/04/13
Why not vaccinate chickens against avian flu, and new form of reproduction found in yellow crazy ants
2023/04/06
How the Maya thought about the ancient ruins in their midst, and the science of Braille
2023/03/30
New worries about Earth’s asteroid risk, and harnessing plants’ chemical factories
2023/03/23
An active volcano on Venus, and a concerning rise in early onset colon cancer
2023/03/16
Compassion fatigue in those who care for lab animals, and straightening out ocean conveyor belts
2023/03/09
Battling bias in medicine, and how dolphins use vocal fry
2023/03/02
Shrinking MRI machines, and the smell of tsetse fly love
2023/02/23
Earth’s hidden hydrogen, and a trip to Uranus
2023/02/16
Using sharks to study ocean oxygen, and what ancient minerals teach us about early Earth
2023/02/09
Visiting a mummy factory, and improving the IQ of … toilets
2023/02/02
Wolves hunting otters, and chemical weathering in a warming world
2023/01/26
Bad stats overturn ‘medical murders,’ and linking allergies with climate change
2023/01/19
Peering beyond the haze of alien worlds, and how failures help us make new discoveries
2023/01/12
A controversial dam in the Amazon unites Indigenous people and scientists, and transplanting mitochondria to treat rare diseases
2023/01/05
Year in review 2022: Best of online news, and podcast highlights
2022/12/22
Breakthrough of the Year, and the best in science books
2022/12/15
The state of science in Ukraine, and a conversation with Anthony Fauci
2022/12/08
A genetic history of Europe’s Jews, and measuring magma under a supervolcano
2022/12/01
Artificial intelligence takes on Diplomacy, and how much water do we really need?
2022/11/24
Mammoth ivory trade may be bad for elephants, and making green electronics with fungus
2022/11/17
Kurt Vonnegut’s contribution to science, and tunas and sharks as ecosystem indicators
2022/11/10
Cities as biodiversity havens, and gene therapy for epilepsy
2022/11/03
Space-based solar power gets serious, AI helps optimize chemistry, and a book on food extinction
2022/10/27
Snakes living the high-altitude life, and sending computing power to the edges of the internet
2022/10/20
Climate change threatens supercomputing, and collecting spider silks
2022/10/13
Linking violence in Myanmar to fossil amber research, and waking up bacterial spores
2022/10/06
Giving a lagoon personhood, measuring methane flaring, and a book about eating high on the hog
2022/09/29
Can wolves form close bonds with humans, and termites degrade wood faster as the world warms
2022/09/22
Testing planetary defenses against asteroids, and building a giant ‘water machine’
2022/09/15
Why the fight against malaria has stalled in southern Africa, and how to look for signs of life on Mars
2022/09/08
Using free-floating DNA to find soldiers’ remains, and how people contribute to indoor air chemistry
2022/09/01
Chasing Arctic cyclones, brain coordination in REM sleep, and a book on seafood in the information age
2022/08/25
Monitoring a nearby star’s midlife crisis, and the energetic cost of chewing
2022/08/18
Cougars caught killing donkeys in Death Valley, and decoding the nose
2022/08/11
Invasive grasses get help from fire, and a global map of ant diversity
2022/08/04
Probing beyond our Solar System, sea pollinators, and a book on the future of nutrition
2022/07/28
Possible fabrications in Alzheimer’s research, and bad news for life on Enceladus
2022/07/21
The Webb Space Telescope’s first images, and why scratching sometimes makes you itchy
2022/07/14
Running out of fuel for fusion, and addressing gender-based violence in India
2022/07/07
Former pirates help study the seas, and waves in the atmosphere can drive global tsunamis
2022/06/30
Using waste to fuel airplanes, nature-based climate solutions, and a book on Indigenous conservation
2022/06/23
A look at Long Covid, and why researchers and police shouldn’t use the same DNA kits
2022/06/16
Saving the Spix’s macaw, and protecting the energy grid
2022/06/09
The historic Maya’s sophisticated stargazing knowledge, and whether there is a cost to natural cloning
2022/06/02
Saying farewell to Insight, connecting the microbiome and the brain, and a book on agriculture in Africa
2022/05/26
Seeing the Milky Way’s central black hole, and calling dolphins by their names
2022/05/19
Fixing fat bubbles for vaccines, and preventing pain from turning chronic
2022/05/12
Staking out the start of the Anthropocene, and why sunscreen is bad for coral
2022/05/05
Using quantum tools to track dark matter, why rabies remains, and a book series on science and food
2022/04/28
Protecting birds from brightly lit buildings, and controlling robots from orbit
2022/04/21
Desert ‘skins’ drying up, and one of the oldest Maya calendars
2022/04/14
A surprisingly weighty fundamental particle, and surveying the seas for RNA viruses
2022/04/07
Probing Earth’s mysterious inner core, and the most complete human genome to date
2022/03/31
Scientists become targets on social media, and battling space weather
2022/03/24
The challenges of testing medicines during pregnancy, and when not paying attention makes sense
2022/03/17
Monitoring wastewater for SARS-CoV-2, and looking back at the biggest questions about the pandemic
2022/03/10
A global treaty on plastic pollution, and a dearth of Black physicists
2022/03/03
Securing nuclear waste for 100,000 years, and the link between math literacy and life satisfaction
2022/02/24
COVID-19’s long-term impact on the heart, and calculating the survival rate of human artifacts
2022/02/17
Merging supermassive black holes, and communicating science in the age of social media
2022/02/10
Building a green city in a biodiversity hot spot, and live monitoring vehicle emissions
2022/02/03
Fecal transplants in pill form, and gut bacteria that nourish hibernating squirrels
2022/01/27
A window into live brains, and what saliva tells babies about human relationships
2022/01/20
Cloning for conservation, and divining dynamos on super-Earths
2022/01/13
Setting up a permafrost observatory, and regulating transmissible vaccines
2022/01/06
Top online stories, the state of marijuana research, and Afrofuturism
2021/12/23
The Breakthrough of the year show, and the best of science books
2021/12/16
Tapping fiber optic cables for science, and what really happens when oil meets water
2021/12/09
The ethics of small COVID-19 trials, and visiting an erupting volcano
2021/12/02
Why trees are making extra nuts this year, human genetics and viral infections, and a seminal book on racism and identity
2021/11/25
Wildfires could threaten ozone layer, and vaccinating against tick bites
2021/11/18
The long road to launching the James Webb Space Telescope, and genes for a longer life span
2021/11/11
The folate debate, and rewriting the radiocarbon curve
2021/11/04
Sleeping without a brain, tracking alien invasions, and algorithms of oppression
2021/10/28
Soil science goes deep, and making moldable wood
2021/10/20
The ripple effects of mass incarceration, and how much is a dog’s nose really worth?
2021/10/14
Swarms of satellites could crowd out the stars, and the evolution of hepatitis B over 10 millennia
2021/10/07
Whole-genome screening for newborns, and the importance of active learning for STEM
2021/09/30
Earliest human footprints in North America, dating violins with tree rings, and the social life of DNA
2021/09/23
Potty training cows, and sardines swimming into an ecological trap
2021/09/16
Legions of lunar landers, and why we make robots that look like people
2021/09/09
Pinpointing the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and making vortex beams of atoms
2021/09/02
New insights into endometriosis, predicting RNA folding, and the surprising career of the spirometer
2021/08/26
Building a martian analog on Earth, and moral outrage on social media
2021/08/19
A risky clinical trial design, and attacks on machine learning
2021/08/12
A freeze on prion research, and watching cement dry
2021/08/05
Debating healthy obesity, delaying type 1 diabetes, and visiting bone rooms
2021/07/29
Blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease, and what earthquakes on Mars reveal about the Red Planet’s core
2021/07/22
Science after COVID-19, and a landslide that became a flood
2021/07/15
Scientists’ role in the opioid crisis, 3D-printed candy proteins, and summer books
2021/07/08
Preserving plastic art, and a gold standard for measuring extreme pressure
2021/07/01
Does Botox combat depression, the fruit fly sex drive, and a series on race and science
2021/06/24
Keeping ads out of dreams, and calculating the cost of climate displacement
2021/06/17
Finding consciousness outside the brain, and using DNA to reunite families
2021/06/10
Cicada citizen science, and expanding the genetic code
2021/06/03
Cracking consciousness, and taking the temperature of urban heat islands
2021/05/27
Ecstasy plus therapy for PTSD, and the effects of early childhood development programs on mothers
2021/05/20
Cutting shipping air pollution may cause water pollution, and keeping air clean with lightning
2021/05/13
Chernobyl’s ruins grow restless, and entangling macroscopic objects
2021/05/06
Storing wind as gravity, and well-digging donkeys
2021/04/29
Rebuilding Louisiana’s coast, and recycling plastic into fuel
2021/04/22
Why muon magnetism matters, and a count of all the Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived
2021/04/15
Magnetar mysteries, and when humans got big brains
2021/04/08
Fighting outbreaks with museum collections, and making mice hallucinate
2021/04/01
Social insects as models for aging, and crew conflict on long space missions
2021/03/25
COVID-19 treatment at 1 year, and smarter materials for smarter cities
2021/03/18
Next-generation gravitational wave detectors, and sponges that soak up frigid oil spills
2021/03/11
The world’s oldest pet cemetery, and how eyeless worms can see color
2021/03/04
Measuring Earth’s surface like never before, and the world’s fastest random number generator
2021/02/25
All your COVID-19 vaccine questions answered, and a new theory on forming rocky planets
2021/02/18
Building Africa’s Great Green Wall, and using whale songs as seismic probess
2021/02/11
Looking back at 20 years of human genome sequencing
2021/02/04
Calculating the social cost of carbon, and listening to mole-rat chirps
2021/01/28
Counting research rodents, a possible cause for irritable bowel syndrome, and spitting cobras
2021/01/21
An elegy for Arecibo, and how our environments may change our behavior
2021/01/14
The uncertain future of North America’s ash trees, and organizing robot swarms
2021/01/07
Areas to watch in 2021, and the living microbes in wildfire smoke
2020/12/31
Breakthrough of the Year, top online news, and science book highlights
2020/12/17
Making ecology studies replicable, and a turnaround for the Tasmanian devil
2020/12/10
How the new COVID-19 vaccines work, and restoring vision with brain implants
2020/12/03
Keeping coronavirus from spreading in schools, why leaves fall when they do, and a book on how nature deals with crisis
2020/11/26
Fish farming’s future, and how microbes compete for space on our face
2020/11/19
How the human body handles extreme heat, and improvements in cooling clothes
2020/11/12
What we can learn from a mass of black hole mergers, and ecological insights from 30 years of Arctic animal movements
2020/11/05
Taking the politicians out of tough policy decisions; the late, great works of Charles Turner; and the science of cooking
2020/10/29
Early approval of a COVID-19 vaccine could cause ethical problems for other vax candidates, and ‘upcycling’ plastic bags
2020/10/22
Making sure American Indian COVID-19 cases are counted, and feeding a hungry heart
2020/10/15
Visiting a once-watery asteroid, and how buzzing the tongue can treat tinnitus
2020/10/08
FDA clinical trial protection failures, and an AI that can beat curling’s top players
2020/10/01
How Neanderthals got human Y chromosomes, and the earliest human footprints in Arabia
2020/09/24
Performing magic for animals, and why the pandemic is pushing people out of prisons
2020/09/17
Alien hunters get a funding boost, and checking on the link between chromosome ‘caps’ and aging
2020/09/10
Fighting Europe’s second wave of COVID-19, and making democracy work for poor people
2020/09/03
Arctic sea ice under attack, and ancient records that can predict the future effects of climate change
2020/08/27
Wildlife behavior during a global lockdown, and electric mud microbes
2020/08/20
A call for quick coronavirus testing, and building bonds with sports
2020/08/13
Why COVID-19 poses a special risk during pregnancy, and how hair can split steel
2020/08/06
Fighting COVID-19 vaccine fears, tracking the pandemic’s origin, and a new technique for peering under paint
2020/07/30
How Hiroshima survivors helped form radiation safety rules, and a path to stop plastic pollution
2020/07/23
Reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, and taking the heat out of crude oil separation
2020/07/16
A fast moving megatrial for coronavirus treatments, and transferring the benefits of exercise by transferring blood
2020/07/09
An oasis of biodiversity a Mexican desert, and making sound from heat
2020/07/02
Stopping the spread of COVID-19, and arctic adaptations in sled dogs
2020/06/25
Coronavirus spreads financial turmoil to universities, and a drone that fights mosquito-borne illnesses
2020/06/18
The facts on COVID-19 contact tracing apps, and benefits of returning sea otters to the wild
2020/06/11
Why men may have more severe COVID-19 symptoms, and using bacteria to track contaminated food
2020/06/04
A rare condition associated with coronavirus in children, and tracing glaciers by looking at the ocean floor
2020/05/28
How scientists are thinking about reopening labs, and the global threat of arsenic in drinking water
2020/05/21
How past pandemics reinforced inequality, and millions of mysterious quakes beneath a volcano
2020/05/14
Making antibodies to treat coronavirus, and why planting trees won’t save the planet
2020/05/07
Blood test for multiple cancers studied in 10,000 women, and is our Sun boring?
2020/04/30
From nose to toes—how coronavirus affects the body, and a quantum microscope that unlocks the magnetic secrets of very old rocks
2020/04/23
How countries could recover from coronavirus, lessons from an ancient drought, and feeling tactile waves in the hand
2020/04/16
Does coronavirus spread through the air, and the biology of anorexia
2020/04/09
How COVID-19 disease models shape shutdowns, and detecting emotions in mice
2020/04/02
Why some diseases come and go with the seasons, and how to develop smarter, safer chemicals
2020/03/26
Ancient artifacts on the beaches of Northern Europe, and how we remember music
2020/03/19
Science’s leading role in the restoration of Notre Dame and the surprising biology behind how our body develops its tough skin
2020/03/12
Dog noses detect heat, the world faces coronavirus, and scientists search for extraterrestrial life
2020/03/05
An ancient empire hiding in plain sight, and the billion-dollar cost of illegal fishing
2020/02/27
Brickmaking bacteria and solar cells that turn ‘waste’ heat into electricity
2020/02/20
NIH’s new diversity hiring program, and the role of memory suppression in resilience to trauma
2020/02/13
Fighting cancer with CRISPR, and dating ancient rock art with wasp nests
2020/02/06
A cryo–electron microscope accessible to the masses, and tracing the genetics of schizophrenia
2020/01/30
Getting BPA out of food containers, and tracing minute chemical mixtures in the environment
2020/01/23
Researchers flouting clinical reporting rules, and linking gut microbes to heart disease and diabetes
2020/01/16
Squeezing two people into an MRI machine, and deciding between what’s reasonable and what’s rational
2020/01/09
Areas to watch in 2020, and how carnivorous plants evolved impressive traps
2020/01/02
Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in books
2019/12/19
Hunting for new epilepsy drugs, and capturing lightning from space
2019/12/13
Debating lab monkey retirement, and visiting a near-Earth asteroid
2019/12/05
Double dipping in an NIH loan repayment program, and using undersea cables as seismic sensors
2019/11/28
Building a landslide observatory, and the universality of music
2019/11/21
How to make an Arctic ship ‘vanish,’ and how fast-moving spikes are heating the Sun’s atmosphere
2019/11/14
Unearthing slavery in the Caribbean, and the Catholic Church’s influence on modern psychology
2019/11/07
How measles wipes out immune memory, and detecting small black holes
2019/10/31
A worldwide worm survey, and racial bias in a health care algorithm
2019/10/24
Trying to find the mind in the brain, and why adults are always criticizing ‘kids these days’
2019/10/17
Fossilized dinosaur proteins, and making a fridge from rubber bands
2019/10/10
An app for eye disease, and planting memories in songbirds
2019/10/03
Privacy concerns slow Facebook studies, and how human fertility depends on chromosome counts
2019/09/26
Cooling Earth with asteroid dust, and 3 billion missing birds
2019/09/19
Studying human health at 5100 meters, and playing hide and seek with rats
2019/09/12
Searching for a lost Maya city, and measuring the information density of language
2019/09/05
Where our microbiome came from, and how our farming and hunting ancestors transformed the world
2019/08/29
Promising approaches in suicide prevention, and how to retreat from climate change
2019/08/22
One million ways to sex a chicken egg, and how plastic finds its way to Arctic ice
2019/08/15
Next-generation cellphone signals could interfere with weather forecasts, and monitoring smoke from wildfires to model nuclear winter
2019/08/08
Earthquakes caused by too much water extraction, and a dog cancer that has lived for millennia
2019/08/01
Breeding better bees, and training artificial intelligence on emotional imagery
2019/07/25
Can we inherit trauma from our ancestors, and the secret to dark liquid dances
2019/07/18
The point of pointing, and using seabirds to track ocean health
2019/07/11
Converting carbon dioxide into gasoline, and ‘autofocal’ glasses with lenses that change shape on the fly
2019/07/04
Creating chimeras for organ transplants and how bats switch between their eyes and ears on the wing
2019/06/27
The why of puppy dog eyes, and measuring honesty on a global scale
2019/06/20
Better hurricane forecasts and spotting salts on Jupiter’s moon Europa
2019/06/13
The limits on human endurance, and a new type of LED
2019/06/06
Grad schools dropping the GRE requirement and AIs play capture the flag
2019/05/30
New targets for the world’s biggest atom smasher and wood designed to cool buildings
2019/05/23
Nonstick chemicals that stick around and detecting ear infections with smartphones
2019/05/16
Probing the secrets of the feline mind and how Uber and Lyft may be making traffic worse
2019/05/09
The age-old quest for the color blue and why pollution is not killing the killifish
2019/05/02
Race and disease risk and Berlin’s singing nightingales
2019/04/25
How dental plaque reveals the history of dairy farming, and how our neighbors view food waste
2019/04/18
A new species of ancient human and real-time evolutionary changes in flowering plants
2019/04/11
A radioactive waste standoff and science’s debt to the slave trade
2019/04/04
Mysterious racehorse injuries, and reforming the U.S. bail system
2019/03/28
Vacuuming potato-size nodules of valuable metals in the deep sea, and an expedition to an asteroid 290 million kilometers away
2019/03/21
Mysterious fast radio bursts and long-lasting effects of childhood cancer treatments
2019/03/14
Clues that the medieval plague swept into sub-Saharan Africa and evidence humans hunted and butchered giant ground sloths 12,000 years ago
2019/03/07
Measuring earthquake damage with cellphone sensors and determining the height of the ancient Tibetan Plateau
2019/02/28
Spotting slavery from space, and using iPads for communication disorders
2019/02/21
How far out we can predict the weather, and an ocean robot that monitors food webs
2019/02/14
Possible potato improvements, and a pill that gives you a jab in the gut
2019/02/07
Treating the microbiome, and a gene that induces sleep
2019/01/31
Pollution from pot plants, and how our bodies perceive processed foods
2019/01/24
Peering inside giant planets, and fighting Ebola in the face of fake news
2019/01/17
A mysterious blue pigment in the teeth of a medieval woman, and the evolution of online master’s degrees
2019/01/10
Will a radical open-access proposal catch on, and quantifying the most deadly period of the Holocaust
2019/01/03
End of the year podcast: 2018’s breakthroughs, breakdowns, and top online stories
2018/12/20
‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ turns 50, and how Neanderthal DNA could change your skull
2018/12/13
Where private research funders stow their cash and studying gun deaths in children
2018/12/06
The universe’s star formation history and a powerful new helper for evolution
2018/11/29
Exploding the Cambrian and building a DNA database for forensics
2018/11/22
The worst year ever and the effects of fasting
2018/11/15
A big increase in monkey research and an overhaul for the metric system
2018/11/08
How the appendix could hold the keys to Parkinson’s disease, and materials scientists mimic nature
2018/11/01
Children sue the U.S. government over climate change, and how mice inherit their gut microbes
2018/10/25
Mutant cells in the esophagus, and protecting farmers from dangerous pesticide exposure
2018/10/18
What we can learn from a cluster of people with an inherited intellectual disability, and questioning how sustainable green lawns are in dry places
2018/10/11
Odd new particles may be tunneling through the planet, and how the flu operates differently in big and small towns
2018/10/04
The future of PCB-laden orca whales, and doing genomics work with Indigenous people
2018/09/27
Metaresearchers take on meta-analyses, and hoary old myths about science
2018/09/20
The youngest sex chromosomes on the block, and how to test a Zika vaccine without Zika cases
2018/09/13
Should we prioritize which endangered species to save, and why were chemists baffled by soot for so long?
2018/09/06
<i>Science</i> and <i>Nature</i> get their social science studies replicated—or not, the mechanisms behind human-induced earthquakes, and the taboo of claiming causality in science
2018/08/30
Sending flocks of tiny satellites out past Earth orbit and solving the irrigation efficiency paradox
2018/08/23
Ancient volcanic eruptions, and peer pressure—from robots
2018/08/16
Doubts about the drought that kicked off our latest geological age, and a faceoff between stink bugs with samurai wasps
2018/08/09
How our brains may have evolved for language, and clues to what makes us leaders—or followers
2018/08/02
Liquid water on Mars, athletic performance in transgender women, and the lost colony of Roanoke
2018/07/26
Why the platypus gave up suckling, and how gravity waves clear clouds
2018/07/19
The South Pole’s IceCube detector catches a ghostly particle from deep space, and how rice knows to grow when submerged
2018/07/12
A polio outbreak threatens global eradication plans, and what happened to America’s first dogs
2018/07/05
Increasing transparency in animal research to sway public opinion, and a reaching a plateau in human mortality
2018/06/28
New evidence in Cuba’s ‘sonic attacks,’ and finding an extinct gibbon—in a royal Chinese tomb
2018/06/21
The places where HIV shows no sign of ending, and the parts of the human brain that are bigger—in bigger brains
2018/06/14
Science books for summer, and a blood test for predicting preterm birth
2018/06/07
The first midsize black holes, and the environmental impact of global food production
2018/05/31
Sketching suspects with DNA, and using light to find Zika-infected mosquitoes
2018/05/24
Tracking ancient Rome’s rise using Greenland’s ice, and fighting fungicide resistance
2018/05/17
Ancient DNA is helping find the first horse tamers, and a single gene is spawning a fierce debate in salmon conservation
2018/05/10
The twins climbing Mount Everest for science, and the fractal nature of human bone
2018/05/03
Deciphering talking drums, and squeezing more juice out of solar panels
2018/04/26
Drug use in the ancient world, and what will happen to plants as carbon dioxide levels increase
2018/04/19
How DNA is revealing Latin America’s lost histories, and how to make a molecule from just two atoms
2018/04/12
Legendary Viking crystals, and how to put an octopus to sleep
2018/04/05
Chimpanzee retirement gains momentum, and x-ray ‘ghost images’ could cut radiation doses
2018/03/29
A possible cause for severe morning sickness, and linking mouse moms’ caretaking to brain changes in baby mice
2018/03/22
How humans survived an ancient volcanic winter and how disgust shapes ecosystems
2018/03/15
Animals that don’t need people to be domesticated; the astonishing spread of false news; and links between gender, sexual orientation, and speech
2018/03/08
A new dark matter signal from the early universe, massive family trees, and how we might respond to alien contact
2018/03/01
Neandertals that made art, live news from the AAAS Annual Meeting, and the emotional experience of being a scientist
2018/02/22
Genes that turn off after death, and debunking the sugar conspiracy
2018/02/15
Happy lab animals may make better research subjects, and understanding the chemistry of the indoor environment
2018/02/08
Following 1000 people for decades to learn about the interplay of health, environment, and temperament, and investigating why naked mole rats don’t seem to age
2018/02/01
The dangers of dismantling a geoengineered sun shield and the importance of genes we don’t inherit
2018/01/25
Unearthed letters reveal changes in Fields Medal awards, and predicting crime with computers is no easy feat
2018/01/18
Salad-eating sharks, and what happens after quantum computing achieves quantum supremacy
2018/01/11
Who visits raccoon latrines, and boosting cancer therapy with gut microbes
2018/01/04
<i>Science</i>’s Breakthrough of the Year, our best online news, and science books for your shopping list
2017/12/21
Putting the breaks on driverless cars, and dolphins that can muffle their ears
2017/12/14
Folding DNA into teddy bears and getting creative about gun violence research
2017/12/07
Debunking yeti DNA, and the incredibly strong arms of prehistoric female farmers
2017/11/30
The world’s first dog pictures, and looking at the planet from a quantum perspective
2017/11/22
Preventing psychosis and the evolution—or not—of written language
2017/11/16
Randomizing the news for science, transplanting genetically engineered skin, and the ethics of experimental brain implants
2017/11/09
How Earth’s rotation could predict giant quakes, gene therapy’s new hope, and how carbon monoxide helps deep-diving seals
2017/11/02
Building conscious machines, tracing asteroid origins, and how the world’s oldest forests grew
2017/10/26
LIGO spots merging neutron stars, scholarly questions about a new Bible museum, and why wolves are better team players than dogs
2017/10/19
Evolution of skin color, taming rice thrice, and peering into baby brains
2017/10/12
Putting rescue robots to the test, an ancient Scottish village buried in sand, and why costly drugs may have more side effects
2017/10/05
Furiously beating bat hearts, giant migrating wombats, and puzzling out preprint publishing
2017/09/28
Cosmic rays from beyond our galaxy, sleeping jellyfish, and counting a language’s words for colors
2017/09/21
Cargo-sorting molecular robots, humans as the ultimate fire starters, and molecular modeling with quantum computers
2017/09/14
Taking climate science to court, sailing with cylinders, and solar cooling
2017/09/07
Mysteriously male crocodiles, the future of negotiating AIs, and atomic bonding between the United States and China
2017/08/31
What hunter-gatherer gut microbiomes have that we don’t, and breaking the emoji code
2017/08/24
A jump in rates of knee arthritis, a brief history of eclipse science, and bands and beats in the atmosphere of brown dwarfs
2017/08/17
Coddled puppies don’t do as well in school, some trees make their own rain, and the Americas were probably first populated by ancient mariners
2017/08/10
The biology of color, a database of industrial espionage, and a link between prions and diabetes
2017/08/03
DNA and proteins from ancient books, music made from data, and the keys to poverty traps
2017/07/27
Paying cash for carbon, making dogs friendly, and destroying all life on Earth
2017/07/20
Still-living dinosaurs, the world’s first enzymes, and thwarting early adopters in tech
2017/07/13
Odorless calories for weight loss, building artificial intelligence researchers can trust, and can oily birds fly?
2017/07/06
A Stone Age skull cult, rogue Parkinson’s proteins in the gut, and controversial pesticides linked to bee deaths
2017/06/29
Why eggs have such weird shapes, doubly domesticated cats, and science balloons on the rise
2017/06/22
Slowly retiring chimps, tanning at the cellular level, and plumbing magma’s secrets
2017/06/15
How to weigh a star—with a little help from Einstein, toxic ‘selfish genes,’ and the world’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils
2017/06/08
A new taste for the tongue, ancient DNA from Egyptian mummies, and early evidence for dog breeding
2017/06/01
How whales got so big, sperm in space, and a first look at Jupiter’s poles
2017/05/25
Preventing augmented-reality overload, fixing bone with tiny bubbles, and studying human migrations
2017/05/18
Our newest human relative, busting human sniff myths, and the greenhouse gas that could slow global warming
2017/05/11
Podcast: Reading pain from the brains of infants, modeling digital faces, and wifi holograms
2017/05/04
Podcast: Where dog breeds come from, bots that build buildings, and gathering ancient human DNA from cave sediments
2017/04/27
Podcast: When good lions go bad, listening to meteor crashes, and how humans learn to change the world
2017/04/20
Podcast: Watching shoes untie, Cassini’s last dive through the breath of a cryovolcano, and how human bias influences machine learning
2017/04/13
Podcast: Giant virus genetics, human high-altitude adaptations, and quantifying the impact of government-funded science
2017/04/06
Podcast: Killing off stowaways to Mars, chasing synthetic opiates, and how soil contributes to global carbon calculations
2017/03/30
Podcast: Teaching self-driving cars to read, improving bike safety with a video game, and when ‘you’ isn’t about ‘you’
2017/03/23
Podcast: The archaeology of democracy, new additions to the uncanny valley, and the discovery of ant-ibiotics
2017/03/16
Podcast: Human pheromones lightly debunked, ignoring cyberattacks, and designer chromosomes
2017/03/09
Podcast: Breaking the 2-hour marathon barrier, storing data in DNA, and how past civilizations shaped the Amazon
2017/03/02
Podcast: Cracking the smell code, why dinosaurs had wings before they could fly, and detecting guilty feelings in altruistic gestures
2017/02/23
Podcast: Recognizing the monkey in the mirror, giving people malaria parasites as a vaccine strategy, and keeping coastal waters clean with seagrass
2017/02/16
Podcast: Saving grizzlies from trains, cheap sun-powered water purification, and a deep look at science-based policymaking
2017/02/09
Podcast: An 80-million-year-old dinosaur protein, sending oxygen to the moon, and competitive forecasting
2017/02/02
Podcast: Bringing back tomato flavor genes, linking pollution and dementia, and when giant otters roamed Earth
2017/01/26
Podcast: Explaining menopause in killer whales, triggering killer mice, and the role of chromosome number in cancer immunotherapy
2017/01/19
Podcast: A blood test for concussions, how the hagfish escapes from sharks, and optimizing carbon storage in trees
2017/01/12
Podcast: An ethics conundrum from the Nazi era, baby dinosaur development, and a new test for mad cow disease
2017/01/05
Podcast: Our Breakthrough of the Year, top online stories, and the year in science books
2016/12/22
The sound of a monkey talking, cloning horses for sport, and forensic anthropologists help the search for Mexico’s disappeared
2016/12/15
Podcast: Altering time perception, purifying blueberries with plasma, and checking in on ocelot latrines
2016/12/08
Podcast: What ants communicate when kissing, stars birthed from gas, and linking immune strength and social status
2016/12/01
Podcast: Scientists on the night shift, sucking up greenhouse gases with cement, and repetitive stress in tomb builders
2016/11/24
Podcast: The rise of skeletons, species-blurring hybrids, and getting rightfully ditched by a taxi
2016/11/17
Podcast: How farms made dogs love carbs, the role of dumb luck in science, and what your first flu exposure did to you
2016/11/10
Podcast: The impact of legal pot on opioid abuse, and a very early look at a fetus’s genome
2016/11/03
Podcast: A close look at a giant moon crater, the long tradition of eating rodents, and building evidence for Planet Nine
2016/10/27
Podcast: Science lessons for the next U.S. president, human high altitude adjustments, and the elusive Higgs bison
2016/10/20
Podcast: When we pay attention to plane crashes, releasing modified mosquitoes, and bacteria that live off radiation
2016/10/13
Podcast: Bumble bee emotions, the purpose of yawning, and new insights into the developing infant brain
2016/10/06
Podcast: Why we murder, resurrecting extinct animals, and the latest on the three-parent baby
2016/09/29
Podcast: An atmospheric pacemaker skips a beat, a religious edict that spawned fat chickens, and knocking out the ‘sixth sense’
2016/09/22
Podcast: A burning body experiment, prehistoric hunting dogs, and seeding life on other planets
2016/09/15
Podcast: Double navigation in desert ants, pollution in the brain, and dating deal breakers
2016/09/08
Podcast: Ceres’s close-up, how dogs listen, and a new RNA therapy
2016/09/01
Podcast: Quantum dots in consumer electronics and a faceoff with the quiz master
2016/08/25
Podcast: How mice mess up reproducibility, new support for an RNA world, and giving cash away wisely
2016/08/18
Podcast: 400-year-old sharks, busting a famous scientific hoax, and clinical trials in pets
2016/08/11
Podcast: Pollution hot spots in coastal waters, extreme bees, and diseased dinos
2016/08/04
Podcast: Saving wolves that aren’t really wolves, bird-human partnership, and our oldest common ancestor
2016/07/28
Podcast: An omnipresent antimicrobial, a lichen ménage à trois, and tiny tide-induced tremors
2016/07/21
Podcast: The science of the apocalypse, and abstract thinking in ducklings
2016/07/14
Podcast: An exoplanet with three suns, no relief for aching knees, and building better noses
2016/07/07
Podcast: Ending AIDS in South Africa, what makes plants gamble, and genes that turn on after death
2016/06/30
Podcast: A farewell to <i>Science</i>’s editor-in-chief, how mosquito spit makes us sick, and bears that use human shields
2016/06/23
Podcast: Treating cocaine addiction, mirror molecules in space, and new insight into autism
2016/06/16
Podcast: Scoliosis development, antiracing stripes, and the dawn of the hobbits
2016/06/09
Podcast: Bionic leaves that make fuel, digging into dog domestication, and wars recorded in coral
2016/06/02
Podcast: The economics of the Uber era, mysterious Neandertal structures, and an octopus boom
2016/05/26
Podcast: Tracking rats in a city slum, the giraffe genome, and watching human evolution in action
2016/05/19
Podcast: Rocky remnants of early Earth, plants turned predator, and a new artificial second skin
2016/05/12
Podcast: Why animal personalities matter, killer whale sanctuaries, and the key to making fraternal twins
2016/05/05
Podcast: Patent trolls, the earthquake-volcano link, and obesity in China
2016/04/28
Podcast: Sizing up a baby dino, jolting dead brains, and dirty mice
2016/04/21
Podcast: Tracking Zika, the evolution of sign language, and changing hearts and minds with social science
2016/04/14
Podcast: Spreading cancer, sacrificing humans, and transplanting organs
2016/04/07
Podcast: Building a portable drug factory, mapping yeast globally, and watching cliffs crumble
2016/03/31
Podcast: Battling it out in the Bronze Age, letting go of orcas, and evolving silicon-based life
2016/03/24
Podcast: The latest news from Pluto, a rock-eating fungus, and tracking storm damage with Twitter
2016/03/17
Podcast: Nuclear forensics, honesty in a sea of lies, and how sliced meat drove human evolution
2016/03/10
Podcast: Glowing robot skin, zombie frogs, and viral fossils in our DNA
2016/03/03
Podcast: A recipe for clean and tasty drinking water, a gauge on rapidly rising seas, and fake flowers that can fool the most discerning insects
2016/02/25
Podcast: Combatting malnutrition with gut microbes, fighting art forgers with science, and killing cancer with gold
2016/02/18
Podcast: The effects of Neandertal DNA on health, squishing bugs for science, and sleepy confessions
2016/02/11
Podcast: Taking race out of genetics, a cellular cleanse for longer life, and smart sweatbands
2016/02/04
Podcast: Babylonian astronomers, doubly domesticated cats, and outrunning a T. Rex
2016/01/28
Podcast: A planet beyond Pluto, the bugs in your home, and the link between marijuana and IQ
2016/01/21
Podcast: Wounded mammoths, brave birds, bright bulbs, and more
2016/01/14
Podcast: Dancing dinosaurs, naked black holes, and more
2016/01/08
The Science breakthrough of the year, readers' choice, and the top news from 2015.
2015/12/17
Artificial intelligence programs that learn concepts based on just a few examples and a daily news roundup
2015/12/10
How our gut microbiota change as we age and a daily news roundup
2015/12/03
Can "big data" from mobile phones pinpoint pockets of poverty? And a news roundup
2015/11/26
Bioengineering functional vocal cords and a daily news roundup
2015/11/19
The consequences of mass extinction and a daily news roundup
2015/11/12
The evolution of Mars' atmosphere and a daily news roundup
2015/11/05
The origins of biodiversity in the Amazon and a daily news roundup
2015/10/29
The neuroscience of reversing blindness and a daily news roundup
2015/10/22
Pluto's mysteries revealed and a daily news roundup
2015/10/15
Can math apps benefit kids? And a daily news roundup
2015/10/08
Safer jet fuels and a daily news roundup
2015/10/01
3-parent gene therapy for mitochondrial diseases and a news roundup
2015/09/24
How future elites view self-interest and equality and a news roundup
2015/09/17
Genes and the human microbiome and a news roundup
2015/09/10
The state of science in Iran and a news roundup
2015/09/03
Moralizing gods, scientific reproducibility, and a daily news roundup
2015/08/27
Human superpredators and a news roundup
2015/08/20
Marmoset monkey vocal development and a news roundup
2015/08/13
Effective Ebola vaccines and a daily news roundup
2015/08/06
Comet chemistry and a news roundup
2015/07/30
Ancient DNA and a news roundup
2015/07/23
AI therapists and a news roundup
2015/07/16
Jumping soft bots and a news roundup
2015/07/09
The scent of a rose and a news roundup
2015/07/02
Metallic hydrogen and a daily news roundup.
2015/06/25
Tracking ivory with genetics, the letter R, and a news roundup
2015/06/18
Tracking aquatic animals, cochlear implants, and a news roundup
2015/06/11
Friction at the atomic level, the acoustics of historical speeches, and a news roundup
2015/06/04
Climate change and China's tea crop and a news roundup
2015/05/28
Testosterone, women, and elite sports and a news roundup
2015/05/21
Science in Cuba and a news roundup
2015/05/14
How the measles virus disables immunity to other diseases and a news roundup
2015/05/07
Sustainable seafood and a news roundup
2015/04/30
Hubble's 25th anniversary and a news roundup
2015/04/23
The bond between people and dogs and a news roundup
2015/04/16
Mountain gorilla genomes and a news roundup
2015/04/09
The Deepwater Horizon disaster: Five years later.
2015/04/02
Child abuse across generations and a news roundup
2015/03/26
Robotic materials and a news roundup
2015/03/19
The politics of happiness and a news roundup
2015/03/12
Antimicrobial resistance and a news roundup
2015/03/05
Sexual trait evolution in mosquitoes and a news roundup
2015/02/26
Maternal effects in songbirds and a news roundup
2015/02/19
The planetary boundaries framework, marine debris, and a news roundup
2015/02/12
Spatial neurons and a news roundup
2015/02/05
Mathematicians and the NSA and a news roundup
2015/01/29
How comets change seasonally and a news roundup
2015/01/22
High-altitude bird migration and a news roundup
2015/01/15
Deworming buffalo and a news roundup
2015/01/08
Measuring MOOCs
2015/01/01
Our breakthrough of the year and this year's top news stories
2014/12/19
The oldest piece of Mars on Earth and a news roundup (21 November 2014)
2014/12/15
Science Podcast - Lessons from the tsetse fly genome and a news roundup (18 April 2014)
2014/12/15
A flock of genomes and a news roundup (12 December 2014)
2014/12/12
The shocking predatory strike of the electric eel and a news roundup (5 December 2014)
2014/12/05
Gendered brains and a news roundup (21 November 2014)
2014/11/21
How hippos help and a news roundup (14 November 2014)
2014/11/14
A new way to study norovirus and a news roundup (7 November 2014)
2014/11/07
Changing minds on charitable giving and a news roundup (31 October 2014)
2014/10/31
High altitude humans living ~11,000 years ago (24 October 2014)
2014/10/24
Plants and predators and a daily news roundup (17 October 2014)
2014/10/17
Robot relations and a daily news roundup (10 October 2014)
2014/10/10
Mapping the sea floor and a daily news roundup (3 October 2014)
2014/10/03
The spread of an ancient technology and a daily news roundup (26 September 2014)
2014/09/26
Monitoring 600 years of upwelling off the California coast (19 September 2014)
2014/09/19
Engineering global health and a news roundup (12 September 2014)
2014/09/12
Scaling up a biofuel and a news roundup (5 Sep 2014)
2014/09/05
The home microbiome and a news roundup (29 August 2014)
2014/08/29
Censorship in China and a news roundup (22 August 2014)
2014/08/22
Preconception parenting and a news roundup (15 Aug 2014)
2014/08/15
Building brain-like computers (8 Aug 2014)
2014/08/08
Galactic gamma rays and a news roundup (1 Aug 2014)
2014/08/01
Science funding for people not projects and a news roundup (25 Jul 2014)
2014/07/25
Altering genes in the wild and a news roundup (18 Jul 2014)
2014/07/18
Oceans of plastic and a news roundup (11 Jul 2014)
2014/07/11
Psychedelic research resurgence and a news roundup (4 Jul 2014)
2014/07/04
Pollen paths and a news roundup (27 Jun 2014)
2014/06/27
Mind reading and a news roundup (20 Jun 2014)
2014/06/20
Mapping Mexico's genetics and a news roundup (13 Jun 2014)
2014/06/13
Rethinking global supply chains and a news roundup (6 Jun 2014)
2014/06/06
25 years after Tiananmen and a news roundup (30 May 2014)
2014/05/30
Science Podcast - Inequality and health and a news roundup (23 May 2014)
2014/05/23
Science Podcast - Evading back-action in a quantum system and a news roundup (16 May 2014)
2014/05/16
Science Podcast -Chine marine archaeology and a news roundup (9 May 2014)
2014/05/09
Science Podcast - Climate and corn and a news roundup (2 May 2014)
2014/05/02
Science Podcast - A binary star system that includes a white dwarf and a news roundup (18 April 2014)
2014/04/18
Science Podcast - Biomechanics of fruitflies on the wing and a news roundup (11 April 2014)
2014/04/11
Science Podcast - Life under funding change and a news roundup (4 April 2014)
2014/04/04
Science Podcast - A BRCA1 and breast cancer retrospective and a news roundup (28 Mar 2014)
2014/03/28
Science Podcast - Human odor discrimination and a news roundup (21 Mar 2014)
2014/03/21
Science Podcast - Checking the hubris of big data harvests and a news roundup (14 Mar 2014)
2014/03/14
Science Podcast - 100 years of crystallography, linking malaria and climate, and a news roundup (7 Mar 2014)
2014/03/07
Science Podcast - Treating Down Syndrome and a news roundup (28 Feb 2014)
2014/02/28
Science Podcast - Analyzing soundscapes and a news roundup (21 Feb 2014)
2014/02/21
Science Podcast - Termite-inspired robots and cells with lots of extra genomes (14 Feb 2014)
2014/02/14
Science Podcast - Tracing autism's roots in developlement and a rundown of stories from our daily news site (7 Feb 2014)
2014/02/07
Science Podcast - Quantum cryptography, salt's role in ecosystems, and a rundown of stories from our daily news site (31 Jan 2014)
2014/01/31
Science Podcast - The genome of a transmissible dog cancer, the 10-year anniversary of Opportunity on Mars, and a rundown of stories from our daily news site (24 Jan 2014)
2014/01/24
Science Podcast - The modern hunter-gatherer gut, fast mountain weathering, and a rundown of stories from our daily news site (17 Jan 2014)
2014/01/17
Science Podcast - Abundant bacterial vesicles in the ocean and a rundown of stories from our daily news site (10 Jan 2014)
2014/01/10
Science Podcast - Monstrous stone monuments of old and a rundown of stories from our daily news site (3 Jan 2014)
2014/01/03
Science Podcast - Science's breakthrough of the year, runners-up and the top content from our daily news site (20 Dec 2013)
2013/12/20
Science Podcast - Fear-enhanced odor detection, the latest from the Curiosity mission, and more (13 Dec 2013)
2013/12/13
Science Podcast - Noisy gene expression, the Tohoku-oki fault, and snake venom as a healer (6 Dec 2013)
2013/12/06
Science Podcast - 2013 science books for kids, newlywed happiness, and authorship for sale in China (29 Nov 2013)
2013/11/29
Science Podcast - Replacing the Y chromosome, the future of U.S. missile defense, the brightest gamma-ray burst, and more (22 Nov 2013)
2013/11/22
Science Podcast - Canine origins, asexual bacterial adaptation, perovskite-based solar cells, and more (15 Nov 2013)
2013/11/15
Science Magazine Podcast
https://www.science.org/podcasts
Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.
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