Science Magazine Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paleorobotics, revisiting the landscape of fear, and a book on the future of imagination Oct 24, 2024

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.

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zu8ch5j

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Virginia Morell

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to deal with backsliding democracies, and balancing life as a scientist and athlete Oct 17, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Lena E. H. Svanholm

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Graphene’s journey from hype to prime time, and harvesting lithium from briny water Oct 10, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Mark Peplow

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zn17zjt

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific evidence that cats are liquids, and when ants started their fungus farms Oct 03, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zlav1o2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Burying trees to lock up carbon, notorious ‘Alzheimer’s gene’ fuels hope, and a book on virtual twins Sep 26, 2024

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.

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z8oerdq

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser; Angela Saini

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Looking for life on an icy moon, and feeling like a rat Sep 19, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Robin Andrews

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zapddvc

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hail finally gets its scientific due, and busting up tumors with ultrasound Sep 12, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Linking long lives with smart brains, and India’s science education is leaning into its history and traditions—but at what cost? Sep 05, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zbfmymg

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A fungus-driven robot, counting snow crabs, and a book on climate capitalism Aug 29, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad; Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zt21ifv

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Saving wildlife with AI, and randomized trials go remote Aug 22, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Christine Peterson

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The origins of the dino-killing asteroid, and remapping the scientific enterprise Aug 15, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The humidity vs. heat debate, and studying the lifetime impacts of famine Aug 08, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Iron-toothed dragons, and improving electron microscopy Aug 01, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Phie Jacobs,

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zeecyfw

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Targeting dirty air, pollution from dead satellites, and a book on embracing robots Jul 25, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Micheal Funk, Angela Saini; Daniel Clery

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z01x70o

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New treatments for deadly snake bites, and a fusion company that wants to get in the medical isotopes game Jul 18, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Adrian Cho

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How rat poison endangers wildlife, and using sound to track animal populations Jul 11, 2024

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.

Authors: Kevin McLean, Sarah Crespi, Dina Fine Maron

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zq42hy5

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s new in the world of synthetic blood, and how a bacterium evolves into a killer Jul 04, 2024

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.

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]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Targeting crop pests with RNA, the legacy of temporary streams, and the future of money Jun 27, 2024

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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hunt for habitable exoplanets, and how a warming world could intensify urban air pollution Jun 20, 2024

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.

Authors: Daniel Clery; Meagan Cantwell; Arianna Remmel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zxi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How dogs’ health reflects our own, and what ancient DNA can reveal about human sacrifice Jun 13, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zxgwbqo

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Putting mysterious cellular structures to use, and when brown fat started to warm us up Jun 06, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; John Travis

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpoy92t

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Restoring sight to blind kids, making babies without a womb, and challenging the benefits of clinical trials May 30, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z6gdgb4

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stepping on snakes for science, and crows that count out loud May 23, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ztje4j6

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How the immune system can cause psychosis, and tool use in otters May 16, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Richard Stone; Katherine Irving

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4pdg62

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A very volcanic moon, and better protections for human study subjects May 09, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zyq2ig8

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Improving earthquake risk maps, and the world’s oldest ice May 02, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfj31xo

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The science of loneliness, making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions safer, and a new book series Apr 25, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ritual murders in the neolithic, why 2023 was so hot, and virus and bacteria battle in the gut Apr 18, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Andrew Curry

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zhgw74e

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trialing treatments for Long Covid, and a new organelle appears on the scene Apr 11, 2024

]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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zof5fvk

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When did rats come to the Americas, and was Lucy really our direct ancestor? Apr 04, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Teaching robots to smile, and the effects of a rare mandolin on a scientist’s career Mar 28, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hope in the fight against deadly prion diseases, and side effects of organic agriculture Mar 21, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving; Meredith Wadman

LINKS FOR MP3 META

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z91m76v

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why babies forget, and how fear lingers in the brain Mar 14, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Sara Reardon

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z9bqkyc

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A dive into the genetic history of India, and the role of vitamin A in skin repair Mar 07, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The sci-fi future of medical robots is here, and dehydrating the stratosphere to stave off climate change Feb 29, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Amos Matsiko

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zvvddhw

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes snakes so special, and how space science can serve all Feb 22, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; Christie Wilcox; Sean Cummings

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zabhbwe

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What makes blueberries blue, and myth buster Adam Savage on science communication Feb 15, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z7ye2st

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new kind of magnetism, and how smelly pollution harms pollinators Feb 08, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Zack Savitsky

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zz09cbu

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new way for the heart and brain to ‘talk’ to each other, and Earth’s future weather written in ancient coral reefs Feb 01, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Paul Voosen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z1hqrn2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A hangover-fighting enzyme, the failure of a promising snakebite treatment, and how ants change lion behavior Jan 25, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zd5mbue

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paper mills bribe editors to pass peer review, and detecting tumors with a blood draw Jan 19, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The environmental toll of war in Ukraine, and communications between mom and fetus during childbirth Jan 11, 2024

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Rich Stone

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z5jiifi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The top online news from 2023, and using cough sounds to diagnose disease Jan 04, 2024

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hunt for a quantum phantom, and making bitcoin legal tender Dec 22, 2023

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science’s Breakthrough of the Year, and tracing poached pangolins Dec 14, 2023

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Farm animals show their smarts, and how honeyguide birds lead humans to hives Dec 07, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Katherine Irving

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zr3zfn1

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Basic geoengineering, and autonomous construction robots Nov 30, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z66mytn

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exascale supercomputers amp up science, finally growing dolomite in the lab, and origins of patriarchy Nov 23, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini; Robert Service

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn0660

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI improves weather prediction, and cutting emissions from landfills Nov 16, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm9783

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The state of Russian science, and improving implantable bioelectronics Nov 09, 2023

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Turning anemones into coral, and the future of psychiatric drugs Nov 02, 2023

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.

Authors: Christie Wilcox; Sarah Crespi

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm6756

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making corn shorter, and a book on finding India’s women in science Oct 26, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5269

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The consequences of the world's largest dam removal, and building a quantum computer using sound waves Oct 19, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Tanya Roussy, Warren Cornwall

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl4219

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mysterious objects beyond Neptune, and how wildfire pollution behaves indoors Oct 13, 2023

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.

● Elephant trunk’s ‘stunning’ microscopic musculature may explain its dexterity | Science

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Paul Voosen, Kevin McLean

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl3178

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How long can ancient DNA survive, and how much stuff do we need to escape poverty? Oct 05, 2023

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:

● ‘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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Erik Stokstad, Katherine Irving

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl1587

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Visiting utopias, fighting heat death, and making mysterious ‘dark earth’ Sep 28, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0606

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reducing cartel violence in Mexico, and what to read and see this fall Sep 21, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Valerie Thompson, Jamie Dickman

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk9453

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why cats love tuna, and powering robots with tiny explosions Sep 14, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk8409

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Extreme ocean currents from a volcano, and why it’s taking so long to wire green energy into the U.S. grid Sep 07, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Meagan Cantwell; Dan Charles

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk7170

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reducing calculus trauma, and teaching AI to smell Aug 31, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen; Lizzie Wade

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk6142

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The source of solar wind, hackers and salt halt research, and a book on how institutions decide gender Aug 24, 2023

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.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What killed off North American megafauna, and making languages less complicated Aug 17, 2023

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why some trees find one another repulsive, and why we don’t know how much our hands weigh Aug 10, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Andrew Saintsing, Christie Wilcox

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk2064

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tracing the genetic history of African Americans using ancient DNA, and ethical questions at a famously weird medical museum Aug 03, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean, Titi Shodiya, Zakiya Whatley, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1038

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers collaborate with a social media giant, ancient livestock, and sex and gender in South Africa Jul 27, 2023

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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Adding thousands of languages to the AI lexicon, and the genes behind our bones Jul 20, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7646

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The AI special issue, adding empathy to robots, and scientists leaving Arecibo Jul 13, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Claudio Lopez Lloreda

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7011

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Putting the man-hunter and woman-gatherer myth to the sword, and the electron's dipole moment gets closer to zero Jul 06, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Bridget Alex

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj5600

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Putting organs into the deep freeze, a scavenger hunt for robots, and a book on race and reproduction Jun 29, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Warren Cornwall

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj4684

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A space-based telescope to hunt dark energy, and what we can learn from scaleless snakes Jun 22, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why it’s tough to measure light pollution, and a mental health first aid course Jun 15, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj2212

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contraception for cats, and taking solvents out of chemistry Jun 08, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Jake Yeston

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0996

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How we measure the world with our bodies, and hunting critical minerals Jun 01, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi9883

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Talking tongues, detecting beer, and shifting perspectives on females May 25, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Elizabeth Pennisi

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi8592

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The earliest evidence for kissing, and engineering crops to clone themselves May 18, 2023

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.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi7436

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Debating when death begins, and the fate of abandoned lands May 11, 2023

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

[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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building big dream machines, and self-organizing landscapes May 04, 2023

Builders of the largest scientific instruments, and how cracks can add resilience to an ecosystem

First up this week, a story on a builder of the biggest machines. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about Adrian’s dad and his other baby: an x-ray synchrotron.

Next up on this episode, a look at self-organizing landscapes. Host Sarah Crespi and Chi Xu, a professor of ecology at Nanjing University, talk about a Science Advances paper on how resilience in an ecosystem can come from the interaction of a plant and cracks in the soil.

Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, assistant editor for custom publishing, discusses challenges early-career researchers face and how targeted funding for this group can enable their future success. She talks with Gary Michelson, founder and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies and Aleksandar Obradovic, this year’s grand prize winner of the annual Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Hong’an Ding/Yellow River Estuary Association of Photographers; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: red beach from above with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Adrian Cho

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/science.adi5718

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The value of new voices in science and journalism, and what makes something memorable Apr 27, 2023

Science’s editor-in-chief and an award-winning broadcast journalist discuss the struggles shared by journalism and science, and we learn about what makes something stand out in our memories

First up on the show this week: Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with Amna Nawaz, an award-winning broadcast journalist and host of the PBS NewsHour, about the value of new voices in science and journalism and other things the two fields have in common.

Next up, what makes something stand out in your memory? Is an object or word memorable because it is unique or expressive? Are there features of things that make them memorable, regardless of meaning? Wilma Bainbridge, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her Science Advances paper on teasing apart the features of memorability.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: madabandon/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: array of lemons with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi4383

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mapping uncharted undersea volcanoes, and elephant seals dive deep to sleep Apr 20, 2023

What does it mean that we have so many more seamounts than previously thought, and finding REM sleep in seals

First up on the show this week: so many seamounts. Staff News Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a study that mapped about 17,000 never-before-seen underwater volcanoes. They talk about how these new submarine landforms will influence conservation efforts and our understanding of ocean circulation.

Next up, how do mammals that spend 90% of their time in the water, get any sleep? Jessica Kendall-Bar, the Schmidt AI in Science postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is here to talk about her work exploring the sleep of elephant seals by capturing their brain waves as they dive deep to slumber.

Finally, in a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, assistant editor for the Custom Publishing office, interviews Friedman Brain Institute Director Eric Nestler and Director of Drug Discovery Paul Kenny, two experts on addiction from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Rob Oo/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: two female elephant seals looking at the camera with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi3256

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More precise radiocarbon dating, secrets of hibernating bear blood, and a new book series Apr 13, 2023

Anchoring radiocarbon dates to cosmic events, why hibernating bears don't get blood clots, and kicking off a book series on sex, gender, and science

First up this week, upping the precision of radiocarbon dating by linking cosmic rays to isotopes in wood. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Online News Editor Michael Price about how spikes in cosmic rays—called Miyake events—are helping archaeologists peg the age of wooden artifacts to a year rather than a decade or century.

Next on the show, we have a segment on why bears can safely sleep during hibernation without worrying about getting clots in their blood. Unlike bears, when people spend too much time immobilized, such as sitting for a long time on a flight, we risk getting deep vein thrombosis—or a blood clot. Johannes Müller-Reif of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry talks with host Sarah Crespi about what we can learn from bears about how and why our bodies decide to make these clots and what we can do to prevent them.

Stay tuned for an introduction to our new six-part series on books exploring science, sex, and gender. Guest host Angela Saini talks with scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling about the books in this year's lineup and how they were selected.

We’ve been nominated for a Webby! Please support the show and vote for us by 20 April.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Thomas Zsebok/iStock/Getty; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: brown bear lying in a cave with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Mike Price; Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi2236

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why not vaccinate chickens against avian flu, and new form of reproduction found in yellow crazy ants Apr 06, 2023

Why some countries, such as China, vaccinate flocks against bird flu but others don’t, and male ants that are always chimeras

First up this week, highly pathogenic avian influenza is spreading to domestic flocks around the globe from migrating birds. Why don’t many countries vaccinate their bird herds when finding one case can mean massive culls? Staff News Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the push and pull of economics, politics, and science at play in vaccinating poultry against bird flu.

Next up, a crazy method of reproduction in the yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes). Hugo Darras, an assistant professor in the Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution at Johannes Gutenberg University, talks about how males of this species are always chimeras—which means their body is composed of two different cell lines, one from each parent.
Read a related perspective.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: The Wild Martin; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Queen and worker yellow crazy ants with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi0665

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How the Maya thought about the ancient ruins in their midst, and the science of Braille Mar 30, 2023

On this week’s show: How people in the past thought about their own past, and a detailed look at how Braille is read

First up this week, what did people 1000 years ago think about 5000-year-old Stonehenge? Or about a disused Maya temple smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood? Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how Mesoamerican sites are revealing new ways that ruins were incorporated into past peoples’ lives.

Next up on this week’s show is a segment from the AAAS meeting on reading science and Braille. We hear from Robert Englebretson, an associate professor of linguistics at Rice University, about filling in a gap in reading science research when it comes to how Braille is read, written, and learned.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: S. Crespi/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Maya building with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi0106

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New worries about Earth’s asteroid risk, and harnessing plants’ chemical factories Mar 23, 2023

On this week’s show: Earth’s youngest impact craters could be vastly underestimated in size, and remaking a plant’s process for a creating a complex compound

First up this week, have we been measuring asteroid impact craters wrong? Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about new approaches to measuring the diameter of impact craters. They discuss the new measurements which, if confirmed, might require us to rethink just how often Earth gets hit with large asteroids. Paul also shares more news from the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

Next up, pulling together all the enzymes used by a plant to make a vaccine adjuvant—a compound used to boost the efficacy of vaccines—in the lab. Anne Osbourn, a group leader and professor of biology at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England, talks about why plants are so much better at making complex molecules, and an approach that allows scientists to copy their methods.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/JPL; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Itturalde crater in Bolivia with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh9195

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An active volcano on Venus, and a concerning rise in early onset colon cancer Mar 16, 2023

On this week’s show: Spotting volcanic activity on Venus in 30-year-old data, and giving context to increases in early onset colon cancer

First up this week, a researcher notices an active volcano on Venus in data from the Magellan mission—which ended in 1994. News Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how to find a “fresh” lava flow in 30-year-old readings.

Next up, a concerning increase in early onset colon cancer. Kimmie Ng, director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is here to talk about how these early colon cancers—those diagnosed before age 50—are different from those diagnosed later in life. We also talk about what needs to be learned about diet, environment, and genetics to better understand this condition.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Maat Mons volcano on Venus with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh8158

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Compassion fatigue in those who care for lab animals, and straightening out ocean conveyor belts Mar 09, 2023

On this week’s show: Compassion fatigue will strike most who care for lab animals, but addressing it is challenging. Also, overturning ideas about ocean circulation

First up this week: uncovering compassion fatigue in those who work with research animals—from cage cleaners to heads of entire animal facilities. Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm discuss how to recognize the anxiety and depression that can be associated with this work and what some institutions are doing to help.

Featured in this segment:

Next up on the show, a segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes Science) on overturning assumptions in ocean circulation. Physical oceanographer Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks with producer Kevin McLean about the limitations of the ocean conveyor belt model, and how new tools have been giving us a much more accurate view of how water moves around the world.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Global sea surface currents and temperature with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh4938

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Battling bias in medicine, and how dolphins use vocal fry Mar 02, 2023

On this week’s show: Researchers are finding new ways to mitigate implicit bias in medical settings, and how toothed whales use distinct vocal registers for echolocation and communication

First up this week: how to fight unconscious bias in the clinic. Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega talks with host Sarah Crespi about how researchers are attempting to fight bias on many fronts—from online classes to machine learning to finding a biomarker for pain.

Next up on the show: a close look at toothed whale vocalization. Though we have known for more than 50 years that toothed whales such as orcas, sperm whales, and dolphins make diverse and useful sounds, how these noises are produced by their bodies has not been well understood. Coen Elemans, a professor in biology and head of the sound communication and behavior group at the University of Southern Denmark, joins Sarah to talk about using endoscopy and high-speed cameras as well as tissue samples and tracking data to learn how they achieve such amazing feats of sound.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Thumy Phan; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: looking through glasses at a distorted face in what looks like a medical setting with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Pérez Ortega

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh3706

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shrinking MRI machines, and the smell of tsetse fly love Feb 23, 2023

On this week’s show: Portable MRI scanners could revolutionize medical imaging, and pheromones offer a way to control flies that spread disease

First up this week: shrinking MRI machines. Staff Writer Adrian Cho talks with host Sarah Crespi about how engineers and physicists are teaming up to make MRI machines smaller and cheaper.

Next up on the show, the smell of tsetse fly love. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Shimaa Ebrahim, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University, about understanding how tsetse flies use odors to attract one another and how this can be used to prevent the flies from transmitting diseases such as African sleeping sickness.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: GEOFFREY ATTARDO/UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: tsetse fly with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Adrian Cho

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh3128

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earth’s hidden hydrogen, and a trip to Uranus Feb 16, 2023

On this week’s show: The hunt for natural hydrogen deposits heats up, and why we need a space mission to an ice giant

First up this week: a gold rush for naturally occurring hydrogen. Deputy Editor Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss drilling for hidden pockets of hydrogen, which companies are just now starting to explore as a clean energy option.

Next up, big plans for a mission to Uranus. Kathleen Mandt, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, shares what a mission to Uranus could tell us about the formation of our Solar System and all these exoplanets we keep finding.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Austin Fisher; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Uranus illustration with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Eric Hand

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh1873

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using sharks to study ocean oxygen, and what ancient minerals teach us about early Earth Feb 09, 2023

On this week’s show: Shark tags to measure ocean deoxygenation, and zircons and the chemistry of early Earth

First up this week: using sharks to measure ocean deoxygenation. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins us to talk about a group of researchers putting data logging tags on sharks in order to study how climate change is affecting oxygen levels in some of the ocean’s darkest depths.

Next up, what can 4-billion-year-old minerals teach us about chemistry on early Earth? Producer Meagan Cantwell talks to geochemist Dustin Trail about using minerals called zircons to deduce the chemical properties of the early hydrothermal pools where life began.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: David Salvatori/VWPICS/Alamy Stock Photo; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Underwater photo of mako shark with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall; Meagan Cantwell

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Visiting a mummy factory, and improving the IQ of … toilets Feb 02, 2023

On this week’s show: New clues to the chemicals used for mummification, and the benefits and barriers to smart toilets

First up this week: What can we learn from a mummy factory? Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about mummy chemistry and why we don’t know much about what was used to preserve these ancient bodies. Online News Editor Michael Price makes a special appearance.

Next up, how having a smart toilet can contribute to your health. Seung-Min Park, an instructor in the Department of Urology at Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote this week in Science Translational Medicine about the powers of data-collecting toilets to improve health and the psychological and ethical barriers to adopting a smart toilet of your very own.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Portugal2004/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: toilet with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry; Michael Price

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg9654

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wolves hunting otters, and chemical weathering in a warming world Jan 26, 2023

On this week’s show: When deer are scarce these wolves turn to sea otters, and chemical weathering of silicates acts as a geological thermostat

First up on this week’s show we have a story about a group of Alaskan wolves that has switched to eating sea otters as deer populations have dwindled. Science journalist Jack Tamisiea tells host Sarah Crespi about some of the recently published work on this diet shift, and wildlife biologist Gretchen Roffler weighs in on the conditions on the island where this is happening.

Also on this week’s show: Chemical weathering and the global carbon cycle. Sarah speaks with Susan Brantley, Evan Pugh university professor in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and Department of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, about how weathering of silicates in rocks pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They talk about how this temperature-sensitive process could increase as Earth warms, as well as the potential and limitations of this effect on the global carbon budget.

Take the podcast audience survey here.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

What saliva tells babies about human relationships

[Image: Landon Bazeley; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Wolf pup pulling a sea otter carcass up a rocky beach with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jack Tamisiea

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bad stats overturn ‘medical murders,’ and linking allergies with climate change Jan 19, 2023

Statisticians fight bad numbers used in medical murder trials, and the state of allergy science

First up on this week’s show, we have a piece on accusations of medical murder. Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her story on how statisticians are weighing in on cases where nurses and doctors are convicted of murdering patients based on bad statistics. This segment was produced by Kevin McLean with sound design by James Rowlands.

Also on this week’s show: Allergies are on the rise and this increase is linked with climate change. Sarah speaks with Kari Nadeau, Naddisy Foundation endowed professor of medicine and pediatrics at Stanford University, about her review in Science Translational Medicine on the status of allergy science, and how recommendations have changed from when to give children peanuts to opting for sublingual exposure therapy.

Take the podcast audience survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLKCHC8

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: bobtphoto/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: ragweed field with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Cathleen O’Grady

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg7524

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Peering beyond the haze of alien worlds, and how failures help us make new discoveries Jan 12, 2023

Data on hazes and clouds may be key to understanding exoplanets, and NextGen letter writers share the upside of failure

Hazes and clouds could keep exoplanets’ secrets hidden, unless researchers can re-create them here on Earth. After celebrating JWST and its ability to look far back in time and help us look for habitable exoplanets as the 2022 Science Breakthrough of the Year, News Intern Zack Savitsky talks with host Sarah Crespi about an overlooked problem with using telescopes to examine exoplanets’ atmospheres.

What was your greatest mistake? In a chat with producer Kevin McLean, Letters Editor Jennifer Sills shares stories from NextGen Voices about failures that led them in unexpected directions in their science careers.

Take the podcast audience survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLKCHC8

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: exoplanet with cloudy and hazy atmosphere with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jennifer Sills; Zack Savitsky

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg6078

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A controversial dam in the Amazon unites Indigenous people and scientists, and transplanting mitochondria to treat rare diseases Jan 05, 2023

Keeping an eye on the largest hydroelectric project in the Amazon basin, and helping patients with deletions in their mitochondrial DNA

We are starting off the new year with producer Kevin McLean and freelance science journalist Sofia Moutinho. They discuss a controversial dam in the Brazilian Amazon and how Indigenous peoples and researchers are trying to monitor its impact.

Then, host Sarah Crespi speaks with Elad Jacoby, an expert in pediatric hematology and oncology at the Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, about the many wonders of mitochondria. In a recent Science Translational Medicine paper, his team took advantage of the fact that mitochondria are almost exclusively inherited from our mothers to transfer mothers’ mitochondria into their children as treatment for mitochondrial genome deletions.

Take our audience survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLKCHC8

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Dado Galdieri/Hilaea Media; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: two fishermen in a boat with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Sofia Moutinho

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg5434

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Year in review 2022: Best of online news, and podcast highlights Dec 22, 2022

On this week’s show: A rundown of our favorite online news stories, and some of our favorite moments on the podcast this year

This is our last show of the year and it’s a fun one! Dave Grimm, our online news editor, gives a tour of the top online stories of the year, from playful bumble bees to parasite-ridden friars.

Then, host Sarah Crespi looks back at some amazing conversations from the podcast this year, including answers to a few questions she never thought she’d be asking. Highlights include why we aren’t just shooting nuclear waste into space, and how mapping ant diversity is like mapping the early universe.

Past shows mentioned in this episode:

A global map of ant diversity

Gut bacteria that nourish hibernating squirrels

Securing nuclear waste for 100,000 years

Why rabies remains

Why sunscreen is bad for coral

Saving the Spix’s macaw

Waking up bacterial spores

Collecting spider silks

Don’t miss this year’s podcast series on books in food, science, and agriculture, hosted by Angela Saini.

Take our audience survey at https://www.science.org/podcasts.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Peter Trimming/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: squirrel relaxing on a branch with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg3947

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Breakthrough of the Year, and the best in science books Dec 15, 2022

On this week’s show: Science’s Breakthrough of the Year and runners-up, plus the top books in 2022

You might not be surprised by this year’s breakthrough, but hopefully you won’t guess all our runners-up. Producer Meagan Cantwell is joined by Greg Miller, who edited the section this year. The two discuss the big winner and more.

In our second segment, host Sarah Crespi is joined by Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson to chat about the best books in science from this year, and one movie.

Books mentioned in this segment:

Otherlands Review | Buy

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures Review | Buy

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Buy

A House Between Earth and the Moon Review | Buy

Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice Review | Buy

What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care Review | Buy

Stolen Science: Thirteen Untold Stories of Scientists and Inventors Almost Written out of History Review | Buy

The Science Spell Book: Magical Experiments for Kids Review | Buy

Fire of Love (Film) Trailer

The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science (2023) Buy

Don’t miss this year’s podcast series on books in food, science, and agriculture, hosted by Angela Saini.

Take our audience survey at: https://www.science.org/podcasts

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STScI; Joseph DePasquale, Alyssa Pagan,

and Anton M. Koekemoer/STScI Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: the birth of a star with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Greg Miller; Valerie Thompson

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg2633

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The state of science in Ukraine, and a conversation with Anthony Fauci Dec 08, 2022

On this week’s show: The impact of war on science in Ukraine, and a conversation with Anthony Fauci as he prepares to step down

Some scientists in Ukraine have been risking their lives to protect scientific facilities, collections, and instruments amid the war. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone traveled to Kharkiv and Chornobyl earlier this year to meet researchers living and working through the conflict. He spoke with host Sarah Crespi to share some of their stories.

Then we have a conversation with Anthony Fauci, who will be stepping down from his government roles this month after more than 50 years in public service. He shares his thoughts on the ongoing challenges of communicating about science and public health, combating misinformation, and his goals for the future with Science Editor-and-Chief Holden Thorp.

Take our audience survey at: https://www.science.org/podcasts

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Rich Stone; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of rubble damaged during war in Ukraine with building spire in background]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rich Stone; Kevin McLean; Holden Thorp

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg1712

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A genetic history of Europe’s Jews, and measuring magma under a supervolcano Dec 01, 2022

On this week’s show: A medieval German cemetery yields clues to Jewish migrations in Europe, and supercomputers help researchers estimate magma under Yellowstone

First up this week on the podcast, we explore the genetic history of Jewish people in Europe. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about researchers working with rabbis and the local Jewish community to apply new techniques to respectfully study remains in a medieval Jewish cemetery in Germany.

We also have a story on how much magma has accumulated inside Yellowstone National Park’s supervolcano. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Ross Maguire, an assistant professor in the geology department at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, about using supercomputers to get a clearer picture of the volcanic system’s subsurface. Although this new study shows more magma than previous estimates, it’s still not nearly enough for an eruption anytime soon.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Eric Vaughn/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of sunset over Yellowstone National Park with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Andrew Curry

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg0498

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artificial intelligence takes on Diplomacy, and how much water do we really need? Nov 24, 2022

On this week’s show: Meta’s algorithm tackles both language and strategy in a board game, and measuring how much water people use on a daily basis

First up this week on the podcast, artificial intelligence (AI) wins at the game Diplomacy. Freelance science journalist Matthew Hutson joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the advances needed for an AI to win a game that requires cooperation and trust between human and AI players.

Next, we hear about how much water people need to stay hydrated. It’s not the eight glasses a day recommendation we’ve heard so much about. Herman Pontzer, a professor in Duke University’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Duke Global Health Institute, talks about a study that involved recording water turnover from 5000 people around the world. It turns out daily water needs vary from person to person and place to place.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: manus1550/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of a stack of drinking water bottles with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Matt Hutson

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8979

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mammoth ivory trade may be bad for elephants, and making green electronics with fungus Nov 17, 2022

On this week’s show: The potentially harmful effects of prehistoric ivory on present-day elephants, and replacing polymers in electronics with fungal tissue

First up this week on the podcast, we hear about the effect of mammoth and mastodon ivory on the illegal elephant ivory trade. Online News Editor Michael Price joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as melting permafrost has uncovered fossilized ivory from these extinct creatures, more has entered the ivory trade. The question is: Does the availability of this type of ivory reduce the demand for ivory from elephants, or does it endanger them more?

Next, making electronics greener with fungus with Doris Danninger, a Ph.D. student in the Soft Matter Physics Division at the Institute of Experimental Physics at Johannes Kepler University, Linz. Doris and Sarah discuss the feasibility of replacing the bulky backing of chips and the casing of batteries with sheets of fungal tissue to make flexible, renewable, biodegradable electronics.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: RudiHulshof/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of an elephant tusk with point facing the camera with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Michael Price

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8340

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kurt Vonnegut’s contribution to science, and tunas and sharks as ecosystem indicators Nov 10, 2022

On this week’s show: How sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut foresaw many of today’s ethical dilemmas, and 70 years of tunas, billfishes, and sharks as sentinels of global ocean health

First up this week on the podcast, we revisit the works of science fiction author Kurt Vonneugt on what would have been his 100th birthday. News Intern Zack Savitsky and host Sarah Crespi discuss the work of ethicists, philosophers, and Vonnegut scholars on his influence on the ethics and practice of science.

Researchers featured in this segment:

Peter-Paul Verbeek, a philosopher of science and technology at the University of Amsterdam and chair of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology
David Koepsell, a philosopher of science and technology at Texas A&M University, College Station
Christina Jarvis, a Vonnegut scholar at the State University of New York, Fredonia, and author of the new book Lucky Mud & Other Foma: A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut’s Environmentalism and Planetary Citizenship
Sheila Jasanoff, a science studies scholar at Harvard University

Next, producer Kevin McLean discusses the connection between fishing pressure and extinction risk for large predatory fish such as tunas and sharks. He’s joined by Maria José Juan Jordá, a postdoc at the Spanish Institute for Oceanography, to learn what a new continuous Red List Index using the past 70 years of fisheries data can tell us about the effectiveness and limits of fishing regulations.

Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Joseph Hyser, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine about his use of wide-field fluorescence live cell microscopy to track intercellular calcium waves created following rotavirus infection. This segment is sponsored by Nikon.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: richcarey/istock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: underwater photo of a swirling mass of tunas, with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Zack Savitsky

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf7398

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cities as biodiversity havens, and gene therapy for epilepsy Nov 03, 2022

On this week’s show: How urban spaces can help conserve species, and testing a gene therapy strategy for epilepsy in mice

First up on the podcast, we explore urban ecology’s roots in Berlin. Contributing Correspondent Gabriel Popkin joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss turning wastelands and decommissioned airports into forests and grasslands inside the confines of a city.

Next, we hear about a gene therapy strategy for epilepsy. Yichen Qiu, a recently graduated Ph.D. student and researcher at University College London, talks about introducing a small set of genes into neurons in mice. These genes detect hyperactivity in the brain and respond by quieting the cell, ultimately suppressing seizures.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Maurice Weiss; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: dim photo of the forest of the Schöneberger Südgelände with old railroad tracks receding into the distance, with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gabriel Popkin

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf6190

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Space-based solar power gets serious, AI helps optimize chemistry, and a book on food extinction Oct 27, 2022

On this week’s show: Cheaper launches could make solar power satellites a reality, machine learning helps chemists make small organic molecules, and a book on the extinction of foods

First up on the podcast, space-based solar power gets closer to launch. Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about how reusable rockets bring the possibility of giant solar array satellites that beam down gigawatts of uninterrupted power from space.

After that, we hear about small organic molecule synthesis. Making large organic molecules such as proteins and DNA can be a cinch for chemists, but making new smaller organic molecules is tough—partially because optimized general reaction conditions are hard to come by. Nicholas Angello, a graduate research assistant and Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellow in the Burke group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, talks about an approach that uses robots and machine learning to better optimize these reaction conditions.

Also in the episode: the last in our series of books on food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with author Dan Saladino about his book Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: drawing of satellite solar panels with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dan Clery; Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf4939

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snakes living the high-altitude life, and sending computing power to the edges of the internet Oct 20, 2022

On this week’s show: How some snakes have adapted to the extremes of height and temperature on the Tibetan Plateau, and giving low-power sensors more processing power

First up on the podcast, tough snakes reveal their secrets. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Liz Pennisi about how snakes have adapted to the harsh conditions of the Tibetan Plateau.

Next on the show, Producer Meagan Cantwell talks about moving more computing power to the edges of the internet. She is joined by Alexander Sludds, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Research Lab for Electronics. They discuss a faster, more energy-efficient approach to give edge devices—such as low-power smart sensors or tiny aerial drones—the computing power of far larger machines.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: JUN-FENG GUO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of a Tibetan hot-spring snake near a geothermal pool with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi; Meagan Cantwell

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf3782

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Climate change threatens supercomputing, and collecting spider silks Oct 13, 2022

On this week’s show: Rising waters and intense storms make siting high-performance computer centers a challenge, and matching up spider silk DNA with spider silk properties

(Main Text)

First up on the podcast this week, News Intern Jacklin Kwan talks with host Sarah Crespi about how and where to build high-performance computing facilities as climate change brings extreme conditions to current locations.

Spiders are creeping into the show this week. Kazuharu Arakawa, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Bioscience at Keio University, discusses his Science Advances paper on collecting spider silks and the genes that make them. His team used the data set to connect genetic sequences to the properties of spider silks in order to harness this amazing material for industrial use.

Visit the spider silkomes database here: https://spider-silkome.org/

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Dace Znotina/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: a spiderweb with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jacklin Kwan

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Linking violence in Myanmar to fossil amber research, and waking up bacterial spores Oct 06, 2022

On this week’s show: A study suggests paleontological research has directly benefited from the conflict in Myanmar, and how dormant bacterial spores keep track of their environment

First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss links between violent conflict in Myanmar and a boom in fossil amber research.

Also on the show this week, we hear about how bacterial spores—which can lie dormant for millions of years—decide it’s time to wake up. Kaito Kikuchi, an image analysis scientist at Reveal Biosciences, joins Sarah to discuss how dormant spores act a bit like neurons to make these decisions.

In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Ramon Parsons, director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about his institute’s innovative approach to cancer treatment.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: (public domain); Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: micrograph of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Pérez Ortega

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf2050

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Giving a lagoon personhood, measuring methane flaring, and a book about eating high on the hog Sep 29, 2022

On this week’s show: Protecting a body of water by giving it a legal identity, intentional destruction of methane by the oil and gas industry is less efficient than predicted, and the latest book in our series on science and food

First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about why Spain has given personhood status to a polluted lagoon.

Also on the show this week is Genevieve Plant, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. Genny and Sarah talk about methane flaring—a practice common in the oil and gas industry—where manufactures burn off excess methane instead of releasing it directly into the atmosphere. Research flights over several key regions in the United States revealed these flares are leaky, releasing five time s more methane than predicted.

In this month’s installment of books on the science of food and agriculture, host Angela Saini talks with culinary historian and author Jessica B. Harris about her book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Jeff Peischl/CIRES/NOAA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: methane flares with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf0584

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can wolves form close bonds with humans, and termites degrade wood faster as the world warms Sep 22, 2022

On this week’s show: Comparing human-dog bonds with human-wolf bonds, and monitoring termite decay rates on a global scale

First up on the podcast this week, Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about the bonds between dogs and their human caretakers. Is it possible these bonds started even before domestication?

Also this week, Sarah talks with Amy Zanne, professor and Aresty endowed chair in tropical ecology in the Department of Biology at the University of Miami. They discuss a global study to determine whether climate change might accelerate the rate at which termites and microbes break down dead wood and release carbon into the atmosphere.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Christina Hansen Wheat; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Björk, a female wolf, with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade9777

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Testing planetary defenses against asteroids, and building a giant ‘water machine’ Sep 15, 2022

On this week’s show: NASA’s unprecedented asteroid-deflection mission, and making storage space for fresh water underground in Bangladesh

First up on the podcast this week, News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the upcoming NASA mission, dubbed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, that aims to ram a vending machine–size spacecraft into an asteroid and test out ideas about planetary defense.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Mohammad Shamsudduha, an associate professor in humanitarian science at University College London’s Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. He explains how millions of individual farmers in Bangladesh are creating the “Bengal water machine,” a giant underground sponge to soak up fresh water during monsoon season.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: SW Photography/Getty; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of agricultural fields and a big river at sunset in the city of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade8885

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why the fight against malaria has stalled in southern Africa, and how to look for signs of life on Mars Sep 08, 2022

On this week’s show: After years of steep declines, researchers are investigating why malaria deaths have plateaued, and testing the stability of biosignatures in space

First up on the podcast this week, freelance science journalist Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why malaria deaths have plateaued in southern Africa, despite years of declines in deaths and billions of dollars spent. Leslie visited Mozambique on a global reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center where researchers are investigating the cause of the pause.

Also this week, producer Kevin McLean talks with astrobiologists Mickael Baqué and Jean-Pierre de Vera of the German Aerospace Center. They discuss their Science Advances paper about an experiment on the International Space Station looking at the stability of biosignatures in space and what that means for our search for life on Mars.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: enhanced-color image of Mars’ Jezero crater was taken by NASA’s Perseverance with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Leslie Roberts; Kevin McLean

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade7839

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using free-floating DNA to find soldiers’ remains, and how people contribute to indoor air chemistry Sep 01, 2022

On this week’s show: The U.S. government is partnering with academics to speed up the search for more than 80,000 soldiers who went missing in action, and how humans create their own “oxidation zone” in the air around them

First up on the podcast this week, Tess Joosse is a former news intern here at Science and is now a freelance science journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin. Tess talks with host Sarah Crespi about attempts to use environmental DNA—free-floating DNA in soil or water—to help locate the remains of soldiers lost at sea.

Also featured in this segment:

University of Wisconsin, Madison, molecular biologist Bridget Ladell
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine biologist Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser

Also this week, Nora Zannoni, a postdoctoral researcher in the atmospheric chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, talks about people’s contributions to indoor chemistry. She chats with Sarah about why it’s important to go beyond studying the health effects of cleaning chemicals and gas stoves to explore how humans add their own bodies’ chemicals and reactions to the air we breathe.

In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for Custom Publishing, interviews Benedetto Marelli, associate professor at MIT, about winning the BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation and how he became an entrepreneur.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Jeremy Borrelli/East Carolina University; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: a scuba diver underwater near a World War II wreck off Saipan with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Tess Joosse

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade6771

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chasing Arctic cyclones, brain coordination in REM sleep, and a book on seafood in the information age Aug 25, 2022

On this week’s show: Monitoring summer cyclones in the Arctic, how eye movements during sleep may reflect movements in dreams, and the latest in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture.

First up on the podcast this week, Deputy News Editor Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the first airborne campaign to study summer cyclones over the Arctic and what the data could reveal about puzzling air-ice interactions.

Next on the show, Sarah talks with Yuta Senzai, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, about his paper on what coordinated eye movement and brain activity reveal about the neurology of rapid eye movement sleep.

Also on the show this week, a fishy installment of our series of books on the science of food and agriculture. Host Angela Saini interviews writer and editor Nicholas Sullivan about his latest book The Blue Revolution: Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS data; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo from space of an epic 2012 Arctic cyclone with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Eric Hand; Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade5525

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monitoring a nearby star’s midlife crisis, and the energetic cost of chewing Aug 18, 2022

On this week’s show: An analog to the Maunder Minimum, when the Sun’s spots largely disappeared 400 years ago, and measuring the energy it takes to chew gum

We have known about our Sun’s spots for centuries, and tracking this activity over time revealed an 11-year solar cycle with predictable highs and lows. But sometimes these cycles just seem to stop, such as in the Maunder Minimum—a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 with little or no sunspot activity. News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a nearby star that appears to have entered a similar quiet period, and what we can learn from it about why stars take naps.

Also this week on the show, Adam van Casteren, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester, joins Sarah to talk about measuring how much energy we use to chew up food. Based on the findings, it appears humans have turned out to be superefficient chewers—at least when it comes to the gum used in the study—with less than 1% of daily energy expenditure being spent on mastication.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/SDO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of the largest sunspot from our latest solar cycle with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4241

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cougars caught killing donkeys in Death Valley, and decoding the nose Aug 11, 2022

On this week’s show: Predators may be indirectly protecting Death Valley wetlands, and mapping odorant receptors

First up this week on the podcast, News Intern Katherine Irving joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the first photos of cougars killing feral donkeys in Death Valley National Park. They also discuss the implications for native animals such as big horn sheep, and plans to remove donkeys from the park.

Also this week on the show, Paul Feinstein, professor of biology in the department of biological science at Hunter College, discusses a Science Signaling paper on a new approach to matching up smell receptors with smells—a long-standing challenge in olfaction research.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Angel Di Bilio/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of a burro on a hillside near Death Valley with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade3366

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Invasive grasses get help from fire, and a global map of ant diversity Aug 04, 2022

On this week’s show: A special issue on grass, and revealing hot spots of ant diversity

This week’s special issue on grasses mainly focuses on the importance of these plants in climate change, in ecosystems, on land, and in the water. But for the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about their dark side: invasive grasses that feed fires and transform ecosystems.

Also this week on the show, Evan Economo, a professor in the biodiversity and biocomplexity unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, joins Sarah to discuss his Science Advances paper on creating a worldwide map of ant diversity. Such maps help us better understand where vertebrate and invertebrate diversity do and don’t overlap and what this means for conservation. If you want to explore the data, you can see them at antmaps.org.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NTPFES; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: grassland fire in Northern Australia with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade2512

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Probing beyond our Solar System, sea pollinators, and a book on the future of nutrition Jul 28, 2022

On this week’s show: Plans to push a modern space probe beyond the edge of the Solar System, crustaceans that pollinate seaweed, and the latest in our series of author interviews on food, science, and nutrition

After visiting the outer planets in the 1980s, the twin Voyager spacecraft have sent back tantalizing clues about the edge of our Solar System and what lies beyond. Though they may have reached the edge of the Solar System or even passed it, the craft lack the instruments to tell us much about the interstellar medium—the space between the stars. Intern Khafia Choudhary talks with Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone about plans to send a modern space probe outside the Solar System and what could be learned from such a mission.

Next up on the show, Myriam Valero, a population geneticist at the evolutionary biology and ecology of algae research department at Sorbonne University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about how a little crustacean might help fertilize a species of algae. If the seaweed in the study does use a marine pollinator, it suggests there may have been a much earlier evolutionary start for pollination partnerships.

Finally, we have the next in our series on books exploring the science of food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with biochemist T. Colin Campbell about his book The Future of Nutrition: An Insider’s Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Johns Hopkins APL/Mike Yakovlev; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: illustration of an interstellar probe crossing the boundary of the heliosphere with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rich Stone; Angela Saini; Khafia Choudhary

++

LINKS FOR MP3 META

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1292

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Possible fabrications in Alzheimer’s research, and bad news for life on Enceladus Jul 21, 2022

On this week’s show: Troubling signs of fraud threaten discoveries key to a reigning theory of Alzheimer’s disease, and calculating the saltiness of the ocean on one of Saturn’s moons

Investigative journalist Charles Piller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles brought to light by a neuroscientist whistleblower.

Next, researcher Wan Ying Kang talks with Sarah about Saturn’s bizarre moon Enceladus. Kang’s group wrote in Science Advances about modeling the salinity of the global ocean tucked between the moon’s icy shell and solid core. Their findings spell bad news for potential habitability on Enceladus.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Enceladus as viewed from Cassini with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Charles Piller

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade0384

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Webb Space Telescope’s first images, and why scratching sometimes makes you itchy Jul 14, 2022

On this week’s show: The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope hint at the science to come, and disentangling the itch-scratch cycle

After years of delays, the James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of December 2021. Now, NASA has released a few of the first full-color images captured by the instrument’s enormous mirror. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these first images and what they mean for the future of science from Webb.

Next on the podcast, Jing Feng, principal investigator at the Center for Neurological and Psychiatric Research and Drug Discovery at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, discusses his Science Translational Medicine paper on why scratching sometimes triggers itching. It turns out, in cases of chronic itch there can be a miswiring in the skin. Cells that normally detect light touch instead connect with nerve fibers that convey a sensation of itchiness. This miswiring means light touches (such as scratching) are felt as itchiness—contributing to a vicious itch-scratch cycle.

Also this week, in a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Paul Bastard, chief resident in the department of pediatrics at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris and a researcher at the Imagine Institute in Paris and Rockefeller University. They talk about his work to shed light on susceptibility to COVID-19, which recently won him the Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STSCI; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: James Webb Space Telescope image of image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9123

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Running out of fuel for fusion, and addressing gender-based violence in India Jul 07, 2022

On this week’s show: A shortage of tritium fuel may leave fusion energy with an empty tank, and an attempt to improve police responsiveness to violence against women

First up this week on the podcast, Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new hurdle for fusion: not enough fuel. After decades of delays, scientists are almost ready to turn on the first fusion reactor that makes more energy than it uses, but the fast-decaying fuel needed to run the reactor is running out.

Also this week, we highlight an intervention aimed at increasing police responsiveness to gender-based violence in India. Sandip Sukhtankar, an economist at the University of Virginia, talks about creating dedicated spaces for women in local police stations, staffed by trained officers. The presence of these “help desks”—when staffed by women officers—increased the recording by police of crimes against women, opening up access to social services and possibly a path to justice.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: DAVID PARKER/SCIENCE SOURCE; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: The interior of the ITER fusion megareactor (artist’s concept) with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8229

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former pirates help study the seas, and waves in the atmosphere can drive global tsunamis Jun 30, 2022

On this week’s show: A boost in research ships from an unlikely source, and how the 2022 Tonga eruption shook earth, water, and air around the world

For decades, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society caused controversy on the high seas; now it’s turning its patrolling ships into research vessels. Online News Editor David Grimm discusses how this change of heart came about with host Sarah Crespi.

Also this week, how atmospheric waves can push tsunamis around the globe. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Emily Brodsky, an earthquake physicist at University of California, Santa Cruz, about data from a multitude of sensors showing how waves in the air drove the fast-moving tsunamis that raced around the planet after the January Hunga eruption in Tonga.

Read the related papers:

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA Earth Observatory; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai eruption as seen from space with podcast overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/content/podcast/former-pirates-help-study-seas-and-waves-atmosphere-can-drive-global-tsunamis

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using waste to fuel airplanes, nature-based climate solutions, and a book on Indigenous conservation Jun 23, 2022

On this week’s show: Whether biofuels for planes will become a reality, mitigating climate change by working with nature, and the second installment of our book series on the science of food and agriculture

First this week, Science Staff Writer Robert F. Service talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about sustainable aviation fuel, a story included in Science’s special issue on climate change. Researchers have been able to develop this green gas from materials such as municipal garbage and corn stalks. Will it power air travel in the future?

Also in the special issue this week, Nathalie Seddon, a professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, chats with host Sarah Crespi about the value of working with nature to support the biodiversity and resilience of our ecosystems. Seddon emphasizes that nature-based solutions alone cannot stop climate change—technological approaches and behavioral changes will also need to be implemented.

Finally, we have the second installment of our series of author interviews on the science of food and agriculture. Host and science journalist Angela Saini talks to Jessica Hernandez, an Indigenous environmental scientist and author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. Hernandez’s book explores the failures of Western conservationism—and what we can learn about land management from Indigenous people.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: USDA NCRS Texas; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: cows in a forest]

Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Robert Service, Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6320

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A look at Long Covid, and why researchers and police shouldn’t use the same DNA kits Jun 16, 2022

On this week’s show: Tracing the roots of Long Covid, and an argument against using the same DNA markers for suspects in law enforcement and in research labs for cell lines

Two years into the pandemic, we’re still uncertain about the impact of Long Covid on the world—and up to 20% of COVID-19 patients might be at risk. First on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to share a snapshot of the current state of Long Covid research, particularly what researchers think are likely causes.

Also this week, Debra Mathews, assistant director for science programs in the Berman Institute of Bioethics and associate professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University, talks with Sarah about why everyone using the same DNA kits—from FBI to Interpol to research labs—is a bad idea.

Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Bobby Soni, chief business officer at the BioInnovation Institute (BII), about what steps scientists can take to successfully commercialize their ideas. This segment is sponsored by BII.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: A. Mastin/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: illustration of potential causes for Long Covid ]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add4887

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Saving the Spix’s macaw, and protecting the energy grid Jun 09, 2022

Two decades after it disappeared in nature, the stunning blue Spix’s macaw will be reintroduced to its forest home, and lessons learned from Texas’s major power crisis in 2021

The Spix’s macaw was first described in scientific literature in 1819—200 years later it was basically poached to extinction in the wild. Now, collectors and conservationists are working together to reintroduce captive-bred birds into their natural habitat in northeastern Brazil. Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt discusses the recovery of this highly coveted and endangered parrot with host Sarah Crespi.

Also this week, in an interview from the AAAS annual meeting, Meagan Cantwell talks with Varun Rai, Walt and Elspth Rostow professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, about how to prepare energy grids to weather extreme events and climate change.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: PATRICK PLEUL/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: two blue Spix’s macaws with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt; Meagan Cantwell

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3733

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The historic Maya’s sophisticated stargazing knowledge, and whether there is a cost to natural cloning Jun 02, 2022

On this week’s show: Exploring the historic Maya’s astronomical knowledge and how grasshoppers clone themselves without decreasing their fitness

First this week, Science contributing correspondent Joshua Sokol talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about the historic Maya’s sophisticated astronomical knowledge. In recent decades, researchers have set out to understand how city structures relate to astronomical phenomena and decipher ancient texts. Now, collaboration between Western scholars and living Indigenous people hopes to further illuminate the field.

Also this week, Mike Kearney, a professor at the school of biosciences at the University of Melbourne, chats with host Sarah Crespi about a species of grasshopper that can reproduce asexually. After studying the insect’s genetics, Kearney and his group didn’t find harmful mutations—or traits that made the grasshopper better adapted to its environment than the two species of grasshopper it hybridized from. Kearney and his team suggest this way of reproducing might not be rare because it’s harmful, but because most animal have safeguards in place to prevent asexual reproduction from arising.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Sergio Montúfar/pinceladasnocturnas.com—Estrellas Ancestrales “Astronomy in the Maya Worldview”; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Joshua Sokol; Sarah Crespi

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3058

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Saying farewell to Insight, connecting the microbiome and the brain, and a book on agriculture in Africa May 26, 2022

What we learned from a seismometer on Mars, why it’s so difficult to understand the relationship between our microbes and our brains, and the first in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture

First up this week, freelance space journalist Jonathan O’Callaghan joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the retirement of NASA’s Mars InSight lander. After almost 4 years of measuring quakes on the surface of the Red Planet, the lander’s solar panels are getting too dusty to continue providing power. O'Callaghan and Crespi look back at the insights that InSight has given us about Mars’s interior, and they talk about where else in the Solar System it might make sense to place a seismometer.

Also this week, we have a special issue on the body’s microbiome beyond the gut. As part of the special issue, John Cryan, principal investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, wrote a commentary piece on tightening the connections research has made between microbes and the brain—the steps needed to go from seeing connections to understanding how the microbiome might be tweaked to change what’s happening in the brain.

Finally this week, we have the first installment of our series of author interviews on the science of food and agriculture. In this inaugural segment, host and science journalist Angela Saini talks to Ousmane Badiane, an expert on agricultural policy and development in Africa, and a co-author of Food For All In Africa: Sustainable Intensification for African Farmers, a 2019 book looking at the possibilities and reality of sustainable intensive farming in Africa.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Illustration: Hannah Agosta; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: overlapping drawings of microbial populations]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jonathan O’Callaghan; Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.10.1126/science.add1406

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seeing the Milky Way’s central black hole, and calling dolphins by their names May 19, 2022

On this week’s show: The shadow of Milky Way’s giant black hole has been seen for the first time, and bottlenose dolphins recognize each other by signature whistles—and tastes

It’s been a few years since the first image of a black hole was published—that of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy came about in 2019. Now, we have a similar image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way—our very own galaxy. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why these images look so much alike, even though M87’s black hole is 1600 times larger than ours. We also discuss what’s next for the telescope that captured these shots.

Also this week, we take to the seas. Bottlenose dolphins are known to have a “signature whistle” they use to announce their identity to other dolphins. This week in Science Advances, Jason Bruck and colleagues write about how they may also recognize other dolphins through another sense: taste. Jason, an assistant professor in the department of biology at Stephen F. Austin State University, talks with Sarah about what this means for dolphin minds.

In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor, interviews Gary Michelson, founder and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies, about the importance of supporting research in the field of immunology—and where that support should be directed. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Dolphin Quest ; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: bottlenose dolphin peeking its head out of the water with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add0515

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fixing fat bubbles for vaccines, and preventing pain from turning chronic May 12, 2022

On this week’s show: Lipid nanoparticles served us well as tiny taxis delivering millions of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, but they aren’t optimized—yet, and why we might need inflammation to stop chronic pain

The messenger RNA payload of the mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is wrapped up in little fatty packets called lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). These fat bubbles were originally designed for something much different—carrying molecules into cells to silence genes. But they were useful and we were in a hurry, so not much was changed about them when they were pressed into service against COVID-19. Science journalist Elie Dolgin talks with host Sarah Crespi about ongoing efforts to improve LNPs as a delivery system for mRNA vaccines and therapeutic treatments.

Next on the show, we hear about “pain chronification.” Have you ever thought about chronic pain? What happens in the body when it heals—no specific thing is broken—but the pain never subsides? Sarah chats with Luda Diatchenko, professor on the faculties of medicine and dentistry at McGill University, about her Science Translational Medicine paper on the need for inflammation to prevent pain chronification.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: lipid nanoparticle illustration with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elie Dolgin

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9455

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Staking out the start of the Anthropocene, and why sunscreen is bad for coral May 05, 2022

On this week’s show: Geoscientists eye contenders for where to mark the beginning of the human-dominated geological epoch, and how sunscreen turns into photo toxin

We live in the Anthropocene: an era on our planet that is dominated by human activity to such an extent that the evidence is omnipresent in the soil, air, and even water. But how do we mark the start? Science Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how geoscientists are choosing the one place on Earth that best shows the advent of the Anthropocene, the so-called “golden spike.”

Also this week, Djordje Vuckovic, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, joins Sarah to talk about how sunscreen threatens coral reefs. Reefs are under a lot of stress these days, from things like warming waters, habitat destruction, and the loss of their fishy friends to voracious fishermen. Another suspected stressor is chemical sunscreens, which drift off swimming tourists. It turns out that common chemicals in sunscreen that protect skin from the Sun are modified by sea anemones and corals into a photo toxin that damages them when exposed to the Sun’s rays.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Amanda Tinoco; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of healthy corals at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

New @ScienceMagazine Podcast:

@voooos

Djordje Vuckovic @cee_stanford

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq8294

This week on the @ScienceMagazine Podcast, reporter @voooos

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq8294

++

LINKS FOR MP3 META

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq8294

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using quantum tools to track dark matter, why rabies remains, and a book series on science and food Apr 28, 2022

On this week’s show: How physicists are using quantum sensors to suss out dark matter, how rabies thwarts canine vaccination campaigns, and a kickoff for our new series with authors of books on food, land management, and nutrition science

Dark matter hunters have turned to quantum sensors to find elusive subatomic particles that may exist outside physicists’ standard model. Adrian Cho, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to give a tour of the latest dark matter particle candidates—and the traps that physicists are setting for them.

Next, we hear from Katie Hampson, a professor in the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, about her work contact tracing rabies in Tanzania. Her group was able to track rabies in a population of 50,000 dogs over 14 years. The massive study gives new insight into how to stop a virus that circulates at superlow levels but keeps popping up, despite vaccine campaigns.

Finally, we launch our 2022 books series on food and agriculture. In six interviews, which will be released monthly for the rest of the year, host and science journalist Angela Saini will speak to authors of recent books on topics from Indigenous land management to foods that are going extinct. This month, Angela talks with Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, who helped select the books for the series.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Suzanne McNabb; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Dogs in Tanzania with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini, Adrian Cho

Episode page: https://www.science.org/content/podcast/using-quantum-tools-track-dark-matter-why-rabies-remains-and-book-series-science-and

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Protecting birds from brightly lit buildings, and controlling robots from orbit Apr 21, 2022

On this week’s show: Saving birds from city lights, and helping astronauts inhabit robots

First up, Science Contributing Correspondent Josh Sokol talks with host Sarah Crespi about the millions of migrating birds killed every year when they slam into buildings—attracted by brightly lit windows. New efforts are underway to predict bird migrations and dim lights along their path, using a bird-forecasting system called .

Next, we hear from Aaron Pereira, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and a guest researcher at the human robot interaction lab at the European Space Agency. He chats with Sarah about his Science Robotics paper on controlling a robot on Earth from the International Space Station and the best way for an astronaut to “immerse” themselves in a rover or make themselves feel like it is an extension of their body.

In a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Alberto Pugliese, professor of medicine, microbiology, and immunology at the University of Miami, about a program he leads to advance research into type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Helmsley Charitable Trust and nPod (the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes).

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: M. Panzirsch et al., Science Robotics (2022); Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: remote-controlled rover with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Josh Sokol

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq5907

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Desert ‘skins’ drying up, and one of the oldest Maya calendars Apr 14, 2022

On this week’s show: Climate change is killing critical soil organisms in arid regions, and early evidence for the Maya calendar from a site in Guatemala

Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how climate change is affecting “biocrust,” a thin layer of fungi, lichens, and other microbes that sits on top of desert soil, helping retain water and create nutrients for rest of the ecosystem. Recent measurements in Utah suggest the warming climate is causing a decline in the lichen component of biocrust, which is important for adding nitrogen into soils.

Next, Sarah talks with Skidmore College anthropologist Heather Hurst, who directs Guatemala’s San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project, and David Stuart, a professor of art history and director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas, Austin, about their new Science Advances paper. The study used radiocarbon dating to pin down the age of one of the earliest pieces of the Maya calendar. Found in an archaeological dig in San Bartolo, Guatemala, the character known as “seven deer” (which represents a day in the Maya calendar), was dated to 300 B.C.E. That early appearance challenges what researchers know about the age and origins of the Maya dating system.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Heather Hurst; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Ixbalamque painting from San Barolo, Guatemala, with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq4848

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A surprisingly weighty fundamental particle, and surveying the seas for RNA viruses Apr 07, 2022

On this week’s show: A new measurement of the W boson could challenge physicists’ standard model, and an abundance of marine RNA viruses

Staff Writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new threat to the standard model of particle physics—a heavier than expected measurement of a fundamental particle called the W boson. They chat about how this measurement was taken, and what it means if it is right.

Next, Sarah talks about the microscopic denizens of Earth’s oceans with Ahmed Zayed, a research scientist in the department of microbiology at Ohio State University, Columbus. They talk about findings from a global survey of marine RNA viruses. The results double the number of known RNA viruses, suggesting new classifications will be needed to categorize all this viral diversity.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: A. Mastin/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: illustration of three RNA viruses with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Adrian Cho

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq3391

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Probing Earth’s mysterious inner core, and the most complete human genome to date Mar 31, 2022

On this week’s show: A journey to the center of the center of the Earth, and what was missing from the first human genome project

Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the many mysteries surrounding the innermost part of our planet—from its surprisingly recent birth to whether it spins faster or slower than the rest of the planet.

Next, Sarah chats with Adam Phillippy about the results from the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium, an effort to create a complete and detailed read of the human genome. Phillippy, a senior investigator and head of the Genome Informatics Section at the National Human Genome Research Institute, explains what we can learn by topping up the human genome with roughly 200 more megabases of genetic information—practically a whole chromosome’s worth of additional sequencing.

See all the T2T papers.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: An array of the human chromosomes showing newly sequenced parts from the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1885

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists become targets on social media, and battling space weather Mar 24, 2022

On this week’s show: Why it’s tougher than ever to be a researcher on Twitter, and a highlight from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting

First up, Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady talks with host Sarah Crespi about the harassment that COVID-19 researchers are facing and a survey conducted by Science that shows more media exposure is linked to higher levels of abuse.

Next, producer Meagan Cantwell shares another interview from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting. She talks with Delores Knipp, a research professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead aerospace engineering sciences department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, about what happens when our well-behaved Sun behaves badly.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: SkyLab 4/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: solar flare image taken from Skylab 4]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O'Grady

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb2091

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The challenges of testing medicines during pregnancy, and when not paying attention makes sense Mar 17, 2022

On this week’s show: Getting pregnant people into clinical trials, and tracking when mice aren’t paying attention

First up, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how scientists can overcome the lack of research on drug safety in pregnancy.

Next, Nikola Grujic, a Ph.D. student at the Institute for Neuroscience at ETH Zürich, talks about rational inattention in mice and how it helps explain why our brains notice certain things—and miss others.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Stefan Rotter/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: rodent peering out of a hole]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb2037

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Monitoring wastewater for SARS-CoV-2, and looking back at the biggest questions about the pandemic Mar 10, 2022

On this week’s show: We have highlights from a special COVID-19 retrospective issue on lessons learned after 2 years of the pandemic

First up, Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what scientists have learned from scanning sewage for COVID-19 RNA. And now that so many wastewater monitoring stations are in place—what else can we do with them?

Next, we have researcher Katia Koelle, an associate professor of biology at Emory University. She wrote a review on the evolving epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2: What have been the most important questions from epidemiologists over the course of the pandemic, and how can they help us navigate future pandemic threats?

Check out the full COVID-19 retrospective issue on lessons learned from the pandemic.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Stephan Schmitz/Folio Art; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: partially constructed bridge over water filled with giant SARS-CoV-2 viral particles]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb1867

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A global treaty on plastic pollution, and a dearth of Black physicists Mar 03, 2022

On this week’s show: The ins and outs of the first global treaty on plastic pollution, and why the United States has so few Black physicists

First up, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the world’s first global treaty on plastics pollution–and the many questions that need answers to make it work. Read a related Policy Forum here.

Up next, we hear from some of more than 50 Black physicists interviewed for a special news package in Science about the barriers Black physicists face, and potential models for change drawing on a 2020 report that documents how the percentage of undergraduates physics degrees going to Black students has declined over the past 20 years.

In his excerpt, Willie Rockward, chair and professor of physics at Morgan State University, describes how a study group dubbed the “Black Hole” provided much-needed support for him and four colleagues who were part of the first cohort of Black graduate physics students at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Next, Fana Mulu-Moore, a physics and astronomy instructor at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado, explains her ‘life-changing’ transition from research to teaching, and how it has given her a sense of purpose.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Carl Campbell/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: sheaves of plastic wrap photographed against a black background]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb1765

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Securing nuclear waste for 100,000 years, and the link between math literacy and life satisfaction Feb 24, 2022

On this week’s show: Finland puts the finishing touches on the world’s first high-level permanent nuclear repository, and why being good at math might make you both happy and sad

First up, freelance science journalist Sedeer El-Showk joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his visit to a permanent nuclear waste repository being built deep underground in Finland, and the technology—and political maneuvering—needed to secure the site for 100,000 years.

Also this week, Pär Bjälkebring, a senior lecturer in the department of psychology at the University of Gothenburg, talks with Sarah on the sidelines of the 2022 annual meeting of AAAS (publisher of Science) about the link between numeracy—math literacy—income, and life satisfaction. Bjälkebring took part in the AAAS panel Decision-Making with Large Numbers and Its Underlying Psychological Mechanisms on 19 February. Learn more about the 2022 AAAS meeting here.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Tapani Karjanlahti/TVO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photograph of a digging machine inside a giant cave]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sedeer El-Showk

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada1534

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID-19’s long-term impact on the heart, and calculating the survival rate of human artifacts Feb 17, 2022

On this week’s show: A giant study suggests COVID-19 takes a serious toll on heart health—a full year after recovery, and figuring out what percentage of ancient art, books, and even tools has survived the centuries

First up, Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new study that looked at more than 150,000 COVID-19 patient records and found increases in risk for 20 different cardiovascular conditions 1 year after recovery.

Also this week we have Mike Kestemont, an associate professor in the department of literature at the University of Antwerp, talking about an estimate of how much of antiquity has endured.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: illuminated manuscript page showing a giant R, plus a person and some writing]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada1311

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Merging supermassive black holes, and communicating science in the age of social media Feb 10, 2022

On this week’s show: What we can learn from two supermassive black holes that appear to be on a collision course with each other, and the brave new online world in which social media dominates and gatekeeps public access to scientific information

First up, Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about the possibly imminent merger of two supermassive black holes in a nearby galaxy. How imminent? We might see a signal as early as 100 days from now.

Also, this week we have a special section on science and social media. In her contribution, Dominique Brossard, professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, talks about the shift in the source of scientific information away from traditional publishers, newspapers, etc. to social media platforms, and what it means for the future of science communication.

Finally, we share some tweets about the relationship of social media and science communication submitted by young readers in our Letters section. You can read our picks here or check out all the submissions on Twitter at #NextGenSci.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: simulation of a pair of supermassive black holes on the cusp of merging]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada1028

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building a green city in a biodiversity hot spot, and live monitoring vehicle emissions Feb 03, 2022

On this week’s show: Environmental concerns over Indonesia building a new capital on Borneo, and keeping an eye on pollution as it comes out of the tailpipe

First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Dennis Normile talks with host Sarah Crespi about Indonesia’s plans for an ultragreen new capital city on the island of Borneo. Despite intentions to limit the environmental impact of the new urban center, many are concerned about unplanned growth surrounding the city which could threaten rare plants and animals.

Also this week, John Zhou, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Technology Sydney talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on reducing pollution from cars and trucks by live monitoring vehicle emissions using remote sensors.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Malinda Rathnayake/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: cars on the road in a city at sunset]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dennis Normile

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fecal transplants in pill form, and gut bacteria that nourish hibernating squirrels Jan 27, 2022

On this week’s show: A pill derived from human feces treats recurrent gut infections, and how a squirrel’s microbiome supplies nitrogen during hibernation

First up this week, Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss putting the bacterial benefits of human feces in a pill. The hope is to avoid using fecal transplants to treat recurrent gut infections caused by the bacterium Clostridium difficile.

Also this week, Hannah Carey, a professor in the department of comparative biosciences within the school of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, talks with Sarah about how ground squirrels are helped by their gut microbes during hibernation.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: illustration of two 13-lined ground squirrels]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada0494

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A window into live brains, and what saliva tells babies about human relationships Jan 20, 2022

On this week’s show: Ethical concerns rise with an increase in open brain research, and how sharing saliva can be a proxy for the closeness of a relationship

Human brains are protected by our hard skulls, but these bony shields also keep researchers out. With brain surgeries and brain implants on the rise, scientists are getting more chances to explore living brains. Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the ethics of doing research on patients undergoing intense medical procedures, and the kinds of research being done.

Also this week, Ashley Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher in the brain and cognitive science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about the meaning behind sharing saliva. Spend any time with a baby lately? Were you in awe—eager to cuddle, kiss, even change a diaper? Or were you slightly horrified by the drool and other fluids seeping out of this new human? Your feelings on the matter might depend on your closeness with the baby and—as Thomas and colleagues write this week in Science—the baby may notice which way you feel. According to their results, babies, like adults, seem to recognize sharing saliva—like sharing food and utensils or kissing—as a signal of close relationships.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Onfokus/Getty/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: baby chewing on a cellphone]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick

Episode page: http://www.science.org/content/podcast/window-live-brains-and-what-saliva-tells-babies-about-human-relationships

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cloning for conservation, and divining dynamos on super-Earths Jan 13, 2022

On this week’s show: How cloning can introduce diversity into an endangered species, and ramping up the pressure on iron to see how it might behave in the cores of rocky exoplanets

First up this week, News Intern Rachel Fritts talks with host Sarah Crespi about cloning a frozen ferret to save an endangered species.

Also this week, Rick Kraus, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talks about how his group used a powerful laser to compress iron to pressures similar to those found in the cores of some rocky exoplanets. If these super-Earths’ cores are like our Earth’s, they may have a protective magnetosphere that increases their chances of hosting life.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Kimberly Fraser/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: three baby black-footed ferrets being held by gloved hands]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Fritts

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acz9974

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Setting up a permafrost observatory, and regulating transmissible vaccines Jan 06, 2022

On this week’s show: Russia announces plans to monitor permafrost, and a conversation about the dangers of self-spreading engineered viruses and vaccines

Science journalist Olga Dobrovidova joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about plans to set up a national permafrost observatory in Russia.

Then Filippa Lentzos, senior lecturer in science and international security in the department of war studies and in the department of global health and social medicine, and co-director for the center for science and security at King’s College London, joins Sarah to discuss her Science commentary on the dangers of transmissible vaccines for controlling invasive species and viruses found in wildlife.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Евгений Ерыгин/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: person walking on snow at night in city of Norilsk, Russia]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Olga Dobrovidova

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Top online stories, the state of marijuana research, and Afrofuturism Dec 23, 2021

On this week’s show: The best of our online stories, what we know about the effects of cannabinoids, and the last in our series of books on race and science

First, Online News Editor David Grimm brings the top online stories of the year—from headless slugs to Dyson spheres. You can find out the other top stories and the most popular online story of the year here.

Then, Tibor Harkany, a professor of molecular neuroscience at the Medical University of Vienna’s Center for Brain Research, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the state of marijuana research. Pot has been legalized in many places, and many people take cannabinoids—but what do we know about the effects of these molecules on people? Tibor calls for more research into their helpful and harmful potential.

Finally, we have the very last installment of our series of books on race and science. Books host Angela Saini talks with physician and science fiction author Tade Thompson about his book Rosewater. Listen to the whole series.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Biodiversity Heritage Library/Flickr/Public Domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: illustration of a wombat]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Angela Saini

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Breakthrough of the year show, and the best of science books Dec 16, 2021

Every year Science names its top breakthrough of the year and nine runners up. Online News Editor Catherine Matacic joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what Science’s editors consider some of the biggest innovations of 2021.

Also this week, Books Editor Valerie Thompson shares her list of top science books for the year—from an immunology primer by a YouTuber, to a contemplation of the universe interwoven with a close up look at how the science sausage is made.

Books on Valerie’s list:

Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System that Keeps You Alive by Phillip Dettmer
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach
The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime and Dreams Deferredby Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Listen to last year’s books round up.

List of this year’s top science books for kids.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Valerie Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: golden protein confetti]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Catherine Matacic; Valerie Thompson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tapping fiber optic cables for science, and what really happens when oil meets water Dec 09, 2021

Geoscientists are turning to fiber optic cables as a means of measuring seismic activity. But rather than connecting them to instruments, the cables are the instruments. Joel Goldberg talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about tapping fiber optic cables for science.

Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Sylvie Roke, a physicist and chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, and director of its Laboratory for fundamental BioPhotonics, about the place where oil meets water. Despite the importance of the interaction between the hydrophobic and the hydrophilic to biology, and to life, we don’t know much about what happens at the interface of these substances.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Artography/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: oil droplets and water]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Joel Goldberg

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acx9771

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ethics of small COVID-19 trials, and visiting an erupting volcano Dec 02, 2021

There has been so much research during the pandemic—an avalanche of preprints, papers, and data—but how much of it is any good? Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the value of poorly designed research on COVID-19 and more generally.

In September, the volcano Cumbre Vieja on Spain’s Canary Islands began to erupt. It is still happening. The last time it erupted was back in 1971, so we don’t know much about the features of the past eruption or the signs it was coming. Marc-Antoine Longpré, a volcanologist and associate professor at Queens College, City University of New York, discusses the ongoing eruption with Sarah and what today’s sensors tell us about what happens when this volcano wakes up.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Eduardo Robaina; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: The eruption of Cumbre Vieja, September 2021]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why trees are making extra nuts this year, human genetics and viral infections, and a seminal book on racism and identity Nov 25, 2021

Have you noticed the trees around you lately—maybe they seem extra nutty? It turns out this is a “masting” year, when trees make more nuts, seeds, and pinecones than usual. Science Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the many mysteries of masting years.

Next, Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Jean-Laurent Casanova, a professor at Rockefeller University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, about his review article on why some people are more vulnerable to severe disease from viral infections. This is part of a special issue on inflammation in Science.

Finally, in this month’s book segment on race and science, host Angela Saini talks with author Beverly Daniel Tatum about her seminal 2003 book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: LensOfDan/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: Pile of acorns]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Angela Saini

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wildfires could threaten ozone layer, and vaccinating against tick bites Nov 18, 2021

Could wildfires be depleting the ozone all over again? Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the evidence from the Polarstern research ship for wildfire smoke lofting itself high into the stratosphere, and how it can affect the ozone layer once it gets there.

Next, we talk ticks—the ones that bite, take blood, and can leave you with a nasty infection. Andaleeb Sajid, a staff scientist at the National Cancer Institute, joins Sarah to talk about her Science Translational Medicine paper describing an mRNA vaccine intended to reduce the length of tick bites to before the pests can transmit diseases to a host.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Janice Haney Carr/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: digitally colorized scanning electron microscopic image of a grouping of Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, the causative agent of Lyme disease]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The long road to launching the James Webb Space Telescope, and genes for a longer life span Nov 11, 2021

The James Webb Space Telescope was first conceived in the late 1980s. Now, more than 30 years later, it’s finally set to launch in December. After such a long a road, anticipation over what the telescope will contribute to astronomy is intense. Daniel Clery, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what took so long and what we can expect after launch.

You might have heard that Greenland sharks may live up to 400 years. But did you know that some Pacific rockfish can live to be more than 100? That’s true, even though other rockfish species only live about 10 years. Why such a range in life span? Greg Owens, assistant professor of biology at the University of Victoria, discusses his work looking for genes linked with longer life spans.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Tyson Rininger; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: Sebastes caurinus, the copper rockfish ]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The folate debate, and rewriting the radiocarbon curve Nov 04, 2021

Some 80 countries around the world add folic acid to their food supply to prevent birth defects that might happen because of a lack of the B vitamin—even among people too early in their pregnancies to know they are pregnant. This year, the United Kingdom decided to add the supplement to white flour. But it took almost 10 years of debate, and no countries in the European Union joined them in the change. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ongoing folate debate.

Last year, a highly anticipated tool for dating ancient materials was released: a new updated radiocarbon calibration curve. The curve, which describes how much carbon-14 was in the atmosphere at different times in the past 55,000 years, is essential to figuring out the age of organic materials such as wood or leather. Sarah talks with Tim Heaton, senior lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and Edouard Bard, a professor at the College of France, about how the curve was redrawn and what it means, both for archaeology and for our understanding of the processes that create radiocarbon in the first place—like solar flares and Earth’s magnetic fields.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: close-up photograph of layers in volcanic tephra]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sleeping without a brain, tracking alien invasions, and algorithms of oppression Oct 28, 2021

Simple animals like jellyfish and hydra, even roundworms, sleep. Without brains. Why do they sleep? How can we tell a jellyfish is sleeping? Staff Writer Liz Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what can be learned about sleep from these simple sleepers. The feature is part of a special issue on sleep this week in Science.

Next is a look at centuries of alien invasions—or rather, invasive insects moving from place to place as humans trade across continents. Sarah talks with Matthew MacLachlan, a research economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, about his Science Advances paper on why insect invasions don’t always increase when trade does.

Finally, a book on racism and the search algorithms. Books host Angela Saini for our series of interviews on race and science talks with Safiya Umoja Noble, a professor in the African American Studies and Information Studies departments at the University of California, Los Angeles, about her book: Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: marcouliana/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: brown marmorated stink bug pattern]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi, Angela Saini

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Soil science goes deep, and making moldable wood Oct 20, 2021

There are massive telescopes that look far out into the cosmos, giant particle accelerators looking for ever tinier signals, gargantuan gravitational wave detectors that span kilometers of Earth—what about soil science? Where’s the big science project on deep soil? It’s coming soon. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about plans for a new subsoil observatory to take us beyond topsoil.

Wood is in some ways an ideal building material. You can grow it out of the ground. It’s not very heavy. It’s strong. But materials like metal and plastic have one up on wood in terms of flexibility. Plastic and metal can be melted and molded into complicated shapes. Could wood ever do this? Liangbing Hu, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering and director of the Center for Materials Innovation at the University of Maryland, College Park, talked with Sarah about making moldable wood in a new way.

In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing office, interviews Michael Brehm, associate professor at UMass Chan Medical School Diabetes Center of Excellence, about how he is using humanized mouse models to study ways to modulate the body’s immune system as a pathway to treating type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Xiao et al., Science 2021; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: honeycomb structure made from moldable wood]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ripple effects of mass incarceration, and how much is a dog’s nose really worth? Oct 14, 2021

This week we are covering the Science special issue on mass incarceration.

Can a dog find a body? Sometimes. Can a dog indicate a body was in a spot a few months ago, even though it’s not there now? There’s not much scientific evidence to back up such claims. But in the United States, people are being sent to prison based on this type of evidence. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Peter Andrey Smith, a reporter and researcher based in Maine, about the science—or lack thereof—behind dog-sniff evidence.

With 2 million people in jail or prison in the United States, it has become incredibly common to have a close relative behind bars. Sarah talks with Hedwig Lee, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, about the consequences of mass incarceration for families of the incarcerated, from economic to social.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Adrian Brandon; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: illustration from the special issue on mass incarceration by Adrian Brandon. He writes: “This illustration shines a light on the structural role of the prison system and how deeply embedded it is in the fabric of this country.”]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Peter Andrey Smith

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Swarms of satellites could crowd out the stars, and the evolution of hepatitis B over 10 millennia Oct 07, 2021

In 2019, a SpaceX rocket released 60 small satellites into low-Earth orbit—the first wave of more than 10,000 planned releases. At the same time, a new field of environmental debate was also launched—with satellite companies on one side, and astronomers, photographers, and stargazers on the other. Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the future of these space-based swarms.

Over the course of the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic, different variants of the virus have come and gone. What would such changes look like over 10,000 years? Arthur Kocher, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, talks with Sarah about watching the evolution of the virus that causes hepatitis B—over 10 millennia—and how changes in the disease’s path match up with shifts in human history.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Rafael Schmall; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: Starlink satellites moving across the sky in a long-exposure photograph of the star Albireo in Cygnus]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Josh Sokol

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whole-genome screening for newborns, and the importance of active learning for STEM Sep 30, 2021

Today, most newborns get some biochemical screens of their blood, but whole-genome sequencing is a much more comprehensive look at an infant—maybe too comprehensive? Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ethical ins and outs of whole-genome screening for newborns, and the kinds of infrastructure needed to use these screens more widely.

Sarah also talks with three contributors to a series of vignettes on the importance of active learning for students in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Yuko Munakata, professor in the department of psychology and Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, talks about how the amount of unstructured time and active learning contributes to developing executive function—the way our brains keep us on task.

Nesra Yannier, special faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and inventor of NoRILLA, discusses an artificial intelligence–driven learning platform that helps children explore and learn about the real world.

Finally, Louis Deslauriers, senior preceptor in the department of physics and director of science teaching and learning at Harvard University, laments lectures: why we like them so much, why we think we learn more from lectures than inquiry-based learning, and why we’re wrong.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Jerry Lai/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: newborn baby feet]

[Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earliest human footprints in North America, dating violins with tree rings, and the social life of DNA Sep 23, 2021

Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss fossilized footprints left on a lake shore in North America sometime before the end of Last Glacial Maximum—possibly the earliest evidence for humans on the continent. Read the research.

Next, Paolo Cherubini, a senior scientist in the dendrosciences research group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, discusses using tree rings to date and authenticate 17th and 18th century violins worth millions of dollars.

Finally, in this month’s installment of the series of book interviews on race and science, guest host Angela Saini interviews Alondra Nelson, professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, about her 2016 book The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome.

Note on the closing music: Violinist Nicholas Kitchen plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne on the violin “Castelbarco” made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy, in 1697. Courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Bennet et al., Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: human footprints preserved in rock]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Angela Saini

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Potty training cows, and sardines swimming into an ecological trap Sep 16, 2021

Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the health and environmental benefits of potty training cows.

Next, Peter Teske, a professor in the department of zoology at the University of Johannesburg, joins us to talk about his Science Advances paper on origins of the sardine run—a massive annual fish migration off the coast of South Africa.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Steven Benjamin; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: sardines in a swirling bait ball]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Legions of lunar landers, and why we make robots that look like people Sep 09, 2021

Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about plans for NASA’s first visit to the Moon in 50 years—and the quick succession of missions that will likely follow.

Next, Eileen Roesler, a researcher and lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin in the field of human-robot automation, discusses the benefits of making robots that look and act like people—it’s not always as helpful as you would think.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Virginie Angéloz/Noun Project; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: three robot drawings that look like people to different degrees]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pinpointing the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and making vortex beams of atoms Sep 02, 2021

Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the many theories circulating about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and why finding the right one is important.

Next, Ed Narevicius, a professor in the chemical and biological physics department at the Weizmann Institute of Science, talks with Sarah about creating vortex beams of atoms—a quantum state in which the phase of the matter wave of an atom rotates around its path, like a spiral staircase.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Alon Luski et al./Science 2021; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: vortex beams showing holes in the center of the beam]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New insights into endometriosis, predicting RNA folding, and the surprising career of the spirometer Aug 26, 2021

News Intern Rachel Fritts talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new way to think about endometriosis—a painful condition found in one in 10 women in which tissue that normally lines the uterus grows on the outside of the uterus and can bind to other organs.

Next, Raphael Townshend, founder and CEO of Atomic AI, talks about predicting RNA folding using deep learning—a machine learning approach that relies on very few examples and limited data.

Finally, in this month's edition of our limited series on race and science, guest host and journalist Angela Saini is joined by author Lundy Braun, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and Africana studies at Brown University, to discuss her book: Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: C. Bickel/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: folded RNA 3D structures]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Fritts

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building a martian analog on Earth, and moral outrage on social media Aug 19, 2021

Contributing Correspondent Michael Price joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the newest Mars analog to be built on the location of the first attempt at a large-scale sealed habitat, Biosphere 2 in Arizona.

Next, William Brady, a postdoctoral researcher in the psychology department at Yale University, talks with Sarah about using an algorithm to measure increasing expressions of moral outrage on social media platforms.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Kai Staats; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: lettuce plants being tended in a Mars analog]

[Caption: Lettuce plants being tended in a Mars analog]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Mike Price

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A risky clinical trial design, and attacks on machine learning Aug 12, 2021

Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for Science, talks with host Sarah Crespi about a risky trial of vitamin D in asthmatic children that has caused a lot of concern among ethicists. They also discuss how the vitamin D trial connects with a possibly dangerous push to compare new treatments with placebos instead of standard-of-care treatments in clinical trials.

Next, Birhanu Eshete, professor of computer and information science at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the risks of exposing machine learning algorithms online—risks such as the reverse engineering of training data to access proprietary information or even patient data.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Filip Patock/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[Alt text: Bottle of Vitamin D pills]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; Charles Piller

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A freeze on prion research, and watching cement dry Aug 05, 2021

International News Editor Martin Enserink talks with host Sarah Crespi about a moratorium on prion research after the fatal brain disease infected two lab workers in France, killing one.

Next, Abhay Goyal, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, talks with intern Claire Hogan about his Science Advances paper on figuring out how to reduce the massive carbon footprint of cement by looking at its molecular structure.

Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Ansuman Satpathy, assistant professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of supporting early-career research and diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Marquette LaForest/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Debating healthy obesity, delaying type 1 diabetes, and visiting bone rooms Jul 29, 2021

First this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the paradox of metabolically healthy obesity. They chat about the latest research into the relationships between markers of metabolic health—such as glucose or cholesterol levels in the blood—and obesity. They aren’t as tied as you might think.

Next, Colin Dayan, professor of clinical diabetes and metabolism at Cardiff University and senior clinical researcher at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, joins Sarah to discuss his contribution to a special issue on type 1 diabetes. In his review, Colin and colleagues lay out research into how type 1 diabetes can be detected early, delayed, and maybe even one day prevented.

Finally, in the first of a six-part series of book interviews on race and science, guest host Angela Saini talks with author and professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Samuel Redman, about his book Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums. The two discuss the legacy of human bone collecting and racism in museums today.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Jason Solo/Jacky Winter Group; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel; Angela Saini

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease, and what earthquakes on Mars reveal about the Red Planet’s core Jul 22, 2021

First this week, Associate Editor Kelly Servick joins us to discuss a big push to develop scalable blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease and how this could advance research on the disease and its treatment.

Next, Amir Khan, a senior scientist at the Physics Institute of the University of Zurich and the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zürich, talks with multimedia intern Claire Hogan about marsquakes detected by NASA’s InSight lander—and what they can reveal about Mars’s crust, mantle, and core.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: C. Bickel/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Claire Hogan

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science after COVID-19, and a landslide that became a flood Jul 15, 2021

First this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new series on how COVID-19 may alter the scientific enterprise and they look back at how pandemics have catalyzed change throughout history.

Next, Dan Shugar, associate professor of geoscience and director of the environmental science program at the University of Calgary, talks with producer Joel Goldberg about a deadly rock and ice avalanche in northern India this year and why closely monitoring steep mountain slopes is so important for averting future catastrophes.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Irfan Rashid, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists’ role in the opioid crisis, 3D-printed candy proteins, and summer books Jul 08, 2021

First this week, Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with author Patrick Radden Keefe about his book Empire of Pain and the role scientists, regulators, and physicians played in the rollout of Oxycontin and the opioid crisis in the United States.

Next, Katelyn Baumer, a Ph.D. student in the chemistry and biochemistry department at Baylor University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about her Science Advances paper on 3D printing proteins using candy.

Finally, book review editor Valerie Thompson takes us on a journey through some science-y summer reads—from the future of foods to a biography of the color blue.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp; Valerie Thompson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Preserving plastic art, and a gold standard for measuring extreme pressure Jul 01, 2021

First this week, Contributing Correspondent Sam Kean talks with producer Joel Goldberg about techniques museum conservators are using to save a range of plastic artifacts—from David Bowie costumes to the first artificial heart.

Next, Dayne Fratanduono, an experimental physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about new standards for how gold and platinum change under extreme pressure. Fratanduono discusses how these standards will help researchers make more precise measurements of extreme pressure in the future.

Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Laura Mackay, professor and laboratory head at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by the Michelson Foundation.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Aleth Lorne; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

++

Authors: Joel Goldberg; Sam Kean; Meagan Cantwell

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does Botox combat depression, the fruit fly sex drive, and a series on race and science Jun 24, 2021

First this week, Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady talks with host Sarah Crespi about controversy surrounding the use of Botox injections to alleviate depression by suppressing frowning.

Next, researcher Stephen Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, discusses his Science Advances paper on what turns on the fruit fly sex drive.

Finally, we are excited to kick off a six-part series of monthly interviews with authors of books that highlight the many intersections between race and science and scientists. This week, guest host and journalist Angela Saini talks with Keith Wailoo, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, who helped select the topics about the books we will be covering and how they were selected.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Tomasz Klejdysz/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady; Angela Saini

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keeping ads out of dreams, and calculating the cost of climate displacement Jun 17, 2021

First this week, News Intern Sofia Moutinho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss scientists concerns about advertisers looking into using our smart speakers or phones to whisper ads to us while we sleep.

Next, Bina Desai, head of Programs at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva, discusses how to predict the economic impact of human displacement due to climate change as part of a special issue on strategic retreat.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission Belur Math/Amphan Cyclone Relief Services; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sofia Moutinho

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Finding consciousness outside the brain, and using DNA to reunite families Jun 10, 2021

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cicada citizen science, and expanding the genetic code Jun 03, 2021

First this week, freelance journalist Ian Graber-Stiehl discusses what might be the oldest community science project—observing the emergence of periodical cicadas. He also notes the shifts in how amateur scientists have gone from contributing observations to helping scientists make predictions about the insects’ schedules.

Next, Jason Chin, program leader at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, discusses how reducing redundancy in the genetic code opens up space for encoding unusual amino acids. His group shows that eliminating certain codes from the genome makes bacteria that are resistant to viruses and that these edited codes can be used to program the cells to make complicated molecules.

In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with Gary Michelson, founder of the Michelson Medical Research Foundation and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies, about the best ways to support early-career scientists, including through prizes such as the new Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Bill Douthitt/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ian Graber-Stiehl

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cracking consciousness, and taking the temperature of urban heat islands May 27, 2021

First this week, Lucia Melloni, a group leader in the department of neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, talks with host Sarah Crespi about making the hard problem of consciousness easier by getting advocates of opposing theories to collaborate and design experiments to rule in or rule out their competing theories.

Next, TC Chakraborty, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, shares his Science Advances paper on why it’s important to measure air temperature on the ground rather than from satellites when trying to understand urban heat islands—how cities heat up more than the surrounding countryside.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Joe Wolf/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ecstasy plus therapy for PTSD, and the effects of early childhood development programs on mothers May 20, 2021

Staff Writer Kelly Servick talks with host Sarah Crespi about the pairing of a specific type of psychotherapy with the drug MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, for treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

Also this week, Pamela Jakiela, an economics professor at Williams College, discusses the importance of knowing how early childhood development interventions like free day care or parenting classes have an effect on caregivers, particularly mothers.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Graham Crouch/World Bank; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Kelly Servick; Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cutting shipping air pollution may cause water pollution, and keeping air clean with lightning May 13, 2021

News Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss possible harms from how the shipping industry is responding to air pollution regulations—instead of pumping health-harming chemicals into the air, they are now being dumped into oceans.

Also this week, William Brune, professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, talks about flying a plane into thunderstorms and how measurements from research flights revealed the surprising amount of air-cleaning oxidants created by lightning.

In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Manfred Kraus, senior director and head of in vivo pharmacology oncology at Bristol Myers Squibb, about the impact of humanized mice on preclinical research. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Samantha Dellaert/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Erik Stokstad; Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chernobyl’s ruins grow restless, and entangling macroscopic objects May 06, 2021

Rich Stone, former international news editor at Science and current senior science editor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Tangled Bank Studios, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about concerning levels of fission reactions deep in an inaccessible area of the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Though nothing is likely to come of it anytime soon, scientists must decide what—if anything—they should do tamp down reactions in this hard-to-reach place.

Also on this week’s show, Shlomi Kotler, an assistant professor in the department of applied physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joins Sarah to discuss the quantum entanglement of macroscopic objects. This hallmark of quantum physics has been confined—up until now—to microscopic items like atoms, ions, and photons. But what does it mean that two drums, each the width of a human hair, can be entangled?

Read a related insight.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Caption: New Safe Confinement structure built over Chernobyl ruins; Credit: URBEX Hungary/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Rich Stone; Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Storing wind as gravity, and well-digging donkeys Apr 29, 2021

Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a company that stores renewable energy by hoisting large objects in massive “gravity batteries.”

Also on this week’s show, Erick Lundgren, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, talks about how water from wells dug by wild horses and feral donkeys provides a buffer to all different kinds of animals and plants during the driest times in the Sonora and Mojave deserts.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Tracy Hall/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Cathleen O’Grady; Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebuilding Louisiana’s coast, and recycling plastic into fuel Apr 22, 2021

Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall about a restoration project to add 54 square kilometers back to the coast of Louisiana by allowing the Mississippi River to resume delivering sediment to sinking regions.

Also on this week’s show, Dion Vlachos, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Delaware, Newark, and director of the Delaware Energy Institute, joins Sarah to talk about his Science Advances paper on a low-temperature process to convert different kinds of plastic to fuels, like gasoline and jet fuel.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Shannon Dosemagen/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Warren Cornwall; Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why muon magnetism matters, and a count of all the Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived Apr 15, 2021

Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about a new measurement of the magnetism of the muon—an unstable cousin of the electron. This latest measurement and an earlier one both differ from predictions based on the standard model of particle physics. The increased certainty that there is a muon magnetism mismatch could be a field day for theoretical physicists looking to add new particles or forces to the standard model.

Also on this week’s show, Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and professor of integrative biology, joins Sarah to talk about his team’s calculation for the total number of Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived.

In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Imre Berger, professor of biochemistry at the University of Bristol, about his Science paper on finding a druggable pocket on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and how the work was accelerated by intensive cloud computing. This segment is sponsored by Oracle for Research.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image:Lewis Kelly/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Adrian Cho; Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Magnetar mysteries, and when humans got big brains Apr 08, 2021

Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol about magnetars—highly magnetized neutron stars. A recent intense outburst of gamma rays from a nearby galaxy has given astronomers a whole new view on these mysterious magnetic monsters.

Also on this week’s show, Christoph Zollikofer, a professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich, talks about the evolution of humanlike brains. His team’s work with brain-case fossils suggests the complex brains we carry around today were not present in the early hominins to leave Africa, but later developed in the cousins they left behind.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: (Text) Sculptor galaxy; (Image) ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA; Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Joshua Sokol; Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fighting outbreaks with museum collections, and making mice hallucinate Apr 01, 2021

Podcast Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Pamela Soltis, a professor and curator with the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida and the director of the University of Florida Biodiversity Institute, about how natural collections at museums can be a valuable resource for understanding future disease outbreaks. Read the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. This segment is part of our coverage of the 2021 AAAS Annual Meeting.

Also on this week’s show, Katharina Schmack, a research associate at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, joins producer Joel Goldberg to talk about giving mice a quiz that makes them hallucinate. Observing the mice in this state helps researchers make connections between dopamine, hallucinations, and mental illness.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: christopherhu/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Joel Goldberg; Meagan Cantwell

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social insects as models for aging, and crew conflict on long space missions Mar 25, 2021

Most research on aging has been done on model organisms with limited life spans, such as flies and worms. Host Meagan Cantwell talks to science writer Yao-Hua Law about how long-living social insects—some of which survive for up to 30 years—can provide new insights into aging.

Also in this episode, host Sarah Crespi talks with Noshir Contractor, the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University, about his AAAS session on keeping humans in harmony during long space missions and how mock missions on Earth are being applied to plans for a crewed mission to Mars.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image:TerriAnneAllen/Unsplash ; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Yao Hua Law; Meagan Cantwell

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID-19 treatment at 1 year, and smarter materials for smarter cities Mar 18, 2021

Science News Staff Writer Kelly Servick discusses how physicians have sifted through torrents of scientific results to arrive at treatments for SARS-CoV-2.

Sarah also talks with Wesley Reinhart of Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Institute for Computational and Data Science, about why we should be building smart cities from smart materials, such as metamaterials that help solar panels chase the Sun, and living materials like self-healing concrete that keep buildings in good shape.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Singapore Esplanade/Travis/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next-generation gravitational wave detectors, and sponges that soak up frigid oil spills Mar 11, 2021

Science Staff Writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about plans for the next generation of gravitational wave detectors—including one with 40-kilometer arms. The proposed detectors will be up to 10 times more sensitive than current models and could capture all black hole mergers in the observable universe.

Sarah also talks with Pavani Cherukupally, a researcher at Imperial College London and the University of Toronto, about her Science Advances paper on cleaning up oil spills with special cold-adapted sponges that work well when crude oil gets clumpy.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: VLCC tanker Amoco Cadiz oil spill/Collection of Doug Helton/NOAA/NOS/ORR/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Adrian Cho

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world’s oldest pet cemetery, and how eyeless worms can see color Mar 04, 2021

Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a 2000-year-old pet cemetery found in the Egyptian city of Berenice and what it can tell us about the history of human-animal relationships.

Also this week, Dipon Ghosh, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about how scientists missed that the tiny eyeless roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, which has been intensively studied from top to bottom for decades, somehow has the ability to detect colors.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: HINRICH SCHULENBURG; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Measuring Earth’s surface like never before, and the world’s fastest random number generator Feb 25, 2021

First up, science journalist Julia Rosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about a growing fleet of radar satellites that will soon be able to detect minute rises and drops of Earth’s surface—from a gently deflating volcano to a water-swollen field—on a daily basis.

Sarah also talks with Hui Cao, a professor of applied physics at Yale University, about a new way to generate enormous streams of random numbers faster than ever before, using a tiny laser that can fit on a computer chip.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Kyungduk Kim/Yale; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Julia Rosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All your COVID-19 vaccine questions answered, and a new theory on forming rocky planets Feb 18, 2021

Science Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to take on some of big questions about the COVID-19 vaccines, such as: Do they stop transmission? Will we need boosters? When will life get back to “normal.”

Sarah also talks with Anders Johansen, professor of planetary sciences and planet formation at the University of Copenhagen, about his Science Advances paper on a new theory for the formation of rocky planets in our Solar System. Instead of emerging out of ever-larger collisions of protoplanets, the new idea is that terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars formed from the buildup of many small pebbles.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: European Space Agency/Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Building Africa’s Great Green Wall, and using whale songs as seismic probess Feb 11, 2021

Science journalist Rachel Cernansky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about progress on Africa’s Great Green Wall project and the important difference between planting and growing a tree.

Sarah also talks with Václav Kuna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, about using loud and long songs from fin whales to image structures under the ocean floor.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Holly Gramazio/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Cernansky

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Looking back at 20 years of human genome sequencing Feb 04, 2021

This week we’re dedicating the whole show to the 20th anniversary of the publication of the human genome. Today, about 30 million people have had their genomes sequenced. This remarkable progress has brought with it issues of data sharing, privacy, and inequality.

Host Sarah Crespi spoke with a number of researchers about the state of genome science, starting with Yaniv Erlich, from the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science and CEO of Eleven Biotherapeutics, who talks about privacy in the age of easily obtainable genomes.

Next up Charles Rotimi, director of the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health at the National Human Genome Research Institute, discusses diversity—or lack thereof—in the field and what it means for the kinds of research that happens.

Finally, Dorothy Roberts, professor in the departments of Africana studies and sociology and the law school at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about the seemingly never-ending project of disentangling race and genomes.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Holly Gramazio/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi;

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Calculating the social cost of carbon, and listening to mole-rat chirps Jan 28, 2021

On its first day, the new Biden administration announced plans to recalculate the social cost of carbon—a way of estimating the economic toll of greenhouse gases. Staff Writer Paul Voosen and host Sarah Crespi discuss why this value is so important and how it will be determined.

Next up, Alison Barker, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, talks with Sarah about the sounds of naked mole-rats. You may already know naked mole-rats are pain and cancer resistant—but did you know these eusocial mammals make little chirps to identify themselves as colony members? Can these learned local dialects make naked mole-rats a new research model for language learning?

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Smithsonian’s National Zoo/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Counting research rodents, a possible cause for irritable bowel syndrome, and spitting cobras Jan 21, 2021

Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a controversial new paper that estimates how many rodents are used in research in the United States each year. Though there is no official number, the paper suggests there might be more than 100 million rats and mice housed in research facilities in the country—doubling or even tripling some earlier estimates.

Next, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with Sarah about a new theory behind the cause of irritable bowel syndrome—that it might be a localized allergic reaction in the gut.

Sarah also chats with Taline Kazandjian, a postdoctoral research associate at the Centre for Snakebite Research & Interventions in Liverpool, U.K., about how the venom from spitting cobras has evolved to cause maximum pain and why these snakes might have developed the same defense mechanism three different times.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Rushen/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An elegy for Arecibo, and how our environments may change our behavior Jan 14, 2021

Science Senior Correspondent Daniel Clery regales host Sarah Crespi with tales about the most important work to come from 57 years of research at the now-defunct Arecibo Observatory and plans for the future of the site.

Sarah also talks with Toman Barsbai, an associate professor in the school of economics at the University of Bristol, about the influence of ecology on human behavior—can we figure out how many of our behaviors are related to the different environments where we live? Barsbai and colleagues took on this question by comparing behaviors around finding food, reproduction, and social hierarchy in three groups of animals living in the same places: foraging humans, nonhuman mammals, and birds.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: University of Central Florida; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The uncertain future of North America’s ash trees, and organizing robot swarms Jan 07, 2021

Freelance journalist Gabriel Popkin and host Sarah Crespi discuss what will happen to ash trees in the United States as federal regulators announce dropping quarantine measures meant to control the emerald ash borer—a devastating pest that has killed tens of millions of trees since 2002. Instead of quarantines, the government will use tiny wasps known to kill the invasive beetles in hopes of saving the ash.

Sarah also talks with Pavel Chvykov, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the principles for organizing active matter—things like ant bridges, bird flocks, or little swarms of robots.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Donald Macauley/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gabriel Popkin

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Areas to watch in 2021, and the living microbes in wildfire smoke Dec 31, 2020

We kick off our first episode of 2021 by looking at future trends in policy and research with host Meagan Cantwell and several Science news writers. Ann Gibbons talks about upcoming studies that elucidate social ties among ancient humans, Jeffrey Mervis discusses relations between the United States and China, and Paul Voosen gives a rundown of two Mars rover landings.

In research news, Meagan Cantwell talks with Leda Kobziar, an associate professor of wildland fire science at the University of Idaho, Moscow, about the living component of wildfire smoke—microbes. The bacteria and fungi that hitch a ride on smoke can impact both human health and ecosystems—but Kobziar says much more research is needed.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Christopher Michel/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons; Jeffrey Mervis, Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Breakthrough of the Year, top online news, and science book highlights Dec 17, 2020

Our last episode of the year is a celebration of science in 2020. First, host Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor David Grimm about some of the top online news stories of the year—from how undertaker bees detect the dead to the first board game of death. (It’s not as grim as it sounds.)

Sarah then talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about the Breakthrough of the Year, scientific breakdowns, and some of the runners-up—amazing accomplishments in science achieved in the face of a global pandemic.

Finally, Book Review Editor Valerie Thompson joins Sarah to discuss highlights from the books section—on topics as varied as eating wild foods to how the materials we make end up shaping us.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: ISS Expedition 7 Crew/EOL/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Catherine Matacic; Valerie Thompson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making ecology studies replicable, and a turnaround for the Tasmanian devil Dec 10, 2020

The field of psychology underwent a replication crisis and saw a sea change in scientific and publishing practices, could ecology be next? News Intern Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the launch of a new society for ecologists looking to make the field more rigorous.

Sarah also talks with Andrew Storfer, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Washington State University, Pullman, about the fate of the Tasmanian devil. Since the end of the last century, these carnivorous marsupials have been decimated by a transmissible facial tumor. Now, it looks like—despite many predictions of extinction—the devils may be turning a corner.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: The Mammals of Australia, John Gould, 1804-1881/Biodiversity Library/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How the new COVID-19 vaccines work, and restoring vision with brain implants Dec 03, 2020

Staff Writer Meredith Wadman and host Sarah Crespi discuss what to expect from the two messenger RNA–based vaccines against COVID-19 that have recently released encouraging results from their phase III trials and the short-term side effects some recipients might see on the day of injection.

Sarah also talks with researcher Xing Chen, a project co-leader and postdoctoral scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, about using brain stimulation to restore vision. Researchers have known for about 70 years that electrical stimulation at certain points in the brain can lead to the appearance of a phosphene—a spot of light that appears not because there’s light there, but because of some other stimulation, like pressing on the eyeball. If electrical stimulation can make a little light appear, how about many lights? Can we think about phosphenes as pixels and draw a picture for the brain? How about a moving picture?

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keeping coronavirus from spreading in schools, why leaves fall when they do, and a book on how nature deals with crisis Nov 26, 2020

Many schools closed in the spring, during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Many opened in the fall. Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what was learned in spring about how coronavirus spreads in schools that might help keep children safe as cases surge once again.

Also this week: What makes leaves fall off deciduous trees when they do—is it the short, cold nights? Or is the timing of so-called “leaf senescence” linked to when spring happens? Sarah talked to Constantin Zohner, a lead scientist at the Institute of Integrative Biology at ETH Zurich, about his tree leaf timing study. Sarah also spoke with commentary author Christy Rollinson, a forest ecologist at the Morton Arboretum, about how important these trees and the timing of their leaf drop is for climate change.

In the books segment, host Kiki Sanford talks with Ruth DeFries about her book, What Would Nature Do? A Guide for Our Uncertain Times.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Joe Cheng/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fish farming’s future, and how microbes compete for space on our face Nov 19, 2020

These days about half of the protein the world’s population eats is from seafood. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how brand-new biotech and old-fashion breeding programs are helping keep up with demand, by expanding where we can farm fish and how fast we can grow them.

Sarah also spoke with Jan Claesen, an assistant professor at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, about skin microbes that use their own antibiotic to fight off harmful bacteria. Understanding the microbes native to our skin and the molecules they produce could lead to treatments for skin disorders such as atopic dermatitis and acne.

Finally, in a segment sponsored by MilliporeSigma, Science’s Custom Publishing Director and Senior Editor, Sean Sanders, talks with Timothy Cernak, an Assistant Professor of Medicinal Chemistry and Chemistry at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, about retrosynthesis—the process of starting with a known chemical final product and figuring out how to make that molecule efficiently from available pieces.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Erik Christensen/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook, Podington Bear]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How the human body handles extreme heat, and improvements in cooling clothes Nov 12, 2020

This week the whole show focuses on keeping cool in a warming world. First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Senior News Correspondent Elizabeth Pennisi about the latest research into how to stay safe when things heat up—whether you’re running marathons or fighting fires.

Sarah also talks with Po-Chun Hsu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke University, about the future of cooling fabrics for everyday use. It turns out we can save a lot of energy and avoid carbon dioxide emissions by wearing clothing designed to keep us cool in slightly warmer buildings than we’re used to now. But the question is, will cooling clothes ever be “cool”?

Visit the whole special issue on cooling.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

++Meta

[Image: J. Bartlett Team Rubicon/BLM for USFS/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elizabeth Pennisi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What we can learn from a mass of black hole mergers, and ecological insights from 30 years of Arctic animal movements Nov 05, 2020

First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about new gravitational wave detections from the first half of 2019—including 37 new black hole mergers. With so many mergers now recorded, astrophysicists can do different kinds of research into things like how new pairs of black holes come to be and how often they merge.

Sarah also talks with Sarah Davidson, data curator at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, about results from an Arctic animal tracking project that includes 3 decades of location information on many species, from soaring golden eagles to baby caribou taking their first steps. The early results from the Arctic Animal Movement Archive show that researchers can use the database as a baseline for future Arctic investigations and to examine the effects of climate on ecosystems in this key region.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: N. Fischer, H. Pfeiffer, and A. Buonanno/Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) Collaboration; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Adrian Cho

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Taking the politicians out of tough policy decisions; the late, great works of Charles Turner; and the science of cooking Oct 29, 2020

First up, host Sarah Crespi talks to News Intern Cathleen O’Grady about the growing use of citizens’ assemblies, or “minipublics,” to deliberate on tough policy questions like climate change and abortion. Can random groups of citizens do a better job forming policy than politicians?

Next, we feature the latest of a new series of insight pieces that revisit landmark Science papers. Sarah talks with Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona, a Ph.D. student at Queen Mary University of London, about Charles Turner, a Black zoologist who published multiple times in Science in the early 1900s. Despite being far ahead of his time in his studies of animal cognition, Turner’s work was long overlooked—due in large part to the many difficulties facing a Black man in academia at the turn of the century.

Finally, in our monthly books segment, host Kiki Sanford chats with author Pia Sorensen about her new book: Science and Cooking: Physics Meets Food, From Homemade to Haute Cuisine.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early approval of a COVID-19 vaccine could cause ethical problems for other vax candidates, and ‘upcycling’ plastic bags Oct 22, 2020

First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Jon Cohen about some tricky ethical questions that may arise after the first coronavirus vaccine is authorized for use in the United States. Will people continue to participate in clinical trials of other vaccines? Will it still be OK to give participants placebo vaccines?

Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Bert Weckhuysen, a professor at Utrecht University, about a process for taking low-value plastic like polyethylene (often used for packaging and grocery bags) and “upcycling” it into biodegradable materials that can be used for new purposes.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Zeev Barkan/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jon Cohen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making sure American Indian COVID-19 cases are counted, and feeding a hungry heart Oct 15, 2020

First up, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute and chief research officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board. Echo-Hawk shares what inspired her journey in public health and explains the repercussions of excluding native people from health data. This story was originally reported by Lizzie Wade, who profiled Echo-Hawk as part of Science’s “voices of the pandemic” series.

Next, host Sarah Crespi interviews Danielle Murashige, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania, about her Science paper that attempts to quantify how much fuel a healthy heart needs.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

++Meta

[Image OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Lizzie Wade

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Visiting a once-watery asteroid, and how buzzing the tongue can treat tinnitus Oct 08, 2020

First up, Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to the asteroid Bennu. After OSIRIS-REx’s up-close surveys of the surface revealed fewer likely touchdown points than expected, its sampling mission has been rejiggered. Paul talks about the prospects for a safe sampling in mid-October and what we might learn when the craft returns to Earth in 2023.

Sarah also talks with Hubert Lim, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Neuromod Devices Limited, about his Science Translational Medicine paper on a new treatment for tinnitus. The team showed that bimodal stimulation—playing sounds in the ear and buzzes on the tongue—was able to change the brain and turn down the tinnitus in a large clinical trial.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Extra audio credits: Tinnitus sound samples courtesy of the American tinnitus Association. Treatment samples courtesy of Neuromod Ltd.

[Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr/NASA/Goddard; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FDA clinical trial protection failures, and an AI that can beat curling’s top players Oct 01, 2020

Investigative journalist Charles Piller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his latest Science exclusive: a deep dive into the Food and Drug Administration’s protection of human subjects in clinical trials. Based on months of data analysis and interviews, he uncovered long-term failures in safety enforcement in clinical trials and potential problems with trial data used to make decisions about drug and device approvals.

Sarah also talks with Klaus-Robert Müller, a professor of machine learning at the Technical University of Berlin, about an artificial intelligence (AI) trained in the sport of curling—often described as a cross between bowling and chess. Although AI has succeeded in chess, Go, and poker, the constantly changing environment of curling is far harder for a nonhuman mind to adapt to. But AIs were the big winners in competitions with top human players, Müller and colleagues report this week in Science Robotics.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

++Meta

[Image: Cory Denton/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Charles Piller

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Neanderthals got human Y chromosomes, and the earliest human footprints in Arabia Sep 24, 2020

Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons talks with host Sarah Crespi about a series of 120,000-year-old human footprints found alongside prints from animals like asses, elephants, and camels in a dried-up lake on the Arabian Peninsula. These are the earliest human footprints found so far in Arabia and may help researchers better understand the history of early hominin migrations out of Africa.

Continuing on the history of humanity theme, Sarah talks with Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, about her team’s efforts to fish the elusive Y chromosome out of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. It turns out Y chromosomes tell a different story about our past interbreeding with Neanderthals than previous tales told by the rest of the genome. Read a related Insight article.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ann Gibbons

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Performing magic for animals, and why the pandemic is pushing people out of prisons Sep 17, 2020

Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how jail and prison populations in the United States have dropped in the face of coronavirus and what kinds of scientific questions about public health and criminal justice are arising as a result.

Also this week, Elias García-Pelegrín, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, talks with Sarah about his article on watching animals watch magic tricks. Do animals fall for the same illusions we do? What does it say about the way their minds work?

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alien hunters get a funding boost, and checking on the link between chromosome ‘caps’ and aging Sep 10, 2020

First up this week, Senior Correspondent Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about how Breakthrough Listen—a privately funded initiative that aims to spend $100 million over 10 years to find extraterrestrial intelligent life—has changed the hunt for alien intelligence-link.

And as part of a special issue on the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project, Brandon Pierce, a professor in the Departments of Public Health Sciences and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago, joins Sarah to discuss his group’s work on variation in the protective caps at the end of our chromosomes. The gradual shortening of these caps, also known as telomeres, has been associated with aging.

Read more from the GTEx special issue.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dan Clery

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fighting Europe’s second wave of COVID-19, and making democracy work for poor people Sep 03, 2020

First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about rising numbers of coronavirus cases in Europe. Will what we’ve learned this summer about how the virus is transmitted and treated help prevent a second peak?

Read all of our coronavirus news coverage.

And as part of a special issue on democracy, Rohini Pande, a professor in the department of economics at Yale University, joins Sarah to discuss her review that asks the question: Can democracy work for poor people? Read more from the special issue on democracy.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Mattias Berg/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Arctic sea ice under attack, and ancient records that can predict the future effects of climate change Aug 27, 2020

Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how Arctic sea ice is under attack from above and below—not only from warming air, but also dangerous hot blobs of ocean water.

Next, Damien Fordham, a professor and global change ecologist at the University of Adelaide, talks about how new tools for digging into the past are helping catalog what happened to biodiversity and ecosystems during different climate change scenarios in the past. These findings can help predict the fate of modern ecosystems under today’s human-induced climate change.

And in our books segment, Kiki Sanford talks with author Carl Bergstrom about his new book: Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wildlife behavior during a global lockdown, and electric mud microbes Aug 20, 2020

First up this week, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how wildlife biologists are taking advantage of humanity’s sudden lull. Scientists are launching studies of everything from sea turtles on suddenly quiet beaches to noise-averse birds living near airports to see how animal behavior changes when people are a little less obtrusive.

Next, as part of our special issue on mud—yes, wet dirt— Senior Correspondent Elizabeth Pennisi talks about her story on electric microbes that were first found in mud and are now found pretty much everywhere. Why do bacteria need to move electrons around and what does it mean that they do it all over the planet?

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Read all of our coronavirus coverage here.

Image: Lars Riis-Damgaard and Steffen Larsen; Music: Jeffrey Cook

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi; Erik Stokstad

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A call for quick coronavirus testing, and building bonds with sports Aug 13, 2020

Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a different approach to COVID-19 testing that might be useful in response to the high numbers of cases in the United States. To break chains of transmission and community spread, the new strategy would replace highly accurate but slow polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests with cheaper, faster tests that are less accurate but can be administered frequently. Such tests cost between $1 and $3 compared with more than $100 for diagnostic PCR tests and give results in less than 30 minutes instead of days.

Also this week, Salma Mousa, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, joins Sarah to talk about an experiment that added Muslim players to teams in a Christian soccer league in northern Iraq. The goal of the study was to see whether this type of social contact would change how the Christians—a threatened minority in the region—behaved toward Muslims, on and off the field.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Kate Brady/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Robert Service

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why COVID-19 poses a special risk during pregnancy, and how hair can split steel Aug 06, 2020

Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risk of the novel coronavirus infection to pregnant women. Early data suggest expectant women are more likely to get severe forms of the infection and require hospitalization. Meredith describes how the biology of pregnancy—such as changes to the maternal immune system and added stress on the heart and lungs—might explain the harsher effects of the virus.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Gianluca Roscioli about his experiments with commercial razor blades and real human hair. By using a scanning electron microscope, he was able to show how something relatively soft like hair is able to damage something 50 times harder like stainless steel.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: G. Roscioli et al., Science 2020; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman

Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/why-covid-19-poses-special-risk-during-pregnancy-and-how-hair-can-split-steel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fighting COVID-19 vaccine fears, tracking the pandemic’s origin, and a new technique for peering under paint Jul 30, 2020

Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his editorial on preventing vaccine hesitancy during the coronavirus pandemic. Even before the current crisis, fear of vaccines had become a global problem, with the World Health Organization naming it as one of the top 10 worldwide health threats in 2019. Now, it seems increasingly possible that many people will refuse to get vaccinated. What can public health officials and researchers do to get ahead of this issue?

Also this week, Sarah talks with Science Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen about his story on Chinese scientist Shi Zhengli, the bat researcher at the center of the COVID-19 origins controversy—and why she thinks President Donald Trump owes her an apology.

Finally, Geert Van der Snickt, a professor in the conservation-restoration department at the University of Antwerp, talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on a new process for peering into the past of paintings. His team used a combination of techniques to look beneath an overpainting on the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck—a pivotal piece that showed the potential of oil paints and even included an early example of painting from an aerial view.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: van der Snickt et al., Science Advances 2020; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Hiroshima survivors helped form radiation safety rules, and a path to stop plastic pollution Jul 23, 2020

Contributing Correspondent Dennis Normile talks about a long-term study involving the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Seventy-five years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the two cities in Japan, survivors are still helping scientists learn about the effects of radiation exposure.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Winnie Lau, senior manager for preventing ocean plastics at Pew Charitable Trusts about her group’s paper about what it would take to seriously fight the flow of plastics into the environment.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: MPCA Photos/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dennis Normile

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, and taking the heat out of crude oil separation Jul 16, 2020

Contributing correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks about what can be learned from schools around the world that have reopened during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, few systematic studies have been done but observations of outbreaks in schools in places such as France or Israel do offer a few lessons for countries looking to send kids back to school soon. The United Kingdom and Germany have started studies of how the virus spreads in children and at school, but results are months away. In the meantime, Gretchen’s reporting suggests small class sizes, masks, and social distancing among the adults at school are particularly important measures.

Read all our coronavirus news coverage.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Kirstie Thompson, a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, about increasing the efficiency of petroleum processing. If all—or even some—petroleum processing goes heat free, it would mean big energy savings. Around the world, about 1% of all energy use goes to heating up petroleum in order to get useful things such as gas for cars or polymers for plastics. These days, this separation is done through distillation, heating and separating by boiling point. Kirstie describes a heat-free way of getting this separation—by using a special membrane instead.

Read a related Insight.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

++

[Image: Kurt Bauschardt/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A fast moving megatrial for coronavirus treatments, and transferring the benefits of exercise by transferring blood Jul 09, 2020

Contributing correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about the success of a fast moving megatrial for coronavirus treatments. The UK’s RECOVERY (Randomized Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy) trial has enrolled more than 12,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients since early March and has released important recommendations that were quickly taken up by doctors and scientists around the world. Kai discusses why such a large study is necessary and why other large drug trials like the WHO’s SOLIDARITY trial are lagging behind.

Also this week, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Saul Villeda, a professor in the Department of Anatomy at University of California, San Francisco, about transferring the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain from an active mouse to a sedentary mouse by transferring their blood.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: eyesplash/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Kai Kupferschmidt

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An oasis of biodiversity a Mexican desert, and making sound from heat Jul 02, 2020

First up this week, News Intern Rodrigo Pérez-Ortega talks with host Meagan Cantwell about an oasis of biodiversity in the striking blue pools of Cuatro Ciénegas, a basin in northern Mexico. Researchers have published dozens of papers exploring the unique microorganisms that thrive in this area, while at the same time fighting large agricultural industries draining the precious water from the pools.

David Tatnell, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Exeter, talks with host Sarah Crespi about using heat to make sound, a phenomenon known as thermoacoustics. Just like the sound of fire or thunder, sudden changes in temperature can create sound waves. In his team’s paper in Science Advances, Tatnell and colleagues describe a thermoacoustic speaker that uses thin, heated films to make sound. This approach cuts out the crosstalk seen in mechanical speakers and allows for extreme miniaturization of sound production. In the ultrasound range, arrays of thermoacoustic speakers could improve acoustic levitation and ultrasound imaging. In the hearing range, the speakers could be made extremely small, flexible, and even transparent.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Read Science’s coronavirus coverage.

++

[Image: David Jaramillo; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Rodrigo Pérez-Ortega, Sarah Crespi

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stopping the spread of COVID-19, and arctic adaptations in sled dogs Jun 25, 2020

Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies how ocean waves disperse virus-laden aerosols, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how she became an outspoken advocate for using masks to prevent coronavirus transmission. A related insight she wrote for Science has been downloaded more than 1 million times.

Mikkel Sinding, a postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College Dublin, talks sled dog genes with Sarah. After comparing the genomes of modern dogs, Greenland sled dogs, and an ancient dog jaw bone found on a remote Siberian island where dogs may have pulled sleds some 9500 years ago, they found that modern Greenland dogs—which are still used to pull sleds today—have much in common with this ancient Siberian ancestor. Those similarities include genes related to eating high-fat diets and cold-sensing genes previously identified in woolly mammoths.

In this month's book segment, Kiki Sanford talks with Rutger Bregman about his book, Humankind: A Hopeful History which outlines a shift in the thinking of many social scientists to a view of humans as more peaceful than warlike.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Read all our coronavirus coverage.

[Image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi;

Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/stopping-spread-covid-19-and-arctic-adaptations-sled-dogs

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coronavirus spreads financial turmoil to universities, and a drone that fights mosquito-borne illnesses Jun 18, 2020

Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how universities are dealing with the financial crunch brought on by the coronavirus. Jeff discusses how big research universities are balancing their budgets as federal grants continue to flow, but endowments are down and so is the promise of state funding.

Mosquito-borne infections like Zika, dengue, malaria, and chikungunya cause millions of deaths each year. Nicole Culbert and colleges write this week in Science Robotics about a new way to deal with deadly mosquitoes—using drones. The drones are designed to drop hundreds of thousands of sterile male mosquitoes in areas with high risk of mosquito-borne illness. The idea is that sterile male mosquitoes will mate with females and the females then lay infertile eggs, which causes the population to decline. They found this drone-based approach is cheaper and more efficient than other methods of releasing sterile mosquitoes and does not have the problems associated with pesticide-based eradication efforts such as resistance and off-target effects.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/coronavirus-spreads-financial-turmoil-universities-and-drone-fights-mosquito-borne-illnesses

++

[Image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jeffrey Mervis

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The facts on COVID-19 contact tracing apps, and benefits of returning sea otters to the wild Jun 11, 2020

Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the ins and outs of coronavirus contact tracing apps—what they do, how they work, and how to calculate whether they are crushing the curve.

Read all our coronavirus coverage.

Edward Gregr, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, talks with Sarah about the controversial reintroduction of sea otters to the Northern Pacific Ocean—their home for centuries, before the fur trade nearly wiped out the apex predator in the late 1800s. Gregr brings a unique cost-benefit perspective to his analysis, and finds many trade-offs with economic implications for fisheries For example, sea otters eat shellfish like urchins and crabs, depressing the shellfishing industry; but their diet encourages the growth of kelp forests, which in turn provide a habitat for economically important finfish, like salmon and rockfish. Read a related commentary article.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Read all our coronavirus coverage.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why men may have more severe COVID-19 symptoms, and using bacteria to track contaminated food Jun 04, 2020

First up this week, staff writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe coronavirus infections in men. New support for this idea comes from a study showing high levels of male pattern baldness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Next, Jason Qian, a Ph.D. student in the systems biology department at Harvard Medical School, joins Sarah to talk about an object-tracking system that uses bacterial spores engineered with unique DNA barcodes. The inactivated spores can be sprayed on anything from lettuce, to wood, to sand and later be scraped off and read out using a CRISPR-based detection system. Spraying these DNA-based identifiers on such things as vegetables could help trace foodborne illnesses back to their source.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A rare condition associated with coronavirus in children, and tracing glaciers by looking at the ocean floor May 28, 2020

First up this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about a rare inflammatory response in children that has appeared in a number of COVID-19 hot spots.

Next, Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and professor of physical geography at the University of Cambridge, talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about tracing the retreat of Antarctica's glaciers by examining the ocean floor.

Finally, Kiki Sanford interviews author Danny Dorling about his new book, Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration―and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Scott Ableman/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel; Kiki Sanford

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How scientists are thinking about reopening labs, and the global threat of arsenic in drinking water May 21, 2020

Online news editor David Grimm talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the unique challenges of reopening labs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Though the chance to resume research may instill a sense of hope, new policies around physical distancing and access to facilities threaten to derail studies—and even careers. Despite all the uncertainty, the crisis could result in new approaches that ultimately benefit the scientific community, and the world.

Also this week, Joel Podgorski, a senior scientist in the Water Resources and Drinking Water Department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the global threat of arsenic in drinking water. Arsenic is basically present in all rocks in minute amounts. Under the right conditions it can leach into groundwater and poison drinking water. Without a noticeable taste or smell, arsenic contamination can go undetected for years. The paper, published in Science, estimates that more than 100 million people are at risk of drinking arsenic contaminated water and provides a guide for the most important places to test.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

++

[Image: Ian Aiden Relkoff/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; David Grimm

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How past pandemics reinforced inequality, and millions of mysterious quakes beneath a volcano May 14, 2020

Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of inequality in past pandemics. Evidence from medical records and cemeteries suggests diseases like the 1918 flu, smallpox, and even the Black Death weren’t indiscriminately killing people—instead these infections caused more deaths in those with less money or status.

Also this week, Aaron Wech, a research geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, joins Sarah to talk about recordings of more than 1 million earthquakes from deep under Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano, which hasn’t erupted in 4500 years. They discuss how these earthquakes, which have repeated every 7 to 12 minutes for at least 20 years, went undetected for so long.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

++

[Image: Ian Aiden Relkoff/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making antibodies to treat coronavirus, and why planting trees won’t save the planet May 07, 2020

Staff writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2. Many companies and researchers are rushing to design and test this type of treatment, which proved effective in combating Ebola last year.

And Karen Holl, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins Sarah to discuss the proper planning of tree planting campaigns. It turns out that just putting a tree in the ground is not enough to stop climate change and reforest the planet.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Ian Dick/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blood test for multiple cancers studied in 10,000 women, and is our Sun boring? Apr 30, 2020

Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins Sarah to talk about a recent Science paper describing the results of a large study on a blood test for multiple types of cancer. The trial’s results suggest such a blood test combined with follow-up scans may help detect cancers early, but there is a danger of too many false positives.

And postdoctoral researcher Timo Reinhold of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research joins Sarah to talk about his paper on how the Sun is a lot less variable in its magnetic activity compared with similar stars—what does it mean that our Sun is a little bit boring?

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/nose-toes-how-coronavirus-affects-body-and-quantum-microscope-unlocks-magnetic-secrets-very

[Image: Solar Dynamic Observatory/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From nose to toes—how coronavirus affects the body, and a quantum microscope that unlocks the magnetic secrets of very old rocks Apr 23, 2020

Coronavirus affects far more than just the lungs, and doctors and researchers in the midst of the pandemic are trying to catalog—and understand—the virus’ impact on our bodies. Staff writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what we know about how COVID-19 kills. See

all Science news coverage of the pandemic here, and all research papers and editorials here.

Also this week, staff writer Paul Voosen talks with Sarah about quantum diamond microscopes. These new devices are able to detect minute traces of magnetism, giving insight into the earliest movements of Earth’s tectonic plates and even ancient paleomagnetic events in space.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Meteorite ALH84001/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman; Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How countries could recover from coronavirus, lessons from an ancient drought, and feeling tactile waves in the hand Apr 16, 2020

Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about countries planning a comeback from a coronavirus crisis. What can they do once cases have slowed down to go back to some sort of normal without a second wave of infection? See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here.

As part of a drought special issue of Science, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins Sarah to talk about water management and the downfall of the ancient Wari state. Sometimes called the first South American empire, the Wari culture successfully expanded throughout the Peruvian Andes 1400 years ago.

Also this week, Yon Visell of the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on the biomechanics of human hands. Our skin’s ability to propagate waves along the surface of the hand may help us sense the world around us.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Kai Kuperferschmidt

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does coronavirus spread through the air, and the biology of anorexia Apr 09, 2020

On this week’s show, Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new National Academy of Sciences report that suggests the novel coronavirus can go airborne, the evidence for this idea, and what this means for the mask-wearing debate. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here.

Also this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins Sarah to talk about a burgeoning understanding of the biological roots of anorexia nervosa—an eating disorder that affects about 1% of people in the United States. From genetic links to brain scans, scientists are finding a lot more biology behind what was once thought of as a culturally driven disorder.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/does-coronavirus-spread-through-air-and-biology-anorexia

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How COVID-19 disease models shape shutdowns, and detecting emotions in mice Apr 02, 2020

On this week’s show, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about modeling coronavirus spread and the role of forecasts in national lockdowns and other pandemic policies. They also talk about the launch of a global trial of promising treatments. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here.

Also this week, Nadine Gogolla, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, talks with Sarah about linking the facial expressions of mice to their emotional states using machine learning.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Damien Roué/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why some diseases come and go with the seasons, and how to develop smarter, safer chemicals Mar 26, 2020

On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg gets an update on the coronavirus pandemic from Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen. In addition, Cohen gives a rundown of his latest feature, which highlights the relationship between diseases and changing seasons—and how this relationship relates to a potential coronavirus vaccine.

Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Alexandra Maertens, director of the Green Toxicology initiative at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, about the importance of incorporating nonanimal testing methods to study the adverse effects of chemicals.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

++

[Image: Let Ideas Compete/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Joel Goldberg; Jon Cohen; Meagan Cantwell

Listen to previous podcasts http://www.sciencemag.org/podcasts

About the Science Podcast http://www.sciencemag.org/about/podcast

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ancient artifacts on the beaches of Northern Europe, and how we remember music Mar 19, 2020

On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg talks with science journalist Andrew Curry about recent archaeological finds along the shores of Northern Europe. Curry outlines the rich history of the region that scientists, citizen scientists, and energy companies have helped dredge up.

Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Elizabeth Margulis, a professor at Princeton University, about musical memory. Margulis dives into several music cognition studies, as well as her own study on how Western and non-western audiences interpret the same song differently.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

[Image: Sebastian Reinecke/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Meagan Cantwell, Joel Goldberg, Andrew Curry

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science’s leading role in the restoration of Notre Dame and the surprising biology behind how our body develops its tough skin Mar 12, 2020

On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Lesté-Lasserre talks with host Sarah Crespi about the scientists working on the restoration of Notre Dame, from testing the changing weight of wet limestone, to how to remove lead contamination from four-story stained glass windows. As the emergency phase of work winds down, scientists are also starting to use the lull in tourist activity to investigate the mysteries of the cathedral’s construction.

Also this week, Felipe Quiroz, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, talks with Sarah about his paper on the cellular mechanism of liquid-liquid phase separation in the formation of the tough outer layer of the skin. Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids “demix,” or separate, like oil and water. In cells, this process created membraneless organelles that are just now starting to be understood. In this work, Quiroz and colleagues create a sensor for phase separation in the cell that works in living tissue, and show how phase separation is tied to the formation of the outer layers of skin in mice. Read the related Insight.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: r. nial bradshaw/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Lesté-Lasserre

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dog noses detect heat, the world faces coronavirus, and scientists search for extraterrestrial life Mar 05, 2020

On this week’s show, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how dogs’ cold noses may be able to sense warm bodies. Read the research.

International News Editor Martin Enserink shares the latest from our reporters covering coronavirus.

And finally, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Jill Tarter, chair emeritus at the SETI Institute, about the newest technologies being used to search for alien life, what a positive signal would look like, and how to inform the public if extraterrestrial life ever were detected.

Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/dog-noses-detect-heat-world-faces-coronavirus-and-scientists-search-extraterrestrial-life

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An ancient empire hiding in plain sight, and the billion-dollar cost of illegal fishing Feb 27, 2020

This week on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a turning point for one ancient Mesoamerican city: Tikal. On 16 January 378 C.E., the Maya city lost its leader and the replacement may have been a stranger. We know from writings that the new leader wore the garb of another culture—the Teotihuacan—who lived in a giant city 1000 kilometers away. But was this new ruler of a Maya city really from a separate culture? New techniques being used at the Tikal and Teotihuacan sites have revealed conflicting evidence as to whether Teotihuacan really held sway over a much larger region than previously estimated.

Sarah also talks with Rashid Sumaila, professor and Canada research chair in interdisciplinary ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. You may have heard of illegal fishing being bad for the environment or bad for maintaining fisheries—but as Sumaila and colleagues report this week in Science Advances, the illegal fishing trade is also incredibly costly—with gross revenues of between $8.9 billion and $17.2 billion each year.

In the books segment this month, Kiki Sanford interviews Gaia Vince about her new book Transcendence

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

++

[Image: Christian Hipólito; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brickmaking bacteria and solar cells that turn ‘waste’ heat into electricity Feb 20, 2020

On this week’s show, staff writer Robert F. Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about manipulating microbes to make them produce building materials like bricks—and walls that can take toxins out of the air.

Sarah also talks with Paul Davids, principal member of the technical staff in applied photonics & microsystems at Sandia National Laboratories, about an innovation in converting waste heat to electricity that uses similar materials to solar cells but depends on quantum tunneling.

And in a bonus segment, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with online news editor David Grimm on stage at the AAAS annual meeting in Seattle. They discuss how wildfires can harm your lungs, crime rates in so-called sanctuary states, and how factors such as your gender and country of origin influence how much trust you put in science.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NIH’s new diversity hiring program, and the role of memory suppression in resilience to trauma Feb 13, 2020

On this week’s show, senior correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant program that aims to encourage diversity at the level of university faculty with the long-range goal of increasing the diversity of NIH-grant recipients.

Sarah also talks with Pierre Gagnepain, a cognitive neuroscientist at INSERM, the French biomedical research agency, about the role of memory suppression in post-traumatic stress disorder. Could people that are better at suppressing memories be more resilient to the aftermath of trauma?

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fighting cancer with CRISPR, and dating ancient rock art with wasp nests Feb 06, 2020

On this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a Science paper that combines two hot areas of research-link—CRISPR gene editing and immunotherapy for cancer—and tests it in patients.

Sarah also talks with Damien Finch, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, about the Kimberly region of Australia and dating its ice age cave paintings using charcoal from nearby wasp nests.

Episode page

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A cryo–electron microscope accessible to the masses, and tracing the genetics of schizophrenia Jan 30, 2020

Structural biologists rejoiced when cryo–electron microscopy, a technique to generate highly detailed models of biomolecules, emerged. But years after its release, researchers still face long queues to access these machines. Science’s European News Editor Eric Hand walks host Meagan Cantwell through the journey of a group of researchers to create a cheaper, more accessible alternative.

Also this week, host Joel Goldberg speaks with psychiatrist and researcher Goodman Sibeko, who worked with the Xhosa people of South Africa to help illuminate genetic details of schizophrenia.

Though scientists have examined this subject among Western populations, much less is known about the underlying genetics of people native to Africa.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Getting BPA out of food containers, and tracing minute chemical mixtures in the environment Jan 23, 2020

As part of a special issue on chemicals for tomorrow’s Earth, we’ve got two green chemistry stories. First, host Sarah Crespi talks with contributing correspondent Warren Cornwell about how a company came up with a replacement for the popular can lining material bisphenol A and then recruited knowledgeable critics to test its safety.

Sarah is also joined by Beate Escher of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the University of Tübingen to discuss ways to trace complex mixtures of humanmade chemicals in the environment. They talk about how new technologies can help detect these mixtures, understand their toxicity, and eventually connect their effects on the environment, wildlife, and people.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers flouting clinical reporting rules, and linking gut microbes to heart disease and diabetes Jan 16, 2020

Though a U.S. law requiring clinical trial results reporting has been on the books for decades, many researchers have been slow to comply. Now, 2 years after the law was sharpened with higher penalties for noncompliance, investigative correspondent Charles Piller took a look at the results. He talks with host Sarah Crespi about the investigation and a surprising lack of compliance and enforcement.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Brett Finlay, a microbiologist at the University Of British Columbia, Vancouver, about an Insight in this week’s issue that aims to connect the dots between noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer and the microbes that live in our guts. Could these diseases actually spread through our microbiomes?

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

[Image: stu_spivack/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Squeezing two people into an MRI machine, and deciding between what’s reasonable and what’s rational Jan 09, 2020

Getting into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine can be a tight fit for just one person. Now, researchers interested in studying face-to-face interactions are attempting to squeeze a whole other person into the same tube, while taking functional MRI (fMRI) measurements. Staff news writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the kinds of questions simultaneous fMRIs might answer.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Igor Grossman, the director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo, about his group’s Science Advances paper on public perceptions of the difference between something being rational and something being reasonable.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Ads on this week’s show: KiwiCo

[Image: Amanda/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Kelly Servick, Sarah Crespi

Transcript link: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/SciencePodcast_200110.pdf

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Areas to watch in 2020, and how carnivorous plants evolved impressive traps Jan 02, 2020

We start our first episode of the new year looking at future trends in policy and research with host Joel Goldberg and several Science News writers. Jeffrey Mervis discusses upcoming policy changes, Kelly Servick gives a rundown of areas to watch in the life sciences, and Ann Gibbons talks about potential advances in ancient proteins and DNA.

In research news, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Beatriz Pinto-Goncalves, a post-doctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre, about carnivorous plant traps. Through understanding the mechanisms that create these traps, Pinto-Goncalves and colleagues elucidate what this could mean for how they emerged in the evolutionary history of plants.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Ads on this week’s show: KiwiCo

[Image: Eleanor/Flickr]

++

Authors: Joel Goldberg, Jeffrey Mervis, Kelly Servick, Ann Gibbons, Meagan Cantwell

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in books Dec 19, 2019

As the year comes to a close, we review the best science, the best stories, and the best books from 2019. Our end-of-the-year episode kicks off with Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm talking about the top online stories on things like human self-domestication, the “wood wide web,” and more.

News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins Sarah to discuss Science’s 2019 Breakthrough of the Year, some of the contenders for breakthrough, also known as runners-up, and the breakdowns—when science and politics just didn’t seem to mix this year.

Finally, Science books editor Valerie Thompson brings her favorites from the world of science-inflected media. She and Sarah talk about some of the best books reviewed in Science this year, a food extinction book we should have reviewed, a pair of science-centric films, and even an award-winning birding board game.

For more science books, films, and games, visit the books et al blog at blogs.sciencemag.org/books.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Ads on this week’s show: Bayer; Lightstream; KiwiCo

++

[Image: Roots, Craig Cloutier/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Tim Appenzeller; Valerie Thompson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hunting for new epilepsy drugs, and capturing lightning from space Dec 13, 2019

About one-third of people with epilepsy are treatment resistant. Up until now, epilepsy treatments have focused on taming seizures rather than the source of the disease and for good reason—so many roads lead to epilepsy: traumatic brain injury, extreme fever and infection, and genetic disorders, to name a few. Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about researchers that are turning back the pages on epilepsy, trying to get to the beginning of the story where new treatments might work.

And Sarah also talks with Torsten Neurbert at the Technical University of Denmark’s National Space Institute in Kongens Lyngby about capturing high-altitude “transient luminous events” from the International Space Station (ISS). These lightning-induced bursts of light, color, and occasionally gamma rays were first reported in the 1990s but had only been recorded from the ground or aircraft. With new measurements from the ISS come new insights into the anatomy of lightning.

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

Ads on this week’s show: Bayer; Lightstream; KiwiCo