Science Magazine Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Salty permafrost’s role in Arctic melting, the promise of continuous protein monitoring, and death in the ancient world Sep 25, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, Science News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why a salty layer of permafrost undergirding Arctic ice is turning frozen landscapes into boggy morasses.

Next on the show, glucose isn’t the only molecule in the body that can be monitored in real time; proteins can be, too. Freelancer producer Zakiya Whatley talks with Jane Donnelly, an MD/Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University, about what we could learn from the live monitoring of key proteins, from the status of a transplanted organ to the early signs of a flare up in autoimmune disease.

Finally, philologist Robert Garland joins books host Angela Saini to talk about ancient cultures and their death practices in his book What to Expect When You’re Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife.

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

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Tim Appenzeller

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Protecting newborns from an invisible killer, the rise of drones for farming, and a Druid mystery Sep 18, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the long journey to a vaccine for group B streptococcus, a microbe that sickens 400,000 babies a year and kills at least 91,000.

Next on the show, there are about 250,000 agricultural drones employed on farms in China. Countries such as South Korea, Turkey, and Thailand are swiftly increasing agricultural drone use, whereas the United States and Russia are proceeding more slowly. Food policy researcher Ben Belton discusses what appears to drive drone use in agriculture and how they might make farming more productive and sustainable.

Finally, Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson brings books on the secrets rocks have to tell about humanity and the mystery surrounding a Druid preserved in a bog for thousands of years.

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

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Valerie Thompson; Leslie Roberts

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An aggressive cancer’s loophole, and a massive field of hydrogen beneath the ocean floor Sep 11, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, aggressive tumors have a secret cache of DNA that may help them beat current drug treatments. Freelance journalist Elie Dolgin joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about targeting so-called extrachromosomal DNA—little gene-bearing loops of DNA—that help difficult-to-treat cancers break the laws of inheritance.

Next on the show, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Weidong Sun, director of the Center of Deep Sea Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, about the discovery of a hydrogen-rich system so large it makes up at least 5% of current estimates for global hydrogen emissions from abiotic sources. They discuss how hydrogen gas rising from the mantle reacting with oxygen could have triggered an explosion that formed holes hundreds of meters across and dozens of meters deep.

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

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elie Dolgin; Meagan Cantwell

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Finding HIV’s last bastion in the body, and playing the violin like a cricket Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, despite so many advances in treatment, HIV drugs can suppress the virus but can’t cure the infection. Where does suppressed HIV hide within the body? Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the Last Gift Study, in which people with HIV donate their bodies for rapid autopsy to help find the last reservoirs of the virus.

Next on the show, Christine Elliott, a doctoral candidate in the department of entomology at Purdue University, talks about the Bug Bowl—an annual public outreach event that highlights all the wonders and benefits of insects. We also get to hear the sounds of violins trying to be crickets and learn how music connects people to bugs in ways that posters and public lectures can’t.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen

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A mother lode of Mexican mammoths, how water pollution enters the air, and a book on playing dead Aug 28, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a megafauna megafind that rivals the La Brea Tar Pits. In addition to revealing tens of thousands of bones from everything from dire wolves to an ancient human, the site has yielded the first DNA from ammoths that lived in a warm climate.

Next on the show, the Tijuana River crosses the U.S.-Mexican border from Tijuana to San Diego—bringing with it sewage, industrial waste, and stinky smells. News Intern Nazeefa Ahmed talks with Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California San Diego about detecting both air and water pollution around the river and the steps needed for cleanup.

Finally, the latest in our series of books exploring the science of death. This month, host Angela Saini talks with philosopher Susana Monsó about her ook Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death. Content warning for this segment: The interview contains descriptions of dead baby animals.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Perez Ortega; Angela Saini

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New insights into endometriosis, and mapping dengue in Latin America Aug 21, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss recent advances in understanding endometriosis—a disease where tissue that resembles the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, causing pain and other health effects. The pair talk about how investigating the role of the immune system in this disease is leading researchers to new potential diagnostic tools and treatments.

Next on the show, why are there good dengue years and bad dengue years? This week in Science Translational Medicine, Talia Quandelacy and colleagues map the synchrony and spread of this mosquito-borne disease in Latin America. She joins the podcast to talk about how the seasons, rainfall, and even El Niño connect with dengue levels and how this understanding can help with prediction and preparation.

Quandelacy is an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology at the University of Colorado School of Public Health.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman

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Why chatbots lie, and can synthetic organs and AI replace animal testing? Aug 14, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell and Contributing Correspondent Sara Reardon discuss alternative approaches to animal testing, from a heart on a chip to a miniorgan in a dish.

Next on the show, Expert Voices columnist Melanie Mitchell and host Sarah Crespi dig into AI lies. Why do chatbots fabricate answers and pretend to do math? Mitchell describes the stress tests large language models undergo—called red teaming—and the steps needed to better understand how they “think.”

Melanie Mitchell is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. You can read all her Expert Voices columns here.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Melanie Mitchell; Sara Reardon

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Why anteaters keep evolving, and how giant whales get enough food to live Aug 07, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm brings stories on peacock feathers’ ability to emit laser light, how anteaters have evolved at least 12 times, and why we should be thanking ketchup for our French fries.

Next on the show, rorqual whales, such as the massive blue whale, use a lunging strategy to fill their monster maws with seawater and prey, then filter out the tasty parts with baleen sieves. Lunging for food when you weigh 100 tons seems like it would be an energetically expensive way to meet your dietary needs. But as Ashley Blawas, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hopkins Marine Station at Stanford University, describes in Science Advances this week, lunge-feeding whales have a few tricks up their sieves and use much less energy than predicted.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm

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Wartime science in Ukraine, what Neanderthals really ate, and visiting the city of the dead Jul 31, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the toll of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and how researchers have been mobilized to help the war effort. In June, Stone visited the basement labs where Ukrainian students modify off-the-shelf drones for war fighting and the facilities where biomedical researchers develop implants and bandages for wounded soldiers.

Next on the show, the isotopic ratios in our teeth and bones record the chemistry of what we eat. When anthropologists recently applied this technique to Neanderthals, they were surprised to find that when it comes to eating meat, our hominin cousins appeared to be on par with lions. Melanie Beasley, assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, has an explanation for why Neanderthals chemically look like hypercarnivores: They were just eating a lot of maggots. She talks about how she tested this idea by studying maggots that were fed putrefying human flesh.

Last up on this episode, a new installment of our series of books on death and science. This month’s books host Angela Saini talks with Ravi Nandan Singh, a sociologist at Shiv Nadar University, about his book Dead in Banaras: An Ethnography of Funeral Travelling.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Rich Stone

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Robots that eat other robots, and an ancient hot spot of early human relatives Jul 24, 2025

Show notes

First up on the podcast, South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind is home to the world’s greatest concentration of ancestral human remains, including our own genus, Homo, Australopithecus, and a more robust hominin called Paranthropus. Proving they were there at the same time is challenging, but new fossil evidence seems to point to coexistence. Producer Kevin McLean discusses what a multihominin landscape might have looked like with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons.

Next on the show, should robots grow and adapt like babies? Host Sarah Crespi talks with roboticist Philippe Wyder about a platform for exploring this idea. In his Science Advances paper, Wyder and his team demonstrate how simple stick-shaped robots with magnets at either end can join up for more complicated tasks and shed parts to adapt to new ones.

Philippe Wyder was at Columbia University and the University of Washington when he completed this work, and he has now moved on to a company called Distyl AI.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Ann Gibbons

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