Science Magazine Podcast

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Keeping transgenic corn sustainable, and sending shrunken heads home Feb 27, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, Kata Karáth, a freelance journalist based in Ecuador, talks with host Sarah Crespi about an effort to identify traditionally prepared shrunken heads in museums and collections around the world and potentially repatriate them.

Next, genetically modified Bt corn has helped farmers avoid serious crop damage from insects, but planting it everywhere all the time can drive insects to adapt to the bacterial toxin made by the plant. Christian Krupke, an entomology professor at Purdue University, talks about the economics of planting Bt corn and how farmers could save money and extend the usefulness of this transgenic plant by being selective about where and when they plant it.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kata Karáth

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Shrinking AI for use in farms and clinics, ethical dilemmas for USAID researchers, and how to evolve evolvability Feb 20, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, researchers face impossible decisions as U.S. aid freeze halts clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how organizers of U.S. Agency for International Development–funded studies are grappling with ethical responsibilities to trial participants and collaborators as funding, supplies, and workers dry up.

Next, freelance science journalist Sandeep Ravindran talks about creating tiny machine learning devices for bespoke use in the Global South. Farmers and medical clinics are using low-cost, low-power devices with onboard machine learning for spotting fungal infections in tree plantations or listening for the buzz of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.

Finally, Michael Barnett, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, joins the podcast to discuss evolving evolvability. His team demonstrated a way for organisms to become more evolvable in response to repeated swings in the environment.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran; Martin Enserink

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Training AI to read animal facial expressions, NIH funding takes a big hit, and why we shouldn’t put cameras in robot pants Feb 13, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins the podcast to discuss the big change in NIH’s funding policy for overhead or indirect costs, the outrage from the biomedical community over the cuts, and the lawsuits filed in response.

Next, what can machines understand about pets and livestock that humans can’t? Christa Lesté-Lasserre, a freelance science journalist based in Paris, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss training artificial intelligence on animal facial expressions. Today, this approach can be used to find farm animals in distress; one day it may help veterinarians and pet owners better connect with their animal friends.

Finally, Keya Ghonasgi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks about a recent Science Robotics paper on the case against machine vision for the control of wearable robotics. It turns out the costs of adding video cameras to exoskeletons—such as loss of privacy—may outweigh the benefits of having robotic helpers on our arms and legs.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Lesté-Lasserre; David Malakoff

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How the mantis shrimp builds its powerful club, and mysteries of middle Earth Feb 06, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about recent policy stories on NASA’s reactions to President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive orders.

Next, the mantis shrimp is famous for its powerful club, a biological hammer it uses to crack open hard shells. The club applies immense force on impact, but how does it keep itself together blow after blow? Nicolas Alderete is an associate researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but at the time of the work he was a graduate researcher in theoretical and applied mechanics at Northwestern University. He joins the podcast to discuss the makeup of the mantis shrimp’s club and how it uses “phononics”—specialized microstructures that can reduce or change high-frequency vibrations—to reduce wear and tear when smashing and bashing.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

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Why it pays to scratch that itch, and science at the start of the second Trump administration Jan 30, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, we catch up with the editor of ScienceInsider, Jocelyn Kaiser. She talks about changes at the major science agencies that came about with the transition to President Donald Trump’s second administration, such as hiring freezes at the National Institutes of Health and the United States’s departure from the World Health Organization.

Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Dan Kaplan, a professor in the departments of immunology and dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh, about why it sometimes pays to scratch that itch. It turns out scratching may be our bodies’ end run around pests and pathogens attempting to steal blood or invade the body.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jocelyn Kaiser

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Unlocking green hydrogen, and oxygen deprivation as medicine Jan 23, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, although long touted as a green fuel, the traditional approach to hydrogen production is not very sustainable. Staff writer Robert F. Service joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss how researchers are aiming to improve electrolyzers—devices that split water into hydrogen and oxygen—with more efficient and durable designs.

Next, Robert Rogers, who was a postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology at Massachusetts General Hospital when this work was conducted, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the idea of chronic hypoxia as medicine. Efficacious in mouse disease models, the big question now is whether long-lasting reduced oxygen could help people with certain serious conditions, such as mitochondrial defects or brain inflammation. The pair discuss what we know so far about this potential treatment and the challenges of delivering low levels of oxygen around the clock.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Robert Service

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Rising infections from a dusty devil, and nailing down when our ancestors became meat eaters Jan 16, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, growing numbers of Valley fever cases, also known as coccidioidomycosis, has researchers looking into the disease-causing fungus. They’re exploring its links to everything from drought and wildfires to climate change and rodent populations. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her visit to a Valley fever research site in the desert near Bakersfield, California, where researchers are sampling air and soil for the elusive fungus.

Next up, scientists are trying to pin down when meat eating became a habit for human ancestors. It’s long been hypothesized that eating meat drove big changes in our family tree—such as bigger brains and more upright posture. Tina Lüdecke, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and honorary research fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, investigated the diet of our ancient hominin relatives Australopithecus. Her team used nitrogen isotope ratios from the tooth enamel in seven Australopithecus individuals in South Africa to determine what predominated in their diets at the time—meat or veg.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zulg8oo

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Bats surf storm fronts, and public perception of preprints Jan 09, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, as preprint publications ramped up during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so did media attention for these pre–peer-review results. But what do the readers of news reports based on preprints know about them? Associate News Editor Jeff Brainard joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss studies that look at the public perception of preprints in the news and how to inject skepticism into stories about them.

Next, placing tiny tags on bats to follow them across central Europe. Former Science intern Edward Hurme—now a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Migration at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior—revisits the podcast after 13 years. He discusses the difficulty of tracking bats as they fly long distances at night and what new tagging technology is revealing about their migration patterns.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jeff Brainard

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On the trail with a truffle-hunting dog, and why we should save elderly plants and animals Jan 02, 2025

Show notes

First up this week, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about truffle hunting for science. Wilcox accompanied Heather Dawson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon, and her sister Hilary Dawson, a postdoctoral researcher at Australian National University, on a hunt for nonculinary truffles—the kind you don’t eat—with the help of a specially trained dog. These scientists and their dog are digging up many new species of these hard-to-find fungi with the ultimate aim of cataloging and conserving them.

Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with R. Keller Kopf, an ecologist and lecturer at Charles Darwin University, about the importance of conserving older plants and animals. For example, as certain fish age they produce many more eggs than younger fish. Or in a forest, older trees may provide different ecosystem services than saplings.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox; Ariana Remmel

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

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Top online stories of the year, and revisiting digging donkeys and baby minds Dec 19, 2024

Show notes

First up this week, Online News Editor David Grimm shares a sampling of stories that hit big with our audience and staff in this year, from corpse-eating pets to the limits of fanning ourselves.

Next, host Sarah Crespi tackles some unfinished business with Producer Kevin McLean. Three former guests talk about where their research has taken them since their first appearances on the podcast.

Erick Lundgren, a researcher at the Centre for Open Science and Research Synthesis at the University of Alberta, revisits his paper on donkeys that dig wells in deserts. Lundgren first appeared on the podcast in April 2021.

Katie Hampson, a professor of infectious disease ecology at the University of Glasgow, discusses where her Tanzanian rabies research has spread. Hampson first appeared on the podcast in April 2022.

Ashley Thomas, an assistant professor of psychology in the Laboratory for Development Studies at Harvard University, talks about why it’s important to plumb the depths of baby minds and the big questions behind her work on children’s understanding of social relationships. Thomas first appeared on the podcast in January 2022.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm

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