Science Magazine Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Debating healthy obesity, delaying type 1 diabetes, and visiting bone rooms Jul 29, 2021

Show notes

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.

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[Image: Jason Solo/Jacky Winter Group; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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

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Blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease, and what earthquakes on Mars reveal about the Red Planet’s core Jul 22, 2021

Show notes

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.

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[Image: C. Bickel/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Claire Hogan

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Science after COVID-19, and a landslide that became a flood Jul 15, 2021

Show notes

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.

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[Image: Irfan Rashid, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

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Scientists’ role in the opioid crisis, 3D-printed candy proteins, and summer books Jul 08, 2021

Show notes

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.

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Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp; Valerie Thompson

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Preserving plastic art, and a gold standard for measuring extreme pressure Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

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.

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[Image: Aleth Lorne; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Joel Goldberg; Sam Kean; Meagan Cantwell

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Does Botox combat depression, the fruit fly sex drive, and a series on race and science Jun 24, 2021

Show notes

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.

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[Image: Tomasz Klejdysz/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady; Angela Saini

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Keeping ads out of dreams, and calculating the cost of climate displacement Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

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.

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[Image: Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission Belur Math/Amphan Cyclone Relief Services; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sofia Moutinho

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Finding consciousness outside the brain, and using DNA to reunite families Jun 10, 2021

Show notes

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Cicada citizen science, and expanding the genetic code Jun 03, 2021

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts

About the Science Podcast

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[Image: Bill Douthitt/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ian Graber-Stiehl

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Cracking consciousness, and taking the temperature of urban heat islands May 27, 2021

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

[Image: Joe Wolf/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi

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