Science Magazine Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Areas to watch in 2021, and the living microbes in wildfire smoke Dec 31, 2020

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

[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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

[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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

[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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

[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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF)

[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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

++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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

[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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

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

Show notes

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.

Listen to previous podcasts.

About the Science Podcast

Download a transcript (PDF).

[Image: Zeev Barkan/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jon Cohen

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