Science Magazine Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Podcast: Double navigation in desert ants, pollution in the brain, and dating deal breakers Sep 08, 2016

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News stories on magnetic waste in the brain, the top deal breakers in online dating, and wolves that are willing to “risk it for the biscuit,” with David Grimm. From the magazine How do we track where we are going and where we have been? Do you pay attention to your path? Look for landmarks? Leave a scent trail? The problem of navigation has been solved a number of different ways by animals. The desert-dwelling Cataglyphis ant was thought to rely on stride integration, basically counting their steps. But it turns out they have a separate method of keeping track of their whereabouts called “optic flow.” Matthias Wittlinger joins Sarah Crespi to talk about his work with these amazing creatures. Read the research. [Image: Rooobert Bayer /Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: Ceres’s close-up, how dogs listen, and a new RNA therapy Sep 01, 2016

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News stories on what words dogs know, an RNA therapy for psoriasis, and how Lucy may have fallen from the sky, with Catherine Matacic. From the magazine In early 2015, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. Over the last year and a half, scientists have studied the mysterious dwarf planet using data collected by Dawn, including detailed images of its surface. Julia Rosen talks with Debra Buczkowski about Ceres’s close-up. See the full Ceres package.

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Podcast: Quantum dots in consumer electronics and a faceoff with the quiz master Aug 25, 2016

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Sarah Crespi takes a pop quiz on literal life hacking, spotting poverty from outer space, and the size of the average American vocabulary with Catherine Matacic. From the magazine You can already buy a quantum dot television, but it’s really just the beginning of the infiltration of quantum dots into our everyday lives. Cherie Kagan is here to talk about her in depth review of the technology published in this week’s issue. [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: How mice mess up reproducibility, new support for an RNA world, and giving cash away wisely Aug 18, 2016

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News stories on a humanmade RNA copier that bolsters ideas about early life on Earth, the downfall of a pre-Columbian empire, and how a bit of cash at the right time can keep you off the streets, with Jessica Boddy. From the magazine This story combines two things we seem to talk about a lot on the podcast: reproducibility and the microbiome. The big question we’re going to take on is how reproducible are mouse studies when their microbiomes aren’t taken into account? Staff writer Kelly Servick is here to talk about what promises to be a long battle with mouse-dwelling bugs. [Image: Annedde/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: 400-year-old sharks, busting a famous scientific hoax, and clinical trials in pets Aug 11, 2016

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News stories on using pets in clinical trials to test veterinarian drugs, debunking the Piltdown Man once and for all, and deciding just how smart crows can be, with David Grimm. From the magazine It’s really difficult to figure out how old a free-living animal is. Maybe you can find growth rings in bone or other calcified body parts, but in sharks like the Greenland shark, no such hardened parts exist. Using two different radiocarbon dating approaches, Julius Neilsen and colleagues discovered that the giant Greenland shark may live as long as 400 years. Read the research. [Image: James Howard McGregor/Wikimedia Commons/Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: Pollution hot spots in coastal waters, extreme bees, and diseased dinos Aug 04, 2016

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News stories on bees that live perilously close to the mouth of a volcano, diagnosing arthritis in dinosaur bones, and the evolution of the female orgasm, with David Grimm. From the magazine Rivers deliver water to the ocean but water is also discharged along the coast in a much more diffuse way. This “submarine groundwater discharge” carries dissolved chemicals out to sea. But the underground nature of these outflows makes them difficult to quantify. Audrey Sawyer talks with Sarah Crespi about the scale of this discharge and how it affects coastal waters surrounding the United States. [Image: Hilary Erenler/Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: Saving wolves that aren’t really wolves, bird-human partnership, and our oldest common ancestor Jul 28, 2016

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Stories on birds that guide people to honey, genes left over from the last universal common ancestor, and what the nose knows about antibiotics, with Devi Shastri. The Endangered Species Act—a 1973 U.S. law designed to protect animals in the country from extinction—may need a fresh look. The focus on “species” is the problem. This has become especially clear when it comes to wolves—recent genetic information has led to government agencies moving to delist the grey wolf. Robert Wayne helps untangle the wolf family tree and talks us through how a better understanding of wolf genetics may trouble their protected status. [Image: Claire N. Spottiswoode/Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: An omnipresent antimicrobial, a lichen ménage à trois, and tiny tide-induced tremors Jul 21, 2016

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Stories on a lichen threesome, tremors caused by tides, and a theoretical way to inspect nuclear warheads without looking too closely at them, with Catherine Matacic. Despite concerns about antibiotic resistance, it seems like antimicrobials have crept into everything—from hand soap to toothpaste, and even fabrics. What does the ubiquitous presence of these compounds mean for our microbiomes? Alyson Yee talks with host Sarah Crespi about one antimicrobial in particular—triclosan—which has been partially banned in the European Union. [Image: T. Wheeler/Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: The science of the apocalypse, and abstract thinking in ducklings Jul 14, 2016

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What do we know about humanity-ending catastrophes? Julia Rosen talks with Sarah Crespi about various doomsday scenarios and what science can do to save us. Alex Kacelnik talks about getting ducklings to recognize “same” and “different”—a striking finding that reveals conceptual thinking in very early life. Read the related research. [Image: Antone Martinho/Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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Podcast: An exoplanet with three suns, no relief for aching knees, and building better noses Jul 07, 2016

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Listen to stories on how once we lose cartilage it’s gone forever, genetically engineering a supersniffing mouse, and building an artificial animal from silicon and heart cells, with Online News Editor David Grimm. As we learn more and more about exoplanets, we find we know less and less about what were thought of as the basics: why planets are where they are in relation to their stars and how they formed. Kevin Wagner joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the latest unexpected exoplanet—a young jovian planet in a three-star system. [Image: Hellerhoff/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0;Music: Jeffrey Cook]

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