2023 Science Magazine
]Researchers are testing HIV drugs and monoclonal antibodies against long-lasting COVID-19, and what it takes to turn a symbiotic friend into an organelle
First up on the show this week, clinical trials of new and old treatments for Long Covid. Producer Meagan Cantwell is joined by Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and some of her sources to discuss the difficulties of studying and treating this debilitating disease.
People in this segment: · Shelley Hayden
Next: Move over mitochondria, a new organelle called the nitroplast is here. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Tyler Coale, a postdoctoral scholar in the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Ocean Sciences Department, about what exactly makes an organelle an organelle and why it would be nice to have inhouse nitrogen fixing in your cells.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zof5fvk
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Tracing the arrival of rats using bones, isotopes, and a few shipwrecks; and what scientists have learned in 50 years about our famous ancestor Lucy
First on the show: Did rats come over with Christopher Columbus? It turns out, European colonists weren’t alone on their ships when they came to the Americas—they also brought black and brown rats to uninfested shores. Eric Guiry, a researcher in the Trent Environmental Archaeology Lab at Trent University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how tiny slices of bone from early colony sites and sunken shipwrecks can tell us when these pesky rodents arrived.
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons about what has happened in the 50 years since anthropologists found Lucy—a likely human ancestor that lived 2.9 million to 3.3 million years ago. Although still likely part of our family tree, her place as a direct ancestor is in question. And over the years, her past has become less lonesome as it has become populated with other contemporaneous hominins.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4scrgk
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Robots that can smile in synchrony with people, and what ends up in the letters section First on this week’s show, a robot that can predict your smile. Hod Lipson, a roboticist and professor at Columbia University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how mirrors can help robots learn to make facial expressions and eventually improve robot nonverbal communication.
Next, we have Margaret Handley, a professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics and medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She shares a letter she wrote to Science about how her past, her family, and a rare instrument relate to her current career focus on public health and homelessness. Letters Editor Jennifer Sills also weighs in with the kinds of letters people write into the magazine. Other Past as Prologue letters: A new frontier for mi familia by Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony A uranium miner’s daughter by Tanya J. Gallegos Embracing questions after my father’s murder by Jacquelyn J. Cragg A family’s pride in educated daughters by Qura Tul Ain One person’s trash: Another’s treasured education by Xiangkun Elvis Cao
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Sills
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zy9w2u0
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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New clinical trials for treatments of an always fatal brain disease, and what happens with pests when a conventional and organic farm are neighbors
First up on this week’s show, a new treatment to stave off prion disease goes into clinical trials. Prions are misfolded proteins that clump together and chew holes in the brain. The misfolding can be switched on in a number of ways—including infection with a misfolded prion protein from an animal or person. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about new potential treatments—from antisense nucleotides to small molecules that interfere with protein production—for these fatal neurodegenerative diseases.
Next on the show: Freelance producer Katherine Irving talks with Ashley Larsen, associate professor of agricultural and landscape ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about the effects of organic farms on their neighbors. If there are lots of organic growers together, pesticide use goes down but conventional farms tend to use more pesticides when side by side with organic farms.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving; Meredith Wadman LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z91m76v
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Investigating “infantile amnesia,” and how generalized fear after acute stress reflects changes in the brain
This week we have two neuroscience stories. First up, freelance science journalist Sara Reardon looks at why infants’ memories fade. She joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss ongoing experiments that aim to determine when the forgetting stops and why it happens in the first place.
Next on the show, Hui-Quan Li, a senior scientist at Neurocrine Biosciences, talks with Sarah about how the brain encodes generalized fear, a symptom of some anxiety disorders such as social anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Sara Reardon
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z9bqkyc
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What modern Indian genomes say about the region’s deep past, and how vitamin A influences stem cell plasticity First up this week, Online News Editor Michael Price and host Sarah Crespi talk about a large genome sequencing project in India that reveals past migrations in the region and a unique intermixing with Neanderthals in ancient times.
Next on the show, producer Kevin McLean chats with Matthew Tierney, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, about how vitamin A and stem cells work together to grow hair and heal wounds.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Michael Price Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfhqarg
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Keeping water out of the stratosphere could be a low-risk geoengineering approach, and using magnets to drive medical robots inside the body
First up this week, a new approach to slowing climate change: dehydrating the stratosphere. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risks and advantages of this geoengineering technique.
Next on the show, Science Robotics Editor Amos Matsiko gives a run-down of papers in a special series on magnetic robots in medicine. Matsiko and Crespi also discuss how close old science fiction books came to predicting modern medical robots’ abilities.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Amos Matsiko
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zvvddhw
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On this week’s show: Factors that pushed snakes to evolve so many different habitats and lifestyles, and news from the AAAS annual meeting
First up on the show this week, news from this year’s annual meeting of AAAS (publisher of Science) in Denver. News intern Sean Cummings talks with Danielle Wood, director of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the sustainable use of orbital space or how space exploration and research can benefit everyone.
And Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi with an extravaganza of meeting stories including a chat with some of the authors of this year’s Newcomb Cleveland Prize–winning Science paper on how horses spread across North America.
Voices in this segment:
William Taylor, assistant professor and curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Museum of Natural History
Ludovic Orlando, director of the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse
University of Oklahoma archaeologists Sarah Trabert and Brandi Bethke
Yvette Running Horse Collin, post-doctoral researcher Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse III)
Next on the show: What makes snakes so special? Freelance producer Ariana Remmel talks with Daniel Rabosky, professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, about the drivers for all the different ways snakes have specialized—from spitting venom to sensing heat.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; Christie Wilcox; Sean Cummings
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zabhbwe
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Why squeezing a blueberry doesn’t get you blue juice, and a myth buster and a science editor walk into a bar
First up on the show this week, MythBusters’s Adam Savage chats with Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp about the state of scholarly publishing, better ways to communicate science, plus a few myths Savage still wants to tackle.
Next on the show, making blueberries without blue pigments. Rox Middleton, a postdoctoral fellow at the Dresden University of Technology and honorary research associate at the University of Bristol, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how blueberries and other blue fruits owe their hue to a trick of the light caused by specialized wax on their surface.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews professor Jim Wells about organoid therapies. This segment is sponsored by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z7ye2st
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More than 200 materials could be “altermagnets,” and the impact of odiferous pollutants on nocturnal plant-pollinator interactions
First up on the show this week, researchers investigate a new kind of magnetism. Freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about recent evidence for “altermagnetism” in nature, which could enable new types of electronics.
Next on the show, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Jeremy Chan, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Naples Federico II, about how air pollution can interfere with pollinator activities—is the modern world too smelly for moths to do their work?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Zack Savitsky
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zz09cbu
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A remote island may hold clues for the future of El Nino and La Nina under climate change, and how pressure in the blood sends messages to neurons
First up, researchers are digging into thousands of years of coral to chart El Nino’s behavior over time. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about his travels to the Pacific island of Vanuatu to witness the arduous task of reef drilling.
Next on the show, host Sarah Crespi talks with Veronica Egger, a professor of neurophysiology at the Regensburg University Institute of Zoology, about an unexpected method of signaling inside the body. Egger’s work suggests the pulse of the blood—the mechanical drumming of it—affects neurons in the brain. The two discuss why this might be a useful way for the body to talk to itself.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z1hqrn2
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On this week’s show: A roundup of stories from our daily newsletter, and the ripple effects of the invasive big-headed ant in Kenya First up on the show, Science Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about snake venom antidotes, a surprising job for a hangover enzyme, and crustaceans that spin silk.
Next on the show, the cascading effects of an invading ant. Douglas Kamaru, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Zoology & Physiology at the University of Wyoming, discusses how the disruption of a mutually beneficial relationship between tiny ants and spiny trees in Kenya led to lions changing their hunting strategies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zd5mbue
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Investigation shows journal editors getting paid to publish bunk papers, and new techniques for finding tumor DNA in the blood
First up on this week’s episode, Frederik Joelving, an editor and reporter for the site Retraction Watch, talks with host Sarah Crespi about paper mills—organizations that sell authorship on research papers—that appear to be bribing journal editors to publish bogus articles. They talk about the drivers behind this activity and what publishers can do to stop it.
Next, producer Zakiya Whatley of the Dope Labs podcast talks with researcher Carmen Martin-Alonso, a graduate student in the Harvard–Massachusetts Institute of Technology Program in Health Sciences and Technology, about improving liquid biopsies for cancer. They discuss novel ways to detect tumor DNA circulating in the blood.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zakiya Whatley; Richard Stone
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zahpt8h
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Assessing environmental damage during wartime, and tracking signaling between fetus and mother
First up, freelance journalist Richard Stone returns with news from his latest trip to Ukraine. This week, he shares stories with host Sarah Crespi about environmental damage from the war, particularly the grave consequences of the Kakhovka Dam explosion.
Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with researcher Nardhy Gomez-Lopez, a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology and pathology and immunology in the Center for Reproductive Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The two discuss signaling between fetus and mother during childbirth and how understanding this crosstalk may one day help predict premature labor.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Andrew Pospisilik, chair and professor of epigenetics at the Van Andel Institute, about his research into how epigenetics stabilizes particular gene expression patterns and how those patterns affect our risk for disease. This segment is sponsored by the Van Andel Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Rich Stone
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z5jiifi
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Best of online news, and screening for tuberculosis using sound
This week’s episode starts out with a look back at the top 10 online news stories with Online News Editor David Grimm. There will be cat expressions and mad scientists, but also electric cement and mind reading. Read all top 10 here.
Next on the show, can a machine distinguish a tuberculosis cough from other kinds of coughs? Manuja Sharma, who was a Ph.D. student in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington at the time of the work, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her project collecting a cough data set to prove this kind of cough discrimination is possible with just a smartphone.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm
Audio credit for human infant cries: Nicolas Grimault, Nicolas Mathevon, Florence Levrero; Neuroscience Research Center, ENES and CAP team. UJM, CNRS, France.
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpuo5vn
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Seeking the Majorana fermion particle, and a look at El Salvador’s adoption of cryptocurrency
First up on the show this week, freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky and host Sarah Crespi discuss the hunt for the elusive Majorana fermion particle, and why so many think it might be the best bet for a functional quantum computer. We also hear the mysterious tale of the disappearance of the particle’s namesake, Italian physicist Ettore Majorana.
Next in the episode, what happens when you make a cryptocurrency legal tender? Diana Van Patten, professor of economics in the Yale University School of Management, discusses the results of El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin in 2021.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zjvhsy8
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Top science from 2023, and a genetic tool for pangolin conservation
First up this week, it’s Science’s Breakthrough of the Year with producer Meagan Cantwell and News Editor Greg Miller. But before they get to the tippy-top science find, a few of this year’s runners-up. See all our end-of-year coverage here.
Next, Jen Tinsman, a forensic wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss using genetics to track the illegal pangolin trade. These scaly little guys are the most trafficked mammals in the world, and researchers can now use DNA from their scales to find poaching hot spots.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Greg Miller
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zk0pw91
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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A look at cognition in livestock, and the coevolution of wild bird–human cooperation
This week we have two stories on thinking and learning in animals. First, Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about a reporting trip to the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology in northern Germany, where scientists are studying cognition in farm animals, including goats, cows, and pigs. And because freelance audio producer Kevin Caners went along, we have lots of sound from the trip—so prepare yourself for moos and more.
Voices in this story:
Next, audio producer Katherine Irving talks with Claire Spottiswoode, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, about her research into cooperation between honeyguide birds and human honey hunters. In their Science study, Spottiswoode and her team found honeyguides learn distinct signals made by honey hunters from different cultures suggesting that cultural coevolution has occurred.
Read a related Perspective.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Katherine Irving
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zr3zfn1
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Raising the pH of the ocean to reduce carbon in the air, and robots that can landscape
First up on this week’s show, Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall discusses research into making oceans more alkaline as a way to increase carbon capture and slow climate change. But there are a few open questions with this strategy: Could enough material be dumped in the ocean to slow climate change? Would mining that material release a lot of carbon? And, would either the mining or ocean changes have big impacts on ecosystems or human health?
Next, we hear from Ryan Luke Johns, a recent Ph.D. graduate from ETH Zurich, about why we want robots building big rocky structures from found materials: It reduces energy costs and waste associated with construction, and it would allow us to build things remotely on Mars.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z66mytn
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A leap in supercomputing is a leap for science, cracking the dolomite problem, and a book on where patriarchy came from
First up on this week’s show, bigger supercomputers help make superscience. Staff Writer Robert F. Service joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how the first exascale computer is enabling big leaps in scientists’ models of the world.
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with the University of Michigan’s Wenhao Sun, professor of materials science and engineering, and graduate student Joonsoo Kim. They discuss solving the centuries-old problem of growing the common mineral dolomite in the lab.
Finally, books host Angela Saini is back but this time she’s in the hot seat talking about her own book, The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality. Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson and host Sarah Crespi chat with Angela about what history, archaeology, and biology reveal about where and when patriarchy started. See our whole series of books podcasts on sex, gender, and science.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini; Robert Service
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn0660
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What it means that artificial intelligence can now forecast the weather like a supercomputer, and measuring methane emissions from municipal waste
First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how artificial intelligence has become shockingly good at forecasting the weather while using way fewer resources than other modeling systems. Read a related Science paper.
Next, focusing on municipal solid waste—landfills, compost centers, garbage dumps—may offer a potentially straightforward path to lower carbon emissions. Zheng Xuan Hoy, a recent graduate from the new energy science and engineering department at Xiamen University Malaysia, discusses his Science paper on this overlooked source of methane and some plausible solutions for reducing these emissions.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm9783
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First up on this week’s show: the future of science in Russia. We hear about how the country’s scientists are split into two big groups: those that left Russia after the invasion of Ukraine and those that stayed behind. Freelance journalist Olga Dobrovidova talks with host Sarah Crespi about why so many have left, and the situation for those who remain.
Next on the show: miniature, battery-free bioelectronics. Jacob Robinson, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, discusses how medical implants could go battery-free by harvesting energy from the human body and many other potential innovations in store for these internal medical devices.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Olga Dobrovidova
LINKS FOR MP3 META
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm8195
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Why scientists are trying to make anemones act like corals, and why it’s so hard to make pharmaceuticals for brain diseases
First up on this week’s show, coaxing anemones to make rocks. Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the difficulties of raising coral in the lab and a research group that’s instead trying to pin down the process of biomineralization by inserting coral genes into easy-to-maintain anemones.
Next on the show, a look at why therapeutics for both neurodegenerative disease and psychiatric illness are lagging behind other kinds of medicines. Steve Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, talks with Sarah about some of the stumbling blocks to developing drugs for the brain—including a lack of diverse genome sequences—and what researchers are doing to get things back on track.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, associate editor Jackie Oberst discusses with Thomas Fuchs, dean of artificial intelligence (AI) and human health and professor of computational pathology and computer science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the potential and evolving role of AI in health care. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Christie Wilcox; Sarah Crespi
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science. adm6756
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First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about why it might make sense to grow shorter corn. It turns out the towering corn typically grown today is more likely to blow over in strong winds and can’t be planted very densely. Now, seedmakers are testing out new ways to make corn short through conventional breeding and transgenic techniques in the hopes of increasing yields.
Next up on the show, the last in our series of books on sex and gender with Books Host Angela Saini. In this installment, Angela speaks with Nandita Jayaraj and Aashima Dogra about their book Lab Hopping: A Journey to Find India’s Women in Science.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5269
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Restoring land after dam removal, and phonons as a basis for quantum computing
First up on this week’s show, planting in the silty soil left behind after a dam is removed and reservoirs recede. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the world's largest dam removal project and what ecologists are doing to revegetate 36 kilometers of new river edge.
Next up on the show, freelance producer and former guest Tanya Roussy. She talks with Andrew Cleland, a professor at the University of Chicago, about a Science paper from this summer on using the phonon—a quantum of sound energy—as the basis of quantum computers.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Tanya Roussy, Warren Cornwall Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl4219
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The Kuiper belt might be bigger than we thought, and managing the effects of wildfires on indoor pollution
First up on this week’s show, the Kuiper belt—the circular field of icy bodies, including Pluto, that surrounds our Solar System— might be bigger than we thought. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the distant Kuiper belt objects out past Neptune, and how they were identified by telescopes looking for new targets for a visit by the New Horizons spacecraft.
Next up on the show, the impact of wildfire smoke indoors. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Delphine Farmer, a chemist at Colorado State University, about an experiment to measure where particulates and volatile organic compounds end up when they sneak inside during a wildfire event.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Jens Nielsen, CEO of the BioInnovation Institute—an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark—about the next big leap in biology: synthetic biology. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Paul Voosen, Kevin McLean Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science. adl3178
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Pushing ancient DNA past the Pleistocene, and linking agriculture to biodiversity and infectious disease First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad brings a host of fascinating stories, from the arrival of deadly avian flu in the Galapagos to measuring the effect of earthworms on our daily bread. He and host Sarah Crespi start off the segment discussing just how much stuff you need to avoid abject poverty and why measuring this value can help us balance human needs against planetary sustainability.
Other stories from Erik mentioned in this segment:
? Elephant trunk’s ‘stunning’ microscopic musculature may explain its dexterity | Science ? ‘Mind-boggling’ sea creature spotted off Japan has finally been identified | Science
Next up on the show, as part of a special issue on ancient DNA, freelance producer Katherine Irving talks with Love Dalen, a professor of evolutionary genomics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics at Stockholm University. They talk about the longevity of ancient DNA and what it would take to let us see back even further. See the whole ancient DNA special issue here.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Erik Stokstad, Katherine Irving
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl1587
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A book on utopias and gender roles, India looks to beat climate-induced heat in cities, and how ancient Amazonians improved the soil First up on this week’s show: the latest in our series of books on sex, gender, and science. Books host Angela Saini discusses Everyday Utopia: In Praise of Radical Alternatives to the Traditional Family Home with ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee, professor of Russian and Eastern European studies at the University of Pennsylvania. See this year’s whole series here.
Also this week, as part of a special issue on climate change and health, host Sarah Crespi speaks with Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, a freelance journalist based in Mumbai, India. They talk about how India is looking to avoid overheating cities in the coming decades, as climate change and urbanization collide.
Finally, we hear about how ancient Amazonians created fertile “dark earth” on purpose. Sarah is joined by Morgan Schmidt, an archaeologist and geographer at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. They discuss recent research published in Science Advances on the mysterious rich soil that coincides with ancient ruins, which may still be produced by modern Indigenous people in Brazil.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0606
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The key to shrinking cartels is cutting recruitment, and a roundup of books, video games, movies, and more
First up on this week’s show: modeling Mexico’s cartels. Rafael Prieto-Curiel, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how modeling cartel activities can help us understand the impact of potential interventions such as increased policing or reducing gang recruitment.
Lisa Sanchez, executive director of Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia, talks with Sarah about just how difficult it would be to make the model results—which show that reducing recruitment is key—a reality.
Next on the show, Science books editor Valerie Thompson and books intern Jamie Dickman discuss a huge selection of science books, movies, video games, and even new exhibits—all due out this fall. See the complete roundup here.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Valerie Thompson, Jamie Dickman
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk9453
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Receptors that give our feline friends a craving for meat, and using combustion to propel insect-size robots
First up on this week’s episode, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about why despite originating from a dry, desert environment cats seem to love to eat fish.
Next on the show, bugs such as ants are tiny while at the same time fast and strong, and small robots can’t seem to match these insectile feats of speed and power. Cameron Aubin, a postdoc at Cornell University who will shortly join the University of Michigan, discusses using miniscule combustion reactions to bring small robots up to ant speed.
Finally in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Bobby Soni, chief business officer at the BioInnovation Institute, an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark, what it takes to bring a product from lab to market and how to make the leap from scientist to entrepreneur. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk8409
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How the Tonga eruption caused some of the fastest underwater flows in history, and why many U.S. renewable energy projects are on hold
First up on this week’s show, we hear about extremely fast underwater currents after a volcanic eruption. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with sedimentary geologist Michael Clare and submarine volcanologist Isobel Yeo, both at the U.K. National Oceanography Centre. They discuss the complex aftermath of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption, including fast and powerful ocean currents that severed seafloor cables.
Watch a related video on last year’s eruption by Meagan: How the Tonga volcanic eruption rippled through the earth, ocean and atmosphere.
Next on the show, an unexpected slowdown in connecting renewable power to the electrical grid. Freelance journalist Dan Charles joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how problems with modeling energy flow in the electrical grid are holding up wind and solar power projects across the country.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Meagan Cantwell; Dan Charles
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk7170
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How active learning improves calculus teaching, and using machine learning to map odors in the smell space
First up on this week’s show, Laird Kramer, a professor of physics and faculty in the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University (FIU), talks with host Sarah Crespi about students leaving STEM fields because of calculus and his research into improving instruction.
We also hear from some Science staffers about their own calculus trauma, from fear of spinning shapes to thinking twice about majoring in physics (featuring Kevin McLean, Paul Voosen, Lizzie Wade, Meagan Cantwell, and FIU student and learning assistant Carolyn Marquez).
Next on the show, can a computer predict what something will smell like to a person by looking at its chemical structure? Emily Mayhew, a professor in the department of food science and human nutrition at Michigan State University, talks about how this was accomplished using a panel of trained smellers, and what the next steps are for digitizing the sense of smell.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen; Lizzie Wade
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk6142
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A close look at a coronal hole, how salt and hackers can affect science, and the latest book in our series on science, sex, and gender First up on this week’s show, determining the origin of solar wind—the streams of plasma that emerge from the Sun and envelope the Solar System. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, about how tiny jets in so-called coronal holes seem to be responsible. Sarah also talks with Science Editor Keith Smith about the source of the data, the Solar Orbiter mission. Read a related Perspective.
Next, two stories on unlikely reasons for slowing science. First, cyberattacks on telescopes scramble ground-based astronomy in Hawaii and Chile, with Diverse Voices Interns Tanvi Dutta Gupta and Celina Zhao. Also, we hear about an unparalleled water crisis in Uruguay that has left scientists high and dry, with science journalist Maria de los Angeles Orfila.
Finally, in this month’s books segment in our series on science, sex, and gender, host Angela Saini talks with author and political scientist Paisley Currah about his book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, on why and how government institutions categorize people by sex and gender.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini; Maria de los Angeles Orfila; Celina Zhao; Tanvi Dutta Gupta
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4714
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Ancient wildfires may have doomed Southern California’s big mammals, and do insular societies have more complex languages?
First up on this week’s show, what killed off North America’s megafauna, such as dire wolves and saber-toothed cats? Online News Editor Mike Price joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the likely culprits: climate or humans, or one that combines both—fire. They discuss how the La Brea Tar Pits are helping researchers figure this out. Read the related Science paper.
Next up, do languages get less complex when spoken in multilingual societies? Olena Shcherbakova, a doctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, joins Sarah with a broad look at how the complexity of languages changes under different social and linguistic environments.
In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor for custom publishing, discusses with Trine Bartholdy, chief innovation officer at the BioInnovation Institute, an international life science incubator in Copenhagen, Denmark, about the continued disparity in women’s health research and funding and ways in which these challenges are being overcome. This segment is sponsored by the BioInnovation Institute.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Mike Price
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3475
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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First up on this week’s show, we hear about the skewed perception of our own hands, extremely weird giant viruses, champion regenerating flatworms, and more from Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox. Christie also chats with host Sarah Crespi about her work on a daily newsletter and what it takes to do it 5 days a week. Read more newsletters and sign up for your daily dose of Science and science. Next on the show, AAAS Intern Andrew Saintsing learns about why trees are repulsive—to one another. Michael Kalyuzhny, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of integrative biology at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses his Science paper on why trees of the same species avoid living close together in diverse habitats such as rainforests.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Andrew Saintsing, Christie Wilcox
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk2064
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Bringing together ancient DNA from a burial site and a giant database of consumer ancestry DNA helps fill gaps in African American ancestry, and a reckoning for Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum
First up on this week’s show, ancient DNA researchers and ancestry giant 23andMe joined forces to uncover present day ties to a cemetery at the Catoctin Furnace ironworks in Maryland, where enslaved people were buried. Contributing producers and hosts of the Dope Labs podcast Titi Shodiya and Zakiya Whatley spoke with authors Eadaoin Harney and David Reich about the historical significance of this work and how it may help some African American communities recover parts of their lost genealogy. Our News team also covered the paper here.
Next we have a conversation with Staff Writer Rodrigo Perez Ortega about Philadelphia’s famously creepy Mutter Museum. He talks to producer Kevin McLean about his recent story on the ethics of showcasing the various medical curiosities that the museum is known for.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean, Titi Shodiya, Zakiya Whatley, Rodrigo Perez Ortega
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1038
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On this week’s show: evaluating scientific collaborations between independent scholars and industry, farming in ancient Europe, and a book from our series on sex, gender, and science.
First up on this week’s show, a look behind the scenes at a collaboration between a social media company and 17 academics. Host Sarah Crespi speaks with Michael Wagner, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication who acted as an impartial observer for Meta’s U.S. 2020 election project. Wagner wrote a commentary piece about what worked and what didn’t in this massive project, which will spawn more than 15 papers, three of them out this week in Science.
Then, producer Meagan Cantwell speaks with Silvia Valenzuela Lamas about her talk about how sociopolitical changes shaped livestock in ancient Europe. Her talk was part of a session on migrations and exchanges in ancient civilizations from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting.
Also this week, the latest in our book series on sex, gender, and science. Host Angela Saini talks with author Amanda Lock Swarr about her book: Envisioning African Intersex: Challenging Colonial and Racist Legacies in South African Medicine.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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A massive effort by African volunteers is ensuring artificial intelligence understands their native languages, and measuring 40,000 skeletons
Also this week on the show, Eucharist Kun, a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin, and colleagues used machine learning to take skeletal measurements from x-rays stored in the UK Biobank. Kun discusses links from these body proportions to genes, evolution, and disease.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews Aysha Akhtar, co-founder and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, about how the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act 2.0 along with advances in technology are clearing the way for alternatives to animal testing in the development of new drugs. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7646
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Science’s NextGen voices share their thoughts on artificial intelligence, how to avoid creating sociopathic robots, and a visit to a historic observatory as researchers pack their bags
As part of a Science special issue on finding a place for artificial intelligence (AI) in science and society, Producer Kevin McLean shares voices from the next generation of researchers. We hear from students about how they think human scientists will still need to work alongside AI in the future.
Continuing the AI theme, we learn about instilling empathy to get better decisions from AI. Researcher Leonardo Christov-Moore, a neuroscientist at the Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies, discusses his Science Robotics piece on the importance of feelings for future iterations of AI with host Sarah Crespi.
Finally, the status of the Arecibo Observatory. Sarah talks with Contributing Correspondent Claudia Lopez Lloreda in Puerto Rico about scientists wrapping up their work at the facility, and the uncertain future of both their work prospects and the site itself.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Claudio Lopez Lloreda
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7011
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Worldwide survey kills the myth of “Man the Hunter,” and tightly constraining the electric dipole moment of the electron
First up this week on the show, freelance science writer Bridget Alex joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss busting the long-standing myth that in our deep past, virtually all hunters were men and women tended to be gatherers. It turns out women hunt in the vast majority of foraging societies, upending old stereotypes.
After that, we learn about a hunt for zero. Tanya Roussy, a recent Ph.D. graduate in quantum physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, discusses her work trying to constrain the electric dipole moment of the electron. She also talks about why the dipole moment being zero could be just as interesting as not zero to people studying the big mysteries of the universe—such as why matter and antimatter didn’t wipe each other out at the beginning of the universe. Read a related commentary.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Bridget Alex
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj5600
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On this week’s show: Improvements in cryopreservation technology, teaching robots to navigate new places, and the latest book in our series on sex and gender
First up this week on the show, scientists are learning how to “cryopreserve” tissues—from donor kidneys to coral larvae. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the latest in freezing and thawing technology.
Next up: How much does a robot need to “know” about the world to navigate it? Theophile Gervet, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses a scavenger hunt–style experiment that involves bringing robots to Airbnb rentals.
Finally, as part of our series of books on sex, gender, and science, host Angela Saini interviews author Dorothy Roberts, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, about her book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Warren Cornwall
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj4684
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On this week’s show: Euclid, a powerful platform for detecting dark energy, and a slithery segment on how snakes make scales
First up on the show this week, we’re taking the hunt for dark energy to space. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new space-based telescope called Euclid, set to launch next month. Euclid will kick off a new phase in the search for dark energy, the mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe.
Also on this week’s show, snakes reveal a new way to pattern the body. Athanasia Tzika, a senior lecturer in the genetics and evolution department at the University of Geneva, talks about her Science Advances paper on the novel way snakes organize their scales.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
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A special issue on light pollution, and first aid for mental well-being
First up this week, cleaning up the night skies. As part of a special issue on light pollution, host Sarah Crespi talks with Stefan Wallner, a researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, about why light pollution is so difficult to measure and how coordination efforts between disciplines will help us darken the nights.
Also on this week’s show, a mental health first aid course for scientists. Azmi Ahmad, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale School of Medicine, joins Sarah to discuss steps for supporting mental health day to day and during a crisis.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj2212
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A single-shot cat contraceptive, and a close look at “dry” chemistry
First up this week: an innovation in cat contraception. Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about a nonsurgical pregnancy prevention technique for cats and why such an approach has been a long-term goal for cat population control.
Also on this week’s show, we hear about new insights into mechanical chemistry—using physical force to push molecules together. Science Editor Jake Yeston and Yerzhan Zholdassov, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry at the City University of New York, join Sarah to discuss why pushing things together works and how it might herald an era of solvent-free chemistry. Read a related commentary article.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Jake Yeston
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0996
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Body-based units of measure in cultural evolution, and how the geologic history of the United States can be used to find vital minerals
First up this week, we hear about the advantages of using the body to measure the world around you. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Roope Kaaronen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, about how and why cultures use body-based measurements, such as arm lengths and hand spans. Read the related commentary.
Also on this week’s show, the United States starts a big hunt for useful minerals. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins me to discuss the country’s Earth MRI project, which seeks to locate rare earth elements and other minerals critical to sustainable energy and technology within its borders.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi9883
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Why it’s so hard to understand the tongue, a book on a revolutionary shift toward studying the female of the species, and using proteomics to find beer in a painting
First on the show this week, Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to talk tongues: Who has them, who doesn’t, and all their amazing elaborations.
We also have the first in a new six-part series on books exploring the science of sex and gender. For this month’s installment, host Angela Saini talks with evolutionary biologist Malin Ah-King about her book The Female Turn: How Evolutionary Science Shifted Perceptions About Females.
Finally, detecting beer in early 19th century Danish paintings. Heritage scientist Fabiana Di Gianvincenzo of the Heritage Science Laboratory at the University of Ljubljana talks about her Science Advances paper on using proteomics to dig out clues to artistic practices of the day and how they fit in with the local beer-loving culture.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Elizabeth Pennisi
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi8592
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Cloning vigorous crops, and finding the first romantic kiss
First up this week, building resilience into crops. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss all the tricks farmers use now to make resilient hybrid crops of rice or wheat and how genetically engineering hybrid crop plants to clone themselves may be the next step.
After that we ask: When did we start kissing? Troels Pank Arboll is an assistant professor of Assyriology in the department of cross-cultural and regional studies at the University of Copenhagen. He and Sarah chat about the earliest evidence for kissing—romantic style—and why it is unlikely that such kisses had a single place or time of origin.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi7436
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A new approach promises to increase organ transplants but some question whether they should proceed without revisiting the definition of death, and what happens to rural lands when people head to urban centers
First up this week, innovations in organ transplantation lead to ethical debates. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and several transplant surgeons and doctors about defining death, technically. Also in this segment:
Next up, what happens to abandoned rural lands when people leave the countryside for cities? Producer Kevin McLean talks with Gergana Daskalova, a Schmidt Science Fellow in the Biodiversity, Ecology, and Conservation group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, about how the end of human activities in these places can lead to opportunities for biodiversity.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Additional music provided by Looperman.com
[Image: Martin Cathrae/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: partially collapsed old barn with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi6336
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Builders of the largest scientific instruments, and how cracks can add resilience to an ecosystem
First up this week, a story on a builder of the biggest machines. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about Adrian’s dad and his other baby: an x-ray synchrotron.
Next up on this episode, a look at self-organizing landscapes. Host Sarah Crespi and Chi Xu, a professor of ecology at Nanjing University, talk about a Science Advances paper on how resilience in an ecosystem can come from the interaction of a plant and cracks in the soil.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, assistant editor for custom publishing, discusses challenges early-career researchers face and how targeted funding for this group can enable their future success. She talks with Gary Michelson, founder and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies and Aleksandar Obradovic, this year’s grand prize winner of the annual Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Hong’an Ding/Yellow River Estuary Association of Photographers; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: red beach from above with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Adrian Cho
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/science.adi5718
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Science’s editor-in-chief and an award-winning broadcast journalist discuss the struggles shared by journalism and science, and we learn about what makes something stand out in our memories
First up on the show this week: Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with Amna Nawaz, an award-winning broadcast journalist and host of the PBS NewsHour, about the value of new voices in science and journalism and other things the two fields have in common.
Next up, what makes something stand out in your memory? Is an object or word memorable because it is unique or expressive? Are there features of things that make them memorable, regardless of meaning? Wilma Bainbridge, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Chicago, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her Science Advances paper on teasing apart the features of memorability.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: madabandon/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: array of lemons with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi4383
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What does it mean that we have so many more seamounts than previously thought, and finding REM sleep in seals
First up on the show this week: so many seamounts. Staff News Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a study that mapped about 17,000 never-before-seen underwater volcanoes. They talk about how these new submarine landforms will influence conservation efforts and our understanding of ocean circulation.
Next up, how do mammals that spend 90% of their time in the water, get any sleep? Jessica Kendall-Bar, the Schmidt AI in Science postdoctoral fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is here to talk about her work exploring the sleep of elephant seals by capturing their brain waves as they dive deep to slumber.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, assistant editor for the Custom Publishing office, interviews Friedman Brain Institute Director Eric Nestler and Director of Drug Discovery Paul Kenny, two experts on addiction from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Rob Oo/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: two female elephant seals looking at the camera with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi3256
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Anchoring radiocarbon dates to cosmic events, why hibernating bears don't get blood clots, and kicking off a book series on sex, gender, and science
First up this week, upping the precision of radiocarbon dating by linking cosmic rays to isotopes in wood. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Online News Editor Michael Price about how spikes in cosmic rays—called Miyake events—are helping archaeologists peg the age of wooden artifacts to a year rather than a decade or century.
Next on the show, we have a segment on why bears can safely sleep during hibernation without worrying about getting clots in their blood. Unlike bears, when people spend too much time immobilized, such as sitting for a long time on a flight, we risk getting deep vein thrombosis—or a blood clot. Johannes Muller-Reif of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry talks with host Sarah Crespi about what we can learn from bears about how and why our bodies decide to make these clots and what we can do to prevent them.
Stay tuned for an introduction to our new six-part series on books exploring science, sex, and gender. Guest host Angela Saini talks with scholar Anne Fausto-Sterling about the books in this year's lineup and how they were selected.
We’ve been nominated for a Webby! Please support the show and vote for us by 20 April.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Thomas Zsebok/iStock/Getty; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: brown bear lying in a cave with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Mike Price; Angela Saini
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi2236
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Why some countries, such as China, vaccinate flocks against bird flu but others don’t, and male ants that are always chimeras
First up this week, highly pathogenic avian influenza is spreading to domestic flocks around the globe from migrating birds. Why don’t many countries vaccinate their bird herds when finding one case can mean massive culls? Staff News Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the push and pull of economics, politics, and science at play in vaccinating poultry against bird flu.
Next up, a crazy method of reproduction in the yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes). Hugo Darras, an assistant professor in the Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution at Johannes Gutenberg University, talks about how males of this species are always chimeras—which means their body is composed of two different cell lines, one from each parent.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: The Wild Martin; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Queen and worker yellow crazy ants with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi0665
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On this week’s show: How people in the past thought about their own past, and a detailed look at how Braille is read
First up this week, what did people 1000 years ago think about 5000-year-old Stonehenge? Or about a disused Maya temple smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood? Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how Mesoamerican sites are revealing new ways that ruins were incorporated into past peoples’ lives.
Next up on this week’s show is a segment from the AAAS meeting on reading science and Braille. We hear from Robert Englebretson, an associate professor of linguistics at Rice University, about filling in a gap in reading science research when it comes to how Braille is read, written, and learned.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: S. Crespi/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Maya building with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi0106
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On this week’s show: Earth’s youngest impact craters could be vastly underestimated in size, and remaking a plant’s process for a creating a complex compound
First up this week, have we been measuring asteroid impact craters wrong? Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about new approaches to measuring the diameter of impact craters. They discuss the new measurements which, if confirmed, might require us to rethink just how often Earth gets hit with large asteroids. Paul also shares more news from the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.
Next up, pulling together all the enzymes used by a plant to make a vaccine adjuvant—a compound used to boost the efficacy of vaccines—in the lab. Anne Osbourn, a group leader and professor of biology at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England, talks about why plants are so much better at making complex molecules, and an approach that allows scientists to copy their methods.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA/JPL; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Itturalde crater in Bolivia with podcast overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh9195
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On this week’s show: Spotting volcanic activity on Venus in 30-year-old data, and giving context to increases in early onset colon cancer
First up this week, a researcher notices an active volcano on Venus in data from the Magellan mission—which ended in 1994. News Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how to find a “fresh” lava flow in 30-year-old readings.
Next up, a concerning increase in early onset colon cancer. Kimmie Ng, director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is here to talk about how these early colon cancers—those diagnosed before age 50— are different from those diagnosed later in life. We also talk about what needs to be learned about diet, environment, and genetics to better understand this condition.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Maat Mons volcano on Venus with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh8158
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On this week’s show: Compassion fatigue will strike most who care for lab animals, but addressing it is challenging. Also, overturning ideas about ocean circulation
First up this week: uncovering compassion fatigue in those who work with research animals—from cage cleaners to heads of entire animal facilities. Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm discuss how to recognize the anxiety and depression that can be associated with this work and what some institutions are doing to help.
Featured in this segment:
Next up on the show, a segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes Science) on overturning assumptions in ocean circulation. Physical oceanographer Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks with producer Kevin McLean about the limitations of the ocean conveyor belt model, and how new tools have been giving us a much more accurate view of how water moves around the world.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: Global sea surface currents and temperature with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh4938
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On this week’s show: Researchers are finding new ways to mitigate implicit bias in medical settings, and how toothed whales use distinct vocal registers for echolocation and communication First up this week: how to fight unconscious bias in the clinic. Staff Writer Rodrigo Perez Ortega talks with host Sarah Crespi about how researchers are attempting to fight bias on many fronts—from online classes to machine learning to finding a biomarker for pain. Next up on the show: a close look at toothed whale vocalization. Though we have known for more than 50 years that toothed whales such as orcas, sperm whales, and dolphins make diverse and useful sounds, how these noises are produced by their bodies has not been well understood. Coen Elemans, a professor in biology and head of the sound communication and behavior group at the University of Southern Denmark, joins Sarah to talk about using endoscopy and high-speed cameras as well as tissue samples and tracking data to learn how they achieve such amazing feats of sound. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Thumy Phan; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: looking through glasses at a distorted face in what looks like a medical setting with podcast overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Perez Ortega Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh3706
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Portable MRI scanners could revolutionize medical imaging, and pheromones offer a way to control flies that spread disease First up this week: shrinking MRI machines. Staff Writer Adrian Cho talks with host Sarah Crespi about how engineers and physicists are teaming up to make MRI machines smaller and cheaper. Next up on the show, the smell of tsetse fly love. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Shimaa Ebrahim, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University, about understanding how tsetse flies use odors to attract one another and how this can be used to prevent the flies from transmitting diseases such as African sleeping sickness. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: GEOFFREY ATTARDO/UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: tsetse fly with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Adrian Cho Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh3128 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: The hunt for natural hydrogen deposits heats up, and why we need a space mission to an ice giant First up this week: a gold rush for naturally occurring hydrogen. Deputy Editor Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss drilling for hidden pockets of hydrogen, which companies are just now starting to explore as a clean energy option. Next up, big plans for a mission to Uranus. Kathleen Mandt, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, shares what a mission to Uranus could tell us about the formation of our Solar System and all these exoplanets we keep finding. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Austin Fisher; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Uranus illustration with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Eric Hand Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh1873
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On this week’s show: Shark tags to measure ocean deoxygenation, and zircons and the chemistry of early Earth First up this week: using sharks to measure ocean deoxygenation. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins us to talk about a group of researchers putting data logging tags on sharks in order to study how climate change is affecting oxygen levels in some of the ocean’s darkest depths. Next up, what can 4-billion-year-old minerals teach us about chemistry on early Earth? Producer Meagan Cantwell talks to geochemist Dustin Trail about using minerals called zircons to deduce the chemical properties of the early hydrothermal pools where life began. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: David Salvatori/VWPICS/Alamy Stock Photo; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Underwater photo of mako shark with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall; Meagan Cantwell
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On this week’s show: New clues to the chemicals used for mummification, and the benefits and barriers to smart toilets First up this week: What can we learn from a mummy factory? Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about mummy chemistry and why we don’t know much about what was used to preserve these ancient bodies. Online News Editor Michael Price makes a special appearance. Next up, how having a smart toilet can contribute to your health. Seung-Min Park, an instructor in the Department of Urology at Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote this week in Science Translational Medicine about the powers of data-collecting toilets to improve health and the psychological and ethical barriers to adopting a smart toilet of your very own. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Portugal2004/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: toilet with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry; Michael Price Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg9654 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: When deer are scarce these wolves turn to sea otters, and chemical weathering of silicates acts as a geological thermostat First up on this week’s show we have a story about a group of Alaskan wolves that has switched to eating sea otters as deer populations have dwindled. Science journalist Jack Tamisiea tells host Sarah Crespi about some of the recently published work on this diet shift, and wildlife biologist Gretchen Roffler weighs in on the conditions on the island where this is happening. Also on this week’s show: Chemical weathering and the global carbon cycle. Sarah speaks with Susan Brantley, Evan Pugh university professor in the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute and Department of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, about how weathering of silicates in rocks pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They talk about how this temperature-sensitive process could increase as Earth warms, as well as the potential and limitations of this effect on the global carbon budget.
Take the podcast audience survey here. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Landon Bazeley; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Wolf pup pulling a sea otter carcass up a rocky beach with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jack Tamisiea
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Statisticians fight bad numbers used in medical murder trials, and the state of allergy science First up on this week’s show, we have a piece on accusations of medical murder. Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her story on how statisticians are weighing in on cases where nurses and doctors are convicted of murdering patients based on bad statistics. This segment was produced by Kevin McLean with sound design by James Rowlands. Also on this week’s show: Allergies are on the rise and this increase is linked with climate change. Sarah speaks with Kari Nadeau, Naddisy Foundation endowed professor of medicine and pediatrics at Stanford University, about her review in Science Translational Medicine on the status of allergy science, and how recommendations have changed from when to give children peanuts to opting for sublingual exposure therapy. Take the podcast audience survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLKCHC8 This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: bobtphoto/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: ragweed field with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Cathleen O’Grady Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg7524 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Data on hazes and clouds may be key to understanding exoplanets, and NextGen letter writers share the upside of failure Hazes and clouds could keep exoplanets’ secrets hidden, unless researchers can re-create them here on Earth. After celebrating JWST and its ability to look far back in time and help us look for habitable exoplanets as the 2022 Science Breakthrough of the Year, News Intern Zack Savitsky talks with host Sarah Crespi about an overlooked problem with using telescopes to examine exoplanets’ atmospheres. What was your greatest mistake? In a chat with producer Kevin McLean, Letters Editor Jennifer Sills shares stories from NextGen Voices about failures that led them in unexpected directions in their science careers. Take the podcast audience survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLKCHC8 This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: exoplanet with cloudy and hazy atmosphere with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jennifer Sills; Zack Savitsky Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg6078 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Keeping an eye on the largest hydroelectric project in the Amazon basin, and helping patients with deletions in their mitochondrial DNA We are starting off the new year with producer Kevin McLean and freelance science journalist Sofia Moutinho. They discuss a controversial dam in the Brazilian Amazon and how Indigenous peoples and researchers are trying to monitor its impact. Then, host Sarah Crespi speaks with Elad Jacoby, an expert in pediatric hematology and oncology at the Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv University, about the many wonders of mitochondria. In a recent Science Translational Medicine paper, his team took advantage of the fact that mitochondria are almost exclusively inherited from our mothers to transfer mothers’ mitochondria into their children as treatment for mitochondrial genome deletions. Take our audience survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TLKCHC8 This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Dado Galdieri/Hilaea Media; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: two fishermen in a boat with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Sofia Moutinho Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg5434 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: A rundown of our favorite online news stories, and some of our favorite moments on the podcast this year This is our last show of the year and it’s a fun one! Dave Grimm, our online news editor, gives a tour of the top online stories of the year, from playful bumble bees to parasite-ridden friars. Then, host Sarah Crespi looks back at some amazing conversations from the podcast this year, including answers to a few questions she never thought she’d be asking. Highlights include why we aren’t just shooting nuclear waste into space, and how mapping ant diversity is like mapping the early universe. Past shows mentioned in this episode:
Gut bacteria that nourish hibernating squirrels Securing nuclear waste for 100,000 years Why sunscreen is bad for coral Don’t miss this year’s podcast series on books in food, science, and agriculture, hosted by Angela Saini. Take our audience survey at https://www.science.org/podcasts. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Peter Trimming/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: squirrel relaxing on a branch with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg3947 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Science’s Breakthrough of the Year and runners-up, plus the top books in 2022 You might not be surprised by this year’s breakthrough, but hopefully you won’t guess all our runners-up. Producer Meagan Cantwell is joined by Greg Miller, who edited the section this year. The two discuss the big winner and more. In our second segment, host Sarah Crespi is joined by Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson to chat about the best books in science from this year, and one movie. Books mentioned in this segment: How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures Review | Buy An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us Buy A House Between Earth and the Moon Review | Buy Is Science Enough? Forty Critical Questions About Climate Justice Review | Buy What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care Review | Buy Stolen Science: Thirteen Untold Stories of Scientists and Inventors Almost Written out of History Review | Buy The Science Spell Book: Magical Experiments for Kids Review | Buy Fire of Love (Film) Trailer The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science (2023) Buy Don’t miss this year’s podcast series on books in food, science, and agriculture, hosted by Angela Saini. Take our audience survey at: https://www.science.org/podcasts This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STScI; Joseph DePasquale, Alyssa Pagan, and Anton M. Koekemoer/STScI Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: the birth of a star with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Greg Miller; Valerie Thompson Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg2633 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: The impact of war on science in Ukraine, and a conversation with Anthony Fauci as he prepares to step down Some scientists in Ukraine have been risking their lives to protect scientific facilities, collections, and instruments amid the war. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone traveled to Kharkiv and Chornobyl earlier this year to meet researchers living and working through the conflict. He spoke with host Sarah Crespi to share some of their stories. Then we have a conversation with Anthony Fauci, who will be stepping down from his government roles this month after more than 50 years in public service. He shares his thoughts on the ongoing challenges of communicating about science and public health, combating misinformation, and his goals for the future with Science Editor-and-Chief Holden Thorp. Take our audience survey at: https://www.science.org/podcasts This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Rich Stone; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of rubble damaged during war in Ukraine with building spire in background] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rich Stone; Kevin McLean; Holden Thorp Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg1712 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: A medieval German cemetery yields clues to Jewish migrations in Europe, and supercomputers help researchers estimate magma under Yellowstone First up this week on the podcast, we explore the genetic history of Jewish people in Europe. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about researchers working with rabbis and the local Jewish community to apply new techniques to respectfully study remains in a medieval Jewish cemetery in Germany. We also have a story on how much magma has accumulated inside Yellowstone National Park’s supervolcano. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Ross Maguire, an assistant professor in the geology department at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, about using supercomputers to get a clearer picture of the volcanic system’s subsurface. Although this new study shows more magma than previous estimates, it’s still not nearly enough for an eruption anytime soon. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Eric Vaughn/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of sunset over Yellowstone National Park with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Andrew Curry Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg0498 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Meta’s algorithm tackles both language and strategy in a board game, and measuring how much water people use on a daily basis First up this week on the podcast, artificial intelligence (AI) wins at the game Diplomacy. Freelance science journalist Matthew Hutson joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the advances needed for an AI to win a game that requires cooperation and trust between human and AI players. Next, we hear about how much water people need to stay hydrated. It’s not the eight glasses a day recommendation we’ve heard so much about. Herman Pontzer, a professor in Duke University’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Duke Global Health Institute, talks about a study that involved recording water turnover from 5000 people around the world. It turns out daily water needs vary from person to person and place to place. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: manus1550/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of a stack of drinking water bottles with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Matt Hutson Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8979 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: The potentially harmful effects of prehistoric ivory on present-day elephants, and replacing polymers in electronics with fungal tissue First up this week on the podcast, we hear about the effect of mammoth and mastodon ivory on the illegal elephant ivory trade. Online News Editor Michael Price joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as melting permafrost has uncovered fossilized ivory from these extinct creatures, more has entered the ivory trade. The question is: Does the availability of this type of ivory reduce the demand for ivory from elephants, or does it endanger them more? Next, making electronics greener with fungus with Doris Danninger, a Ph.D. student in the Soft Matter Physics Division at the Institute of Experimental Physics at Johannes Kepler University, Linz. Doris and Sarah discuss the feasibility of replacing the bulky backing of chips and the casing of batteries with sheets of fungal tissue to make flexible, renewable, biodegradable electronics. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: RudiHulshof/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of an elephant tusk with point facing the camera with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Michael Price Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8340 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: How sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut foresaw many of today’s ethical dilemmas, and 70 years of tunas, billfishes, and sharks as sentinels of global ocean health First up this week on the podcast, we revisit the works of science fiction author Kurt Vonneugt on what would have been his 100th birthday. News Intern Zack Savitsky and host Sarah Crespi discuss the work of ethicists, philosophers, and Vonnegut scholars on his influence on the ethics and practice of science. Researchers featured in this segment:
Next, producer Kevin McLean discusses the connection between fishing pressure and extinction risk for large predatory fish such as tunas and sharks. He’s joined by Maria Jose Juan Jorda, a postdoc at the Spanish Institute for Oceanography, to learn what a new continuous Red List Index using the past 70 years of fisheries data can tell us about the effectiveness and limits of fishing regulations. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Joseph Hyser, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine about his use of wide-field fluorescence live cell microscopy to track intercellular calcium waves created following rotavirus infection. This segment is sponsored by Nikon. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: richcarey/istock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: underwater photo of a swirling mass of tunas, with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Zack Savitsky Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf7398 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: How urban spaces can help conserve species, and testing a gene therapy strategy for epilepsy in mice First up on the podcast, we explore urban ecology’s roots in Berlin. Contributing Correspondent Gabriel Popkin joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss turning wastelands and decommissioned airports into forests and grasslands inside the confines of a city. Next, we hear about a gene therapy strategy for epilepsy. Yichen Qiu, a recently graduated Ph.D. student and researcher at University College London, talks about introducing a small set of genes into neurons in mice. These genes detect hyperactivity in the brain and respond by quieting the cell, ultimately suppressing seizures. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Maurice Weiss; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: dim photo of the forest of the Schoneberger Sudgelande with old railroad tracks receding into the distance, with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gabriel Popkin Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf6190 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Cheaper launches could make solar power satellites a reality, machine learning helps chemists make small organic molecules, and a book on the extinction of foods First up on the podcast, space-based solar power gets closer to launch. Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about how reusable rockets bring the possibility of giant solar array satellites that beam down gigawatts of uninterrupted power from space. After that, we hear about small organic molecule synthesis. Making large organic molecules such as proteins and DNA can be a cinch for chemists, but making new smaller organic molecules is tough—partially because optimized general reaction conditions are hard to come by. Nicholas Angello, a graduate research assistant and Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellow in the Burke group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, talks about an approach that uses robots and machine learning to better optimize these reaction conditions. Also in the episode: the last in our series of books on food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with author Dan Saladino about his book Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: drawing of satellite solar panels with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dan Clery; Angela Saini Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf4939 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: How some snakes have adapted to the extremes of height and temperature on the Tibetan Plateau, and giving low-power sensors more processing power First up on the podcast, tough snakes reveal their secrets. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Liz Pennisi about how snakes have adapted to the harsh conditions of the Tibetan Plateau. Next on the show, Producer Meagan Cantwell talks about moving more computing power to the edges of the internet. She is joined by Alexander Sludds, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Research Lab for Electronics. They discuss a faster, more energy-efficient approach to give edge devices—such as low-power smart sensors or tiny aerial drones—the computing power of far larger machines. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: JUN-FENG GUO; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of a Tibetan hot-spring snake near a geothermal pool with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi; Meagan Cantwell Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf3782 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Rising waters and intense storms make siting high-performance computer centers a challenge, and matching up spider silk DNA with spider silk properties
(Main Text) First up on the podcast this week, News Intern Jacklin Kwan talks with host Sarah Crespi about how and where to build high-performance computing facilities as climate change brings extreme conditions to current locations. Spiders are creeping into the show this week. Kazuharu Arakawa, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Bioscience at Keio University, discusses his Science Advances paper on collecting spider silks and the genes that make them. His team used the data set to connect genetic sequences to the properties of spider silks in order to harness this amazing material for industrial use. Visit the spider silkomes database here: https://spider-silkome.org/ This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Dace Znotina/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: a spiderweb with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jacklin Kwan
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On this week’s show: A study suggests paleontological research has directly benefited from the conflict in Myanmar, and how dormant bacterial spores keep track of their environment First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Rodrigo Perez Ortega joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss links between violent conflict in Myanmar and a boom in fossil amber research. Also on the show this week, we hear about how bacterial spores—which can lie dormant for millions of years—decide it’s time to wake up. Kaito Kikuchi, an image analysis scientist at Reveal Biosciences, joins Sarah to discuss how dormant spores act a bit like neurons to make these decisions. In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Ramon Parsons, director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about his institute’s innovative approach to cancer treatment. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: (public domain); Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: micrograph of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Perez Ortega Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf2050 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Protecting a body of water by giving it a legal identity, intentional destruction of methane by the oil and gas industry is less efficient than predicted, and the latest book in our series on science and food First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about why Spain has given personhood status to a polluted lagoon. Also on the show this week is Genevieve Plant, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. Genny and Sarah talk about methane flaring—a practice common in the oil and gas industry—where manufactures burn off excess methane instead of releasing it directly into the atmosphere. Research flights over several key regions in the United States revealed these flares are leaky, releasing five time s more methane than predicted. In this month’s installment of books on the science of food and agriculture, host Angela Saini talks with culinary historian and author Jessica B. Harris about her book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Jeff Peischl/CIRES/NOAA; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: methane flares with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf0584 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Comparing human-dog bonds with human-wolf bonds, and monitoring termite decay rates on a global scale First up on the podcast this week, Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about the bonds between dogs and their human caretakers. Is it possible these bonds started even before domestication? Also this week, Sarah talks with Amy Zanne, professor and Aresty endowed chair in tropical ecology in the Department of Biology at the University of Miami. They discuss a global study to determine whether climate change might accelerate the rate at which termites and microbes break down dead wood and release carbon into the atmosphere. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Christina Hansen Wheat; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Bjork, a female wolf, with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade9777 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: NASA’s unprecedented asteroid-deflection mission, and making storage space for fresh water underground in Bangladesh First up on the podcast this week, News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the upcoming NASA mission, dubbed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, that aims to ram a vending machine–size spacecraft into an asteroid and test out ideas about planetary defense. Also this week, Sarah talks with Mohammad Shamsudduha, an associate professor in humanitarian science at University College London’s Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. He explains how millions of individual farmers in Bangladesh are creating the “ Bengal water machine,” a giant underground sponge to soak up fresh water during monsoon season. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: SW Photography/Getty; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of agricultural fields and a big river at sunset in the city of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade8885 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: After years of steep declines, researchers are investigating why malaria deaths have plateaued, and testing the stability of biosignatures in space First up on the podcast this week, freelance science journalist Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why malaria deaths have plateaued in southern Africa, despite years of declines in deaths and billions of dollars spent. Leslie visited Mozambique on a global reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center where researchers are investigating the cause of the pause. Also this week, producer Kevin McLean talks with astrobiologists Mickael Baque and Jean-Pierre de Vera of the German Aerospace Center. They discuss their Science Advances paper about an experiment on the International Space Station looking at the stability of biosignatures in space and what that means for our search for life on Mars. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: enhanced-color image of Mars’ Jezero crater was taken by NASA’s Perseverance with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Leslie Roberts; Kevin McLean Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade7839 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: The U.S. government is partnering with academics to speed up the search for more than 80,000 soldiers who went missing in action, and how humans create their own “oxidation zone” in the air around them First up on the podcast this week, Tess Joosse is a former news intern here at Science and is now a freelance science journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin. Tess talks with host Sarah Crespi about attempts to use environmental DNA—free-floating DNA in soil or water—to help locate the remains of soldiers lost at sea. Also featured in this segment:
Also this week, Nora Zannoni, a postdoctoral researcher in the atmospheric chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, talks about people’s contributions to indoor chemistry. She chats with Sarah about why it’s important to go beyond studying the health effects of cleaning chemicals and gas stoves to explore how humans add their own bodies’ chemicals and reactions to the air we breathe. In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for Custom Publishing, interviews Benedetto Marelli, associate professor at MIT, about winning the BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation and how he became an entrepreneur. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Jeremy Borrelli/East Carolina University; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: a scuba diver underwater near a World War II wreck off Saipan with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Tess Joosse Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade6771 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Monitoring summer cyclones in the Arctic, how eye movements during sleep may reflect movements in dreams, and the latest in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture. First up on the podcast this week, Deputy News Editor Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the first airborne campaign to study summer cyclones over the Arctic and what the data could reveal about puzzling air-ice interactions. Next on the show, Sarah talks with Yuta Senzai, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, about his paper on what coordinated eye movement and brain activity reveal about the neurology of rapid eye movement sleep. Also on the show this week, a fishy installment of our series of books on the science of food and agriculture. Host Angela Saini interviews writer and editor Nicholas Sullivan about his latest book The Blue Revolution: Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS data; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo from space of an epic 2012 Arctic cyclone with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Eric Hand; Angela Saini Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade5525 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: An analog to the Maunder Minimum, when the Sun’s spots largely disappeared 400 years ago, and measuring the energy it takes to chew gum We have known about our Sun’s spots for centuries, and tracking this activity over time revealed an 11-year solar cycle with predictable highs and lows. But sometimes these cycles just seem to stop, such as in the Maunder Minimum—a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 with little or no sunspot activity. News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a nearby star that appears to have entered a similar quiet period, and what we can learn from it about why stars take naps. Also this week on the show, Adam van Casteren, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester, joins Sarah to talk about measuring how much energy we use to chew up food. Based on the findings, it appears humans have turned out to be superefficient chewers—at least when it comes to the gum used in the study—with less than 1% of daily energy expenditure being spent on mastication. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA/SDO; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of the largest sunspot from our latest solar cycle with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4241 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Predators may be indirectly protecting Death Valley wetlands, and mapping odorant receptors First up this week on the podcast, News Intern Katherine Irving joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the first photos of cougars killing feral donkeys in Death Valley National Park. They also discuss the implications for native animals such as big horn sheep, and plans to remove donkeys from the park. Also this week on the show, Paul Feinstein, professor of biology in the department of biological science at Hunter College, discusses a Science Signaling paper on a new approach to matching up smell receptors with smells—a long-standing challenge in olfaction research. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Angel Di Bilio/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photo of a burro on a hillside near Death Valley with podcast overlay symbol] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade3366 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: A special issue on grass, and revealing hot spots of ant diversity This week’s special issue on grasses mainly focuses on the importance of these plants in climate change, in ecosystems, on land, and in the water. But for the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about their dark side: invasive grasses that feed fires and transform ecosystems. Also this week on the show, Evan Economo, a professor in the biodiversity and biocomplexity unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, joins Sarah to discuss his Science Advances paper on creating a worldwide map of ant diversity. Such maps help us better understand where vertebrate and invertebrate diversity do and don’t overlap and what this means for conservation. If you want to explore the data, you can see them at antmaps.org. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NTPFES; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: grassland fire in Northern Australia with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade2512 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Plans to push a modern space probe beyond the edge of the Solar System, crustaceans that pollinate seaweed, and the latest in our series of author interviews on food, science, and nutrition After visiting the outer planets in the 1980s, the twin Voyager spacecraft have sent back tantalizing clues about the edge of our Solar System and what lies beyond. Though they may have reached the edge of the Solar System or even passed it, the craft lack the instruments to tell us much about the interstellar medium—the space between the stars. Intern Khafia Choudhary talks with Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone about plans to send a modern space probe outside the Solar System and what could be learned from such a mission. Next up on the show, Myriam Valero, a population geneticist at the evolutionary biology and ecology of algae research department at Sorbonne University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about how a little crustacean might help fertilize a species of algae. If the seaweed in the study does use a marine pollinator, it suggests there may have been a much earlier evolutionary start for pollination partnerships. Finally, we have the next in our series on books exploring the science of food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with biochemist T. Colin Campbell about his book The Future of Nutrition: An Insider’s Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Johns Hopkins APL/Mike Yakovlev; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: illustration of an interstellar probe crossing the boundary of the heliosphere with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rich Stone; Angela Saini; Khafia Choudhary
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Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1292
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On this week’s show: Troubling signs of fraud threaten discoveries key to a reigning theory of Alzheimer’s disease, and calculating the saltiness of the ocean on one of Saturn’s moons Investigative journalist Charles Piller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles brought to light by a neuroscientist whistleblower. Next, researcher Wan Ying Kang talks with Sarah about Saturn’s bizarre moon Enceladus. Kang’s group wrote in Science Advances about modeling the salinity of the global ocean tucked between the moon’s icy shell and solid core. Their findings spell bad news for potential habitability on Enceladus. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Enceladus as viewed from Cassini with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Charles Piller Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade0384 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope hint at the science to come, and disentangling the itch-scratch cycle After years of delays, the James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of December 2021. Now, NASA has released a few of the first full-color images captured by the instrument’s enormous mirror. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these first images and what they mean for the future of science from Webb. Next on the podcast, Jing Feng, principal investigator at the Center for Neurological and Psychiatric Research and Drug Discovery at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, discusses his Science Translational Medicine paper on why scratching sometimes triggers itching. It turns out, in cases of chronic itch there can be a miswiring in the skin. Cells that normally detect light touch instead connect with nerve fibers that convey a sensation of itchiness. This miswiring means light touches (such as scratching) are felt as itchiness—contributing to a vicious itch-scratch cycle. Also this week, in a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Paul Bastard, chief resident in the department of pediatrics at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris and a researcher at the Imagine Institute in Paris and Rockefeller University. They talk about his work to shed light on susceptibility to COVID-19, which recently won him the Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STSCI; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: James Webb Space Telescope image of image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9123 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: A shortage of tritium fuel may leave fusion energy with an empty tank, and an attempt to improve police responsiveness to violence against women First up this week on the podcast, Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new hurdle for fusion: not enough fuel. After decades of delays, scientists are almost ready to turn on the first fusion reactor that makes more energy than it uses, but the fast-decaying fuel needed to run the reactor is running out. Also this week, we highlight an intervention aimed at increasing police responsiveness to gender-based violence in India. Sandip Sukhtankar, an economist at the University of Virginia, talks about creating dedicated spaces for women in local police stations, staffed by trained officers. The presence of these “help desks”—when staffed by women officers—increased the recording by police of crimes against women, opening up access to social services and possibly a path to justice. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: DAVID PARKER/SCIENCE SOURCE; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: The interior of the ITER fusion megareactor (artist’s concept) with podcast overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add8229
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On this week’s show: A boost in research ships from an unlikely source, and how the 2022 Tonga eruption shook earth, water, and air around the world For decades, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society caused controversy on the high seas; now it’s turning its patrolling ships into research vessels. Online News Editor David Grimm discusses how this change of heart came about with host Sarah Crespi. Also this week, how atmospheric waves can push tsunamis around the globe. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Emily Brodsky, an earthquake physicist at University of California, Santa Cruz, about data from a multitude of sensors showing how waves in the air drove the fast-moving tsunamis that raced around the planet after the January Hunga eruption in Tonga. Read the related papers:
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA Earth Observatory; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai eruption as seen from space with podcast overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; David Grimm Episode page: https://www.science.org/content/podcast/former-pirates-help-study-seas-and-waves-atmosphere-can-drive-global-tsunamis About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Whether biofuels for planes will become a reality, mitigating climate change by working with nature, and the second installment of our book series on the science of food and agriculture First this week, Science Staff Writer Robert F. Service talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about sustainable aviation fuel, a story included in Science’s special issue on climate change. Researchers have been able to develop this green gas from materials such as municipal garbage and corn stalks. Will it power air travel in the future? Also in the special issue this week, Nathalie Seddon, a professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford, chats with host Sarah Crespi about the value of working with nature to support the biodiversity and resilience of our ecosystems. Seddon emphasizes that nature-based solutions alone cannot stop climate change—technological approaches and behavioral changes will also need to be implemented. Finally, we have the second installment of our series of author interviews on the science of food and agriculture. Host and science journalist Angela Saini talks to Jessica Hernandez, an Indigenous environmental scientist and author of Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science. Hernandez’s book explores the failures of Western conservationism—and what we can learn about land management from Indigenous people. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: USDA NCRS Texas; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: cows in a forest] Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Robert Service, Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add6320 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Tracing the roots of Long Covid, and an argument against using the same DNA markers for suspects in law enforcement and in research labs for cell lines Two years into the pandemic, we’re still uncertain about the impact of Long Covid on the world—and up to 20% of COVID-19 patients might be at risk. First on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to share a snapshot of the current state of Long Covid research, particularly what researchers think are likely causes. Also this week, Debra Mathews, assistant director for science programs in the Berman Institute of Bioethics and associate professor of genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University, talks with Sarah about why everyone using the same DNA kits—from FBI to Interpol to research labs—is a bad idea. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Bobby Soni, chief business officer at the BioInnovation Institute (BII), about what steps scientists can take to successfully commercialize their ideas. This segment is sponsored by BII. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: A. Mastin/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: illustration of potential causes for Long Covid ] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add4887 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Two decades after it disappeared in nature, the stunning blue Spix’s macaw will be reintroduced to its forest home, and lessons learned from Texas’s major power crisis in 2021 The Spix’s macaw was first described in scientific literature in 1819—200 years later it was basically poached to extinction in the wild. Now, collectors and conservationists are working together to reintroduce captive-bred birds into their natural habitat in northeastern Brazil. Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt discusses the recovery of this highly coveted and endangered parrot with host Sarah Crespi. Also this week, in an interview from the AAAS annual meeting, Meagan Cantwell talks with Varun Rai, Walt and Elspth Rostow professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, about how to prepare energy grids to weather extreme events and climate change. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: PATRICK PLEUL/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: two blue Spix’s macaws with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt; Meagan Cantwell Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3733 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Exploring the historic Maya’s astronomical knowledge and how grasshoppers clone themselves without decreasing their fitness First this week, Science contributing correspondent Joshua Sokol talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about the historic Maya’s sophisticated astronomical knowledge. In recent decades, researchers have set out to understand how city structures relate to astronomical phenomena and decipher ancient texts. Now, collaboration between Western scholars and living Indigenous people hopes to further illuminate the field. Also this week, Mike Kearney, a professor at the school of biosciences at the University of Melbourne, chats with host Sarah Crespi about a species of grasshopper that can reproduce asexually. After studying the insect’s genetics, Kearney and his group didn’t find harmful mutations—or traits that made the grasshopper better adapted to its environment than the two species of grasshopper it hybridized from. Kearney and his team suggest this way of reproducing might not be rare because it’s harmful, but because most animal have safeguards in place to prevent asexual reproduction from arising. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Sergio Montufar/pinceladasnocturnas.com—Estrellas Ancestrales “Astronomy in the Maya Worldview”; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Joshua Sokol; Sarah Crespi Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3058 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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What we learned from a seismometer on Mars, why it’s so difficult to understand the relationship between our microbes and our brains, and the first in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture First up this week, freelance space journalist Jonathan O’Callaghan joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the retirement of NASA’s Mars InSight lander. After almost 4 years of measuring quakes on the surface of the Red Planet, the lander’s solar panels are getting too dusty to continue providing power. O'Callaghan and Crespi look back at the insights that InSight has given us about Mars’s interior, and they talk about where else in the Solar System it might make sense to place a seismometer. Also this week, we have a special issue on the body’s microbiome beyond the gut. As part of the special issue, John Cryan, principal investigator at APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, wrote a commentary piece on tightening the connections research has made between microbes and the brain—the steps needed to go from seeing connections to understanding how the microbiome might be tweaked to change what’s happening in the brain. Finally this week, we have the first installment of our series of author interviews on the science of food and agriculture. In this inaugural segment, host and science journalist Angela Saini talks to Ousmane Badiane, an expert on agricultural policy and development in Africa, and a co-author of Food For All In Africa: Sustainable Intensification for African Farmers, a 2019 book looking at the possibilities and reality of sustainable intensive farming in Africa. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Illustration: Hannah Agosta; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: overlapping drawings of microbial populations] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jonathan O’Callaghan; Angela Saini Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.10.1126/science.add1406 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: The shadow of Milky Way’s giant black hole has been seen for the first time, and bottlenose dolphins recognize each other by signature whistles—and tastes It’s been a few years since the first image of a black hole was published—that of the supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy came about in 2019. Now, we have a similar image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way—our very own galaxy. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why these images look so much alike, even though M87’s black hole is 1600 times larger than ours. We also discuss what’s next for the telescope that captured these shots. Also this week, we take to the seas. Bottlenose dolphins are known to have a “signature whistle” they use to announce their identity to other dolphins. This week in Science Advances, Jason Bruck and colleagues write about how they may also recognize other dolphins through another sense: taste. Jason, an assistant professor in the department of biology at Stephen F. Austin State University, talks with Sarah about what this means for dolphin minds. In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor, interviews Gary Michelson, founder and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies, about the importance of supporting research in the field of immunology—and where that support should be directed. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Dolphin Quest ; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: bottlenose dolphin peeking its head out of the water with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add0515 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Lipid nanoparticles served us well as tiny taxis delivering millions of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19, but they aren’t optimized—yet, and why we might need inflammation to stop chronic pain The messenger RNA payload of the mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is wrapped up in little fatty packets called lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). These fat bubbles were originally designed for something much different—carrying molecules into cells to silence genes. But they were useful and we were in a hurry, so not much was changed about them when they were pressed into service against COVID-19. Science journalist Elie Dolgin talks with host Sarah Crespi about ongoing efforts to improve LNPs as a delivery system for mRNA vaccines and therapeutic treatments. Next on the show, we hear about “pain chronification.” Have you ever thought about chronic pain? What happens in the body when it heals—no specific thing is broken—but the pain never subsides? Sarah chats with Luda Diatchenko, professor on the faculties of medicine and dentistry at McGill University, about her Science Translational Medicine paper on the need for inflammation to prevent pain chronification. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: lipid nanoparticle illustration with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elie Dolgin Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9455 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Geoscientists eye contenders for where to mark the beginning of the human-dominated geological epoch, and how sunscreen turns into photo toxin We live in the Anthropocene: an era on our planet that is dominated by human activity to such an extent that the evidence is omnipresent in the soil, air, and even water. But how do we mark the start? Science Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how geoscientists are choosing the one place on Earth that best shows the advent of the Anthropocene, the so-called “golden spike.”
Also this week, Djordje Vuckovic, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, joins Sarah to talk about how sunscreen threatens coral reefs. Reefs are under a lot of stress these days, from things like warming waters, habitat destruction, and the loss of their fishy friends to voracious fishermen. Another suspected stressor is chemical sunscreens, which drift off swimming tourists. It turns out that common chemicals in sunscreen that protect skin from the Sun are modified by sea anemones and corals into a photo toxin that damages them when exposed to the Sun’s rays.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: Amanda Tinoco; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: photo of healthy corals at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia with podcast symbol overlay]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
TWEET New @ScienceMagazine Podcast: @voooos Djordje Vuckovic @cee_stanford https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq8294
This week on the @ScienceMagazine Podcast, reporter @voooos
https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq8294
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On this week’s show: How physicists are using quantum sensors to suss out dark matter, how rabies thwarts canine vaccination campaigns, and a kickoff for our new series with authors of books on food, land management, and nutrition science Dark matter hunters have turned to quantum sensors to find elusive subatomic particles that may exist outside physicists’ standard model. Adrian Cho, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to give a tour of the latest dark matter particle candidates—and the traps that physicists are setting for them. Next, we hear from Katie Hampson, a professor in the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health & Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow, about her work contact tracing rabies in Tanzania. Her group was able to track rabies in a population of 50,000 dogs over 14 years. The massive study gives new insight into how to stop a virus that circulates at superlow levels but keeps popping up, despite vaccine campaigns. Finally, we launch our 2022 books series on food and agriculture. In six interviews, which will be released monthly for the rest of the year, host and science journalist Angela Saini will speak to authors of recent books on topics from Indigenous land management to foods that are going extinct. This month, Angela talks with Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, who helped select the books for the series. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Suzanne McNabb; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Dogs in Tanzania with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini, Adrian Cho Episode page: https://www.science.org/content/podcast/using-quantum-tools-track-dark-matter-why-rabies-remains-and-book-series-science-and About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Saving birds from city lights, and helping astronauts inhabit robots First up, Science Contributing Correspondent Josh Sokol talks with host Sarah Crespi about the millions of migrating birds killed every year when they slam into buildings—attracted by brightly lit windows. New efforts are underway to predict bird migrations and dim lights along their path, using a bird-forecasting system called . Next, we hear from Aaron Pereira, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and a guest researcher at the human robot interaction lab at the European Space Agency. He chats with Sarah about his Science Robotics paper on controlling a robot on Earth from the International Space Station and the best way for an astronaut to “immerse” themselves in a rover or make themselves feel like it is an extension of their body. In a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Alberto Pugliese, professor of medicine, microbiology, and immunology at the University of Miami, about a program he leads to advance research into type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Helmsley Charitable Trust and nPod (the Network for Pancreatic Organ Donors with Diabetes). This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: M. Panzirsch et al., Science Robotics (2022); Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: remote-controlled rover with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Josh Sokol Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq5907 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Climate change is killing critical soil organisms in arid regions, and early evidence for the Maya calendar from a site in Guatemala Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how climate change is affecting “biocrust,” a thin layer of fungi, lichens, and other microbes that sits on top of desert soil, helping retain water and create nutrients for rest of the ecosystem. Recent measurements in Utah suggest the warming climate is causing a decline in the lichen component of biocrust, which is important for adding nitrogen into soils. Next, Sarah talks with Skidmore College anthropologist Heather Hurst, who directs Guatemala’s San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project, and David Stuart, a professor of art history and director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas, Austin, about their new Science Advances paper. The study used radiocarbon dating to pin down the age of one of the earliest pieces of the Maya calendar. Found in an archaeological dig in San Bartolo, Guatemala, the character known as “seven deer” (which represents a day in the Maya calendar), was dated to 300 B.C.E. That early appearance challenges what researchers know about the age and origins of the Maya dating system. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Heather Hurst; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: Ixbalamque painting from San Barolo, Guatemala, with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq4848 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: A new measurement of the W boson could challenge physicists’ standard model, and an abundance of marine RNA viruses Staff Writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new threat to the standard model of particle physics—a heavier than expected measurement of a fundamental particle called the W boson. They chat about how this measurement was taken, and what it means if it is right. Next, Sarah talks about the microscopic denizens of Earth’s oceans with Ahmed Zayed, a research scientist in the department of microbiology at Ohio State University, Columbus. They talk about findings from a global survey of marine RNA viruses. The results double the number of known RNA viruses, suggesting new classifications will be needed to categorize all this viral diversity. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: A. Mastin/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: illustration of three RNA viruses with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Adrian Cho Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq3391 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: A journey to the center of the center of the Earth, and what was missing from the first human genome project Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the many mysteries surrounding the innermost part of our planet—from its surprisingly recent birth to whether it spins faster or slower than the rest of the planet. Next, Sarah chats with Adam Phillippy about the results from the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium, an effort to create a complete and detailed read of the human genome. Phillippy, a senior investigator and head of the Genome Informatics Section at the National Human Genome Research Institute, explains what we can learn by topping up the human genome with roughly 200 more megabases of genetic information—practically a whole chromosome’s worth of additional sequencing. See all the T2T papers. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: An array of the human chromosomes showing newly sequenced parts from the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium with podcast symbol overlay] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1885 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Why it’s tougher than ever to be a researcher on Twitter, and a highlight from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting First up, Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady talks with host Sarah Crespi about the harassment that COVID-19 researchers are facing and a survey conducted by Science that shows more media exposure is linked to higher levels of abuse. Next, producer Meagan Cantwell shares another interview from this year’s AAAS Annual Meeting. She talks with Delores Knipp, a research professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead aerospace engineering sciences department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, about what happens when our well-behaved Sun behaves badly. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: SkyLab 4/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: solar flare image taken from Skylab 4] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O'Grady Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb2091 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Getting pregnant people into clinical trials, and tracking when mice aren’t paying attention First up, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how scientists can overcome the lack of research on drug safety in pregnancy. Next, Nikola Grujic, a Ph.D. student at the Institute for Neuroscience at ETH Zurich, talks about rational inattention in mice and how it helps explain why our brains notice certain things—and miss others. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Stefan Rotter/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: rodent peering out of a hole] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb2037 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: We have highlights from a special COVID-19 retrospective issue on lessons learned after 2 years of the pandemic First up, Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what scientists have learned from scanning sewage for COVID-19 RNA. And now that so many wastewater monitoring stations are in place—what else can we do with them? Next, we have researcher Katia Koelle, an associate professor of biology at Emory University. She wrote a review on the evolving epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2: What have been the most important questions from epidemiologists over the course of the pandemic, and how can they help us navigate future pandemic threats? Check out the full COVID-19 retrospective issue on lessons learned from the pandemic. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Stephan Schmitz/Folio Art; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: partially constructed bridge over water filled with giant SARS-CoV-2 viral particles] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb1867 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: The ins and outs of the first global treaty on plastic pollution, and why the United States has so few Black physicists First up, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the world’s first global treaty on plastics pollution–and the many questions that need answers to make it work. Read a related Policy Forum here. Up next, we hear from some of more than 50 Black physicists interviewed for a special news package in Science about the barriers Black physicists face, and potential models for change drawing on a 2020 report that documents how the percentage of undergraduates physics degrees going to Black students has declined over the past 20 years. In his excerpt, Willie Rockward, chair and professor of physics at Morgan State University, describes how a study group dubbed the “Black Hole” provided much-needed support for him and four colleagues who were part of the first cohort of Black graduate physics students at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Next, Fana Mulu-Moore, a physics and astronomy instructor at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado, explains her ‘life-changing’ transition from research to teaching, and how it has given her a sense of purpose. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Carl Campbell/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: sheaves of plastic wrap photographed against a black background] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adb1765 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Finland puts the finishing touches on the world’s first high-level permanent nuclear repository, and why being good at math might make you both happy and sad First up, freelance science journalist Sedeer El-Showk joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his visit to a permanent nuclear waste repository being built deep underground in Finland, and the technology—and political maneuvering—needed to secure the site for 100,000 years. Also this week, Par Bjalkebring, a senior lecturer in the department of psychology at the University of Gothenburg, talks with Sarah on the sidelines of the 2022 annual meeting of AAAS (publisher of Science) about the link between numeracy—math literacy—income, and life satisfaction. Bjalkebring took part in the AAAS panel Decision-Making with Large Numbers and Its Underlying Psychological Mechanisms on 19 February. Learn more about the 2022 AAAS meeting here. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Tapani Karjanlahti/TVO; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: photograph of a digging machine inside a giant cave] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sedeer El-Showk Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada1534 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: A giant study suggests COVID-19 takes a serious toll on heart health—a full year after recovery, and figuring out what percentage of ancient art, books, and even tools has survived the centuries First up, Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new study that looked at more than 150,000 COVID-19 patient records and found increases in risk for 20 different cardiovascular conditions 1 year after recovery. Also this week we have Mike Kestemont, an associate professor in the department of literature at the University of Antwerp, talking about an estimate of how much of antiquity has endured. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: illuminated manuscript page showing a giant R, plus a person and some writing] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada1311 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: What we can learn from two supermassive black holes that appear to be on a collision course with each other, and the brave new online world in which social media dominates and gatekeeps public access to scientific information First up, Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about the possibly imminent merger of two supermassive black holes in a nearby galaxy. How imminent? We might see a signal as early as 100 days from now. Also, this week we have a special section on science and social media. In her contribution, Dominique Brossard, professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, talks about the shift in the source of scientific information away from traditional publishers, newspapers, etc. to social media platforms, and what it means for the future of science communication. Finally, we share some tweets about the relationship of social media and science communication submitted by young readers in our Letters section. You can read our picks here or check out all the submissions on Twitter at #NextGenSci. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: simulation of a pair of supermassive black holes on the cusp of merging] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada1028 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Environmental concerns over Indonesia building a new capital on Borneo, and keeping an eye on pollution as it comes out of the tailpipe First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Dennis Normile talks with host Sarah Crespi about Indonesia’s plans for an ultragreen new capital city on the island of Borneo. Despite intentions to limit the environmental impact of the new urban center, many are concerned about unplanned growth surrounding the city which could threaten rare plants and animals. Also this week, John Zhou, professor of environmental engineering at the University of Technology Sydney talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on reducing pollution from cars and trucks by live monitoring vehicle emissions using remote sensors. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Malinda Rathnayake/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: cars on the road in a city at sunset] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dennis Normile
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On this week’s show: A pill derived from human feces treats recurrent gut infections, and how a squirrel’s microbiome supplies nitrogen during hibernation First up this week, Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss putting the bacterial benefits of human feces in a pill. The hope is to avoid using fecal transplants to treat recurrent gut infections caused by the bacterium Clostridium difficile. Also this week, Hannah Carey, a professor in the department of comparative biosciences within the school of veterinary medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, talks with Sarah about how ground squirrels are helped by their gut microbes during hibernation. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: illustration of two 13-lined ground squirrels] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ada0494 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Ethical concerns rise with an increase in open brain research, and how sharing saliva can be a proxy for the closeness of a relationship Human brains are protected by our hard skulls, but these bony shields also keep researchers out. With brain surgeries and brain implants on the rise , scientists are getting more chances to explore living brains. Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the ethics of doing research on patients undergoing intense medical procedures, and the kinds of research being done. Also this week, Ashley Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher in the brain and cognitive science department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about the meaning behind sharing saliva. Spend any time with a baby lately? Were you in awe—eager to cuddle, kiss, even change a diaper? Or were you slightly horrified by the drool and other fluids seeping out of this new human? Your feelings on the matter might depend on your closeness with the baby and—as Thomas and colleagues write this week in Science— the baby may notice which way you feel. According to their results, babies, like adults, seem to recognize sharing saliva—like sharing food and utensils or kissing—as a signal of close relationships. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Onfokus/Getty/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: baby chewing on a cellphone] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick Episode page: http://www.science.org/content/podcast/window-live-brains-and-what-saliva-tells-babies-about-human-relationships About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: How cloning can introduce diversity into an endangered species, and ramping up the pressure on iron to see how it might behave in the cores of rocky exoplanets First up this week, News Intern Rachel Fritts talks with host Sarah Crespi about cloning a frozen ferret to save an endangered species. Also this week, Rick Kraus, a research scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talks about how his group used a powerful laser to compress iron to pressures similar to those found in the cores of some rocky exoplanets. If these super-Earths’ cores are like our Earth’s, they may have a protective magnetosphere that increases their chances of hosting life. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Kimberly Fraser/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: three baby black-footed ferrets being held by gloved hands] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Fritts Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acz9974 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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On this week’s show: Russia announces plans to monitor permafrost, and a conversation about the dangers of self-spreading engineered viruses and vaccines Science journalist Olga Dobrovidova joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about plans to set up a national permafrost observatory in Russia. Then Filippa Lentzos, senior lecturer in science and international security in the department of war studies and in the department of global health and social medicine, and co-director for the center for science and security at King’s College London, joins Sarah to discuss her Science commentary on the dangers of transmissible vaccines for controlling invasive species and viruses found in wildlife. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Евгений Ерыгин/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: person walking on snow at night in city of Norilsk, Russia] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Olga Dobrovidova
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On this week’s show: The best of our online stories, what we know about the effects of cannabinoids, and the last in our series of books on race and science First, Online News Editor David Grimm brings the top online stories of the year—from headless slugs to Dyson spheres. You can find out the other top stories and the most popular online story of the year here. Then, Tibor Harkany, a professor of molecular neuroscience at the Medical University of Vienna’s Center for Brain Research, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the state of marijuana research. Pot has been legalized in many places, and many people take cannabinoids—but what do we know about the effects of these molecules on people? Tibor calls for more research into their helpful and harmful potential. Finally, we have the very last installment of our series of books on race and science. Books host Angela Saini talks with physician and science fiction author Tade Thompson about his book Rosewater. Listen to the whole series. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Biodiversity Heritage Library/Flickr/Public Domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: illustration of a wombat] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Angela Saini
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Every year Science names its top breakthrough of the year and nine runners up. Online News Editor Catherine Matacic joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what Science’s editors consider some of the biggest innovations of 2021. Also this week, Books Editor Valerie Thompson shares her list of top science books for the year—from an immunology primer by a YouTuber, to a contemplation of the universe interwoven with a close up look at how the science sausage is made. Books on Valerie’s list:
Listen to last year’s books round up. List of this year’s top science books for kids.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Valerie Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: golden protein confetti] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Catherine Matacic; Valerie Thompson
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Geoscientists are turning to fiber optic cables as a means of measuring seismic activity. But rather than connecting them to instruments, the cables are the instruments. Joel Goldberg talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about tapping fiber optic cables for science. Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Sylvie Roke, a physicist and chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, and director of its Laboratory for fundamental BioPhotonics, about the place where oil meets water. Despite the importance of the interaction between the hydrophobic and the hydrophilic to biology, and to life, we don’t know much about what happens at the interface of these substances. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Artography/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: oil droplets and water] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Joel Goldberg Episode page: https://www. science.org/doi/10.1126/science.acx9771 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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There has been so much research during the pandemic—an avalanche of preprints, papers, and data—but how much of it is any good? Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the value of poorly designed research on COVID-19 and more generally. In September, the volcano Cumbre Vieja on Spain’s Canary Islands began to erupt. It is still happening. The last time it erupted was back in 1971, so we don’t know much about the features of the past eruption or the signs it was coming. Marc-Antoine Longpre, a volcanologist and associate professor at Queens College, City University of New York, discusses the ongoing eruption with Sarah and what today’s sensors tell us about what happens when this volcano wakes up. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Eduardo Robaina; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [alt: The eruption of Cumbre Vieja, September 2021] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady
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Have you noticed the trees around you lately— maybe they seem extra nutty? It turns out this is a “masting” year, when trees make more nuts, seeds, and pinecones than usual. Science Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the many mysteries of masting years. Next, Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Jean-Laurent Casanova, a professor at Rockefeller University and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, about his review article on why some people are more vulnerable to severe disease from viral infections. This is part of a special issue on inflammation in Science. Finally, in this month’s book segment on race and science, host Angela Saini talks with author Beverly Daniel Tatum about her seminal 2003 book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: LensOfDan/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: Pile of acorns] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Angela Saini
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Could wildfires be depleting the ozone all over again? Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the evidence from the Polarstern research ship for wildfire smoke lofting itself high into the stratosphere, and how it can affect the ozone layer once it gets there. Next, we talk ticks—the ones that bite, take blood, and can leave you with a nasty infection. Andaleeb Sajid, a staff scientist at the National Cancer Institute, joins Sarah to talk about her Science Translational Medicine paper describing an mRNA vaccine intended to reduce the length of tick bites to before the pests can transmit diseases to a host. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Janice Haney Carr/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: digitally colorized scanning electron microscopic image of a grouping of Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria, the causative agent of Lyme disease] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
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The James Webb Space Telescope was first conceived in the late 1980s. Now, more than 30 years later, it’s finally set to launch in December. After such a long a road, anticipation over what the telescope will contribute to astronomy is intense. Daniel Clery, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what took so long and what we can expect after launch. You might have heard that Greenland sharks may live up to 400 years. But did you know that some Pacific rockfish can live to be more than 100? That’s true, even though other rockfish species only live about 10 years. Why such a range in life span? Greg Owens, assistant professor of biology at the University of Victoria, discusses his work looking for genes linked with longer life spans. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Tyson Rininger; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: Sebastes caurinus, the copper rockfish ] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
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Some 80 countries around the world add folic acid to their food supply to prevent birth defects that might happen because of a lack of the B vitamin—even among people too early in their pregnancies to know they are pregnant. This year, the United Kingdom decided to add the supplement to white flour. But it took almost 10 years of debate, and no countries in the European Union joined them in the change. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ongoing folate debate. Last year, a highly anticipated tool for dating ancient materials was released: a new updated radiocarbon calibration curve. The curve, which describes how much carbon-14 was in the atmosphere at different times in the past 55,000 years, is essential to figuring out the age of organic materials such as wood or leather. Sarah talks with Tim Heaton, senior lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and Edouard Bard, a professor at the College of France, about how the curve was redrawn and what it means, both for archaeology and for our understanding of the processes that create radiocarbon in the first place—like solar flares and Earth’s magnetic fields. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: close-up photograph of layers in volcanic tephra] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman
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Simple animals like jellyfish and hydra, even roundworms, sleep. Without brains. Why do they sleep? How can we tell a jellyfish is sleeping? Staff Writer Liz Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what can be learned about sleep from these simple sleepers. The feature is part of a special issue on sleep this week in Science. Next is a look at centuries of alien invasions—or rather, invasive insects moving from place to place as humans trade across continents. Sarah talks with Matthew MacLachlan, a research economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, about his Science Advances paper on why insect invasions don’t always increase when trade does. Finally, a book on racism and the search algorithms. Books host Angela Saini for our series of interviews on race and science talks with Safiya Umoja Noble, a professor in the African American Studies and Information Studies departments at the University of California, Los Angeles, about her book: Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: marcouliana/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: brown marmorated stink bug pattern] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi, Angela Saini
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There are massive telescopes that look far out into the cosmos, giant particle accelerators looking for ever tinier signals, gargantuan gravitational wave detectors that span kilometers of Earth—what about soil science? Where’s the big science project on deep soil? It’s coming soon. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about plans for a new subsoil observatory to take us beyond topsoil. Wood is in some ways an ideal building material. You can grow it out of the ground. It’s not very heavy. It’s strong. But materials like metal and plastic have one up on wood in terms of flexibility. Plastic and metal can be melted and molded into complicated shapes. Could wood ever do this? Liangbing Hu, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering and director of the Center for Materials Innovation at the University of Maryland, College Park, talked with Sarah about making moldable wood in a new way. In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing office, interviews Michael Brehm, associate professor at UMass Chan Medical School Diabetes Center of Excellence, about how he is using humanized mouse models to study ways to modulate the body’s immune system as a pathway to treating type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Xiao et al., Science 2021; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: honeycomb structure made from moldable wood] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
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This week we are covering the Science special issue on mass incarceration. Can a dog find a body? Sometimes. Can a dog indicate a body was in a spot a few months ago, even though it’s not there now? There’s not much scientific evidence to back up such claims. But in the United States, people are being sent to prison based on this type of evidence. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Peter Andrey Smith, a reporter and researcher based in Maine, about the science—or lack thereof—behind dog-sniff evidence. With 2 million people in jail or prison in the United States, it has become incredibly common to have a close relative behind bars. Sarah talks with Hedwig Lee, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, about the consequences of mass incarceration for families of the incarcerated, from economic to social. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Adrian Brandon; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: illustration from the special issue on mass incarceration by Adrian Brandon. He writes: “This illustration shines a light on the structural role of the prison system and how deeply embedded it is in the fabric of this country.”] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Peter Andrey Smith
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In 2019, a SpaceX rocket released 60 small satellites into low-Earth orbit—the first wave of more than 10,000 planned releases. At the same time, a new field of environmental debate was also launched—with satellite companies on one side, and astronomers, photographers, and stargazers on the other. Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the future of these space-based swarms. Over the course of the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic, different variants of the virus have come and gone. What would such changes look like over 10,000 years? Arthur Kocher, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, talks with Sarah about watching the evolution of the virus that causes hepatitis B—over 10 millennia—and how changes in the disease’s path match up with shifts in human history. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Rafael Schmall; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: Starlink satellites moving across the sky in a long-exposure photograph of the star Albireo in Cygnus] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Josh Sokol
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Today, most newborns get some biochemical screens of their blood, but whole-genome sequencing is a much more comprehensive look at an infant—maybe too comprehensive? Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ethical ins and outs of whole-genome screening for newborns, and the kinds of infrastructure needed to use these screens more widely. Sarah also talks with three contributors to a series of vignettes on the importance of active learning for students in science, technology, engineering, and math. Yuko Munakata, professor in the department of psychology and Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, talks about how the amount of unstructured time and active learning contributes to developing executive function—the way our brains keep us on task. Nesra Yannier, special faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and inventor of NoRILLA, discusses an artificial intelligence–driven learning platform that helps children explore and learn about the real world. Finally, Louis Deslauriers, senior preceptor in the department of physics and director of science teaching and learning at Harvard University, laments lectures: why we like them so much, why we think we learn more from lectures than inquiry-based learning, and why we’re wrong. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Jerry Lai/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: newborn baby feet] [Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser]
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Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss fossilized footprints left on a lake shore in North America sometime before the end of Last Glacial Maximum—possibly the earliest evidence for humans on the continent. Read the research. Next, Paolo Cherubini, a senior scientist in the dendrosciences research group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, discusses using tree rings to date and authenticate 17th and 18th century violins worth millions of dollars. Finally, in this month’s installment of the series of book interviews on race and science, guest host Angela Saini interviews Alondra Nelson, professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, about her 2016 book The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome. Note on the closing music: Violinist Nicholas Kitchen plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne on the violin “Castelbarco” made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy, in 1697. Courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Bennet et al., Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: human footprints preserved in rock] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Angela Saini See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the health and environmental benefits of potty training cows. Next, Peter Teske, a professor in the department of zoology at the University of Johannesburg, joins us to talk about his Science Advances paper on origins of the sardine run—a massive annual fish migration off the coast of South Africa. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Steven Benjamin; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: sardines in a swirling bait ball] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about plans for NASA’s first visit to the Moon in 50 years—and the quick succession of missions that will likely follow. Next, Eileen Roesler, a researcher and lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin in the field of human-robot automation, discusses the benefits of making robots that look and act like people— it’s not always as helpful as you would think. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Virginie Angeloz/Noun Project; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: three robot drawings that look like people to different degrees] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
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Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the many theories circulating about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and why finding the right one is important. Next, Ed Narevicius, a professor in the chemical and biological physics department at the Weizmann Institute of Science, talks with Sarah about creating vortex beams of atoms—a quantum state in which the phase of the matter wave of an atom rotates around its path, like a spiral staircase. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Alon Luski et al./Science 2021; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: vortex beams showing holes in the center of the beam] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen
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News Intern Rachel Fritts talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new way to think about endometriosis—a painful condition found in one in 10 women in which tissue that normally lines the uterus grows on the outside of the uterus and can bind to other organs. Next, Raphael Townshend, founder and CEO of Atomic AI, talks about predicting RNA folding using deep learning—a machine learning approach that relies on very few examples and limited data. Finally, in this month's edition of our limited series on race and science, guest host and journalist Angela Saini is joined by author Lundy Braun, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and Africana studies at Brown University, to discuss her book: Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: C. Bickel/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: folded RNA 3D structures] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Fritts
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Contributing Correspondent Michael Price joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the newest Mars analog to be built on the location of the first attempt at a large-scale sealed habitat, Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Next, William Brady, a postdoctoral researcher in the psychology department at Yale University, talks with Sarah about using an algorithm to measure increasing expressions of moral outrage on social media platforms. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Kai Staats; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: lettuce plants being tended in a Mars analog] [Caption: Lettuce plants being tended in a Mars analog] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Mike Price
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Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for Science, talks with host Sarah Crespi about a risky trial of vitamin D in asthmatic children that has caused a lot of concern among ethicists. They also discuss how the vitamin D trial connects with a possibly dangerous push to compare new treatments with placebos instead of standard-of-care treatments in clinical trials. Next, Birhanu Eshete, professor of computer and information science at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the risks of exposing machine learning algorithms online—risks such as the reverse engineering of training data to access proprietary information or even patient data. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Filip Patock/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: Bottle of Vitamin D pills] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; Charles Piller
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International News Editor Martin Enserink talks with host Sarah Crespi about a moratorium on prion research after the fatal brain disease infected two lab workers in France, killing one. Next, Abhay Goyal, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, talks with intern Claire Hogan about his Science Advances paper on figuring out how to reduce the massive carbon footprint of cement by looking at its molecular structure. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Ansuman Satpathy, assistant professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of supporting early-career research and diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Marquette LaForest/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Jason Solo/Jacky Winter Group; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel; Angela Saini
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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 Zurich, 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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: C. Bickel/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Claire Hogan
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Irfan Rashid, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp; Valerie Thompson
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Aleth Lorne; Music: Jeffrey Cook] ++ Authors: Joel Goldberg; Sam Kean; Meagan Cantwell
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Tomasz Klejdysz/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady; Angela Saini
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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. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission Belur Math/Amphan Cyclone Relief Services; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sofia Moutinho
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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. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Bill Douthitt/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ian Graber-Stiehl
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Joe Wolf/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi
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Staff Writer Kelly Servick talks with host Sarah Crespi about the pairing of a specific type of psychotherapy with the drug MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Also this week, Pamela Jakiela, an economics professor at Williams College, discusses the importance of knowing how early childhood development interventions like free day care or parenting classes have an effect on caregivers, particularly mothers. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Graham Crouch/World Bank; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Kelly Servick; Sarah Crespi
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News Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss possible harms from how the shipping industry is responding to air pollution regulations—instead of pumping health-harming chemicals into the air, they are now being dumped into oceans. Also this week, William Brune, professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, talks about flying a plane into thunderstorms and how measurements from research flights revealed the surprising amount of air-cleaning oxidants created by lightning. In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Manfred Kraus, senior director and head of in vivo pharmacology oncology at Bristol Myers Squibb, about the impact of humanized mice on preclinical research. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Samantha Dellaert/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Erik Stokstad; Sarah Crespi
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Rich Stone, former international news editor at Science and current senior science editor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Tangled Bank Studios, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about concerning levels of fission reactions deep in an inaccessible area of the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Though nothing is likely to come of it anytime soon, scientists must decide what—if anything—they should do tamp down reactions in this hard-to-reach place. Also on this week’s show, Shlomi Kotler, an assistant professor in the department of applied physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joins Sarah to discuss the quantum entanglement of macroscopic objects. This hallmark of quantum physics has been confined—up until now—to microscopic items like atoms, ions, and photons. But what does it mean that two drums, each the width of a human hair, can be entangled? Read a related insight. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Caption: New Safe Confinement structure built over Chernobyl ruins; Credit: URBEX Hungary/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Rich Stone; Sarah Crespi
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Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a company that stores renewable energy by hoisting large objects in massive “gravity batteries.” Also on this week’s show, Erick Lundgren, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, talks about how water from wells dug by wild horses and feral donkeys provides a buffer to all different kinds of animals and plants during the driest times in the Sonora and Mojave deserts. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Tracy Hall/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Cathleen O’Grady; Sarah Crespi
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Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall about a restoration project to add 54 square kilometers back to the coast of Louisiana by allowing the Mississippi River to resume delivering sediment to sinking regions. Also on this week’s show, Dion Vlachos, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Delaware, Newark, and director of the Delaware Energy Institute, joins Sarah to talk about his Science Advances paper on a low-temperature process to convert different kinds of plastic to fuels, like gasoline and jet fuel. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Shannon Dosemagen/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Warren Cornwall; Sarah Crespi
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Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about a new measurement of the magnetism of the muon—an unstable cousin of the electron. This latest measurement and an earlier one both differ from predictions based on the standard model of particle physics. The increased certainty that there is a muon magnetism mismatch could be a field day for theoretical physicists looking to add new particles or forces to the standard model. Also on this week’s show, Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and professor of integrative biology, joins Sarah to talk about his team’s calculation for the total number of Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived. In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Imre Berger, professor of biochemistry at the University of Bristol, about his Science paper on finding a druggable pocket on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and how the work was accelerated by intensive cloud computing. This segment is sponsored by Oracle for Research. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image:Lewis Kelly/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Adrian Cho; Sarah Crespi
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Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol about magnetars—highly magnetized neutron stars. A recent intense outburst of gamma rays from a nearby galaxy has given astronomers a whole new view on these mysterious magnetic monsters. Also on this week’s show, Christoph Zollikofer, a professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich, talks about the evolution of humanlike brains. His team’s work with brain-case fossils suggests the complex brains we carry around today were not present in the early hominins to leave Africa, but later developed in the cousins they left behind. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: (Text) Sculptor galaxy; (Image) ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA; Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Joshua Sokol; Sarah Crespi
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Podcast Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Pamela Soltis, a professor and curator with the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida and the director of the University of Florida Biodiversity Institute, about how natural collections at museums can be a valuable resource for understanding future disease outbreaks. Read the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. This segment is part of our coverage of the 2021 AAAS Annual Meeting. Also on this week’s show, Katharina Schmack, a research associate at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, joins producer Joel Goldberg to talk about giving mice a quiz that makes them hallucinate. Observing the mice in this state helps researchers make connections between dopamine, hallucinations, and mental illness. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: christopherhu/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Joel Goldberg; Meagan Cantwell
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Most research on aging has been done on model organisms with limited life spans, such as flies and worms. Host Meagan Cantwell talks to science writer Yao-Hua Law about how long-living social insects—some of which survive for up to 30 years—can provide new insights into aging. Also in this episode, host Sarah Crespi talks with Noshir Contractor, the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University, about his AAAS session on keeping humans in harmony during long space missions and how mock missions on Earth are being applied to plans for a crewed mission to Mars. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image:TerriAnneAllen/Unsplash ; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Yao Hua Law; Meagan Cantwell
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Science News Staff Writer Kelly Servick discusses how physicians have sifted through torrents of scientific results to arrive at treatments for SARS-CoV-2. Sarah also talks with Wesley Reinhart of Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Institute for Computational and Data Science, about why we should be building smart cities from smart materials, such as metamaterials that help solar panels chase the Sun, and living materials like self-healing concrete that keep buildings in good shape. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Singapore Esplanade/Travis/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick
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Science Staff Writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about plans for the next generation of gravitational wave detectors—including one with 40-kilometer arms. The proposed detectors will be up to 10 times more sensitive than current models and could capture all black hole mergers in the observable universe. Sarah also talks with Pavani Cherukupally, a researcher at Imperial College London and the University of Toronto, about her Science Advances paper on cleaning up oil spills with special cold-adapted sponges that work well when crude oil gets clumpy. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: VLCC tanker Amoco Cadiz oil spill/Collection of Doug Helton/NOAA/NOS/ORR/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Adrian Cho
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Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a 2000-year-old pet cemetery found in the Egyptian city of Berenice and what it can tell us about the history of human-animal relationships. Also this week, Dipon Ghosh, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about how scientists missed that the tiny eyeless roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, which has been intensively studied from top to bottom for decades, somehow has the ability to detect colors. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: HINRICH SCHULENBURG; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm
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First up, science journalist Julia Rosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about a growing fleet of radar satellites that will soon be able to detect minute rises and drops of Earth’s surface—from a gently deflating volcano to a water-swollen field—on a daily basis. Sarah also talks with Hui Cao, a professor of applied physics at Yale University, about a new way to generate enormous streams of random numbers faster than ever before, using a tiny laser that can fit on a computer chip. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Kyungduk Kim/Yale; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Julia Rosen
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Science Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to take on some of big questions about the COVID-19 vaccines, such as: Do they stop transmission? Will we need boosters? When will life get back to “normal.” Sarah also talks with Anders Johansen, professor of planetary sciences and planet formation at the University of Copenhagen, about his Science Advances paper on a new theory for the formation of rocky planets in our Solar System. Instead of emerging out of ever-larger collisions of protoplanets, the new idea is that terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars formed from the buildup of many small pebbles. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: European Space Agency/Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen
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Science journalist Rachel Cernansky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about progress on Africa’s Great Green Wall project and the important difference between planting and growing a tree. Sarah also talks with Vaclav Kuna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, about using loud and long songs from fin whales to image structures under the ocean floor. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Holly Gramazio/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Cernansky
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This week we’re dedicating the whole show to the 20th anniversary of the publication of the human genome. Today, about 30 million people have had their genomes sequenced. This remarkable progress has brought with it issues of data sharing, privacy, and inequality. Host Sarah Crespi spoke with a number of researchers about the state of genome science, starting with Yaniv Erlich, from the Efi Arazi School of Computer Science and CEO of Eleven Biotherapeutics, who talks about privacy in the age of easily obtainable genomes. Next up Charles Rotimi, director of the Center for Research on Genomics and Global Health at the National Human Genome Research Institute, discusses diversity—or lack thereof—in the field and what it means for the kinds of research that happens. Finally, Dorothy Roberts, professor in the departments of Africana studies and sociology and the law school at the University of Pennsylvania, talks about the seemingly never-ending project of disentangling race and genomes. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Holly Gramazio/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi;
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On its first day, the new Biden administration announced plans to recalculate the social cost of carbon—a way of estimating the economic toll of greenhouse gases. Staff Writer Paul Voosen and host Sarah Crespi discuss why this value is so important and how it will be determined. Next up, Alison Barker, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, talks with Sarah about the sounds of naked mole-rats. You may already know naked mole-rats are pain and cancer resistant—but did you know these eusocial mammals make little chirps to identify themselves as colony members? Can these learned local dialects make naked mole-rats a new research model for language learning? This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Smithsonian’s National Zoo/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
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Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a controversial new paper that estimates how many rodents are used in research in the United States each year. Though there is no official number, the paper suggests there might be more than 100 million rats and mice housed in research facilities in the country—doubling or even tripling some earlier estimates. Next, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with Sarah about a new theory behind the cause of irritable bowel syndrome—that it might be a localized allergic reaction in the gut. Sarah also chats with Taline Kazandjian, a postdoctoral research associate at the Centre for Snakebite Research & Interventions in Liverpool, U.K., about how the venom from spitting cobras has evolved to cause maximum pain and why these snakes might have developed the same defense mechanism three different times. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Rushen/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
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Science Senior Correspondent Daniel Clery regales host Sarah Crespi with tales about the most important work to come from 57 years of research at the now-defunct Arecibo Observatory and plans for the future of the site. Sarah also talks with Toman Barsbai, an associate professor in the school of economics at the University of Bristol, about the influence of ecology on human behavior—can we figure out how many of our behaviors are related to the different environments where we live? Barsbai and colleagues took on this question by comparing behaviors around finding food, reproduction, and social hierarchy in three groups of animals living in the same places: foraging humans, nonhuman mammals, and birds. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: University of Central Florida; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery
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Freelance journalist Gabriel Popkin and host Sarah Crespi discuss what will happen to ash trees in the United States as federal regulators announce dropping quarantine measures meant to control the emerald ash borer—a devastating pest that has killed tens of millions of trees since 2002. Instead of quarantines, the government will use tiny wasps known to kill the invasive beetles in hopes of saving the ash. Sarah also talks with Pavel Chvykov, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the principles for organizing active matter—things like ant bridges, bird flocks, or little swarms of robots. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Donald Macauley/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gabriel Popkin
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Christopher Michel/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons; Jeffrey Mervis, Paul Voosen
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: ISS Expedition 7 Crew/EOL/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Catherine Matacic; Valerie Thompson
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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. 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
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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. Download a transcript (PDF).
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Joe Cheng/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
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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. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Erik Christensen/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook, Podington Bear] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
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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. Download a transcript (PDF).
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[Image: J. Bartlett Team Rubicon/BLM for USFS/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elizabeth Pennisi
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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. 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
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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. Download a transcript (PDF).
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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. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Zeev Barkan/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jon Cohen
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First up, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute and chief research officer for the Seattle Indian Health Board. Echo-Hawk shares what inspired her journey in public health and explains the repercussions of excluding native people from health data. This story was originally reported by Lizzie Wade, who profiled Echo-Hawk as part of Science’s “voices of the pandemic” series. Next, host Sarah Crespi interviews Danielle Murashige, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania, about her Science paper that attempts to quantify how much fuel a healthy heart needs. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). ++Meta [Image OpenStax Anatomy and Physiology; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Lizzie Wade
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First up, Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission to the asteroid Bennu. After OSIRIS-REx’s up-close surveys of the surface revealed fewer likely touchdown points than expected, its sampling mission has been rejiggered. Paul talks about the prospects for a safe sampling in mid-October and what we might learn when the craft returns to Earth in 2023. Sarah also talks with Hubert Lim, from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Neuromod Devices Limited, about his Science Translational Medicine paper on a new treatment for tinnitus. The team showed that bimodal stimulation—playing sounds in the ear and buzzes on the tongue—was able to change the brain and turn down the tinnitus in a large clinical trial. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Extra audio credits: Tinnitus sound samples courtesy of the American tinnitus Association. Treatment samples courtesy of Neuromod Ltd. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr/NASA/Goddard; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen
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Investigative journalist Charles Piller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his latest Science exclusive: a deep dive into the Food and Drug Administration’s protection of human subjects in clinical trials. Based on months of data analysis and interviews, he uncovered long-term failures in safety enforcement in clinical trials and potential problems with trial data used to make decisions about drug and device approvals. Sarah also talks with Klaus-Robert Muller, a professor of machine learning at the Technical University of Berlin, about an artificial intelligence (AI) trained in the sport of curling—often described as a cross between bowling and chess. Although AI has succeeded in chess, Go, and poker, the constantly changing environment of curling is far harder for a nonhuman mind to adapt to. But AIs were the big winners in competitions with top human players, Muller and colleagues report this week in Science Robotics. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF).
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[Image: Cory Denton/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Charles Piller
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Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons talks with host Sarah Crespi about a series of 120,000-year-old human footprints found alongside prints from animals like asses, elephants, and camels in a dried-up lake on the Arabian Peninsula. These are the earliest human footprints found so far in Arabia and may help researchers better understand the history of early hominin migrations out of Africa. Continuing on the history of humanity theme, Sarah talks with Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, about her team’s efforts to fish the elusive Y chromosome out of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA. It turns out Y chromosomes tell a different story about our past interbreeding with Neanderthals than previous tales told by the rest of the genome. Read a related Insight article. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ann Gibbons
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Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how jail and prison populations in the United States have dropped in the face of coronavirus and what kinds of scientific questions about public health and criminal justice are arising as a result. Also this week, Elias Garcia-Pelegrin, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, talks with Sarah about his article on watching animals watch magic tricks. Do animals fall for the same illusions we do? What does it say about the way their minds work? This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF).
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First up this week, Senior Correspondent Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about how Breakthrough Listen—a privately funded initiative that aims to spend $100 million over 10 years to find extraterrestrial intelligent life—has changed the hunt for alien intelligence-link. And as part of a special issue on the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project, Brandon Pierce, a professor in the Departments of Public Health Sciences and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago, joins Sarah to discuss his group’s work on variation in the protective caps at the end of our chromosomes. The gradual shortening of these caps, also known as telomeres, has been associated with aging. Read more from the GTEx special issue. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: V. Altounian/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dan Clery
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First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about rising numbers of coronavirus cases in Europe. Will what we’ve learned this summer about how the virus is transmitted and treated help prevent a second peak? Read all of our coronavirus news coverage. And as part of a special issue on democracy, Rohini Pande, a professor in the department of economics at Yale University, joins Sarah to discuss her review that asks the question: Can democracy work for poor people? Read more from the special issue on democracy. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Mattias Berg/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt
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Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how Arctic sea ice is under attack from above and below—not only from warming air, but also dangerous hot blobs of ocean water. Next, Damien Fordham, a professor and global change ecologist at the University of Adelaide, talks about how new tools for digging into the past are helping catalog what happened to biodiversity and ecosystems during different climate change scenarios in the past. These findings can help predict the fate of modern ecosystems under today’s human-induced climate change. And in our books segment, Kiki Sanford talks with author Carl Bergstrom about his new book: Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF).
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First up this week, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how wildlife biologists are taking advantage of humanity’s sudden lull. Scientists are launching studies of everything from sea turtles on suddenly quiet beaches to noise-averse birds living near airports to see how animal behavior changes when people are a little less obtrusive. Read all of our coronavirus coverage here. Next, as part of our special issue on mud—yes, wet dirt— Senior Correspondent Elizabeth Pennisi talks about her story on electric microbes that were first found in mud and are now found pretty much everywhere. Why do bacteria need to move electrons around and what does it mean that they do it all over the planet? This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). Image: Lars Riis-Damgaard and Steffen Larsen; Music: Jeffrey Cook Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi; Erik Stokstad
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Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a different approach to COVID-19 testing that might be useful in response to the high numbers of cases in the United States. To break chains of transmission and community spread, the new strategy would replace highly accurate but slow polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests with cheaper, faster tests that are less accurate but can be administered frequently. Such tests cost between $1 and $3 compared with more than $100 for diagnostic PCR tests and give results in less than 30 minutes instead of days. Read all of our coronavirus coverage here. Also this week, Salma Mousa, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, joins Sarah to talk about an experiment that added Muslim players to teams in a Christian soccer league in northern Iraq. The goal of the study was to see whether this type of social contact would change how the Christians—a threatened minority in the region—behaved toward Muslims, on and off the field. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Kate Brady/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Robert Service
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Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risk of the novel coronavirus infection to pregnant women. Early data suggest expectant women are more likely to get severe forms of the infection and require hospitalization. Meredith describes how the biology of pregnancy—such as changes to the maternal immune system and added stress on the heart and lungs—might explain the harsher effects of the virus. Also this week, Sarah talks with Gianluca Roscioli about his experiments with commercial razor blades and real human hair. By using a scanning electron microscope, he was able to show how something relatively soft like hair is able to damage something 50 times harder like stainless steel. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: G. Roscioli et al., Science 2020; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/why-covid-19-poses-special-risk-during-pregnancy-and-how-hair-can-split-steel
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Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his editorial on preventing vaccine hesitancy during the coronavirus pandemic. Even before the current crisis, fear of vaccines had become a global problem, with the World Health Organization naming it as one of the top 10 worldwide health threats in 2019. Now, it seems increasingly possible that many people will refuse to get vaccinated. What can public health officials and researchers do to get ahead of this issue? Also this week, Sarah talks with Science Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen about his story on Chinese scientist Shi Zhengli, the bat researcher at the center of the COVID-19 origins controversy—and why she thinks President Donald Trump owes her an apology. Finally, Geert Van der Snickt, a professor in the conservation-restoration department at the University of Antwerp, talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on a new process for peering into the past of paintings. His team used a combination of techniques to look beneath an overpainting on the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan Van Eyck—a pivotal piece that showed the potential of oil paints and even included an early example of painting from an aerial view. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: van der Snickt et al., Science Advances 2020; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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Contributing Correspondent Dennis Normile talks about a long-term study involving the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Seventy-five years after the United States dropped nuclear bombs on the two cities in Japan, survivors are still helping scientists learn about the effects of radiation exposure. Also this week, Sarah talks with Winnie Lau, senior manager for preventing ocean plastics at Pew Charitable Trusts about her group’s paper about what it would take to seriously fight the flow of plastics into the environment. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: MPCA Photos/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dennis Normile
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Contributing correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks about what can be learned from schools around the world that have reopened during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, few systematic studies have been done but observations of outbreaks in schools in places such as France or Israel do offer a few lessons for countries looking to send kids back to school soon. The United Kingdom and Germany have started studies of how the virus spreads in children and at school, but results are months away. In the meantime, Gretchen’s reporting suggests small class sizes, masks, and social distancing among the adults at school are particularly important measures.
Read all our coronavirus news coverage.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Kirstie Thompson, a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, about increasing the efficiency of petroleum processing. If all—or even some—petroleum processing goes heat free, it would mean big energy savings. Around the world, about 1% of all energy use goes to heating up petroleum in order to get useful things such as gas for cars or polymers for plastics. These days, this separation is done through distillation, heating and separating by boiling point. Kirstie describes a heat-free way of getting this separation—by using a special membrane instead.
Read a related Insight.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF) ++
[Image: Kurt Bauschardt/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gretchen Vogel
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Contributing correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about the success of a fast moving megatrial for coronavirus treatments. The UK’s RECOVERY (Randomized Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy) trial has enrolled more than 12,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients since early March and has released important recommendations that were quickly taken up by doctors and scientists around the world. Kai discusses why such a large study is necessary and why other large drug trials like the WHO’s SOLIDARITY trial are lagging behind. Also this week, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Saul Villeda, a professor in the Department of Anatomy at University of California, San Francisco, about transferring the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain from an active mouse to a sedentary mouse by transferring their blood. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: eyesplash/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Kai Kupferschmidt
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First up this week, News Intern Rodrigo Perez-Ortega talks with host Meagan Cantwell about an oasis of biodiversity in the striking blue pools of Cuatro Cienegas, a basin in northern Mexico. Researchers have published dozens of papers exploring the unique microorganisms that thrive in this area, while at the same time fighting large agricultural industries draining the precious water from the pools. David Tatnell, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Exeter, talks with host Sarah Crespi about using heat to make sound, a phenomenon known as thermoacoustics. Just like the sound of fire or thunder, sudden changes in temperature can create sound waves. In his team’s paper in Science Advances, Tatnell and colleagues describe a thermoacoustic speaker that uses thin, heated films to make sound. This approach cuts out the crosstalk seen in mechanical speakers and allows for extreme miniaturization of sound production. In the ultrasound range, arrays of thermoacoustic speakers could improve acoustic levitation and ultrasound imaging. In the hearing range, the speakers could be made extremely small, flexible, and even transparent. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. ++ [Image: David Jaramillo; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Rodrigo Perez-Ortega, Sarah Crespi
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Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies how ocean waves disperse virus-laden aerosols, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how she became an outspoken advocate for using masks to prevent coronavirus transmission. A related insight she wrote for Science has been downloaded more than 1 million times. Read Science’s coronavirus coverage. Mikkel Sinding, a postdoctoral fellow at Trinity College Dublin, talks sled dog genes with Sarah. After comparing the genomes of modern dogs, Greenland sled dogs, and an ancient dog jaw bone found on a remote Siberian island where dogs may have pulled sleds some 9500 years ago, they found that modern Greenland dogs—which are still used to pull sleds today— have much in common with this ancient Siberian ancestor. Those similarities include genes related to eating high-fat diets and cold-sensing genes previously identified in woolly mammoths. In this month's book segment, Kiki Sanford talks with Rutger Bregman about his book, Humankind: A Hopeful History which outlines a shift in the thinking of many social scientists to a view of humans as more peaceful than warlike. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/stopping-spread-covid-19-and-arctic-adaptations-sled-dogs
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Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how universities are dealing with the financial crunch brought on by the coronavirus. Jeff discusses how big research universities are balancing their budgets as federal grants continue to flow, but endowments are down and so is the promise of state funding. Read all our coronavirus coverage. Mosquito-borne infections like Zika, dengue, malaria, and chikungunya cause millions of deaths each year. Nicole Culbert and colleges write this week in Science Robotics about a new way to deal with deadly mosquitoes—using drones. The drones are designed to drop hundreds of thousands of sterile male mosquitoes in areas with high risk of mosquito-borne illness. The idea is that sterile male mosquitoes will mate with females and the females then lay infertile eggs, which causes the population to decline. They found this drone-based approach is cheaper and more efficient than other methods of releasing sterile mosquitoes and does not have the problems associated with pesticide-based eradication efforts such as resistance and off-target effects. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). ++ [Image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jeffrey Mervis
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Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the ins and outs of coronavirus contact tracing apps—what they do, how they work, and how to calculate whether they are crushing the curve.
Read all our coronavirus coverage.
Edward Gregr, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, talks with Sarah about the controversial reintroduction of sea otters to the Northern Pacific Ocean—their home for centuries, before the fur trade nearly wiped out the apex predator in the late 1800s. Gregr brings a unique cost-benefit perspective to his analysis, and finds many trade-offs with economic implications for fisheries For example, sea otters eat shellfish like urchins and crabs, depressing the shellfishing industry; but their diet encourages the growth of kelp forests, which in turn provide a habitat for economically important finfish, like salmon and rockfish. Read a related commentary article. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF).
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First up this week, staff writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe coronavirus infections in men. New support for this idea comes from a study showing high levels of male pattern baldness in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Read all our coronavirus coverage. Next, Jason Qian, a Ph.D. student in the systems biology department at Harvard Medical School, joins Sarah to talk about an object-tracking system that uses bacterial spores engineered with unique DNA barcodes. The inactivated spores can be sprayed on anything from lettuce, to wood, to sand and later be scraped off and read out using a CRISPR-based detection system. Spraying these DNA-based identifiers on such things as vegetables could help trace foodborne illnesses back to their source. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF)
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First up this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about a rare inflammatory response in children that has appeared in a number of COVID-19 hot spots. Next, Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute and professor of physical geography at the University of Cambridge, talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about tracing the retreat of Antarctica's glaciers by examining the ocean floor. Finally, Kiki Sanford interviews author Danny Dorling about his new book, Slowdown: The End of the Great Acceleration-and Why It’s Good for the Planet, the Economy, and Our Lives. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: Scott Ableman/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel; Kiki Sanford
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Online news editor David Grimm talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the unique challenges of reopening labs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Though the chance to resume research may instill a sense of hope, new policies around physical distancing and access to facilities threaten to derail studies—and even careers. Despite all the uncertainty, the crisis could result in new approaches that ultimately benefit the scientific community, and the world.
Also this week, Joel Podgorski, a senior scientist in the Water Resources and Drinking Water Department at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the global threat of arsenic in drinking water. Arsenic is basically present in all rocks in minute amounts. Under the right conditions it can leach into groundwater and poison drinking water. Without a noticeable taste or smell, arsenic contamination can go undetected for years. The paper, published in Science, estimates that more than 100 million people are at risk of drinking arsenic contaminated water and provides a guide for the most important places to test.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF) ++
[Image: Ian Aiden Relkoff/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; David Grimm
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Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of inequality in past pandemics. Evidence from medical records and cemeteries suggests diseases like the 1918 flu, smallpox, and even the Black Death weren’t indiscriminately killing people—instead these infections caused more deaths in those with less money or status. Also this week, Aaron Wech, a research geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, joins Sarah to talk about recordings of more than 1 million earthquakes from deep under Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano, which hasn’t erupted in 4500 years. They discuss how these earthquakes, which have repeated every 7 to 12 minutes for at least 20 years, went undetected for so long. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). ++
[Image: Ian Aiden Relkoff/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade
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Staff writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2. Many companies and researchers are rushing to design and test this type of treatment, which proved effective in combating Ebola last year. And Karen Holl, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins Sarah to discuss the proper planning of tree planting campaigns. It turns out that just putting a tree in the ground is not enough to stop climate change and reforest the planet. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Ian Dick/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen
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Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins Sarah to talk about a recent Science paper describing the results of a large study on a blood test for multiple types of cancer. The trial’s results suggest such a blood test combined with follow-up scans may help detect cancers early, but there is a danger of too many false positives. And postdoctoral researcher Timo Reinhold of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research joins Sarah to talk about his paper on how the Sun is a lot less variable in its magnetic activity compared with similar stars—what does it mean that our Sun is a little bit boring? This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Solar Dynamic Observatory/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser
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Coronavirus affects far more than just the lungs, and doctors and researchers in the midst of the pandemic are trying to catalog—and understand—the virus’ impact on our bodies. Staff writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what we know about how COVID-19 kills. See all Science news coverage of the pandemic here, and all research papers and editorials here. Also this week, staff writer Paul Voosen talks with Sarah about quantum diamond microscopes. These new devices are able to detect minute traces of magnetism, giving insight into the earliest movements of Earth’s tectonic plates and even ancient paleomagnetic events in space. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/nose-toes-how-coronavirus-affects-body-and-quantum-microscope-unlocks-magnetic-secrets-very Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Meteorite ALH84001/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman; Paul Voosen
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Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about countries planning a comeback from a coronavirus crisis. What can they do once cases have slowed down to go back to some sort of normal without a second wave of infection? See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here. As part of a drought special issue of Science, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins Sarah to talk about water management and the downfall of the ancient Wari state. Sometimes called the first South American empire, the Wari culture successfully expanded throughout the Peruvian Andes 1400 years ago. Also this week, Yon Visell of the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on the biomechanics of human hands. Our skin’s ability to propagate waves along the surface of the hand may help us sense the world around us. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Kai Kuperferschmidt
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On this week’s show, Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new National Academy of Sciences report that suggests the novel coronavirus can go airborne, the evidence for this idea, and what this means for the mask-wearing debate. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here. Also this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins Sarah to talk about a burgeoning understanding of the biological roots of anorexia nervosa—an eating disorder that affects about 1% of people in the United States. From genetic links to brain scans, scientists are finding a lot more biology behind what was once thought of as a culturally driven disorder. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/does-coronavirus-spread-through-air-and-biology-anorexia Download a transcript (PDF).
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On this week’s show, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about modeling coronavirus spread and the role of forecasts in national lockdowns and other pandemic policies. They also talk about the launch of a global trial of promising treatments. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here.
Also this week, Nadine Gogolla, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, talks with Sarah about linking the facial expressions of mice to their emotional states using machine learning.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: Damien Roue/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt
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On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg gets an update on the coronavirus pandemic from Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen. In addition, Cohen gives a rundown of his latest feature, which highlights the relationship between diseases and changing seasons—and how this relationship relates to a potential coronavirus vaccine. Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Alexandra Maertens, director of the Green Toxicology initiative at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, about the importance of incorporating nonanimal testing methods to study the adverse effects of chemicals. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
++ [Image: Let Ideas Compete/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Joel Goldberg; Jon Cohen; Meagan Cantwell
Listen to previous podcasts http://www.sciencemag.org/podcasts
About the Science Podcast http://www.sciencemag.org/about/podcast
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On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg talks with science journalist Andrew Curry about recent archaeological finds along the shores of Northern Europe. Curry outlines the rich history of the region that scientists, citizen scientists, and energy companies have helped dredge up.
Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Elizabeth Margulis, a professor at Princeton University, about musical memory. Margulis dives into several music cognition studies, as well as her own study on how Western and non-western audiences interpret the same song differently.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF)
[Image: Sebastian Reinecke/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Meagan Cantwell, Joel Goldberg, Andrew Curry
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On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Leste-Lasserre talks with host Sarah Crespi about the scientists working on the restoration of Notre Dame, from testing the changing weight of wet limestone, to how to remove lead contamination from four-story stained glass windows. As the emergency phase of work winds down, scientists are also starting to use the lull in tourist activity to investigate the mysteries of the cathedral’s construction.
Also this week, Felipe Quiroz, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, talks with Sarah about his paper on the cellular mechanism of liquid-liquid phase separation in the formation of the tough outer layer of the skin. Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids “demix,” or separate, like oil and water. In cells, this process created membraneless organelles that are just now starting to be understood. In this work, Quiroz and colleagues create a sensor for phase separation in the cell that works in living tissue, and show how phase separation is tied to the formation of the outer layers of skin in mice. Read the related Insight.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF).
[Image: r. nial bradshaw/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Leste-Lasserre
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On this week’s show, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how dogs’ cold noses may be able to sense warm bodies. Read the research. International News Editor Martin Enserink shares the latest from our reporters covering coronavirus. And finally, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Jill Tarter, chair emeritus at the SETI Institute, about the newest technologies being used to search for alien life, what a positive signal would look like, and how to inform the public if extraterrestrial life ever were detected. Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/dog-noses-detect-heat-world-faces-coronavirus-and-scientists-search-extraterrestrial-life This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF).
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This week on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a turning point for one ancient Mesoamerican city: Tikal. On 16 January 378 C.E., the Maya city lost its leader and the replacement may have been a stranger. We know from writings that the new leader wore the garb of another culture—the Teotihuacan—who lived in a giant city 1000 kilometers away. But was this new ruler of a Maya city really from a separate culture? New techniques being used at the Tikal and Teotihuacan sites have revealed conflicting evidence as to whether Teotihuacan really held sway over a much larger region than previously estimated.
Sarah also talks with Rashid Sumaila, professor and Canada research chair in interdisciplinary ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. You may have heard of illegal fishing being bad for the environment or bad for maintaining fisheries—but as Sumaila and colleagues report this week in Science Advances, the illegal fishing trade is also incredibly costly—with gross revenues of between $8.9 billion and $17.2 billion each year.
In the books segment this month, Kiki Sanford interviews Gaia Vince about her new book Transcendence How Humans Evolved through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF). ++
[Image: Christian Hipolito; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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On this week’s show, staff writer Robert F. Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about manipulating microbes to make them produce building materials like bricks—and walls that can take toxins out of the air.
Sarah also talks with Paul Davids, principal member of the technical staff in applied photonics & microsystems at Sandia National Laboratories, about an innovation in converting waste heat to electricity that uses similar materials to solar cells but depends on quantum tunneling.
And in a bonus segment, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with online news editor David Grimm on stage at the AAAS annual meeting in Seattle. They discuss how wildfires can harm your lungs, crime rates in so-called sanctuary states, and how factors such as your gender and country of origin influence how much trust you put in science.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF)
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On this week’s show, senior correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant program that aims to encourage diversity at the level of university faculty with the long-range goal of increasing the diversity of NIH-grant recipients.
Sarah also talks with Pierre Gagnepain, a cognitive neuroscientist at INSERM, the French biomedical research agency, about the role of memory suppression in post-traumatic stress disorder. Could people that are better at suppressing memories be more resilient to the aftermath of trauma?
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF)
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On this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a Science paper that combines two hot areas of research-link—CRISPR gene editing and immunotherapy for cancer—and tests it in patients.
Sarah also talks with Damien Finch, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, about the Kimberly region of Australia and dating its ice age cave paintings using charcoal from nearby wasp nests. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF).
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Structural biologists rejoiced when cryo–electron microscopy, a technique to generate highly detailed models of biomolecules, emerged. But years after its release, researchers still face long queues to access these machines. Science’s European News Editor Eric Hand walks host Meagan Cantwell through the journey of a group of researchers to create a cheaper, more accessible alternative.
Also this week, host Joel Goldberg speaks with psychiatrist and researcher Goodman Sibeko, who worked with the Xhosa people of South Africa to help illuminate genetic details of schizophrenia. Though scientists have examined this subject among Western populations, much less is known about the underlying genetics of people native to Africa.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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As part of a special issue on chemicals for tomorrow’s Earth, we’ve got two green chemistry stories. First, host Sarah Crespi talks with contributing correspondent Warren Cornwell about how a company came up with a replacement for the popular can lining material bisphenol A and then recruited knowledgeable critics to test its safety.
Sarah is also joined by Beate Escher of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the University of Tubingen to discuss ways to trace complex mixtures of humanmade chemicals in the environment. They talk about how new technologies can help detect these mixtures, understand their toxicity, and eventually connect their effects on the environment, wildlife, and people.
Read more in the special issue on chemicals for tomorrow’s Earth.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
Download a transcript (PDF)
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Though a U.S. law requiring clinical trial results reporting has been on the books for decades, many researchers have been slow to comply. Now, 2 years after the law was sharpened with higher penalties for noncompliance, investigative correspondent Charles Piller took a look at the results. He talks with host Sarah Crespi about the investigation and a surprising lack of compliance and enforcement. Also this week, Sarah talks with Brett Finlay, a microbiologist at the University Of British Columbia, Vancouver, about an Insight in this week’s issue that aims to connect the dots between noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer and the microbes that live in our guts. Could these diseases actually spread through our microbiomes? This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: stu_spivack/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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Getting into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine can be a tight fit for just one person. Now, researchers interested in studying face-to-face interactions are attempting to squeeze a whole other person into the same tube, while taking functional MRI (fMRI) measurements. Staff news writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the kinds of questions simultaneous fMRIs might answer. Also this week, Sarah talks with Igor Grossman, the director of the Wisdom and Culture Lab at the University of Waterloo, about his group’s Science Advances paper on public perceptions of the difference between something being rational and something being reasonable. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: KiwiCo [Image: Amanda/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Kelly Servick, Sarah Crespi Transcript link: https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/SciencePodcast_200110.pdf
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We start our first episode of the new year looking at future trends in policy and research with host Joel Goldberg and several Science News writers. Jeffrey Mervis discusses upcoming policy changes, Kelly Servick gives a rundown of areas to watch in the life sciences, and Ann Gibbons talks about potential advances in ancient proteins and DNA. In research news, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Beatriz Pinto-Goncalves, a post-doctoral researcher at the John Innes Centre, about carnivorous plant traps. Through understanding the mechanisms that create these traps, Pinto-Goncalves and colleagues elucidate what this could mean for how they emerged in the evolutionary history of plants. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: KiwiCo [Image: Eleanor/Flickr] ++ Authors: Joel Goldberg, Jeffrey Mervis, Kelly Servick, Ann Gibbons, Meagan Cantwell
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As the year comes to a close, we review the best science, the best stories, and the best books from 2019. Our end-of-the-year episode kicks off with Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm talking about the top online stories on things like human self-domestication, the “wood wide web,” and more.
News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins Sarah to discuss Science’s 2019 Breakthrough of the Year, some of the contenders for breakthrough, also known as runners-up, and the breakdowns—when science and politics just didn’t seem to mix this year.
Finally, Science books editor Valerie Thompson brings her favorites from the world of science-inflected media. She and Sarah talk about some of the best books reviewed in Science this year, a food extinction book we should have reviewed, a pair of science-centric films, and even an award-winning birding board game.
For more science books, films, and games, visit the books et al blog at blogs.sciencemag.org/books.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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++
[Image: Roots, Craig Cloutier/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Tim Appenzeller; Valerie Thompson
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About one-third of people with epilepsy are treatment resistant. Up until now, epilepsy treatments have focused on taming seizures rather than the source of the disease and for good reason—so many roads lead to epilepsy: traumatic brain injury, extreme fever and infection, and genetic disorders, to name a few. Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about researchers that are turning back the pages on epilepsy, trying to get to the beginning of the story where new treatments might work.
And Sarah also talks with Torsten Neurbert at the Technical University of Denmark’s National Space Institute in Kongens Lyngby about capturing high-altitude “transient luminous events” from the International Space Station (ISS). These lightning-induced bursts of light, color, and occasionally gamma rays were first reported in the 1990s but had only been recorded from the ground or aircraft. With new measurements from the ISS come new insights into the anatomy of lightning.
This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.
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[Image: Gemini Observatory; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
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| After their life as research subjects, what happens to lab monkeys? Some are euthanized to complete the research, others switch to new research projects, and some retire from lab life. Should they retire in place—in the same lab under the care of the same custodians—or should they be sent to retirement home–like sanctuaries? Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss recently penned legislation that pushes for monkey retirements and a new collaboration between universities and sanctuaries to create a retirement pipeline for these primates.
Sarah also talks with Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) and a professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, about the latest news from the asteroid Bennu. Within 1 week of beginning its orbit of the asteroid, OSIRIS-REx was able to send back surprising images of the asteroid ejecting material. It’s extremely rocky surface also took researchers by surprise and forced a recalculation of the sample return portion of the craft’s mission. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: McDonalds; Parcast’s Natural Disasters podcast; KiwiCo Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| The National Institutes of Health’s largest loan repayment program was conceived to help scientists pay off school debts without relying on industry funding. But a close examination of the program by investigative correspondent Charles Piller has revealed that many participants are taking money from the government to repay their loans, while at the same time taking payments from pharmaceutical companies. Piller joins Host Sarah Crespi to talk about the steps he took to uncover this double dipping and why ethicists say this a conflict of interest.
Sarah also talks with Nate Lindsey, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, about turning a 50-meter undersea fiber optic cable designed to move data into a sensor for activity in the ocean and the land underneath. During a 4-day test in Monterey Bay, California, the cable detected earthquakes, faults, waves, and even ocean-going storms. For this month’s books segment, Kiki Sandford talks with Dan Hooper about his book At the Edge of Time: Exploring the Mysteries of Our Universe’s First Seconds. You can find more books segments on the Books et al. blog. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: McDonalds; Salk’s Where Cures Begin podcast Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| You may have seen the aftermath of a landslide, driving along a twisty mountain road—a scattering of rocks and scree impinging on the pavement. And up until now, that’s pretty much how scientists have tracked landslides—roadside observations and spotty satellite images. Now, researchers are hoping to track landslides systematically by instrumenting an entire national park in Taiwan. The park is riddled with landslides—so much so that visitors wear helmets. Host Sarah Crespi talks with one of those visitors—freelance science journalist Katherine Kornei—about what we can learn from landslides.
In a second rocking segment, Sarah also talks with Manvir Singh about the universality of music. His team asked the big questions in a Science paper out this week: Do all societies make music? What are the common elements that can be picked out from songs worldwide? Sarah and Manvir listen to songs and talk about what love ballads and lullabies have in common, regardless of their culture of origin. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Bayer; KiwiCo; McDonalds Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Martin Lewinson/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| The Polarstern research vessel will spend 1 year locked in an Arctic ice floe. Aboard the ship and on the nearby ice, researchers will take measurements of the ice, air, water, and more in an effort to understand this pristine place. Science journalist Shannon Hall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about her time aboard the Polarstern and how difficult these measurements are, when the researchers’ temporary Arctic home is the noisiest, smokiest, brightest thing around.
After that icy start, Sarah talks also with Tanmoy Samanta, a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University in Beijing, about the source of the extreme temperature of the Sun’s corona, which can be up to 1 million K hotter than the surface of the Sun. His team’s careful measurements of spicules—small, plentiful, short-lived spikes of plasma that constantly ruffle the Sun’s surface—and the magnetic networks that seem to generate these spikes, suggest a solution to the long-standing problem of how spicules arise and, at the same time, their likely role in the heating of the corona. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Bayer Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Shannon Hall; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Most historical accounts of slavery were written by colonists and planters. Researchers are now using the tools of archaeology to learn more about the day-to-day lives of enslaved Africans—how they survived the conditions of slavery, how they participated in local economies, and how they maintained their own agency. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about a Caribbean archaeology project based on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and launched by the founders of the Society for Black Archaeologists that aims to unearth these details. Watch a related video here.
Sarah also talks with Jonathan Schulz, a professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, about a role for the medieval Roman Catholic Church in so-called WEIRD psychology—western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. The bulk of psychology experiments have used participants that could be described as WEIRD, and according to many psychological measures, WEIRD subjects tend to have some extreme traits, like a stronger tendency toward individuality and more friendliness with strangers. Schulz and colleagues used historical maps and measures of kinship structure to tie these traits to strict marriage rules enforced by the medieval Catholic Church in Western Europe. Read related commentary. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Bayer; KiwiCo Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Meagan Cantwell/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Measles is a dangerous infection that can kill. As many as 100,000 people die from the disease each year. For those who survive infection, the virus leaves a lasting mark—it appears to wipe out the immune system’s memory. News Intern Eva Fredrick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a pair of studies that looked at how this happens in children’s immune systems.
Read the related studies in Science and Science Immunology. In our second segment this week, Sarah talks with Todd Thompson, of Ohio State University in Columbus, about his effort to find a small black hole in a binary pair with a red giant star. Usually black holes are detected because they are accruing matter and as the matter interacts with the black hole, x-rays are released. Without this flashy signal, black hole detection gets much harder. Astronomers must look for the gravitational influence of the black holes on nearby stars—which is easier to spot when the black hole is massive. Thompson talks with Sarah about a new approach to finding small, noninteracting black holes. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Bayer Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Alissa Eckert; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Earthworms are easy … to find. But despite their prevalence and importance to ecosystems around the world, there hasn’t been a comprehensive survey of earthworm diversity or population size. This week in Science, Helen Philips, a postdoctoral fellow at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and the Institute of Biology at Leipzig University, and colleagues published the results of their worldwide earthworm study, composed of data sets from many worm researchers around the globe. Host Sarah Crespi gets the lowdown from Philips on earthworm myths, collaborating with worm researchers, and links between worm populations and climate. Read a related commentary here.
Sarah also talks with Ziad Obermeyer, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, about dissecting out bias in an algorithm used by health care systems in the United States to recommend patients for additional health services. With unusual access to a proprietary algorithm, inputs, and outputs, Obermeyer and his colleagues found that the low amount of health care dollars spent on black patients in the past caused the algorithm to underestimate their risk for poor health in the future. Obermeyer and Sarah discuss how this happened and remedies that are already in progress. Read a related commentary here. Finally, in the monthly books segment, books host Kiki Sanford interviews author Alice Gorman about her book Dr. Space Junk vs The Universe: Archaeology and the Future. Listen to more book segments on the Science books blog: Books, et al. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quanmen; MEL Science Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| We don’t know where consciousness comes from. And we don’t know whether animals have it, or whether we can detect it in patients in comas. Do neuroscientists even know where to look? A new competition aims to narrow down the bewildering number of theories of consciousness and get closer to finding its biological signs by pitting different theories against each other in experimental settings. Freelance journalist Sara Reardon talks with host Sarah Crespi about how the competition will work.
In our second segment, we talk about how we think about children. For thousands of years, adults have complained about their lack of respect, intelligence, and tendency to distraction, compared with previous generations. A new study out this week in Science Advances suggests our own biased childhood memories might be at fault. Sarah Crespi talks with John Protzko of the University of California, Santa Barbara, about how terrible people thought kids were in 3800 B.C.E. and whether understanding those biases might change how people view Generation Z today. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quanmen; Bayer; KiwiCo Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Andrea Kirkby/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Have you ever tried to scrub off the dark, tarlike residue on a grill? That tough stuff is made up of polymers—basically just byproducts of cooking—and it is so persistent that researchers have found similar molecules that have survived hundreds of millions of years. And these aren’t from cook fires. They are actually the byproducts of death and fossilization. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel about how these molecules can be found on the surface of certain fossils and used as fingerprints for the proteins that once dwelled in dinos.
And Sarah talks with Zunfeng Liu, a professor at Nankai University in Tianjin, China, about a new cooling technology based on a 100-year-old observation that a stretched rubber band is warm and a relaxed one is cool. It’s going to be hard to beat the 60% efficiency of compression-based refrigerators and air conditioning units, but Zunfeng and colleagues aim to try, with twists and coils that can cool water by 7°C when relaxed. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| Host Sarah Crespi talks with undergraduate student Micheal Munson from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, about a smartphone app that scans photos in the phone’s library for eye disease in kids.
And Sarah talks with Todd Roberts of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, about incepting memories into zebra finches to study how they learn their songs. Using a technique called optogenetics—in which specific neurons can be controlled by pulses of light—the researchers introduced false song memories by turning on neurons in different patterns, with longer or shorter note durations than typical zebra finch songs. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: MOVA Globes; KiwiCo.com Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| On this week’s show, Senior News Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis talks with host Sarah Crespi about a stalled Facebook plan to release user data to social scientists who want to study the site’s role in elections.
Sarah also talks with Jennifer Gruhn, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Copenhagen Center for Chromosome Stability, about counting chromosomes in human egg cells. It turns out that cell division errors that cause too many or too few chromosomes to remain in the egg may shape human fertility over our reproductive lives. Finally, in this month’s book segment, Kiki Sanford talks with Daniel Navon about his book Mobilizing Mutations: Human Genetics in the Age of Patient Advocacy. Visit the books blog for more author interviews: Books et al. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: MOVA Globes; The Tangled Tree by David Quammen Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| On this week’s show, science journalist Josh Sokol talks about a global cooling event sparked by space dust that lead to a huge shift in animal and plant diversity 466 million years ago. (Read the related research article in Science Advances.)
And I talk with Kenneth Rosenberg, an applied conservation scientist at Cornell University, about steep declines in bird abundance in the United States and Canada. His team estimates about 3 billion birds have gone missing since the 1970s. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: MOVA Globes; KiwiCo.com Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| In La Rinconada, Peru, a town 5100 meters up in the Peruvian Andes, residents get by breathing air with 50% less oxygen than at sea level. International News Editor Martin Enserink visited the site with researchers studying chronic mountain sickness—when the body makes excess red blood cells in an effort to cope with oxygen deprivation—in these extreme conditions. Martin talks with host Sarah Crespi about how understanding why this illness occurs in some people and not others could help the residents of La Rinconada and the 140 million people worldwide living above 2500 meters. Read the whole special issue on mountains.
Sarah also talks with Annika Stefanie Reinhold about her work at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin training rats to play hide and seek. Surprisingly, rats learned the game easily and were even able to switch roles—sometimes playing as the seeker, other times the hider. Annika talks with Sarah about why studying play behavior in animals is important for understanding the connections between play and learning in both rats and humans. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: MOVA Globes; Kroger’s Zero Hunger, Zero Waste campaign Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Tambako The Jaguar/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week’s show starts with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade, who spent 12 days with archaeologists searching for a lost Maya city in the Chiapas wilderness in Mexico. She talks with host Sarah Crespi about how you lose a city—and how you might go about finding one.
And Sarah talks with Christophe Coupe, an associate professor in the department of linguistics at the University of Hong Kong in China, about the information density of different languages. His work, published this week in Science Advances, suggests very different languages—from Chinese to Japanese to English and French—are all equally efficient at conveying information. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Kroger’s Zero Hunger, Zero Waste campaign; KiwiCo Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| Micro-organisms live inside everything from the human gut to coral—but where do they come from? Host Meagan Cantwell talks to Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi about the first comprehensive survey of microbes in Hawaii’s Waimea Valley, which revealed that plants and animals get their unique microbiomes from organisms below them in the food chain or the wider environment.
Going global, Meagan then speaks with Erle Ellis, professor of geography and environmental science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, about a project that aggregated the expertise of more than 250 archaeologists to map human land use over the past 10,000 years. This detailed map will help fine-tune climate models. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this show: Science Sessions Podcast; Kroger Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Chris Couderc/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Changing the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline from 1-800-273- 8255 (TALK) to a three-digit number could save lives—especially when coupled with other strategies. Host Meagan Cantwell talks to Greg Miller, a science journalist based in Portland, Oregon, about three effective methods to prevent suicides—crisis hotlines, standardizing mental health care, and restricting lethal means. Greg’s feature is part of a larger package in Science exploring paths out of darkness.
With more solutions this week, host Sarah Crespi speaks with A. R. Siders, a social scientist at the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware in Newark, about her policy forum on the need for “managed climate retreat”—strategically moving people and property away from high-risk flood and fire zones. Integrating relocation into a larger strategy could maximize its benefits, supporting equality and economic development along the way. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this show: KiwiCo; Kroger Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Scott Woods-Fehr/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Researchers, regulators, and the chicken industry are all united in their search for a way to make eggs more ethical by stopping culling—the killing of male chicks born to laying hens. Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel talks with host Sarah Crespi about the many approaches being tried to determine the sex of chicken embryos before they hatch, from robots with lasers, to MRIs, to artificial intelligence, to gene editing with CRISPR.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Melanie Bergmann, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, about finding microplastic particles in snow all the way up at the Fram Strait, between Greenland and the Svalbarg archipelago in Norway. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Ads on this week’s show: Science Sessions podcast; National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: fruchtzwerg’s world/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| In recent months, telecommunications companies in the United States have purchased a new part of the spectrum for use in 5G cellphone networks. Weather forecasters are concerned that these powerful signals could swamp out weaker signals from water vapor—which are in a nearby band and important for weather prediction. Freelance science writer Gabriel Popkin joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the possible impact of cellphone signals on weather forecasting and some suggested regulations.
In other weather news this week, Sarah talks with Pengfei Yu, a professor at Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, about his group’s work using a huge smoke plume from the 2017 wildfires in western Canada as a model for smoke from nuclear bombs. They found the wildfire smoke lofted itself 23 kilometers into the stratosphere, spread across the Northern Hemisphere, and took 8 months to dissipate, which line up with models of nuclear winter and suggests these fires can help predict the results of a nuclear war. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: KiwiCo.com Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| After two mysterious earthquake swarms occurred under the Sea of Galilee, researchers found a relationship between these small quakes and the excessive extraction of groundwater. Science journalist Michael Price talks with host Sarah Crespi about making this connection and what it means for water-deprived fault areas like the Sea of Galilee and the state of California.
Also this week, Sarah talks with graduate student Adrian Baez-Ortega from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom’s Transmissible Cancer Group about the genome of a canine venereal cancer that has been leaping from dog to dog for about 8000 years. By comparing the genomes of this cancer from dogs around the globe, the researchers were able to learn more about its origins and spread around the world. They also discuss how such a long-lived cancer might help them better understand and treat human cancers. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week’s show: Science Sessions podcast from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| Imagine having a rat clinging to your back, sucking out your fat stores. That’s similar to what infested bees endure when the Varroa destructor mite comes calling. Some bees fight back, wiggling, scratching, and biting until the mites depart for friendlier backs. Now, researchers, professional beekeepers, and hobbyists are working on ways to breed into bees these mite-defeating behaviors to rid them of these damaging pests. Host Sarah Crespi and Staff Writer Erik Stokstad discuss the tactics of, and the hurdles to, pesticide-free mite control.
Also this week, Sarah talks to Philip Kragel of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado in Boulder about training an artificial intelligence on emotionally charged images. The ultimate aim of this research: to understand how the human visual system is involved in processing emotion. And in books, Kate Eichorn, author of The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media, joins books host Kiki Sanford to talk about how the monetization of digital information has led to the ease of social media sharing and posting for kids and adults. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Steve Baker/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Can we inherit trauma from our ancestors? Studies of behavior and biomarkers have suggested the stress of harsh conditions or family separations can be passed down, even beyond one’s children. Journalist Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a possible mechanism for this mode of inheritance and mouse studies that suggest possible ways to reverse the effects.
Spiky, pulsating ferrofluids are perpetual YouTube stars. The secret to these dark liquid dances is the manipulation of magnetic nanoparticles in the liquid by external magnets. But when those outside forces are removed, the dance ends. Now, researchers writing in Science have created permanently magnetic fluids that respond to other magnets, electricity, and pH by changing shape, moving, and—yes—probably even dancing. Sarah Crespi talks to Thomas Russell of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst about the about the applications of these squishy, responsive magnets. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| You can learn a lot about ocean health from seabirds. For example, breeding failures among certain birds have been linked to the later collapse of some fisheries. Enriqueta Velarde of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Fisheries at the University of Veracruz in Xalapa, Mexico, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what these long-lived fliers can tell us about the ocean and its inhabitants.
Also this week, Sarah and Cathal O’Madagain of the Ecole Normale Supe?rieure in Paris discuss pointing—a universal human gesture common to almost all children before age 1. They discuss why pointing matters, and how this simple gesture may underlie humans’ amazing ability to collaborate and coordinate. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on the show: Kiwico.com Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: C. O’Madagain et al., Science Advances 2019; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Chemists have long known how to convert carbon dioxide into fuels—but up until now, such processes have been too expensive for commercial use. Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about using new filters and catalysts to close the gap between air-derived and fossil-derived gasoline.
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Nitish Padmanaban of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, about replacing bifocals with “autofocals.” These auto-focusing glasses track your eye position and measure the distance to the visual target before adjusting the thickness of their liquid lenses. The prototype glasses have an onboard camera and batteries that make them particularly bulky; however, they still outperformed progressive lenses in tests of focus speed and acuity. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| Researchers have been making animal embryos from two different species, so-called “chimeras,” for years, by introducing stem cells from one species into a very early embryo of another species. The ultimate goal is to coax the foreign cells into forming an organ for transplantation. But questions abound: Can evolutionarily distant animals, like pigs and humans, be mixed together to produce such organs? Or could species closely related to us, like chimps and macaques, stand in for tests with human cells? Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the research, the regulations, and the growing ethical debate.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Yossi Yovel of the School of Zoology and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University in Israel about his work on sensory integration in bats. Writing in Science Advances, he and his colleagues show through several clever experiments when bats switch between echolocation and vision. Yossi and Sarah discuss how these trade-offs in bats can inform larger questions about our own perception. For our monthly books segment, Science books editor Valerie Thompson talks with Lucy Jones of the Seismological Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena about a song she created, based on 130 years of temperature data, for an instrument called the “viola de gamba.” Read more on the Books et al. blog. Download a transcript (PDF) This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on the show: MagellanTV; KiwiCo Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: The Legend Kay/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| How can you resist puppy dog eyes? This sweet, soulful look might very well have been bred into canines by their intended victims—humans. Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Meagan Cantwell about a new study on the evolution of this endearing facial maneuver. David also talks about what diseased dog spines can tell us about early domestication—were these marks of hard work or a gentler old age for our doggy domestics?
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Michel Marechal of the University of Zurich in Switzerland about honesty around the globe. By tracking about 17,000 wallets left at hotels, post offices, and banks, his team found that we humans are a lot more honest than either economic models or our own intuitions give us credit for. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on the show: MagellanTV Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Molly Marshall/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| We’ve all seen images or animations of hurricanes that color code the wind speeds inside the whirling mass—but it turns out we can do a better job measuring these winds and, as a result, better predict the path of the storm. Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about how a microsatellite-based project for measuring hurricane wind speeds is showing signs of success—despite unexpected obstacles from the U.S. military’s tweaking of GPS signals.
Also this week, Sarah talks with graduate student Samantha Trumbo, a Ph.D. candidate in planetary science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, about spotting chloride salts on the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. What can these salts on the surface tell us about the oceans that lie beneath Europa’s icy crust? Download a transcript (PDF) This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on the show: KiwiCo.com; MagellanTV Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Cheap and easy to make, perovskite minerals have become the wonder material of solar energy. Now, scientists are turning from using perovskites to capture light to using them to emit it. Staff Writer Robert Service joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using these minerals in all kinds of light-emitting diodes, from cellphones to flat screen TVs.
Read the related paper in Science Advances. Also this week, Sarah talks with Caitlin Thurber, a biologist at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, about a hard limit on human endurance. Her group used data from transcontinental racers—who ran 957 kilometers over the course of 20 weeks—and found that after about 100 days, their metabolism settled in at about 2.5 times the baseline rate, suggesting a hard limit on human endurance at long timescales. Earlier studies based on the 23-day Tour de France found much higher levels of energy expenditure, in the four- to five-times-baseline range. Download a transcript (PDF) This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on the show: KiwiCo.com Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: N. Zhou et al., Science Advances 2019; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Up until this year, most U.S. graduate programs in the sciences required the General Record Examination from applicants. But concerns about what the test scores actually say about potential students and the worry that the cost is a barrier to many have led to a rapid and dramatic reduction in the number of programs requiring the test. Science Staff Writer Katie Langin joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this trend and how it differs across disciplines.
Also this week, Sarah talks with DeepMind’s Max Jaderberg in London about training artificial agents to play a video game version of capture the flag. The agents played approximately 4 years’ worth of Quake III Arena and came out better than even expert human players at both cooperating and collaborating, even when their computer-quick reflexes were hampered. And in this month’s book segment, new host Kiki Sanford interviews Marcus Du Satoy about his book The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads this week: KiwiCo.com Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science podcast. [Image: DeepMind; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built with one big goal in mind: to find the Higgs boson. It did just that in 2012. But the question on many physicists’ minds about the LHC is, “What have you done for me lately?” Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about proposals to look at the showers of particles created by its proton collisions in new ways—from changing which events are recorded, to changing how the data are analyzed, even building more detectors outside of the LHC proper—all in the hopes that strange, longer-lived particles are being generated but missed by the current set up.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Tian Li of the University of Maryland in College Park about a modified wood designed to passively cool buildings. Starting from its humble roots in the forest, the wood is given a makeover: First it is bleached white to eliminate pigments that absorb light. Next, it is hot pressed, which adds strength and durability. Most importantly, these processes allow the wood to emit in the middle-infrared range, so that when facing the sky, heat passes through the wood out to the giant heat sink of outer space. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| The groundwater of Rockford, Michigan, is contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals found in everything from nonstick pans to dental floss to—in the case of Rockford—waterproofing agents from a shoe factory that shut down in 2009. Science journalist Sara Talpos talks with host Meagan Cantwell about how locals found the potentially health-harming chemicals in their water, and how contamination from nonstick chemicals isn’t limited to Michigan.
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Shyamnath Gollakota of the University of Washington in Seattle about his work diagnosing ear infections with smartphones. With the right app and a small paper cone, it turns out that your phone can listen for excess fluid in the ear by bouncing quiet clicks from the speaker off the eardrum. Clinical testing shows the setup is simple to use and can help parents and doctors check children for this common infection. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this show: Science Rules! podcast with Bill Nye Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Dennis Wise/University of Washington; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Dog cognition and social behavior have hogged the scientific limelight for years—showing in study after study that canines have social skills essential to their relationships with people. Cats, not so much. These often-fractious felines tend to balk at strange situations—be they laboratories, MRI machines, or even a slightly noisy fan. Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss several brave research labs that have started to work with cats on their terms in order to show they have social smarts comparable to dogs. So far, the results suggest that despite their different ancestors and paths to domestication, cats and dogs have a lot more in common then we previously thought.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Greg Erhardt, assistant professor of civil engineering at University of Kentucky in Lexington about the effect of ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft on traffic in San Francisco, California. His group’s work showed that when comparing 2010 and 2016 traffic, these services contributed significantly to increases in congestion in a large growing city like San Francisco, but questions still remain about how much can be generalized to other cities or lower density areas. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Ads on this show: KiwiCo Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Thomas Hawk/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Humans have sought new materials to make elusive blue pigments for millennia—with mixed success. Today, scientists are tackling this blue-hued problem from many different angles. Host Sarah Crespi talks with contributing correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt about how scientists are looking to algae, bacteria, flowers—even minerals from deep under Earth’s crust—in the age-old quest for the rarest of pigments.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Andrew Whitehead, associate professor in the department of environmental toxicology at the University of California, Davis, about how the Atlantic killifish rescued its cousin, the gulf killifish, from extreme pollution. Whitehead talks about how a gene exchange occurred between these species that normally live thousands of kilometers apart, and whether this research could inform future conservation efforts. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy Download the transcript (PDF) Ads on this show: KiwiCo Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| Noncancerous tumors of the uterus—also known as fibroids—are extremely common in women. One risk factor, according to the scientific literature, is “black race.” But such simplistic categories may actually obscure the real drivers of the disparities in outcomes for women with fibroids, according to this week’s guest. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Jada Benn Torres, an associate professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, about how using interdisciplinary approaches— incorporating both genetic and cultural perspectives—can paint a more complete picture of how race shapes our understanding of diseases and how they are treated.
In our monthly books segment, book review editor Valerie Thompson talks with David Rothenberg, author of the book Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound, about spending time with birds, whales, and neuroscientists trying to understand the aesthetics of human and animal music. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Carlos Delgado/Wikipedia; Matthias Ripp/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have two interviews from the annual meeting of AAAS in Washington D.C.: one on the history of food and one about our own perceptions of food and food waste.
First up, host Sarah Crespi talks with Christina Warinner from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, about the history of dairying. When did people first start to milk animals and where? It turns out, the spread of human genetic adaptations for drinking milk do not closely correspond to the history of consuming milk from animals. Instead, evidence from ancient dental plaque suggests people from all over the world developed different ways of chugging milk—not all of them genetic. Next, Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Sheril Kirshenbaum, co-director of the Michigan State University Food Literacy and Engagement Poll, about the public’s perception of food waste. Do most people try to conserve food and produce less waste? Better insight into the point of view of consumers may help keep billions of kilograms of food from being discarded every year in the United States. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Ads on the show: Columbia University and Magellan TV Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Carefull in Wyoming/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| The ancient humans also known as the “hobbit” people (Homo floresiensis) might have company in their small stature with the discovery of another species of hominin in the Philippines. Host Sarah Crespi talks to Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about what researchers have learned about this hominin from a jaw fragment, and its finger and toe bones and how this fits in with past discoveries of other ancient humans.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Florian Schiestl, a professor in evolutionary biology at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, about his work to understand the rapid evolution of the flowering plant Brassica rapa over the course of six generations. He was able to see how the combination of pollination by bees and risk of getting eaten by herbivores influences the plant’s appearance and defense mechanisms. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Ads on this week's show: Kolabtree.com and Magellan TV Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Florian Schiestl; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A single factory in Malaysia supplies about 10% of the world’s rare earth oxides, used in everything from cellphones to lasers to missiles. Controversy over the final resting place for the slightly radioactive byproducts has pushed the plant to the brink of closure. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with freelance writer Yao Hua Law about calls to ship the waste back to where it was originally mined in Australia, and how stopping production in Malaysia would mean almost all rare earth production would take place in China.
In another global trade story, host Sarah Crespi talks with freelance writer Sam Kean about close links between the slave trade and early naturalists’ efforts to catalog the world’s flora and fauna. Today, historians and museums are just starting to come to grips with the often-ignored relationships between slavers and scientists. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Ads on this show: Kolabtree and MagellanTV Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: James Petiver, 1695; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Southern California’s famous Santa Anita racetrack is struggling to explain a series of recent horse injuries and deaths. Host Meagan Cantwell is joined by freelance journalist Christa Leste-Lasserre to discuss what might be causing these injuries and when the track might reopen.
In our second segment, researchers are racing to understand the impact of jailing people before trial in the United States. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about the negative downstream effects of cash bail—and what research can tell us about other options for the U.S. pretrial justice system. Last up is books, in which we hear about the long, sometimes winding, roads that food can take from its source to your plate. Books editor Valerie Thompson talks with author Robyn Metcalfe about her new work, Food Routes: Growing Bananas in Iceland and Other Tales from the Logistics of Eating. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. *Correction, 1 April, 12 p.m.: A previous version of this podcast included an additional research technique that was not used to investigate the Santa Anita racetrack. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Mark Smith/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Pirate’s gold may not be that far off, as there are valuable metals embedded in potato-size nodules thousands of meters down in the depths of the ocean. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the first deep-sea test of a bus-size machine designed to scoop up these nodules, and its potential impact on the surrounding ecosystem.
In an expedition well above sea level, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down on the asteroid Ryugu last month. And although the craft won’t return to Earth until 2020, researchers have learned a lot about Ryugu in the meantime. Meagan speaks with Seiji Sugita, a professor at the University of Tokyo and principal investigator of the Optical Navigation Camera of Hayabusa 2, about Ryugu’s parent body, and how this study can better inform future asteroid missions. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Daniel Clery about the many, many theories surrounding fast radio bursts—extremely fast, intense radio signals from outside the galaxy—and a new telescope coming online that may help sort them out.
Also this week, Sarah talks with Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel about her story on researchers’ attempts to tackle the long-term effects of pediatric cancer treatment. The survival rate for some pediatric cancers is as high as 90%, but many survivors have a host of health problems. Jennifer’s feature is part of a special section on pediatric cancer. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: ESO/L. Calcada; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| New archaeological evidence suggests the same black plague that decimated Europe also took its toll on sub-Saharan Africa. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about diverse medieval sub-Saharan cities that shrank or even disappeared around the same time the plague was stalking Europe.
In a second archaeological story, Meagan Cantwell talks with Gustavo Politis, professor of archaeology at the National University of Central Buenos Aires and the National University of La Plata, about new radiocarbon dates for giant ground sloth remains found in the Argentine archaeological site Campo Laborde. The team’s new dates suggest humans hunted and butchered ground sloths in the late Pleistocene, about 12,500 years ago. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Ife-Sungbo Archaeological Project; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| In the wake of a devastating earthquake, assessing the extent of damage to infrastructure is time consuming—now, a cheap sensor system based on the accelerometers in cellphones could expedite this process. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade about how these sensor systems work and how they might assist communities after an earthquake.
In another Earth-shaking study, scientists have downgraded the height of the ancient Tibetan Plateau. Most reconstructions estimate that the “rooftop of the world” reached its current height of 4500 meters about 40 million years ago, but a new study suggests it was a mere 3000 meters high during this period. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Svetlana Botsyun, a postdoctoral researcher at Tubingen University in Germany, about her team’s new approach to studying paleoelevation, and how a shorter Tibetan Plateau would have impacted the surrounding area’s climate. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Martin Luff/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| In our first segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (Science’s publisher) in Washington, D.C., host Sarah Crespi talks with Cathy Binger of University of New Mexico in Albuquerque about her session on the role of modern technology, such as iPads and apps, in helping people with communication disorders. It turns out that there’s no killer app, but some devices do help normalize assistive technology for kids.
Also this week, freelance journalist Sarah Scoles joins Sarah Crespi to talk about bringing together satellite imaging, machine learning, and nonprofits to put a stop to modern-day slavery. In our monthly books segment, books editor Valerie Thompson talks with Judy Grisel about her book Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction, including discussions of Gisel’s personal experience with addiction and how it has informed her research as a neuroscientist. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: ILO in Asia and the Pacific/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| The app on your phone tells you the weather for the next 10 days—that’s the furthest forecasters have ever been able to predict. In fact, every decade for the past hundred years, a day has been added to the total forecast length. But we may be approaching a limit—thanks to chaos inherent in the atmosphere. Staff writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how researchers have determined that we will only be adding about 5 more days to our weather prediction apps.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell interviews Trygve Fossum from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim about his article in Science Robotics on an underwater autonomous vehicle designed to sample phytoplankton off the coast of Norway. The device will help researchers form a better picture of the base of many food webs and with continued monitoring, researchers hope to better understand key processes in the ocean such as nutrient, carbon, and energy cycling. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast [Image: Joshua Stevens/NASA Earth Observatory; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Because of its genetic complexity, the potato didn’t undergo a “green revolution” like other staple crops. It can take more than 15 years to breed a new kind of potato that farmers can grow, and genetic engineering just won’t work for tackling complex traits such as increased yield or heat resistance. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Erik Stokstad about how researchers are trying to simplify the potato genome to make it easier to manipulate through breeding.
Researchers and companies are racing to perfect an injector pill—a pill that you swallow, which then uses a tiny needle to shoot medicine into the body. Such an approach could help improve compliance for injected medications like insulin. Host Meagan Cantwell and Staff Writer Robert F. Service discuss a new kind of pill—one that flips itself over once it hits the bottom of the stomach and injects a dose of medication into the stomach lining. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Michael Eric Nickel/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Orla Smith, editor of Science Translational Medicine joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what has changed in the past 10 years of microbiome research, what’s getting close to being useful in treatment, and how strong, exactly, the research is behind those probiotic yogurts.
When you’re sick, sleeping is restorative—it helps your body recover from nasty infections. Meagan Cantwell speaks with Amita Sehgal, professor of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania and an investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, about the process of discovering a gene in fruit flies that links sleep and immune function. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| The “dank” smelling terpenes emitted by growing marijuana can combine with chemicals in car emissions to form ozone, a health-damaging compound. This is especially problematic in Denver, where ozone levels are dangerously high and pot farms have sprung up along two highways in the city. Host Sarah Crespi talks with reporter Jason Plautz about researchers’ efforts to measure terpene emissions from pot plants and how federal restrictions have hampered them.
Next, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Dana Small, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at Yale University, about how processed foods are perceived by the body. In a doughnut-rich world, what’s a body to think about calories, nutrition, and satiety? And in the first book segment of the year, books editor Valerie Thompson is joined by Erika Malim, a history professor at Princeton University, to talk about her book Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America, which follows the rise and fall of the “killer ape hypothesis”—the idea that our capacity for killing each other is what makes us human. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Wornden LY/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| It’s incredibly difficult to get an inkling of what is going on inside gas giants Saturn and Jupiter. But with data deliveries from the Cassini and Juno spacecraft, researchers are starting to learn more. Science Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about new gravity measurements from Cassini’s last passes around Saturn. Using these data, researchers were able to compare wind patterns on Saturn and Jupiter and measure the mass and age of Saturn’s rings. It turns out the rings are young, relatively speaking—they may have formed as recently as 10 million years ago, after dinosaurs went extinct.
Megan Cantwell then talks to science writer Laura Spinney about how researchers are fighting conspiracy theories and political manipulation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the country’s ongoing Ebola outbreak. In a first, the government, nongovernmental organizations, and scientists are working with community leaders to fight misinformation—and they might actually be winning. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Stuart Rankin; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide free lectures and assignments, and gained global attention for their potential to increase education accessibility. Plagued with high attrition rates and fewer returning students every year, MOOCs have pivoted to a new revenue model—offering accredited master’s degrees for professionals. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Justin Reich, an assistant professor in the Comparative Media Studies Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, about the evolution of MOOCs and how these MOOC professional programs may be reaching a different audience than traditional online education.
Archaeologists were flummoxed when they found a brilliant blue mineral in the dental plaque of a medieval-era woman from Germany. It turned out to be lapis lazuli—an expensive pigment that would have had to travel thousands of kilometers from the mines of Afghanistan to a monastery in Germany. Host Sarah Crespi talks to Christina Warinner, a professor of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, about how the discovery of this pigment shed light on the impressive life of the medieval woman, an artist who likely played a role in manuscript production. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image:Oberlin.edu/Wikimedia Commons; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Plan S, an initiative that requires participating research funders to immediately publish research in an open-access journal or repository, was announced in September 2018 by Science Europe with 11 participating agencies. Several others have signed on since the launch, but other funders and journal publishers have reservations. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Contributing Correspondent Tania Rabesandratana about those reservations and how Plan S is trying to change publishing practices and research culture at large.
Some 1.7 million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis in the 22 months of Operation Reinhard (1942–43) which aimed to eliminate all Jews in occupied Poland. But until now, the speed and totality of these murders were poorly understood. It turns out that about one-quarter of all Jews killed during the Holocaust were murdered in the autumn of 1942, during this operation. Meagan talks with Lewi Stone, a professor of biomathematics at Tel Aviv University in Israel and mathematical science at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, about this shocking kill rate, and why researchers are taking a quantitative approach to characterizing genocides. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Michael Beckwith; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| First, we hear Online News Editor David Grimm and host Sarah Crespi discuss audience favorites and staff picks from this year’s online stories, from mysterious pelvises to quantum engines.
Megan Cantwell talks with News Editor Tim Appenzeller about the 2018 Breakthrough of the Year, a few of the runners-up, and some breakdowns. See the whole breakthrough package here, including all the runners-up and breakdowns. And in her final segment for the Science Podcast, host Jen Golbeck talks with Science books editor Valerie Thompson about the year in books. Both also suggest some last-minute additions to your holiday shopping list. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| In 1968, Science published the now-famous paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” by ecologist Garrett Hardin. In it, Hardin questioned society’s ability to manage shared resources, concluding that individuals will act in their self-interest and ultimately spoil the resource. Host Meagan Cantwell revisits this classic paper with two experts: Tine De Moor, professor of economics and social history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Brett Frischmann, a professor of law, business, and economics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. They discuss how premodern societies dealt with common resources and how our current society might apply the concept to a more abstract resource—knowledge.
Not all human skulls are the same shape—and if yours is a little less round, you may have your extinct cousins, the Neanderthals, to thank. Meagan speaks with Simon Fisher, neurogeneticist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, about why living humans with two Neanderthal gene variants have slightly less round heads—and how studying Neanderthal DNA can help us better understand our own biology. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Phillip Gunz; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A new Science investigation reveals several major private research funders—including the Wellcome Trust and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—are making secretive offshore investments at odds with their organizational missions. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with writer Charles Piller about his deep dive into why some private funders choose to invest in these accounts.
In the United States, gun injuries kill more children annually than pediatric cancer, but funding for firearm research pales in comparison. On this week’s show, host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Meredith Wadman and emergency physician Rebecca Cunningham about how a new grant will jump-start research on gun deaths in children. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Bernard Spragg; Music: Jeffrey Cook] *Correction, 27 December, 5 p.m.: The interview on studying gun deaths in children in the United States incorrectly says that NIH spent $3.1 million on research into pediatric gun deaths. The correct figure is $4.4 million.
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| In a fast-changing environment, evolution can be slow—sometimes so slow that an organism dies out before the right mutation comes along. Host Sarah Crespi speaks with Staff Writer Elizabeth Pennisi about how plastic traits—traits that can alter in response to environmental conditions—could help life catch up.
Also on this week’s show, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Marco Ajello a professor of physics and astronomy at Clemson University in South Carolina about his team’s method to determine the universe’s star formation history. By looking at 739 blazars, supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies, Ajello and his team were able to model the history of stars since the big bang. Finally, in this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Christine Du Bois about her book Story of Soy. You can listen to more book segments and read more reviews on our books blog, Books et al. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Read a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| First, we hear from science writer Joshua Sokol about his trip to the Cambrian—well not quite. He talks with host Megan Cantwell about his travels to a remote site in the mountains of British Columbia where some of Earth’s first animals—including a mysterious, alien-looking creature—are spilling out of Canadian rocks.
Also on this week’s show, host Sarah Crespi talks with James Hazel a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Genetic Privacy and Identity in Community Settings at Vanderbilt University in Nashville about a proposal for creating a universal forensic DNA database. He and his co-authors argue that current, invasive practices such as law enforcement subpoenaing medical records, commercial genetic profiles, and other sets of extremely detailed genetic information during criminal investigations, would be curtailed if a forensics-use-only universal database were created. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Read a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast
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| When was the worst year to be alive? Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons talks to host Sarah Crespi about a contender year that features a volcanic eruption, extended darkness, cold summer, and a plague.
Also on this week’s show, host Meagan Cantwell talks with Andrea Di Francesco of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, Maryland, about his review of current wisdom on fasting and metabolism. Should we start fasting—if not to extend our lives maybe to at least to give ourselves a healthy old age? In a special segment from our policy desk, Deputy Editor David Malakoff discusses the results of the recent U.S. election with Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis and we learn what happened to the many scientist candidates that ran and some implications for science policy. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Photo: Scott Suchman; Styling: Nichole Bryant; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A new report suggests a big increase in the use of monkeys in laboratory experiments in the United States in 2017. Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss which areas of research are experiencing this rise and the possible reasons behind it.
Also this week, host Meagan Cantwell talks with staff writer Adrian Cho about a final push to affix the metric system’s measures to physical constants instead of physical objects. That means the perfectly formed 1-kilogram cylinder known as Le Grand K is no more; it also means that the meter, the ampere, and other units of measure are now derived using complex calculations and experiments. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Peter Nijenhuis/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| For a long time, Parkinson’s disease was thought to be merely a disorder of the nervous system. But in the past decade researchers have started to look elsewhere in the body for clues to this debilitating disease—particularly in the gut. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with Viviane Labrie of the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about new research suggesting people without their appendixes have a reduced risk of Parkinson’s. Labrie also describes the possible mechanism behind this connection.
And host Sarah Crespi talks with Peter Fratzl of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, about what materials scientists can learn from nature. The natural world might not produce innovations like carbon nanotubes, but evolution has forged innumerable materials from very limited resources—mostly sugars, proteins, and minerals. Fratzl discusses how plants make time-release seedpods that are triggered by nothing but fire and rain, the amazing suckerin protein that comprises squid teeth, and how cicadas make their transparent, self-cleaning wings from simple building blocks. Fratzl’s review is part of a special section in Science on composite materials. Read the whole package, including a review on using renewables like coconut fiber for building cars and incorporating carbon nanotubes and graphene into composites. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download the transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Roger Smith/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A group of children is suing the U.S. government—claiming their rights to life, liberty, and property are under threat from climate change thanks to government policies that have encouraged the use and extraction of fossil fuels. Host Meagan Cantwell interviews news writer Julia Rosen on the ins and outs of the suit and what it could mean if the kids win the day.
Also this week, host Sarah Crespi talks with Andrew Moeller of Cornell University about his work tracing the gut microbes inherited through 10 generations of mice. It turns out the fidelity is quite high—you can still tell mice lineages apart by their gut microbes after 10 generations. And horizontally transmitted microbes, those that jump from one mouse line to another through exposure to common spaces or handlers, were more likely than inherited bacteria to be pathogenic and were often linked to illnesses in people. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Bob Dass/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| As you age, your cells divide over and over again, leading to minute changes in their genomes. New research reveals that in the lining of the esophagus, mutant cells run rampant, fighting for dominance over normal cells. But they do this without causing any detectable damage or cancer. Host Sarah Crespi talks to Phil Jones, a professor of cancer development at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, about what these genome changes can tell us about aging and cancer, and how some of the mutations might be good for you.
Most Western farmers apply their pesticides using drones and machinery, but in less developed countries, organophosphate pesticides are applied by hand, resulting in myriad health issues from direct exposure to these neurotoxic chemicals. Host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Praveen Vemula, a research investigator at the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in Bengaluru, India, about his latest solution—a cost-effective gel that can be applied to the skin to limit pesticide-related toxicity and mortality. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image:Navid Folpour/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A small isolated town in Colombia is home to a large cluster of people with fragile X syndrome—a genetic disorder that leads to intellectual disability, physical abnormalities, and sometimes autism. Spectrum staff reporter Hannah Furfaro joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the history of fragile X in the town of Ricaurte and the future of the people who live there.
Also this week, we talk about greening up grass. Lawns of green grass pervade urban areas all around the world, regardless of climate, but the cost of maintaining them may outweigh their benefits. Host Meagan Cantwell talks with Maria Ignatieva of The University of Western Australia in Perth and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala about how lawns can be transformed to contribute to a more sustainable future. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Adam Kerfoot-Roberts/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Hoping to spot subatomic particles called neutrinos smashing into Earth, the balloon-borne Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) detector has circled the South Pole four times. ANITA has yet to detect those particles, but it has twice seen oddball radio signals that could be evidence of something even weirder: some heavier particle unknown to physicists’ standard model, burrowing up through Earth. Science writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the possibility that this reading could lead to a big change in physics.
Next, host Meagan Cantwell asks researcher Ben Dalziel what makes a bad—or good—flu year. Traditionally, research has focused on two factors: climate, which impacts how long the virus stays active after a sneeze or cough, and changes in the virus itself, which can influence its infectiousness. But these factors don’t explain every pattern. Dalziel, a population biologist in the Departments of Integrative Biology and Mathematics at Oregon State University in Corvallis, explains how humidity and community size shape the way influenza spreads. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Science has often treated Indigenous people as resources for research—especially when it comes to genomics. Now, Indigenous people are exploring how this type of study can be conducted in a way that respects their people and traditions. Meagan Cantwell talks with contributing correspondent Lizzie Wade about a summer workshop for Indigenous scientists that aims to start a new chapter in genomics.
We’ve known for decades that PCBs—polychlorinated biphenyls—are toxic and carcinogenic. In the 1970s and 1980s, these compounds were phased out of use in industrial and electronic applications, worldwide. But they are still in the environment—in soil and air—and in animal tissues, particularly those of killer whales. These toxic compounds start out at minute levels in tiny organisms, but as the small are eaten by the slightly larger, the PCB concentration increases—from plankton, to fish, to seals—until you are at killer whales with PCB-packed blubber. Ailsa Hall, director of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St. Andrews University in the United Kingdom, talks with host Sarah Crespi about her group’s work measuring PCB levels in different killer whale populations and calculating the effect of PCBs on those populations 100 years from now. In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Damon Centola about his book How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions. You can listen to more books segment and read more reviews on our books blog, Books et al. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Meta-analyses—structured analyses of many studies on the same topic—were once seen as objective and definitive projects that helped sort out conflicts amongst smaller studies. These days, thousands of meta-analyses are published every year—many either redundant or contrary to earlier metaworks. Host Sarah Crespi talks to freelance science journalist Jop de Vrieze about ongoing meta-analysis wars in which opposing research teams churn out conflicting metastudies around important public health questions such as links between violent video games and school shootings and the effects of antidepressants. They also talk about what clues to look for when trying to evaluate the quality of a meta-analysis.
Sarah also talked with three other contributors to our “Research on Research” special issue. Pierre Azoulay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Ben Jones of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and MIT’s Heidi Williams discuss the evidence for some hoary old scientific home truths. See whether you can guess who originally made these claims and how right or wrong they were: Do scientists make great contributions after age 30? How important is it to stand on the shoulders of giants? Does the truth win, or do its opponents just eventually die out? Read the rest of the package on science under scrutiny here. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Davide Bonazzi/@SalzmanArt; Show music: Jeffrey Cook; additional music: Nguyen Khoi Nguyen]
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| Strawberries had both male and female parts, like most plants, until several million years ago. This may seem like a long time ago, but it actually means strawberries have some of the youngest sex chromosomes around. What are the advantages of splitting a species into two sexes? Host Sarah Crespi interviews freelance journalist Carol Cruzan Morton about her story on scientists’ journey to understanding the strawberry’s sexual awakening.
In 2016, experimental Zika vaccines were swiftly developed in response to the emergence of serious birth defects in the babies of infected woman. Two years after the height of Zika cases, there’s so little spread of the virus in the Americas that it has stymied vaccine trials. Researchers hope to overcome this hurdle with “human challenge experiments”—vaccinating people, then intentionally infecting them with Zika to see whether they’re protected from the virus. Meagan Cantwell talks with staff writer Jon Cohen about his news story that highlights the risks and rewards of human challenge experiments. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| We are in the middle of what some scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction and not all at-risk species can be saved. That’s causing some conservationists to say we need to start thinking about “species triage.” Meagan Cantwell interviews freelance journalist Warren Cornwall about his story on weighing the costs of saving Canada’s endangered caribou and the debate among conservationists on new approaches to conservation.
And host Sarah Crespi interviews Hope Michelsen, a staff scientist at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California, about mysterious origins of soot. The black dust has been around since fire itself, but researchers never knew how the high-energy environment of a flame can produce it—until now. Michelsen walks Sarah through the radical chemistry of soot formation—including its formation of free radicals—and discusses soot’s many roles in industry, the environment, and even interstellar space. Check out this useful graphic describing the soot inception process in the related commentary article. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Darren Bertram/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A new project out of the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia, found that of all the experimental social science papers published in Science and Nature from 2010–15, 62% successfully replicated, even when larger sample sizes were used. What does this say about peer review? Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Kelly Servick about how this project stacks up against similar replication efforts, and whether we can achieve similar results by merely asking people to guess whether a study can be replicated.
Podcast producer Meagan Cantwell interviews Emily Brodsky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, about her research report examining why earthquakes occur as far as 10 kilometers from wastewater injection and fracking sites. Emily discusses why the well-established mechanism for human-induced earthquakes doesn’t explain this distance, and how these findings may influence where we place injection wells in the future. In this month’s book podcast, Jen Golbeck interviews Judea Pearl and Dana McKenzie, authors of The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect. They propose that researchers have for too long shied away from claiming causality and provide a road map for bringing cause and effect back into science. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Jens Lambert, Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Small satellites—about the size of a briefcase—have been hitching rides on rockets to lower Earth orbit for decades. Now, because of their low cost and ease of launching, governments and private companies are looking to expand the range of these “sate-lites” deeper into space. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Deputy News Editor Eric Hand about the mods and missions in store for so-called CubeSats.
And our newest podcast producer Meagan Cantwell interviews Quentin Grafton of Australian National University in Canberra and Brad Udall of Colorado State University in Fort Collins about something called the “irrigation efficiency paradox.” As freshwater supplies dry up around the world, policymakers and farmers have been quick to try to make up the difference by improving irrigation, a notorious water waster. It turns out that both human behavior and the difficulty of water measurement are plaguing water conservation efforts in agriculture. For example, when farms find they are using less water, they tend to plant ever-more-water-intensive crops. Now, researchers are trying to get the message out about the behavioral component of this issue and tackle the measurement problem, using cheap remote-sensing technology, but with water scarcity looming ahead, we have to act soon. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: John A. Kelley, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece—known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranean civilizations of Crete and Egypt in a layer of white ash. This geological marker could be used to tie together many ancient historical events, but the estimated date could be off by a century. Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that used tree rings to calibrate radiocarbon readings—and get closer to pinning down a date. The findings also suggest that scientists may need to change their standard radiocarbon dating calibration curve.
Sarah also talks to Tony Belpaeme of Ghent University in Belgium and Plymouth University in the United Kingdom about his Science Robotics paper that explored whether people are susceptible to peer pressure from robots. Using a classic psychological measure of peer influence, the team found that kids from ages 7 to 9 occasionally gave in to social pressure from robot peers, but adults did not. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy, with help from Meagan Cantwell. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Softbank Robotics; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| We now live in the Meghalayan age—the last age of the Holocene epoch. Did you get the memo? A July decision by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, which is responsible for naming geological time periods, divided the Holocene into three ages: the Greenlandian, the Northgrippian, and the Meghalayan. The one we live in—the Meghalayan age (pronounced “megalion”)—is pegged to a global drought thought to have happened some 4200 years ago. But many critics question the timing of this latest age and the global expanse of the drought. Staff writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about the evidence for and against the global drought—and what it means if it’s wrong.
Sarah also talks to staff writer Kelly Servick about her feature story on what happens when biocontrol goes out of control. Here’s the setup: U.S. Department of Agriculture researchers wanted to know whether brown marmorated stink bugs that have invaded the United States could be controlled—aka killed—by importing their natural predators, samurai wasps, from Asia. But before they could find out, the wasps showed up anyway. Kelly discusses how using one species to combat another can go wrong—or right—and what happens when the situation outruns regulators. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Melissa McMasters/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Yes, humans are the only species with language, but how did we acquire it? New research suggests our linguistic prowess might arise from the same process that brought domesticated dogs big eyes and bonobos the power to read others’ intent. Online News Editor Catherine Matacic joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how humans might have self-domesticated themselves, leading to physical and behavioral changes that gave us a “language-ready” brain.
Sarah also talks with Micah Edelson of the University of Zurich in Switzerland about his group’s research into the role that “responsibility aversion”—the reluctance to make decisions for a group—might play when people decide to lead or defer in a group setting. In their experiments, the team found that some people adjusted how much risk they would take on, depending on whether they were deciding for themselves alone or for the entire group. The ones who didn’t—those who stuck to the same plan whether others were involved or not—tended to score higher on standardized tests of leadership and have held higher military rank. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Scaly breasted munia/Ravi Vaidyanathan; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Billions of years ago, Mars probably hosted many water features: streams, rivers, gullies, etc. But until recently, water detected on the Red Planet was either locked up in ice or flitting about as a gas in the atmosphere. Now, researchers analyzing radar data from the Mars Express mission have found evidence for an enormous salty lake under the southern polar ice cap of Mars. Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how the water was found and how it can still be liquid—despite temperatures and pressures typically inhospitable to water in its liquid form.
Read the research. Sarah also talks with science journalist Katherine Kornei about her story on changing athletic performance after gender transition. The feature profiles researcher Joanna Harper on the work she has done to understand the impacts of hormone replacement therapy and testosterone levels in transgender women involved in running and other sports. It turns out within a year of beginning hormone replacement therapy, transgender women plateau at their new performance level and stay in a similar rank with respect to the top performers in the sport. Her work has influenced sports oversight bodies like the International Olympic Committee. In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Andrew Lawler about his book The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Next month’s book will be The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect by Judea Pearl and Dana Mackenzie. Write us at sciencepodcast@aaas.org or tweet to us @sciencemagazine with your questions for the authors. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Henry Howe; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Suckling mothers milk is a pretty basic feature of being a mammal. Humans do it. Possums do it. But monotremes such as the platypus and echidna—although still mammals—gave up suckling long ago. Instead, they lap at milky patches on their mothers’ skin to get early sustenance. Science News Writer Gretchen Vogel talks with host Sarah Crespi about the newest suckling science—it turns out monotremes probably had suckling ancestors, but gave it up for the ability to grind up tasty, hard-shelled, river-dwelling creatures.
Sarah also talks with Sandra Yuter of North Carolina State University in Raleigh about her work on fast-clearing clouds off the southwest coast of Africa. These immense marine layers appear to be exiting the coastal regions under the influence of gravity waves (not to be confused with gravitational waves). This finding can help scientists better model cloud behavior, particularly with respect to their influence on global temperatures. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: North Carolina State University]
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| A detection of a single neutrino at the 1-square-kilometer IceCube detector in Antarctica may signal the beginning of “neutrino astronomy.” The neutral, almost massless particle left its trail of debris in the ice last September, and its source was picked out of the sky by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope soon thereafter. Science News Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the blazar fingered as the source and how neutrinos from this gigantic matter-gobbling black hole could help astronomers learn more about mysterious high-energy cosmic rays that occasionally shriek toward Earth.
Read the research. Sarah also talks with Cornell University’s Susan McCouch about her team’s work on deep-water rice. Rice can survive flooding by fast internodal growth—basically a quick growth spurt that raises its leaves above water. But this growth only occurs in prolonged, deep flooding. How do these plants know they are submerged and how much to grow? Sarah and Susan discuss the mechanisms involved and where they originated. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Wild polio has been hunted to near extinction in a decades-old global eradication program. Now, a vaccine-derived outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is threatening to seriously extend the polio eradication endgame. Deputy News Editor Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the tough choices experts face in the fight against this disease in the DRC.
Sarah also talks with Online News Editor David Grimm about when dogs first came to the Americas. New DNA and archaeological evidence suggest these pups did not arise from North American wolves but came over thousands of years after the first people did. Now that we know where they came from, the question is: Where did they go? Read the research. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript of this episode (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast [Image: Polio virus/David Goodsell/RCSB PDB; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Public opinion on the morality of animal research is on the downswing in the United States. But some researchers think letting the public know more about how animals are used in experiments might turn things around. Online News Editor David Grimm joins Sarah Crespi to talk about these efforts.
Sarah also talks Ken Wachter of the University of California, Berkeley about his group’s careful analysis of data from all living Italians born 105 or more years before the study. It turns out the risk of dying does not continue to accelerate with age, but actually plateaus around the age of 105. What does this mean for attempts to increase human lifespan? In this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck talks with Simon Winchester about his book The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World. Read more book reviews at our books blog, Books et al. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Chris Jones/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Since the 2016 reports of a mysterious assault on U.S. embassy staff in Cuba, researchers have struggled to find evidence of injury or weapon. Now, new research has discovered inner-ear damage in some of the personnel complaining of symptoms. Former International News Editor Rich Stone talks to host Sarah Crespi about the case, including new reports of a similar incident in China, and what kind of weapon—if any—might have been involved.
Sarah also talks with Staff Writer Gretchen Vogel about the bones of an extinct gibbon found in a 2200- to 2300-year-old tomb in China. Although gibbons were often featured in historical poetry and paintings, these bones confirm their presence and the fact that they were distinct from today’s species. Read the research. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Pedro Szekely; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Nigeria, Russia, and Florida seem like an odd set, but they all have one thing in common: growing caseloads of HIV. Science Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this week’s big read on how the fight against HIV/AIDS is evolving in these diverse locations.
Sarah also talks with Armin Raznahan of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, about his group’s work measuring which parts of the human brain are bigger in bigger brains. Adult human brains can vary as much as two times in size—and until now this expansion was thought to be evenly distributed. However, the team found that highly integrative regions are overrepresented in bigger brains, whereas regions related to processing incoming sensory information such as sight and sound tend to be underrepresented. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Misha Friedman; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| What book are you taking to the beach or the field this summer? Science’s books editor Valerie Thompson and host Sarah Crespi discuss a selection of science books that will have you catching comets and swimming with the fishes.
Sarah also talks with Mira Moufarrej of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, about her team’s work on a new blood test that analyzes RNA from maternal blood to determine the gestational age of a fetus. This new approach may also help predict the risk of preterm birth. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: William Warby/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Astronomers have been able to detect supermassive black holes and teeny-weeny black holes but the midsize ones have been elusive. Now, researchers have scanned through archives looking for middle-size galaxies and found traces of these missing middlers. Host Sarah Crespi and Staff Writer Daniel Clery discuss why they were so hard to find in the first place, and what it means for our understanding of black hole formation.
Farming animals and plants for human consumption is a massive operation with a big effect on the planet. A new research project that calculated the environmental impact of global food production shows highly variable results for different foods—and for the same foods grown in different locations. Sarah talks with one of the researchers—Joseph Poore of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom—about how understanding this diversity can help cut down food production’s environmental footprint and help consumers make better choices. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Miltos Gikas/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| DNA fingerprinting has been used to link people to crimes for decades, by matching DNA from a crime scene to DNA extracted from a suspect. Now, investigators are using other parts of the genome—such as markers for hair and eye color—to help rule people in and out as suspects. Staff Writer Gretchen Vogel talks with Sarah Crespi about whether science supports this approach and how different countries are dealing with this new type of evidence.
Sarah also talks with Jill Fernandes of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, about her Science Advances paper on a light-based technique for detecting Zika in mosquitoes. Instead of grinding up the bug and extracting Zika DNA, her group shines near-infrared light through the body. Mosquitoes carrying Zika transmit this light differently from uninfected ones. If it’s successful in larger trials, this technique could make large-scale surveillance of infected mosquitoes quicker and less expensive. In our monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck talks with author Sarah-Jayne Blakemore about her new work: Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain. You can check out more book reviews and share your thoughts on the Books et al. blog. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Two thousand years ago, ancient Romans were pumping lead into the air as they smelted ores to make the silvery coin of the realm. Online News Editor David Grimm talks to Sarah Crespi about how the pollution of ice in Greenland from this process provides a detailed 1900-year record of Roman history.
This week is also resistance week at Science—where researchers explore the global challenges of antibiotic resistance, pesticide resistance, herbicide resistance, and fungicide resistance. Sarah talks with Sarah Gurr of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom about her group’s work on the spread of antifungal resistance and what it means for crops and in the clinic. And in a bonus books segment, staff writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks about medicine and fraud in her review of Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Wheat rust/Oregon State University; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Who were the first horse tamers? Online News Editor Catherine Matacic talks to Sarah Crespi about a new study that brings genomics to bear on the question.
The hunt for the original equine domesticators has focused on Bronze Age people living on the Eurasian steppe. Now, an ancient DNA analysis bolsters the idea that a small group of hunter-gatherers, called the Botai, were likely the first to harness horses, not the famous Yamnaya pastoralists often thought to be the originators of the Indo-European language family. Sarah also talks with News Intern Katie Langin about her feature story on a single salmon gene that may separate spring- and fall-run salmon. Conservationists, regulators, and citizens are fiercely debating the role such a small bit of DNA plays in defining distinct populations. Is the spring run distinct enough to warrant protection? This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Jessica Piispanen/USFWS; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| To study the biological differences brought on by space travel, NASA sent one twin into space and kept another on Earth in 2015. Now, researchers from that project are trying to replicate that work planet-side to see whether the differences in gene expression were due to extreme stress or were specific to being in space. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about a “control” study using what might be a comparably stressful experience here on Earth: climbing Mount Everest.
Catherine also shares a recent study that confirmed what one reddit user posted 5 years ago: A single path stretching from southern Pakistan to northeastern Russia will take you on the longest straight-line journey on Earth, via the ocean. Finally, Sarah talks with Roland Kroger of the University of York in the United Kingdom about his group’s study published this week in Science. Using a combination of techniques usually reserved for materials science, the group explored the nanoscale arrangement of mineral in bone, looking for an explanation of the tissue’s contradictory combination of toughness and hardness. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Human bone (20X) by Berkshire Community College Bioscience Image Library; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Researchers have found new clues to how the “talking drums” of one Amazonian tribe convey their messages. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about the role of tone and rhythm in this form of communication.
Getting poked with a needle will probably get you moving. Apparently, it also gets charges moving in certain semiconductive materials. Sarah interviews Marin Alexe of The University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K., about this newfound flexo-photovoltaic effect. Alexe’s group found that prodding or denting certain semiconductors with tiny needles causes them to suddenly produce current in response to light. That discovery could enhance the efficiency of current of solar cell technologies. Finally, in our books segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Lucy Cooke about her new book The Truth About Animals: Stoned Sloths, Lovelorn Hippos, and Other Tales from the Wild Side of Wildlife. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Adam Levine/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Armed with new data, archaeologists are revealing that mind-altering drugs were present at the dawn of the first complex societies some 5000 years ago in the ancient Middle East. Contributing writer Andrew Lawler joins Sarah Crespi to discuss the evidence for these drugs and how they might have impacted early societies and beliefs.
Sarah also interviews Sarah Hobbie of the University of Minnesota about the fate of plants under climate change. Will all that extra carbon dioxide in the air be good for certain types of flora? A 20-year long study published this week in Science suggests theoretical predictions have been off the mark. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Public domain Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Geneticists and anthropologists studying historical records and modern-day genomes are finding traces of previously unknown migrants to Latin America in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Asians, Africans, and Europeans first met indigenous Latin Americans. Sarah Crespi talks with contributing correspondent Lizzie Wade about what she learned on the topic at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists’s annual meeting in Austin.
Sarah also interviews Kang-Keun Ni about her research using optical tweezers to bring two atoms—one cesium and one sodium—together into a single molecule. Such precise control of molecule formation is allowing new observations of these basic processes and is opening the door to creating new molecules for quantum computing. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Juan Fernando Ibarra; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A millennium ago, Viking navigators may have used crystals known as “sunstones” to navigate between Norway and Greenland. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor David Grimm about how one might use a crystal to figure out where they are.
Sarah also interviews freelancer Danna Staaf about her piece on sedating cephalopods. Until recently, researchers working with octopuses and squids faced the dilemma of not knowing whether the animals were truly sedated or whether only their ability to respond had been suppressed. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Nicholas Roerich, Guests from Overseas; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Two of the world’s most famous research chimpanzees have finally retired. Hercules and Leo arrived at a chimp sanctuary in Georgia last week. Sarah Crespi checks in with Online News Editor David Grimm on the increasing momentum for research chimp retirement since the primates were labeled endangered species in 2015.
Sarah also interviews freelancer Sophia Chen about her piece on x-ray ghost imaging—a technique that may lead to safer medical imaging done with cheap, single-pixel cameras. David Malakoff joins Sarah to talk about the big boost in U.S. science funding signed into law over the weekend. Finally, Jen Golbeck interviews author Stephanie Elizabeth Mohr on her book First in Fly: Drosophila Research and Biological Discovery for our monthly books segment. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Crystal Alba/Project Chimps; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Researchers are converging on which genes are linked to morning sickness—the nausea and vomiting associated with pregnancy—and the more severe form: hyperemesis gravidarum (HG). And once we know what those genes are—can we help pregnant women feel better? News intern Roni Dengler joins Sarah Crespi to talk about a new study that suggests a protein already flagged for its role in cancer-related nausea may also be behind HG.
In a second segment, Tracy Bedrosian of the Neurotechnology Innovations Translator talks about how the amount of time spent being licked by mom might be linked to changes in the genetic code of hippocampal neurons in mice pups. Could these types of genomic changes be a new type of plasticity in the brain? This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Jacob Botter/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| When Indonesia’s Mount Toba blew its top some 74,000 years ago, an apocalyptic scenario ensued: Tons of ash and debris entered the atmosphere, coating the planet in ash for 2 weeks straight and sending global temperatures plummeting. Despite the worldwide destruction, humans survived. Sarah Crespi talks with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic about how life after Toba was even possible—were humans decimated, or did they rally in the face of a suddenly extra hostile planet?
Next, Julia Buck of the University of California, Santa Barbara, joins Sarah to discuss her Science commentary piece on landscapes of disgust. You may have heard of a landscape of fear—how a predator can influence an ecosystem not just by eating its prey, but also by introducing fear into the system, changing the behavior of many organisms. Buck and colleagues write about how disgust can operate in a similar way: Animals protect themselves from parasites and infection by avoiding disgusting things such as dead animals of the same species or those with disease. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Emma Forsber/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Did people domesticate animals? Or did they domesticate themselves? Online News Editor David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about a recent study that looked at self-domesticating mice. If they could go it alone, could cats or dogs have done the same in the distant past?
Next, Sinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge joins Sarah to discuss his work on true and false rumor cascades across all of Twitter, since its inception. He finds that false news travels further, deeper, and faster than true news, regardless of the source of the tweet, the kind of news it was, or whether bots were involved. In a bonus segment recording during a live podcasting event at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Sarah first speaks with Ben Munson of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis about markers of gender and sexual orientation in spoken language and then Adrienne Hancock of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., talks about using what we know about gender and communication to help transgender women change their speech and communication style. Live recordings sessions at the AAAS meeting were supported by funds from the European Commission. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Rudolf Jakkel (CC0); Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| For some time after the big bang there were no stars. Researchers are now looking at cosmic dawn—the time when stars first popped into being—and are seeing hints of dark matter’s influence on supercold hydrogen clouds. News Writer Adrian Cho talks with Sarah Crespi about how this observation was made and what it means for our understanding of dark matter.
Sarah also interviews Joanna Kaplanis of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, U.K., about constructing enormous family trees based on an online social genealogy platform. What can we learn from the biggest family tree ever built—with 13 million members spanning 11 generations? In a bonus segment recording during a live podcasting event at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Sarah talks with Michael Varnum of Arizona State University in Tempe about what people think they will do if humanity comes into contact with aliens that just happen to be microbes. Live recordings sessions at the AAAS meeting were supported by funds from the European Commission. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Kilo-Degree Survey Collaboration/H. Hildebrandt & B. Giblin/ESO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| We talk about the techniques of painting sleuths, how to combat alternative facts or “fake news,” and using audio signposts to keep birds from flying into buildings. For this segment, David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with host Sarah Crespi as part of a live podcast event from the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin.
Sarah also interviews Science News Editor Tim Appenzeller about Neandertal art. The unexpected age of some European cave paintings is causing experts to rethink the mental capabilities of our extinct cousins. For the monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck interviews with William Glassley about his book, A Wilder Time: Notes from a Geologist at the Edge of the Greenland Ice. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Marcus Trienke/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Some of our genes come alive after we die. David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about which genes are active after death and what we can learn about time of death by looking at patterns of postmortem gene expression.
Sarah also interviews David Merritt Johns of Columbia University about the so-called sugar conspiracy. Historical evidence suggests, despite recent media reports, it is unlikely that “big sugar” influenced U.S. nutrition policy and led to the low-fat diet fad of the ’80s and ’90s. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Lauri Andler (Phantom); Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Would happy lab animals—rats, mice, even zebrafish—make for better experiments? David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about the potential of treating lab animals more like us and making them more useful for science at the same time.
Sarah also interviews Jon Abbatt of the University of Toronto in Canada about indoor chemistry. What is going on in the air inside buildings—how different is it from the outside? Researchers are bringing together the tools of outdoor chemistry and building sciences to understand what is happening in the air and on surfaces inside—where some of us spend 90% of our time. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Austin Thomason/Michigan Photography; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about the chance a naked mole rat could die at any one moment. Surprisingly, the probability a naked mole rat will die does not go up as it gets older. Researchers are looking at the biology of these fascinating animals for clues to their seeming lack of aging.
Sarah also interviews freelancer Douglas Starr about his feature story on the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study—a comprehensive study of the lives of all the babies born in 1 year in a New Zealand hospital. Starr talks about the many insights that have come out of this work—including new understandings of criminality, drug addiction, and mental illness—and the research to be done in the future as the 1000-person cohort begins to enter its fifth decade. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Tim Evanson/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Catherine Matacic—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about how geoengineering could reduce the harshest impacts of climate change, but make them even worse if it were ever turned off.
Sarah also interviews Augustine Kong of the Big Data Institute at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom about his Science paper on the role of noninherited “nurturing genes.” For example, educational attainment has a genetic component that may or may not be inherited. But having a parent with a predisposition for attainment still influences the child—even if those genes aren’t passed down. This shift to thinking about other people (and their genes) as the environment we live in complicates the age-old debate on nature versus nurture. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Collection of Dr. Pablo Clemente-Colon, Chief Scientist National Ice Center; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Freelance science writer Michael Price talks with Sarah Crespi about recently revealed deliberations for a coveted mathematics prize: the Fields Medal. Unearthed letters suggest early award committees favored promise and youth over star power.
Sarah also interviews Julia Dressel about her Science Advances paper on predicting recidivism—the likelihood that a criminal defendant will commit another crime. It turns out computers aren’t better than people at these types of predictions, in fact—both are correct only about 65% of the time. Jen Golbeck interviews Paul Shapiro about his book, Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, in our monthly books segment. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Greg Chiasson/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about two underwater finds: the first sharks shown to survive off of seagrass and what fossilized barnacles reveal about ancient whale migrations.
Sarah also interviews Staff Writer Adrian Cho about what happens after quantum computing achieves quantum supremacy—the threshold where a quantum computer’s abilities outstrip nonquantum machines. Just how useful will these machines be and what kinds of scientific problems might they tackle? Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Aleria Jensen, NOAA/NMFS/AKFSC; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| David Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about a long-term project monitoring raccoon latrines in California. What influence do these wild bathrooms have on the ecosystem?
Sarah also interviews Christian Jobin of the University of Florida in Gainesville about his Perspective on three papers linking the success of cancer immunotherapy with microbes in the gut—it turns out which bacteria live in a cancer patient’s intestines can predict their response to this cutting-edge cancer treatment. Read the related papers: Routy et al., Gut microbiome influences efficacy of PD-1–based immunotherapy against epithelial tumors, Science 2018 Gopalakrishnan et al., Gut microbiome modulates response to anti–PD-1 immunotherapy in melanoma patients, Science 2018 Matson et al., The commensal microbiome is associated with anti–PD-1 efficacy in metastatic melanoma patients, Science 2018 aan4236 Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: cuatrok77/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Dave Grimm—online news editor for Science—talks with Sarah Crespi about a few of this year’s top stories from our online news site, like ones on a major error in the monarch butterfly biological record and using massive balloons to build tunnels, and why they were chosen. Hint: It’s not just the stats.
Sarah also interviews Staff Writer Adrian Cho about the 2017 Breakthrough of the Year. Adrian talks about why Science gave the nod to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory team for a second year in a row—for the detection of a pair of merging neutron stars. Jen Golbeck is also back for the last book review segment of the year. She talks with Sarah about her first year on the show, her favorite books, what we should have covered, and some suggestions for books as gifts. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: f99aq8ove/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Whales and dolphins have incredibly sensitive hearing and are known to be harmed by loud underwater noises. David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about new research on captive cetaceans suggesting that some species can naturally muffle such sounds—perhaps opening a way to protect these marine mammals in the wild.
Sarah also interviews Staff Writer Jeffrey Mervis about his story on the future of autonomous cars. Will they really reduce traffic and make our lives easier? What does the science say? Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Laura Wolf/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, three papers came out describing new approaches to folding DNA into large complex shapes—20 times bigger than previous DNA sculptures. Staff Writer Bob Service talks with Sarah Crespi about building microscopic teddy bears, doughnuts, and more from genetic material, and using these techniques to push forward fields from materials science to drug delivery.
Sarah also interviews Philip Cook of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, about his Policy Forum on gun regulation research. It’s long been hard to collect data on gun violence in the United States, and Cook talks about how some researchers are getting funding and hard data. He also discusses some strong early results on open-carry laws and links between gun control and intimate partner homicide. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: : K. WAGENBAUER ET AL., NATURE, VOL. 551, 2017; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| The abominable snowman, the yeti, bigfoot, and sasquatch—these long-lived myths of giant, hairy hominids depend on dropping elusive clues to stay in the popular imagination—a blurry photo here, a big footprint there—but what happens when scientists try to pin that evidence down? Online News Editor David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about the latest attempts to verify the yeti’s existence using DNA analysis of bones and hair and how this research has led to more than the debunking of a mythic creature.
Sarah also interviews Alison Macintosh of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom about her investigation of bone, muscle, and behavior in prehistory female farmers—what can a new database of modern women’s bones—athletes and regular folks—tell us about the labor of women as humans took up farming? Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Didier Descouens/CC BY SA 3.0; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| About 8000 years ago, people were drawing dogs with leashes, according to a series of newly described stone carvings from Saudi Arabia. Online News Editor David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about reporting on this story and what it says about the history of dog domestication.
Sarah also interviews physicist Brad Marston of Brown University on surprising findings that bring together planetary science and quantum physics. It turns out that Earth’s rotation and the presence of oceans and atmosphere on its surface mean it can be described as a “topological insulator”—a term usually reserved for quantum phenomena. Insights from the study of these effects at the quantum level may help us understand weather and currents at the planetary level—including insights into climate change and exoplanets. Listen to previous podcasts.
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| How has written language changed over time? Do the way we read and the way our eyes work influence how scripts look? This week we hear a story on changes in legibility in written texts with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Sarah Crespi also interviews Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel on her story about detecting signs of psychosis in kids and teens, recruiting at-risk individuals for trials, and searching for anything that can stop the progression. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Procsilas Moscas/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on what to do with experimental brain implants after a study is over, how gene therapy gave a second skin to a boy with a rare epidermal disease, and how bone markings thought to be evidence for early hominid tool use may have been crocodile bites instead, with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Sarah Crespi interviews Gary King about his new experiment to bring fresh data to the age-old question of how the news media influences the public. Are journalists setting the agenda or following the crowd? How can you know if a news story makes a ripple in a sea of online information? In a powerful study, King’s group was able to publish randomized stories on 48 small and medium sized news sites in the United States and then track the results. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Chad Sparkes/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on how the sloshing of Earth’s core may spike major earthquakes, carbon monoxide’s role in keeping deep diving elephant seals oxygenated, and a festival celebrating heavily researched yet completely nonsensical theories with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi interviews staff writer Jocelyn Kaiser about the status of gene therapy, including a newly tested gene-delivering virus that may give scientists a new way to treat devastating spinal and brain diseases. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Robert Schwemmer, CINMS, NOAA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on sunlight pushing Mars’s flock of asteroids around, approximately 400-million-year-old trees that grew by splitting their guts, and why fighting poverty might also mean worsening climate change with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks with cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene of the Coll?ge de France in Paris about consciousness—what is it and can machines have it? For our monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck reviews astronaut Scott Kelly’s book Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: NASA/Goddard; Music: Jeffrey Cook]?
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| This week we hear stories about the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s latest hit, why wolves are better team players than dogs, and volcanic eruptions that may have triggered riots in ancient Egypt with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Sarah Crespi interviews contributing correspondent Lizzie Wade about the soon-to-open Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. Can it recover from early accusations of forgeries and illicitly obtained artifacts? Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Public Domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories about a new brain imaging technique for newborns, recently uncovered evidence on rice domestication on three continents, and why Canada geese might be migrating into cities, with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi interviews Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania about the age and diversity of genes related to skin pigment in African genomes. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Danny Chapman/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories about putting rescue bots to the test after the Mexico earthquake, why a Scottish village was buried in sand during the Little Ice Age, and efforts by the U.S. military to predict posttraumatic stress disorder with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Andrew Wagner interviews Alexandra Tinnermann of the University Medical Center of Hamburg, Germany, about the nocebo effect. Unlike the placebo effect, in which you get positive side effects with no treatment, in the nocebo effect you get negative side effects with no treatment. It turns out both nocebo and placebo effects get stronger with a drug perceived as more expensive. Read the research. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Chris Burns/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on how a bat varies its heart rate to avoid starving, giant wombatlike creatures that once migrated across Australia, and the downsides of bedbugs’ preference for dirty laundry with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks Jocelyn Kaiser about her guide to preprint servers for biologists—what they are, how they are used, and why some people are worried about preprint publishing’s rising popularity. For our monthly book segment, Jen Golbeck talks to author Sandra Postel about her book, Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle of Water and Prosperity. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: tap10/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on animal hoarding, how different languages have different numbers of colors, and how to tell a wakeful jellyfish from a sleeping one with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic, Brice Russ, and Sarah Crespi.
Andrew Wagner talks to Karl-Heinz Kampert about a long-term study of the cosmic rays blasting our planet. After analyzing 30,000 high-energy rays, it turns out some are coming from outside the Milky Way. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Doug Letterman/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on the gut microbiome’s involvement in multiple sclerosis, how wildfires start—hint: It’s almost always people—and a new record in quantum computing with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Andrew Wagner talks to Lulu Qian about DNA-based robots that can carry and sort cargo. Sarah Crespi goes behind the scenes with Science’s Photography Managing Editor Bill Douthitt to learn about snapping this week’s cover photo of the world’s smallest neutrino detector. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Curtis Perry/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on smooth sailing with giant, silolike sails, a midsized black hole that may be hiding out in the Milky Way, and new water-cooling solar panels that could cut air conditioning costs with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Sabrina McCormick about climate science in the U.S. courts and the growing role of the judiciary in climate science policy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on involving more AIs in negotiations, tiny algae that might be responsible for killing some (not all) dinosaurs, and a chemical intended to make farm fish grow faster that may be also be causing one area’s crocodile population to skew male—with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Rich Stone about being on the scene for a joint U.S.-China mission to remove bomb-grade fuel from a nuclear reactor in Ghana. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image:Chad Sparkes; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Sarah Crespi talks to Sam Smits about how our microbial passengers differ from one culture to the next—are we losing diversity and the ability to fight chronic disease?
For our books segment, Jen Golbeck talks with Vyvyan Evans about his book The Emoji Code: The Linguistics Behind Smiley Faces and Scaredy Cats. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Woodlouse/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on a big jump in U.S. rates of knee arthritis, some science hits and misses from past eclipses, and the link between a recently discovered thousand-year-old Viking fortress and your Bluetooth earbuds with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Daniel Apai about a long-term study of brown dwarfs and what patterns in the atmospheres of these not-quite-stars, not-quite-planets can tell us. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on new satellite measurements that suggest the Amazon makes its own rain for part of the year, puppies raised with less smothering moms do better in guide dog school, and what DNA can tell us about ancient Greeks’ near mythical origins with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Lizzie Wade about coastal and underwater evidence of a watery route for the Americas’ first people. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Lizzie Wade; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease in chimps, a potential new pathway to diabetes—through prions—and what a database of industrial espionage says about the economics of spying with Online News Editors David Grimm and Catherine Matacic.
Sarah Crespi talks to Innes Cuthill about how the biology of color intersects with behavior, development, and vision. And Mary Soon Lee joins to share some of her chemistry haiku—one poem for each element in the periodic table. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Zoltan Tasi/Unsplash; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we hear stories on turning data sets into symphonies for business and pleasure, why so much of the world is stuck in the poverty trap, and calls for stiffening statistical significance with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to news writer Ann Gibbons about the biology of ancient books—what can we learn from DNA, proteins, and book worm trails about a book, its scribes, and its readers? Listen to previous podcasts. [Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on the genes that may make dogs friendly, why midsized animals are the fastest, and what it would take to destroy all the life on our planet with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Seema Jayachandran about paying cash to Ugandan farmers to not cut down trees—does it reduce deforestation in the long term? Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Kerrick/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we have stories on how ultraviolet rays may have jump-started the first enzymes on Earth, a new fossil find that helps date how quickly birds diversified after the extinction of all the other dinosaurs, and a drug that may help reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury on memory with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic and special guest Carolyn Gramling.
Sarah Crespi talks to Christian Catalini about an experiment in which some early adopters were denied access to new technology and what it means for the dissemination of that tech. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Michael Wuensch/Creative Commons Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on the twisty tree of human ancestry, why mice shed weight when they can’t smell, and the damaging effects of even a small amount of oil on a bird’s feathers—with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to News Editor Tim Appenzeller about a special section on how artificial intelligence is changing the way we do science. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: © 2012 CERN, FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE ALICE COLLABORATION; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on what the rogue Parkinson’s protein is doing in the gut, how chimps outmuscle humans, and evidence for an ancient skull cult with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Jen Golbeck is back with this month’s book segment. She interviews Alan Alda about his new book on science communication: If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? Sarah Crespi talks to Jeremy Kerr about two huge studies that take a nuanced looked at the relationship between pesticides and bees. Read the research in Science: Country-specific effects of neonicotinoid pesticides on honey bees and wild bees, B.A. Woodcock et al. Chronic exposure to neonicotinoids reduces honey bee health near corn crops, Tsvetkov et al. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: webted/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on the new capabilities of science balloons, connections between deforestation and drug trafficking in Central America, and new insights into the role ancient Egypt had in taming cats with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Mary Caswell Stoddard about why bird eggs come in so many shapes and sizes. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image:; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on why it’s taking so long for research chimps to retire, boosting melanin for a sun-free tan, and tracking a mouse trail to find liars online with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to Allison Rubin about what we can learn from zircon crystals outside of a volcano about how long hot magma hangs out under a volcano. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Project Chimps; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on what body cams reveal about interactions between black drivers and U.S. police officers, the world’s oldest Homo sapiens fossils, and how modern astronomers measured the mass of a star—thanks to an old tip from Einstein—with Online News Intern Ryan Cross.
Sarah Crespi talks to Eyal Ben-David about a pair of selfish genes—one toxin and one antidote—that have been masquerading as essential developmental genes in a nematode worm. She asks how many more so-called “essential genes” are really just self-perpetuating freeloaders? Science Careers Editor Rachel Bernstein is also here to talk about stress and work-life balance for researchers and science students. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Chris Burns/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on how we taste water, extracting ancient DNA from mummy heads, and the earliest evidence for dog breeding with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Sarah Crespi talks to John Travis about postsurgical cognitive dysfunction—does surgery sap your brain power? Listen to previous podcasts. [Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on strange dimming at a not-so-distant star, sending sperm to the International Space Station, and what the fossil record tells us about how baleen whales got so ginormous with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Julia Rosen talks to Scott Bolton about surprises in the first data from the Juno mission, including what Jupiter’s poles look like and a peak under its outer cloud layers. Listen to previous podcasts. [Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on blocking dangerous or annoying distractions in augmented reality, gene therapy applied with ultrasound to heal bone breaks, and giving robots geckolike gripping power with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Deputy News Editor Elizabeth Culotta joins Sarah Crespi to discuss a special package on human migrations—from the ancient origins of Europeans to the restless and wandering scientists of today. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: Public domain; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we have stories on ancient hominids that may have coexisted with early modern humans, methane seeps in the Arctic that could slow global warming, and understanding color without words with Online News Intern Lindzi Wessel.
John McGann joins Sarah Crespi to discuss long-standing myths about our ability to smell. It turns out people are probably a lot better at detecting odors than scientists thought! Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Streluk/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we discuss the most accurate digital model of a human face to date, stray Wi-Fi signals that can be used to spy on a closed room, and artificial intelligence that can predict Supreme Court decisions with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic.
Caroline Hartley joins Sarah Crespi to discuss a scan that can detect pain in babies—a useful tool when they can’t tell you whether something really hurts. Listen to previous podcasts. See more book segments.
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| This week, a new family tree of dog breeds, advances in artificial wombs, and an autonomous robot that can print a building with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Viviane Slon joins Sarah Crespi to discuss a new way to seek out ancient humans—without finding fossils or bones—by screening sediments for ancient DNA. Jen Golbeck interviews Andrew Shtulman, author of Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theories About the World Are So Often Wrong for this month’s book segment. Listen to previous podcasts. See more book segments. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: nimis69/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, meteors’ hiss may come from radio waves, pigeons that build on the wings of those that came before, and a potential answer to the century-old mystery of what turned two lions into people eaters with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Elise Amel joins Julia Rosen to discuss the role of evolution and psychology in humans’ ability to overcome norms and change the world, as part of a special issue on conservation this week in Science. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript Transcripts courtesy Scribie.com [Image: bjdlzx/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, walk like an elephant—very far, with seeds in your guts, Cassini’s mission to Saturn wraps up with news on the habitability of its icy moon Enceladus, and how our shoes manage to untie themselves with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Aylin Caliskan joins Sarah Crespi to discuss how biases in our writing may be perpetuated by the machines that learn from them. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, viruses as remnants of a fourth domain of life, a scan of many Tibetan genomes reveals seven new genes potentially related to high-altitude life, and doubts about dark energy with Online News Editor David Grimm.
Danielle Li joins Sarah Crespi to discuss her study quantifying the impact of government funding on innovation by linking patents to U.S. National Institutes of Health grants. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: artubo/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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This week, how to avoid contaminating Mars with microbial hitchhikers, turning mammalian cells into biocomputers, and a look at how underground labs in China are creating synthetic opioids for street sales in the United States with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Caitlin Hicks Pries joins Julia Rosen to discuss her study of the response of soil carbon to a warming world. And for this month’s book segment, Jen Golbeck talks to Rob Dunn about his book Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, new estimates for the depths of the world’s lakes, a video game that could help kids be safer bike riders, and teaching autonomous cars to read road signs with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Ariana Orvell joins Sarah Crespi to discuss her study of how the word “you” is used when people recount meaningful experiences.
Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: VisualCommunications/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, what bear-mounted cameras can tell us about their caribou-hunting habits, ants that mix up their own medicine, and feeling alienated by emotional robots with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Lizzie Wade joins Sarah Crespi to discuss new thinking on the origins of democracy outside of Europe, based on archeological sites in Mexico.
Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: rpbirdman/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, how Flickr photos could help predict floods, why it might be a good idea to ignore some cyberattacks, and new questions about the existence of human pheromones with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Sarah Richardson joins Alexa Billow to discuss a global project to build a set of working yeast chromosomes from the ground up.
Read Sarah Richardson’s research in Science. Listen to previous podcasts. Download the show transcript. Transcripts courtesy of Scribie.com. [Image: Drew Gurian; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about the science behind breaking the 2-hour marathon barrier, storing data in DNA strands, and a dinosaur’s zigzagging backbones with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. And Carolina Levis joins Alexa Billow to discuss evidence that humans have been domesticating the Amazon’s plants a lot longer than previously thought. Read Carolina Levis’s research in Science. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Carolina Levis; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about why people are nice to each other—does it feel good or are we just avoiding feeling bad—approaches to keeping arsenic out of the food supply, and using artificial intelligence to figure out what a chemical smells like to a human nose with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Stephen Brusatte joins Alexa Billow to discuss why dinosaurs evolved wings and feathers before they ever flew. And in the latest installment of our monthly books segment, Jen Golbeck talks with Bill Schutt, author of Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History.
Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Todd Marshall; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about what it means if a monkey can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, injecting people with live malaria parasites as a vaccine strategy, and insect-inspired wind turbines with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Joleah Lamb joins Alexa Billow to discuss how seagrass can greatly reduce harmful microbes in the ocean—protecting people and corals from disease. Read the research. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: peters99/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about why grizzly bears seem to be dying on Canadian railway tracks, slow-release fertilizers that reduce environmental damage, and cleaning water with the power of the sun on the cheap, with Online News Editor David Grimm. And David Malakoff joins Alexa Billow to discuss a package of stories on the role of science and evidence in policymaking[link TK]. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: tacky_ch/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about how the Earth is sending oxygen to the moon, using a GPS data set to hunt for dark matter, and retrieving 80-million year old proteins from dinosaur bones, with Online News Editor David Grimm. And Philip Tetlock joins Alexa Billow to discuss improving our ability to make judgments about the future through forecasting competitions as part of a special section on prediction in this week’s issue of Science.
Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about 50-kilogram otters that once stalked southern China, using baseball stats to show how jet lag puts players off their game, and a growing link between pollution and dementia, with Online News Editor David Grimm. Also in this week’s show: our very first monthly book segment. In the inaugural segment, Jen Golbeck interviews Helen Pilcher about her new book Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-extinction. Plus Denise Tieman joins Alexa Billow to discuss the genes behind tomato flavor, or lack thereof. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Dutodom; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about a surprising reason why killer whales undergo menopause, flipping a kill switch in mice with lasers, and Fukushima residents who measured their own radiation exposure[link tk], with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Stephen Elledge about the relationship between chromosomal abnormalities in tumors and immunotherapy for cancer. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Copyright Kenneth Balcomb Center for Whale Research; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about a blood test that could predict recovery time after a concussion, new insights into the bizarre hagfish’s anatomy, and a cheap paper centrifuge based on a toy, with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Christian Koerner about why just planting any old tree isn’t the answer to our carbon problem.
Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about how long dinosaur eggs take—or took—to hatch, a new survey that confirms the world’s hot spots for lightning, and replenishing endangered species with feral pets with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Megan Gannon about the dilemma presented by tissue samples collected during the Nazi era. And Sarah Crespi discusses a new test for mad cow disease with Kelly Servick. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: NASA/flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about human evolution in action, 6000-year-old fairy tales, and other top news stories from 2016 with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to News Editor Tim Appenzeller about this year’s breakthrough, runners-up, breakdowns, and how Science’s predictions from last year help us. In a bonus segment, Science book review editor Valerie Thompson talks about the big science books of 2016 and science books for kids. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Warwick Goble; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about what talking monkeys would sound like, a surprising virus detected in ancient pottery, and six cloned horses that helped win a big polo match with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to news writer Lizzie Wade about what forensic anthropologists can do to help parent groups find missing family members in Mexico. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: (c) Felix Marquez; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about cleaning blueberries with purple plasma, how Tibetan dogs adapted to high-altitude living, and who’s checking ocelot message boards with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Joe Paton about how we know time flies when mice are having fun. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Joseph Sites/USDA ARS; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about kissing communication in ants, building immune strength by climbing the social ladder, and a registry for animal research with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Bjorn Emonts about the birth of stars in the Spiderweb Galaxy 10 billion years ago. Related research on immune function and social hierarchy. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Lauren Brent; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about cement’s shrinking carbon footprint, commuting hazards for ancient Egyptian artisans, and a new bipartisan group opposed to government-funded animal research in the United States with Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to news writer Sam Kean about the kinds of data that can only be gathered at night as part of the special issue on circadian biology. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: roomauction/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week we chat about why it’s hard to get a taxi to nowhere, why bones came onto the scene some 550 million years ago, and how targeting bacteria’s predilection for iron might make better vaccines, with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks with news writer Elizabeth Pennisi about the way hybrids muck up the concept of species and turn the evolutionary tree into a tangled web. Listen to previous podcasts [Image: Raul Gonzalez Alegria; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—is Bhutan really a quake-free zone, how much of scientific success is due to luck, and what farming changed about dogs and us—with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Katelyn Gostic of the University of California, Los Angeles, about how the first flu you came down with—which depends on your birth year—may help predict your susceptibility to new flu strains down the road. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image:monkeybusinessimages/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, news writer Greg Miller chats with us about how the legalization of marijuana in certain U.S. states is having an impact on the nation’s opioid problem. Plus, Sarah Crespi talks to Sascha Drewlo about a new method for profiling the DNA of fetuses very early on in pregnancy. [Image: OpenRangeStock/iStockphoto/Music: Jeffrey Cook] ++ Authors: Sarah Crespi; Alexa Billow
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| This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—eating rats in the Neolithic, growing evidence for a gargantuan 9th planet in our solar system, and how to keep just the good parts of a hookworm infection—with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Alexa Billow talks to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Maria Zuber about NASA’s GRAIL spacecraft, which makes incredibly precise measurements of the moon’s gravity. This week’s guest used GRAIL data to explore a giant impact crater and learn more about the effects of giant impacts on the moon and Earth. Listen to previous podcasts. [Image: Ernest Wright, NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—jumping spiders that can hear without ears, long-lasting changes in the human body at high altitudes, and the long hunt for an extinct bison—with Science’s Online News Intern Jessica Boddy. Plus, Sarah Crespi talks to Deputy News Editor David Malakoff about six science lessons for the next U.S. president. [Image: Gil Menda at the Hoy Lab; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories -- including a new bacterial model for alien life that feeds on cosmic rays, tracking extinct “bear dogs” to Texas, and when we stop caring about plane crashes -- with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Alexa Billow talks to Staff Writer Kelly Servick about her feature story on the releasing modified mosquitoes in Brazil to combat diseases like Zika, dengue, and chikungunya. Her story is part of a package on mosquito control. Listen to previous podcasts [Image: © Alex Wild; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| This week, we chat about some of our favorite stories—including making bees optimistic, comparing yawns across species, and “mind reading” in nonhuman apes—with Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm. Plus, Science’s Alexa Billow talks to Mercedes Paredes about her research on the developing infant brain. Listen to previous podcasts [Image: mdmiller/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Daily news stories Should we bring animals back from extinction, three-parent baby announced, and the roots of human violence, with David Grimm. From the magazine Our networked world gives us an unprecedented ability to monitor and respond to global happenings. Databases monitoring news stories can provide real-time information about events all over the world -- like conflicts or protests. However, the databases that now exist aren’t up to the task. Alexa Billow talks with Ryan Kennedy about his policy forum that addresses problems with global data collection and interpretation. [Image: Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| A quick change in chickens’ genes as a result of a papal ban on eating four-legged animals, the appeal of tragedy, and genetic defects in the “sixth sense,” with David Grimm.
From the magazine In February of this year, one of the most regular phenomena in the atmosphere skipped a cycle. Every 22 to 36 months, descending eastward and westward wind jets—high above the equator—switch places. The Quasi-Biennial Oscillation, or QBO, is normally so regular you can almost set your watch by it, but not this year. Scott Osprey discusses the implications for this change with Alexa Billow. Read the research. [Image: ValerijaP/iStockphoto; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| News stories on our earliest hunting companions, should we seed exoplanets with life, and finding space storm hot spots with David Grimm. From the magazine Two years ago, 43 students disappeared from a teacher’s college in Guerrero, Mexico. Months of protests and investigation have not yielded a believable account of what happened to them. The government of Mexico claims that the students were killed by cartel members and burned on an outdoor pyre in a dump outside Cucola. Lizzie Wade has been following this story with a focus on the science of fire investigation. She talks about an investigator in Australia that has burned pig carcasses in an effort to understand these events in Mexico. [Image: Edgard Garrido/REUTERS/Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| 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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| Listen to stories on how plants know when to take risks, confirmation that the ozone layer is on the mend, and genes that come alive after death, with Online News Editor David Grimm. Science news writer Jon Cohen talks with Julia Rosen about South Africa’s bid to end AIDS. [Image: J.Seita/Flickr/Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Listen to how mosquito spit helps make us sick, mother bears protect their young with human shields, and blind cave fish could teach us a thing or two about psychiatric disease, with Online News Editor Catherine Matacic. Marcia McNutt looks back on her time as Science’s editor-in-chief, her many natural disaster–related editorials, and looks forward to her next stint as president of the National Academy of Sciences, with host Sarah Crespi.
[Music: Jeffrey Cook; Image: Siegfried Klaus]
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| Listen to stories on the first mirror image molecule spotted in outer space, looking at the role of touch in the development of autism, and grafting on lab-built bones, with online news editor David Grimm. Karen Ersche talks about why cocaine addiction is so hard to treat and what we can learn by bringing addicted subjects into the lab with host Sarah Crespi. [Image: Science/Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Listen to stories on lizard stripes that trick predators, what a tiny jaw bone reveals about ancient “hobbit” people, and the risks of psychology’s dependence on online subjects drawn from Mechanical Turk, with online news intern Patrick Monahan. Brian Ciruna talks about a potential mechanism for the most common type of scoliosis that involves the improper flow of cerebral spinal fluid during adolescence with host Sarah Crespi. [Image: irin717/iStock/Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Listen to stories on new evidence for double dog domestication, what traces of mercury in coral can tell us about local wars, and an update to a classic adaptation story, with online news editor David Grimm. Brendan Colon talks about a bionic leaf system that captures light and carbon and converts it to several different types of fuels with host Sarah Crespi. [Image: Andy Phillips/Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0/Music: Jeffrey Cook]
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on underground rings built by Neandertals, worldwide increases in cephalopods and a controversial hypothesis for Alzheimer’s disease. Glen Weyl joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss academics’ role in rising markets that depend on data and networks of people. We’re lucky to live in the age of the match—need a ride, a song, a husband? There’s an app that can match your needs to the object of your desire, with some margin of error. But much of this innovation is happening in the private sector—what is academia doing to contribute? [Music: Jeffrey Cook; Image: Etienne Fabre / SSAC]
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on finding clues to giraffes’ height in their genomes, evidence that humans are still evolving from massive genome projects, and studies that infect humans with diseases on purpose. Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss an intense study of slum-dwelling rats. [Image: Mauricio Susin]
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| Online News Editor Catherine Matacic shares stories how the Venus flytrap turned to the meat-eating side, a new clingy polymer film that shrinks up eye bags, and survey results on who pirates scientific papers and why. Hanika Rizo joins Julia Rosen to discuss evidence that parts of Earth have remained unchanged since the planet formed.
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on a proposal for an orca sanctuary in the sea, the genes behind conceiving fraternal twins, and why CRISPR won’t be fixing the sick anytime soon. Elizabeth Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss bold birds, shy spiders, and the importance of animal personality. [Image: Judy Gallagher]
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| Online News Editor Catherine Matacic shares stories on how earthquakes may trigger volcanic eruptions, growing obesity in China’s children, and turning salty water sweet on the cheap. Lauren Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the rise of patent trolls in the United States and a proposal for cutting back on their sizable profits. [Image: © Alberto Garcia/Corbis]
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| Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on a possibledebunking of a popular brain stimulation technique, using “dirty” mice in the lab to simulate the human immune system, and how South American monkeys’ earliest ancestors used rafts to get to Central America. Kristi Curry Rogers joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss insights into dinosaur growth patterns from the bones of a baby titanosaur found in Madagascar. Read the research. [Image: K. Curry Rogers et al./Science]
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| Online news editor Catherine Matacic shares stories on the evolution of sign language, short conversations than can change minds on social issues, and finding the one-in-a-million people who seem to be resistant to certain genetic diseases—even if they carry genes for them. Nuno Faria joins host Sarah Crespi to explain how genomic analysis can track Zika’s entry date into Brazil and follow its spread. [Image: r.a. olea/Flickr]
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| Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on evidence for the earth being hit by supernovae, record-breaking xenotransplantation, and winning friends and influencing people with human sacrifice. Staff news writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how small membrane-bound packets called “exosomes” might pave the way for cancer cells to move into new territory in the body. [Image: Val Altounian/Science]
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| Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on yeasty hitchhikers, sunlight-induced rockfalls, and the tiniest gravity sensor. Andrea Adamo joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a revolutionary way of making drugs using a portable, on-demand, and reconfigurable drug factory. [Image: Tom Evans]
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on SeaWorld’s plans for killer whales, the first steps toward silicon-based life, and the ripple effect of old dads on multiple generations. Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a grisly find in Northern Germany that suggests Bronze Age northern Europe was more organized and more violent than thought. [Image: ANDESAMT FUR KULTUR UND DENKMALPFLEGE MECKLENBURG-VORPOMMERN/LANDESARCHAOLOGIE/S. SUHR ]
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| News intern Nala Rogers shares stories on mineral-mining microbes, mapping hurricane damage using social media, and the big takeaway from the latest human-versus-computer match up. Hal Weaver joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss five papers from New Horizons Pluto flyby, including a special focus on Pluto’s smaller moons. [Image: Saran_Poroong/iStockphoto]
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on the influence of governmental corruption on the honesty of individuals, what happened when our ancestors cut back on the amount of time spent chewing food, and how plants use sand to grind herbivores‘ gears. Science’s International News Editor Rich Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his forensics story on how to track down the culprits after a nuclear detonation. [Image: Miroslav Boskov]
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on zombification by a frog-killing fungus, relating the cosmological constant to life in the universe, and ancient viral genes that protect us from illness. Chris Larson joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new type of robot skin that can stretch and glow. [Image: Jungbae Park]
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| Online News Editor Catherine Matacic shares stories on what we can learn from 6million years of climate data, how to make lifelike orchids with 3D printing, and crowdsourced gender bias on eBay. Fernando Rosario-Ortiz joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how approaches to water purification differ between countries. [Image: Eric Hunt/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 3.0] 0]
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on how our abilities shape our minds, killing cancer cells with gold nanoparticles, and catching art forgery with cat hair. Laura Blanton joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how nourishing our gut microbes may prevent malnutrition. Read the related research in Science. [Image: D. S. Wagner et al., Biomaterials, 31 (2010)] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm
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| Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on confessions extracted from sleepy people, malaria hiding out in deer, and making squishable bots based on cockroaches. Corinne Simonti joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss whether Neandertal DNA in the human genome is helping or hurting. Read the related research in Science. [Image: Tom Libby, Kaushik Jayaram and Pauline Jennings. Courtesy of PolyPEDAL Lab UC Berkeley.]
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| Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on killing cells to lengthen life, getting mom’s microbes after a C-section, and an advanced fitness tracker that sits on the wrist and sips sweat. Michael Yudell joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss an initiative to replace race in genetics with more biologically meaningful terms, and Lena Wilfert talks about drivers of the global spread of the bee-killing deformed wing virus. [Image: Vipin Baliga/(CC BY 2.0)]
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| Online news editor David Grimm shares stories on 66-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex tracks, a signature of human consciousness, and a second try at domesticating cats. Mathieu Ossendrijver joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss newly translated Babylonian tablets that extend the roots of calculus all the way back to between 350 B.C.E. to 50 B.C.E. Read the related research in Science.
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| Online News Editor David Grimm shares stories on studying marijuana use in teenage twins, building a better maze for psychological experiments, and a close inspection of the bugs in our homes. Science News Writer Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the potential for a ninth planet in the solar system that circles the sun just once every 15,000 years. [Image: Gilles San Martin/CC BY-SA 2.0]
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| In this week’s podcast, David Grimm talks about brave birds, building a brighter light bulb, and changing our voice to influence our emotions. Plus, Ann Gibbons discusses the implications of a butchered 45,000-year-old mammoth found in the Siberian arctic for human migration. Read the related research in Science. [IMG: Dmitry Bogdanov]
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| What stripped an unusual black hole of its stars? Can a bipolar drug change ant behavior? And did dinosaurs dance to woo mates? Science's Online News Editor David Grimm chats about these stories and more with Science's Multimedia Producer Sarah Crespi. Plus,Science's Emily Underwood wades into the muddled world of migraine research, and Jessica Metcalf talks about using modern microbial means to track mammalian decomposition.
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| Robert Coontz discusses Science's 2015 Breakthrough of the Year and runners-up, from visions of Pluto to the discovery of a previously unknown human species. Online news editor David Grimm reviews the top news stories of the past year with Sarah Crespi. Hosted by Susanne Bard.
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| Brenden Lake discusses a new computational model that rivals the human ability to learn new concepts based on just a single example; David Grimm talks about attracting cockroaches, searching for habitable planets, and looking to street dogs to learn about domestication. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Rodrigo Basaure CC BY 2.0, via flickr]
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| Paul O'Toole discusses what happens to our gut microbes as we age; David Grimm talks about competent grandmas, our tilted moon, and gender in the brain. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Dhinakaran Gajavarathan CC BY 2.0, via flickr]
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| Joshua Blumenstock discusses patterns of mobile phone use as a source of "big data" about wealth and poverty in developing countries; David Grimm talks about gene drives, helpful parasites, and electric roses. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: A.A. JAMES]
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| Jennifer Long explains how scientists have engineered human vocal cords; Catherine Matacic talks about vanquishing a deadly amphibian fungus, pigeons that spot cancer, and more. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Jaime Bosch MNCN-CSIC]
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| Lauren Sallan discusses the consequences of a mass extinction event 359 million years ago on vertebrate body size; David Grimm talks about grandma's immune system, gambling on studies, and killer genes. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Robert Nicholls]
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| Bruce Jakosky discusses where Mars' once-thick, CO2-ish atmosphere went and the first data from the MAVEN mission to study the Red Planet; David Grimm talks about worm allergies, fake fingerprints, and toilets for all. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: NASA]
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| Lizzie Wade discusses whether the amazing biodiversity of the Amazon Basin was the result of massive flooding, or the uplift of the Andes mountain range. David Grimm talks about microbes aboard the International Space Station, the fate of juvenile giant ground sloths during the Pleistocene, and singing classes as social glue. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: ©Jason Houston]
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| Rhitu Chatterjee discusses Project Prakash and the neuroscience behind reversing blindness in children, teenagers, and adults in rural India; David Grimm talks about where dogs came from, when life first evolved, and holes in the brain. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Francois de Halleux CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]
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| Alan Stern discusses the first scientific results from the New Horizons July 14 flyby of Pluto, which revealed details about the dwarf planet's geology, surface composition, and atmosphere; Catherine Matacic talks about dino temps, Paleo-sleeping, and editing pig organs. Hosted by Sarah Crespi.
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| Talia Berkowitz discusses the use of a math app at home to boost math achievement at school, Catherine Matacic talks about the fate of animals near Chernobyl, a potential kitty contraceptive, and where spiders got their knees. Hosted by Sarah Crespi.
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| Julia Kornfield discusses the design of safer jet fuel additives using polymer theory to control misting and prevent fires, David Grimm talks about building a better sunscreen, cultures that don't count past four, and does empathy mean feeling literal pain. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Image credit: Eduard Marmet/CC BY-SA-3.0]
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| Kimberly Dunham-Snary discusses the long-term health considerations of gene therapy for mitochondrial diseases and David Grimm talks about the smell of death, Mercury crashing, and animal IQ. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Image credit: Ben Gracewood CC BY-NC 2.0, via flickr]
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| Daniel Markovits discusses the preferences for fairness and equiality among potential future US leaders and David Grimm talks about finding fluorine's origins, persistant lone wolves, and the domestiction of the chicken. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Image credit: Philip Pikart/CC BY-SA 4.0]
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| Seth Bordenstein discusses how our genes affect the composition of our microbiome, influencing our health, and David Grimm talks with Sarah Crespi about the origins of the Basque language, the benefits of being raised in a barn, and how some flying ants lost their wings. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Image credit: Decaseconds/CC BY-NC 2.0, via flickr
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| Rich Stone discusses science in Iran in the face of economic sanctions. David Grimm brings stories on sleep deprivation and the common cold, plastic in birds, and counting trees. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Image credit: Credit: Alessandro Marongiu / Demotix /Corbis]
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| Brian Nosek discusses the reproducibility of science, Lizzie Wade delves into the origin of religions with moralizing gods. David Grimm talks about debunking the young Earth, a universal flu vaccine, and short, sweet paper titles. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Image credit: DIPTENDU DUTTA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES]
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| Chris Darimont discusses the impact of humans' unique predatory behavior on the planet and Catherine Matacic talks with Sarah Crespi about whistled languages, Neolithic massacres, and too many gas giants. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Image credit: Andrew S Wright]
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| Asif Ghazanfar discusses how marmoset parents influence their babies' vocal development and Hanae Armitage talks with Sarah Crespi about the influence of livestock on biodiversity hotspots, trusting internet search results, and ant-like robots. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Carmem A. Busko, CC BY-2.5]
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| Andrea Marzi discusses a vaccine that is effective against Ebola in monkeys and David Grimm talks about weigh-loss surgery, carbon suckers, and sexist HVAC. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: NIAID]
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| Fred Goesmann discusses Philae's bumpy landing on Comet 67P, and the organic compounds it detected there, and Hanae Armitage talks with Sarah Crespi about this week’s online news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: NAVCAM/ESA/Rosetta]
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| Elizabeth Culotta discusses the ancient DNA revolution and David Grimm brings online news stories about rising autism numbers, shark safety, and tiny cloudmakers. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Alexander Maklakov]
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| John Bohannon discusses using artificial intelligence in the psychologist's chair and David Grimm brings online news stories about the age of human hands, deadly weather, and biological GPS. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img:Nils Rinaldi/Flickr]
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| Nick Bartlett discusses the challenges of building a jumping soft robot and David Grimm brings online news stories about drug violence in Mexico, pollution's effect on weather, and drugging away our altruism. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Stephen Wolfe/Flickr]
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| Silvie Baudino discusses the biosynthesis of the compounds responsible for the scents of roses and David Grimm brings online news stories about hearing fractals, muon detectors, and bobcat burials. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: liz west/Flickr]
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| Marcus Knudson discusses making metallic hydrogen and how it can better our understanding of gas giant planets and David Grimm brings online news stories about kid justice, part-time dieting, and bird brains. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: NASA/ESA]
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| Samuel Wasser discusses using genetics to track down sources of elephant ivory, Suzanne Boyce talks with Susanne Bard about why it's so hard to say the letter R, and David Grimm brings online news stories about declining devils, keeping dinos out of North America, and the tiniest flea circus. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: guido da rozze/Flickr CC BY 2.0]
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| Sara Iverson discusses how telemetry has transformed the study of animal behavior in aquatic ecosystems, and Monita Chatterjee discusses the impact of cochlear implants on the ability to recognize emotion in voices, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories with Sarah Crespi. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © marinesavers.com]
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| Alexei Bylinskii discusses friction at the atomic level and Braxton Boren talks about the acoustics of historical spaces, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories with Sarah Crespi. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Pericles' Funeral Oration by Philipp von Foltz, 1852]
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| Christina Larson discusses the impact of climate change on China's tea and other globally sensitive crops, and Emily Conover discusses daily news stories with Sarah Crespi. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Yosomono/Creative Commons License BY 2.0, via flickr]
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| Katrina Karkazis discusses the controversial use of testosterone testing by elite sports organizations to determine who can compete as a woman, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images]
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| Richard Stone discusses science in Cuba: isolation, innovation, and future partnerships, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Garry Balding/Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, via flickr]
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| Michael Mina discusses how measles destroys immunity to other infectious diseases and why the measles vaccine has led to disproportionate reductions in childhood mortality since its introduction 50 years ago, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: UNICEF Ethiopia/Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.0, via flickr]
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| James Sanchirico discusses the challenges of creating sustainable fisheries in developing countries, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © Simon Bush]
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| Hubble at 25: Daniel Clery discusses the contributions of the Hubble Space Telescope to our understanding of the universe, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: NASA]
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| Evan MacLean discusses the role of oxytocin in mediating the relationship between dogs and people, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Teresa Alexander-Arab/flickr/Creative Commons BY-ND 2.0]
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| Chris Tyler-Smith discusses what whole genome sequencing reveals about the genetic diversity and evolutionary history of endangered mountain gorillas, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Berzerker/flickr/Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.0]
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| 5th Anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster: Marcia McNutt discusses the role of science in responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Warren Cornwall examines the state of ecological recovery 5 years later. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © Bryan Tarnowski/Science Magazine]
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| Cathy Spatz Widom discusses whether child abuse is transmitted across generations. Angela Colmone has a round-up of advances in immunotherapy from Science Translational Medicine, and David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Luigi Mengato/flickr/Creative Commons]
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| Nikolaus Correll discusses the future of robotic materials inspired by nature. Emily Conover discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Nick Dragotta]
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| Sean Wojcik discusses the relationship between happiness and political ideology. Emily Conover discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Erik Hersman/flickr/CC BY 2.0]
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| Stephen Baker discusses the challenges faced by lower-income countries when fighting antimicrobial resistant infections. Emily Conover discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Merton Wilton/flickr/CC BY-NC 2.0]
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| Sara Mitchell discusses the co-evolution of sexual traits in mosquitoes and their influence on malaria transmission. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © Sam Cotton]
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| Renee Duckworth discusses the role of maternal effects on species replacement in ecological communities shaped by forest fires. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © Alex Badyaev]
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| Will Steffen discusses the processes that define the planetary boundaries framework: a safe operating space within which humanity can still thrive on earth. Jenna Jambeck examines the factors influencing how much plastic debris a nation contributes to the ocean. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Bo Eide Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.0]
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| Gyorgy Buzsaki discusses how two types of neurons in the brain's hippocampus work together to map an animal's environment. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: © Isaac Planas-Sitja]
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| John Bohannon discusses the growing rift between mathematicians and the National Security Agency following Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations of massive eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: Amos Frumkin/Hebrew University Cave Research Center]
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| Myrtha Hassig discusses variability and heterogeneity of the coma of comet 67P as part of Science's special issue on the Rosetta spacecraft. Meghna Sachdev discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Susanne Bard. [Img: European Space Agency/Rosetta/NAVCAM]
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| Charles Bishop discusses the "roller-coaster" flight strategy of bar-headed geese as they migrate across the Himalayas between their breeding and wintering grounds. Online news editor David Grimm discusses daily news stories. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: © Nyambayar Batbayar]
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| Vanessa Ezenwa discusses the complex relationship between parasitic infections and tuberculosis in African buffalo and what it can tell us about human health. Online news editor David Grimm dicusses coloration in lizards, weighing earth-like planets, and how bears help meadows by eating ants. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Mark Jordahl/Flickr/CC-BY-2.0]
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| Justin Reich discusses the brief history of MOOCs and their impact on teaching online and offline. [Img: GARY WATERS/GETTYIMAGES]
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| Robert Coontz discusses this year's Breakthrough and letting readers have their say. Online news editor David Grimm brings the top news stories of 2014 and takes an audio news quiz. Hosted by Sarah Crespi.
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| Tsetse fly genetics; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Eric Hand discusses the winding history of the Black Beauty meteorite--a 4.4 billion-year-old piece of Mars. Online news editor David Grimm brings stories on bacteria's role in the blood-brain barrier, the "ice-pocalypse", and why only 10 percent of galaxies may host complex life. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: © Joe McNally]
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| Erich Jarvis sums up the findings from sequencing 40+ bird genomes. Online news editor David Grimm brings stories capturing comet dust, the origins of life, and losing the Y chromosome. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Copyright © Flip de Nooyer/Foto Natura/Minden Pictures]
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| Kenneth Catania takes a close look at how exactly electric eels stun their prey. Online news editor David Grimm brings stories on pushing back the earliest abstract art by a few millennia, how our primate ancestors handled their liquor, and murderous sea mammals. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: © Kenneth Catania]
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| Cordelia Fine discusses the prevalence of "neurosexism" in the study of the human brain. Online news editor David Grimm brings stories on climbing walls like a gecko, human hand transplants, and measuring altruism in the lab. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: turkishdisco/Flickr/CC-BY-SA]
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| David Grimm and Meghna Sachdev discuss robots that can induce ghostly feelings, the domestication of cats, and training humans to echolocate. Elizabeth Pennisi discusses overcoming hippos' dangerous reputation and oddly shaped bodies to study their important role in African ecosystems. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: Kabacchi/Wikipedia]
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| Stephanie Karst discusses her team's successful efforts to culture norovirus in the lab and what this new system means for treatment and prevention. David Grimm brings daily news stories on counting virtual friends, drama at the center of the galaxy, and the birth of the penis. Hosted by Sarah Crespi.
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| Ayelet Gneezy discusses trends in charitable giving and how to maximize donations. David Grimm brings stories on an algal virus found in humans, how to stop zooming human population growth, and an avalanche on an asteroid. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: ISAS/JAXA]
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| Kurt Rademaker discusses his work exploring the Andean plateau for artifacts of the earliest high-altitude humans, Paleoindians that lived at 4500 meters more than 11,000 years ago. Hosted by Sarah Crespi. [Img: David-Stanley/Flickr]
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| Adam Ford discusses linking plants, their herbivores, and their predators on the East African savannah. Science daily news editor David Grimm brings stories on storing CO2 underground for millions of years, why fruit flies like yeast and vice versa, and volcanoes on the moon. [Img: Filip Lachowski]
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| The rights and responsibilities of robots.
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| Satellite data helps map the last unexplored terrain on planet Earth.
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| New evidence reveals the complicated history of stone tool use 400,000 - 200,000 years ago.
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| Hindcasting weather over the ocean near the California coast for 600 years.
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| Frugal engineering for global health; roundup of daily news.
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| Bringing cellulosic ethanol to market; roundup of daily news.
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| Sharing microbes around the house; roundup of daily news.
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| Investigating web censorship practices in China; roundup of daily news.
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| Parenting from before conception; roundup of daily news.
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| A new class of gamma ray sources; roundup of daily news.
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| A new class of gamma ray sources; roundup of daily news.
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| NIH opts to back researchers rather than research; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Controlling populations in the wild through genetic manipulation; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| The fate of plastic that ends up at sea; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Psychedelic research resurgence; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Moths chasing odors; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Learning to read minds; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Mapping Mexico's genetically diverse population; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Taming the unwieldy web of global supply chains; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| The impact of Tiananmen Square on science in China; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Inequality and health; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Measuring minute motions; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Marine archaeology on the Silk Road; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Climate and crops; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| A distinctive binary star system; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Fruitflies take evasive action; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Money battles; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| BRCA1 turns 20; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Human odor discrimination; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| What Google's Flu Trends can teach us about the pitfalls of big data; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Celebrating crystallography's centennial; how climate pushes malaria uphill; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Treatment trials for Down Syndrome; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Eavesdropping on ecosystems; roundup of daily news with David Grimm.
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| Termite-inspired builder robots; why some mammalian cells have so many copies of their chromosomes.
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| Tackling the role of early fetal brain development in autism; daily news stories with David Grimm.
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| Should we worry more about quantum decryption in the future or the past, how salt's role as a micronutrient may effect the global carbon cycle, and a daily news roundup.
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| The genome from a cancerous cell line that's been living for millenia, Opportinty's first 10 years on Mars, and a daily news roundup.
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| Hunter-gatherer gut microbes, fast moving mountains, and a daily news roundup.
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| Ocean-going vesicles; stories from our daily news site.
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| Britain's prehistoric stone monuments; stories from our daily news site.
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| Notable highlights from the year in science; Science's breakthrough of the year and runners up.
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| Fear-enhanced odor detection with John McGann; the latest from Curiosity’s hunt for traces of ancient life on Mars with Richard Kerr; and more.
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Discussing the origin of transcriptional noise with Alvaro Sanchez; examining results from a drilling expedition at the Tohoku-oki fault; and looking at the potential benefits of snake venom with Kai Kupferschmidt.
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| Talking kids' science books with Maria Sosa; predicting happiness in marriage with James McNulty; investigating questionable scholarly publishing practices in China with Mara Hvistendahl.
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| The minimum requirements for a Y chromosome with Monika Ward; Eliot Marshall checks in on U.S.'s missile interception program 30 years later; Sylvia Zhu breaks down observations from the brightest gamma-ray burst.
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| The origin of dog domestication in Europe with Robert Wayne; Richard Lenski tracks the adaptation of bacteria over 50,000 generations; Robert Services describes the prospects of a new contender in solar technology.
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