Science Magazine Podcast

Last time on The Normals, we learned that in the 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) wanted to recruit many healthy volunteers for basic research. Two peace churches, the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, had an excess of healthy human volunteers. The “Normals” recruited from these Anabaptist churches were surprisingly happy, even as they went through sometimes painful procedures. In this follow-up episode, we hear about how the sources of normal human subjects changed in the 1960s and why NIH researchers felt they needed to expand their search for normal people. We also learn about the first death in the program and the shifting motives on the parts of the researchers and volunteers. Final episode drops next Tuesday, April 21. All Normals episodes In this episode: Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University Ken Naas, former Normal patient Cindy Jansen, former Normal patient Dale Horst, former Normal patient Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer Additional resources: The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss NASA’s plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars in less than 3 years. Having not launched a fission reactor to space in more than 60 years, the organization faces many technical and bureaucratic hurdles to make that deadline. Next on the show, Aaron Sandel, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, reports this week in Science on what looks like a chimpanzee civil war. The unprecedented violent split occurred in a large chimp colony that has been tracked by researchers for decades. Now, scientists are asking: What can the lethal division of a chimp community teach us about human conflict? This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do we know what's normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start studying normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn't have. How do we know what’s normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start to study normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn’t have. When the healthy subjects arrived, experimenters tested LSD, sleep devrivation, rice-only diets, and more risky intervetions on them. Where it found those volunteers and what happened next is the story of The Normals.  Starting on 7 April, the Science Podcast will be releasing a new three-part limited series called The Normals. We'll hear from some of the original “Normals,” follow the program through the decades, and see what's happening with healthy human subject research today. All Normals episodes Appearing in this episode: Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University Dale Horst, former Normal patient Shirley Burry Geissinger, former Normal patient Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer Additional resources: The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, a new path to calculating the Hubble constant. This value for the universe’s speed of expansion is typically determined in one of two ways, one favored by cosmologists, the other by astronomers. But the resulting values from these methods are consistently different. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how reappearing bursts from deep space, lensed by gravity, could resolve the dispute over the speed of the expanding universe. Next on the show, freelance producer Elah Feder talks with Mauro Costa-Mattioli, principal investigator at Altos Labs’ Institutes of Science, about tuning the “integrated stress response” (ISR) in mouse brains. The ISR pathway turns off much of protein synthesis in cells as a response to stressors such as viral infections or oxygen deprivation. The ISR is overactive in some models of cognitive dysfunction—suggesting the downregulated protein synthesis may hamper brain functions such as memory formation. In his paper, Costa-Mattioli and colleagues show turning on the ISR pathway causes memory problems in mice and turning off the ISR can restore function in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease and Down syndrome. Although this research was in mice, it suggests cognitive dysfunction associated with many different disorders may involve the ISR—making it a good therapeutic target. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink talks about so-called resurrection plants. These specialized plants can survive up to 95% water loss, whereas most plants struggle when their water levels dip below 60%. We also hear from Jill Farrant, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town, about her work dissecting the desiccation survival pathways in resurrection plants and how they might be repurposed to protect crop plants from drought. Next on the show, we’ve all heard of chatbots praising their users for asking the most basic of questions. This bias toward sycophancy extends beyond pleasantries into relationship advice the artificial intelligence (AI) doles out to users. Myra Cheng, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Stanford University, joins the show to talk about how this tendency for AIs to be agreeable can lead users to have more confidence in their opinions, to the detriment of their relationships with others. Warning, this last segment contains spoilers for the movie and book Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. If you’ve seen the movie or don’t mind a bit of extra context, you will hear an analysis of planetary science in the film with astrophysicist and associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History, Jacqueline Faherty. Read the full film review. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, we discuss a finding that’s likely to reignite debate over how humans first spread through the Americas. In the late 1990s, a site in southern Chile called Monte Verde forced archaeologists to adjust their views of the peopling of South America because it dated to about 14,500 years before present, which challenged the prevailing idea of when human inhabitants appeared on the continent. Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss new results published in Science that suggest Monte Verde is nowhere near that old. See the paper and related commentary. Next on the show, we talk about groundwater, a vital source of water for both drinking and agriculture that’s often overused and depleted. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Scott Jasechko, a professor of water resources with the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, about the many different approaches to improving groundwater supplies and what has worked where, which he reviews in this week’s issue of Science. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Evan Howell traveled to Cape Blossom, Alaska, where the receding coastline has revealed an ancient trove of glacial ice that may have survived for 350,000 years—making it the oldest ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Now researchers just need to figure out how to date it. Next on the show, tracking wolves and ravens in Yellowstone National Park shows the birds don’t follow the wolves in hope of a meal, but instead remember and revisit frequent wolf kill sites. Matthias-Claudio Loretto, assistant professor in the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, discusses how this might change the way we think about scavengers’ strategies for finding their ephemeral food sources.  Finally, Claire Bedbrook, the Helen Hay Whitney and Wu Tsai neuroscience postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, discusses her work tracking African turquoise killifish over their life span. By capturing behaviors over the course of the fish’s entire lives, her team was able to observe behaviors that could be used to predict whether a fish would live a short or long life. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.  About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, a peek into the roiling seas of U.S. science policy. ScienceInsider Editor Jocelyn Kaiser talks about shifting leadership at the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as a dip in funding rates by the National Institutes of Health. Staff Writer Robert F. Service covers proposed restrictions on access by international researchers and students to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall talks about the Department of Energy’s rush to loosen radiation exposure standards. Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone discusses why an accusation of nuclear weapons testing in China could spark a new round of weapons testing in the United States and Russia. Next on the show, this year’s children’s book roundup features everything from a look at space law to a clever wartime spider farmer. Senior Editor Valerie Thompson joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the books and the reviews of them, written by Science staffers (and sometimes their kids). This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell talks to Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall about his visit to Brazil, where he observed firsthand what it takes for researchers to understand why bird populations in the Amazon and beyond are shrinking. Next on the show, Raouf Belkhir, an M.D.-Ph.D. student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss his Science Advances paper on a newly refined way to map awake patients’ brains during neurosurgery. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox, Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko, and intern Perri Thaler share their experiences from the AAAS annual meeting in Phoenix. Christie recorded on location with David Rand regarding his prize-winning Science paper on using a large language model to combat conspiracy theories. Check out the live version of his team’s Debunk Bot. Michael chats with host Sarah Crespi about the foggy outlook of science in the United States as funding levels and graduate positions decline, and the bright sunshine of young students presenting science posters. And finally, Perri shares her reporting on OpenAI’s contribution to theoretical physics announced at the meeting. Next on the show, we hear about the “bouba-kiki” effect—the tendency for people, no matter their language, to associate round shapes with the nonword bouba and spiky shapes with the nonword kiki. Maria Loconsole, a postdoctoral researcher in the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of Padova, joins the podcast to discuss why her team looked for this effect in freshly hatched chickens. It turns out these baby birds also make these associations, which suggests the effect has less to do with language and more to do with how vertebrate brains are set up to experience the world. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, more than half of all dogs going through service animal training don’t make it to graduation. Producer Kevin McLean journeys with Online News Editor David Grimm to Canine Companions, one of the biggest organizations in the United States for training working dogs. At the facility, they meet puppies in preparation and learn about the behavioral testing and genetics that could be used to improve service animal schooling. Also appearing in this segment: Emily Bray, assistant professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Arizona Brenda Kennedy, chief veterinary and research officer at Canine Companions Next on the show, Kishalay De, assistant professor at Columbia University and associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute, talks about observing the birth of a stellar black hole in the nearby Andromeda galaxy. He recounts how his team looked for this elusive event and describes what we can learn from observing it in the decades to come. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, host Sarah Crespi and Staff Writer Adrian Cho talk football and the latest science behind helmets engineered to reduce head injuries. Have better materials and testing led to fewer concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy in players? Next on the show, more than 100,000 people die from opioid overdoses in North America per year. Although much study has gone into addiction research, less attention has been paid to the biological details of overdose itself. John Strang, a professor in the National Addiction Centre at King’s College London, joins the podcast to discuss the questions researchers could be asking about overdose, and how to partner with drug addicted people to find solutions. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, how do we protect astronauts when they leave the shelter of Earth’s protective magnetic fields and face the slow, constant bombardment of space radiation? Freelance science journalist Elie Dolgin joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what we know about the damage from high-velocity particles and the research being done to curb their biological toll. Next on the show, modeling the fall of fossil fuels during the decarbonization of energy systems, with civil engineer and environmental sociologist Emily Grubert and historian and engineer Joshua Lappen, both at the University of Notre Dame. The pair wrote a policy forum on predicting chokepoints or “minimum viable scales” in the decline of fossil fuel networks—in effect, when a system might get too small to maintain its function. Understanding how to keep things online until they are no longer needed is important to maintain energy for all, as renewables grow and mines, pipelines, and refineries shrink. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up with Jennie Erin Smith, Science’s new senior biomedicine reporter, we delve into: autobrewery syndrome, when microbes inside the human gut make too much alcohol; how doctors can use a public repository, the Mexican Biobank, to guide patient care; and preliminary findings that surgery on the brain’s plumbing shows promise for Alzheimer’s disease. Next on the show, it’s tough to calculate when and where deorbiting spacecraft might enter the upper atmosphere and then eventually hit the ground. Benjamin Fernando, a seismologist and planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University, has shown that sonic booms created by fast-moving space debris shake seismic sensors, giving clues to angle of re-entry, breakup dynamics, and final location. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Sofia Quaglia talks about her visit to the Galápagos archipelago and how researchers there are working to restore the islands to their former ecological glory. *Note this episode has been updated to reflect that the Ecuadorian government is not responsible for primarily funding these efforts. Next on the show, Antarctica’s deep ice coating obscures the hills and valleys on its surface, making the continent’s response to climate change one of the biggest unknowns in predicting sea level rise over the next century. Helen Ockenden, a glaciologist at Grenoble Alpes University, joins the podcast to discuss how her team used satellite imagery and the physics of ice flows to fill in the missing details of Antarctica’s subglacial surface. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, scholars are on a quest to find Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA. With no direct descendants, the hunt involves sampling the famous polymath’s papers, paintings, and distant cousins. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone talks with host Sarah Crespi about what researchers hope to learn from Leonardo’s genes and the new field of “arteomics.” Next on the show, new evidence for poisoned arrows from 60,000 years ago complicates our picture of hunting during the Pleistocene. Sven Isaksson, a professor of archaeological science at Stockholm University, joins the podcast to discuss the discovery of poisonous residues on microliths—the tiny, worked stone points used on arrows and spearheads. These findings could push back the origins of this toxic technology by 50,000 years. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, the best images of exoplanets right now are basically bright dots. We can’t see possible continents, potential oceans, or even varying colors. To improve our view, scientists are proposing a faraway fleet of telescopes that would use light bent by the Sun’s gravity to magnify a distant exoplanet. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss where to aim such a magnificent telescope and all the technological pieces needed to put it together. Next on the show, expert voices columnist and Johns Hopkins University mathematician Emily Riehl discusses her recent essay on communication woes in the math community. The complex concepts, jargon, and the slow pace of understanding a proof all add up to siloed subdisciplines and potentially more errors in the literature. Alex Kontorovich, a professor in the math department at Rutgers University, also joins to discuss how proof assistant computer programs and machine learning could help get mathematicians all on the same page. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this year’s best online news stories—top performers and staff picks alike. Together they journey the scientific gamut, from bird feeders’ influence on hummingbird beak evolution to the use of “artificial spacetimes” to guide tiny robots through their environments. Next on the show, a discussion of this year’s pick for Breakthrough of the Year with producer Meagan Cantwell and News editor Greg Miller. They also touch on some other top finds from this year, including the first confirmed Denisovan skull, rice that can beat the heat, custom gene editing, and progress on xenotransplantation. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, we’ve likely only found about half the so-called city-killer asteroids (objects more than 140 meters in diameter). Freelance science journalist Robin George Andrews joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the upcoming launch of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor, an asteroid hunter that will improve our ability to look for large objects that might crash into Earth, particularly those hiding in the Sun’s glare. Next on the show, freelancer producer Elah Feder talks with Wendy Valencia-Montoya, an organismic and evolutionary biology Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, about heated conversations between plants and their pollinators. Her work suggests infrared radiation might be the oldest cue for animals to come hither, more ancient than color. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Science celebrates 100 years of quantum mechanics with a special issue covering the past, present, and future of the field. News Contributing Correspondent Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a more philosophical approach to quantum physics and the mysterious measurement problem. Next on the show we have Anne Goujon, program director at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. She talks about her Expert Voices column on the uncertain future of demography and how the field is grappling with new theories on what happens after the global population peaks. How will different countries deal with falling populations? Will they try to reverse the trend? What are the goals going into the next century? This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, when will the world hit peak carbon emissions? It’s not an easy question to answer because emissions cannot be directly measured in real time. Instead, there are proxies, satellite measures, and many, many calculations. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how close we are to the top of carbon mountain and the tough road to come after the peak passes. Vani Rajendran, senior researcher in the cognitive neuroscience department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Cellular Physiology, talks about macaques that can keep the beat. She explains how this intriguing ability challenges a long-standing view that animals with complex vocalizations and rhythm are inextricably linked. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast: the mysterious fate of Europe’s Neolithic farmers. They arrived from Anatolia around 5500 B.C.E. and began farming fertile land across Europe. Five hundred years later, their buildings, cemeteries, and pottery stopped showing up in the archaeological record, and mass graves with headless bodies started to appear across the continent. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about what this strange transition might mean. Next on the show, Editor for Life Sciences Sacha Vignieri discusses recent dog research published in Science, including tracing the movement of dogs alongside ancient human populations, examining when dogs first diversified, and probing the relationship between modern dogs’ breeds and their dispositions. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi for a rundown of online news stories. They talk about lichen that dine on dino bones, the physics of the lip-out problem in golf, and a brain-computer interface that can decode a tonal language (Chinese) from brain waves. Next on the show, Jeremy Munday, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of California, Davis, talks about generating mechanical power using a heat engine aimed at the night sky. Heat engines typically generate power by harnessing a temperature difference between two things—but by using space as the cold part and the ground as the warm part, Munday’s device can generate energy at night. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Sofia Moutinho visited the Xingu Indigenous territory in Brazil to learn about a long-standing collaboration between scientists and the Kuikuro to better understand early Amazon communities. Next on the show, we visit the Pacific pocket mouse recovery program at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance to talk with researchers about the tricky process of increasing genetic diversity in an endangered species. Researcher Aryn Wilder talks about a long-term project to interbreed mice from isolated populations in order to add more genetic diversity across the species—despite a mismatch in chromosome numbers between some of the groups. Debra Shier, associate director of the recovery ecology program at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, takes us on a tour of the breeding facility. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, increased carbon dioxide emissions sink more acidity into the ocean, but checking pH all over the world, up and down the water column, is incredibly challenging. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a technique that takes advantage of how sound moves through the water to detect ocean acidification. Next on the show, we visit the lab of University of California San Diego professor Alysson Muotri at the Sanford Consortium, where he grows human brain organoids—multicellular structures that function like underdeveloped brains. Muotri used organoids to compare a protein that appears to be protective in human brains against the effects of lead toxicity with the archaic version of the protein that was present in our extinct cousins, like Denisovans and Neanderthals. His work suggests lead exposure differently affected our ancestors and our archaic cousins, possibly helping us survive to the present day. Finally, stay tuned for the last in our six-part series on books exploring the science of death. This month, host Angela Saini talks with astrophysicist Katie Mack about how the universe might end and her 2021 book The End of Everything: (Astrophysically Speaking). This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, the Bering Sea’s snow crabs are bouncing back after a 50-billion-crab die-off in 2020, but scientists are racing to predict what’s going to happen to this important fishery. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what’s next for snow crabs. Next on the show, freelance producer Elah Feder talks with Fei Peng, a professor in the department of psychology in the School of Public Health at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and principal investigator at the Great Bay Area Brain Science and Brain Inspired Research Center, about detecting emotions—or more scientifically “affect”—in bumble bees. His group observed how a bumble bee that appears to be hopeful can share this state with other bees. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt takes a trip to Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where ancient RNA viruses may lie buried in the permafrost. He talks with host Sarah Crespi about why we only have 100 years of evolutionary history for viruses such as coronavirus and influenza, and what we can learn by looking deeper back in time. Next on the show, Nathalie Stroeymeyt, senior lecturer at the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol, joins freelancer producer Elah Feder to talk about how humans aren’t the only species that takes public health measures to stop outbreaks. To keep their colonies healthy when threatened with infectious disease, ants socially distance and even make architectural changes to their nests’ organization. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, producer Kevin McLean talks with Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko about the impact of wildfires on wine; a couple horse stories, one modern, one ancient; and why educators are racing to archive government materials.   Next on the show, research that took advantage of a natural experiment in unnatural lighting. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Ph.D. student Liz Aguilar and Kimberly Rosvall, an associate professor, both in the department of biology at Indiana University Bloomington, about a citizen-science initiative that captured bird behavior before, during, and after a total solar eclipse in April 2024.      This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Michael Greshko Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Robert F. Service joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a boom in nuclear medicine, from new and more powerful radioisotopes to improved precision in cancer cell targeting.   Next on the show, we talk about why we sigh. Maria Clara Novaes-Silva, a doctoral student at ETH Zürich, discusses how deep breaths cause minute rearrangements at the special interface where air meets lung. The lung flexibility granted by these deeper inhalations suggest people on ventilators might have better lung health if they were served a larger draught of air from time to time. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Authors: Sarah Crespi; Robert Service Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Science News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why a salty layer of permafrost undergirding Arctic ice is turning frozen landscapes into boggy morasses.    Next on the show, glucose isn’t the only molecule in the body that can be monitored in real time; proteins can be, too. Freelancer producer Zakiya Whatley talks with Jane Donnelly, an MD/Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University, about what we could learn from the live monitoring of key proteins, from the status of a transplanted organ to the early signs of a flare up in autoimmune disease. Finally, philologist Robert Garland joins books host Angela Saini to talk about ancient cultures and their death practices in his book What to Expect When You’re Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.  Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Tim Appenzeller Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the long journey to a vaccine for group B streptococcus, a microbe that sickens 400,000 babies a year and kills at least 91,000. Next on the show, there are about 250,000 agricultural drones employed on farms in China. Countries such as South Korea, Turkey, and Thailand are swiftly increasing agricultural drone use, whereas the United States and Russia are proceeding more slowly. Food policy researcher Ben Belton discusses what appears to drive drone use in agriculture and how they might make farming more productive and sustainable. Finally, Science Books Editor Valerie Thompson brings books on the secrets rocks have to tell about humanity and the mystery surrounding a Druid preserved in a bog for thousands of years. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Authors: Sarah Crespi; Valerie Thompson; Leslie Roberts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, aggressive tumors have a secret cache of DNA that may help them beat current drug treatments. Freelance journalist Elie Dolgin joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about targeting so-called extrachromosomal DNA—little gene-bearing loops of DNA—that help difficult-to-treat cancers break the laws of inheritance.   Next on the show, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Weidong Sun, director of the Center of Deep Sea Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, about the discovery of a hydrogen-rich system so large it makes up at least 5% of current estimates for global hydrogen emissions from abiotic sources. They discuss how hydrogen gas rising from the mantle reacting with oxygen could have triggered an explosion that formed holes hundreds of meters across and dozens of meters deep.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elie Dolgin; Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, despite so many advances in treatment, HIV drugs can suppress the virus but can’t cure the infection. Where does suppressed HIV hide within the body? Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the Last Gift Study, in which people with HIV donate their bodies for rapid autopsy to help find the last reservoirs of the virus.   Next on the show, Christine Elliott, a doctoral candidate in the department of entomology at Purdue University, talks about the Bug Bowl—an annual public outreach event that highlights all the wonders and benefits of insects. We also get to hear the sounds of violins trying to be crickets and learn how music connects people to bugs in ways that posters and public lectures can’t.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a megafauna megafind that rivals the La Brea Tar Pits. In addition to revealing tens of thousands of bones from everything from dire wolves to an ancient human, the site has yielded the first DNA from ammoths that lived in a warm climate.    Next on the show, the Tijuana River crosses the U.S.-Mexican border from Tijuana to San Diego—bringing with it sewage, industrial waste, and stinky smells. News Intern Nazeefa Ahmed talks with Kimberly Prather, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California San Diego about detecting both air and water pollution around the river and the steps needed for cleanup.   Finally, the latest in our series of books exploring the science of death. This month, host Angela Saini talks with philosopher Susana Monsó about her ook Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death. Content warning for this segment: The interview contains descriptions of dead baby animals.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Perez Ortega; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss recent advances in understanding endometriosis—a disease where tissue that resembles the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, causing pain and other health effects. The pair talk about how investigating the role of the immune system in this disease is leading researchers to new potential diagnostic tools and treatments.   Next on the show, why are there good dengue years and bad dengue years? This week in Science Translational Medicine, Talia Quandelacy and colleagues map the synchrony and spread of this mosquito-borne disease in Latin America. She joins the podcast to talk about how the seasons, rainfall, and even El Niño connect with dengue levels and how this understanding can help with prediction and preparation.   Quandelacy is an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology at the University of Colorado School of Public Health.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell and Contributing Correspondent Sara Reardon discuss alternative approaches to animal testing, from a heart on a chip to a miniorgan in a dish.   Next on the show, Expert Voices columnist Melanie Mitchell and host Sarah Crespi dig into AI lies. Why do chatbots fabricate answers and pretend to do math? Mitchell describes the stress tests large language models undergo—called red teaming—and the steps needed to better understand how they “think.”   Melanie Mitchell is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. You can read all her Expert Voices columns here.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Melanie Mitchell; Sara Reardon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm brings stories on peacock feathers’ ability to emit laser light, how anteaters have evolved at least 12 times, and why we should be thanking ketchup for our French fries.   Next on the show, rorqual whales, such as the massive blue whale, use a lunging strategy to fill their monster maws with seawater and prey, then filter out the tasty parts with baleen sieves. Lunging for food when you weigh 100 tons seems like it would be an energetically expensive way to meet your dietary needs. But as Ashley Blawas, a postdoctoral researcher at the Hopkins Marine Station at Stanford University, describes in Science Advances this week, lunge-feeding whales have a few tricks up their sieves and use much less energy than predicted.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the toll of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and how researchers have been mobilized to help the war effort. In June, Stone visited the basement labs where Ukrainian students modify off-the-shelf drones for war fighting and the facilities where biomedical researchers develop implants and bandages for wounded soldiers.   Next on the show, the isotopic ratios in our teeth and bones record the chemistry of what we eat. When anthropologists recently applied this technique to Neanderthals, they were surprised to find that when it comes to eating meat, our hominin cousins appeared to be on par with lions. Melanie Beasley, assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, has an explanation for why Neanderthals chemically look like hypercarnivores: They were just eating a lot of maggots. She talks about how she tested this idea by studying maggots that were fed putrefying human flesh.   Last up on this episode, a new installment of our series of books on death and science. This month’s books host Angela Saini talks with Ravi Nandan Singh, a sociologist at Shiv Nadar University, about his book Dead in Banaras: An Ethnography of Funeral Travelling.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Rich Stone Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind is home to the world’s greatest concentration of ancestral human remains, including our own genus, Homo, Australopithecus, and a more robust hominin called Paranthropus. Proving they were there at the same time is challenging, but new fossil evidence seems to point to coexistence. Producer Kevin McLean discusses what a multihominin landscape might have looked like with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons.   Next on the show, should robots grow and adapt like babies?  Host Sarah Crespi talks with roboticist Philippe Wyder about a platform for exploring this idea. In his Science Advances paper, Wyder and his team demonstrate how simple stick-shaped robots with magnets at either end can join up for more complicated tasks and shed parts to adapt to new ones.   Philippe Wyder was at Columbia University and the University of Washington when he completed this work, and he has now moved on to a company called Distyl AI.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Ann Gibbons Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Réunion Island had a shark attack crisis in 2011 and closed its beaches for more than a decade. Former News Intern Alexa Robles-Gil joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how researchers have used that time to study the island’s shark populations and test techniques for preventing attacks, in the hopes of protecting lives and reopening the island’s shores.   Next on the show, engineering gut microbes to break down the precursors of kidney stones. Weston Whitaker, a research scientist at Stanford University, joins the podcast to discuss how he and his team created a stable niche for these useful microbes in the human gut and overcame some of the challenges of controlling them once inside.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Alexa Robles-Gil Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to celebrate the 2-year anniversary of ScienceAdviser with many stories about the amazing water bear. They also discuss links between climate change, melting glaciers, and earthquakes in the Alps, as well as what is probably the first edible laser.   Next on the show, freelance producer Elah Feder talks with Tatiana Feuerborn,  a postdoctoral fellow in the cancer genetics and comparative genomics branch of the National Institutes of Health, about the evolutionary history of the Greenland sled dog. Her team’s work sequencing 98 genomes from modern and ancient sled dogs reveals the canine’s current diversity and suggests approaches for conservation.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elah Feder; Christie Wilcox  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, U.S. aid helped two African countries rein in HIV. Then came President Donald Trump. Senior News Correspondent Jon Cohen talks with producer Kevin McLean about how in Lesotho and Eswatini, treatment and prevention cutbacks are hitting pregnant people, children, and teens especially hard.   This story is part of a series about the impacts of U.S. funding cuts on global health, supported by the Pulitzer Center.   Next on the show, host Sarah Crespi is joined by Robin Wordsworth, the Gordon McKay Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. They discuss the challenges and potential of microbes to grow plastics, drugs, and food on the surface of Mars or other bodies in the Solar System.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jon Cohen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a pair of Science papers on kinship and culture in Neolithic Anatolia. The researchers used ancient DNA and isotopes from 8000 to 9000 years ago to show how maternal lines were important in Çatalhöyük culture.   ●     E. Yüncü et al., Female lineages and changing kinship patterns in Neolithic Çatalhöyük, 2025 ●     D. Koptekin et al., Out-of-Anatolia: Cultural and genetic interactions during the Neolithic expansion in the Aegean, 2025   Next on the show, researchers were able to make a synthetic material that changes color in the same way squids do. Georgii Bogdanov, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, talks about how his lab was able to discover the subcellular arrangement of proteins in the squid cells and mimic this structure synthetically using titanium dioxide deposition.   Finally, the latest book in our series on science and death. Books host Angela Saini talks with Tamara Kneese about her book Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond and whether our families can turn us into chatbots after we die.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.  About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is just coming online, and once fully operational, it will take a snapshot of the entire southern sky every 3 days. Producer Meagan Cantwell guides us through Staff Writer Daniel Clery’s trip to the site of the largest camera ever made for astronomy.   Next on the show, probing the impact of plastic bag regulations. Environmental economist Anna Papp joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her work comparing litter collected by shore cleanup efforts before and after the onset of plastic bag bans.   In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, senior editor of custom publishing, interviews professors Deepak Bhatt and Filip Swirski about advances in the science of heart health. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Daniel Clery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about how scientists are probing the world’s hottest forests to better understand how plants will cope with climate change. His story is part of a special issue on plants and heat, which includes reviews and perspectives on the fate of plants in a warming world.   Next on the show, “convergent” antibodies may underlie the growing number of people allergic to peanuts. Sarita Patil, co-director of the Food Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, joins the podcast to discuss her research on allergies and antibodies. She explains how different people appear to create antibodies with similar gene sequences and 3D structures that react to peanut proteins—a big surprise given the importance of randomness in the immune system’s ability to recognize harmful invaders.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, we hear from Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the tricky problem of regional climate prediction. Although global climate change models have held up for the most part, predicting what will happen at smaller scales, such as the level of a city, is proving a stubborn challenge. Just increasing the resolution of global models requires intense computing power, so researchers and city planners are looking to other approaches to find out what’s in store for cities.   Next on the show, a visit to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where researchers have found evidence that the Indigenous Menominee people cultivated maize for 600 years, even during an ice age. Madeleine McLeester, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Dartmouth College, talks about using lidar to search among the heavily forested lands for striations that indicate corn farming and the anthropological conundrums raised by such extensive agriculture without nearby urban centers.   Finally in this episode, producer Kevin McLean quizzes host Sarah Crespi on some mysterious sounds that have appeared on the site as part of news stories. No clues here so be sure to play along.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Kevin McLean Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor Michael Greshko joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about stories set high above our heads. They discuss capturing fungal spores high in the stratosphere, the debate over signs of life on the exoplanet K2-18b, and a Chinese contender for world’s oldest star catalog.   Next on the show, a look into long-standing questions on why and how our bodies respond to tickling. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks to Konstantina Kilteni, an assistant professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour and the Department of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute. They discuss how standardizing approaches to testing tickling in the lab could get us closer to answers.   Finally in this episode, the first in our book series on the science of death, with books host Angela Saini. Saini interviews Nobel Prize–winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan about developments in longevity research and his book Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Michael Greshko, Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the strange metal state. Physicists are probing the behavior of electrons in these materials, which appear to behave like a thick soup rather than discrete charged particles. Many suspect insights into strange metals might lead to the creation of room-temperature superconductors, highly desired materials that promise lossless energy delivery and floating trains. A few years ago, researcher Nora Zannoni came on the show to talk about our oxidation fields: zones of highly reactive radicals our bodies naturally produce that surround us and interact with nearby chemicals. Now she’s back to discuss how our personal oxidation fields interact with personal care products—such as hand lotion, for example—and the resulting effects those products can end up having on the air we breathe indoors. Zannoni is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of Italy’s National Research Council. The work for the paper was done when she was a postdoc scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Jonathan Moens talks with host Sarah Crespi about a forensic test called brain electrical oscillation signature (BEOS) profiling, which police in India are using along with other techniques to try to tell whether a suspect participated in a crime, despite these technologies’ extremely shaky scientific grounding.   Next on the show, scientists have recently made strides in our understanding of horses, from identifying the mutations that make horses amazing athletes to showing how climate shaped intercontinental horse migrations 50,000 years ago. Science life sciences editor Sacha Vignieri joins us to discuss new horse-related studies published in Science—and how equine research has broader implications. Other papers mentioned in this segment: W. Taylor et al., Science 2023 C. Gaunitz et al., Science 2018 A. Outram et al., Science 2009   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sacha Vignieri; Jonathan Moens Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell worked with the Science News team to review how the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s administration have impacted science. In the segment, originally produced for video, we hear about how the workforce, biomedical research, and global health initiatives all face widespread, perhaps permanent damage, with News staffers David Malakoff, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Rachel Bernstein.  Next on the show, acoustical analysis of ancient music from Greece and Rome shows different musical notation styles for different instruments. Dan Baciu, a professor at the Münster School of Architecture at the Münster University of Applied Sciences, talks with host Sarah Crespi about his analysis.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; David Malakoff; Jocelyn Kaiser; Rachel Bernstein Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about his visit to 17th century crypts under an old hospital in Italy. Researchers are examining tooth plaque, bone lesions, and mummified brains to learn more about the health, diet, and drug habits of Milan’s working poor 400 years ago. Next on the show, a mechanism for driving growth in fat stores with age. Or, the source of the “dad bod” trope. Producer Zakiya Whatley talks with Qiong “Annabel” Wang, associate professor in the department of molecular and cellular endocrinology at City of Hope, about her work showing how middle-age mice gain fat via dedicated progenitor cells that actually become more active as the animals age. Similar cells are also present in people, suggesting it’s not just lack of willpower or sedentary habits that give us gains as we get older. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zakiya Whatley; Andrew Curry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, bringing Gregor Mendel’s peas into the 21st century. Back in the 19th century Mendel, a friar and naturalist, tracked traits in peas such as flower color and shape over many generations. He used these observations to identify basic concepts about inheritance such as recessive and dominant traits. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about the difficulty of identifying genes for these phenotypes all these years later. We also hear some other stories from the plant world, including evidence that wavy fields are more attractive to insects and a tree benefits from being struck by lightning.   Next on the show, a carnivorous caterpillar that haunts spiderwebs, camouflaged in its insect prey’s body parts. Producer Kevin McLean talks with Daniel Rubinoff, a professor in the department of plant and environmental protection sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, about how such an adaptation might have evolved and the overlooked importance of insect conservation.    Finally, we kick off our 2025 books series on the science of death and dying. Books host Angela Saini and books editor Valerie Thompson talk about the challenges of putting this year’s list together and the reads they are looking forward to.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad; Kevin McLean; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how an Egyptian cult that killed cats may have also tamed them.   Next on the show, we hear about when the aurorae wandered. About 41,000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic poles took an excursion. They began to move equatorward and decreased in strength to one-tenth their modern levels. Agnit Mukhopadhyay, a research affiliate at the University of Michigan, talks about how his group mapped these magnetic changes, and what it would be like if such a big change took place today.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, ScienceInsider Editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss big changes in science funding and government jobs this month, including an order to cut billions in contracts, lawsuits over funding caps and grant funding cancellations, and mass firings at the National Institutes of Health.   Next on the show, taking sleep loss more seriously. Jennifer Tudor, an associate professor of biology at Saint Joseph’s University, talks about how skipping out on sleep has many metabolic consequences, from reducing protein synthesis in our brains to making our muscles less efficient at using ATP. Her new review in Science Signaling suggests that given these impacts, we should stop putting sleep last on our to-do lists.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Geoengineering experiments face an uphill battle, and a way to combat the pregnancy complication hyperemesis gravidarum First up on the podcast, climate engineers face tough conversations with the public when proposing plans to test new technologies. Freelance science journalist Rebekah White joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the questions people have about these experiments and how researchers can get collaboration and buy-in for testing ideas such as changing the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight or altering the ocean to suck up more carbon dioxide.   Next on the show, hyperemesis gravidarum—severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy—is common in many pregnant people and can have lasting maternal and infant health effects. This week, Marlena Fejzo wrote about her path from suffering hyperemesis gravidarum to finding linked genes and treatments for this debilitating complication. For her essay, Fejzo was named the first winner of the BioInnovation Institute & Science Translational Medicine Prize for Innovations in Women’s Health. Fejzo is a scientist at the Center for Genetic Epidemiology in the department of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rebekah White Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, urban wildfires raged in Los Angeles in January. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall discusses how researchers have come together to study how pollution from buildings at such a large scale impacts the environment and health of the local population.   Next on the show, Mingze Chen, a graduate student in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Michigan, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the challenges of placing artificial intelligence in small robots. As you add more sensors and data, the demand for computing power and energy goes up. To reduce the power demand, Chen’s team tried a different kind of physics for collecting and processing data using a type of resistance switching memory device called a “memristor.”   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss stories from the sea, including why scientists mounted cameras on seabirds, backward and upside-down; newly discovered organisms from the world’s deepest spot, the Mariana Trench; and how extremely venomous, blue-lined octopus males use their toxin on females in order to mate. Read more or subscribe at science.org/scienceadviser.   Next on the show, J. Chris McKnight, a senior research fellow in the Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St. Andrews, talks about testing free-living seals to see how they respond to different carbon dioxide or oxygen levels in the air. It turns out they don’t respond like other mammals, which go into panic under high carbon dioxide; instead, seals appear to directly detect oxygen, a safer bet when your life is mostly spent diving deep underwater.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, science policy editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the latest news about the National Institutes of Health—from reconfiguring review panels to canceled grants to confirmation hearings for a new head, Jay Bhattacharya.   Next, although cochlear implants can give deaf children access to sound, it doesn’t always mean they have unrestricted access to language. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady about why some think using sign language with kids with cochlear implants gives them the best chance at communicating fully and fluently.   Finally, using a pain illusion to better understand how the brain modulates pain. Francesca Fardo, an associate professor in the department of clinical medicine at Aarhus University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of learning and uncertainty in pain perception. It turns out, the more uncertain we are about a sensation that could be painful, the more pain we feel.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Cathleen O’Grady; Jocelyn Kaiser Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the most recent developments in U.S. science under Donald Trump’s second term, from the impact of tariffs on science to the rehiring of probationary employees at the National Science Foundation.   Next, we tackle the question of extra-pair paternity in people—when marriage or birth records of parentage differ from biological parentage. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry writes about researchers looking into the question of how often children are genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers by using genealogy and genetic testing.   Finally, Susanne Schweizer, Scientia associate professor at the University of New South Wales, talks about her article on intrusive thoughts in the perinatal period as part of a special issue on women’s health in Science Advances. Almost all pregnant and recent mothers experience intrusive thoughts about harm coming to their offspring. Schweizer and colleagues suggest gaining a better understanding of intrusive thoughts during this highly predictable window could help explain the phenomenon more broadly.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Kata Karáth, a freelance journalist based in Ecuador, talks with host Sarah Crespi about an effort to identify traditionally prepared shrunken heads in museums and collections around the world and potentially repatriate them.   Next, genetically modified Bt corn has helped farmers avoid serious crop damage from insects, but planting it everywhere all the time can drive insects to adapt to the bacterial toxin made by the plant. Christian Krupke, an entomology professor at Purdue University, talks about the economics of planting Bt corn and how farmers could save money and extend the usefulness of this transgenic plant by being selective about where and when they plant it.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kata Karáth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, researchers face impossible decisions as U.S. aid freeze halts clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how organizers of U.S. Agency for International Development–funded studies are grappling with ethical responsibilities to trial participants and collaborators as funding, supplies, and workers dry up.   Next, freelance science journalist Sandeep Ravindran talks about creating tiny machine learning devices for bespoke use in the Global South. Farmers and medical clinics are using low-cost, low-power devices with onboard machine learning for spotting fungal infections in tree plantations or listening for the buzz of malaria-bearing mosquitoes.   Finally, Michael Barnett, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, joins the podcast to discuss evolving evolvability. His team demonstrated a way for organisms to become more evolvable in response to repeated swings in the environment.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran; Martin Enserink  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins the podcast to discuss the big change in NIH’s funding policy for overhead or indirect costs, the outrage from the biomedical community over the cuts, and the lawsuits filed in response.   Next, what can machines understand about pets and livestock that humans can’t? Christa Lesté-Lasserre, a freelance science journalist based in Paris, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss training artificial intelligence on animal facial expressions. Today, this approach can be used to find farm animals in distress; one day it may help veterinarians and pet owners better connect with their animal friends.   Finally, Keya Ghonasgi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks about a recent Science Robotics paper on the case against machine vision for the control of wearable robotics. It turns out the costs of adding video cameras to exoskeletons—such as loss of privacy—may outweigh the benefits of having robotic helpers on our arms and legs.    This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Lesté-Lasserre; David Malakoff Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about recent policy stories on NASA’s reactions to President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive orders.   Next, the mantis shrimp is famous for its powerful club, a biological hammer it uses to crack open hard shells. The club applies immense force on impact, but how does it keep itself together blow after blow? Nicolas Alderete is an associate researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but at the time of the work he was a graduate researcher in theoretical and applied mechanics at Northwestern University. He joins the podcast to discuss the makeup of the mantis shrimp’s club and how it uses “phononics”—specialized microstructures that can reduce or change high-frequency vibrations—to reduce wear and tear when smashing and bashing.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, we catch up with the editor of ScienceInsider, Jocelyn Kaiser. She talks about changes at the major science agencies that came about with the transition to President Donald Trump’s second administration, such as hiring freezes at the National Institutes of Health and the United States’s departure from the World Health Organization.   Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Dan Kaplan, a professor in the departments of immunology and dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh, about why it sometimes pays to scratch that itch. It turns out scratching may be our bodies’ end run around pests and pathogens attempting to steal blood or invade the body.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jocelyn Kaiser Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, although long touted as a green fuel, the traditional approach to hydrogen production is not very sustainable. Staff writer Robert F. Service joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss how researchers are aiming to improve electrolyzers—devices that split water into hydrogen and oxygen—with more efficient and durable designs.   Next, Robert Rogers, who was a postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology at Massachusetts General Hospital when this work was conducted, talks with host Sarah Crespi about the idea of chronic hypoxia as medicine. Efficacious in mouse disease models, the big question now is whether long-lasting reduced oxygen could help people with certain serious conditions, such as mitochondrial defects or brain inflammation. The pair discuss what we know so far about this potential treatment and the challenges of delivering low levels of oxygen around the clock.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Robert Service Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, growing numbers of Valley fever cases, also known as coccidioidomycosis, has researchers looking into the disease-causing fungus. They’re exploring its links to everything from drought and wildfires to climate change and rodent populations. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her visit to a Valley fever research site in the desert near Bakersfield, California, where researchers are sampling air and soil for the elusive fungus.   Next up, scientists are trying to pin down when meat eating became a habit for human ancestors. It’s long been hypothesized that eating meat drove big changes in our family tree—such as bigger brains and more upright posture. Tina Lüdecke, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and honorary research fellow at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, investigated the diet of our ancient hominin relatives Australopithecus. Her team used nitrogen isotope ratios from the tooth enamel in seven Australopithecus individuals in South Africa to determine what predominated in their diets at the time—meat or veg.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zulg8oo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, as preprint publications ramped up during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so did media attention for these pre–peer-review results. But what do the readers of news reports based on preprints know about them? Associate News Editor Jeff Brainard joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss studies that look at the public perception of preprints in the news and how to inject skepticism into stories about them.   Next, placing tiny tags on bats to follow them across central Europe. Former Science intern Edward Hurme—now a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Migration at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior—revisits the podcast after 13 years. He discusses the difficulty of tracking bats as they fly long distances at night and what new tagging technology is revealing about their migration patterns.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jeff Brainard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about truffle hunting for science. Wilcox accompanied Heather Dawson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon, and her sister  Hilary Dawson, a postdoctoral researcher at Australian National University, on a hunt for nonculinary truffles—the kind you don’t eat—with the help of a specially trained dog. These scientists and their dog are digging up many new species of these hard-to-find fungi with the ultimate aim of cataloging and conserving them.    Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with R. Keller Kopf, an ecologist and lecturer at Charles Darwin University, about the importance of conserving older plants and animals. For example, as certain fish age they produce many more eggs than younger fish. Or in a forest, older trees may provide different ecosystem services than saplings.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox; Ariana Remmel  About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Online News Editor David Grimm shares a sampling of stories that hit big with our audience and staff in this year, from corpse-eating pets to the limits of fanning ourselves.   Next, host Sarah Crespi tackles some unfinished business with Producer Kevin McLean. Three former guests talk about where their research has taken them since their first appearances on the podcast.   Erick Lundgren, a researcher at the Centre for Open Science and Research Synthesis at the University of Alberta, revisits his paper on donkeys that dig wells in deserts. Lundgren first appeared on the podcast in April 2021.   Katie Hampson, a professor of infectious disease ecology at the University of Glasgow, discusses where her Tanzanian rabies research has spread. Hampson first appeared on the podcast in April 2022.   Ashley Thomas, an assistant professor of psychology in the Laboratory for Development Studies at Harvard University, talks about why it’s important to plumb the depths of baby minds and the big questions behind her work on children’s understanding of social relationships. Thomas first appeared on the podcast in January 2022.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Breakthroughs Editor Greg Miller joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year. They also discuss some of the other scientific achievements that turned heads this year, from ancient DNA and autoimmune therapy, to precision pesticides, and the discovery of a new organelle.   Next, host Sarah Crespi is joined by news staffers to catch up on threads they’ve been following all year. First a bumpy road for certain medicines. Editor Kelly Servick discusses the regulatory hurdles for psychedelic drugs and immunotherapy treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Then we hear from Staff Writer Paul Voosen about why scientists think this will be the hottest year on record. Finally, what happened with fusion power this year? Staff Writer Daniel Clery brings updates.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Greg Miller; Meagan Cantwell; Kelly Servick; Daniel Clery; Paul Voosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, freelance science journalist Sofia Moutinho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss making open-access journals from South and Latin America visible to the rest of the world by creating platforms that help with the publishing process and discovery of journal articles. This story is part of a News series about global equity in science.   Next on the show, departing Physical Sciences Editor Brent Grocholski discusses highlights from his career at Science, particularly his work on cooling technologies. Related papers:   ●     A self-regenerative heat pump based on a dual-functional relaxor ferroelectric polymer ●     High cooling performance in a double-loop electrocaloric heat pump ●     High-performance multimode elastocaloric cooling system ●     Colossal electrocaloric effect in an interface-augmented ferroelectric polymer ●     Sizing up caloric devices   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Brent Grocholski; Sofia Moutinho   About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, making electronics greener with leaves. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox about using the cellulose skeletons of leaves to create robust, biodegradable backings for computer chips. This sustainable approach can be used for printing circuits and making organic light-emitting diodes and if widely adopted, could massively reduce the carbon footprint of electronics.  Next on the show, Kevin Hatala, a biology professor at Chatham University, joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss fossil footprints unearthed in the Turkana Basin of Kenya. A 13-step long track with three perpendicular footprints likely show two different species of early humans, Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei, walked on the same shorelines. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Christie Wilcox  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, where on Earth do people live the longest? What makes those places or people so special? Genes, diet, life habits? Or could it be bad record keeping and statistical flukes? Freelance science journalist Ignacio Amigo joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the controversies around so-called blue zones—regions in the world where clusters of people appear to have extreme longevity.   Next on the show, producer Kevin Mclean talks with Dorian Houser, director of conservation biology at the National Marine Mammal Foundation. Houser and colleagues temporarily captured juvenile minke whales and tested their hearing. It turns out these baleen whales have more sensitive hearing than predicted from vocalizations and anatomical modeling, which could change our understanding of how they are affected by underwater noise pollution.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ignacio Amigo; Kevin McLean Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, a ship that flips for science. Sean Cummings, a freelance science journalist, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the resurrection of the Floating Instrument Platform (R/V FLIP), a research vessel built by the U.S. Navy in the 1960s and retired in 2023. FLIP is famous for turning vertically 90° so the bulk of the long ship is underwater, stabilizing it for data gathering. Additional audio from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Watch FLIP flipping here.   Next on the show, viewing past lives using bones from medieval London cemeteries. Samantha Yaussy, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at James Madison University, joins Sarah to talk about a bony paradox. Do lesions or scars on buried bones mean the person was frail and ill when they lived or were they strong and resilient because they survived long enough for disease to damage their bones?   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sean Cummings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about his travel to meet up with a lead researcher in the field, Folarin Kolawole, and the subtle signs of rifting on the African continent.   Next on the show, Nik Dennler, a Ph.D. student in the Biocomputation Group at the University of Hertfordshire and the International Center for Neuromorphic Systems at Western Sydney University, discusses speeding up electronic noses. These fast sniffing devices could one day be mounted on drones to help track down forest fires before they are large enough to spot with a satellite. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the difficulties of studying misinformation. Although misinformation seems like it’s everywhere, researchers in the field don’t agree on a common definition or shared strategies for combating it.   Next, what can Wikipedia tell us about human curiosity? Dani Bassett, a professor in the department of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, observed three different curiosity styles in people browsing the online encyclopedia—hunter, busybody, and dancer. They explain characteristics of each style and how which approach you use could depend on where you live.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpuwynf  About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using robots to study evolution, the last installment of our series of books on a future to look forward to, and did reintroducing wolves really restore an ecosystem? First up this week, a new study of an iconic ecosystem doesn’t support the “landscape of fear” concept. This is the idea that bringing back apex predators has a huge impact on the behavior of their prey, eventually altering the rest of the ecosystem. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Virginia Morell about the findings.   Next, using bioinspired robotics to explore deep time. Michael Ishida, a postdoctoral researcher in the Bio-Inspired Robotics Lab at the University of Cambridge, talks about studying key moments in evolutionary history, such as the transition from water to land by creating robotic versions of extinct creatures.   Finally in the last in our series of books on an optimistic future, books host Angela Saini talks with Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University and recently named MacArthur Fellow. The two discuss Benjamin’s latest book, Imagination: A Manifesto, which explores the part that imagination plays in creating new and radical futures.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zu8ch5j  Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Virginia Morell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, host Sarah Crespi talks to Jon Chu, a presidential young professor in international affairs at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, about how people around the world define democracy. Does democracy mean elections, freedom of the press, social mobility, or something else? Chu’s team found there was common ground across six countries. In many places with backsliding democracies, leaders may be tempted to change the definition of democracy to their own ends—this study suggests the people they rule won’t be fooled.   Next, when staying at home meant choosing between chemistry and basketball, Lena Svanholm sought an opportunity in the U.S. to pursue both. She joins producer Kevin McLean to discuss her next steps in balancing dual careers in science and professional sports.   In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of Custom Publishing, interviews Michal Elovitz about gaps in women’s health research. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Lena E. H. Svanholm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, we celebrate 20 years of graphene—from discovery, to hype, and now reality as it finally finds its place in technology and science. Science journalist Mark Peplow joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss graphene’s bumpy journey.   Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Seth Darling, chief science and technology officer for the Advanced Energy Technologies Directorate at Argonne National Laboratory, about two new ways to harvest lithium from water. One approach harnesses sunlight to pull water up through a membrane and collect lithium, whereas the other uses an electrochemical cell to selectively suck lithium up. Finding efficient ways to extract lithium from sources where it’s lower in concentration, such as the ocean, will be crucial as demand increases.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Mark Peplow   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zn17zjt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, online editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how cats think about their own bodies. Do cats think of themselves as a liquid, as much the internet appears to believe? New experiments suggest they may—but only in one dimension.   Next, freelance producer Ariana Remmel is joined by Ted Schultz, a research entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution, to discuss the evolution of ant-fungus farming. It turns out, ants and fungus got together when the earth was going through some really tough times around 66 million years ago.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; David Grimm Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zlav1o2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The gene variant APOE4 is finally giving up some of its secrets, how putting dead trees underground could make carbon sequestration cheap and scalable, and the latest in our series of books on an optimistic future   First up this week, Staff Writer and Editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss APOE4, a gene linked with a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease. They talk about new research into why APOE4 might be a good target for preventing or treating this dreaded neurodegenerative disease.   Next, Ning Zeng, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Science and at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland, joins the show to discuss an unusual approach to carbon sequestration and a very old piece of wood. He talks about how an unearthed 3000-year-old log that has held on to most of its carbon is pretty good proof that we can efficiently put carbon underground at low cost by burying trees.   Finally, we have the latest in our series of books on a future to look forward to. Books host Angela Saini talks with Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, the two authors of the book Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z8oerdq   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, a preview of a NASA mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Science journalist Robin Andrews joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the Clipper mission and what it could reveal about the habitability of the world that lies beneath Europa’s chaotic, icy surface.   Next, what does it feel like to be a rat? This week Science has a special issue on rats, focusing on their contributions to science, their history as invasives and disease carriers, and more. But Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, a professor in the School of Psychological Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, is here to talk about their capacity for empathy and other positive emotions.   In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews University of Manchester professor Sarah Haigh about the past, present, and future of graphene. This segment is sponsored by Zeiss.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Robin Andrews Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zapddvc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why don’t we know what is happening with hail? It’s extremely destructive and costs billions of dollars in property damage every year. We aren’t great at predicting hailstorms and don’t know much about how climate change will affect them, but scientists are working to change that. News Intern Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss deploying new technologies in this long-neglected area of research. Next on the show, ultrasound—it’s not just for looking inside the body anymore. Meaghan O’Reilly is a senior scientist in physical sciences at the Sunnybrook Research Institute, an associate professor of medical biophysics at the University of Toronto, and is the Canada Research Chair in biomedical ultrasound. She talks about how researchers are using focused sound waves to disrupt tumors, change the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, stimulate the immune system, and more. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Hannah Richter Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zm3x6zq  About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The latest in our series on global equity in science, and how better memory helps chickadees live longer  First up this week, as part of our series on global equity in science, Contributing Correspondent Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about an initiative in India intended to increase education about early “Indian knowledge systems” amid concerns about homogenization and misinformation. Next, producer Kevin McLean climbs a mountain to visit a test bed for intelligence. He met up with Joe Welklin and Vladimir Pravosudov of the University of Nevada, Reno to talk about their research on how memory helps mountain chickadees survive. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zbfmymg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week on the podcast, the latest conservation news with Staff Writer Erik Stokstad. Stokstad and host Sarah Crespi talk about the fate of snow crabs in the Bering Sea, how much we have been overestimating fishing stocks worldwide, and invasive snakes in Guam that bite off more than they can chew.   Next, a fungus takes the wheel. Anand Mishra, a research associate in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University, discusses a method of integrating electronics with fungal cells in a biohybrid robot. By using the hardy cells from a mushroom instead of the delicate cells of an animal, Mishra and colleagues hope to durably introduce the sensing and signaling capacity of these living organisms into robots.   Finally, the fourth installment of our six-part series on books that look to an optimistic future. This month, host Angela Saini talks with science writer Akshat Rathi about how capitalism might just save us from climate change and his book Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad; Angela Saini   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zt21ifv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week on the show, uncounted kilometers of fences are strung across the globe. Researchers know they interfere with wildlife migrations and sometimes make finding food and safety difficult for animals. But they don’t know where all these fences are. Freelancer science journalist Christine Peterson joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how artificial intelligence and aerial photos could help create fence inventories and eventually reopen spaces for native species.   Next, Azizi Seixas, interim chair of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s department of informatics and health data science and a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, discusses his review on decentralized randomized trials. Randomized, controlled trials based in a research center or centers have long been the gold standard for determining the effectiveness of a medical intervention. This week on the podcast, Seixas argues that distributed research designs with home-based measurements and reporting have the potential to speed up research, allow greater participation, and make the results of studies more equitable.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Christine Peterson   About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Deputy News Editors Elizabeth Culotta and Shraddha Chakradhar join host Sarah Crespi to talk about the launch of a new series highlighting the latest in postcolonial science. They cover how researchers around the world, but especially in the Global South, are reckoning with colonial legacies and what is in store for the rest of the series.   Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Mario Fischer-Gödde, a research scientist at the University of Cologne about the origins of the giant asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast  Authors: Sarah Crespi, Elizabeth Culotta, Shraddha Chakradhar, Meagan Cantwell Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zjugpvu About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers debate if humidity makes heat more deadly, and finding excess diabetes cases in Ukrainian people that were born right after the 1930s famine First up this week, which is worse: the heat or the humidity? Staff writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about conflicting reports on the risk of increased mortality when humidity compounds heat, and how to resolve the debate in the field.     Next, LH Lumey, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center, discusses what the catastrophe of a famine can teach us about the importance of maternal and fetal health for the long term. His work focuses on records of a 1930s Ukrainian famine painstakingly reconstructed by Ukrainian demographers after being obscured by the former Soviet Union. The famine records combined with newer data show that babies gestated during famine are more likely to acquire type 2 diabetes later in life.    This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Meredith Wadman    Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z6yms94   About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, we hear about caves on the Moon, a shake-up at Pompeii, and the iron-lined teeth of the Komodo dragon. Reporter Phie Jacobs joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these news stories and more from our daily newsletter, ScienceAdviser.   Next on the show, electron microscopes allow us to view a world inaccessible to light—at incredible resolution and tiny scales. But bombarding samples with a beam of electrons has downsides. The high-energy electrons used for visualizing minute structures can cause damage to certain materials. Jonathan Peters, a research fellow in the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin, joins the podcast to talk about a new approach that protects samples while keeping resolution sharp.    This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Phie Jacobs,   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zeecyfw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tackling air pollution—indoors and outdoors, how burned-up satellites in the atmosphere could destroy ozone, and the latest in our series of books on a future to look forward to First up this week, Science Senior Editor Michael Funk joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the magazine’s special issue on air pollution. The two discuss the broad scope of air pollution, from home cooking to transmissible disease.   Next, how burned-up satellites may cause pollution problems as megaconstellations take to the skies. Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks about how metals from deorbiting spacecrafts might change the chemistry of the upper atmosphere.   Finally, books host Angela Saini is joined by author Daniela Rus, a roboticist and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They discuss Rus’s book The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots for this year’s books series that takes an optimistic look at the future.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Micheal Funk, Angela Saini; Daniel Clery   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z01x70o Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, Staff Writer Adrian Cho talks with host Sarah Crespi about a fusion company that isn’t aiming for net energy. Instead, it’s looking to sell off the high-energy neutrons from its fusion reactors for different purposes, such as imaging machine parts and generating medical isotopes. In the long run, the company hopes to use money from these neutron-based enterprises for bigger, more energetic reactors that may someday make fusion energy. Next, we hear from Tian Du, a Ph.D. candidate in the Dr John and Anne Chong Lab for Functional Genomics at the University of Sydney. She talks about finding antivenom treatments by screening all the genes in the human genome. Her Science Translational Medicine paper focuses on a strong candidate for treating spitting cobra bites, but the technique may prove useful for many other venomous animal bites and stings, from jellyfish to spiders. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi, Adrian Cho Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rodenticides are building up inside unintended targets, including birds, mammals, and insects; and bringing bioacoustics and artificial intelligence together for ecology First up this week, producer Kevin McLean and freelance science journalist Dina Fine Maron discuss the history of rodent control and how rat poisons are making their way into our ecosystem.   Next on the episode, host Sarah Crespi talks with Jeppe Rasmussen, a postdoctoral fellow in the behavior ecology group at the University of Copenhagen, about why researchers are training artificial intelligence to listen for seals, frogs, and whales.   Additional sound in this segment (some played, some mentioned):   ·      Monk seal noises care of Jeppe Rasmussen ·      Frog and crickets from Pond5  ·      Lyrebird sounds (Youtube link) ·      Cod fish sounds (Fishbase link)   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Kevin McLean, Sarah Crespi, Dina Fine Maron    Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zq42hy5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up this week, guest host Kevin McLean talks to freelance writer Andrew Zaleski about recent advancements in the world of synthetic blood. They discuss some of the failed attempts over the past century that led many to abandon the cause altogether, and a promising new option in the works called ErythroMer that is both shelf stable and can work on any blood type.   Next on the episode, producer Zakiya Whatley talks to Aaron Weimann from the University of Cambridge about the evolutionary history of the deadly bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. They discuss how more than a century’s worth of samples from all over the world contributed to new insights on the emergence and expansion of the pathogen known for its ability to develop antimicrobial resistance.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Kevin McLean, Andrew Zaleski, Zakiya Whatley   Episode Page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z1jhbqi   About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast   [Image: Matt Roth, Music: Jeffrey Cook and Nguyen Khoi Nguyen] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guest host Meagan Cantwell talks to Staff Writer Erik Stokstad about a new weapon against crop-destroying beetles. By making pesticides using RNA, farmers can target pests and their close relatives, leaving other creatures unharmed.  Next, freelance producer Katherine Irving talks to hydrologist Craig Brinkerhoff about a recent analysis of ephemeral streams—which are only around temporarily—throughout the United States. Despite their fleeting presence, Brinkerhoff and his colleagues found these streams play a major role in keeping rivers flowing and clean. Brinkerhoff is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, and completed this work as a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.   Finally, the next segment in our books series on a future to look forward to. Books host Angela Saini talks with author Rachel O’Dwyer about her recent book Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform. They’ll discuss new and old ideas of currency, and what it means to have our identities tied to our money as we move toward a more cashless society. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show: Scientists are expanding the hunt for habitable exoplanets to bigger worlds, and why improvements in air quality have stagnated in Los Angeles, especially during summer, despite cleaner cars and increased regulations Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins producer Meagan Cantwell to talk through the major contenders for habitable exoplanets—from Earth-like rocky planets to water worlds. Preliminary results from two rocky exoplanets have some researchers concerned about whether they will be able to detect atmospheres around planets orbiting turbulent stars.   Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with Eva Pfannerstill, an atmospheric chemist at the Jülich Research Center, about how volatile organic compounds, mostly from plants, are causing an increase in air pollution during hot days in Los Angeles.    This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast   Authors: Daniel Clery; Meagan Cantwell; Arianna Remmel   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zxi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show: Companion animals such as dogs occupy the same environment we do, which can make them good sentinels for human health, and DNA gives clues to ancient Maya rituals and malaria’s global spread Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss two very different studies that used DNA to dig into our past. One study reveals details of child sacrifices in an ancient Maya city. The other story is on the surprising historical reach of malaria, from Belgium to the Himalayas to South America.   Next on the show, using our canine companions to track human health. Courtney Sexton, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Population Health Sciences at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, talks about what we can learn from these furry friends that tend to be exposed to many of the same things we are such as pesticides and cleaning chemicals.   Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Jackie Oberst, associate editor of custom publishing, interviews professors Miriam Merad and Brian Brown about the evolution of immunology 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zxgwbqo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Despite not having a known function, cellular “vaults” are on the verge of being harnessed for all kinds of applications, and looking at the evolution of brown fat into a heat-generating organ   First on this week’s show, Managing News Editor John Travis joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mysterious cellular complexes called “vaults.” First discovered in the 1980s, scientists have yet to uncover the function of these large, common, hollow structures. But now some researchers are looking to use vaults to deliver cancer drugs and viruses for gene therapy.   Next, what can we learn about the evolution of brown fat from opossums? Unlike white fat, which stores energy in many mammals, brown fat cells use ATP to generate heat, helping babies maintain their body temperature and hibernators kick-start their summers. Susanne Keipert, a researcher in the Department of Molecular Biosciences at Stockholm University’s Wenner-Gren Institute, talks about when in evolutionary history brown fat took on this job of burning energy.   Finally, this week we are launching our music refresh! If you are interested in what happened to our music—where it came from and how it’s different (and the same)—stay tuned for a chat with artist Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; John Travis  Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zpoy92t Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Studying color vision in with children who gain sight later in life, joining a cancer trial doesn’t improve survival odds, and the first in our books series this year First on this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the pros and cons of participating in clinical trials. Her story challenges the common thinking that participating in a trial is beneficial—even in the placebo group—for cancer patients.   Next, Lukas Vogelsang, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about research into color vision with “late-sighted” kids. Studying children who were born blind and then later gained vision gave researchers new insights into how vision develops in babies and may even help train computers to see better.   Last up on the show is the first in our series of books podcasts on a future to look forward to. Books host Angela Saini talks with author Claire Horn, a researcher based at Dalhousie University’s Health Justice Institute. They discuss the implications of growing babies from fertilized egg to newborn infant—completely outside the body—and Horn’s book Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z6gdgb4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A roundup of online news stories featuring animals, and researchers get crows to “count” to four   This week’s show is all animals all the time. First, Online News Editor Dave Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss stepping on venomous snakes for science, hunting ice age cave bears, and demolishing lizardlike buildings.   Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Diana Liao, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, about teaching crows to count out loud. They discuss the complexity of this behavior and how, like the famous band, these counting corvids have all the right vocal skills to do it.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; David Grimm   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ztje4j6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show: What happens when the body’s own immune system attacks the brain, and how otters’ use of tools expands their diet   First on the show this week, when rogue antibodies attack the brain, patients can show bizarre symptoms—from extreme thirst, to sleep deprivation, to outright psychosis. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the hunt for biomarkers and treatments for this cluster of autoimmune disorders that were once mistaken for schizophrenia or even demonic possession.   Next on this episode, producer Katherine Irving talks with Chris Law, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington and the University of Texas at Austin, about how sea otters gain energy benefits (and dental benefits) when they use tools to tackle tougher prey such as snails or large clams.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Richard Stone; Katherine Irving Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4pdg62 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jupiter’s moon Io has likely been volcanically active since the start of the Solar System, and a proposal to safeguard healthy human subjects in clinical trials First on the show this week, a look at proposed protections for healthy human subjects, particularly in phase 1 clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risks healthy participants face when involved in early testing of drugs for safety and tolerance. Then, we hear about a project to establish a set of global standards initiated by the Ethics Committee of France’s national biomedical research agency, INSERM.   Next on this episode, a peek at the history of the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, Jupiter’s moon Io. Because the surface of Io is constantly being remodeled by its many volcanoes, it’s difficult to study its past by looking at craters or other landmarks. Katherine de Kleer, assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, talks about using isotopic ratios in the moon’s atmosphere to estimate how long it’s been spewing matter into space.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zyq2ig8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bringing historical seismic reports and modern seismic risk maps into alignment, and a roundup of stories from our newsletter, ScienceAdviser   First on the show this week, a roundup of stories with our newsletter editor, Christie Wilcox. Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about the oldest ice ever found, how well conservation efforts seem to be working, and repelling mosquitoes with our skin microbes.   Next on this episode, evaluating seismic hazard maps. In a Science Advances paper this week, Leah Salditch, a geoscience peril adviser at risk and reinsurance company Guy Carpenter, compared modern seismic risk map predictions with descriptions of past quakes. The analysis found a mismatch: Reported shaking in the past tended to be stronger than modern models would have predicted. She talks with Crespi about where this bias comes from and how to fix it.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfj31xo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers try to identify effective loneliness interventions, making the Sandmeyer safer, and books that look to the future and don’t see doom and gloom   First up on the show, Deputy News Editor Kelly Servick explores the science of loneliness. Is loneliness on the rise or just our awareness of it? How do we deal with the stigma of being lonely?   Also appearing in this segment: ●     Laura Coll-Planas ●     Julianne Holt-Lunstad ●     Samia Akhter-Khan   Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with Tim Schulte, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and RWTH Aachen University, about making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions—the Sandmeyer reaction—both safer and more versatile.   Finally, we kick off this year’s book series with books editor Valerie Thompson and books host Angela Saini. They discuss this year’s theme: a future to look forward to.   Book segments come out the last episode of the month. Books in the series: ●     Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth by Claire Horn (May) ●     Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform by Rachel O’Dwyer (June) ●     The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone (July) ●     Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age by Akshat Rathi (August) ●     Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield (September) ●     Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin (October)     This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Ariana Remmel; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini LINKS FOR MP3 META   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zqubta7   About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A different source of global warming, signs of a continentwide tradition of human sacrifice, and a virus that attacks the cholera bacteria   First up on the show this week, clearer skies might be accelerating global warming. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as air pollution is cleaned up, climate models need to consider the decrease in the planet’s reflectivity. Less reflectivity means Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun and increased temps.   Also from the news team this week, we hear about how bones from across Europe suggest recurring Stone Age ritual killings. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks about how a method of murder used by the Italian Mafia today may have been used in sacrifices by early farmers, from Poland to the Iberian Peninsula.   Finally, Eric Nelson, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, joins Sarah to talk about an infectious bacteria that’s fighting on two fronts. The bacterium that causes cholera—Vibrio cholerae—can be killed off with antibiotics but at the same time, it is hunted by a phage virus living inside the human gut. In a paper published in Science, Nelson and colleagues describe how we should think about phage as predator and bacteria as prey, in the savanna of our intestines. The ratio of predator to prey turns out to be important for the course of cholera infections.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Andrew Curry   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zhgw74e Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

]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: ·      Michael Peluso ·      Sara Cherry ·      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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zof5fvk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving; Meredith Wadman LINKS FOR MP3 META   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z91m76v Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Sara Reardon   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z9bqkyc Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Amos Matsiko   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zvvddhw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; Christie Wilcox; Sean Cummings   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zabhbwe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z7ye2st Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Zack Savitsky   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zz09cbu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A remote island may hold clues for the future of El Niño and La Niña 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 Niño’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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Paul Voosen    Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z1hqrn2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zd5mbue Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Rich Stone   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z5jiifi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm   Audio credit for human infant cries: Nicolas Grimault, Nicolas Mathevon, Florence Levréro; 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Christian Nawroth Annkatrin Pahl Jan Langbein   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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Katherine Irving   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zr3zfn1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Zürich, 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z66mytn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini; Robert Service   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adn0660 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm9783 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Christie Wilcox; Sarah Crespi   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm6756 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5269 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Tanya Roussy, Warren Cornwall Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl4219 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Paul Voosen, Kevin McLean  Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl3178 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Galápagos 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 Dalén, 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Erik Stokstad, Katherine Irving   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl1587 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar, Angela Saini    Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl0606 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 México 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Valerie Thompson, Jamie Dickman   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk9453 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, David Grimm   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk8409  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Meagan Cantwell; Dan Charles   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk7170  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen; Lizzie Wade     Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk6142 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 María de los Ángeles 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini; María de los Ángeles Orfila; Celina Zhao; Tanvi Dutta Gupta   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4714 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Andrew Saintsing, Christie Wilcox   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk2064 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Mütter 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 Éadaoin 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 Pérez Ortega about Philadelphia’s famously creepy Mütter 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean, Titi Shodiya, Zakiya Whatley, Rodrigo Pérez Ortega   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk1038  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A massive effort by African volunteers is ensuring artificial intelligence understands their native languages, and measuring 40,000 skeletons Our AI summer continues with a look at how to get artificial intelligence to understand and translate the thousands of languages that don’t have large online sources of text and audio. Freelance journalist Sandeep Ravindran joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss Masakhane, a volunteer-based project dedicated to spurring growth in machine learning of African languages. See the whole special issue on AI here.   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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sandeep Ravindran   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7646 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 López 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Claudio Lopez Lloreda   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj7011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Bridget Alex   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj5600  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Warren Cornwall   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj4684   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi     Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj2212  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Jake Yeston   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj0996    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Paul Voosen   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi9883 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini; Elizabeth Pennisi   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi8592   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Arbøll 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.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi7436     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Anji Wall, abdominal transplant surgeon and bioethicist at Baylor University Medical Center Marat Slessarav, consultant intensivist and donation physician at the London Health Sciences Centre and assistant professor in the department of medicine at Western University Nader Moazami, surgical head of heart transplantation at New York University Langone Health   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   About the Science Podcast   [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   [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  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   [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   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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 Müller-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.   About the Science Podcast   [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Read a related perspective.    This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.   About the Science Podcast   [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    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Preston Van Hooser Megan LaFollette Anneke Keizer   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.   About the Science Podcast   [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   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Pérez 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. About the Science Podcast [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 Pérez 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. About the Science Podcast [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. About the Science Podcast [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  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. About the Science Podcast [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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. About the Science Podcast [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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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

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: What saliva tells babies about human relationships A global map of ant diversity Gut bacteria that nourish hibernating squirrels Securing nuclear waste for 100,000 years Why rabies remains Why sunscreen is bad for coral Saving the Spix’s macaw Waking up bacterial spores Collecting spider silks 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  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Otherlands Review | Buy 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  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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

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

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: Peter-Paul Verbeek, a philosopher of science and technology at the University of Amsterdam and chair of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology David Koepsell, a philosopher of science and technology at Texas A&M University, College Station Christina Jarvis, a Vonnegut scholar at the State University of New York, Fredonia, and author of the new book Lucky Mud & Other Foma: A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut’s Environmentalism and Planetary Citizenship Sheila Jasanoff, a science studies scholar at Harvard University 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 José Juan Jordá, 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: University of Wisconsin, Madison, molecular biologist Bridget Ladell Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine biologist Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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

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

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   ++ LINKS FOR MP3 META   Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1292     About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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  About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Global fast-traveling tsunamis driven by atmospheric Lamb waves on the 2022 Tonga eruption Atmospheric waves and global seismoacoustic observations of the January 2022 Hunga eruption, Tonga 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    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

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

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

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