Science Magazine Podcast

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

The James Webb Space Telescope was first conceived in the late 1980s. Now, more than 30 years later, it’s finally set to launch in December. After such a long a road, anticipation over what the telescope will contribute to astronomy is intense. Daniel Clery, a staff writer for Science, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what took so long and what we can expect after launch. You might have heard that Greenland sharks may live up to 400 years. But did you know that some Pacific rockfish can live to be more than 100? That’s true, even though other rockfish species only live about 10 years. Why such a range in life span? Greg Owens, assistant professor of biology at the University of Victoria, discusses his work looking for genes linked with longer life spans. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Tyson Rininger; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: Sebastes caurinus, the copper rockfish ] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some 80 countries around the world add folic acid to their food supply to prevent birth defects that might happen because of a lack of the B vitamin—even among people too early in their pregnancies to know they are pregnant. This year, the United Kingdom decided to add the supplement to white flour. But it took almost 10 years of debate, and no countries in the European Union joined them in the change. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ongoing folate debate. Last year, a highly anticipated tool for dating ancient materials was released: a new updated radiocarbon calibration curve. The curve, which describes how much carbon-14 was in the atmosphere at different times in the past 55,000 years, is essential to figuring out the age of organic materials such as wood or leather. Sarah talks with Tim Heaton, senior lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield, and Edouard Bard, a professor at the College of France, about how the curve was redrawn and what it means, both for archaeology and for our understanding of the processes that create radiocarbon in the first place—like solar flares and Earth’s magnetic fields. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: close-up photograph of layers in volcanic tephra] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Simple animals like jellyfish and hydra, even roundworms, sleep. Without brains. Why do they sleep? How can we tell a jellyfish is sleeping? Staff Writer Liz Pennisi joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what can be learned about sleep from these simple sleepers. The feature is part of a special issue on sleep this week in Science. Next is a look at centuries of alien invasions—or rather, invasive insects moving from place to place as humans trade across continents. Sarah talks with Matthew MacLachlan, a research economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, about his Science Advances paper on why insect invasions don’t always increase when trade does. Finally, a book on racism and the search algorithms. Books host Angela Saini for our series of interviews on race and science talks with Safiya Umoja Noble, a professor in the African American Studies and Information Studies departments at the University of California, Los Angeles, about her book: Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image:  marcouliana/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: brown marmorated stink bug pattern] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi, Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are massive telescopes that look far out into the cosmos, giant particle accelerators looking for ever tinier signals, gargantuan gravitational wave detectors that span kilometers of Earth—what about soil science? Where’s the big science project on deep soil? It’s coming soon. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about plans for a new subsoil observatory to take us beyond topsoil. Wood is in some ways an ideal building material. You can grow it out of the ground. It’s not very heavy. It’s strong. But materials like metal and plastic have one up on wood in terms of flexibility. Plastic and metal can be melted and molded into complicated shapes. Could wood ever do this? Liangbing Hu, a professor in the department of materials science and engineering and director of the Center for Materials Innovation at the University of Maryland, College Park, talked with Sarah about making moldable wood in a new way. In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing office, interviews Michael Brehm, associate professor at UMass Chan Medical School Diabetes Center of Excellence, about how he is using humanized mouse models to study ways to modulate the body’s immune system as a pathway to treating type 1 diabetes. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Xiao et al., Science 2021; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text:  honeycomb structure made from moldable wood] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we are covering the Science special issue on mass incarceration. Can a dog find a body? Sometimes. Can a dog indicate a body was in a spot a few months ago, even though it’s not there now? There’s not much scientific evidence to back up such claims. But in the United States, people are being sent to prison based on this type of evidence. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Peter Andrey Smith, a reporter and researcher based in Maine, about the science—or lack thereof—behind dog-sniff evidence. With 2 million people in jail or prison in the United States, it has become incredibly common to have a close relative behind bars. Sarah talks with Hedwig Lee, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, about the consequences of mass incarceration for families of the incarcerated, from economic to social.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image:  Adrian Brandon; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: illustration from the special issue on mass incarceration by Adrian Brandon. He writes: “This illustration shines a light on the structural role of the prison system and how deeply embedded it is in the fabric of this country.”] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Peter Andrey Smith     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2019, a SpaceX rocket released 60 small satellites into low-Earth orbit—the first wave of more than 10,000 planned releases. At the same time, a new field of environmental debate was also launched—with satellite companies on one side, and astronomers, photographers, and stargazers on the other. Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the future of these space-based swarms. Over the course of the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic, different variants of the virus have come and gone. What would such changes look like over 10,000 years? Arthur Kocher, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, talks with Sarah about watching the evolution of the virus that causes hepatitis B—over 10 millennia—and how changes in the disease’s path match up with shifts in human history. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Rafael Schmall; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: Starlink satellites moving across the sky in a long-exposure photograph of the star Albireo in Cygnus] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Josh Sokol Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, most newborns get some biochemical screens of their blood, but whole-genome sequencing is a much more comprehensive look at an infant—maybe too comprehensive? Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the ethical ins and outs of whole-genome screening for newborns, and the kinds of infrastructure needed to use these screens more widely. Sarah also talks with three contributors to a series of vignettes on the importance of active learning for students in science, technology, engineering, and math. Yuko Munakata, professor in the department of psychology and Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, talks about how the amount of unstructured time and active learning contributes to developing executive function—the way our brains keep us on task. Nesra Yannier, special faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and inventor of NoRILLA, discusses an artificial intelligence–driven learning platform that helps children explore and learn about the real world. Finally, Louis Deslauriers, senior preceptor in the department of physics and director of science teaching and learning at Harvard University, laments lectures: why we like them so much, why we think we learn more from lectures than inquiry-based learning, and why we’re wrong. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Jerry Lai/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: newborn baby feet] [Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss fossilized footprints left on a lake shore in North America sometime before the end of Last Glacial Maximum—possibly the earliest evidence for humans on the continent. Read the research. Next, Paolo Cherubini, a senior scientist in the dendrosciences research group at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, discusses using tree rings to date and authenticate 17th and 18th century violins worth millions of dollars. Finally, in this month’s installment of the series of book interviews on race and science, guest host Angela Saini interviews Alondra Nelson, professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, about her 2016 book The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome. Note on the closing music: Violinist Nicholas Kitchen plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne on the violin “Castelbarco” made by Antonio Stradivari in Cremona, Italy, in 1697. Courtesy of the U.S. Library of Congress.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Bennet et al., Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: human footprints preserved in rock] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Angela Saini See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the health and environmental benefits of potty training cows. Next, Peter Teske, a professor in the department of zoology at the University of Johannesburg, joins us to talk about his Science Advances paper on origins of the sardine run—a massive annual fish migration off the coast of South Africa. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Steven Benjamin; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: sardines in a swirling bait ball] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Staff Writer Paul Voosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about plans for NASA’s first visit to the Moon in 50 years—and the quick succession of missions that will likely follow.  Next, Eileen Roesler, a researcher and lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin in the field of human-robot automation, discusses the benefits of making robots that look and act like people—it’s not always as helpful as you would think.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Virginie Angéloz/Noun Project; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: three robot drawings that look like people to different degrees] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the many theories circulating about the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and why finding the right one is important. Next, Ed Narevicius, a professor in the chemical and biological physics department at the Weizmann Institute of Science, talks with Sarah about creating vortex beams of atoms—a quantum state in which the phase of the matter wave of an atom rotates around its path, like a spiral staircase.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Alon Luski et al./Science 2021; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: vortex beams showing holes in the center of the beam] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

News Intern Rachel Fritts talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new way to think about endometriosis—a painful condition found in one in 10 women in which tissue that normally lines the uterus grows on the outside of the uterus and can bind to other organs. Next, Raphael Townshend, founder and CEO of Atomic AI, talks about predicting RNA folding using deep learning—a machine learning approach that relies on very few examples and limited data. Finally, in this month's edition of our limited series on race and science, guest host and journalist Angela Saini is joined by author Lundy Braun, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and Africana studies at Brown University, to discuss her book: Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: C. Bickel/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: folded RNA 3D structures] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Fritts   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contributing Correspondent Michael Price joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the newest Mars analog to be built on the location of the first attempt at a large-scale sealed habitat, Biosphere 2 in Arizona. Next, William Brady, a postdoctoral researcher in the psychology department at Yale University, talks with Sarah about using an algorithm to measure increasing expressions of moral outrage on social media platforms. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Listen to previous podcasts. Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Kai Staats; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: lettuce plants being tended in a Mars analog] [Caption: Lettuce plants being tended in a Mars analog] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Mike Price   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Piller, an investigative journalist for Science, talks with host Sarah Crespi about a risky trial of vitamin D in asthmatic children that has caused a lot of concern among ethicists. They also discuss how the vitamin D trial connects with a possibly dangerous push to compare new treatments with placebos instead of standard-of-care treatments in clinical trials. Next, Birhanu Eshete, professor of computer and information science at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the risks of exposing machine learning algorithms online—risks such as the reverse engineering of training data to access proprietary information or even patient data. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast [Image: Filip Patock/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] [Alt text: Bottle of Vitamin D pills] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; Charles Piller       Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

International News Editor Martin Enserink talks with host Sarah Crespi about a moratorium on prion research after the fatal brain disease infected two lab workers in France, killing one. Next, Abhay Goyal, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, talks with intern Claire Hogan about his Science Advances paper on figuring out how to reduce the massive carbon footprint of cement by looking at its molecular structure. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Ansuman Satpathy, assistant professor in the department of pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of supporting early-career research and diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Marquette LaForest/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink     Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the paradox of metabolically healthy obesity. They chat about the latest research into the relationships between markers of metabolic health—such as glucose or cholesterol levels in the blood—and obesity. They aren’t as tied as you might think. Next, Colin Dayan, professor of clinical diabetes and metabolism at Cardiff University and senior clinical researcher at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, joins Sarah to discuss his contribution to a special issue on type 1 diabetes. In his review, Colin and colleagues lay out research into how type 1 diabetes can be detected early, delayed, and maybe even one day prevented. Finally, in the first of a six-part series of book interviews on race and science, guest host Angela Saini talks with author and professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Samuel Redman, about his book Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums. The two discuss the legacy of human bone collecting and racism in museums today. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Jason Solo/Jacky Winter Group; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, Associate Editor Kelly Servick joins us to discuss a big push to develop scalable blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease and how this could advance research on the disease and its treatment. Next, Amir Khan, a senior scientist at the Physics Institute of the University of Zurich and the Institute of Geophysics at ETH Zürich, talks with multimedia intern Claire Hogan about marsquakes detected by NASA’s InSight lander—and what they can reveal about Mars’s crust, mantle, and core. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: C. Bickel/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Claire Hogan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new series on how COVID-19 may alter the scientific enterprise and they look back at how pandemics have catalyzed change throughout history.  Next, Dan Shugar, associate professor of geoscience and director of the environmental science program at the University of Calgary, talks with producer Joel Goldberg about a deadly rock and ice avalanche in northern India this year and why closely monitoring steep mountain slopes is so important for averting future catastrophes. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Irfan Rashid, Department of Geoinformatics, University of Kashmir; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Joel Goldberg; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with author Patrick Radden Keefe about his book Empire of Pain and the role scientists, regulators, and physicians played in the rollout of Oxycontin and the opioid crisis in the United States. Next, Katelyn Baumer, a Ph.D. student in the chemistry and biochemistry department at Baylor University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about her Science Advances paper on 3D printing proteins using candy.  Finally, book review editor Valerie Thompson takes us on a journey through some science-y summer reads—from the future of foods to a biography of the color blue. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). Authors: Sarah Crespi; Holden Thorp; Valerie Thompson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, Contributing Correspondent Sam Kean talks with producer Joel Goldberg about techniques museum conservators are using to save a range of plastic artifacts—from David Bowie costumes to the first artificial heart.  Next, Dayne Fratanduono, an experimental physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about new standards for how gold and platinum change under extreme pressure. Fratanduono discusses how these standards will help researchers make more precise measurements of extreme pressure in the future. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Laura Mackay, professor and laboratory head at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne and 2018 winner of the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, about the importance of diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math. This segment is sponsored by the Michelson Foundation. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Aleth Lorne; Music: Jeffrey Cook] ++ Authors: Joel Goldberg; Sam Kean; Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady talks with host Sarah Crespi about controversy surrounding the use of Botox injections to alleviate depression by suppressing frowning. Next, researcher Stephen Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, discusses his Science Advances paper on what turns on the fruit fly sex drive. Finally, we are excited to kick off a six-part series of monthly interviews with authors of books that highlight the many intersections between race and science and scientists. This week, guest host and journalist Angela Saini talks with Keith Wailoo, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, who helped select the topics about the books we will be covering and how they were selected. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Tomasz Klejdysz/Shutterstock; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Cathleen O’Grady; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, News Intern Sofia Moutinho joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss scientists concerns about advertisers looking into using our smart speakers or phones to whisper ads to us while we sleep.  Next, Bina Desai, head of Programs at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva, discusses how to predict the economic impact of human displacement due to climate change as part of a special issue on strategic retreat. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission Belur Math/Amphan Cyclone Relief Services; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sofia Moutinho Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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First this week, freelance journalist Ian Graber-Stiehl discusses what might be the oldest community science project—observing the emergence of periodical cicadas. He also notes the shifts in how amateur scientists have gone from contributing observations to helping scientists make predictions about the insects’ schedules. Next, Jason Chin, program leader at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, discusses how reducing redundancy in the genetic code opens up space for encoding unusual amino acids. His group shows that eliminating certain codes from the genome makes bacteria that are resistant to viruses and that these edited codes can be used to program the cells to make complicated molecules.  In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with Gary Michelson, founder of the Michelson Medical Research Foundation and co-chair of Michelson Philanthropies, about the best ways to support early-career scientists, including through prizes such as the new Michelson Philanthropies and Science Prize for Immunology. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Bill Douthitt/Science; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ian Graber-Stiehl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First this week, Lucia Melloni, a group leader in the department of neuroscience at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, talks with host Sarah Crespi about making the hard problem of consciousness easier by getting advocates of opposing theories to collaborate and design experiments to rule in or rule out their competing theories. Next, TC Chakraborty, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, shares his Science Advances paper on why it’s important to measure air temperature on the ground rather than from satellites when trying to understand urban heat islands—how cities heat up more than the surrounding countryside. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Joe Wolf/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Staff Writer Kelly Servick talks with host Sarah Crespi about the pairing of a specific type of psychotherapy with the drug MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, for treating post-traumatic stress disorder. Also this week, Pamela Jakiela, an economics professor at Williams College, discusses the importance of knowing how early childhood development interventions like free day care or parenting classes have an effect on caregivers, particularly mothers. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Graham Crouch/World Bank; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Kelly Servick; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

News Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss possible harms from how the shipping industry is responding to air pollution regulations—instead of pumping health-harming chemicals into the air, they are now being dumped into oceans. Also this week, William Brune, professor of meteorology and atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, talks about flying a plane into thunderstorms and how measurements from research flights revealed the surprising amount of air-cleaning oxidants created by lightning. In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Manfred Kraus, senior director and head of in vivo pharmacology oncology at Bristol Myers Squibb, about the impact of humanized mice on preclinical research. This segment is sponsored by the Jackson Laboratory. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Samantha Dellaert/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Erik Stokstad; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rich Stone, former international news editor at Science and current senior science editor at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Tangled Bank Studios, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about concerning levels of fission reactions deep in an inaccessible area of the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Though nothing is likely to come of it anytime soon, scientists must decide what—if anything—they should do tamp down reactions in this hard-to-reach place. Also on this week’s show, Shlomi Kotler, an assistant professor in the department of applied physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joins Sarah to discuss the quantum entanglement of macroscopic objects. This hallmark of quantum physics has been confined—up until now—to microscopic items like atoms, ions, and photons. But what does it mean that two drums, each the width of a human hair, can be entangled? Read a related insight. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Caption: New Safe Confinement structure built over Chernobyl ruins; Credit: URBEX Hungary/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Rich Stone; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contributing Correspondent Cathleen O’Grady joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a company that stores renewable energy by hoisting large objects in massive “gravity batteries.” Also on this week’s show, Erick Lundgren, a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, talks about how water from wells dug by wild horses and feral donkeys provides a buffer to all different kinds of animals and plants during the driest times in the Sonora and Mojave deserts. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Tracy Hall/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Cathleen O’Grady; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall about a restoration project to add 54 square kilometers back to the coast of Louisiana by allowing the Mississippi River to resume delivering sediment to sinking regions. Also on this week’s show, Dion Vlachos, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Delaware, Newark, and director of the Delaware Energy Institute, joins Sarah to talk about his Science Advances paper on a low-temperature process to convert different kinds of plastic to fuels, like gasoline and jet fuel.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Shannon Dosemagen/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Warren Cornwall; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about a new measurement of the magnetism of the muon—an unstable cousin of the electron. This latest measurement and an earlier one both differ from predictions based on the standard model of particle physics. The increased certainty that there is a muon magnetism mismatch could be a field day for theoretical physicists looking to add new particles or forces to the standard model.   Also on this week’s show, Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and professor of integrative biology, joins Sarah to talk about his team’s calculation for the total number of Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived. In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders interviews Imre Berger, professor of biochemistry at the University of Bristol, about his Science paper on finding a druggable pocket on the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and how the work was accelerated by intensive cloud computing. This segment is sponsored by Oracle for Research. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image:Lewis Kelly/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Adrian Cho; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Sarah Crespi talks with Contributing Correspondent Joshua Sokol about magnetars—highly magnetized neutron stars. A recent intense outburst of gamma rays from a nearby galaxy has given astronomers a whole new view on these mysterious magnetic monsters. Also on this week’s show, Christoph Zollikofer, a professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich, talks about the evolution of humanlike brains. His team’s work with brain-case fossils suggests the complex brains we carry around today were not present in the early hominins to leave Africa, but later developed in the cousins they left behind. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: (Text) Sculptor galaxy; (Image) ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA; Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Joshua Sokol; Sarah Crespi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Podcast Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Pamela Soltis, a professor and curator with the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida and the director of the University of Florida Biodiversity Institute, about how natural collections at museums can be a valuable resource for understanding future disease outbreaks. Read the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. This segment is part of our coverage of the 2021 AAAS Annual Meeting. Also on this week’s show, Katharina Schmack, a research associate at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, joins producer Joel Goldberg to talk about giving mice a quiz that makes them hallucinate. Observing the mice in this state helps researchers make connections between dopamine, hallucinations, and mental illness. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: christopherhu/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Joel Goldberg; Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most research on aging has been done on model organisms with limited life spans, such as flies and worms. Host Meagan Cantwell talks to science writer Yao-Hua Law about how long-living social insects—some of which survive for up to 30 years—can provide new insights into aging.  Also in this episode, host Sarah Crespi talks with Noshir Contractor, the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University, about his AAAS session on keeping humans in harmony during long space missions and how mock missions on Earth are being applied to plans for a crewed mission to Mars.  This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast [Image:TerriAnneAllen/Unsplash ; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Yao Hua Law; Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science News Staff Writer Kelly Servick discusses how physicians have sifted through torrents of scientific results to arrive at treatments for SARS-CoV-2. Sarah also talks with Wesley Reinhart of Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Institute for Computational and Data Science, about why we should be building smart cities from smart materials, such as metamaterials that help solar panels chase the Sun, and living materials like self-healing concrete that keep buildings in good shape. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Singapore Esplanade/Travis/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science Staff Writer Adrian Cho joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about plans for the next generation of gravitational wave detectors—including one with 40-kilometer arms. The proposed detectors will be up to 10 times more sensitive than current models and could capture all black hole mergers in the observable universe. Sarah also talks with Pavani Cherukupally, a researcher at Imperial College London and the University of Toronto, about her Science Advances paper on cleaning up oil spills with special cold-adapted sponges that work well when crude oil gets clumpy. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: VLCC tanker Amoco Cadiz oil spill/Collection of Doug Helton/NOAA/NOS/ORR/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Adrian Cho Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science’s Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a 2000-year-old pet cemetery found in the Egyptian city of Berenice and what it can tell us about the history of human-animal relationships. Also this week, Dipon Ghosh, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, talks about how scientists missed that the tiny eyeless roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, which has been intensively studied from top to bottom for decades, somehow has the ability to detect colors. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: HINRICH SCHULENBURG; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up, science journalist Julia Rosen talks with host Sarah Crespi about a growing fleet of radar satellites that will soon be able to detect minute rises and drops of Earth’s surface—from a gently deflating volcano to a water-swollen field—on a daily basis. Sarah also talks with Hui Cao, a professor of applied physics at Yale University, about a new way to generate enormous streams of random numbers faster than ever before, using a tiny laser that can fit on a computer chip. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Kyungduk Kim/Yale; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Julia Rosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science Staff Writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to take on some of big questions about the COVID-19 vaccines, such as: Do they stop transmission? Will we need boosters? When will life get back to “normal.” Sarah also talks with Anders Johansen, professor of planetary sciences and planet formation at the University of Copenhagen, about his Science Advances paper on a new theory for the formation of rocky planets in our Solar System. Instead of emerging out of ever-larger collisions of protoplanets, the new idea is that terrestrial planets like Earth and Mars formed from the buildup of many small pebbles. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: European Space Agency/Stuart Rankin/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science journalist Rachel Cernansky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about progress on Africa’s Great Green Wall project and the important difference between planting and growing a tree. Sarah also talks with Václav Kuna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, about using loud and long songs from fin whales to image structures under the ocean floor. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Holly Gramazio/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rachel Cernansky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices