Science Magazine Podcast

First up on the podcast, News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about an x-ray image that is upsetting the narrative of DNA’s discovery as told by James Watson. A newly resurfaced photo taken by Rosalind Franklin—photo 49—shows she was aware of the helical structure of DNA and explains why her published image—photo 51—does not have indications of her understanding of its shape. Next on the show, producer Elah Feder chats with Andreas Nieder, professor of animal physiology and director of the Institute for Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, about the high speed of bird cognition. It turns out in experimental settings carrion crows make decisions twice as fast as primates. The conversation delves into what could make avian brains ultrafast and the evolutionary advantages of speedy thinking. Last up this week, poets and scientists get together in books and in real life. Phil Levin and David Hassler discuss their collaboration on a joint effort to create a poetry anthology and a…

First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell and Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox discuss a few stories from ScienceAdviser, including why Nazi Germany was unlikely to ever make an atomic bomb, a gene that might prevent gray hairs, and 140 years of cheese history from a Swiss basement. Next on the show, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how archaeologists are revisiting the standard Inca chronology as radiocarbon dates mix up the timeline for the empire’s inception and growth. Last up this week, the neural basis of our breath’s rhythm. Nicholas Bush, a staff research scientist at Epsilon, talks about using modern neuronal recording techniques and computing to describe the generation of rhythmic breathing. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image: Lizzie Wade Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Robin George Andrews describes Japan’s upcoming Martian Moons eXploration mission that will nab a sample from the surface of Mars’s moon Phobos. The material, due back to Earth in 2031, could reveal the origins of this mysterious moon, the past habitability of Mars, or even hints of life itself. Next on the show, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano started to periodically spew tall fountains of lava in December 2024. Researchers and the public tuned in to watch more than 50 fountaining events steaming live online. Ashton Flinders, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how observations from the cameras plus geochemical, geophysical, and geologic monitoring revealed a predictable pattern in these usually rare events. Last up this week, Javier Birchenall, professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, discusses predictions of world-ending crises—starting with a…

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Jennie Erin Smith joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about new research on how noninvasive technologies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation are being used in the context of women’s health to tackle everything from postpartum depression to menstrual pain and fertility issues. Next on the show, we talk with Liisa Galea, Treliving family chair in women’s mental health and professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. In a review in this week’s special issue on women’s health, Galea discusses the state of research on hormone therapy during perimenopause and the links between menopausal symptoms and long-term concerns such as dementia and cardiovascular disease. See the whole women’s health special issue here. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image credit: Chiara Vercesi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Staff Reporter Tom Howarth joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the language artificial intelligence agents evolve inside their swarms. Next on the show, producer Elah Feder talks with Revathe Thillaikumar, a behavioral ecologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. The two discuss the value of social learning as baby orangutans learn to find their own food over the longest dependency period of any animal, except humans. Finally, from our series on scientific autobiographies, books host Angela Saini talks with astrophysicist Sara Seager about the moving account of life after losing her husband in her book, The Smallest Lights in the Universe. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Image: inkoly/istock Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, as the planet warms and forests burn, can we replant them with new trees that will thrive in the decades ahead? Associate Editor Katie Langin joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss research into “assisted migration” for replenishing forests after wildfires. Next on the show, Susana Monsó, an associate professor in the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at the Spanish National University of Distance Education, shares her latest Expert Voices column. She discusses how philosophy can play a role in the scientific process—from defining terms to formulating questions. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image: Dirk Hobman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell and freelance journalist Andrew Lawler discuss how psychoactive drugs might have shaped culture in pre-Inca Andean societies. They chat about how technical advances and an increasingly open research environment have allowed scientists to detect traces of substances such as vilca, which contains dimethyl­tryptamine, the psychoactive compound also found in ayahuasca. Next on the show, host Sarah Crespi is joined by Noam Angrist, academic director of the What Works Hub for Global Education at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. Angrist wrote a Policy Forum piece on the need to move on from small, controlled trials of education interventions to better address educational needs in lower and middle-income countries. To move forward, he explains, we need to learn how to make sure these interventions work at scale and that governments can readily implement them. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast…

First up on the podcast, Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how climate is pushing the disease-carrying tick Hyalomma marginatum out of its comfort zone. Stone reports from Kosovo, where the tick has long been endemic, on how surveillance can uncover hidden circulation—and help countries prepare before human cases appear. Next on the show, researchers have long known ambient temperatures cause some species of amphibians to reverse sex. In the case of the agile frog (Rana dalmatina), genetically female frogs take on male characteristics at elevated temperatures—including the ability to sire offspring. Veronika Bókony, an evolutionary ecologist at the Center for Agricultural Science in Hungary, examined what happens to the offspring of sex-reversed agile frogs, which will probably make up more of the species’ population as the planet warms. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image: Danny Laps/NiS/Minden Pictures Learn more about your ad…

First up on the podcast, will it ever make economic sense to produce drugs and biomedical supplies in space? Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko discusses his story on the researchers attempting to make biomanufacturing in space a reality, with News intern Julia Vaz. Next on the show, producer Kevin McLean chats with Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, a professor in the department of birds and mammals at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, about how narwhals have helped collect hard-to-reach oceanographic samples. Data collected by these long-toothed cetaceans revealed far more warm Atlantic water is pressing into the fjords of East Greenland than previously thought. Finally, the latest in our book series on biographies. This month, books host Angela Saini talks with writer Priyambada Jayakumar about her biography of M. S. Swaminathan. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image credit: Vast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, the News team’s Diverse Voices in Science Journalism interns Mona Patterson and Laura Martín Agudelo join host Sarah Crespi to talk over some of their reporting from the summer. They chat about several stories, including why it’s so difficult to track the food-borne illness cyclosporiasis and a new map for a major highway of the human nervous system. Check out all of Patterson’s and Martín Agudelo’s stories. Next on the show, Leslie Chan, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Emory School of Medicine, describes an ingestible metabolic probe for the gut microbiome. Her team tested the pill in mice and showed they could detect an enzyme made by the microbiome that causes toxicity during some chemotherapy treatments. The signal is read from volatiles in the breath, making the test a noninvasive way to check on the activity of gut microbes. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.…

First up on the podcast, ScienceInsider Editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi for the latest science policy news. The two discuss recent grant cancellations by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the likelihood that the agency will spend its budget by the end of its fiscal year on 30 September. Next on the show, crew aboard spacecraft that enter deep space are likely to be exposed to a radiation source we don’t often encounter on Earth’s surface: high-speed protons coming from solar storms or cosmic rays. So to protect astronauts, researchers are using plastics to defend against this dangerous form of radiation. Jordan Houri, lead scientist for space exploration at StemRad, talks about testing the protective capabilities of specially designed vests aboard NASA’s Artemis I mission. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image credit: ​NASA/Lockheed Martin/DLR/StemRad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Deputy News Editor Michael Price discusses the history of the North American bison population, its decline, and resurrection—and links to Indigenous cultures. He’s joined by University of California, Santa Cruz evolutionary molecular biologist Beth Shapiro and Greg Wilson, a wildlife ecologist with Parks Canada. They talk about their Science paper on the genetic diversity of modern bison after near extermination during European colonization. Shapiro and Wilson also explain how these findings can be used to inform conservation efforts. Next on the show, Jennie Brand-Miller, professor emeritus in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences and Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what our ancient ancestors were eating and a big question—was hunting key to evolving big brains? Brand-Miller argues instead that fruit was the key factor in the expansion of hominin brains. She points to the high sugar demands of large brains, about 100…

First up on the podcast, we catch up with Celina Zhao, a staff reporter for Science’s AI In Science reporting initiative. She talks with host Sarah Crespi about artificial intelligence’s knack for finding legal loopholes and how philosophers are navigating conflicts of interest around advising companies on AI. Next on the show, it’s hard to figure out how much force a muscle is exerting without sticking invasive probes into the body. Christopher Bird, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Queensland, discusses a new way to use ultrawideband radar to measure muscle forces that could prove useful for assistive devices and rehabilitation. Finally, the third in our limited six-part series on scientific biographies. This month, host Angela Saini talks with zoologist Matthew Cobb about his new book on the life of Francis Crick, Crick: A Mind in Motion. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image credit: Chiara Vercesi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Brendan Borrell talks about his work reporting on the previously undisclosed death of a 6-year-old girl in a gene-editing clinical trial in China and the reasons her parents came forward. This story was produced in collaboration with Retraction Watch and supported by the Science Fund for Investigative Reporting. Next on the show, Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Evan McKenzie, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, about an insect that evolved to avoid predators by modifying its respiratory system to withstand high pressure at depth. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image credit: Daria Lada Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, we continue our coverage of the fallout from cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), this time focusing on how one of the largest recipients of aid is coping 18 months later. Contributing Correspondent Catherine Offord talks about her trip to Malawi and the efforts to strengthen their health infrastructure in the wake of funding shocks. Next on the show, Collin Cherubim, Ph.D. candidate in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at Harvard University, discusses what it means to find helium escaping from the atmosphere of a rocky planet in the habitable zone of a nearby red dwarf. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Image credit: Thoko Chikondi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall goes on an owl hunt in the woods of Northern California. After surviving logging and habitat destruction in the 1990s, the endangered Northern spotted owl has put conservationists in a bind: In order to protect the spotted owl, the only solution may be shooting barred owls. Next on the show, looking back at the first 10 years of the journal Science Immunology. Editor Seth Thomas Scanlon explores how the field has changed since the inception of the journal and talks about a special series of reviews on immune memory. Check out the special issue cover here. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Image credit: Danny Hofstadter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, relationships turn chilly in the polar research haven of Svalbard in Norway. Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the impacts of geopolitical shifts on the scientific output of this region so important to the study of climate change. Next on the show, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Thomas Gernon, a geologist at the University of Southampton, about how ice sheets formed in Antarctica during a time when the temperatures were relatively warm. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, ScienceInsider editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss big policy stories from the past month, including a proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration to increase the involvement of politicians in grantmaking. Next on the show, Science Senior Editor Michael Funk joins to discuss a trio of papers on the light-detecting proteins responsible for color vision. Ohashi et al., Science 2026 Peng et al., Science 2026 Schmidt et al., Science 2026 Finally, in our books segment for this month, host Angela Saini talks with science writer Georgina Ferry, who wrote a biography about crystallographer Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, the first and only woman scientist from the United Kingdom to win a Nobel Prize. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, wrangling wolves in Europe. After near extermination in much of the continent, wolf numbers have surged up to about 20,000 individuals. Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel joins podcast host Sarah Crespi to discuss the conflicts that have risen as the wolf population grows. Next on the show, Ph.D. student Carla Bassil talks about designing an e-nose that can hone in on important food smells such as chicken that has gone bad or the presence of allergens including peanuts. Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, director and senior editor of custom publishing, interviews professors Eimear Kenny and Alex Charney about how genomic medicine, artificial intelligence, and large-scale sequencing are transforming the future of patient 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 Image credit: Lorenzo Shoubridge Learn…

First up on the podcast, producer Kevin McLean talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the latest on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. Researchers have long been concerned that global warming could cause a collapse in the AMOC, which would trigger dramatic cooling in Northern Europe. But recent data and models suggest the AMOC may be more resilient than previously thought. Next on the show, Scott Marek, assistant professor in the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine, talks with host Sarah Crespi about brainwide association studies (BWAS) for childhood brain development. BWAS measure structure and function across many brains and look for correlations between these measures and behavior, disease, and environment. In this work, Marek and colleagues focus on how socioeconomic factors—captured by zip code—are strongly correlated with certain brain differences in more than 4000 children ages 9.5 to 11. The work also suggests lack of sleep and…

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Joshua Sokol talks about the intense discussion happening in the astrophysics community as artificial intelligence and machine learning become increasingly powerful—could “astronomer” stop being a job one day? Next on the show, as the Trump administration makes moves to regulate ultraprocessed foods, host Sarah Crespi talks with Faidon Magkos, a professor in obesity and metabolism in the department of nutrition, exercise, and sports at the University of Copenhagen, about what studies say about their health effects. Finally this week, a behind-the-scenes look at our recent limited series “The normals.” Producer Kevin McLean talks about the experience of joining a study as a healthy subject, and Crespi talks about what didn’t make it into the episodes. Listen to “The normals” here. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, a company is using whole brains—maintained with specialized life support—to study new drugs. Freelance science journalist Sara Reardon joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the advantages and ethical considerations of keeping brains intact but inactive. Next on the show, when some lizards lose their tails, they might regenerate new ones. But what happens to the old tail? Whereas a castoff lizard tail quickly decomposes, this isn’t the case for the castoff tube feet of the sea cucumber, Psolus fabricii. Sara Miller Jobson, a Ph.D. student at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, describes how these “living” limbs healed after amputation and then survived for more than 3 years in just seawater. Their survival in such simple conditions, while maintaining a complex tissue with a functioning immune response, could make amputated tube feet a useful model system for studying regeneration. Finally this week, the first in our book series on science biographies. Books host Angela Saini…

First up on the podcast, Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the surprising commonalities between our immune systems and the tools bacteria use to defend themselves against viruses. These unexpected parallels have become rich ground for researchers investigating new molecular biology tools and model systems for immune research. Next on the show, Dominic Rohner, a professor of economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute and University of Lausanne, talks about the impact of cuts in international aid on violent conflict in Africa. His team harnessed the natural experiment of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) work stoppage ordered by the Trump administration in early 2025 to find links between the sudden withdrawal of high levels of aid to increases in conflict. See also Science’s 2025 news series on the impact of USAID cuts on children. Finally, Valerie Thompson, Science’s books and media editor, interviews undergraduate student and author Theo…

First up on the podcast, Meagan Cantwell produced a segment with Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt on the fight against deepfakes. Kupferschmidt talks with Hany Farid, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, about the never-ending battle against fake imagery and why Farid is not giving up. Next on the show, building a tough, bio-compatible capsule for engineered bacteria. Tetsuhiro Harimoto talks about the challenges of keeping living bacteria inside a hydrogel capsule and the advantages of using engineered bacteria as sensors and medicine dispensers inside the body. (Harimoto completed this work as a postdoc at Harvard University and will start as a professor at Cornell University in the fall.) This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First up on the podcast, along Brazil’s Juruá River, local residents have been working with scientists to manage a giant fish called the arapaima—affecting the land, the people, and the economy. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this collaborative effort. Next on the show, how moonlight affects nocturnal animals. Carlos Camacho, a researcher at the Doñana Biological Station, talks about the Moon-inflected habits of a nighttime foraging bird, the red-necked nightjar. His team found that the extra light provided by the full Moon allows these birds to consume more insects at night. And the timing of their long-haul migration between Europe and Africa is linked to the cycles of the Moon. Last up this week, Science Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp talks with Timothy Snyder, historian and author of the book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. They discuss the role of institutions, professional ethics, and personal beliefs for scientists in tough…

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm shares a batch of fun stories with podcast host Sarah Crespi—from spider hearts racing when traffic gets loud to a disease-preventing house. Staff Writer Adrian Cho hops in to help discuss the possibility of black holes without singularities at their center. Next on the show, epigenetics has become a hot topic in pop science but the ethical conversation is not keeping up. The idea that parents can pass down epigenetic marks from environmental toxins or trauma to their children—without changes in DNA—has been around for decades but the research in people is lacking. Jackie Leach Scully, a professor of bioethics and director of the Disability Innovation Institute at the University of New South Wales, discusses where the research actually is and the concerns that may arise if such marks do appear to impact the young. Last up this week, we are launching our 2026 biography books series with books host Angela Saini and Science books editor Valerie Thompson.…

First up on the podcast, freelance science and environmental journalist Quentin Septer joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a controversial uranium mine getting fast-tracked in South Dakota. Septer chatted with locals, scientists, and regulators to learn more about the geology of the region and the promise of cleanup after the miners go home. Next on the show, looking at cells that don’t get cancer. Giulio Ciucci, a postdoctoral researcher at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, talks about the infrequency of heart cancer and how the mechanical load that heart cells endure makes them resist turning cancerous. *CORRECTION: In the on this site summary in this episode, the book author in the review by Kai Kupferschmidt was listed incorrectly. The correct information is: True Color by Kory Stamper, Knopf, 2026. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The final of a three-part limited Science Podcast series that looks at the history of normal human subjects in research In episode two, we heard what happened to the normals program after church volunteers came to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center—and were surprisingly happy despite going through sometimes-painful procedures. In the decades to follow, the program got bigger as government funding expanded and started to recruit more broadly, stepping away from specific religious groups toward recruiting from colleges, universities, and unions. In this episode, we hear about how normal human subjects experience research today and the ways the normals project influenced oversight and safety for these sometimes vulnerable people. All episodes in this series Appearing in this episode: Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University Jill Fisher, professor of social medicine in the Center for Bioethics at the University of North Carolina…

First up on the podcast, quantum computers require extremely low temperatures—less than 1°C away from absolute zero. But getting down to those temperatures has usually required dilution fridges using the extremely rare and increasingly expensive isotope helium-3. Freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss up-and-coming technologies that can drive down temperatures while staying helium-3–free. Next on the show, Nizan Packin, a professor of law at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, talks about prediction markets as a public health threat. Early on, prediction markets were proposed as a way to make reliable forecasts from crowdsourced wisdom. With the appearance of commercial, for-profit prediction markets linked with cryptocurrency and sports betting, Nizan and colleagues ask what studies should be done to better understand potential harms to the public. Finally, in a Working Life column this week, recent Ph.D. graduate Filippo Dall’Armellina wrote about how…

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

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

How do we know what's normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start studying normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn't have. How do we know what’s normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start to study normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn’t have. When the healthy subjects arrived, experimenters tested LSD, sleep devrivation, rice-only diets, and more risky intervetions on them. Where it found those volunteers and what happened next is the story of The Normals. Starting on 7 April, the Science Podcast will be releasing a new three-part…

First up on the podcast, a new path to calculating the Hubble constant. This value for the universe’s speed of expansion is typically determined in one of two ways, one favored by cosmologists, the other by astronomers. But the resulting values from these methods are consistently different. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how reappearing bursts from deep space, lensed by gravity, could resolve the dispute over the speed of the expanding universe. Next on the show, freelance producer Elah Feder talks with Mauro Costa-Mattioli, principal investigator at Altos Labs’ Institutes of Science, about tuning the “integrated stress response” (ISR) in mouse brains. The ISR pathway turns off much of protein synthesis in cells as a response to stressors such as viral infections or oxygen deprivation. The ISR is overactive in some models of cognitive dysfunction—suggesting the downregulated protein synthesis may hamper brain functions such as memory formation. In his paper, Costa-Mattioli and…

First up on the podcast, Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink talks about so-called resurrection plants. These specialized plants can survive up to 95% water loss, whereas most plants struggle when their water levels dip below 60%. We also hear from Jill Farrant, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town, about her work dissecting the desiccation survival pathways in resurrection plants and how they might be repurposed to protect crop plants from drought. Next on the show, we’ve all heard of chatbots praising their users for asking the most basic of questions. This bias toward sycophancy extends beyond pleasantries into relationship advice the artificial intelligence (AI) doles out to users. Myra Cheng, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at Stanford University, joins the show to talk about how this tendency for AIs to be agreeable can lead users to have more confidence in their opinions, to the detriment of their relationships with others. Warning, this last segment contains…

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

First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Evan Howell traveled to Cape Blossom, Alaska, where the receding coastline has revealed an ancient trove of glacial ice that may have survived for 350,000 years—making it the oldest ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Now researchers just need to figure out how to date it. Next on the show, tracking wolves and ravens in Yellowstone National Park shows the birds don’t follow the wolves in hope of a meal, but instead remember and revisit frequent wolf kill sites. Matthias-Claudio Loretto, assistant professor in the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, discusses how this might change the way we think about scavengers’ strategies for finding their ephemeral food sources. Finally, Claire Bedbrook, the Helen Hay Whitney and Wu Tsai neuroscience postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, discusses her work tracking African turquoise killifish over their life span. By capturing behaviors over the course of the fish’s entire…

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

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

First up on the podcast, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox, Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko, and intern Perri Thaler share their experiences from the AAAS annual meeting in Phoenix. Christie recorded on location with David Rand regarding his prize-winning Science paper on using a large language model to combat conspiracy theories. Check out the live version of his team’s Debunk Bot. Michael chats with host Sarah Crespi about the foggy outlook of science in the United States as funding levels and graduate positions decline, and the bright sunshine of young students presenting science posters. And finally, Perri shares her reporting on OpenAI’s contribution to theoretical physics announced at the meeting. Next on the show, we hear about the “bouba-kiki” effect—the tendency for people, no matter their language, to associate round shapes with the nonword bouba and spiky shapes with the nonword kiki. Maria Loconsole, a postdoctoral researcher in the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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