Science Magazine Podcast
Episodes
Coronavirus spreads financial turmoil to universities, and a drone that fights mosquito-borne illnesses
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how universities are dealing with the financial crunch brought on by the cor...
The facts on COVID-19 contact tracing apps, and benefits of returning sea otters to the wild
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Staff Writer Kelly Servick joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the ins and outs of coronavirus contact tracing apps—what they do, how they work, a...
Why men may have more severe COVID-19 symptoms, and using bacteria to track contaminated food
04 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
First up this week, staff writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about how male sex hormones may play a role in higher levels of severe c...
A rare condition associated with coronavirus in children, and tracing glaciers by looking at the ocean floor
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
First up this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel talks with host Sarah Crespi about a rare inflammatory response in children that has appeared...
How scientists are thinking about reopening labs, and the global threat of arsenic in drinking water
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Online news editor David Grimm talks with producer Joel Goldberg about the unique challenges of reopening labs amid the coronavirus pandemic. Though t...
How past pandemics reinforced inequality, and millions of mysterious quakes beneath a volcano
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of inequality in past pandemics. Evidence from medical records and ...
Making antibodies to treat coronavirus, and why planting trees won’t save the planet
07 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Staff writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2. Many companies a...
Blood test for multiple cancers studied in 10,000 women, and is our Sun boring?
30 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins Sarah to talk about a recent Science paper describing the results of a large study on a blood test for multiple type...
From nose to toes—how coronavirus affects the body, and a quantum microscope that unlocks the magnetic secrets of very old rocks
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Coronavirus affects far more than just the lungs, and doctors and researchers in the midst of the pandemic are trying to catalog—and understand—th...
How countries could recover from coronavirus, lessons from an ancient drought, and feeling tactile waves in the hand
16 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about countries planning a comeback from a coronavirus crisis. What can they...
Does coronavirus spread through the air, and the biology of anorexia
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new National Academy of Sciences report that suggests the nove...
How COVID-19 disease models shape shutdowns, and detecting emotions in mice
02 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about modeling coronavirus spread and the role of for...
Why some diseases come and go with the seasons, and how to develop smarter, safer chemicals
26 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg gets an update on the coronavirus pandemic from Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen. In addition, Cohen gives a r...
Ancient artifacts on the beaches of Northern Europe, and how we remember music
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg talks with science journalist Andrew Curry about recent archaeological finds along the shores of Northern Eu...
Science’s leading role in the restoration of Notre Dame and the surprising biology behind how our body develops its tough skin
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Lesté-Lasserre talks with host Sarah Crespi about the scientists working on the restoration of Notre ...
Dog noses detect heat, the world faces coronavirus, and scientists search for extraterrestrial life
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how dogs’ cold noses may be able to sense warm bodies. Read...
An ancient empire hiding in plain sight, and the billion-dollar cost of illegal fishing
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a turning point for one ancient Mesoamerican city:...
Brickmaking bacteria and solar cells that turn ‘waste’ heat into electricity
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, staff writer Robert F. Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about manipulating microbes to make them produce building materials...
NIH’s new diversity hiring program, and the role of memory suppression in resilience to trauma
13 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, senior correspondent Jeffrey Mervis joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant program ...
Fighting cancer with CRISPR, and dating ancient rock art with wasp nests
06 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a Science paper that combines two hot areas of resea...
A cryo–electron microscope accessible to the masses, and tracing the genetics of schizophrenia
30 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Structural biologists rejoiced when cryo–electron microscopy, a technique to generate highly detailed models of biomolecules, emerged. But years aft...
Getting BPA out of food containers, and tracing minute chemical mixtures in the environment
23 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As part of a special issue on chemicals for tomorrow’s Earth, we’ve got two green chemistry stories. First, host Sarah Crespi talks with contribut...
Researchers flouting clinical reporting rules, and linking gut microbes to heart disease and diabetes
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Though a U.S. law requiring clinical trial results reporting has been on the books for decades, many researchers have been slow to comply. Now, 2 year...
Squeezing two people into an MRI machine, and deciding between what’s reasonable and what’s rational
09 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Getting into a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine can be a tight fit for just one person. Now, researchers interested in studying face-to-face i...
Areas to watch in 2020, and how carnivorous plants evolved impressive traps
02 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We start our first episode of the new year looking at future trends in policy and research with host Joel Goldberg and several Science News writers. J...
Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in books
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As the year comes to a close, we review the best science, the best stories, and the best books from 2019. Our end-of-the-year episode kicks off with H...
Hunting for new epilepsy drugs, and capturing lightning from space
13 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
About one-third of people with epilepsy are treatment resistant. Up until now, epilepsy treatments have focused on taming seizures rather than the sou...
Debating lab monkey retirement, and visiting a near-Earth asteroid
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After their life as research subjects, what happens to lab monkeys? Some are euthanized to complete the research, others switch to new research projec...
Double dipping in an NIH loan repayment program, and using undersea cables as seismic sensors
28 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The National Institutes of Health’s largest loan repayment program was conceived to help scientists pay off school debts without relying on industry...
Building a landslide observatory, and the universality of music
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You may have seen the aftermath of a landslide, driving along a twisty mountain road—a scattering of rocks and scree impinging on the pavement. And ...
How to make an Arctic ship ‘vanish,’ and how fast-moving spikes are heating the Sun’s atmosphere
14 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Polarstern research vessel will spend 1 year locked in an Arctic ice floe. Aboard the ship and on the nearby ice, researchers will take measuremen...
Unearthing slavery in the Caribbean, and the Catholic Church’s influence on modern psychology
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Most historical accounts of slavery were written by colonists and planters. Researchers are now using the tools of archaeology to learn more about the...
How measles wipes out immune memory, and detecting small black holes
31 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Measles is a dangerous infection that can kill. As many as 100,000 people die from the disease each year. For those who survive infection, the virus l...
A worldwide worm survey, and racial bias in a health care algorithm
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Earthworms are easy … to find. But despite their prevalence and importance to ecosystems around the world, there hasn’t been a comprehensive surve...
Trying to find the mind in the brain, and why adults are always criticizing ‘kids these days’
17 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We don’t know where consciousness comes from. And we don’t know whether animals have it, or whether we can detect it in patients in comas. Do neur...
Fossilized dinosaur proteins, and making a fridge from rubber bands
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever tried to scrub off the dark, tarlike residue on a grill? That tough stuff is made up of polymers—basically just byproducts of cooking—...
An app for eye disease, and planting memories in songbirds
03 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Host Sarah Crespi talks with undergraduate student Micheal Munson from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, about a smartphone app that scans photos in t...
Privacy concerns slow Facebook studies, and how human fertility depends on chromosome counts
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, Senior News Correspondent Jeffrey Mervis talks with host Sarah Crespi about a stalled Facebook plan to release user data to soc...
Cooling Earth with asteroid dust, and 3 billion missing birds
19 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s show, science journalist Josh Sokol talks about a global cooling event sparked by space dust that lead to a huge shift in animal and ...
Studying human health at 5100 meters, and playing hide and seek with rats
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In La Rinconada, Peru, a town 5100 meters up in the Peruvian Andes, residents get by breathing air with 50% less oxygen than at sea level. Internation...
Searching for a lost Maya city, and measuring the information density of language
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week’s show starts with Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade, who spent 12 days with archaeologists searching for a lost Maya city in the Chi...
Where our microbiome came from, and how our farming and hunting ancestors transformed the world
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Micro-organisms live inside everything from the human gut to coral—but where do they come from? Host Meagan Cantwell talks to Staff Writer Elizabeth...
Promising approaches in suicide prevention, and how to retreat from climate change
22 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Changing the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline from 1-800-273- 8255 (TALK) to a three-digit number could save lives—especially when coupled with ...
One million ways to sex a chicken egg, and how plastic finds its way to Arctic ice
15 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Researchers, regulators, and the chicken industry are all united in their search for a way to make eggs more ethical by stopping culling—the killing...
Next-generation cellphone signals could interfere with weather forecasts, and monitoring smoke from wildfires to model nuclear winter
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In recent months, telecommunications companies in the United States have purchased a new part of the spectrum for use in 5G cellphone networks. Weathe...
Earthquakes caused by too much water extraction, and a dog cancer that has lived for millennia
01 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After two mysterious earthquake swarms occurred under the Sea of Galilee, researchers found a relationship between these small quakes and the excessiv...
Breeding better bees, and training artificial intelligence on emotional imagery
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine having a rat clinging to your back, sucking out your fat stores. That’s similar to what infested bees endure when the Varroa destructor mite...
Can we inherit trauma from our ancestors, and the secret to dark liquid dances
18 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Can we inherit trauma from our ancestors? Studies of behavior and biomarkers have suggested the stress of harsh conditions or family separations can b...
The point of pointing, and using seabirds to track ocean health
11 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You can learn a lot about ocean health from seabirds. For example, breeding failures among certain birds have been linked to the later collapse of som...
Converting carbon dioxide into gasoline, and ‘autofocal’ glasses with lenses that change shape on the fly
04 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chemists have long known how to convert carbon dioxide into fuels—but up until now, such processes have been too expensive for commercial use. Staff...
Creating chimeras for organ transplants and how bats switch between their eyes and ears on the wing
27 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Researchers have been making animal embryos from two different species, so-called “chimeras,” for years, by introducing stem cells from one specie...
The why of puppy dog eyes, and measuring honesty on a global scale
20 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How can you resist puppy dog eyes? This sweet, soulful look might very well have been bred into canines by their intended victims—humans. Online New...
Better hurricane forecasts and spotting salts on Jupiter’s moon Europa
13 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve all seen images or animations of hurricanes that color code the wind speeds inside the whirling mass—but it turns out we can do a better job...
The limits on human endurance, and a new type of LED
06 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Cheap and easy to make, perovskite minerals have become the wonder material of solar energy. Now, scientists are turning from using perovskites to cap...
Grad schools dropping the GRE requirement and AIs play capture the flag
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Up until this year, most U.S. graduate programs in the sciences required the General Record Examination from applicants. But concerns about what the t...
New targets for the world’s biggest atom smasher and wood designed to cool buildings
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built with one big goal in mind: to find the Higgs boson. It did just that in 2012. But the question on many physi...
Nonstick chemicals that stick around and detecting ear infections with smartphones
16 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The groundwater of Rockford, Michigan, is contaminated by per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, chemicals found in everything from nonstick pans to den...
Probing the secrets of the feline mind and how Uber and Lyft may be making traffic worse
09 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dog cognition and social behavior have hogged the scientific limelight for years—showing in study after study that canines have social skills essent...
The age-old quest for the color blue and why pollution is not killing the killifish
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have sought new materials to make elusive blue pigments for millennia—with mixed success. Today, scientists are tackling this blue-hued probl...
Race and disease risk and Berlin’s singing nightingales
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Noncancerous tumors of the uterus—also known as fibroids—are extremely common in women. One risk factor, according to the scientific literature, i...
How dental plaque reveals the history of dairy farming, and how our neighbors view food waste
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week we have two interviews from the annual meeting of AAAS in Washington D.C.: one on the history of food and one about our own perceptions of f...
A new species of ancient human and real-time evolutionary changes in flowering plants
11 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The ancient humans also known as the “hobbit” people (Homo floresiensis) might have company in their small stature with the discovery of another s...
A radioactive waste standoff and science’s debt to the slave trade
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A single factory in Malaysia supplies about 10% of the world’s rare earth oxides, used in everything from cellphones to lasers to missiles. Controve...
Mysterious racehorse injuries, and reforming the U.S. bail system
28 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Southern California’s famous Santa Anita racetrack is struggling to explain a series of recent horse injuries and deaths. Host Meagan Cantwell is jo...
Vacuuming potato-size nodules of valuable metals in the deep sea, and an expedition to an asteroid 290 million kilometers away
21 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pirate’s gold may not be that far off, as there are valuable metals embedded in potato-size nodules thousands of meters down in the depths of the oc...
Mysterious fast radio bursts and long-lasting effects of childhood cancer treatments
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Daniel Clery about the many, many theories surrounding fast radio bursts—extremely fast, intense radio sig...
Clues that the medieval plague swept into sub-Saharan Africa and evidence humans hunted and butchered giant ground sloths 12,000 years ago
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
New archaeological evidence suggests the same black plague that decimated Europe also took its toll on sub-Saharan Africa. Host Sarah Crespi talks wit...
Measuring earthquake damage with cellphone sensors and determining the height of the ancient Tibetan Plateau
28 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of a devastating earthquake, assessing the extent of damage to infrastructure is time consuming—now, a cheap sensor system based on the ...
Spotting slavery from space, and using iPads for communication disorders
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In our first segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (Science’s publisher) in Washington, D.C., host Sarah Crespi talks with Cathy Binger of Univers...
How far out we can predict the weather, and an ocean robot that monitors food webs
14 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The app on your phone tells you the weather for the next 10 days—that’s the furthest forecasters have ever been able to predict. In fact, every de...
Possible potato improvements, and a pill that gives you a jab in the gut
07 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Because of its genetic complexity, the potato didn’t undergo a “green revolution” like other staple crops. It can take more than 15 years to br...
Treating the microbiome, and a gene that induces sleep
31 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Orla Smith, editor of Science Translational Medicine joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about what has changed in the past 10 years of microbiome resear...
Pollution from pot plants, and how our bodies perceive processed foods
24 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The “dank” smelling terpenes emitted by growing marijuana can combine with chemicals in car emissions to form ozone, a health-damaging compound. T...
Peering inside giant planets, and fighting Ebola in the face of fake news
17 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s incredibly difficult to get an inkling of what is going on inside gas giants Saturn and Jupiter. But with data deliveries from the Cassini and ...
A mysterious blue pigment in the teeth of a medieval woman, and the evolution of online master’s degrees
10 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide free lectures and assignments, and gained global attention for their potential to increase education acces...
Will a radical open-access proposal catch on, and quantifying the most deadly period of the Holocaust
03 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Plan S, an initiative that requires participating research funders to immediately publish research in an open-access journal or repository, was announ...
End of the year podcast: 2018’s breakthroughs, breakdowns, and top online stories
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
First, we hear Online News Editor David Grimm and host Sarah Crespi discuss audience favorites and staff picks from this year’s online stories, from...
‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ turns 50, and how Neanderthal DNA could change your skull
13 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In 1968, Science published the now-famous paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” by ecologist Garrett Hardin. In it, Hardin questioned society’s ab...
Where private research funders stow their cash and studying gun deaths in children
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A new Science investigation reveals several major private research funders—including the Wellcome Trust and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—are...
The universe’s star formation history and a powerful new helper for evolution
29 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In a fast-changing environment, evolution can be slow—sometimes so slow that an organism dies out before the right mutation comes along. Host Sarah ...
Exploding the Cambrian and building a DNA database for forensics
22 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
First, we hear from science writer Joshua Sokol about his trip to the Cambrian—well not quite. He talks with host Megan Cantwell about his travels t...
The worst year ever and the effects of fasting
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When was the worst year to be alive? Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons talks to host Sarah Crespi about a contender year that features a volcanic...
A big increase in monkey research and an overhaul for the metric system
08 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A new report suggests a big increase in the use of monkeys in laboratory experiments in the United States in 2017. Online News Editor David Grimm join...
How the appendix could hold the keys to Parkinson’s disease, and materials scientists mimic nature
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For a long time, Parkinson’s disease was thought to be merely a disorder of the nervous system. But in the past decade researchers have started to l...
Children sue the U.S. government over climate change, and how mice inherit their gut microbes
25 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A group of children is suing the U.S. government—claiming their rights to life, liberty, and property are under threat from climate change thanks t...
Mutant cells in the esophagus, and protecting farmers from dangerous pesticide exposure
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As you age, your cells divide over and over again, leading to minute changes in their genomes. New research reveals that in the lining of the esophagu...
What we can learn from a cluster of people with an inherited intellectual disability, and questioning how sustainable green lawns are in dry places
11 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A small isolated town in Colombia is home to a large cluster of people with fragile X syndrome—a genetic disorder that leads to intellectual disabil...
Odd new particles may be tunneling through the planet, and how the flu operates differently in big and small towns
04 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Hoping to spot subatomic particles called neutrinos smashing into Earth, the balloon-borne Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) detector has ...
The future of PCB-laden orca whales, and doing genomics work with Indigenous people
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Science has often treated Indigenous people as resources for research—especially when it comes to genomics. Now, Indigenous people are exploring how...
Metaresearchers take on meta-analyses, and hoary old myths about science
20 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Meta-analyses—structured analyses of many studies on the same topic—were once seen as objective and definitive projects that helped sort out confl...
The youngest sex chromosomes on the block, and how to test a Zika vaccine without Zika cases
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Strawberries had both male and female parts, like most plants, until several million years ago. This may seem like a long time ago, but it actually me...
Should we prioritize which endangered species to save, and why were chemists baffled by soot for so long?
06 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We are in the middle of what some scientists are calling the sixth mass extinction and not all at-risk species can be saved. That’s causing some con...
<i>Science</i> and <i>Nature</i> get their social science studies replicated—or not, the mechanisms behind human-induced earthquakes, and the taboo of claiming causality in science
30 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A new project out of the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Virginia, found that of all the experimental social science papers published in S...
Sending flocks of tiny satellites out past Earth orbit and solving the irrigation efficiency paradox
23 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Small satellites—about the size of a briefcase—have been hitching rides on rockets to lower Earth orbit for decades. Now, because of their low cos...
Ancient volcanic eruptions, and peer pressure—from robots
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Several thousand years ago the volcano under Santorini in Greece—known as Thera—erupted in a tremendous explosion, dusting the nearby Mediterranea...
Doubts about the drought that kicked off our latest geological age, and a faceoff between stink bugs with samurai wasps
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We now live in the Meghalayan age—the last age of the Holocene epoch. Did you get the memo? A July decision by the International Commission on Strat...
How our brains may have evolved for language, and clues to what makes us leaders—or followers
02 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Yes, humans are the only species with language, but how did we acquire it? New research suggests our linguistic prowess might arise from the same proc...
Liquid water on Mars, athletic performance in transgender women, and the lost colony of Roanoke
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Billions of years ago, Mars probably hosted many water features: streams, rivers, gullies, etc. But until recently, water detected on the Red Planet w...
Why the platypus gave up suckling, and how gravity waves clear clouds
19 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Suckling mothers milk is a pretty basic feature of being a mammal. Humans do it. Possums do it. But monotremes such as the platypus and echidna—alth...
The South Pole’s IceCube detector catches a ghostly particle from deep space, and how rice knows to grow when submerged
12 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A detection of a single neutrino at the 1-square-kilometer IceCube detector in Antarctica may signal the beginning of “neutrino astronomy.” The ne...