Science Magazine Podcast

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.sc

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 Ho

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 chol

]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: h

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

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 ed

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 u

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

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

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

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 archaeo

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 Sc

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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