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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 th...
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 t...
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, t...
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...
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 r...
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 environme...
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 an...
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 reli...
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 S...
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 th...
First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss NASA’s plans to send a nuclear-powered spacec raft 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 Chimpa...
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 unpreced...
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, f...
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 th...
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 result...
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...
First up on the podcast, a peek into the roiling seas of U.S. science policy. Science Insider 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...
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 ...
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 fu...
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 , assista...
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 St...
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 env...
Science Magazine's new biomedicine reporter discusses the Mexican Biobank's role in guiding patient care and the complex reality of auto-brewery syndrome, including new culprits and promising fecal microbiota transplantation treatments. The episode also delves into the recently discovered glymphatic system, the brain's clearance mechanism, and ongoing trials to manipulate it with drugs and surgery for conditions like Alzheimer's. Finally, a planetary scientist explains how seismic sensors detect sonic booms from re-entering space debris, offering crucial data for understanding breakup dynamics and mitigating risks from increasingly frequent uncontrolled re-entries.
The podcast first delves into the Galápagos, where researchers are combating invasive species like rats, cats, and plants, and deploying innovative methods to protect native birds. It highlights the complex challenges of ecosystem restoration and the crucial role of local communities in these long-term efforts. The second segment shifts to Antarctica, detailing a novel technique combining satellite imagery and ice flow physics to map its hidden subglacial landscape, providing vital data to improve predictions of future sea level rise and uncover new geological insights.
Researchers are on a quest to find Leonardo da Vinci's DNA from his artworks and distant relatives, using "arteomics" to uncover genetic clues about his extraordinary visual acuity. The episode also explores the discovery of 60,000-year-old poisoned arrows in South Africa, revealing complex hunting technology and cognitive capabilities of early humans. Chemical analysis of microliths shows the use of plant-based poisons, pushing back our understanding of this ancient practice.
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 s...
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. T...
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 V...
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 colum...
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 Autono...
