The new field of digital bioacoustics is using machine learning to try decipher animal speak, including honeybee toots and quacks and whoops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Are you working really hard to learn something? Remember this counterintuitive fact, and you might improve your learning curve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The bite of the lone star tick makes people allergic to a sugar found in mammalian products, and many doctors don’t know about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A “Darwinian paradox” is that homosexual activity occurs even though it does not lead to or aid in reproduction. But if you visit three capuchin monkeys in Los Angeles, they’ll show you how beneficial their liaisons are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Luddites did not hate technology—but they did fight the way it was used to exploit humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Xenotransplants could help to solve the organ transplant crisis—if researchers can get the science right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Light is a very dangerous, if not so obvious, threat to birds who migrate at night. But researchers are using weather radar to track birds and provide “lights out” forecasts to help keep their paths clear of visual distraction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Science is turning to machines to unlock the secrets of the vast, mysterious pulse-of-the-planet phenomenon that is nocturnal migration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If you really want to challenging your bird identification skills, try using them at night, when bird calls are less than 100 milliseconds long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
For thousands of years, no one truly knew how birds migrated—that is, until a few unlikely pioneers sat in an empty field with hundreds of pounds of kludged together recording gear and waited to hear sounds that no one had ever captured. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On any given night, dense clouds of dark, ghostly figures pass over your head as you sleep. Maybe you never knew they were there, but there are people out there who are deciphering all the unseen movement that happens amid the darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hearing aids may help maintain better brain functions in older people and better health overall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apothecaries founded this famous garden—one of the most ancient botanical gardens in Europe—to teach their students which plants poison and which plants cure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here’s how scientists are planning on getting underground fungi data from space using satellites. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Atmospheric carbon is a currency that plants use to “buy” nutrients from fungi in the soil. To find out where this economy will go next, the devil is in the details. And the details are in the dirt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Like us, plants and fungi have complex economies. By burning fossil fuels, we’ve been devaluing their currency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic might help people tackle substance abuse as well as shed pounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Scientists used a smoking machine—complete with a 3-D-printed mouthpiece—to figure out how to get the most cannabinoid per puff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
New AI technology predicts hit songs—by listening to someone’s body. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here’s what’s behind the A.I technology that has worried so many actors—including something called “the orb.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A sleep researcher who studies what dreams can tell us about the possible onset of some mental disorders believes lucid dreamers might hold a lot of answers in their head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here’s what a historian who has studied J. Robert Oppenheimer for two decades has to say about the new Christopher Nolan film on the father of the atomic bomb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Inflammatory bowel disease flare-ups can be traced to mental stress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here’s how large language models, or LLMs, actually work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Very small delays in swing jazz point to our evolution as a supremely auditory species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
New research has discovered that wildfire smoke hurts these primates’ voice—and health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
ChatGPT and other AI programs can offer medical advice. But how good are they? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The famous climate pattern El Niño could usher in a new hottest year on record and will have domino effects on the world’s weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
John O’Keefe shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014 for discovering that neurons in the hippocampus encode an animal’s location and create a cognitive map for navigation. This podcast was produced for the Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Researchers, using the galaxy as a detector, believe they have detected gravitational waves from monster black holes for the first time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
