Lots of research has tried to break down how music toys with the emotions of any audience, but have you ever thought about how music makes the musicians playing it feel? A group of researchers from Italy recently noticed this gap in the science and decided to answer it. They found that when violinists play more emotional pieces, their bow movements are rougher. Nicola di Stefano, the cognitive scientist who led the study, thinks that this effect might come from musicians reacting strongly to the...
Apr 01, 2025•9 min
Have you ever wanted to take a trip to the Arctic? Every year, tourists from around the world make their way to the region. But the ships carrying these tourists bring an invisible pollutant with them — one that’s impossible to see and impossible to ignore: noise. How does this unseen phenomenon affect animals that call the Arctic home? And what role do even the most environmentally conscious travelers play in this story? Researchers and cruise industry officials are working to uncover the answe...
Jan 14, 2025•12 min
It’s no secret that rivers winding through major cities have been reshaped by human hands. Where wildlife and marshes once existed, gray sidewalks and bleak straight-lined tributaries have blossomed. Now, some cities are implementing floating wetlands — native plant life on a body of biodegradable materials that bobs on top of the water — to address a budding desire to see animals and greenery return to their rivers. In this podcast episode, Jenaye Johnson speaks with scientists and community me...
Jun 13, 2024•11 min
Meet the newest robotic police officer in town: the Knightscope K5. This “Robocop” completed a two month trial period in New York City’s Times Square subway station from September to November of 2023, recording video and monitoring the station. But despite city officials promising its safety, people were understandably nervous about a robotic police officer. The robot’s trial period has ended and the K5 will not be re-entering the subway system, but it still serves as an important window to the ...
Mar 28, 2024•11 min
Boredom under COVID quarantine led many to pursue some strange side hobby, but for 24 mathematicians and artists, it resulted in Mathemalchemy — a collective of mathematically (aesthetically, too) charming pieces of art — from cryptographic quilts, huge parabolas of embroidered spheres, crochet theta curves caught in fishing nets, and murals of OctoPi, seen generating various wave-related equations per every water ripple. For the “Mathemalchemists,” their project is a lively, whimsical invitatio...
Mar 13, 2024•10 min
Oysters have been a New York City culinary staple for centuries. Hundreds of years ago, when the Indigenous Lenape people lived in the region prior to European colonization, the harbor teemed with shellfish. But by the early 20th century, pollution, urban development and overharvesting erased nearly 350 square miles of oyster beds. Fast forward to the present, and a nonprofit is now working to revive the once-mighty bivalve. The Billion Oyster Project started seeding the harbor with oysters in 2...
Feb 16, 2023•10 min
When you imagine a dam, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s the hulking concrete wall of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River or the Grand Coulee on the Columbia. Large barriers on large rivers, looming large on the horizon. But colossal structures like these make up only a fraction of the dams that chop up waterways across the United States. The nation’s rivers, streams and brooks are full of smaller dams — many of which aren’t monitored at the state or national level. And even though they’re small,...
Feb 09, 2023•10 min
Growing up in Houston, Marina Watowich was no stranger to hurricane seasons. This familiarity now drives Watowich’s research in genomics, where she seeks to understand how the environment affects the aging process. She isn’t studying aging in humans — but in a unique population of monkeys in Puerto Rico. These monkeys live on an isolated island off Puerto Rico and give researchers unique access and insights into monkey genetics. In 2017, Hurricane Maria walloped Puerto Rico and tore down trees o...
Aug 22, 2022•12 min
Chimpanzees are nearing extinction in many countries. Of the four subspecies of these great apes, western chimpanzees are the most endangered. Experts estimate that their distribution is now extremely patchy, with 80% of their numbers having declined in the last 20 years. The largest-remaining population is found in the Ivory Coast in Western Africa, with smaller populations in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Liberia. Poaching and habitat loss are some of the well-known threats ...
Apr 08, 2022•7 min
Thinking about climate change can be overwhelming, even paralyzing. Attempting to solve this global crisis will take enormous efforts by politicians, companies and local leaders to reverse the negative effects on our planet. On this global stage, where can artistic expression fit into our response and communication efforts? Enter climate change theater — an effort by playwrights, educators and scientists to spread information and awareness about the impacts of human behavior on the environment. ...
Mar 08, 2022•8 min
What do Tiger Woods, Michelle Williams and President Joe Biden all have in common? Like around 3 million people in the United States, they are all people who stutter. Stuttering commonly develops around childhood and most people stop stuttering by the time they reach adulthood. However, stuttering persists for some adults and researchers haven’t been able to figure out why. But findings from a recent study may get them one step closer to finding out: Adults don’t stutter when they talk alone. Jo...
Mar 03, 2022•8 min
The Central Park Running Club meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30 in the morning. Not much stops them from starting their days together with an early morning jaunt through the park — not cold, not rain and not even January’s big snowstorm. What’s so special about exercising together that it gets these intrepid Central Park runners out of bed and onto the road each week? In this episode of the Scienceline podcast, Emily talks to runners, a neuroscientist and a health psychologist to find out....
Feb 22, 2022•9 min
The Republic of Tuva, located in the Russian Federation, is known across the world for its music. If you’ve ever heard Tuvan vocalists sing, you’ll understand why. A piercing whistle hovers over a deep, buzzing drone — two very different sounds coming from the same singer’s vocal tract as he harmonizes with himself. So how do these master vocalists sing two notes at once? The answer lies in the most fundamental principles of sound. And in theory, anyone can learn to do it. On this episode of the...
Feb 17, 2022•8 min
Sometimes, being a “material girl” comes with a downside. An endless cycle of fashion trends doesn’t only weigh on your wallet; it takes a toll on the planet too. In 2020, the fashion industry accounted for 10% of the world’s carbon emissions, which is more than the oceanic shipping and international flight industries combined. If current practices continue undeterred, experts predict emissions will only increase. Just like the larger issue of climate change, the path to fixing the fashion indus...
Feb 15, 2022•8 min
Have you ever wondered how the universe will end? Chances are that the answer is “yes”; humans tend to have an innate curiosity when it comes to morbid questions. Scientists, of course, are no different. Cosmologists have pondered the ultimate fate of the universe, and many have converged on a theory: the “heat death of the universe,” also known as the “Big Freeze.” The Big Freeze theory suggests that, one day, all the energy in the universe will become evenly distributed, preventing any further...
Feb 10, 2022•9 min
Today, many charcuterie boards, servings of buffalo chicken and cobb salads feature blue cheese and possibly even a glass of beer. New evidence shows that humans’ taste for a cheese flavored by fungi may have begun as early as 800 B.C. The Hallstatt salt mines in the Eastern Alps preserved excrement left behind by the workers who extracted salt from underground. Last year, researchers analyzed molecules on four samples of paleofeces, or very old human poop, and found evidence of blue cheese and ...
Feb 08, 2022•7 min
Like many other volunteers, Brooklyn resident Hailee got involved with feral cat care by accident. After seeing cats in need around her neighborhood, she adopted some, found veterinary resources for others and joined a community of cat-savvy neighbors. Throughout New York City a network of volunteers and professionals are working to compassionately reduce feral cat populations. “In 2003, only 25% of animals who came into the shelters got out alive… now what the industry calls the live release ra...
Feb 03, 2022•6 min
If you’re a parent, you might have the opinion that video games are a waste of time. But the U.S. Department of State, educators and other experts think that gaming might actually be the best way to engage students — especially during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic — on important issues, like where the food we eat comes from and how agriculture can impact climate change. By using Farmcraft, a tweaked version of the popular game Minecraft that focuses on modern farming practices, students...
Jan 26, 2022•9 min
Right in the heart of New York City is the East River, separating Manhattan and the Bronx from Brooklyn, Queens and the suburbia of Long Island. For many New Yorkers, the river is just water running under the many bridges they cross over during their daily commute. But before the confluence of the Hudson River and the harbor became New York City, the East River was home to a diversity of wildlife including fish, oysters and whales. What would it take to reincarnate this lost ecosystem of New Yor...
Apr 08, 2021•8 min
In the last few decades, the study of exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — has exploded. Since the first one was spotted in 1992, scientists have found thousands of different exoplanets in their own unique systems, each of which has told us something new about the cosmos. Hidden among planets made of diamond and systems that we didn’t think could exist is a wealth of scientific information. To the people that study these strange celestial bodies, finding a “weird one” is a sign that t...
Feb 26, 2021•8 min
Last year, plenty of people took up the new hobby of baking sourdough. What better to do when you can’t leave the house? And, since sourdoughs are based on cultivating a microbial community of yeast and bacteria in what’s called a “starter,” these bakers had to learn how to care for the billions of microbes with which they now shared a kitchen. But as with many other hobbies, some of those new sourdough bakers probably gave up at some point. So what happened to their new microbe friends? What ha...
Jan 28, 2021•10 min
In the 1980s, Mark Temple was the drummer for the indie pop band The Hummingbirds. He toured the world and saw his music played on MTV, but eventually left the band and returned to school. When the university where he teaches shut down earlier this year, Temple used his time at home to rekindle his pastime: He turned the coronavirus genome into music. Each genetic letter contained within SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was converted into a musical note, bass line or drum beat. The re...
Jan 21, 2021•7 min
As long as humans have been around, we’ve relied on plants for our survival: as food, fuel, shelter, medicine — and to produce the oxygen we breathe. Ethnobotanists are scientists who study and catalog these complex interactions between people and plants. Yet ethnobotany has a complicated history of its own, with roots in European colonial expeditions and in the exploitation of Indigenous communities. Now, with the biodiversity crisis imperiling plants, ethnobotanists have become unexpected advo...
Jan 13, 2021•8 min
2020 was another record-breaking year of storms and wildfires in the United States. Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, reports of fiery skies above California and “unsurvivable” storm surges in Louisiana can feel like apocalyptic icing on a hellish cake. So how do meteorologists decide what to say about extreme weather? And as the climate changes, are weather reports changing too? TV weathercasters are trusted messengers for many American families — including Casey Crownhart’s fam...
Jan 06, 2021•8 min
Watching for resident and migratory birds has provided an outlet for people to go outside during the COVID-19 shutdowns. Photo: Migratory birds like this magnolia warbler pass through New York City each year, and the pandemic hasn’t stopped them. [Jean-Guy Dallaire | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ] Music by: Chuck Fresh, Jahzzar For more information about this episode, please visit https://scienceline.org/2020/12/birding-provides-escape-for-the-pandemic-fatigued
Dec 30, 2020•7 min
The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted economies across the globe. With international travel on hiatus, the toll on tourism has been immense. So where does that leave the communities — and animals — that depend on money from travelers?
Sep 28, 2020•10 min
It’s literally in the name — folk culture depends on groups of people. Whether they’re attending a folk dance or a jam session, members of folk communities gather together to engage in a group experience. Or at least, that’s how it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sep 27, 2020•10 min
Grieving is difficult. Grieving during a pandemic even more so. In the Islamic tradition, a person's passing is marked with an elaborate and symbolic funeral. But what happens to those traditions when the world is put on pause, and when tragedy seems never-ending?
Sep 27, 2020•10 min
June felt different this year. The month, usually filled with technicolor LGBTQ Pride celebrations, fell quiet due to coronavirus lockdown measures. Many pride organizers adapted by hosting online pride events, which allowed queer folks from across the globe to meet while increasing the chance of homophobic cyberattacks. And these attacks did occur. This episode of DISTANCED centers around the novel pride celebrations of 2020, most held over Zoom, streamed on Facebook Live, or uploaded to YouTub...
Sep 23, 2020•6 min
In this podcast, Scienceline speaks with Fred Rubino, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University, who studies Wolbachia and their survival in fruit flies. Also, Cameron Simmons, Director of Impact Assessment at the World Mosquito Program, talks about how Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes are made, deployed, and the current challenges of both these bacteria and controlling diseases like dengue.
Sep 04, 2020•9 min
