Science Magazine Podcast
Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.
Episodes
May 1, 2025 • 33 mins
First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about his visit to 17th century crypts under an old hospital in Italy. Researchers are examining tooth plaque, bone lesions, and mummified brains to learn more about the health, diet, and drug habits of Milan’s working poor 400 years ago.
Next on the show, a mechanism for driving growth in fat stores with age. Or, the source of the “dad ...
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First up on the podcast, bringing Gregor Mendel’s peas into the 21st century. Back in the 19th century Mendel, a friar and naturalist, tracked traits in peas such as flower color and shape over many generations. He used these observations to identify basic concepts about inheritance such as recessive and dominant traits. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about the difficulty of identifying genes for these phen...
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April 17, 2025 • 27 mins
First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how an Egyptian cult that killed cats may have also tamed them.
Next on the show, we hear about when the aurorae wandered. About 41,000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic poles took an excursion. They began to move equatorward and decreased in strength to one-tenth their modern levels. Agnit Mukhopadhyay, a research affiliate at the University ...
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April 10, 2025 • 29 mins
First up on the podcast, ScienceInsider Editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss big changes in science funding and government jobs this month, including an order to cut billions in contracts, lawsuits over funding caps and grant funding cancellations, and mass firings at the National Institutes of Health.
Next on the show, taking sleep loss more seriously. Jennifer Tudor, an associate professor of biology at Sain...
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Geoengineering experiments face an uphill battle, and a way to combat the pregnancy complication hyperemesis gravidarum
First up on the podcast, climate engineers face tough conversations with the public when proposing plans to test new technologies. Freelance science journalist Rebekah White joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the questions people have about these experiments and how researchers can get collaboration and buy-in fo...
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March 27, 2025 • 33 mins
First up this week, urban wildfires raged in Los Angeles in January. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall discusses how researchers have come together to study how pollution from buildings at such a large scale impacts the environment and health of the local population.
Next on the show, Mingze Chen, a graduate student in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Michigan, talks with host Sarah Crespi about...
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March 20, 2025 • 39 mins
First up this week, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss stories from the sea, including why scientists mounted cameras on seabirds, backward and upside-down; newly discovered organisms from the world’s deepest spot, the Mariana Trench; and how extremely venomous, blue-lined octopus males use their toxin on females in order to mate. Read more or subscribe at science.org/scienceadviser.
Next on the ...
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First up this week, science policy editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the latest news about the National Institutes of Health—from reconfiguring review panels to canceled grants to confirmation hearings for a new head, Jay Bhattacharya.
Next, although cochlear implants can give deaf children access to sound, it doesn’t always mean they have unrestricted access to language. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks with...
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March 6, 2025 • 56 mins
First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the most recent developments in U.S. science under Donald Trump’s second term, from the impact of tariffs on science to the rehiring of probationary employees at the National Science Foundation.
Next, we tackle the question of extra-pair paternity in people—when marriage or birth records of parentage differ from biological parentage. C...
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February 27, 2025 • 36 mins
First up this week, Kata Karáth, a freelance journalist based in Ecuador, talks with host Sarah Crespi about an effort to identify traditionally prepared shrunken heads in museums and collections around the world and potentially repatriate them.
Next, genetically modified Bt corn has helped farmers avoid serious crop damage from insects, but planting it everywhere all the time can drive insects to adapt to the bacterial toxin mad...
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First up this week, researchers face impossible decisions as U.S. aid freeze halts clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how organizers of U.S. Agency for International Development–funded studies are grappling with ethical responsibilities to trial participants and collaborators as funding, supplies, and workers dry up.
Next, freelance science journalist Sandeep Ravindran talks ...
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First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins the podcast to discuss the big change in NIH’s funding policy for overhead or indirect costs, the outrage from the biomedical community over the cuts, and the lawsuits filed in response.
Next, what can machines understand about pets and livestock that humans can’t? Christa Lesté-Lasserre, a freelance science journalist based in Paris, joins host Sarah Crespi to di...
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February 6, 2025 • 27 mins
First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about recent policy stories on NASA’s reactions to President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive orders.
Next, the mantis shrimp is famous for its powerful club, a biological hammer it uses to crack open hard shells. The club applies immense force on impact, but how does ...
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January 30, 2025 • 27 mins
First up this week, we catch up with the editor of ScienceInsider, Jocelyn Kaiser. She talks about changes at the major science agencies that came about with the transition to President Donald Trump’s second administration, such as hiring freezes at the National Institutes of Health and the United States’s departure from the World Health Organization.
Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Dan Kaplan, a professor in the departmen...
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January 23, 2025 • 34 mins
First up this week, although long touted as a green fuel, the traditional approach to hydrogen production is not very sustainable. Staff writer Robert F. Service joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss how researchers are aiming to improve electrolyzers—devices that split water into hydrogen and oxygen—with more efficient and durable designs.
Next, Robert Rogers, who was a postdoctoral fellow in molecular biology at Massachuset...
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January 16, 2025 • 34 mins
First up this week, growing numbers of Valley fever cases, also known as coccidioidomycosis, has researchers looking into the disease-causing fungus. They’re exploring its links to everything from drought and wildfires to climate change and rodent populations. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her visit to a Valley fever research site in the desert near Bakersfield, California, where researchers are sa...
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January 9, 2025 • 33 mins
First up this week, as preprint publications ramped up during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so did media attention for these pre–peer-review results. But what do the readers of news reports based on preprints know about them? Associate News Editor Jeff Brainard joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss studies that look at the public perception of preprints in the news and how to inject skepticism into stories about them.
Next...
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January 2, 2025 • 29 mins
First up this week, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about truffle hunting for science. Wilcox accompanied Heather Dawson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon, and her sister Hilary Dawson, a postdoctoral researcher at Australian National University, on a hunt for nonculinary truffles—the kind you don’t eat—with the help of a specially trained dog. These scientists and their dog are digging up...
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December 19, 2024 • 38 mins
First up this week, Online News Editor David Grimm shares a sampling of stories that hit big with our audience and staff in this year, from corpse-eating pets to the limits of fanning ourselves.
Next, host Sarah Crespi tackles some unfinished business with Producer Kevin McLean. Three former guests talk about where their research has taken them since their first appearances on the podcast.
Erick Lundgren, a researcher at the Ce...
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December 12, 2024 • 45 mins
First up this week, Breakthroughs Editor Greg Miller joins producer Meagan Cantwell to discuss Science’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year. They also discuss some of the other scientific achievements that turned heads this year, from ancient DNA and autoimmune therapy, to precision pesticides, and the discovery of a new organelle.
Next, host Sarah Crespi is joined by news staffers to catch up on threads they’ve been following all yea...
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