Science Magazine Podcast
Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.
Episodes
July 25, 2024 • 47 mins
Tackling air pollution—indoors and outdoors, how burned-up satellites in the atmosphere could destroy ozone, and the latest in our series of books on a future to look forward to
First up this week, Science Senior Editor Michael Funk joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the magazine’s special issue on air pollution. The two discuss the broad scope of air pollution, from home cooking to transmissible disease.
Next, how burned-up ...
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First up this week, Staff Writer Adrian Cho talks with host Sarah Crespi about a fusion company that isn’t aiming for net energy. Instead, it’s looking to sell off the high-energy neutrons from its fusion reactors for different purposes, such as imaging machine parts and generating medical isotopes. In the long run, the company hopes to use money from these neutron-based enterprises for bigger, more energetic reactors that may some...
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July 11, 2024 • 35 mins
Rodenticides are building up inside unintended targets, including birds, mammals, and insects; and bringing bioacoustics and artificial intelligence together for ecology
First up this week, producer Kevin McLean and freelance science journalist Dina Fine Maron discuss the history of rodent control and how rat poisons are making their way into our ecosystem.
Next on the episode, host Sarah Crespi talks with Jeppe Rasmussen, a pos...
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July 4, 2024 • 32 mins
First up this week, guest host Kevin McLean talks to freelance writer Andrew Zaleski about recent advancements in the world of synthetic blood. They discuss some of the failed attempts over the past century that led many to abandon the cause altogether, and a promising new option in the works called ErythroMer that is both shelf stable and can work on any blood type.
Next on the episode, producer Zakiya Whatley talks to Aaron Wei...
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June 27, 2024 • 50 mins
Guest host Meagan Cantwell talks to Staff Writer Erik Stokstad about a new weapon against crop-destroying beetles. By making pesticides using RNA, farmers can target pests and their close relatives, leaving other creatures unharmed.
Next, freelance producer Katherine Irving talks to hydrologist Craig Brinkerhoff about a recent analysis of ephemeral streams—which are only around temporarily—throughout the United States. Despite the...
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June 20, 2024 • 32 mins
On this week’s show: Scientists are expanding the hunt for habitable exoplanets to bigger worlds, and why improvements in air quality have stagnated in Los Angeles, especially during summer, despite cleaner cars and increased regulations
Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins producer Meagan Cantwell to talk through the major contenders for habitable exoplanets—from Earth-like rocky planets to water worlds. Preliminary results from two r...
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June 13, 2024 • 41 mins
On this week’s show: Companion animals such as dogs occupy the same environment we do, which can make them good sentinels for human health, and DNA gives clues to ancient Maya rituals and malaria’s global spread
Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss two very different studies that used DNA to dig into our past. One study reveals details of child sacrifices in an ancient Maya city. The other sto...
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June 6, 2024 • 37 mins
Despite not having a known function, cellular “vaults” are on the verge of being harnessed for all kinds of applications, and looking at the evolution of brown fat into a heat-generating organ
First on this week’s show, Managing News Editor John Travis joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mysterious cellular complexes called “vaults.” First discovered in the 1980s, scientists have yet to uncover the function of these large, common,...
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Studying color vision in with children who gain sight later in life, joining a cancer trial doesn’t improve survival odds, and the first in our books series this year
First on this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the pros and cons of participating in clinical trials. Her story challenges the common thinking that participating in a trial is beneficial—even in the placebo group—fo...
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May 23, 2024 • 33 mins
A roundup of online news stories featuring animals, and researchers get crows to “count” to four
This week’s show is all animals all the time. First, Online News Editor Dave Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss stepping on venomous snakes for science, hunting ice age cave bears, and demolishing lizardlike buildings.
Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Diana Liao, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen, a...
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May 16, 2024 • 32 mins
On this week’s show: What happens when the body’s own immune system attacks the brain, and how otters’ use of tools expands their diet
First on the show this week, when rogue antibodies attack the brain, patients can show bizarre symptoms—from extreme thirst, to sleep deprivation, to outright psychosis. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the hunt for biomarkers and treatments for this clus...
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May 9, 2024 • 29 mins
Jupiter’s moon Io has likely been volcanically active since the start of the Solar System, and a proposal to safeguard healthy human subjects in clinical trials
First on the show this week, a look at proposed protections for healthy human subjects, particularly in phase 1 clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risks healthy participants face when involved in early testing of drug...
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May 2, 2024 • 24 mins
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, eval...
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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-Lunsta...
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April 18, 2024 • 38 mins
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 absorb...
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April 11, 2024 • 33 mins
]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 ...
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April 4, 2024 • 31 mins
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 L...
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March 28, 2024 • 30 mins
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 ep...
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March 21, 2024 • 35 mins
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 f...
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March 14, 2024 • 29 mins
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 sci...
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