Science Magazine Podcast
Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.
Episodes
February 5, 2026 • 39 mins
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 ha...
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January 29, 2026 • 38 mins
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 t...
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January 22, 2026 • 32 mins
First up with Jennie Erin Smith, Science’s new senior biomedicine reporter, we delve into: autobrewery syndrome, when microbes inside the human gut make too much alcohol; how doctors can use a public repository, the Mexican Biobank, to guide patient care; and preliminary findings that surgery on the brain’s plumbing shows promise for Alzheimer’s disease.
Next on the show, it’s tough to calculate when and where deorbiting spacecraf...
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January 15, 2026 • 30 mins
First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Sofia Quaglia talks about her visit to the Galápagos archipelago and how researchers there are working to restore the islands to their former ecological glory.
*Note this episode has been updated to reflect that the Ecuadorian government is not responsible for primarily funding these efforts.
Next on the show, Antarctica’s deep ice coating obscures the hills and valleys on it...
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January 8, 2026 • 27 mins
First up on the podcast, scholars are on a quest to find Leonardo da Vinci’s DNA. With no direct descendants, the hunt involves sampling the famous polymath’s papers, paintings, and distant cousins. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone talks with host Sarah Crespi about what researchers hope to learn from Leonardo’s genes and the new field of “arteomics.”
Next on the show, new evidence for poisoned arrows from 60,000 years ago...
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January 1, 2026 • 43 mins
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 t...
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December 18, 2025 • 33 mins
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 ...
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December 11, 2025 • 27 mins
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.
N...
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December 4, 2025 • 38 mins
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 Analys...
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November 27, 2025 • 26 mins
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 researche...
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November 20, 2025 • 32 mins
First up on the podcast: the mysterious fate of Europe’s Neolithic farmers. They arrived from Anatolia around 5500 B.C.E. and began farming fertile land across Europe. Five hundred years later, their buildings, cemeteries, and pottery stopped showing up in the archaeological record, and mass graves with headless bodies started to appear across the continent. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about...
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November 13, 2025 • 28 mins
First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi for a rundown of online news stories. They talk about lichen that dine on dino bones, the physics of the lip-out problem in golf, and a brain-computer interface that can decode a tonal language (Chinese) from brain waves.
Next on the show, Jeremy Munday, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of California, Davis, talks about ...
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November 6, 2025 • 35 mins
First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Sofia Moutinho visited the Xingu Indigenous territory in Brazil to learn about a long-standing collaboration between scientists and the Kuikuro to better understand early Amazon communities.
Next on the show, we visit the Pacific pocket mouse recovery program at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance to talk with researchers about the tricky process of increasing genetic diversity i...
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First up on the podcast, increased carbon dioxide emissions sink more acidity into the ocean, but checking pH all over the world, up and down the water column, is incredibly challenging. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a technique that takes advantage of how sound moves through the water to detect ocean acidification.
Next on the show, we visit the lab of University of California San Diego professor Aly...
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October 23, 2025 • 27 mins
First up on the podcast, the Bering Sea’s snow crabs are bouncing back after a 50-billion-crab die-off in 2020, but scientists are racing to predict what’s going to happen to this important fishery. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what’s next for snow crabs.
Next on the show, freelance producer Elah Feder talks with Fei Peng, a professor in the department of psychology in the School of...
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October 16, 2025 • 26 mins
First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt takes a trip to Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago where ancient RNA viruses may lie buried in the permafrost. He talks with host Sarah Crespi about why we only have 100 years of evolutionary history for viruses such as coronavirus and influenza, and what we can learn by looking deeper back in time.
Next on the show, Nathalie Stroeymeyt, senior lecturer at the Scho...
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October 9, 2025 • 37 mins
First up on the podcast, producer Kevin McLean talks with Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko about the impact of wildfires on wine; a couple horse stories, one modern, one ancient; and why educators are racing to archive government materials.
Next on the show, research that took advantage of a natural experiment in unnatural lighting. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Ph.D. student Liz Aguilar and Kimberly Rosvall, an asso...
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October 2, 2025 • 34 mins
First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Robert F. Service joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a boom in nuclear medicine, from new and more powerful radioisotopes to improved precision in cancer cell targeting.
Next on the show, we talk about why we sigh. Maria Clara Novaes-Silva, a doctoral student at ETH Zürich, discusses how deep breaths cause minute rearrangements at the special interface where air meets lung. The lung fle...
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First up on the podcast, Science News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why a salty layer of permafrost undergirding Arctic ice is turning frozen landscapes into boggy morasses.
Next on the show, glucose isn’t the only molecule in the body that can be monitored in real time; proteins can be, too. Freelancer producer Zakiya Whatley talks with Jane Donnelly, an MD/Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University...
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September 18, 2025 • 35 mins
First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the long journey to a vaccine for group B streptococcus, a microbe that sickens 400,000 babies a year and kills at least 91,000.
Next on the show, there are about 250,000 agricultural drones employed on farms in China. Countries such as South Korea, Turkey, and Thailand are swiftly increasing agricultural drone use, whereas t...
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