Scienceline
The Scienceline podcast is produced by the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. For more information, e-mail us at scienceline@gmail.com.
Episodes
March 31, 2025 • 9 mins
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 t...
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January 13, 2025 • 11 mins
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? Research...
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June 12, 2024 • 11 mins
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 po...
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March 28, 2024 • 11 mins
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 th...
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March 13, 2024 • 10 mins
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 ...
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February 16, 2023 • 10 mins
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 B...
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February 9, 2023 • 10 mins
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 monito...
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August 22, 2022 • 11 mins
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. ...
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April 8, 2022 • 7 mins
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 Liber...
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March 8, 2022 • 8 mins
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...
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March 3, 2022 • 7 mins
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 cl...
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February 22, 2022 • 8 mins
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 ...
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February 17, 2022 • 8 mins
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...
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February 15, 2022 • 8 mins
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 th...
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February 10, 2022 • 8 mins
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 ...
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February 8, 2022 • 6 mins
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 paleofec...
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February 3, 2022 • 6 mins
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 shel...
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January 26, 2022 • 8 mins
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 popu...
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April 8, 2021 • 7 mins
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 whale...
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February 26, 2021 • 8 mins
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 thes...
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