Science Magazine Podcast

Science Magazine
Science Magazine Podcast

Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.

  1. A tardi party for the ScienceAdviser newsletter, and sled dog genomes

    6D AGO

    A tardi party for the ScienceAdviser newsletter, and sled dog genomes

    First up on the podcast, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi to celebrate the 2-year anniversary of ScienceAdviser with many stories about the amazing water bear. They also discuss links between climate change, melting glaciers, and earthquakes in the Alps, as well as what is probably the first edible laser.   Next on the show, freelance producer Elah Feder talks with Tatiana Feuerborn,  a postdoctoral fellow in the cancer genetics and comparative genomics branch of the National Institutes of Health, about the evolutionary history of the Greenland sled dog. Her team’s work sequencing 98 genomes from modern and ancient sled dogs reveals the canine’s current diversity and suggests approaches for conservation.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Elah Feder; Christie Wilcox  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    27 min
  2. Losing years of progress against HIV, and farming plastic on Mars

    JUL 3

    Losing years of progress against HIV, and farming plastic on Mars

    First up on the podcast, U.S. aid helped two African countries rein in HIV. Then came President Donald Trump. Senior News Correspondent Jon Cohen talks with producer Kevin McLean about how in Lesotho and Eswatini, treatment and prevention cutbacks are hitting pregnant people, children, and teens especially hard.   This story is part of a series about the impacts of U.S. funding cuts on global health, supported by the Pulitzer Center.   Next on the show, host Sarah Crespi is joined by Robin Wordsworth, the Gordon McKay Professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. They discuss the challenges and potential of microbes to grow plastics, drugs, and food on the surface of Mars or other bodies in the Solar System.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jon Cohen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    31 min
  3. Will your family turn you into a chatbot after you die? Plus, synthetic squid skin, and the sway of matriarchs in ancient Anatolia

    JUN 26

    Will your family turn you into a chatbot after you die? Plus, synthetic squid skin, and the sway of matriarchs in ancient Anatolia

    First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a pair of Science papers on kinship and culture in Neolithic Anatolia. The researchers used ancient DNA and isotopes from 8000 to 9000 years ago to show how maternal lines were important in Çatalhöyük culture.   ●     E. Yüncü et al., Female lineages and changing kinship patterns in Neolithic Çatalhöyük, 2025 ●     D. Koptekin et al., Out-of-Anatolia: Cultural and genetic interactions during the Neolithic expansion in the Aegean, 2025   Next on the show, researchers were able to make a synthetic material that changes color in the same way squids do. Georgii Bogdanov, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, talks about how his lab was able to discover the subcellular arrangement of proteins in the squid cells and mimic this structure synthetically using titanium dioxide deposition.   Finally, the latest book in our series on science and death. Books host Angela Saini talks with Tamara Kneese about her book Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond and whether our families can turn us into chatbots after we die.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.  About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Andrew Curry; Angela Saini Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    46 min
  4. How effective are plastic bag bans? And a whole new way to do astronomy

    JUN 19

    How effective are plastic bag bans? And a whole new way to do astronomy

    First up on the podcast, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is just coming online, and once fully operational, it will take a snapshot of the entire southern sky every 3 days. Producer Meagan Cantwell guides us through Staff Writer Daniel Clery’s trip to the site of the largest camera ever made for astronomy.   Next on the show, probing the impact of plastic bag regulations. Environmental economist Anna Papp joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her work comparing litter collected by shore cleanup efforts before and after the onset of plastic bag bans.   In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Erika Berg, senior editor of custom publishing, interviews professors Deepak Bhatt and Filip Swirski about advances in the science of heart health. This segment is sponsored by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Daniel Clery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    38 min
  5. Why peanut allergy is so common and hot forests as test beds for climate change

    JUN 12

    Why peanut allergy is so common and hot forests as test beds for climate change

    First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about how scientists are probing the world’s hottest forests to better understand how plants will cope with climate change. His story is part of a special issue on plants and heat, which includes reviews and perspectives on the fate of plants in a warming world.   Next on the show, “convergent” antibodies may underlie the growing number of people allergic to peanuts. Sarita Patil, co-director of the Food Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, joins the podcast to discuss her research on allergies and antibodies. She explains how different people appear to create antibodies with similar gene sequences and 3D structures that react to peanut proteins—a big surprise given the importance of randomness in the immune system’s ability to recognize harmful invaders.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    38 min
  6. Farming maize in ice age Michigan, predicting the future climate of cities, and our host takes a quiz on the sounds of science

    JUN 5

    Farming maize in ice age Michigan, predicting the future climate of cities, and our host takes a quiz on the sounds of science

    First up on the podcast, we hear from Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the tricky problem of regional climate prediction. Although global climate change models have held up for the most part, predicting what will happen at smaller scales, such as the level of a city, is proving a stubborn challenge. Just increasing the resolution of global models requires intense computing power, so researchers and city planners are looking to other approaches to find out what’s in store for cities.   Next on the show, a visit to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where researchers have found evidence that the Indigenous Menominee people cultivated maize for 600 years, even during an ice age. Madeleine McLeester, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Dartmouth College, talks about using lidar to search among the heavily forested lands for striations that indicate corn farming and the anthropological conundrums raised by such extensive agriculture without nearby urban centers.   Finally in this episode, producer Kevin McLean quizzes host Sarah Crespi on some mysterious sounds that have appeared on the site as part of news stories. No clues here so be sure to play along.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Kevin McLean Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    43 min
  7. Tickling in review, spores in the stratosphere, and longevity research

    MAY 29

    Tickling in review, spores in the stratosphere, and longevity research

    First up on the podcast, Online News Editor Michael Greshko joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about stories set high above our heads. They discuss capturing fungal spores high in the stratosphere, the debate over signs of life on the exoplanet K2-18b, and a Chinese contender for world’s oldest star catalog.   Next on the show, a look into long-standing questions on why and how our bodies respond to tickling. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks to Konstantina Kilteni, an assistant professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour and the Department of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute. They discuss how standardizing approaches to testing tickling in the lab could get us closer to answers.   Finally in this episode, the first in our book series on the science of death, with books host Angela Saini. Saini interviews Nobel Prize–winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan about developments in longevity research and his book Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Michael Greshko, Meagan Cantwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    54 min
  8. Strange metals and our own personal ‘oxidation fields’

    MAY 22

    Strange metals and our own personal ‘oxidation fields’

    First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the strange metal state. Physicists are probing the behavior of electrons in these materials, which appear to behave like a thick soup rather than discrete charged particles. Many suspect insights into strange metals might lead to the creation of room-temperature superconductors, highly desired materials that promise lossless energy delivery and floating trains. A few years ago, researcher Nora Zannoni came on the show to talk about our oxidation fields: zones of highly reactive radicals our bodies naturally produce that surround us and interact with nearby chemicals. Now she’s back to discuss how our personal oxidation fields interact with personal care products—such as hand lotion, for example—and the resulting effects those products can end up having on the air we breathe indoors. Zannoni is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of Italy’s National Research Council. The work for the paper was done when she was a postdoc scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    41 min
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Hosts & Guests

4.3
out of 5
767 Ratings

About

Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.

Information

  • Creator
    Science Magazine
  • Years Active
    2006 - 2025
  • Episodes
    596
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2023 Science Magazine
  • Show Website
    Science Magazine Podcast

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