Science Magazine Podcast

Afleveringen

1. Destroying forever chemicals, hyperlocal pollution sensing, and an experiment in queer parenthood

   29 oktober 2026 · 50 min

   Afspelen
   First up on the podcast, thousands of tons of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been released into the environment. It’s not always that difficult to round them up, but what to do next has been a tougher call. Until now, the default has been to burn PFAS—but that has been shown in some cases to release smaller PFAS back into the environment. Freelance science journalist Mark Peplow joins host Sarah Crespi to talk over recent technological improvements in destroying these forever chemicals and how feasible it is to deploy them. Lees meer

   Next on the show, News Intern Julia Vaz talks with Chirag Manchanda, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, about his Science Advances paper on new ways to analyze the sources of urban air pollution.

   Finally, the last in our six-part series on scientific biographies. Host Angela Saini talks with biologist Joe Osmundson about his new memoir, Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood.

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   Image: JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
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2. Birds make decisions faster than we do, rewriting DNA’s history, and combining science and poetry

   22 oktober 2026 · 44 min

   Afspelen
   First up on the podcast, News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about an x-ray image that is upsetting the narrative of DNA’s discovery as told by James Watson. A newly resurfaced photo taken by Rosalind Franklin—photo 49—shows she was aware of the helical structure of DNA and explains why her published image—photo 51—does not have indications of her understanding of its shape. Lees meer

   Next on the show, producer Elah Feder chats with Andreas Nieder, professor of animal physiology and director of the Institute for Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, about the high speed of bird cognition. It turns out in experimental settings carrion crows make decisions twice as fast as primates. The conversation delves into what could make avian brains ultrafast and the evolutionary advantages of speedy thinking.

   Last up this week, poets and scientists get together in books and in real life. Phil Levin and David Hassler discuss their collaboration on a joint effort to create a poetry anthology and a scientific report on the state of nature. They explain how they see science and poetry are connected, and how their ideas will be put into action at an upcoming conference on poetry and science in November.

   Also in this segment, Lara Volski reads her poem “The Monarch Bear.”

   People in this segment

   Phil Levin, professor in sustainability science and director of the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington (UW)

   David Hassler, executive director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University

   Lara Volski, Ph.D. candidate in the People and Wildlife Lab at UW

   Works mentioned

   The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders

   The Nature Record

   Conference details

   Poet and science gathering at Kent State

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   Image: Franklin: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
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3. Cheese history, redating the Inca empire, and the source of the breath’s rhythm

   15 oktober 2026 · 57 min

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   First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell and Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox discuss a few stories from ScienceAdviser, including why Nazi Germany was unlikely to ever make an atomic bomb, a gene that might prevent gray hairs, and 140 years of cheese history from a Swiss basement. Lees meer

   Next on the show, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how archaeologists are revisiting the standard Inca chronology as radiocarbon dates mix up the timeline for the empire’s inception and growth.

   Last up this week, the neural basis of our breath’s rhythm. Nicholas Bush, a staff research scientist at Epsilon, talks about using modern neuronal recording techniques and computing to describe the generation of rhythmic breathing.

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   Image: Lizzie Wade
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4. A moon heist, lava fountains, and predicting doomsday

   8 oktober 2026 · 49 min

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   First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Robin George Andrews describes Japan’s upcoming Martian Moons eXploration mission that will nab a sample from the surface of Mars’s moon Phobos. The material, due back to Earth in 2031, could reveal the origins of this mysterious moon, the past habitability of Mars, or even hints of life itself. Lees meer

   Next on the show, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano started to periodically spew tall fountains of lava in December 2024. Researchers and the public tuned in to watch more than 50 fountaining events steaming live online. Ashton Flinders, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how observations from the cameras plus geochemical, geophysical, and geologic monitoring revealed a predictable pattern in these usually rare events.

   Last up this week, Javier Birchenall, professor of economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, discusses predictions of world-ending crises—starting with a prediction published in a Science paper in 1960 that suggested Earth’s population would reach a singularity on 13 November 2026. We are still here and the global population is headed for a decline. What happened to the singularity and what else are we not predicting very well?

   Heinz von Foerster et al., Science 1960

   Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026

   “At this date human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millenia[sic].”

   Image: ESA Mars Express/Andrea Luck

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

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5. Stimulating the brain for women’s health, and the long-term implications of menopausal symptoms

   1 oktober 2026 · 37 min

   Afspelen
   First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Jennie Erin Smith joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about new research on how noninvasive technologies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation are being used in the context of women’s health to tackle everything from postpartum depression to menstrual pain and fertility issues. Lees meer

   Next on the show, we talk with Liisa Galea, Treliving family chair in women’s mental health and professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. In a review in this week’s special issue on women’s health, Galea discusses the state of research on hormone therapy during perimenopause and the links between menopausal symptoms and long-term concerns such as dementia and cardiovascular disease.

   See the whole women’s health special issue here.

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   Image credit: Chiara Vercesi
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6. Studying the changing of AI language inside swarms, how orangutans learn to forage, and an astrophysicist talks about loss

   24 september 2026 · 49 min

   Afspelen
   First up on the podcast, Staff Reporter Tom Howarth joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the language artificial intelligence agents evolve inside their swarms. Lees meer

   Next on the show, producer Elah Feder talks with Revathe Thillaikumar, a behavioral ecologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. The two discuss the value of social learning as baby orangutans learn to find their own food over the longest dependency period of any animal, except humans.

   Finally, from our series on scientific autobiographies, books host Angela Saini talks with astrophysicist Sara Seager about the moving account of life after losing her husband in her book, The Smallest Lights in the Universe.

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   About the Science Podcast

   Image: inkoly/istock
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7. Can ‘assisted migration’ save forests? And the role of philosophy in science

   17 september 2026 · 40 min

   Afspelen
   First up on the podcast, as the planet warms and forests burn, can we replant them with new trees that will thrive in the decades ahead? Associate Editor Katie Langin joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss research into “assisted migration” for replenishing forests after wildfires. Lees meer

   Next on the show, Susana Monsó, an associate professor in the Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science at the Spanish National University of Distance Education, shares her latest Expert Voices column. She discusses how philosophy can play a role in the scientific process—from defining terms to formulating questions.

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   Image: Dirk Hobman
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8. Psychoactive substances helped spur Andean civilization, and breaking barriers to education

   10 september 2026 · 33 min

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   First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell and freelance journalist Andrew Lawler discuss how psychoactive drugs might have shaped culture in pre-Inca Andean societies. They chat about how technical advances and an increasingly open research environment have allowed scientists to detect traces of substances such as vilca, which contains dimethyl­tryptamine, the psychoactive compound also found in ayahuasca. Lees meer

   Next on the show, host Sarah Crespi is joined by Noam Angrist, academic director of the What Works Hub for Global Education at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. Angrist wrote a Policy Forum piece on the need to move on from small, controlled trials of education interventions to better address educational needs in lower and middle-income countries. To move forward, he explains, we need to learn how to make sure these interventions work at scale and that governments can readily implement them.

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   About the Science Podcast

   Image credit: John Bigelow Taylor/Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History/Catalog number 41.2/7768
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9. Sex-reversing frogs, and Europe’s rising rates of a deadly tick-borne disease

   3 september 2026 · 28 min

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   First up on the podcast, Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how climate is pushing the disease-carrying tick Hyalomma marginatum out of its comfort zone. Stone reports from Kosovo, where the tick has long been endemic, on how surveillance can uncover hidden circulation—and help countries prepare before human cases appear. Lees meer

   Next on the show, researchers have long known ambient temperatures cause some species of amphibians to reverse sex. In the case of the agile frog (Rana dalmatina), genetically female frogs take on male characteristics at elevated temperatures—including the ability to sire offspring. Veronika Bókony, an evolutionary ecologist at the Center for Agricultural Science in Hungary, examined what happens to the offspring of sex-reversed agile frogs, which will probably make up more of the species’ population as the planet warms.

   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

   Image: Danny Laps/NiS/Minden Pictures
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10. Making drugs in space, the man who fed India, and what narwhals can teach us about changing seas

    27 augustus 2026 · 50 min

    Afspelen
    First up on the podcast, will it ever make economic sense to produce drugs and biomedical supplies in space? Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko discusses his story on the researchers attempting to make biomanufacturing in space a reality, with News intern Julia Vaz. Lees meer

    Next on the show, producer Kevin McLean chats with Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, a professor in the department of birds and mammals at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, about how narwhals have helped collect hard-to-reach oceanographic samples. Data collected by these long-toothed cetaceans revealed far more warm Atlantic water is pressing into the fjords of East Greenland than previously thought.

    Finally, the latest in our book series on biographies. This month, books host Angela Saini talks with writer Priyambada Jayakumar about her biography of M. S. Swaminathan.

    This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

    Image credit: Vast
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