Science Magazine Podcast

First up on the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall goes on an owl hunt in the woods of Northern California. After surviving logging and habitat destruction in the 1990s, the endangered Northern spotted owl has put conservationists in a bind: In order to protect the spotted owl, the only solution may be shooting barred owls. Next on the show, looking back at the first 10 years of t...

First up on the podcast, relationships turn chilly in the polar research haven of Svalbard in Norway. Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the impacts of geopolitical shifts on the scientific output of this region so important to the study of climate change. Next on the show, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Thomas Gernon, a geologist at the Univer...

First up on the podcast, ScienceInsider editor Jocelyn Kaiser joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss big policy stories from the past month, including a proposal from President Donald Trump’s administration to increase the involvement of politicians in grantmaking. Next on the show, Science Senior Editor Michael Funk joins to discuss a trio of papers on the light-detecting proteins responsible for col...

First up on the podcast, wrangling wolves in Europe. After near extermination in much of the continent, wolf numbers have surged up to about 20,000 individuals. Contributing Correspondent Gretchen Vogel joins podcast host Sarah Crespi to discuss the conflicts that have risen as the wolf population grows. Next on the show, Ph. D. student Carla Bassil talks about designing an e-nose that can hone in...

First up on the podcast, producer Kevin McLean talks with Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the latest on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. Researchers have long been concerned that global warming could cause a collapse in the AMOC, which would trigger dramatic cooling in Northern Europe. But recent data and models suggest the AMOC may be more resilient than previously thought...

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Joshua Sokol talks about the intense discussion happening in the astrophysics community as artificial intelligence and machine learning become increasingly powerful—could “astronomer” stop being a job one day? Next on the show, as the Trump administration makes moves to regulate ultraprocessed foods, host Sarah Crespi talks with Faidon Magkos,...

First up on the podcast, a company is using whole brains—maintained with specialized life support—to study new drugs. Freelance science journalist Sara Reardon joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the advantages and ethical considerations of keeping brains intact but inactive. Next on the show, when some lizards lose their tails, they might regenerate new ones. But what happens to the old tail? W...

First up on the podcast, Senior International Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the surprising commonalities between our immune systems and the tools bacteria use to defend themselves against viruses. These unexpected parallels have become rich ground for researchers investigating new molecular biology tools and model systems for immune research. Next on the show, Domi...

First up on the podcast, Meagan Cantwell produced a segment with Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt on the fight against deepfakes. Kupferschmidt talks with Hany Farid, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, about the never-ending battle against fake imagery and why Farid is not giving up. Next on the show, building a tough, bio-compatible capsule for engineered bacteria. T...

First up on the podcast, along Brazil’s Juruá River, local residents have been working with scientists to manage a giant fish called the arapaima—affecting the land, the people, and the economy. Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about this collaborative effort. Next on the show, how moonlight affects nocturnal animals. Carlos Camacho, a researcher at the Do...

First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm shares a batch of fun stories with podcast host Sarah Crespi—from spider hearts racing when traffic gets loud to a disease-preventing house. Staff Writer Adrian Cho hops in to help discuss the possibility of black holes without singularities at their center. Next on the show, epigenetics has become a hot topic in pop science but the ethical c...

First up on the podcast, freelance science and environmental journalist Quentin Septer joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a controversial uranium mine getting fast-tracked in South Dakota. Septer chatted with locals, scientists, and regulators to learn more about the geology of the region and the promise of cleanup after the miners go home. Next on the show, looking at cells that don’t get canc...

The final of a three-part limited Science Podcast series that looks at the history of normal human subjects in research In episode two, we heard what happened to the normals program after church volunteers came to the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center—and were surprisingly happy despite going through sometimes-painful procedures. In the decades to follow, the program got bigger...

First up on the podcast, quantum computers require extremely low temperatures—less than 1°C away from absolute zero. But getting down to those temperatures has usually required dilution fridges using the extremely rare and increasingly expensive isotope helium-3. Freelance science journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss up-and-coming technologies that can drive down temperature...

Last time on The Normals, we learned that in the 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) wanted to recruit many healthy volunteers for basic research. Two peace churches, the Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren, had an excess of healthy human volunteers. The “Normals” recruited from these Anabaptist churches were surprisingly happy, even as they went through sometimes painful procedur...

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss NASA’s plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars in less than 3 years. Having not launched a fission reactor to space in more than 60 years, the organization faces many technical and bureaucratic hurdles to make that deadline. Next on the show, Aaron Sandel, associate professor in the D...

How do we know what's normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start studying normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn't have. How do we know what’s normal in a perso...

First up on the podcast, a new path to calculating the Hubble constant. This value for the universe’s speed of expansion is typically determined in one of two ways, one favored by cosmologists, the other by astronomers. But the resulting values from these methods are consistently different. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how reappearing bursts from deep space, lensed...

First up on the podcast, Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink talks about so-called resurrection plants. These specialized plants can survive up to 95% water loss, whereas most plants struggle when their water levels dip below 60%. We also hear from Jill Farrant, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of Cape Town, about her work dissecting the desiccation survival pathways in r...

First up on the podcast, we discuss a finding that’s likely to reignite debate over how humans first spread through the Americas. In the late 1990s, a site in southern Chile called Monte Verde forced archaeologists to adjust their views of the peopling of South America because it dated to about 14,500 years before present, which challenged the prevailing idea of when human inhabitants appeared on...

First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Evan Howell traveled to Cape Blossom, Alaska, where the receding coastline has revealed an ancient trove of glacial ice that may have survived for 350,000 years—making it the oldest ice in the Northern Hemisphere. Now researchers just need to figure out how to date it. Next on the show, tracking wolves and ravens in Yellowstone National Park shows the...

First up on the podcast, a peek into the roiling seas of U.S. science policy. ScienceInsider Editor Jocelyn Kaiser talks about shifting leadership at the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as a dip in funding rates by the National Institutes of Health. Staff Writer Robert F. Service covers proposed restrictions on access by international research...

First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell talks to Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall about his visit to Brazil, where he observed firsthand what it takes for researchers to understand why bird populations in the Amazon and beyond are shrinking. Next on the show, Raouf Belkhir, an M.D.-Ph. D. student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Carnegie Mellon University,...

First up on the podcast, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox, Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko, and intern Perri Thaler share their experiences from the AAAS annual meeting in Phoenix. Christie recorded on location with David Rand regarding his prize-winning Science paper on using a large language model to combat conspiracy theories. Check out the live version of his team’s Debunk Bot. M...

First up on the podcast, more than half of all dogs going through service animal training don’t make it to graduation. Producer Kevin McLean journeys with Online News Editor David Grimm to Canine Companions, one of the biggest organizations in the United States for training working dogs. At the facility, they meet puppies in preparation and learn about the behavioral testing and genetics that coul...