Science Talk

Guest host W. Wayt Gibbs talks with Jason Wright, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, about what’s known as the Fermi paradox: In a universe of trillions of planets, where is everybody? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Health journalist Judy Foreman talks about her new book Exercise Is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pathologists are starting to get a closer look at the damage that COVID-19 does to the body by carefully examining the internal organs of people who have died from the novel coronavirus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coronavirus research requires high-containment labs. Journalist Elisabeth Eaves talks with Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs about her article “The Risks of Building Too Many Bio Labs,” a joint project of the New Yorker and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society in the U.K., talks about flat earth belief and its relationship to conspiracy theories and other antiscience activities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs continues to report on the coronavirus outbreak from his home in Kirkland, Wash., site of the first U.S. cases. In this installment, he talks with researchers about what their models show for the future of the pandemic and on research to create tests to see who has developed immunity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoic...

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the original U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this installment of our ongoing series, he talks with researchers about the properties of the virus and why it spreads so quickly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christian Walzer, executive director of global health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, talks about how the wildlife trade, especially for human consumption, can lead to disease outbreaks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this 2012 interview, David Quammen talks about his book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, which is highly relevant to the emergence of the coronavirus that has changed our lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Judy Moskowitz, a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University, talks about ways to cope during this time of missing out on our usual diet of social interactions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this installment of our ongoing series, he talks with researchers about the efforts to create vaccines and treatments and the challenges the outbreak poses to cancer patients and others who are immunocompromised. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/...

Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this first installment of an ongoing series, he looks at why children seem to weather this disease better than adults and the complicated issue of shuttering schools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emmy and Peabody Award–winning science writer, producer and director Ann Druyan talks about Cosmos: Possible Worlds, the next installment of the Cosmos series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ben Wiegand, global head of the World without Disease Accelerator at Janssen, the Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, talks about efforts to prevent a disease or to identify it in its earliest stages for more effective treatments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Duke University evolutionary biologist Mohamed A. F. Noor talks about his book Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and author Peter Brannen talks about his book The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and author Beth Gardiner talks about her new book Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution. And CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna talks about gene editing.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nature is arguably the world’s most prestigious scientific journal. Editor in chief Magdalena Skipper spoke with Scientific American’s acting editor in chief Curtis Brainard about her journal as it celebrates its 150th anniversary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino share the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of lithium-ion batteries” that have led to portable electronic devices that are rechargeable virtually anywhere on the planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

William Kaelin, Jr., Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza share the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.” New therapies for cancer and conditions such as anemia are in the pipeline, based on these discoveries.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American senior editor Jen Schwartz talks with WHO officials Maria Neira and Agnès Soucat about climate and health and with Rachel Kyte, special representative to the U.N. secretary-general for, and CEO of, Sustainable Energy for All. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy talks with Scientific American’s Andrea Thompson about the widespread benefits of taking action against climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Physics historian Graham Farmelo talks about his latest book, The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and author David Epstein talks about his new book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Glaciologist Elizabeth Case of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University’s Earth Institute takes us out near Juneau, Alaska, to study and live on the shifting ice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices