PNAS Science Sessions
PNAS
Welcome to Science Sessions, the PNAS podcast program. Listen to brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in PNAS, plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Feb 14, 2023 • 10min
How lizards adapt to urban living
Kristin Winchell explains the genetic basis of anole adaptation to urban environments.
Jan 30, 2023 • 8min
Revisiting the history of animal extinctions
Researchers document animal extinctions in the Ediacaran Period that may have preceded the earliest known mass extinction.
Jan 16, 2023 • 10min
The music of Mesozoic bush crickets
Bo Wang and Chunpeng Xu describe how fossilized katydids provide insight into the role of insect sounds in the Mesozoic.
Jan 3, 2023 • 7min
How a neural network taught itself chess
Tom McGrath describes how the neural network AlphaZero taught itself how to play chess without observing a human game.
Dec 19, 2022 • 7min
Honeybees: Nature's puzzle solvers
Orit Peleg, Golnar Fard and Francisco López Jiménez explain how honeybees overcome geometric constraints to construct honeycombs.
Dec 5, 2022 • 10min
Cultural identity in sperm whales
Taylor Hersh explores how patterns of clicks produced by sperm whales suggest the exchange of cultural information between the whales.
Nov 14, 2022 • 19min
Tuning into nature's music
Researchers discuss what animal soundscapes can tell us about the health of ecosystems.
Oct 31, 2022 • 10min
Point sources of methane emission
Daniel Cusworth discusses combining aircraft-based and satellite-based measurement to identify methane emission point sources.
Oct 17, 2022 • 11min
How climate warming releases ocean methane
Syee Weldeab describes what researchers can learn from ancient global warming about the risks posed by ocean floor methane hydrates.
Oct 3, 2022 • 10min
U-turn in occupational gender segregation
Ling Zhu and David B. Grusky explore intergenerational factors influencing occupational gender segregation in the United States.
