Science Magazine Podcast

Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade talks with host Sarah Crespi about the role of inequality in past pandemics. Evidence from medical records and cemeteries suggests diseases like the 1918 flu, smallpox, and even the Black Death weren’t indiscriminately killing people—instead these infections caused more deaths in those with less money or status. Also this week, Aaron Wech, a research geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory, joins Sarah to talk about recordings of more than 1 million earthquakes from deep under Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano, which hasn’t erupted in 4500 years. They discuss how these earthquakes, which have repeated every 7 to 12 minutes for at least 20 years, went undetected for so long. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF).  ++   [Image: Ian Aiden Relkoff/Wikipedia; Music: Jeffrey Cook]   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Staff writer Jon Cohen joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about using monoclonal antibodies to treat or prevent infection by SARS-CoV-2. Many companies and researchers are rushing to design and test this type of treatment, which proved effective in combating Ebola last year. And Karen Holl, a professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joins Sarah to discuss the proper planning of tree planting campaigns. It turns out that just putting a tree in the ground is not enough to stop climate change and reforest the planet. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) [Image: Ian Dick/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jon Cohen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Staff Writer Jocelyn Kaiser joins Sarah to talk about a recent Science paper describing the results of a large study on a blood test for multiple types of cancer. The trial’s results suggest such a blood test combined with follow-up scans may help detect cancers early, but there is a danger of too many false positives. And postdoctoral researcher Timo Reinhold of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research joins Sarah to talk about his paper on how the Sun is a lot less variable in its magnetic activity compared with similar stars—what does it mean that our Sun is a little bit boring?   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). [Image: Solar Dynamic Observatory/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jocelyn Kaiser Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coronavirus affects far more than just the lungs, and doctors and researchers in the midst of the pandemic are trying to catalog—and understand—the virus’ impact on our bodies. Staff writer Meredith Wadman joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss what we know about how COVID-19 kills. See all Science news coverage of the pandemic here, and all research papers and editorials here. Also this week, staff writer Paul Voosen talks with Sarah about quantum diamond microscopes. These new devices are able to detect minute traces of magnetism, giving insight into the earliest movements of Earth’s tectonic plates and even ancient paleomagnetic events in space. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/nose-toes-how-coronavirus-affects-body-and-quantum-microscope-unlocks-magnetic-secrets-very Listen to previous podcasts About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF)  [Image: Meteorite ALH84001/NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meredith Wadman; Paul Voosen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about countries planning a comeback from a coronavirus crisis. What can they do once cases have slowed down to go back to some sort of normal without a second wave of infection? See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here. As part of a drought special issue of Science, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins Sarah to talk about water management and the downfall of the ancient Wari state. Sometimes called the first South American empire, the Wari culture successfully expanded throughout the Peruvian Andes 1400 years ago. Also this week, Yon Visell of the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks with Sarah about his Science Advances paper on the biomechanics of human hands. Our skin’s ability to propagate waves along the surface of the hand may help us sense the world around us. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF) Authors: Sarah Crespi; Lizzie Wade; Kai Kuperferschmidt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show, Staff Writer Robert Service talks with host Sarah Crespi about a new National Academy of Sciences report that suggests the novel coronavirus can go airborne, the evidence for this idea, and what this means for the mask-wearing debate. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here. Also this week, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins Sarah to talk about a burgeoning understanding of the biological roots of anorexia nervosa—an eating disorder that affects about 1% of people in the United States. From genetic links to brain scans, scientists are finding a lot more biology behind what was once thought of as a culturally driven disorder. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. Episode page: https://www.sciencemag.org/podcast/does-coronavirus-spread-through-air-and-biology-anorexia Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Download a transcript (PDF). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show, Contributing Correspondent Kai Kupferschmidt talks with host Sarah Crespi about modeling coronavirus spread and the role of forecasts in national lockdowns and other pandemic policies. They also talk about the launch of a global trial of promising treatments. See all of our News coverage of the pandemic here. See all of our Research and Editorials here.   Also this week, Nadine Gogolla, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, talks with Sarah about linking the facial expressions of mice to their emotional states using machine learning.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   Listen to previous podcasts.   About the Science Podcast   Download a transcript (PDF)   [Image: Damien Roué/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kai Kupferschmidt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg gets an update on the coronavirus pandemic from Senior Correspondent Jon Cohen. In addition, Cohen gives a rundown of his latest feature, which highlights the relationship between diseases and changing seasons—and how this relationship relates to a potential coronavirus vaccine. Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Alexandra Maertens, director of the Green Toxicology initiative at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, about the importance of incorporating nonanimal testing methods to study the adverse effects of chemicals.    This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   Listen to previous podcasts.   About the Science Podcast    ++  [Image: Let Ideas Compete/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]    Authors: Joel Goldberg; Jon Cohen; Meagan Cantwell   Listen to previous podcasts http://www.sciencemag.org/podcasts    About the Science Podcast http://www.sciencemag.org/about/podcast  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show, host Joel Goldberg talks with science journalist Andrew Curry about recent archaeological finds along the shores of Northern Europe. Curry outlines the rich history of the region that scientists, citizen scientists, and energy companies have helped dredge up.   Also this week, from a recording made at this year’s AAAS annual meeting, host Meagan Cantwell speaks with Elizabeth Margulis, a professor at Princeton University, about musical memory. Margulis dives into several music cognition studies, as well as her own study on how Western and non-western audiences interpret the same song differently.   This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.   Download a transcript (PDF)   Listen to previous podcasts   About the Science Podcast [Image: Sebastian Reinecke/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Meagan Cantwell, Joel Goldberg, Andrew Curry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s show, freelance writer Christa Lesté-Lasserre talks with host Sarah Crespi about the scientists working on the restoration of Notre Dame, from testing the changing weight of wet limestone, to how to remove lead contamination from four-story stained glass windows. As the emergency phase of work winds down, scientists are also starting to use the lull in tourist activity to investigate the mysteries of the cathedral’s construction.   Also this week, Felipe Quiroz, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, talks with Sarah about his paper on the cellular mechanism of liquid-liquid phase separation in the formation of the tough outer layer of the skin. Liquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids “demix,” or separate, like oil and water. In cells, this process created membraneless organelles that are just now starting to be understood. In this work, Quiroz and colleagues create a sensor for phase separation in the cell that works in living tissue, and show how phase separation is tied to the formation of the outer layers of skin in mice. Read the related Insight.   This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.   Listen to previous podcasts.   About the Science Podcast   Download a transcript (PDF).   [Image: r. nial bradshaw/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]   Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Lesté-Lasserre Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices