Artist and author Geo Rutherford created Spooky Lake Month to highlight the strange and eerie waters of the world. She first fell in love with the Great Lakes during graduate school in Milwaukee. Rutherford was an early educational video creator, but it was a video about spooky lakes that skyrocketed her to viral fame. She has a new book, Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes That Dot Our Planet. Rutherford joins host Rachel Feltman to discuss art, natural wonders and the deepest lake in the world.  You can get Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes That Dot Our Planet at  www.georutherford.com/book  Watch Spooky Lakes videos at www.tiktok.com/@geodesaurus We’re still looking for listener submissions for our upcoming episode on the science of earworms. We’d love to hear a song you just can’t get out of your head. If you’re up for the challenge, sing or hum a few bars in a voice memo and send it over to [email protected] with your name and where you’re from.  We value your input! Take our quick survey to share your feedback. Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Geo Rutherford. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Rachel Feltman is joined by Jasmine McDonald, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, to discuss the disturbing trend of an increase in early-onset breast cancer diagnoses. They explore how chronic exposure to endocrine disruptors could be fueling this rise and examine the surprising role that societal beauty standards may play in shaping these risks. This episode is part of “Women’s Health,” an editorially independent special project produced with financial support from Organon. We value your input! Take our quick survey to share your feedback. Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have confirmed we’re in the solar maximum, a period of increased solar activity that could lead to more auroras. Also, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a fivefold surge in whooping cough cases. And a new study suggests that some microbes might be using our disinfectants against us by chowing down on them. Recommended reading: Whooping Cough Is Spreading Again after Years of Relative Quiet Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a lot of excitement and apprehension over the seemingly sudden proliferation of artificial intelligence in just about everything. Technological progress often outpaces regulation, and the next U.S. president will set the tone for AI policy. Scientific American’s associate technology editor Ben Guarino walks us through AI policies and plans from Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Plus, we discuss the role AI generated images, videos and even voices could play in spreading misinformation around the election. Recommended reading: How the Next President Will Determine the Future of AI  Lethal AI Weapons Are on the Rise. What’s Next?  We Cannot Cede Control of Weapons to Artificial Intelligence  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with associate technology editor Ben Guarino. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you stop implicit bias from getting in the way of better health? This doctor wants to make learning how to manage bias as important as learning how to suture. SHOWNOTES: Have you ever felt judged at the doctor’s office, even before you said a word? Unfortunately, that’s not uncommon, and it’s often not intentional. Like everyone, doctors have unconscious biases that can affect how they treat patients, which can pose real risks to health outcomes. In this episode, host Rachel Feltman is joined by Cristina Gonzalez, a physician and professor of medicine and population health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to discuss how these biases form and what can be done to address them. This podcast is part of “Health Equity Heros,” an editorially independent special report that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everything you need to know about last week’s physics, chemistry, and physiology or medicine Nobels. COVID could raise the risk of heart attacks and strokes years after original infection. Hurricane Milton causes tornadoes across Florida and delays the launch of Europa Clipper. Recommended reading: How Does Sharing a Nobel Prize Work? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-chemistry-physics-and-medicine-nobel-prizes-can-be-shared-and-how-that/  Why Hurricane Milton Caused So Many Tornadoes https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-hurricane-milton-caused-so-many-tornadoes/  NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission Carries Special Cargo: A Poem https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-europa-clipper-mission-carries-special-cargo-a-poem/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American associate news editor and music enthusiast Allison Parshall takes Science Quickly through what we know about how singing came to be. Scientists aren’t sure why humans evolved to sing, but commonalities in traditional music offer clues to how the practice evolved. Neuroscience shows us where speech and singing live in the brain and what information the forms hold. And an upcoming experiment will look into how singing might make us more connected to one another. Recommended reading: New Folk Song Analysis Finds Similarities around the World How Artificial Intelligence Helped Write This Award-Winning Song E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Marielle Issa, Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hurricanes Beryl, Francine and Helene have battered the Gulf Coast this year. Hurricane Milton is expected to add to the destruction, particularly in parts of the west coast of central Florida that are already reeling from Hurricane Helene. Scientific American’s associate editor of sustainability Andrea Thompson joins Science Quickly to help us understand how we measure hurricanes and how climate change is magnifying the damage done by these massive storms. Plus, we discuss how the catastrophic flooding in western North Carolina dispels the myth that anywhere can be a true “climate haven.” Recommended reading: New Hurricane Forecasts Could Predict Terrifying Explosive Intensification https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-hurricane-forecasts-could-predict-terrifying-explosive-intensification/  Hurricanes Kill People for Years after the Initial Disaster  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hurricanes-kill-people-for-years-after-the-initial-disaster/  Hurricane Helene Signals the End of the ‘Climate Haven’ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hurricane-helene-signals-the-end-of-the-climate-haven/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Andrea Thompson, Scientific American’s associate editor of sustainability. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hurricane Helene’s death toll continues to rise. Marburg virus is spreading in Rwanda, but risks for a global outbreak are low. Researchers in Beijing used stem cell treatments to reverse diabetes in a patient. Plus, we discuss a map of a fruit fly’s brain and dolphin smiles. Recommended reading: Hurricanes Kill People for Years after the Initial Disaster https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hurricanes-kill-people-for-years-after-the-initial-disaster/  See an Amazingly Detailed Map of the Fruit Fly Brain https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-an-amazingly-detailed-map-of-the-fruit-fly-brain/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck.  The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drag queen and mathematics communicator Kyne Santos tells us the questions that modern mathematicians are grappling with, from infinite tiling to the structure of math itself. We hope you enjoyed the final episode of this Friday miniseries about magical math. You can listen to parts one and two wherever you get your podcasts or at the links below.  Recommended reading: – Discover Math’s Elegance and Power with Drag Queen Kyne Santos – Is Math Part of Nature or an Invention of the Mind? – Inside Mathematicians’ Search for the Mysterious ‘Einstein Tile’ E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Kyne Santos. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses, Emily Makowski and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Food and Drug Administration has granted priority review to suzetrigine, a novel painkiller. It’s part of a new class of medications that could provide relief to those with chronic pain. The drugs target sodium channels on nerve cells, stopping pain signaling at the periphery. Journalist Marla Broadfoot explains the biology of aches and pains and the reasons it is so challenging to develop well-tolerated medications for pain. Recommended reading: New Painkiller Could Bring Relief to Millions—Without Addiction Risk  Ozempic Quiets Food Noise in the Brain—But How?  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Marla Broadfoot. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the United Nations General Assembly, host Rachel Feltman interviews Melissa Fleming, the U.N.’s undersecretary-general for global communications, on how misinformation and distrust in science are impacting global well-being. Plus, we note caveats to a major social media study and explain how food packaging can be harmful to the environment and human health. Recommended reading: Why It’s So Hard to Recycle Plastic https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-its-so-hard-to-recycle-plastic/  How Deadly Is Mpox, What Vaccines Are Effective, and Other Questions Answered https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-deadly-is-mpox-what-vaccines-are-effective-and-other-questions-answered/  61 Unexpected ‘Forever Chemicals’ Found in Food Packaging https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/61-unexpected-pfas-forever-chemicals-found-in-food-packaging/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio.  This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Melissa Fleming, undersecretary-general for global communications at the United Nations. Our show is edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where does math come from? Mathematicians are still debating whether math is an inherent part of nature or an invention of the human mind. Mathematics communicator and drag queen Kyne will guide you through the question of what math really is in this three-part Friday miniseries. Recommended reading: – Gift Wrapping Five Oranges Has Outwitted the Best Minds in Mathematics for Generations  – The SAT Problem That Everybody Got Wrong E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman and Kyne Santos. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses, Emily Makowski and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affects up to five million people in the U.S., yet it remains poorly understood. Many people with PCOS go undiagnosed while experiencing symptoms such as irregular periods, changes in hair and body shape, acne and infertility. Even after a diagnosis, they’re often told to lose weight to manage symptoms—advice that some researchers now say can be harmful.  A recent study found that people with PCOS are more likely to have eating disorders, regardless of their body mass index. Laura Cooney, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, co-authored the study. She joins host Rachel Feltman to discuss why the focus on weight loss for PCOS treatment needs to be reconsidered. This episode is part of “Health Equity Heroes,” an editorially independent special project that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s news roundup: Earth might have previously had a giant ring of space rocks like the one around Saturn, “scuba diving” lizards are using bubbles to breathe, and a new study mapped brain changes in a person throughout pregnancy. Additionally, we describe how NASA’s stranded astronauts will vote from space. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Anaissa Ruiz Tejada. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mathematics communicator and drag queen Kyne Santos will help you discover the beauty and power of math in this three-part Friday miniseries. Kyne takes us back to ancient Greece to illustrate the elegance of mathematics. We meet mathematician Tom Crawford, who combines fieldwork and modeling to predict the impacts of pollution, as well as philosopher and logician Mark Jago.  Recommended reading: – Gift Wrapping Five Oranges Has Outwitted the Best Minds in Mathematics for Generations – The SAT Problem That Everybody Got Wrong E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman and Kyne Santos. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses, Emily Makowski and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recognition of Prostate Cancer Awareness Month this September, host Rachel Feltman sits down with Alfred Winkler, chief of urology at NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital, to discuss proactive steps individuals can take to protect themselves against prostate cancer. Black American men, in particular, face some of the highest rates of the disease in the world, with multiple factors contributing to this elevated risk. This episode explores efforts to raise awareness and promote early screening within this high-risk group. This episode is part of “Health Equity Heroes,” an editorially independent special project that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Recommended reading: New Prostate Cancer Treatments Offer Hope for Advanced Cases  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week's news roundup: The European Space Agency’s Juice mission tested its instruments with a flyby of Earth in preparation for studying habitability on moons of Jupiter’. Also, a study found that Massachusetts has reduced food waste through composting and enforcement while four other states have not successfully done so despite also having bans on disposing of such waste in landfills. And researchers tested the generative artificial intelligence platform GPT-4 Turbo’s ability to counter conspiracy theories through personalized, fact-based conversations, yielding promising results. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman interviewed NASA flight engineer Matthew Dominick live—from space! In this first-ever interview conducted from the International Space Station’s (ISS’s) iconic cupola, Dominick talks about his path to space, his experience on the ISS and his incredible astrophotography. You can listen to the full video and watch the changing light from the cupola at the link below. Watch the First-Ever Interview from the ISS Cupola https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/learn-how-astronauts-take-photos-from-nasa-in-flight-engineer-matthew/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Matthew Dominick. Our show is edited by Jeff DelViscio with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Content warning: This episode contains some details about the 9/11 attacks and victims’ remains. Twenty-three years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, forensic scientists are still working to identify victims from the World Trade Center site. Host Rachel Feltman speaks with Kathleen Corrado, forensics executive director at Syracuse University’s College of Arts & Sciences, about what unique challenges have been posed by the massive scale of the tragedy and how the lessons learned are now helping investigators solve cases from wildfires to criminal investigations—in addition to aiding efforts to identify the remaining victims of 9/11. Recommended reading: Health Effects of 9/11 Still Plague Responders and Survivors What Structural Engineers Learned from 9/11 E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s new roundup, a new study finds no clear connection between phone use and brain or head cancers, putting some fears to rest. Meanwhile Sweden’s new screen-time guidelines suggest keeping kids under age two away from screens entirely and limiting time for older children—and echo concerns from other countries about how much time young people spend on devices. Also, jellyfish clones are invading lakes in British Columbia, Oregon faces its worst measles outbreak in three decades, and NASA clears up the mystery behind the strange noise on the ill-fated Boeing Starliner spacecraft. Recommended reading: How to Check If You’re Immune to Measles How Worried Should We Be about Starliner’s Stranded Astronauts? When Should Kids Get a Smartphone? E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As people live longer and family sizes shrink, fewer relatives are available to share the burden of caregiving for aging loved ones. The second episode of our two-part miniseries on caregiving explores what this means for the family members who take on this critical role. How do they provide the best care while also maintaining their own well-being? To hear firsthand how caregivers are navigating this challenge, Lauren Young and Tanya Lewis, Scientific American’s respective associate and senior editors of health and medicine, visited a support center in Queens, N.Y. Young shares some of the stories they gathered from the community there. Listen to part one of this series. This episode is part of “Health Equity Heroes,” an editorially independent special project that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Recommended reading: Shrinking Family Sizes May Change Our Experience with Aging E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and hosted by Lauren Young. Tanya Lewis also contributed reporting for this miniseries. Marielle Issa, Emily Makowski, Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Discrimination may be speeding up the aging process for people of color and other minoritized groups. Research is revealing that structural and interpersonal racism could be key factors in why these communities often age faster and face age-related diseases sooner. Alexis Reeves, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, studies how racism affects aging, with a focus on early menopause. In a conversation with Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman, Reeves discusses how traditional research methods might be overlooking these critical disparities. This episode is part of “Health Equity Heroes,” an editorially independent special project that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Recommended reading: Discrimination May Hasten Menopause in Black and Hispanic Women How Racism in Early Life Can Affect Long-Term Health “Systematic Exclusion at Study Commencement Masks Earlier Menopause for Black Women in the Study of Women’s Health across the Nation (SWAN),” by Alexis Reeves et al., in International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 52, No. 5; October 2023  “Study Selection Bias and Racial or Ethnic Disparities in Estimated Age at Onset of Cardiometabolic Disease among Midlife Women in the US,” by Alexis Reeves et al, in JAMA Network Open, Vol. 5, No. 1, Article No. e2240665. Published online November 7, 2022  Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this first episode of a two-part miniseries on caregiving, Tanya Lewis, Scientific American’s senior editor of health and medicine, shares her personal experience with becoming a caregiver for her mother after her mom was diagnosed with a serious illness. Her journey inspired her to explore the broader challenges faced by caregivers. Lewis and her colleague Lauren J. Young, SciAm’s associate editor of health and medicine, reached out to listeners and investigated the stresses of caregiving, uncovering common experiences and insights. Lewis joins host Rachel Feltman to delve into the scope of the caregiving crisis. This episode is part of “Health Equity Heroes,” an editorially independent special project that was produced with financial support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals. Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and co-hosted by Tanya Lewis. Lauren J. Young also contributed reporting. Marielle Issa, Emily Makowski, Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Marc Hachadourian, senior curator of orchids and director of glasshouse horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden, joins host Rachel Feltman to explore houseplant trends from the past and the present. Plus, they discuss how ethically sourcing your plants can prevent fad-driven overcollection. Listen to the New York Botanical Garden’s new podcast Plant People. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with Marc Hachadourian, senior curator of orchids and director of glasshouse horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden. Our show is edited by Jeff DelViscio and Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NASA’s Perseverance rover cautiously climbs Jezero Crater on Mars in search of new discoveries. We also explore recent revelations about the Red Planet’s hidden water reserves and puzzling sulfur findings. On the health front, a new device, described as an implant that acts like a pacemaker for the brain, shows promise for Parkinson’s treatment by reducing symptoms more effectively than conventional methods. Plus, we discuss a concerning side effect of the popular weight-loss drug semaglutide, fears of a polio outbreak in Gaza and the latest on mpox, which the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency earlier this month. Recommended Reading:  Mars Hides Colossal Ocean Deep Below Its Surface People Are Overdosing on Semaglutide Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy Mpox Is a Global Health Emergency. Here’s What We Know Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Democratic presidential ticket has literally diverse voices. While Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech is influenced by her Californian origins, the way Minnesota governor Tim Walz talks reflects his roots in Nebraska. In our podcast, linguist Nicole Holliday expands on her viral TikTok analyses of Harris’s speech patterns and the ideological stereotypes we attach to pronunciation and intonation.  Recommended reading: Watch one of Holliday’s viral TikToks Bilingualism Is Reworking This Language’s Rainbow  Grammar Changes How We See, an Australian Language Shows  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Polymetallic nodules litter a stretch of ocean between Mexico and Hawaii. They contain metals, such as manganese and cobalt, that mining companies want to use for battery production. Researchers recently found that these seafloor blobs might make their own oxygen—and no one knows exactly how. Scientific American’s associate news editor Allison Parshall explains the hype behind this “dark oxygen.” Recommended reading: ‘Dark Oxygen’ Discovered Coming from Mineral Deposits on Deep Seafloor https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-oxygen-discovered-coming-from-mineral-deposits-on-deep-seafloor/ Earth’s Coral Reefs Face a New, Deadly Mass Bleaching. They Can Still Be Saved https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earths-coral-reefs-face-a-new-deadly-mass-bleaching-they-can-still-be-saved/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest and associate news editor Allison Parshall. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doris Tsao is the 2024 recipient of The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for her research on facial recognition. Her work has provided insights into the complex workings of the brain and has the potential to advance our understanding of perception and cognition. This podcast was produced for The Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazines board of editors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Cameron is known for his ambitious filmmaking. His newest project is a six-part National Geographic miniseries that goes beneath the waves with the crew of the OceanXplorer. Cameron joins Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman to talk about the origins of his fascination with the ocean and the importance of seeing scientists at work. Recommended reading: Mysterious Galápagos Reefs Harbor Strawberry Squid and Other Fantastic Creatures https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mysterious-galapagos-reefs-harbor-strawberry-squid-and-other-fantastic-creatures1/  Healthy Coral Reefs Sound like a Symphony https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/this-is-how-a-healthy-coral-reef-sounds-and-why-it-matters/  Earth’s Coral Reefs Face a New, Deadly Mass Bleaching. They Can Still Be Saved https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earths-coral-reefs-face-a-new-deadly-mass-bleaching-they-can-still-be-saved/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest James Cameron.Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When the hit podcast Science Vs went to find the facts about the “male G-spot,” it was faced with remarkably little research to draw from. So the team collaborated with academics on one of the largest surveys about anal sex and masturbation. We discuss what they learned, on this episode of Science Quickly with Rachel Feltman and special guest Wendy Zukerman of Science Vs.  Recommended reading: Mind-Blowing Orgasms: Does the Male G-Spot Exist?  How to Explore Your Sexuality, according to Science   Asexuality Research Has Reached New Heights. What Are We Learning?  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Wendy Zukerman, host of Science Vs. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Debris from satellites, rockets and other space infrastructure are crowding low-Earth orbit. Occasionally, that space junk crashes down to Earth. For Samantha Lawler, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, such debris was mostly a theoretical nuisance. Then a nearby farmer found remnants of a SpaceX craft on his land, and Lawler was pulled into the murky legal landscape around space junk in the skies and on the ground. Recommended reading:  SpaceX Dropped Space Junk on My Neighbor’s Farm. Here’s What Happened Next  Space Junk Is Polluting Earth’s Stratosphere with Vaporized Metal  Space Trash Threatens the Global Economy E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Samantha Lawler. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris came to a close on Sunday—and swimmers swam the Seine as promised. The two astronauts sent to the International Space Station on a Boeing Starliner craft in June are still in limbo, with no set return flight. The EPA is acting quickly to suspend sales of products that contain the pesticide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate over safety concerns. Plus, we discuss a new theory of how the pyramids were built (and no, it doesn’t involve aliens). Recommended reading: Cleaning Up Paris’s Poop River for the Olympics  https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/cleaning-up-the-poop-polluted-seine-for-the-paris-olympics/  Lost Branch of the Nile May Solve Long-Standing Mystery of Egypt’s Famed Pyramids https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/egypts-famed-pyramids-overlooked-a-long-lost-branch-of-the-nile/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Fonda Mwangi with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck.  The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Content warning: This episode focuses in part on the archaeological study of ancient human sacrifice, including incidents involving young children. While we have taken care not to include gratuitous descriptions of violence, this episode does contain frank discussion of the circumstances of these deaths and the nature of these individuals’ remains. In the final episode of our three-part series on unusual archaeology, science journalist Kata Karáth takes you on one more adventure—to a mountaintop with an extreme climate, where archaeologists investigate the practice of human sacrifice among the Inka. Listen to the first two episodes of this series exploring humanity’s past: — Sustainable Fishing with Ancient Chambers and Ocean Tides — How Ancient Humans Interpreted the Cosmos E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and hosted by Kata Karáth with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Special thanks to María Luz Endere and Carlos Molina-Vital for their assistance with parts of this script. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Rachel Feltman is joined by conservation bioacoustics researcher Isla Keesje Davidson to explore the vibrant world of coral reefs through an unexpected lens: sound. They discuss how healthy coral reefs sound different from those in distress, why listening to the ocean could be key to its preservation and how you can be part of this groundbreaking research. Recommended reading:  — Earth’s Coral Reefs Face a New, Deadly Mass Bleaching. They Can Still Be Saved — We Can Save Earth’s Coral Reefs Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman, featuring guest Isla Keesje Davidson. Our show is fact-checked by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Cancer Society published a study suggesting that for 8 or 34 cancers tracked, case rates are rising from one generation to the next. While headlines often point to sedentary lifestyles and higher weights as a possible cause, some experts say that these factors alone cannot explain the spike. In more hopeful oncology news, there’s a new blood test for colorectal cancer–though it doesn’t replace the importance of colonoscopies.  SpaceX is delaying their attempt at the first-ever private spacewalk—billionaire Jared Isaacman will have to wait. And on the ground, move over hardwood and softwood—two surviving species of the Liriodendron genus point to a new categorization of midwood. Recommended reading: Gen X Faces Higher Cancer Rates Than Any Previous Generation  Why We’ll Never Live in Space  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gazing up at the night sky is a universal human experience, likely as old as our species itself. But how did our ancient ancestors feel about what they saw in the heavens, and how did it shape their lives? In Episode Two of our three-part Fascination miniseries on unusual archaeology, science journalist Kata Karáth introduces us to archaeoastronomy—the study of how people in the past experienced and explained the phenomena of the cosmos. Listen to the first episode of this series: “Sustainable Fishing with Ancient Chambers and Ocean Tides” E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Jeff DelViscio, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Rachel Feltman. This episode was reported and hosted by Kata Karáth. Special thanks to Saara Alakorva and Camilla Brattland for their assistance with parts of this script. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-checked this series. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sex testing has a long history in sports. As participation in events like the Olympics opened to women, organizers and audiences alike began questioning the sex of the athletes. The tests devised to “prove” an athlete’s sex have been invasive and inaccurate. Rose Eveleth, host of the NPR and CBC podcast Tested, brings us the story of sex testing and where the science stands. Listen to Tested: https://link.chtbl.com/zQEKpQCE Read Olympic coverage from Scientific American: Is Technology in the Olympics a Form of Doping or a Reality of Modern Sport? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-technology-in-the-olympics-a-form-of-doping-or-a-reality-of-modern-sport/ For Olympic Athletes, First Come the Games—Then Come the Post-Olympics Blues https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-olympic-athletes-first-come-the-games-then-come-the-post-olympics-blues/ E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Rose Eveleth, host of Tested. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a scorching summer, with record-breaking temperatures last Monday. Rain really is harder to predict, and greenhouse gasses are probably to blame. Polio is circulating in Gaza’s wastewater and could spread as conflict leads to crowding, poor sanitation and missing routine vaccinations. Plus, we discuss a shocking price for a promising HIV vaccine, cocaine sharks and komodo dragons with iron-tipped teeth.  Recommended reading: Sharks in Brazil Test Positive for a Surprising Contaminant: Cocaine  Komodo Dragons’ Nightmare Iron-Tipped Teeth Are a Reptilian First  Why Extreme Heat Is So Deadly  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. This show was edited by Jeff DelViscio, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fish trapping is an ancient practice, reaching across the globe from at least as far back as 11,000 years ago. It takes advantage of coastal tides and human-made chambers to catch and release fish. The simple but ingenious ancient fishing structures are built on two intertwining principles: the ocean can provide for us if we properly care for it. Archaeologists are mapping the possible locations of ancient traps. And on Penghu, a group of islands off of Taiwan, people are reviving the traditional tidal weirs, hoping to promote sustainable fishing and attract ecotourism.  Stay tuned for more from science journalist Kata Karáth in part two of our three-part Fascination series on unusual archaeology. Recommended reading: – Oldest Deep-Sea Shipwreck Is a ‘Time Capsule’ from the Bronze Age – The Oldest-Wine-in-the-World Title Goes to a 2,000-Year-Old White Found in Southwestern Spain E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman and journalist Kata Karáth. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meditation is mostly mainstream, with many people using mindfulness to manage stress. But dedicated practitioners of advanced meditation move beyond mindfulness into a state where consciousness “entirely falls away.” That’s according to today’s guest: Matthew Sacchet, an associate professor and director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Sacchet tells host Rachel Feltman about his journey from youthful meditator to neuroscience researcher. Plus, they discuss what meditation and psychedelic experiences are unlocking for consciousness researchers. Recommended reading: Read a feature co-authored by Sacchet in the July issue of SciAm  And see our June issue feature on the neuroscience of near-death experiences E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Matthew Sacchet. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Biden is far from the only positive as COVID is experiencing a summer surge. Windows malfunction grounds planes and causes outages for banks, hospitals and emergency services. The Perseid meteor shower gives you plenty of shooting stars to see. Plus, we use the Twisters premiere as an excuse to talk about wild weather. Recommended reading COVID Rates Are Rising Again. Why Does It Spread So Well in the Summer?  Worldwide Tech Outage Started with Defective Crowdstrike Update to Microsoft Windows [WATCH] Tornado Science is Evolving Fast  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Seine is set to feature prominently in the Paris 2024 Olympics’ Opening Ceremony—and in its marathon swimming events. But this urban waterway has been challenging to clean and keep clean after a particularly wet summer and high bacterial counts. What can the Parisian organizers learn from the revitalization of a U.S. river that was so polluted that it inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency? Scientific American associate news editor Allison Parshall takes us to the banks of the reformed Cuyahoga River in Ohio.  Plus, she gives us a look at the growing urban river swimming movement in Europe. Recommended Reading Training with 'Digital Twins' Could Boost Olympic Swimmer Speeds  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest and Scientific American associate news editor Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  The Seine is set to feature prominently in the Paris 2024 Olympics’ Opening Ceremony—and in its marathon swimming events. But this urban waterway has been challenging to clean and keep clean after a particularly wet summer and high bacterial counts. What can the Parisian organizers learn from the revitalization of a U.S. river that was so polluted that it inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency? Scientific American associate news editor Allison Parshall takes us to the banks of the reformed Cuyahoga River in Ohio.  Plus, she gives us a look at the growing urban river swimming movement in Europe. Recommended Reading Training with 'Digital Twins' Could Boost Olympic Swimmer Speeds https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/training-with-digital-twins-could-boost-olympic-swimmer-speeds/  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/getsciam/ And sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter: https://www.scientificamerican.com/account/email-preferences/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science journalist and Radiolab host Latif Nasser found himself at the center of a space mystery. A space poster in his child’s room showed Zoozve, a moon circling Venus. Only Nasser had never heard of Zoozve—and neither had anyone else. Nasser brings us the story of Zoozve the quasi-moon and brings listeners the opportunity to name a quasi-moon of their own. Recommended listening Zoozve  Name a Quasi-Moon with Radiolab Quasi-Moon Contest  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with special guest Latif Nasser, Radiolab host. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chad Mirkin, recipient of the 2024 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience, has spent his career exploring the possibilities of creating and inventing materials at the nanoscale. This podcast was produced for The Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, dive into NASA’s groundbreaking Mars habitat simulation and discuss the innovative ​​“stillsuits” designed to recycle astronaut pee and how they could enhance spacewalks. Plus, we discuss the record-breaking Hurricane Beryl and its implications for climate change policies, and a surprising case of the plague in Colorado.  Recommended reading: – One Small Step Back in Time: Relive the Wonder of Apollo 11 – Why Hurricane Beryl Underwent Unprecedented Rapid Intensification Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re at the end of the Nathaniel B. Palmer’s Antarctic expedition. The researchers onboard are returning sea ice and thousands of gallons of seawater. These samples will allow them to examine biogeochemical processes, some of which are linked to climate change. As the research vessel makes its way back to port, the scientists reflect on the future of our planet and the question of whether the ice in Antarctica will always be around for sampling. Listen to the first three episodes of this series:  – Glacial Melting Could Change the Chemistry of Antarctic Seawater  – Penguins and Ice Samples Make This Research Vessel Paradice – Life for Researchers on This Icebreaker Is Cold and Fulfilling E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by journalist Sofia Moutinho. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Przewalski’s horses are truly wild horses, even the ones held in captivity. They traditionally roamed the Central Asian steppes, so you can imagine everyone’s surprise when two separate accounts on TikTok claimed to have found a Przewalski’s horse here in the U.S. But as guest and Scientific American associate news editor Allison Parshall will tell you, the real story is the remarkable conservation efforts that led to a resurgence for this horse, which was once considered extinct in the wild. The Last Wild Horses Are Finally Returning to Their Natural Habitat  How a Cloned Ferret Inspired a DNA Bank for Endangered Species  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest and associate news editor Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re looking at our reporting—from 100 years ago. In 1924 Scientific American’s pages were bemoaning traffic, waste management and pests. They were also praising the by-products of coal tar and those substances’ use in household items. While the record is clear on the toxicity of fossil fuels to our environment and our health, demand for fossil-fuel-based “petrochemical” products such as plastic is only increasing. Host Rachel Feltman advises on how to avoid petrochemicals in our everyday products. Plus, we take a lighthearted look at a telepathy study also featured in one of our 1924 issues.  Recommended reading: The Gas Industry Is Gaslighting the Public about Climate Change Renewable Power Set to Surpass Coal Globally by 2025 E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Supreme Court dismissed a case about Idaho’s abortion ban, preserving a lower court ruling that allows for emergency access to abortion in the state. NASA pushed back a return flight for two Starliner astronauts so that Boeing and the agency can better understand the helium leaks and thruster failures that plagued the spacecraft’s launch.  Infectious disease experts are still tracking the transmission of bird flu in the U.S., while Finland is set to offer preemptive vaccines to farmworkers. Higher temperatures are contributing to a spike in dengue fever. A new strain of mpox is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We’re taking the holiday week off, so there won’t be an episode on Wednesday or Friday. Enjoy your Fourth of July, stay safe around fireworks and listen to our back catalog of episodes when you need a break from backyard barbecues.  Recommended reading: Supreme Court Allows Emergency Abortions in Idaho—For Now Mosquitoes Carry Nasty Diseases. Here’s How to Protect Yourself E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Life onboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer can be cramped and cold. Chaotic work schedules and changing time zones can be disorienting, and the isolation of Antarctica is hard to handle. Research, routine and a mock trial with the god of the sea help these scientists stay grounded. Stay tuned for the fourth and final episode of this Friday Fascination: researchers reflect on the emotional toll of witnessing climate change’s impact on Antarctica. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by journalist Sofia Moutinho. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Summers are getting hotter, with heat waves that last longer and occur more often. That makes it even more important to communicate the risks of heat to vulnerable groups and keep communities and individuals cool. Sustainability editor Andrea Thompson explains why it feels hotter than ever and how to keep yourself and your community safe in the summer heat.  Recommended reading: This Isn’t Your Grandparents’ Summer Heat How Some Common Medications Can Make People More Vulnerable to Heat E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman, with special guest Andrea Thompson. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Microplastics are everywhere—and we mean everywhere. These pesky plastic pollutants have been found in penis tissue, testicles, breast milk and blood. They’ve turned up in Antarctic snow, in the clouds above Mount Fuji, inside deep-sea creatures and near the top of Mount Everest. In Paris Olympic ambitions for the Seine’s are being complicated by bacteria. Far above Earth, the Starliner spacecraft faced a rocky road to the International Space Station (ISS). Starliner’s return to Earth is being delayed as Boeing and NASA officials take a look at the leaks and thruster failures that occurred during its journey to the ISS. Recommended reading: Microplastics Linked to Heart Attack, Stroke and Death The Physics of Breakdancing, a New Olympic Sport  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s important that researchers get samples of Antarctic sea ice before melting takes the opportunity away. But fieldwork is never straightforward, and in part two of our Friday Fascination series about Antarctica, journalist Sofia Moutinho and the scientists on the Nathaniel B. Palmer take a break to enjoy some adorable Adélie penguins, the smallest penguin species in the Antarctic. Stay tuned for next Friday’s episode, when we’ll learn what it’s like to live and work onboard an icebreaker in Antarctica. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by journalist Sofia Moutinho. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The U.S. Department of Defense has sounded the alarm on a worrying hypothetical program from Russia aimed at putting a nuclear weapon into orbit. Associate news editor Allison Parshall explains what we know about nukes in space from a satellite accident and a series of ill-advised low-orbit tests during the cold war. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s news roundup features spiders, space and the Supreme Court. “Flying” Joro spiders are making headlines, but are they really taking over the East Coast? Extreme heat leads Greece to close the Acropolis and worry about what the rest of the summer will bring. Levels of ozone-depleting hydrochlorofluorocarbons are on the decline. Plus, satellite reentry releases ozone-damaging aluminum oxide, and access to medication abortion is preserved.  Recommended viewing: The Ozone Hole Showed Humans Could Damage Earth and That We Could Heal It E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily Today in Science newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a research vessel making its way through the waters of West Antarctica. Journalist Sofia Moutinho is joining a team of chemists trying to find out how glacial melting is changing ocean chemistry—and what those changes might mean for the global climate. The researchers want to know whether a negative feedback loop could take shape in Antarctica’s seas. Carbon dioxide contributes to the rise in warming that is melting the glaciers. As glacial melting releases iron, phytoplankton feast. Phytoplankton in turn remove carbon from the air, potentially causing a cooling effect. Stay tuned for next Friday’s episode, where Moutinho will embark on a hunt for sea ice and hear about the researchers’ special encounter with Adélie penguins. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by journalist Sofia Moutinho. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly a third of U.S. adults have tattoos, but how many people know what's really in the ink? Despite new regulations, researchers have found many commercial inks contain unlisted and potentially harmful ingredients. John Swierk, an assistant professor of chemistry at Binghamton University, and his team are trying to figure out exactly what goes into each vial of tattoo ink—and how tattoos actually work—to help make body art safer. Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman, with guest John Swierk, assistant professor of chemistry at Binghamton University. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s news roundup, we present the latest from the skies and the pillbox. The Hubble Space Telescope is limping along, operating with just one gyroscope to preserve its research capabilities. China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe is sending back the first ever samples from the far side of the moon. Plus, there are exciting advancements in the world of pharmaceuticals, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention endorsing a “morning-after pill” for STIs and artificial intelligence discovering potential novel antibiotics. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily Today in Science newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Kelso Harper. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can plants “think?" Do they “talk” to one another? These are questions that scientists are asking—and the answers might surprise you. Zoë Schlanger, climate reporter at The Atlantic, sits down with Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman to discuss her new book The Light Eaters, which explores the surprising science of plant intelligence.  Related Reading: Brains Are Not Required When It Comes to Thinking and Solving Problems—Simple Cells Can Do It How Plant Intelligence Can Soothe Climate Anxiety Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Zoë Schlanger from The Atlantic. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A “double brood” of cicadas is taking over much of the eastern half of the U.S. They’re loud and abundant. Have you considered–eating them? Chef Joseph Yoon, founder of Brooklyn Bugs, explains how to harvest and feast upon this year’s “double brood” and the many benefits of adding insects to our diet.   Related Reading: – Periodical Cicadas Emerge Every 13 or 17 Years. How Do They Keep Track of Time? – Can You Eat Cicadas? Can Your Dog Do So?  E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman, with guest Joseph Yoon of Brooklyn Bugs. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s news roundup: Despite widespread concerns, a new study on adolescent smartphone use found that teens report improved moods when using their devices. Misleadingly framed but factually accurate stories shared on social media can drive vaccine hesitancy more effectively than outright false information. Updates on rising COVID-19 cases and the latest developments in the ongoing bird flu outbreak. Plus, the potential return of stunning auroral displays, thanks to upcoming solar activity.  Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Kelso Harper. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cape Cod communities are facing an expensive mandate to clean up their wastewater. Urine diversion or “pee-cycling” could be a cost-effective pollution solution. In the third and final installment of our three-part Fascination series about Cape Cod’s “yellow tide,” environmental reporter Barbara Moran meets a Falmouth couple championing this unconventional approach.  You can check out more of Barbara Moran’s reporting on Cape Cod’s water pollution, including the “pee-cycling” pilot project in Falmouth. And watch WBUR and Scientific American’s documentary short exploring how pollution and algae overgrowth threaten this Massachusetts vacation hub. Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  This series is a co-production of WBUR and Scientific American. It’s reported and hosted by WBUR’s Barbara Moran. Science Quickly is produced by Jeff DelViscio, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Rachel Feltman. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-checked this series, and Duy Linh Tu and Sebastian Tuinder contributed reporting and sound. WBUR’s Kathleen Masterson edited this series. Additional funding was provided by the Pulitzer Center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Research at the intersection of science and beauty is providing us with a better understanding of hair diversity. This podcast was produced for L’Oréal by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you have a large yard or a tiny planter, there are ways to use your outdoor space to protect wildlife. Senior news reporter Meghan Bartels takes us through what you can do, or stop doing, to make your yard and home friendlier to local critters.  Related Reading: – 8 Ways to Protect Wildlife Near Your Home – Pollinators Flock to Flower-Filled Solar Panel Fields Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Meghan Bartels. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cape Cod’s famed ponds and bays are suffering from pollution with a curious origin: human urine. Household septic systems are flushing nitrogen into the water, resulting in toxic algal blooms. In the second installment of our three-part Fascination series about Cape Cod’s “yellow tide,” environmental reporter Barbara Moran looks at the controversial and costly pollution solutions being considered. You can check out more of Barbara Moran’s reporting on the efforts to improve Cape Cod’s water pollution, including a “pee-cycling” project being considered by one innovative town. And watch WBUR and Scientific American’s documentary short exploring how pollution and algae overgrowth threaten this Massachusetts vacation hub. Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  This series is a co-production of WBUR and Scientific American. It’s reported and hosted by WBUR’s Barbara Moran. Science Quickly is produced by Jeff DelViscio, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Rachel Feltman. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-checked this series, and Duy Linh Tu and Sebastian Tuinder contributed reporting and sound. WBUR’s Kathleen Masterson edited this series. Additional funding was provided by the Pulitzer Center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Psychologist and cooperation theorist Athena Aktipis shares advice from her new book, A Field Guide to the Apocalypse, on how to survive and thrive in doomsday scenarios from catastrophic natural disasters to zombie outbreaks.  Related Reading: – Could the Zombie Fungus in TV’s The Last of Us Really Infect People? – The Evolutionary Reasons We Are Drawn to Horror Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Athena Aktipis. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's science roundup: drinking raw milk was always risky, but now there are added concerns over the spread of bird flu into dairy cows. An intense geomagnetic storm led to stunning auroras across the globe last week–and similar storms could mess with satellites and electricity infrastructure. Plus, hurricane forecasts are on the horizon. Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! And discover something new everyday by subscribing to Scientific American or signing up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the first episode of a three-part series, environmental reporter Barbara Moran is on Cape Cod to find out why the crystal clear water there is turning “pea-soup green”—and how communities are scrambling to clean it up. For more information, read WBUR’s coverage of the efforts to improve Cape Cod’s water pollution, including a “pee-cycling” project being considered by one innovative town. And watch WBUR and Scientific American’s documentary short exploring how pollution and algae overgrowth threaten this Massachusetts vacation hub. Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter. This series is a co-production of WBUR and Scientific American. It’s reported and hosted by WBUR’s Barbara Moran. Science Quickly is produced by Jeff DelViscio, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Rachel Feltman. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-checked this series, and Duy Linh Tu and Sebastian Tuinder contributed reporting and sound. WBUR’s Kathleen Masterson edited this series. Additional funding was provided by the Pulitzer Center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cannabis consumers may be familiar with the paranoia that can come from taking too many gummies or smoking too much weed. New research into cannabis reveals how a lemon-scented terpene d-limonene can ease anxiety without diminishing the high.  Join Scientific American, Springer Nature and Nature Portfolio in Washington, D.C. on May 17 for Science on the Hill. Register now! Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI-generated images of Katy Perry at Monday’s Met Gala looked so realistic they even duped her mom. And it just so happens that ChatGPT developer OpenAI released a new tool to detect fake images generated by DALL-E—the very next day.   Join Scientific American, Springer Nature and Nature Portfolio in Washington, D.C. on May 17 for Science on the Hill. Register now! Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meet Rachel Feltman, the new host of Science Quickly! Bringing a fresh perspective and infectious enthusiasm, Rachel will take you on audio journeys to far-off places, inspire you to ponder deep questions, and introduce you to people changing the world with science.  Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter.  Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Kelso Harper, Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Elah Feder, Alexa Lim, Madison Goldberg and Anaissa Ruiz Tejada with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doctors are starting to prescribe vegetables or entire meals to ward off disease. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this show, we’ve been talking about uncertainty from a variety of different angles. We’ve heard how uncertainty can be a spark for creativity and scientific discovery. We’ve discussed how uncertainty can go unseen and make science really difficult. And we’ve explored some of the research techniques and habits of mind that researchers use to deal with uncertainty. Today we’re going to end with two final questions: If science is always uncertain, how can we ever know anything? How can we have confidence in science if there’s always underlying uncertainty? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amid Earth’s fourth global coral bleaching event, a leading expert says tackling climate change is the key to fighting back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ahead of a project to spray carbon dioxide into jungle plots, researchers contemplate what its results might signal about the forest’s future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After years of delay, researchers are ready to inject carbon dioxide into jungle plots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Years in the making, a project in the Amazon rain forest is finally set to determine whether a rise in carbon dioxide could save one of the world’s largest carbon sinks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cows and at least one person in the U.S. have been sickened by avian influenza. We asked experts about the risk to humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Volcano detectives use artificial intelligence to sleuth out ancient secrets in Alaska. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

These marine mammals are very hard to observe, but in the past two decades the roughly 20 or so people in the world who study sperm whales have found some compelling evidence of culture among them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going to look at how measles—a disease that was practically eliminated in the U.S.—has resurged in recent months, because people basically forgot how bad it was and got complacent about vaccines.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a professional astronomer—with a passion for amateur astrophotography—and she's here to offer tips and tricks for want to get into capturing the night sky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The feeling of a total solar eclipse is intense, and the sights, sensations and emotions can overwhelm you even if you think you know what's coming. And we sat down with Kate Russo, a psychologist, author and Eclipse Chaser, who's seen 13 total solar eclipses over the last 25 years, to talk about what to expect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the discovery of new elements to the testing of novel theories of gravity, solar eclipses have helped spark scientific progress for centuries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eclipses can affect animals, and biologists are preparing to see what happens during totality on April 8. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI-generated art is creating new ethical issues—and competition—for digital artists. Nightshade and Glaze are two tools helping creators fight back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mucus is a miracle of evolution, and some researchers are trying to re-create what nature makes naturally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does the word "uncertainty" make you nervous? Does it rule your life? Would you say it kinda describes the state of the world these days?  Enter Uncertain, a new limited podcast series from Scientific American. In this series, host Christie Aschwanden will help to demystify uncertainty. She's going to take away its scariness–or, rather, a cast of scientific dreamers that she talked to, will.  As you’ll see, uncertainty drives scientific discovery. Throughout scientific history, uncertainty has spurred our collective imagination and our need to know the things we don’t.  To be clear, uncertainty makes science very difficult. So in this mini-series we’ll both learn how scientists push through those difficulties; and how they also avoid the bias, logical fallacies, and blindspots that can lurk behind uncertainty. She'll get them to share their own habits of mind and techniques for facing, and embracing, the unknown.  And even if you’re not a scientist, UNCERTAIN provides a practical way to think through what we don’t know in our lives—to face that uncertainty, and, hopefully, live better, more informed lives because of it.

The slimy substance is so powerful that doctors once made hog stomach mucus milkshakes to treat ulcers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you take a journey into the depths of the slime all around us, you find yourself starting to understand that mucus is a miracle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Machine-learning algorithms allow composers to create all-new instruments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A quick nap can boost your memory, your mood and even your creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our space and physics editors go head-to-head over a classic mind-bending question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists have long wondered how baleen whales make their songs, and a new study has finally uncovered the anatomical workings behind their melodies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, long dismissed by doctors, causes immune system dysfunction and other problems. But treatments are lacking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Epigenetics research reveals how famines can cause health problems later in life — and how these changes might be passed down to later generations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the African savanna, a single invasive ant species has upset the delicate balance between predator and prey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nose-plus-throat could increase test accuracy—but could create problems too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A newly-examined munch mark on a tibia has become a real pleistocene whodunit. By Natalia Raegan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A recent GWAS investigation on risk-taking and bisexuality made some assumptions that some experts don’t agree with. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A grassroots online movement has helped shift the way scientists think about asexuality. But much is still unknown. This is part four of a four-part series on the science of pleasure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers once faced death threats for asking women what gives them pleasure. Now they’re helping individuals and couples figure it out themselves. Part three of a four-part series on the science of pleasure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Research shows rough sex is becoming more common. Dominatrices are helping the general public catch up. Hosted by Meghan McDonough, this is part two of a four-part series on the science of pleasure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part one of a four-part series on the science of pleasure, hosted by Meghan McDonough. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Individual interventions for burnout don’t work. Researchers explain why. Hosted by Shayla Love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 8, we’re in for a treat. A total solar eclipse will be visible across a broad swath of North America, giving us a view of the edges of the sun as the moon passes in front of its face.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Portugal is one of the most vulnerable countries in Europe to climate change. Straddling the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic regions, it’s part of a climate change hot spot. Some of the biggest fuels are shrubs. One study found that shrubland covers 1.6 million hectares in Portugal—about 18 percent of the nation’s land area. And those shrubs are gaining ground. That’s because, for decades, people have been moving out of rural communities such as the one Tommy Ferreira lives in. Most leave to pursue better-paying jobs in the cities or in wealthier European Union countries. Portugal has lost 30 percent of its rural population since 1960. The same trend is occurring across the Mediterranean region. Abandoning these farmlands is increasing wildfire risk, according to an Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report released last spring. When people who work the land leave it, grazing pastures and farm fields become thick with fuels. But these ancient Maronesa cattle can help solve both of these modern-day problems. It was a solution hiding in plain sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the last decade, reports of UFO sightings have filled headlines and news broadcasts, and some of these have from a surprising place—the Pentagon. Former defense officials have made a number of claims about, and released videos of, strange sightings made by military pilots. These days, the objects are officially called “UAPs”—unidentified anomalous phenomena. But regardless of the new branding, Congress has demanded answers on them, especially after one former official this summer claimed that he believed that the U.S. possessed “nonhuman” spacecraft and possibly their “dead pilots.” We talk to the former intelligence official and physicist, Sean Kirkpatrick, who until December headed the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon office that Congress told to find some answers to all this. He recently published an op-ed in Scientific American called  "Here's What I Learned as the U.S. Government's UFO Hunter". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Experts are starting to plan for the moment when a quantum computer large enough to crack the backbone of the math that keeps things secret will be turned on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This year, healthcare providers have tools to help prevent lower respiratory tract disease caused by RSV for older adults.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s episode covers a topic that many parents-to-be have struggled with: fertility. In vitro fertilization offers a path to pregnancy for people fortunate enough to be able to access it. But predicting the success of an implanted embryo is hard. Now researchers are developing a test that could make it easier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From Papua New Guinea to the Andaman Islands, Indigenous languages are under threat. An Indian linguist helped preserve one language family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study used machine learning on 6 million Danish people to "autocomplete" their life trajectories –— and when they might kick the bucket. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s episode, we want to talk about some of the current challenges with using home COVID tests. When you first have symptoms, a change in how your body reacts to the virus could lead to a test result showing you’re negative when you’re actually infected.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all have our tricks for sobering up after a night of drunken revelry: maybe a pot of black coffee or an ice-cold shower. But for mice in a certain lab in Texas, all it takes is a shot. No, not more alcohol—it’s an injection of a hormone called fibroblast growth factor 21, or FGF21.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine for a moment that you’re a very hungry bird soaring over 30-foot ocean swells in high winds, with no land for thousands of miles. How do you know where you’re going? If you’re a wandering albatross, you listen. But listen to what, exactly? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The moon has guided our movements and cultures, and though we may think we know it well, it still guards some of its deepest secrets from us. A new book from Rebecca Boyle take us on a deep dive into our sister celestial orb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nell Greenfieldboyce discusses her new book Transient and Strange, the intimacy of the essays and the science that inspired them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dogs are good for you, science says Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she’s an urban legend. But who was she? 2023 editor's pick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Advanced sensors and artificial intelligence could have us at the brink of interspecies communication Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The holidays are a time for indulgence, but there are ways to drink alcohol without suffering the painful effects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re looking back at 2023 for our favorite podcast shows and one about the largest bird to ever fly the skies just flew to the top of the list. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The stories we tell about orcas might say more about us than about them Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The beloved fish that feed orcas and humans depend on kelp forests’ unique habitat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Arctic Permafrost Atlas, which took years to create, is both beautiful and sobering, given the pace of climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Problems with the heart, kidneys and metabolic health are all connected Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thanks to researchers, new AI tech is delving into feline feelings to see when cats could need medical help.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The research focused on figuring out what enables certain sperm to gain some competitive advantage over millions of others fighting for the same prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A long-term decline in unsupervised activity may be contributing to mental health declines in children and adolescents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three experts break down how misinformation and propaganda spread through conflict and how to debunk it yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fewer kids got their routine childhood vaccines since before the pandemic. Are lack of access and a loss of trust in science to blame? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The choices we make in how we adapt to climate change can sometimes come back to bite us Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara peoples are learning more about the missiles siloed on their lands, and that knowledge has put the preservation of their culture and heritage in even starker relief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The missiles on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota make it a potential target for a nuclear attack. And that doesn’t come close to describing what the reality would be for those on the ground. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota has had nuclear missile silos on its land for decades. Now the U.S. government wants to take the old weapons out and replace them with new ones, and it’s unclear how many living there know about that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

15 nuclear missiles deployed in underground concrete silos across the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota. It took displacement and flood to get them there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation digs into a decades-long mystery: how 15 intercontinental ballistic missiles came to be siloed on her ancestral lands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daytime naps of about 30 minutes really improve your thinking and may spark creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As interest and support for psychedelic research grows, scientists share their hopes for the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Psychedelic researchers are engaged in heated debate over whether the mind-altering effects of the drugs are necessary for realizing their therapeutic potential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As companies join the hunt, can the field of mind-altering synthetic substances stay true to its original pioneering spirit of wonder, curiosity and connection? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than half of our diet consists of foods that have been industrially processed in some way, and they may be harmful to our health Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Under the right conditions, the spadefoot tadpole will transform into a voracious predator of its own species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lions, tigers, bears: this creature sends all of those beasts running for the hills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Can something spring back to life if it last moved around when woolly mammoths roamed the earth? The answer appears to be yes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the rush to build and train ever larger AI models, developers have swept up much of the searchable Internet, quite possibly including some of your own public data—and potentially some of your private data as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re a silphid beetle, a dead body is all your children really want, and it’s your job—no matter how difficult—to get one for them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The dangerous virus is still here. Here’s how you can stay safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sea ice is changing fast. Are forecasts created by artificial intelligence the best way to keep up with the pace of a warming climate in the far north? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers have been banned from working in Indonesia’s tropical rain forests after the government disagreed with their scientific conclusions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A needlelike tower, hung with sensors, “sniffs” the air above the Arctic Circle for signs of catastrophic thaw in the sodden ground below. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a tiny village north of the Arctic Circle in the Northwest Territories, the Inuvialuit of Tuktoyaktuk have taken climate science into their own hands.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is a permafrost thaw slump? Just imagine a massive hole with an area the size of more than nine football fields—and growing—where ice-cold ground once stood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The popular decongestant phenylephrine is not effective, an FDA panel found. Here’s what to use instead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We present the latest updates on ChatGPT, Bard and other competitors in the artificial intelligence arms race. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An astronomy festival in Italy opted to make all of its events and workshops multisensory. The organizers wanted to see whether sound, touch and smell can, like sight, transmit the wonders of the cosmos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A blind astronomer “sonified” the universe’s most explosive events: gamma-ray bursts. By listening to, rather than looking at, the data, she made a critical discovery and changed the field of astronomy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Space is famously silent, but astronomers and musicians are increasingly turning astronomical data into sound as a way to make discoveries and inspire people who are blind or visually impaired. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One researcher has been hiring planes to strafe the sky over the Amazon rain forest to collect the air coming off the trees, and what she is finding is cause for alarm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Consumers can now get easy tests for Alzheimer’s. But these tests may not really help patients that much—yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón discusses her involvement in NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and the inspiration behind her poem, which will travel onboard the spacecraft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caterpillars can’t regulate their body temperatures, so they have to come up with a totally different strategy to make it through the coldest months of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A honeybee swarm has as much electric charge as a thundercloud, and the insects’ mass movements in the atmosphere might even have some influence on the weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new field of digital bioacoustics is using machine learning to try decipher animal speak, including honeybee toots and quacks and whoops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you working really hard to learn something? Remember this counterintuitive fact, and you might improve your learning curve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The bite of the lone star tick makes people allergic to a sugar found in mammalian products, and many doctors don’t know about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A “Darwinian paradox” is that homosexual activity occurs even though it does not lead to or aid in reproduction. But if you visit three capuchin monkeys in Los Angeles, they’ll show you how beneficial their liaisons are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Luddites did not hate technology—but they did fight the way it was used to exploit humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Xenotransplants could help to solve the organ transplant crisis—if researchers can get the science right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Light is a very dangerous, if not so obvious, threat to birds who migrate at night. But researchers are using weather radar to track birds and provide “lights out” forecasts to help keep their paths clear of visual distraction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science is turning to machines to unlock the secrets of the vast, mysterious pulse-of-the-planet phenomenon that is nocturnal migration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you really want to challenging your bird identification skills, try using them at night, when bird calls are less than 100 milliseconds long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For thousands of years, no one truly knew how birds migrated—that is, until a few unlikely pioneers sat in an empty field with hundreds of pounds of kludged together recording gear and waited to hear sounds that no one had ever captured. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On any given night, dense clouds of dark, ghostly figures pass over your head as you sleep. Maybe you never knew they were there, but there are people out there who are deciphering all the unseen movement that happens amid the darkness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hearing aids may help maintain better brain functions in older people and better health overall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Apothecaries founded this famous garden—one of the most ancient botanical gardens in Europe—to teach their students which plants poison and which plants cure.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is behind the Black maternal mortality crisis, and what needs to change? In this podcast from Nature and Scientific American, leading academics unpack the racism at the heart of the system.

Here’s how scientists are planning on getting underground fungi data from space using satellites. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Atmospheric carbon is a currency that plants use to “buy” nutrients from fungi in the soil. To find out where this economy will go next, the devil is in the details. And the details are in the dirt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like us, plants and fungi have complex economies. By burning fossil fuels, we’ve been devaluing their currency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic might help people tackle substance abuse as well as shed pounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists used a smoking machine—complete with a 3-D-printed mouthpiece—to figure out how to get the most cannabinoid per puff.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New AI technology predicts hit songs—by listening to someone’s body.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s what’s behind the A.I technology that has worried so many actors—including something called “the orb.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A sleep researcher who studies what dreams can tell us about the possible onset of some mental disorders believes lucid dreamers might hold a lot of answers in their head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s what a historian who has studied J. Robert Oppenheimer for two decades has to say about the new Christopher Nolan film on the father of the atomic bomb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inflammatory bowel disease flare-ups can be traced to mental stress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s how large language models, or LLMs, actually work.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Very small delays in swing jazz point to our evolution as a supremely auditory species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research has discovered that wildfire smoke hurts these primates’ voice—and health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ChatGPT and other AI programs can offer medical advice. But how good are they? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The famous climate pattern El Niño could usher in a new hottest year on record and will have domino effects on the world’s weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

John O’Keefe shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014 for discovering that neurons in the hippocampus encode an animal’s location and create a cognitive map for navigation. This podcast was produced for the Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers, using the galaxy as a detector, believe they have detected gravitational waves from monster black holes for the first time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Toxic dust plagues marginalized communities on the shores of this disappearing salt lake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Desert ants living in the featureless salt plains of Tunisia count their steps and erect tall entrances at their nests to find their way back home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your body has a secret cooling method, and scientists explain how to use it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Along with an expert, we take you into some of nature's most monstrous storms.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The James Webb Space Telescope is giving us our first glimpse of stars in the early universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2013 a new user named Cleo took an online math forum by storm with unproved answers. Today she’s an urban legend. But who was she? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The party drug MDMA could soon be approved for treating people with severe PTSD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where is it coming from? How long will it last? What's in the smoke? Whose health is at risk? How do you clean your own air? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Terror birds were the grizzly bears of birds, the great white sharks of the land, Jack the Ripper but with feathers. They were also truly fascinating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Officially, these prehistoric birds are the dromornithids, but everyone who studies them calls them thunderbirds—and for good reason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The fossil was a prehistoric bird called Pelagornis sandersi, and its wings stretched out twice as wide as those of the great albatross.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

James Rothman shared The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2010 for discovering the molecular basis of neurotransmitter release. How did a biochemist come to win such a prestigious prize in neuroscience? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What you pay for tests, vaccines, and medicine will change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From North America to South Asia, summer heat waves are becoming longer, stronger and more frequent with climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the technology upsetting jobs and causing intellectual property issues to models making up fake answers to questions, here’s why we’re concerned about generative AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More sustainable ways of removing persistent chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from the environment are on the horizon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We learn the story of “Ella,” a patient with 12 different personalities, or “parts,” and of her therapist, who helped her form a peaceful community—many selves in one body and mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two SciAm editors duke it out to see if wormholes and multiverses could in fact exist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parrot nestlings spend time stringing together jumbled mixtures of sound—a rehearsal for more adult conversations   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recent rulings on the abortion pill cite the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old law that’s still on the books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vernal pools are safe havens for creatures such as fairy shrimp, and they have lived through the end of the dinosaurs, the breakup of Pangaea and multiple ice ages. But humans are paving them over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inside a vault at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles lies a microscopic population of immense value—the repository for vernal pool fairy shrimp. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carpets of gold, burrowing toads and fairy shrimp all depend on vernal pools—habitats that, most of the time, do not exist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vernal pools are home to spectacular residents such as fairy shrimp, but these unusual natural wonders are under threat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A scientist who does whale necropsies — or in layman's terms, whale autopsies — tells us why so many dead whales are washing up on beaches.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Very high HDL cholesterol levels almost double your risk of heart problems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Humans are building meaningful relationships with AI chatbots. What will the consequences be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and Europa Clipper missions will search for signs of habitability on three of Jupiter’s potentially ocean-bearing moons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two of the foremost experts on witch hunts talk about the link between the formation of domestic labor and the rise of witch hunting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The AI GPT-4 has emergent abilities—but that’s not why it’s scary.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A careful new study reveals coffee is generally safe for your heart and may boost your daily step count. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

These two researchers journey toward the center of Earth—via windows to the crust—to find bacteria that can breathe iron, arsenic and other metals that would kill us pretty quickly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The real-life fungi that inspired The Last of Us hijack the bodies of ants, wasps, cicadas, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our first known interstellar visitor is now long gone, but new research has some ideas about why it moved the way it did while it was in our cosmic neighborhood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Insights from Deaf and autistic communities could finally make office spaces better for everyone.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vera Rubin went from a teenager with a cardboard telescope to the “mother of dark matter.” Some of her colleagues and mentees weigh in on her fascinating life and how she was a champion for women in astronomy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Post-COVID symptoms can linger for months or years, and more and more evidence points to problems with the nervous system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Music made with artificial intelligence could upend the music industry. Here’s what that might look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Google’s new AI model can generate entirely new music from text prompts. Here’s what they sound like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Machine-learning algorithms are getting so good that they can translate Western instruments into Thai ones with ease. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the inaugural episode of Cosmos, Quickly, we blast off with Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno of the Space Force, who is charged with protecting our space in space, particularly from Russia and China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The burgeoning field of “digital bioacoustics” is helping us understand animals like never before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A vaccine pioneer tells us that shots to protect against RSV—a dangerous virus for babies and older people—are finally nearing approval. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year on Pi Day, we have a reason to celebrate one of math’s most famous symbols. But this year we speak to someone who has captured it in song. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We slammed a $330-million spaceship the size of a dairy cow into an asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Here’s what we’re learning about how our first step in planetary defense could save us in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some animals’ babies physically relax when their parents whisk them away from danger. The same thing works for tiny, wailing humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists partnered with tiger sharks to map seagrass—the unsung hero of ocean conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some caterpillars have evolved with antifreeze in their body cavity, allowing them to become cater-Popsicles to survive cold winters. But climate change could threaten that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosts Josh Fischman and Tanya Lewis explore the pandemic’s mental health toll on teens and young adults. They also delve into the effectiveness of telehealth, which has been booming since the start of the pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers who study aphantasia, or the inability to visualize something in your “mind’s eye,” are starting to get a sense of how to accurately measure the condition and what it may mean for those who have it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From space aliens to foreign surveillance, we spoke to experts to find out what’s really going on with the balloon brouhaha. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Successfully mitigating the impacts of climate change will rely heavily on innovation in science and technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science might be redefining what “life out there” really means. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How romance affects our well-being is a lot more complicated than “they lived happily ever after.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In fair zoo-ona, a pair of star-cross’d pandas take their life. And we learn about whether or not animals can fall in love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you “anxious,” “avoidant” or “disorganized?” So-called attachment styles have taken the Internet by storm. But it turns out there’s a lot more to unpack than people think.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Shayla Love dives into the true story behind the now infamous 36 questions that lead to love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new era in Scientific American audio history is about to drop starting next week. Get ready for a science variety show guaranteed to quench your curiosity in under 10 minutes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American’s short-form podcast has been going for 16 years, three months and seven days, counting today. But it’s time for us to evolve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study puts the “brain drain hypothesis”—the idea that just having a phone next to you impacts your cognition—to the test to see if the science passes muster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The verdict is in: female dogs actively evaluate human competence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A massive storm slammed into Alaska’s western coast, and there was no ice to stop it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Concertgoers danced more when music was supplemented with low-frequency bass tones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vaccines saved New York City billions of dollars, and China faces public fury over its strict virus-control policies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recordings of more than 50 species of turtles and other animals help scientists reassess the origins of acoustic communication in vertebrates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers put this ancient critter through a subzero gauntlet to learn more about what happens to their internal clock while surviving the extreme. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the ashes of the giants of Big Basin Redwoods State Park arise a history of fire suppression and real questions about what happens to the forests in a drought-stricken West Coast going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this new episode of our coronavirus podcast, we discuss a study that looked at the effects of Paxlovid on long COVID symptoms, and we also talk new bivalent boosters and immunity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research shows that bees “buzz” in more than the way you might think. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Zealand’s erect-crested penguin lays two eggs but rejects the first one—the opposite of how most birds prioritize their offspring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID, flu and RSV are surging. Here’s what you need to know to protect yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American technology editor Sophie Bushwick explains how Iran is using surveillance tech against vulnerable citizens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As recent advances improve the prospects of detecting and catching lung cancer early, a new challenge arises: how to ensure people worldwide, regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances, benefit from new clinical tools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a new episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we talk about the variants that are likely to be around this winter and how boosters help even if you’ve already had the disease. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research shows that birds of prey attempting to grab a bat from a roiling mass of the flying mammals have developed a way to cope with the confusion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rats kept awake after exploring novel objects remembered the original items but not where they’d seen those objects, raising interesting questions about human sleep. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we talk about why we’ve had years shaved off our average collective life since 2020. Also, we talk about “mabs” and why you might want to know what they are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Early-stage lung cancers are not only difficult to diagnose—they’ve also proved difficult to curatively treat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A surprising new gene discovery in coyotes may help conserve the critically endangered wolf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, Josh Fischman gets COVID, and President Joe Biden says the pandemic is over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A study of orb-weaving spiders shows that the arachnids’ webs pick up a range of sounds—and that they are always “listening” for vibrations coming in over them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chomping on food takes so much energy that it shaped human evolution. Our ancestors spent many hours a day chewing, which may have shaped our teeth and jaws. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research has discovered the first case of acoustic mimicry between a mammal and an insect—an acquired skill that could just save certain bats’ skin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is our second back-to-school special episode of COVID. Quickly. Today we talk about two big issues: the low vaccination rates among the littlest kids and how long you should quarantine after being sick (actually). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It turns out that making new views of the universe accessible to those with vision impairment has required some deep thought—and carefully chosen words. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It turns out that hoverflies may fly hundreds or even thousands of miles—all to help pollinate our flowers and vegetables. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although recent spikes in temperature affect all of us, our urban critters have had to find their own ways to beat the heat. Sometimes they “sploot.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is our back-to-school special episode of COVID, Quickly. We’ll talk about why COVID testing is about to become a school problem—and about whether or not kids are at risk for long COVID. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Engineers at the company DeepMind built a machine-learning system based on research on how babies’ brain works, and it did better on certain tasks than its conventional counterparts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conny Aerts is an astrophysicist and a pioneer of asteroseismology. This year she shared the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics for her research and leadership that has laid the foundations of solar and stellar structure theory, and revolutionized our understanding of the interiors of stars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our puppies’ eyes well up, a reaction caused by oxytocin, which makes us want to take care of them even more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recognizing those who are making a meaningful impact in the lives of cancer patients, the Cancer Community Awards, sponsored by AstraZeneca, presents an individual or organization with the President’s Award. We reconnected with Margaret Stauffer, the 2021 winner, to hear more about what’s happened since she received the award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Celebrating those who enhance the ability to provide the right treatment for the right patient at the right time, the Cancer Community Awards, sponsored by AstraZeneca, presents an individual or organization with the Catalyst for Precision Medicine Award. We prepared for this year’s awards by reconnecting with the 2021 winner, Dr. Colin Pritchard, to hear more about what’s happened since he received the award.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We do not have a theory to tell us everything about how a black hole works, but new research is shedding a least some light on one of their many mysteries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we take a few minutes to talk about the other virus making headlines—and then return to long COVID. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Celebrating those who significantly improve access to cancer care for underserved populations, the Cancer Community Awards, sponsored by AstraZeneca, presents an individual or organization with a Catalyst for Change Award. We spoke with the 2021 award winner, Tomma Hargraves, to learn more about what’s happened since she received the award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A single whiff of oxytocin, a chemical that some call the “love hormone,” promotes tolerance among lions at a wildlife sanctuary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Celebrating those who strive to overcome disparities in cancer care to bring quality services to their patients, the Cancer Community Awards, sponsored by AstraZeneca, created the Catalyst for Equity Award. We spoke with Dr. Anne Marie Murphy, executive director of Equal Hope and winner of the award in 2021, to learn more about what’s happened since her organization received the award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A pair of studies show that male bottlenose dolphins rely on wingmen when wooing mates—and that they cultivate these friendships by being vocal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Celebrating those who are making a patient’s experience as easy as possible during an extraordinarily difficult time, the Cancer Community Awards, sponsored by AstraZeneca, presents an individual or organization with a Catalyst for Care Award. We spoke with the 2021 winner, Unite for HER’s founder and CEO Sue Weldon, to hear more about what’s happened since her organization received the award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we talk about getting reinfected with the coronavirus just a month or two after an earlier bout—and the difference that trusting others can make in a pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jacob Sagiv is a chemist who studies properties of self-assembled monolayers. This year, he shared The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for his research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lung cancer is the number-one cause of cancer deaths in the world. But how many lives would be saved if doctors could diagnose and treat it before it progresses? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new subpopulation of Greenland polar bears offers insights into how this species might hang on as Arctic ice disappears. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we talk about the increase in new Omicron subvariants. Should fall vaccine boosters contain standard Omicron or some of those new subvariants instead? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers design an artificial neuron that can trigger closure of a Venus flytrap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we discuss some parents breathing a collective sigh of relief and the paradox of how effective vaccines can make it harder to create new drugs to treat patients who get the coronavirus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers tricked out conventional camera traps to snap headshots of Puma concolor, revealing a better way to track the elusive species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Huda Zoghbi is a clinician-scientist who studies the molecular mechanisms of neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration. This year she shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for discovering the genetic pathways behind serious brain disorders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Appointing women to leadership positions renders organizations more likely to describe all women as being powerful, persistent and bold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we clear up some data misconceptions, get to the bottom of the booster uptake issue and talk Novavax. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bacteria resistant to methicillin emerged in hedgehogs long before the drug was prescribed to treat infections. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For meerkats in the Kalahari Desert, rising temperatures spark deadly outbreaks of tuberculosis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Technology editor Sophie Bushwick breaks down the precedent for using your phone to monitor personal health data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study links sea ice decline with increasing wildfire weather in the Western U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It took hundreds of researchers and many telescopes to capture an image of the black hole at the middle of our Milky Way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers looked back at more than 100 years of research and found that a fascination with annelids with mixed up appendages was strong—and that research still has relevance today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A landmark study of women who were turned away from getting the procedure found that being forced to have a child worsened their health and economic status. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the newest season of Lost Women of Science, we enter a world of secrecy, computers and nuclear weapons—and see how Klára Dán von Neumann was a part of all of it.

As the world warms, many animals are getting smaller. For birds, new research shows what they have upstairs may just make a different in how much smaller they get. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A research team finds seven tiny dwarf galaxies stripped of their dark matter that nonetheless persisted despite the theft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A glitch in speech initiation gives rise to the repetition that characterizes stuttering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the newest season of Lost Women of Science, we enter a world of secrecy, computers and nuclear weapons—and see how Klára Dán von Neumann was a part of all of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Think of the process as a kind of marine fecal transplant—except the restorative bacteria do not come from stool; they come from other corals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By dating nearly a quarter-million stars, astronomers were able to reconstruct the history of our galaxy—and they say it has lived an “enormously sheltered life.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Florida manatees are “talking” up a storm, and a team that has been recording those sounds for seven years is starting to understand the chatter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Science—and experience—show that we most definitely see faces in inanimate objects. But new research finds that, more often than not, we perceive those illusory faces as male. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A nearly two-year-long study of Hawaiian corals suggests some species may be better equipped to handle warmer, more acidic waters than previously believed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research shows that detecting digital fakes generated by machine learning might be a job best done with humans still in the loop.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New fossils are changing a decades-old story about the species that roamed the Mediterranean 80 million years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is not clear whether the act has medicinal benefit or is merely a cultural practice among the animals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using software designed to align DNA sequences, scientists cataloged the mutations that arose as folk songs evolved Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The city has deployed a system of sensors to flag highly polluting vehicles. Nearly all of them have been repaired, helping to clean Hong Kong’s air. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Rockport, Me., an array of nearly 11,000 solar panels will soon begin a solar harvest as the sweet berries growing below them ripen on the bush. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The small rodents are one of the few known monogamists in the wild—and their faithfulness was put to the test in a lab. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Equally surprising is the fact that we still do not know how birds actually stay airborne. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What shape do you see when you hear “bouba”? What about “kiki”? It turns out that nonsense words that evoke certain shapes have something to say about the origins of language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Using a combination of fishing data and satellite tracking, scientists found that the sharks have shifted their range some 250 miles poleward over the past 40 years.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Harnessing the wind to blow back emissions is not without its own impacts, so researchers are developing technologies to coexist with whales and other ocean-dwelling species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You might not think that you can generate more body acceleration than a big-league baseball pitcher, but new research shows you can. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The painter described falling into the briefest of slumbers to refresh his mind. Now scientists have shown the method is effective at inducing creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wildfires, appearing dead in winter, are actually smoldering and then bouncing back to life in spring to consume increasingly more land in the Far North. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new podcast is on a mission to retrieve unsung female scientists from oblivion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A volcanologist says the eruption on the island of La Palma is a unique window into the “personality” of basaltic volcanoes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The World Economic Forum and Scientific American team up to highlight technological advances that could change the world—including self-fertilizing crops, on-demand drug manufacturing, breath-sensing diagnostics and 3-D-printed houses.

A 15-year study of where carbon lies in boreal forests has unearthed a surprising finding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The scientists found several previously hidden galaxies that date back to 13 billion years ago—and many more might be missing from our current census of the early universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study finds that, for robots, overlords are less persuasive than peers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Miller-Urey experiment showed that the conditions of early Earth could be simulated in a glass flask. New research finds the flask itself played an underappreciated, though outsize, role. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A fossil bed in Patagonia provides evidence of complex social structure in dinosaurs as early as 193 million years ago. And scientists say that herding behavior could have been key to the beasts’ success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ultrasound triggered cells home in on tumors and then self destruct to deliver damage or therapeutics from inside. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new podcast is on a mission to retrieve unsung female scientists from oblivion.

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You read that right. Researchers have taken the chemical defenses of some insects and turned them into sounds, which, it turns out, repel people just as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over millions of years of evolution, some beetles have learned to dampen the stench of decay to help their young thrive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By dating the remnants of trees felled in Newfoundland, scientists have determined that the Norse people likely first set foot in the Americas in the year A.D. 1021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book  Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction,  science journalist Michelle Nijhuis looks into the past of the wildlife conservation field, warts and all, to try to chart its future.

New research using a camera that can “see" sound” shows some elephants can produce high-pitched buzzing with their lips. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nearly 200 years after his death, the German composer’s musical scratch was pieced together by machine—with a lot of human help. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ewine van Dishoeck received the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics in 2018 for elucidating the life cycle of interstellar clouds and the formation of stars and planets. What other mysteries of space are left to be uncovered? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here’s what we can learn about climate change and infrastructure from Denali National Park’s only road. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The speed of these self-propelling droplets on a hot-oil surface seemed to defy physics until researchers broke out the super-slow-motion camera. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research uses night vision to see how nocturnal bees navigate the dark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is a tale of sound: the song of a solitary whale that vocalizes at a unique frequency of 52 hertz, which no other whale—as the story goes—can seemingly understand. It is also a tale about science and ocean life, laced with fantasy and mystery and mostly shrouded in darkness. The whale, who is of unknown species and nicknamed “52,” was originally discovered in 1989 and has been intermittently tracked by scientists ever since. Its solitary nature baffled marine researchers. And its very existence captured the attention and hearts of millions of people. But as 52 roams the ocean’s depths, a lot about its nature is still up in the air. No one has ever seen it in the flesh. Scientists have determined that the whale is a large male and possibly a hybrid, and they have speculated that its unique song—too low in frequency for humans and too high for whales—might be a result of a malformation. Scientific American sat down with Josh Zeman, an award-winning filmmaker who created a documentary about 52, to talk not just about his impressive cinematic quest (and it is impressive and beautifully shot) but also the science and academic collaborations that fueled it. The documentary—written and directed by Zeman and executive produced by actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Adrian Grenier—is inspired by the findings of the late bioacoustics scientist William Watkins. It is propelled by passion and curiosity and relies on underwater acoustics to track 52 through the sound-rich and noise-heavy environment of the ocean. A departure for Zeman in terms of genre choice, the film still exudes an air of mystery and sleuthing reminiscent of whodunits. It unfolds like a classic true-crime story, a genre that Zeman, an investigative reporter and a true-crime documentarian, was originally famous for working in. Then again, when Zeman started making the movie, the whale was MIA and had been silent for years. In essence, Zeman reopened a cold case to—in his own words—“set the record straight” and “bring the audience into the world of the whale.” With the help of marine scientists, he followed streams of whale songs and other breadcrumbs in the form of auditory clues, listening in, analyzing, tracking, slowly and persistently narrowing down the circle around 52. Zeman found him, lost him and found him again until eventually the filmmaker made an unexpected revelation about him. It may not be the closure Zeman expected to give to his audiences. But it is definitely a fresh chapter in this evolving tale. Zeman says he is hopeful that other storytellers will take up the mantle and continue to unearth more facts about 52. “What a more beautiful gift can you give than to say, ‘Actually, there’s another chapter.’ And then, 20 years later, somebody else comes in and adds their chapter,” he says. “That’s what storytelling is.”

Photoferrotrophs have been around for billions of years on Earth, and new research suggests that they have played an outsize roll in the natural capture of carbon dioxide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research shows that the prehistoric giants were even cooler than we thought Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The rodents’ personalities may help them to secure territory and avoid prey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One researcher’s poorly timed attention lapse flipped a car—and pushed science forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gerd Binnig shared The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience in 2016 for inventing the atomic force microscope. What transformative impact has this invention had on nanoscience? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a story of desperation, anger, poverty—and triumph over long odds to crack the code of a degenerative disease that had been stealing the lives of children since it was first discovered more than a century ago.

Researcher Matthew Austin has become a wildflower pollinator, sans the wings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show: World of Wonders, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Vesper Flights, by Helen Macdonald.

The greater sac-winged bat develops its own language in much the way we do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Theresa and Donald Dardar lived their whole lives in coastal Louisiana. They knew the “big one” might come someday. It did, and now everything is uncertain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show:  Underland, by Robert MacFarlane, and  Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn. 

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers have developed a microprocessor built on high-performance plastic rather than silicon—and they say it could enable smarter food labels and supply chain management. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An educational experiment used escape rooms and the undead to set the stage for a terrible situation that would become all too real Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The last time this tiny wheel animalcule was moving around, woolly mammoths roamed the earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show: Entangled Life,  by Merlin Sheldrake, and  Gathering Moss,  by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

In trying to explain the spectacular star trails of the star cluster Palomar 5, astronomers stumbled on a very large trove of black holes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research has created microscopic antibiotic factories in droplets that measure a trillionth of liter in volume. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show: Why Fish Don’t Exist,  by Lulu Miller, and The Book of Eels,  by Patrik Svensson.

A molecule found in the retinas of European robins seems to be able to sense weak magnetic fields, such as that of Earth, after it is exposed to light. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience a the alien sounds of the yearly elk rut inside of Rocky Mountain National Park . Catch additional episodes in the series here .

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ardem Patapoutian shared The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2020 for answering a basic question: How does touch actually work? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research finds they fly around on noise-cancelling wings Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience a humid, salty morning full of birdsong inside the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana.  Catch additional episodes in the series here . 

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research shows that lightning-quick neural rehearsal can supercharge learning and memory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience an evanescent like no other: the blue oak woodlands in Sequoia National Park in California. Catch additional episodes in the series here . 

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A study makes the case for the new species based on its looks, genes and sounds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience a thunderstorm—and a lazy day of waiting that storm out—inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Catch additional episodes in the series here . 

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. You can listen to all past episodes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Human children: please take note of the behavior of prebirth zebra finches Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists found that elephants often sniff pathways—and seem especially attuned to urine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A pan-coronavirus vaccine could be “one vaccine to rule them all,” and so far it has shown strong results in mice, hamsters, monkeys, horses and even sharks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place, and prepare to experience sunrise on a Yellowstone marsh and then relax—if you can—close enough to a bison to hear it eat its lunch. You can catch more episodes in the series  here .

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers in the happiest lab in the world tested 375 pups and found they connected with people by eight weeks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Made from microalgae and bacteria, the new substance can survive for three days without feeding. It could one day be used to build living garments, self-powered kitchen appliances or even window coverings that sequester carbon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new experiment shows that bats are born with a fixed reference for the speed of sound—and living in lighter air can throw it off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek made extraordinary observations of blood cells, sperm cells and bacteria with his microscopes. But it turns out the lens technology he used was quite ordinary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One mathematician has spend decades uncovering the deadly calculations of pestilence and plague, sometimes finding data that were hiding in plain sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An analysis of the animal’s walking speed suggests that T. rex’s walking pace was close to that of a human. It’s too bad the king of the dinosaurs didn’t just walk when hungry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is like when your cell phone keeps you awake in bed—except mosquitoes do not doom scroll when they stay up, they feast on your blood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a new episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It seems like the males will do anything, even fake nearby danger, to get females to stick around to mate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The rosy-faced lovebirds that live in Phoenix appear to be free riding on our urban climate control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you the fifth episode in our podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Earth Day, Scientific American sits down with National Geographic underwater photographer Brian Skerry to talk about free diving with whales and filming the giant mammals within five meters or less. “We have to get within a few meters of our subject to get good pictures,” Skerry says. “I can't use a 1,000-millimeter lens underwater. Also, the sun has to be out because I can’t light a whale underwater; they're too big.” Skerry has been tracking whales, their hidden lives, their feeding rituals and hunting practices—strategies that differ dramatically from one whale pod to another—for nearly four decades. Both his new book Secrets of the Whales , released on April 6, and Disney+ series with the same title, a four-episode documentary that is narrated by Sigourney Weaver and premieres today, boast jaw-dropping moments. A visual feast of magnificent scenery, the book and streaming series show humpback whales breaching the water surface to catch herring, orcas trailing ancient pathways, narwhals flicking their giant tusks to sting their prey and ghost-white beluga whales frolicking in shallow waters with their young—some of them only a few days old and still dragging around their umbilical cord. The footage that Skerry filmed takes the audience on a tour of whale cultures across Antarctica, Norway, New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Alaska and other places. It tells stories of resilience, familial bonding and intimacy, generational knowledge sharing and deadly encounters—along with rich lives and complex behaviors that are reminiscent of humans and that were sometimes captured on camera for the first time. “If we look at the ocean, through the lens of culture, these animals are doing so many things in many ways that mirror human culture,” Skerry says. The Disney+ series, however, doesn’t only dwell on the magic and wonder of this world. It also warns against the effects of pollution and the ongoing climate emergency on a very delicate and interconnected marine ecosystem. Secrets of the Whales was a perfect story to showcase both aspects, Skerry says, because it lives at the confluence of cutting-edge science and conservation. “I like to say, ‘It's not a conservation story,’” he adds. “And yet it could be the most important conservation story ever because if we can see these animals through that lens of culture, it changes how we perceive nature and our relation to it.”

New research shows that members of a bee colony all have the same gut microbiome, which controls their smell—and thus their ability to separate family from foe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place, and prepare to experience true solitude inside  Voyageurs National Park .  You can catch more episodes in the series here .

Australia’s critically endangered regent honeyeaters are losing what amounts to their culture—and that could jeopardize their success at landing a mate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s been 60 years, to the day, since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel to space in a tiny capsule attached to an R-7 ballistic missile, a powerful rocket originally designed to carry a three- to five-megaton nuclear warhead. In this new episode marking the 60th anniversary of this historic space flight—the first of its kind— Scientific American talks to Stephen Walker, an award-winning filmmaker, director and book author, about the daring launch that changed the course of human history and charted a map to the skies and beyond. Walker discusses his new book  Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space , out today, and how Gagarin’s journey—an enormous mission that was fraught with danger and planned in complete secrecy—happened on the heels of a cold war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and sparked a relentless space race between a rising superpower and an ailing one, respectively. Walker, whose films have won an Emmy and a BAFTA, revisits the complex politics and pioneering science of this era from a fresh perspective. He talks about his hunt for eyewitnesses, decades after the event; how he uncovered never-before-seen footage of the space mission; and, most importantly, how he still managed to put the human story at the heart of a tale at the intersection of political rivalry, cutting-edge technology, and humankind’s ambition to conquer space and explore new frontiers.

A fast-growing front in the battle against climate change is focused on developing green technologies aimed at reducing humankind’s carbon footprint, but many scientists say simply reducing emissions is no longer enough. We have to find new ways to suck carbon out of the atmosphere. A Maine start-up is looking to raise a sinkable carbon-capturing forest in the open ocean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience a riot of bird song inside the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge  that will stay with you long after the episode ends. You can catch more episodes in the series here .

Today we bring you the fourth episode in a new podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Particles called muons are behaving weirdly, and that could mean a huge discovery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The two cities’ rock doves are genetically distinct, research shows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience the transcendence that explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark must have felt at the end of their journey—inside a park that bears their names . You can catch more episodes in the series here .

We know a lot about how sea turtles are threatened by our trash, but new research has just uncovered an underreported threat hiding inside lakes and rivers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you the third episode in a new podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience the what it feels like to listen to the forest from 150 feet off the ground in Sequoia National Park . You can catch more episodes in the series here .

By collecting the larvae of the fast flyers, researchers have turned the insects into “biosentinels” that can track mercury pollution across the country. Berly McCoy reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we launch a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job , an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these places amid the pandemic, but after you take this acoustic journey, you will be longing to get back outside. Strap on some headphones, find a quiet place and prepare to experience the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. You can catch more episodes in the series here .

Can you pick a lock with just a smartphone? New research shows that doing so is possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the Science Talk podcast, Noam Slonim  of IBM Research speaks to Scientific American about an impressive feat of computer engineering: an AI-powered autonomous system that can engage in complex debate with humans over issues ranging from subsidizing preschool and the merit of space exploration to the pros and cons of genetic engineering.  In a new Nature paper , Slonim and his colleagues show that across 80 debate topics, Project Debater’s computational argument technology has performed very decently—with a human audience being the judge of that. “However, it is still somewhat inferior on average to the results obtained by expert human debaters,” Slonim says.  In a 2019 San Francisco showcase, the system went head-to-head with expert debater Harish Natarajan.  Beyond gaming, it’s rare to see humans and machines go against each other, let alone in an oratory competition. Not unlike its human counterpart, the AI was given only 15 minutes to research the topic and prepare for the debate—rifling through thousands of gigabytes of information at record speed to form an opening statement and layer counterarguments that were later delivered through a robotic female voice, in fragments and with near perfect diction.  It couldn’t best Natarajan in San Francisco, but in a different debate, the system—co-led by Slonim and fellow IBM researcher Ranit Aharonov —has managed to change the stance of nine people in a debate on the use of telemedicine, essentially swaying the debate to its side and rebutting the argument of its opponent. In other words, in this realm, humans still prevail. But how do you build the architecture for a complex system like this? Is the AI capable of recognizing meaning or larger contexts in a debate? Can a system descended from Project Debater one day intervene in real-life social media arguments to quell misinformation or stir a debate in one direction or another, for better or worse? We answer these questions and more in the podcast.

New research tries to tease out whether our closest animal relatives can be selfless Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you the second episode in a new podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists studied three varieties of house mice and found that those who had lived alongside humans the longest were also the craftiest at solving food puzzles. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research shows that when faced with an impossible task, the marsupials look to humans for help. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we begin a new podcast series: COVID, Quickly. Every two weeks, Scientific American’s senior health editors Tanya Lewis and Josh Fischman catch you up on the essential developments in the pandemic: from vaccines to new variants and everything in between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can call it the “revenge of the computer scientist.” An algorithm that made headlines for mastering the notoriously difficult Atari 2600 game Montezuma’s Revenge can now beat more games, achieving near perfect scores, and help robots explore real-world environments. Pakinam Amer reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Decoy sea turtle eggs containing tracking tech are new weapons against beach poachers and traffickers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is the wood that the rock greats have sworn by—swamp ash, in the form of their Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars—for more than 70 years. If you have ever listened to rock, you have probably heard a solid-body swamp ash guitar. But now  climate change is threatening the wood that helped build rock and roll. In today’s podcast, veteran guitarist Jim Campilongo takes us through the finer points of swamp ash and what it would mean to lose it.  Bonus material: Here’s Campilongo showing the difference between the sound of a solid-body swamp ash guitar and a hollow-body one.  And here’s a little information about Campilongo’s latest project: He teams up with his longtime collaborator Luca Benedetti on the album  Two Guitars . Check it out. Editor’s Not (2/16/21): This podcast incorrectly stated that the article  on climate change and swamp ash in the February 2021 edition of Scientific American  was authored by Priyanka Runwal and Andrea Thompson. The author was Runwal alone.

Spotted hyena males do not fight for mates, so how are certain males shut out of the mating game? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After an intense game of cat and mouse with different particles, atomic physicists have measured the radius of the helium nucleus five times more precisely than before. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on the Science Talk podcast, Alexis Gambis , a New York University biologist and independent filmmaker, speaks about making Son of Monarchs , which won the 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is about a Mexican scientist who studies the evolution of monarch butterfly wings. It is a cultural piece about the politics of immigration, spirituality and shifting identities. Gambis talks about science beyond the lab bench, bringing CRISPR technology to the big screen and how he is usually given to bold, innovative features that focus on science or technology and that depict a scientist as a central character.  In one scene in Son of Monarchs,  the main character stands in a rowdy bar and raises his glass to “CRISPR and the genetic revolution.” There are several allusions throughout the film to how gene editing fascinates and terrifies us. Evolutionary science is the thread that ties the human story together.  From script to screen, the scientist-director meditates on the long journey to the finish line, securing funding and how science’s big stories can be weaved into art.  Gambis has been running a science film festival for 13 years and making science films for longer. His next project, El Beso , is a plunge into the life and science-fiction writings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, an early 20th-century Spanish neuroscientist who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. 

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from around the world, including one from Costa Rica about decoy sea turtle eggs with the potential to catch poachers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The research team determined that the city of Raipur in central India has at least one street cow for every 54 human residents. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some dog population genetics show similarities to ours, such as in the ability to digest grains. But other lineages differ.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The prospect of death by giant hornet has pushed some Asian honeybees to resort to a poop-based defense system Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unlike humans, wolves can subsist on protein alone for months—so scientists say we may have lobbed leaner leftovers their way. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers help farmers in Namibia avoid costly cattle losses by tracking big cat hangouts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Linguist Ben Zimmer says the pandemic has turned us all into amateur epidemiologists utilizing terms such as “superspreader” and “asymptomatic.” Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb talks about his book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter .

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from around the world, including one from Panama about the toll lightning takes on tropical trees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Juvenile ravens performed just as well as chimps and orangutans in a battery of intelligence tests—except for assays of spatial skills. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bee larvae and pupae appear to secrete a chemical that does the work of a late-night cup of coffee for their nurses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New research tracked the canines in northern Minnesota for years to see just how they reshape their ecosystems. Audio of wolves inside Voyageurs National Park, courtesy of Jacob Job.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A study of adults learning a new language found that speaking primarily activated regions in the left side of the brain, but reading and listening comprehension were much more variable Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nurse Kristen Choi says health care providers need to better educate patients about possible side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kidney disease affects millions of Americans, but corporate capture of dialysis, along with disparities in treatment and transplant access, mean that not everyone's journey is the same. On this Science Talk podcast, we speak with Carrie Arnold, lead reporter in an ambitious, year-long reporting project into the current state of chronic kidney disease treatment in the U.S., from diagnosis to dialysis, and from maintenance treatment to transplant (for those who are lucky). You can read the first part in the series here . It's a story of technological and procedural advance, but also one that has seen just two large, for-profit enterprises come to dominate the market for dialysis delivery. It's a story of expanding access, but also one still marked by racial and ethnic disparities. And it's a tale of medical innovation and adaptation, but also one beset by conflicts of interest and an inability to adapt to holistic modes of care that other disease specialities, from cardiology to oncology, have long ago embraced.  For the 37 million Americans navigating the corridors of kidney disease, these are likely familiar issues. But for the third of Americans at risk for renal disease — and for anyone who cares about how the nation's health care dollars are spent — this five-part collaboration between Undark Magazine and Scientific American pulls back the curtain and provides an unflinching look at what's working, and what's not. 

Nanoparticles that attach to photoreceptors allowed mice to see infrared and near-infrared light for up to two months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The wrinkle-faced bat covers its face with a flap of skin, seemingly as part of its courtship rituals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About a year ago, SARS-CoV-2 (which wasn’t called that yet) was just beginning to emerge in a cluster of cases inside China . We know what has happened since then, but it bears repeating: there have been  69 million cases and more than 1.5 million deaths  globally as of December 10, 2020, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. And as the virus raced around the world, science has also raced to understand how it actually works, biologically. Today on the Science Talk podcast, a virologist who has been part of that massive effort joins us. Britt Glaunsinger  is a professor in the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She has been studying viruses for 25 years, with a particular focus, before December 2019, on the herpesvirus. Over the past 12 months, her lab has been focusing on strategies the virus uses to suppress the body's innate immune system.

Scientific American  and the World Economic Forum sifted through more than 75 nominations for the most innovative and potentially game-changing technologies in 2020. The final top 10 span the fields of medicine, engineering, environmental sciences and chemistry. And to win the nod, the technologies must have the potential to spur progress in societies and economies by outperforming established ways of doing things. They also need to be novel (that is, not currently in wide use) yet likely to have a major impact within the next three to five years. Here’s your guide for the (hopefully) near future.  Read the full report here .

Materials scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez talks about her latest book The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another .

Evidence of the ancient humans was limited to a cave in Siberia. But now scientists have found genetic remains of the Denisovans in China. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Travel time differences for sound waves produced by undersea earthquakes in the same place at different times can provide details about ocean warming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A duckbill dinosaur jawbone found in Morocco means that dinosaurs crossed a large body of water to reach Africa.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chipmunklike animals that lived among the dinosaurs appear to have been social creatures, which suggests that sociality arose in mammals earlier than scientists thought. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from around the world, including one, from the dormant volcano Llullaillaco in Chile, about a mouse that is the highest-dwelling mammal ever documented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID might be fought efficiently with fewer shutdowns by restricting activities only in a particular area with a population up to 200,000 when its case rate rises above a chosen threshold.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Horseflies misjudge landings on zebra patterns, compared with solid gray or black surfaces, which provides evidence for why evolution came up with the black-and-white pattern. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Need a break from politics and the pandemic? You’re probably not in the Amazon rain forest right now, but we can take you there in audio. Today, in part three of our three-part audio sound escape, we ascend into the trees where howler monkeys and crimson-crested woodpeckers rule the airwaves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Need a break from politics and the pandemic? You’re probably not in the Amazon rain forest right now, but we can take you there in audio. Today, in part two of our three-part audio sound escape, we descend into a nighttime flood of frog music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Need a break from politics and the pandemic? You’re probably not in the Amazon rain forest right now, but we can take you there in audio. Today, in part one of our three-part audio sound escape, we listen to dolphins hunting among the trees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The concave-eared torrent frog's unusual ear anatomy lets it hear high-frequency calls, which gives a mating advantage to the littler males that sing soprano. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from all over, including one from the United Arab Emirates about the the first interplanetary mission by an Arab country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We wrap up our preelection series with Scientific American senior editor Jen Schwartz, who talks about the possible effects of the election results on technology development and use.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti and associate editor Andrea Thompson talk about this election and the future of U.S. energy research and policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti talks about how this election will affect environmental science and policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American’s associate editor for sustainability Andrea Thompson talks about how climate science and policy will be affected by this election. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American’s senior medicine editor Josh Fischman talks about issues in medicine and public health that will be affected by this election. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientific American’s editor in chief sets up this week’s series of podcasts about how this election could affect science, technology and medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many of the statues not along the coast are in places that featured a resource vital to the communities that lived and worked there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More than 40 of the birds, in coalitions of three or four, may fight for days over oak trees in which to store their acorns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The volatile compounds released by microbial communities on cheese rinds shape and shift a cheese’s microbiome. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mass-extinction asteroid happened to strike an area where the rock contained a lot of organic matter and sent soot into the stratosphere, where it could block sunlight for years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Planners returned water to the dry bed of Arizona’s Santa Cruz River in 2019, and various species began showing up on the same day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers say three ancient leather balls, dug up from the tombs of horsemen in northwestern China, are the oldest such specimens from Europe or Asia. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From mammals to mollusks, animals living among humans lose their antipredator behaviors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ancestors of today’s dogs already exhibited some playfulness, which became a key trait during domestication. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A stretch of Neandertal DNA has been associated with some cases of severe COVID-19, but it’s unclear how much of a risk it poses. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New Nobel laureate in chemistry Jennifer Doudna talks about various applications of the gene-editing tool CRISPR. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blue whales off California’s coast sing at night—until it’s time to start migrating, and they switch to daytime song. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Rice, who today shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, talked about how rapidly research now occurs, compared with his early work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers determined that Greenland is on track to lose more ice this century than during any of the previous 120 centuries. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The disappearance of their predators in a disturbed ecosystem has turned Atlantic forest sloths from night creatures to day adventurers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers seeking evidence for cancer in dinosaurs found it in a collection of bones at a paleontology museum in Alberta. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fork-tailed flycatchers make a fluttering sound with their wings—but separate subspecies have different “dialects” of fluttering. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from all over, including one from Israel about what DNA reveals about the Dead Sea Scrolls’ parchment.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hyraxes, which live in Africa and the Middle East, punctuate their songs with snorts. And the snorts appear to reflect the animals’ emotional state. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists determined that temperatures were 11 degrees cooler during the last ice age—and that finding has implications for modern-day warming. Julia Rosen reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hummingbirds in the Peruvian Andes enter a state of torpor at night to conserve energy, dipping their body temperature to as low as 38 degrees Fahrenheit. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Given an impossible task, a dog will ask a human for help, but a wolf will not seek help—and neither will a pet pig. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pumping cheap iron-oxide-rich red bricks with specific vapors that form polymers enables the bricks to become electrical-charge-storage devices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers found that leftovers are likely to end up in the trash, so they advise cooking smaller meals in the first place to avoid food waste. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The finding of a baby dinosaur fossil in the Arctic implies that some dinos nested in the region, which was milder than today but not toasty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Astronomers observed an odd triple-star system that offers clues about misaligned planetary orbits. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A study estimates that 200 million trees in the tropics are mowed down by lightning annually. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from all over, including one from Antarctica about how there’s something funny about penguin poop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We look back at some highlights, midlights and lowlights of the history of Scientific American, featuring former editor in chief John Rennie. Astrophysicist Alan Guth also appears in a sponsored segment.

Every year, Alaska’s big salmon runs feature smaller salmon. Climate change and competition with hatchery-raised salmon may be to blame. Julia Rosen reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That drought may have brought about societal shifts in the region 5,000 years ago. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The finding could potentially help wildlife managers keep better tabs on their herds. Jason G. Goldman reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Baking is applied microbiology,” according to the book Modernist Bread . During pandemic lockdowns, many people started baking their own bread. Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs talks about Modernist Bread, for which he was a writer and editor.

Researchers found extra bones within a 240-million-year-old ichthyosaur fossil—which they determined to be the ichthyosaur’s last, possibly fatal meal. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Butterflies, fish and frogs sport rear-end eyespots that reduce predation. Painting eye markings on cows similarly seems to ward off predators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hermit warblers in California have developed 35 different song dialects, apparently as a result of wildfires temporarily driving them out of certain areas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former Scientific American editor Mark Alpert talks about his latest sci-fi thriller The Coming Storm, which warns about the consequences of unethical scientific research and of ignoring the scientific findings you don’t like.  

Scientists determined that “lava world” exoplanets do not derive their brightness from molten rock but possibly get it from reflective metallic clouds. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Climate change is expected to bring more frequent droughts and heat waves to Africa’s Kalahari Desert. And aardvarks might not be able to cope. Jason G. Goldman reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists spotted a mouse at the summit of Llullaillaco, a 22,000-foot-tall volcano on the border of Chile and Argentina. Julia Rosen reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs spoke with Arthur Caplan , head of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s division of medical ethics, about some of the ethical issues that researchers have to consider in testing and distributing vaccines against COVID-19.

A decline in smell was the sense loss most strongly associated with such risk in a recent study. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rather than undergoing active chameleonlike color changes, glass frogs’ translucency allows light to bounce from their background and go through them—making their apparent color close to their setting.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Compared with traditional lineup techniques, a series of two-faces-at-a-time choices led to more accurate identification by study witnesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An analysis of fox fossils found evidence that they scavenged from wolf and bear kills until Homo sapiens supplied plenty of horse and reindeer remains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now submerged caves in the Yucatán Peninsula contain remains of ocher-mining operations that date back at least 10,000 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and author Emily Anthes talks about her book The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness .

Soap bubbles are sticky enough to carry a pollen payload and delicate enough to land on flowers without harm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from all over, including one about how a lizard population responded to hurricanes by developing larger and stickier toe pads on average. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

COVID-19-related lockdowns dampened human activity around the globe—giving seismologists a rare glimpse of the earth’s quietest rumblings. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Art museums are filled with centuries-old paintings with details of plants that today give us clues about evolution and breeding practices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meteorologists take advantage of weather data collected by commercial jetliners at different altitudes and locations. Fewer flights mean less data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The sword-tailed cricket can discern bats’ echolocation signals by only responding to calls of a certain volume—at which point it plummets out of their approach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist Bob Hirshon reports from the Taking Nature Black conference, reporter Shahla Farzan talks about tracking copperhead snakes, and nanoscientist Ondrej Krivanek discusses microscopes with subangstrom resolution.

The system works like noise-cancelling headphones but fits over an open window. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vaccination used against smallpox during the Civil War reveals the identity of the distantly related virus used to keep troops disease-free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Individuals aren’t very good at judging whether someone coughing or sneezing has an infectious condition or is simply reacting to something benign. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Those that eat insects, migrate or usually live in the woods are most likely to fly into buildings that feature a lot of glass. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

White-throated sparrows made a change to their familiar call that quickly spread across Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists have found snippets of Native South American DNA in the genomes of present-day Polynesians, and they trace the contact to the year 1150. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers saw a third fewer vehicle collisions with deer, elk, moose and other large mammals in the four weeks following COVID-19 shutdowns in three states they tracked. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Velvety free-tailed bats produce sounds that help them locate insect prey but simultaneously identify them to their companions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Old, big trees are dying faster than in the past, leaving younger, less biodiverse forests that store less carbon worldwide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The stomach contents of young great white sharks show that they spend a lot of time patrolling the seafloor for meals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Political scientists analyzed congressional tweets and observed how Republicans and Democrats responded differently to the virus. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The gross ecosystem product, or GEP, tries to take into account the contribution of nature to the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many species are known to have changed their migration routes in response to the changing climate. They now include mule deer and Bewick’s swans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Journalist and author Florence Williams talks about her book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative .

Behavioral scientist Stephen Martin and psychologist Joseph Marks talk about their book Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why .

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from around the planet, including one about a 70-million-year-old mollusk fossil that reveals years back then had a few more days than we have now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Biological oceanography expert Miriam Goldstein talks about issues facing the oceans. Reporter Adam Levy discusses air pollution info available because of the pandemic. And astrophysicist Andrew Fabian chats about black holes.

By hardening the nation’s streets and highways, trucks would use less fuel and spare the planet carbon emissions. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Narwhals, recognizable by their large single tusk, make distinct sounds that are now being analyzed in depth by researchers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the fourth Science on the Hill event, Future Climate: What We Know, What We Don’t, experts talked with Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti about what goes into modeling our climate—and how such models are used in addition to long-term climate prediction.

A study of our closest evolutionary relatives finds that the chimp behavior known as lip smacking occurs in the same timing range as human mouths during speech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three-dimensional printed coral-like structures were able to support the algae that live in real corals, which could help restore reefs and grow algae for bioenergy production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scientists are studying the delicate mucus houses built by creatures called larvaceans to better understand how they live. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The psychological state of children may need special attention during COVID-19 impacts and isolation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By sequencing DNA from the dust of dead sea scrolls, scientists were able to glean new clues about the ancient manuscripts. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Right whales, other whales and turtles get caught in lobster trap lines, but fewer lines can maintain the same lobster catch levels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An expert on climate denial offers tips for inoculating people against coronavirus conspiracy notions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prey animals flash biochemically produced light to confuse elephant seals hunting in the dark. But at least one seal turned the tables. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Analyzing keywords on Twitter can offer a loose measure of the subjective well-being of a community, as long as you don’t count three words: good, love and LOL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Silent Cities project is collecting sound from cities around the planet during the coronavirus pandemic to give researchers a database of natural sound in areas usually filled with human-generated noise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky talks about human behavior, the penal system and the question of free will.

Here are some brief reports about science and technology from around the planet, including one about an incredibly well-preserved horned lark (Eremophila alpestris), like the one pictured, that lived 46,000 years ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exposed to mildly warmer waters, some corals turn neon instead of bleaching white. The dramatic colors may help coax symbiotic algae back. Christopher Intagliata reports.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A gene whose mutated form is associated with cancer in humans turns out to have a role in burning calories over a long evolutionary history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mosquitoes that like to bite at night are being thwarted by bed nets, leading to the rise of populations that prefer to bite when the nets are not up yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Physicist Brian Keating talks about his book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor .

President Trump pointed out yesterday that if we didn't do any testing for the virus we would have very few cases, which forces us to confront the issues posed by testing in general. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Food sharing is mainly found in adult animals as a part of social bonding. But in a rarely observed behavior in birds, older barn owl chicks will share food with younger ones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dehydrated blood that could be kept at room temperature for years may be possible thanks to a sugar used to preserve donuts—and made by tardigrades and brine shrimp so they can dry out and spring back with water. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To entice female ring-tailed lemurs, males rub wrist secretions, which include compounds we use in perfumes, onto their tail and then wave it near the gals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

They don’t stand on one leg around just anybody but often prefer certain members of the flock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Horses picked out photographs of their current keepers, and even of former keepers whom they had not seen in months, at a rate much better than chance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio talks about his latest book, Galileo: And the Science Deniers, and how the legendary scientist’s battles are still relevant today.

The large herbivores appear to prefer disturbed areas over more intact ones and spread many more seeds in those places through their droppings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bees infected with a virus cut back on interactions within their hive but find it easier to get past sentries at neighboring hives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wild cats kill more animals than domestic ones do. But pet cats kill many more of them in a small area than similarly sized wild predators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are a few brief reports about science and technology from around the planet, including one about what the eruption of Mount Vesuvius might have done to one ill-fated resident of Herculaneum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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?

Health journalist Judy Foreman talks about her new book Exercise Is Medicine: How Physical Activity Boosts Health and Slows Aging .

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.

Oxpeckers riding on rhinoceroses feast on ticks, and their calls warn the nearsighted herbivores about approaching humans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a teleconference promoting her participation in Earth Day events on the National Geographic Channel, Goodall talked about what gives her hope during the pandemic and what she hopes we all learn from it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are some “highlights” from the past 13.5 years of this podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Introducing herds of large herbivores in the Arctic would disturb surface snow, allowing cold air to reach the ground and keep the permafrost frosty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In mice, a test for lung cancer involves nanoprobes that recognize tumors and send reporter molecules into the urine for simple analysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As he endorsed Joe Biden today, former president Barack Obama touched on some environmental, economic and science matters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Researchers studying yellow warbler responses to the parasitic cowbird realized that red-winged blackbirds were eavesdropping on the calls and reacting to them, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, it’s probably there because the odds on its presence have gone way up in the past 40 years. But such parasites are still much more of a health problem for whales and dolphins than they are for us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices