Keeping transgenic corn sustainable, and sending shrunken heads home
First up this week, Kata Karáth, a freelance journalist based in Ecuador, talks with host Sarah Crespi about an effort to identify traditionally prepared shrunken heads in museums and collections arou...
27 Feb 202535min
Shrinking AI for use in farms and clinics, ethical dilemmas for USAID researchers, and how to evolve evolvability
First up this week, researchers face impossible decisions as U.S. aid freeze halts clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about how organizers of U.S. Agen...
20 Feb 202542min
Training AI to read animal facial expressions, NIH funding takes a big hit, and why we shouldn’t put cameras in robot pants
First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins the podcast to discuss the big change in NIH’s funding policy for overhead or indirect costs, the outrage from the biomedical communi...
13 Feb 202539min
How the mantis shrimp builds its powerful club, and mysteries of middle Earth
First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about recent policy stories on NASA’s reactio...
6 Feb 202526min
Why it pays to scratch that itch, and science at the start of the second Trump administration
First up this week, we catch up with the editor of ScienceInsider, Jocelyn Kaiser. She talks about changes at the major science agencies that came about with the transition to President Donald Trump’s...
30 Jan 202526min
Unlocking green hydrogen, and oxygen deprivation as medicine
First up this week, although long touted as a green fuel, the traditional approach to hydrogen production is not very sustainable. Staff writer Robert F. Service joins producer Meagan Cantwell to disc...
23 Jan 202533min
Rising infections from a dusty devil, and nailing down when our ancestors became meat eaters
First up this week, growing numbers of Valley fever cases, also known as coccidioidomycosis, has researchers looking into the disease-causing fungus. They’re exploring its links to everything from dro...
16 Jan 202533min
Bats surf storm fronts, and public perception of preprints
First up this week, as preprint publications ramped up during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so did media attention for these pre–peer-review results. But what do the readers of news reports ...
9 Jan 202532min
