Science Magazine Podcast2 Jun 2022

The historic Maya’s sophisticated stargazing knowledge, and whether there is a cost to natural cloning

On this week’s show: Exploring the historic Maya’s astronomical knowledge and how grasshoppers clone themselves without decreasing their fitness First this week, Science contributing correspondent Joshua Sokol talks with producer Meagan Cantwell about the historic Maya’s sophisticated astronomical knowledge. In recent decades, researchers have set out to understand how city structures relate to astronomical phenomena and decipher ancient texts. Now, collaboration between Western scholars and living Indigenous people hopes to further illuminate the field. Also this week, Mike Kearney, a professor at the school of biosciences at the University of Melbourne, chats with host Sarah Crespi about a species of grasshopper that can reproduce asexually. After studying the insect’s genetics, Kearney and his group didn’t find harmful mutations—or traits that made the grasshopper better adapted to its environment than the two species of grasshopper it hybridized from. Kearney and his team suggest this way of reproducing might not be rare because it’s harmful, but because most animal have safeguards in place to prevent asexual reproduction from arising. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. [Image: Sergio Montúfar/pinceladasnocturnas.com—Estrellas Ancestrales “Astronomy in the Maya Worldview”; Music: Jeffrey Cook] Authors: Meagan Cantwell; Joshua Sokol; Sarah Crespi Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3058 About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Episoder(641)

A team effort to save a giant fish, the power of moonlight, and how scientists can navigate a tough political environment

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Watching a spiders’ heart beat, epigenetic ethics, and what science biographies reveal about fame

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30 Apr 46min

Cleaning up uranium mining, and how the heart avoids cancer

First up on the podcast, freelance science and environmental journalist Quentin Septer joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a controversial uranium mine getting fast-tracked in South Dakota. Septer c...

23 Apr 30min

The normals | Episode 3

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How to keep quantum computers cool, whether prediction markets harm public health, and podcasting on podcasting

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16 Apr 50min

The Normals | Episode 2

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A chimpanzee ‘civil war,’ and NASA plans for nuclear propulsion

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9 Apr 42min

The Normals | Episode 1

How do we know what's normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start studying normal humans on a grand scale....

7 Apr 23min