Science Magazine Podcast

First up on the podcast, producer Kevin McLean talks with staff writer Jennie Erin Smith about a new old idea for Alzheimer’s disease. They discuss how the cholinergic hypothesis originally came about, how it fell out of fashion, and why it’s making a comeback now.

Next on the show, the United States can make more power as demand goes up, but moving that increased amount of electricity around the country is proving problematic. Madeline Yozwiak, a postdoctoral scholar in the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss her Policy Forum article on the barriers to scaling up the country’s electric grid and some potential solutions.

Finally, boosting precision medicine by looking at All of Us. The National Institutes of Health’s All of Us project is a gigantic source of whole-genome sequences and electronic health records. Philip Empey, associate professor in the School of Pharmacy and associate director of the Institute for Precision Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, discusses how panning through this huge trove of data to find pharmacogenomic variants—genes important for prescription decisions—will improve precision medicine.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

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First up on the podcast, people are buying consumer-grade brain wave detectors ostensibly to help with sleep, concentration, and meditation. But as freelance investigative journalist Jonathan Moens describes, companies are getting more than the price of the devices in the exchange—including training data for artificial intelligence models—in many cases without the consent of the user.

Next on the show, we delve into the many uses for glucagonlike peptide-1 (GLP-1) agonist drugs beyond reducing obesity. Host Sarah Crespi talks with one of the special issue editors, Yevgeniya Nusinovich, senior editor at Science, about their potential for everything from improving cognition to combating cancer. Then we hear from Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health, about hopes for using GLP-1 therapies to address addiction to a range of substances.

See the whole special issue here.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

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First up on the podcast, thousands of tons of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been released into the environment. It’s not always that difficult to round them up, but what to do next has been a tougher call. Until now, the default has been to burn PFAS—but that has been shown in some cases to release smaller PFAS back into the environment. Freelance science journalist Mark Peplow joins host Sarah Crespi to talk over recent technological improvements in destroying these forever chemicals and how feasible it is to deploy them.

Next on the show, News Intern Julia Vaz talks with Chirag Manchanda, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, about his Science Advances paper on new ways to analyze the sources of urban air pollution.

Finally, the last in our six-part series on scientific biographies. Host Angela Saini talks with biologist Joe Osmundson about his new memoir, Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

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First up on the podcast, News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about an x-ray image that is upsetting the narrative of DNA’s discovery as told by James Watson. A newly resurfaced photo taken by Rosalind Franklin—photo 49—shows she was aware of the helical structure of DNA and explains why her published image—photo 51—does not have indications of her understanding of its shape.

Next on the show, producer Elah Feder chats with Andreas Nieder, professor of animal physiology and director of the Institute for Neurobiology at the University of Tübingen, about the high speed of bird cognition. It turns out in experimental settings carrion crows make decisions twice as fast as primates. The conversation delves into what could make avian brains ultrafast and the evolutionary advantages of speedy thinking.

Last up this week, poets and scientists get together in books and in real life. Phil Levin and David Hassler discuss their collaboration on a joint effort to create a poetry anthology and a scientific report on the state of nature. They explain how they see science and poetry are connected, and how their ideas will be put into action at an upcoming conference on poetry and science in November.

Also in this segment, Lara Volski reads her poem “The Monarch Bear.”

People in this segment

Phil Levin, professor in sustainability science and director of the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington (UW)

David Hassler, executive director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University

Lara Volski, Ph.D. candidate in the People and Wildlife Lab at UW

Works mentioned

The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders

The Nature Record

Conference details

Poet and science gathering at Kent State

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

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First up on the podcast, producer Meagan Cantwell and Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox discuss a few stories from ScienceAdviser, including why Nazi Germany was unlikely to ever make an atomic bomb, a gene that might prevent gray hairs, and 140 years of cheese history from a Swiss basement.

Next on the show, Contributing Correspondent Lizzie Wade joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how archaeologists are revisiting the standard Inca chronology as radiocarbon dates mix up the timeline for the empire’s inception and growth.

Last up this week, the neural basis of our breath’s rhythm. Nicholas Bush, a staff research scientist at Epsilon, talks about using modern neuronal recording techniques and computing to describe the generation of rhythmic breathing.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

Image: Lizzie Wade
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