Science Quickly
1,930 episodes — Page 8 of 39
Podcasts of the Year: Cleo, the Mysterious Math Menace
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
Podcasts of the Year: Talking to Animals using Artificial Intelligence
Advanced sensors and artificial intelligence could have us at the brink of interspecies communication Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Avoid Holiday Hangovers
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
Podcasts of the Year: What Better Gift for the Holidays Than a Monstrous Mystery?
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
Are Orca Whales Friends or Foes?
The stories we tell about orcas might say more about us than about them Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Turns Out Undersea Kelp Forests Are Crucial to Salmon
The beloved fish that feed orcas and humans depend on kelp forests’ unique habitat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Researchers Just Created the World's First Permafrost Atlas of the Entire Arctic
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
A New Type of Heart Disease is on the Rise
Problems with the heart, kidneys and metabolic health are all connected Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AI Can Now Read Your Cat's Pain
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
These Researchers Put Sperm Through a Kind of 'Hunger Games'
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
Is Too Little Play Hurting Our Kids?
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
How Misinformation Spreads through Conflict
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
Why Childhood Vaccination Rates Are Falling
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
Climate Adaptation Can Backfire If We Aren't Careful
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 Members of This Reservation Learned They Live with Nuclear Weapons. Can Their Reality Ever Be the Same?
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
What Would It Mean to 'Absorb' a Nuclear Attack?
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
If You Had a Nuclear Weapon in Your Neighborhood, Would You Want to Know about It?
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
Just One U.S. Reservation Hosts Nuclear Weapons. This Is The Story of How That Came to Be
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
How Did Nuclear Weapons Get on My Reservation?
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
Quick Naps Are Good for Your Brain
Daytime naps of about 30 minutes really improve your thinking and may spark creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Funding for Research on Psychedelics Is on the Rise, Along with Scientists' Hopes for Using Them
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
Do You Need to 'Trip' for Psychedelics to Work as Medicine?
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
The Search for New Psychedelics
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
What Are Ultraprocessed Foods, and Are They Bad for You?
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
These Creatures Are Probably the Closest Thing Nature Has to Real Werewolves
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
The World's Most Frightening Animal Sounds like This
Lions, tigers, bears: this creature sends all of those beasts running for the hills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Tale of the Rotifer That Came Back to Life after 25,000 Years in an Icy Tomb
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
Generative AI Models Are Sucking Up Data from All Over the Internet, Yours Included
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
Some Parents Show Their Kids They Care with a Corpse
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
How to Handle This New COVID Season
The dangerous virus is still here. Here’s how you can stay safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
As Arctic Sea Ice Breaks Up, AI Is Starting to Predict Where the Ice Will Go
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
Scientists Argue Conservation Is under Threat in Indonesia
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 Soggy Mission to Sniff Out a Greenhouse Gas 'Bomb' in the High Arctic
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
This Indigenous Community Records the Climate Change That Is Causing Its Town to Erode Away
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
Journey to the Thawing Edge of Climate Change
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
A Popular Decongestant Doesn't Work. What Does?
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
The State of Large Language Models
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
Song of the Stars, Part 3: The Universe in all Senses
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
Song of the Stars, Part 2: Seeing in the Dark
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
Song of the Stars, Part 1: Transforming Space into Symphonies
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
This Researcher Captured Air from the Amazon in Dive-Bombs--And Found Grim Clues That the Forest Is Dying
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
Should You Get a Blood Test For Alzheimer's?
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
Ada Limón's Poem for Europa, Jupiter's Smallest Galilean Moon
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
How the Woolly Bear Caterpillar Does Something Pretty Amazing to Survive the Winter
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
Bees 'Buzz' in More Ways Than You Might Think
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
Scientists Are Beginning to Learn the Language of Bats and Bees Using AI
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
Trying to Train Your Brain Faster? Knowing This Might Help with That
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
This Tick Bite Makes You Allergic to Red Meat
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
This Lesbian Monkey Love Triangle Tells Us Something Really Interesting about Darwin's 'Paradox'
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
What the Luddites Can Teach Us about AI
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