Why peanut allergy is so common and hot forests as test beds for climate change
First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about how scientists are probing the world’s hottest forests to better understand how plants will cope with climate change. His story
is part of a special issue on plants and heat, which includes reviews and perspectives on the fate of plants in a warming world.
Next on the show, “convergent” antibodies may underlie the growing number of people allergic to peanuts. Sarita Patil, co-director of the Food
Allergy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, joins the podcast to discuss her research on allergies and antibodies. She explains how different people appear to create antibodies with similar gene sequences and 3D structures that react to peanut proteins—a big surprise given the importance of randomness in the immune system’s ability to recognize harmful invaders.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Erik Stokstad
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38:22
Farming maize in ice age Michigan, predicting the future climate of cities, and our host takes a quiz on the sounds of science
First up on the podcast, we hear from Staff Writer Paul Voosen about the tricky problem of regional climate prediction. Although global climate change models have held up for the most part, predicting what will happen at smaller scales, such as the level of a city, is proving a stubborn challenge. Just increasing the resolution of global models requires intense computing power, so researchers and city planners are looking
to other approaches to find out what’s in store for cities.
Next on the show, a visit to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where researchers have found evidence that the Indigenous Menominee people cultivated maize for 600 years, even during an ice age. Madeleine McLeester, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Dartmouth College, talks about using lidar to search among the heavily forested lands for striations that indicate corn farming and the anthropological conundrums raised by such extensive agriculture without nearby urban centers.
Finally in this episode, producer Kevin McLean quizzes host Sarah Crespi on some mysterious sounds that have appeared on the site as part of news stories. No clues here so be sure to play along.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Kevin McLean
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43:05
Tickling in review, spores in the stratosphere, and longevity research
First up on the podcast, Online News Editor Michael Greshko joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about stories set high above our heads. They discuss capturing fungal spores high in the stratosphere, the debate over signs of
life on the exoplanet K2-18b, and a Chinese contender for world’s oldest star catalog.
Next on the show, a look into long-standing questions
on why and how our bodies respond to tickling. Producer Meagan Cantwell talks to Konstantina Kilteni, an assistant professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour and the Department of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute. They discuss how standardizing
approaches to testing tickling in the lab could get us closer to answers.
Finally in this episode, the first in our book series
on the science of death, with books host Angela Saini. Saini interviews Nobel Prize–winning biologist Venki Ramakrishnan about developments in longevity research and his book Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for
Immortality.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi, Angela Saini, Michael Greshko, Meagan Cantwell
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53:30
Strange metals and our own personal ‘oxidation fields’
First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the strange metal state. Physicists are probing the
behavior of electrons in these materials, which appear to behave like a thick soup rather than discrete charged particles. Many suspect insights into strange metals might lead to the creation of room-temperature superconductors, highly desired materials that promise lossless energy delivery and floating trains.
A few years ago, researcher Nora Zannoni came on the show to talk about our oxidation fields: zones of highly reactive radicals our bodies naturally produce that surround us and interact with nearby chemicals.
Now she’s back to discuss how our personal oxidation fields interact with personal care products—such as hand lotion, for example—and the resulting effects those products can end up having on the air
we breathe indoors.
Zannoni is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of Italy’s National Research Council. The work for the paper was done when she was a postdoc scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky
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41:13
A horse science roundup and using dubious brain scans as evidence of crimes
First up on the podcast, freelance journalist Jonathan Moens talks with host Sarah Crespi about a forensic test called brain electrical oscillation signature (BEOS) profiling, which police in India are using along with other techniques to try to tell whether a suspect participated in a crime, despite these technologies’ extremely shaky scientific grounding.
Next on the show, scientists have recently made strides in our understanding of horses, from identifying the mutations that make horses amazing athletes to showing how climate shaped intercontinental horse migrations 50,000 years ago. Science life sciences editor Sacha Vignieri joins us to discuss new horse-related studies published in Science—and how equine research has broader implications.
Other papers mentioned in this segment:
W. Taylor et al., Science 2023
C. Gaunitz et al., Science 2018
A. Outram et al., Science 2009
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Sacha Vignieri; Jonathan Moens
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Brasil