Science Magazine Podcast

• Hunting asteroids from space, and talking to pollinators with heat

  First up on the podcast, we’ve likely only found about half the so-called city-killer asteroids (objects more than 140 meters in diameter). Freelance science journalist Robin George Andrews joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the upcoming launch of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor, an asteroid hunter that will improve our ability to look for large objects that might crash into Earth, particularly those hiding in the Sun’s glare. Next on the show, freelancer producer Elah Feder talks with Wendy Valencia-Montoya, an organismic and evolutionary biology Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University, about heated conversations between plants and their pollinators. Her work suggests infrared radiation might be the oldest cue for animals to come hither, more ancient than color. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Grappling with declining populations, and the future of quantum mechanics

  First up on the podcast, Science celebrates 100 years of quantum mechanics with a special issue covering the past, present, and future of the field. News Contributing Correspondent Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about a more philosophical approach to quantum physics and the mysterious measurement problem. Next on the show we have Anne Goujon, program director at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. She talks about her Expert Voices column on the uncertain future of demography and how the field is grappling with new theories on what happens after the global population peaks. How will different countries deal with falling populations? Will they try to reverse the trend? What are the goals going into the next century? This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• When we’ll hit peak carbon emissions, and macaques that keep the beat

  First up on the podcast, when will the world hit peak carbon emissions? It’s not an easy question to answer because emissions cannot be directly measured in real time. Instead, there are proxies, satellite measures, and many, many calculations. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how close we are to the top of carbon mountain and the tough road to come after the peak passes. Vani Rajendran, senior researcher in the cognitive neuroscience department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Institute of Cellular Physiology, talks about macaques that can keep the beat. She explains how this intriguing ability challenges a long-standing view that animals with complex vocalizations and rhythm are inextricably linked. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• A headless mystery, and a deep dive on dog research

  First up on the podcast: the mysterious fate of Europe’s Neolithic farmers. They arrived from Anatolia around 5500 B.C.E. and began farming fertile land across Europe. Five hundred years later, their buildings, cemeteries, and pottery stopped showing up in the archaeological record, and mass graves with headless bodies started to appear across the continent. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks with host Sarah Crespi about what this strange transition might mean. Next on the show, Editor for Life Sciences Sacha Vignieri discusses recent dog research published in Science, including tracing the movement of dogs alongside ancient human populations, examining when dogs first diversified, and probing the relationship between modern dogs’ breeds and their dispositions. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Solving the ‘golfer’s curse’ and using space as a heat sink

  First up on the podcast, Online News Editor David Grimm joins host Sarah Crespi for a rundown of online news stories. They talk about lichen that dine on dino bones, the physics of the lip-out problem in golf, and a brain-computer interface that can decode a tonal language (Chinese) from brain waves. Next on the show, Jeremy Munday, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of California, Davis, talks about generating mechanical power using a heat engine aimed at the night sky. Heat engines typically generate power by harnessing a temperature difference between two things—but by using space as the cold part and the ground as the warm part, Munday’s device can generate energy at night. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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