On this week’s show: What happens when the body’s own immune system attacks the brain, and how otters’ use of tools expands their diet

First on the show this week, when rogue antibodies attack the brain, patients can show bizarre symptoms—from extreme thirst, to sleep deprivation, to outright psychosis. Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the hunt for biomarkers and treatments for this cluster of autoimmune disorders that were once mistaken for schizophrenia or even demonic possession.

Next on this episode, producer Katherine Irving talks with Chris Law, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington and the University of Texas at Austin, about how sea otters gain energy benefits (and dental benefits) when they use tools to tackle tougher prey such as snails or large clams.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Richard Stone; Katherine Irving

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4pdg62

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Jupiter’s moon Io has likely been volcanically active since the start of the Solar System, and a proposal to safeguard healthy human subjects in clinical trials

First on the show this week, a look at proposed protections for healthy human subjects, particularly in phase 1 clinical trials. Deputy News Editor Martin Enserink joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the risks healthy participants face when involved in early testing of drugs for safety and tolerance. Then, we hear about a project to establish a set of global standards initiated by the Ethics Committee of France’s national biomedical research agency, INSERM.

Next on this episode, a peek at the history of the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, Jupiter’s moon Io. Because the surface of Io is constantly being remodeled by its many volcanoes, it’s difficult to study its past by looking at craters or other landmarks. Katherine de Kleer, assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, talks about using isotopic ratios in the moon’s atmosphere to estimate how long it’s been spewing matter into space.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Martin Enserink

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zyq2ig8

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Bringing historical seismic reports and modern seismic risk maps into alignment, and a roundup of stories from our newsletter, ScienceAdviser

First on the show this week, a roundup of stories with our newsletter editor, Christie Wilcox. Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about the oldest ice ever found, how well conservation efforts seem to be working, and repelling mosquitoes with our skin microbes.

Next on this episode, evaluating seismic hazard maps. In a Science Advances paper this week, Leah Salditch, a geoscience peril adviser at risk and reinsurance company Guy Carpenter, compared modern seismic risk map predictions with descriptions of past quakes. The analysis found a mismatch: Reported shaking in the past tended to be stronger than modern models would have predicted. She talks with Crespi about where this bias comes from and how to fix it.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfj31xo

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Researchers try to identify effective loneliness interventions, making the Sandmeyer safer, and books that look to the future and don’t see doom and gloom

First up on the show, Deputy News Editor Kelly Servick explores the science of loneliness. Is loneliness on the rise or just our awareness of it? How do we deal with the stigma of being lonely?

Also appearing in this segment:

●     Laura Coll-Planas

●     Julianne Holt-Lunstad

●     Samia Akhter-Khan

Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with Tim Schulte, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and RWTH Aachen University, about making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions—the Sandmeyer reaction—both safer and more versatile.

Finally, we kick off this year’s book series with books editor Valerie Thompson and books host Angela Saini. They discuss this year’s theme: a future to look forward to.

Book segments come out the last episode of the month. Books in the series:

●     Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth by Claire Horn (May)

●     Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform by Rachel O’Dwyer (June)

●     The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone (July)

●     Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age by Akshat Rathi (August)

●     Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield (September)

●     Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin (October)

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Ariana Remmel; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini

LINKS FOR MP3 META

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zqubta7

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

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A different source of global warming, signs of a continentwide tradition of human sacrifice, and a virus that attacks the cholera bacteria

First up on the show this week, clearer skies might be accelerating global warming. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as air pollution is cleaned up, climate models need to consider the decrease in the planet’s reflectivity. Less reflectivity means Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun and increased temps.

Also from the news team this week, we hear about how bones from across Europe suggest recurring Stone Age ritual killings. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks about how a method of murder used by the Italian Mafia today may have been used in sacrifices by early farmers, from Poland to the Iberian Peninsula.

Finally, Eric Nelson, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, joins Sarah to talk about an infectious bacteria that’s fighting on two fronts. The bacterium that causes cholera—Vibrio cholerae—can be killed off with antibiotics but at the same time, it is hunted by a phage virus living inside the human gut. In a paper published in Science, Nelson and colleagues describe how we should think about phage as predator and bacteria as prey, in the savanna of our intestines. The ratio of predator to prey turns out to be important for the course of cholera infections.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Andrew Curry

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zhgw74e

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]Researchers are testing HIV drugs and monoclonal antibodies against long-lasting COVID-19, and what it takes to turn a symbiotic friend into an organelle

First up on the show this week, clinical trials of new and old treatments for Long Covid. Producer Meagan Cantwell is joined by Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and some of her sources to discuss the difficulties of studying and treating this debilitating disease.

People in this segment:

·      Michael Peluso

·      Sara Cherry

·      Shelley Hayden

Next: Move over mitochondria, a new organelle called the nitroplast is here. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Tyler Coale, a postdoctoral scholar in the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Ocean Sciences Department, about what exactly makes an organelle an organelle and why it would be nice to have inhouse nitrogen fixing in your cells.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zof5fvk

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Tracing the arrival of rats using bones, isotopes, and a few shipwrecks; and what scientists have learned in 50 years about our famous ancestor Lucy

First on the show: Did rats come over with Christopher Columbus? It turns out, European colonists weren’t alone on their ships when they came to the Americas—they also brought black and brown rats to uninfested shores. Eric Guiry, a researcher in the Trent Environmental Archaeology Lab at Trent University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how tiny slices of bone from early colony sites and sunken shipwrecks can tell us when these pesky rodents arrived.

Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons about what has happened in the 50 years since anthropologists found Lucy—a likely human ancestor that lived 2.9 million to 3.3 million years ago. Although still likely part of our family tree, her place as a direct ancestor is in question. And over the years, her past has become less lonesome as it has become populated with other contemporaneous hominins.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons

LINKS FOR MP3 META

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4scrgk

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

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Robots that can smile in synchrony with people, and what ends up in the letters section

First on this week’s show, a robot that can predict your smile. Hod Lipson, a roboticist and professor at Columbia University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how mirrors can help robots learn to make facial expressions and eventually improve robot nonverbal communication.

Next, we have Margaret Handley, a professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics and medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She shares a letter she wrote to Science about how her past, her family, and a rare instrument relate to her current career focus on public health and homelessness. Letters Editor Jennifer Sills also weighs in with the kinds of letters people write into the magazine.

Other Past as Prologue letters:

A new frontier for mi familia by Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony

A uranium miner’s daughter by Tanya J. Gallegos

Embracing questions after my father’s murder by Jacquelyn J. Cragg

A family’s pride in educated daughters by Qura Tul Ain

One person’s trash: Another’s treasured education by Xiangkun Elvis Cao

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Sills

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zy9w2u0

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

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New clinical trials for treatments of an always fatal brain disease, and what happens with pests when a conventional and organic farm are neighbors

First up on this week’s show, a new treatment to stave off prion disease goes into clinical trials. Prions are misfolded proteins that clump together and chew holes in the brain. The misfolding can be switched on in a number of ways—including infection with a misfolded prion protein from an animal or person. Staff Writer Meredith Wadman talks with host Sarah Crespi about new potential treatments—from antisense nucleotides to small molecules that interfere with protein production—for these fatal neurodegenerative diseases.

Next on the show: Freelance producer Katherine Irving talks with Ashley Larsen, associate professor of agricultural and landscape ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about the effects of organic farms on their neighbors. If there are lots of organic growers together, pesticide use goes down but conventional farms tend to use more pesticides when side by side with organic farms.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving; Meredith Wadman

LINKS FOR MP3 META

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z91m76v

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Investigating “infantile amnesia,” and how generalized fear after acute stress reflects changes in the brain

This week we have two neuroscience stories. First up, freelance science journalist Sara Reardon looks at why infants’ memories fade. She joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss ongoing experiments that aim to determine when the forgetting stops and why it happens in the first place.

Next on the show, Hui-Quan Li, a senior scientist at Neurocrine Biosciences, talks with Sarah about how the brain encodes generalized fear, a symptom of some anxiety disorders such as social anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Sara Reardon

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z9bqkyc

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What modern Indian genomes say about the region’s deep past, and how vitamin A influences stem cell plasticity

First up this week, Online News Editor Michael Price and host Sarah Crespi talk about a large genome sequencing project in India that reveals past migrations in the region and a unique intermixing with Neanderthals in ancient times.

Next on the show, producer Kevin McLean chats with Matthew Tierney, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, about how vitamin A and stem cells work together to grow hair and heal wounds.

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

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Michael Price

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfhqarg

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

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