Podcast Episodes

How long can ancient DNA survive, and how much stuff do we need to escape poverty?

Pushing ancient DNA past the Pleistocene, and linking agriculture to biodiversity and infectious disease

First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer…

2 years, 5 months ago

How long can ancient DNA survive, and how much stuff do we need to escape poverty?

Pushing ancient DNA past the Pleistocene, and linking agriculture to biodiversity and infectious disease

First up on this week’s show, Staff Writer Er…

2 years, 5 months ago

Visiting utopias, fighting heat death, and making mysterious ‘dark earth’

A book on utopias and gender roles, India looks to beat climate-induced heat in cities, and how ancient Amazonians improved the soil

First up on this…

2 years, 6 months ago

Reducing cartel violence in Mexico, and what to read and see this fall

The key to shrinking cartels is cutting recruitment, and a roundup of books, video games, movies, and more

First up on this week’s show: modeling M…

2 years, 6 months ago

Why cats love tuna, and powering robots with tiny explosions

Receptors that give our feline friends a craving for meat, and using combustion to propel insect-size robots

First up on this week’s episode, Onlin…

2 years, 6 months ago

Extreme ocean currents from a volcano, and why it’s taking so long to wire green energy into the U.S. grid

How the Tonga eruption caused some of the fastest underwater flows in history, and why many U.S. renewable energy projects are on hold

First up o…

2 years, 6 months ago

Reducing calculus trauma, and teaching AI to smell

How active learning improves calculus teaching, and using machine learning to map odors in the smell space

First up on this week’s show, Laird Kram…

2 years, 7 months ago

The source of solar wind, hackers and salt halt research, and a book on how institutions decide gender

A close look at a coronal hole, how salt and hackers can affect science, and the latest book in our series on science, sex, and gender

First up on th…

2 years, 7 months ago

What killed off North American megafauna, and making languages less complicated

Ancient wildfires may have doomed Southern California’s big mammals, and do insular societies have more complex languages?

First up on this week’s …

2 years, 7 months ago

Why some trees find one another repulsive, and why we don’t know how much our hands weigh

First up on this week’s show, we hear about the skewed perception of our own hands, extremely weird giant viruses, champion regenerating flatworms, a…

2 years, 7 months ago