Science, Quickly
1,497 episodes - English - Latest episode: 16 days ago - ★★★★ - 1.1K ratingsTune in every week for quick, fascinating new developments and dives in the world of science.
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Episodes
The Fungi Economy, Part 2: Here's How Plants and Fungi Trade beneath Our Feet
August 07, 2023 09:30 - 17 minutesAtmospheric carbon is a currency that plants use to “buy” nutrients from fungi in the soil. To find out where this economy will go next, the devil is in the details. And the details are in the dirt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Fungi Economy, Part 1: Just like Us, Trees Are Experiencing Inflation
August 04, 2023 11:00 - 14 minutesLike us, plants and fungi have complex economies. By burning fossil fuels, we’ve been devaluing their currency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Could Weight-Loss Drugs Curb Addiction? Your Health, Quickly, Episode 12
August 02, 2023 06:00 - 10 minutesDrugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic might help people tackle substance abuse as well as shed pounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Roll a Joint Perfectly, according to Science
July 31, 2023 14:00 - 9 minutesScientists used a smoking machine—complete with a 3-D-printed mouthpiece—to figure out how to get the most cannabinoid per puff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's How AI Can Predict Hit Songs With Frightening Accuracy
July 28, 2023 18:00 - 11 minutesNew AI technology predicts hit songs—by listening to someone’s body. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's Why Actors Are So Worried about AI
July 26, 2023 18:03 - 10 minutesHere’s what’s behind the A.I technology that has worried so many actors—including something called “the orb.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Are You a Lucid Dreamer?
July 24, 2023 16:30 - 11 minutesA sleep researcher who studies what dreams can tell us about the possible onset of some mental disorders believes lucid dreamers might hold a lot of answers in their head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Here's What 'Oppenheimer' Gets Right--And Wrong--About Nuclear History
July 21, 2023 10:00 - 15 minutesHere’s what a historian who has studied J. Robert Oppenheimer for two decades has to say about the new Christopher Nolan film on the father of the atomic bomb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Stress Messes With Your Gut
July 19, 2023 06:00 - 10 minutesInflammatory bowel disease flare-ups can be traced to mental stress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Should We Care About AI's Emergent Abilities?
July 17, 2023 06:00 - 14 minutesHere’s how large language models, or LLMs, actually work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What That Jazz Beat Tells Us about Hearing and The Brain
July 14, 2023 08:15 - 13 minutesVery small delays in swing jazz point to our evolution as a supremely auditory species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Just like People, Orangutans Get Smoker's Voice
July 10, 2023 08:00 - 13 minutesNew research has discovered that wildfire smoke hurts these primates’ voice—and health. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Doctor AI Will See You Now
July 07, 2023 06:00 - 9 minutesChatGPT and other AI programs can offer medical advice. But how good are they? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
El Niño is Back. What Does That Mean For You?
July 05, 2023 06:00 - 7 minutesThe famous climate pattern El Niño could usher in a new hottest year on record and will have domino effects on the world’s weather. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Kavli Prize Presents: How Your Brain Maps the World [Sponsored]
June 29, 2023 15:00 - 9 minutesJohn O’Keefe shared the Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2014 for discovering that neurons in the hippocampus encode an animal’s location and create a cognitive map for navigation. This podcast was produced for the Kavli Prize by Scientific American Custom Media, a division separate from the magazine’s board of editors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Universe Is Abuzz with Giant Gravitational Waves, and Scientists Just Heard Them (Maybe)
June 28, 2023 21:00 - 16 minutesResearchers, using the galaxy as a detector, believe they have detected gravitational waves from monster black holes for the first time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Poisons and Perils on the Salton Sea
June 26, 2023 06:00 - 11 minutesToxic dust plagues marginalized communities on the shores of this disappearing salt lake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These Ants Are Probably Better at Navigating Than You Are
June 23, 2023 11:00 - 4 minutesDesert ants living in the featureless salt plains of Tunisia count their steps and erect tall entrances at their nests to find their way back home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How to Cool Down Fast in Summer Heat
June 21, 2023 13:00 - 11 minutesYour body has a secret cooling method, and scientists explain how to use it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Follow a Hurricane Expert into the Heart Of the Beast
June 19, 2023 12:05 - 12 minutesAlong with an expert, we take you into some of nature's most monstrous storms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Have Astronomers Seen the Universe's First Stars?
June 16, 2023 06:00 - 6 minutesThe James Webb Space Telescope is giving us our first glimpse of stars in the early universe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cleo, the Mysterious Math Menace
June 14, 2023 06:00 - 13 minutesIn 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? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
MDMA Moves from Party Drug Back to Therapy Tool
June 12, 2023 06:00 - 11 minutesThe party drug MDMA could soon be approved for treating people with severe PTSD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Five Things You Need to Know about Wildfire Smoke Right Now
June 09, 2023 11:00 - 11 minutesWhere is it coming from? How long will it last? What's in the smoke? Whose health is at risk? How do you clean your own air? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These Predators Had a Face like an Axe and Will Haunt Your Nightmares
June 07, 2023 06:00 - 8 minutesTerror birds were the grizzly bears of birds, the great white sharks of the land, Jack the Ripper but with feathers. They were also truly fascinating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Thunderous Goose Relative Was Built like a Tank with the Wings of a Songbird
June 05, 2023 06:00 - 10 minutesOfficially, these prehistoric birds are the dromornithids, but everyone who studies them calls them thunderbirds—and for good reason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Gargantuan Bird Weighed as Much as a Sports Car
June 02, 2023 06:00 - 10 minutesThe elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Massive Scientific Discovery Sat Hidden in a Museum Drawer for Decades
May 31, 2023 06:00 - 11 minutesThe fossil was a prehistoric bird called Pelagornis sandersi, and its wings stretched out twice as wide as those of the great albatross. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Kavli Prize Presents: Understanding the Machinery of the Cell [Sponsored]
May 30, 2023 15:00 - 10 minutesJames Rothman shared The Kavli Prize in Neuroscience in 2010 for discovering the molecular basis of neurotransmitter release. How did a biochemist come to win such a prestigious prize in neuroscience? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What the End of the COVID Emergency Means for You
May 24, 2023 07:00 - 11 minutesWhat you pay for tests, vaccines, and medicine will change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Heat Waves Are Breaking Records. Here's What You Need to Know
May 22, 2023 06:00 - 6 minutesFrom North America to South Asia, summer heat waves are becoming longer, stronger and more frequent with climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Why We're Worried about Generative AI
May 19, 2023 15:00 - 18 minutesFrom the technology upsetting jobs and causing intellectual property issues to models making up fake answers to questions, here’s why we’re concerned about generative AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dismantling the PFAS 'Forever Chemicals' Legacy [Sponsored]
May 18, 2023 15:00 - 9 minutesMore sustainable ways of removing persistent chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from the environment are on the horizon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Understanding Dissociative Identity Disorder through the 'Community' of Ella
May 17, 2023 06:00 - 16 minutesWe learn the story of “Ella,” a patient with 12 different personalities, or “parts,” and of her therapist, who helped her form a peaceful community—many selves in one body and mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Is Time Travel Even Possible?
May 15, 2023 11:45 - 8 minutesTwo SciAm editors duke it out to see if wormholes and multiverses could in fact exist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Parrot Babies Babble Just like Us
May 12, 2023 06:00 - 7 minutesParrot nestlings spend time stringing together jumbled mixtures of sound—a rehearsal for more adult conversations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A 19th-Century Obscenity Law Is Being Used Again to Limit Abortion
May 10, 2023 06:00 - 10 minutesRecent rulings on the abortion pill cite the Comstock Act, a 150-year-old law that’s still on the books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
These Mini Ecosystems Existed Underfoot of Dinosaurs, but Our Parking Lots Might Pave Them to Extinction
May 08, 2023 15:00 - 9 minutesVernal pools are safe havens for creatures such as fairy shrimp, and they have lived through the end of the dinosaurs, the breakup of Pangaea and multiple ice ages. But humans are paving them over. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This $600-Million Room Contains the World's Largest Collection of These Tiny Endangered Animals
May 05, 2023 06:00 - 9 minutesInside a vault at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles lies a microscopic population of immense value—the repository for vernal pool fairy shrimp. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Surviving in the Ephemeral Pools of Life
May 03, 2023 06:00 - 10 minutesCarpets of gold, burrowing toads and fairy shrimp all depend on vernal pools—habitats that, most of the time, do not exist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This Fleeting Ecosystem Is Magical, and You Have Probably Never Heard of It or Even Noticed It
May 01, 2023 06:00 - 8 minutesVernal pools are home to spectacular residents such as fairy shrimp, but these unusual natural wonders are under threat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Do We Need To Save the Whales Again?
April 28, 2023 08:30 - 8 minutesA scientist who does whale necropsies — or in layman's terms, whale autopsies — tells us why so many dead whales are washing up on beaches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Bad Side of 'Good' Cholesterol
April 26, 2023 09:00 - 9 minutesVery high HDL cholesterol levels almost double your risk of heart problems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AI Chatbots and the Humans Who Love Them
April 24, 2023 11:00 - 13 minutesHumans are building meaningful relationships with AI chatbots. What will the consequences be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Mission to Jupiter's Strange Moons Is Finally on Its Way
April 19, 2023 11:00 - 8 minutesThe Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) and Europa Clipper missions will search for signs of habitability on three of Jupiter’s potentially ocean-bearing moons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Surprising Backstory behind Witch Hunts and Reproductive Labor
April 18, 2023 09:00 - 8 minutesTwo of the foremost experts on witch hunts talk about the link between the formation of domestic labor and the rise of witch hunting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What You Need to Know about GPT-4
April 14, 2023 06:00 - 10 minutesThe AI GPT-4 has emergent abilities—but that’s not why it’s scary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Good News for Coffee Lovers
April 12, 2023 06:00 - 11 minutesA careful new study reveals coffee is generally safe for your heart and may boost your daily step count. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Meet the Magnificent Microbes of the Deep Unknown
April 10, 2023 06:00 - 13 minutesThese two researchers journey toward the center of Earth—via windows to the crust—to find bacteria that can breathe iron, arsenic and other metals that would kill us pretty quickly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How Zombifying Fungi Became Master Manipulators
April 07, 2023 06:00 - 13 minutesThe real-life fungi that inspired The Last of Us hijack the bodies of ants, wasps, cicadas, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices