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Science Selections

441 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago - ★★★ - 9 ratings

Science Selections From Popular Scientific Journals

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Episodes

Tesla's Tower - May 2021 Smithsonian.com

May 08, 2021 22:42 - 15 minutes - 3.82 MB

The Rise and Fall of Nikola Tesla and his Tower. His vision of a global wireless-transmission tower proved to be his undoing.

Virus Affects Brain - Apr 2021 Science News

April 29, 2021 18:19 - 13 minutes - 2.79 MB

New clues hint at how Researchers are sifting through symptoms to figure out what the virus does to the brain, by Laura Sanders

Human Hair - Apr 2021 Smithsonian

April 22, 2021 18:19 - 11 minutes - 2.79 MB

Why Did Humans Lose Their Fur? We are the naked apes of the world, having shed most of our body hair long ago. By Jason Daiey.

Einstein Baffled Press & Public - Apr 2021 Pocket Worthy

April 22, 2021 17:42 - 21 minutes - 5.09 MB

100 years ago few people claimed to fully understand Relativity, but it still managed to spark the publics imagination. By Dan Falk

Y Chromosome is Disappearing - The Conversation, Apr 2021

April 22, 2021 17:06 - 9 minutes - 2.37 MB

Research shows the Y chromosome may escape extinction in the short term. But what if, in the future, we reproduce artificially?

An Evolutionary Puzzle - Apr 2021 Pocket Worthy

April 16, 2021 21:53 - 11 minutes - 2.81 MB

Paleontologists seek the ancestors that could explain how bats became the only flying mammals. By Riley Black.

Our Strange Sun - Apr 2021 Quanta Magazine

April 11, 2021 01:02 - 14 minutes - 3.47 MB

The Sun radiates far more gamma rays than expected, raising questions about its magnetic field and the possibility of exotic physics

Programming By Voice - Mar 2021 IEEE Spectrum

April 05, 2021 17:50 - 8 minutes - 2.05 MB

Programming by Voice May Be the Next Frontier in Software Development. Your speech becomes your computer's commands.

Time Will Blow Your Mind - Mar 2021 Pocket Worthy

March 26, 2021 17:37 - 11 minutes - 2.8 MB

This Physicist's Ideas of Time Will Blow Your Mind. Is time only in our head? By Ephrat Livni.

Comets Are Dangerous - Mar 2021 Nautil.us

March 18, 2021 19:27 - 15 minutes - 3.64 MB

Comets Are More Dangerous Than We Thought. Could a comet, not an asteroid, have killed the dinosaurs? By Sean Raymond

Dark Energy Stars? - Mar 2021 Nautil.us

March 15, 2021 18:32 - 12 minutes - 2.89 MB

Are Black Holes Actually Dark Energy Stars? Why a physicist believes our understanding of black holes is wrong. By Jesse Stone

Physics Behind Evolution - Mar 2021 Quanta Magazine

March 13, 2021 20:13 - 19 minutes - 4.72 MB

Nigel Goldenfeld applied condensed matter physics to show evolution was blazingly fast for the earliest life and then slowed down.

Aging Is Reversible - Mar 2021 Pocket Worthy

March 06, 2021 20:25 - 11 minutes - 2.66 MB

Aging Is Reversible - at least in human cells and live mice. Study shows changes to gene activity that occur with age can be turned back.

End of Aging and Cancer? - Mar 2021 Pocket Worthy

March 06, 2021 19:43 - 9 minutes - 2.32 MB

Detailed images of the anti-aging enzyme telomerase are a drug designer's dream. By Richard Faragher.

The Breakfast Economy - Mar 2021 Pocket Worthy

March 03, 2021 04:43 - 12 minutes - 2.95 MB

Whether it actually is the most important meal of the day, the real emphasis seems to be on keeping weekday breakfast low-key.

Feynman's Learning Technique - Mar 2021 Farnam Blog

February 27, 2021 22:49 - 40 minutes - 9.74 MB

If you want to supercharge learning and become smarter, the Feynman Technique might be the best way to learn absolutely anything.

Forgetting - Feb 2021 Nautilus Blog

February 25, 2021 03:37 - 22 minutes - 5.41 MB

How We'll Forget John Lennon. Our culture has two types of forgetting. By Kevin Berger.

Brain Background Noise - Feb 2021 Quanta Magazine

February 13, 2021 23:16 - 24 minutes - 5.91 MB

Brain background noise may yield clues to persistent mysteries, giving insights into sleep, aging and more. By Elizabeth Landau

Origins of The Universe - The Atlantic Feb 2021

February 13, 2021 18:51 - 41 minutes - 9.9 MB

Theoretical physicist Andrei Linde may have the world's most expansive conception of what infinity looks like. By Alan Lightman

Gut Microbes Drive Brain Disorders - Nature, Feb 2021

February 12, 2021 20:21 - 23 minutes - 5.67 MB

Scientists study how the gut microbiome can affect brain health. It may lead to better and easier brain disease treatment.

Man's Best Friends - Feb 2021 Ars Technica

February 12, 2021 04:19 - 13 minutes - 3.21 MB

Dogs have been our best friends for at least 23,000 years. They accompanied the first people to set foot in the Americas.

Anti-Nutrients - The Conversation, Jan 2021

February 06, 2021 19:04 - 9 minutes - 2.25 MB

Anti-nutrients - they're part of a normal diet and not as scary as they sound. By Jill Joyce.

Four Desires - Feb 2021 Brain Pickings

February 06, 2021 18:05 - 12 minutes - 3.03 MB

The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior. Bertrand Russell's magnificent Nobel prize acceptance speech. By Maria Popova

Science of Cheap Wine - Feb 2021 Smithsonian.com

February 04, 2021 18:42 - 10 minutes - 2.6 MB

How advances in bottling, fermenting and taste-testing are democratizing a once-opaque liquid. By Ben Panko

10 Computer Codes Transform Science - Nature Jan 2021

January 30, 2021 20:00 - 35 minutes - 8.41 MB

From Fortran to arXiv, these advances in programming and platforms sent biology, climate science and physics into warp speed.

Mental Illness & Evolution - Feb 2019 Scientific American

January 29, 2021 19:16 - 10 minutes - 2.6 MB

Susceptibility to Mental Illness May Have Helped Humans Adapt Over the Millennia. By Dana G. Smith.

The Ocean's Largest Mystery - The Guardian, Jan 2021

January 29, 2021 18:39 - 11 minutes - 2.67 MB

An ultrasound and chance sightings of potential mating rituals could help save these gentle giants from extinction. By Ashifa Kassam

Knowing About Time - Jan 2021 Nautilus Blog

January 29, 2021 03:25 - 7 minutes - 1.78 MB

Forget Everything You Think You Know About Time. Is a linear representation of time accurate? By Brian Gallagher

Myths About Exercise & Sleep - Jan, 2021 npr.com

January 28, 2021 01:00 - 12 minutes - 3.09 MB

For much of history, human beings needed to be physically active every day in order to hunt or gather. They didn't do formal exercise

Stromatolites - Jan 2021 BBC Travel

January 26, 2021 21:25 - 12 minutes - 3.12 MB

3.5 billion year-old stromatolites built the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere to 20%, giving the kiss of life to all that was to evolve

Visited By Aliens? -Jan 2021 The New Yorker

January 24, 2021 02:48 - 27 minutes - 6.59 MB

An astrophysicist argues signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life have appeared. What's the evidence? By Elizabeth Kolbert

Edge of a Black Hole - Jan 2021 Quanta Magazine

January 17, 2021 02:59 - 16 minutes - 3.95 MB

Hot spots orbit just outside the black hole at the galaxy's center. Their motions give us a close look at that violent environment.

Addiction to Caffiene - Jan 2021 Pocket Worthy

January 16, 2021 03:35 - 7 minutes - 1.88 MB

Regular ingestion of the drug alters your brain's chemical makeup, leading to fatigue, headaches and nausea if you try to quit.

Massive AI Calculation - Jan 2021 Ars Technica

January 09, 2021 19:22 - 11 minutes - 2.64 MB

Optical hardware performs massive parallel AI calculations. Two research groups do it by very different methods. By John Timmer

World-Changing Processor - Dec 2020 Ars Technica

January 01, 2021 22:48 - 19 minutes - 4.73 MB

How an obscure British PC maker invented the Acorn Risc Machine (ARM) processor and changed the world. By Jason Torchinsky

Artificial Mountains - Pocket Worthy Nov 2020

November 22, 2020 01:14 - 12 minutes - 3.05 MB

The World Is Studded With Artificial Mountains. They're fake, but they can be spectacular (and hazardous). By Dylan Taylor-Lehman

Smart Concrete - The Conversation, Nov 2020

November 15, 2020 00:34 - 8 minutes - 2.05 MB

Smart concrete could pave the way for high-tech, cost-effective roads. By Luna Lu and Vishal Saravade.

Future Batteries - Nov 2020 Wired

November 07, 2020 19:33 - 19 minutes - 4.84 MB

A renaissance in structural battery research aims to build energy storage into the structures of devices they power.

Brain-Computer Interface - Oct 2020 Ars Technica

November 01, 2020 03:36 - 12 minutes - 3 MB

Electrodes threaded through blood vessels let people control gadgets with their minds. By Adam Rogers.

Remake the Plastics - Oct 2020 Ars Technica

October 25, 2020 03:27 - 8 minutes - 2.05 MB

If recycling plastics makes no sense, remake the plastics. New catalytic approaches convert plastic into liquid fuels, nanotubes

Room Temperature Superconductor - Oct 2020 Ars Technica

October 17, 2020 17:44 - 9 minutes - 2.35 MB

First room-temperature superconductor. A few million atmospheres of pressure lets mundane chemicals superconduct. By John Timmer

Extreme Night Owls - Sep 2020 The Guardian

September 27, 2020 01:03 - 18 minutes - 4.47 MB

What happens when your natural sleeping pattern is at odds with the rest of the world? By Rachel Hall.

The Number Instinct - Jul 2020 MIT Press

September 15, 2020 19:54 - 22 minutes - 5.49 MB

Animals have evolved to use numbers to exploit food sources, avoid predators and reproduce. By Andreas Nieder.

Curb the Opioid Epidemic - The Conversation - Aug, 2020

August 08, 2020 22:03 - 10 minutes

How gene editing a person's brain cells could be used to curb the opioid epidemic. By Craig W. Stevens.

Hand Out - Aug 2020 Scientific American

August 01, 2020 03:20 - 6 minutes - 1.45 MB

The CoVid-19 pandemic has revealed that we don't need handshakes. By Steve Mirsky.

From Wolf to Dog - Aug 2020 Scientific American

July 26, 2020 00:24 - 8 minutes

An amicable disposiion governed evolution of an animal that turned into a favorite pet. By Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods.

Survival of the Friendliest

July 24, 2020 15:42 - 18 minutes - 3.14 MB

Natural selection for hypersocial traits enabled Earth's apex species to best Neandrtals and other competitors.

Galileo & Plague - Aug, 2020 Scientific American

July 22, 2020 17:42 - 12 minutes - 3.14 MB

In a plague outbreak in the 1630's Galileo was forced to find new ways of researching and connecting with his family. By Hannah Marcus

Do Dogs See In Black & White - The Conversation Jul 2020

July 19, 2020 03:27 - 6 minutes - 1.66 MB

Dogs see the world differently than people, but it's a myth that they see only black, white and shades of gray. By Nancy Dreschel

When Did We Lose British Accents? - From Pocket Worthy

July 12, 2020 01:32 - 7 minutes - 1.71 MB

Absence of audio recording technology makes 'when' a tough question to answer. But there are theories as to 'why'. By Matt Soniak

Books

Heart of Darkness
1 Episode