Science Podcasts

On this week’s show: a fight over the global drought that defines our new geological age, and battling stink bugs with samurai wasps

On this week’s show: how kindness may have primed us for language, and the role of avoiding responsibility in leadership

On this week’s show: Radar readings from Mars suggest a large lake of water under one of the polar ice caps, how gender transition affects an athlete’s physiology and performance, and Andrew Lawler’s book The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke

On this week’s show: how mouth anatomy reveals the evolutionary history of suckling, and why researchers think gravity waves may be responsible for clearing immense clouds

On this week’s show: A neutrino caught in polar ice ushers in new way to look at the universe, and how deep-water rice keeps its head above water

On this week’s show: A vaccine-derived polio outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo leads to tough choices for public health experts, and new evidence points to Siberian origins for America’s first dogs.

On this week’s show: Will telling the public more about animal research win back their good opinion? And what does it mean that our risk of dying plateaus after 105?

On this week’s show: sonic attack or mass paranoia? New evidence suggests the mysterious illness affecting U.S. diplomats in Cuba is more than just a figment of the imagination. And newly uncovered bones in the tomb of China’s first emperor’s grandmother reveal a now-extinct species of gibbon.

On this week’s show: Why do Nigeria, Russia, and Florida have growing HIV problems? And which parts of the brain are bigger in people who have bigger brains?

On this week’s show: recommendations from our books editor for your summer reading list, and a new blood test for fetal gestational age and preterm birth risk