On this week’s show: Factors that pushed snakes to evolve so many different habitats and lifestyles, and news from the AAAS annual meeting
First up on the show this week, news from this year’s annual meeting of AAAS (publisher of Science) in Denver. News intern Sean Cummings talks with Danielle Wood, director of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about the sustainable use of orbital space or how space exploration and research can benefit everyone.
And Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox joins host Sarah Crespi with an extravaganza of meeting stories including a chat with some of the authors of this year’s Newcomb Cleveland Prize–winning Science paper on how horses spread across North America.
Voices in this segment:
William Taylor, assistant professor and curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Museum of Natural History
Ludovic Orlando, director of the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse
University of Oklahoma archaeologists Sarah Trabert and Brandi Bethke
Yvette Running Horse Collin, post-doctoral researcher Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse III)
Next on the show: What makes snakes so special? Freelance producer Ariana Remmel talks with Daniel Rabosky, professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, about the drivers for all the different ways snakes have specialized—from spitting venom to sensing heat.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
About the Science Podcast
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Ariana Remmel; Christie Wilcox; Sean Cummings
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zabhbwe
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Climate change threatens supercomputing, and collecting spider silks
Linking violence in Myanmar to fossil amber research, and waking up bacterial spores
Giving a lagoon personhood, measuring methane flaring, and a book about eating high on the hog
Can wolves form close bonds with humans, and termites degrade wood faster as the world warms
Testing planetary defenses against asteroids, and building a giant ‘water machine’
Why the fight against malaria has stalled in southern Africa, and how to look for signs of life on Mars
Using free-floating DNA to find soldiers’ remains, and how people contribute to indoor air chemistry
Chasing Arctic cyclones, brain coordination in REM sleep, and a book on seafood in the information age
Monitoring a nearby star’s midlife crisis, and the energetic cost of chewing
Cougars caught killing donkeys in Death Valley, and decoding the nose
Invasive grasses get help from fire, and a global map of ant diversity
Probing beyond our Solar System, sea pollinators, and a book on the future of nutrition
Possible fabrications in Alzheimer’s research, and bad news for life on Enceladus
The Webb Space Telescope’s first images, and why scratching sometimes makes you itchy
Running out of fuel for fusion, and addressing gender-based violence in India
Former pirates help study the seas, and waves in the atmosphere can drive global tsunamis
Using waste to fuel airplanes, nature-based climate solutions, and a book on Indigenous conservation
A look at Long Covid, and why researchers and police shouldn’t use the same DNA kits
Saving the Spix’s macaw, and protecting the energy grid
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