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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Social insects as models for aging, and crew conflict on long space missions
COVID-19 treatment at 1 year, and smarter materials for smarter cities
Next-generation gravitational wave detectors, and sponges that soak up frigid oil spills
The world’s oldest pet cemetery, and how eyeless worms can see color
Measuring Earth’s surface like never before, and the world’s fastest random number generator
All your COVID-19 vaccine questions answered, and a new theory on forming rocky planets
Building Africa’s Great Green Wall, and using whale songs as seismic probess
Looking back at 20 years of human genome sequencing
Calculating the social cost of carbon, and listening to mole-rat chirps
Counting research rodents, a possible cause for irritable bowel syndrome, and spitting cobras
An elegy for Arecibo, and how our environments may change our behavior
The uncertain future of North America’s ash trees, and organizing robot swarms
Areas to watch in 2021, and the living microbes in wildfire smoke
Breakthrough of the Year, top online news, and science book highlights
Making ecology studies replicable, and a turnaround for the Tasmanian devil
How the new COVID-19 vaccines work, and restoring vision with brain implants
Keeping coronavirus from spreading in schools, why leaves fall when they do, and a book on how nature deals with crisis
Fish farming’s future, and how microbes compete for space on our face
How the human body handles extreme heat, and improvements in cooling clothes
What we can learn from a mass of black hole mergers, and ecological insights from 30 years of Arctic animal movements
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
DNA Today: A Genetics Podcast
Museum of the Missing
Strange by Nature Podcast
Sasquatch Chronicles
Hidden Brain