On this week’s show: How sci-fi writer Kurt Vonnegut foresaw many of today’s ethical dilemmas, and 70 years of tunas, billfishes, and sharks as sentinels of global ocean health
First up this week on the podcast, we revisit the works of science fiction author Kurt Vonneugt on what would have been his 100th birthday. News Intern Zack Savitsky and host Sarah Crespi discuss the work of ethicists, philosophers, and Vonnegut scholars on his influence on the ethics and practice of science.
Researchers featured in this segment:
Next, producer Kevin McLean discusses the connection between fishing pressure and extinction risk for large predatory fish such as tunas and sharks. He’s joined by Maria José Juan Jordá, a postdoc at the Spanish Institute for Oceanography, to learn what a new continuous Red List Index using the past 70 years of fisheries data can tell us about the effectiveness and limits of fishing regulations.
Finally, in a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for custom publishing, interviews Joseph Hyser, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine about his use of wide-field fluorescence live cell microscopy to track intercellular calcium waves created following rotavirus infection. This segment is sponsored by Nikon.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
[Image: richcarey/istock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]
[alt: underwater photo of a swirling mass of tunas, with podcast overlay symbol]
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Zack Savitsky
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf7398
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What killed off North American megafauna, and making languages less complicated
Why some trees find one another repulsive, and why we don’t know how much our hands weigh
Tracing the genetic history of African Americans using ancient DNA, and ethical questions at a famously weird medical museum
Researchers collaborate with a social media giant, ancient livestock, and sex and gender in South Africa
Adding thousands of languages to the AI lexicon, and the genes behind our bones
The AI special issue, adding empathy to robots, and scientists leaving Arecibo
Putting the man-hunter and woman-gatherer myth to the sword, and the electron's dipole moment gets closer to zero
Putting organs into the deep freeze, a scavenger hunt for robots, and a book on race and reproduction
A space-based telescope to hunt dark energy, and what we can learn from scaleless snakes
Why it’s tough to measure light pollution, and a mental health first aid course
Contraception for cats, and taking solvents out of chemistry
How we measure the world with our bodies, and hunting critical minerals
Talking tongues, detecting beer, and shifting perspectives on females
The earliest evidence for kissing, and engineering crops to clone themselves
Debating when death begins, and the fate of abandoned lands
Building big dream machines, and self-organizing landscapes
The value of new voices in science and journalism, and what makes something memorable
Mapping uncharted undersea volcanoes, and elephant seals dive deep to sleep
More precise radiocarbon dating, secrets of hibernating bear blood, and a new book series
Why not vaccinate chickens against avian flu, and new form of reproduction found in yellow crazy ants
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