On this week’s show: Meta’s algorithm tackles both language and strategy in a board game, and measuring how much water people use on a daily basis

First up this week on the podcast, artificial intelligence (AI) wins at the game Diplomacy. Freelance science journalist Matthew Hutson joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the advances needed for an AI to win a game that requires cooperation and trust between human and AI players.

Next, we hear about how much water people need to stay hydrated. It’s not the eight glasses a day recommendation we’ve heard so much about. Herman Pontzer, a professor in Duke University’s Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and the Duke Global Health Institute, talks about a study that involved recording water turnover from 5000 people around the world. It turns out daily water needs vary from person to person and place to place.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: manus1550/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of a stack of drinking water bottles with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Matt Hutson

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8979 

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: The potentially harmful effects of prehistoric ivory on present-day elephants, and replacing polymers in electronics with fungal tissue

First up this week on the podcast, we hear about the effect of mammoth and mastodon ivory on the illegal elephant ivory trade. Online News Editor Michael Price joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as melting permafrost has uncovered fossilized ivory from these extinct creatures, more has entered the ivory trade. The question is: Does the availability of this type of ivory reduce the demand for ivory from elephants, or does it endanger them more?

Next, making electronics greener with fungus with Doris Danninger, a Ph.D. student in the Soft Matter Physics Division at the Institute of Experimental Physics at Johannes Kepler University, Linz. Doris and Sarah discuss the feasibility of replacing the bulky backing of chips and the casing of batteries with sheets of fungal tissue to make flexible, renewable, biodegradable electronics.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: RudiHulshof/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of an elephant tusk with point facing the camera with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Michael Price

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf8340

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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:

• Peter-Paul Verbeek, a philosopher of science and technology at the University of Amsterdam and chair of the World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology
• David Koepsell, a philosopher of science and technology at Texas A&M University, College Station
• Christina Jarvis, a Vonnegut scholar at the State University of New York, Fredonia, and author of the new book Lucky Mud & Other Foma: A Field Guide to Kurt Vonnegut’s Environmentalism and Planetary Citizenship
• Sheila Jasanoff, a science studies scholar at Harvard University

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: How urban spaces can help conserve species, and testing a gene therapy strategy for epilepsy in mice

First up on the podcast, we explore urban ecology’s roots in Berlin. Contributing Correspondent Gabriel Popkin joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss turning wastelands and decommissioned airports into forests and grasslands inside the confines of a city.

Next, we hear about a gene therapy strategy for epilepsy. Yichen Qiu, a recently graduated Ph.D. student and researcher at University College London, talks about introducing a small set of genes into neurons in mice. These genes detect hyperactivity in the brain and respond by quieting the cell, ultimately suppressing seizures.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Maurice Weiss; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: dim photo of the forest of the Schöneberger Südgelände with old railroad tracks receding into the distance, with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Gabriel Popkin

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf6190

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: Cheaper launches could make solar power satellites a reality, machine learning helps chemists make small organic molecules, and a book on the extinction of foods

First up on the podcast, space-based solar power gets closer to launch. Staff Writer Daniel Clery talks with host Sarah Crespi about how reusable rockets bring the possibility of giant solar array satellites that beam down gigawatts of uninterrupted power from space.

After that, we hear about small organic molecule synthesis. Making large organic molecules such as proteins and DNA can be a cinch for chemists, but making new smaller organic molecules is tough—partially because optimized general reaction conditions are hard to come by. Nicholas Angello, a graduate research assistant and Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellow in the Burke group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, talks about an approach that uses robots and machine learning to better optimize these reaction conditions.

Also in the episode: the last in our series of books on food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with author Dan Saladino about his book Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: drawing of satellite solar panels with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Dan Clery; Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf4939

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

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On this week’s show: How some snakes have adapted to the extremes of height and temperature on the Tibetan Plateau, and giving low-power sensors more processing power

First up on the podcast, tough snakes reveal their secrets. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Liz Pennisi about how snakes have adapted to the harsh conditions of the Tibetan Plateau.

Next on the show, Producer Meagan Cantwell talks about moving more computing power to the edges of the internet. She is joined by Alexander Sludds, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Research Lab for Electronics. They discuss a faster, more energy-efficient approach to give edge devices—such as low-power smart sensors or tiny aerial drones—the computing power of far larger machines.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: JUN-FENG GUO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of a Tibetan hot-spring snake near a geothermal pool with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Liz Pennisi; Meagan Cantwell

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf3782

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

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On this week’s show: Rising waters and intense storms make siting high-performance computer centers a challenge, and matching up spider silk DNA with spider silk properties

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First up on the podcast this week, News Intern Jacklin Kwan talks with host Sarah Crespi about how and where to build high-performance computing facilities as climate change brings extreme conditions to current locations.

Spiders are creeping into the show this week. Kazuharu Arakawa, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Bioscience at Keio University, discusses his Science Advances paper on collecting spider silks and the genes that make them. His team used the data set to connect genetic sequences to the properties of spider silks in order to harness this amazing material for industrial use.

Visit the spider silkomes database here: https://spider-silkome.org/ 

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Dace Znotina/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: a spiderweb with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jacklin Kwan

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: A study suggests paleontological research has directly benefited from the conflict in Myanmar, and how dormant bacterial spores keep track of their environment

First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Rodrigo Pérez Ortega joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss links between violent conflict in Myanmar and a boom in fossil amber research.

Also on the show this week, we hear about how bacterial spores—which can lie dormant for millions of years—decide it’s time to wake up. Kaito Kikuchi, an image analysis scientist at Reveal Biosciences, joins Sarah to discuss how dormant spores act a bit like neurons to make these decisions.

In a sponsored segment from the Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Ramon Parsons, director of the Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about his institute’s innovative approach to cancer treatment.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: (public domain); Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: micrograph of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rodrigo Pérez Ortega

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf2050

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: Protecting a body of water by giving it a legal identity, intentional destruction of methane by the oil and gas industry is less efficient than predicted, and the latest book in our series on science and food

First up on the podcast this week, Staff Writer Erik Stokstad talks with host Sarah Crespi about why Spain has given personhood status to a polluted lagoon.

Also on the show this week is Genevieve Plant, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. Genny and Sarah talk about methane flaring—a practice common in the oil and gas industry—where manufactures burn off excess methane instead of releasing it directly into the atmosphere. Research flights over several key regions in the United States revealed these flares are leaky, releasing five times more methane than predicted.

In this month’s installment of books on the science of food and agriculture, host Angela Saini talks with culinary historian and author Jessica B. Harris about her book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Jeff Peischl/CIRES/NOAA; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: methane flares with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Angela Saini, Erik Stokstad

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf0584

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: Comparing human-dog bonds with human-wolf bonds, and monitoring termite decay rates on a global scale

First up on the podcast this week, Online News Editor David Grimm talks with host Sarah Crespi about the bonds between dogs and their human caretakers. Is it possible these bonds started even before domestication?

Also this week, Sarah talks with Amy Zanne, professor and Aresty endowed chair in tropical ecology in the Department of Biology at the University of Miami. They discuss a global study to determine whether climate change might accelerate the rate at which termites and microbes break down dead wood and release carbon into the atmosphere.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Christina Hansen Wheat; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Björk, a female wolf, with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade9777 

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

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On this week’s show: NASA’s unprecedented asteroid-deflection mission, and making storage space for fresh water underground in Bangladesh

First up on the podcast this week, News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the upcoming NASA mission, dubbed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, that aims to ram a vending machine–size spacecraft into an asteroid and test out ideas about planetary defense.

Also this week, Sarah talks with Mohammad Shamsudduha, an associate professor in humanitarian science at University College London’s Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction. He explains how millions of individual farmers in Bangladesh are creating the “Bengal water machine,” a giant underground sponge to soak up fresh water during monsoon season.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: SW Photography/Getty; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of agricultural fields and a big river at sunset in the city of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade8885 

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: After years of steep declines, researchers are investigating why malaria deaths have plateaued, and testing the stability of biosignatures in space

First up on the podcast this week, freelance science journalist Leslie Roberts joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss why malaria deaths have plateaued in southern Africa, despite years of declines in deaths and billions of dollars spent. Leslie visited Mozambique on a global reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center where researchers are investigating the cause of the pause.

Also this week, producer Kevin McLean talks with astrobiologists Mickael Baqué and Jean-Pierre de Vera of the German Aerospace Center. They discuss their Science Advances paper about an experiment on the International Space Station looking at the stability of biosignatures in space and what that means for our search for life on Mars.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: enhanced-color image of Mars’ Jezero crater was taken by NASA’s Perseverance with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Leslie Roberts; Kevin McLean

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade7839

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: The U.S. government is partnering with academics to speed up the search for more than 80,000 soldiers who went missing in action, and how humans create their own “oxidation zone” in the air around them

First up on the podcast this week, Tess Joosse is a former news intern here at Science and is now a freelance science journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin. Tess talks with host Sarah Crespi about attempts to use environmental DNA—free-floating DNA in soil or water—to help locate the remains of soldiers lost at sea.

Also featured in this segment:

• University of Wisconsin, Madison, molecular biologist Bridget Ladell
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution marine biologist Kirstin Meyer-Kaiser

Also this week, Nora Zannoni, a postdoctoral researcher in the atmospheric chemistry department at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, talks about people’s contributions to indoor chemistry. She chats with Sarah about why it’s important to go beyond studying the health effects of cleaning chemicals and gas stoves to explore how humans add their own bodies’ chemicals and reactions to the air we breathe.

In a sponsored segment from Science/AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for Custom Publishing, interviews Benedetto Marelli, associate professor at MIT, about winning the BioInnovation Institute & Science Prize for Innovation and how he became an entrepreneur.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Jeremy Borrelli/East Carolina University; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: a scuba diver underwater near a World War II wreck off Saipan with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Tess Joosse

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade6771

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: Monitoring summer cyclones in the Arctic, how eye movements during sleep may reflect movements in dreams, and the latest in our series of books on the science of food and agriculture.

First up on the podcast this week, Deputy News Editor Eric Hand joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss the first airborne campaign to study summer cyclones over the Arctic and what the data could reveal about puzzling air-ice interactions. 

Next on the show, Sarah talks with Yuta Senzai, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, about his paper on what coordinated eye movement and brain activity reveal about the neurology of rapid eye movement sleep.

Also on the show this week, a fishy installment of our series of books on the science of food and agriculture. Host Angela Saini interviews writer and editor Nicholas Sullivan about his latest book The Blue Revolution: Hunting, Harvesting, and Farming Seafood in the Information Age.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS data; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo from space of an epic 2012 Arctic cyclone with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Eric Hand; Angela Saini

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade5525

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: An analog to the Maunder Minimum, when the Sun’s spots largely disappeared 400 years ago, and measuring the energy it takes to chew gum

We have known about our Sun’s spots for centuries, and tracking this activity over time revealed an 11-year solar cycle with predictable highs and lows. But sometimes these cycles just seem to stop, such as in the Maunder Minimum—a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 with little or no sunspot activity. News Intern Zack Savitsky joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss a nearby star that appears to have entered a similar quiet period, and what we can learn from it about why stars take naps.

Also this week on the show, Adam van Casteren, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester, joins Sarah to talk about measuring how much energy we use to chew up food. Based on the findings, it appears humans have turned out to be superefficient chewers—at least when it comes to the gum used in the study—with less than 1% of daily energy expenditure being spent on mastication.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/SDO; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of the largest sunspot from our latest solar cycle with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Zack Savitsky

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade4241

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: Predators may be indirectly protecting Death Valley wetlands, and mapping odorant receptors 

First up this week on the podcast, News Intern Katherine Irving joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the first photos of cougars killing feral donkeys in Death Valley National Park. They also discuss the implications for native animals such as big horn sheep, and plans to remove donkeys from the park.

Also this week on the show, Paul Feinstein, professor of biology in the department of biological science at Hunter College, discusses a Science Signaling paper on a new approach to matching up smell receptors with smells—a long-standing challenge in olfaction research.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Angel Di Bilio/iStock; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: photo of a burro on a hillside near Death Valley with podcast overlay symbol]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Katherine Irving

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade3366 

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: A special issue on grass, and revealing hot spots of ant diversity

This week’s special issue on grasses mainly focuses on the importance of these plants in climate change, in ecosystems, on land, and in the water. But for the podcast, Contributing Correspondent Warren Cornwall joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about their dark side: invasive grasses that feed fires and transform ecosystems.

Also this week on the show, Evan Economo, a professor in the biodiversity and biocomplexity unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, joins Sarah to discuss his Science Advances paper on creating a worldwide map of ant diversity. Such maps help us better understand where vertebrate and invertebrate diversity do and don’t overlap and what this means for conservation. If you want to explore the data, you can see them at antmaps.org. 

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NTPFES; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: grassland fire in Northern Australia with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Warren Cornwall  

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade2512

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: Plans to push a modern space probe beyond the edge of the Solar System, crustaceans that pollinate seaweed, and the latest in our series of author interviews on food, science, and nutrition

After visiting the outer planets in the 1980s, the twin Voyager spacecraft have sent back tantalizing clues about the edge of our Solar System and what lies beyond. Though they may have reached the edge of the Solar System or even passed it, the craft lack the instruments to tell us much about the interstellar medium—the space between the stars. Intern Khafia Choudhary talks with Contributing Correspondent Richard Stone about plans to send a modern space probe outside the Solar System and what could be learned from such a mission.

Next up on the show, Myriam Valero, a population geneticist at the evolutionary biology and ecology of algae research department at Sorbonne University, talks with host Sarah Crespi about how a little crustacean might help fertilize a species of algae. If the seaweed in the study does use a marine pollinator, it suggests there may have been a much earlier evolutionary start for pollination partnerships.

Finally, we have the next in our series on books exploring the science of food and agriculture. This month, host Angela Saini talks with biochemist T. Colin Campbell about his book The Future of Nutrition: An Insider’s Look at the Science, Why We Keep Getting It Wrong, and How to Start Getting It Right.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: Johns Hopkins APL/Mike Yakovlev; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: illustration of an interstellar probe crossing the boundary of the heliosphere with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Rich Stone; Angela Saini; Khafia Choudhary

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LINKS FOR MP3 META

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1292  

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: Troubling signs of fraud threaten discoveries key to a reigning theory of Alzheimer’s disease, and calculating the saltiness of the ocean on one of Saturn’s moons

Investigative journalist Charles Piller joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss signs of fabrication in scores of Alzheimer’s articles brought to light by a neuroscientist whistleblower.

Next, researcher Wan Ying Kang talks with Sarah about Saturn’s bizarre moon Enceladus. Kang’s group wrote in Science Advances about modeling the salinity of the global ocean tucked between the moon’s icy shell and solid core. Their findings spell bad news for potential habitability on Enceladus.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: Enceladus as viewed from Cassini with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Charles Piller

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade0384

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week’s show: The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope hint at the science to come, and disentangling the itch-scratch cycle

After years of delays, the James Webb Space Telescope launched at the end of December 2021. Now, NASA has released a few of the first full-color images captured by the instrument’s enormous mirror. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss these first images and what they mean for the future of science from Webb.

Next on the podcast, Jing Feng, principal investigator at the Center for Neurological and Psychiatric Research and Drug Discovery at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, discusses his Science Translational Medicine paper on why scratching sometimes triggers itching. It turns out, in cases of chronic itch there can be a miswiring in the skin. Cells that normally detect light touch instead connect with nerve fibers that convey a sensation of itchiness. This miswiring means light touches (such as scratching) are felt as itchiness—contributing to a vicious itch-scratch cycle.

Also this week, in a sponsored segment from Science and the AAAS Custom Publishing Office, Sean Sanders, director and senior editor for the Custom Publishing Office, interviews Paul Bastard, chief resident in the department of pediatrics at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris and a researcher at the Imagine Institute in Paris and Rockefeller University. They talk about his work to shed light on susceptibility to COVID-19, which recently won him the Michelson Philanthropies & Science Prize for Immunology. This segment is sponsored by Michelson Philanthropies.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

[Image: NASA; ESA; CSA; STSCI; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

[alt: James Webb Space Telescope image of image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 with podcast symbol overlay]

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Daniel Clery

Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add9123

About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.