As the year comes to a close, we review the best science, the best stories, and the best books from 2019. Our end-of-the-year episode kicks off with Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm talking about the top online stories on things like human self-domestication, the “wood wide web,” and more.

 

News Editor Tim Appenzeller joins Sarah to discuss Science’s 2019 Breakthrough of the Year, some of the contenders for breakthrough, also known as runners-up, and the breakdowns—when science and politics just didn’t seem to mix this year.

 

Finally, Science books editor Valerie Thompson brings her favorites from the world of science-inflected media. She and Sarah talk about some of the best books reviewed in Science this year, a food extinction book we should have reviewed, a pair of science-centric films, and even an award-winning birding board game.

 

For more science books, films, and games, visit the books et al blog at blogs.sciencemag.org/books.

 

This week’s episode was edited by Podigy.

 

Ads on this week’s show: Bayer; Lightstream; KiwiCo

 

Listen to previous podcasts.

 

About the Science Podcast

 

 

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[Image: Roots, Craig Cloutier/Flickr; Music: Jeffrey Cook]

 

Authors: Sarah Crespi; David Grimm; Tim Appenzeller; Valerie Thompson
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Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in books

Weekly podcasts from Science Magazine, the world's leading journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary.

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Researchers try to identify effective loneliness interventions, making the Sandmeyer safer, and books that look to the future and don’t see doom and gloom
 
First up on the show, Deputy News Editor Kelly Servick explores the science of loneliness. Is loneliness on the rise or just our awareness of it? How do we deal with the stigma of being lonely?
 
Also appearing in this segment:
●     Laura Coll-Planas
●     Julianne Holt-Lunstad
●     Samia Akhter-Khan
 
Next, producer Ariana Remmel talks with Tim Schulte, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research and RWTH Aachen University, about making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions—the Sandmeyer reaction—both safer and more versatile.
 
Finally, we kick off this year’s book series with books editor Valerie Thompson and books host Angela Saini. They discuss this year’s theme: a future to look forward to.
 
Book segments come out the last episode of the month. Books in the series:
●     Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth by Claire Horn (May)
●     Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform by Rachel O’Dwyer (June)
●     The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone (July)
●     Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age by Akshat Rathi (August)
●     Virtual You: How Building Your Digital Twin Will Revolutionize Medicine and Change Your Life by Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield (September)
●     Imagination: A Manifesto by Ruha Benjamin (October)
 
 
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
 
About the Science Podcast
 
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kelly Servick; Ariana Remmel; Valerie Thompson; Angela Saini
LINKS FOR MP3 META
 
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zqubta7
 
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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The science of loneliness, making one of organic chemistry’s oldest reactions safer, and a new book series

A different source of global warming, signs of a continentwide tradition of human sacrifice, and a virus that attacks the cholera bacteria
 
First up on the show this week, clearer skies might be accelerating global warming. Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how as air pollution is cleaned up, climate models need to consider the decrease in the planet’s reflectivity. Less reflectivity means Earth is absorbing more energy from the Sun and increased temps.
 
Also from the news team this week, we hear about how bones from across Europe suggest recurring Stone Age ritual killings. Contributing Correspondent Andrew Curry talks about how a method of murder used by the Italian Mafia today may have been used in sacrifices by early farmers, from Poland to the Iberian Peninsula.
 
Finally, Eric Nelson, an associate professor at the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, joins Sarah to talk about an infectious bacteria that’s fighting on two fronts. The bacterium that causes cholera—Vibrio cholerae—can be killed off with antibiotics but at the same time, it is hunted by a phage virus living inside the human gut. In a paper published in Science, Nelson and colleagues describe how we should think about phage as predator and bacteria as prey, in the savanna of our intestines. The ratio of predator to prey turns out to be important for the course of cholera infections.
 
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
 
About the Science Podcast
 
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen; Andrew Curry
 
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zhgw74e
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Ritual murders in the neolithic, why 2023 was so hot, and virus and bacteria battle in the gut

]Researchers are testing HIV drugs and monoclonal antibodies against long-lasting COVID-19, and what it takes to turn a symbiotic friend into an organelle
 
First up on the show this week, clinical trials of new and old treatments for Long Covid. Producer Meagan Cantwell is joined by Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel and some of her sources to discuss the difficulties of studying and treating this debilitating disease.
 
People in this segment:
·      Michael Peluso
·      Sara Cherry
·      Shelley Hayden
 
Next: Move over mitochondria, a new organelle called the nitroplast is here. Host Sarah Crespi talks with Tyler Coale, a postdoctoral scholar in the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Ocean Sciences Department, about what exactly makes an organelle an organelle and why it would be nice to have inhouse nitrogen fixing in your cells.
 
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
 
About the Science Podcast
 
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Jennifer Couzin-Frankel
 
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zof5fvk
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Trialing treatments for Long Covid, and a new organelle appears on the scene

Tracing the arrival of rats using bones, isotopes, and a few shipwrecks; and what scientists have learned in 50 years about our famous ancestor Lucy
 
First on the show: Did rats come over with Christopher Columbus? It turns out, European colonists weren’t alone on their ships when they came to the Americas—they also brought black and brown rats to uninfested shores. Eric Guiry, a researcher in the Trent Environmental Archaeology Lab at Trent University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how tiny slices of bone from early colony sites and sunken shipwrecks can tell us when these pesky rodents arrived.
 
Next, producer Meagan Cantwell talks with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons about what has happened in the 50 years since anthropologists found Lucy—a likely human ancestor that lived 2.9 million to 3.3 million years ago. Although still likely part of our family tree, her place as a direct ancestor is in question. And over the years, her past has become less lonesome as it has become populated with other contemporaneous hominins.
 
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
 
About the Science Podcast
 
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Ann Gibbons
LINKS FOR MP3 META
 
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.z4scrgk
 
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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When did rats come to the Americas, and was Lucy really our direct ancestor?

Robots that can smile in synchrony with people, and what ends up in the letters section

First on this week’s show, a robot that can predict your smile. Hod Lipson, a roboticist and professor at Columbia University, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how mirrors can help robots learn to make facial expressions and eventually improve robot nonverbal communication.
 
Next, we have Margaret Handley, a professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics and medicine at the University of California San Francisco. She shares a letter she wrote to Science about how her past, her family, and a rare instrument relate to her current career focus on public health and homelessness. Letters Editor Jennifer Sills also weighs in with the kinds of letters people write into the magazine.

Other Past as Prologue letters:
A new frontier for mi familia by Raven Delfina Otero-Symphony
A uranium miner’s daughter by Tanya J. Gallegos
Embracing questions after my father’s murder by Jacquelyn J. Cragg
A family’s pride in educated daughters by Qura Tul Ain
One person’s trash: Another’s treasured education by Xiangkun Elvis Cao
 
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
 
About the Science Podcast
 
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Jennifer Sills
 
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zy9w2u0
 
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Breakthrough of the Year, our favorite online news stories, and the year in books

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