Science, Quickly

By Scientific American

Technology Science & Medicine

What's Science, Quickly about?

Leading science and tech journalists dive into a rich world of scientific discovery in this bite-size science variety show. To view all of our archived  material, go to:  www.scientificamerican.com/podcast .

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Long COVID's Roots in the B...

03.29.2023

Post-COVID symptoms can linger for months or years, and more and more evidence points to problems with the nervous system.

Science, Quickly episodes:

03.29.2023 Long COVID's Roots in the Brain: Your Health Quickly, Episode 3 Post-COVID symptoms can linger for months or years, and more and more evidence points to problems with the nervous system.
03.27.2023 If AI Starts Making Music on Its Own, What Happens to Musicians? Music made with artificial intelligence could upend the music industry. Here’s what that might look like.
03.24.2023 Music-Making Artificial Intelligence Is Getting Scary Good Google’s new AI model can generate entirely new music from text prompts. Here’s what they sound like.
03.22.2023 Artificial Intelligence Helped Make the Coolest Song You've Heard This Week Machine-learning algorithms are getting so good that they can translate Western instruments into Thai ones with ease.
03.20.2023 Space Force Humor, Laser Dazzlers, and the Havoc a War in Space Would Actually Wreak In the inaugural episode of Cosmos, Quickly, we blast off with Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno of the Space Force, who is charged with protecting our space in space, particularly from Russia and China.
03.17.2023 Squeak Squeak, Buzz Buzz: How Researchers Are Using AI to Talk to Animals The burgeoning field of “digital bioacoustics” is helping us understand animals like never before.
03.15.2023 RSV Vaccines Are Coming At Last: Your Health, Quickly, Episode 2 A vaccine pioneer tells us that shots to protect against RSV—a dangerous virus for babies and older people—are finally nearing approval.
03.14.2023 If the Mathematical Constant Pi Was a Song, What Would It Sound Like? Every year on Pi Day, we have a reason to celebrate one of math’s most famous symbols. But this year we speak to someone who has captured it in song.
03.10.2023 How To Stop a (Potentially Killer) Asteroid We slammed a $330-million spaceship the size of a dairy cow into an asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Here’s what we’re learning about how our first step in planetary defense could save us in the future.
03.08.2023 The Scientific Secret to Soothing Fussy Babies Some animals’ babies physically relax when their parents whisk them away from danger. The same thing works for tiny, wailing humans.
03.06.2023 How Helper Sharks Discovered the World's Largest Seagrass Ecosystem Scientists partnered with tiger sharks to map seagrass—the unsung hero of ocean conservation.
03.03.2023 How the Woolly Bear Caterpillar Turns into a Popsicle to Survive the Winter Some caterpillars have evolved with antifreeze in their body cavity, allowing them to become cater-Popsicles to survive cold winters. But climate change could threaten that.
03.01.2023 The Pandemic's Mental Toll, and Does Telehealth Work? Your Health, Quickly, Episode 1 Hosts Josh Fischman and Tanya Lewis explore the pandemic’s mental health toll on teens and young adults. They also delve into the effectiveness of telehealth, which has been booming since the start of the pandemic.
02.27.2023 Does Not Being Able to Picture Something in Your Mind Affect Your Creativity? Researchers who study aphantasia, or the inability to visualize something in your “mind’s eye,” are starting to get a sense of how to accurately measure the condition and what it may mean for those who have it.
02.24.2023 Sorry, UFO Hunters--You Might Just Be Looking at a Spy Balloon From space aliens to foreign surveillance, we spoke to experts to find out what’s really going on with the balloon brouhaha.
02.23.2023 Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change [Sponsored] Successfully mitigating the impacts of climate change will rely heavily on innovation in science and technology.
02.22.2023 How Do We Find Aliens? Maybe Unlearn What We Know About 'Life' First Science might be redefining what “life out there” really means.
02.20.2023 Love and the Brain: Do Partnerships Really Make Us Happy? Here's What the Science Says How romance affects our well-being is a lot more complicated than “they lived happily ever after.”
02.17.2023 Love and the Brain: The Animal Matchmaker and the Panda Romeo and Juliet In fair zoo-ona, a pair of star-cross’d pandas take their life. And we learn about whether or not animals can fall in love.
02.15.2023 Love and the Brain: How Attached Are We to Attachment Styles? Are you “anxious,” “avoidant” or “disorganized?” So-called attachment styles have taken the Internet by storm. But it turns out there’s a lot more to unpack than people think.
02.13.2023 Love and the Brain, Part 1: The 36 Questions, Revisited Host Shayla Love dives into the true story behind the now infamous 36 questions that lead to love.
02.06.2023 Coming Soon to Your Podcast Feed: Science, Quickly A new era in Scientific American audio history is about to drop starting next week. Get ready for a science variety show guaranteed to quench your curiosity in under 10 minutes.
12.21.2022 The 60-Second Podcast Takes a Short Break--But Wait, There's More Scientific American ’s short-form podcast has been going for 16 years, three months and seven days, counting today. But it’s time for us to evolve.
12.20.2022 Is Your Phone Actually Draining Your Brain? A new study puts the “brain drain hypothesis”—the idea that just having a phone next to you impacts your cognition—to the test to see if the science passes muster.
12.16.2022 Why Your Dog Might Think You're a Bonehead The verdict is in: female dogs actively evaluate human competence.
12.14.2022 Alaska's Protective Sea Ice Wall Is Crumbling because of the Climate Crisis A massive storm slammed into Alaska’s western coast, and there was no ice to stop it.
12.09.2022 It's the Bass That Makes Us Boogie Concertgoers danced more when music was supplemented with low-frequency bass tones.
12.06.2022 How Vaccines Saved Money and Lives and China's Zero-COVID Protests: COVID, Quickly Podcast, Episode 44 Vaccines saved New York City billions of dollars, and China faces public fury over its strict virus-control policies.
12.02.2022 'Chatty Turtles' Flip the Script on the Evolutionary Origins of Vocalization in Animals Recordings of more than 50 species of turtles and other animals help scientists reassess the origins of acoustic communication in vertebrates.
11.30.2022 Tardigrades, an Unlikely Sleeping Beauty Researchers put this ancient critter through a subzero gauntlet to learn more about what happens to their internal clock while surviving the extreme.
11.23.2022 A Burned Redwood Forest Tells a Story of Climate Change, Past, Present and Future From the ashes of the giants of Big Basin Redwoods State Park arise a history of fire suppression and real questions about what happens to the forests in a drought-stricken West Coast going forward.
11.22.2022 Antivirals Could Reduce Long COVID Risk and How Well the New Boosters Work: COVID, Quickly Podcast, Episode 43 In this new episode of our coronavirus podcast, we discuss a study that looked at the effects of Paxlovid on long COVID symptoms, and we also talk new bivalent boosters and immunity.
11.15.2022 A Honeybee Swarm Has as Much Electric Charge as a Thundercloud New research shows that bees “buzz” in more than the way you might think.
11.11.2022 These Punk Rock Penguins Have a Bizarre Breeding Strategy New Zealand’s erect-crested penguin lays two eggs but rejects the first one—the opposite of how most birds prioritize their offspring.
11.08.2022 The Viral Triple Threat and Why You Need a Booster: COVID, Quickly, Episode 42 COVID, flu and RSV are surging. Here’s what you need to know to protect yourself.
11.04.2022 What You Need to Know about Iran's Surveillance Tech Scientific American technology editor Sophie Bushwick explains how Iran is using surveillance tech against vulnerable citizens.
10.28.2022 Delivering Equitable Lung Cancer Care [Sponsored] As recent advances improve the prospects of detecting and catching lung cancer early, a new challenge arises: how to ensure people worldwide, regardless of their socioeconomic circumstances, benefit from new clinical tools.
10.25.2022 New Halloween 'Scariant' Variants and Boosting Your Immunity: COVID, Quickly, Episode 41 In a new episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we talk about the variants that are likely to be around this winter and how boosters help even if you’ve already had the disease.
10.21.2022 These Hawks Have Figured Out How to See the Bat in the Swarm New research shows that birds of prey attempting to grab a bat from a roiling mass of the flying mammals have developed a way to cope with the confusion.
10.14.2022 Naps Not Needed to Make New Memories Rats kept awake after exploring novel objects remembered the original items but not where they’d seen those objects, raising interesting questions about human sleep.
10.11.2022 How the Pandemic Shortened Life Expectancy and New Drugs on the Horizon: COVID, Quickly, Episode 40 In this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, we talk about why we’ve had years shaved off our average collective life since 2020. Also, we talk about “mabs” and why you might want to know what they are.
10.07.2022 Engineering the Treatment of Early-Stage Lung Cancer [SPONSORED] Early-stage lung cancers are not only difficult to diagnose—they’ve also proved difficult to curatively treat.
10.05.2022 Rediscovered Red Wolf Genes May Help Conserve the Species A surprising new gene discovery in coyotes may help conserve the critically endangered wolf.
09.27.2022 What the Disease Feels Like, and Presidents Can't End Pandemics: COVID, Quickly, Episode 39 On this episode of the COVID, Quickly podcast, Josh Fischman gets COVID, and President Joe Biden says the pandemic is over.
09.23.2022 These Spiders Use Their Webs like Huge, Silky Ears A study of orb-weaving spiders shows that the arachnids’ webs pick up a range of sounds—and that they are always “listening” for vibrations coming in over them.
09.21.2022 Chewing Consumes a Surprising Amount of Energy Chomping on food takes so much energy that it shaped human evolution. Our ancestors spent many hours a day chewing, which may have shaped our teeth and jaws.
09.16.2022 These Bats Buzz like Bees to Save Their Own Lives New research has discovered the first case of acoustic mimicry between a mammal and an insect—an acquired skill that could just save certain bats’ skin.
09.13.2022 Unvaxxed Kids and 8 Days a Week (of Isolation): COVID, Quickly, Episode 38 This is our second back-to-school special episode of COVID. Quickly . Today we talk about two big issues: the low vaccination rates among the littlest kids and how long you should quarantine after being sick (actually).
09.09.2022 Listen to Images from the James Webb Space Telescope It turns out that making new views of the universe accessible to those with vision impairment has required some deep thought—and carefully chosen words.
09.07.2022 These Tiny Pollinators Can Travel Surprisingly Huge Distances It turns out that hoverflies may fly hundreds or even thousands of miles—all to help pollinate our flowers and vegetables.

Older episodes

Science, Quickly

What's Science, Quickly about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Science, Quickly episodes:

Long COVID's Roots in the Brain: Your Health Quickly, Episode 3

If AI Starts Making Music on Its Own, What Happens to Musicians?

Music-Making Artificial Intelligence Is Getting Scary Good

Artificial Intelligence Helped Make the Coolest Song You've Heard This Week

Space Force Humor, Laser Dazzlers, and the Havoc a War in Space Would Actually Wreak

Squeak Squeak, Buzz Buzz: How Researchers Are Using AI to Talk to Animals

RSV Vaccines Are Coming At Last: Your Health, Quickly, Episode 2

If the Mathematical Constant Pi Was a Song, What Would It Sound Like?

How To Stop a (Potentially Killer) Asteroid

The Scientific Secret to Soothing Fussy Babies

How Helper Sharks Discovered the World's Largest Seagrass Ecosystem

How the Woolly Bear Caterpillar Turns into a Popsicle to Survive the Winter

The Pandemic's Mental Toll, and Does Telehealth Work? Your Health, Quickly, Episode 1

Does Not Being Able to Picture Something in Your Mind Affect Your Creativity?

Sorry, UFO Hunters--You Might Just Be Looking at a Spy Balloon

Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change [Sponsored]

How Do We Find Aliens? Maybe Unlearn What We Know About 'Life' First

Love and the Brain: Do Partnerships Really Make Us Happy? Here's What the Science Says

Love and the Brain: The Animal Matchmaker and the Panda Romeo and Juliet

Love and the Brain: How Attached Are We to Attachment Styles?

Love and the Brain, Part 1: The 36 Questions, Revisited

Coming Soon to Your Podcast Feed: Science, Quickly

The 60-Second Podcast Takes a Short Break--But Wait, There's More

Is Your Phone Actually Draining Your Brain?

Why Your Dog Might Think You're a Bonehead

Alaska's Protective Sea Ice Wall Is Crumbling because of the Climate Crisis

It's the Bass That Makes Us Boogie

How Vaccines Saved Money and Lives and China's Zero-COVID Protests: COVID, Quickly Podcast, Episode 44

'Chatty Turtles' Flip the Script on the Evolutionary Origins of Vocalization in Animals

Tardigrades, an Unlikely Sleeping Beauty

A Burned Redwood Forest Tells a Story of Climate Change, Past, Present and Future

Antivirals Could Reduce Long COVID Risk and How Well the New Boosters Work: COVID, Quickly Podcast, Episode 43

A Honeybee Swarm Has as Much Electric Charge as a Thundercloud

These Punk Rock Penguins Have a Bizarre Breeding Strategy

The Viral Triple Threat and Why You Need a Booster: COVID, Quickly, Episode 42

What You Need to Know about Iran's Surveillance Tech

Delivering Equitable Lung Cancer Care [Sponsored]

New Halloween 'Scariant' Variants and Boosting Your Immunity: COVID, Quickly, Episode 41

These Hawks Have Figured Out How to See the Bat in the Swarm

Naps Not Needed to Make New Memories

How the Pandemic Shortened Life Expectancy and New Drugs on the Horizon: COVID, Quickly, Episode 40

Engineering the Treatment of Early-Stage Lung Cancer [SPONSORED]

Rediscovered Red Wolf Genes May Help Conserve the Species

What the Disease Feels Like, and Presidents Can't End Pandemics: COVID, Quickly, Episode 39

These Spiders Use Their Webs like Huge, Silky Ears

Chewing Consumes a Surprising Amount of Energy

These Bats Buzz like Bees to Save Their Own Lives

Unvaxxed Kids and 8 Days a Week (of Isolation): COVID, Quickly, Episode 38

Listen to Images from the James Webb Space Telescope

These Tiny Pollinators Can Travel Surprisingly Huge Distances

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