Science Quickly

With measles cases on the rise, experts are pushing back against misleading claims about vitamin A as a substitute for vaccination. A Supreme Court ruling has reshaped the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over water pollution, raising concerns about future environmental protections. And in the world of biotechnology, scientists have genetically engineered woolly mice—an experiment with implications for de-extinction efforts.

Recommended reading:

Company Seeking to Resurrect the Woolly Mammoth Creates a ‘Woolly Mouse’

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/company-seeking-to-resurrect-the-woolly-mammoth-creates-a-woolly-mouse/ 

Trump Gives EPA One Week to Decide on Abandoning Climate Pollution Regulation

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-gives-epa-one-week-to-decide-on-abandoning-climate-pollution/ 

Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. 

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John Green is an author, advocate and one half of the Vlogbrothers. His latest book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, comes out on March 18. Green joins host Rachel Feltman to share how tuberculosis shaped history, geography and culture. He discusses how he came to understand the inequities of tuberculosis and the dire risk public health interruptions pose to patients today.

Recommended reading:

You can preorder Everything Is Tuberculosis: https://everythingistb.com/#book

How Advocates Pushed Big Pharma to Cut Tuberculosis Drug Priceshttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-advocates-pushed-big-pharma-to-cut-tuberculosis-drug-prices/ 

The Heroic Black Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosishttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-heroic-black-nurses-who-helped-cure-tuberculosis/ 

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. 

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura and Naeem Amarsy with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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Not much passes into our brain from the rest of our body, to the chagrin of drug makers everywhere. So it should be cause for concern when a study found that microplastics were somehow ending up in our brain, says chief opinion editor Megha Satyanarayana. She takes a step back and brings us into the wider world of plastics and the way petroleum chemicals can become pollutants far beyond the factories where they are made. Plus, Satyanarayana discusses the Scientific American opinion section and her column Cross Currents, which aims to decode the science from the headlines.

Recommended reading:

Why Aren’t We Losing Our Minds over the Plastic in Our Brains? 

Subscribe to receive weekly emails alerts for Satyanarayana’s column Cross Currents: 

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Megha Satyanarayana. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck.  The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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Officials have confirmed the first measles death in an outbreak in West Texas. A meeting to discuss which strains to focus on for next year’s flu vaccines was canceled by the Food and Drug Administration. Public health officials are investigating two outbreaks of an unknown disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Plus, new research discovers the importance of microbes in space for astronauts’ health and sheds light on the way the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. turned a brain to glass.

Recommended reading:

The Measles Outbreak in Texas Is Why Vaccines Matter | Opinion https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-measles-outbreak-in-texas-is-why-vaccines-matter/

The International Space Station May Need More Microbes to Keep Astronauts Healthy https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-international-space-station-may-need-more-microbes-to-keep-astronauts/ 

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. 

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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Have you ever had a song continue to loop in your brain no matter how hard you tried to shake it? These “earworms” are more than just an annoyance—they’re a phenomenon scientists have studied for years. This episode dives into what makes certain melodies stick, why some tunes are more persistent than others and what our listeners shared as their most unforgettable earworms.

Recommended reading:

How Do You Solve a Problem Like an Earworm? 

Email us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new everyday: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for our daily newsletter. 

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy, and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was reported and co-hosted by Josh Fischman. Emily Makowski, Shayna Posses, and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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The Gaia spacecraft stopped collecting data this January after about 11 years and more than three trillion observations. Senior space and physics editor Lee Billings joins host Rachel Feltman to review Gaia’s Milky Way–mapping mission and the tidal streams, black holes and asteroids the spacecraft identified. 

Recommended reading:

New Maps of Milky Way Are Biggest and Best Yet https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gaias-multi-billion-star-map-of-the-milky-way-keeps-getting-better/ 

Astronomers Discover Milky Way’s ‘Sleeping Giant’ Black Hole Shockingly Close to Earth https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/milky-way-sleeping-giant-black-hole-shockingly-close-to-earth/ 

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.  

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest Lee Billings. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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The black hole at the center of our galaxy is emitting near-constant, random light. The European Space Agency has approved astronaut candidate John McFall, making McFall the first physically disabled candidate to be cleared to fly. The risk of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth rose to more than 3 percent and then dipped down to 1.5 percent with new data—our February 12 episode explained why this risk has been changing.

Recommended reading:

Hear our February 12 episode about asteroid 2024 YR4: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/what-we-know-about-2024-yr4-the-asteroid-with-a-2-percent-chance-of-impact/ 

Read more of guest host Allison Parshall’s exceptional coverage: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/allison-parshall/ 

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. 

Science Quickly is produced by Allison Parshall, Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Allison Parshall. Our show is edited by Naeem Amarsy with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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It’s fairly strange that humans, unlike many other mammals, don’t have hair all over. Our lack of body hair and wide geographic distribution led to the variation of sun-protective melanin in our skin. For the hair that remains, why did some groups develop curls while others did not? Biological anthropologist Tina Lasisi takes host Rachel Feltman through her work on understanding the roots of hair types. Plus, they discuss what we might learn from “chemo curls” and how developmental shifts change the extent and texture of hair during puberty.

Recommended reading:

Read more about Tina Lasisi at her website

Read papers on hair and thermoregulation published by Lasisi and her colleagues in 2024 and 2023

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. 

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Jeff DelViscio with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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Scientists now agree that COVID spreads via airborne transmission. But during the early days of the disease, public health officials suggested that it mainly did so via close contact. The subsequent back-and-forth over how COVID spread brought science journalist Carl Zimmer into the world of aerobiology. In his new book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe, Zimmer examines the unseen life in the air around us. He joins host Rachel Feltman to look back at the history of the field, from ancient Greek “miasmas” to Louis Pasteur’s unorthodox experiments to biological warfare. 

You can preorder Zimmer’s new book

And stay up-to-date on his work at his website

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. 

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Naeem Amarsy with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Love isn’t just about romance. This Valentine’s Day, we’re exploring the power of deep nonromantic bonds. Host Rachel Feltman sits down with Rhaina Cohen, a producer and editor for NPR’s podcast Embedded and author of The Other Significant Others, to discuss the history and psychology of friendship—and the reasons these connections deserve just as much celebration as romantic partnerships.

Recommended reading:

—The Evolutionary Origins of Friendship

—How to Reconnect with Old Friends Who Have Become Strangers

Subscribe to Rhaina Cohen’s newsletter.

E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter.

Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices