Science Talk

By Scientific American

Technology Science & Medicine

What's Science Talk about?

Science Talk takes you deeply into the world of science audio. Sometimes we travel deep into the wilderness. Sometimes deep into the mind of a scientific expert. The experience will always stimulate your auditory neurons, even if you don't know quite where you're headed at the start. Also check our podcast from Scientific American : "60-Second Science." To view all of our archived podcasts please go to www.scientificamerican.com/podcast

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Love Computers? Love Histor...

04.26.2022

In the newest season of Lost Women of Science, we enter a world of secrecy, computers and nuclear weapons—and see how Klára Dán von Neumann was a part of all of it.

Science Talk episodes:

03.20.2020 COVID-19: The Wildlife Trade and Human Disease Christian Walzer, executive director of global health at the Wildlife Conservation Society, talks about how the wildlife trade, especially for human consumption, can lead to disease outbreaks.
03.19.2020 David Quammen: How Animal Infections Spill Over to Humans In this 2012 interview, David Quammen talks about his book Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, which is highly relevant to the emergence of the coronavirus that has changed our lives.
03.17.2020 COVID-19: Dealing with Social Distancing Judy Moskowitz, a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University, talks about ways to cope during this time of missing out on our usual diet of social interactions.
03.14.2020 Coronavirus Hot Zone: Research and Responses in the U.S. Epicenter Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this installment of our ongoing series, he talks with researchers about the efforts to create vaccines and treatments and the challenges ...
03.10.2020 Coronavirus Hot Zone: The View from the U.S. Epicenter Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs reports from the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak: Kirkland, Wash. In this first installment of an ongoing series, he looks at why children seem to weather this disease better than adults and ...
03.08.2020 The New Cosmos: A Conversation with Ann Druyan Emmy and Peabody Award–winning science writer, producer and director Ann Druyan talks about Cosmos: Possible Worlds, the next installment of the Cosmos series.
02.27.2020 Advancing Efforts in Disease Interception Ben Wiegand, global head of the World without Disease Accelerator at Janssen, the Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, talks about efforts to prevent a disease or to identify it in its earliest stages for more effective treatments.
02.13.2020 Kirk, Spock and Darwin Duke University evolutionary biologist Mohamed A. F. Noor talks about his book Live Long and Evolve: What Star Trek Can Teach Us about Evolution, Genetics, and Life on Other Worlds .
01.30.2020 How to Make a Mass Extinction Journalist and author Peter Brannen talks about his book The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions .
11.21.2019 Air Pollution: An Unclear and Present Danger Journalist and author Beth Gardiner talks about her new book Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution . And CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna talks about gene editing.
11.11.2019 150 Years of the Journal Nature Nature is arguably the world’s most prestigious scientific journal. Editor in chief Magdalena Skipper spoke with Scientific American ’s acting editor in chief Curtis Brainard about her journal as it celebrates its 150th anniversary.
10.10.2019 Lithium-Ion Battery Creators Win Chemistry Nobel Prize John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino share the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of lithium-ion batteries” that have led to portable electronic devices that are rechargeable virtually anywhere on the planet.
10.08.2019 How Cells Sense Oxygen Levels: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine William Kaelin, Jr., Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza share the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for their discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.” New therapies for cancer and conditions such as anemia are in ...
10.02.2019 Talking Health and Energy at U.N. Climate Action Summit Scientific American senior editor Jen Schwartz talks with WHO officials Maria Neira and Agnès Soucat about climate and health and with Rachel Kyte, special representative to the U.N. secretary-general for, and CEO of, Sustainable Energy for All.
09.28.2019 Kicking Climate Change: Wins for Health, the Economy and Security Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy talks with Scientific American ’s Andrea Thompson about the widespread benefits of taking action against climate change.
09.24.2019 The Mathematical Language of Nature Physics historian Graham Farmelo talks about his latest book, The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets.
08.10.2019 Jacks-of-All-Trades Make the Grade Journalist and author David Epstein talks about his new book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World .
07.21.2019 It's Melting: Science on Ice Glaciologist Elizabeth Case of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University’s Earth Institute takes us out near Juneau, Alaska, to study and live on the shifting ice.
07.17.2019 Joseph Lange's Campaign against HIV Seema Yasmin, director of research and education at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative, talks about her book The Impatient Dr. Lange: One Man’s Fight to End the Global HIV Epidemic. Lange was killed five years ago today when flight MH17 ...
06.26.2019 Bone Up on What's Inside You Author and self-described fossil fanatic Brian Switek talks about his new book Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone.
06.19.2019 Solving Our Plastic Problem At Scientific American 's third Science on the Hill event, experts from academia and the private sector met at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill to talk with Scientific American editor-in-chief Mariette DiChristina about solutions to our plethora-of-plastics ...
05.24.2019 Secrets of the Universe Revealed! Cornell University applied mathematics professor Steven Strogatz talks about his new book Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe.
04.29.2019 How the Black Hole Said Cheese Scientific American 's chief features editor Seth Fletcher talks about his book Einstein's Shadow, an account of the long effort to image a black hole that recently came to fruition.
04.22.2019 A Tree and Its People in a Warming Landscape Conservation scientist Lauren Oakes discusses her book about Alaska ecology and sociology, In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World.
03.13.2019 Science Couple Phages Out Superbug Medical researcher Steffanie Strathdee needed to save the life of her husband, researcher Tom Patterson, when he contracted one of the world's worst infections. She turned to phage therapy: using a virus to kill the bacteria.
02.20.2019 Vaccine Rejection: Truth and Consequences Kent State epidemiologist Tara Smith talks about vaccines, recent preventable measles outbreaks and her 2017 journal article on vaccine rejection.
02.12.2019 On the Origin of Darwin On this 210th anniversary of Darwin's birth we hear evolution writer and historian Richard Milner perform a brief monologue as Charles Darwin, and former Scientific American editor in chief John Rennie and Darwin's great-great-grandson Matthew Chapman read excerpts from The ...
01.31.2019 Warming Arctic on Thin Ice Scientific American collections editor Andrea Gawrylewski talks to managing editor Curtis Brainard about how warming in the Arctic affects us all. And glaciologist Elizabeth Case takes us out near Juneau to study and live on the shifting ice.
01.14.2019 Fake Whiskeys and Octo-Ecstasy Scientific American assistant news editor, Tanya Lewis, and collections editor, Andrea Gawrylewski, take a deeper look at two short articles from the Advances news section of the December issue, on counterfeit whiskeys and the effect of real ecstasy...on octopuses.
01.03.2019 Ultima Thule and the Apes of Earth As the New Horizons mission approached Ultima Thule, Rowan University paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara put our close-up study of the Kuiper Belt object into a deep-time perspective.
12.18.2018 Meet the Real Ravenmaster Christopher Skaife talks about his new book The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London, in front of a live audience at Caveat, “the speakeasy bar for intelligent nightlife" in Lower Manhattan.
11.22.2018 The Crusade against Dangerous Food, Part 2 Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Deborah Blum talks about her book The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century, Part 2.
11.22.2018 The Crusade against Dangerous Food, Part 1 Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Deborah Blum talks about her book The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the 20th Century, Part 1.
10.31.2018 Bones and Stones: Cemetery Geology A tour of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, N.Y., focuses on the geology of the landscape and the mausoleums.
10.17.2018 Tinder for Cheetahs; and an Unusual Blindness Scientific American assistant news editor, Tanya Lewis, and collections editor, Andrea Gawrylewski, host a new podcast that takes a deeper look at short articles from the Advances news section of the magazine.
10.03.2018 Better Living through Evolution: Nobel Prize in Chemistry Frances Arnold, George Smith and Gregory Winter shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for using evolutionary principles to create highly efficient enzymes and antibodies, with numerous practical applications.
10.02.2018 Laser Advances That Changed Our Lives: Nobel Prize in Physics Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland shared the Nobel Prize for finding ways to control and enhance laser light, leading to numerous common applications.
10.01.2018 Unleashing Immunity against Cancer: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine James P. Allison and and Tasuku Honjo shared the Nobel Prize for their discovery of inhibition of negative immune regulation, the basis of new drugs against cancer.
10.01.2018 Where There's a Wills There's a Way to Explain the Home Run Rise Astrophysicist and sports data scientist Meredith Wills talks about why a subtle change in Major League baseballs may be behind the jump in home runs after 2014.
09.25.2018 More People, but Less Hardship? Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann talks about the just-issued Goalkeepers Report, tracking progress against poverty and disease even as the population keeps rising.
09.05.2018 Here's Looking at Humanity, Kid Senior Editor Gary Stix talks about the September special issue of Scientific American , devoted to the science of being human. And Brown University evolutionary biologist Ken Miller discusses human chromosome 2 and what it tells us about us.
08.17.2018 Life at the Improv: The Power of Imagination Stephen Asma, professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, talks about his two latest books, The Evolution of Imagination and Why We Need Religion .
08.02.2018 Out with the Bad Science NPR science journalist Richard Harris talks about his book, Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope and Wastes Billions .
08.02.2018 Out with the Bad Science NPR science journalist Richard Harris talks about his book, Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope and Wastes Billions .
06.19.2018 AI, Robotics and Your Health At the second Science on the Hill event, AI, Robotics and Your Health, experts from academia and the private sector talked with Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina about the future of AI and robotics in medicine.
06.19.2018 AI, Robotics and Your Health At the second Science on the Hill event, AI, Robotics and Your Health, experts from academia and the private sector talked with Scientific American Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina about the future of AI and robotics in medicine.
05.23.2018 Dinosaurs: From Humble Beginnings to Global Dominance Edinburgh University paleontologist Steve Brusatte talks about his May 2018 Scientific American article, "The Unlikely Triumph of the Dinosaurs," and his new book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World .
05.23.2018 Dinosaurs: From Humble Beginnings to Global Dominance Edinburgh University paleontologist Steve Brusatte talks about his May 2018 Scientific American article, "The Unlikely Triumph of the Dinosaurs," and his new book, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World .
04.30.2018 Humans Evolved but Are Still Special Brown University biologist and author Ken Miller talks about his new book The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness and Free Will .
04.30.2018 Humans Evolved but Are Still Special Brown University biologist and author Ken Miller talks about his new book The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness and Free Will .

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Science Talk

What's Science Talk about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Science Talk episodes:

COVID-19: The Wildlife Trade and Human Disease

David Quammen: How Animal Infections Spill Over to Humans

COVID-19: Dealing with Social Distancing

Coronavirus Hot Zone: Research and Responses in the U.S. Epicenter

Coronavirus Hot Zone: The View from the U.S. Epicenter

The New Cosmos: A Conversation with Ann Druyan

Advancing Efforts in Disease Interception

Kirk, Spock and Darwin

How to Make a Mass Extinction

Air Pollution: An Unclear and Present Danger

150 Years of the Journal Nature

Lithium-Ion Battery Creators Win Chemistry Nobel Prize

How Cells Sense Oxygen Levels: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Talking Health and Energy at U.N. Climate Action Summit

Kicking Climate Change: Wins for Health, the Economy and Security

The Mathematical Language of Nature

Jacks-of-All-Trades Make the Grade

It's Melting: Science on Ice

Joseph Lange's Campaign against HIV

Bone Up on What's Inside You

Solving Our Plastic Problem

Secrets of the Universe Revealed!

How the Black Hole Said Cheese

A Tree and Its People in a Warming Landscape

Science Couple Phages Out Superbug

Vaccine Rejection: Truth and Consequences

On the Origin of Darwin

Warming Arctic on Thin Ice

Fake Whiskeys and Octo-Ecstasy

Ultima Thule and the Apes of Earth

Meet the Real Ravenmaster

The Crusade against Dangerous Food, Part 2

The Crusade against Dangerous Food, Part 1

Bones and Stones: Cemetery Geology

Tinder for Cheetahs; and an Unusual Blindness

Better Living through Evolution: Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Laser Advances That Changed Our Lives: Nobel Prize in Physics

Unleashing Immunity against Cancer: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Where There's a Wills There's a Way to Explain the Home Run Rise

More People, but Less Hardship?

Here's Looking at Humanity, Kid

Life at the Improv: The Power of Imagination

Out with the Bad Science

Out with the Bad Science

AI, Robotics and Your Health

AI, Robotics and Your Health

Dinosaurs: From Humble Beginnings to Global Dominance

Dinosaurs: From Humble Beginnings to Global Dominance

Humans Evolved but Are Still Special

Humans Evolved but Are Still Special

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