Top science from 2023, and a genetic tool for pangolin conservation
 
First up this week, it’s Science’s Breakthrough of the Year with producer Meagan Cantwell and News Editor Greg Miller. But before they get to the tippy-top science find, a few of this year’s runners-up. See all our end-of-year coverage here.
 
Next, Jen Tinsman, a forensic wildlife biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss using genetics to track the illegal pangolin trade. These scaly little guys are the most trafficked mammals in the world, and researchers can now use DNA from their scales to find poaching hot spots.
 
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
 
About the Science Podcast
 
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Meagan Cantwell; Greg Miller
 
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zk0pw91
 
About the Science Podcast: https://www.science.org/content/page/about-science-podcast
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Science’s Breakthrough of the Year, and tracing poached pangolins

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Bringing historical seismic reports and modern seismic risk maps into alignment, and a roundup of stories from our newsletter, ScienceAdviser
 
First on the show this week, a roundup of stories with our newsletter editor, Christie Wilcox. Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about the oldest ice ever found, how well conservation efforts seem to be working, and repelling mosquitoes with our skin microbes.
 
Next on this episode, evaluating seismic hazard maps. In a Science Advances paper this week, Leah Salditch, a geoscience peril adviser at risk and reinsurance company Guy Carpenter, compared modern seismic risk map predictions with descriptions of past quakes. The analysis found a mismatch: Reported shaking in the past tended to be stronger than modern models would have predicted. She talks with Crespi about where this bias comes from and how to fix it.
 
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
 
About the Science Podcast
 
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox
 
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfj31xo
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Improving earthquake risk maps, and the world’s oldest ice

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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Science’s Breakthrough of the Year, and tracing poached pangolins

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