Episódios

  • Why Do We Sing? Musicologists and Neuroscientists Seek an Answer

    Why Do We Sing? Musicologists and Neuroscientists Seek an Answer
    Jul 11 2025
    Last year Science Quickly looked across disciplines to piece apart the science of singing. To understand why humans sing, musicologists collaborated on an international study of folk music. To understand how we sing, neuroscientists differentiated how our brain processes speech and singing. Music enthusiast and associate mind and brain editor Allison Parshall takes us through some hallmark 2024 studies that, taken together, piece together the evolutionary origins of singing. Recommended reading: Hidden Patterns in Folk Songs Reveal How Music Evolved https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hidden-patterns-in-folk-songs-reveal-how-music-evolved/ Why You Can’t Get That Song Out of Your Head https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/why-do-songs-get-stuck-in-your-head/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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 and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman with guest associate mind and brain editor Allison Parshall. Our show is fact-checked by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    25 minutos
  • What Does an Ailing Coral Reef Sound Like?

    What Does an Ailing Coral Reef Sound Like?
    Jul 9 2025
    Sick coral reefs are visually striking—bleached and lifeless, far from the vibrancy we’ve come to expect. But what does an unhealthy coral system sound like? In this rerun, conservation bioacoustics researcher Isla Keesje Davidson tells Science Quickly all about the changing soundscape of the seas. Recommended reading: 84 Percent of Corals Impacted in Mass Bleaching Event https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worst-coral-mass-bleaching-on-record-caused-by-warming-oceans/ How Corals Fight Back against Warming Seas https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-corals-fight-back-against-warming-seas/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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 and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is fact-checked by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    17 minutos
  • An Astronaut Shares His Passion for Space Photography—Live, from the ISS Cupola

    An Astronaut Shares His Passion for Space Photography—Live, from the ISS Cupola
    Jul 7 2025
    Ten months ago Science Quickly made space history by conducting the first-ever live interview from the cupola of the International Space Station (ISS). Astronaut Matthew Dominick spoke with Rachel Feltman about his work on the ISS and the stunning space photography that first caught our attention. Watch a video of the interview See more stunning space photographs from Matthew Dominick E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    18 minutos
  • Move Over Fireworks—Drone Shows Are Taking to the Skies

    Move Over Fireworks—Drone Shows Are Taking to the Skies
    Jul 2 2025
    Drone shows are replacing fireworks for summer celebrations. They’re safer and more environmentally friendly but complicated to program and run. A recent preprint paper proposes an algorithmic solution that can take some technical challenges out of drone operators’ hands and give engineers more creative control. Host Rachel Feltman speaks with researchers Mac Schwager, an associate professor at the aeronautics and astronautics department at Stanford University, and Eduardo Montijano, an associate professor at the department of computer science and systems engineering at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, about their work and what it would take to move the algorithm from theory to the skies. Recommended reading: Read the research team’s paper, which was presented at a 2024 workshop: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-91813-1_6 And released as a preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15899 How Do Fireworks Actually Work? Here’s the Explosive Science https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/the-science-of-fireworks/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    16 minutos
  • Talking to the Host of Drilled about the Legal Battles around Standing Rock

    Talking to the Host of Drilled about the Legal Battles around Standing Rock
    Jun 30 2025
    Protests around the construction of the now complete Dakota Access Pipeline brought national attention to Energy Transfer, the company that built and owns the pipeline and funded private security against the protestors. Energy Transfer sued the nonprofit Greenpeace for hundreds of millions of dollars. The company claimed that the Standing Rock movement was not Indigenous-led environmental activism but a conspiratorial effort by Greenpeace. Reporter Alleen Brown is spending this season of her podcast, Drilled, looking into the lawsuit and the message that legal actions like this send to activists. Recommended reading: Listen to Drilled Read Alleen Brown’s newsletter E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    13 minutos
  • How to Fight Bird Flu If It Becomes the Next Human Pandemic (Part 3)

    How to Fight Bird Flu If It Becomes the Next Human Pandemic (Part 3)
    Jun 27 2025
    Creating a bird flu vaccine requires several layers of bioprotective clothing and typically a whole lot of eggs. H5N1 avian influenza infections have gone from flocks of chickens to herds of cattle and humans. Scientists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute are taking their best guess at the strains of the virus that could spread and are creating critical vaccine candidates. Multimedia journalist and Scientific American multimedia intern Naeem Amarsy suited up and went to San Antonio, Tex., to visit a “biosafety level three” (BSL-3) lab at the institute. This is the third and final episode of our series about bird flu. You can listen to episode one: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/how-h5n1-went-from-an-illness-in-wild-birds-to-a-global-pandemic-threat/ And episode two: https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/how-bird-flu-went-from-devastating-poultry-farms-to-infecting-dairy-herds/ And read more of our health coverage: https://www.scientificamerican.com/health/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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 and reported by Naeem Amarsy. This series was reported and produced by Lauren Young, Meghan Bartels, Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. Special thanks to Laura Petersen and Catie Corcoran at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, Jane Deng and Elizabeth Dowling at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Kimberly Lau, Dean Visser and Jeanna Bryner at Scientific American. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura 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
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    33 minutos
  • Bird Flu’s Jump to Cattle Took Dairy Farmers by Surprise (Part 2)

    Bird Flu’s Jump to Cattle Took Dairy Farmers by Surprise (Part 2)
    Jun 25 2025
    Dairy cattle have become an intermediary between avian influenza found in wild birds and the handful of recorded H5N1 bird flu cases in humans. Senior news reporter Meghan Bartels took a trip upstate to Cornell University’s Teaching Dairy Barn. Early last year Texas dairy farmers noticed lethargic cows producing off-color milk. One of them sent Cornell researchers a sample, which genetic sequencing determined to contain a strain of H5N1. That strain traces its roots to the H5N1 virus that emerged in China in the late 1990s—which spread around the world thanks to migrating wild birds, such as those found on the beach that associate health and medicine editor Lauren Young visited in episode one of our three-part series about bird flu. And outbreak of H5N1 has been running through poultry farms since the early 2020s. Poultry farmers have been forced to cull flocks, reinforce biosecurity protocols and change the prices of eggs as a result. Dairy farms were less prepared for the spillover and its unexpected transition into raw-milk-drinking barn cats. While pasteurization makes milk safe for human consumption, there’s no easy way to prevent the spread between herds of cattle. In the next episode, multimedia intern and producer Naeem Amarsy looks at how the virus made yet another hop—this time into humans. Recommended reading: How the U.S. Lost Control of Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-flu-has-spread-out-of-control-after-mistakes-by-u-s-government-and/ Bird Flu Vaccine for Cows Passes Early Test https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-flu-vaccine-for-cows-passes-early-test/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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 reported and hosted by Meghan Bartels. This series is reported and produced by Lauren Young, Meghan Bartels, Naeem Amarsy, Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. Special thanks to Becka Bowyer and Kaitlyn Serrao at Cornell University and to Kimberly Lau, Dean Visser and Jeanna Bryner at Scientific American. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura 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
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    23 minutos
  • How Bird Flu Went from an Isolated Avian Illness to a Human Pandemic Threat (Part 1)

    How Bird Flu Went from an Isolated Avian Illness to a Human Pandemic Threat (Part 1)
    Jun 23 2025
    Bird flu outbreaks in poultry and cattle have caused concern for public health officials. There have been few reported cases of human transmission, but the growing risks of H5N1 avian influenza have virologists on alert. Researchers at the St. Jude Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response take an annual visit to Delaware Bay to collect samples of bird poop for analysis. These samples give the researchers a look at emerging avian illnesses. While spillover of H5N1 into domestic birds has been known for a while, the first case of spillover into humans was only identified during a 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong. Since then H5N1 has gone global and moved from transmitting from bird to bird to spreading from bird to mammal and from mammal to mammal. Associate health and medicine editor Lauren Young takes a sample collection walk on the beach and speaks with virus detectives about how H5N1 evolved in episode one of our three-part series about bird flu. Join us on Wednesday to learn how bird flu jumped from poultry to cattle. Recommended reading: RFK, Jr., Wants to Let Bird Flu Spread on Poultry Farms. Why Experts Are Concerned https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rfk-jr-wants-to-let-bird-flu-spread-on-poultry-farms-why-experts-are/ Bird Flu Detected in Humans in the U.S.: What We Know So Far https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-flu-detected-in-a-person-in-texas-what-we-know-so-far/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com 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 Lauren Young. This series was reported and produced by Lauren Young, Meghan Bartels, Naeem Amarsy, Fonda Mwangi and Jeff DelViscio. And special thanks to Kimberly Lau and Dean Visser at Scientific American for making it possible and to Michael Sheffield at St. Jude for assistance in the field. Our show is edited by Alex Sugiura 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
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    31 minutos