Skip to content
Science Talk podcast artwork

PODCAST · science

Science Talk

by Scientific American

Science Talk is a podcast of longer-form audio experiments from Scientific American--from immersive sonic journeys into nature to deep dives into research with leading experts.

Publisher-supplied feed metadata · PodParley refreshed Apr 15, 2026 · Source feed

Episodes

  1. Episode 5: How Do We Know Anything?

    On this show, we’ve been talking about uncertainty from a variety of different angles. We’ve heard how uncertainty can be a spark for creativity and scientific discovery. We’ve discussed how uncertainty can go unseen and make science really difficult. And we’ve explored some of the research...

  2. Episode 4: This Simple Strategy Might Be the Key to Advancing Science Faster

    Science is an iterative process. Progress comes from people coming up with ideas that are sort of right and then new evidence and ideas coming in to update them to become even more correct. Underlying this process is a willingness by scientists to accept that they might be wrong and be open to...

  3. Episode 3: When Uncertainty Hides in the Blindspot of Overconfidence

    Today’s episode of Uncertain is about the ways that studies can leave us overconfident and how “just-so stories” can make us feel overly certain about results that are still a work in progress. And sometimes studies get misleading results because of random error or weird samples or study design....

  4. Episode 2: Think Seeing is Believing? Think Again

    In this episode, we’ll talk with two researchers whose work probes the uncertainty surrounding how we perceive the world around us. It turns out that what we see may not always be a perfect reflection of reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. Episode 1: Uncertainty is Science's Super Power. Make It Yours, Too

    Welcome to Uncertain, a five-part podcast miniseries from Scientific American. Here we will dive head first into the possibilities of the unknowing. Over the next five episodes, I’ll be talking with people like her: explorers who work in the realm of uncertainty. Through them, we’ll discover the...

  6. Coming Soon: 'Uncertain' - A New Short Series on the Thrill of Not Knowing

    Does the word "uncertainty" make you nervous? Does it rule your life? Would you say it kinda describes the state of the world these days? Enter Uncertain, a new limited podcast series from Scientific American. In this series, host Christie Aschwanden will help to demystify uncertainty. She's…

    more
  7. Racism in Health: The Roots of the U.S. Black Maternal Mortality Crisis

    What is behind the Black maternal mortality crisis, and what needs to change? In this podcast from Nature and Scientific American, leading academics unpack the racism at the heart of the system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. Love Computers? Love History? Listen to This Podcast

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

  9. Top 10 Emerging Tech of 2021

    The World Economic Forum and Scientific American team up to highlight technological advances that could change the world—including self-fertilizing crops, on-demand drug manufacturing, breath-sensing diagnostics and 3-D-printed houses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  10. Listen to This New Podcast: The Lost Women of Science

    A new podcast is on a mission to retrieve unsung female scientists from oblivion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  11. An Unblinking History of the Conservation Movement

    In her new book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction, science journalist Michelle Nijhuis looks into the past of the wildlife conservation field, warts and all, to try to chart its future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  12. Inside the Nail-Biting Quest to Find the 'Loneliest Whale'

    It is a tale of sound: the song of a solitary whale that vocalizes at a unique frequency of 52 hertz, which no other whale—as the story goes—can seemingly understand. It is also a tale about science and ocean life, laced with fantasy and mystery and mostly shrouded in darkness. The whale, who is…

    more
  13. Listen to This: 'Hope Lies in Dreams,' a New Podcast from Nature Biotechnology

    This is a story of desperation, anger, poverty—and triumph over long odds to crack the code of a degenerative disease that had been stealing the lives of children since it was first discovered more than a century ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  14. Summer of Science Reading, Episode 4: Navigating Loss and Hope with Nature

    In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show: World of Wonders, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Vesper Flights, by Helen Macdonald....

  15. Summer of Science Reading, Episode 3: Abandoned and Underground but Not Lost

    In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show: Underland, by Robert MacFarlane, and Islands of Abandonment, by Cal Flyn. Learn…

    more
  16. Summer of Science Reading, Episode 2: Life beneath Our Feet

    In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show: Entangled Life, by Merlin Sheldrake, and Gathering Moss, by Robin Wall Kimmerer....

  17. Summer of Science Reading, Episode 1: The Many Mysteries of Fish

    In Science Book Talk, a new four-part podcast miniseries, host Deboki Chakravarti acts as literary guide to two science books that share a beautiful and sometimes deeply resonant entanglement. In this week’s show: Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller, and The Book of Eels, by Patrik Svensson.…

    more
  18. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 10: The Otherworldly Sounds of an Elk Rut

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  19. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 9: Inside a Migratory Bird Sanctuary

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  20. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 8: The Blue Oaks of Sequoia

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  21. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 7: Into the Wilderness by Canoe

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  22. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 6: Yellowstone Bison and Marsh Birds

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  23. The Deepest Dive to Find the Secrets of the Whales

    On Earth Day, Scientific American sits down with National Geographic underwater photographer Brian Skerry to talk about free diving with whales and filming the giant mammals within five meters or less. “We have to get within a few meters of our subject to get good pictures,” Skerry says. “I can't...

  24. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 5: A Northwoods Voyage

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  25. First in Space: New Yuri Gagarin Biography Shares Hidden Side of Cosmonaut

    It’s been 60 years, to the day, since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to travel to space in a tiny capsule attached to an R-7 ballistic missile, a powerful rocket originally designed to carry a three- to five-megaton nuclear warhead. In this new episode marking the 60th...

  26. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 4: Beautiful Swamp

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  27. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 3: Where Lewis and Clark Trod

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  28. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 2: Sequoia Heights

    Here is our next installment of a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to...

  29. National Park Nature Walks, Episode 1: Rocky Mountains

    Today we launch a new pop-up podcast miniseries that takes your ears into the deep sound of nature. Host Jacob Job, an ecologist and audiophile, brings you inches away from a multitude of creatures, great and small, amid the sonic grandeur of nature. You may not be easily able to access these...

  30. AI Can Now Debate with Humans and Sometimes Convince Them, Too

    Today on the Science Talk podcast, Noam Slonim of IBM Research speaks to Scientific American about an impressive feat of computer engineering: an AI-powered autonomous system that can engage in complex debate with humans over issues ranging from subsidizing preschool and the merit of space...

  31. Climate Change Could Shred Guitars Known for Shredding

    It is the wood that the rock greats have sworn by—swamp ash, in the form of their Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars—for more than 70 years. If you have ever listened to rock, you have probably heard a solid-body swamp ash guitar. But now climate change is threatening the wood that helped...

  32. On Finding Yourself in a Butterfly's Wings

    Today on the Science Talk podcast, Alexis Gambis, a New York University biologist and independent filmmaker, speaks about making Son of Monarchs, which won the 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is about a Mexican scientist who studies the evolution of...

  33. A Breakdown of Beavers

    Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb talks about his book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  34. America on Dialysis

    Kidney disease affects millions of Americans, but corporate capture of dialysis, along with disparities in treatment and transplant access, mean that not everyone's journey is the same. On this Science Talk podcast, we speak with Carrie Arnold, lead reporter in an ambitious, year-long reporting...

  35. What Science Has Learned about the Coronavirus One Year On

    About a year ago, SARS-CoV-2 (which wasn’t called that yet) was just beginning to emerge in a cluster of cases inside China. We know what has happened since then, but it bears repeating: there have been 69 million cases and more than 1.5 million deaths globally as of December 10, 2020, according…

    more
  36. 2020's Top 10 Tech Innovations

    Scientific American and the World Economic Forum sifted through more than 75 nominations for the most innovative and potentially game-changing technologies in 2020. The final top 10 span the fields of medicine, engineering, environmental sciences and chemistry. And to win the nod, the…

    more
  37. Inventing Us: How Inventions Shaped Humanity

    Materials scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez talks about her latest book The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  38. 175 Years of Scientific American: The Good, the Bad and the Debunking

    We look back at some highlights, midlights and lowlights of the history of Scientific American, featuring former editor in chief John Rennie. Astrophysicist Alan Guth also appears in a sponsored segment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  39. Bread Science: A Yeasty Conversation

    “Baking is applied microbiology,” according to the book Modernist Bread. During pandemic lockdowns, many people started baking their own bread. Scientific American contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs talks about Modernist Bread, for which he was a writer and editor. Learn more about your ad…

    more
  40. The Coming or Possibly Nearly Here Storm

    Former Scientific American editor Mark Alpert talks about his latest sci-fi thriller The Coming Storm, which warns about the consequences of unethical scientific research and of ignoring the scientific findings you don’t like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  41. COVID-19 Vaccine Ethics: Who Gets It First and Other Issues

    Contributing editor W. Wayt Gibbs spoke with Arthur Caplan, head of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine’s division of medical ethics, about some of the ethical issues that researchers have to consider in testing and distributing vaccines against COVID-19. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...

  42. How Your Homes and Buildings Affect You

    Journalist and author Emily Anthes talks about her book The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of How Buildings Shape Our Behavior, Health, and Happiness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  43. African-Americans, Nature and Environmental Justice

    Journalist Bob Hirshon reports from the Taking Nature Black conference, reporter Shahla Farzan talks about tracking copperhead snakes, and nanoscientist Ondrej Krivanek discusses microscopes with subangstrom resolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  44. How Nature Helps Body and Soul

    Journalist and author Florence Williams talks about her book The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  45. The Messenger Is the Message

    Behavioral scientist Stephen Martin and psychologist Joseph Marks talk about their book Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, and Why. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  46. Air, Sea and Space: Ocean Health, Atmosphere Insights and Black Holes

    Biological oceanography expert Miriam Goldstein talks about issues facing the oceans. Reporter Adam Levy discusses air pollution info available because of the pandemic. And astrophysicist Andrew Fabian chats about black holes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  47. Science on the Hill: Calculating Climate

    For the fourth Science on the Hill event, Future Climate: What We Know, What We Don’t, experts talked with Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti about what goes into modeling our climate—and how such models are used in addition to long-term climate prediction. Learn more about your ad...

  48. Your Brain, Free Will and the Law

    Stanford University neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky talks about human behavior, the penal system and the question of free will. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  49. No, No Nobel: How to Lose the Prize

    Physicist Brian Keating talks about his book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  50. Galileo's Fight against Science Denial

    Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio talks about his latest book, Galileo: And the Science Deniers, and how the legendary scientist’s battles are still relevant today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Type above to search every episode's transcript for a word or phrase. Matches are scoped to this podcast.

Searching…

We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.

No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.

Showing of matches

No topics indexed yet for this podcast.

Loading reviews...

ABOUT THIS SHOW

Science Talk is a podcast of longer-form audio experiments from Scientific American--from immersive sonic journeys into nature to deep dives into research with leading experts.

HOSTED BY

Scientific American

CATEGORIES

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Science Talk have?

Science Talk currently has 544 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.

What is Science Talk about?

Science Talk is a podcast of longer-form audio experiments from Scientific American--from immersive sonic journeys into nature to deep dives into research with leading experts.

How often does Science Talk release new episodes?

Science Talk releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 544 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.

Where can I listen to Science Talk?

You can listen to Science Talk on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.

Who hosts Science Talk?

Science Talk is created and hosted by Scientific American.
URL copied to clipboard!