Oct 8

A moon heist, lava fountains, and predicting doomsday

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Robin George Andrews describes Japan’s upcoming Martian Moons eXploration mission that will nab a sample from the surface of Mars’s moon Phobos. The material, due back to Earth in 2031, could reveal the origins of this mysteri ... Show More

47m 40s

Oct 1

Stimulating the brain for women’s health, and the long-term implications of menopausal symptoms

First up on the podcast, Staff Writer Jennie Erin Smith joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about new research on how noninvasive technologies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation are being used in the context of women’s health to tackle everything from postpartum depression to ... Show More

37m 23s

Sep 24

Studying the changing of AI language inside swarms, how orangutans learn to forage, and an astrophysicist talks about loss

First up on the podcast, Staff Reporter Tom Howarth joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the language artificial intelligence agents evolve inside their swarms. Next on the show, producer Elah Feder talks with Revathe Thillaikumar, a behavioral ecologist and postdoctoral fellow ... Show More

48m 42s

Apr 2023

Are Rats Running This Podcast?

This week, New York City crowned Kathleen Corradi its first rat czar. The new position is part of a multipronged approach from city officials. Reporter and New Yorker Anil Oza called up rodentologists to understand — does their approach withstand the test of scientific research? ... Show More

14m 4s

Dec 2024

The New Conservationists: AI is Making Meaning from the Sounds and Visuals of Wildlife (Part 2)

Ashleigh Papp, an animal scientist turned storyteller, takes us on into the field. Conservationists and animal behaviorists were once restricted to wildlife data gathered manually. Now new technologies are expanding the amount of passively collected data—and machine learning is h ... Show More

17m 55s

Dec 2024

The New Conservationists: AI is Making Meaning from the Sounds and Visuals of Wildlife (Part 2)

Ashleigh Papp, an animal scientist turned storyteller, takes us on into the field. Conservationists and animal behaviorists were once restricted to wildlife data gathered manually. Now new technologies are expanding the amount of passively collected data—and machine learning is h ... Show More

17m 55s

May 2024

How to Protect Wildlife without Leaving Home

Whether you have a large yard or a tiny planter, there are ways to use your outdoor space to protect wildlife. Senior news reporter Meghan Bartels takes us through what you can do, or stop doing, to make your yard and home friendlier to local critters. Related Reading: – 8 Ways ... Show More

7m 54s

Jul 2023

The science of sound

Scientists, conservationists and other researchers are using audio soundscapes in innovative ways to record the natural world in rich detail and help develop strategies to preserve it. Gaia Vince visits the Dear Earth exhibition at London’s Southbank Centre where she interacts wi ... Show More

35m 39s

Jul 2024

Digital Dr. Dolittle: decoding animal conversations with artificial intelligence (reprise)

Artificial Intelligence is making the stuff of science fiction a science reality, changing how humans interact with the world. It could also change the way we interact with wildlife, giving us the ability to talk to animals...but are we ready? On this episode Chris talks to Aza R ... Show More

50m 2s

Jun 2023

Rethinking The Lab Rat

For generations, scientists have leaned on seven key species, including rats and mice, for research. They're called model organisms and they've been standardized over the year — removing as much individuality as possible. But as research questions become more complicated, some re ... Show More

12m 39s

Jul 2024

Protecting wildlife from human activity

From the way we catch food, to how we generate energy, human activity inevitably impacts on wildlife and the environment in unintended ways. So this week we’re looking at ways to reduce this collateral damage. We visit a windfarm in Finland that's using AI to predict bird flight ... Show More

22m 59s

Sep 2023

Coming soon: Can AI help us speak to animals?

<p>Subscribe now to the FT's Tech Tonic podcast: Some scientists believe that rapid advances in artificial intelligence may also hold the key to decoding animal sounds, allowing us to ‘translate’ them into human language. In a new season of Tech Tonic, FT innovation editor John T ... Show More

1m 9s

Dec 2021

What Does A Healthy Rainforest Sound Like? (encore)

On a rapidly changing planet, there are many ways to measure the health of an ecosystem. Can sound be one of them? Researcher Sarab Sethi explains how machine learning and soundscape recordings could be used to predict ecosystem health around the world.See pcm.adswizz.com for inf ... Show More

12m 46s

How rat poison endangers wildlife, and u...