Science Quickly

Mar 24 2025 1754 ep. 5 mins 8.2k

Science Quickly Podcast artwork

Host Rachel Feltman, alongside leading science and tech journalists, dives into the rich world of scientific discovery in this bite-size science variety show.

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

NASA Astronauts Finally Return, Seals Hold Their Breath, and Penguin Poop Stresses Out Krill

Mar 24 2025 10 mins

Two NASA astronauts are finally back on Earth after an unexpected nine-month stay in space. What kept them up there so long? Meanwhile scientists have discovered that gray seals have a built-in oxygen gauge that helps them hold their breath for more than an hour. And in the Antarctic, researchers found that penguin poop seriously stresses out krill. Catch up on these stories and mo

Severance’s Consulting Neurosurgeon Explains the Science behind the Show’s Brain Procedure

Mar 21 2025 17 mins

What if you could completely separate your work and personal life—with the help of a brain implant? That’s the unsettling premise of Severance, the hit Apple TV+ show that just wrapped its second season. To make the science fiction feel as real as possible, the creators brought in an actual neurosurgeon, Vijay Agarwal, chief of the Skull-Base Tumor Center at Montefiore Einstein

What Everyone Gets Wrong about Colonoscopies

Mar 19 2025 10 mins

Colonoscopy gets a bad rap, but how much of what you’ve heard is actually true? In recognition of Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, we’re tackling the biggest myths that keep people from getting this potentially lifesaving screening. John Nathanson, a gastroenterologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, joins host Rachel Feltman to clear up what the misconceptions

NASA Launches New Missions, Saturn Gains Some Moons, and Whale Urine Balances Marine Ecosystems

Mar 17 2025 9 mins

The new Environmental Protection Agency administrator plans to get rid of or weaken critical environmental rules and policies, such as regulations around greenhouse gases and clean water protections. The deregulation effort follows the recent cancellation of hundreds of grants. NASA launched two missions last week. The first, SPHEREx, will make a three-dimensional map of the sky. T

Movie Magic Meets Practical Robotics for Netflix’s The Electric State

Mar 14 2025 17 mins

Dennis Hong, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered a love of robots at an early age while watching the “droid” characters in Star Wars. As director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at U.C.L.A., Hong has worked on functional humanoid robots for tasks such as firefighting and disaster relief. Then the Ru

A Tuberculosis Outbreak Exposes U.S. Postpandemic Vulnerabilities

Mar 12 2025 14 mins

It’s been five years since COVID was declared a global pandemic. Local, national and global public health agencies mobilized to contain the spread of COVID, but experts worry that backlash against measures like lockdowns have made today’s systems less capable of handling a disease of similar scale. Now the U.S. faces a tuberculosis outbreak in Kansas that underscores the import

Measles Misinformation, Ozone Recovery and Woolly Mice

Mar 10 2025 10 mins

With measles cases on the rise, experts are pushing back against misleading claims about vitamin A as a substitute for vaccination. A Supreme Court ruling has reshaped the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority over water pollution, raising concerns about future environmental protections. And in the world of biotechnology, scientists have genetically engineered woolly mice�

Author John Green on How Tuberculosis Shaped Our Modern World

Mar 07 2025 11 mins

John Green is an author, advocate and one half of the Vlogbrothers. His latest book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, comes out on March 18. Green joins host Rachel Feltman to share how tuberculosis shaped history, geography and culture. He discusses how he came to understand the inequities of tuberculosis and the dire risk public health interruptions pose to patients today. Recommende

Must Be Microplastics on the Brain

Mar 05 2025 14 mins

Not much passes into our brain from the rest of our body, to the chagrin of drug makers everywhere. So it should be cause for concern when a study found that microplastics were somehow ending up in our brain, says chief opinion editor Megha Satyanarayana. She takes a step back and brings us into the wider world of plastics and the way petroleum chemicals can become pollutants far b

How Did a Volcano Turn a Brain to Glass? Plus, Measles, Mystery Illness and Microbes

Mar 03 2025 9 mins

Officials have confirmed the first measles death in an outbreak in West Texas. A meeting to discuss which strains to focus on for next year’s flu vaccines was canceled by the Food and Drug Administration. Public health officials are investigating two outbreaks of an unknown disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Plus, new research discovers the importance of microbes in