Three Ear-Worthy Science Podcasts

The New York Times published an article titled “Trump’s Return to Power Elevates Ever Fringier Conspiracy Theories” on May 6, 2025.

The article gives examples. “People who question whether the Earth is round — a fact understood by the ancient Greeks and taught to American children in elementary school — might have been political pariahs a decade ago. Now, they’re running local Republican parties in Georgia and Minnesota and seeking public office in Alabama.”

A prominent far-right activist, who claimed the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, were an inside job by the U.S. government, commemorated the 9/11 anniversary last year alongside President Trump.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, pledged the agency’s support last month for a fight involving so-called chemtrails, a debunked theory that the white condensation lines streaming behind airplanes are toxic, or could even be used for nefarious purposes.

Let’s face it. Science is under attack. That’s why we’re covering three superb science podcasts that promote the virtues of the scientific method, rather than whatever crackpot theory fits their paranoid view of the world.

Kudos to EarBuds Podcast Collective: The Podcast Recommendation Newsletter for recommending the science podcasts we are discussing today. The recommendation newsletter provides subscribers with five podcast episodes on a theme, each week curated by a new expert.

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New Scientist Weekly

From the evolution of intelligent life to the mysteries of consciousness, from the threat of the climate crisis to the search for dark matter, The World, the Universe, and Us is your essential weekly dose of science and wonder in an uncertain world.

Hosts Rowan Hooper and Penny Sarchet are joined each week by expert scientists in the field. They draw on New Scientist’s unparalleled depth of reporting and put the stories that matter into context.

The hosts tell us: “Feed your curiosity with the podcast that will restore your sense of optimism and nourish your brain.”

The podcast is one piece of New Scientist magazine, a popular weekly science and technology magazine, based in London, that covers international news from a scientific standpoint. It publishes English-language editions in the UK, US, and Australia, and also offers a Dutch-language edition. The magazine has been publishing issues since 1956.

The show has been around for more than 300 episodes.

One of the most recent episodes tackled the discovery of life on other planets. On the show, the hosts exclaim: “Big news has just broken — astronomers claim they’ve detected the strongest evidence for alien life yet.”

The hosts explain that astronomers studying the atmosphere of a distant planet, K2–18b, say they have detected a molecule called DMS that's only produced on Earth by living organisms. Therefore, it’s thought that life might be producing it there as well. Hear from the lead researcher on this project, Nikku Madhusudhan of the University of Cambridge, who says, “These are the first hints of an alien world that is possibly inhabited.”

In this episode, Alex Wilkins and Rowan Hooper offer a balanced perspective on the discussion and explore how far this is from definitive evidence of alien life. We also hear from Laura Kreidberg, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

Check out New Scientist Weekly. It’s science, straight up, and sliced thin.

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Science Friday

Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday is the source for entertaining and educational stories about science, technology, and other cool stuff. Science Friday is your trusted source for news and entertaining stories about science. We started as a radio show, created in 1991 by host and executive producer Ira Flatow. Since then, we’ve grown into much more: We produce award-winning digital videos and publish original web content covering everything from octopus camouflage to cooking on Mars.

Award-winning science correspondent and TV journalist Ira Flatow is the host of Science Friday, heard on public radio stations across the country and distributed by WNYC Studios. He anchors the show each Friday, bringing radio and Internet listeners worldwide a lively, informative discussion on science, technology, health, space, and the environment. Ira is also the founder and president of the Science Friday Initiative, a 501 ©(3) non-profit company dedicated to creating radio, TV, and Internet projects that make science “user-friendly.”

Flatow’s interest in things scientific began in boyhood — he almost burned down his mother’s bathroom trying to recreate a biology class experiment. “I was the proverbial kid who spent hours in the basement experimenting with electronic gizmos, and then entering them in high school science fairs,” Flatow says. Mixing his passion for science with a tendency toward being a bit of a ham, Flatow describes his work as the challenge “to make science and technology a topic for discussion around the dinner table.”

He has shared that enthusiasm with public radio listeners for more than 35 years. As a reporter and then news director at WBFO-FM in Buffalo, New York, Flatow began reporting at the station while pursuing his engineering degree at the State University of New York in Buffalo. As NPR’s science correspondent from 1971 to 1986, Flatow found himself reporting from the Kennedy Space Center, Three Mile Island, Antarctica, and the South Pole. In one memorable NPR report, Flatow took former All Things Considered host Susan Stamberg into a closet to crunch Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, proving they spark in the dark.

Check out Science Friday.

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Science In Action

Science In Action is a long-running science podcast produced by the BBC World Service, hosted by British journalists Roland Pease and Marnie Chesterton, and scientist Adam Hart, according to Wikipedia. The podcast explores the latest scientific discoveries, news, and debates, featuring interviews with researchers and experts from around the globe, according to BBC

The podcast aims to present complex scientific topics in an accessible and engaging manner, making science more approachable to a wider audience It features interviews with leading scientists and experts, providing insights into their research and perspectives on scientific issues The podcast covers a wide range of scientific disciplines, from the latest research on earthquakes to advancements in medicine and technology.

Here are two examples:

“Pain, particularly chronic pain, is hard to research. New therapeutics are hard to screen for. Patients are not all the same. Sergui Pascu and colleagues at Stanford University have been growing brain samples from stem cells. Then they began connecting different samples, each specialized to represent a specific brain region. This week they announce their most complex “assembloid” yet, one that even reacts to hot chili, passing a signal from the sensory neurons through to the thinking bits. The hope is that it can provide insights on how pain, and potential painkillers, work.”

“Human brains are notoriously large, particularly in infants. Whilst for primates, the human pelvis is quite narrow, to allow us to walk and run on two legs. This notoriously makes childbirth, well, not as straightforward as most other species. This evolutionary “obstetric dilemma” has been debated for decades. Marianne Brasil, of Western Washington University, and colleagues, have published this week a huge study of contemporary human genes and anatomies available from the UK Biobank to shed some more light on this ongoing compromise.”

Check out Science In Action.