A Heroic Effort to Measure Helium

A small clinical trial suggests that psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, may help some people with anorexia when combined with intensive therapy. Science Quickly host Rachel Feltman speaks with health journalist Alexandra Pattillo about what early research ha ...  Show more

Astrophysicist, folklorist and author Moiya McTier joins Science Quickly to discuss her new book Mothers of Invention, a sweeping look at the history of human creativity. From the Greek muses and the invention of writing to the rise of generative artificial intelligence, McTier e ...  Show more

Back in January, we spoke to a scientist at the National Ignition Facility about how close they were to achieving what’s been called “one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century.” This week, they announced they’ve finally done it. A version of this episode ori ...  Show more

The research focused on figuring out what enables certain sperm to gain some competitive advantage over millions of others fighting for the same prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices 

The smaller the thing you look at, the bigger the microscope you need to use. That’s why the circular Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where they discovered the Higgs boson is 27 kilometres long, and its detectors tens of metres across. But to dig deeper still into the secrets of t ...  Show more

Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, celebrates the art and science of the chemical elements. Today he looks at helium. Helium is a finite resource here on Earth and many branches of science need it. Doctors need it to run MRI machines to d ...  Show more