The Normals | Episode 2

First up on the podcast, quantum computers require extremely low temperatures—less than 1°C away from absolute zero. But getting down to those temperatures has usually required dilution fridges using the extremely rare and increasingly expensive isotope helium-3. Freelance scienc ...  Show more

First up on the podcast, freelance science journalist Hannah Richter joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss NASA’s plans to send a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars in less than 3 years. Having not launched a fission reactor to space in more than 60 years, the organization faces man ...  Show more

The chikungunya virus is rapidly spreading in China. Could it make its way to the U.S.? Meanwhile in Alaska a glacial lake outburst flooded the nearby Mendenhall River to record levels. And in Ethiopia fossilized teeth reveal a new species of Australopithecus—one that possibly li ...  Show more

Fareed examines two emerging technologies that are already changing life as we know it—CRISPR gene editing and artificial intelligence—in interviews with two women who pioneered them: UC Berkeley’s Jennifer Doudna and Stanford’s Fei-Fei Li. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ...  Show more

In this installment of Best Of The Gist, upon hearing the news that researchers had discovered four previously unknown colonies of emperor penguins with the help of satellite imagery, we give to you Mike's 2017 interview with penguin researcher Michelle LeRue. Then we replay Mike ...  Show more

Tens of thousands of animal species are facing extinction, mostly because of human activity. But thanks to conservationists, there are some animals that are making a comeback. This is part four of “The New Conservationists,” a four-part series about the evolving world of animal c ...  Show more