Weekly: Trump’s war on science; How whale song resembles human language; How to boil the perfect egg with science

每周:特朗普的科学战争; 鲸鱼歌与​​人类语言如何相似; 如何用科学煮完美的鸡蛋

New Scientist Podcasts

科学

2025-02-07

23 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Episode 288 President Trump has launched what’s being described as an all-out assault on science and medicine. Given America’s impact on global science, this affects the entire world. Web pages referencing climate change and global warming are being deleted, words like “transgender” are being banned from medical publications and USAID has been labelled evil. As access to fundamental scientific information is put at risk, we find out how anxiety is rising among US scientists - and what it means for the rest of us. Two studies of whale songs have uncovered striking similarities to the patterns of human language. In one study, researchers analysed and encoded around 150 unique sounds used by the males in their songs, while another study examined the length of whale “words”. What does this say about whale language - will we be able to understand what they’re saying one day? Want to boil the perfect egg? Got 30 minutes to spare? Researchers have been rigorously testing the most scientific way to boil an egg, to ensure perfect consistency of the white and yolk - and it seems they hit the jackpot. Alex Wilkins tests the method for himself and compares it to your regular 7 minute job. The question is, is this new method worth the extra effort? Hosted by Rowan Hooper and Chelsea Whyte, with guests James Dinneen, Grace Wade, Nancy Maclean, Gretchen Goldman, James Woodford and Alex Wilkins. To read more about these stories, visit https://www.newscientist.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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单集文稿 ...

  • Welcome to New Scientists Weekly.

  • We're going to start with two important messages.

  • First, you'll hear from historian Nancy Maclean from Duke University.

  • What we are experiencing now in the United States under the second Trump administration is deadly serious.

  • It is a war on science knowledge and expertise in general,

  • and it is a war that is enlisting every lever of executive power available.

  • As a US Historian, I can tell you that we have never seen anything akin to this before in audacity and scale,

  • even at the height of the Cold War red scare.

  • And now you're going to hear Gretchen Goldman

  • and she's president of the Union of Concerned scientists in Washington D.C.

  • we.

  • Are witnessing an all out assault on federal science in the United States.

  • Long standing legal precedent, policies, processes and norms are all being ignored.

  • Critical government functions are being disrupted and the scientific community is reeling.

  • On the show this week, we're going to get into what's at stake in the U.S.

  • i'm Rowan Hooper, joined in New York this week by Chelsea White.

  • Hey, Chelsea.

  • Hi.

  • Yes, on the show this week, we're going to talk about the chaos engulfing science here in the US and we.

  • Should say it's happening in the US but it affects the rest of the world.