In an episode first aired back in 2025 on our sister show, Terrestrials, we take you on a musical journey all about beavers. Few mammals have a bigger positive impact on the planet than the beaver. With its bright orange buck teeth, the creature is an expert engineer that brings life wherever it waddles and even fights fires. Our story begins in the Bronx river, once known as the “open sewer” of New York City. After some humans decide to clean it up, we meet one of the river’s residents - José the beaver. We learn about the US government parachuting beavers out of planes into the mountains. And finally head to California where we discover how one beaver family saved acres of land from burning.
Special thanks to author Ben Goldfarb, Christian Murphy from the Bronx River Alliance and Dr. Emily Fairfax.
Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González and sound-designed by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Our team includes Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde and Tanya Chawla. Fact checking was by Diane Kelly.
Our advisors for this show were Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma, Liza Demby and Tovah Barocas.
EPISODE CITATIONS:
Books -
Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (https://zpr.io/4QLuhrSMfurk), by Ben Goldfarb
Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America (https://zpr.io/3BbaViJK8Hk3), by Leila Philip’s
Videos -
Watch the US government drop beavers out of planes (https://zpr.io/y2JJPwwyr3Bp).
Watch Leave It to Beavers (https://zpr.io/JVGZYmNCTy6h), a documentary about beavers restoring rivers and wetlands.
Articles -
How reintroducing beavers can enhance ecological health (https://zpr.io/KNxz3MtKL9sV), by Madison Pobis, Stanford Report.
Beaver Dams Help Wildfire-Ravaged Ecosystems Recover Long after Flames Subside (https://zpr.io/kAnjEUPvPUeJ), by Isobel Sandcomb, Scientific American
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How do beekeepers make a living? Why is there so much honey fraud? And why did billions of bees suddenly disappear? To find out, guest host Steve Levitt activates his hive mind.
SOURCES:
Alex Sapoznik, historian, reader in late medieval history at King’s College London.
Chris Hiatt, past president of the American Honey Producers Association, owner of Hiatt Honey Company.
Michael Roberts, founding executive director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at U.C.L.A. Law School.
Walter "Wally" Thurman, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at North Carolina State University.
RESOURCES:
"U.S. honey is increasingly supplied through imports," by David Olsen (USDA Economic Research Service, 2018).
"Economic Effects and Responses to Changes in Honey Bee Health," by Peyton Ferrier, Randal Rucker, Walter Thurman, and Michael Burgett (USDA Economic Research Service, 2018).
"The Fable of the Bees: An Economic Investigation," by Steven Cheung (The Journal of Law and Economics, 1973).
"Sugar and Sweeteners Yearbook Tables - Visualization: Meeting honey demand in the United States," (USDA Economic Research Service).
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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 many technical and bureaucratic hurdles to make that deadline.
Next on the show, Aaron Sandel, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, reports this week in Science on what looks like a chimpanzee civil war. The unprecedented violent split occurred in a large chimp colony that has been tracked by researchers for decades. Now, scientists are asking: What can the lethal division of a chimp community teach us about human conflict?
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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Nearly everything that politicians say about taxes is at least half a lie. They are also dishonest when it comes to the national debt. In this update of an episode from 2025, Stephen Dubner finds one of the few people in Washington who is willing to tell the truth — and it’s even worse than you think.
SOURCES:
Jessica Riedl, budget and tax fellow at the Brookings Institution.
RESOURCES:
"How Did DOGE Disrupt So Much While Saving So Little?" by Emily Badger, David Fahrenthold, Alicia Parlapiano, and Margot Sanger-Katz (New York Times, 2025).
"Correcting the Top 10 Tax Myths," by Jessica Riedl (Manhattan Institute, 2024).
"Spending, Taxes, and Deficits: A Book of Charts," by Jessica Riedl (Manhattan Institute, 2024).
"Why Did Americans Stop Caring About the National Debt?" by Jessica Riedl (Reason, 2024).
"A Comprehensive Federal Budget Plan to Avert a Debt Crisis," by Jessica Riedl (Manhattan Institute, 2024).
"When Does Federal Debt Reach Unsustainable Levels?" by Jagadeesh Gokhale, Kent Smetters, and Mariko Paulson (The Wharton School of Business, 2023).
"The Limits of Taxing the Rich," by Jessica Riedl (Manhattan Institute, 2023).
EXTRAS:
"Farewell to a Generational Talent," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
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How do we know what's normal in a person? In the early 1950s, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) set out to do something unprecedented. It wanted to start studying normal humans on a grand scale. It had pretty much everything in place: It had the building, it had recruited all of these amazing researchers—it was the healthy human bodies NIH didn't have. Where it found those volunteers and what happened next is the story of The Normals.
Starting on 7 April, the Science Podcast will be releasing a new three-part limited series called The Normals.
We'll hear from some of the original “Normals,” follow the program through the decades, and see what's happening with healthy human subject research today.
All Normals episodes
Appearing in this episode:
Laura Stark, history professor at the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University
Dale Horst, former Normal patient
Sarah Crespi, Science Podcast senior host and producer
Additional resources:
The Normals: A People’s History of Modern America in Five Human Experiments by Laura Stark
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We like to think that good financial decisions come down to discipline and basic math. But the psychology of money turns out to be deeply complicated. Researcher John Dinsmore explains the hidden mental biases that shape how we think about spending, borrowing, and the future. We explore how these forces can steer us toward costly mistakes — and how to guard against them. Then, on Your Questions Answered, researcher Bobby Parmar returns to consider the upsides of embracing uncertainty.
We're excited to share that Hidden Brain is coming to YouTube! Check out our trailer and subscribe so you don't miss our first three episodes, coming April 10.
Episode art by Andania Humaira for Unsplash+ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Cross Country Spotlight - highlights from Checkup on Sunday. For the first time in more than 50 years, humans will swing around the moon and head back home. It’s thrilling. It’s historic. And it’s expensive. We heard from callers —Why does space exploration matter to you? Is it worth the money? Here are some highlights from the show.
Stephen Lewis passed away early on March 31st, 2026. He appeared on Cross Country Checkup multiple times throughout his career as a politician, ambassador, and activist. Here's a selection from an interview he did back in October of 1977 when he was the leader of the Ontario NDP. The question for callers on that program was, "What do you think is the critical issue facing the next session of parliament?”
We're approaching a big moment for the Artemis II mission, as the crew prepares for their flyby around the moon. It’s not a landing, but it’s the first time in more than 50 years that humans will swing around the moon and head back home. It’s thrilling. It’s historic. And it’s expensive. Artemis has blown past budgets and timelines. And here in Canada, taxpayers will contribute more than $800 million to the Canadian Space Agency this year. So, is it worth it?Our question: Why does space exploration matter to you? Is it worth the investment?
The federal NDP is pitching public, non-profit grocery stores. They say it's to bring prices down. City governments in New York and Toronto are studying the idea while Mexico has had a government-run chain since the 1950s. Supporters say it could lower bills. Critics say it won't.Our question: Are government-run grocery stores the fix for high prices? How's the cost of food affecting you?
This week, in an episode we first aired in 2022, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s the chaos of life.
Latif, Lulu, and our Senior Producer Matt Kielty were all sitting on their own little stories until they got thrown into the studio, and had their cherished beliefs about the shape of life put on a collision course. From an accidental study of sea creatures, to the ambitions of Stephen J Gould, to an undercooked theory that captured the world’s imagination, we undo the seeming order of the living world and try to make some music out of the wreckage. (Bonus: Learn how Francis Crick really thought life got started on this planet).
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Latif Nasser, Matt Kielty, Heather Radke, Lulu Miller and Candice Wang
Produced by - Matt Kielty and Simon Adler
with help from - Arianne Wack
Original music and sound design contributed by - Matt Kilety, Simon Adler, Alan Goffinski, and Jeremy Bloom
EPISODE CITATIONS:
Articles -
Chaos in a long-term experiment with a plankton community (https://zpr.io/j6sYXKfDzPCG), by Benincà, E., Huisman, J., Heerkloss, R. et al. Nature
Chaos theory discloses triggers and drivers of plankton dynamics in stable environment (https://zpr.io/qHKENA3SJ8ML), by Telesh IV, Schubert H, Joehnk KD, Heerkloss R, Schumann R, Feike M, Schoor A, Skarlato SO. Sci Rep.
Books -
Full House (https://zpr.io/pMQZfyPcRzD4), by Stephen Jay Gould
Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? (https://zpr.io/pPVNugUKWpi4), by David M. Raup
Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline (https://zpr.io/YBjJxuXjydPN), by David Sepkoski
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life (https://zpr.io/LzfueEqUWNHb), by Nick LaneLife Itself: Its Origin and Nature (https://zpr.io/KPZf57eEVMBX), by Francis Crick
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Is it tradition … or protectionism? And what happens when the bourbon boom turns into a glut?
SOURCES:
Andrew Muhammad, agricultural economist at the University of Tennessee.
Brad Patrick, executive in residence and lecturer at the University of Kentucky Gatton College of Business and Economics, bourbon fellow at the James B. Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits.
Danny Kahn, master distiller and distillation and aging operations director at Sazerac.
Ken Troske, labor economist and chair of the economics department at the University of Kentucky.
RESOURCES:
"America's Bourbon Boom Is Over. Now the Hangover Is Here," by Aaron Tilley and Sadie Gurman (The Wall Street Journal, 2024).
Bourbon Empire: The Past and Future of America's Whiskey, by Reid Mitenbuler (2015).
"Code of Federal Regulations: Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits," (Electronic Code of Federal Regulations).
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First up on the podcast, a new path to calculating the Hubble constant. This value for the universe’s speed of expansion is typically determined in one of two ways, one favored by cosmologists, the other by astronomers. But the resulting values from these methods are consistently different. Staff Writer Daniel Clery joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss how reappearing bursts from deep space, lensed by gravity, could resolve the dispute over the speed of the expanding universe.
Next on the show, freelance producer Elah Feder talks with Mauro Costa-Mattioli, principal investigator at Altos Labs’ Institutes of Science, about tuning the “integrated stress response” (ISR) in mouse brains. The ISR pathway turns off much of protein synthesis in cells as a response to stressors such as viral infections or oxygen deprivation. The ISR is overactive in some models of cognitive dysfunction—suggesting the downregulated protein synthesis may hamper brain functions such as memory formation. In his paper, Costa-Mattioli and colleagues show turning on the ISR pathway causes memory problems in mice and turning off the ISR can restore function in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease and Down syndrome. Although this research was in mice, it suggests cognitive dysfunction associated with many different disorders may involve the ISR—making it a good therapeutic target.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
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