How the mantis shrimp builds its powerful club, and mysteries of middle Earth

02/06/25 • 27 min

1 Listener

First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about recent policy stories on NASA’s reactions to President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive orders.

Next, the mantis shrimp is famous for its powerful club, a biological hammer it uses to crack open hard shells. The club applies immense force on impact, but how does it keep itself together blow after blow? Nicolas Alderete is an associate researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, but at the time of the work he was a graduate researcher in theoretical and applied mechanics at Northwestern University. He joins the podcast to discuss the makeup of the mantis shrimp’s club and how it uses “phononics”—specialized microstructures that can reduce or change high-frequency vibrations—to reduce wear and tear when smashing and bashing.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Paul Voosen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Why it pays to scratch that itch, and science at the start of the second Trump administration

First up this week, we catch up with the editor of ScienceInsider, Jocelyn Kaiser. She talks about changes at the major science agencies that came about with the transition to President Donald Trump’s second administration, such as hiring freezes at the National Institutes of Health and the United States’s departure from the World Health Organization.

Next, producer Kevin McLean talks with Dan Kaplan, a professor in the departments of immunology and dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh, about why it sometimes pays to scratch that itch. It turns out scratching may be our bodies’ end run around pests and pathogens attempting to steal blood or invade the body.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Jocelyn Kaiser

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Next Episode

Training AI to read animal facial expressions, NIH funding takes a big hit, and why we shouldn’t put cameras in robot pants

First up this week, International News Editor David Malakoff joins the podcast to discuss the big change in NIH’s funding policy for overhead or indirect costs, the outrage from the biomedical community over the cuts, and the lawsuits filed in response.

Next, what can machines understand about pets and livestock that humans can’t? Christa Lesté-Lasserre, a freelance science journalist based in Paris, joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss training artificial intelligence on animal facial expressions. Today, this approach can be used to find farm animals in distress; one day it may help veterinarians and pet owners better connect with their animal friends.

Finally, Keya Ghonasgi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks about a recent Science Robotics paper on the case against machine vision for the control of wearable robotics. It turns out the costs of adding video cameras to exoskeletons—such as loss of privacy—may outweigh the benefits of having robotic helpers on our arms and legs.

This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.

About the Science Podcast

Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christa Lesté-Lasserre; David Malakoff

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices