This is the science podcast for May 8th, 2025. I'm Sarah Crespi. First up, producer Megan Cantwell

worked with the News from Science team to review how the first 100 days of the Trump administration

have impacted science. In the segment, originally produced for video, we hear about how the

workforce,

biomedical research, and global health initiatives all face widespread, perhaps permanent damage.

Appearing in this segment are news staffers David Malikoff, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Rachel Bernstein.

Next on the show, analysis of ancient music from Greece and Rome shows different musical notation styles for different instruments.

Researcher Dan Bassiou joins me to share some clips and also to talk about how the music of the time reflected the philosophy of the time.

There's been a constant stream of news in the first 100 days of the Trump administration.

I'm Megan Cantwell, a producer here at Science, and I made a video featuring editors and reporters from our news staff that go over some of the impacts to science so far.

I turned first to one of the editors who's been guiding coverage on this, David Malikoff.

The first 100 days of the Trump administration's been guiding coverage on this, David Malikoff.

The first 100 days of the Trump administration have been an absolute whirlwind of chaos, confusion, and frankly also fear in the scientific community.

Every day, it's something new, it's something different. It's almost endless.

But as a new staff, we sort of focused on three broad areas. One is the impact on the scientific workforce, both folks who work in the federal

government, but also scientists who are supported by federal money. There's no question that this

administration has acted much more aggressively to reduce the size of the federal workforce than

almost any previous administration. Back in February, when we size of the federal workforce than almost any previous administration.

Back in February, when we saw the first federal workforce cuts, they really went across the board.

Within HHS, there's the National Institutes of Health, CDC and FDA, all of them saw cuts,

and then also at a lot of the land management agencies, USGS Forest Service.

Rachel Bernstein's an editor for the career section.

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