Disembodied human brains, immortal bits of sea cucumber, and fame in Galileo’s time

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First up on the podcast, a company is using whole brains—maintained with specialized life support—to study new drugs. Freelance science journalist Sara Reardon joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about the advantages and ethical considerations of keeping brains intact but inactive. Next on the show, when some lizards lose their tails, they might regenerate new ones. But what happens to the old tail? Whereas a castoff lizard tail quickly decomposes, this isn’t the case for the castoff tube feet of the sea cucumber, Psolus fabricii. Sara Miller Jobson, a Ph.D. student at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, describes how these “living” limbs healed after amputation and then survived for more than 3 years in just seawater. Their survival in such simple conditions, while maintaining a complex tissue with a functioning immune response, could make amputated tube feet a useful model system for studying regeneration. Finally this week, the first in our book series on science biographies. Books host Angela Saini talks with historian Anna-Luna Post about her recent book, Galileo’s Fame: Science, Credibility, and Memory in the Seventeenth Century, which explores how fame shaped the scientific fortunes of Galileo Galilei. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is supported by the Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, an international leader in research, education, and patient care.
0:07.9	The medical and graduate school is part of the Mount Sinai Health System, one of the largest academic medical systems in New York City.
0:15.6	Ranked among the top recipients of NIH funding, researchers at Mount Sinai have made breakthrough discoveries advancing
0:21.9	the health of patients. Here, clinicians and scientists push the boundaries in cardiology,
0:27.5	cancer, immunology, neuroscience, genomics, geriatrics, environmental medicine, and artificial
0:34.0	intelligence. The Icon School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we find a way.
0:42.3	This is a science podcast for May 28th, 2026. I'm Sarah Crespi. We've got a little bit of a theme going on this week.
0:50.3	Keeping things alive or semi-alive when maybe they shouldn't be?
0:55.0	First, it's whole brains in a tub.
0:58.0	Freelancer Sarah Reardon talks about researchers keeping intact brains on life support to test drugs,
1:05.0	and then the ethical considerations of these kinds of studies.
1:09.0	After that, we're talking about keeping an amputated tube foot
1:12.7	from a sea cucumber alive for three years in seawater. I talk with researcher Sarah Jobson
1:19.0	about why her lab looked into this and what we can learn from such zombofied limbs. Finally,
1:25.4	this one's a little stretch on the theme, but it is the first in our
1:28.4	26 book series. We're doing science biographies this year, and this one's on keeping
1:33.8	Galileo's legacy alive. Books host Angela Saney talks with historian Anna Luna Post about her
1:39.9	book on how fame-shaped scientific fortunes of Galileo.
1:50.1	This week in science, freelance science journalist Sarah Reardon talks about using whole brains on a form of stripped down life support to test drugs.
1:54.0	And she heard about some of the ethical considerations that come along with these types of
1:57.6	studies during a fellowship at MIT through the Knight Science Journalism
2:01.6	Program. We should probably hit right away on this very confusing aspect of this as saying
	...

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