Matching sounds to shapes, and stories from the AAAS annual meeting

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First up on the podcast, Newsletter Editor Christie Wilcox, Associate Online News Editor Michael Greshko, and intern Perri Thaler share their experiences from the AAAS annual meeting in Phoenix. Christie recorded on location with David Rand regarding his prize-winning Science paper on using a large language model to combat conspiracy theories. Check out the live version of his team’s Debunk Bot. Michael chats with host Sarah Crespi about the foggy outlook of science in the United States as funding levels and graduate positions decline, and the bright sunshine of young students presenting science posters. And finally, Perri shares her reporting on OpenAI’s contribution to theoretical physics announced at the meeting. Next on the show, we hear about the “bouba-kiki” effect—the tendency for people, no matter their language, to associate round shapes with the nonword bouba and spiky shapes with the nonword kiki. Maria Loconsole, a postdoctoral researcher in the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of Padova, joins the podcast to discuss why her team looked for this effect in freshly hatched chickens. It turns out these baby birds also make these associations, which suggests the effect has less to do with language and more to do with how vertebrate brains are set up to experience the world. 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.
0:41.3	This is a science podcast for February 19th, 2026.
0:44.3	I'm Sarah Crespi.
0:46.3	First up, science news editors and reporters
0:48.3	are going to share their experiences
0:50.3	from last weekend's AAA's annual meeting in Phoenix.
0:53.3	After chatting, two themes emerged.
0:56.3	What can AI do for research and what will the future of science look like in the United States?
1:02.7	Next on the show, we hear about the Buba Kiki effect.
1:05.2	This is a tendency for people, no matter their language, to associate round shapes with the non-word booba and spiky
1:13.3	shapes with the non-word kiki. Researcher Maria Lankonsole joins the podcast to discuss why her
1:20.0	team looked for this effect in freshly hatched chickens. Now we have reporting out of the AAAS annual meeting that happened over the past weekend in Phoenix.
1:42.1	The stated theme of the meeting was science at scale,
1:44.9	but digging into what happened with reporters and editors that attended, there were two
1:50.5	themes that came out of us, really. How AI is useful for science and influencing science.
1:56.7	And then the other theme that came out was, what's the future of the scientific enterprise in the United States?
2:03.5	We're going to start here on the AI side.
	...

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