Robots that eat other robots, and an ancient hot spot of early human relatives

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News Commentary, News, Science

4.2 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

First up on the podcast, South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind is home to the world’s greatest concentration of ancestral human remains, including our own genus, Homo, Australopithecus, and a more robust hominin called Paranthropus. Proving they were there at the same time is challenging, but new fossil evidence seems to point to coexistence. Producer Kevin McLean discusses what a multihominin landscape might have looked like with Contributing Correspondent Ann Gibbons. Next on the show, should robots grow and adapt like babies? Host Sarah Crespi talks with roboticist Philippe Wyder about a platform for exploring this idea. In his Science Advances paper, Wyder and his team demonstrate how simple stick-shaped robots with magnets at either end can join up for more complicated tasks and shed parts to adapt to new ones. Philippe Wyder was at Columbia University and the University of Washington when he completed this work, and he has now moved on to a company called Distyl AI. This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy. About the Science Podcast Authors: Sarah Crespi; Kevin McLean; Ann Gibbons 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, the academic arm of the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, and one of America's leading research medical schools.
0:11.1	What are researchers on heart health working on to transform patient care and prolong lives?
0:16.6	Find out in a special supplement to Science magazine prepared by the Icon School of Medicine
0:21.4	at Mount Sinai in partnership with science. Visit our website at www.combe.combe
0:26.5	at www.s.combe of medical research dash heart. The Icon School of Medicine in Mount Sinai,
0:33.9	we find a way. This is a science podcast for July 24th, 2025. I'm Sarah Cresby.
0:42.8	First up this week, South Africa's cradle of humankind is home to the world's greatest
0:47.9	concentration of ancestral human remains, including our own genus Homo and two others,
0:56.5	astrolopeficcus and parenthesis.
1:01.9	Proving they were there at the exact same time is challenging, but producer Kevin McLean discusses what a multi-hominant landscape might have looked like with contributing correspondent
1:06.8	Ann Gibbons.
1:08.2	Next on the show, should robots grow and adapt like babies? I talk with
1:13.3	roboticist Philip Weider about a platform for exploring this idea. In his science advances paper,
1:19.2	Weider and his team demonstrate how simple stick-shaped robots with magnets at either end
1:23.8	can join up for more complicated tasks and shed parts to adapt to new ones.
1:31.7	The idea of different species of hominins are evolutionary ancestors. Living at the same place
1:37.7	at the same time isn't a totally foreign concept. We live in an age now where you can spit in a
1:43.1	little tube and find out how much Neanderthal DNA you have. We know that an age now where you can spit in a little tube and find out how much
1:44.6	Neanderthal DNA you have. We know that there was overlap and even interbreeding in the past
1:49.7	200,000 years, but this week in science, newswriter Ann Gibbons, has a feature about some recent
1:56.5	discoveries that turned the coexistence clock way further back, two million years, to earlier
2:02.9	ancestors like Homer erectus, peranthropus, and Australopithecus. In an area of South Africa
	...

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