On this week’s show: how the Black Death may have transformed medieval societies in sub-Saharan Africa, and evidence for human involvement in the extinction of megafauna like giant sloths

On this week’s show: cheap sensors that can monitor a building’s structural integrity after an earthquake, and a new method to determine the paleoelevation of the Tibetan Plateau

On this week’s show: We go to the AAAS annual meeting to talk communication disorders, we use satellites to spy on modern slavery, and we read a book on the neuroscience of addiction.

On this week’s show: Chaos puts a limit on how far out we can predict weather, and why researchers are using autonomous robots to sample phytoplankton off of Norway’s coast

On this week’s show: Can we improve the potato? Plus, a pill that flips over and injects medicine in the stomach.

On this week’s show: we check in on the progress of microbiome research in the clinic and the mysterious properties of a gene that triggers sleep

On this week’s show: Studying pollution from cannabis farms in the United States is difficult because of federal restrictions, and how processed foods complicate signaling from the gut to the brain

On this week’s show: Researchers combat conspiracy theories during Ebola outbreaks, and new data from Saturn’s Cassini mission reveal how that planet’s interior differs from fellow gas giant Jupiter’s

On this week’s show: why Massive Open Online Courses now offer professional master’s degree programs, and how a blue pigment in the dental plaque of a medieval woman alludes to women’s early involvement in manuscript production

On this week’s show: The world debates open-access mandates, and quantifying the hyper intense kill-rate of the Holocaust using railway transport records