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Scientific American
30-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Neurotic Cats, One-Eyed Aliens and Hypnosis for Liars Are among the Historical Gems Reported in
11 min read Scientific American Dive into the quirkiest and most fascinating tales from Scientific American 's 180-year archive By We're celebrating 180 years of Scientific American. Explore our legacy of discovery and look ahead to the future. Scientists are trained to thoroughly investigate their new ideas. Sometimes, however, their preliminary research can go down strange rabbit holes, leading to interpretations of evidence that are, well, misguided. In reporting on emerging science for 180 years, Scientific American has published straight accounts that were considered legitimate at the time but today seem quaint, quizzical, ridiculous—or, sometimes, prophetic. That's how science works. It evolves. As experts learn more in any given discipline, they revise theories, conduct new experiments and recast former conclusions. SciAm editors and writers have dutifully reported on it all, leaving us with some fun accounts from science history, here for you to enjoy. Know What? Your Phone Can Send Photos On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. April 6, 1895 'When the telephone was introduced to the attention of the world, and the human voice was made audible miles away, there were dreamy visions of other combinations of natural forces by which even sight of distant scenes might be obtained through inanimate wire. It may be claimed, now, that this same inanimate wire and electrical current will transmit and engrave a copy of a photograph miles away from the original. The electro-artograph, named by its inventor, Mr. N. S. Amstutz, will transmit copies of photographs to any distance, and reproduce the same at the other end of the wire, in line engraving, ready for press printing.' — 'The Amstutz Electro-Artograph,' in Scientific American, Vol. LXXII, No. 14, page 215; April 6, 1895 Steam Boilers Are Exploding Everywhere March 19, 1881 'The records kept by the Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company show that 170 steam boilers exploded in the United States last year, killing 259 persons and injuring 555. The classified list shows the largest number of explosions in any class to have been 47, in sawing, planing and woodworking mills. The other principal classes were in order: paper, flouring, pulp and grist mills, and elevators, 19; railroad locomotives and fire engines, 18; steamboats, tugboats, yachts, steam barges, dredges and dry docks, 15; portable engines, hoisters, thrashers, piledrivers and cotton gins, 13; ironworks, rolling mills, furnaces, foundries, machine and boiler shops, 13; distilleries, breweries, malt and sugar houses, soap and chemical works, 10.' — 'Whose Boilers Explode,' in Scientific American, Vol. XLIV, No. 12, page 176; March 19, 1881 Want to Crack Open a Safe? Try Nitroglycerin January 27, 1906 'Today the safe-breaker no longer requires those beautifully fashioned, delicate yet powerful tools which were formerly both the admiration and the despair of the safe manufacturer. For the introduction of nitroglycerine, 'soup' in technical parlance, has not only obviated onerous labor, but has again enabled the safe-cracking industry to gain a step on the safe-making one. The modern 'yeggman,' however, is often an inartistic, untidy workman, for it frequently happens that when the door suddenly parts company with the safe it takes the front of the building with it. The bombardment of the surrounding territory with portions of the Farmers' National Bank seldom fails to rouse from slumber even the soundly-sleeping tillers of the soil.' — 'The Ungentle Art of Burglary,' in Scientific American, Vol. XCIV, No. 4, page 88; January 27, 1906 Japanese Tissues Surprise Americans June 19, 1869 'The Japanese dignitaries, says the Boston Journal of Chemistry, who recently visited this country under the direction of Mr. Burlingame, were observed to use pocket paper instead of pocket handkerchiefs, whenever they had occasion to remove perspiration from the forehead, or 'blow the nose.' The same piece is never used twice, but is thrown away after it is first taken in hand. We should suppose in time of general catarrh, the whole empire of Japan would be covered with bits of paper blowing about. The paper is quite peculiar, being soft, thin, and very tough.' — 'Pocket Paper,' in Scientific American, Vol. XX, No. 25, page 391; June 19, 1869 Poor Pluto Is 10 Times Smaller Than Thought July 1950 'The outermost planet of the solar system has a mass 10 times smaller than hitherto supposed, according to measurements made by Gerard P. Kuiper of Yerkes Observatory with the 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain. On the basis of deviations in the path of the planet Neptune, supposedly caused by Pluto's gravitational attraction, it used to be estimated that Pluto's mass was approximately that of the earth. Kuiper was the first human being to see the planet as anything more than a pinpoint of light. He calculated that Pluto's diameter is 3,600 miles, and its mass is one tenth of the earth's. It leaves unsolved the mystery of Neptune's perturbations, which are too great to be accounted for by so small a planet as Pluto.' — 'Pluto's Mass,' in Scientific American, Vol. 183, No. 1, page 28; July 1950 Astronomers Fail to Find Factories on the Moon August 27, 1846 'By means of a magnificent and powerful telescope, procured by Lord Ross, of Ireland, the moon has been subjected to a more critical examination than ever before. It is stated that there were no vestiges of architectural remains to show that the moon is or ever was inhabited by a race of mortals similar to ourselves. The moon presented no appearance that it contained anything like the green-field and lovely verdure of this beautiful world of ours. There was no water visible—not a sea, or a river, or even the measure of a reservoir for supplying a factory—all seemed desolate.' — 'The Moon' in Scientific American, Vol. I, No. 49, page 2; August 27, 1846 Widespread Layoffs for Horses November 22, 1919 'Professional horse-breeders still boost for the business; but they are merely whistling to keep up their courage. The days of the horse as a beast of burden are numbered. The automobile is taking the place of the carriage horse; the truck is taking the place of the dray horse; and the farm tractor the place of the farm horse. Nor is there any cause to bemoan this state of affairs. We all admit that the horse is one of the noblest of animals; and that is a very good reason why we should rejoice at his prospective emancipation from a life of servitude and suffering. That, of course, is the humanitarian side of it; the business side is more to the point: the machine is going to do the hard work of the world much easier and much cheaper than it ever has been done. At least 50 percent of the horses will have been laid off by January 1st, 1920.' — 'The Draft-Horse Situation,' in Scientific American, Vol. CXXI, No. 21, page 510; November 22, 1919 Woman Can Eat after Stomach Is Removed January 15, 1898 'The catalog of brilliant achievements of surgery must now include the operation performed by Dr. Carl Schlatter, of the University of Zurich, who has succeeded in extirpating the stomach of a woman. The patient is in good physical condition, having survived the operation three months. Anna Landis was a Swiss silk weaver, fifty-six years of age. She had abdominal pains, and on examination it was found that she had a large tumor, the whole stomach being hopelessly diseased. Dr. Schlatter conceived the daring and brilliant idea of removing the stomach and uniting the intestine with the oesophagus, forming a direct channel from the throat down through the intestines. The abdominal wound has healed rapidly and the woman's appetite is now good, but she does not eat much at a time.' — 'Living without a Stomach,' in Scientific American, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 3, page 35; January 15, 1898 Thomas Edison Had a Crush on Iron January 1898 'The remarkable process of crushing and magnetic separation of iron ore at Mr. Thomas Edison's works in New Jersey shows a characteristic originality and freedom from the trammels of tradition. The rocks of iron ore are fed through 70-ton 'giant rolls' that can seize a 5-ton rock and crunch it with less show of effort than a dog in crunching a bone. After passing through several rollers and mesh screens, the finely crushed material falls in a thin sheet in front of a series of magnets, which deflect the magnetic particles containing iron. This is the latest and most radical development in mining and metallurgy of iron.' — 'The Edison Magnetic Concentrating Works,' in Scientific American, Vol. LXXVIII, No. 4, pages 55–57; January 22, 1898 Baby Bottles Are the Best Way to Drink in Space June 1959 'The problems of eating and drinking under weightless conditions in space, long a topic of speculation among science-fiction writers, are now under investigation in a flying laboratory. Preliminary results indicate that space travelers will drink from plastic squeeze bottles and that space cooks will specialize in semiliquid preparations resembling baby food. According to a report in the Journal of Aviation Medicine, almost all the volunteers found that drinking from an open container was a frustrating and exceedingly messy process. Under weightless conditions even a slowly lifted glass of water was apt to project an amoeba-like mass of fluid onto the face. Drinking from a straw was hardly more satisfactory. Bubbles of air remained suspended in the weightless water, and the subjects ingested more air than water.' — 'Space Menus,' in Scientific American, Vol. 200, No. 6, pages 82, 85; June 1959 Hypnosis Can Cure Lying but Not Lack of Ambition February 24, 1900 'Dr. John D. Quackenbos, of Columbia University, has long been engaged in experiments in using hypnotic suggestion for the correction of moral infirmities and defects such as kleptomania, the drink habit, and in children habits of lying and petty thieving. Dr. Quackenbos says, 'I find out all I can about the extent of a patient's weakness. For each patient I have to find some ambition, some strong conscious tendency to appeal to, and then my suggestion, as an unconscious impulse, controls the moral weakness by inducing the patient to further his desires by honest means. Of course, if a man has, like one of my patients, no ambition in the world save to be a good billiard player, he can't be cured of the liquor habit, because his highest ambition takes him straight into danger.'' — 'Hypnotism in Practice,' in Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XLIX, No. 1260, page 20192; February 24, 1900 Aliens Could Have 100 Eyes November 18, 1854 'Sir David Brewster, who supposes the stars to be inhabited, as being 'the hope of the Christian,' asks, 'is it necessary that an immortal soul be hung upon a skeleton of bone; must it see with two eyes, and rest on a duality of limbs? May it not rest in a Polyphemus with one eye ball, or an Argus with a hundred? May it not reign in the giant forms of the Titans, and direct the hundred hands of Briareus?' Supposing it were true, what has that to do with the hope of the Christian? Nothing at all. This speculating in the physical sciences, independent of any solid proofs one way or the other, and dragging in religion into such controversies, neither honors the Author of religion, nor adds a single laurel to the chaplet of the sciences; nor will we ever be able to tell whether Mars or Jupiter contain a single living object.' — 'Inhabitants in the Stars,' in Scientific American, Vol. X, No. 10, page 74; November 18, 1854 New Party Food: Oxygen Cakes February 2, 1907 'Smoke helmets, smoke jackets, and self-contained breathing apparatus generally are used in mines of all kinds, fire brigades, ammonia chambers of refrigerating factories and other industrial concerns. The curious gear is intended to supply the user with air for about four hours. Oxygen can be supplied from a steel cylinder. Some shipping companies absolutely refuse to carry compressed oxygen in steel cylinders, however. Now a new substance, known as 'oxylithe,' has come along. The stuff is prepared in small cakes ready for immediate use, and on coming in contact with water it gives off chemically pure oxygen.' — 'Breathing Masks and Helmets,' by W. G. Fitz-Gerald, in Scientific American, Vol. XCVI, No. 5, pages 113–114; February 2, 1907 Fake News: Wheat Buried with Mummies Can Grow July 23, 1864 'There is a popular belief that wheat found in the ancient sepulchres of Egypt will not only germinate after the lapse of 3,000 years, but produce ears of extraordinary size and beauty. The question is undecided; but Antonio Figari-Bey's paper, addressed to the Egyptian Institute at Alexandria, appears much against it. One kind of wheat which Figari-Bey employed for his experiments had been found in Upper Egypt, at the bottom of a tomb at Medinet-Aboo [Madīnat Hābū]. The form of the grains had not changed, but their color, both without and within, had become reddish, as if they had been exposed to smoke. On being sown in moist ground, on the ninth day their decomposition was complete. No trace of any germination could be discovered.' — 'Mummy Wheat,' in Scientific American, Vol. XI, No. 4, page 49; July 23, 1864 First Picturephone Requires an Enormous Pocket July 1964 'By this month it should be possible for a New Yorker, a Chicagoan or a Washingtonian to communicate with someone in one of the other cities by televised telephoning. The device they would use is called a Picturephone and is described by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which developed it, as 'the first dialable visual telephone system with an acceptable picture that has been brought within the range of economic feasibility.' A desktop unit includes a camera and a screen that is 4 3 ⁄ 8 inches wide and 5 3 ⁄ 4 inches high. AT&T says it cannot hope to provide the service to homes or offices at present, one reason being that the transmission of a picture requires a bandwidth that would accommodate 125 voice-only telephones.' — 'Picturephone,' in Scientific American, Vol. 211, No. 1, page 48; July 1964 Scientific American Returns Bribe Offered by Casino Cheat March 2, 1901 'A correspondent from the city of Boone, Iowa, sends $5 and some sketches of a table he is building, evidently intended for some gambling establishment. There is a plate of soft iron in the middle of a table under the cloth, which by an electric current may become magnetized. Loaded dice can thereby be manipulated at the will of the operator. He desires us to assist him in overcoming some defects in his design. We have returned the amount of the bribe offered, and take the opportunity of informing him that we do not care to become an accessory in his crime.' — 'A Disingenuous Request,' in Scientific American, Vol. LXXXIV, No. 9, page 135; March 2, 1901 That Giant Sucking Sound Doesn't Exist February 21, 1857 'I have been informed by a European acquaintance that the Maelstrom, that great whirlpool on the coast of Norway, has no existence. He told me that a nautical and scientific commission, appointed by the King of Denmark, was sent to approach as near as possible to the edge of the whirlpool, sail around it, measure its circumference, observe its action and make a report. They went out and sailed all around where the Maelstrom was said to be, but the sea was as smooth as any other part of the German ocean. I had been instructed to believe that the Maelstrom was a fixed fact, and that ships, and even huge whales, were sometimes dragged within its terrible liquid coils, and buried forever.' — 'Maelstrom—The Great Whirlpool,' in Scientific American, Vol. XII, No. 24, page 187; February 21, 1857 Small Jets of Air Make Cats Neurotic March 1950 'Neurotic aberrations can be caused when patterns of behavior come into conflict either because they arise from incompatible needs, or because they cannot coexist in space and time. Cat neuroses were experimentally produced by first training animals to obtain food by manipulating a switch that deposited a pellet of food in the food-box. After a cat had become thoroughly accustomed to this procedure, a harmless jet of air was flicked across its nose as it lifted the lid of the food-box. The cats then showed neurotic indecision about approaching the switch. Some assumed neurotic attitudes. Others were uninterested in mice. One tried to shrink into the cage walls.' — 'Experimental Neuroses,' by Jules H. Masserman, in Scientific American, Vol. 182, No. 3, pages 38–43; March 1950
Scientific American
23-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scientific American
Recommended Books to the Beach This Summer
Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. You might not know this, but Scientific American is a great place to go for book recommendations—and not just for nonfiction science titles either. Our team is packed with voracious readers, and we publish lists of our favorites at the end of each year. You can also get book recommendations every Friday in our daily newsletter, Today in Science. Now that summer is in full swing, we thought it would be fun to chat about some of our favorite beach reads. Today I'm joined by Bri Kane, Scientific American's resident reader, to go through some of her top picks for summer reading across a range of genres. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Bri, thanks so much for coming on to chat with us. Would you start by just telling our listeners a little bit about what you do at SciAm and, of course, how it involves books? Bri Kane: Well, my day job is helping our contractors, writers and illustrators with their contracts and their invoices, but as everyone in the office knows, I'm constantly bullying people into reading more books and shoving books in their hand. Feltman: [Laughs] Yes, and we love it. We love that you do that [laughs]. Some of our listeners who read Scientific American might already know that you can get awesome book recommendations from there—and not just nonfiction science books: we also talk about science fiction and just our favorite books of the year—so we thought we would have Bri on to talk about some exciting summer reads as a way to give you some stuff to read this summer but also introduce you to the concept of getting book recommendations from Scientific American, because our editors and reporters read a lot [laughs]. Our expertise is: we're nerds [laughs]! Kane: Yeah, I mean, Scientific American has been reviewing books for over 100 years. I've been spending a lot of time in our archive this summer in anticipation of our 180th anniversary this August, and we've had some really spicy takes on books over the years, and I'm really excited to offer listeners my own spicy takes on books now. Feltman: Amazing, so why don't we start with the more obvious Scientific American book recommendations, the low-hanging fruit: those, like, nonfiction science books that we just have to read this summer. What do you have to recommend to us in that department? Kane: So the first one is Clamor by Chris Berdik. It's a really interesting deep dive into sound and hearing in a whole new way, beyond just the decibel count: how loud our human nature is and how loud we are making nature. It's a really interesting way to think about your own hearing, and as someone who is spending a lot of time on the New York City subway and trying to go to shows with my friends on the weekend, I've never been more aware of my long-term hearing health. Feltman: Yeah, that sounds great. And I think if listeners wanna get a little bit more information before they read it, I believe you recently reviewed this one, right? Where can folks find that? Kane: Oh, yeah, I'm reviewing books every Friday in our Today in Science newsletter. Feltman: So what else do you have for us today? Kane: The next one is Empire of AI by Karen Hao. It's a really buzzy book this year, but it's really good. It's an investigative reporter's deep dive into how AI and the companies that have built it have sprung up so fast and are making millions of dollars. I need to catch up on what's going on with AI in Silicon Valley, but this is a great one. Feltman: Yeah, I love when a book comes along that allows me to rectify the fact that I have been willfully trying to know as little about a subject [laughs] as possible. AI, I haven't quite been able to do that because it, it is too involved in my life and my job and this industry, but there are definitely things in the tech world where I'm like, 'Nope.' Everything I've learned about NFTs has been against my will. So when an incredibly talented science and technology reporter comes along and is like, 'Here, this is everything you need to know about this,' I'm like, 'Okay, great. Thank you.' [Laughs] Kane: I've never been to Silicon Valley, but I still wanna know what they're up to. Feltman: [Laughs] So what other recommendations do you have? Kane: I also wanted to recommend Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp. He spent two years living out of a backpack, traveling to the smelliest places of the most beautiful countries in the world, with hidden dump sites in jungles and millions of dollars being exchanged in black market economies just to move our garbage all around the world. Feltman: Wow, that sounds great. Do you have any fiction to recommend? Kane: There's a lot of really exciting fiction coming out this year, but one I wanted to talk to you [about], Rachel, is Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle. I know we're both big fans. Feltman: I love Chuck [laughs]. Kane: Lucky Day, coming out in August, is shockingly funny, and it's really scary. It's very existential: What is the meaning of life, and if there's no meaning in life, what's my meaning, and where am I going? It's really funny and really heartfelt in a way that Chuck Tingle can really handle: making you laugh and asking those big, existential questions. Feltman: Yeah, I haven't read that one yet. I know there are, like, ARCs floating around, and I'm, like, saving it, but I, I can't wait. I love all of his other books, so really excited. Kane: Yeah, another really weird and exciting fiction book out this year is Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen. Feltman: Yeah, that one sounds really interesting. Kane: This one no one saw coming, but it's such a great take on historical fiction. I don't really read a lot of historical fiction, but I love the idea of taking a historical figure and bringing them to our modern world and [letting] the plot go from there. There's a lot of real history in this book, but Harriet Tubman has really been put on a pedestal for so long, and she's treated as a real person, with an incredible history and a searing, intense personality. It was so fun. This one is a great, really fast read—perfect for a beach day. Feltman: That sounds great. Kane: Another more interesting take on classic sci-fi is Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel. It's a really funny and cringey story about someone who desperately loves their best friend and just wants to join their really cool science-fiction writing group—except he can't 'cause he's not really a writer and he's really annoying and weird. It's so funny to be stuck in this protagonist's head who just doesn't understand why they are being the cringey one, but they love science fiction, and it's a really creative version of the story within the story. Feltman: Yeah, that one sounds really interesting. Kane: And then for my own summer reading this year, I'm working on Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood series. My book club made me read the first one, Dawn, and I absolutely fell in love. It's a really brilliant and disturbing first-contact story. I've never really seen one that handles not only who am I when I interact with an alien, but what is humanity, and where does the line between human and alien blur once we start—copulating, I'll say? Feltman: Yeah, that series has been on my list for a long time. Over the last couple of years I finally picked up Parable of the Sower, also by Octavia Butler, and I was like, wow, I always knew this was a good book; everybody says it—it's a great book, and I believed them, but it's also so prescient, you know? Her speculative-fiction writing was just brilliant and forward-looking, so I'm also looking forward to reading more of her this summer, and you have inspired me. Kane: Yeah, I mean, Octavia Butler is awesome. The hype is real. Like, if you haven't checked her out yet, I really recommend checking out the backlist, and if you're more of a straight science-fiction reader, I highly recommend Dawn and the Lilith's Brood series; it's really unique science fiction. Feltman: Amazing, well, Bri, thank you so much for coming on and giving us these amazing recommendations. Would you remind our listeners where else they can find info on SciAm 's book lovers and the amazing stuff we do [laughs]? Kane: Yeah, I'll be reviewing books every Friday in our daily newsletter Today in Science. And keep an eye out later this year for our three end-of-year books lists: our staff favorites as usual, but we also have some best-of coming out. Feltman: And I am also participating in making that list, so—I'm constantly behind on my reading assignments for Bri, but I [laughs], but I'm working on it. And if listeners do wanna sign up for Today in Science, which they absolutely should, we'll have a link in our show notes today. Bri, thank you so much for coming on today. Kane: Thanks for having me, Rachel. I can't wait to see what you end up reading this summer. Feltman: That's all for today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe to Today in Science so you can get more of Bri's recommendations. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
Scientific American
21-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Were the Wright Brothers First in Flight? Inside a 1925 Dispute
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. You may have noticed we've been taking a bit of a break from our usual Monday news roundup to make room for special episodes, including our bird flu series, as well as to accommodate some summer holidays and vacation plans for our small but mighty team. We'll be back to the news roundup format next week. For today I thought it would be fun to dip back into the Scientific American archives for a few minutes. Let's check in on what SciAm was up to exactly one century ago, in July of 1925. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. I'll start with the issue's cover story, which was contributed by the curator of marine life at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and seems to have been written, at least in large part, to introduce readers to the concept of tide pools. These are indents in rocky coastal areas that during high tide get filled with water, which remains trapped once the tide goes back out. The writer describes the abundant marine life that could be found in the high tide puddles of Woods Hole, Massachusetts and other Massachusetts tidal zones, waxing poetic about barnacles and sea worms, which he compares to 'acrobats' and 'Goddesses of the sea,' respectively. One hundred years later, scientists and laypeople alike are still quite taken with tide pools. They're really interesting environments: during low tide they're generally shallow enough that they can get quite warm, which can be challenging for the organisms living inside them. Other difficulties for these organisms include the fact that tide pools are easy for predators such as birds and crabs to access. On top of that, oxygen levels in the pool drop off between infusions of new seawater. Plus, tidal pool residents often have to withstand crashing waves when the ocean reaches them again. A lot has changed since 1925, but checking out tide pools is still a great pastime for anyone hanging around the coast. Depending on where you live, you can spot anemones, starfish, coral and even octopi, among other things. The issue also features a somewhat scathing assessment of the U.S. commercial aviation industry as it stood in 1925. According to Scientific American 's editors, someone visiting from abroad asked them whether one could travel from New York to Chicago by airplane. (He asked this question, by the way, by calling up the magazine's office. Life was hard before Google.) The editors told him that he'd have to hire his own airplane to make such a trip, which would be very expensive. But that got them thinking: Would this request have been reasonable in the traveler's home country? Thus began SciAm 's investigation into the world of commercial flight. RIP SciAM Editors, you would've loved The Rehearsal. The resulting article points out that in the U.S. in 1925 commercial aviation was mainly used to get mail from one coast to the other. Meanwhile, the article explains, countries in Europe were already in the midst of an aviation boom, using planes to move people and products all over the place. According to the article, one could travel from London to Berlin for $40, which amounts to about $753 today. That's not exactly bargain airfare, but it's not so far off from what a modern flier might pay to travel in business class, and one can imagine that most folks paying for the privilege of air travel in 1925 were either traveling for important business, flush with cash or more likely both. It's clear that the Scientific American editors were dismayed to find the U.S. lagging so far behind. In an inset titled, rather dramatically, 'Are We a Negligent People?' the magazine asks what has become of American aviation. 'We invented the airplane, neglected it, and left to Europe the task of putting it into widely extended commercial service,' the section reads probably in a transatlantic accent. 'As a people we are supposed to have a perfect genius for practising rapid-fire methods in our industrial activities. We are supposed to have developed time-saving into an exact science and have shown the world how to practise it. In the airplane, the Wrights gave us a time-saving machine which, if our business men had not been so possessed with the desire to make money and make it quickly, would today be one of our principal means of transportation for men, mail and light freight. Save for the fine work of the Army, the Navy, the Air Postal Service and a few private firms, we have done practically nothing, leaving to Europe the developing of commercial transportation.' That's not the only aviation tea in the July 1925 issue. In the magazine's 'Our Point of View' section the editors reflect on Orville Wright's decision to send the first power-driven, person-carrying aircraft to the British National Museum. If you're not familiar with this historical scandal, here's the gist: the Wright brothers are famous for making the first powered, controlled flight in 1903. But for decades the Smithsonian Institution tried to give that honor to Samuel Langley, its former secretary, whose own flying machine had crashed just days before the Wrights' aircraft succeeded. In 1914 the Smithsonian's director had Langley's aircraft retrofitted to prove it could have flown—if only it hadn't failed—and used that to award him the credit. The museum displayed the aircraft with a placard to that effect. Orville Wright was, understandably, displeased. In Scientific American 's July 1925 issue the editors say that the museum display is misleading and that Langley definitely did not beat the Wright brothers. 'The whole matter, indeed, may be regarded as very much of a tempest in a teapot,' the editors wrote, 'and it could easily be set right if the Smithsonian Institution would remove the objectionable placard and change it so that there could be no possible misunderstanding.' That wouldn't actually happen until 1928, and the Smithsonian didn't get around to apologizing until 1942. But hey, we tried! Though the U.S. was lagging behind in commercial flight, a graphic from the 1925 issue shows we were leading the charge in at least one technological arena: gabbing on the phone. The infographic contends that 62.9 percent of the world's telephones in 1925 were located in the U.S. and that the country led the way in phones per capita as well. We also came out ahead in terms of how often people got on the horn: the average person in the United States apparently sent 182 messages via phone each year, with second place going to Denmark with 123. And Russians, the editors noted, were 'content with four and one-half calls' each. Sure we're talking a lot, but are we actually saying anything? That's all for today's archival adventure. We'll be back on Wednesday to talk about some of SciAm 's hottest summer reading recommendations. And tune in next week for a return to our good old news roundup. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
Scientific American
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scientific American
Brains Process Speech and Singing Differently
Musicologists and neuroscientists have been trying to understand what turns speech into music. By , Allison Parshall, Fonda Mwangi & Madison Goldberg Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. We're wrapping up our week of summer reruns with one of my absolute favorite Science Quickly episodes. Back in October, SciAm associate news editor Allison Parshall took us on a fascinating sonic journey through the evolution of song. What turns speech into music, and why did humans start singing in the first place? A couple of 2024 studies offered a few clues. Allison, thanks for coming back on the pod. Always a pleasure to have you. Allison Parshall: Thanks for having me. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Feltman: So I hear we're going to talk about music today. Parshall: We are going to talk about music, my favorite topic; I think your favorite topic, too—I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth. Feltman: Yeah, I'm a fan, yeah. Parshall: Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I would love to know if you have a favorite folk song. Feltman: That is a really tough question because I love, you know, folk music and all of its weird modern subgenres. But if I had to pick one that jumps out that I'm like, 'I know this is genuinely at least a version of an old folk song and not, like, something Bob Dylan wrote,' would be 'In the Pines,' which I probably love mostly because I grew up kind of in the pines, in the [New Jersey] Pine Barrens, so feels, you know, appropriate. Parshall: Will you sing it for me? Feltman: Oh, don't make me sing, don't make me sing. Okay, yes. Parshall: Yay, okay! I'm sat. Feltman (singing): ' In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don't even shine / I'd shiver the whole night through / My girl, my girl, don't lie to me / Tell me, 'Where did you sleep last night?'' That's it; that's the song. Parshall: Clapping, yay! Oh, that was lovely. Honestly, I didn't know if I expected you to sing it. Feltman: If you ask me to sing, I'm gonna sing. Parshall: I'm very happy. Well, I will not be singing my favorite folk song—I don't even know if it qualifies as a folk song—but my grandma used to sing us a lullaby, and that lullaby was 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic,' like, 'Mine eyes have seen the glory,' or whatever. Yeah, so I think that's my favorite one, but I don't know if it qualifies. [CLIP: 'Handwriting,' by Frank Jonsson ] Parshall: But I'm definitely not the only person, like, asking this question; I'm asking it to you for a reason. There's this group of musicologists from around the world that have been basically going around to each other and asking each other the same thing: 'Can you sing me a traditional song from your culture?' And they're in search of the answer to this really fundamental question about music, which is: 'Why do humans across the whole world, in every culture, sing?' This is something that musicologists and evolutionary biologists have been asking for centuries, like, at least as far back as Darwin. And this year we had two cool new cross-cultural studies that have helped us get a little bit closer to an answer. And actually they've really changed how I think about the way that we humans communicate with one another, so I'm really happy to tell you about them. Feltman: Yeah, why do we sing? What theories are we working with? Parshall: Well, okay, so there's generally two schools of thought. One is that singing is kind of an evolutionary accident—like, we evolved to speak, which is genuinely evolutionarily helpful, and then singing kind of just came along as a bonus. Feltman: That is a pretty sweet bonus. Parshall: I agree. It's like we get the vocal apparatus to do the speaking, and then the singing comes along. And the people who buy into this theory like to say that music is nothing more than, quote, 'auditory cheesecake,' which is a turn of phrase that has long irked Patrick Savage. He's a comparative musicologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Patrick Savage: It's just like a drug or a cheesecake: It's nice to have, but you don't really need it. It could vanish from existence, and no one would care, you know? So that kind of pisses off a lot of us who care deeply about music and think it has deep value. But it's kind of a challenge—like, can we show that there are any real, consistent differences between music and language? Parshall: Savage took this challenge very seriously because, if you couldn't tell, he belongs to the other school of thought about music's origins: that singing served some sort of evolutionary purpose in its own right, that it wasn't just a bonus. And if that were true, if music weren't just a by-product of language but played, like, an actual role in how we evolved, you'd expect to see similarities across human societies in what singing is and how it functions in a way that is different from speech. Feltman: Yeah, that makes sense and also sounds like an extremely massive research project. [CLIP: 'None of My Business,' by Arthur Benson ] Parshall: Yeah, I don't envy them the job of having to go around and try to perfectly represent the globe, but they made a solid attempt. They got to work recruiting colleagues to submit samples of them singing a traditional tune of their choice. And through what I can only describe as a truly heroic act of coordination—I can only imagine the e-mail threads—he and a small team of collaborators received data from 75 total participants from 55 language backgrounds and all six populated continents. Feltman: Wow. Parshall: So each participant submitted four recordings: one of them singing the traditional tune, another one where they play it on an instrument, another one where they speak the lyrics and another one where they speak naturally—just basically giving a natural language sample of them describing the song that they picked. And Savage himself picked the tune that you might recognize called 'Scarborough Fair.' Let me play that for you. [CLIP: Patrick Savage sings 'Scarborough Fair'] Feltman: It's a classic choice—can't knock it. Parshall: Yeah, and I'm not immune to a little 'Scarborough Fair.' There were also more upbeat tunes that some of the English-speaking contributors submitted. [CLIP: Tecumseh Fitch sings 'Rovin' Gambler'] Parshall: It makes me want to slap my knee and, like, play a fiddle. But that one was from Tecumseh Fitch. He's an American biologist currently at the University of Vienna. And this next one that I picked to show you comes from Marin Naruse of the Amami Islands off southern Japan. She's actually a professional singer and cultural ambassador for the region. [CLIP: Marin Naruse sings 'Asabanabushi'] Parshall: That vocal-flipping technique I just thought was so cool. And I was also totally taken by this next one from Neddiel Elcie Muñoz Millalonco. She's an Indigenous researcher and traditional singer from Chiloé Island in Chile, and here she is singing a traditional Huilliche song. [CLIP: Neddiel Elcie Muñoz Millalonco sings 'Ñaumen pu llauken' ('Joy for the Gifts')] Parshall: So that's just a little taste of what this data is like. There's way more where that came from, and it's all publicly available too, so you can check it out yourself. But the researchers after this, when they got the samples, got to work analyzing it. So hats off to Yuto Ozaki of Keio University in Japan. He's the lead author of the study, and to hear Pat Savage tell it, he spent, like, months just processing these audio files full time. So by comparing the singing samples to the speech samples and then comparing those differences with each other, the researchers found that songs tended to be different than speech in a few key ways: they were slower, they were higher-pitched, and they had more stable pitches than speech. [CLIP: 'The Farmhouse,' by Silver Maple ] Feltman: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Parshall: Yeah, like, if you think about the way that maybe a lot of us think about the differences between singing and speech—which, again, we can't fully trust because there's so many different ways to sing and speak around the world—but it generally takes more time to sing a lyric than to speak it because we're lingering on each note for longer. And because we're lingering that means we're able to settle on specific pitches, like, instead of—where I'm speaking, I have this kind of low rumble that settles for less time on any specific pitch. I could also go dooo, and that is, for the most part, like, one specific pitch. It's less upsy and downsy. And then, also, we generally sing with higher pitches than we speak. Feltman: Yeah, why is that? Parshall: Maybe because when we speak we're kind of in this narrow, comfortable window toward the bottom of our vocal range. Like, right now, the way I'm speaking, I could go a little bit lower, but I couldn't go very much lower, whereas if I'm singing, I can go, like, octaves higher, probably, than the way I'm speaking right now. I think it's partly just the way that we're built, but singing opens up that upper range to us—like, you know, the mi mi mi mi mi mi mi of it all. So these differences where we're hearing, you know, slower speeds, higher pitches, those are all interesting, but they feel kind of intuitive, and I didn't have a great way to understand what they were telling me kind of as a whole until I learned about this next study that I'm going to tell you about. Feltman: Ooh, so what did they find? Parshall: So this one actually had more of a neuroscience focus, whereas the other one was a little bit more anthropological. This one was conducted by Robert Zatorre of McGill University in Montréal and his colleagues. His team has been asking basically the same question as Savage's team but in a different way. So that's: Can we find commonalities in how cultures around the world speak versus how they sing? Robert Zatorre: Do they have some kind of basic mechanism that all humans share? Or is it rather that they're purely cultural sort of artifacts—each culture has a way of speaking and a way of producing music, and there's really nothing in common between them? As a neuroscientist, what interests me in particular is whether there are brain mechanisms in common. Parshall: And Zatorre wasn't going into this from scratch. His own research and research of others had shown that the left and right hemispheres of the brain might be involved differently in speaking versus singing. Zatorre: An oversimplified version would be to say that speech depends on mechanisms in the left hemisphere of the brain, and music depends more on mechanisms in the right hemisphere of the brain. But I say that's oversimplified because it wouldn't really be correct to say that. Parshall: So what is correct, though, according to Zatorre, is that there are certain acoustic qualities common in speech that are parsed on the left side of our brain and other acoustic qualities common in singing that are parsed on the right side. Feltman: So pretty much all I know about left versus right brain is all the debunked stuff about being, like, left-brained or right-brained as a personality type. So could you unpack the actual neuroscience here a little bit? Parshall: Yeah, the whole, like, 'Oh, I'm left-brained. Oh, I'm right-brained,' that's mostly been debunked. But it's true that parts of the two sides of the brain do specialize in totally different things sometimes, and here's what that means for processing sound. [CLIP: 'Let There Be Rain,' by Silver Maple ] Parshall: Speech contains a lot of time-based, or temporal, information, meaning that the signal of what you hear, even as I'm talking now, is changing from, like, millisecond to millisecond and, importantly, that those changes are meaningful. Like, each letter or phoneme that I'm pronouncing goes by super quickly, but if I swapped one for the other—like said 'bat' instead of 'cat'—that would totally change the meaning, and that happens super quick. So those tiny time frames really matter when we're talking about speech, and that kind of quick-changing information is processed more on the left side of the brain. Singing, on the other hand, contains a lot of spectral information, which is processed more on the right side of the brain. So when I say 'spectral,' I'm referring to the spectrum of sound waves from super low pitch to, like, super high. Those aren't at all encompassing of the spectrum. Feltman: Yeah, that was the whole spectrum of sound. Parshall: I can go way lower than—yeah, it goes way lower than what you think you're hearing and way higher than what you think you're hearing. But that information of that spectrum, it kind of contains the 'color,' or the timbre, that allows you to distinguish between, for example, a saxophone and a clarinet or even, you know, your voice and my voice if you were listening. You can really hear this difference in some audio samples that Zatorre sent over from his studies. So basically, for one of these studies, they hired a soprano to sing some melodies and then used computer algorithms to mess with the quality of her voice. So here's the original audio. [CLIP: Audio of singing from a study by Zatorre and his colleagues: 'I think she has a soft and lovely voice.'] Parshall: Then they digitally altered the recordings to degrade that temporal, or timing, information. That's kind of like the musical equivalent of slurring your speech or the audio equivalent of making an image blurry. They basically make all of those time cues that are so important for speech blur into each other. [CLIP: Same audio from the study with temporal degradation] Feltman: Ooh, freaky. Parshall: Yeah, it's, like, delightfully alien, I would say. You'll notice that you actually can't hear the lyrics, but you can still kind of hear the melody, right? You could probably distinguish it from another melody, and that's not the case when you do something different and instead of the temporal information, you degrade the spectral information—that's the sound's color. So here's what it sounds like when they take out all that spectral information. [CLIP: Same audio from the study with spectral degradation] Feltman: Whoa. Parshall: Yeah, like, the only thing I can compare it to are, like, the Daleks from Doctor Who. Feltman: Totally, yeah. Parshall: I love it, and I hate it. So in this one you can hear the lyrics, but you can't hear the melody at all. So it's kind of the inverse. And you can hear that both of these dimensions of sound—the temporal and the spectral—are really important for both song and speech. Like, you would not want to listen to my voice for very long if I sounded like a Dalek. But generally speech relies more on that temporal information, and song relies more on the spectral information. Feltman: And this is true across different cultures, too? Parshall: Yeah, so in a study published this summer, Zatorre's team found that this distinction holds true across 21 cultures, and they surveyed urban, rural and smaller-scale societies from around the world. And despite how different some of these languages and singing traditions are from each other, it held true that songs had more spectral information and speech had more temporal information overall. And so, since we can link these differences to different methods of processing in the brain, there's actually a potential biological mechanism in humans that separates music from speech. Zatorre: So the story we're trying to tell is that we have two communication systems that are kind of parallel: one is speaking; [the] other is music. And our brains have two separate specializations: one for music, one for speech. But it's not for music or for speech per se; it's for the acoustics that are most relevant for speech versus the acoustics that are most relevant for music. Parshall: Yeah, and it kind of makes sense to me that we'd have these two parallel communication systems because they basically allow us two separate channels to convey totally different types of information. And, like, imagine how long this podcast would be if I sang everything instead of speaking it. And then imagine that I couldn't incorporate language at all, like, via lyrics, and I just had to do it with notes. That's just impossible—unless we came up with some elaborate code. But then also imagine trying to sit here and explain to me your favorite song in words and all the feelings it brings up for you and why you love it. Like, could you do that? Feltman: Probably not. It would be really hard. Parshall: Probably not. It's conveying—there's, like, something extra that you're conveying with song that just resists being conveyed via speech. So all that to say, 'auditory cheesecake,' quote, unquote—music as this little accidental cherry on top of language—that doesn't seem to be the right way of thinking about why we sing. Here's Savage again. Savage: It suggests that it's not just a by-product—like, there's something that is causing them to be consistently different in all these different cultures. Like, they're kind of functionally specialized for something. But what that something is is very speculative. [CLIP: 'Those Rainy Days,' by Elm Lake ] Parshall: That speculative X factor that he's talking about, that reason why we evolved to sing, if you had to come up with a theory, Rachel, what would it be? Feltman: I mean, when I think about reasons to sing that I, like, can't imagine humanity just not doing, I don't know—I picture people soothing babies; people celebrating with each other; people, like, engaging in spiritual practice; like, standing outside a crush's window with a boom box. Singing is a thing we do to get each other's attention and share an emotional experience. Parshall: Yeah, I think that sharing feels really important, and I feel like I have a similar intuition. And that's basically what Savage thinks, too: that music has played some sort of social role. So that could be really wholesome, like the boom box or us bonding together, singing songs around a campfire. Or—I mean, it could be less wholesome. It could be, like, us singing war songs before we do battle with our enemies. This is one of those evolutionary hypotheses, as many of them are, that it's kind of impossible to fully prove or disprove. It's really hard to get evidence that would be able to say, 'Oh, we sing because it, you know, bonds us closer together.' But it's very compelling. Feltman: Yeah. So just to recap: we know that we have these two very different ways, from a neuroscience perspective, of conveying information. We've got this, you know, melodic musical, and then we've got this, like, very straightforward speech. And sure, we can't go back in a time machine and ask, you know, our distant ancestors, 'Why're you singing? Why're you doing that?' So what's next? How do we move this research forward? Parshall: It can be a little tricky, obviously, to come up with specific proof, but one of Savage's co-authors is hoping to find some clues in an upcoming experiment. So her name is Suzanne Purdy, and she's a psychologist also at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. And she's involved with something called the CeleBRation Choir. And this choir is super cool because it's made up of people [with communication difficulties, including people] who have what's called aphasia, so their ability to speak has been impacted by events like a stroke or like Parkinson's. But one of the very interesting things about aphasia is, oftentimes, people's ability to sing remains intact. So that might be because it is relying on different parts of the brain—you know, more varied parts of the brain—than speech does. Suzanne Purdy: When being with the CeleBRation Choir, with people struggling to communicate verbally, but then hearing them sing, [it's] so beautiful and amazing. And our research has shown how it's therapeutic in terms of feeling connected and valuable and able to be in a room and impress people with your singing, even when something terrible has happened in your life. Parshall: So I actually have a recording to share with you of the choir because I think it's super cool. [CLIP: The CeleBRation Choir sings 'Celebration,' by Ben Fernandez ] Parshall: So partly inspired by her experiences with the CeleBRation Choir, Purdy and her team are currently developing an experiment where they test whether singing can actually make us feel more connected to each other. So they're going to bring in students and have them sing together and then compare that to the experiences of students who have just talked together in a group. And then they'll measure their feelings of connectedness to each other. And they're planning to actually do this cross-culturally, too. So they're going to do this for groups of Māori students, Māori being the Indigenous people of New Zealand, and then students of European descent to see if there are any cultural differences in the impact of singing together. Purdy: It's the kind of thing that, you know, companies do with team-building exercises. They don't usually get people to sing, do they? But they do get people to problem-solve or to talk together. So this—part of this next phase is: Can you achieve the same level of social cohesion through just coming together with a shared purpose without singing? Or does the singing add a special quality, and is that more effective? Parshall: Okay, I can't tell if the idea of a company team-building choir sounds fun or like the worst idea ever, but I do have a feeling that it would be kind of effective. Feltman: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's not so different from a karaoke night. And, you know, what brings people together more than a karaoke night? Parshall: That's a good point. Why did I not think of karaoke night? Okay, we're gonna have to go to our boss with this one. I think it could be really fun. It is just still a hypothesis whether music really did evolve—or singing, specifically, really did evolve to bond us together. Like, again, this is not something we have necessarily a lot of proof for. And even if this study that Purdy is developing comes up and shows, you know, these groups of students did feel more bonded together when they sang versus when they spoke, that's still only just, like, a little bit of clues and proof. Feltman: Right, that could just show that we gained this incredible benefit from singing over time. It doesn't necessarily tell us that that's why it evolved. Parshall: Right. But then I'm always fighting against myself—the instinct to be like, 'Oh, but it's true,' because it feels true, right? Feltman: It does feel true. Parshall: Like, based off of my personal experience and a lot of people around me, it feels like, you know, when you're in a concert and you look around and you feel, like, the oneness of the world when you're all singing together in this packed stadium, music, regardless of what science shows, it does have these effects on us personally. Feltman: Yeah, and we can definitely get a better understanding of why it's so important. Parshall: Yeah, like, regardless of how we got here, regardless of how we evolved, we can still look at the impact it has on us now. Feltman: It's interesting, I've been thinking this whole time—my sister does shape-note singing, which is this old musical notation style that was basically created so that people who were not otherwise musically literate could, like, all come and sing together in a group at, like, a moment's notice. And it has, like, a big following these days, and people just get together and open these giant old books of, like, mostly Shaker songs and stuff. And I find the shape-note stuff very confusing. It's very confusing until you learn it, and then it's allegedly easier than reading other music. Feltman: But yeah, it's just amazing how connected people feel within, like, five minutes of sitting down together and singing together. We don't need researchers to tell us that that's a universal experience, but I think it's awesome that they're asking these questions to help us understand, you know, just why music is so important to us. Allison, thank you so much for coming in to chat about this and for sharing all of these lovely musical snippets. I think that was my favorite part. Parshall: Thank you so much for having me. Feltman: That's all for today's episode, and that's a wrap on our week of greatest hits. We'll be back next week with something new. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. Today's episode was reported and co-hosted by Allison Parshall. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news. For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great weekend!
Scientific American
18-06-2025
- Health
- Scientific American
Exercise Isn't Just for Your Muscles—It's Great for Your Gut, Too
We've all heard the saying 'you are what you eat'—especially when it comes to gut health. But what if your workout matters just as much as your diet? By , Lydia Denworth, Fonda Mwangi & Alex Sugiura This episode was made possible by the support of Yakult and produced independently by Scientific American's board of editors. Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Over the last couple of decades, few science topics have made a bigger mainstream splash than the microbiome. Our growing understanding of the microbes that live on us, in us and around us has scientists analyzing—and trying to tweak—colonies from our armpits to our genitals. But when most of us hear the word 'microbiome' our minds go first to the diverse ecosystems found within our guts. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The communities of bacteria, archaea, viruses and fungi that live in our digestive tracts have a huge impact on us. Research shows that our gut microbiomes influence how well we digest our food and absorb nutrients, and an imbalance in the microorganisms of the gut is associated with conditions such as type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic liver disease. Some research even suggests that our gut microbiomes are tied to cognitive function and mental well-being: scientists are exploring how autism spectrum disorder, depression, anxiety, PTSD and more could be connected to the tiny creatures that live inside us. But this relationship isn't one-sided: we also have a lot of power over our gut microbiomes—and that extends beyond our food choices. Our guest today is Lydia Denworth, a contributing editor for Scientific American. She writes SciAm 's Science of Health column. In the magazine's June 2025 issue she reported on the surprising link between gut microbes and exercise. She's here today to tell us more. Thanks so much for coming on to chat with us today. Lydia Denworth: It's good to be here. Feltman: So you recently wrote in your column about the microbiome, which, of course, our listeners have heard a lot about, but I think people tend to think about their microbiome and think about yogurts and probiotics. But you wrote about the connection to exercise. How did you first come across that connection? Denworth: I was at a science journalist conference, and I heard Marc Cook talk—he's one of the people I interviewed for that column—and he's a researcher at North Carolina [Agricultural and Technical] State University, and he studies exercise in the microbiome, and it was exactly what you just said that got him interested. I mean, everybody thinks about diet, probiotics, things like that. And back about 15 years ago he was at the University of Illinois [Urbana-Champaign] getting his Ph.D., and the idea that there might be a link between exercise and microbes in your gut was really just not a thing that anybody was thinking about. But he did know that people with inflammatory bowel disease, specifically ulcerative colitis, benefited from exercise. So he thought, 'Well, let me investigate, maybe, what that's about.' So he stuck mice on wheels—you know, mice like to run on wheels—and he found that the mice that voluntarily exercised were protected against a mouse version of colitis and the ones that did not run were not. And so it kinda started there, with this idea that, 'Oh, there's more to look at.' Feltman: So now, you know, more than a decade later, what do we know about the connection between exercise and the gut microbiome? Denworth: We know a couple of things. So one thing is: in people who are regular exercisers or who are elite athletes the diversity and abundance of microbes in your gut is greater, but more important than that is this question of, 'What do the microbes actually do?' And that's where the researchers have really kind of gone down the rabbit hole and said, 'Well, why would it be that exercise is improving your fitness?' And what they found is that exercise boosts the production of microbes that produce something called short-chain fatty acids. And that's a simple molecule, but it's something that helps with your gut health. It helps reduce inflammation. It is part of your healthy metabolism. So the metabolism makes energy, right, and when you exercise and then you boost these short-chain fatty acids, especially one called butyrate, it improves all these processes that your body needs to do to stay healthy. Feltman: Can you tell us a little bit more about what the functional differences in the microbiomes of people who are getting this boost from exercise versus not? You know, what does that diversity of microbes do for us? Denworth: There's a lot we don't know yet about exactly what it is that the microbes are doing versus the other benefits of exercise, so there are open questions there. But having this healthy, active microbiome that they see in athletes and from exercise seems to increase your capacity for exercise. It probably works in both directions—it's bidirectional. So the research on the other side of it is really only in mice so far. But they do find that if, for instance, you give mice antibiotics that kill off the bacteria in their guts, they are less likely to exercise and they reach exhaustion faster. They also find that a healthy microbiome seems to contribute to muscle development—and then vice versa, right: you don't develop as many muscles as effectively if you don't have a healthy microbiome. And so all of that is in the beginning stages of research, but it—it's intriguing, right? Feltman: Yeah, and do the researchers behind this have any specific recommendations for what kind of exercise or how much is gonna, you know, help your microbiome out? Denworth: So far the research doesn't really change what the standard recommendations are, which is that we engage in about 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week or 75 minutes of intense exercise a week. The research does suggest that it's aerobic exercise more than strength training that is having this effect—although it's such early days and there have been so few studies of other kinds of exercise other than aerobic that I think we don't know for sure that it's not happening with other forms of exercise, but aerobic exercise is where it's at. The recommendations are the same; it's just more reason to get out there and gut out your workout [laughs]. Feltman: [Laughs] Absolutely. And remind us what's the general advice for supporting a good, diverse, healthy gut microbiome? Denworth: Well, diet is the number one thing that affects your microbiome—more powerfully than exercise, I should say that—and fiber in particular is really important for having a good, healthy gut. But then exercise—probably combining a healthy diet that includes a lot of fiber and doing some good aerobic exercise is going to be the best combination that's gonna give you the healthiest gut. Feltman: Great, so just more motivation to do the things that we already know are good for us [laughs]. Denworth: [Laughs] That's exactly it. Feltman: Well, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been great. Denworth: Thanks for having me. Feltman: That's all for today's episode. For more on this topic, check out Lydia's column online or in print. If you're not already reading Scientific American 's print magazine, you can probably find it on a newsstand near you—or go to to subscribe. If you like this show, you'll absolutely love the rest of the Scientific American family. As for Science Quickly, we'll be back on Friday to talk about an insidious new trend in men's health. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
