12 of the best interviews scientific American Done in 2025—on AI, headaches, and more
From an interview with author Mary Roach to a conversation with cardiologist Eric Topol, here are the 12 most eye-opening conversations of this year
scientific American Spends a lot of time asking questions of authors on their new science-related books, of scientists in the lab on their latest discoveries, and of experts who help us develop a deeper understanding of these discoveries. Here are our 12 favorite interviews we did this year. They answer the question “Should ChatGPT be your therapist?” Raise questions and answer. “Why haven’t we fixed the headache yet?”
space
How many moons?
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Astronomer Edward Ashton helped discover that Saturn has 192 more moons than we thought. he told scientific American All about how to find those hidden natural satellites and about a technique called “shifting and stacking,” which is used to create a quasi-flip-book of images of potential moons.
CO’s story2
Physics senior desk editor Lee Billings talks to science journalist Peter Brannon about his latest bookCO’s story2 everything has a story, To discuss how the same chemical compound is a harmful pollutant and “essentially the main thing that makes Earth a special, habitable place.”
life’s journey in space
Author Caleb Scharf discusses what he calls “dispersal”, or the study of how life will have “increasingly different trajectories” as a result of space travel. Scharf told us he’s “thinking of our emerging space age as another kind of evolutionary leap forward.”
seeing the aurora from space
In April, four passengers aboard a SpaceX rocket circled the planet from pole to pole, giving them a potentially unprecedented view of Earth’s poles. Senior journalist Meghan Bartels spoke to space physicist Katie Herlingshaw of Norway’s University Center in Svalbard about how frame2 The objective of the mission was to shed light on this luminous phenomenon.
Health
What is ‘personality’?
Mary Ziegler, author Personality: The New Civil War on ReproductionDiscussed the Trump administration’s IVF policy recommendations and the way our definitions of personhood impact science and medical policies overall.
Where is the treatment for headache?
science quickly Host Rachel Feltman spoke with Undark editor-in-chief Tom Zeller, Jr., who wrote Headache and tackles cluster headaches, knowing why this common ailment is not understood and certainly not cured.
Mary Roach has a new book about body parts.
Book cover: WW Norton & Company; Alona Horkova/Getty Images; illustration by scientific American
How do you replace a body part?
Feltman also spoke to Mary Roach about her latest book, replaceable you– named one of scientific AmericanThe best nonfiction books of the year. Feltman and Roach laughed about the strange inspiration for the book and the complexity of actually replacing body parts.
How long can we survive?
Health & Medicine editor Lauren Young spoke to author Eric Topol, a cardiologist and genomics professor at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. super agersAbout how people are fascinated by “biological clocks” and whether science supports the claim that we’ll probably live longer than we thought.
Mathematics and Technology
leave therapy to humans
Mind & Brain editor Alison Parshall spoke with licensed psychologist C. Vale Wright about the dangers of using chatbots as personal therapists. Wright, senior director of the American Psychological Association’s Office of Health Care Innovation, explained that concerns about bots come from the fear that they “may seem too solid and like they’re legitimate — when, of course, they’re not.”
Do you speak “Internet”?
What do terms like “brain rot” really mean? And should you be concerned? skibidi toilet Jokes told in schoolyards? TikTok sensation and linguist Adam Aleksic, author Algospeak: How social media is changing the future of languageAnalyzed how social media algorithms are creating such new trends around slang and our speech patterns as a whole.
an ai epic
Karen Hao, author The Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAIone of scientific AmericanBest nonfiction books of the year included science quickly To discuss the reality and possible future of AI development. Hao explained why he referred to AI companies as ’empires’ in the book and why he is optimistic about the future of AI.
Disproving a Mathematical Conjecture Before High School Graduation
At the age of 17, Hannah Cairo disproved the Mizohata–Takeuchi conjecture, breaking a four-decade-old mathematical belief, so naturally scientific American I reached out to him to talk about his incredible work. Cairo told us that she has loved mathematics her entire life and believes that “math is an art.” We couldn’t agree more.
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