Unfold

Unfold is a science podcast produced by UC Davis, and it tends to go where a piece of research meets ordinary life. Host Amy Quinton is the steady voice. Around her rotate Kat Kerlin, Marianne Russ Sharp and, on the bird flu story, reporter Caroline Champlin. Episodes tend to open on a scene. One starts with a glass of wine being poured on campus; another starts with the calls of a Clark's nutcracker, a bird a UC Davis biologist likened to a raven holding its nose. From there one host walks the other through the story, and the plain questions get asked out loud, such as how a bird could reshape a forest. The tentative answer is seeds cached on rocky slopes as winter food, some of which sprout into trees. The same episode, 'Climbing to Extremes', follows a field crew led by a UC Davis master's student, hiking 10 to 12 miles on some days in search of high-elevation Jeffrey pines. The trees they log are a few feet tall, often damaged by cold or critters, and many carry no cones. Food and drink come up more than once. 'Sip Happens: What’s Behind Wine’s Decline' lays out pressures that have all hit wine at the same time: oversupply, hard seltzers and canned cocktails, aging baby boomers who drink less, and a Gen Z that barely drinks. It also marks a change on campus, with UC Davis now able to sell its wine, student bottles included, rather than pouring it down the drain. 'The Science and Politics of Processed Foods' begins with Quinton and Kerlin in a grocery store, facing a wall of orange boxes. From there it moves to the argument that ultra-processed foods rely on emulsifiers, flavoring agents and texture improvers to make people want more. The most serious material concerns health, human and animal. 'Just One Spore' follows Rex Dangerfield, who fell ill after turning backyard soil in Patterson during a drought and has since had two surgeries to place and replace a brain shunt. 'Just One Spore Part 2' turns to Cooper, a boxer mix in Farmersville, whose owner drained fluid through ports in his chest so he could recover at home. 'Fowl News: Bird Flu Ruffles Feathers at the Fair' is lighter, visiting Avian Bowl, a poultry quiz for kids at the Orange County Fair, and a family keeping 90 animals at one Orange County house. The humor is gentle, mostly punning titles and teasing between hosts, and it steps aside when a story turns painful. Closing credits point to ucdavis.edu/unfold for photos, video, longer written pieces and links to studies. What a listener gets is science with faces attached: the patient, the dog, the field crew, the kid on the buzzer.