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This is a science podcast for April 18, 2025. I'm Sarah Crespi. First this week, online news editor

David Grimm is here to talk about how an Egyptian cult that killed cats may have also tamed them.

Next on the show, researcher Agnet Mokopade talks about how his group map changes associated with a big shift in Earth's magnetic poles about 41,000 years ago.

And what it would be like if such a dramatic magnetic change took place today?

I always thought that domesticated cats came from Egypt, but it turns out...

They came from Egypt.

It turns out that the field of cat domestication has moved around the geography and the timeline of cat domestication quite a bit in the past few decades.

Online news editor, David Grimm is here with a pair of new studies that brings us back to

Egypt, as he mentioned, as a source for cat domestication. Hi, Dave. Welcome back to the podcast.

Hey, Sarah. Glad to have you. So I know that cats have been synonymous with ancient Egypt for a lot of people.

So how far back in time do we know the relationship between cats and Egyptians goes?

Yeah, I mean, you know, there is evidence for cats in ancient Egypt going back even before

there was actually like an official ancient Egypt.

You know, we're talking maybe 6,000 years ago in that region,

but it's a little unclear what exactly those animals are, but there are paintings of cats

going back almost 4,000 years. There's a painting of a cat eating fish under a dining room

...