Science Friday - SoundSage

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Human childbirth is often difficult and incredibly painful—just ask anyone who’s been through it. And for a long time, childbirth seemed to be uniquely difficult for humans. But a new study suggests that we aren’t alone: Some small primates birth offspring whose heads are nearly twice the size of the mother’s pelvic area.

So how do those primates go through difficult childbirths? Why didn’t evolution make ours any easier? And what can this tell us about humankind? Flora explores these questions and more with anthropologist Lia Betti.

Guest:

Dr. Lia Betti is an associate professor of anthropology at University College London in the UK.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, was the first Native person to hold a cabinet position. Now she’s running to be governor of New Mexico.

Haaland joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her new memoir, “A Voice Like Mine,” her time at the Interior Department, and why she thinks lawsuits are a good thing when it comes to the environment.

Read an excerpt from “A Voice Like Mine.”

Guest:

Deb Haaland served as Secretary of the Interior under President Biden. She is a member of Laguna Pueblo tribe and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Keeping your butt in a seat for hours a day increases the risk of heart attacks, diabetes, psychiatric conditions, and more. But in our tech-filled world, many of us lead sedentary lives, whether because of school, work, or leisure. Researchers set up an experiment to see how much movement would make a difference for people who spend their days at a desk—and 23,000 people signed up.

Joining Flora to tell us what they found is tech journalist Manoush Zomorodi, author of “Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being.”

Read an excerpt of “Body Electric.”

Guest:

Manoush Zomorodi is host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour and author of “Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

8.5 Hours Of Daily Sitting Linked To Higher BMI And Cholesterol
How Is Screen Time Affecting My Kid?

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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In August 2025, the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he spoke with Host Ira Flatow about his life’s work, how hibakusha lived with the medical consequences of the bombs, and his message to the world.

Guest:

Dr. Masao Tomonaga is a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and director emeritus of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

House Stalls On Bill To Compensate Victims Of Nuclear Testing
Revisiting The Nuclear Age With ‘Oppenheimer’

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Imagine you wanted to get a general idea of what people are eating in a given community. You could look at grocery store sales, or do surveys, but neither can capture a complete picture.

Microbiome researcher Lawrence David and his lab look to another source of data: genetic material in sewage water. It turns out that detectable DNA signatures of individual plant and animal species remain behind even after they’ve been eaten, digested, excreted, and flushed down the toilet. He joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe his “Edible Atlas” project, the backend limitations of sewage analysis, and where the research might go.

Guest:

Dr. Lawrence David is an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology in the Center for Genomics and Computational Biology. He runs the Edible Atlas project at Duke University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

You Share Your Gut Microbiome With Your Friends
Dirty Diapers Reveal How Germy Babies’ Microbiomes Are

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see."

There’s something about space that captures the imagination of scientists and artists alike. Just ask astrophysicist Derek Ward-Thompson and astronomer Brian May (yes, THAT Brian May, guitarist of Queen). In their book "Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3-D," they turn flat images of the galaxies to three dimensional spacescapes that leap off the page.

In March, Host Flora Lichtman spoke with Ward-Thompson and May about the enchanting nature of space and the collision of art and astronomy. And yes, they get into the music.

Guests:

Dr. Brian May is an astronomer and the guitarist of Queen.

Dr. Derek Ward-Thompson is an astrophysicist at the University of Lancashire in England.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Investigating ‘Flow State’ With The Bassist From Phish
New Telescope Captures The Cosmos In Groundbreaking Detail

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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In nature, enzymes are the catalysts that make much of biology work. They jumpstart chemical reactions that either wouldn’t happen, or would happen super slowly. They break down food, build other molecules, extract energy, and more. What if we could harness evolution to engineer designer enzymes that do other specific jobs that benefit us?

Putting that idea into practice changed the game for chemistry, and earned Frances Arnold the Nobel Prize prize in 2018. She called it “directed evolution.” Today, thousands of labs use her methods to coax enzymes into doing things no one ever thought of. She joined Host Flora Lichtman in March 2026 to talk about where she sees this approach going in the future, and the personal evolution that brought her into science.

Guest:

Dr. Frances Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Enzymes Are Taking On Our Plastic Problem
Even Nobel Prize Winners Deal With Imposter Syndrome

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Brain cancers are rare, but devastating. Patients face short life expectancies after diagnosis. Brain tumors are often impossible to remove completely. And radiation and chemotherapy don’t always stop them from spreading.

It’s a daunting class of disease to study, but that didn’t dissuade physician-researcher Michelle Monje from trying. She has spent two decades studying how brain tumors form and interact with healthy brain cells, and pioneered the field of cancer neuroscience.

Guest:

Dr. Michelle Monje is a professor of pediatric neuro-oncology at Stanford Medicine.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Promising new treatments for pancreatic cancer and ALS
The new frontier of cancer research is in space

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Astronaut food is not known as a frontier of culinary imagination, unless you count rehydrated shrimp cocktail. As NASA prepares for longer trips to the moon and Mars, is space cuisine ready for an overhaul?

Flora speaks with retired astronaut Clayton Anderson, who spent 167 days in space, and chef David Skinner, who has advised NASA on how to make food for astronauts better.

Guests:

Clayton Anderson spent 15 years as a NASA astronaut, with stints on the International Space Station in 2007 and 2010. He’s currently based in Nebraska.

David Skinner is the executive chef and owner of Eculent and Ishtia, two Houston restaurants. He’s advised NASA on how to make food for astronauts better.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Mission Orbital Eats: Engineer Foods For Extreme Environments
Making A Meal Fit For An Astronaut

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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At one point this year, the 50 hottest cities on the planet were all in one country: India. The average peak temperature in those cities was 112 F. India is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world, and weather disasters, such as heat waves, have become more extreme and more common in recent years.

So how is this extreme heat affecting people in India? And what needs to change to keep people safe? Flora speaks with Gulrez Azhar, a physician and researcher who has spent much of his career studying the health impacts of heat waves in India.

Guest:

Dr. Gulrez Azhar is a physician and researcher studying the health impacts of heat waves in India.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

The Alarming Impacts Of Extreme Heat
Extreme Heat Is Making Learning—And Teaching—More Difficult

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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About 130 days a year, a research vessel leaves Miami and sets out to catch, measure, sample, tag, and release sharks in Florida’s coastal waters. Over the course of a year, they’ll encounter about 600 animals in a process called “fisheries independent monitoring,” an effort to gather data on sea creatures that isn’t skewed by changes in fishing procedures, equipment, or regulations.

Marine conservation biologist Catherine Macdonald leads the lab behind that effort. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about shark conservation, share stories from her research, and spread shark joy.

Guest:

Dr. Catherine Macdonald is a marine conservation biologist and director of the Shark Research and Conservation Program, part of the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

What Greenland Sharks Are Teaching Us About Aging Eyes
Fishing For—And Saving—Sharks off the Jersey Shore

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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During the early Cold War era, the United States Army and later the NSA began recruiting and training codebreakers and intelligence officers to decipher intercepted Soviet messages.

Among those recruits were a group of highly skilled Black women who were employed as cryptologists to decode these messages. But their role in Cold War intelligence operations has been largely overlooked, until now.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with historian Sarah Valentine about her book, “Decoding the Devil: Black Women Codebreakers and the Secret War Against Stalin’s Bomb.”

Read an excerpt of “Decoding the Devil.”

Guest:

Dr. Sarah Valentine is the author of “Decoding the Devil: Black Women Codebreakers and the Secret War Against Stalin’s Bomb.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The tropical waters of Sri Lanka, an island off the coast of India, are home to a population of blue whales unlike any other. These whales stay put, while every other known population migrates. That discovery was made by budding scientist Asha de Vos more than 20 years ago—it made a splash, and so did she. She later became the first Sri Lankan to earn a PhD studying marine mammals, charting a new scientific path in her country.

De Vos joined Host Flora Lichtman in 2025 to discuss her path into science, what it means to be the first in her field, and how she built a marine biology program from the ground up.

Guest:

Dr. Asha de Vos is a marine biologist and the founder and executive director of the non-profit Oceanswell. She’s based in Sri Lanka.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In the last couple months, Vermont, Alabama, and Oklahoma have passed data privacy laws. Massachusetts is negotiating its own version. Meanwhile, congressional lawmakers have introduced national privacy bills that would preempt these state laws.

In light of all this legislation, we’re revisiting an interview from February about how the United States’ data ecosystem makes it possible for any number of government agencies and businesses to buy our private data, from facial scans to health records to location tracking.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with law professor and tech policy expert Laura Moy, who has testified in Congress about privacy laws and how data brokers profit off of personal data.

Guest:

Laura Moy is an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law, based in Washington, D.C.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In 2020, Andrea Ghez shared the Nobel Prize for her observations of a supermassive compact object at the center of the Milky Way galaxy—an object that has all the hallmarks of a supermassive black hole. Ghez had developed techniques that allowed her to peer through galactic dust clouds with the Keck telescopes and observe the movements of stars orbiting the galactic center. Measuring their velocity and orbits provided information about the galactic core.

She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about this game-changing discovery, what we’ve learned about the galactic center, and her own orbit in science.

Guest:

Dr. Andrea Ghez is a Nobel Laureate in Physics (2020) and a professor of physics & astronomy at UCLA.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

The Monster At The Heart Of The Milky Way
A Mysterious Gas Is Discovered In The Milky Way

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Back in May, a paper published in Nature Sustainability reignited a decades-old debate about coastal Louisiana: Should people leave? Climate researchers wrote that due to rising sea levels, coastal Louisiana has crossed the point of no return and that governments should be making plans now for places like New Orleans to relocate.

Jessica Dandridge-Smith, who runs The Water Collaborative in New Orleans, speaks with Flora about why this paper sparked such a strong reaction, and how she thinks about the possibility of relocation. Then, we chat with climate scientist A.R. Siders about how we can plan for the future while taking care of our communities in the present.

Guests:

Jessica Dandridge-Smith is the executive director of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans.

Dr. A.R. Siders is an associate professor at the University of Delaware studying climate adaptations.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

In Louisiana, A Chance To Study A Successful, Growing Wetland
Save The Wetlands, Save The World

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Pompeii is known for its disastrous end with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but for archeologists, what came before is just as interesting. Researchers are using artifacts left behind in the remarkably well-preserved Roman city to piece together what life was like for the thousands of people who lived there 2,000 years ago.

A new book and television show analyze some of these clues to tell the stories of the ordinary people who faced this extraordinary event. Flora speaks with archaeobotanist Jess Venner, author of “The Lost Voices of Pompeii,” and actor Tom Hiddleston, host of National Geographic’s “Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston.”

Read an excerpt from “The Lost Voices of Pompeii: Life and Death on Pompeii’s Final Day”

Watch the interview on YouTube.

Guests:

Dr. Jess Venner is an archaeobotanist at the University of Oxford and author of “The Lost Voices of Pompeii.”

Tom Hiddleston is an actor and producer, and host of National Geographic’s “Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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An outbreak of the foodborne illness cyclosporiasis has sent thousands of people running to the bathroom this summer. Health officials have linked the outbreak to lettuce served at Taco Bell locations in five states, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Food safety expert Byron Chaves joins Flora to talk about the “explosive” nature of the illness and why pinpointing a source of the parasite has been so difficult.

Guest:

Dr. Byron Chaves is an associate extension specialist and professor in the Department of Food Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How does a tick bite cause a red meat allergy?
Use of herbicide linked to Parkinson’s is on the rise in the US

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for an early launch at the end of August. It will rest about a million miles from Earth at Lagrange point 2, where forces of gravity and motion balance out, allowing it to orbit the sun in sync with the Earth. The Roman Telescope is designed to collect masses of data that could inform questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets. Jackie Townsend, project manager for the mission, joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the telescope’s backstory, and what scientists hope it will do.

Then, turning from deep space to deep oceans, Anthony Tarantino of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution joins Flora to describe the recent maintenance and recertification process for the famous Alvin deep-sea submersible. It’s more than an oil change: The process involves disassembling the vehicle down to the bare frame.

Guests:

Jackie Townsend is project manager for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission. She’s based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Anthony Tarantino is program manager for the Alvin Group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Mars Rover, Move Over: Making A Rover To Explore The Deep Sea
Listening for the cosmic ‘dark ages,’ from the lunar far side

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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For two decades, a perplexing illness has been spreading: After a lone-star tick bite, people find themselves with a severe allergic reaction to red meat. The CDC estimates up to 450,000 people in the U.S. may be affected with alpha-gal syndrome, up from just a few dozen documented cases in 2009. New research finds that in some states, more than 30% of people are positive for alpha-gal antibodies—but not all of them have the syndrome.

Flora speaks with allergist Scott Commins, who has studied alpha-gal syndrome for nearly 20 years, to unpack this finding and next frontiers for treatment.

Guest:

Dr. Scott Commins is the William J. Yount Distinguished Professor of Medicine and associate chief for allergy and immunology at the UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Instead Of A Vaccine For Lyme, How About A Vaccine For Ticks?
Why Don’t We Have A Vaccine For Lyme Disease?

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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One of the most irresistible questions in sci-fi stories about aliens is what our reaction will be when we learn of their existence. Horror? Bewilderment? Relief? Euphoria? It’s a scenario we love to imagine again and again, like in Steven Spielberg’s recent movie, “Disclosure Day.”

But how would humanity react if we learned of intelligent aliens? Can you actually study that? It turns out there’s a whole lab inside SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, that is thinking about what the public response might be and how to prepare for it.

Host Ira Flatow sits down with astronomer Lucian Walkowicz and philosopher-ethicist Chelsea Haramia, co-directors SETI’s Discovery and Futures Lab, to talk about the research that’s been done to answer these questions.

Guests:

Dr. Lucian Walkowicz is an astronomer and science advisory board member at SETI.

Dr. Chelsea Haramia is a senior research fellow at the University of Bonn in Germany, and a philosopher-ethicist at SETI.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How Close Are We To Answers About Aliens?
The Human Obsession With Aliens Goes Way, Way Back

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Dino Martins has plucked maggots out of a dead elephant, pulled botflies out of camel snot, and willingly let a horsefly feast on him. Why? Because he’s obsessed with parasites.

Dino is an entomologist who grew up in rural Kenya, and he’s worked all over the world studying how insects keep this planet alive. And along the way, he met some of the world’s most iconic freeloaders, which he describes in his new book, “Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites.”

Flora speaks with Dino about his unlikely journey into science, the beauty and disgust of parasites, and why these little moochers deserve more of our care.

Read an excerpt from “Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites.”

Guest:

Dr. Dino Martins is an entomologist and evolutionary biologist based in Malindi, Kenya.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Tiny wasps emerge from a caterpillar, and reveal a hidden world
Should We Conserve Parasites? Some Scientists Say Yes

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In March, China became the first country to approve an invasive brain-computer interface beyond clinical trials. The implant, called NEO, is now available to some patients with limb paralysis due to a spinal cord injury. Ira talks with Wired staff writer Emily Mullin about the significance of this milestone.

Plus, brain implants aren’t the only development: China’s entire biotech industry has skyrocketed in recent years. A decade ago, about 8% of new drug molecules were discovered in China. Now it's over 40%. And more clinical trials are now being conducted there than in the U.S. or Europe. Ira talks with health policy researcher So-Yeon Kang, who’s been following the Chinese pharma industry’s meteoric rise.

Guests:

Emily Mullin is a staff writer at Wired.

Dr. So-Yeon Kang is an Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy at Georgetown University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Advances In Brain-Computer Interfaces For People With Paralysis
How China Is Driving Down Electricity Costs With Renewables

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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What happens when the skies are no longer dark at night? Writer Craig Childs biked from the brightest night sky, to the darkest, to find out what we lose when the lights don’t go out. He joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about his book “The Wild Dark,” our SciFri Book Club pick for July and August.

Plus, astronomer John Barentine fills us in on DarkSky International’s latest report, “Artificial Light at Night: State of the Science 2026.”

Read an excerpt from “The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light.”

Guests:

Craig Childs is the author of “The Wild Dark: Finding the Night Sky in the Age of Light.”

Dr. John Barentine is an astronomer and principal consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, LLC

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has become the third-largest on record. And while the regional response is more robust than it was during the largest outbreak, in 2014-2016, the U.S. has now largely divested from global health initiatives under President Trump. So it raises the question: What role should the U.S. play in global health? And how do we build systems that protect our collective health even as political winds change?

Flora speaks with John Nkengasong, virologist and founder of the Africa CDC, about Ebola, what it took to curb HIV/AIDS, and how to make global health initiatives more resilient. Dr. Jessica Bartley is senior director of psychological services for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Guest:

Dr. John Nkengasong has led public health initiatives in the United States and across Africa for over 30 years. He is also the executive director for higher education, collaboratives, and special initiatives at the Mastercard Foundation.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

A virus hunter in Nigeria has thoughts on the Ebola outbreak
Inside the Nebraska quarantine facility responding to hantavirus

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Gut feelings, trusting your gut, butterflies: We have lots of expressions about how our brains and our bowels are intertwined. But how well do we understand the science of this on the biomolecular level? And which of those organs is actually in the driver's seat?

Flora churned through the details with gastroneurologists Emeran Mayer and Trischa Pasricha on stage at the 2026 Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.

Guests:

Dr. Emeran Mayer is distinguished research professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and executive director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience.

Dr. Trisha Pasricha is a neurogastroenterologist and physician-scientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as well as an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How to poop better, according to a gastroenterologist
The Gurgling, Growling History Of The Gut

A transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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The band Phish has toured for over 40 years. One of the draws of their legendary live shows—which can go on for 8 hours—is finding moments of “flow,” when the band members lock into an improvised jam, finding new musical ideas in real time.

Phish fans live for these transcendent moments, but so do the musicians—to the point that Mike Gordon, the band’s bass player, is funding scientific research to better understand flow state.

In November 2025, Host Flora Lichtman sat down with Mike and his research collaborator, neuroscientist Greg Appelbaum, to unpack their research so far and how it’s helping to inform other neuroscience.

Guests:

Mike Gordon is bassist and co-founder of the seminal improvisational rock band Phish.

Dr. Greg Appelbaum is a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

A transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Americans pay roughly three times as much for prescription meds as people in other wealthy nations. But why?

Tahir Amin argues it’s largely to do with how our patent systems work. He’s been on both sides of the issue: He spent a decade as an intellectual property lawyer, helping corporations use patents to protect their bottom lines. Then he moved to India and saw firsthand how the global patent system hampered access to HIV drugs.

That led him to shift gears and create an advocacy organization aimed at changing the patent system to make access to medicines more equitable. He chats with Flora about how it all works, and his new book, “Pharma Monopoly.”

Read an excerpt from “Pharma Monopoly: The Battle for the Future of Medicines.”

Guest:

Tahir Amin is a co-author of “Pharma Monopoly: The Battle for the Future of Medicines” and a founder and CEO of Initiatives for Medicine Access and Knowledge (I-MAK).

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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If you hear “colonial America” and “science,” one name probably comes to mind: Benjamin Franklin. But he wasn’t the only one thinking big thoughts and asking big questions. Many other natural philosophers were also looking at the world in new ways, and trying to make sense of how it worked.

In honor of the nation’s 250th birthday, Host Ira Flatow traveled to Boston, the birthplace of the American Revolution, for a conversation with historian Robert Allison about scientific thought in early America.

Guest:

Dr. Robert Allison is a professor of history at Suffolk University, chair of Revolution 250, and president of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers have engineered an artificial cell out of chemicals and biomolecules that, at a basic level, can eat, grow, duplicate its own genetic code, and reproduce itself. The cell, dubbed SpudCell, is aimed at creating a chassis that can be adapted to create biological factories for the chemicals humans rely on for modern life, from fuels to pharmaceuticals. But it also raises the question of what it means for something to be “alive.”

Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the technological advance, the possibilities for the artificial cell, and a nonprofit organization she hopes will allow the SpudCell to spark an innovation in biotechnology.

Guest:

Dr. Kate Adamala is a synthetic biologist and an associate professor of genetics, cell biology, and development at the University of Minnesota.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Imagine this: You’re an astronaut, you’ve landed on the moon, and as you’re taking one small step for mankind, you kick up a bunch of lunar dirt. Now, tiny, jagged particles of dust are on your spacesuit, sticking to the spacecraft, getting in the machinery, and into your lungs. These are the kinds of problems planetary geologist Erica Jawin is trying to solve as NASA prepares for future moon bases.

And what will you eat as an astronaut on the moon? Turns out that lunar dirt, or regolith, can be used to grow potatoes and other crops, just like Matt Damon did in “The Martian.” Flora talks to space biologist David Handy to learn more.

Guests:

Dr. Erica Jawin is a planetary geologist at the National Air and Space Museum and a participating scientist on NASA's Artemis science team.

Dr. David Handy is a space biologist studying how to grow potatoes in moon dirt at Oregon State University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Around 25 years ago, Ardem Patapoutian set out to investigate the fundamental biology behind our sense of touch. Through a long process of gene elimination, he identified a class of sensors in the cell membrane that turn physical pressure into an electrical signal. He changed the game in the field of sensation and perception, and in 2021 shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work.

He joined Host Flora Lichtman in November 2025 to talk about his research, the odd jobs he worked along the way, and how he found a sense of belonging in science.

Guests:

Dr. Ardem Patapoutian is a professor and the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Hundreds of thousands of years ago, deep in the mountains of the Yukon, a ground squirrel pooped. That scat stayed frozen for millenia—until very recently, when researchers thawed it out and realized it was a literal data dump. They found traces of a surprising number of animals and plants, providing a detailed snapshot of life during the last ice age. Flora talks with biomolecular archaeologist Tyler Murchie about the gold mine that is ancient squirrel poop.

And, if you liked our poop jokes, you’ll want to hear how two different types of laughter are processed in the brain. Think big belly laughs versus polite chuckles in conversation. Ira chats with neuroscientist Sophie Scott about how these laughs originate and why we need them both.

Guests:

Dr. Tyler Murchie is a biomolecular archaeologist at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia and McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Sophie Scott is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London in England.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly forms of cancer, and it can be difficult to catch early. But there’s some good news: Clinical trials of a new drug called daraxonrasib found that it doubled the survival time of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. And some oncologists are calling it a game changer—not just for pancreatic cancer, but potentially other forms of cancer too. Ira talks with oncologist Zev Wainberg, who led a clinical trial for the drug.

Plus, ALS is a degenerative disease that causes patients to lose their ability to walk, swallow and eventually to breathe. Now, there’s a drug for a rare genetic form of ALS that can slow the progression or even reverse some of these symptoms. Ira talks with New York Times health and science reporter Pam Belluck about this new treatment.

Guests:

Dr. Zev Wainberg is a co-director of UCLA Health’s GI Oncology Program.

Pam Belluck is a health and science reporter for The New York Times.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

mRNA Vaccine For Pancreatic Cancer Continues To Show Promise
How do clinical trials work, and who can participate?

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On a hot summer day, there’s nothing better than a dip in a cold pool. But you know who can ruin that for you? A scientist who studies pool chemistry. What chemical reactions are happening in that swimming pool when the water comes into contact with our bodily fluids and skin products?

Environmental engineer Ernest Blatchley sits down with Flora Lichtman to discuss his findings after two decades of research, including how urine in a pool makes that chlorine smell, and his work to make the air of the Paris Olympics’ indoor pools less toxic.

Guest:

Dr. Ernest Blatchley is a professor of environmental engineering at Purdue University, based in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

A ‘Dune’-Inspired Space Suit To Turn Astronaut Pee Into Water
The Evolution Of An Enzyme Engineer Who Changed Chemistry

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The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed rule changes that would bring a major shift in how scientific grants are awarded by U.S. government agencies. Under the current process, researchers submit grant proposals that are then vetted and scored by a committee of experts in that scientific field, with top-scoring proposals recommended for funding.

If its proposed changes are enacted, the OMB would insert a political review into the process, allowing administration officials to determine whether grant proposals are aligned with administration priorities, regardless of their scientific merit. Those proposed rules are now in a public comment period. Holden Thorp, editor in chief of the Science family of journals, joins Ira to explain why he called the change “another red alert for American science” in a recent editorial.

Guest:

Dr. Holden Thorp is editor in chief of the Science family of journals, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

A Science Historian Tackles Ghostwriting In Scientific Papers
What Do mRNA Funding Cuts Mean For Future US Research?

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If you have arachnophobia, consider this your opportunity to try exposure therapy: A new study suggests that 415 million years ago, in modern-day England and Wales, a scorpion the length of a golden retriever was scurrying around, complete with 6-inch pincers. Flora talks with lead study author Richie Howard about the finding.

If you’re grossed out by a 3-foot scorpion, you’re not alone. But, scorpion researcher Lauren Esposito says we’ve got it all wrong—scorpions are wonderful and caring creatures.

Guests:
Dr. Richie Howard is an invertebrate paleontologist and curator of fossil arthropods at the Natural History Museum in London, England.

Dr. Lauren Esposito is a scorpion researcher and director of the non-profit Islands and Seas and founder of 500 Queer Scientists.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The FDA recently approved a sunscreen ingredient called bemotrizinol, or BEMT, that’s been used in Europe and Asia for years. This is the first new sunscreen ingredient approved in the United States in over two decades. Meanwhile, skin cancer has become the most common cancer in the U.S.

Flora discusses the chemistry of sunblock with a sunscreen chemist AJ Addae, and the regulatory process that led to this approval with health journalist Michael Scaturro.

Guests:

Michael Scaturro is a health journalist based in New York City.

AJ Addae is a chemistry PhD student at UCLA and founder of SULA Labs.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Understanding Sunscreen Ingredients And Which Ones You Need

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If you watch sports, whether the recent NBA finals or the ongoing World Cup matches, you may have noticed that the athletes aren’t the only ones putting on a show. The announcers seem to be playing a beautiful game of their own, capturing the excitement and play-by-play of the game in a unique blend of sentence structure, elocution, and pitch. Linguists have even given this speech pattern a name: sports announcer talk.

Sociolinguist and dialectologist Valerie Fridland joins Host Flora Lichtman to break down the patterns and rules of this register.

Guest:

Dr. Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno, and author of “Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

The Art And Science Of Trash Talk
What The Sigma Is Algospeak?

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There is a murderous crime spree happening right under—and perhaps inside—our noses. Killer microbes armed with weapons are eviscerating, assassinating, and detonating their fellow microbes. And the newest culprit? A protist that morphs into a cannibilastic supergiant when times get tough.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Glen D’Souza and Ben Larson, two detectives who study these micro-murders. They chat about why microbes kill, how they choose their victims, and whether we can harness those weapons for good.

Guests:

Dr. Glen D’Souza is a microbiologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Dr. Ben Larson is an assistant professor and cell biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Do you ever hear a song that transports you to a specific place and time? This auditory wormhole has a name: musical daydreams. Music cognition expert Elizabeth Margulis studies why they happen, and what they tell us about our brains. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss this phenomenon.

Guest:

Dr. Elizabeth Margulis is a professor and director of Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab. She’s also the author of “Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

A Neurologist Investigates His Own Musical Hallucinations
Oliver Sacks Searched The Brain For The Origins Of Music

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Researchers just published details of a massive undersea graveyard of whales deep in the Indian Ocean. Spanning about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles), it contains whale remains dating back more than 5 million years—and at least five active whale fall sites still teeming with life. Fossil whale expert Nick Pyenson joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss these findings.

Then, marine biologists Rachel Sipler and Sara Jobson join Ira Flatow to describe an unusual discovery in certain species of sea cucumbers: If a foot or tentacle becomes detached, the parts don’t wither up and rot away. Even without a stomach, these parts appear to directly extract nutrients from the surrounding seawater. “Zombie” sea cucumber parts have been observed surviving for more than three years.

Guests:

Dr. Nick Pyenson is curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Dr. Rachel Sipler is a senior research scientist in the Bigelow Laboratory in East Boothbay, Maine.

Sara Jobson a PhD student at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. Johns, Canada.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Remembering Roger Payne, Who Helped Save The Whales
Can A Microbe Conservation Movement Take Off?

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Big cats used to roam the entire United States. You might know them as mountain lions, pumas, cougars, or catamounts. Though they go by many names, they're actually all the same species.

Their current population is mostly confined to the West, and part of Florida, though in recent years they’ve been spotted in other areas east of the Mississippi River. Most cougars were gone from the Northeast by the 1800s, with the last verified accounts in the 1930s.

Mountain lion ecologist Mark Elbroch hopes to reintroduce these big cats back into their previous habitats in New England. But, should we? What are the benefits and drawbacks of reintroducing the apex predator into an ecosystem it's been away from for so long?

Guest:

Dr. Mark Elbroch is the director of the puma program at Panthera, a big cat conservation organization.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Surveying wildlife along Lewis and Clark’s route, 220 years later
Are Raccoons On The Road To Domestication?

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When Blue Origin’s New Glenn spacecraft exploded in an enormous fireball during a ground test a couple weeks ago, it sent shockwaves not only through the air, but through NASA’s timeline for the upcoming Artemis missions.

It also came at an especially bad time for Jeff Bezos’ rocket company—just days after it was awarded a slew of NASA contracts to deliver equipment to the moon. Blue Origin had also been expected to play a major role in the upcoming Artemis III and IV missions, but that’s now more up in the air depending on how soon the company can rebuild its only launchpad.

And with NASA’s Artemis III crew announcement this week, Guest Host Jane Lindholm sits down with space reporters Ken Chang and Brendan Byrne to break it all down and what’s next for the space program.

Guests:

Ken Chang is a science reporter at the New York Times, where he covers NASA and the solar system.

Brendan Byrne is a space reporter for Central Florida Public Media and host of the podcast “Are We There Yet.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Planning your photo ops for a trip around the moon
The new frontier of cancer research is in space

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‘Tis the season for porch beers and happy hours, and we’re taking on listener questions about how alcohol affects us. Like, is a glass of wine at dinner really good for you? And why do sugary drinks give us hangovers?

Joining Guest Host Jane Lindholm to answer these questions and more are brewer and chemist Tom Shellhammer and neuroscientist Jacqui Barker.

Guests:

Dr. Jacqui Barker is an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine.

Dr. Tom Shellhammer is a brewer and the Nor’Wester Professor of Fermentation Science at Oregon State University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

What Causes Red Wine Headaches? It May Be Quercetin
The Physics That Makes Swing-Top Bottles ‘Pop’

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The 2026 World Cup will be the largest one yet, and FIFA is trying to make it the most high-tech, too. The federation has partnered with tech giant Lenovo to launch Football AI Pro, which is designed to analyze over 2,000 different metrics and deliver real-time insights to coaches, players, and analysts. Guest Host Jane Lindholm chats with ESPN writer Ryan O’Hanlon about how AI analytics actually play out in soccer.

Plus, how a team of researchers grew 16 stadiums’ worth of FIFA-class turf. Turfgrass scientist Jackie Lyn Guevara breaks down the importance of perfectly uniform turf, how the turf was designed, and what she’ll be looking out for during the matches.

Guests:

Ryan O’Hanlon is a staff writer at ESPN and the author of“Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game's Analytics Revolution.”

Dr. Jackie Lyn "Jack" Guevara is an assistant professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

We’re All Being Played By Metrics
The Surprising Science Of Why Sneakers Squeak

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Elite athletes spend a lot of time training their bodies for strength, endurance, coordination, and precision. But what about their brains? Can psychology help athletes achieve peak performance?

Joining Flora Lichtman to talk about this are professional climber Alex Honnold and Jessica Bartley, psychologist for U.S. Olympians and Paralympians.

Guests:

Alex Honnold is a professional climber, founder of the Honnold Foundation, and host of the Planet Visionaries Podcast: in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.

Dr. Jessica Bartley is senior director of psychological services for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Can Better Equipment Eliminate Concussions In Sports?
Olympic Ski Mountaineering, And Mountain Goat Climbing Feats

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If you’ve ever been a child, had a child, or seen a child face down in a supermarket aisle screaming, you know that parenting can be tough. But humans aren’t the only ones raising their young, so how do animals deal with toddlers that won’t follow directions or little ones that are constantly begging for snacks?

Parent and science journalist Elizabeth Preston, who wrote the book “The Creatures' Guide to Caring,” joins Host Flora Lichtman to tackle some SciFri listeners’ parenting problems, from dawdling to the bedtime pop-out.

Read an excerpt from “The Creatures' Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care.”

Guest: Elizabeth Preston is a science journalist and the author of “The Creatures' Guide to Caring.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How Do Animals Understand Death?
Why It Took Decades For This Octopus To Be Recognized

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A few weeks ago, we talked to two sonic branding experts who compose music for household appliances. And we played for them a song “sung” by a washing machine that they didn’t really appreciate. But many of our listeners immediately identified the tune, a famous melody by 19th-century composer Franz Schubert.

And, as our guest tells us, it’s not just any tune—it’s one of Schubert’s most beloved compositions, “The Trout,” which he returned to several times during his short but prolific career.

L. Michael Griffel, a Schubert expert and former head of the music history department at The Julliard School, joins us for our mea culpa to “Die Forelle.”

A transcript for this episode will be added to the original segment page: Who’s composing music for my washing machine?

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The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring Uganda is caused by the Bundibugyo virus. There’s no specific treatment or vaccine for this strain, unlike the more common Zaire strain that caused the 2014 outbreak.

Molecular biologist Christian Happi has dedicated his career to improving genomic sequencing capabilities and virus monitoring across the continent of Africa. He joins Flora to discuss the challenges of the current outbreak and his vision for better disease surveillance.

Guest:

Dr. Christian Happi is a distinguished professor at Redeemer’s University and runs the Institute of Genomics and Global Health in Nigeria.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Inside the Nebraska quarantine facility responding to hantavirus
Can ‘Suggestion-Box Science’ Make Public Health More Useful?

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If you look up where medicine originated, or the earliest medical interventions, you’ll probably find yourself reading about ancient Greece or Egypt or Mesopotamia. But what about before that? How did early humans treat illnesses or cope with injuries? What did a Neanderthal do if she broke a rib or had a toothache?

Flora digs into these questions with archaeologist Penny Spikins and microbiologist Laura Weyrich. They chat about ancient treatments like antibiotics and root canals, why Neanderthals were always getting hurt, and how they took care of themselves—and each other.

Guests:

Dr. Penny Spikins is a professor of the archaeology of human origins at the University of York in England.

Dr. Laura Weyrich is an associate professor of anthropology and bioethics at Pennsylvania State University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

What Did It Feel Like To Be An Early Human?
Your Pain Tolerance May Have Been Passed Down From Neanderthals

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A group of researchers and private investors are planning a series of privately funded missions to Venus, hoping to find signs of life. That may seem like a startling possibility. Although Venus is a close neighbor to Earth, it has a smothering atmosphere of carbon dioxide that has allowed the planet’s surface to heat to temperatures that would melt lead. There’s crushing pressure. And to top it off, there are clouds of sulfuric acid.

Astrophysicist and planetary scientist Sara Seager joins Host Ira Flatow to explain why she thinks life on Venus might be possible, high up in the clouds. Seager has conducted lab experiments that indicate various biomolecules could survive there, despite the toxic conditions. She’s leading a series of proposed private missions to the planet, to study the atmosphere, conduct habitability studies, and even bring back a sample of Venusian cloud material.

Guest:

Dr. Sara Seager is an astrophysicist and a professor of physics, planetary science, and aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Bizarre exoplanet clouds + Counting insects with weather radar
The lucky breaks that make our Earth home

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Many of the forces driving species to extinction—habitat destruction, pollution, climate change—also fuel the spread of disease. And plants and animals around the globe are facing their own little pandemics, from cancer to fungal diseases.

But what if we could treat them with cutting-edge medicines? Is there something drug developers could do to help? Chemist Tim Cernak thinks so. He has been developing drugs for people for 20 years, but his patient roster has started to include sea turtles, frogs, and giant reptiles. He talks with Flora about why he’s making drugs for wildlife and why more chemists should join in.

Guest:

Dr. Tim Cernak is an associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Raising A New Generation Of Bat Conservationists In West Africa
How Conservation Efforts Brought Rare Birds Back From The Brink

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The benefits of getting a shingles vaccine seem relatively straightforward: It will prevent you from getting shingles, a painful rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. But researchers have found a surprising link between getting the shingles vaccine and a lower risk of developing dementia. And that’s not the only vaccine that seems to have additional benefits. So what’s going on here?

To help explain this research are epidemiologist Pascal Geldsetzer, who studies the association between the shingles vaccine and lower rates of dementia; and physician and epidemiologist Helen Chu, who studies the Flu, RSV and COVID-19 viruses.

Guests:

Dr. Pascal Geldsetzer is an assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health at Stanford University.

Dr. Helen Chu is a professor of epidemiology, allergy and infectious diseases at the University of Washington.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Study Finds COVID mRNA Vaccines Boost Cancer Treatment
As Cervical Cancer Deaths Plummet, Experts Credit HPV Vaccine

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Two disease outbreaks are dominating the news: Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and hantavirus, which started spreading on a cruise ship.

The U.S. has a one-of-a-kind medical facility that exists just for emergencies like this. It’s called the National Quarantine Unit, and it’s in Omaha, Nebraska. Right now, 18 Americans from the cruise ship where hantavirus broke out are in quarantine there.

Host Flora Lichtman chats with Angie Vasa, a nurse and administrator who has worked at this emergency center for the last 17 years. They discuss how the facility works, what’s happening with the travelers exposed to hantavirus, and how they’re preparing for the possibility of Ebola-exposed individuals.

Guest:

Angie Vasa is the director of emergency preparedness and special pathogens programs at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Mapping Out How Viruses Jump Between Species
How Viruses Have Shaped Our World

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When Lewis and Clark crossed the United States in the early 1800s, they recorded their wildlife observations along the way. Now, more than 200 years later, an expedition is following the same route and partnering with scientists across the U.S. to catalog animals and track the changes. Expedition leader Roland Kays joins Host Flora Lichtman to share some highlights.

Plus, using cell phone data and GPS collars, ecologists were able to see how animals moved (or not) when people were around. Ecologist Ruth Oliver tells us about her findings.

Guests:

Dr. Roland Kays is research professor at NC State University and director of the Biodiversity & Earth Observation Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Dr. Ruth Oliver is an ecologist and assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Are Raccoons On The Road To Domestication?
Teamwork Between Species Is The Key To Life Itself

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On Monday, Pope Leo XIV presented his encyclical, an open letter from the church, on AI. The 42,000-word document covers a lot of terrain—from screen time to resource extraction to job loss—but the core message is summed up in the title: “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding The Human Person In The Time Of Artificial Intelligence.”

How did the pope arrive at these views? Among those advising him on issues like AI are scientists and other experts. Host Flora Lichtman talks with a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, anthropologist Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, about the encyclical and what it’s like to advise the pope.

Guest:

Dr. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is an anthropologist and chancellor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How Is AI Being Used In The Iran War?
An AI Leader’s Human-Centered Approach To Artificial Intelligence

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Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have observed clouds on a hot gas giant exoplanet called WASP-94A b, some 700 light-years away. But these clouds aren’t your usual wisps of water vapor—they’re vaporized sand. Astronomer David Sing joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe the planetary weather, and how the researchers were able to observe it.

Then, ecologist Elske Tielens joins Flora to describe how ecologists using weather radar data counted the insects aloft in U.S. skies: around 100 trillion of them on an average summer day.

Guests:

Dr. David Sing is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Elske Tielens is an ecologist with the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How Insects Changed The World—And Human Cultures
Not Just Dying Stars: A Black Hole That Came From Gas

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It’s common knowledge that many diseases and conditions have some kind of genetic link. But that wasn't always the case. In 1990, long before the Human Genome Project tied so many health issues to differences in genetics, researchers identified a gene called BRCA1. It was the first gene linked to a hereditary form of any common cancer. People with certain variants of BRCA1 stood a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer than those without those mutations.

Geneticist Mary-Claire King and her lab were the first to identify that gene. She joined Host Flora Lichtman in September 2025 to talk about her background, her research, and her approach to science.

Guest:

Dr. Mary-Claire King is an American Cancer Society Professor in the departments of Genome Sciences and Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

A Nagasaki Survivor And Physician Recounts His Life’s Work
I Was Considered A Nobody

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Old creepy houses are a horror cliche, but why? Why do they freak us out? According to new research, it might have something to do with infrasound: a sound that’s below the range of human hearing, potentially emitted by low-rumbling pipes or old boilers more common in older houses.

Psychologist and pseudoscience researcher Rodney Schmaltz explains his new study, and what role infrasound could play in leading people to feel unsettled in “haunted” places. Then, infrasound researcher Milton Garcés breaks down the infrasound that’s produced by volcanoes and asteroid impacts, and how it serves as a “keep away” signal in nature.

Guests:

Dr. Rodney Schmaltz is a professor of psychology at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.

Dr. Milton Garcés is a research scientist at the Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology and director of the Infrasound Laboratory at the University of Hawai’i in Honolulu.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

What The Sounds Of Melting Glaciers Can Tell Us
The World According To Sound: A Sonic History Of Astronomy

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We recently got a call from a SciFri listener in Florida who has autoimmune arthritis. He told us that over the years he’d taken 10 drugs, and each out eventually stopped working. He then tried to enroll in a clinical trial for a new drug for his condition, but he was rejected specifically because he was on his 10th drug.

Today we’re digging into clinical trials and how they work. Are there incentives for drug developers to leave out “problem children”? Or is it more complicated than that? Flora talks with lawyer and bioethicist Holly Fernandez Lynch about what clinical trials are designed to do, how participants are chosen, and where FDA regulation comes into play.

Guest:

Dr. Holly Fernandez Lynch is an associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Why so many studies can’t be replicated
Can ‘Suggestion-Box Science’ Make Public Health More Useful?

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The herbicide paraquat is so toxic it’s banned in over 70 countries. But its use in the U.S. is growing, despite known links to Parkinson’s disease. In southeastern Mississippi, an industrial plant is leaking tens of thousands of pounds of the chemical into the air.

Environmental reporter Delaney Nolan and epidemiologist Beate Ritz join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the implications of this leak, and what we know about how paraquat affects the body.

Guests:

Delaney Nolan is an environmental reporter based in New Orleans. She reported this story for The Lens and the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk.

Dr. Beate Ritz is a professor of epidemiology at UCLA in Los Angeles.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Teasing Apart The Causes And Early Signs Of Parkinson’s
Workout Worms May Reveal New Parkinson’s Treatments

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Bucket hats. Low-rise jeans. Track suits. As you might’ve noticed, Y2K fashion is in right now. People say that fashion moves in 20-year cycles, and it turns out…it does! At least according to math.

Host Flora Lichtman sits down with mathematician Emma Zajdela to figure out how she analyzed over 35,000 images of women's clothing dating all the way back to the 1860s to confirm this theory.

Guest:

Dr. Emma Zajdela is a Franco-American mathematician and science diplomacy activist.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

The Many, Many Ways Tuberculosis Shaped Human Life
Functional Fashion From An Artist And A Caterpillar

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A recent study simulated the extreme temperatures and pressure of the Earth’s interior by squeezing a sample between diamonds and heating it with a laser. In those simulations, researchers found that the Earth’s core may contain vast amounts of hydrogen, locked away in alloys with iron and silicon. Planetary scientist Anat Shahar joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what this tells us about how the planet formed, and where water on Earth may have come from.

Then, another kind of deep history: Paleontologist Arnaud Rebillard introduces Host Flora Lichtman to “regurgitalite”—fossilized vomit. Rebillard studied a sample of regurgitalite some 50 million years older than the dinosaurs.

Guests:

Dr. Anat Shahar is a planetary scientist, and vice president for research at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C.

Arnaud Rebillard is a PhD candidate in paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Berlin.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Could Underground Hydrogen Reserves Put Clean Energy Within Reach?
A Reptile’s Baffling Backfin And The Math Of Dashing Dinos

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Just about every animal with a backbone yawns (maybe even dinosaurs), but why we do it is still something of a mystery. A SciFri listener from Texas recently spotted some research that suggests yawning could play a role in clearing waste products from the brain, and asked us to get to the bottom of it. Biomechanical engineer Lynne Bilston, an author on that study, joins Flora to discuss the findings and what they could mean for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

Plus, about a third of Americans aren’t getting the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a new CDC report. We check in with sleep researcher Stuti Jaiswal to break down the report and find out how to get a better night's sleep.

Check out an MRI video of what yawning looks like inside the body.

Guests:

Dr. Lynne Bilston is a biomechanical engineer at UNSW Sydney in Australia.

Dr. Stuti Jaiswal is a physician scientist and co-director, education at Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego, California.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Does Taping Your Mouth Shut Help You Sleep?
The Brain’s Glial Cells Might Be As Important As Neurons

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An upcoming resupply mission will carry tumor samples to the International Space Station for research. Experiments in microgravity have yielded shocking results: Some tumors triple in size in just 10 days—the kind of growth that could take 10 years on Earth. What does that mean for science, and for astronauts?

Joining Ira to discuss this new frontier in cancer research are hematologist Catriona Jamieson and aerospace engineer Meenal Datta.

Guests:

Dr. Catriona Jamieson is a hematologist at the UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center in California.

Dr. Meenal Datta studies the physics of cancer at the University of Notre Dame’s College of Engineering in Indiana.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How A Fringe Idea Led To Lifesaving Cancer Treatments
To Get Ready For Mars, NASA Studies How The Body Changes In Space

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Have you noticed that your newer appliances are serenading you? Many new washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, and vacuums have sonic signatures. But why? And who are the composers making music for the machines in your home?

Flora talks to sonic branding experts Audrey Arbeeny, who has developed sounds for washing machines; and Joel Beckerman, who has composed for Roomba.

Guests:

Audrey Arbeeny is the owner and executive producer of Audiobrain. She’s composed for Whirlpool, KitchenAid, the London Olympic Games, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.

Joel Beckerman is a composer and founder of Made Music Studio, and author of “The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel, and Buy.” He’s composed for the NFL, IMAX, and the Roomba vacuum.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Are Physical Buttons And Knobs Making A Comeback?
Common Loons Are Pop Music Icons

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Scientists studying climate models say there’s a high chance this will be an El Niño year—and that we could be in for a “super” El Niño. The difference is indicated by sea surface temperatures in part of the Pacific Ocean rising a little—or a lot—above their long-term average.

El Niño is one half of what climatologists call the ENSO, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The oscillation operates on a roughly 3-7 year cycle, changing the path of the jet stream and shifting weather conditions around the world. An El Niño year, for instance, typically brings wetter weather in the western U.S. but dryer conditions in the Pacific Northwest, and can be a drought buster for regions such as southern California. But shifting ocean currents also have the potential to affect marine ecosystems, leading to algal booms, coral bleaching, and more.

Climate scientist Dillon Amaya joins Host Ira Flatow to describe the role of the El Niño in shaping world weather, and what effects a particularly strong El Niño year might have on global ecosystems.

Guest:

Dr. Dillon Amaya is a research scientist at the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Meet A Pioneer Of Modern Weather Prediction
Could We Get Weather Forecasts Years—Or A Decade—In Advance?

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In April, the crew of Artemis II got an unprecedented tour of the far side of the moon, and they brought back a proverbial shoebox full of pictures. Lunar scientist Kelsey Young stayed on Earth, and helped guide the astronauts through their photo shoots from Mission Control.

Young talks with Host Flora Lichtman about how the science team chose their shot list, how to lead distant astronauts in their scientific observations, and what researchers are learning from the images and in-the-moment descriptions captured by the Artemis II crew.

Guest:

Dr. Kelsey Young is the Artemis science flight operations lead for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Inside the lives of astronauts’ families
How The Moon Transformed Life On Earth, From Climate to Timekeeping

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When Kemi Doll was in medical school, she learned that Black women are twice as likely to die from uterine cancer as white women, and also suffer disproportionately from other uterine-related conditions. What wasn’t explained was why. Now a gynecologic oncologist, Doll has made it her mission to change these trends and improve care for Black women.

She joins Flora to discuss her new book, “A Terrible Strength: The Hidden Crisis of the Black Womb and Your Survival Guide to Healing.” They explore the way systemic racism and the normalization of Black women’s pain lead to later diagnoses of uterine cancer and poorer health outcomes for a range of gynecologic conditions including fibroids, endometriosis, and heavy periods. And Doll explains the problem with using reproductive health as a synonym for uterine health.

Guest:

Dr. Kemi Doll is a gynecologic oncologist and professor at the University of Washington Schools of Medicine and Public Health.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Endometriosis Is Common. Why Is Getting Diagnosed So Hard?
A Black Physician’s Analysis Of The Legacy Of Racism In Medicine

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Cameras and sensors are just about everywhere, recording your face, how you walk, where you go, your heart rate. And AI is making it easy to amass and analyze that data about all of us.

Privacy attorney Anne Toomey McKenna joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the ubiquity of biometric surveillance and how data brokers are gathering and selling our information, including to law enforcement.

Guest:

Anne Toomey McKenna is an attorney specializing in privacy and biometric surveillance. She’s on the Advisory Board for AI Policy at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers - USA.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Why Worry About My Data If I Have Nothing To Hide?
New Products Collect Data From Your Brain. Where Does It Go?

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Breaking news out of eastern Oklahoma! A hole in the sky has opened. Through it, an unidentified turtle-shaped craft has descended. Alerts say that this is first contact.

So it goes in the sci-fi thriller “Hole in the Sky.” In the book, author Daniel H. Wilson imagines this moment where we meet alien life for the first time. It’s set in the heart of Cherokee Nation and follows characters including a military man, a NASA scientist, and a Cherokee father named Jim who is just trying to survive the alien entity.

Wilson joins Flora for a conversation about the book and how he integrated elements of Cherokee culture with science fiction. They get into the ways we project our own fears—like genocide and slavery—onto aliens, and how science fiction helps us imagine the unimaginable.

The SciFri Book Club is reading “Hole in the Sky” during May and June. Join us to read along!

Read an excerpt from “Hole in the Sky.”

Guest:

Dr. Daniel H. Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and bestselling author of “Robopocalypse,” “Hole in the Sky,” and several other books. He holds advanced degrees in machine learning and robotics and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Beavers are having a moment, thanks to the new Pixar movie “Hoppers.” Amid some body-swapping shenanigans, the film is about humans coexisting with wildlife—particularly oversized rodents capable of reworking landscapes in profound ways.

The beaver science consultant on “Hoppers,” Emily Fairfax, joins Flora to talk about beavers’ brilliant, chaotic landscape engineering, and how the creatures show up in the movie. Then, reporter Zac Ziegler walks Flora through a successful beaver-centric engineering project in Oregon.

Guests:

Emily Fairfax is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Minnesota. She was a science consultant for the Pixar movie “Hoppers.”

Zac Ziegler is a reporter at KLCC in Eugene, Oregon.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How The Humble Beaver Shaped A Continent
Beavers Build Ecosystems Of Resilience

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Deep in an active nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario, researchers are installing and calibrating a set of sensitive detectors. They hope that the location roughly 6,800 feet underground will screen out much of the ordinary radiation and cosmic rays felt on the surface, and allow their detectors to sense tiny disturbances caused by a dark matter particle passing close to the nucleus of one of the germanium atoms in a target material.

If successful, the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment may shed some light on the nature of dark matter, an unseen something that is thought to make up around 85% of the matter in the universe.

Priscilla Cushman, a physicist who has been working on the project for over 20 years, joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe the hunt, the timeline of the experiment, and the big unknowns facing the SuperCDMS team.

Guest:

Dr. Priscilla Cushman is spokesperson for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, and a professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Listening for the cosmic ‘dark ages,’ from the lunar far side
Most Powerful Neutrino Ever Is Detected In the Mediterranean

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Hurricane season officially begins in June. And in the event of a big storm, local and state governments often rely on help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. But, President Trump has questioned the value of the agency.

“I've never been a big fan of FEMA. I like to keep it local. I like to see governors and neighboring states help each other as opposed to FEMA,” Trump said in March.

We’ve heard this from the administration about other federal agencies, but FEMA is a special case. People have mistrusted this agency since its founding in the late 1970s.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Micah Loewinger, co-host of the show “On The Media,” who traced FEMA’s history in a new series called “American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA.”

Guest:

Micah Loewinger is co-host of On The Media.Other episodes you may enjoy:

As Disasters Escalate, What’s The Future Of FEMA?
Can We Geoengineer Our Way Out Of A Natural Disaster?

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Animal neuroaudiologist Pete Scheifele joins us to answer some burning questions from SciFri listener Paul: Why can dogs and cats hear a wider range of frequencies than we do? Is it in their ears, their brains? And what would life be like if you had dog ears or cat ears?

And, scientists have created the first “smell map” of the nose using a mouse model. Host Flora Lichtman talks with neurobiologist Bob Datta about this latest research, and what it tells us about olfaction.

Guests:

Dr. Pete Scheifele is a neuroaudiologist at the University of Cincinnati and executive director of the FETCHLAB, an animal audiology clinic and lab.

Dr. Bob Datta is a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

What’s That Smell? An AI Nose Knows
Blood In The Water: Shark Smell Put To The Test

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The news we hear about plastic is often alarming: We have a spoon’s worth of plastics in our brains, and there are microplastics in our hearts, lymph nodes, and bloodstreams. Plastics are ubiquitous, but the reality might be more complicated than it seems.

It turns out that measuring microplastics is really, really difficult. One reason? Because we’re surrounded by plastics! Think of the pipettes and petri dishes and gloves we use in labs.

Host Flora Lichtman chats with microplastics researcher Cassandra Rauert about the difficulties of studying plastics in the human body and what she’s doing about it—like how she designed a whole lab made almost entirely of stainless steel and glass.

Guest:

Dr. Cassandra Rauert is a senior research fellow studying microplastics exposure at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Can algae help pull microplastics out of our water supply?
Where Does Plastic And Other Trash Go After We Throw It Away?

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In mid-April, President Trump issued an executive order to set aside funding and loosen the bureaucratic process at the FDA to fast-track psychedelic therapy research. One obscure psychedelic got a particularly bright spotlight: ibogaine.

Originating from the root bark of the iboga plant of central Africa, the psychedelic has shown promise for curbing opioid addiction and treating PTSD. But it also can be risky to take, and hasn’t made it to the medical mainstream like psilocybin or ketamine. So what’s the story with this drug?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about its history is neurologist and pharmacologist Deborah Mash, who secured the first FDA approval for clinical trials involving ibogaine in the 1990s. And to tell us how it fits in with the growing interest in medical psychedelics is Jane Hu, journalist for The Microdose newsletter. (Disclosure: Deborah Mash is founder and CEO of a company that’s developing a therapeutic drug based on ibogaine.)

Guests:

Jane C. Hu is a journalist for the psychedelic science newsletter The Microdose, based in Seattle, WA.

Dr. Deborah Mash is professor emeritus of neurology and molecular and cellular pharmacology at the University of Miami School of Medicine. She is the also founder and CEO of DemeRx.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How Are State-Run Psilocybin Therapy Programs Going?
Is This PTSD Treatment Too Good To Be True?

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Comparing a backyard sparrow to a fearsome velociraptor seems odd, but modern birds are indeed living dinosaurs. Scientists are finding more and more connections between the past physiology of dinos and the present physiology of birds.

Joining Ira Flatow to talk about some forgotten species from the past tens of millions of years—think gorilla-sized penguins—is Steve Brusatte, paleontologist and author of “The Story of Birds: A New History from their Dinosaur Origins to the Present.”

Read an excerpt from “The Story of Birds”

Guest:

Dr. Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist and author of “The Story of Birds: A New History from their Dinosaur Origins to the Present.” He’s based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Do Birds Sing In Their Dreams?
Were Dinos On Their Way Out Before The Asteroid Hit? Maybe Not

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Our bodily systems are rife with mutations. In fact, your DNA is mutating right now. These errors, and attempts to repair them, are a key to understanding immune function, aging, and even how heart disease develops. Gene mutations can even mitigate the harm caused by some inherited diseases.

Host Ira Flatow goes on a journey through the illuminating science of genetic mutations with Roxanne Khamsi, science writer and author of “Beyond Inheritance: Our Ever-Mutating Cells and a New Understanding of Health.”

Guest:

Roxanne Khamsi is a science writer and author of the book, “Beyond Inheritance: Our Ever-Mutating Cells and a New Understanding of Health.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

How One Gene Affects Alzheimer’s Risk
65 Genomes Expand Our Picture Of Human Genetics

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Data centers make controversial neighbors: They’re loud, they use a lot of water, and can drive electricity prices up. Following public concern and organizing efforts, Maine nearly implemented an 18-month ban on data center construction, before a governor veto.

Joining Flora to talk about real changes communities can advocate for in regards to data centers are Pete McGuire, climate reporter at Maine Public, and Lauren Keeler, director of ASU’s Just Energy Transition Center.

Guests:

Pete McGuire is climate reporter at Maine Public.

Dr. Lauren Keeler is an associate professor and director of the Just Energy Transition Center at Arizona State University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

As Companies Build Data Centers For AI, Communities Push Back
Secrets Of Ancient Concrete, And… Data Centers In Space?

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The way ancient societies like the Greeks, Maya, and Khmer Empire built their cities can tell us a lot about how a place was governed. Did rulers live in ornate palaces or alongside other residents? Are there large, open spaces for community gatherings?

In a new study, archaeologists document how they use the design of ancient temples, plazas, and cities to understand how a society was governed. So what does ancient architecture reveal about democracy? And do the democratic design principles hold true today?

Host Flora Lichtman chats with anthropologist Jake Holland-Lulewicz about ancient democracies, and with archaeologist Jeff Hou about how the role of public spaces in democracies has changed.

Guests:

Dr. Jacob Holland-Lulewicz is an anthropologist and assistant professor at Penn State.

Dr. Jeff Hou is the head of the architecture department at the National University of Singapore.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Secrets Of Ancient Concrete, And… Data Centers In Space?
One Crisis After Another: Designing Cities For Resiliency

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What did the universe look like before any stars turned on? Astronomers call that time the “dark ages,” and while they think it may be possible to see remnants of it in very low frequency radio signals, hearing those signals from Earth can be challenging.

One possibility is to put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, where it would have periods of observation shielded from interference both from Earth and from the sun—and potentially be able to receive that dark ages signal. The LuSEE-Night mission will explore that approach. A small demonstration radio telescope is slated for launch in late 2026 to serve as a proof of concept for low frequency radio astronomy on the lunar far side.

Astronomer Anže Slosar, lead scientist for LuSEE-Night, joins Host Ira Flatow to describe the telescope project and what astronomers hope to achieve by sending it to the moon.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

CERN finds a new particle + News alerts for the cosmos
3D Images Of Galaxies Will Rock You (Ft. Queen)

Guests:

Dr. Anže Slosar is science lead for the LuSEE-Night project. He’s based at Brookhaven National Lab.

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To mark Earth Day, we asked you to tell us about your favorite places on the planet. You took us to the woods near Traverse City, Michigan, to a lake in Oklahoma, to Long Island Harbor where you spent your summers as a kid.

Basking in a sea breeze and admiring a sunset are basic human pleasures. But how do you take these moments and turn them into meaning? How do you pin those feelings down with words?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman are two poets who make that attempt for their livelihood: Jane Hirshfield, founder of Poets for Science, and Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and former Wisconsin poet laureate.

Guests:

Kimberly Blaeser is a poet, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets, and former Wisconsin Poet Laureate.

Jane Hirshfield is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of “Ledger” (Knopf, 2020) and nine other books of poetry. She’s based in San Francisco, California.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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What makes Earth special, and why are we here at all? In his book “Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe That Make You Possible,” astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi tackles the conditions needed to put life on Earth, from the formation of stars, to self-organizing molecules, to quantum weirdness and the nature of time. He joins Host Flora Lichtman to celebrate our place in the cosmos.

Read an excerpt from "Why Do We Exist?"

Guest:

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi is an astrophysicist and author of “Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe that Make You Possible.”

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Nearly all Americans have some type of PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals,” in their blood. The chemicals, which are linked to numerous health issues, were first regulated in drinking water at the federal level two years ago (though some limits have been rolled back).

But, back in 2018, New Jersey became the first state to adopt its own drinking water standards for PFAS. Now, researchers at Rutgers University have crunched the data to see how well it worked. They found that levels of the regulated chemicals dropped by as much as 55%.

Host Ira Flatow talks with the lead author of the study, cancer epidemiologist Hari Iyer about the significance of his findings and his plans to study the possible link between PFAS and prostate cancer.

Want to filter PFAS from your tap at home? Learn more:

Identifying Drinking Water Filters Certified to Reduce PFAS via EPA
Home Water Treatment for PFAS via PennState Extension

Guest:

Dr. Hari Iyer is an assistant professor of cancer epidemiology and health outcomes at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

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A new imaging technique using a particle accelerator is giving researchers an unprecedented level of detail of our organs, producing scans 100 billion times brighter than a CT scanner. Those 3D models are now part of a public database called the Human Organ Atlas, available to researchers and the medically curious.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to explain why they needed so much power and what kind of research advances will follow is imaging scientist Claire Walsh, director of the Human Organ Atlas hub.

Check out images from the Human Organ Atlas on our website.

Guest:

Dr. Claire Walsh is an associate professor at the UCL department of mechanical engineering and director of the Human Organ Atlas Hub.

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In the 2010s, inventor Simone Giertz (pronounced “Yetch”) began making videos that straddled the line between practical and absurd. What if you had a robot that could feed you soup? Or a drone that could cut your hair? As time went on, her projects became more polished and more ambitious, like converting a Tesla sedan into a pickup truck.

Today, with almost 3 million subscribers to her YouTube channel, Simone is still designing and building objects that are quirkily useful—a fruit bowl that changes size for instance—but that could also be at home in a high-end design store. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her approach to problems, and the joy of making physical objects in an increasingly online world.

Guest:

Simone Giertz is an engineer, maker, YouTube creator and founder of Yetch Studio.

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What are dolphins actually saying with their iconic, high-pitched whistles? Dolphin communication researcher Laela Sayigh is trying to find out. She’s been compiling a database of whistles from a pod of dolphins in Sarasota, Florida, the longest-studied group of cetaceans in the world.

She joins Flora to discuss fundamental questions about dolphin dialects, including how dolphins’ “signature” whistles can change depending on context, and the process of decoding new types of whistles.

Guest:

Dr. Laela Sayigh is a senior research specialist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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“This was not easy, being 200,000+ miles away from home. Like before you launch, it feels like it's the greatest dream on earth. And when you're out there, you just wanna get back to your families and your friends.” – Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman

Last week, the crew of Artemis II made it safely home. Throughout the journey, we heard the astronauts talk about moonjoy, awe, wonder, and—without exception—gratitude for their families.

To learn more about what it's like to be part of an astronaut family, Host Flora Lichtman chats with Tracy Scott, whose dad was a commander during the Apollo missions. Now, as a sociologist who studies the Moonshot era, Scott gives us a glimpse into astronaut life and the social context of the Apollo and Artemis missions.

Guest:

Dr. Tracy Scott is a sociologist at Emory University studying the lives and families of Apollo era astronauts. She’s based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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If you’re a gardener, thinking about getting your soil in shape probably means thinking about compost. But composting can be a mysterious process. What can go into the pile? How do you balance carbon and nitrogen? And how do you do it in a city?

Compost expert Cassandra Marketos joins Host Ira Flatow to break down the basics of what she calls “purposeful decomposition,” and give practical tips for the backyard composter.

Read an excerpt from Marketos’ new book, “Compost after Reading.”

Guest:

Cassandra Marketos is the author of “Compost After Reading: A Practical Manifesto for Purposeful Decomposition.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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How do we know what we know? That's where science comes in—it gives us a method for testing our ideas and getting trustworthy results. But some researchers have warned that many scientific studies can't be replicated.

To find out how deep the problem goes, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded one of the largest analyses of social science, called the SCORE project. They checked the results of thousands of papers across economics, education, and psychology—and found that only half of them could be replicated.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to discuss the findings are Tim Errington, one of the leads on this project, and economist Abel Brodeur, who recently released the results of a separate replication study that found more encouraging results than SCORE did.

Guest:

Dr. Tim Errington is senior director of research at the Center For Open Science in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Abel Brodeur is a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa and founder of the Institute for Replication.

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Movies may be a largely visual medium, but sound plays a huge role in setting tone, creating new worlds, and fleshing out characters. Sound designer Erik Aadahl has brought some of Hollywood’s iconic creatures to life with sound, like the Transformers, 2014’s Godzilla, and Rocky the alien from “Project Hail Mary.” He joins Flora to talk about the science of sound design, and how he uses his background in biology to look for sounds in the animal kingdom.

Guest:

Erik Aadahl is a sound designer and editor at E² in Los Angeles, California.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound are prescribed for weight loss, diabetes, and blood-sugar management. But as more people use them, patients are reporting a decrease in cravings for drugs and alcohol. Researchers are now investigating whether GLP-1s might be effective for treating alcohol and drug addiction.

How much do we know? What are the risks? And do these drugs tell us anything new about the biology of addiction?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with neuroscientist Joseph Schacht, who is conducting a clinical trial on GLP-1s and alcohol use; and Sarah Carstens, addictions clinical director of Outpatient Services at Penn Medicine’s Princeton House Behavioral Health.

Guests:

Dr. Joseph Schacht is the co-director of the Division of Addiction Science, Prevention, and Treatment at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.

Sarah Carstens is the addictions clinical director of Outpatient Services at Penn Medicine’s Princeton House Behavioral Health.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Scientists recently published the first footage of a sperm whale birth, and it was a crowded ordeal. More than 10 other sperm whales were there for the delivery and helped keep the baby whale afloat—and not all of them were related to mom. How much do we actually understand whale culture? And how should we think about altruism in the animal kingdom?

Host Flora Lichtman chats with whale biologist Shane Gero about what it was like to witness this birth and what it tells us about whale culture.

Guest:

Dr. Shane Gero is a whale biologist at Carleton University, founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, and biology lead for Project CETI. He’s based in Ottawa, Canada.

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Last year, Chinese carmaker BYD sold millions of electric vehicles, overtaking Tesla to become the world’s biggest seller of EV cars. And BYD cars weren’t just for the Chinese market. They went to Europe, Asia, and Mexico, and may soon be available in Canada. But thanks to tariffs and regulations, BYDs are not available to U.S. buyers.

China policy expert Kyle Chan joins Host Ira Flatow for a look at the growing EV market worldwide, and how the U.S. seems to be putting the brakes on battery-powered cars.

Guest:

Kyle Chan is an expert on Chinese technology and industrial policy.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Microplastics and nanoplastics have been found just about everywhere: in our soil, our bodies, and our water. Recent research involving bioengineered algae has had success in capturing and removing microplastics from water.

Environmental reporter Kate Grumke joins Producer Kathleen Davis to talk about the latest approaches to addressing microplastics, and researcher Susie Dai discusses her work using algae to pull them out of wastewater.

Guests:

Dr. Susie Dai is a professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of Missouri.

Kate Grumke is a senior environmental reporter for St. Louis Public Radio.

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On Wednesday, NASA’s Artemis II mission launched, kicking off on a roughly 10-day trip that will carry four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth. The flight is another test of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule that are intended to be used for an eventual crewed lunar landing.

Space reporter Brendan Byrne joins Producer Kathleen Davis to share his impressions of the launch and what’s ahead for the Artemis program. Then, moon book author Rebecca Boyle joins the discussion to tackle an important listener question: What if Earth didn’t have a moon?

Guests:

Brendan Byrne is the host of the “Are We There Yet?” podcast, and assistant news director for Central Florida Public Media in Orlando, Florida.

Rebecca Boyle is a science journalist and author of “Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed The Planet, Guided Evolution, And Made Us Who We Are.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In 2006, a vote by the International Astronomical Union determined that Pluto was no longer a planet. The decision sparked a heated public debate, and many planetary scientists disagreed with kicking Pluto out of the planet club.

Twenty years later, Pluto is back in the news: NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said he wants to make Pluto great again by declaring it… a planet again. And he’s urging President Trump to do so by executive order. Why does this Plutonian debate keep rearing its head? And does the president have the power to do that?

To answer those questions and more, Host Ira Flatow talks with planetary scientists and Pluto champions Amanda Bosh and Alan Stern.

Guests:

Dr. Amanda Bosh is the executive director of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, where Pluto was first discovered.

Dr. Alan Stern is the vice president at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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For many of us, what happens in the bathroom stays in the bathroom: According to a recent survey, 1 in 3 Americans are too embarrassed to talk about their poop or gut issues with their doctor. Gastroenterologists like Trisha Pasricha say that’s a problem, and that that stigma is getting in the way of our health and happiness.

She joins Host Flora Lichtman to share some crucial gut knowledge, and talk about her new book, “You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong.”

Read an excerpt from “You’ve Been Pooping All Wrong: How To Make Your Bowel Movements A Joy.”

Guest: Dr. Trisha Pasricha is a physician-scientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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A listener recently called in asking how they might get a pair of functioning web shooters so they could operate as a local Spider-Man. While web shooters (sadly) don’t exist, we can say that the ways real spiders use silk put Peter Parker’s powers to shame. Spiders can use their sticky threads to sail through the air, capture prey larger than them, and even live underwater. And scientists trying to harness those powers.

Host Flora Lichtman chats with spider-silk aficionado Cheryl Hayashi about the wonders of silk, and Fiorenzo Omenetto shares how his engineering lab uses silk in the design of biomedical tools, like vaccines and sensors.

Guests:

Dr. Cheryl Hayashi is the senior vice president and provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Dr. Fiorenzo Omenetto is a biomedical engineer and director of the Silklab at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have announced that they discovered a new subatomic particle. Roughly four times more massive than a standard proton, this short-lived piece of matter called Ξcc⁺(Xi-cc-plus) is like an extra-heavy proton, researchers say. Physicist Hassan Jawahery joins Host Flora Lichtman to unpack how the particle was found, and what its discovery means for theoretical physics.

Then, astronomer Eric Bellm describes a new alert system that could flag potentially significant changes in the southern night sky in real time. On its first night of testing at the Rubin Observatory in Chile, the system fired off 800,000 alerts.

Guests:

Dr. Hassan Jawahery is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland and a member of the LHCb consortium.

Dr. Eric Bellm is alert product group lead for the Rubin Observatory and a research associate professor at the University of Washington.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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When ChatGPT first came onto the scene, it wowed users with its writing abilities, but drew laughs for generating images of seven-fingered hands and struggling with basic math, where 2+2 didn’t always equal 4. But more recently, things have changed: Google and OpenAI’s models bagged gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad last year, and now some experts say AI could pose an existential threat to the field of mathematics itself.

Mathematicians Emily Riehl and Daniel Litt join Host Flora Lichtman to explore how this technology could change the way math discoveries are made—and what could be lost if things go too far.

Guests:

Dr. Emily Riehl is a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.

Dr. Daniel Litt is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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When Punch the monkey was abandoned by his mother, zookeepers gave him a surrogate and unexpected source of comfort: a stuffed animal. Videos of Punch snuggling the stuffie went viral, and, as his stardom rose, millions of us began wondering, “Is Punch OK? Does he have a girlfriend? Is he being bullied by the zoo's other macaques?” Primatologist Christine Webb joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the ways humans relate to our closest relatives, and whether we can—and should—map human feelings onto other primates.

Guest:

Christine Webb is an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University. She is the author of “The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Bird flu has flown off the national news radar, with only scattered, local reports of dead birds in parks and poultry farms. Is it simply no longer a concern, or have cuts to federal science funding disrupted monitoring for this disease? Airborne pathogens expert Seema Lakdawala gives a flyover view on where bird flu stands today, and whether the government’s current monitoring efforts are enough to help prevent another pandemic.

Guest:

Dr. Seema Lakdawala is co-director of the Center for Transmission of Airborne Pathogens and an associate professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Flowers peeking up through the soil are a welcome sight after a long cold winter—and are one of the first markers of spring. Biologist David George Haskell argues that flowers aren’t just beautiful: They’re also critical to most ecosystems and the diversity of life as we know it. Flowering plants also make up a large part of human diets (rice, maize, and wheat are all flowers). And homing in on orchids, Haskell says, can help us understand the complex relationship between flowers and pollinators.

Guest:

Dr. David George Haskell is a biologist and author of: “How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries”

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The Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, and in the 50 years since, the company has evolved from a handful of Silicon Valley misfits to a global technology and media powerhouse.

Tech journalist David Pogue talks with Ira Flatow about the backstory of the company, and the leadership of the mercurial Steve Jobs. He offers a peek into some lesser known chapters of the company’s history, like the ill-fated Apple Paladin, a prototype Apple-produced fax machine. Pogue chronicles the company’s history in his latest book, “Apple: The First 50 Years.”

Guest:

David Pogue is a tech journalist, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, and author of the book “Apple: The First 50 Years.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Science fiction nerds, rejoice: the long-awaited adaptation of “Project Hail Mary” is in theaters now. Host Flora Lichtman chats with book author Andy Weir and astrobiologist Mike Wong about the film’s aliens, and how they buck the trend of what extraterrestrials usually look like on screen.

Guest:

Andy Weir is the author of “Project Hail Mary” and “The Martian.”

Dr. Mike Wong is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at Carnegie Science in Washington, D.C.

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A project called Antscan has generated high resolution images of thousands of ants, representing over 700 species. To make it happen, researchers brought preserved ants from collections around the world to a particle accelerator in Germany. There, a powerful synchrotron X-ray source combined with a vial-swapping robot allowed the researchers to build a collection of 3D ant images, inside and out. Each voxel (like a 3D pixel) has a resolution of 1.22 micrometers—enough to see the tiny hairs on ant bodies, and distinguish individual muscle fibers.

Antscan researcher Julian Katzke joins us to describe the background of the project, and how the images could be used for science and art.

Check out Antscan images at our website.

Guest:

Dr. Julian Katzke is a postdoc at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He worked on the AntScan project while a PhD student at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

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For decades, renowned environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert has taken readers to remote corners of the planet to understand how all life is connected—and how our planet is changing. She’s covered everything from the collapse of insect populations to the success of one town’s effort to go carbon neutral.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Kolbert about the undeniable heaviness of our current climate moment, how the splendor of the Great Barrier Reef “tilted” her worldview, and the messy business of trying to solve environmental problems.

In March and April, the Science Friday Book Club is reading Kolbert’s latest book, “Life on a Little-Known Planet.” It’s a collection of essays she’s written over the years. Check out the Book Club to read along.

Guest:

Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of several books, including “Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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There’s an idea bubbling up in medicine called the “digital twin.” The concept is to take personal health data like genetics, blood test results, tissue samples, MRI scans, and family history, and create a digital model of a patient that can be used to predict how a treatment might work for them. Think personalized medicine supercharged by AI.

For example, cancer researchers are working on models that would create radiation and chemotherapy treatment plans based on the specifics of a patient’s tumor. But these models aren’t ready for the clinic yet, and with so much patient data involved, privacy concerns abound.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Caroline Chung, a radiation oncologist at the forefront of digital twin research.

Guest:

Dr. Caroline Chung is a radiation oncologist and the co-director of the Institute for Data Science Oncology at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Farmers’ Almanacs have been around for hundreds of years, offering detailed advice about things like the best time to plant certain crops, and when to wean your calves. But do farmers actually use them? Host Flora Lichtman discusses their place in modern life with astronomer and Farmers’ Almanac contributor Dean Regas, and Missouri farmer Liz Graznak.

Plus, zebra finches build their nests with a keen eye for color. But is their style easily swayed by feathered peer pressure? Zebra finch expert Lauren Guillette fills us in.

Guests:

Dean Regas is an astronomer and former Farmers’ Almanac contributor based in Cincinnati.

Liz Graznak is an organic farmer and owner of Happy Hollow Farm based in Columbia, Missouri.

Lauren Guillette is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Ecology at the University of Alberta.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In February, conservationists released 158 young tortoises onto Floreana Island in the Galapagos. The Floreana tortoise subspecies had long been thought extinct, but the discovery of close relatives on another island made a captive breeding effort possible.

SciFri turtle correspondent Charles Bergquist talks with conservationist Penny Becker about the science behind the reintroduction, and what it was like to return the species to an island that had not seen them since the 1850s. Plus, the latest on sea turtle nesting season, and an ancient sea turtle stampede.

Guest:
Dr. Penny Becker is CEO of the nonprofit Island Conservation.

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The military use of AI is capturing headlines this month. After a dustup with the Pentagon, the AI company Anthropic is out, and OpenAI is in. Meanwhile, in the US war with Iran, AI is being deployed in ways we’ve never seen.

To make sense of it all, Host Flora Lichtman talks with journalist Karen Hao, who covers AI and is the author of the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI.

Guest:
Karen Hao is a tech journalist and author of the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI.

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On social media, the vagus nerve often gets billed as the gateway to nervous system nirvana: It’s your ticket to better rest, relaxation, and health if you “stimulate” it correctly. Where did this idea come from, and what does the research say?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with neurosurgeon Kevin Tracey, a pioneer of a field called bioelectronic medicine, which uses techniques to stimulate the nervous system with electricity. Back in the 1990s, he was the first to discover that the vagus nerve regulates the immune system and inflammation.

Guest:

Dr. Kevin Tracey is a neurosurgeon, and president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health. He is the author of The Great Nerve.

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In recent months, AI music has moved from novelty act into the realm of listenable music. For the first time, AI-generated songs from AI-generated artists are on the Billboard top 100 charts, and more musicians are coming out saying they use AI in their songwriting process.

Is this just another tech upgrade to the music-making process or does it signal something bigger in the industry? To investigate, SciFri producer and musician Dee Peterschmidt talks to journalist Kristin Robinson, who covers AI in the music industry, and Laurie Spiegel, an electronic and algorithmic music pioneer.

Guests:
Kristin Robinson is a senior writer for Billboard, based in Los Angeles, CA.
Laurie Spiegel is a composer and programmer based in New York, NY

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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March Madness is almost upon us, which means basketball arenas across the country will be filled with the thunderous roar of fans and the surprisingly loud squeaks of basketball shoes. At his first NBA game, physicist Adel Djellouli was surprised by the constant noise from the court and wondered, why do basketball shoes squeak? Turns out, the physics of a squeak involves lightning bolts and earthquakes.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Djellouli about his research and the joy of investigating seemingly simple questions.

Guest: Dr. Adel Djellouli is an experimental physicist at Harvard University.

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Skepticism around public health policy, experts and institutions has left some researchers asking basic questions about their role and relationship with the public. Can public health be done better?

Epidemiologist Erica Walker has a perspective on just that. She started off studying noise pollution, found her science wasn’t serving people as she hoped, and pivoted her approach in an effort to be more useful. Flora sits down with Walker to hear the story.

Guest: Dr. Erica Walker is an assistant professor of epidemiology and director of the Community Noise Lab at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

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Ever heard an alcohol ad that tells you to “please drink responsibly”? Or a gambling ad that warns, "when the fun stops, stop”? Or been urged to reduce your carbon footprint?

The message is basically the same: These products and activities have risks. But mitigating them, well, that’s on you. How did we get this idea that it's our personal responsibility to make a dent in big problems like climate change—and not the job of the government to impose regulations? That’s the focus of the new book It’s on You.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with behavioral scientist and It’s on You coauthor Nick Chater, about how he and his colleagues played a role in shaping a narrative of individual responsibility, and how to change it.

Guest:
Dr. Nick Chater is a professor of behavioural science at Warwick University and coauthor of It's on You: How Corporations and Behavioral Scientists Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society's Deepest Problems.

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"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see."

There’s something about space that captures the imagination of scientists and artists alike. Just ask astrophysicist Derek Ward-Thompson and astronomer Brian May (yes, THAT Brian May, guitarist of Queen). In their new book Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3-D, they turn flat images of the galaxies to three dimensional spacescapes that leap off the page.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Ward-Thompson and May about the enchanting nature of space and the collision of art and astronomy. And yes, they get into the music.

Guests:
Dr. Brian May is an astronomer and the guitarist of Queen.
Dr. Derek Ward-Thompson is an astrophysicist at the University of Lancashire in England.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Earlier this year, Congress pushed back on the Trump administration’s attempts to slash funding for many science research programs, and restored that money to the budget. But despite the funds existing in the budget, they have not yet been released to some researchers.

Science journalist Alexandra Witze joins Host Ira Flatow to walk through the details of the government funding process, and her recent report in Nature about the funding slowdown.

Guest: Alexandra Witze is a correspondent for the journal Nature. She's based in Boulder, Colorado.

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Putting that idea into practice changed the game for chemistry, and earned Frances Arnold the Nobel Prize prize in 2018. She called it “directed evolution.” Today, thousands of labs use her methods to coax enzymes into doing things no one ever thought of. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about where she sees this approach going in the future, and the personal evolution that brought her into science.

Guest: Dr. Frances Arnold is the Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

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The new semi-autobiographical play “The Reservoir” spins a comedic narrative around cognitive reserve, the idea that doing brain-stimulating activities can prevent or delay the onset of dementia symptoms. It’s currently running at the Atlantic Theater Company and co-produced by The Ensemble Studio Theater in New York.*

Host Ira Flatow talks with playwright Jake Brasch about his inspiration for the play and how to mesh science into the theater.

Then, neurologist Marilyn Albert discusses some of the latest science of mental stimulation and dementia. After following a diverse group of older adults for 20 years, her research found that a modest amount of specialized cognitive training reduced dementia risk by 25%. You can try a very similar brain training exercise at home.

*“The Reservoir” received funding from the Sloan Foundation, which also helps support Science Friday.

Guests:
Jake Brasch is a writer, performer, composer, clown, and writer of the new play “The Reservoir.”
Dr. Marilyn Albert is a professor of neurology and director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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American chestnut trees once towered over the landscape, dominating forests in parts of the eastern United States. But in the late 1800s, a fungal blight virtually wiped them out across the country. Chestnut restoration scientist Jared Westbrook tells Host Ira Flatow how new genetic work could speed up efforts to breed fungal resistance into hybrid chestnuts and create a heartier chestnut population.

Then, author Hanna Lewis introduces Ira to the concept of miniforests, self-sustaining native forest ecosystems on a tiny footprint, like an empty lot or a schoolyard. The planting method, developed by botanist Akira Miyawaki, can help “rewild” small parcels of land by jump-starting forest development.

Read our full story, The Miniforest Movement Gains Ground In The U.S.

Guests:
Dr. Jared Westbrook is Director of Science for the American Chestnut Foundation in Asheville, North Carolina.
Hanna Lewis is the author of the book Mini-Forest Revolution: Using the Miyawaki Method to Rapidly Rewild the World. She works for non-profit Renewing the Countryside in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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On February 12, the Environmental Protection Agency dealt a major blow to the government’s power to fight climate change by rescinding a key piece of research called the endangerment finding. The finding, issued in 2009, basically says: Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare—and because they’re harmful, they must be regulated. It's the legal basis for the federal government’s regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. So what does it mean that this finding has been thrown out?

Host Flora Lichtman digs into this question with Andy Miller, an original author on the endangerment finding who spent more than 30 years working for the EPA.

Guest:
Dr. Andy Miller worked on air pollution and climate change at the EPA for more than 30 years. He was an original author on Endangerment Finding.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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An estimated 500,000 people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in the United States each year, but the causes and mechanisms of the condition remain a neurological mystery. A recent study looked at the role of variants in a gene called APOE in Alzheimer’s, and found that while it’s not a simple determinant of developing the disease, that one gene seems to play a significant role in promoting disease risk. Researchers hope work like this could point to new areas to study and even potential treatments.

Epidemiologist Dylan Williams joins Host Ira Flatow to explain the findings and discuss the challenges in tracing a complex disease to its roots.

Guest: Dr. Dylan Williams is a principal research fellow in molecular and genetic epidemiology at University College London.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Does the availability of “hemp-derived” THC products have you dazed and confused? A legal loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill lets these items be sold over the counter. But state actions, and a federal law that could come in November, aims to snuff these products out.

Host Flora Lichtman talks to cannabis expert Cinnamon Bidwell about the confusing legal landscape, and the real differences between products. Plus, investigative reporter Joe Hong talks to Flora to break down his findings of what’s lurking in NYC’s dirty snowbanks.

Guest:
Dr. Cinnamon Bidwell is a clinical psychologist focused on cannabis at the University of Colorado. She co-directs the CU Change lab.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Despite major advances in our understanding of the biology of mental health disorders, there’s no blood test or brain scan that will confirm if you have depression, anxiety, PTSD, or any other psychiatric illness.

And yet, the American Psychiatric Association recently announced that it will be including biomarkers for mental conditions in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which guides diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. So how close are we to pinpointing the biological markers of mental illness, and what does that mean for diagnosis? It’s complicated.

Host Flora Lichtman untangles some of this science with psychiatry researcher John Krystal.

Guest: Dr. John Krystal is a professor of psychiatry, neuroscience, and psychology at the Yale School of Medicine.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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There’s a long-held idea that autism is more prevalent in boys than girls—the CDC says it’s three times as common. But a growing body of research suggests the reality is more complicated. In a new study, researchers tracked autism diagnoses in millions of Swedish people born from 1985 to 2022. They found that the prevalence of autism is actually pretty even across the sexes, but people with “female” stamped on their birth certificate are often diagnosed later in life.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with epidemiologist Caroline Fyfe about what this study teaches us about the prevalence of autism. Then, psychology researcher Rachel Moseley, an autistic woman herself, shares how late and missed diagnoses can affect autistic people.

Guests:
Dr. Caroline Fyfe is an epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh who studied sex differences in autism diagnoses.
Dr. Rachel Moseley is a researcher in psychology at Bournemouth University in the UK, studying the experiences of autistic adults.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The gap between vaccine science and vaccine policy has been widening under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, the American Medical Association and the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota, have announced that they are partnering to create their own vaccine review process, effectively creating a parallel system to the CDC’s.

Host Ira Flatow talks with Michael Osterholm, executive director of the Vaccine Integrity Project, about the role of this new review panel.

Guest: Dr. Michael Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy and executive director of the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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While parts of the eastern and southern US have had unusually high snowfall this year, Colorado and Utah are in a snow drought. The abysmal winter sports season is just the tip of the melting iceberg: Snowpack is key to providing water throughout the year for the drought-stricken region. Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about this unusual winter are reporter David Condos and climate scientist Brad Udall.

Guests:
David Condos is the Southern Utah Reporter at KUER based in St. George.
Brad Udall is a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Figure skating is a fan favorite at the Winter Olympics—for every event, the stands are packed to watch competitors glide, jump, and spin. But what does it take to pull off these seemingly effortless moves?

Figure skating researcher Deborah King joins Host Ira Flatow to unfold the science of the sport, from the impressive jumps of US skater Ilia Malinin, to the g-forces endured by the ankles of a speeding skater.

Guest: Dr. Deborah King is a professor of exercise science and athletic training at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In Oregon and Colorado, you can book an appointment for psilocybin therapy, where a licensed therapist takes you on a guided trip using the drug that makes “magic” mushrooms hallucinogenic.

Under federal law, psilocybin is illegal. But within the past few years, both states greenlit the drug for supervised medical use, and New Mexico may soon follow. It’s being used to treat certain conditions, including drug-resistant depression and PTSD. With a lot more people taking the drug under state supervision, what are we learning about its safety and efficacy? Who is taking it, and can clinics make money?

Host Flora Lichtman checks in on the state of these programs with Colorado Public Radio journalist Alejandro Galva. Then, she sits down with geriatric and palliative care specialist Stacy Fischer for a research update on the therapeutic use of the drug, and the nation’s largest clinical trial for psilocybin use for advanced cancer patients facing mental health challenges.

Guests:
Alejandro Galva is the afternoon editor at Colorado Public Radio. He’s also the editor of their series “The Trip,” which covers the psychedelic therapy landscape in the state.
Dr. Stacy Fischer is a geriatric and palliative care specialist at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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You may have heard that a little dirt is good for kids. It helps them build up their immune systems, and sets them on a path to future health. But what kind of filth does the trick?

Producer Kathleen Davis digs into the latest science on the benefits of exposing kids to the outdoors with microbiologist Jack Gilbert and pediatric epidemiologist Amber Fyfe-Johnson.

Guests:
Dr. Jack Gilbert is a microbiologist and professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and in the department of pediatrics in UC San Diego School of Medicine.
Dr. Amber Fyfe-Johnson is an associate professor and pediatric epidemiologist at Institute for Research and Education to Advance Community Health at Washington State University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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With so many dating apps—and so many people using them—why are a record number of American adults single? Is marriage as important as it was a generation or two ago? Evolutionary biologist and sex researcher Justin Garcia joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about dating and mating, and what evolutionary biology can tell us about our need to form a “pair bond” … or not.

Read an excerpt from Justin’s new book, The Intimate Animal: The Science of Sex, Fidelity, and Why We Live and Die for Love.

Guest: Dr. Justin Garcia is an evolutionary biologist and executive director of the Kinsey Institute. He is the author of The Intimate Animal.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Our ability to imagine is part of what makes us who we are—not just as individuals, but also as humans. It turns out, though, that we may not be the only species capable of playing pretend. In a string of experiments, scientists sat down, set the table, and hosted pretend tea parties with a bonobo named Kanzi to see if he’d play along—and he did.

Producer Kathleen Davis chats with study author Amalia Bastos about Kanzi, what it means to imagine, and how our definition of “humanness” keeps changing.

Guest: Dr. Amalia Bastos is a cognitive scientist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Screens are ubiquitous in today’s world, and concerns about how they affect kids are mounting. Last month, Australia banned social media use for kids under 16, with some European countries poised to follow. But what’s the science on how neverending YouTube videos or TikToks affect kids’ brains and bodies?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss are neuroscientist John Foxe and behavioral developmental pediatrician Jenny Radesky.

Guests:
Dr. John Foxe is Director of The Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester in New York.
Dr. Jenny Radesky is a developmental behavioral pediatrician at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She’s also co-Medical Director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Wandering through a museum, you can get a glimpse of what life in ancient societies looked like. But what did it smell like? And is it even possible to get a whiff of, say, a freshly embalmed mummy, or a 5,000-year-old Saudi Arabian incense burner? That’s exactly what some chemists and olfactory designers are trying to do.

Producer Kathleen Davis talks with archeo-chemist Barbara Huber and perfumer Carole Calvez about how they scientifically recreated the scent of ancient Egyptian mummies and brought that smell to museums on special cards.

Guests:
Dr. Barbara Huber is an archeo-chemist at the University of Tübingen in Germany.
Carole Calvez is a perfumer and olfactory designer and a cofounder of Iris & Morphée in Paris, France.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Cyanobacteria may be the ultimate lesson in resilience. These 3.5 billion-year-old organisms have lived through hell-on-earth conditions, and found creative ways to persevere. While the state of the world feels out of control, Host Flora Lichtman talks to molecular microbiologist Devaki Bhaya about the planet’s ultimate survivalists.

Guest: Dr. Devaki Bhaya is a molecular microbiologist at Carnegie Science in Stanford, California.

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the largest particle collider in the United States, collided its last particles in early February. RHIC is a massive accelerator ring and set of instruments based at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and was designed to accelerate gold ions to near-light speed before collision. It was the second most powerful accelerator on the planet, second only to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Since RHIC began running in 2000, scientists have used it to study the tiniest subatomic particles, which give insight into some of the universe’s biggest questions.

Brookhaven nuclear physicist Gene Van Buren joins Host Flora Lichtman to look back on the history of RHIC, what physicists have learned from the collider, and what lies ahead for particle physics.

Guest: Dr. Gene Van Buren is a nuclear physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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This year’s Winter Olympics feature a new event called “skimo,” or ski mountaineering. The racing event involves periods of skiing uphill using “skins” for traction, sprinting uphill on foot, and a downhill ski slalom to the finish. Mountaineering historian Peter Hansen joins Host Flora Lichtman for an introduction to skimo, and the scientific connections of early modern mountaineers.

Then, wildlife ecologist Kevin White describes the amazing capabilities of the mountain goat, what’s known about the physical features that contribute to their climbing ability, and risks to mountain goat populations.

Guests:

Dr. Peter Hansen is a professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and author of the book The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment.
Dr. Kevin White is a wildlife ecologist based at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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As ICE cracks down in Minneapolis and across the country, reporters and privacy advocates have drawn attention to how the agency is using technology: scanning people’s faces without consent, using private health records to make arrests, tracking people’s location in real time with phone data.

So how does all this work? How does the United States’ data ecosystem make it possible for not just ICE, but any number of government agencies and businesses to buy our private data? And what actually happens after we send that DM or open up Instagram at a protest to post a picture?

To learn more, Host Flora Lichtman sits down with law professor and tech policy expert Laura Moy. She’s testified in Congress about privacy laws and how data brokers profit off of personal data.

Guest: Laura Moy is an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law, based in Washington, D.C.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The new dietary guidelines from the USDA call for Americans to “eat real food” and consume less “highly processed” food. But how? By some estimates, ultraprocessed foods make up nearly 60% of the average American adult diet, and they’re all over school lunch menus.

Health policy expert Laura Schmidt and nutrition policy researcher Alyssa Moran join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about ultraprocessed foods and our food supply. What might they be doing to our health, and what steps could policymakers take to help Americans eat less of them?

Guests:
Dr. Laura Schmidt is a professor at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Alyssa Moran is deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In an effort to make their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable, some farmers are experimenting with agrivoltaics: growing crops underneath solar panels. This dual harvest is working for some, but what will it take for agrivoltaics to work on a larger, more industrial scale?

Joining Host Ira Flatow are journalist Jana Rose Schleis and environmental economics expert Madhu Khanna.

Guests:
Jana Rose Schleis is a news producer at KBIA in Columbia, Missouri. Her podcast series, “The Next Harvest,” is available on podcast platforms.
Dr. Madhu Khanna is a professor of environmental economics and director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Point systems are everywhere. Ready for movie night? Consult Rotten Tomatoes. Vetting a new pediatrician? See how many stars they have. At work, it can be even more pervasive: There’s KPIs and ROIs because success has to be measurable.

But what happens when we boil something down to one nice number? What do we lose? Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, author of the new book The Score, joins Host Flora Lichtman to explore how metrics can be soul-crushing in work and in life, yet keeping score is freeing in the world of games.

Read an excerpt from The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.

Guest:
Dr. C. Thi Nguyen is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He’s the author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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We’re bringing you a special bonus episode from our friends at the live call-in show “The Middle with Jeremy Hobson.” Jeremy is joined by Science Friday Host Flora Lichtman and theoretical astrophysicist Priya Natarajan to talk about how trust in science can be restored. It took a hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Trump Administration has now elevated science skeptics to positions of power and proposed giant cuts in scientific research.

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All the pups we love—from chihuahuas to great danes—are descendants of the mighty gray wolf. But how did we end up with so many breeds? The story that's often told is that dog diversity really took off with the Victorians in the 1800s, but new research is unleashing a different tale. Host Flora Lichtman talks with bioarchaeologist Carly Ameen about the diversification of dogs.

Plus, a long-running experiment to tame silver foxes is cluing us into how domestication happens. Canine researcher Erin Hecht gives us a glimpse into the experiment and what it tells us about domesticated brains.

Guests:
Dr. Carly Ameen is a bioarcheologist and lecturer at the University of Exeter in England.
Dr. Erin Hecht is an evolutionary biologist at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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We keep hearing that these are unprecedented times for science: scientific skeptics running federal agencies, growing mistrust of vaccines, and messaging from the highest levels of government that scientists are in the pocket of industry.

To understand how unique this time really is, we’re talking to Naomi Oreskes, a science historian who has spent her career studying skepticism in science. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss our current moment, and how ghostwriting in scientific papers is harming public trust in science.

Guest: Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, based in Cambridge, MA.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In a speech last week in a speech at the World Economic Forum, President Trump said China was making a lot of wind turbines, but not using much wind power in their own country. Is that right?

China studies professor Jeremy Wallace joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the renewable energy landscape in China. They’ll dig into how China is flooding the world with affordable solar technology, making it the cheapest form of electricity in history. Plus, what energy tech China is manufacturing, what it's using domestically, and what it's exporting.

Guest: Dr. Jeremy Wallace is the A. Doak Barnett Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Forty years ago this week, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in flight, 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. All seven crew members were killed. In the months that followed, the tragedy was traced to a failed O-ring in one of the shuttle’s rocket boosters. Now, with the Artemis II mission preparing for launch to lunar orbit, what have we learned about spaceflight and risk?

Former astronaut Jim Wetherbee joins Host Ira Flatow to remember the Challenger tragedy, and look ahead to the age of private spaceflight and the upcoming Artemis II mission.

Guest: Jim Wetherbee is a former NASA astronaut, the former head of flight crew operations for NASA, and the author of Controlling Risk: Thirty Techniques for Operating Excellence.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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A rogue strain of flu, subclade K, has sickened more than 19 million people in the US so far this season. And the flu shot hasn’t offered that much protection. What’s going on with this superflustorm?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman with some answers is Jennifer Duchon, a pediatric infectious disease specialist.

Guest: Dr. Jennifer Duchon is a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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This time last year, Los Angeles was on fire, and more than 16,000 homes and buildings burned to the ground. Cars, batteries, solar panels, insulation, and cleaning supplies went up in flames, releasing chemicals like lead, benzene, and asbestos into giant smoke plumes that wafted across the city.

A year later, scientists are trying to understand the fallout of this urban wildfire—what chemicals got left behind, how to remediate them, and the threats to our health. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Yifang Zhu and Francois Tissot, who are at the forefront of this research. And for one of them, this work is personal.

Guests:
Dr. François Tissot is a professor of geochemistry at Caltech in Pasadena, California.
Dr. Yifang Zhu is a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Deepfakes have been everywhere lately, from fake AI images of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro following his (real) capture by the United States, to X’s Grok AI generating nonconsensual images of real people in states of undress. And if you missed all that, you've almost certainly had your own deepfake close encounter in your feed: maybe rabbits bouncing on a trampoline or an unlikely animal friendship that seems a little too good to be true.

Deepfakes have moved beyond the realm of novelty, and it’s more difficult than ever to know what is actually real online. So how did we get here and what is there, if anything, to do about it?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman are Hany Farid, who’s studied digital forensics and how we relate to AI for over 25 years, and Sam Cole, a journalist at 404 Media who’s covered deepfakes and their impact since 2017.

Guests:
Dr. Hany Farid is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at University of California, Berkeley.
Sam Cole is a journalist at 404 Media, based in New York, NY

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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When it comes to “bad” cholesterol, most cardiologists say lower is better. But what’s the best way to get that number down? Can diet and exercise alone do the job?

Cardiologists Kiran Musunuru and Neha Pagidipati join Host Ira Flatow for a look at the latest in cholesterol-lowering treatments, including CRISPR technology that could turn off cholesterol-making genes for life. How does it work, and is it safe?

Guests:
Dr. Kiran Musunuru is the scientific director of the Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Neha Pagidipati is the director of the Cardiometabolic Prevention Clinic at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, NC.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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An Associated Press investigation found that more than 420 “anti-science” bills were introduced in statehouses last year, targeting protections around public health issues like vaccines, milk safety, and fluoride. As state legislatures come back into session, what can we expect for 2026? Joining Ira Flatow is Laura Ungar, science and medical reporter for the Associated Press.

Plus, reporter Elise Plunk joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the complex case of a citizen-led pollution monitoring program in Louisiana that persists despite a law banning the use of its data.

Guests:
Laura Ungar is a science and medical reporter for the Associated Press.
Elise Plunk is an environmental reporter and Report for America corps member at the Louisiana Illuminator.

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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It’s a wintertime question that you may have had as you struggled down a frozen sidewalk, or strapped on some ice skates: Just why is ice slippery, anyway? It turns out the answer is somewhat complicated.

Mechanical engineer Robert Carpick studies tribology, the science of surface interactions, from friction to wear to lubrication. He joins Host Ira Flatow to wrangle some new ideas about the slippery science of ice.

Guest: Dr. Robert Carpick is the John Henry Towne Professor in the department of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Each year, around 90,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease that can cause tremors and affect cognition. Scientists are working to identify some of the earliest signs of the disease, and to figure out how we might test for—and treat—Parkinson’s in the future.

Neurologists Emily Tamadonfar and Michael Okun join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss what we know about why Parkinson’s starts and how it may be associated with genetic mutations, pollution, and other factors.

Guests:
Dr. Emily Tamadonfar is a clinical associate professor of neurology in the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Dr. Michael Okun is a professor and executive director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at University of Florida Health in Gainesville, Florida.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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As we age, our vision gets blurrier, we form cataracts, and we have a higher risk of glaucoma. But Greenland sharks live for hundreds of years and still maintain healthy, functional eyeballs. So what gives?

Host Ira Flatow talks with molecular biologist Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk, who studies the mechanisms of aging, about what we can learn from these fishy eyeballs and how it could help us.

Plus, listener Leon called us with a question: Is it true that the James Webb Space Telescope’s gold-plated mirror is so perfectly flat that if it were the size of the United States, the highest bump would be the size of a baseball? Not quite. Host Flora Lichtman discusses this feat of engineering with JWST project scientist Macarena Garcia Marin.

Guests:

Dr. Dorota Skowronska-Krawczyk is a molecular biologist and associate professor at the University of California, Irvine. She studies the mechanisms of aging.
Dr. Macarena Garcia Marin is a project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope at the Space Telescope and Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

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The concrete of ancient Rome is famous for its durability. Just look at the Pantheon and those iconic aqueducts that helped transport water throughout the empire—still standing 2,000 years later.

But knowledge about how this concrete was made hasn’t been very solid. Well, scientists have discovered a construction site in Pompeii preserved in the volcanic ash, which might hold clues to how we can improve our concrete today. Concrete researcher Admir Masic joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the findings.

Plus, we’ll look at the infrastructure of the future with engineer Benjamin Lee, who breaks down the recent news of tech companies looking to move their power-hungry data centers to space. They discuss the daunting engineering challenges and possible benefits.

Guests:
Dr. Admir Masic is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dr. Benjamin Lee is a professor in the department of electrical and systems engineering and the department of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Last February, Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, issued a dire warning about federal cuts to science, saying the country was on its way to losing its status as a global science leader.

Nearly a year later, where does the United States stand with science funding, and what happens next? Sudip Parikh joins Host Flora Lichtman once again to discuss.

Guest: Dr. Sudip Parikh is CEO and Executive Publisher of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, based in Arlington, Virginia.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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With President Trump’s moves to take control of Venezuela’s oil production—including the seizure of incoming and outgoing oil tankers—there’s been a lot of talk about the country’s deep reserves of crude. But not all oil is the same, and getting the Venezuelan reserves out of the ground might be neither cheap nor simple. So who wants that oil, and what is it good for?

Petroleum engineer Jennifer Miskimins joins Host Ira Flatow to drill into the ABCs of oil production and refining.

Guest: Dr. Jennifer Miskimins is 2026 president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and head of the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.

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Growing up, Daisy Hernández was told that her aunt had become ill from eating a bad apple. She watched as her aunt became sicker and sicker, and didn’t learn until years later that she was living with Chagas disease. It affects around 8 million people, mostly across the Americas, and yet many of us have never heard of it.

Hernandez’s book, The Kissing Bug, is SciFri’s first book club pick of the year. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Hernández about her book, the story of her aunt who died of Chagas, and how a disease that affects so many people can be so neglected.

Read an excerpt of The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease.

Guest: Daisy Hernández is a journalist and the author of The Kissing Bug. She’s based in Chicago.

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What does it mean to be a wild animal in a world dominated by humans? A recent study found that city-dwelling raccoons’ snouts are getting shorter—a sign of domestication. Another study on dark-eyed juncos living on a Los Angeles college campus found that their beaks changed shape during the COVID-19 lockdown, when there wasn’t as much food and trash on campus.

Evolutionary biologist Pamela Yeh and animal domestication expert Raffaela Lesch join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss how wildlife is evolving in urban areas, what it means to be domesticated, and when we can expect to have a pet raccoon sleeping at the foot of the bed.

Guests:
Dr. Pamela Yeh is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA.
Dr. Raffaela Lesch is an assistant professor of biology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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A year ago this week, the Eaton and Palisades fires broke out in Los Angeles, and ultimately became one of the most destructive urban fire events in recent history. Today we’ll hear about a community brigade that is taking firefighting into its own hands through a technique called “home hardening.”

Journalist Adriana Cargill, host of the new podcast “The Palisades Fire: A Sandcastle Special” from PRX, embedded with this group to understand what the future of firefighting could look like. She and Jack Cohen, a former research scientist with the USDA Forest Service, join Host Flora Lichtman to explain the science behind how people can prevent their own homes from burning.

Guests:
Adriana Cargill is a multimedia journalist and host of the podcast “The Palisades Fire: A Sandcastles Special.” She is based in Los Angeles, California.
Dr. Jack Cohen is a former research physical scientist with the USDA Forest Service, based in Missoula, Montana.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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When humans finally land on Mars, what should they do? A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine lays out the science objectives for a crewed Mars mission. Planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who co-chaired the report committee, joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the plans to send people to Mars.

We’ll also get an update on the mission to survey the asteroid Psyche. Elkins-Tanton tells us how she managed the team that made the Psyche mission possible, and what she learned from her mistakes.

Guest: Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a planetary scientist. She’s the head of NASA’s Psyche mission and director of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Since President Trump returned to office, his administration has been aggressive in rolling back clean energy initiatives. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” ended tax credits for solar panels and electric vehicles. And the EPA is moving to cancel $7 billion dollars in federal grants that were intended to help low- and middle-income families install solar on their homes.

But that isn’t the whole story. Texas, California, and other states are bringing so much solar and battery power online that in March, fossil fuels generated less than half the electricity in the US for the first time ever. And internationally, solar has gotten so cheap to build and install that it’s fundamentally transforming many countries’ power grids.

So where exactly does solar adoption stand in the US and across the world right now?

In August, climate activist Bill McKibben joined Host Ira Flatow to talk about the recent wins and future challenges that sun-powered energy faces, which he writes about in his new book Here Comes The Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.

Read an excerpt from Here Comes The Sun.

Guest: Bill McKibben is a climate activist and founder of Third Act. He’s based in Middlebury, Vermont.

Transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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‘Tis the season for exercise resolutions. For a select few, an ultramarathon—a race of 50, 100, or even more miles—may be on the table for 2026. But is there a limit to what our bodies can endure? And what makes ultramarathoners capable of these tremendous feats?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman are sports medicine expert Brandee Waite and biological anthropologist Andrew Best.

Guests:
Dr. Brandee Waite is the director of UC Davis Health Sports Medicine in Sacramento, California.
Dr. Andrew Best is an assistant professor of biology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In the last year, you’ve basically replaced your body weight in new cells. So yes, it’s a new year, new you. To ring in 2026, we’re talking about starting anew, and drawing inspiration from tiny worms that embody the ultimate growth mindset—they can regrow a whole body from just a tiny piece of their tail.

In this festive episode, Host Flora Lichtman talks with biologist Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, a pioneer in the field of regeneration, about the science of regeneration and the biology lessons we can carry into the new year.

Guest: Dr. Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado is a biologist and president and chief scientific officer of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri.

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This has been a busy year in science, from government budget cuts and policy changes affecting research, to the record rise of renewables, to the surge in AI, and everything in between.

Science journalists Sophie Bushwick and Maggie Koerth join Host Ira Flatow to unpack some of the year’s top stories, and some you might have missed.

Guests:
Sophie Bushwick is a freelance science journalist and editor based in New York.
Maggie Koerth is climate and weather editor for CNN, based in Minneapolis.

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Being able to belt out a tune like Adele or Pavarotti is not just about raw talent. The best singers in the world have to work on their technique—like how to control their breath and develop the stamina to hit note after note for a two-hour concert. But pop stars and opera singers aren’t the only vocalists who have figured out how to harness their voices for maximum impact.

Death metal vocalists also train their voices to hit that unique guttural register. And those iconic screams are not as easy to master as they might seem.

In a conversation from April, Host Flora Lichtman talks with speech pathologist Amanda Stark, and Mark Garrett, vocal coach and lead singer of the band Kardashev.

Read the whole story at sciencefriday.com.

Guests:
Dr. Amanda Stark is a speech pathologist and vocology researcher at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mark Garett is a vocal coach and the lead singer of Kardashev. He’s based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Transcript available at sciencefriday.com.

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Gen Alpha slang can seem unintelligible to adults, but linguist and TikToker Adam Aleksic argues language development in the internet age is worth legitimate study. In a conversation from July, Adam talks to Host Flora Lichtman about how algorithms and social media are changing the way we speak, and discusses his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language.

Guest: Adam Aleksic is a linguist and content creator posting educational videos as the “Etymology Nerd” to an audience of more than three million. He is the author of Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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What have we learned in recent years about black holes? Can entangled quantum particles really communicate faster than light? What’s the story behind Schrödinger’s Cat? And, in this weird liminal space between the holidays, what even IS time, really?

Physicist Sean Carroll and Host Ira Flatow tackled those big questions and more at a recent event at WNYC’s Greene Space in New York City. Carroll’s book The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion is the SciFri Book Club pick for December.

Guest: Dr. Sean Carroll is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Health psychologist Dr. Kari Leibowitz traveled to some of the coldest, darkest places on earth to learn how people there don’t just survive, but thrive in winter. She says that one of the key ingredients is adopting a positive wintertime mindset by focusing on and celebrating the good parts of winter.

In a conversation from January, Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Kari Leibowitz, author of How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days, about saunas, cold plunges, candles, and other small ways to make winter a season to look forward to rather than dread. Plus, she responds to some of our audience’s own tips to make the season enjoyable.

Guest: Dr. Kari Leibowitz is a health psychologist and author of How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days. She’s based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Transcript is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Imagine sitting at home and then all of a sudden you hear a men’s choir belting out “The Star Spangled Banner.” You check your phone, computer, radio. Nothing’s playing. You look outside, no one’s there. That’s what happened to neurologist Bruce Dobkin after he received a cochlear implant. He set out to learn everything he could about the condition, called musical hallucinosis.

In a story from August, Host Ira Flatow talks with Dobkin about his decision to publish his account in a medical journal and why the condition is more common than he realized.

Guest: Dr. Bruce Dobkin is a neurologist at UCLA Health.

Transcript is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Koalas with the bodies of lions. Elephants the size of your dog. Gigantic, 8-foot-tall sloths. These aren’t creatures found in science fiction: They walked our planet a million years ago, during the Ice Age.

That’s the focus of the third season of the Apple TV series “Prehistoric Planet,” which uses the latest paleontology research and photorealistic CGI to reimagine the lives of ancient creatures. So far, the series has focused on dinosaurs, but now it’s taking that same approach to the huge and strange-looking animals that roamed the tundras and deserts of the Ice Age.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to thaw out the new research featured in the show are two of its scientific consultants, paleontologist Darren Naish and La Brea Tar Pits curator Emily Lindsey.

Guests: Dr. Darren Naish is a paleozoologist and author based in Southampton, U.K.

Dr. Emily Lindsey is a paleoecologist, curator, and excavation site director at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California.

Transcript available at sciencefriday.com.

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Since 1955, when Congress passed the Polio Vaccination Assistance Act, the federal government has been in the business of expanding access to vaccines. That is, until this year.

2025 has been filled with almost daily news stories about federal agencies, under the direction of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., casting doubts about vaccine safety, including unsubstantiated claims about links to autism. These agencies have also been taking steps that could roll back access to vaccines, including for hepatitis B and COVID-19.

But we’ve found it very hard to sort out what these talking points and recommendations mean in practice. KFF Health News journalists Jackie Fortiér and Arthur Allen join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss, one year in, what this administration’s stance on vaccines has meant practically—for vaccine access, and vaccine uptake.

Guests: Arthur Allen is senior correspondent at KFF Health News and author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver.

Jackie Fortiér is a Peggy Girshman fellow covering health policy at KFF Health News.

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This year, comet 3I/Atlas broke into our solar system, but also the zeitgeist. This dirty snowball is a visitor from another solar system, and it’s only the third interstellar object we’ve ever spotted. And today, it's closer to us than ever before—just 170 million miles away.

Astronomy experts Stefanie Milam and Hakeem Oluseyi join Host Flora Lichtman to dish about 3I/ATLAS and how it captured the spotlight in a way that maybe no other big hunk of rock ever has.

Plus, the sun is setting on the ISS, and the plan is to eventually crash it into the ocean. But wouldn’t it be cooler to send it into deep space instead? A listener pleads his case.

Guests: Dr. Stefanie Milam is an astrochemist at NASA and a project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. She studies comets and interstellar objects.

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi is an astrophysicist and CEO of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

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While on a sampling trip in California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, researchers stopped to sample a rather boring stream on their hike to Boiling Springs Lake. But when they incubated that water sample back in the lab, they discovered an amoeba that could still move and divide at 145 F, a new record for a eukaryotic cell. Microbiologist Angela Oliverio joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe the “fire amoeba,” Incendiamoeba cascadensis.

Plus, planetary scientist Johanna Teske takes us to exoplanet TOI-561b, a far-off “wet lava ball” which was recently observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Researchers believe that the planet has the strongest evidence yet of an atmosphere on a rocky planet outside our solar system.

Guests:
Dr. Angela Oliverio is an assistant professor in the department of biology at Syracuse University.
Dr. Johanna Teske is a staff scientist at Carnegie Science Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Videos of humanoid robots dancing, doing cartwheels, putting clothes in a washing machine, and serving drinks are all over social media. And tech CEOs are telling us to prepare for the forthcoming humanoid army that’s going to totally change our lives for the better.

But what’s real? Where are we with this technology? Are these humanoids robots ready to take washing the dishes off our plates, or work beside us in warehouses?

Tech journalist James Vincent became an expert on the subject when he toured humanoid robot factories and rubbed shoulders with robots themselves for a feature story he wrote for Harper’s Magazine. He joins Host Flora Lichtman with perspective on the hype.

Guest: James Vincent is a journalist who’s written for The Verge and The Guardian, and author of the book Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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It’s that time of year: the Christmas Bird Count, when birders go out in flocks to record all the birds they see in a single day. The data collected during this annual tradition gets compiled by the National Audubon Society, and helps scientists understand bird population trends across the Americas.

If you participate in the bird count, chances are you’ll see a lot of the same birds you’d see any other day of the year—think sparrows, blue jays, blackbirds, cardinals. But that doesn’t make them any less special. So this year we’re turning our binoculars on a few (wrongfully) overlooked common birds.

Producer Kathleen Davis talks with two of our favorite birders, author and illustrator Rosemary Mosco, and conservation scientist Corina Newsome, to share some surprising facts about birds that don’t often make it to the top of pecking order.

Guests:
Rosemary Mosco is an author, illustrator, and speaker whose work connects people with the natural world.
Corina Newsome is a birder and conservation scientist at the National Wildlife Federation, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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It’s winter, and the SciFri team is already dreaming of warmer weather. How about a mind vacation to one of the hottest places on earth, an erupting volcano? Tamsin Mather has trekked to volcanoes in Chile, Guatemala, Italy, and beyond to learn their secrets. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to field your burning volcano questions, like what’s the deal with glass shards that look like hairballs?

Guest: Dr. Tamsin Mather is a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Oxford in the UK.

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The sound of a choir performing in a cathedral is iconic for a reason. It’s this beautiful human experience: being side-by-side with other people, feeling the sound vibrate through you, reverberating around the space.

But how long has that been a part of our culture? And what role did sound play in the lives of people who lived during the Ice Age or the Stone Age? That’s the focus of a growing field of archaeology called archaeoacoustics, where researchers use the scientific tools of today to investigate the role of sound and music in the past.

To learn more, Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Margarita Díaz-Andreu, principal investigator of the Art Soundscapes project, and Rupert Till, head of the department of humanities at the University of Huddersfield in the UK.

Guests: Dr. Margarita Díaz-Andreu is an ICREA professor at the University of Barcelona in Spain and principal investigator of the Art Soundscapes project.
Dr. Rupert Till is a professor of music and head of the department humanities at the University of Huddersfield in the UK.

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As the planet warms, the world’s glaciers are melting faster than snow can replenish the ice. That has implications for sea level rise, ocean currents, and global weather patterns. But collecting data at the edge of a melting glacier can be risky.

Glaciologist Erin Pettit and her colleagues are listening to the sounds melting glaciers make—from the sizzling of trapped air bubbles bursting, to the deep rumbles of underwater calving of icebergs. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to share some glacial sounds, and describe the multi-stage robot tools she uses to monitor melting ice.

Guest: Dr. Erin Pettit is a professor of geophysics and glaciology at Oregon State University.

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In cancer research, the “seed and soil” hypothesis posits that the tumor is like a seed of misbehaving cells taking root in the body. Whether it grows—and where it grows—depends on the conditions, or soil. Since this hypothesis was proposed more than 100 years ago, most research and treatments have focused on the seed, or tumor.

For nearly 50 years, Rakesh Jain has been studying the soil. But in a seed-focused field, his work was seen as wasteful and radical. Now, that very same research has led to seven FDA-approved treatments for diseases including lung and liver cancer, and earned him a National Medal of Science in 2016. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Jain about how his fringe idea led to lifesaving cancer treatments.

Guest: Dr. Rakesh K. Jain studies the biology of tumors at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital as a professor of radiation oncology.

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For many people, bubonic plague is an illness that seems squarely situated in medieval times. But each year, a handful of human cases pop up in the western United States. Plague can be treated successfully with modern medicine. But why does it still exist, and how should we think about it both locally and globally?

Plague researcher Viveka Vadyvaloo joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk all things spread and containment.

Guest: Dr. Viveka Vadyvaloo is a plague researcher and director of the Allen School for Global Health at Washington State University.

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Today we’re spotlighting an underappreciated group of marine creatures: sea slugs. Don’t let their humble name fool you. They come in vivid neon colors, with patterns that rival the most beautiful butterflies and feather-like external gills and tentacles.

There are an estimated 10,000 species of sea slugs and they are incredibly diverse. Some are smaller than a quarter. And one species can weigh more than a terrier, up to 30 pounds. Not to mention their contributions to brain research—understanding their neural networks was the basis for a Nobel Prize in 2000.

Marine biologist Patrick Krug joins Host Ira Flatow to dive into the slimy science of sea slugs.

Guest: Dr. Patrick Krug is a sea slug researcher and professor of biological sciences at Cal State LA.

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There’s an enormous buildout of data centers underway across the country to fuel the AI boom. Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been spent on data centers, with talk of spending trillions more. And these data centers use a lot of power: According to the Times Picuayune, Meta’s new data center under construction in Louisiana will require nearly three times the power that New Orleans uses in a year. Residents across the country have taken note, and rising utility rates have become an issue in some recent elections.

Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, has been studying the costs and impacts of the data center boom. She joins Host Ira Flatow for an update on the latest.

Guest: Casey Crownhart is a senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, based in New York, NY.

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You might think about bats as flitting around in the dark and hunting insects, but some species feed on fruits or flowers—and play an important role as pollinators. One place that role is crucial is in the relationship between bats and agave plants. Bat conservationist Kristen Lear joins Host Ira Flatow to describe efforts to restore agaves in the Southwest and Mexico, which has consequences for bats, for the ecosystems around the agave, and for your liquor cabinet, since agave is the source of drinks like tequila and mezcal.

Plus, journalist Dan Fagin joins Ira to discuss his recent New York Times article on a new technology that is letting researchers follow individual monarch butterflies over the course of a thousand-mile migration.

Guests:
Dr. Kristen Lear is director of the Agave Restoration Initiative at Bat Conservation International, based in Austin, Texas.
Dan Fagin is a science journalist and the director of the Science, Health & Environmental Reporting Program at New York University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The spotted owl has been a conservation flashpoint for more than 30 years. While habitat loss has been their historic foe, their most recent threat comes from within the owl family tree: the barred owl. Barred owls have expanded into the Pacific Northwest and are now outcompeting spotted owls for food and habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has put forth a strategy that some experts say is the only way to save the spotted owl, and it could involve killing hundreds of thousands of barred owls.

Ecologist and spotted owl expert Rocky Gutierrez joins Host Flora Lichtman to break down the plan, and explain how we got to this point.

Guest: Dr. R.J. “Rocky” Gutierrez is an owl ecologist and professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. He’s now based in Humboldt County, California.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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A team of scientists is trying to jumpstart a global conservation movement, on par with efforts to save the rainforests or protect the oceans. But it might be even more ambitious because the target of their quest is invisible, everywhere, and mostly something we try to hand-sanitize away: microbes.

So how do you conserve something that is everywhere and in everything? And why do microbes need protecting to begin with? Host Flora Lichtman digs into it with microbial ecologist Jack Gilbert, who is leading this charge. They chat about the thinking behind microbe conservation plans, and why some scientists are hesitant to jump onboard.

Guest: Dr. Jack Gilbert is a microbial ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Species Survival Commission’s Microbial Conservation Specialist Group.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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When we try to commune with nature, many of us turn toward the living: a walk in the woods among swaying trees, chirping birds, blooming flowers.

But earth scientist Anjana Khatwa says not to overlook the inanimate—don’t sleep on rocks. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her love for rocks beyond the scientific and her new book, The Whispers of Rock.

Read an excerpt from The Whispers of Rock: The Stories That Stone Tells about Our World and Our Lives.

Guest: Dr. Anjana Khatwa is a geologist and author of The Whispers of Rock: The Stories That Stone Tells about Our World and Our Lives.

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Each year, the Ig Nobel Prizes recognize scientific research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think. For instance, researchers who investigated the pizza preferences of lizards on the island of Togo. Or a man who kept track of his fingernail growth for 35 years.

As is Thanksgiving tradition, we’re sharing highlights from this year’s Ig Nobels on Science Friday. Annals of Improbable Research editor Marc Abrahams acts as master of ceremonies for the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes, which include 10 awards, several 24-second scientific lectures, and a mini-opera about indigestion.

Guest: Marc Abrahams is the editor and co-founder of Annals of Improbable Research and the founder and master of ceremonies for the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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A good workout can make you feel triumphant. And even if that isn’t your relationship with exercise, you’ve probably heard that working out can lift your mood, fight depression, and make you more resilient when life knocks back. But why exactly does exercise improve mental health? Is it all about those endorphins? Does the type or duration of a workout matter if you’re looking for a mental wellness boost?

To help answer those questions and more, Host Flora Lichtman talks with Eduardo Esteban Bustamante and Jack Raglin, who both study the relationship between physical activity and mental health.

Guests: Dr. Eduardo Esteban Bustamante studies the link between physical activity and mental health in kids as the director of the Healthy Kids Lab at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Dr. Jack Raglin studies exercise and sports science as a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University.

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It’s a wonderful time of the year: squash, pumpkin, and gourd season. But how do those giant, award-winning pumpkins grow so big? And what’s the difference between a gourd and a squash?

In a conversation from 2023, Ira talks with Dr. Chris Hernandez, director of the University of New Hampshire’s squash, pumpkin, and melon breeding program to explore all things winter squash and answer listener questions.

Guests: Dr. Chris Hernandez is an assistant professor of Plant Breeding at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire.
Dan Souza is co-Editor of Cook’s Science: How to Unlock Flavor in 50 of our Favorite Ingredients (Cook’s Illustrated, 2016). He’s based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Transcript is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Have you ever gotten to the end of, say, a jar of peanut butter and wondered if it should go in trash or recycling? If it’s worth rinsing out? And where will it actually end up?

Journalist Alexander Clapp had those same questions, and went to great lengths to answer them—visiting five continents to chronicle how our trash travels. Along the way, he discovered a multibillion-dollar trash trade run by shady waste brokers, and a global industry powered by slimy spoons, crinkled plastic bags, and all the other stuff we throw away. It’s a putrid business that we’re a part of, and many of us know little about.

In a conversation from February, Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Clapp about the garbage business and his new book Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife Of Your Trash.

Guest: Alexander Clapp is a journalist and author of Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife Of Your Trash. He’s based in Athens, Greece.

Transcript is available at sciencefriday.com.

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Twenty years ago, a young oncologist started journaling to process his experience treating cancer patients. That cathartic act became the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

Fifteen years after the book was published, how has our understanding of preventing and treating cancer changed? Host Flora Lichtman is joined by author Siddhartha Mukherjee to talk about what we now understand about screening, environmental risks, and rising cancer rates in young people.

Read an excerpt of the new chapters added to The Emperor of Maladies on the 15th anniversary of the book’s publication.

This headline has been corrected from "Multi-Headed" to "Many-Headed" to accurately reflect Siddhartha Mukherjee's statement.

Guest: Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and an associate professor of medicine at Columbia University.

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African grey parrots are internet stars. It’s easy to see why—the charismatic birds sing, tell jokes, and sling profanities. But how do the endangered birds get from African forests to your feed?

Wildlife crime reporter Rene Ebersole joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her investigation into the global parrot trade, and the black market for wild African greys that is threatening their existence.

Guest: Rene Ebersole is Editor In Chief at Wildlife Investigative Reporters and Editors (WIRE).

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After years of getting your emails and phone calls, we know that SciFri listeners are in the 99th percentile when it comes to nerdy knowledge. We’re putting your fact retention skills to the test with the first ever Super Food Science Excellence Trivia Blowout (SFSETBO).

Host Flora Lichtman teams up with trivia kingpin Mangesh Hattikudur, co-host of the podcast “Part-Time Genius,” to quiz one lucky listener on her food science knowledge.

Guest: Mangesh Hattikudur is the co-host of “Part-Time Genius” and co-founder of Kaleidoscope.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Some animals have a very different relationship to aging than we do: They don’t get cancer, they never go through menopause, and they live absurdly long lives.

For instance, one bat species can live for more than 40 years, which may not sound like very long but that’s about nine times longer than expected based on its size. For comparison, if we aged on that scale, we’d live for hundreds of years. These bats aren’t the only animal super-agers—there’s a whole menagerie of them.

So what’s their secret? And can we learn anything from them that might help us live longer, healthier lives? Host Flora Lichtman talks with longevity researchers Vera Gorbunova and Juan Manuel Vazquez about what animals are teaching us.

Guests:
Dr. Vera Gorbunova is a biologist and professor at the University of Rochester, and a co-director of the Rochester Aging Research Center.
Dr. Juan Manuel Vazquez is a biologist and assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University studying the evolution of aging.

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Proteins are crucial for life. They're made of amino acids that “fold” into millions of different shapes. And depending on their structure, they do radically different things in our cells. For a long time, predicting those shapes for research was considered a grand biological challenge.

But in 2020, Google’s AI lab DeepMind released Alphafold, a tool that was able to accurately predict many of the structures necessary for understanding biological mechanisms in a matter of minutes. In 2024, the Alphafold team was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for the advance.

Five years later after its release, Host Ira Flatow checks in on the state of that tech and how it’s being used in health research with John Jumper, one of the lead scientists responsible for developing Alphafold.

Guest: John Jumper, scientist at Google Deepmind and co-recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

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If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to drill a hole? A team of researchers wondered that too and set out to investigate, by putting tiny muscle monitors on eight downy woodpeckers and recording them with high-speed video as they pecked away in the lab.

Integrative organismal biologist Nick Antonson, co-author of a report on the work, joins Host Flora Lichtmen to peck away at the mystery.

Plus, you can take two ant eggs with the exact same genes, and one can grow up to be a queen, the other a worker. Neuroscientist and evolutionary biologist Daniel Kronauer joins Flora to share recent research into how an ant becomes a queen.

Guests: Dr. Nick Antonson is an NSF postdoctoral research fellow in the department of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology at Brown University.
Dr. Daniel Kronauer is the Stanley S. and Sydney R. Shuman Professor in the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior at The Rockefeller University in New York.

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Our memories make us who we are—just ask Barbra Streisand. But despite the lyrics in many popular songs, memories aren’t frozen in time. When we call them up, the details shift and change. And neuroscience research shows that we might be able to take that a step further—to manipulate our memories and even implant false ones.

Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez joins Host Ira Flatow to explain how memory manipulation could revolutionize the way we treat brain disorders. They also discuss Ramirez’s book, How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist's Quest to Alter the Past, and how the sudden death of his friend and scientific collaborator made him rethink the role of memory.

Guest: Dr. Steve Ramirez is an associate professor of psychology and brain sciences at Boston University and the author of How to Change a Memory.

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Bearded vultures build giant, elaborate nests that are passed down from generation to generation. And according to a new study, some of these scavengers have collected bits and bobs of human history over the course of centuries. Scientists picked apart 12 vulture nests preserved in Spain and discovered a museum collection’s worth of objects, including a woven sandal that could be more than 700 years old.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with study author Ana Belen Marín-Arroyo, an archaeologist who studies ancient humans, about how the nests are giving us a glimpse into vulture culture as well as the lives of the people they lived beside.

Guest: Dr. Ana Belen Marín-Arroyo is an archeologist and professor of prehistory at the University of Cantabria in Spain.

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Phish fans live for these transcendent moments, but so do the musicians—to the point that Mike Gordon, the band’s bass player, is funding scientific research to better understand flow state.

Host Flora Lichtman sits down with Mike and his research collaborator, neuroscientist Greg Appelbaum, to unpack their research so far and how it’s helping to inform other neuroscience.

Guests:
Mike Gordon is bassist and co-founder of the rock band Phish.
Dr. Greg Appelbaum is a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego.

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He joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about his research, the odd jobs he worked along the way, and how he found a sense of belonging in science.

Guest: Dr. Ardem Patapoutian is a professor and the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

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Over the last five years, billions of people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. New research has found an unanticipated result of these vaccines: Cancer treatments are more effective for some vaccinated patients, and many live longer than their unvaccinated counterparts. This news comes at a time where the federal government is slashing funding for mRNA research.

Host Ira Flatow speaks to lead study author Adam Grippin and vaccine expert Eric Topol.

Guests: Dr. Adam Grippin is a radiation oncologist at the MC Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
Dr. Eric Topol is a cardiologist and genomics professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

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One of the biggest debates in the dinosaur world is what was happening right before they went extinct. Were they already declining, or would they have thrived if not for the asteroid? Two recent studies shed some light on this question: one that analyzes a trove of fossils from New Mexico and suggests there was more diversity in the Americas than previously thought, and another that reanalyzes a long-debated juvenile T. rex fossil and finds it’s likely a separate, smaller species.

Host Ira Flatow is joined by authors on those separate studies, paleontologists Steve Brusatte and Lindsay Zanno.

Guests: Dr. Lindsay Zanno is division head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC.
Dr. Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

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As Black Friday approaches, you’re probably being inundated with ads for bigger, better televisions. But just how good is good enough? Are there limits to what our eyes can even make out?

Visual perception researcher Maliha Ashraf joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her new study on display resolution—including a display calculator she and her colleagues developed to help you determine the optimal display characteristics for a given room. And retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones joins the conversation to delve into the workings of human vision.

Guests:
Dr. Maliha Ashraf is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge in the UK.
Dr. Bryan W. Jones is a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pittsburgh.

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Decades ago, non-native carp were brought onto fish farms on the Mississippi River to control algae and parasites. They escaped, thrived, and eventually flooded the Illinois River, outcompeting native species and wreaking havoc. If the carp find their way into the Great Lakes, they could do major damage to those vital ecosystems.

There’s a proposed project to stop the fish—but it’s expensive, and not everyone agrees it’s the best solution. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with WBEZ and Grist reporter Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco and carp expert Cory Suski.

Guests: Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco is an environmental reporter at WBEZ and Grist.
Dr. Cory Suski is a professor of aquatic resources at the University of Illinois.

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Axolotls are one of the most charismatic and beloved amphibians out there. But did you know that there’s only one place in the whole world where you can find them in the wild? It’s Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City.

There, scientists are scrambling to save them from extinction by creating refuges, using environmental DNA to track them down, and tag-teaming with the farmers who work on the lake. Luis Zambrano, one of the world’s leading axolotl experts, and Alejandro Maeda-Obregón, a molecular biologist, talk with Host Flora Lichtman about their work to protect these beloved amphibians.

Guests: 
Dr. Luis Zambrano is a leading expert on axolotls and an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
Dr. Alejandro Maeda-Obregón is a molecular ecologist at University College London who studies rare and endangered species.

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Endometriosis is a painful disease that occurs when endometrium-like tissue grows outside of the uterus. It’s extremely common—if you have a uterus, you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it. Yet, it takes seven years on average to receive a formal diagnosis. What does the latest science tell us about the biology of the condition and how to treat it? And why do so many people have such a difficult time getting diagnosed?

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by endometriosis researcher and patient Linda Griffith to answer those questions and more.

Guest: Dr. Linda Griffith is a biological engineer and Scientific Director of The MIT Center for Gynepathology Research.

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We've figured out how to harness renewable energy from many natural systems, like solar, wind, and geothermal power. But what about the ocean’s waves? It might seem like converting wave power into electricity on a large scale would’ve been figured out by now, but the tech is actually just getting its sea legs. Why has it been so hard to develop? And just how promising is it?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Jes Burns, who reported on Oregon’s massive wave energy test site; and then she checks in with Deborah Greaves, an offshore renewable energy researcher, for a look at what’s happening in the rest of the world.

Guests:
Jes Burns is a science and environment reporter and host of "All Science. No Fiction." at Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Dr. Deborah Greaves is a professor of ocean engineering at the University of Plymouth in England.

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For Halloween, we bring you an ode to three quintessentially creepy creatures: bats, arachnids, and snakes. First, bat researcher Elena Tena joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe tracking the greater noctule bat in flight and learning that it can feed on migratory birds. Then, arachnologist Paula Cushing describes the camel spider, which is neither a camel nor a spider. And herpetologist Sara Ruane highlights one of her favorite snakes, the tiger keelback, which is both venomous and poisonous.

Plus, what makes a lake spooky? A pond possessed? Flora talks with Geo Rutherford, creator of the Spooky Lake Month series on TikTok and Instagram, to learn about some of the spookiest, most mysterious lakes on the planet.

Guests:

Dr. Elena Tena is the national coordinator for the Spanish Bat Atlas project.
Dr. Paula Cushing is senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Denver, Colorado.
Dr. Sara Ruane is curator of herpetology at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois.
Geo Rutherford is the author of Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes That Dot Our Planet and the creator of Spooky Lake content TiKTok and Instagram. You can find her @geodesaurus.

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There’s an established playbook for getting one’s affairs in order before death—create a will, name legal guardians, and so on. But there’s also a newer consideration: what will happen to our digital presences, like social media accounts, files, photos, videos, and more. So how do we manage them, and make sure we’re not turned into AI chatbots without permission? (It does happen.)

Information scientist Jed Brubaker studies digital afterlives, and joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss how we can manage our digital legacies.

Guest: Jed Brubaker is an information scientist and head of the Digital Legacy Clinic at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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At first blush, the plots of many horror movies don’t seem particularly appealing. Take “The Shining”: A murderous psychopath tries to kill his family in a haunted, secluded hotel. But horror movies have had devoted fans for as long as they’ve been around, and lately, scary movies and television shows like “Sinners” or “The Walking Dead” have made a big splash. Why? What draws us to horror? And why are some people more thrill-seeking or morbidly curious than others?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with two psychologists on opposite poles of horror fandom to flesh out some of the answers: horrorphile and behavioral scientist Coltan Scriver, and psychology professor Ken Carter, who’s horrified by horror.

Guests: Dr. Ken Carter is a psychology professor at Emory University and the author of Buzz!: Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies.
Dr. Coltan Scrivner is a behavioral scientist at Arizona State University and the author of Morbidly Curious: A Scientist Explains Why We Can’t Look Away.

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For decades, peanut allergies were on the rise in the US. But a study released on October 20 found that peanut allergies in babies and young children are now decreasing. This drop correlates with a change in guidance from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 2017, the agency started recommending exposing children to peanuts “early and often.” Since that recommendation, the prevalence of peanut allergies has dropped significantly.

Sharon Chinthrajah, a physician specializing in allergies and immunology, churns through the findings with Host Flora Lichtman.

Guest: Dr. Sharon Chinthrajah is a physician specializing in allergy and immunology at the Sean N. Parker Center at Stanford University.

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Bacteria have been around for billions of years. Could they have come up with complex behaviors that we just don’t understand yet? Could they have their own language? Their own culture? Their own complex societies playing out right under, and in, our noses?

Microbiologist Bonnie Bassler has been studying these questions for more than 30 years. She talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the wild world of bacterial communication, and how understanding microbes could help us understand ourselves.

Guest: Dr. Bonnie Bassler is a microbiologist at Princeton University.

The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com.

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After years of development, lab-grown fish is taste-test ready for the public. Four restaurants in the US are serving up cultivated salmon made by the company Wildtype. Producer Kathleen Davis gives Host Flora Lichtman a rundown on how Wildtype tastes, initial public perception, and the upstream battle to take cultivated meat mainstream.

Plus, SciFri heads to Burlington, Vermont, where scientists are cooking up the foods of the future—including the building blocks of cell-cultured meat. Flora digs in with foodie researchers Alexis Yamashita and Rachael Floreani about why innovation is critical to a sustainable food future.

Guests: Adam Tortosa is a chef and the owner of Robin in San Francisco, California.
Alexis Yamashita is a community organizer and PhD student in food systems at the University of Vermont.
Dr. Rachael Floreani is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Vermont.

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Do science documentaries need a refresh? What if the goal wasn’t just teaching you something, but making you feel something? A new series from the BBC, airing on PBS, called “Human” tries to do just that. It tells the tale of our ancient family tree, embracing the complex and dramatic sides of the story. It asks: Who were the different species of humans that lived on this planet before us? What must it have been like to be in their shoes? And how did we become the only ones left standing?

Ella Al-Shamahi, a paleoanthropologist and host of “Human,” tells SciFri Host Flora Lichtman about her vision for how to tell this story so that today’s humans lean in.

Guest: Ella Al-Shamahi is a paleoanthropologist and the host of “Human”on BBC/PBS.

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TikTok and other social media sites are full of mental health content—often short, grabby, first-person videos detailing symptoms for conditions like ADHD and autism. But what does this mean for teens and young adults who spend hours a day scrolling?

A new study published in PLOS One analyzes the 100 most viewed TikTok videos about ADHD to assess both how accurate they are and how young people respond to them. Researchers found that about half of the videos were inaccurate or missing key context, and that the more TikToks young adults watched, the less critical they were of the content.

For some, watching social videos about mental health conditions led them to better understand themselves and eventually get a proper diagnosis and treatment. For others it made them consider if they have conditions they don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with the lead author of the ADHD TikTok study, Vasileia Karasavva, a PhD Student in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia; and Dr. Jennifer Katzenstein, director of psychology, neuropsychology, and social work at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Guests: Vasileia Karasavva is a PhD Student in Clinical Psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
Dr. Jennifer Katzenstein is Director of Psychology, Neuropsychology and Social work and Co-director of the Center for Behavioral Health at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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We’re taking a polar plunge into the science of sea unicorns, also known as narwhals!

Narwhals are mysterious arctic whales with long, twirly tusks protruding from their foreheads, like a creature out of a fairy tale. And it turns out that we don’t know too much about them, partly because they live so far north in the remote Arctic.

An international team of researchers used drones to observe narwhals in the wild and learned new things about their behavior, including how they use their tusks to hunt and play.

Host Flora Lichtman gets on the horn with Dr. Gregory O’Corry-Crowe, research professor and biologist at Florida Atlantic University, who was an author on the new narwhal study, published last month in Frontiers in Marine Science.

Guest: Dr. Greg O’Corry-Crowe is a research professor at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

Transcripts for each episode are available at sciencefriday.com.

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Astrophysicists may have spotted evidence for “dark stars,” an unusual type of star that could possibly have existed in the earliest days of the universe, in data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Instead of being powered by nuclear fusion as current stars are, the controversial theory says that these ancient dark stars would have formed by mixing a huge cloud of hydrogen and helium with a type of self-annihilating dark matter. Dark stars would not have been dark—researchers believe that if they existed, they would actually have been bigger and brighter than current stars.

Astrophysicists Katherine Freese, who first proposed the idea of dark stars in 2007, and Cosmin Ilie, who detected the possible signs of the dark stars, join Host Ira Flatow to discuss the theory.

Guests:
Dr. Katherine Freese is a theoretical astrophysicist and a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Cosmin Ilie is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Colgate University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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AI is everywhere these days, and though there’s debate about how useful it is, one area where experts think it could be game-changing is scientific research. It promised to be particularly useful for speeding up drug discovery, an expensive and time-consuming process that can take decades. But so far, it hasn’t panned out.

The few AI-designed drugs that have made it to clinical trials haven’t been approved, venture capital investment in these efforts has cratered in the last few years, and many startups have shut their doors. So why has it been so hard to make AI-designed drugs? What are the fundamental issues, and what does the future of this research look like?

Joining Host Ira Flatow with some answers is Peter Coveney, who studies how chemistry discoveries can be sped up with algorithms and computers.

Guest: Dr. Peter Coveney is a professor and director of the Centre for Computational Science at University College London.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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It’s easy to take maps for granted. After all, most of us have a pretty good map in our pockets at all times, ready to show us how to get anywhere on the globe. But to make a map useful, you have to decide what to keep in and what to leave out—and, most importantly, which mathematical equations to use. Beyond navigating from point A to point B, math and maps come together for a wide variety of things, like working out the most efficient route to deliver packages, calculating the depth of the ocean floor, and more.

Host Ira Flatow is joined by Paulina Rowińska, mathematician and author of Mapmatics: A Mathematician's Guide to Navigating the World, to go on a journey through the math at the heart of all kinds of maps.

Guest: Dr. Paulina Rowińska is a mathematician, writer, science journalist and author of Mapmatics: A Mathematician's Guide to Navigating the World.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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It seems like every week, there’s a new headline about some kind of sci-fi-esque organ transplant. Think eyeballs, 3D-printed kidneys, pig hearts.

In her new book,Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy, science writer Mary Roach chronicles the effort to fabricate human body parts—and where that effort sometimes breaks down. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Roach about everything from hair transplants to 3D-printed hearts, and why our anatomy is so hard to replicate in the first place.

Guest: Mary Roach is a science writer and the author of Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Remember “The Biggest Loser”—the show where people tried to lose as much weight as quickly as possible for a big cash prize? The premise of the show was that weight loss was about willpower: With enough discipline, anyone can have the body they want.

The show’s approach was problematic, but how does its attitude toward weight loss match our current understanding of health and metabolism? The authors of the book Food Intelligence, nutrition scientist Kevin Hall, who studied “Biggest Loser” contestants at the NIH; and science writer Julia Belluz, join Host Flora Lichtman and answer listener questions about nutrition, diet fads, and metabolism.

Read an excerpt of Food Intelligence: The Science of How Food Both Nourishes and Harms Us.

Guests:
Julia Belluz is a science journalist based in Paris.
Dr. Kevin Hall is a nutrition scientist and former NIH researcher based in Kensington, Maryland.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In July 1925, physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Wolfgang Pauli sharing his new ideas about what would eventually become known as quantum theory. A hundred years later, that theory has been expanded into a field of science that explains aspects of chemical behavior, has become the basis of a new type of computing, and more. But it’s still really weird, and often counterintuitive. Physicist Chad Orzel joins Host Ira Flatow to celebrate 100 years of quantum science, and separate quantum fact from science fiction.

Guest: Dr. Chad Orzel is the R. Gordon Gould Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and chair of the department, at Union College in Schenectady, New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to three people whose combined discoveries outlined the role of the peripheral immune system—how the immune system knows to attack just foreign invaders and not its own tissues and organs. But when the phone rang for Shimone Sakaguchi, Mary E. Brunkow, and Fred Ramsdell, only two of them picked up.

Host Ira Flatow talks with Nobel Prize winner Fred Ramsdell, co-founder and scientific advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics.

Plus, Ira talks with bioengineering professor César de la Fuente, who looks for solutions to the antibiotic resistance crisis in unexpected places. Now, he’s used AI to help identify promising antibiotic candidates lurking in ancient archaea, small organisms that can survive some of the most extreme conditions in the world.

Guests:
Dr. Fred Ramsdell is the co-founder and scientific advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics.
Dr. César de la Fuente is an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

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It’s World Space Week, and we’re fueling up the rocket for a tour of some missions and projects that could provide insights into major space mysteries. Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi joins Host Flora Lichtman to celebrate the wonders of space science, from the recently launched IMAP, which will study the solar environment, to the new Vera Rubin Observatory, and big physics projects like LIGO.

Plus, the latest in climate tech: MIT Technology Review has published its annual list of climate tech companies that show great promise in work ranging from producing sodium ion batteries to recycling rare earth magnets. Host Ira Flatow talks with climate reporter Casey Crownhart about trends in climate tech and what companies she’s excited about.

Guests: Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi is an astrophysicist and author of the upcoming book, Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe That Make You Possible, and host of the video podcast “Particles of Thought.”
Casey Crownhart is a senior climate reporter for MIT Technology Review based in New York City.

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The Klamath River, which runs from southern Oregon to California, used to be a top salmon run. But after a series of hydroelectric dams was installed along the river around 100 years ago, salmon populations tanked.

This is the prologue to a remarkable story of a coalition that fought to restore the river. Led by members of the Yurok Nation, who’ve lived along the river for millennia, a group of lawyers, biologists, and activists successfully lobbied for the removal of the dams. The fourth and final dam was taken down last year.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to go behind the scenes of the dam removal and what’s happened since are Amy Bowers Cordalis, former general counsel for the Yurok Nation and author of the forthcoming book The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life; and Barry McCovey Jr., director of the Yurok Tribes Fisheries Department.

Read an excerpt from The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life.

Guests:

Amy Bowers Cordalis is an attorney, member of the Yurok Nation, and author of The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family’s Fight To Save A River And A Way Of Life.
Barry McCovey Jr. is the director of the Yurok Tribes Fisheries Department, based in Klamath, California.

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Archeologists in movies have a reputation for being hands-on, like Indiana Jones unearthing hidden treasure, or Lara Croft running through a temple. Archeology in real life tends to be a bit more sedentary. But some archeologists are committed to getting their hands dirty—even recreating the stinky, slimy, and sometimes tasty parts of ancient life.

Science writer Sam Kean enmeshed himself in the world of experimental archaeology for his new book Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations. He joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss making stone tools, launching catapults, and DIY mummies.

Guest: Sam Kean is a science writer and author of Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations.

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If you’re a moth trying to stay uneaten, there are competing strategies. Some moths rely on camouflage, trying to blend in. Other moths take the opposite approach: They’re bold and bright, with colors that say “don’t eat me, I’m poison.” Biologist Iliana Medina joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe a study that placed some 15,000 origami moths in forests around the world to investigate which strategy might work best.

Then, mammologist Anderson Feijó and evolutionary biologist Rafaela Missagia join Flora to dive into another evolutionary conundrum: why so many rodents have thumbnails.

Guests: Dr. Iliana Medina Guzman is a Senior Lecturer in the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Dr. Anderson Feijó is a mammal curator at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Dr. Rafaela Missagia is an assistant professor at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Our country’s public health system is ailing. With layoffs and leadership changes at the CDC, changing vaccine guidelines, a government shutdown, and declining public trust—where do we go from here? Can state and local public health agencies pick up the slack? Are there other solutions?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with former CDC director Tom Frieden to put these questions into perspective.

Guest: Dr. Tom Frieden is a former CDC director, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, and author of The Formula for Better Health: How to Save Millions of Lives—Including Your Own.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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There’s fresh drama in the field of human origins! A new analysis of an ancient hominid skull from China challenges what we thought we knew about our ancestral family tree, and its timeline—at least according to the researchers who wrote the paper. The new study claims that Homo sapiens, and some of our relatives, could have emerged at least half a million years earlier than we thought. But big claims require big evidence.

Anthropologist John Hawks joins Host Flora Lichtman to piece together the details.

Guest: Dr. John Hawks is an anthropologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Jane Goodall, renowned primatologist, conservationist, and humanitarian, died on October 1 at the age of 91. Goodall was born in London in 1934, and her curiosity about the natural world led her to the forests of Gombe, Tanzania, where she made groundbreaking observations of chimpanzee behavior, including tool use. Her research challenged the accepted scientific perceptions of our closest relatives.

Host Ira Flatow shares his memories of Dr. Goodall, including an interview from 2002 in which she discussed her life and work.

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Roughly 1 in 10 Americans take antidepressants. The most common type is SSRIs, or selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, like Prozac, Lexapro, and Zoloft. But what happens when you stop taking them? Studies don’t point to a single conclusion, and there’s ongoing debate among physicians and patients about the severity and significance of SSRI withdrawal symptoms. The discourse reached a fever pitch when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. compared SSRI withdrawal to heroin withdrawal in January.

Host Flora Lichtman digs into the data on SSRI withdrawal with psychiatrists Awais Aftab and Mark Horowitz.

Guests: Dr. Awais Aftab is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Mark Horowitz is a clinical research fellow in the UK’s National Health Service and scientific co-founder of Outro Health.

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Host Flora Lichtman talks with de Vos about her path into science, what it means to be the first Sri Lankan in her field, and how she built a marine biology program from the ground up.

Guest: Dr. Asha de Vos is a marine biologist and the founder and executive director of the non-profit Oceanswell. She’s based in Sri Lanka.

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In mid-September, artists from around the country convened in Laurel, Maryland, for one of the splashiest events in the wildlife art world: the Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest. At the annual event, artists compete to have their excruciatingly detailed waterfowl painting appear on the Federal Duck Stamp, which is a waterfowl hunting license. This year, Digital Producer Emma Gometz was there to watch the duck drama unfold. They join Host Flora Lichtman to explain why artists take this competition so seriously, how duck stamps support conservation, and who took the crown this year.

Read our article about the 2025 competition.

Plus, Interlochen Public Radio reporter Claire Keenan-Kurgan shares the story of a volunteer group determined to bring one of the world’s rarest flowers back to a small river island in Illinois.

Guests: Emma Gometz is Science Friday’s Digital Producer of Engagement. They write SciFri’s “Science Goes To The Movies” series and are a journalist and illustrator based in Queens, NY.
Claire Keenan-Kurgen is a reporter for Interlochen Public Radio in northern Michigan.

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Football season is well underway, and fans know those athletes get hit hard. Could better helmets and guidelines around concussion prevention someday eliminate head injuries from the sport?

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with concussion doctor Michael Collins and helmet specialist Barry Miller about how our understanding of head injuries and equipment has evolved.

Guests: Dr. Michael Collins is the clinical and executive director of the Sports Medicine Concussion Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Dr. Barry Miller is the director of outreach at the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab.

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At a news conference on September 22, President Trump claimed that taking acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, during pregnancy “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism.” Many experts have pushed back on the statement, saying it’s a false claim that downplays the risks of fever during pregnancy, which Tylenol may be used to treat.

Autistic people and their families also raised concerns about the language used and the premise that autism is a scourge that needs to be eliminated.

Host Flora Lichtman digs into what we know about acetaminophen use during pregnancy with epidemiologist Brian Lee, who led one of the largest peer-reviewed studies looking at the link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism in children.

Guest: Dr. Brian Lee is a professor of epidemiology at Drexel University, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Robots are just about everywhere these days: circling the grocery store, cleaning the floor at the airport, making deliveries. Not to mention the robots on the assembly lines in factories. But how far are we from having a human-like robot at home? For example, a robot housekeeper like Rosie from “The Jetsons.” She didn’t just cook and clean, she bantered and bonded with the Jetsons.

Stanford roboticist Karen Liu joined Host Ira Flatow to talk about how AI is driving advances in humanoid robotics at a live show at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, California.

Guest: Dr. Karen Liu is a professor of computer science at Stanford University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, scientists are on the cutting edge of growing coral. Rising ocean temperatures have caused mass coral bleaching, and experts are racing against the clock to figure out how to help corals be more resilient to stress.

Coral scientist Rebecca Albright joined Host Ira Flatow at our live show at the Fox Theater in Redwood City, California, to talk about the work her lab does to help corals reproduce—romantic lighting and full moons included.

Guest: Dr. Rebecca Albright is a coral reef biologist, an associate curator, and a Patterson Scholar at the California Academy of Sciences.

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Sift through your memories and excavate an image of a fossil. Maybe you’re picturing dinosaur bones, the imprint of an ammonite, or the fronds of a fern etched into stone. But there’s a whole other category of fossilized remains that can tell us about life way before T. rexes, or even twigs, existed on this planet. That’s fossilized evidence of microbes.

Microbiologist Paula Welander uses these ancient remains to understand how life began on Earth. She joined Host Flora Lichtman for our live show at the Fox Theater in Redwood City, California, to talk about how her work may help us find life elsewhere in the universe.

Guest: Dr. Paula Welander is a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University.

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Nigeria is home to 100 known species of bats—about a third of Africa’s bat species—but scientists don’t know much about them. Ecologists Iroro Tanshi and Benneth Obitte, collaborators and life partners, are trying to change that. In addition to studying and protecting the bats of their homeland, they’re also working to raise up a whole network of bat scientists across West Africa.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with them about how they started their work, what they’ve learned, and how they’re paving the way for other bat conservationists.

Guests:
Dr. Iroro Tanshi is an ecologist at the University of Washington and cofounder of the Small Mammal Conservation Organization.
Dr. Benneth Obitte is a conservation ecologist at Texas Tech University and cofounder of the Small Mammal Conservation Organization.

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The overall state of birds can seem rather grim. Almost a third of North American bird species are in decline, and in the last five decades, more than 100 species have lost over half of their populations. This is primarily due to lack of food—fewer insects to eat—and habitat loss, like the development of grasslands.

But there’s a bright spot: Some birds that were once rare are now abundant, like the merlin, sandhill crane, and pileated woodpecker.

Host Ira Flatow talks with biologist Tom Langen, who explains these birds’ remarkable comebacks, and discusses his conservation work to bring threatened fish species back from the brink.

Guest: Dr. Tom Langen is a professor of biology at Clarkson University.

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Codependency between humans gets a bad rap. But in nature, species often rely on each other for survival. While humans think they’re in control of relationships between other species, like dogs and even the yeast for our breads, the opposite is often true.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with ecologist Rob Dunn, whose new book, The Call of the Honeyguide, argues that mutualisms are the story of life itself.

Read an excerpt of The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life.

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You might remember news reporting from earlier this year that a 180-foot asteroid had about a 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. And if it did, it would unleash energy equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs. After further observations, astronomers revised that probability way down, to close to zero. So what is our current capability to spot Earthbound asteroids? And how are governments preparing to communicate and respond to a potential impact on a populated area?

Joining Host Ira Flatow with some of the answers are Kelly Fast, from NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and Leviticus “L.A.” Lewis, former FEMA liaison for that office.

Guests: Dr. Kelly Fast is the acting planetary defense officer in NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, based in Laurel, Maryland.
Leviticus “L.A.” Lewis is a former FEMA liaison to the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

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Geneticist Mary-Claire King and her lab were the first to identify that gene. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her background, her research, and her approach to science.

Guest: Dr. Mary-Claire King is an American Cancer Society Professor in the departments of Genome Sciences and Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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What makes someone a genius? Are they the smartest, most creative, most innovative people? Those with the highest IQ? Who we consider a genius may actually tell us much more about what we value as a society than any objective measure of brilliance. A compelling or quirky life story often shapes who is elevated to genius status.

Host Ira Flatow unpacks the complicated and coveted title of genius with Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of A Dangerous Idea.

Read an excerpt of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of A Dangerous Idea.

Guest: Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic, based in London, who writes about politics and culture.

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A video shown on Capitol Hill on September 9 reportedly shows an American hellfire missile attacking and simply bouncing off a UAP (the military term for a UFO). When videos like this come out, speculation about aliens often follows. But our obsession with aliens isn’t new—and it didn’t begin with 1950s alien invasion movies like “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” or even with Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” mock news bulletins of the 1930s.

As science reporter Becky Ferreira writes in her upcoming book, First Contact: The Story Of Our Obsession With Aliens, humans have been fascinated with the potential for alien life for about as long we’ve been around. She joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss how our views of beings from other worlds changed throughout the millennia, and where we’re at now with scientific exploration of life beyond Earth.

Plus, science journalist Umair Irfan joins Ira to share other stories from the week in science, including what’s going on in a decision-making brain, the trouble with vector-borne illnesses, and the unusual tale of an ant queen that breeds ants of another species.

Read an excerpt of First Contact: The Story Of Our Obsession With Aliens.

Guests:
Becky Ferreira is a science reporter at 404 Media and author of First Contact: The Story Of Our Obsession With Aliens.
Umair Irfan is a senior correspondent at Vox, based in Washington, D.C.

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It all started harmlessly enough: People bought kits to grow mushrooms at home. But then, scientists in the upper Midwest noticed something strange. The golden oyster mushroom, which is not native to the United States, was thriving in local forests. Those homegrown mushrooms escaped our basements into the wild. Fungal ecologist Aishwarya Veerabahu joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what impact these invasive mushrooms might have on the ecosystem.

Plus, nightshade expert Sandra Knapp describes the evolution of the potato plant, and how a lucky crossbreeding millions of years ago may have given rise to the starchy tubers we eat today.

Guests:
Aishwarya Veerabahu is a fungal ecologist and PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Sandra Knapp is a Merit Researcher at the Natural History Museum in London.

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If you’ve flipped through an issue of National Geographic or scrolled through their social media, and caught a stunningly detailed photo of a tiny creature—like one where you can make out the hairs on a honeybee’s eyeballs, or the exact contours of a hummingbird’s forked tongue—you have probably seen the work of Anand Varma. He’s an award-winning science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab, a storytelling studio in Berkeley, California.

Varma speaks with Host Flora Lichtman and takes us behind the lens to show what it takes to capture iconic images of creatures that are so often overlooked.

Guest: Anand Varma is a science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab. He’s based in Berkeley, California.

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Dietary supplements are big business, with one recent estimate showing the industry is worth almost $64 billion in the United States alone. Take a casual scroll through your social media and you’ll find influencers hawking all kinds of supplements. But how effective are they? How are they regulated? And why are these “natural” remedies so appealing to millions of Americans?

To size up the science and culture of supplements, Host Flora Lichtman talks with supplement researcher Pieter Cohen, and Colleen Derkatch, author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture.

Guests: Dr. Pieter Cohen is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at the Cambridge Health Alliance where he leads the Supplement Research Program.
Dr. Colleen Derkatch is the author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture and professor of rhetoric at Toronto Metropolitan University.

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Put on your party hat and wet suit because it is Cephalopod Week, Science Friday’s annual celebration of all things, octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. To kick things off, we’re bringing you an ode to the octopus arm. You may have heard that octopuses can use their arms to “taste” their surroundings, which they use for finding food. Now, researchers have unlocked a key mechanism in the octopus sensory system. Octopuses use their suckers to detect harmful microbes on the surface of crab shells or even their own eggs.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with molecular biologist Nicholas Bellono about the latest in octopus sensory science.

Guest: Dr. Nicholas Bellono is a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University.

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On August 27, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the White House fired CDC director Susan Monarez after only a month on the job. Right after she was ousted, other senior leaders resigned from the agency, including Demetre Daskalakis, an infectious disease physician and former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.

Dr. Daskalakis speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about the state of the agency and what these developments mean for public health.

Guest: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis is the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.

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Earlier this summer, astronomers discovered something strange whizzing past Jupiter: an interstellar object. Scientists named it 3I/ATLAS. It’s only the third interstellar object ever observed, and it’s due to leave the solar system by the end of the year, so the race is on to learn as much as we can about it. Host Flora Lichtman talks with astrochemist Stefanie Milam about what this object could teach us about other solar systems—and ours.

And, for the past two years, researchers have been studying samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, trying to tease out details about its origins, and what they tell us about our solar system. Researcher Jessica Barnes describes a new analysis of Bennu samples that found stardust, the residue of ancient exploding stars, older than our solar system.

Guests:

Dr. Stefanie Milam is an astrochemist at NASA and a project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.
Dr. Jessica Barnes is an associate professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

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You have probably given some thought to outdoor air pollution, whether it’s wildfire smoke or smog from traffic. You may even check AQI measurements on your phone. But what about the air inside your home? Host Flora Lichtman talks to civil and environmental engineer Nusrat Jung, who studies indoor air pollution, about how we create toxic air without even knowing it, and what we can do to avoid it.

Guest: Dr. Nusrat Jung is a civil and environmental engineer at Purdue University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In some places, sand dunes protect shorelines from the onslaught of ocean waves. In other places, the dunes themselves are on the move, and threaten human structures.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with mechanical engineer Nathalie Vriend, who studies the structure of sand dunes, about what makes a heap of sand a dune, and what scientists still hope to learn about sand.

Guest: Dr. Nathalie Vriend is an associate professor in mechanical engineering and leader of the Granular Flow Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

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Summer may be winding down, but we’re not quite ready to let go of beach days, backyard cookouts, or ice cream cones. We love ice cream here at SciFri, so we’re pulling a few of our favorite ice cream science stories out of the freezer this week.

Back in 2015, ice cream expert Maya Warren sat down with Host Ira Flatow to help us understand a science mystery of “unmeltable” ice cream that made the evening news in Cincinnati.

That same summer, Ira spoke to Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks, and Brian Smith, founder of Ample Hills Creamery, who give us science-backed tips for making smooth, velvety ice cream at home.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, and the levees designed to protect New Orleans failed. Huge swaths of the city flooded, and 1,600 people were trapped inside Charity Hospital. Physician Erica Fisher was working in Charity’s emergency room at the time, and she and her colleagues fought for days to keep their patients alive.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Dr. Fisher, now an emergency medicine physician at University Medical Center in New Orleans, about Hurricane Katrina and the vulnerability of our healthcare systems in the face of disasters.

Plus, science writer Maggie Koerth joins Flora to share other science news the week, including the link between heat waves and aging, updated COVID vaccine guidelines, the ancient origins of human mucus, and the possibility that dwarf planet Ceres could once have sustained life.

Guest: Dr. Erica Fisher is an emergency medicine physician at University Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers recently used near-infrared photography to get a detailed look at ancient artwork showing scenes of wild animals tangled in a fight. But these weren’t paintings on a cave wall. They were tattoos on the arms of a Siberian woman who lived 2,300 years ago. What can ancient ink tell us about our ancestors?

Sticking and poking their way into this with Host Flora Lichtman are archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf and his research collaborator, tattoo artist Danny Riday.

Guests: Aaron Deter-Wolf is an archaeologist for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville, Tennessee.
Danny Riday is a tattoo artist and independent researcher based in Les Eyzies, France.

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You might think of a star as a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is turned into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. But researchers recently reported that they’d observed some of what lies beneath all that hydrogen and helium, at least inside one unusual supernova. The star, named supernova 2021yfj, had its outer layers stripped away, leaving behind a silicon- and sulfur-rich inner shell.

Astrophysicist Steve Schulze joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe what the team spotted in the heart of a dying star.

Guest: Dr. Steve Schulze is a research associate at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.

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Gray wolves are native to the Rocky Mountains, but decades of hunting nearly eradicated them from the western United States by the 1940s. In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, and it’s been a conservation success story, but not a straight path out of the woods.

Host Flora Lichtman digs into the last 30 years of wolves in the West with Heath Druzin, creator of the podcast “Howl,” from Boise State Public Radio and The Idaho Capital Sun. Druzin reported the podcast and companion written series with Clark Corbin.

Guest: Heath Druzin is host of the podcast “Howl,” from Boise State Public Radio and The Idaho Capital Sun.

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What do Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, lime Jell-O, and Kraft Creamy French Salad dressing have in common? They've all gotten a glow-up from artificial food dyes. Petroleum-based food dyes have become a target of RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—but what does science say about their effects on health?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss is Asa Bradman, an expert in the health effects of food dyes and other things we’re exposed to in our environment.

Guest:
Dr. Asa Bradman is a professor of public health at the University of California Merced based in Merced, California.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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This month, the Department of Health and Human Services terminated almost $500 million in mRNA vaccine development grants and contracts. While HHS has said that these cuts won't affect mRNA cancer research, some researchers have expressed concern about the impact on their ongoing work. In light of these developments, we’re revisiting a conversation from February.

A team at Memorial Sloan Kettering is developing an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, which is notoriously difficult to treat. A few years ago, the team embarked on a small trial to test the vaccine’s safety. Sixteen patients with pancreatic cancer received it, and half of them had a strong immune response. A follow-up study found that in six of those patients, the cancer hadn’t relapsed after three years.

Host Flora Lichtman spoke to study author Vinod Balachandran about the work, which has not yet been affected by the cuts, according to Memorial Sloan Kettering.

Guest: Dr. Vinod Balachandran is an associate attending surgeon and Director of The Olayan Center for Cancer Vaccines at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, New York.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Since President Trump returned to office, his administration has been aggressive in rolling back clean energy initiatives. But that isn’t the whole story. Texas, California, and other states are bringing so much solar and battery power online that in March, fossil fuels generated less than half the electricity in the US for the first time ever. And internationally, solar has gotten so cheap to build and install that it’s fundamentally transforming many countries’ power grids. So where exactly does solar adoption stand in the US and across the world right now?

Climate activist Bill McKibben joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the recent wins and future challenges that sun-powered energy faces, which he writes about in his new bookHere Comes The Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.

Guest: Bill McKibben is a climate activist and founder of Third Act. He’s based in Middlebury, Vermont.

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Fireflies’ magical blinking lights are tiny beacons in the warm dark night. Who can resist catching one? Not scientists.

Because their light comes from bodily chemicals, fireflies’ power of illumination has long been used as a tool in medical research. And that has driven scientists to investigate the inner workings of the blinking beetle itself. Researchers have recently discovered that fireflies’ glowing lanterns are only one of the ways they communicate.

Host Ira Flatow talks with entomologist Sarah Lower and biochemist Stephen Miller about the latest advances in firefly science.

Guests: Dr. Sarah Lower is an associate professor of biology at Bucknell University where she studies fireflies.
Dr. Stephen Miller is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biotechnology at the UMass Chan Medical School.

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Throughout history, humans have been on a search for truth. From the ancient Greeks and their belief in a universal truth, to our Founding Fathers writing, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” In a world of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and the rising influence of artificial intelligence, where does truth fit in? Mathematician Adam Kucharski, author of Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty, joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the complicated truth.

Read an excerpt of Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty.

Guest:
Dr. Adam Kucharski is a mathematician and author of Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty. He is based in London.

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Did you know that murder mystery writer Agatha Christie had a background in chemistry? In about half of her stories, the murder is committed using poison—something she was very, very familiar with. She had even trained in apothecaries to mix prescriptions by hand before she became a novelist. Chemist-turned-author Kathryn Harkup wrote about them in her new book, V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death. Harkup talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the science of poisons, why they’re so popular in whodunnits, and how to get away with murder (in fiction writing, of course).

Guest:
Kathryn Harkup is a former chemist and author of V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death.

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On August 5, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Department of Health and Human Services would terminate almost $500 million in mRNA vaccine development grants and contracts, affecting 22 projects. Biologist and mRNA researcher Jeff Coller joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about what this move means for future mRNA research in the US beyond these immediate projects.

Plus, reporter Casey Crownhart joins Ira to discuss the latest in climate news, including flooding in Juneau, Alaska; how Ford is pursuing further electric vehicle manufacturing despite federal roadblocks; and a startup using Earth itself as a giant battery.

Guests:

Dr. Jeff Coller is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics at Johns Hopkins University.
Casey Crownhart is a senior climate reporter for MIT Technology Review in New York, New York.

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If you’ve found yourself scrolling through the breastfeeding world online, you know that people have a lot of strong opinions about breast milk. But what exactly do we know about the biology of it? Does breast milk really adapt to a baby’s needs? Does it confer immunity? How does making breast milk impact the breastfeeder? Joining Host Flora Lichtman to spin through the science of this sophisticated substance are experts Shelley McGuire and Deepshika Ramanan.

Guests:
Dr. Shelley McGuire is the director of the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Idaho.
Dr. Deepshika Ramanan is an assistant professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

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Science journalist Tom Zeller Jr. has suffered from debilitating cluster headaches for three decades. Like other cluster headache sufferers, his episodes would leave him unable to function, and the fear of the next one happening was constant. In a quest to better understand his own condition, Zeller learned that headaches remain a great neurological mystery, with basic mechanisms behind why they happen still unknown. He joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about his new book, The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction – and a Search for Relief.

Guest:
Tom Zeller Jr. is editor in chief of Undark and author of the book The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction – and a Search for Relief. He’s based in Montana.

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Last week, astronaut James Lovell died at the age of 97. In April of 1970, he was the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which launched with three astronauts en route to the moon. While in space, however, the craft encountered a serious problem: an explosion in one of its fuel tanks that severely damaged the craft and disabled its electrical system, prompting the famous phrase, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” In 1995, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the mission, Host Ira Flatow spoke with Lovell about the historic flight and how good luck and ingenuity among the crew and mission controllers on the ground combined to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts safely back to Earth.

Guest:
James Lovell was a NASA astronaut and commander of the Apollo 13 mission.

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Fungal networks in the soil are arguably the basis of much of life on Earth, but they’re understudied and underappreciated in the conservation world. Scientists at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) are trying to fix that. They just unveiled a global map of mycorrhizal fungal networks, which highlights how widespread they are and how little protection they have. Host Flora Lichtman talks with two of the SPUN mapmakers, Adriana Corrales and Michael Van Nuland, about the importance of fungal networks and why they need more protection.

Guests: Dr. Adriana Corrales is a forest ecologist and scientist with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. She’s based in Bogotá, Colombia.
Dr. Michael Van Nuland is an ecologist and scientist with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. He’s based in Portland, Oregon.

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The mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s disease have eluded scientists for decades. But a new breakthrough points to lithium as a possible explanation—not only does it occur naturally in the brain, but a deficiency causes dementia in mice. This research is one of thousands of projects that have lost funding due to President Trump’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Host Ira Flatow speaks with Alzheimer’s researcher Bruce Yankner about this new finding, and then to epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina and immunologist Elisabeth Marnik about the country’s “quiet engine of science,” the NIH.

Guests:
Dr. Bruce Yankner is professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, epidemiologist and author of the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter. She’s based in San Diego.
Dr. Elisabeth Marnik is an immunologist and Director of Science Education & Outreach at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine.

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If social media and certain influential podcast hosts are to be believed, cold plunges can do everything from boosting your immune system to reducing inflammation to acting as an antidote for depression. But what does the science say? Joining Host Flora Lichtman to throw at least a few drops of cold water on this science of plunging is biologist François Haman, who studies human performance and cold exposure.

And, with the help of the HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” a minor league baseball team in Pennsylvania rebranded themselves the Erie Moon Mammoths. That comes just a few months after the Utah NHL franchise renamed itself the Utah Mammoth as a nod to that state’s paleontological past. So, why are mammoths back? And do they really have what it takes to be a successful team mascot? Paleontologist Advait Jukar joins Host Flora Lichtman to weigh in.

Guests:
Dr. François Haman is a biologist at the University of Ottawa who studies how the human body responds to extreme environments.
Dr. Advait Jukar is the assistant Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

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Dr. Masao Tomonaga was only 2 years old when the United States bombed his home city of Nagasaki. He survived, and grew up to become a physician for other survivors, known as hibakusha. He also studied hematology, and his research on leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes was foundational for understanding how radiation affects the body. On the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he speaks with Host Ira Flatow about his life’s work, how hibakusha lived with the medical consequences of the bombs, and his message to the world.

Guest:
Dr. Masao Tomonaga is a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and director emeritus of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Hospital.

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The first complete draft of the human genome was published back in 2003. Since then, researchers have worked both to improve the accuracy of human genetic data, and to expand its diversity, looking at the genetics of people from many different backgrounds. Three genetics experts join Host Ira Flatow to talk about a recent close examination of the genomes of 65 individuals from around the world, and how it may help researchers get a better understanding of genomic functioning and diversity.

Guests:

Dr. Christine Beck is an associate professor of genetics and genome sciences in the University of Connecticut Health Center and the Jackson Laboratory.
Dr. Glennis Logsdon is an assistant professor of genetics and a core member of the Epigenetics Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Adam Philippy is a Senior Investigator in the Center for Genomics and Data Science Research at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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For almost their entire 4.5 billion-year existence, Earth and its moon have been galactic neighbors. And the moon isn’t just Earth’s tiny sidekick—their relationship is more like that of siblings, and they’re even cut from similar cosmic cloth.

Without the moon, Earth and its inhabitants wouldn’t be what they are today: The climate would be more extreme, lunar tides wouldn’t have given rise to life on Earth, biological rhythms would be off-beat, and even timekeeping and religion would have evolved differently. The new book Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed The Planet, Guided Evolution, And Made Us Who We Are explores how our existence is tied to the moon’s.

Ira Flatow and guest host Sophie Bushwick chat with journalist and author Rebecca Boyle about how the moon came to be, how it transformed life on Earth, and how our relationship with it is changing.

Guest: Rebecca Boyle is a journalist and author of Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed The Planet, Guided Evolution, And Made Us Who We Are. She’s based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Transcript available at sciencefriday.com.

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This week the Trump administration indicated that it would seek to roll back a key EPA finding that allows the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from things like cars and power plants. The 16-year-old rule, known as the “endangerment finding,” states that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health. Sophie Bushwick, news editor at New Scientist, joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the proposed change, along with news about exoplanet life, Russian drones, rust-based batteries, hexagonal diamonds, quantum entanglement, and extra-old honey.

Plus, a robot performed surgery by itself for the first time, on a pig cadaver. Medical roboticist Axel Krieger joins Ira to discuss how he was able to train the surgical robot.

Guests:
Sophie Bushwick is senior news editor at New Scientist in New York.
Dr. Axel Krieger is an associate professor in the department of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

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Whistling is a skill used to communicate over distances—a whistle can mean anything from “you’re cute” to “time to come home for dinner.” There’s a complex series of mechanisms in the mouth that need to come together to make a whistle. Hosts Ira Flatow and Flora Lichtman discuss all things whistling with professional musician and whistler Wanda Civic, aka MCP, and speech language pathologist Aaron Johnson.

Guests: Wanda Civic aka MCP is a musician and whistler based in New York, New York.
Aaron Johnson is a speech and language pathologist at the Voice Center of New York University, in New York, New York.

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Paleontologists have identified an ancient reptile with a towering crest made not of skin, or scales, or feathers, or antler—but something else entirely. It’s some kind of integumentary outerwear we’ve never seen before. The small creature sporting the curious crest was named Mirasaura grauvogeli, and it lived during the Middle Triassic period, about 247 million years ago, just before dinosaurs evolved.

Host Flora Lichtman talks to evolutionary biologist Richard Prum about this dramatic dorsal mystery and what it tells us about the evolution of dinosaurs, birds, and feathers.

Plus, how fast did dinosaurs run? It turns out that the equation scientists have been using for five decades to estimate dinosaur speeds is not completely accurate. To understand what this could mean for velociraptor velocities, T. rex tempos, and spinosaurus speeds, Flora talks with paleobiologist Peter Falkingham.

Guests: Dr. Richard Prum is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and head curator of ornithology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He previously chaired Yale’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
Dr. Peter Falkingham is a professor of paleobiology at Liverpool John Moores University in England.

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The Trump administration has proposed cutting NASA’s budget by almost 25% and shutting down 19 currently operating science missions. On July 21, several hundred current and former employees of the space agency released an official letter of dissent, titled “The Voyager Declaration,” arguing against “rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission.” Retired NASA astronaut Cady Coleman joins Host Flora Lichtman to explain why she felt compelled to add her signature to the letter of dissent.

Guest:
Dr. Cady Coleman is a retired NASA astronaut and the author of Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change. She’s based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.

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Menopause is having a moment. Celebrities like Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, and Michelle Obama have recently shared their personal menopause experiences. Menopause and perimenopause are showing up across social media and even in popular books. All this to say, menopause has finally gone mainstream.

But, it wasn’t until about three decades ago that menopause research really kicked into gear. Since then, scientists have made a lot of progress in understanding the basic biological process as well as treatments like hormone therapy and the importance of separating symptoms of menopause from those of aging.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with two menopause researchers, ob-gyn Monica Christmas and epidemiologist Carrie Karvonen-Gutierrez, about what we’ve learned so far—and what misconceptions bug them most.

Guests: Dr. Monica Christmas is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Chicago and director of the menopause program at UChicago Medicine.
Dr. Carrie Karvonen-Gutierrez is an associate professor of epidemiology and the director of the Center for Midlife Science at the University of Michigan.

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The EPA recently announced that it’s going to shut down its scientific research arm, called the Office of Research and Development. Since the agency was founded nearly 55 years ago, it’s had in-house scientists researching things like pollutants in our air and water, and the risks posed by toxic chemicals. That research informs the EPA’s guidelines and standards.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who spent 40 years working at the EPA, about the importance of the Office’s research and what losing it means for public health and the environment.

Guest: Dr. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta spent 40 years working at the Environmental Protection Agency. She was the principal deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

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In December, the Parker Solar Probe made history when it made the closest-ever approach to the sun by a spacecraft. As it whizzed by, a camera recorded incredibly detailed images, which show the sun’s surface, the flow of solar winds, and eruptions of magnetized balls of gas. Seeing this activity in such detail could help scientists understand solar weather.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Parker Solar Probe project scientist Nour Rawafi about what these images show and how the probe could fundamentally change our understanding of the sun.

Guest:
Dr. Nour Rawafi is the Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

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You can’t get a mortgage without home insurance. But in some parts of the country, it’s becoming harder and harder to find a plan, as insurance companies drop homeowners and pull out of entire states, as flooding, wildfires, and storms become more frequent and intense. Host Flora Lichtman talks to reporters Jessica Meszaros and Rachel Cohen, who have been covering this issue in Florida and Colorado. Flora then speaks with Benjamin Keys, who studies the impact of climate change on the real estate market, about the future of home ownership in a world increasingly unsettled by climate change.

Guests:

Rachel Cohen is the Mountain West News Bureau reporter for KUNC.
Dr. Benjamin Keys studies the impact of climate change on the real estate market at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Jessica Meszaros is a climate change and environment reporter for WUSF in Tampa, Florida.

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Gen Alpha slang can seem unintelligible to adults, but linguist and TikToker Adam Aleksic argues language development in the internet age is worth legitimate study. Adam talks to Host Flora Lichtman about how algorithms and social media are changing the way we speak, and discusses his new book, Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language.

Guest:
Adam Aleksic is a linguist and content creator, and the author of Algospeak: How Social Media is Transforming the Future of Language.

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The New World screwworm has cattle ranchers, entomologists, and the federal government on edge. The pest was successfully eradicated from the US decades ago, but has recently been moving north from South America into Central America and Mexico, with concerns that it may cross the border into Texas. It’s notorious for laying eggs in the wounds of animals and slowly eating them from the inside out. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with entomologist Sonja Swiger about past efforts to get rid of the New World screwworm, and why that process involves dropping millions of bugs out of airplanes.

Guest: Dr. Sonja Swiger is an entomologist and professor at Texas A&M in Stephenville, Texas.

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In July 1925, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial captivated the nation. On its face, the case was relatively straightforward: A Tennessee biology teacher named John Scopes was accused of teaching human evolution to his students. At the time, that was against state law. Both sides enlisted the help of big name lawyers to represent them, and the case turned into a national spectacle. But, why has the legacy of the case persisted? And what can it help us understand about our current moment?

Host Ira Flatow talks with Brenda Wineapple, author of Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation. Read an excerpt of the book at sciencefriday.com.

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It’s shaping up to be one of the worst tick years yet, and concerns about Lyme disease—which is transmitted through the bites of some species—are high. Aside from a short-lived vaccine released in the late 1990s, people have not had the opportunity to get vaccinated against Lyme disease. But if our dogs can get vaccinated, why can’t we? Host Flora Lichtman speaks with immunologist and Lyme disease expert Linden Hu about the ongoing quest for a vaccine against Lyme disease, and our evolving understanding of the disease.

Guest: Dr. Linden Hu is a Professor of immunology at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Read an article from SciFri about the research towards finding an anti-tick vaccine.

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About 7% of veterans experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and that number can be closer to 30% for those who have served in a war zone.

But PTSD has been treated pretty much the same way since the disorder was first recognized roughly four decades ago: Patients are instructed to revisit their trauma until the memory no longer creates an emotional response. This process can be so harrowing that over half of veterans are unable to complete the full course of treatment. But what if there was a way for PTSD treatment to be virtually painless?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Yasmin Tayag, staff writer at The Atlantic, who explored a controversial treatment called Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories, and the challenges of even studying a treatment that bucks conventional wisdom.

Guest: Yasmin Tayag is a staff reporter for The Atlantic.

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For decades, astronomers have been trying to nail down the value of the Hubble constant—a measure of how fast the universe is expanding. But some cosmologists say there’s evidence that the universe is expanding faster than physics can explain, and our current models of it might be broken. Hosts Flora Lichtman and Ira Flatow talk with Wendy Freedman and Dan Scolnic, two cosmologists with different takes on this constant controversy.

Guests:
Wendy Freedman, a former team leader of the Hubble Key Project, is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.
Dr. Dan Scolnic is a cosmologist and associate professor of physics at Duke University in North Carolina.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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For decades, residents of the small city of Newburgh, New York, were unknowingly drinking water contaminated with toxic PFAS—also known as forever chemicals. The source turned out to be firefighting foam used on a nearby air base that had seeped into streams and creeks, and ultimately the city’s main drinking water reservoir.

Now, Newburgh is one of 10 sites that are part of a CDC-led study investigating the health effects of PFAS exposure. Early data out of Newburgh links PFAS with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and heart disease. Host Flora Lichtman discusses the research with environmental epidemiologist Erin Bell and reporter Shantal Riley.

Read our full story about what PFAS contamination has meant for Newburgh in English and in Spanish.

Guests:
Shantal Riley is an award-winning journalist and science writer, focused on environmental health.
Dr. Erin Bell is an environmental epidemiologist at the University at Albany in New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Oceanographer Victoria Orphan’s dream was coming true. She was sitting in the Alvin submersible, on one of its deepest science dives ever. But the trip was anything but smooth sailing. Victoria takes us inside the sub, where her dream turns nightmarish as things start to go wrong, and Alvin pilot Nick O’Sadcia works frantically to troubleshoot. Oceanographer Shana Goffredi, who’s also Victoria’s wife, tells us about the tense scene unfolding on the ship miles above, as they wait for word from the sub.

“The Leap” is a 10-episode audio series that profiles scientists willing to take big risks to push the boundaries of discovery. It has premiered on Science Friday’s podcast feed every Monday since May 12. This is the final episode of the 2025 season.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers found a new sea spider with a giant nose, leg cannons, and—most remarkably—a novel way of surviving in the lightless, freezing environment miles below the sea surface. These oceanic arthropods are powered by methane that seeps out of the ocean floor.

Biologist Shana Goffredi joins Host Flora Lichtman to tell us more about the discovery and explain how we’re connected to these little beasts.

Guest: Dr. Shana Goffredi is a biology professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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President Trump has said that he wants to phase out FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and move responsibility for dealing with major disasters to the state level. Since its creation in 1979, the agency has played a key role in coordinating emergency response nationally. Host Ira Flatow talks with Samantha Montano, an emergency management specialist and author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis, about the path forward for FEMA and how US emergency response efforts might change in the coming years.

Plus, how much can extreme flooding events be attributed to climate change? Host Flora Lichtman breaks down the science with Andrew Dessler, Director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather.

Guests:
Dr. Samantha Montano is an associate professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
Dr. Andrew Dessler is the Director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Most pasta is made from just two ingredients—flour and water. For decades this humble food has prompted physicists around the world to try to understand its mysterious properties and answer questions like: Why does a stick of spaghetti break into three pieces and not cleanly into two? And why is cacio e pepe so hard to perfect? The answers reveal more about the building blocks of the universe than you might expect. Host Ira Flatow talks with Joseph Howlett, math writer at Quanta Magazine, and author of a recent story for the BBC about spaghetti science.

And, if you frequent the wellness world on social media, you may have seen a trend popular with influencers: using adhesive tape to seal one’s mouth shut while sleeping. This is intended to help the sleeper breathe through their nose all night, which people claim has a slew of benefits including improved quality of sleep, reduced sleep apnea, a more defined jawline, and a brightened complexion. But should you add mouth taping to your nighttime routine? According to Dr. Linda Lee, physician and surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, you should be evaluated by a professional first.

Dr. Lee joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the right way to start nose breathing, what the scientific literature says (and doesn’t say) about mouth taping, and how social media is changing the information patients seek from their physicians.

Transcripts for each episode are available at sciencefriday.com.

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We live in a world filled with microbes—they’re inside our bodies, in soil, in deep sea hydrothermal vents, and in your window AC unit. Some microbiologists are hopeful that finding more of these tiny organisms could help us address the climate crisis. Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about how are microbiologists James Henriksen and Lisa Stein.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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GLP-1 medications like Ozempic have dominated headlines over the past couple of years. When writing his new book, Diet, Drugs and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight, former FDA commissioner David Kessler wanted to unpack the science beyond those headlines. He also has a personal relationship with the subject, having taken GLP-1 medications himself. Host Flora Lichtman joins Kessler to talk about the latest science on metabolism, weight loss, and how these blockbuster drugs actually work.

Guest:
Dr. David Kessler is the former commissioner of the FDA and the author of Diet, Drugs and Dopamine: The New Science of Achieving a Healthy Weight.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In both her life and her work, researcher Karmella Haynes has never followed the pack. Karmella explains why she created her own area of research at the intersection of synthetic biology and epigenetics. Emory colleague David Katz weighs in on the challenges Karmella faces in pioneering a new research field. Plus Karmella’s sister Sherrone Wallace fills us in on their family life, and how their father raised them to inhabit spaces that weren’t always welcoming. Karmella has been recognized by the Hypothesis Fund as a Scout for her bold science and enabling others to pursue their big ideas.

“The Leap” is a 10-episode audio series that profiles scientists willing to take big risks to push the boundaries of discovery. It premieres on Science Friday’s podcast feed every Monday until July 21.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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In excerpts of two conversations from the Science Friday archives (originally recorded in 2000 and 2009), oceanographer Robert Ballard joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the 1985 expedition in which he discovered the wreck of the Titanic. He also emphasizes the value of combining the efforts of oceanographers, engineers, and social scientists to study the world’s deep oceans.

Guest:
Robert Ballard is a National Geographic Explorer-at-Large and a Professor of Oceanography in the Center for Ocean Exploration at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, Rhode Island.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Summer is here, which means it’s the season for soaking up the sun. But it’s important to do so responsibly, considering the strong link between sun exposure and skin cancer. There are a lot of sunscreens on the market, so Hosts Flora Lichtman and Ira Flatow join dermatologist Jonathan Ungar to discuss what ingredients to look for and how they work.

Guest:
Dr. Jonathan Ungar is a dermatologist and director of the Waldman Melanoma and Skin Cancer Center at Mount Sinai in New York, New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The latest Jurassic World movie, “Jurassic World Rebirth,” is out today. The movie stars Scarlett Johansson (“The Avengers”) and Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight”). Their characters make a dangerous journey to an island chock-full of dinosaurs to get their hands on some dino blood for a life-saving heart medicine. But unfortunately for them, and luckily for us, things do not go as planned.

Producer Dee Peterschmidt saw the movie and has a behind-the-scenes look with the movie’s scientific consultant, paleontologist Steve Brusatte.

Guest:
Dr. Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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AI is not just for automating tasks or coming up with new recipe ideas. Increasingly, people are turning to AI chatbots for companionship. Roughly half a billion people worldwide have downloaded chatbots designed specifically to provide users with emotional and social support. And while these human-chatbot relationships might ease loneliness or simply be fun to have, these digital friends can also cause real harm by encouraging dangerous or inappropriate behavior—especially in children or teens.

To explore the emerging world of AI companion chatbots, Host Flora Lichtman is joined by freelance science reporter David Adam, who recently wrote about the effect of AI companions on mental health for Nature magazine; and Rose Guingrich, a psychology researcher studying interactions between humans and AI at Princeton University.

Guests:
David Adam is a freelance science reporter based in London.
Rose Guingrich is a researcher in the department of psychology at Princeton University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Geologist Steve Squyres risked his career and millions of dollars to get two rovers roaming on Mars. But the mission almost didn’t make it to the launch pad. Steve and NASA engineer Jennifer Trosper describe the many obstacles the team faced in getting Spirit and Opportunity ready, from ripped parachutes to fuzzy camera feeds, and the problem-solving it took to safely land the twin vehicles on Martian soil.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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Since January, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made sweeping cuts to science. It's hard to keep track of how many research grants were canceled, but they add up to hundreds of millions—possibly billions—of dollars of research funding lost. Some scientists, like Dr. Katie Edwards, are taking the fight to the courts. Edwards studies interpersonal violence at the University of Michigan, and she speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about why she’s suing the NIH.

Guest:
Dr. Katie Edwards is the director of the Interpersonal Violence Research Laboratory and a professor of social work at the University of Michigan. She studies violence against marginalized communities.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The first images from the brand new Vera C. Rubin Observatory have finally been unveiled, and they show us the cosmos like never before. The camera captures so much detail that its first complete image contains about 10 million galaxies. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Federica Bianco about our dazzling new view of the night sky, how the camera works, and what cosmic mysteries it may reveal.

See images from the telescope on our website.

Guest: Dr. Federica Bianco is an astrophysicist at the University of Delaware and the deputy project scientist for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Last month, scientists reported a historic first: they gave the first personalized gene-editing treatment to a baby who was born with a rare life-threatening genetic disorder. Before the treatment, his prognosis was grim. But after three doses, the baby’s health improved.

So how does it work? What are the risks? And what could this breakthrough mean for the 30 million people in the US who have a rare genetic disease with no available treatments?

To help get some answers, Host Flora Lichtman is joined by the physician-scientists who led this research: geneticist Dr. Kiran Musunuru and pediatrician Dr. Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas.

Guests:
Dr. Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas is an assistant professor of pediatrics and genetics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Kiran Musunuru is a professor of translational research at the University of Pennsylvania.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Australia is known for its unusual animal life, from koalas to kangaroos. But once upon a time, the Australian landscape had even weirder fauna, like Palorchestes azael, a marsupial with immense claws and a small trunk. There was Protemnodon mamkurra, a massive, slow-moving, kangaroo-like creature. And Zygomaturus trilobus, a wombat the size of a hippo. They’re all extinct now, and researchers are trying to figure out why. Host Flora Lichtman talks with researcher Carli Peters about ZooMS, a technique that allows researchers to use collagen from ancient bone fragments to identify species, offering clues to those ancient extinction events. Peters recently described using the technique in the journal Frontiers in Mammal Science.

And, a recent study in the journal Nature Astronomy hints that our own Milky Way galaxy may not be doomed to collide with Andromeda after all. Till Sawala, an astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki, joins Flora to talk about the finding.

Guests:
Dr. Carli Peters is a postdoctoral researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behavior at the University of Algarve in Faro, Portugal.
Dr. Till Sawala is an astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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As a grad student, Suchitra Sebastian wasn’t sure she wanted to be a physicist. But when one of her experiments gave an unexpected result, she was hooked. Suchitra’s former PhD student Beng Sing Tan describes the late-night experiments that led to an “impossible” finding—a potentially new state of matter. Theoretical physicist Piers Coleman tells us about working on the edges of a scientific field, and what happens when a new theory ruffles old feathers.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) started collecting data nearly three years ago, and it has already transformed our understanding of the universe. It has spotted the earliest galaxies ever seen, and, closer to home, captured auroras around Jupiter. So what’s the latest from the JWST? In this live broadcast, Hosts Flora Lichtman and Ira Flatow talk with astrophysicist Macarena Garcia Marin, deputy project director for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Guest:
Dr. Macarena Garcia Marin is an astrophysicist and instrument scientist for the European Space Agency. She’s also deputy project director for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Ever noticed how some people get to their 80s and 90s and continue to be healthy and active? They spend their days playing mahjong, driving to lunch, learning shuffle dancing, and practicing Portuguese. Those are “super agers,” seniors who stay fit well into old age. How do they do it? Is it luck or genetics? In this live broadcast, Hosts Flora Lichtman and Ira Flatow discuss the science of aging with two experts on the topic, cardiologist Eric Topol and neuroscientist Emily Rogalski.

Guests:
Dr. Eric Topol is an author, practicing cardiologist at the Scripps Clinic, and a genomics professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.
Dr. Emily Rogalski is a clinical and cognitive neuroscientist, and the director of the Healthy Aging & Alzheimer’s Research Care Center at the University of Chicago.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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While there are a lot of dinosaur fossils, and a lot of plant fossils, the precise connection between the two has been something of a mystery. Now, researchers report that they’ve found what’s called a cololite, fossilized gut contents, in the remains of a sauropod—a massive, long-necked plant-eater. The dino’s last meal dates back 95 to 100 million years. Paleontologist Stephen Poropat joins Host Flora Lichtman to dig into the mysteries of a dinosaur’s tummy.

And, for prairie dogs, communication is key. The rodents’ yips and barks can warn when danger is near—and not just to other prairie dogs. A new study suggests that birds called long-billed curlews are eavesdropping on this chatter to learn when a predator is lurking nearby. Using speakers and a taxidermied badger on wheels, ornithologists are untangling the social dynamics of black-tailed prairie dogs. Host Flora Lichtman talks with study author Andrew Dreelin about this eavesdropping behavior and what it means for conservation.

Guests:
Dr. Stephen Poropat is a paleontologist and deputy director of the Western Australian Organic and Isotope Geochemistry Centre at Curtin University in Perth, Australia.
Andrew Dreelin is a research fellow with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and a PhD candidate at Northern Illinois University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Last month, former President Joe Biden announced that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. The news sparked a larger conversation about what exactly the best practices are to screen for prostate cancer. Turns out, it’s more complicated than it might seem. Host Ira Flatow is joined by oncologist Matthew Cooperberg and statistician Andrew Vickers, who studies prostate cancer screening, to help unpack those complexities.

Guests:
Dr. Matthew Cooperberg is a urologic oncologist and professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Andrew Vickers is a statistician who studies the efficacy of prostate cancer screening at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center based in New York City.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Biochemist Virginia Man-Yee Lee has spent a lifetime in the lab, figuring out what happens in the brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases. She’s made key discoveries about Parkinson's, ALS, and Alzheimer's.The secret to her success? Happiness. “If you're not happy, you don’t know what you’re capable of,” Lee says. Neurologist Ken Kosick reflects on the early days of Alzheimer’s research, and neurologist Alice S. Chen-Plotkin, a former postdoc in Virginia’s lab, gives us a fly-on-the-wall look at the unusual research partnership between Lee and her husband John Trojanowski.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

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On Monday, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of the panel that advises the CDC on who should get certain vaccines and when. Then on Thursday, he appointed eight new members, some of whom have been critical of vaccines in the past. So who exactly is new on the panel and how are medical experts reacting?

Sophie Bushwick from New Scientist breaks down this reshuffling and the other top science stories of the week, including Starlink’s leaky satellites, Earth’s possible past encounters with dark matter, IBM’s quantum computing plans, a device that can extract water from dry air, and how a paralyzed man was able to speak thanks to brain-controlled synthetic voice.

Plus, nearly one in four Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site, places that are contaminated with hazardous waste and flagged for cleanup by the government. Amid sweeping cuts to science and environmental programs, the Trump administration appears to be prioritizing the cleanup of these polluted sites. But why? Host Flora Lichtman talks with science journalist Shahla Farzan about the Trump administration’s approach to cleaning up Superfund sites and what this means for impacted communities.

Read Farzan’s full story about the move to expedite cleanup, and her past coverage of how floods can impact the areas surrounding Superfund sites.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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This week, China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft sent back its first image from space. It’s headed to a rendezvous with the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa, one of Earth’s “quasi-moons,” where it will collect samples in 2026. The mission comes after several successful lunar missions, including a lunar rover and a sample return mission from the far side of the moon. Host Ira Flatow talks with reporter Ling Xin from the South China Morning Post about the goals of China’s space program, and what might be ahead.

Plus, astronomer Dean Regas describes his new “tactile astronomy” book, which seeks to bring stories of the constellations to young blind and low-vision readers.

Guests:
Ling Xin is a science reporter at the South China Morning Post based in Ohio.
Dean Regas is an astronomer, host of the “Looking Up” podcast, and author of the new book All About Orion.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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The prairie might just be the most underappreciated landscape in the United States. Beginning in the early 1800s, the majority of these grasslands were converted into big industrial farms. Now, some unaffectionately refer to it as “flyover country.”

Host Ira Flatow talks with Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, authors of Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie, about the loss of biodiversity on the American prairie and those working to restore what remains.

Guests:
Dave Hage is a longtime environmental reporter and co-author of Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie, based in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Josephine Marcotty is a longtime environmental reporter and co-author of Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Transcript will be available on sciencefriday.com.

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Bedbug infestations are not just a modern problem—these pests have been with early human ancestors for 245,000 years, causing problems long before the invention of beds. Lindsay Miles, an entomologist at Virginia Tech, has found that changes in bedbug population size mirrored those of humans, proving they might be our first pest. Miles talks with Host Flora Lichtman about our history with bedbugs and why they’re such prolific pests.

Plus, the discovery of a new wasp that catches its prey… with butt flaps. Dr. Lars Vilhelmsen, curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen tells us all about it.

Guests:
Dr. Lindsay Miles is an entomologist at Virginia Tech.
Dr. Lars Vilhelmsen is a curator at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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Manu Prakash is many things—biologist, engineer, inventor, philosopher—but what he isn’t is conventional. Following his instincts has led Manu to his most ambitious project yet: mapping the whole tree of life, with the help of everyone on this planet. Step one: make a cheap microscope anyone can use. Foldscope co-inventor Jim Cybulski describes their invention, and their dream to supply millions of microscopes to the masses. Manu has been recognized by the Hypothesis Fund as a Scout for his bold science and enabling others to pursue their big ideas.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

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A mysterious disease called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) has been appearing in emergency rooms for about a decade. The disease has caused otherwise healthy children to lose the ability to move their arms and legs, and some become completely paralyzed. AFM is caused by a virus that's a cousin of the polio virus, earning it the nickname "the new polio.” Journalist and physician Eli Cahan joins Host Flora Lichtman to explain what doctors have been observing, the research efforts toward developing a vaccine, and what this emerging disease reveals about our readiness for future outbreaks and pandemics.

Read Cahan’s article about what fighting this “new polio” might look like as our healthcare infrastructure gets dismantled.

And, learning more about some non-cancerous cells may help researchers better understand how cancer progresses. When you think about how cancer spreads in the body, you’re probably thinking about cancer cells—they divide uncontrollably, form into tumors, and hide from the immune system. So, it makes sense that studying the behavior of these cells is critical to our understanding of cancer. But now, researchers are looking more closely at the non-cancerous cells that co-exist within tumors and the surrounding tissues. They make up what’s called the “colocateome.” Taking this more holistic approach to cancer research may help explain why some treatments don't work for all patients, and eventually may lead to more effective therapies. To better understand this expanding field, Host Ira Flatow talks with Sylvia Plevritis, a Stanford University cancer researcher.

Correction: In the second story of this episode, with Dr. Sylvia Plevritis, we misspoke and said, “Some of the hardest to treat tumors are actually non-cancer cells.” This was in reference to tumors that are mostly non-cancer cells, not entirely non-cancer cells.

Guests:
Dr. Eli Cahan is a journalist and physician based in Boston, Massachusetts.
Dr. Sylvia Plevritis is a professor of biomedical data science and radiology at Stanford University.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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It’s a precarious time for science in the United States. Federal funding is being slashed, career scientists are being laid off, and researchers are considering leaving to work abroad. On top of that, public trust in science and experts has declined. Besides acknowledging the federal attacks on science, a lot of scientists are also asking themselves: What are we doing wrong? How do we engage the public? And what could we do better?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to dig through these questions is Felice Frankel, a science photographer and chemical engineer at MIT. She’s also the author of the upcoming book Phenomenal Moments: Revealing the Hidden Science Around Us, out this fall.

Guest:
Felice Frankel is a science photographer and a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of chemical engineering.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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South American cane toads were brought to Australia in 1935 to help eradicate native beetles that were destroying sugar cane crops. The toads didn’t care much for the beetles, but they did spread across the coast of Queensland and beyond, with no natural predators to stop them. Their own deadly toxin devastated local reptiles along the way, and they now number over 200 million.

Invasive biologists have long tried to curb Australia’s cane toad population. The newest approach uses CRISPR gene-editing technology to create cannibalistic “Peter Pan” cane toad tadpoles: tadpoles that don’t fully mature and instead feast on the tens of thousands of eggs that the toads produce.

How was this approach developed, and how do these researchers think about making a potentially massive change to the ecosystem? Biologist Rick Shine, who has led the effort, joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss it. Later, science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert talks about her experience reporting on similar monumental efforts to control nature—and what they say about us.

Guests:
Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (Crown, 2021). She’s based in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Dr. Rick Shine is a professor of biology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

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Birding is a hobby that attracts a very particular group of people: the kind who get up at sunrise, go into the woods, and wait for hours for a little tiny feathered friend to fly past. Author and illustrator Rosemary Mosco guides us into the world of birding with her new book, The Birding Dictionary. Plus, biologist Sara Lipshutz fills us in on the surprisingly high-drama world of some female birds.

Guests: Rosemary Mosco is an author, illustrator, and speaker whose work connects people with the natural world. Her latest book is The Birding Dictionary.

Dr. Sara Lipshutz is an assistant professor in biology at Duke University.

Transcript is available on sciencefriday.com.

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As a young plant scientist, Joanne Chory shook up the research establishment with her unconventional approach to figuring out how plants work. Her methods and success changed the field, and led her to her biggest project yet—tackling climate change, with the help of millions of plants. Colleagues Steve Kay, Detlef Weigel, and Jennifer Nemhauser describe what made Joanne outstanding in the field of plant scientists. Plus Joanne’s sister, Mary Ann Chory, describes their early family life and the sibling relationships that shaped them. Joanne Chory died in November 2024 at age 69 from complications due to Parkinson’s disease.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

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Grant funding by the National Science Foundation has been cut by more than half this year, bringing the foundation’s science funding to its lowest level in decades. Katrina Miller, who covers science for the New York Times, joins Host Flora Lichtman to unpack the cutbacks and discuss where the funding changes might lead.

And, the FDA has cleared a blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. The first-of-its-kind test measures the levels of amyloid and tau proteins in a patient’s blood, two major biomarkers of the disease. Alzheimer’s researcher Jason Karlawish joins Flora to explain this new diagnostic tool and what it means for patients.

Guests:

Katrina Miller is a science reporter for The New York Times based in Chicago.

Dr. Jason Karlawish is a professor of medicine, medical ethics and health policy, and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and co-director of the Penn Memory Center, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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At the end of April, air traffic control radar surveillance and radio communication systems at Newark Liberty International Airport went dark for over a minute. A week and half later, radar went down again briefly. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has since cut down the number of flights in and out of Newark. But, how does our air traffic control system work? How do air traffic controllers keep track of all of the planes in the sky? And what happens when systems fail? Michael McCormick, a former air traffic control operations manager at the FAA, joins Host Flora Lichtman to dive into the science of air traffic control.

Guest:
Dr. Michael McCormick is a former vice president of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization, and an associate professor and program coordinator of Air Traffic Management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

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At the beginning of May, the National Institutes of Health, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced a plan to develop a universal vaccine platform. Think: a single shot for flu or COVID-19 that would last years, maybe a lifetime. The plan—called Generation Gold Standard—has a reported budget of $500 million, and a tight deadline. But will it work? And where does the science on this actually stand? In this live broadcast, Hosts Flora Lichtman and Ira Flatow talk with epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and vaccine researcher Ted Ross.

Guests:
Michael Osterholm is Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Dr. Ted Ross is the global director of vaccine research at the Cleveland Clinic’s Florida Research and Innovation Center in Port St. Lucie, Florida.

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Betül Kaçar started her scientific career as a biochemist, working on an enzyme found in zebrafish. But then she found her calling: investigating some of the hardest questions in evolutionary biology by resurrecting ancient life forms. NASA administrator Melissa Kirven-Brooks recalls the fellowship application that put Betül on her radar. And evolutionary biologist and geneticist Harmit Malik weighs in on what makes Betül's project so hard, and why he’s kind of jealous he didn’t think of it first. Betül previously received a Hypothesis Fund Award for her research.

Guest:
Dr. Betül Kaçar, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and leader of a NASA-funded multi-institutional research center focusing on life’s early evolution

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

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The “Mission: Impossible” franchise is known for its big stunts, and the newest film is no exception. Producer Kathleen Davis talks to the film’s stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, about the science behind one big underwater scene. Plus, psychologist Kenneth Carter joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about what makes high-adrenaline adventurers tick.

Take this questionnaire to see where you fall on the "sensation scale" Carter mentioned in this episode.

Guests:
Wade Eastwood is a stunt coordinator, stunt performer, and director in the film and television industry. He was the second unit director and stunt coordinator on "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning."
Dr. Kenneth Carter is a Professor of Psychology at Oxford College of Emory University, and the author of Buzz!: Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Climate scientist Jagadish Shukla grew up in a small village in rural India, where people starved if the monsoon season didn’t bring rain. To help his village, he set out to become a scientist and discover a way to predict the seasons—an unthinkable idea at the time, in the 1960s and ‘70s. Shukla became a pioneer in modern weather forecasting, and he tells his unlikely story in his new memoir, A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory. He talks with Host Flora Lichtman about his journey to becoming a leading climate scientist, the state of weather forecasting today, and why forecasting is more important than ever in the face of climate change.

Guest:
Dr. Jagadish Shukla, author of A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theoryand climate scientist at George Mason University

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In recent years, digital touchscreens have replaced many of the buttons and knobs that control various functions in cars. But when Host Ira Flatow went shopping for a new car, he noticed that physical controls seemed to be making a comeback. But will the rise of technologies like voice recognition and automation make cars more button-centric, or less? Ira talks with car ergonomics engineer James Forbes and buttonologist Rachel Plotnick about the advantages and disadvantages of the physical button or knob, and what might lead an automaker to choose one type of control over another.

Guests:
James Forbes, professor of practice in the department of automotive engineering at Clemson University.
Rachel Plotnick, author of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (The MIT Press, 2018).

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Tomatoes come in all kinds of colors, sizes, and flavors. But what’s going on at the genetic level? What makes a tomato red or yellow? Tiny or giant?

Researchers are mapping the genomes of 22 varieties of nightshades—the family of plants that includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants. They located the genes that control the size of tomatoes and eggplants and then used CRISPR gene editing to grow bigger fruits without sacrificing flavor.

Geneticist Michael Schatz joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about his latest research into nightshade genomes and the current state of genetically modified crops.

Guest: Dr. Michael Schatz, professor of computational biology and oncology at Johns Hopkins University, based in Baltimore, Maryland.

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As a teenager living in St. Vincent, Richie Robertson saw first-hand what a volcanic eruption did to life on the island. Forty years later, he was the scientist the community turned to when the same volcano roared back to life. Richie’s colleague, Stacey Edwards of the UWI Seismic Research Centre, explains how Richie earned the trust of the community, and why it was important to have a Vincentian leading the way in a crisis.

Guests:
Dr. Richard Robertson, geologist at the UWI Seismic Research Centre
Stacey Edwards, education & outreach manager at the UWI Seismic Research Centre

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

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The lesser prairie chicken was granted endangered species status in 2023. Now the Department of the Interior is moving to revoke those protections. What can this bird known for its flamboyant courtship rituals tell us about the Trump administration’s approach to environmental policy and protections for endangered species?

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Producer Shoshannah Buxbaum and Vox environmental reporter Benji Jones to talk about his reporting on the lesser prairie chicken and other science stories of the week including, Trump supporters in the wind energy sector, at-home cervical cancer screening, a new fossil from an ancient bird ancestor, the latest brood of cicadas emerging, and how flamingos eat with their heads upside down underwater.

Guests:
Benji Jones, environmental correspondent at Vox
Shoshannah Buxbaum, producer at Science Friday

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Firefighting is a career with an inherent cancer risk, but a full understanding of what those risks are has been elusive. An important registry designed to help understand the link between firefighters and cancer was taken offline on April 1 because of federal cuts, then restored six weeks later. Host Flora Lichtman discusses this with firefighter health researcher Sara Jahnke and reporter Murphy Woodhouse from Boise State Public Radio and the Mountain West News Bureau.

Plus, pests and pathogens are ravaging keystone tree species in forests across the country. Flora discusses the innovative science behind breeding pest-resistant trees with Leigh Greenwood from The Nature Conservancy.

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What does it take to create and maintain one of the largest repositories of botanical information in the world? For starters, it can mean helicopter-ing into remote nooks of the Amazon, hiking through rough terrain, looking for strange fruits and flowers, and climbing trees to pluck specimens from the branches. Then there’s all the science required to identify, classify, and codify those species.

Botanists Lúcia Lohmann and Charlotte Taylor join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss their work discovering new plant species and maintaining the storied Missouri Botanical Garden.

And, what does it mean to be a superfood? What is the science of micronutrient-dense foods like millet, which get less hype than foods like açaí, goji berries, and quinoa? Flora talks with biological engineer Kiruba Krishnaswamy, who puts food under a microscope—literally—and studies the nutrients that help make our bodies function, in hopes of harnessing them to fight hunger worldwide.

Guests:
Dr. Lúcia Lohmann, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and president and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden
Dr. Charlotte Taylor, botanist and senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden
Dr. Kiruba Krishnaswamy, assistant professor in the Colleges of Engineering and Agriculture at the University of Missouri

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Medical sculptor Damon Coyle walks around with a Mary Poppins bag of body parts. Fake ones, that is. At the University of Missouri, his lab creates hyperrealistic body parts designed to help medical providers practice for real-world surgeries and procedures. They make things like lifelike arms for practicing blood draws or a set of eyeballs for ocular trauma training. On stage in Columbia, Missouri, Damon talks with Host Flora Lichtman about how he creates these eerily realistic body parts and how they’re used.

Guest: Damon Coyle, medical sculptor and innovation specialist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.

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Biochemist Kati Karikó spent decades experimenting with mRNA, convinced that she could solve the problems that had kept it from being used as a therapeutic. Her tireless, methodical work was dismissed and she was ridiculed. But that work laid the foundation for the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines that saved millions of lives, and was recognized by a Nobel Prize in 2023. Kati shares her secret weapon for dealing with stress and naysayers. Plus, neurologist David Langer describes Kati’s exacting research style, and her daughter, Olympic gold medalist Susan Francia, reveals the life lessons that led them both to the winner’s circle.

“The Leap” is a production of the Hypothesis Fund, brought to you in partnership with Science Friday.

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Proposed budget cuts for NASA would jeopardize space research. And an executive order could change the political tides for deep sea mining.

On May 2, the Trump Administration proposed a 24% budget cut for NASA. It would slash funding for science while setting billions aside for initiatives to send humans to the moon and Mars. New Scientist editor Sophie Bushwick joins us to talk about this, as well as other news in science, like how many U.S. cities are sinking, the search for geologic hydrogen within mountains, the first photos of free-floating atoms, Chinese poetry about porpoises, and cicadas turned into speakers.

And, President Trump recently issued an executive order that would fast-track access for deep sea mining. Soon after, a Canadian company called The Metals Company submitted the first application for NOAA to review. This has raised environmental and climate concerns, as well as geopolitical tensions. Ocean geologist Sandor Mulsow breaks down what’s at stake for the ocean.

Guests:
Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist in NYC
Dr. Sandor Mulsow, marine geologist at the Austral University of Chile

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Guest: Dr. Bonnie Bassler, microbiologist at Princeton University

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A passion for fashion among the “bone collector caterpillar,” who wears a coat of body parts, and an artist who makes fabrics that remember.

We inch into the world of extreme outerwear with the newly-discovered “bone collector caterpillar,” which wears a coat of many co…llected body parts. Why, Hanipillar Lecter? Entomologist Dan Rubinoff, who along with his team found the species on a mountainside in Oahu, Hawaii, shares the juicy details.

And, what if clothes could remember our experiences? Computer programmer and artist Laura Devendorf is making textiles embedded with sensors and other tech that can tell us about our lives. One dress she made recorded her physical interactions with her kids—and played them back. Laura joins Host Flora Lichtman and spins a yarn about the future of e-textiles.

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Millions of years ago, iguanas somehow got from North America to Fiji. Scientists think they made the trip on a raft of fallen vegetation. Also, the marine reptile’s fossilized fetus is cluing paleontologists into the lives of ancient sea creatures.

Ancient Iguanas Floated 5,000 Miles Across The PacificIf you picture iguanas, you might imagine them sunbathing on hot sand in the Caribbean or skittering around the Mojave Desert. But far, far away from where these iguanas are found is another group of iguanas living on the islands of Fiji and Tonga in the South Pacific—closer to New Zealand than the Americas. And it raises the question: How in the world did these iguanas end up all alone, on the other side of the ocean? In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March, scientists suggest that millions of years ago, iguanas hitched a ride on a raft and accidentally sailed all the way across the ocean before washing ashore and starting a new life. Host Flora Lichtman discusses the iguanas’ intrepid adventure with lead author Dr. Simon Scarpetta, evolutionary biologist and assistant professor at the University of San Francisco in California.

Meet Fiona, The Pregnant Icthyosaur FossilIn the Patagonia region of Chile, Torres del Paine National Park is a graveyard of ichthyosaurs—ancient, dolphin-like reptiles that roamed the oceans when dinosaurs dominated the land. Nearly 90 of these giant reptiles’ fossils have been found amongst the glaciers. But the standout in the bone heap is Fiona, an ichthyosaur that lived 131 million years ago. She’s in pristine condition, the only fully preserved ichthyosaur in Chile. And, she died pregnant. She’s teaching paleontologists about the evolution of her species. And some of those findings were recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Host Flora Lichtman talks with lead author Dr. Judith Pardo-Pérez, paleontologist at the University of Magallanes in Chile.

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In “Into the Unknown,” an astronomer explores the mysteries of the cosmos and the limits of what science can test.

What is time? If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? What happened just before the Big Bang?

Some of the most head-scratching ideas in physics strain the limits of what science can test. In her book Into the Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos, astronomer Dr. Kelsey Johnson describes some of those concepts, and sketches out ways to try to wrap your brain around them. Johnson joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the limits of scientific inquiry, and what mysteries lie at the limits of science.

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Scientists bring us a lab-grown chicken nugget and texturally accurate, plant-based calamari. We’ll bite.

There’s a movement in the world of science to find alternatives to meat and dairy products that don’t involve killing animals. Two avenues for this are by using animal cells in a lab, or going plant-based. Two breakthroughs in this field of food science were published in journals recently: the largest lab-grown chicken nugget and a plant-based fried calamari that tastes like the real thing.

Producer Kathleen Davis joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss these morsels of research and other science news of the week, including mandatory composting hitting the largest U.S. city, why human wounds heal slower than our primate cousins, and the disinfecting limitations of at-home washing machines.

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Death metal vocalists also train their voices to hit that unique guttural register. And those iconic screams are not as easy to master as they might seem.

Vocal scientists at the University of Utah are now bringing death metal singers into the lab to try to understand how they make their extreme vocalizations. What they’re finding is not only insightful for metalheads, but might also help improve treatment for people with some types of vocal injuries. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Amanda Stark, speech pathologist and vocology researcher at the University of Utah, and Mark Garrett, vocal coach and lead singer of the band Kardashev.

Read the whole story at sciencefriday.com.

Also, we share a follow-up to our story about seasonal allergies based on a listener’s question about her family’s allergies.

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It’s zombie season! At least if you’re watching the new season of the fungal thriller “The Last of Us,” airing right now on Max, which chronicles what happens after a fungus turns most of humanity into zombies.

It’s fiction for us, but for some organisms on the planet, it’s more like a documentary. The fungus that zombifies humanity in the show is based on Ophiocordyceps, a real fungal group that infects ants, takes over their brains and bodies, and turns them into spore factories.

But this isn’t the only example of real-life zombies. Science writer Mindy Weisberger found a whole book’s worth of stories about horrifying and creative zombies and zombie-makers that inhabit the Earth, which she writes about in Rise of the Zombie Bugs: The Surprising Science of Parasitic Mind-Control.

Host Flora Lichtman sits down with Weisberger to talk about the creepy and inventive lifestyles of these parasites, and how studying these zombifiers can teach us about ourselves.

Read an excerpt from Rise Of The Zombie Bugs.

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Research suggests that better understanding the psychological and neurological components of chronic pain may lead to better treatments.

Chronic pain is remarkably common: Roughly 20% of adults in the US live with it. And people with chronic pain are more likely to have depression, anxiety, and substance abuse disorders. But this relationship between physical and mental health is not as straightforward as you might think, and there’s still a stigma attached to neuro-psychological causes of chronic pain.

The latest research suggests that untangling the connections between mind and body is a key part of developing better treatments for people with chronic pain. Now, a new psychological treatment called pain reprocessing therapy has shown initial success in eliminating back pain in research participants.

Producer Shoshannah Buxbaum joins Host Flora Lichtman to share her reporting on the intersection of mental health and chronic pain.

Transcript for this story will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers isolated one kind of cone in the eye and aimed lasers at it to allow subjects to see a super vibrant teal shade they call “olo.”

Think about the colors of the world around you—the blue of a cloudless sky, the green of a new leaf, the blazing red of a tulip’s petals. We see these colors because of the way our eyes work. But what if we could change how our eyes respond to light, and present them with light in a form they’d never encounter in the natural world? What would we see?

This week, researchers reported in the journal Science Advances that by using precisely aimed laser light, they were able to selectively target just one of the three types of color-sensing cones in the human retina. The cone, dubbed “M” because it responds to medium wavelengths of light, is normally stimulated at the same time as cones that respond to longer wavelength reddish light, or shorter wavelength bluish light. But after mapping the location of the cones in several subjects’ eyes, the researchers were able to target just the M cones with one specific wavelength of green laser light—a condition that would never exist in nature. The result, they say, is a highly saturated bluish-green teal color unlike anything in the real world. The researchers named their new color “olo.”

Study author James Fong, a computer science PhD student at University of California Berkeley, and his advisor, Dr. Ren Ng, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the project, and the possibility of expanding the limits of human color perception.

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How will market uncertainty and a lack of federal support for climate efforts affect the future of clean energy in the United States? Plus, many wetlands are disappearing, but Louisiana’s “accidental” Wax Lake Delta is growing—and informing coastal restoration techniques.

$8 Billion Of Climate Tech Projects Were Canceled In 3 Months

In the first three months of the Trump administration, officials have been aggressive in cancelling climate change related efforts, from enacting layoffs at large agencies to withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and rescinding federal funding for green research and infrastructure.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to break down the changes we’re starting to see in climate policy and clean tech on the ground is Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review. They also talk about other science news of the week, including a Florida-based startup that’s recycling solar panels, an update on the growing measles outbreak in the Southwest, signs of a US science brain drain, humanoid robot participants in the Beijing half marathon, and how bats manage to drink on the fly.

In Louisiana, A Chance To Study A Successful, Growing Wetland

Amid the rapid erosion of Louisiana’s coast, something hopeful is happening where the Atchafalaya River meets the Gulf. A flow of sediment from a decades-old river diversion has accidentally given birth to new wetlands.

While that small delta is dwarfed by what’s washing away all around it, researchers have gained knowledge from Wax Lake Delta that could help save the rest of Louisiana’s coast and contribute to a better understanding of wetland science across the globe.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

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With the help of cat owners, a new project investigates cats’ biology and aims to link some of their behaviors to their genes.

Calling all cat people: This one’s for you. Despite humans’ long history of welcoming felines into their homes and delis, research on cats lags far behind research on dogs. Now, scientists behind the project Darwin’s Ark are working to close the cat gap by enlisting cat caretakers from across the country to submit a tuft of fur and answer a few questions about their feline’s appearance, personality, and behaviors.

Host Flora Lichtman talks about the project, as well as what we do and don’t know about cat genetics, with Dr. Elinor Karlsson, chief scientific officer at Darwin’s Ark, and director of the Vertebrate Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Universities.

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An evolving technology is changing the lives of people with paralysis: brain-computer interfaces (BCI). These are devices that are implanted in the brain and record neural activity, then translate those signals into commands for a computer. This allows people to type, play computer games, and talk with others just by thinking, allowing more freedom to communicate.

For decades, this technology has looked like a person controlling a cursor on a screen. But this work has advanced, and in a recent breakthrough, a person with paralysis in all four limbs was able to move a virtual quadcopter with extreme precision by thinking about moving it with their fingers.

Another area of BCI research involves speech. Recent work has shown promise in allowing people with vocal paralysis to “speak” through a computer, using old recordings to recreate the person’s voice from before their paralysis.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the state of this technology, and where it may be headed, are Dr. Matthew Willsey, assistant professor of neurosurgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Sergey Stavisky, assistant professor of neurosurgery and co-director of the Neuroprosthetics Lab at the University of California, Davis.

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In Connecting Dots: A Blind Life, inventor Josh Miele recounts his life story and path to becoming an accessibility designer.

When inventor and scientist Josh Miele was 4 years old, a neighbor poured sulfuric acid on his head, burning and permanently blinding him. In his new book Connecting Dots: A Blind Life, Miele chronicles what happened afterwards, growing up as a blind kid, and how he built his career as an inventor and designer of adaptive technology.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Joshua Miele, an Amazon Design Scholar and MacArthur Fellow, or “Genius Grant” recipient. They talk about the inspiration for the book, how he grew into his career, and how disabled people need to be included in the technology revolution.

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Are traffic engineering decisions based on evidence-based research? Not as much as you might think.

If you’ve seen a car crash on the side of the road, you might look at it and think that the person at fault is the driver. But how much blame should be shared by the people who designed those roads in the first place?

Well, some traffic engineers are calling for the field to accept more blame for the crashes and the tens of thousands of annual fatalities that happen on our roads, including Dr. Wes Marshall, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado Denver. In his book Killed By A Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System, he digs into the standards that have dictated traffic design for decades to find out exactly how much science they’re based on. Spoiler alert: It’s a lot less than you’d think.

Host Flora Lichtman sits down with Dr. Marshall to talk about how we got to this point and what a safer version of our streets could look like.

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The Webb Space Telescope picked up traces of dimethyl sulfide on planet K2-18b. On Earth, the molecule comes from microbes and phytoplankton. Also, researchers captured the first confirmed video of a colossal squid swimming in its natural habitat—almost 2,000 feet deep.

Possible Signature Of Life Detected On Exoplanet—MaybeIn major galactic news, scientists may have detected possible signs of life on a planet right here in our galaxy. Is this one of the best hints we’ve gotten that alien life exists? Host Flora Lichtman gets into it with Anil Oza, the Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellow at STAT and MIT. They discuss the latest in alien life, the Trump’s administration cuts to the “indirect costs” of science funding, the largest map of a brain yet, and how salmon on anti-anxiety meds make bolder choices.

A Colossal Squid Video? That’s A Big DealThis week, scientists announced that they had captured the first confirmed video of a colossal squid in its natural habitat, recorded some 1,968 feet (600 m) below the ocean surface near the South Sandwich Islands. While there have been sightings of the colossal squid before, they have mainly been of individuals entangled with fishing equipment—and much of what is known about the elusive creatures comes from dead specimens.

The video was captured by scientists on board the R/V Falkor (too) during an Ocean Census expedition searching for new marine life. As the remotely operated vehicle SuBastian descended towards the ocean floor, its cameras caught sight of a juvenile squid roughly one foot long (30 cm), and captured over a minute of high resolution video. The footage was later analyzed by experts and determined to be a colossal squid.

Colossal squid are estimated to grow up to 23 feet (7 m) in length and can weigh as much as 1,100 pounds (500 kg), making them the heaviest invertebrate on the planet. They are not the same as the giant squid, an entirely different species, which can grow to be longer but are lighter and slimmer.

Dr. Kat Bolstad, one of the squid experts the researchers sent their videos to for identification, joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the sighting.

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Imagine you’re diving into a cell. You’re paddling around in the cytoplasm, you’re climbing up a mitochondria. If you’re having a hard time picturing this, that’s okay! There are professionals who do this for a living.

We wanted to learn more from expert science interpreters, who take the results section of a research paper and translate it into something tangible, like a 40-foot dinosaur skeleton or a 3D animation of cellular machinery too small to see.

At a live event in Salt Lake City in March, Host Flora Lichtman spoke with Dr. Janet Iwasa, head of the University of Utah’s Animation Lab and director of the Genetic Science Learning Center; and Tim Lee, director of exhibits at the Natural History Museum of Utah, about how they bring these out-of-reach worlds to life.

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Bringing back Southwest peach orchards won’t be easy, but researchers are on the lookout for remaining trees—and they need help. And, the newly discovered Lokiceratops is challenging paleontologists’ understanding of how horned dinosaurs evolved and existed together.

How A Navajo Plant Researcher Is Reviving A Desert PeachWhen you think of states known for their peaches, Utah might not be at the top of your list. But there is a variety—the Southwest peach—that grows in this arid landscape, and Native communities have cultivated this tree since the 1600s. But many of the orchards were intentionally destroyed by colonizers hundreds of years ago, and the remaining trees are now scattered across the region.

A local scientist and member of the Navajo Nation is on a mission to track down Southwest peach trees so we can learn more about how these peaches are so well-suited to grow in the desert.

At a live event in Salt Lake City in March, Host Flora Lichtman spoke with Reagan Wytsalucy, plant scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University Extension in San Juan County, Utah. She researches traditional Native American crops, including the Southwest peach.

Meet Lokiceratops, A Giant Dinosaur With Blade-Like HornsThe Intermountain West is a dinosaur nerd’s dream because it’s such a hotspot for fossils. Some of the most famous dino fossils in the world, like T. rex, triceratops, and stegosaurus can be found in western North America. So, of course, Science Friday couldn’t go to Salt Lake City, Utah, without digging into some dinosaur science.

At a live event in Salt Lake City in March, Host Ira Flatow spoke with the scientists behind the discovery of Lokiceratops, a large dinosaur with impressive horns that was unveiled in 2024. Dr. Mark Loewen, vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Utah and the Natural History Museum of Utah; and Savhannah Carpenter, paleontologist and school outreach coordinator at the Natural History Museum of Utah, discuss how they figured out Loki was a new dinosaur, the process of describing and naming the fossil, and what it taught them about dino evolution.

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We are rounding up your questions about roads. What confounds you about traffic, or how interstates are laid out? Are there certain road design elements that ignite your road rage? Tell us about it: we’ve got a traffic engineer in the passenger seat this week, ready to answer your questions. Call us at (877) 4-SCIFRI or 877-472-4374.

In this episode, utterances like “um,” “wow,” and “mm-hmm” aren’t just fillers—they keep conversations flowing. Also, new research suggests the artificial sweetener saccharin could kill antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Huh? The Valuable Role Of InterjectionsListen carefully to a spoken conversation and you’ll notice that the speakers use a lot of little quasi-words—mm-hmm, um, huh? and the like—that don’t convey any information about the topic of the conversation itself. For many decades, linguists regarded such utterances as largely irrelevant noise, the flotsam and jetsam that accumulate on the margins of language when speakers aren’t as articulate as they’d like to be.

But these little words may be much more important than that. A few linguists now think that far from being detritus, they may be crucial traffic signals to regulate the flow of conversation as well as tools to negotiate mutual understanding. That puts them at the heart of language itself—and they may be the hardest part of language for artificial intelligence to master.

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A Sweet New Treatment For Antibiotic Resistant Infections?Researchers have discovered that the artificial sweetener saccharin has powerful antimicrobial properties. A new study published in EMBO Molecular Medicine suggests that saccharin can actually kill antibiotic resistant bacteria by interfering with DNA replication and cell division. The researchers also concluded that, with the help of traditional antibiotics, saccharin could even be used as an effective wound treatment.

Host Ira Flatow talks with study author Dr. Ronan McCarthy, professor in biomedical sciences and director of the Antimicrobial Innovations Centre at Brunel University of London.

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On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation heard testimony from Jared Isaacman, President Trump’s nominee to lead NASA. During the confirmation hearing, Isaacman indicated a priority of sending humans to Mars—while maintaining the agency’s plans to return people to the lunar surface.

In response to a question from Senator Ted Cruz, Isaacman said “I don’t think we have to make any tough trades here, Senator. I think if we can concentrate our resources at the world’s greatest space agency, we don’t have to make a binary decision of moon versus Mars, or moon has to come first versus Mars.” Senators questioned how a strategy involving both options would be possible under current funding levels, and stressed that a bipartisan law had codified the current approach of targeting the moon first, then Mars.

The fate of the Artemis lunar exploration program has faced questions in the new administration. In his inaugural address, President Trump expressed a desire to send astronauts to Mars, but didn’t mention the moon. Elon Musk, head of SpaceX and a favored advisor to the president, is in favor of prioritizing crewed Mars missions ahead of lunar programs. Under questioning, Isaacman repeatedly refused to say directly whether Musk had been present for his job interview with the President.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Senior Producer Charles Bergquist about the nomination and the path ahead for NASA. They also talk about other stories from the week in science, including the controversy over claims of a “de-extincted” dire wolf, advances in rapid bird flu sensors, and the detailed physics of a cup of pour-over coffee.

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We go inside the scientifically accurate ER world created for the TV show with one of its medical consultants.

What is it actually like to work in an emergency room? To deal with overcrowded waiting rooms, a shortage of hospital beds, and a constant flow of life-and-death health conditions—while trying to maintain your sanity at the same time?

That’s the focus of “The Pitt,” a new medical drama on Max from the creators of “ER,” starring one of that show’s key actors, all grown up: Noah Wyle. The first season takes place over a single shift, and each episode is one hour of that shift in real time. And medical professionals are praising the show for its accuracy.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to talk about the accuracy of the show is one of its medical consultants, Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah, associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

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NASA is planning to decommission the International Space Station by the end of 2030. The ISS, which began operations in 2000, is reaching the end of its lifespan and has become costly to maintain. NASA selected SpaceX to construct a vehicle that would “de-orbit” the football field-sized station, pushing it down into the atmosphere where it’ll burn up safely over the Pacific ocean.

So what comes next? So far, NASA has awarded contracts to private companies including Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Northrup Grumman, and Starlab to support the research and development for commercial space stations which would help facilitate future research in orbit, among their own space tourism offerings. Next year, NASA will certify one or more of these companies to build at least one space station, where it’ll then become one of many customers to purchase services from the new facilities.

Loren Grush, space reporter at Bloomberg News, joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss who’s in the running and how future space stations could differ from the one we know today. She also talks about her recent trip to the headquarters of Vast, one of the companies competing for this contract, to learn more about its cryptocurrency origins and its high-level recruitments from NASA and Apple.

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What happens when AI moves beyond convincing chatbots and custom image generators to something that matches—or outperforms—humans?

Each week, tech companies trumpet yet another advance in artificial intelligence, from better chat services to image and video generators that spend less time in the uncanny valley. But the holy grail for AI companies is known as AGI, or artificial general intelligence—a technology that can meet or outperform human capabilities on any number of tasks, not just chat or images.

The roadmap and schedule for getting to AGI depends on who you talk to and their precise definition of AGI. Some say it’s just around the corner, while other experts point a few years down the road. In fact, it’s not entirely clear whether current approaches to AI tech will be the ones that yield a true artificial general intelligence.

Hosts Ira Flatow and Flora Lichtman talk with Will Douglas Heaven, who reports on AI for MIT Technology Review; and Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, who specializes in ethical, explainable and transparent AI, about the path to AGI and its potential impacts on society.

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In many parts of the United States, spring has sprung. There’s nothing quite like those first few beautiful days of spring. They’re delightful—until the sneezing starts.

According to the CDC, a quarter of US adults deal with seasonal allergies. And if you think they’re getting worse, it’s not just in your head. Previous research has shown that climate change is making pollen seasons start earlier and become more intense, a problem that’s expected to get worse.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to discuss the science behind seasonal allergies, and the best methods for treating them, is Dr. Neeta Ogden, director of the Allergy, Asthma and Sinus Center in Edison, New Jersey.

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Over the past two decades, rates of peanut allergies in children have more than tripled. A variety of theories has been proposed to explain this, from a rise in industrialization keeping kids away from the germs that develop the immune system, to the previous pediatric guidelines that urged parents to restrict access to peanuts early in life. Whatever the cause, higher rates of peanut allergies means effective treatments are in higher demand.

New research published in NEJM Evidence shows that a simple treatment could be effective for kids who can tolerate half a peanut or more before an overwhelming reaction: eating a small amount of store-bought peanut butter, gradually increasing the amount over 18 months. In the study, 100% of participating kids increased their tolerance to three tablespoons of peanut butter without an allergic reaction.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss this study and other food allergy treatments on the horizon is Dr. Scott Sicherer, Director of the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

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The cuts hit multiple agencies, affecting work on HIV, gun violence prevention, vaccines, minority health research, and more.

On April 1, thousands of federal health workers woke up to find that they had been laid off. Scientists and civil servants at the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health were let go as part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s pledge to cut jobs at the country’s top disease-fighting agencies.

Host Ira Flatow talks with Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox in Washington, D.C., about the repercussions of these cuts. They also discuss other science news of the week, including a pacemaker the size of a grain of rice, how air pollution affects the climate, and miso made on board the International Space Station.

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Emergency response experts say that funding and staff cuts at the National Weather Service could mean less reliable weather forecast. And, babies like music, but they generally have preferences. A music therapist reveals the best kinds of music to soothe a baby.

Forecasting Cuts Leave Some Worried For Hurricane SeasonMany in Georgia are still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Helene last fall.

Now, firings and funding cuts at the National Weather Service and other agencies have some experts worried about accurate forecasts heading into the next hurricane season, which begins June 1.

Hundreds of workers have been fired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, including meteorologists at the Weather Service. More cuts by the Trump administration are reportedly on the way.

“The forecast is not going to be as accurate because it won’t have as much information in it,” said Chuck Watson of ENKI research in Savannah, who studies disaster preparedness and response.

Read the whole story at sciencefriday.com.

Tips For Soothing Your Baby With Music, From A Music TherapistIf you’re a parent, you’ve probably heard that playing music is good for your baby’s brain development. But that’s where many people’s knowledge about the subject ends. What about music is good for a baby’s development? Will queuing up a lullaby playlist get the job done? And how can you tell if it’s all just too much for them?

Sarah Nolan, a board-certified music therapist and neonatal intensive care unit music therapist in Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Mark Taper and Johnny Mercer Artists Program recently published recommendations on the best ways to play music around your baby.

Host Ira Flatow talks to Nolan about the ideal length of time to play music, what kinds of music are best, and the benefits of music therapy to babies and adults alike.

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In January, an iceberg the size of Chicago splintered off from the Antarctic Peninsula and drifted away in the Bellingshausen Sea.

As luck would have it, a team of scientists was nearby on a research vessel, and they seized the chance to see what was lurking on the seafloor beneath that iceberg—a place that had long been covered, and nearly impossible to get to.

They found a stunning array of life, like octopuses, sea spiders, and crustaceans, as well as possible clues to the dynamics of ice sheets.

Host Ira Flatow talks with the expedition’s two chief scientists: Dr. Patricia Esquete, marine biologist at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, and Dr. Sasha Montelli, glaciologist and geophysicist at University College London.

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Mental health information on social media can be both revelatory and misleading. How do clinicians and their patients make sense of it?

A new study published in PLOS One analyzes the 100 most viewed TikTok videos about ADHD to assess both how accurate they are and how young people respond to them. Researchers found that about half of the videos were inaccurate or missing key context, and that the more TikToks young adults watched, the less critical they were of the content.

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Engineers take an in-depth look at why the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed and how to prevent future tragedies.

In the early morning of March 26, 2024, the container ship Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Within 30 seconds, the bridge collapsed into the river below. Six construction workers lost their lives.

On the one-year anniversary of the accident, we talk about what went wrong, and how to improve the safety of our nation’s bridges and prevent another tragic crash.

Host Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Abi Aghayere, professor of civil engineering at Drexel University; and Dr. Thomas McKenney, associate professor of engineering practice in the naval architecture and marine engineering department at the University of Michigan.

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The company has genetic data of 15 million people, which could be shared with a future buyer. Here’s how to delete it. Plus, an experimental coating could make golf balls roll more reliably on greens with different conditions.

After 23andMe Bankruptcy, Customers Urged To Delete Their DataIf you’re one of roughly 15 million people who used 23andMe to unlock information from their DNA, consumer advocates have a message for you: Delete your data. On Sunday, the company, which has customers send saliva samples for DNA analysis, filed for bankruptcy. While many customers submitted their saliva for the purpose of ancestral analysis, 85% of customers also consent to their data used for genetic disease research.

As the company searches for a buyer, consumer advocates, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, have urged customers to delete their data from 23andMe’s website. 23andMe and other genetic testing companies are not subject to HIPAA, meaning health and medical records kept by 23andMe could be shared with a future buyer.

Producer Kathleen Davis joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss this and other top science stories of the week.

Chemists Make A Coating That Can Slow A Golf Ball’s RollWith spring here, the days are getting warmer and longer, meaning conditions are perfect for a trip to the golf course. And while golf is certainly a game of physics—force, angles, parabolas—this week researchers presented work showing that chemistry could play an important role on the golf course as well. Speaking at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego, researchers described a high performance coating that could be incorporated into the polyurethane shell of a golf ball.

The hydrophilic (water-loving) coating would make tiny bits of water stick to the surface of the golf ball and sheet off, modifying the way the ball interacts with the grass of the green. That interaction, says Tom Kennedy, owner of Chemical Innovative Solutions Inc., would lead to the ball rolling more slowly and reliably, especially on “fast,” closely-cut greens in dry and windy conditions.

Kennedy joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the technology, and how hydrophilic coatings could find a home in other applications, including solar cells.

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Certain words are overrepresented in text written by AI language models. A study investigates why such patterns develop. Also, the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, typically shorten as an organism ages. But when some fat-tail dwarf lemurs hibernate, they lengthen.

‘Delving’ Into The ‘Realm’ Of AI Word ChoiceSeveral years ago, some eagle-eyed readers of scientific papers noticed an unusual trend—an increase in the number of abstracts using certain words. The terms, including “delve,” “realm,” “evolving landscape,” and more, were suddenly appearing more often than they used to.

Researchers analyzed the abstracts and compared them to abstracts written just a few years earlier, before the widespread availability of artificial intelligence large language model chatbots. They came to the conclusion that abstracts written by AI were more likely to use words from a list of around 20 favorites than regular human speech. The question was, why? If the models were trained on conventional writing, how did a preference for words such as “delve” creep in?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Tom Juzek and Dr. Zina Ward of Florida State University, who set out to try to understand the origins of some of AI’s favorite words.

When Dwarf Lemurs Hibernate, Their Chromosomes Do Something OddThe fat-tail dwarf lemur is one of the only primates that hibernate for the winter. A new study published in the journal Biology Letters takes a closer look at what’s going on inside lemur cells when they are in this extended phase of suspended animation. It turns out that their telomeres, the ends of the chromosomes, actually grow longer when the dwarf lemurs hibernate. Typically telomeres shorten as we age, as cells continuously divide. So, what exactly does this finding mean for lemurs and other primates, like humans?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with the co-authors of this study, Dr. Marina Blanco and Dr. Lydia Greene, research scientists at Duke University.

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TB kills more than a million people each year. Dr. Mireille Kamariza has spent her career developing better detection and treatment tools.

As the United States retreats from global health leadership—withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismantling USAID—public health experts warn that there will be implications for the spread of certain diseases around the globe. One such disease is tuberculosis (TB), which is the deadliest infectious disease in the world.

If you live in the United States, it’s likely that TB is not on your radar: It’s rare, and if someone is infected, there are effective treatments. But elsewhere in the world, more than a million people die of the bacterium each year, mostly in low-resource, high population regions.

Tuberculosis isn’t a straightforward bug to treat. It has a unique armor, which helps it evade treatment like antibiotics. The current treatment regimen involves taking 16 pills a day for six months, which for people in regions with limited access to medicine, can be a massive barrier.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the science behind this deadly bacterium, and new tools to test for and treat it, is Dr. Mireille Kamariza, a chemical biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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In a new book, author John Green traces how the disease has impacted culture, geography, and even fashion over the centuries.

Tuberculosis (TB) has had an incredibly large impact on human history. One staggering statistic? It’s been estimated that by the start of the 1800s, the disease had killed one in seven people who had ever lived. Because of this, tuberculosis affected human culture, geography, and fashion—and even killed off some of literature and media’s most famous heroines.

While TB incidence has gone down tremendously in the United States, it remains a massive issue in low-resource nations. About 1.25 million people die of TB each year, making it still the deadliest infectious disease in the world.

Author John Green explores humankind’s relationship with TB in the new book Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. Green speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about how TB’s path reflects our society and culture. He joins us from Indianapolis, Indiana.

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Researchers built the largest 3D map of our universe yet. What they found supports the idea that dark energy could have evolved over time.

One of the mysteries of the universe is why it expands at the rate that it does. Back in 1998, two teams of researchers observed that not only was the universe expanding, but that the rate of expansion was increasing. That observation was the basis for a concept now known as dark energy. In the years since, cosmologists have been trying to get a handle on better measurements of that effect, and hoping to figure out what dark energy actually might be.

This week, researchers on a project called DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, released results based on their first three years of data at an international physics conference. They found that it appears possible that dark energy—whatever it is—has changed over the lifetime of the universe. In other words, the so-called cosmological constant may not, in fact, be a constant. The data is not quite statistically significant yet, so researchers can’t definitively say that this is true, which leaves many questions about the nature of dark energy still unresolved.

Dr. Andrei Cuceu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Dr. Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the new research, and what remains to be discovered in dark energy.

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After nine months aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally landed back on Earth. Also, a German physicist and homebrewer discovered brief, intense physical reactions that happen when you uncork a bubbly swing-top bottle.

NASA Astronauts Return To Earth After Extended Stay On The ISSAfter 286 days aboard the International Space Station—278 days longer than their initial planned mission—NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams landed safely back on Earth on Tuesday, off the coast of Florida. Their mission turned into a nine-month stay on the station after their Boeing Starliner capsule had issues with its thrusters and NASA deemed it unsafe to carry the astronauts back. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule instead ferried them to Earth earlier this week. And they had a splashdown surprise: A pod of curious dolphins greeted them after they landed.

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, to catch us up on that and other big science stories from this week, including why a company is trying to “refreeze” a massive glacier, why the 10 hottest years on record are the last 10, and how the London Zoo is trying to conserve a unique frog that incubates its young in its vocal sacs.

The Physics That Makes Swing-Top Bottles ‘Pop’For a lot of us, uncorking a bottle is the sound of celebration. It’s also a sound that we may not think too much about—until we open our next bottle.

But Dr. Max Koch, a physicist at the University of Göttingen who does home brewing on the side, got to wondering what actually makes that popping sound. What’s happening inside that bottle, physics-wise? To find out more, he recorded the uncorking of an unsuccessful batch of his ginger beer using microphones and a high-speed camera, and analyzed the bubbly results with a physicist’s rigor. His team’s findings were published in the journal Physics of Fluids.

Dr. Koch sits down with Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the brief but intense changes to temperature, sound, and speed that happen when you uncork a swing-top glass bottle.

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The framework of Adverse Childhood Experiences started with an unexpected finding over 30 years ago. How is our approach changing?

We know that experiences from our childhood, both good and bad, shape who we become as adults. But, understanding what kinds of early experiences have staying power into adulthood and the wide range of impacts they can have is an emerging science.

In the 1980s, Dr. Vincent Felitti ran a weight loss clinic in San Diego, California. He noticed that some patients who regained weight were more likely to have experienced sexual abuse in childhood.This eventually led him to conduct research on a larger scale to better understand the correlation between what he and his colleagues dubbed adverse childhood experiences, or ACES, and mental and physical health challenges later in life.

This same 10-question survey Dr. Felitti gave participants in the 1990s is still used by researchers and clinicians to assess childhood trauma. But recently, some psychology experts have begun to question how accurately the ACES framework identifies trauma in diverse populations, since it was originally developed for a mostly white and affluent study population.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Preeti Simran Sethi, science writer and Rosalyn Carter Mental Health Journalism fellow, about her reporting for Science Friday about adverse childhood experiences.

Also, to see more butterfly stories from our listeners, visit our story from last week.

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Former NIH director Dr. Harold Varmus speaks out about what recent budget cuts and policy changes could mean for science.

One of the areas targeted by President Trump’s administration for cuts has been the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cost-cutting actions have included the layoffs of some 1,200 NIH employees, the termination of research grants, a pause in the “study sections” that evaluate and award grant funding, and a cap on indirect costs included in research grants. Some of those moves have been paused following court cases.

Dr. Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the actions, and the impact he fears they could have on the future of biomedical research in the United States.

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Fungal networks in the ground ferry crucial nutrients to plants. But how do brainless organisms form complex supply chain networks? Also, in this year’s baseball spring training, the new Automated Ball-Strike System is helping settle challenges to home plate pitch calls.

Scientists Observe Fungi Creating Complex Supply ChainsAs the leaves start to pop out, it’s natural to look up and admire the trees. But actually, there’s a lot of action happening underneath your feet. Beneath you is a complex network of fungal trade routes carrying essential nutrients to the roots of plants, mined from the soil by fungus. It’s a subterranean supply chain.

But how exactly do these complex networks form? How does the fungus decide where to ship which resources, or where to build roads? Basically, how does a brainless thread make decisions?

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Dr. Toby Kiers, an author on a recent study of those networks, and professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije University in Amsterdam. She’s also the executive director of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN).

A Rookie Robot Umpire Takes The FieldBaseball fans are eagerly awaiting opening day. And while spring training is a time for teams to test out new players and strategies, it’s also a time for Major League Baseball to trial new rules and procedures. One of the things that the league has been testing this year is a robotic system to call balls and strikes.

The Automated Ball-Strike System, which is based on the same technology used for line judging in tennis, isn’t calling every pitch, but is used to back up a challenge system at the plate. The tech is already in use in Triple-A games, and could make it to the major leagues in the years ahead. Baseball writer Davy Andrews joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the technology, and how it could subtly change the rules of the game.

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Layoffs at the agency, which releases weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, could have serious implications. Also, funds for climate and sustainability-focused farming projects have been indefinitely frozen, even though the USDA has already signed contracts.

10% Of NOAA Staff Laid Off, With More Cuts PossibleThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA, impacts and provides services for Americans every day. The agency releases daily weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, and it also conducts research into global weather and climate change.

Along with many other federal science agencies, NOAA is being subjected to layoffs in the name of cost-cutting: 10% of the agency’s workforce has been laid off, with 1,000 more cuts potentially to come. According to Dr. Timothy Gallaudet, acting NOAA administrator during Trump’s first term, this is likely to lead to declines in quality of service and access to information about weather events.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks to Umair Irfan, science correspondent at Vox, who has been covering the turmoil at NOAA. They also discuss other science stories of the week, including the death of prolific blood donor James Harrison.

Frozen Climate And Conservation Funds Leave Farmers In LimboAround the country, farmers are planning and planting this year’s crops. It can be uncertain work, made even more tenuous by some of the Trump administration’s changes to climate and conservation policies.

The administration has frozen billions of dollars in grants to farmers for sustainable agriculture, conservation, and “climate smart” projects. In some cases, farmers had already signed contracts with the government and begun work on these projects.

While some funding from the Inflation Reduction Act was recently released, many farmers across the country are still in limbo.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Patrick Brown, a farmer in Warren County, North Carolina; and Dr. Kitty O’Neil, an agricultural climate resiliency specialist at Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension about the future of farming in a changing climate.

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It’s March 14, or Pi Day, that day of the year where we celebrate the ratio that makes a circle a circle. The Greek letter that represents it is such a part of our culture that it merits our irrational attention.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to help slice into our pi’s is Dr. Steven Strogatz, professor of math at Cornell University and co-host of Quanta Magazine’s podcast “The Joy Of Why.” They talk about how pi was “discovered,” the ways it’s figuring into recent science, and how AI is changing the field of mathematics.

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When you imagine prehistoric life, it’s likely that the first thing that comes to mind are dinosaurs: long-necked Apatosauruses, flying Pterosaurs, big toothy Tyrannosaurs. But what don’t get as much attention are the prehistoric plants that lived alongside them.

Plants, shrubs, and trees played a key part in the food chains of dinosaurs, and many dinosaurs evolved to match the plant life available to them. The Apatosaurus’ long neck, for example, developed to reach leaves high up in prehistoric trees.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to defend the importance of prehistoric plants is Riley Black, author of the new book When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals and Evolution’s Greatest Romance. She’s based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Read an excerpt from When the Earth Was Green at sciencefriday.com.

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An international team of researchers used drones to study narwhals and learn more about their behavior. And, a total lunar eclipse will be visible across most of North and South America in the early morning hours of March 14.

New Footage Shows How Narwhals Use Tusks To Hunt And PlayWe’re taking a polar plunge into the science of sea unicorns, also known as narwhals!

An international team of researchers used drones to observe narwhals in the wild and learned new things about their behavior, including how they use their tusks to hunt and play.

How To See The ‘Blood Moon’ Lunar Eclipse This WeekEarly on Friday, March 14 (or super late on Thursday, March 13, depending on your time zone) people across the U.S. will be able to watch a total lunar eclipse, if skies are clear. The partial eclipse will begin at 1:09 a.m. Eastern time on Friday the 14th, with totality lasting from 2:26 to 3:31 a.m. Eastern.

Astronomer Dean Regas joins Host Flora Lichtman to tell us what to expect, and share some tips for comfortable lunar eclipse viewing.

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A sweeping new study on one of the most beloved insects, maybe the only truly beloved insect—the butterfly—details its rapid population decline in the United States. The new research, published in the journal Science widens the butterfly net and looks at how more than 500 species have fared over the past 20 years.

Researchers found that many populations are taking a nosedive. What’s causing the downswing, and is there anything we can do?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with two of the study authors, Dr. Elise Zipkin, Red Cedar distinguished professor of quantitative ecology and director of the ecology, evolution and behavior program at Michigan State University; and Dr. Nick Haddad, professor of integrative biology also at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.

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On the very first day of Donald Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order targeting foreign aid programs, especially the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Comprising less than 0.1% of the federal budget, USAID provides international humanitarian and development aid for poverty eradication, education, disease prevention, and medical programs. The Trump administration has cut off funding for these programs and most of the USAID staff was placed on leave or laid off.

Since January, hospitals and clinics in places like Thailand, Syria, and India have shuttered; clinical trials on HIV and maternal health have been canceled; and projects on polio, malaria, and tuberculosis prevention have been stopped.

Then, this week, the Supreme Court rejected a bid to keep some aid funds frozen. But what does that mean in practice for USAID’s global health initiatives?

Host Flora Lichtman talks about the global health implications of dismantling USAID with Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon and former head of global health at USAID; and Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist and director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa.

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Scientists aren’t always encouraged to be politically active. But recent political interference by the Trump administration has many fired up. And, the Blue Ghost lunar lander, part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, completed the first fully successful commercial moon landing.

Protesters ‘Stand Up For Science’ At Rallies Across The CountryScientists and defenders of science are gathering in cities across the U.S. today as part of Stand Up for Science rallies, events to protest recent political interference by the Trump administration in science funding. The main rally in Washington, D.C. features speakers including Bill Nye, Dr. Frances Collins and Dr. Atul Gawande, and will advocate for ending censorship, expanding scientific funding, and defending diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks to science reporter Anil Oza, a Sharon Begley Fellow at STAT and MIT, about the runup to Stand Up For Science, and what he’s heard from organizers and attendees. Then, Flora speaks with two listeners, D.C.-based planetary scientist Mike Wong and University of Louisville student Emily Reed, about why they’re fired up to attend local rallies.

Touchdown For The Blue Ghost Lunar LanderLast weekend, the Blue Ghost lander, built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace, became the first commercial spacecraft to execute a fully successful landing on the surface of the moon. On board the lander were 10 NASA instruments flown as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The lander will be in operation on the moon over the course of one lunar day (about 2 Earth weeks), before running out of battery power as the lunar night falls.

Kevin Scholtes, an engineer at Firefly Aerospace, and Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about building a commercial spacecraft, the role of private companies in spaceflight, and some of the science the mission aims to achieve.

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Last year, 9,000 deceased donor kidneys were discarded due to storage and time limitations. A kidney “life support” machine could change that. Also, the SS United States will join Florida’s 4,300 artificial reefs—human-made places for fish and other marine life to live. How do these reefs work?

The Effort To Save Thousands Of Donor Kidneys From Being WastedSylvia Miles was diagnosed with lupus in 2006, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack healthy tissue—including her kidneys.

Miles, who lives in Indianapolis, was later diagnosed with advanced kidney disease, and was in need of a kidney transplant.

Kidney diseases are one of the leading causes of death in the United States with 37 million people living with chronic kidney disease. Together with advanced kidney disease—the later stage of CKD—it cost Medicare billions of dollars in recent years.

People like Miles, who need a kidney transplant, wait an average of five years—often on dialysis.

But despite the long waitlists and organ shortages, around 9,000 kidneys from deceased donors last year were discarded due to perceived issues with their viability. A new Indiana-based organization, 34 Lives, is working to limit that waste and rehabilitate the organs.

Read the rest of this article on sciencefriday.com.

Ocean Liner SS United States Will Become An Artificial ReefThis week, after a notable career, the SS United States, a 1950s ocean liner, took her sunset cruise. Like many retirees, the ship is heading south—from Philadelphia to Florida—where she’ll be reinventing herself. In this next chapter, the SS United States will have new passengers: fish and other marine creatures. The ship will be sunk to the bottom of the sea and turned into an artificial reef, joining more than 4,300 artificial reefs off the coast of Florida.

Other sunken ships have become artificial reefs in the past, which have helped boost marine life as well as scuba diving and fishing tourism. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Scott Jackson, a regional specialized agent with the Florida Sea Grant and University of Florida IFAS extension, about the science behind artificial reefs, and what has been learned from decades of research.

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A journalist traveled to five continents to learn about the afterlife of our trash, and why most “recyclable” plastic actually isn’t.

Have you ever gotten to the end of, say, a jar of peanut butter and wondered if it should go in trash or recycling? If it’s worth rinsing out? And where will it actually end up?

Journalist Alexander Clapp had those same questions, and went to great lengths to answer them—visiting five continents to chronicle how our trash travels. Along the way, he discovered a multibillion dollar trash trade run by shady waste brokers, and a global industry powered by slimy spoons, crinkled plastic bags, and all the other stuff we throw away. It’s a putrid business that we’re a part of, and many of us know little about.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Clapp about the garbage business and his new book Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife Of Your Trash.

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A study finds that Peto’s Paradox, which states that larger animals are no more likely to get cancer than smaller ones, may not hold up. Also, a nearly complete predator skull was found in the Egyptian desert. Its lineage indicates that it was a top carnivore of the age.

What Does An Animal’s Size Have To Do With Its Cancer Risk?If you throw a huge party, there’s more of a chance of problems than if you host a quiet get-together for a couple of friends. The logic is simple: Having more people around means more opportunities for chaos. Similarly, it would seem to make sense that in animals, a bigger species with more cells might have a greater chance of something going wrong with one of those cells, including mutations leading to cancer.

Back in 1977, a British epidemiologist named Richard Peto observed that that didn’t seem to be true. Bigger animals didn’t seem to have a greater risk of cancer than smaller ones. That became known as Peto’s Paradox, and has been a topic of debate among cancer biologists ever since.

Research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a new look at Peto’s Paradox using an unusual set of data—death reports from zoos around the world. Dr. Sarah Amend of Johns Hopkins Medical School joins Host Flora Lichtman to explain why, in their findings, Peto’s Paradox doesn’t seem to hold up—and what studying animal cancer rates could teach scientists about improving human health.

Meet Bastetodon, A 30 Million-Year-Old Apex PredatorOnce upon a time, some 30 million years ago, what is now Egypt’s Western Desert was a lush forest. Humans had not evolved yet, the nearest relatives being monkey-like creatures. And through those forests stalked Bastetodon syrtos, a newly described apex predator from an extinct lineage known as the Hyaenodonts—one of the top carnivores of the age.

Researchers recently discovered a nearly complete skull of the creature. They reported on the find in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Shorouq Al-Ashqar of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center about the discovery, and the picture it helps paint of ancient life.

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Changes limiting programs, grants, and even the nature of studies are already underway at the NIH, NSF, FDA, CDC, and more.

On President Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order to end what he calls “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” referencing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the federal government. The repercussions of this are already being felt across science agencies.

Things are changing fast: Last week, a federal judge in Maryland temporarily blocked parts of the DEI purge from being carried out. At the same time, federal research agencies have already made changes. For example, the National Institutes of Health suddenly pulled a program that provides grants to PhD students from marginalized backgrounds, and has already canceled studies mid-project, like one on LGBTQ cancer patients. The National Science Foundation has begun reviewing active research science projects that may not comply with Trump’s executive orders. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down resources for HIV prevention, LGBTQ+ health, contraception, and more—then partially restored them, as ordered by a judge. And the Food and Drug Administration pulled its guidance on the importance of having some diversity in clinical trials, like those to test drugs and medical devices.

So, what does banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts mean for medical research? And what does it mean for our health?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Rachel Hardeman, director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; and Dr. Melissa Simon, an ob-gyn at Northwestern Medicine, and director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation in Chicago.

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The acting head of the NIH reportedly pushed back against legal guidance to resume grant funding, leaving federal workers in the lurch. Also, though fungi make up a tiny part of the human microbiome, they play an important role in both the prevention and development of many diseases.

Cuts And Conflicting Directives Sow Confusion For NIH WorkersJust over a month after President Trump’s inauguration, federal science in the US is in a state of disarray. Executive orders to halt grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have faced court challenges. Last week, a federal judge extended a restraining order on a proposal to cap NIH grant funding for indirect costs, costs that experts say are critical to their work. But according to new reporting, staff within the NIH have been left without clear guidance about moving forward with those grants, with the NIH’s acting director reportedly pushing back against legal guidance from the agency’s lawyers to restart distribution of the funding.

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Katherine J. Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic, who reported on the turmoil at the NIH. They also talk about other science news of the week, including an update on the measles outbreak in Texas, how to see every planet in the solar system this week, and how scientists think runner Faith Kipeygon could be the first woman to break a four-minute mile.

You’ve Heard Of The Microbiome—Welcome To The MycobiomeYou’ve heard of the microbiome, the community of bacteria, viruses, archaea parasites, and fungi that live in our bodies. But that last member of the group, fungi, get a lot less attention than the others. And perhaps that’s unsurprising. After all, bacteria outnumber fungi 999 to 1 in our guts.

But now, scientists are beginning to piece together just how important fungi truly are. Disruption in the fungal balance can play a role in the development of Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel disease, celiac disease, colorectal cancer, some skin diseases, and more.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum, microbiologist and professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, who has dedicated his career to studying the fungi in our bodies, and coined the term mycobiome over a decade ago.

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The bone and joint structures in mammal tails help them keep their balance. Could those benefits be adapted for robots? And, in her first children’s book, conservationist Bindi Irwin takes little readers on a journey through Australia Zoo.

In Search Of The Best Tail For BalanceIf you have met a cat, you’ve probably at some point been amazed by how acrobatic they are. They’re able to reorient themselves effortlessly, even in midair. It turns out that a lot of that twistiness comes down to having a top-tier tail. While most reptile tails can swing only in one plane of movement, mammal tails have more joints, leading to better inertial control. That lets mammals tweak their balance better, much as holding a balance pole can help an acrobat navigate a tightrope.

In a recent study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers explored the biomechanics of different tails, and considered how a better tail could help build a better robot. Dr. Talia Moore, a roboticist at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Ceri Weber, a cellular and developmental biology postdoc at UC San Diego, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk tails.

Bindi Irwin Encourages Kids To Become ‘Wildlife Warriors’Almost 30 years ago, conservationists Terri Irwin and the late Steve Irwin captured the world’s attention with their show “The Crocodile Hunter.” It introduced millions of people to Australia Zoo and the strange, often scary, sometimes cute, critters from Down Under.

Now, Terri and her children—Bindi and Robert—are at the helm of the zoo, which is the setting for Bindi’s new children’s book, You Are a Wildlife Warrior!: Saving Animals & the Planet. In it, Bindi takes little readers and her own daughter, Grace, on an adventure through the zoo.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Bindi about her family’s legacy, how motherhood fuels her approach to conservation, and what it’s like to run a zoo.

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Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, and about 90% of diagnosed patients die from the disease. A team at Memorial Sloan Kettering has been working to improve those outcomes by developing a new mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer.

A few years ago, the team embarked on a small trial to test the vaccine’s safety. Sixteen patients with pancreatic cancer received it, and even though it was a small study, the results were promising: Half the participants had an immune response, and in those patients the cancer hadn’t relapsed after 18 months.

This week, the team released a new study in Nature following those same patients, and found six out of eight who responded to the vaccine in the first study did not have their cancer return more than three years later.

Joining host Flora Lichtman to talk about these results, and what they could mean for the future of cancer treatment, is study author and surgeon Dr. Vinod Balachandran, director of The Olayan Center for Cancer Vaccines at Memorial Sloan Kettering, based in New York City.

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It’s been an unusually tough winter virus season. Rates of flu-like infections are higher than they’ve been in nearly 30 years. And for the first winter since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, flu deaths have surpassed COVID deaths. Add to that a higher-than-average year for norovirus, a nasty type of stomach bug.

Then there’s the emerging threat of avian flu. While there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus, about 70 people in the US have contracted the virus from livestock since April 2024.

To make sense of the latest viral trends, Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, epidemiologist and author of the newsletter “Your Local Epidemiologist”; and Dr. Erica Shenoy, chief of infection control at Mass General Brigham hospital.

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Last week, some 3,500 people from across scientific fields gathered in Boston for the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The organization’s CEO, Dr. Sudip Parikh, gave a rousing speech to attendees.

“Destruction for the ill-conceived notion of cutting costs didn’t put an American on the moon, and it didn’t wipe smallpox from the face of the Earth,” Parikh said in opening remarks.

He was referring, of course, to the huge funding cuts and mass firings happening across federal science and health agencies under the Trump administration. Over the last few weeks, news of these cuts has been frequent—along with the cancellation of grants that include certain prohibited words and the disappearance of data from agency websites.

So what’s happening, and how should the scientific community respond? Host Flora Lichtman sat down with Dr. Sudip Parikh to discuss the importance of this point in time for American science and technology, what cuts for “efficiency” are getting wrong, and what’s at stake in the next few weeks.

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Finding the original tomb of the royal is one of the most significant developments in Egyptian archeology in recent history. Also, a video of a gloriously creepy anglerfish inspired tears and poetry online. But why was this deep-sea dweller near the surface at all?

Royal Tomb Of Egyptian King Thutmose II UnearthedA British-Egyptian team has made one of the most significant Egyptian archeological finds in recent history: the tomb of pharaoh King Thutmose II, who ruled sometime between 2000 and 1001 BCE. This is the first tomb of a pharaoh unearthed since Tutankhamun’s in 1922.

Thutmose II’s mummified remains were found two centuries ago, but they had been moved from his original tomb, the location of which remained a mystery until now. Part of the reason why his tomb’s location was such a mystery was that Thutmose II was buried in an area associated with the wives of Egyptian kings, about 1.5 miles west of Egypt’s famous Valley of the Kings.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about this and other science stories of the week is Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead of CarbonPlan, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Why The Internet Was Captivated By A Hideous FishLast week, a viral video likely floated to the top of your feed: a rare black seadevil anglerfish, which looks like a floating head with a frightening amount of teeth and two cloudy eyes, swimming in azure waters. The fish showed up near Spain’s Canary Islands, off the northwestern coast of Africa. It made the news because it was spotted near the surface, while anglerfish normally reside in the deep ocean.

So why was she paddling so close to the surface? Was she sick? How unusual is this? And also, why do they even look like that? We had questions.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Kory Evans, assistant professor of biosciences at Rice University, to separate fact from fish-ction. He also explains new research he helped conduct about the evolutionary history of anglerfish, which could help explain why they look the way they do.

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We have lots of expressions to describe the pain of loss—heartache, a broken heart, a punch in the gut. These aren’t just figures of speech: While grief is an emotional experience, it’s also a physical one. Studies show that grief can change your physiology, most dramatically in the cardiovascular and immune systems.

One staggering finding? A heart attack is 21 times more likely to happen in the 24 hours after the death of a loved one. And after the death of a parent, risk of ischemic heart disease rises by 41%, and risk of stroke increases by 30%.

Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor has dedicated her career to understanding the physiology behind grief and grieving. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss what she’s learned over the years, and her new book The Grieving Body.

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Can Men and Women (Baboons) Really Just Be Friends?In the romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” the central premise, as Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan’s characters stay friends throughout the years, is, can men and women really just be friends?

In the movie, the answer is no, not really. Spoiler alert: They do get together in the end. But what if we take that concept and bring it to the animal kingdom, specifically to primates?

The Kinda baboon is known for its distinct social behaviors. Individuals form long-term, social bonds, and those relationships are seen, uniquely, between male and female baboons. Over nine years, researchers studied the Kinda baboon, a kinder, gentler species of baboon, to learn more about their social lives. Kindas are unique among baboons because they’re the least sexually dimorphic: males and females are close to the same size, making them a better analog for us humans.

So can male and female baboons really be just friends? Much like the movie, long friendships do happen between Kindas—but there also appears to be a benefit during mating season.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her work with these baboons is Dr. Anna Weyher, founder of the Kasanka Baboon Project in Zambia. Weyher has studied Kinda baboons for over a decade.

The Best Bear Deterrent May Be DronesWhat do you do when a bear keeps coming too close to people, and doesn’t take the hint to stay away? It’s a serious problem, because human-wildlife conflict can be dangerous for both the people and animals involved. Wildlife managers have for years used a collection of deterrents, including firecracker noises, rubber bullets, and trained dogs, to try to chase bears away from human habitations.

Writing in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science, former Montana bear management specialist Wesley Sarmento claims that a high-tech approach may be more effective: drones. Sarmento joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss his experiences with hazing stubborn bears.

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The North and South Poles, also known as Earth’s iceboxes, help cool the planet, store fresh water, influence weather patterns, and more. They’re also the fastest warming places on Earth.

A new book called Ends of The Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future illustrates the wonders of Antarctica and the Arctic—and the lengths scientists go to to study them before it’s too late.

Host Ira Flatow talks with author Dr. Neil Shubin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, about some of the wonders found at the ends of the Earth, and the threats they’re facing.

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It’s the first FDA approval for a pain medication in 25 years. How does the drug work, and who is it for? Also, non-mixing layers of water and hydrocarbons thousands of miles deep could explain the icy planets’ strange magnetic fields.

The FDA Approves A New, Non-Opioid PainkillerIn January, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new pain medicine called Journavx (suzetrigine), made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals. It’s the first time in 25 years the agency has given the green light to a new painkiller. Notably, it’s not an opioid and, according to the company, it’s not addictive. Unlike opioids, which act directly on the brain, Journavx instead blocks nerve endings across the body that transmit pain.

Host Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Sean Mackey, a professor of anaesthesiology and pain medicine at Stanford University and chief of the Division of Stanford Pain Medicine, to discuss how the new drug works, who should take it, and what its limitations are.

Might Uranus And Neptune Have Deep, Multi-Layer Oceans?We’ve got a pretty good idea about what’s beneath the surface of our nearest planetary neighbors, like Mars. But as you get farther out into the solar system, our knowledge becomes scarce. For instance, what’s inside the so-called ice giants, Neptune and Uranus?

Recent research based on computer simulations of fluids hints that the planets could contain vast multi-layered oceans, as much as thousands of miles deep. A layer of water that is on top of—but doesn’t mix with—a deeper layer of hydrocarbons could help explain strange magnetic fields observed during the Voyager mission.

Dr. Burkhardt Militzer, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at UC Berkeley, wrote about this idea in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He joins Host Ira Flatow to explain his theories.

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Most Powerful Neutrino Ever Is Detected In the MediterraneanNeutrinos are sometimes called “ghost particles,” because they are nearly weightless, rarely interact with any other matter, and have very little electric charge.

Now, scientists have discovered a neutrino with a recording-breaking level of energy, which could bring us closer to understanding physics underpinning the creation of the universe.

Host Ira Flatow is joined by Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist, to talk more about the latest in neutrino research and other top science news of the week, including supersonic spaceflight without a sonic boom; an asteroid headed for Earth; and why loggerhead turtles are dancing.

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In "Common Side Effects," the starring scientist finds a mushroom that can heal any ailment. But powerful people will do anything to stop him from cultivating it. And, a combination of environmental factors and the way our bodies function play a role in how we perceive the smell of snow.

In ‘Common Side Effects,’ A Clash Over An All-Healing MushroomIn the new Adult Swim show “Common Side Effects,” an eccentric scientist has a secret: He’s discovered a strange mushroom that can cure any illness or injury, and he wants to get it to people in need. The only problem is that a pharmaceutical company doesn’t want that secret to get out and will do anything to make sure he’s stopped.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to break down this fungal drama, and the science that inspired it, are the show’s creators, Steve Hely, who previously wrote for “30 Rock” and “Veep;” and Joe Bennett, creator of the animated sci-fi show “Scavengers Reign” on Max.

Why Snow Has That Crisp, Clean SmellIf you know snow, you might know that it has a particular smell to it. It has to do with where you are and how cold it is. It may even involve the memory parts of your brain.

Producer Rasha Aridi talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the science behind that snowy smell, featuring Dr. Johan Lundström, snow aficionado and professor of psychology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

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Every year, billions of dollars are funneled into Alzheimer’s research. And yet, so far, there’s no treatment that’s been able to reverse the disease, or even meaningfully slow the cognitive decline of patients.

Part of the reason is that the disease is complex, and brain disorders are notoriously difficult to understand.

But in a new book, an investigative science reporter makes the case that there’s another reason progress toward Alzheimer’s treatments has stalled: scientific fraud.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Charles Piller, investigative journalist at Science and author of the book Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s.

Read an excerpt of Doctored at sciencefriday.com.

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In late September, firefighters in flame-resistant Nomex were strung out along a fireline. It ran midslope through a pine and hardwood forest above the Klamath River and the small northern California town of Orleans.

Several members of the Karuk tribe were laying down strands of fire with drip torches.

Aja Conrad, who runs the tribal natural resource department’s environmental education field institute, was the firing boss trainee. She kept a close eye as the strips burned together and smoke filled the air.

“Can you just keep an eye on that and maybe not put too much fire below it?” she told one of her burners.

“Copy that.”

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The harms of smoking cigarettes are pretty clear. Smoking causes cancer as well as heart and lung diseases, and it’s the leading cause of preventable death in the United States.

When it comes to vaping, or electronic cigarettes, the risks are a bit more tricky to parse, especially if you read media reports about them. The outbreak of Vaping Use-Associated Lung Injury, also known as EVALI, in 2019 and 2020 made things even more confusing.

The founders of Juul, the company that mainstreamed vaping in the early aughts, said they wanted to help people kick their smoking habits. But can vapes really help people quit? And how bad are they for you, really? And if you’re addicted to vaping, what’s the best way to stop?

To answer those questions and more, Host Ira Flatow talks with one of the top researchers in the field, Dr. Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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Scientists determined that Lucy, a human ancestor from 3.2 million years ago, couldn’t have beaten modern humans in a foot race. Also, the Chinese AI company DeepSeek startled industry observers with an efficient new system. But how does it compare with the leading tech?

How Lucy, Our Famous Ancestor, Runs On A Virtual TreadmillLucy is one of the most famous fossils—an Australopithecus afarensis who lived about 3.2 million years ago. Her skeleton is about 40% complete, and has been studied since its discovery in 1974. In a quest to learn more about what Lucy’s life may have looked like, scientists estimated what her leg and pelvic muscles were like based on her skeleton. They then put her on a treadmill—virtually, of course.

The findings? Lucy was likely not a natural runner, and the modern human body evolved for improved running performance. Host Flora Lichtman talks to Producer Kathleen Davis about these findings, and other news of the week.

Flora also speaks to Anil Oza, a Sharon Begley Science Reporting Fellow at STAT and MIT, about the latest news on the Trump administration taking down scientific data from the Centers for Disease Control website for mentioning topics like gender, DEI and accessibility. They also discuss the National Institutes of Health resuming grant reviews after two weeks of restrictions imposed by the president.

How DeepSeek’s AI Compares To Established ModelsThe Chinese company DeepSeek recently startled AI industry observers with its DeepSeek-R1 artificial intelligence model, which performed as well or better than leading systems at a lower cost. The DeepSeek product apparently requires less human input to train, and less energy in parts of its processing—though experts said it remained to be seen if the new model would actually consume less energy overall.

Will Douglas Heaven, senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review, joins Host Ira Flatow to explain the ins and outs of the new DeepSeek systems, how they compare to existing AI products, and what might lie ahead in the field of artificial intelligence.

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The inner workings of our bodies, particularly what’s happening inside our cells, can be kind of a black box—with countless tiny molecules constantly working and churning to keep us alive. A new technology that blends bioluminescence with cellular machinery may shine some light on the details of their comings and goings and interactions that can be hazy.

Scientists had the bright idea to take that same enzyme that makes fireflies glow and tie it to RNA, the molecule that reads the genetic information in DNA. This developing technology has been used on mice, with the hope that these light-up molecules can help illuminate how viruses replicate or even how memories form in the brain.

Flora Litchtman talks with Dr. Andrej Lupták, professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of California Irvine and Dr. Jennifer Prescher, professor of chemistry at the University of California Irvine, about their research on the topic.

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It seems that every few months, there’s an exciting breakthrough in quantum computing, a kind of computing that takes advantage of quantum physics to perform calculations exponentially faster than our most advanced supercomputers. Last December, Google announced that its quantum computer solved a math problem in five minutes—a problem that would’ve taken a normal supercomputer longer than the age of the universe to solve. And earlier this month, Microsoft, coming off a quantum advance in the fall, told businesses to get “quantum-ready” for 2025, saying that “we are right on the cusp of seeing quantum computers solve meaningful problems.”

So, are we on the cusp? Flora Lichtman is joined by Dr. Shohini Ghose, a quantum physicist and professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada and CTO of the Quantum Algorithms Institute, for a quantum computing check-in and a look at when this futuristic technology could start to have an impact on our lives.

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About four and a half years ago, a spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx touched down on the surface of an asteroid called Bennu. It drilled down and scooped up samples of rock and dust and, after several years of travel, delivered those samples back to Earth.

Since then, researchers around the world have been analyzing tiny bits of that asteroid dust, trying to tease out as much information as they can about what Bennu is like and where it might have come from. Two scientific papers published this week give some of the results of those experiments. Researchers found minerals that could have arisen from the drying of an icy brine, and a soup of organic molecules, including ammonia and 14 of the 20 amino acids necessary for life on Earth.

Dr. Danny Glavin and Dr. Dante Lauretta join Flora Lichtman to talk about the samples, what their analysis is revealing, and what those findings could mean for the hunt for life elsewhere in the solar system.

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After nearly four weeks of burning, the fires in Los Angeles are almost fully contained, and cleanup is underway. But as the dust literally settles, people in LA are left with major questions, like: What is actually in the ash? What’s in the air? And how do I stay safe?

Flora Lichtman talks with two experts in public health and toxic substance exposure about the chemicals left behind after an urban fire as well as what science needs to be done to fully understand the issue. She speaks with Dr. Rima Habre, associate professor of environmental health and spatial sciences at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles; and Dr. Mark Wilson, director of exposure science at Chemical Insights Research Institute (CIRI) in Marietta, Georgia.

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The outbreak of H5N9 avian influenza occurred at a California duck farm in November 2024. Also, new research pinpoints 298 parts of the genome associated with higher risk of bipolar disorder. This could lead to better treatments.

Another Strain Of Bird Flu Discovered In CaliforniaThis week, the World Organization for Animal Health reported that it had been notified by the USDA that a November outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza on a California duck farm was caused by a strain not before seen in the United States: H5N9. The dominant bird flu strain circulating currently, H5N1, has led to massive culling of bird flocks, has infected dairy cattle, and has killed almost 500 people around the world since 2003. The US reported its first human death from bird flu earlier this month.

Experts stressed that the new strain did not itself appear to be an immediate human threat. But the rise of a new strain is troubling and points to the risk of a viral phenomenon known as “reassortment,” in which different viruses mingled in a host can sometimes exchange bits of viral code, forming new strains.

SciFri’s Charles Bergquist joins Flora Lichtman to talk about H5N9 and other stories from the week in science, including a spacewalk that was meant to include a search for microbes on the outside of the International Space Station, a possible positive side effect of scratching an itch, and the discovery of 66 million-year-old fossilized vomit.

Understanding Bipolar Disorder Through The GenomeBipolar disorder is one of the most common mental illnesses—it affects an estimated 40 million people worldwide, about 2.8% of the population. Bipolar disorder can cause extreme mood swings, and be debilitating without treatment.

In an effort to untangle the mysteries of where bipolar disorder originates, researchers studied the genomes of more than 40,000 people with the condition. When comparing these genomes to those of people without bipolar disorder, the researchers were able to pinpoint 298 different parts of the genome associated with the mental illness. With this better understanding of the genome, better, more targeted treatments for bipolar disorder may be possible.

Joining Flora to talk about this research is Dr. Niamh Mullins, assistant professor of psychiatric genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

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Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Kari Leibowitz, author of How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days, about saunas, cold plunges, candles, and other small ways to make winter a season to look forward to rather than dread. Plus, she responds to some of our audience’s own tips to make the season enjoyable.

What Would You Call The Fun Parts Of Winter?

Do you think “winter doldrums” needs a positive rebrand? Let us know what you would call the winter experience instead by leaving us a voicemail at 1-646-767-6532.

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Birds are the master vocalists of the animal kingdom. They can make a remarkable variety of sounds.

But why is a barred owl more of a baritone, while a cedar waxwing is a soprano?

And what influences a bird’s vocal range, and the kinds of sounds it can make? Beak size? Body size? Geography?

To answer some of these questions, researchers analyzed over 140,000 bird vocalizations from all over the world to try to peck out some kernels of knowledge about bird calls and songs. Their research was recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Zuzana Burivalova, assistant professor of forest & wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about her latest research.

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It’s been five years since the first laboratory-confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S., a bleak milestone in the early days of a pandemic that touched the lives of everyone. For the lucky ones, the virus mainly meant more precautions: mask-wearing, the occasional COVID test. But for others, a COVID-19 infection turned into long COVID. This is a chronic condition that lingers long after a COVID infection, and can reduce one’s ability to live their day-to-day life.

It’s been estimated that about 400 million people worldwide have had long COVID. Some researchers say that number is much higher. But there’s a lack of research on successful treatments for long COVID.

Some patients living with the condition have taken things into their own hands. A recent investigation documented the experiences of 13 long COVID patients who tried taking Paxlovid for longer than the typical 5-day course. The patients had mixed results, adding to a growing body of evidence that there will not be one silver bullet for treating the condition.

Joining Ira to talk about the results are two authors of the study, who have both had long COVID for years: Dr. Alison Cohen, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, and Dr. Julia Moore Vogel, senior program director at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.

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A recent study in the journal Nature unveiled new proteins that can neutralize the deadliest of snake venoms. They’re “new” in that they aren’t found in nature—they were created in a lab, dreamed up by AI.

Using AI to discover, or design, the building blocks of drugs is a fast-growing area of research. Another team of scientists out of Philadelphia is using AI to discover new antibiotics by resurrecting long-lost molecules from extinct species like neanderthals and woolly mammoths.

We know what you’re thinking: It sounds too sci-fi to be true.

Flora Lichtman talks with two pioneers in the field about how AI is supercharging drug discovery: Dr. César de la Fuente, bioengineer and presidential associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and Nobel laureate Dr. David Baker, director of the Institute for Protein Design and professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

For our Los Angeles listeners: We’re working on a story about the toxins left behind by the fires and we want to hear from you. How is this affecting you? Are you worried about the air and water and soil? How are you approaching clean-up? And what questions do you have?

Leave us a voicemail at 1-646-767-6532 or send us an email at scifri@sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers at the National Institutes of Health say the move has sent fear and confusion throughout the agency. Plus, what's the technology behind meme coins?

Trump Administration Cancels Meetings, Freezes Hiring At NIHThis was President Trump’s first week back in the Oval Office. Along with issuing a flurry of executive orders, his administration has imposed a range of restrictions on the National Institutes of Health, affecting meetings, travel, hiring, funding, and communications. Scientists expressed alarm about what this could mean for ongoing research, with no clear timeline for if or when the freeze would be lifted.

Flora Lichtman is joined by Casey Crownhart, climate editor at the MIT Technology Review, to catch up on this and other big science stories of the week, including what’s coming next this year for nuclear power, why a record amount of snow fell in the Southeast this week, and new research on the surprisingly complex biology of a manta ray tail.

What Exactly Is A Meme Coin And How Does It Work?A few days before President Trump’s inauguration, he hosted a “crypto ball” in Washington, D.C. That night, he unveiled his very own meme coin—a kind of digital asset that has gained a reputation for facilitating scams. Soon after, first lady Melania Trump also launched her own meme coin. After its launch, Trump’s coin’s market capitalization reached billions of dollars.

This isn’t the first time meme coins have gotten a lot of attention—you might remember Elon Musk joked about another one called Dogecoin on SNL in 2021—but it is the first time that this technology has been used by a sitting president. So what exactly is a meme coin anyway? How does the blockchain play into all this? And how might a president use it differently than an internet celebrity?

To find out more, Flora Lichtman talks with Liz Lopatto, a senior writer at The Verge who covers cryptocurrency and business, about how this market started, how Trump could use meme coins, and where the crypto market could go next.

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Editors at scientific journals are quitting in droves. According to Retraction Watch, a watchdog publication, there have been at least 20 mass resignations since 2023.

So, what’s going on? If you look closely, you’ll notice a common pattern—publishers are cutting back on the number of editors, increasing the number of papers, and charging hefty fees for authors to publish their work.

The most recent mass resignation happened at the Journal of Human Evolution at the end of 2024. Both co-editors in chief and the entire editorial board quit, except for one person.

What does this mean for the future of scientific publishing? Have these resignations made the big publishers change their ways? Is the strict academic publishing system we know in danger?

To answer those questions and more, Ira talks with Dr. Andrea Taylor, former co-editor in chief of the Journal of Human Evolution; and Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch and editor in chief of The Transmitter.

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Rejoice, amateur and professional astronomers: This January is a fantastic time for looking up at the sky.

The flashiest event of the season is also one of the easiest to see without binoculars or a telescope. A “parade of planets”—Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—will be visible, and recognizable by their incredible brightness against the night sky. Uranus and Neptune will also be visible, but with a telescope. This string of planets will be visible for all of January.

Additionally, the ATLAS comet, discovered last year by NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, has come close enough to the sun—8.3 million miles away—to be visible with binoculars or a telescope. Be careful, though: looking at sunrise or sunset could hurt your eyes.

Astronomer Dean Regas, host of the podcast “Looking Up with Dean Regas,” joins Ira from Cincinnati, Ohio, to discuss the best things the winter night sky has to offer this year, with or without a telescope.

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From down here on Earth, life on the International Space Station seems magnificent: floating through the day, enjoying stunning views out your window, having an experience only a handful of other people will ever get.

But what’s it really like to live up there? How does experiencing 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day change your perception of time? How do you cope with being so far from the people you love?

Those are some of the questions explored in the novel Orbital, which won the Booker Prize late last year. In the book, author Samantha Harvey imagines the inner life of astronauts aboard the ISS.

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Samantha Harvey, along with astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman, who spent almost six months on the Space Station, and is an author herself. They talk about the unexpected mundanities of living in space, how Harvey was inspired to write the book during lockdown, and how astronauts make sense of their new reality when separated from the rest of humanity.

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Since January 7, wildfires have been devastating the Los Angeles area. In the span of 10 days, several different fires, including the Palisades and Eaton fires, have burned more than 40,000 acres and destroyed more than 12,000 structures. At least 25 people have died.

The threat of fire is growing, especially in zones known as the wildland-urban interface, or WUI. That’s where unoccupied wildland and human developments meet and mingle. Think of a city sprawling around a forest, for example. In the US, around one in three homes is in this type of high-risk zone.

So what’s the science behind urban fires? And how do we protect ourselves in the face of them?

Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Kimiko Barrett, senior wildfire researcher and policy analyst at the research group Headwaters Economics in Bozeman, Montana; and Dr. Alexandra Syphard, senior research scientist at the Conservation Biology Institute in San Diego, California.

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The SpaceX rocket carries lunar landers from companies based in Texas and Japan. They could arrive at the moon in the coming months. HPV can cause a variety of cancers, including cervical. New mortality data for women under 25 point to the success of the HPV vaccine.

Rocket Launches With Lunar Landers From 2 Private CompaniesOn Wednesday, a SpaceX rocket launched carrying payloads from two separate private companies hoping to achieve lunar landings. The pair of landers—one from Japanese company ispace, and one from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace—will take months to reach the moon. Firefly’s lander is scheduled to arrive first, in March, with ispace’s lander planned for a touchdown in late May or early June.

Another SpaceX launch on Thursday, a test flight of the company’s Starship system, had mixed results. The booster returned to earth and was successfully “caught,” but the spacecraft exploded over the Caribbean shortly after launch. That explosion is under investigation.

Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos in Washington, D.C., joins Ira to talk about the Wednesday launch and plans for private lunar exploration. They also discuss other stories from the week in science, including the ban of Red Dye #3 an AI approach to snake antivenom, and a study predicting a rise in US dementia cases by 2060.

As Cervical Cancer Deaths Plummet, Experts Credit HPV VaccineIn 2006, a vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV) became widely available to adolescents. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection, and it can cause cancers of the mouth, throat, and sexual organs. It’s also the cause of nearly every case of cervical cancer.

Now, almost 20 years after the HPV vaccine was introduced, a study published in JAMA noted a 62% drop in deaths due to cervical cancer in women under 25 in the US: from 50 or 60 deaths per year to 13. This follows earlier research that noted a decrease in cervical precancer and cancer since the introduction of the vaccine.

With HPV vaccine uptake at about 60% for adolescents aged 13-15, a higher uptake could virtually eliminate cervical cancer, experts say. However, childhood vaccination rates have dwindled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, sparking concerns about the spread of preventable disease.

Joining Flora Lichtman to talk about this latest study is lead author Dr. Ashish Deshmukh, professor of public health sciences and co-leader of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina.

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For years, artificial intelligence companies have heralded the coming of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. OpenAI, which makes the chatbot ChatGPT, has said that their founding goal was to build AGI that “benefits all of humanity” and “gives everyone incredible new capabilities.”

Google DeepMind cofounder Dr. Demis Hassabis has described AGI as a system that “should be able to do pretty much any cognitive task that humans can do.” Last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AGI will arrive sooner than expected, but that it would matter much less than people think. And earlier this week, Altman said in a blog post that the company knows how to build AGI as we’ve “traditionally understood it.”

But what is artificial general intelligence supposed to be, anyway?

Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Melanie Mitchell, a professor at Santa Fe University who studies cognition in artificial intelligence and machine systems. They talk about the history of AGI, how biologists study animal intelligence, and what could come next in the field.

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Scientists investigated how the shape of the human body makes hula hooping possible—and what hips and a waist have to do with it. And, the decision for how to proceed with NASA's Mars Sample Return Mission will fall to the incoming administration.

What Makes A Hula Hoop Stay Up?Hula hooping might appear to be a simple physical activity. But there’s some complex math and physics at play as the hoop goes around your body, and scientists haven’t had a clear understanding of those hidden forces—until now. A team of mathematicians at New York University recently published research into the science of hula hooping in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Flora Lichtman is joined by Olivia Pomerenk, a PhD candidate in mathematics at New York University, and a coauthor of that paper. She talks with Flora about why the motion of hula hooping prevents the hoop from falling down and which body types make for the best hooper.

NASA Considers Cheaper, Faster Ways To Retrieve Mars SamplesNASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is an ambitious project that aims to use the Perseverance rover to collect Martian rocks, sand, and even gulps of Martian air. Then, through a complicated handoff between different spacecraft, it would ferry those samples to Earth.

A 2023 assessment found that the original plan to retrieve the samples would be much more expensive, and take much longer, than initially expected.

This week, NASA announced two options for how to cut costs and bring the samples to Earth by the late 2030s. But the agency did not solidify a plan, leaving it to the next administration to sort out around 18 months from now. Is the project on the rocks?

To get up to speed on the mission, Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Jim Bell, professor of earth and space exploration at Arizona State University, and distinguished visiting scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Alcohol poses many risks to our health, including liver damage and driving under the influence.

Now, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has highlighted another risk of drinking alcohol: cancer. In his latest advisory, Murthy detailed the growing body of research showing that drinking alcohol can increase the risk of at least seven types of cancers, those of the mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, breast, liver, and colon.

He’s also recommended adding a warning to alcohol outlining the connection between alcohol use and cancer.

Ira talks with Dr. Murthy about the science that informed his latest advisory and his parting message for the nation as he ends his term as Surgeon General.

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On January 6, the U.S. reported its first human death from the bird flu. According to the CDC, more than 60 people were diagnosed with bird flu in the US last year, up from just one case in 2022.

If you look at global cases over the last two decades, of the nearly 900 reported cases in people, roughly half the patients died.

H5N1 avian influenza has been circulating in birds—and even some mammals—for years. But in the spring of 2024, the virus turned up in dairy cattle. Since then, over 900 herds have been affected, according to the CDC.

This might bring back memories from early in the COVID-19 pandemic—but is that the right way to think about this? Should we be concerned? And what steps should we be taking?

To unpack this, host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Seema Lakdawala, co-director for the Center for Transmission of Airborne Pathogens and associate professor studying influenza viruses at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia; and Dr. Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds and virologist at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

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After her SciFri internship 20 years ago, Flora went on to become a beloved science journalist, video producer, and podcaster. Now she’s back! Also, several different fires are causing extreme damage in the Los Angeles area. Strong Santa Ana winds are one factor behind their rapid spread.

Science Friday Now Has Two Hosts: Meet Flora Lichtman!Big news! Science Friday now has two hosts—Ira Flatow, the program’s founder, and veteran science journalist Flora Lichtman. Going forward, you’ll hear both of them regularly on the air and on our podcast.

Flora joins Ira to introduce herself and talk about her background, from her start as an intern at Science Friday 20 years ago to her role as a video producer, then a writer for Bill Nye, and as creator of the podcast “Every Little Thing.”

Los Angeles Wildfires Burn For Days, Stoked By Santa Ana WindsThis week, the Los Angeles area has been battered by at least five separate wildfires. Tens of thousands of acres have burned, and thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes. Fire experts had warned on January 2 that conditions were ideal for wildfires in parts of Southern California. One factor that has helped these fires spread rapidly? Unusually strong Santa Ana winds.

On the other side of the country, Winter Storm Blair has caused freezing temperatures and up to a foot of snow across the Midwest and up into the East Coast, putting more than 60 million people under weather alerts.

Joining Ira Flatow to discuss these and other top stories of the week is Umair Irfan, science correspondent at Vox, based in Washington, D.C.

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Last October, Ira Flatow took a trip to the World Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon, for a daylong exploration of lichen—the fuzzy growths often found on trees, roofs, and gravestones. Ira sat down in front of a sold-out room with Dr. Hannah Prather, postdoctoral researcher and visiting assistant professor of biology at Reed College, and Dr. Jesse Miller, lead botanist for the Washington Natural Heritage Program. From their crucial role in ecosystems as indicators of air quality to their striking colors and forms, we’ve really taken a lichen to these amazing organisms.

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You’re probably familiar with the concept of handedness—a glove made for your left hand looks basically like the one for your right hand, but won’t fit—it’s a mirror image. Many of life’s important molecules, including proteins and DNA, are chiral, meaning they can exist in either a left-handed or a right-handed form. But on Earth, nature only uses one version or the other in living organisms. Your proteins, for example, are all the left-handed version, while your DNA is all right-handed.

With advances in synthetic biology, it could be possible to build an artificial organism that flips that shape, having right-handed proteins and left-handed DNA. Writing in the journal Science, an international group of researchers recently cautioned against anyone trying to create that sort of so-called mirror life, saying that it poses the threat of “unprecedented and irreversible harm” to human health and global ecosystems.

Dr. Drew Endy, a synthetic biology researcher at Stanford University and one of the authors of that warning, joins Ira to discuss the concept of mirror life and why a group of researchers felt compelled to call for a halt to mirror life experiments.

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Each year, the journalists at the MIT Technology Review publish a list of 10 breakthrough technologies: these are things poised to hit a tipping point, and potentially change the way the world works.

Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence remains a big breakthrough. While 2024 was the year of large learning models, small learning models top Technology Review’s list this year. These smaller models are more accessible, efficient, and could be better for the climate than their larger counterparts.

Also on the list is generative AI search, which is already implemented by Google with its Gemini language model. A new HIV medication called Lenacapavir, which has been shown to be incredibly effective in trials, is also on the list, along with cleaner, alternative jet fuels.

Joining Ira to talk through these and other items on the list is Amy Nordrum, executive editor of operations at MIT Technology Review based in Boston, Massachusetts.

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This winter marks the 125th year of Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, in which bird nerds across the Western Hemisphere venture outside to record all the birds they see and hear.

Scientists use that data to understand how birds are faring, where they’re moving, and what they’re up to when it’s not breeding season. With 125 years under its belt, the Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running community science program in the world.

How do scientists use this data? And what have they learned in those 125 years? Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Brooke Bateman, senior director of climate and community science at the National Audubon Society, and Dr. Janet Ng, wildlife biologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada in Regina, Canada.

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Researchers have projected that by the end of the century, days where snow covers the ground will virtually disappear in the United States, except for in very high mountains like the Rockies. This would affect entire ecosystems, disrupting animals and plants that live beneath the snow and increasing flooding and runoff.

Ira talks with Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist, about the latest snow projections and other top science news of the week, including the discovery of an ancient piece of clothing, how blinking can give you a “cognitive break,” and how dolphins could be using their teeth to improve hearing.

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Few living scientists are as iconic as Dr. Jane Goodall. The legendary primatologist spent decades working with chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. More recently, Goodall has devoted her time to advocating for conservation, not just in Africa, but worldwide.

Ira spoke with Goodall in 2002, after she had published her book The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals, and an IMAX film about her work with chimpanzees had just been released.

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Today, we’re taking time to reflect on all that 2024 brought us in the world of science, from the total solar eclipse in April to the demise of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars and the rise of the blockbuster GLP-1 weight-loss medications. SciFri producers Kathleen Davis and Charles Bergquist join Ira to wrap up the year in science, in a conversation recorded in a live event at WNYC’s Greene Space.

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It’s been an exciting and hectic year in science discovery and innovation. We’ve reported on stories from across many fields of science—from city climate plans and panda conservation to AI energy consumption and the spread of bird flu.

Earlier this month, Ira sat down in front of a live audience at The Greene Space in New York City with Drs. Céline Gounder, Jackie Faherty, and Kevin Reed, three researchers from different areas of science. Together, they reflected on the most exciting discoveries in their fields, important stories you might have missed, and what they're looking forward to in 2025.

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What makes three very different conservation projects so successful? These experts say it’s getting the community involved. And, archaeologists make a case for tracking and preserving artifacts left on Mars to chronicle humans’ first attempts at interplanetary exploration.

Meet 3 Leaders Addressing Local Conservation ProblemsWhile 2024 saw a lot of governments and institutions falling short on climate goals, there were also smaller, localized efforts making a big difference for the environment.

To understand more about the creative ways that people are protecting nature, Science Friday began a newsletter series called “Tiny Nature Triumphs.” It highlights small conservation projects that have helped scientists and communities alike—and inspired people to get involved in solutions in their own backyard.

SciFri Digital Producer Emma Gometz sits down with leaders on three projects featured in “Tiny Nature Triumphs”—Claire Lane, an urban ecologist and leader on the Hamilton County Invasive Species Trade In Program; Jake Rose, co-founder of Chronolog; and Shaun Preston, yardmaster at Camp Small. They discuss how their programs address local conservation problems, and how to get involved.

A New Argument For Preserving ‘Space Junk’ Left On MarsOver the past 60 years or so of space exploration, humans have left some things behind: bits of satellites, moon buggies, Mars rovers, even human excrement. It’s all part of the countless bits of human-made material that some people have dubbed “space junk.”

But what if, many, many years from now, archeologists wanted to trace the chronology of space exploration by examining the items we left in our wake? A new paper in the journal Nature Astronomy argues just this, that artifacts should be considered heritage, rather than trash.

Lead author Dr. Justin Holcomb, assistant research professor at the University of Kansas, joins Ira to discuss shifting our mindset on “space junk.”

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To wrap up 2024, science writer Riley Black shares her favorite paleontology discoveries of the year. And, if treated properly, even old-fashioned eggnog made with cream and raw eggs can be a safe holiday beverage.

The Most Exciting Dino Discoveries Of 2024December is, traditionally, a time to reflect on the events of the past year—including dinosaur discoveries. In 2024, researchers learned more about T. rex and the spiky tails of stegosaurs as well as how dinosaurs evolved, lived, and more.

For Smithsonian Magazine, dinosaur enthusiast and science writer Riley Black rounded up her top dino discoveries of the year. She talks with Ira Flatow about the most exciting paleontology news of 2024.

Can Spiking Eggnog Kill Bacteria From The Raw Eggs?It’s a question that occasionally comes up over the course of a holiday celebration, at least in certain circles: whether or not the alcohol in old-fashioned eggnog made with real cream and raw eggs can protect against foodborne pathogens such as salmonella.

Around 15 years ago, Science Friday investigated, enlisting the help of a lab at Rockefeller University that has a tradition of mixing up a big batch of old-fashioned eggnog around Thanksgiving, then serving it weeks later at a lab holiday party. The researchers kindly conducted a controlled study in which they deliberately spiked samples of their potent eggnog with salmonella, then followed the mixture’s bacterial status over the course of several weeks.

Science Friday’s Charles Bergquist checks in with Dr. Vincent Fischetti, a bacteriologist at Rockefeller, to see if there have been any advances in the field of eggnogology.

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On December 24, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will make the closest-ever approach to the sun by a spacecraft. Parker has made more than 20 close approaches to the sun before, but this one will swoop in even closer than 3.8 million miles away from the sun’s surface.

Since the probe was launched back in 2018, it’s helped scientists better understand our star and unravel mysteries about solar wind, high-energy solar particles, the sun’s corona and more. Scientists hope that this upcoming approach will reveal even more about the star at the center of our solar system.

Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Nour Rawafi, project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission and astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. They discuss the goal of this close approach, how the spacecraft will stand the heat, and what else there is to learn about our sun.

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For its 10th anniversary, the science advisor for “Interstellar” discusses the film’s impact and how new information about gravitational waves could have changed it.

The science fiction film “Interstellar” turns 10 years old this month. For many of us, it was our first encounter with some pretty advanced astrophysics, taking sci-fi concepts like wormholes and time warping, and backing them up with actual science. Now, we’re revisiting the impact that movie’s science had on pop culture, and how astrophysics has advanced in the past decade. If it were made today, what would be different?

Ira Flatow sits down with “Interstellar” science advisor Dr. Kip Thorne, a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. Since the film’s release, he has won a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the detection of gravitational waves generated from black holes. They discuss how the film inspired people to pursue scientific careers and how recent astrophysics discoveries, like gravitational waves, could’ve made it into the movie.

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Officials say the invasive Asian giant hornet, with its menacing nickname, has been eradicated from the United States. Also, with drone sightings in the news, we take a look at the current laws and regulations around hobby and commercial drone operation.

Farewell, Murder Hornet, We Hardly Knew YouOver the past few years many words have been written about an invasive insect known casually as the “murder hornet”—more formally, the Asian giant hornet, or northern giant hornet. But this week, the USDA and the Washington State Department of Agriculture announced that the insect has been eradicated in the United States. Our long national nightmare is over.

Science journalist Maggie Koerth joins Ira to talk about the entomology news, plus other stories from the week in science, including debate over how viruses should be named, the complicated relationship between science and law in the courtroom, and work tracing health signs—through earwax.

What FAA Regulations Tell Us About Mysterious Drone SightingsIt’s been all over the news the last few weeks: a slew of drone sightings in New Jersey and elsewhere on the East Coast, starting in mid-November. Federal authorities and President Biden have said that these drones don’t appear to be a threat to public safety, and that the sightings have been a mix of legal drones, airplanes, and helicopters. But questions and concerns remain, particularly among people who live in these areas. And just this week, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) banned most drones from flying over nearly two dozen New Jersey towns.

Dr. Missy Cummings, professor and director of George Mason University’s Autonomy and Robotics Center in Fairfax, Virginia, has worked on drone technology extensively over the years. She agrees with what federal authorities have said: that these drones sightings are likely legal drones and aircraft, with some prankster drone owners mixed in.

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A program trains women as tactile medical examiners to identify tumors before they show up on imaging scans. And, in a materials science discovery, scientists made a liquid silk solution that hardens and picks up objects—not unlike Spider-Man’s web.

How Blind Women In India Are Detecting Early Breast CancerBreast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide, just behind lung cancer. And the earlier a breast tumor is found, the more likely it is that the person survives their diagnosis.

An international program called Discovering Hands trains blind women to detect even the smallest lumps and bumps through breast exams. The idea is to leverage the blind examiners’ sense of touch, which may be more acute than sighted people’s, to feel for breast abnormalities and, hopefully, catch cancer in an early stage.

Discovering Hands has a cohort in India, a country where only around one in every two people diagnosed with breast cancer survive, and imaging equipment can be expensive or hard to come by.

SciFri producer Rasha Aridi talks with science journalist Kamala Thiagarajan, who reported on Discovering Hands’ program in India for NPR’s global health blog, Goats and Soda.

Accidental Breakthrough Makes Web-Slinging Silk A RealityWe’re all familiar with Spider-Man—the red-suited hero who swings through New York using spider silk that shoots from his hands. While Peter Parker has a radioactive spider to thank for his shooting webs, scientists at Tufts University have made their own version of liquid silk that solidifies and can pick up objects.

This discovery was made accidentally, says biomedical engineer Dr. Marco Lo Presti of the Tufts University Silklab. Lo Presti found that combining silk from a silkworm with dopamine and acetone made the silk change from a flexible liquid to a hardened fiber that attaches to objects.

Lo Presti joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about the possibilities of liquid silk adhesives, and the advancements he’d like to see to make the technology better.

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Sitting is a big part of modern life. Many people work at a desk all day, have long commutes, or at least enjoy some time relaxing on the couch at the end of the day. But sitting has gained a reputation as being bad for us—with some going so far as to call it “the new smoking.”

A recent study in the journal PLOS One sheds more light on just how much sitting is too much, using a cohort of more than 1,000 young adults, including 730 twins. The results showed that sitting for more than about eight and a half hours per day is linked to a higher total cholesterol and body mass index than sitting for less than that amount of time.

But there’s good news: 30 minutes of vigorous exercise per day may counter the negative effects that come from long days of sitting.

Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to discuss the findings are two of the study authors: Dr. Chandra Reynolds, professor in the Institute of Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado, Boulder; and Ryan Bruellman, PhD candidate in genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics at the University of California, Riverside.

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The Accidental Discovery That Gave Us ‘Forever Chemicals’When it comes to PFAS chemicals—known as “forever chemicals”—we often hear that they’re used in nonstick coatings, flame retardants, and stain repellants. But those examples can hide the truth of just how widespread their use has been in modern life.

A new season of the “Hazard NJ” podcast looks at the origin story of PFAS chemicals, and the accidental discovery of PTFE—aka Teflon—in a DuPont laboratory in southern New Jersey. “Hazard NJ” host Jordan Gass-Pooré joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about the history of PFAS, their effect on the environment and health of New Jersey residents, and work towards cleaning up the PFAS mess.

A Play About Pregnancy Inspired By Mushroom ResearchPeople are finding all sorts of uses for mushrooms these days, but we’re going to focus on two of them: how scientists are using them in robots and how playwrights are using them in theater. A few weeks ago, SciFri producer and host of our “Universe of Art” podcast D Peterschmidt moderated a panel at the Science In Theater Festival in Brooklyn, New York.

The festival is put on by a company called Transforma Theatre that stages science-inspired plays. Each year, they pair playwrights with scientists to make short plays that explore the research focus of the scientist.

Director and playwright Hannah Simms was paired with Dr. Andrew Adamatzky, a professor of unconventional computing, who’s learning how to connect various parts of nature, like mushrooms, to computers, and consulted with Hannah during the writing process. The play, called “Fruiting Body,” is about a fungal-computing scientist who, while pregnant, creates a fetal heart monitor powered by mycelium, which turns out to be sentient. While the concept is definitely science fiction, it is based on real unconventional mushroom research.

D talks with Hannah to learn why she wanted to explore her pregnancy through the lens of mushroom research. They’re also joined by Dr. Anand Mishra, a research associate at Cornell University’s department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, who explains how he helped build a robot that’s powered by king oyster mushroom mycelium.

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“The Burning Earth” examines over 800 years of history to demonstrate how violence against people and the planet are one and the same. Also, the host of the “Hazard NJ” podcast talks about the origins of PFAS “forever chemicals” and their impact on New Jersey residents.

How Empire and Environmental Destruction Go Hand-In-HandA new book called The Burning Earth: A History takes on a massive question: How did we get here? “Here” being this point in environmental history and decades deep into the climate crisis. Over the span of 800 years of history, the book connects the dots of how the pursuit of empire, environmental destruction, and human migration led us to this moment in time.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with author Dr. Sunil Amrith, a historian at Yale University. They discuss some common threads that run through human and environmental history, why peace has to be a part of climate action, and what we can learn from understanding the past.

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The effect, known as the Hubble Tension, has been confirmed by James Webb Space Telescope observations. Also, despite near daily warnings of food recalls, 2024 hasn’t been that different from previous years.

The Universe Is Expanding Faster Than ExpectedThere’s still a lot to be learned about the physics of our universe—and one of the most perplexing ideas is something called the Hubble Tension. That’s an observation, made around a decade ago, that the universe seems to be expanding faster than it should be according to cosmologists’ understanding of its earliest days. Now, two years of James Webb Space Telescope observations of supernovae have confirmed those previous measurements made by the Hubble telescope, meaning that the puzzle isn’t just due to some instrumental error.

Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, joins Kathleen Davis to talk about that finding and other stories from the week in science, including a new quantum computing chip from Google, efforts to improve electrical control of prosthetics, proposed new protections for monarch butterflies, and more.

Are Food Recalls Actually On The Rise? Not Really.It feels like there’s been an onslaught of food recalls this year. The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have issued recalls for items like cucumbers and carrots, deli meat and smoked salmon, which have been contaminated with pathogens like salmonella, E. coli, and listeria.

There were just over 1,900 food recalls in the fiscal year ending in October 2024. While that number has been increasing since an initial dip in recalls early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s still lower than the numbers seen in the several years before the pandemic.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Byron Chaves, food scientist and professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, about why it feels like there are so many food recalls this year, how a recall happens, and what food safety tips you should know as a consumer.

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The microbiome, the network of tens of trillions of microbes that live in and on our bodies, helps us digest food and protects us from diseases. And depending on what species of bacteria you have, your microbiome could impact your stress response, decision-making, and how likely you are to develop arthritis and depression.

Scientists have known that your microbiome is partially shaped by your environment, and the people you spend your time with. But they haven’t had a lot of clarity on how exactly social networks outside of home and family impact our microbiome makeup.

To learn more, a team from Yale University mapped the connections among 2,000 people in isolated villages in Honduras and compared their microbiomes to see how exactly their social closeness impacted their gut bacteria. And it turns out, we’re more connected to people in our lives than you may think. Their research was published in the journal Nature.

Ira Flatow is joined by sociologist and physician Dr. Nicholas Christakis, who directs the Human Nature Lab at Yale University. He studies the biology of human social interactions and was an author on the recent paper. They discuss how the researchers worked with villages in Honduras to gather samples and how they can tell who your friends are, just by looking at your poop.

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When you consider someone’s legacy in science, you might think about their biggest discovery, their list of publications, or their titles, awards, and prizes. But another kind of scientific legacy involves the students and colleagues that passed through a scientist’s orbit over the course of a career.

A new book, The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science, takes a look at the legacy of Madame Marie Curie, one of the most recognizable names in science history. But instead of looking only at Curie’s own life, author Dava Sobel views her through the lens of some of the 45 women who trained in Curie’s lab during her research into radioactivity.

Ira Flatow talks with Sobel about her research into Curie’s life, some of the anecdotes from the book, and how she interacted with some of her lab assistants and colleagues.

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There are a lot of holiday gatherings at this time of year, and families getting together can mean that kids are in places that don’t normally have a lot of kid visitors. And, as we know, curious kids can get into trouble.

Dr. Sing-Yi Feng, a pediatric emergency physician and medical toxicologist with the North Texas Poison Center, joins Ira to talk about some of the most common toxic exposures seen in hospital emergency rooms over the holidays. She stresses that even more than protecting against consumption of poinsettia plants or the cleaning supplies under the sink, households with young kids should be sure to control access to prescription medications, alcohol, and cannabis gummies.

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It’s that time of the year when you’re making your list, checking it twice, for gifts that spark a love of science for the kids in your life.

Ira talks with Mahnaz Dar, young readers’ editor at Kirkus Reviews and Carrie Wolfson, collection development librarian at the Boulder Public Library to round up some of the top kids’ science books of 2024 and make recommendations based on listener questions.

See their full list of recommendations on sciencefriday.com.

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The Supreme Court hears a case centering on the FDA’s denial of applications for nicotine-based vapes containing flavored liquid seen as addictive for young people. And, damaged lithium-ion batteries can cause deadly explosions. An algorithm could help detect when they’re about to happen.

Supreme Court Hears Case On FDA Regulation Of Flavored VapesOn Monday, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could change the Food and Drug Administration’s power to regulate nicotine-based vapes. It revolves around the FDA’s denial of applications from two vape companies that sell flavored liquids in their products, citing that the liquids presented a danger in addicting young people to nicotine. But a lower court rejected that denial, saying the agency was inconsistent in its approval process. The decision could impact the FDA’s regulatory power to ban the sale of some of these vapes in the US.

Ira Flatow is joined by Rachel Feltman, host of the Popular Science podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” to talk about the health implications of the case. They also discuss other top science stories of the week, including why there’s been a large decrease in cervical cancer rates over the past decade, why Venus probably wasn’t able to support ancient life (contradicting some hopeful theories), and new information about when humans might’ve started to wear clothing, thanks to some clues from lice.

A Warning For When A Lithium-Ion Battery Is About To ExplodeLithium-ion batteries are used in all sorts of electronics, like smart phones, laptops, and e-bikes. That’s because they can store a lot of energy in a small package. Unfortunately, this also means that when a battery is damaged, there’s a lot of energy to expel, which can lead to explosions and fires.

While there are no national statistics available, in New York City alone, there have been 733 fires started by lithium-ion batteries since 2019, which killed 29 people and injured 442. Most of these fires are a result of e-bike or scooter batteries catching fire.

Now, researchers have trained AI algorithms to be able to better predict when a lithium-ion battery is about to explode. The battery makes a hissing sound two minutes before an explosion.

Ira talks with two researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology about their work on the subject: Dr. Andy Tam, mechanical engineer in the Fire Research Division, and Dr. Anthony Putorti, fire protection engineer and leader of the Firefighting Technology Group.

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The Ig Nobel awards are a salute to achievements that, in the words of the organizers, “make people laugh, then think.” Each year, the editors of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research choose 10 lucky(?) winners who have unusual achievements in science, medicine, and other fields. This year’s awards were presented in a theatrical extravaganza in an MIT lecture hall in September.

They included awards for studying coin flipping (including hundreds of thousands of real coin flips), the movements of a dead trout, and an opera about Murphy’s Law. In a Science Friday holiday tradition, Ira hosts an hour of highlights from the ceremony.

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As part of Science Friday’s 33rd anniversary show, we’re revisiting our listeners’ favorite stories, including this one from 2009.

In the album “Here Comes Science,” the band They Might Be Giants tackled the scientific process, plasma physics, the role of blood in the body, and the importance of DNA, all in song. Band members John Linnell and John Flansburgh discuss the album and play some science tunes.

The transcript for this segment is available at sciencefriday.com.

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As part of Science Friday’s 33rd anniversary show, we’re revisiting our listeners’ favorite stories, including this one from 2022.

66 million years ago, a massive asteroid hit what we know today as the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Many people have a general idea of what happened next: The age of the dinosaurs was brought to a close, making room for mammals like us to thrive.

But fewer people know what happened in the days, weeks, and years after impact. Increased research on fossils and geological remains from this time period have helped scientists paint a picture of this era. For large, non-avian dinosaurs like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex, extinction was swift following the asteroid impact. But for creatures that were able to stay underwater and underground, their post-impact stories are more complicated.

In 2022, Utah-based science writer Riley Black joined Ira to discuss her book The Last Days of the Dinosaurs.

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In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, Dr. Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and Dr. K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.” In “click chemistry,” molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently to let chemists build more complicated molecules. But bioorthogonal chemistry takes that work one step further, allowing the technique to be used within living organisms without damaging cells.

“When someone is thinking outside the box, or in a very different way, we like to think of that as orthogonal thinking,” Bertozzi explained. “So biorthogonal means not interacting with biology. Totally separate from biology.” Her research began with an interest in developing ways to see specific sugar molecules on the surface of cells. But it has developed into an approach that can be used for advanced drug delivery in fields such as chemotherapy.

As part of Science Friday’s 33rd anniversary show, we’re revisiting our listeners’ favorite stories, including this one. In 2022, Bertozzi joined Ira Flatow for a wide-ranging conversation about her research, chemistry education, her early music career, and the importance of diversity in the field of chemistry.

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In 2018, actor, author and science communicator Alan Alda spoke publicly about his diagnosis for Parkinson’s Disease. Alda, who is best known for his role in “MAS*H,” “The Aviator,” and “The West Wing,” shifted his interests to science communication in his later years. He’s written several books on the topic, and has an ongoing podcast, “Clear + Vivid.”

As part of Science Friday’s 33rd anniversary show, we’re revisiting our listeners’ favorite stories, including this one. Alda came on Science Friday in 2018 to talk about his life since his Parkinson’s diagnosis, and how being an advocate for science changes his perspective on his condition.

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Just in time for Thanksgiving, a potato researcher explains potato varieties, potato nutrition, and some tubular tuber facts. And, irregular, fatty marbling gives meat a unique texture. Recreating that in plant-based products isn’t easy.

A Horn Of Potato PlentyThe potato is a versatile vegetable—baked, roasted, fried, mashed—it can bring something to just about any menu. But, how exactly do these tasty tubers end up on our tables? We’ll give you a crash course in potato science, including how potatoes are grown (hint: not from seeds!) and what scientists look for when they develop new potato varieties.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Rhett Spear, assistant professor in the Plant Sciences Department at the University of Idaho.

Adding Marbling To Fake Meat For That Extra-Realistic BitePlant-based meat products have evolved over the past few decades. You can find them in many forms, like sausages, deli meats, and faux chicken nuggets. During the holiday season, no plant-based meat is more famous than the Tofurky Roast, a round imitation turkey.

Despite improvements in flavor for plant-based meat products, there are still lots of challenges to getting fake meats to mimic their real counterparts. One tough one is textural: instilling a marbling effect. This is the effect of irregular fat deposits, which occur naturally in animal meat.

Plant-based meat has a uniform texture by design. Because each product is processed to be a certain way, the randomness and irregularity of fat pockets is taken out of the equation. But some food scientists are working on adding more of this meaty texture to plant-based meat.

Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to discuss the challenges and possibilities for the next stage of plant-based meat is Dr. David Julian McClements, distinguished professor in food science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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We recently asked our listeners which dubious health claims they’ve been seeing in their social media feeds or being circulated by friends and family. Unsurprisingly, we received a ton of questions about nutrition, including: Is seed oil bad for you? Does apple cider vinegar really lower blood sugar? What is the difference between processed and ultraprocessed foods?

To answer those questions and more, SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with RDN Jessica Clifford, a nutrition specialist at Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Colorado State University.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Fifty-three days after Hurricane Helene, residents of Asheville can safely drink their tap water without boiling it. Why did it take so long? And, tribes’ historic lands on the Gulf Coast are being lost to the sea. To slow it down, one tribe has turned to oyster shells.

The Struggle To Restore Drinking Water After Hurricane HeleneWhen Hurricane Helene barrelled through the southeastern US in September, it dumped an estimated 40 trillion gallons of water on the region. That resulted in immense flooding that destroyed roads, buildings, power lines, and other infrastructure.

And it also impacted the region’s potable water supply. For weeks, residents in Asheville, North Carolina, didn’t have access to clean drinking water because the extensive flooding washed large amounts of sediment into the local reservoir. As of Monday, limited access to potable water was restored, marking the first time in 53 days that local residents didn’t have to boil tap water to drink it.

Before that access was restored, we heard from listeners Sarah and Alison in Asheville who had their own questions about the water quality in their city, and the science behind sediment issues in a local reservoir.

Guest host and SciFri producer Kathleen Davis is joined by Dr. Sarah Ledford, associate professor of geosciences at Georgia State University, to figure out why it can take so long for cities to clean their potable water after a storm like this and what other regions expect from the aftermath of future extreme weather.

Using Oyster Shell Reefs To Counter Sea Level Rise In LouisianaOn a hot Friday morning, the sun beat down on volunteers gathered at the edge of the water in southern Plaquemines Parish. They passed heavy sacks of oyster shells to each other down a line. The volunteers loaded the shells onto boats to use them for building an oyster reef to help slow land loss in Grand Bayou Indian Village.

“The oyster reef is a living thing. Baby oysters are going to attach to it. It’s going to grow. It’s going to become bigger,” said James Karst with the Coalition for Coastal Louisiana, the organization that built the reef. “But when the sea level rises, because oysters are growing on it, it will grow vertically as well, so it will continue to add protection.”

Louisiana’s land loss is an existential crisis for many of the tribes who live along the coast. Grand Bayou Indian Village, a small community, home to the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha tribe, is watching its lands wash away. Nearly 1,000 people lived in the village in the 1940s, but now there are only about a dozen homes raised on stilts right along the edge of the bayou. Boats are the only way to get around.

“You can look at the GPS and it will indicate a different color for where land is,” said Karst. “You’ll be looking at this on the screen, then you’ll look up and there is no land there. It’s just open water.”

Volunteers built the reef by stacking bags of recycled oyster shells in the water, up and down the shoreline. The shells came from restaurants in New Orleans. The coalition recently expanded its oyster recycling services to Baton Rouge.

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On November 24, 1974—50 years ago this November—a pair of paleoanthropologists made the discovery of a lifetime: a set of 47 bones, hidden in the dusty, rocky hills of a fossil site in Hadar, Ethiopia. The skeleton belonged to a 3.2 million year old hominin, which came to be nicknamed Lucy.

She marked the very first specimen of Australopithecus afarensis—a species of early hominins that were very likely our own ancestors. Lucy might be the most famous fossil in the world, and she’s transformed our understanding of human evolution.

SciFri’s Kathleen Davis looks back at 50 years of Lucy with the people who know her best: Dr. Donald Johanson, founding director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University and the paleo legend who discovered her, as well as Dr. Zeray Alemseged, paleoanthropologist at the University of Chicago who discovered “Lucy’s baby.” They discuss what Lucy has taught us in the last 50 years, why she remains a scientific icon, and how understanding our ancestral origins helps us understand humanity.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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This was the sixth test launch of the Starship vehicle, which could eventually carry humans and cargo to the moon. It was extremely loud. Also, divers have recovered seeds of a long-lost rye variety from a 146-year-old shipwreck in Lake Huron. Scientists hope to bring it back to life.

SpaceX’s Starship Completes In-Orbit Engine TestOn Tuesday, the rocket company SpaceX conducted another test flight of its Starship spacecraft. In the uncrewed mission, the sixth test of the system, the company was seeking to test its ability to restart the Starship engines while in orbit, a function that’s necessary for in-space maneuvering. The rocket did launch successfully, and the engine test worked. However, at the last minute the company elected not to try to repeat an October maneuver in which it caught a returning SuperHeavy rocket booster at the launch tower, citing safety concerns.

SciFri’s Charles Bergquist joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about the launch, and related research into the tremendous sound created by the system’s launch and reentry. They also discuss other stories from the week in science, including the discovery of a saber-toothed kitten in Siberian permafrost, efforts to use light to help destroy PFAS chemicals, a company using Pokemon Go game data to train an AI, and more.

Michigan-Based Team To Resuscitate Shipwrecked Rye SeedsIn 1878, a wooden schooner named the James R. Bentley set sail from Chicago to Buffalo, New York. But strong winds and rough waters damaged the ship, and it sank to the bottom of Lake Huron. The crew was saved, but the ship’s cargo—a large shipment of rye—sank with it. In the years since the shipwreck, that particular variety of rye has faded out of existence.

Now, almost 150 years later, a Michigan-based team is trying to bring the long-lost rye back to life. They dove to the shipwreck, retrieved a tube full of seeds, and are planning to use gene technology to recreate the rye variety. Their goal is to encourage farmers to grow it, so that distillers can use it to make whiskey.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Eric Olson, professor of wheat breeding and genetics at Michigan State University, and Chad Munger, founder and CEO of Mammoth Distilling.

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What’s the secret to making a fluffy omelet or the perfect pie dough? In this interview from 2012, Jack Bishop, now senior content advisor at America’s Test Kitchen, debunks cooking myths and highlights some of the surprising finds from the show’s cookbook, The Science of Good Cooking.

Bishop tells us that water is one of the key parts of the perfect pie crust. You need it to roll out the dough, but it also forms gluten which makes the dough chewy. So, how can your pie dough be both soft and easy to handle? Use science—and a little bit of vodka.

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It sounds like something from an advertisement for bathroom cleaner: Researchers found over 600 different viruses, most of which are new to science, in samples taken from showerheads and toothbrushes. The viruses, however, are unlikely to affect humans. They are bacteriophages, a type of virus that preys on bacteria. The expedition into bathroom biodiversity was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiomes.

Around a hundred years ago in the former Soviet Union, there were major efforts to develop bacteriophages for medical use. The approach really didn’t catch on in Western countries, overshadowed there by the rise of conventional antibiotics like penicillin. But with some diseases developing resistance to those conventional antibiotics, there’s been increased interest in phages as part of an antibacterial toolkit.

Dr. Erica Hartmann, an associate professor in the department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, joins Ira to talk about what researchers found when they took a close look at a collection of bathroom samples, and how phage research has advanced in recent years.

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Researchers are connecting two ecological problems in the Northeast in hopes of reducing the risk of tick-borne illnesses. Also, a “one-of-a-kind” fossil of Navaornis hestiae helps fill a giant gap in scientists’ understanding of how bird brains evolved.

Managing Some Invasive Plants Might Reduce Blacklegged TicksIn much of the eastern US, October and November usher in an autumn peak of the blacklegged tick season.

For years, researchers have noticed that these ticks, also called deer ticks, are more abundant on certain invasive plant species, like Japanese barberry, that create dense thickets in the forest understory.

Now, a group of scientists in Vermont and Maine is investigating how managing these plants might decrease the number of blacklegged ticks—and the risk of people developing tick-borne illnesses, like Lyme disease and Babesiosis. After getting a $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation, they’re hoping to come up with guidance for landowners.

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Ancient Bird Fossil Offers Clues Into How Bird Brains EvolvedArchaeopteryx is the earliest bird-like dinosaur that we know of. It lived 150 million years ago, but researchers don’t know much about how the bird brain evolved from then to now.

An 80 million-year-old bird from the Mesozoic Era is now helping fill in the blanks. It’s called Navaornis hestiae. Researchers uncovered a fossil of this species, which was previously unknown to science, in Brazil in 2016. That specimen has a remarkably well-preserved skull, which a team of paleontologists used to digitally reconstruct the bird’s brain. The researchers recently reported their findings in the journal Nature.

Ira talks with a lead author of the study, Dr. Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California.

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Despite advances in scientific research, the stomach remains a subject of mystery and intrigue. After all, it’s nearly impossible to ignore its gurgles and growls. Some cultural understanding of the gut has changed too—from an unruly being that must be fed and placated, to a garden ecosystem that is to be nourished in order to flourish.

And if you’re a frequent listener of Science Friday, you’re familiar with the gut’s microbiome—the constellation of trillions of microbes thriving in our bodies. And that the stomach has some of the same neuroreceptors as the brain, which has earned it the nickname of the “second brain.”

Ira talks with Dr. Elsa Richardson, author of Rumbles: A Curious History of the Gut and co-director of the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare at University of Strathclyde in Scotland. They discuss the changing cultural and scientific understanding of the gut, including the discovery of the enteric nervous system and Victorian-era physician Sir William Arbuthnot Lane’s obsession with curing constipation.

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Leaders from the top-polluting countries, like the US and China, aren’t showing up to the UN’s big climate conference in Azerbaijan. And, walking pneumonia typically affects school-age kids, but the CDC reports a rise in cases in children aged 2-4.

At COP29, The World’s Top Polluters Are No-ShowsThe United Nations’ annual international climate conference, COP29, got underway this week in Baku, Azerbaijan. Leaders from around the world come together at this conference to hammer out deals between nations to lower emissions and coordinate climate change-related financial efforts.

And a big focus this year was to negotiate a deal for wealthier countries to financially compensate developing nations who’ve experienced climate-change related damage. The only problem is that world leaders from the top-polluting countries, like the US and China, aren’t even showing up.

Ira Flatow is joined by Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, to catch up on this and other science stories of the week, including new data on rising alcohol consumption, why Voyager 2 got an inaccurate snapshot of Uranus in the 1980s, and why the world’s largest organism might also be its oldest.

Walking Pneumonia Is Spiking. Here’s How To Stay SafeLast month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out a report outlining a significant spike in Mycoplasma pneumoniae infections, better known as walking pneumonia. This respiratory illness is caused by bacteria spread through respiratory droplets, and symptoms usually mimic the common cold. It’s pretty common, with about 2 million infections happening each year, mostly in school-age kids. This year’s spike, which started in the spring, is a little different: There’s been a significant increase in kids aged 2 to 4 and it is now the new leading cause of pneumonia for that group.

Dr. Preeti Sharma, pediatric pulmonologist at Children’s Heath in Dallas, knows what it’s like to have a child with mycoplasma pneumonia. Her daughter came home with the illness in the spring. What she thought was a typical cold turned into a deep and lingering cough: a telltale sign of walking pneumonia.

Dr. Sharma, who is also an associate professor at UT Southwestern, joins Ira Flatow to discuss this year’s Mycoplasma pneumoniae spike, the best treatments, and how to keep your family healthy this holiday season.

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Today, November 8, 2024, marks Science Friday’s 33rd broadcast anniversary. One of the most beloved interviewees on Science Friday over the years was the late neurologist and author Dr. Oliver Sacks, who shared his insights into neuroscience, art, and what it means to be human. Recently, Sacks’ long-time collaborator Kate Edgar published a book of Dr. Sacks' letters. And earlier this fall, the New York Public Library announced its acquisition of Sacks’ entire archive.

In this segment, Ira revisits a 2007 conversation with Oliver Sacks about his book Musicophilia. They talk about the way music and the brain interact, why music can sometimes remain in the brain long after other memories fade, and why a person with limited language abilities might still be able to sing unimpaired.

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In a Chinese study, donor CAR-T cells sent autoimmune diseases into remission. There’s hope that the therapy is scalable. And, scientists used decades of yellow-bellied marmot research to find a way to measure how adverse events affect wild animals’ survival.

CAR-T Cell Therapies Show Promise For Autoimmune DiseasesFor decades, immunologists have explored CAR-T cell therapy as an effective tool to fight blood cancer. Increasingly, CAR-T cells are being explored as a potential silver bullet for treating autoimmune diseases, like lupus—which currently have no cure.

Thus far, CAR-T cell therapy has largely used CRISPR-modified immune cells from a person to treat that person’s own diseases. But new research from China has made a huge step forward for this treatment: Researchers were successful in using donated CAR-T cells from one person to treat another person’s systemic sclerosis, an autoimmune condition that causes atypical growth of connective tissues.

If donor CAR-T cell therapy does indeed work, as posited in this paper, it could mean the therapy is more scalable than it would be otherwise. Joining Ira to talk about this study and its potential impact is Daniel Baker, PhD student in the immunology lab of Dr. Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania.

Measuring The Effects Of Early Life Adversity—In MarmotsIt’s well-established in psychology that if you experience trauma as a child, chances are it’ll impact your physical and mental health as an adult, and could even affect your economic status. In academic terms, this is called early childhood adversity. And psychologists have developed a scoring system for measuring the cumulative effect of adverse childhood experiences, which can include abuse and household dysfunction, and it can help predict health risks later in life.

So we can specifically measure that in humans. But what about other animals? If you’ve adopted a dog that’s had a turbulent past, you know that that can result in reclusive or skittish behavior as an adult. But there hasn’t been a good way to measure it in wild animals.

Well, a new study from UCLA, published in the journal Ecology Letters, establishes a similar index for wild animals, and it used decades of findings from a mammal: the yellow-bellied marmot. So how could it help conservation efforts for other animals?

Ira Flatow talks with Xochitl Ortiz-Ross, a PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA, and one of the authors on that study.

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Think back to the last time you went to the doctor’s office. Chances are, at the start of the visit, they took your temperature, pulse, and blood pressure—your “vitals.”

But how did they take your blood pressure? The medical literature that describes safe blood pressure ranges is all based on readings taken with the patient sitting with feet flat on the floor, legs uncrossed, back supported, and the testing arm supported by a desk at mid-heart level. But if the blood pressure is measured with the person in a different position—say, perched on the edge of an exam table, legs dangling, and an arm hanging at the side—the readings given by a blood pressure monitor can be distorted. In a recent study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers found that arm position could account for as much as a 7mmHg difference in pressure readings. That difference could be enough to incorrectly classify some people as hypertensive.

Dr. Tammy Brady, medical director of the Pediatric Hypertension Program at Johns Hopkins University, joins Ira to talk about the art of blood pressure measurement, how to better track your own blood pressure, how to find blood pressure monitors that have been properly validated, and the importance of advocating for yourself in medical settings.

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Have you ever been stuck in traffic and thought, if only this highway was a little wider so it could fit more cars? You aren’t alone.

Many states have been expanding their highways. New York Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced a $1.3 billion project to expand one of the state’s highways for an estimated maximum six-minute travel savings. Other highway-widening projects are underway in Texas, California, and Maryland. In 2022, federal, state, and local governments in the US spent $127 billion on highway construction. Some departments of transportation say expanding highways is necessary to reduce congestion, especially in areas with growing populations, and to encourage economic development.

But decades of research shows the opposite effects when highways are expanded—that travel times actually increase when more lanes are added. So how does this happen, and why do we keep expanding highways even though the research says it doesn’t work?

Megan Kimble, journalist and author of City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, And The Future Of America’s Highways, joins Ira to break down the research behind highway widening and discuss how increasing funding for public transit could help make traffic better, and why some cities are deciding to remove their highways entirely.

Read an excerpt from City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, And The Future Of America’s Highways.

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Abortion was on the ballot in 10 states, and seven of them passed constitutional amendments defending abortion rights. Also, this ginormous number has a whopping 41,024,320 digits, which isn’t very helpful for mathematicians but is certainly exciting for math nerds.

Seven States Passed Ballot Measures To Protect Abortion RightsThis week, science was on the ballot in many states. Voters across the country weighed in on issues like drug legalization, money to fund climate programs, and, of course, abortion rights. Ten states voted on the issue, and in seven of them, voters chose to protect or expand abortion rights. Those states are Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New York, Colorado, Arizona, and Missouri. On the flip side, voters in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota rejected measures that would protect abortion rights.

Ira Flatow talks with Tim Revell, executive editor at New Scientist, about the outcome of some sciencey ballot measures and what we can expect going into another Trump presidency. They also discuss the launch of the world’s first wooden satellite, what scientists learned when they put vampire bats on a treadmill, and more.

Math Enthusiast Finds The Largest Known Prime NumberLet’s go back to grade school—do you remember learning about prime numbers? They’re numbers that can only be divided by themselves and one.

So 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and so on are prime numbers. The number 12, for example, wouldn’t be prime because you can divide it by other numbers, like 2 and 3. And as you count up and up, prime numbers become more sparse.

Math lovers are always competing to find the largest prime number, and just recently, an engineer discovered the largest one—so far. And you won’t believe how ginormous it is: It has more than 41 million digits.

Ira talks with Jack Murtagh, math writer and columnist for Scientific American, about why prime numbers are so cool, and the quest to find the largest one.

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Author and naturalist Sy Montgomery discusses chicken intelligence and her experience raising a flock in New Hampshire. And, snapshots from over the years could provide researchers with valuable data about how penguin colonies have shifted.

Chickens Have Friendships, Memories, And ReputationsChickens don’t exactly have a reputation of being the sharpest creatures in the animal kingdom. Yet, talk to anyone who raises chickens and they’ll tell you that they are far more intelligent and social than we often give them credit for. For example, chickens can recognize the faces of 100 other chickens and find their way home just days after birth.

Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Sy Montgomery, author of the new book, What the Chicken Knows: A New Appreciation of the World’s Most Familiar Bird, about her own flock and what she’s learned about chicken intelligence.

Tourist Photos From Antarctica May Help Map Penguin ColoniesIf you’re lucky enough to visit Antarctica, you’ll probably aim to snag a classic photo—a colony of penguins, set against the chilly, barren landscape. But now, in addition to being a cherished memory, those pictures could turn out to be a valuable source of ecological data.

Writing in the journal PLOS One, researchers describe a computer vision technique that uses elevation data combined with landscape features in photographs to allow the images to be positioned in a 3D rendering of the Antarctic landscape. And that allows scientists to map the precise boundaries of penguin colonies over time, even without knowing who held the camera or where the photographer was standing.

Dr. Heather Lynch, the Institute for Advanced Computational Science Endowed Professor of Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University, joins guest host Rachel Feltman to discuss the technique, and the value in being able to extract scientific data from pictures stored in photo albums and museum archives.

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In the 1960s, the urban air pollution crisis in America had reached a fever pitch: Cities were shrouded in smog, union steelworkers were demanding protections for their health, and the Department of Justice was mounting an antitrust lawsuit against the Detroit automakers for conspiracy to pollute.

But all that changed when Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act of 1970. The law set national limits for six major pollutants, established stringent emissions standards for vehicles, and required the latest pollution-limiting technology for industrial facilities. It was widely recognized as innovative, landmark legislation because it was evidence-based, future-proofed, and it had teeth.

Since the Clean Air Act took effect, emissions of the most common pollutants have fallen by around 80%. The law has saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars. An EPA analysis showed that the Clean Air Act’s benefits outweigh its costs by a factor of 30. Thanks to this policy, the United States enjoys some of the cleanest air in the world.

But five decades on, has the Clean Air Act protected everyone? And can a policy designed for the problems of urban, mid-century cities protect our health in the face of climate change?

Read the full story at sciencefriday.com.

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On Sunday, more than 50,000 athletes are expected to compete in the New York City Marathon, one of the largest, and most elite marathons in the world. Running a continuous 26.2 miles is a major physical challenge. But what exactly is happening in the body when running such a long distance?

Joining guest host Rachel Feltman to answer questions from long-distance runners is Dr. Brandee Waite, Director of UC Davis Health Sports Medicine. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Waite has directed the medical care for multiple marathons and ultra-marathons, and has served as a team physician for USA Track & Field.

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Gender-affirming care is on the ballot in this presidential election. These treatments, which can include hormone therapy and surgeries, can be lifesaving for trans people. But they could be impacted by the results of this election.

This year alone, states have considered 182 bills aimed at prohibiting gender-affirming care. It’s become a central part of Donald Trump’s campaign, which has stated that, if he is elected, he’ll ask Congress to ban Medicare and Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care, and cut off federal funding to hospitals and clinics that do provide it.

Guest host Rachel Feltman discusses what’s at stake for gender-affirming care this election season with Dr. Logan Casey, director of policy research for the Movement Advancement Project, and Kate Steinle, chief clinical officer at FOLX Health.

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Two years ago, energy companies scrambled for offshore wind contracts. At a recent auction, the demand was significantly lower. Plus, artist Sarah Rosalena uses Indigenous weaving, ceramics, and sculpture practices to create art that challenges tech’s future, in a segment from earlier this year.

Maine Offshore Wind Auction Draws Few BidsOffshore wind is coming to the Gulf of Maine. Earlier this week, the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held an auction for eight leases to develop wind projects off the coast of Maine. But companies bid on only half of the available leases.

Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter for MIT Technology Review about that and other top science news of the week including; bird flu found in pigs, AI’s electronic waste problem, what’s in your black plastic spatula, and giant rats fighting the illegal wildlife trade.

An Artist Combines Indigenous Textiles With Modern TechWhen multidisciplinary artist Sarah Rosalena looks at a loom, she thinks about computer programming. “It’s an extension of your body, being an algorithm,” she says.

Rosalena, a Wixárika descendant and assistant professor of art at the University of California Santa Barbara, combines traditional Indigenous craft—weaving, beadmaking, pottery—with new technologies like AI, data visualization, and 3D-printing. And she also works with scientists to make these otherworldly creations come to life. She involved researchers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab to make 3D-printed pottery with simulated Martian clay. And she collaborated with the Mount Wilson Observatory to produce intricately beaded tapestries based on early-1900s glass plates captured by the observatory’s telescope, which women mathematicians used to make astronomical calculations.

And that’s also a big focus for Rosalena: spotlighting the overlooked contributions women made to computer science and connecting it to how textiles are traditionally thought of as a woman-based craft. When she first started making this kind of art, Rosalena learned that the Jacquard loom—a textile advancement in the 1800s that operated on a binary punch card system which allowed for mass production of intricate designs—inspired computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace when she was developing the first computer program. “[They] have this looped history,” she says. “And when I weave or do beadwork, it’s also recalling that relationship.”

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Great news for the nearly-extinct monarch butterflies, which will pass through the area as they migrate back to Mexico. Also, to find out how blood affects aging, scientists can surgically connect two animals and let blood circulate between them.

After California’s Park Fire, A Second Bloom of MilkweedDon Hankins examines a bright yellow-green patch in the meadow. The land all around is charred by fire. But here, there’s a sort of miracle at work. Native milkweed has sprung up and bloomed for the second time this year. This is not something these plants, Asclepias eriocarpa, also known as Indian milkweed, are known to do.

They bloomed in late spring and early summer and had already done so this year when the Park Fire roared through. But the fire seemed to happen at just the right time to coax a second flowering, one that is likely to line up with the return migration of the monarch butterflies south to overwinter in Mexico. Monarchs rely on these flowers to complete their life cycle. For researcher Don Hankins, this is a surprise delight.

“We may be coming back into some knowledge here that hasn’t been practiced in a long time,” said Don Hankins, a professor at Chico State, who teaches classes in geography with a focus on fire. He is also a California Plains Miwok traditional cultural practitioner.

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Inside The ‘Creepy’ Procedure That Taps Into Young BloodWhile fictional vampires suck the blood of the young to live forever, some researchers have found that certain elements in young blood actually can improve the health of the old. This is possible through a spooky procedure called parabiosis, in which the circulatory systems of two animals are joined, letting the blood flow from one into the other.

By connecting old mice and young mice through parabiosis, researchers have observed how different molecules in the blood impact symptoms of aging. While some outcomes have excited experts, enthusiastic biohackers attempting to defy their own aging might have jumped the gun. There’s a long way to go before we understand how elements of young blood might be harnessed to treat aging humans.

Emma Gometz, SciFri’s digital producer of engagement, talks to Dr. Tony Wyss-Coray, a neurology professor at Stanford University who has used parabiosis (which he once described as “creepy”) to help reveal how components of our blood affect our cognition as we age. They discuss parabiosis, vampires, and how far the field has to go before humans can benefit.

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Did you know that there are ten quintillion—or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000—individual insects on the planet? That means that for each and every one of us humans, there are 1.25 billion insects hopping, buzzing, and flying about.

A new book called The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture celebrates the diversity of the insect world, as well as the many ways it has changed ours—from fashion to food to engineering.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with entomologist and author Dr. Barrett Klein about the beauty of the insect world, how it has shaped human history, and what we can learn from these six-legged critters.

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Leading up to the November election, Science Friday is covering top science issues on the ballot. For voters, those top issues include abortion.

Since the Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, many states have curtailed access to abortion, and 13 states have a total abortion ban.

The election season in particular, there’s been a focus on abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy. Some of the political rhetoric is inflammatory and false. But even among politicians who support abortion rights, there’s a tendency to deflect attention away from these procedures later in pregnancy.

Though third trimester abortions are rare, they make up about 1% of abortions in the United States and are often the most stigmatized. They are legal in only a small number of states, and just a fraction of providers perform them.

To better understand the real science behind abortions later in pregnancy, guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Dr. Katrina Kimport, professor of obstetrics, gynecology & reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco; and Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal and fetal medicine physician who specializes in high risk pregnancy and complex abortion care, based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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Walter Byrd remembers the first time sewage came bubbling out of his toilet like it was yesterday.

“It was just pumping up through there,” Byrd says. “One of the bathrooms was so full of waste, at least 4 inches high in there. It smelled just like a hog pen.”

He sopped up the murky, foul-smelling water and doused the floor with bleach. But the sewage kept coming. On rainy days, it overflowed from drainage ditches into his yard, carrying wads of toilet paper and human waste.

The eight-bedroom home in Cahokia Heights, Illinois, had been a source of pride for Byrd when he first built it in 1996. He spent a lot of time outside, caring for his vegetable garden and watching wildlife wander through the backyard. But trying to stop the sewage backups quickly became his main focus, consuming countless hours and thousands of dollars of his savings.

“It was a dream house, until the floods came,” says Byrd, now 67. “That house broke me down.”

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Some paleontologists argue the ancient footprints found in South Korea show flight may have evolved in multiple dinosaur lineages. And, COP16 will tackle questions like who should profit from non-human DNA, and who is responsible for financing critical conservation projects.

Do Fossil Prints Show Dinosaur Flight Evolved More Than Once?Researchers studying tracks fossilized in Cretaceous-era lakeshore mud in what is now South Korea argue this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the dinosaur footprints are “indirect evidence of pre-avian aerial behavior” in a tiny microraptor.

The tracks, which belong to a sparrow-sized theropod related to Tyrannosaurus rex, are spaced far enough apart to indicate that the tiny dino was moving across the mud very quickly. That speed, the researchers argue, is faster than the animal should have been able to go just by running with its hindlimbs. However, if flapping wings were added into the equation to give a power boost, the spacing might make sense.

If the microraptor did, in fact, have flight-capable wings, that would mean that the ability to fly may have evolved in multiple lineages of dinosaurs, not just the descendants of Archaeopteryx we see as modern birds. Other researchers are not convinced of the analysis, arguing that the tracks may not all have come from the same individual at the same time.

Jason Dinh, climate editor for Atmos, joins guest host Sophie Bushswick to talk about the debate, and other stories from the week in science, including an archeological find of medieval-era Silk Road cities in the Uzbek mountains, breathing differences in people born with the inability to smell, and the surprising ability of hornets to hold their liquor.

Biodiversity’s Biggest Event Is Underway In ColombiaFrom now until November 1, bureaucrats from nearly every country in the world will be gathered in Cali, Colombia, for COP16, better known as the United Nations biodiversity summit. This “conference of the parties” comes together about every two years to deliberate on the biggest issue in conservation science: how to stop ecological collapse.

At the last summit, COP15, nearly every country agreed to a deal to halt biodiversity loss by 2030. This year’s conference will take a temperature check on how nations are doing in their quest to meet this goal (spoiler alert: not well).

Also on the agenda are the questions of who should profit from non-human DNA, and how a $700 billion funding gap for conservation work can be filled. Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to parse through these big ideas is Benji Jones, environmental correspondent for Vox based in New York.

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Throughout history, humans have given a lot of thought to death. We’ve grappled with our mortality, created elaborate burial rituals, and contemplated how best to mourn the loss of a loved one.

But what about other animals? How do they understand death? Scientists have begun looking at this question more closely in the last two decades.

For example, chimpanzees have a wide variety of responses to death based in part on their relationship with the deceased. Possums put on elaborate displays to fake their own deaths. Ants can tell another ant is dead by the chemicals it omits, but have no concept of what death actually means.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Susana Monsó, associate professor of philosophy at the National Distance Education University in Spain and author of Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death.

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Pregnancy is a hugely transformative experience, both in how it can change someone’s day-to-day life, and how it affects the body. There’s a key part of the body that’s been under-researched in relation to pregnancy: the brain.

Those who have been pregnant often talk about “pregnancy brain,” the experience of brain fog or forgetfulness during and after pregnancy. There’s also the specter of postpartum depression, a condition that affects about 1 in 7 women post-birthing. There’s still a dearth of information about what causes these cognitive, psychological, and emotional experiences.

In a recent study, scientists took MRI scans of participants before, during, and after pregnancy, and spotted distinctive changes in the brain’s gray and white matter. While these anatomical changes are noticeable, the researchers are still trying to determine what they actually mean for behavior. Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about this study is Dr. Liz Chrastil, associate professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California Irvine.

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Metaphors can help us understand complicated scientific concepts. But they can also have a downside. And, a pair of musicians wrote a concept album inspired by moths—and found that humans have more in common with the insects than they expected.

How Metaphor Has Shaped Science, For Better Or WorseHere at Science Friday, we’re big fans of metaphors. They can make complicated scientific concepts easier to understand, for both non-experts and scientists themselves. For example, “the big bang” helps us visualize the beginning of the universe. Or we can understand DNA’s role better as a “building block of life.”

But some of these scientific metaphors also have a downside, and can even set research back.

Sam Harnett and Chris Hoff are the hosts of the podcast series “The World According to Sound,” and they sat down with Science Friday’s Director of News and Audio, John Dankosky, to talk about their new project, “An Inexact Science.” They discuss a special two-hour episode that explores how language and metaphor have shaped science, for better or worse.

Intertwining The Lives Of Moths And Humans Through MusicBefore the pandemic, Peter Kiesewalter didn’t think much of moths. Like a lot of people, he’d thought of them mostly as pests. But when his brother Tobi, an interpretive naturalist for Ontario Parks and moth enthusiast, showed him macro photos he’d taken of them, he was blown away. “[They were] absolutely stunning,” Peter says. “The amount of colors and hair were just extraordinary.”

Peter is a Grammy-nominated musician based in New York City. He’s composed music for ABC News, Monday Night Football, and even a “Winnie The Pooh” show. As COVID-19 spread in 2020, work for him and his partner Whitney La Grange, a professional violinist, dried up. So they hunkered down at the family cottage in Ottawa, Canada, along with Tobi’s family. Peter was looking for a new show idea, and when his brother opened up the world of moths to him, he was hooked. “I had to find a way to interpret moths artistically,” he said. “And I started to find connections between them and us.”

That led to “The Moth Project,” a concept album and stage show that combines moth science and visuals with a whole ecosystem of musical genres: 80s pop, funk, classical, covers, even spoken word. Each song ties a stage of a moth’s life (emergence, flight, migration) to a universal human experience. But for Peter, a lot of these songs turned out to be far more personal than he initially thought.

SciFri producer and host of our Universe of Art podcast D Peterschmidt sat down with Peter and Tobi Kiesewalter and Whitney La Grange to find out how this album came together and how understanding moths could better help us understand ourselves.

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On October 14, NASA launched Europa Clipper, its largest planetary mission spacecraft yet. It’s headed to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which could have a giant ocean of liquid water hidden under its icy crust. And where there’s water, scientists think there may be evidence of life. The spacecraft is equipped with nine different instruments and will complete nearly 50 flybys of Europa, scanning almost the entire moon.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Padi Boyd, NASA astrophysicist and host of the agency’s podcast “Curious Universe,” about the launch and the excitement at NASA. Then, Ira checks in with two scientists who are working on the mission about what they’re excited to learn: Dr. Ingrid Daubar, planetary scientist at Brown University and a Europa Clipper project staff scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Dr. Tracy Becker, planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute and a deputy principal investigator for the ultraviolet spectrograph on the Europa spacecraft.

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Two giant pandas on loan from China have arrived at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. Also, originally from Central Asia, Kernza doesn’t need to be replanted every year, unlike crops such as corn and soybeans.

Pandas Return To Washington, D.C., ZooOn Tuesday, two VIPs (Very Important Pandas) arrived at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, en route to new quarters at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

The arrival marks a new chapter of “panda diplomacy,” which leverages the public’s affection for the cute, charismatic animals to both strengthen US-China ties and fund conservation initiatives. Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist, joins SciFri’s John Dankosky to talk about the giant pandas’ arrival and other stories from the week in science.

Scientists Push For A Lesser-Known Grain Called KernzaOn a recent weekday afternoon, dozens of people filled the cozy taproom at Blue Jay Brewing Company. On tap that day was a fresh creation called New Roots. The American Lager was a hit, with many of the patrons going back to the bar for another glass.

Blue Jay’s owner and brewer, Jason Thompson, was also pleased with the result of this experimental beer, which he described as “earthy, almost nutty,” with a “lingering honey-like sweetness to it.” Those flavors came from his choice to use a novel grain called Kernza for 25% of the 600 pounds of grain needed for the whole brew, he said.

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The Basics Of How Health Misinformation SpreadsHealth misinformation can circulate quickly on social media: false claims about vaccines, ads pushing suspicious-looking supplements, politicians making claims about contraception or abortion that don’t match the science.

As November nears, Science Friday is spotlighting the science that’s shaping the election with a short series about health misinformation.

Ira is joined by Irving Washington, senior vice president and executive director of the Health Misinformation and Trust Initiative at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling, and news organization to provide a primer on the basics of health misinformation; how to identify it, emerging trends and the role of artificial intelligence.

We want to hear from you! Is there a piece of health information that you’ve seen recently that you’re skeptical about? Fill out this form, email us a voice memo to scifri@sciencefriday.com, or leave us a voicemail at 1-646-767-6532.

In the coming weeks we’ll select a couple of topics from our listeners to investigate with the help of a subject matter expert.

Benjamin Franklin And The American Experiment Collide On StageWhen you think of famous scientists of the early United States, you likely think of Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and even the glass harmonica.

He and his son are the subject of the play “Franklinland.” It explores their sometimes contentious relationship, Benjamin Franklin’s accomplishments as a scientist, and how the scientific method can be used to understand the ongoing experiment of the United States. It’s running now until November 3 at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City.

Ira Flatow is joined by the playwright of “Franklinland,” Lloyd Suh, to learn how he joined all of these elements for the stage.

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What exactly is … everything? What is space-time?

At one extreme, you’ve got the weird rules of quantum physics that deal with subatomic particles. At the other extreme, you’ve got the vast expanses of space, such as spinning galaxies and black holes.

By mapping the cosmic microwave background, surveying the distribution of galaxies around the sky, and listening for gravitational waves, researchers are studying the cosmos for clues to the quantum. They hope that by finding patterns in some of these large-scale structures, tiny irregularities involving quantum effects in the earliest days of the universe might be revealed.

Charlie Wood, a staff writer covering physics for Quanta Magazine, has written about some of these space-time mysteries in a special issue. He joins Ira to discuss the nature of space-time and how scientists are trying to decode its physics.

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A common worry among older adults is how their brains and bodies might decline as they age.

A small but fortunate group will live past their 95th birthdays, while staying cognitively sharp and free of major health complications. They’re called “SuperAgers.”

Researchers are working to figure out some of the genetic factors behind SuperAgers’ longevity—and how that knowledge might help the rest of the population live longer and healthier lives.

Ira talks with Dr. Sofiya Milman, director of Human Longevity Studies at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the lead researcher of the SuperAgers Family Study; and one of the study’s participants, Sally Froelich, a 95-year-old New York resident.

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For years, Asheville, North Carolina, has been billed as a “climate haven,” a place safe from the touch of climate change-exacerbated disasters. But last month, Hurricane Helene called that label into question. Some of the worst damage of the storm occurred inland, in Western North Carolina.

Data visualization designer David McConville lived in Asheville for about 20 years, before moving to California.

“Watching people idealize Asheville was a little bit crazy-making,” McConville says. “There were very clear patterns of the combination of the topography and hydrology, weather patterns, and development patterns that were creating these dangers,” he says, referring to the extreme flooding and damage brought on by Hurricane Helene.

Resilience and adaptation for communities hit hard by storms is a huge area of conversation for cities. And for places hit hard consecutively, like Florida’s coast after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, that need is even more pressing. Joining Ira to talk about this is Dr. Jesse Keenan, associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana; and Dr. Jola Ajibade, associate professor of environmental and climate justice at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Hurricane Milton caused a major storm surge, but also a reverse one. And, Lake Michigan's surface temperature has been above average nearly every day this year so far. All five Great Lakes are heating up.

The Science Behind Hurricane MiltonOn October 9, Hurricane Milton made landfall in Siesta Key, Florida, then barrelled across the state. This comes just a couple of weeks after Hurricane Helene devastated parts of the southeastern US. Hurricane Milton dumped up to 18 inches of rain in some places, flooding cars, homes, and other buildings. Several people are confirmed dead. Around 3 million are without power.

Hurricane Milton was expected to cause a 15-foot storm surge, but it appears that the storm surge maxed out at five to six feet. And there wasn’t just a storm surge, but a reverse one.

Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, about some of the science of Hurricane Milton. They also discuss other science stories from the week, including President Biden’s new rule for replacing lead pipes, concerns about the security of genetic data with 23andMe, and how to tell if an elephant is left or right-trunked.

Lake Michigan Swimmers Enjoy ‘Unsettling’ Warm WaterOn a sunny, mid-September afternoon, Olu Demuren took a running start off the concrete ledge just south of Belmont Harbor and leapt into Lake Michigan for the first time.

“I was preparing myself for cold water,” Demuren said. “And this immediately felt very nice.”

The water along Chicago’s lakeshore averaged an unseasonable 71 degrees that day. The weather was picturesque too: clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid-80s. Annelise Rittberg watched their friends from the concrete ledge and said the weather felt “deeply abnormal.”

“While it’s fun to be out here, it’s also unsettling,” Rittberg said.

Lake Michigan is heating up. The lake’s surface temperature has surpassed the running average dating back to 1995 nearly every day this year, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data. And it’s not just one Great Lake. All five are warming. The massive bodies of water, which provide drinking water to more than 30 million people, are among the fastest-warming lakes worldwide, according to the federal government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment.

Read the full story at sciencefriday.com.

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We’re one month away from the presidential election. The campaigns are in high gear, trying to get their messages out, and hoping that those messages will be enough to motivate voters to both go to the polls—and to vote in their favor.

But just how solid are people’s political opinions at this point? Can anyone be swayed at this point by another debate, campaign ad, or stump speech talking point? And how do campaigns judge the mood of the electorate to better position their messages?

Dr. Jon Krosnick, director of the Political Psychology Research Group at Stanford University, joins Ira Flatow to talk about political decision-making, the ways campaigns can influence voters, the effectiveness of polling, and what researchers know about how people make and hold opinions.

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The phrase “go with your gut” is often used to say one should follow their intuition in the face of a big decision. Recent research in the journal Nature Mental Health shows the gut really could have a big impact on mental health and decision-making.

This study shows a clear link between people who handle stressful situations well and certain biological signatures in their microbiomes. Certain metabolites and gene activity in study participants were associated with high emotional regulation and cognition. These more resilient participants also had reduced inflammation and improved gut barrier integrity.

The study builds on previous research that shows the brain and the gut are closely linked, and that a dysregulation in one can lead to a dysregulation in the other. Lead author Dr. Arpana Church, co-director of UCLA’s Microbiome Center and associate professor of medicine, joins Ira to talk about the study. They also discuss how probiotics could someday be a promising treatment for mental health conditions.

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As the surgeon general has stated, we are in a mental health crisis. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. And a major challenge is that depression can be difficult to treat, especially for people who don’t respond well to talk therapy or antidepressants.

But there’s a relatively new technique that seems to have a significant positive impact on people with treatment-resistant depression, even sending many of them into remission. It’s called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and it uses magnets to stimulate certain areas of the brain that play a role in depression.

A team at Stanford developed a protocol for TMS that received FDA clearance in 2022 and, as of this year, it’s covered by Medicare. In a study from 2021, it was shown to improve remission rates for depression by up to 80%, with one patient calling it “a game changer.”

So how does TMS work, and could it change the way we treat depression and other mental illnesses?

Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Nolan Williams, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, where he’s also the director of the Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab. They talk about the advances that Williams’ team made with their SAINT protocol (Stanford Accelerated Intelligent Neuromodulation Therapy), patient experiences with the technology, and potential future applications of this technique.

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The origin of life on Earth has been mulled over by scientists for centuries. We now know that life’s building blocks are RNA, amino acids, and cells. But if life originated from the primordial ooze of early Earth, could that process be unfolding elsewhere in the universe?

The search for life elsewhere in the universe is at the center of the book Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life, by Mario Livio and Jack Szostak. Dr. Livio, an astrophysicist previously with the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates the Hubble Space Telescope, joins Ira to talk about the possibilities of life beyond Earth, and where we would most likely find it.

Read an excerpt of Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life.

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The storm flooded mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, which supply the tech industry with some of the purest quartz in the world. Also, researchers developed a 3D-printable material, inspired by worms, that can act as a Band-Aid for damaged heart and cartilage tissue.

Hurricane Helene’s Damage Could Affect The Global Tech IndustryAfter making landfall on September 26, Hurricane Helene devastated regions in the southeastern US. Over 200 people are confirmed dead so far. About a million people are still without power, and many lack clean water.

As climate change intensifies, hurricanes like Helene are expected to occur more often and be more intense. What’s become very clear in the last few years is that due to the interconnectedness of the modern world, extreme weather in one place can have global implications.

For example, Spruce Pine, North Carolina, home to around 2,200 people, flooded during Hurricane Helene. The town is also home to several mines that produce some of the world’s purest quartz, an ingredient necessary to make solar panels, smartphones, semiconductors, and more.

Ira talks with Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, about this and other science news of the week, including a completed map of a fruit fly’s brain, how scientists in the United Kingdom are screening newborns for rare diseases, and how octopuses and fish are hunting as a team.

A Strong, Stretchy, And Sticky Band-Aid For The HeartThe heart is an impressive organ that has to beat constantly for years. But what happens when heart tissue is damaged? Or when cartilage in joints like our knees wears out? These constantly moving tissues don’t regenerate easily, and there aren’t a lot of great treatment options.

To address these kinds of problems, a team at University of Colorado Boulder invented a new strong, stretchy, and sticky hydrogel material that could act as a Band-Aid to heart or tissue lesions. They were inspired by masses of worms that tangle and untangle themselves, behaving almost as both a solid and liquid. The team was able to replicate that in a molecular structure with the help of a new 3D-printing technique. And it could have applications far beyond medicine, including for manufacturing and improving the 3D-printing process itself. Their research was published in the journal Science, and their lab has filed for a provisional patent for the material.

Dr. Jason Burdick, professor of chemical and biological engineering at CU Boulder’s BioFrontiers Institute, joins Ira Flatow to talk about the new material and how it could improve future tissue and cartilage treatment.

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This summer, the Bureau of Land Management approved seven herbicides to fight invasive plants in the West. Also, when scientists analyzed the swirls in the famous painting, they found Van Gogh depicted forces of nature with startling accuracy.

What Newly Approved Herbicides Could Mean For Federal LandInvasive plants are a big problem across the western US.

Cunning interlopers like cheatgrass, leafy spurge and red brome can outcompete native vegetation, crowd habitats and steal water and other vital soil nutrients.

Of the 245 million acres controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, harmful non-native plants have already infested 79 million acres—an area larger than the states of Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina combined. That’s why the federal agency felt the urgency to approve seven new herbicides to kill invasives on its land nationwide, said Seth Flanigan, a BLM senior invasive species specialist based in Idaho.

“If we don’t remove this now, what is it going to look like 10 years from now?” he said.

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The Hidden Physics In Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’One of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous creations is “The Starry Night,” an oil painting of a quaint French village at night with a blue night sky that dramatically swirls around the yellow stars and moon.

It’s easy to admire this painting as a casual viewer, but if you research fluid dynamics, one thing in particular stands out: those iconic swirls in the sky. To a physicist, they look an awful lot like the swirls that atmospheric turbulence produces. And some researchers have been wondering if Van Gogh’s swirls actually match the mathematical models of turbulence theory.

Well, a team of researchers from China and France set out to analyze all the swirls in “The Starry Night,” and it turns out that Van Gogh had a knack for depicting the forces of nature. Their results were published in the journal Physics Of Fluid.

Guest host Anna Rothschild sits down with Dr. Francois Schmitt, research professor in physics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and co-author of the recent study, to talk about the hidden physics in this famous painting.

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This conversation discusses suicide and suicidal ideation in young people. Please take care while listening. If you or a loved one is thinking about suicide or self-harm, text TALK to 741-741 or call 9-8-8 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

In the United States, suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people aged 10 to 24. One in five high school students seriously considered attempting suicide in 2023, according to the latest data from the CDC.

Doctors, researchers, and mental health professionals have been looking for solutions to support our country’s struggling youth. One place to start is in hospital emergency departments.

How can emergency departments be better equipped to help struggling teens, and potentially save lives?

Guest host Anna Rothschild is joined by Dr. Samaa Kemal, an emergency medicine physician at the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago to discuss her research on the subject.

The following resources are available if you or someone close to you is in need of mental health support:

Call 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Or text TALK to 741-741.
Call 1-800-662-HELP for the SAMHSA National Helpline; they can provide referral and information services for mental health and/or substance use disorder treatment.
Locate additional resources through the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

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Emissions from anesthesia are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases from hospitals. This anesthesiologist wants to change that. And, a cultural anthropologist discusses the Mariana Islands’ long history of colonization and why demilitarization matters for climate progress.

A Major Source Of Greenhouse Gases In Hospitals? AnesthesiaDid you know that some of the gases used in anesthesia are strong greenhouse gases? A few years ago, Seattle Children’s Hospital analyzed its carbon footprint and found that the gases used in anesthesia made up about 7% of the hospital’s total emissions, right behind emissions from heating and power and those from commuting.

Faced with this problem, Dr. Elizabeth Hansen, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Seattle Children’s, took matters into her own hands and slashed the operating room’s emissions. She now helps other hospitals do the same with Project Spruce.

Guest host Anna Rothschild talks with Dr. Hansen about how and why she took on the problem.

Militarization And Environmental Injustice In The Mariana IslandsLet’s take a trip to the Northern Mariana Islands, a string of islands in the Pacific just north of Guam. The islands were sites of major battles during World War II and were captured by the United States in 1944. The US established a military presence across the territory—including building the world’s largest air force base at the time, on an island called Tinian.

The US military never left, and in the 1980s, the Northern Mariana Islands became a US territory. A few years ago, the Pentagon proposed building a bombing range on an island called Pagan, but residents of the islands pushed back.

Dr. Isa Arriola is a cultural anthropologist at Concordia University in Montreal and co-founder of the organization Our Common Wealth 670, based in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands. She’s fought back against the militarization of her home islands, and she talks with guest host Anna Rothschild about how the military presence has affected the people and environment of the Marianas, and why demilitarization needs to be part of climate action.

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If you’re a baby boomer, you may remember the first Earth Day, the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war protests, and the first Pride parade. The list goes on, because the 1960s and 70s were packed with social revolutions. But the organization Third Act has a message for boomers: Your work isn’t done yet.

Third Act empowers folks over the age of 60 to get involved in the climate movement. It aims to leverage older generations’ access to power, money, and life experiences to create change.

Ira Flatow talks with Third Act founder Bill McKibben and lead advisor Akaya Windwood about the importance of including older adults in the climate movement.

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The company is betting big on nuclear energy to meet increasing power needs of data centers and new technologies like AI. Also, new research into a strange fish known as the sea robin finds that leg-like appendages can “taste” prey buried in the sand.

Microsoft Makes Deal To Restart Three Mile IslandThree Mile Island in Pennsylvania has quite a reputation in the world of nuclear energy: One of its reactors suffered a catastrophic partial meltdown in 1979, earning the title of the largest nuclear accident in US history. The failed reactor has been inoperable since the accident, while the other reactor shuttered in 2019.

But now, tech giant Microsoft has made a deal with the nuclear site to reopen Three Mile Island, and purchase all of its generating capacity over the next 20 years. As Big Tech bets big on artificial intelligence, the need for electricity to power data centers is increasing tremendously. Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates is a large investor in nuclear energy.

To help Science Friday celebrate Climate Week NYC, Casey Crownhart, climate reporter for MIT Technology Review joins guest host Anna Rothschild to discuss this and other top climate stories of the week.

These Fish Use Their Legs (Yes, Legs) To TasteYour legs may help you get around, but what if they could also help you sniff out a snack? That’s a trick achieved by a fish called the sea robin. The fish, which lives on the seafloor, has an unusual appearance, with wing-like fins and leg-like appendages that it uses to walk along the ocean bottom. But in work published this week in the journal Current Biology, researchers report that those legs are also chemical sensing organs that can taste for prey buried under the sand.

Dr. Nicholas Bellono, a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, first learned of the unusual fish on a visit to the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where he was planning to obtain squid and octopus for another research project. MBL workers showed Bellono and colleagues the sea robin, and explained that they have a reputation for being able to locate hidden prey—to the point that other organisms will follow the sea robin, hoping to get in on the meal. The intrigued researchers brought some sea robins back to the lab, and began a series of experiments to better understand their prey-sniffing abilities.

Bellono joins guest host Anna Rothschild to talk about the fish, the genetic adaptations that allow it to sense the world through its legs, and the value of serendipity and curiosity-driven research in the scientific world.

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In 2021, Dr. Francis Collins stepped down after a dozen years leading the National Institutes of Health. He had just overseen the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic,in the early days of changing public health guidance as scientists learned more about this new virus. He was also involved in the quickest development of a vaccine in history.

Now, he’s had some time to reflect on how the US arrived at such a divisive place about COVID-19 and vaccines, how trust in science has dwindled, and what we can do about it.

Ira sits down with Dr. Collins to talk about the lessons from his new book, The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith and Trust, and why he decided to speak publicly about his prostate cancer diagnosis.

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Since ChatGPT was released to the public almost three years ago, generative AI chatbots have had many impacts on our society: They played a large role in the recent Hollywood strikes, energy usage is spiking because of them, and they’re having a chilling effect on various writing-related industries.

But they’re also affecting the world of research papers and scientific publishing. They do offer some benefits, like making technical research papers easier to read, which could make research more accessible to the public and also greatly aid non-English speaking researchers.

But AI chatbots also raise a host of new issues. Researchers estimate that a significant amount of papers from the last couple years were at least partially written by AI, and others suspect that they are supercharging the production of fake research papers, which has led to thousands of paper retractions across major journals in recent years. Major scientific journals are struggling with how to set guidelines for generative AI use in research papers, given that so-called AI-writing detectors are not as accurate as they were once thought to be.

So what does the future of scientific publishing look like in a world where AI chatbots are a reality? And how does that affect the level of trust that the public has with science?

Ira Flatow sits down with Dr. Jessamy Bagenal, senior executive editor at The Lancet and adjunct professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to talk about how generative AI is changing the way scientific papers are written, how it’s fueling the fake-paper industry, and how she thinks publishers should adjust their submission guidelines in response.

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Would you be interested in a cookie infused with smog from your favorite city? Maybe a loaf of sourdough made from wheat tainted by wildfires?

Those are just a few of the projects from the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, based in Amsterdam and Portugal, where artists use innovative ingredients to represent environmental crises and imagine what the future of food could look like.

Ira talks with Zack Denfeld, co-founder of the Center for Genomic Gastronomy, about how art and food can help us envision a more sustainable food system.

Read the full story about how artists and chefs are putting ecological crises on the menu.

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Parenting is a tough job. Some days are absolutely overwhelming, balancing a job, a home, and a child’s needs. One thing goes wrong and it’s like a house of cards falling apart. Not to mention, being keenly aware of how the parents around you are doing. Are you keeping up?

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy is paying close attention. His most recent advisory is about parental stress and mental health. It’s been a busy summer for Dr. Murthy. He’s called for a warning label on social media because of its effects on mental health and declared gun violence a public health crisis. Ira talks with the Surgeon General in depth about these latest initiatives.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The ring would have gradually fallen to Earth as meteorites, correlating to a spike of impacts seen in the geological record. Also, a new AI tool can judge whether sand came from a beach, a river, a glacial deposit, or a wind-blown dune.

Earth May Once Have Had A Ring Like SaturnHundreds of millions of years ago, Earth may have looked quite different when viewed from space: Scientists propose it may have had a Saturn-like ring, made up of lots of smaller asteroids.

The new paper, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, proposes that this ring formed around 466 million years ago. A major source of evidence is a band of impact craters near the equator. The researchers also posit the ring would have shaded this equatorial area, possibly changing global temperatures and creating an icehouse period.

Ira speaks to Rachel Feltman, host of the Popular Science podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” about this and other top science stories of the week, including how lizards use bubbles to “scuba dive” underwater, and ancient cave art that possibly shows a long-extinct species.

An AI To Identify The Environment A Grain Of Sand Came FromIf you were given a bucket of sand and asked to determine where it came from, you’d probably have a hard time guessing if it was from a beach, a riverbank, the playground down the street, or a Saharan sand dune.

There are experts who can make a guess at that sort of ID, using a categorization process that takes skill, a scanning electron microscope, and hours of time. Now, however, researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they’ve developed an AI model that can quickly judge whether a sample of sand came from a beach, a river, a glacial deposit, or a wind-blown dune.

That type of identification isn’t just of interest to geologists. Sand is one of the world’s most in-demand resources, second only to water in use. And different applications need different types of sand—for instance, making concrete and mortar requires angular sand for good adhesion and stability. These kinds of needs have given rise to illicit sand mining, sand theft, and sand smuggling. A way of rapidly identifying the origins of a sample of sand could be useful to investigators, or to companies seeking to ensure sustainability goals.

Michael Hasson, a PhD candidate in Stanford’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, joins SciFri’s Charles Bergquist to discuss the new SandAI, and the challenges of tracking grains of sand.

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The heaviest antimatter nucleus to date was spotted in a particle accelerator. It could provide new insights into the nature of matter. And, research indicates different songbird species might intentionally travel together during migration, giving each other a possible boost in survival.

Physicists Create Heaviest Antimatter Nucleus YetAntimatter is one of science’s great mysteries. It is produced all around us for fractions of a second, until it collides with matter, and the particles annihilate one another. But what is it?

Antimatter is just like matter, except for one thing. Its particles have the same mass as ordinary matter, but an opposite charge. For example, an electron has a negative charge, so an anti-electron—called a positron—weighs the same, but has a positive charge.

Antimatter is a natural product of some types of radioactive decay and cosmic ray collisions, but it can also be made in particle colliders here on Earth. But making antimatter particles this way is difficult and expensive—let alone controlling them enough to create an entire anti-atom. NASA estimates that creating a gram of antimatter would cost about $62.5 trillion.

But why does antimatter matter? It may hold the key to understanding one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: why there’s something rather than nothing. Cosmologists say that during the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts. But everything around us today is mostly matter, meaning either that there was an excess of matter created, or that matter and antimatter don’t quite follow the rules physicists expect.

Recently, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider spotted 16 instances of the heaviest exotic antimatter nucleus observed to date: antihyperhydrogen-4.

To explore what this breakthrough means for antimatter research, SciFri producer Charles Bergquist talks to Dr. Jamie Dunlop, associate department chair for nuclear physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Different Bird Species May Team Up For MigrationThis season, billions of birds will take to the skies as they flock to their wintering grounds. With so many different species on the move, they’re bound to run into each other. A new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that this mixing and mingling might not be coincidental.

In fact, different bird species could have their own social networks that might boost each others’ survival.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with lead author Dr. Joely DeSimone, migration ecologist at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Appalachian Laboratory, about untangling avian relationships.

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SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire, assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to help answer our listeners’ top questions about the updated COVID-19 vaccines.

This Q&A, which includes questions from our audience members, has been adapted from our interview with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.

If I’ve already had COVID and it wasn’t so bad, why should I even bother with this new booster?

There’s always a chance that COVID-19 will cause more than the sniffles, or that you could end up in the emergency room—especially for older people. Why take that chance when you have the option to go to your local CVS and, in many cases, get a free vaccine that has been proven to decrease your chances of more severe disease?

My hope is that as time progresses, people become more comfortable with the idea of getting seasonal vaccinations for COVID-19 along with flu.

Is the new COVID-19 vaccine one shot?

Yes.

Read the full Q&A at sciencefriday.com.

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Part of the reason it’s difficult to talk about climate change is that it can be hard to see a long-term positive outcome for people and the planet. But Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and co-founder of the Urban Ocean Lab, argues that to prevent the worst effects of climate change, we have to start by asking ourselves, what if we get it right?

She’s the author of a new book with that same title, What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures. In the book, she poses that question to experts in oceans, farming, architecture, finance, and even Hollywood to find out what getting it right looks like in their own fields and what those solutions could look like for the rest of us.

Read an excerpt from What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures.

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Kids and teens are back in school, and the battle over the smartphones in their pockets is becoming more prominent. For years, teachers and parents have lamented about the distractions these devices cause in and out of the classroom. Last year, the US surgeon general declared a youth mental health crisis, citing social media as a significant factor, and more than 40 US states are suing Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, arguing that the company intentionally manipulated their apps to addict teens and kids.

A 2021 survey showed that 76% of US public schools prohibit cellphones. Seven states have implemented bans, and 14 more recently introduced similar legislation.

To parents and educators, it might seem that phones and social media are bad for kids and bad for learning. But research shows that the reality is more complicated, with some suggesting that a blanket smartphone ban isn’t necessarily the solution.

So what are the best ways to approach school phone bans? What do we know about the psychological effects of smartphones on kids and teens? And why does this research tend to defy simple answers?

To answer these questions, guest host and SciFri producer Kathleen Davis is joined by Dr. Emily Weinstein, co-director of the Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard University, and the author of Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing), and Sandy Roberts, education program manager at Science Friday and former middle school teacher.

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SpaceX Crew Completes First Citizen SpacewalkBig news in the world of commercial space flight: On Thursday morning, Jared Iasaacman and Sarah Gillis, members of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission, became the first civilians to complete a spacewalk. The mission is a collaboration between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Isaacman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur. While outside the spacecraft, the two crew members conducted mobility tests on their spacesuits.

SciFri Producer Kathleen Davis talks with Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos Magazine about this and other top science news of the week including deadly cholera outbreaks, germs at 10,000 ft, and Japanese eels that can escape a fish stomach through their gills.

The First Successful Whole-Eye Transplant, Over A Year LaterIn May of 2023, there was a massive advance in the world of organ transplantation: the first whole human eye and partial face transplant. The man at the center of this procedure is 46-year-old Aaron James, who sustained significant facial injuries from a high-voltage work accident.

At the time, it was unclear just how successful the operation would be. Previous tests in animals had resulted in shrinkage of the transplanted eye, if not outright rejection. But now, more than a year after the transplant, a new paper in the journal JAMA outlines the success of this first-of-its-kind operation. While James cannot see out of his new eye, there is blood flow, normal pressure, and a retinal response to light.

Guest host Kathleen Davis speaks with Dr. Daniel Ceradini, director of research at NYU Langone’s Department of Plastic Surgery and first author of the JAMA study. They discuss the implications this success could have for the future of eye surgery, and the dramatic improvements in James’ quality of life.

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Samples of 2.5 billion-year-old mantle rocks found at spreading ocean ridges could put bounds on models of how the planet formed. And, researchers decreased the amount of lignin in poplar tree wood, making it stronger and slower to deteriorate.

‘Time Capsule’ Rocks Provide Clues About Earth’s MantleIf you’re looking to really learn about the history of our planet, look to geology. Ancient rocks can provide a time capsule of the conditions in which they formed. But even the geologic record has its limits—rocks and minerals get weathered, buried, heated, melted, and recycled over time—so geologists need to search out rare super-old geologic holdouts to tell about the earliest times.

Writing in the journal Nature in July, researchers described what they can learn about the chemical history of Earth’s mantle, the geologic layer beneath the planet’s crust, from studying 2.5 billion-year-old rocks collected at spreading ocean ridges. They found that these unusual mantle rocks didn’t necessarily have to have been formed in a world with less available oxygen, but could have been produced just by the mantle layer being hotter long ago.

Dr. Elizabeth Cottrell, chair of the Department of Mineral Sciences at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, joins Ira to talk about the research and why a collection of old rocks is an important part of international scientific infrastructure.

Genetically Engineering Stronger Poplar Tree WoodTrees play a big role in the fight against climate change: They can soak up carbon dioxide from the air and store it for centuries in the form of biomass. But it turns out that trees could be doing even more.

In 2023, Science Friday covered how the company Living Carbon had genetically engineered poplar trees to have a more efficient photosynthesis process. This allowed the trees to grow twice as fast and store 30% more carbon biomass than regular poplars, making them ideal for the carbon credit market.

Recently, researchers at the University of Maryland also experimented with genetically modifying poplar trees. But this time, they had a different goal in mind. They modified the tree to reduce the amount of lignin in its wood. This made the wood stronger without the need for harsh chemical processing. It also slowed the deterioration rate of the wood, which allows it to store carbon for longer periods.

To explain more about this “super wood,” SciFri guest host Sophie Bushwick is joined by the lead plant geneticist on the study, Dr. Yiping Qi, associate professor at Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at the University of Maryland.

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If you’ve ever seen a cute cow video on social media, you might notice they seem to have a lot in common with dogs. They can wag their tails, they love to gobble down tasty treats, and if you’re lucky, they might flop over for a nice belly or neck scratch.

Cows are clearly emotional animals, but how smart are they exactly? That’s the question that neuroscientist and author Dr. Gregory Berns had when he and his wife moved from Atlanta to the Georgia countryside in 2020, and started raising cows of their own. And to better understand them, he applied his years of experience researching the brains of animals, like dogs and dolphins.

He joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about his new book, Cowpuppy: An Unexpected Friendship And A Scientist’s Journey Into The Secret World Of Cows.

Read an excerpt of Cowpuppy: An Unexpected Friendship And A Scientist’s Journey Into The Secret World Of Cows.

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Shark fishing is alive and well, but the fishermen who do it are increasingly prioritizing conservation. And, an unknown ant was spotted in Manhattan in 2011, and it quickly spread through New York City. We now know what it is.

Fishing For—And Saving—Sharks off the Jersey ShoreAt an undisclosed beach at 5:30 p.m. in New Jersey, shark fisherman AJ Rotondella and two clients wait for beachgoers to leave. Once the beach is empty, Rotondella cuts up some chunks of fish as bait, and casts lines into the water.

“I shark fish, shark fish, shark fish, eat pizza, and shark fish … that’s pretty much it,” Rotondella said. “Waking up in the morning … wide open ocean, anything could be anywhere at any time. And I think that’s fascinating. No matter how long you’ve done this, you’ve never seen it all.”

He has always loved fishing, and got into shark fishing 13 years ago, when his brother told him they could catch sharks from the beach. They caught two on their first day and could not catch another shark for the rest of the year.

“That really got me interested because I knew it was possible, but I couldn’t do it again,” he said. “I … absolutely obsessed over this.”

But Rotondella had a steep learning curve ahead of him. By trial and error, sometimes staying on a beach for multiple days, he learned how to read the tides, water temperatures, currents, and even phases of the moon to figure out how to track the sharks.

Read the full story at sciencefriday.com.

Scientists Identify The ‘ManhattAnt’ Spreading Across NYCNew York City is home to more than 8 million people. But there’s another massive population below their feet: ants.

In 2011, when surveying ant populations on Broadway and Times Square, researchers got quite a surprise: an unidentified species of ant, which was soon dubbed the “ManhattAnt.” Since then, it has become the second-most populous ant species in New York City.

Earlier this year, the first study on this unidentified species was released. It concluded that this species, Lasius emarginatus, likely hitchhiked from Europe to the US. Though their populations have grown tremendously, it’s unclear how the ants are interacting with New York’s native ants.

Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to discuss this ant species is Dr. Clint Penick, assistant professor of insect ecology at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama.

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You might be familiar with a gigabyte, one of the most popular units of measure for computer storage. A two-hour movie is 3 gigabytes on average, while your phone can probably store 256 gigabytes.

But did you know that your body also stores information in its own way?

We see this in DNA, which has the instructions needed for an organism to develop, survive, and reproduce. In computing storage terms, each cell of our body contains about 1.5 gigabytes worth of data. And with about 30 trillion cells in our bodies, we could theoretically store about 45 trillion gigabytes—also known as 45 zettabytes—which is equivalent to about one fourth of all the data in the world today.

Recently, a group of researchers was able to develop a technology that allows computer storage and processing using DNA’s ability to store information by turning genetic code into binary code. This technology could have a major impact on the way we do computing and digital storage.

To explain more about this technology, SciFri guest host Sophie Bushwick is joined by two professors from North Carolina State University’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Dr. Albert Keung and Dr. Orlin Velev.

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ESA officials said it was only the ninth time an asteroid was spotted before reaching Earth’s atmosphere. And, as the climate changes and summer temperatures linger, educators are increasingly worried about keeping kids safe from heat exhaustion.

An Asteroid Impact, Spotted In AdvanceOn Wednesday, an asteroid named 2024 RW1 burned up in the atmosphere above the Philippines. As asteroids go, it was not especially notable. Astronomers say objects the size of 2024 RW1, which was about a meter in diameter, encounter the Earth about every two weeks. Due to local weather conditions, not many ground observers were able to see the fireball produced by the impact on the atmosphere. But astronomers on the Catalina Sky Survey project had observed the asteroid a few hours earlier as it approached the planet, and were able to give a prediction for where and when it was likely to enter the atmosphere. European Space Agency officials said it was only the ninth time people were able to spot an asteroid in advance of Earth impact.

SciFri’s Charles Bergquist joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about that astronomical event and other stories from the week in science, including work on gold nugget geophysics, a potential advance in pain medications, and the mystery of a missing pregnant shark.

Extreme Heat Is Making Learning—And Teaching—More DifficultKids across the United States just kicked off a new school year. But in recent years, summer weather has spilled over into fall, with temperatures staying hotter than normal through September and even into October. Sitting in a sweltering classroom can make learning difficult—and even dangerous.

A recent story in The 19th describes how learning and teaching have become more challenging as the climate heats up. Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with The 19th reporter Jessica Kutz about her reporting and what solutions might be on the horizon.

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A new study suggests that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs may have originated from the outer parts of the solar system. And, invasive spotted lanternflies often lay eggs on vehicles and shipped goods. Now researchers are training dogs to sniff them out before they hatch.

Asteroid That Killed The Dinosaurs Was A Carbon-Rich RockAround 66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into the Earth, blasted debris everywhere, plummeted the planet into cold darkness, and ended the age of dinosaurs. (Though birds survived, of course.)

It might be the most famous disaster in our planet’s history, but scientists still have plenty of questions about it. Like, what was the asteroid made of? And where did it come from? A new study in the journal Science offers up some long-awaited answers.

Guest host Rachel Feltman speaks with study author Dr. Mario Fischer-Gödde, a geochemist at the University of Cologne in Germany.

Training Dogs To Stop The Spread Of Spotted LanternfliesIn 10 years, the spotted lanternfly has gone from non-existent in the U.S. to being established in at least 16 states. They’re quite distinct: The adults measure about an inch long, they’ve got striking red and black markings, and are, as the name suggests, spotted. And they’ve got a worrisome tendency to chow down on certain plants, including grapevines, and some fruit and hardwood trees.

Spotted lanternflies are able to spread so effectively in part because they tend to lay eggs on things that travel from state to state: shipping supplies, vehicles, and lumber.

There’s a new tactic to detect spotted lanternfly eggs before they can hatch: training dogs to sniff them out. Guest host Rachel Feltman speaks to two researchers behind this project: Dr. Nathan Hall, director of the Canine Olfaction Research and Education Laboratory at Texas Tech in Lubbock, and Dr. Erica Feuerbacher, associate professor of applied animal welfare and behavior at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Read the full story here.

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Eels have fascinated humans for thousands of years, even captivating big thinkers like Aristotle and Freud. Despite having been around for some 200 million years, eels are still rather mysterious creatures. For example, scientists still aren’t sure exactly how they spawn.

But those unanswered questions haven’t stopped humans from wanting to eat them. So much so that they’re now endangered in some areas—and a lucrative criminal enterprise has risen up to poach baby eels from the wild.

Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of Slippery Beast: A True Crime History, with Eels about her journey into the wild world of eels.

Read an excerpt of Slippery Beast: A True Crime History, with Eels.

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Did you know that almost every star you see in the night sky has at least one planet orbiting it?

Here’s something even wilder: There are some celestial bodies that look a lot like planets, but just float around freely in the cosmos, unattached to any particular star. They’re called rogue worlds. With data from the James Webb Space Telescope, astrophysicists just identified six right here in our own Milky Way galaxy.

So what can we learn from these rogue worlds? Can they teach us anything about how stars and planets are formed? Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with two authors of the recent study: Assistant Research Scientist Dr. Adam Langeveld, and Professor of Physics and Astronomy Dr. Ray Jayawardhana, both of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

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You might have noticed that the seasons don’t quite behave like they used to. In some places, fall and spring seem to fly by, while winter and summer are much longer and feel more intense. This shift is known as season creep, where the timing of the seasons starts to shift.

This phenomenon is mostly due to climate change creating temperature imbalances and throwing weather patterns off kilter year-round. And it can cause problems for plants and animals as their natural cycles fall out of sync. But what does it mean for human behavior?

Seasonal Affective Disorder, often called seasonal depression, tends to hit during the cold, dark winter months. But as the seasons start changing more quickly and unpredictably, the shift could have a wide range of effects on us that we’re only just beginning to understand.

SciFri guest host Rachel Feltman is joined by Dr. Michael Varnum, social psychology area head and associate professor at Arizona State University, to discuss these questions.

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Several states have reported cases of the rare but serious mosquito-borne illness eastern equine encephalitis. And, the new sci-fi movie "Slingshot," about an astronaut’s mental breakdown, prompts questions about how to prepare humans for long-term space travel.

Mosquito-Borne Diseases Are Spreading As Temperatures RiseThis week, a New Hampshire man died of eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), a rare but extremely serious disease caused by a mosquito-borne virus. Human cases of EEE have also been reported in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Vermont, causing some municipalities to step up mosquito control efforts or attempt to limit outdoor activities during peak mosquito times at dawn and dusk.

Other mosquito-borne diseases are on the rise as well. Oropouche fever, a viral disease typically found in South America, has been spotted in the US—and in Brazil, health officials are reporting an 800% increase in the disease. Dengue fever, also spread by mosquitoes, has been increasing across Europe. Experts attribute all the surges to climate change, which has brought warmer, wetter weather that has allowed mosquito populations to thrive and expand their ranges.

Sophie Bushwick of New Scientist joins guest host Rachel Feltman to talk about climate, mosquitoes, and disease, and how communities are trying to curb the spread. They also tackle other stories from the week in science, including a puzzling result in a dark matter search, how fruit flies change their threat perception during courtship, and investigations into how marmoset monkeys call each other by name.

‘Slingshot’ Imagines A Yearslong Space Mission Gone WrongThe new movie “Slingshot,” a sci-fi thriller about a yearslong mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, is out in theaters today. It follows the crew members, played by Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne, and Tomer Capone, as they start to unravel, highlighting how long, lonely missions can put astronauts’ well-being in peril.

While the movie is certainly a work of science fiction, it does remind us that a lot can go wrong in space, both physically and mentally. So as humans get closer to embarking on long missions to places like Mars and beyond, how are real space agencies thinking about keeping them happy and safe?

Science Friday’s digital producer of engagement Emma Gometz sat down with “Slingshot” director Mikael Håfström, and former NASA organizational psychologist Dr. Kelley Slack, to answer those questions and more.

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Your teeth don’t just chew your food—they connect you to the deepest of deep history on Earth. Teeth have existed, in some form, for half a billion years, making them more than 250 million years older than dinosaurs. They came before the evolution of warm bloodedness, eggs, and even limbs. From that very first set of chompers emerged a bewildering and diverse group of teeth, including narwhal tusks, sharks’ pearly teeth, snake fangs, and, of course, ours.

Now teeth are the subject of a new book called Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth from Hagfish to Humans. Guest host Maggie Koerth talks with zoologist and author Dr. Bill Schutt about how teeth evolved, why they’re so neat, and what we can learn from studying them.

Read an excerpt of Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth from Hagfish to Humans.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the maternal mortality rate in the United States is very high compared to other wealthy countries: About 22.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. This is on par with China and Iran, based on UNICEF data.

So why is the US maternal mortality rate so high? It may have to do with how we fill out death certificates.

A study from earlier this year found that misfiling of information in death certificates may be inflating the numbers. The study authors concluded that the US maternal mortality rate was actually half of the CDC-reported rate—about 10.4 per 100,000 live births—which is in line with countries like Canada and the United Kingdom.

But if death certificates can skew maternal mortality statistics by such a huge margin, what else could they be influencing? And how does our system for filling out death certificates work?

To answer these questions, guest host Maggie Koerth is joined by Dr. Robert Anderson, chief of the statistical analysis and surveillance branch at National Center for Health Statistics.

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There’s a phenomenon known as the “overview effect,” a changed perspective some people experience after seeing the Earth from space. Retired astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman says that for her, it was a sense of home and connection.

“First of all, I just don’t feel that far away,” she said. “I feel like home is bigger than we thought and I just happened to be the one of the furthest out people. But the overwhelming sort of sentiment that I have is if only everyone knew how connected they could be, there’s literally nothing we couldn’t solve.”

Coleman flew on two space shuttle missions, spent 159 days on board the International Space Station, and operated the robotic arm during the deployment of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Her new book is Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change.

She joins Ira to talk about her experiences in space and some of the challenges she faced in getting to orbit, from selection to training to the problem of obtaining a properly-fitting space suit.

Read an excerpt of Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change.

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Sequoia National Park is largely designated as wilderness. That complicates efforts to protect its iconic trees from worsening wildfires. Also, archaeologists keep finding older and older cave art. Here’s what it could tell us about how humans evolved over time.

Protecting Sequoias From Wildfire Raises Tricky QuestionsSequoia National Park in California is known for its towering, iconic sequoia trees, some of which are thought to be thousands of years old. Severe wildfires fueled by climate change and a long history of fire suppression have put these trees at risk. One solution to this problem is to plant new sequoias. But an interesting debate has sparked between those in favor of this and those against it.

The vast majority of the park is officially considered “wilderness,” a federal designation that describes an area “untrammeled by man.” This concept of “untrammeled” has become more complicated in the age of climate change: Some people argue that it means humans shouldn’t intervene, even when the ecosystem is changing because of human-made climate change.

Guest host Maggie Koerth speaks with Marissa Ortega-Welch, host and producer of the “How Wild” podcast from KALW and NPR. The first episode of this podcast, “Untrammeled,” highlights this debate.

What Newly Discovered Cave Art Tells Us About Human CreativityIn July, researchers discovered the oldest known cave art. It was found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, and it shows three human-like figures and a wild pig. The painting was dated at 51,200 years old—5,000 years older than any other known cave art.

The finding continues a trend of researchers unearthing older and older examples of human-made art, including those found outside of Spain and Southern France, where most cave art discoveries have been made.

Guest host Maggie Koerth is joined by Dr. Isobel Wisher, a postdoctoral researcher with the Evolution of Early Symbolic Behavior project at Aarhus University in Denmark, to discuss how this field of archeology has changed over the years, how new technology is making these ancient cave paintings more accessible to the public, and what they can tell us about the human experience.

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A new study measuring microplastics in organs of the recently deceased found that about two dozen brain samples were 0.5% plastic by weight. Also, having an IUD inserted in the uterus is extremely painful for some people. The CDC now recommends that doctors use local anesthetics.

Study Finds A Staggering Amount Of Plastic In Human BrainsIt only takes a quick look at our streets and waterways to be reminded that plastic pollution is a big problem. But that’s just the plastic that we can see. An increasing amount of scientific literature points to microplastics accumulating inside our bodies, particularly in organs.

A recent preprint published by the National Institutes of Health found a staggering amount of microplastics in livers, kidneys, and brains of recently deceased cadavers. The brains, however, were the biggest shock: They had 10 to 20 times more microplastics than the other organs studied. Twenty-four of the brain samples measured were found to be about 0.5% plastic by weight.

Joining guest host Maggie Koerth is Tim Revell, executive editor of New Scientist based in London. The two discuss this and other top stories of the week, including a possible explanation for an “alien” radio signal, a look into how orb spiders use fireflies to lure other insects, and a study that says playing video games is good for you, actually.

CDC Updates Guidelines For Managing Pain From IUD InsertionThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced updated guidelines for managing pain from inserting a popular form of birth control called an intrauterine device, or IUD. The recommendations now advise doctors to consider using local anesthetics like lidocaine to help manage patients’ pain.

An IUD is a small T-shaped device that is passed through the vagina and cervix and placed in the uterus, where it can remain for several years. Figures vary, but this insertion process can be very painful for roughly 10%-20% of patients. In recent years there’s been an outpouring of patients speaking out on social media about just how painful their IUD insertions were. Many people have recounted how their doctors did not provide anything to help mitigate their pain or, in some cases, dismissed their experiences altogether.

Guest host Maggie Koerth talks with Dr. Beverly Gray, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University to discuss the significance of these new guidelines.

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It’s been a hot and rainy summer in many parts of the US, and it’s been hard to spend as much time in nature as many of us would like. Heat waves and unpredictable weather have sometimes made it riskier to be outside. Maybe you’ve chosen an easier hike, or doubled up on water bottles, or stayed inside when you’d much rather be outdoors with friends and family.

If you’ve been feeling apathetic about the outdoors, a new book calledForest Walking, Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America might be a helpful read. Co-authors Peter Wohlleben, a forester and conservation advocate, and Jane Billinghurst, an editor, author, and translator, teach readers how to engage with their local forested areas in a deeper way. And it’s what we’re reading for September’s SciFri Book Club.

Diana Plasker, Science Friday’s senior experiences manager, sat down with the authors to talk about how to decode nature’s subtle signs and why it’s important to use all five senses when exploring your surroundings.

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The space elevator has been a staple of science fiction for decades, from The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke to the Apple TV show “Foundation.” But the work and theories to make it a reality have been in development since the late 19th century.

It’s a simple concept: Imagine a long cable, stretching from the Earth’s surface to a satellite locked in orbit 22,000 miles high. It would work like elevators here on Earth, enabling us to send things—and people—up into space. And it would make the need for the expensive rockets we use today obsolete.

Although it has never been considered feasible due to the exorbitant cost and the engineering challenges it poses, the idea refuses to go away.

One of Japan’s biggest construction companies, the Obayashi Corporation, which built the Tokyo Sky Tree, had plans to build a space elevator in 2025 but has reportedly delayed that goal.

So what are the hurdles that keep us from building it? And why does it seem that the space elevator is always 25 years away? Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Dennis Wright, president of the International Space Elevator Consortium to talk about the feasibility of this megaproject.

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A new potential Alzheimer’s therapy uses 40-hertz frequencies of light and sound to stimulate the brain. Research applying this treatment to mice showed a substantial decrease in amyloid plaques, a key biomarker for the disease, and an improvement in cognitive function. Clinical trials testing the efficacy of this method in humans are underway.

But how exactly does this treatment work? Could it be a game changer in Alzheimer’s patients? And what potential does it have for other degenerative diseases, like multiple sclerosis?

Ira talks with Dr. Li-Huei Tsai, professor of neuroscience and director of Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, about her work developing this therapy.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci has a long history with Science Friday. Ira first met him in the early 1980s while covering the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He has been a frequent guest on the program, discussing everything from the common cold to SARS, food allergies to Ebola, and malaria to the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

After leading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, Fauci stepped down in December 2022. But he certainly hasn’t disappeared from the public eye. He’s been called to testify regularly before Congress and he’s written a new book, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service. He joins Ira for a wide-ranging discussion of AIDS, COVID-19, public health vulnerabilities, and his new post-government role as a teacher.

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Data from the Mars InSight lander points to the presence of liquid water underneath its crust. Also, some national and state parks are changing the way they open up campsite reservations online to make them more accessible to everyone.

Scientists Find Strong Evidence For Liquid Water On MarsScientists discovered that there could be oceans’ worth of liquid water hidden underneath Mars’ surface. More than 3 billion years ago, Mars had lakes, rivers, and maybe even oceans on its surface. It was very different from the arid red planet we know today.

But the question remains—when Mars’ atmosphere changed, where did all that water go? This discovery could offer up new clues and possibly spur on the search for life on Mars.

Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, about this discovery and other science news of the week, including why the WHO declared mpox a global health emergency, the microbiome of your microwave, a green-boned dinosaur named Gnatalie, and how love is in the air for brown tarantulas.

Releasing Campsite Reservations In Waves Makes Booking FairerBack in 2022, Science Friday discussed how campsites in state and national parks were virtually impossible to reserve, unless you had a lot of time on your hands and knew exactly when those reservations were going online. Research had shown that the people able to reserve these sites were often wealthy, educated, and white, leaving lots of other people out of the fun of camping.

But two years later, the same team that found those results says there’s good news: Many state and federal campgrounds have changed how their booking windows work, and as a result, camping has become more equitable.

For example, Saddlehorn Campground near Grand Junction, Colorado, was identified as a campground with an inequitable reservation system in a 2022 study. After its publication, campground managers reached out to the study authors to see how they could do better.

“They’ve created what I would call the gold standard in an equitable recreation rationing spectrum for these campsites,” said Dr. Will Rice, assistant professor of outdoor recreation and wildland management at the University of Montana in Missoula.

This method is to release campsites in waves: Some become available six months in advance, some two weeks in advance, and some day-of. This allows more flexibility for people to book, and is an easy fix on the part of the campgrounds.

Rice joins Ira Flatow to talk about these advancements. Since his first appearance on Science Friday, Rice has testified before Congress about the importance of camping reservation equity, and has helped both federal and state campgrounds change their booking reservation windows.

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To gaze upon a full T. rex skeleton is to be transported back in time. Dinosaur fossils are key to understanding what these prehistoric creatures looked like, how they moved, and where they lived.

But there’s one type of dinosaur fossil that’s sometimes overlooked: poop. Its scientific name is coprolite. These fossilized feces are rarer than their boney counterparts, but they’re key to better understanding dino diets and ecosystems.

This all raises an important question: How scientists know if something is fossilized dino poop or just a rock?

At Science Friday Live in Boulder, Ira talks with Dr. Karen Chin, paleontologist and professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder to answer that question and much more.

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Solar holds great promise as a clean energy solution, as the sun is an incredibly abundant resource, and panels can be placed unobtrusively on roofs and in fields. And solar panel technology has advanced quite a bit over the past few decades: panels have become less expensive, more efficient, and more widely used. Panels also generally fare well, considering that they’re outside in inclement weather year after year.

Recent advancements with perovskite solar cells—a type of cell whose name refers to the structure of a compound it contains—have many clean energy enthusiasts excited. Perovskite solar cells are a thin, flexible technology that can even be painted onto a structure and conduct electricity. Much of the work on these has been conducted at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) based in Golden, Colorado.

At Science Friday Live in Boulder, Colorado, Ira sat down with two solar experts from NREL, Dr. Joseph Berry and Dr. Laura Schelhas, to discuss perovskite solar cell advancements and the future of this clean energy technology.

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It’s become clear to farmers and home gardeners alike that climate change is affecting the gardening landscape, literally. The climate is warming, pests are moving into different regions, and there’s a growing need for vegetable varieties that are resilient to the stresses of this new age.

In the world of organic farming, the job of creating those new varieties falls to a plant breeder: someone who, often painstakingly, crosses plants until they create a new variety. Dr. Jim Myers, one of the most accomplished plant breeders in the country, has lots of experience with this.

Myers created the Indigo Rose tomato, a strikingly purple variety with the same antioxidants as blueberries. He also created the green bean cultivar predominantly used by Oregon producers, and is debuting two new varieties of low-heat habanero peppers next month, dubbed “Mild Thing” and “Notta Hotta.”

Myers joins Ira Flatow from Corvallis, Oregon, where he’s a professor of agricultural science at Oregon State University. They discuss his decades-long career in plant breeding and what he sees as the biggest challenges for the plant breeders of the future.

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On July 17, Apex the stegosaurus was sold at Sothebys in New York City for a record $44.6 million. The buyer was billionaire Ken Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, who says he plans to loan the fossil to American institutions for display.

But despite Griffin’s statement, some paleontologists aren’t too happy about the trend of fossils going up for auction.

The sale of dinosaur fossils has become more and more profitable in recent years. Eight out of the ten most expensive fossils have been sold in the last four years. This trend of rising sale prices leaves museums and research institutions unable to pay for fossils that could benefit paleontological research.

Paleontologists fear that as more and more fossils become privately owned, the availability of fossils for research and even access to dig sites might decrease or be restricted.

SciFri guest host and producer Kathleen Davis is joined by Dr. Steve Brusatte, professor of paleontology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland to talk about the potential scientific impacts of privatizing and selling fossils.

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The Boeing capsule is having issues with its thrusters and cannot bring astronauts back to Earth. Also, move over, Farmer’s Almanac. A more accurate long-term weather forecast could be on the horizon.

Boeing’s Starliner Leaves Astronauts Stuck On The Space StationIn another blow to Boeing’s Starliner program, which is meant to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, NASA announced Wednesday that the troubled spacecraft would not be able to take astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore back to Earth due to issues with its thrusters.

The two astronauts arrived at the International Space Station in June for a mission that was supposed to last eight days. But with the current problems, the pair might be stuck on the space station, where Starliner remains docked, until early next year. NASA is considering bringing them back in an upcoming SpaceX Dragon mission.

Ira Flatow is joined by Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, who breaks down this and other top science stories this week, including how the Olympic Games are adjusting to abnormally high temperatures in France, why the EPA banned a widely used weedkiller, and what the moon’s atmosphere is made of.

Could We Get Weather Forecasts Years—Or A Decade—In Advance?Access to weather forecasts has been made easier than ever with the advent of smartphones. Most of the time, we can get accurate information about weather for the next few hours up through the next few days. But a week or two out, those predictions get less reliable.

In the near future, it may be possible to get accurate weather forecasts weeks, months, or even a decade ahead of schedule. While this sounds like science fiction, researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) are working on this very challenge.

Earth system predictions, as the field is called, combines a variety of factors including atmospheric conditions, ocean currents, and even what’s happening in the soil to form predictions. These forecasts are in high demand as the climate changes, particularly as farmers need more information about incoming heat and precipitation. There’s even the possibility that Earth systems predictions could help regions prepare for dangerous natural hazards well ahead of time.

At Science Friday Live in Boulder, Colorado, Ira sat down with two NCAR scientists, Dr. Yaga Richter and Dr. Jerry Meehl about their work in this field.

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It may seem like everyone is either getting COVID-19 this summer, or knows someone who has. That’s because for the fourth year in a row, COVID cases are experiencing a summer surge.

The CDC now tracks COVID-19 mostly through wastewater and found that viral activity has multiplied more than four times from the beginning of May to now. The CDC classifies the viral activity level as “high.”

So what’s behind this surge? And why does it keep happening in the summer?

SciFri’s John Dankosky talks with Jessica Malaty Rivera, infectious disease epidemiologist and science communicator at the de Beaumont Foundation, about what’s behind the surge and how to stay safe.

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New research suggests that polymetallic nodules found 13,000 feet deep produce “dark oxygen” by electrolyzing water. Also, at higher altitudes, the air is less dense, which makes it harder for birds in flight to generate lift. The turkey vulture has a solution.

Deep-Sea ‘Nodules’ May Produce Oxygen, Study FindsAn international team of researchers recently discovered that some 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, oxygen may be produced through natural electrolysis. The group found that small lumps called polymetallic nodules at the bottom of the ocean appeared to act as geo batteries, producing enough electricity to break down water and make oxygen.

That observation challenges the idea that photosynthesis is necessary to produce enough oxygen for living organisms. The researchers hypothesize that this could be a source of oxygen for deep-sea creatures. But while it gives some answers as to how life can thrive at the bottom of the sea, it also raises a lot of new questions.

Science Friday guest host and producer Charles Bergquist is joined by the lead electrochemist of the study, Dr. Franz Geiger, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, to answer some of these questions.

One Bird’s Physics Trick For Flying At High AltitudesIf you’ve ever taken a trip to a higher elevation, you know that the air gets thinner as you go up. If you’re not acclimated to the altitude, it can feel harder to breathe. That thinner air also makes it more difficult for birds and airplanes to fly, because it’s harder to produce the lift forces in thinner air. But it turns out that turkey vultures have a way of dealing with that problem.

Researchers observed turkey vultures in flight at different altitudes and found that rather than flapping harder or more rapidly to deal with decreased lift, the turkey vulture exploits the lower drag in thinner air to fly faster, using increased speed to help balance the lift equation. Dr. Jonathan Rader, a postdoctoral research associate in biology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and an author of a report on this research published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, joins SciFri’s Charles Bergquist to explain how flying things work to adapt to different flight conditions.

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One of the hottest fields in astronomy right now is the search for exoplanets. NASA’s Exoplanet Archive currently lists over 5,700 confirmed planets orbiting distant stars.

And more discoveries will be on the way.

PLATO, which stands for PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars, is a satellite made by the European Space Agency that will help put more exoplanets on the map. Scheduled for launch in late 2026, it will look at around 200,000 sun-like stars to categorize them and the planets that orbit them.

Science Friday guest host and producer Charles Bergquist is joined by one of the scientists working on the telescope, Dr. Suzanne Aigrain, professor of astrophysics at Oxford University, to learn more about PLATO and the future of deep space exploration.

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“Cancer” is a dreaded word in the doctor’s office. But about 40% of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during our lives, the most common being breast, prostate, and lung cancer, according to the National Institutes of Health.

But in the last few decades, major progress has been made in the world of cancer treatment and prevention. Cancer death rates have decreased by about 30% over the last quarter century, with some of the largest decreases seen in lung, melanoma, and myeloma cancers. The Biden administration’s Cancer Moonshot program aims to reduce the number of cancer deaths by at least 50% by 2050.

Early detection methods like mammograms and colonoscopies have improved outcomes for many types of cancer, and new treatment options, like cancer vaccines, immunotherapy, and targeted genetic therapies, have shown promising early results. And the breakthroughs made from the development of the mRNA covid vaccines are bringing even more promise for hard-to-treat cancers.

Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Emperor of all Maladies: The Biography of Cancer, joins guest host John Dankosky to give a broad update on the progress made in cancer treatment and prevention. They also discuss the role AI can play in new breakthroughs, and why some cancers are still particularly difficult to treat.

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The University of Hawaiʻi study will be the largest of its kind to investigate the health and social impacts of the Maui wildfires. Also, fiberglass is washing up on Nantucket’s shores, and residents are concerned about the long-term environmental impact of this debris.

Hawaiʻi Wildfire Survivors To Join Long-Term Health StudyNearly a year ago, Maui experienced a series of wildfires that caused major destruction and anguish for residents. More than 100 people died and thousands of structures were destroyed in what was the fifth deadliest wildland fire in U.S. history.

Survivors of those fires are now taking part in the largest study of its kind to understand the health and social impacts of the Maui wildfires. The research team will sample the blood, DNA, and urine of participants over at least a decade to see if they develop conditions such as cancer. Researchers say this information will be essential as the island and its residents continue to recover.

Casey Crownhart, climate reporter for the MIT Technology Review joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about this story and other top science news of the week, including California’s Park Fire.

Damaged Wind Turbine Blade Sinks Off Massachusetts CoastA large piece of fiberglass debris from the damaged Vineyard Wind turbine blade has sunk to the ocean floor, as the debris cleanup continues, according to press release from the town of Nantucket that’s timestamped for 9:10 a.m.

Town officials said that about half of the fiberglass shell of the blade remains attached and crews will continue to monitor it until a removal plan is developed. Most of the green and white foam fill dislodged during the initial failure last Saturday.

They added that Vineyard wind is also developing a plan to test water quality around the island.

“This complex undertaking involves engaging experts to determine the best path forward. To conduct the testing, specific information from GE’s Safety Data Sheets is required, which is expected to be delivered to Vineyard Wind today,” according to the press release.

To read the full story, visit our website.

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You know that disappointing feeling when you’re ready to make a delicious meal, but you crack open the refrigerator only to find mushy tomatoes, dried-out bread, or oozing strawberries?

Refrigeration fundamentally changes the chemistry of our food, but at this point, most of the United States’ food system relies on the use of refrigerators. Almost three-quarters of the food on an average American’s plate has been refrigerated during production, shipping, and storage. So how did we end up relying so heavily on the fridge? And on a warming planet, can refrigeration keep its cool?

A new book called Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves challenges the definition of “freshness” and our relationship with the fridge. SciFri’s John Dankosky talks with author Nicola Twilley, co-host of the podcast “Gastropod.”

Read an excerpt from Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet.

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If nations are to meet their sustainable energy goals, experts argue that batteries will be a crucial part of the equation. Not only are batteries key for many technologies, they’ll also be necessary to meet energy demands with a power grid that is mainly supplied by renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Without batteries, power from those sources can’t be stored for use when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.

Right now, many technologies depend on lithium-ion batteries. While they certainly work well and have revolutionized mobile devices and electric vehicles, there are drawbacks. First, the lithium, cobalt, and nickel they require can only be found in some countries, and there have been accusations of unethical mining practices, including child labor. The mining and production processes also emit a large amount of CO2, and the batteries themselves can explode and cause fires, although these incidents are becoming less common.

A promising, greener solution to our battery needs could be something called a solid-state battery. Lithium-ion batteries conduct electricity through a liquid electrolyte solution, while solid-state batteries do so with solid materials, such as ceramic, glass, and sulfides. This means they have lower risk of fires, charge faster, have higher voltages, and can be recycled. However, their development has taken longer than expected, due to cost, production hurdles, and lack of large-scale, real-world testing.

Earlier this month, teams at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the University of California San Diego published a paper in Nature Energy demonstrating the world’s first anode-free, sodium-based, solid-state battery architecture, which can charge quickly and last for several hundred cycles. Its main ingredient, sodium, is much more abundant than lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which could mean more affordable and environmentally friendly batteries in the future.

Ira Flatow sits down with Dr. Y. Shirley Meng, a professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and chief scientist for energy storage science at Argonne National Laboratory, to talk about the advancement, and when we could expect to see these unique batteries in our devices.

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Last year, almost half of the honeybee colonies in the U.S. died, making it the second deadliest year for honeybees on record. The main culprit wasn’t climate change, starvation, or even pesticides, but a parasite: Varroa destructor.

“The name for this parasite is a very Transformer-y sounding name, but … these Varroa destructor mites have earned this name. It’s not melodramatic by any means. [They are] incredibly destructive organisms,” says Dr. Sammy Ramsey, entomologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

These tiny mites feed on the bees and make them susceptible to other threats like diseases and pesticides. They’re also highly contagious: They arrived in the US in 1987, and now they live in almost every honeybee colony in the country. Honeybees pollinate many important crops, like apples, peaches, and berries, and their pollinator services add up to billions of dollars.

Ramsey and his lab are trying to put an end to the varroa mites’ spree. Part of their research includes spying on baby bees and their accompanying mites to learn how the parasites feed on the bees and whether there’s a way to disrupt that process.

In Boulder, Colorado, SciFri producer Rasha Aridi speaks with Dr. Ramsey and fellow entomologist Dr. Madison Sankovitz about how the varroa mites terrorize bees so effectively, and what it would take to get ahead of them.

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What A Rodent Brain Shows Us About Love–And LossLove has the reputation of being a fairly unique human emotion. If we’re lucky, we can experience lots of love in our lives: with romantic partners, children, family, friends. But with love comes the possibility of another, less desirable emotion: heartbreak.

Neuroscientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have found that these feelings seem to actually leave a mark on the brain, with dopamine and other feel-good chemicals flooding to the brain’s reward centers when lovers are reunited.

The source for this data may be surprising: prairie voles, tiny rodents that are among the small percentage of mammals that form monogamous pair bonds. By studying their brains when the voles were united with their mates, researchers were able to pinpoint this dopamine flood that they suspect happens in humans’ own brains under the same conditions.

When the voles were separated for four weeks—long enough for them to consider their pairing “over” and find new mates, the broken-up voles had much more muted dopamine response when reunited. Researchers say that could be good news for heartbroken humans because it shows the brain could have something of a “reset” mechanism that allows individuals to go on and form new bonds.

Joining Ira to talk about this research is Dr. Zoe Donaldson, associate professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

If You Rolled Colorado Out Into A Brownie, How Big Would It Be?The surface area of Colorado is 104,094 square miles, according to the US Geological Survey, making it the 8th largest state in the country.

But the state, unlike our neighbors to the east, has a lot of extra geographical stuff — like mountains.

One Coloradan who loves to spend time in those big hills wondered if our dear state wasn’t getting a bit short-changed. Denver-based photographer and editor Howard Paul also happens to love baked goods. So when he posed his question to Colorado Wonders, he couldn’t help but combine his two passions.

Paul had a hunch that such a squishing would make Colorado the largest state in the lower 48. Bigger than Texas. Smaller than Alaska. (For whatever it’s worth, this numerically-challenged reporter thought that was an eminently reasonable guess.)

The first bit of due diligence was to research if this quandary had been approached before. Well, what do you know, the headline of a March 2005 article from Ski Magazine reads “How big would Colorado be if you steamrolled all of the mountains?”

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

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In a first, NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered pure sulfur on Mars. And, we revisit a conversation from 2015 about Alexander von Humboldt and Andrea Wulf's “The Invention of Nature,” which is our August book club pick.

Curiosity Rover Discovers Pure Sulfur On MarsNASA’s Mars Curiosity rover ran over a rock, which cracked open to reveal pure sulfur crystals. This was the first time pure sulfur has been discovered on the planet. The rover found many other similar rocks nearby, raising questions about the geologic history of the location.

Ira talks with Alex Hager, who covers water in the West for KUNC, about Martian sulfur rocks and other top science stories of the week, including melting glaciers increasing the length of the day, life rebounding at Lake Powell, a rare whale and new research on how psilocybin rewires the brain.

A Science Hero, Lost and FoundAlexander von Humboldt was a globetrotting explorer, scientist, environmentalist, and the second-most famous man in Europe—after Napoleon. So why haven’t you heard of him? This week we revisit an interview with writer and historian Andrea Wulf, whose 2015 book The Invention of Nature aims to restore Humboldt to his rightful place in science history. Not only did this singular polymath pioneer the idea that nature is an interconnected system, but, Wulf argues, he was also the lost father of environmentalism.

Ira speaks with Wulf about the man who inspired the likes of Darwin, Thoreau, and Muir, whom contemporaries called “the Shakespeare of the Sciences.”

If this book sounds like a great read for your upcoming vacation, you’re in luck! The SciFri Book Club is reading The Invention Of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf in August. Find out all you need to know, including how to win a free book on our website.

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According to a 2022 study, just over 4% of Americans said they had consumed raw milk in the past year. That might not sound like a lot, but it adds up to around 15 million people. And those numbers seem to be increasing. According to data from the market research agency NielsenIQ from May, sales of raw milk increased by as much as 65% compared to that time last year.

This increase coincides with a recent trend of influencers and other public figures promoting raw milk as a completely safe and healthier alternative to pasteurized milk.

But despite claims about its safety, raw milk is more likely to contain pathogens than pasteurized milk, which is heated to kill harmful microbes. According to records released last week, some 165 people were sickened by salmonella linked to raw products from a single farm in California as of February, the largest raw milk-related salmonella outbreak in a decade. And the CDC recently reported that dairy cows in 13 states were infected with the H5N1 virus, also known as bird flu.

Host Rachel Feltman is joined by Dr. Céline Gounder, editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News and Dr. Nicole Helen Martin, assistant research professor in dairy foods microbiology at Cornell University, to talk about the dangers of health misinformation and how the risks of drinking raw milk can far outweigh its potential benefits.

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Researchers developed a prototype of a space suit that could replace the high-absorbency diapers that astronauts wear on space walks. And, a bitcoin mine's cooling fans are so loud they rattle windows. Residents of Granbury, Texas, are having migraines, panic attacks, and hearing loss.

A ‘Dune’-Inspired Space Suit To Turn Astronaut Pee Into WaterOn the International Space Station, resources are precious. That includes every single drop of water—which is why astronauts drink their own filtered and recycled pee. That might sound a little undignified, but things get worse when astronauts go out for a space walk. If nature comes calling, their only option is a super-strength diaper.

Inspired by the stillsuits that recycle water in Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ series, researchers have come up with a way to keep astronauts clean, dry, and hydrated while they’re hard at work. They’ve designed a system that turns astronauts’ pee into nice, clean drinking water while they’re suited up.

The researchers reported on their prototype in the journal Frontiers in Space Technology. Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Sofia Etlin, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine, about the inspiration behind the stillsuit and how it works.

A Noisy Bitcoin Mine Is Causing A Health Crisis In A Texas TownFor the past several years, there’s been constant hype about AI, bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. We’ve learned that it takes a massive amount of energy, water, and other resources to run the data centers that make these technologies possible, putting climate goals at risk. But these buzzy technologies could have an impact on public health, too.

Residents of the small town of Granbury, Texas, say bitcoin is more than just a figurative headache. Soon after a company opened up a bitcoin mine there a couple years ago, locals started experiencing excruciating migraines, hearing loss, nausea, panic attacks, and more. Several people even ended up in the emergency room. The culprit? Noise from the mine’s cooling fans.

Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with Andrew Chow, technology correspondent at TIME, who investigated the health crisis in Granbury.

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Many kids dream of becoming marine biologists. But even folks who commit fully to studying life in the sea face a lot of barriers to entry in this competitive field—especially if they aren’t white and male.

Jasmin Graham has an unparalleled passion for sharks, but a few years ago she started to feel that the traditional path in academia wasn’t designed for her to succeed. Instead of giving up, she forged a path of her own. And now she’s bringing other young researchers of color along with her.

Guest host Rachel Feltman talks with marine biologist Jasmin Graham, co-founder of Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS) and author of Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Scientist.

Read an excerpt of Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Scientist.

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Last month, the first psychedelic therapy treatment came before the Food and Drug Administration for a vote. It entailed using MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, to treat PTSD.

MDMA therapy has looked promising as a treatment for PTSD and other mental health conditions in some studies. But the FDA scientific advisory panel that evaluated this treatment voted overwhelmingly against approving it.

Many of the arguments against approval had less to do with MDMA itself than with the methodology of the clinical trials done by Lykos Therapeutics, formerly the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS. The FDA panel was presented with allegations of misconduct and incongruous data, including a letter by trial participant Sarah McNamee.

McNamee, who joined the trial for treatment of PTSD, is also a licensed psychotherapist and researcher of trauma and psychotherapy at McGill University in Montreal. She joins guest host Rachel Feltman alongside Dr. Eiko Fried, a methodologist and psychologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, to discuss the decision.

If you or someone you know is struggling with PTSD or other mental health conditions, call 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline.

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The foot-long meteor passed through the Earth’s atmosphere near the Statue of Liberty. Don’t worry, it was fine. Also, the follow-up to the 1996 movie “Twister” is a whirlwind of tornado science. A weather expert decodes its lingo—and real-life tornado trends.

A Small Meteor Blazes Over New York CityTuesday morning, some New York area residents heard a loud boom and saw a daytime fireball streaking overhead. According to observers, a small meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere over New York City, passed by the Statue of Liberty, and proceeded west to New Jersey, moving at some 38,000 miles per hour. Meteor experts said that the object, estimated to be around a foot in size, posed no threat, as debris from an object that small would have burned up before reaching the ground.

Science Friday’s Charles Bergquist joins guest host Rachel Feltman to talk about the overhead display, and about other science news from the week, including a newly planned mission to fly by a near-Earth asteroid. They’ll also talk about a new pool of data for human genetics research, efforts to predict rogue waves, and the challenges of making food taste right in orbit.

The Tornado Science To Know Before Seeing ‘Twisters’“Twisters,” the long awaited follow-up to the 1996 movie “Twister” drops in theaters today, July 19. It’s about a scientist (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who goes back to her home state of Oklahoma to try and stop a massive tornado outbreak from wreaking havoc on its citizens. On the way, she meets a quirky cast of storm chasers, and butts heads with a band of unorthodox “tornado wranglers” led by a YouTube personality (Glen Powell). “Twisters” delights in name-dropping tornado jargon, and its science advisory team said they hoped to make the movie as accurate as possible.

The movie makes science thrilling, but it also shows the ways that tornadoes affect people’s lives in the real world. For example, earlier this week, the Chicago area was hit with multiple tornadoes during a night of extreme weather, leaving thousands without power, and four tornadoes hit upstate New York, killing one person. This comes after a powerful, and some say unusual, tornado season in the Midwest. But just how tornadoes will continue to change is still unknown.

Digital producer Emma Gometz talks with Dr. Bill Gallus, a meteorology professor at Iowa State University, to decode some of the science from “Twisters” and understand how real-life tornadoes are changing.

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If you’ve tried to get prescriptions filled in the last year or so, a pharmacist may have told you, “Sorry, we don’t have that drug right now.” That’s because there are some 323 active and ongoing drug shortages in the United States. That’s the highest number of such shortages since the American Society of Health System Pharmacists started tracking this data back in 2001.

These drug shortages touch every part of the healthcare system. Doctors are having to reconfigure their treatment plans due to short supply of certain drugs, like cancer treatments. And patients can be left going from pharmacy to pharmacy to get even the most common medications, like antibiotics.

SciFri’s John Dankosky talks with freelance journalist Indira Khera and journalist and physician Dr. Eli Cahan, who looked into why drug shortages happen, how they’re affecting the healthcare system, and what solutions are on the horizon.

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The gut microbiome is an important ecosystem of microbes that lives in each one of us, and its strength affects our overall health.

However, the small intestine is an underappreciated part of the gut microbiome. Most of the research into our microbiomes has focused on the other end of the gastrointestinal tract, namely, the colon. And poop samples are an easy way to analyze the microbiome in that lower part of the gut.

Better understanding microbiome disruptions in the small intestines may allow researchers to better understand disorders like irritable bowel syndrome, and celiac disease.

Dr. Christopher Damman, associate professor of gastroenterology at the University of Washington, gives SciFri producer Kathleen Davis a crash course in the microbiome of the small intestine.

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In shallow water not far from the Florida Keys’ famed Seven Mile Bridge, a herd of the state’s flamboyantly pink queen conchs is struggling to survive.

Warming seas and wild swings in temperature have shut down their reproductive impulses in the waist-deep water, leaving them to creep along the ocean floor, searching for food but not love. Meanwhile, just a few miles away in deeper, cooler waters, the iconic mollusks mate freely. So scientists have a rescue plan: load the inshore conchs into milk crates, ferry them to colonies in deep water, and let nature run its course.

As climate change fastracks ocean warming, the researchers hope their plan hatches enough baby conchs to help boost the flagging population.

“Once you put them in a more appropriate temperature regime, snails have a remarkable capability to heal themselves,” says Dr. Gabriel Delgado, a conch scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who is leading the pilot project. “Now you have a contributing member to future populations.”

To read the rest of this article (plus see stunning images of conchs!) visit our website.

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In early June, New York Governor Kathy Hochul blocked a congestion pricing plan from going into effect in New York City. This plan would have charged a fee for cars to enter the central business district of Manhattan, and it would have been the first congestion pricing plan to be fully implemented in the United States.

While congestion pricing can be costly for commuters, the fact that it keeps some cars off the road means it can have health benefits for surrounding communities. Successfully implemented congestion pricing plans in cities such as London, Singapore, and Stockholm have led to better air quality and health.

SciFri’s John Dankosky sits down with Dr. Janet Currie, co-director of Princeton’s Center for Health and Wellbeing, and Dr. Andrea Titus, assistant professor of the Department of Population Health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to talk about the health impacts that congestion pricing has had around the world as well as the potential effects it could have in New York City and in other cities in the United States.

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As the James Webb Space Telescope marks two years of operations, NASA unveils a new image of two galaxies interacting. And, new research shows that cats’ tendency to scratch is affected by stress, certain kinds of play, and how active they are at night.

Galaxies ‘Dance’ In Stunning New JWST ImageThe James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope created by humans, has been successfully operating in space for two years now. Since its launch, the telescope has dazzled astronomers and the public with new kinds of scientific data about the universe and with stunning, highly detailed pictures. And on its two-year anniversary, the telescope continues to return impressive visuals: NASA released a mesmerizing image today of two intermingling galaxies nicknamed the Penguin and the Egg.

Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos, joins guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about that and other top science stories of the week, including a new study that shows that children with autism have a unique microbiome, new FEMA rules that factor in climate change when rebuilding in flood-prone areas, and how invasive insects use hitchhiking to spread their populations.

Why Some Cats Scratch Furniture So MuchIf you have a cat, you’ve probably endured your fair share of unwanted furniture scratching. Maybe you’ve purchased scratching posts, rearranged your furniture, or played with your cats before bed, to try to prevent it. And yet, you wake up to shredded upholstery or bedding.

Furniture scratching is often a stress response, and cats who live with kids or are more playful and active at night are more likely to scratch.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis spoke with Dr. Yasemin Salgirli Demirbas, a physiology professor at Ankara University in Turkey and visiting fellow at the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, about her recently published study which tracked why some cats are more prone to scratching destruction than others and explored the best way for cat owners to achieve a mostly intact living room.

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There’s a little bit of Neanderthal in most of us. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had a long history of intermingling, before the former went extinct about 40,000 years ago. That mixing means most modern humans have some amount of Neanderthal DNA—and it accounts for up to 3% of the genome in some people.

While these genetic remnants don’t have much impact on our day-to-day lives, they may be responsible for one surprising effect: pain tolerance. Recent research shows that people with Neanderthal variants in the gene SCN9A have a lower pain tolerance than people without the gene.

This isn’t the only Neanderthal remnant that’s been passed down. A study from earlier this year pinpointed a certain genome region that impacts nose shape. Taller, wider noses were passed down from our Neanderthal ancestors who lived in colder climates. A larger nose warmed air before it hit the sensitive lungs.

Ira speaks with Dr. Kaustubh Adhikari, assistant professor of statistics at the Open University in the United Kingdom, who worked on both of these studies.

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Climate change is having a profound effect on agriculture. Farmers over the past decade have faced intensifying drought and heat stress on crops, leading many to wonder, what will agriculture look like 50 years from now?

In May, at SciFri Live at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, Ira Flatow discussed the future of agriculture, and potential solutions to these problems, from innovative farming techniques, to ensuring that Iowa’s farmers of color have the resources they need to succeed. He was joined by Todd Western III, a sixth-generation Iowan farmer with Western Family Farms and senior donor advisor at Greater Twin Cities United Way, and Dr. Patrick Schnable, a distinguished professor at Iowa State University and co-founder of Dryland Genetics.

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These days, the 4th of July is known for its fireworks and cookouts. But the holiday commemorates the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important founding documents of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence, alongside the Emancipation Proclamation, the Constitution, and countless other documents, is housed in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Like any other museum, the National Archives doesn’t just house these items, it preserves them, protecting them from the degradation that happens over time.

In March, at SciFri Live in Washington D.C., Ira spoke to two restoration experts about what goes on behind the scenes of the National Archives: Conservator Saira Haqqi and physicist Mark Ormsby. They discuss the history of papermaking in the US, changes in restoration science, and what “National Treasure” really got right.

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Earlier this year, the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington announced that pandas would be returning to the capitol. This news was met with great fanfare because the zoo’s resident pandas had returned to China last fall, leaving the District panda-less for the first time in more than 50 years.

After the pandas left D.C. in the fall, SciFri producer Rasha Aridi and journalist Aja Drain dug into the juicy political history of panda conservation and how it shaped panda research. In this segment from December 2023, they look back at 80 years of panda conservation, and how “panda diplomacy” paved the way for groundbreaking science. And they try to answer the multi-million dollar question: Was it all worth it?

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It’s officially summertime, and a new season of reading is here! Two science writers and voracious readers have compiled their summer reading recommendations, just for Science Friday fans. Before you head out for a week at the beach, start packing for that road trip, or stock up for a long staycation, we’ve got the list of science-y summer reads, straight from those familiar with the best on the shelf.

Joining guest host Diana Plasker to offer listeners their recommendations are Riley Black, a Salt Lake City-based science writer and the author of several books, including The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World; and Deborah Blum, director of the Knight Science Journalism program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of several books, including The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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In a conversation from 2014, Ira talks marinade myths, charcoal chemistry, and the elusive “smoke ring”—the science behind barbecue and grilling.

Are marinades a myth? How does the elusive “smoke ring” form? And can the debate over gas versus charcoal be settled at last? In this episode of our “Food Failures” series, barbecue and grilling expert Meathead Goldwyn looks at the science behind the grill and offers tips for controlling smoke, temperature, and moisture.

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When you think about Earth, you might think of a giant rock, floating around in space, making laps around the sun. A rock that just happens to have critters, plants, and people crawling around its surface.

A new book by Ferris Jabr called Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life argues otherwise: Life doesn’t just exist on Earth, but life is Earth, and the Earth itself is alive.

That idea might sound radical, and it is. There’s a shift happening in how we understand the planet, and what it’ll take to save it, and ourselves, from the future humans are creating.

Becoming Earth takes readers on adventures across the world to learn how life has transformed the Earth, from changing the color of the sky to reshaping the continents.

Guest host Anna Rothschild talks with author Ferris Jabr, a science writer based in Portland, Oregon.

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If you have teenagers in your life, you may have noticed that kids these days seem to be getting their periods earlier than previous generations did. It’s not just in your head: A recent study from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health confirms what many people have assumed, as well as additional findings about period regularity in younger generations.

The study, which analyzed self-reported data from more than 71,000 participants in the US, found that menstrual periods are arriving earlier for younger generations, with the average age dropping from 12.5 years old for people born in 1950 to 11.9 years old for those born in 2005. More staggering, however, is that both early menarche—a person’s first menstrual period—and irregular periods were much more common in the non-white and low-income study participants. And period irregularity has become more common for younger generations compared to their older counterparts.

These findings are a big deal, because early menarche and irregular periods can be a signal of future health issues, including pregnancy complications and mental health changes. Joining guest host Anna Rothschild to discuss the findings and their implications is lead study author Dr. Zifan Wang, postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Most scientific studies that get published have “positive results,” meaning that the study proved its hypothesis. Say you hypothesize that a honeybee will favor one flower over another, and your research backs that up? That’s a positive result.

But what about the papers with negative results? If you’re a researcher, you know that you’re much more likely to disprove your hypothesis than validate it. The problem is that there aren’t a lot of incentives to publish a negative result.

But, some argue that this bias to only publish papers with positive results is worsening existing issues in scientific research and publishing, and could prevent future breakthroughs.

And that’s where the Journal of Trial and Error comes in. It’s a scientific publication that only publishes negative and unexpected results. And the team behind it wants to change how the scientific community thinks about failure, in order to make science stronger.

Guest host Anna Rothschild talks with Dr. Sarahanne Field, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Trial And Error, and assistant professor in behavioral and social sciences at University of Groningen.

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China’s Chang’e 6 return capsule landed in Mongolia, carrying samples from the far side of the moon. Also, Paris has invested $1.5B in cleaning up the Seine for open-water swimming events, but recent tests indicate it’s not yet safe.

A Sample From The Far Side Of The Moon Lands On EarthThis week, the return capsule from China’s Chang’e 6 lunar mission returned to Earth, touching down in a remote part of Inner Mongolia. Inside were dust and rock samples collected from the far side of the moon. Researchers hope that the samples could shed light on both the moon’s formation, and conditions in the ancient solar system.

Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” joins guest host Anna Rothschild to talk about the mission and other stories form the week in science, including a CDC warning about dengue fever, a trans-oceanic butterfly flight, and the possibility of seeing a stellar nova in the coming weeks.

Will The Seine Be Clean Enough For Olympic Swimmers?The Paris Summer Olympics are fast approaching. Opening ceremonies for the games kick off on July 26. And all eyes are on the notoriously polluted River Seine. Due to aging infrastructure, sewage has sometimes flowed directly into it. For the past 100 years swimming in the river was banned. Now, the French government has spent roughly $1.5 billion to upgrade sewage treatment in Paris in order for athletes to be able to swim in the Seine.

Earlier this week, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo was set to take a dip in the river to prove its cleanliness. In protest some Parisians threatened to poop in the Seine to show their dislike of the disruptions and high price tag of the Games.

The dip was postponed until after upcoming elections, but recent water quality tests indicate that the river is not yet safe to swim in.

Guest host Anna Rothschild talks about the current state of the river with Dr. Dan Angelescu, founder and CEO of Fluidion, a water testing company based in Paris, France.

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The larger Pacific striped octopus is unusually social. But it wasn’t recognized by scientists until 2015, despite one man’s efforts. And, a deep-sea squid in the family Gonatidae was filmed cradling large eggs for its body size, which suggests it’s an entirely new species.

Why It Took Decades For This Octopus To Be RecognizedOctopus mating behaviors can be quite deadly. Many species are cannibalistic, making the entire prospect of mating dangerous, and female octopuses often die after laying one clutch of eggs. Their cannibalistic tendencies mean that octopuses don’t socialize as much as other animals.

But the larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO) is different. For one, they live together in colonies. And mating is not only a safer proposition, it involves beak-to-beak “kissing.” Plus, females can lay eggs repeatedly, even tending to embryos at various stages of development.

But because these behaviors are so uncharacteristic of most octopuses, the scientific community didn’t officially recognize their existence until 2015, despite the decades-long effort of a Panamanian diver and artist named Arcadio Rodaniche. When he tried to share his findings about the LPSO at a symposium and publish them in a journal, he was flatly rejected. But his persistent research and documentation of the species would eventually be validated when researchers were able to obtain and observe the octopuses in captivity.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis sits down with freelance science writer Kenna Hughes-Castleberry to talk about an article she reported for Science Friday about the late Rodaniche and his yearslong effort to get official scientific recognition for the LPSO.

Read the story at sciencefriday.com.

Squid With ‘Giant’ Eggs Could Be A New SpeciesTo finish up our celebration of Cephalopod Week we wanted to share a bit of squid news. A group of researchers recently identified a potentially new squid species in the family Gonatidae. Scientists took a closer look at some video footage captured back in 2015 and found a deep-water squid that was cradling some rather large eggs, which was not in line with other squid of the same family.

John Dankosky talks with Dr. Bruce Robison, midwater ecologist and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, about this new discovery.

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In July 1945, the US deployed the world’s first nuclear weapon during the Trinity Test. Since then, the US has tested more than 200 nukes above ground in places including New Mexico, Nevada, and several Pacific Islands.

For decades to come, “downwinders,” or people who lived near those test sites, and those involved manufacturing these weapons, were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. They’ve disproportionately suffered from diseases like cancer, autoimmune disorders, and more.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was established in 1990 to provide victims of the US nuclear program a one-time payment to help cover medical bills. But the program has fallen short of helping everyone affected—like the downwinders living around the Trinity Test site in New Mexico.

A new bill, which was passed in the Senate earlier this year, would expand the program to include more people and provide more money. It’s up to the House now to pass it, but Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana won’t call a vote. And the clock is ticking, because RECA expired on June 10. So what happens now?

SciFri’s John Dankosky speaks with Tina Cordova, downwinder and co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in Albuquerque; Loretta Anderson, co-founder of the Southwest Uranium Miners’ Coalition Post ‘71, from the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico; and Lilly Adams, senior outreach coordinator at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Some birds are famous for being extinct, like the Dodo and the passenger pigeon.

But how do we prevent species from reaching that point? One of the starting points is to try and track down the birds that are “lost to science.” These are birds that have not been documented in over a decade, but just might still be out there, if we look for them.

A new study analyzed data, images, and recordings from platforms that crowdsource observations from all over the world to identify birds “lost to science.” In total, the project, called The Search for Lost Birds identified 126 such species.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis is joined by Dr. John Mittermeier, director of the Search for Lost Birds at the American Bird Conservancy to talk more about the findings of this research and what it’s like to track down a “lost” bird.

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In 2005, countries around the world ratified the Kyoto Protocol. It was the first big, legally-binding international climate policy, but there was a big drawback: The United States, the world’s richest country and second-highest emitter, didn’t ratify it.

In response, American mayors took action. Even if the US wouldn’t commit to cutting climate emissions, their cities would. It was the classic “think global, act local” move.

It started with mayoral resolutions—a bunch of “whereases” laying out the reasons cities needed their own climate targets. Whereas manmade climate change is happening. Whereas cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s emissions. Whereas more than half the world’s people live in cities. Whereas cities are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Therefore? Our city is going to do something about it. Mayors proclaimed, city councils adopted, and gavels cracked on podiums across the country as city climate plans were created, along with a new job to manage it all: the chief sustainability officer.

Twenty years later, hundreds of US cities have climate plans. Their chief sustainability officers are responsible for aggressive decarbonization goals that require deep cuts to emissions, and fast. But are cities actually meeting their targets? And do city sustainability officers have what they need to meet them?

Read the rest of this story at sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers say the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature is a better indicator of heat stress. Also, cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs. A new vaccine has increased survival rates in clinical trials, offering hope for dogs and humans.

Yes, It’s Hot. But How Hot?Much of the country has been enduring a heat wave this week, with millions sweating from Maine to the Midwest. But describing exactly how hot it is—and when temperatures become hazardous—can be challenging. Beyond the basic temperature, there’s the heat index, invented in 1978, which incorporates humidity measurements and is supposed to give a better indication of how a person might feel outside. Some health researchers are calling for more attention to a different type of temperature measurement known as the wet bulb globe temperature. It tracks temperature, humidity, and sunlight, and improves upon the heat index standard.

Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, joins SciFri’s Kathleen Davis to talk about measuring temperatures and protecting yourself from extreme heat. Plus, they discuss other stories from the week in science, including advances in tornado prediction, a delay in a return flight from the International Space Station, and a newly-described horned dinosaur that once roamed the US.

A Canine Cancer Vaccine Shows Promising ResultsDogs are by far the most popular pet in the United States: 62 million households have at least one. They are humans’ best friends, after all. Sadly, cancer is the leading cause of death in domestic dogs. And when a pet gets sick, it can be devastating for the entire family.

Lucky for dogs (and their people), there may soon be a breakthrough in treating canine cancer: a vaccine that can slow and even stop the spread of tumors. Clinical trial results are quite promising so far, increasing 12-month survival rates in dogs with some cancers from 35% to 60%. The research team also reports that in many dogs the vaccine shrinks tumors.

Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about this novel therapy is Dr. Mark Mamula, professor of medicine at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. Mamula discusses this important breakthrough, and possible future applications for human cancer therapies.

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Two mannequins walk into a science lab, and one’s got a big tick problem. She can teach humans how to check for ticks. Also, researchers used citizen science observations and machine learning to understand where fireflies are and what they need to thrive.

In Wisconsin, Mannequins Help Teach People How To Spot TicksNationwide, Wisconsin is a hot spot for Lyme disease. And cases are rising, as climate change and development alter how humans interact with the ticks that transmit this disease. In Wisconsin, cases reported annually have more than doubled in the last two decades.

With tick season underway, tick checks are one of the most important ways you can prevent infection. I recently visited the Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-borne Disease, which is housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where researchers are using a new tool to teach people how to do tick checks — mannequins.

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Protecting A Flickering Symbol Of Summer NightsWhen people talk about watching fireflies, a common comment is “You know, I don’t see as many fireflies as I used to.” Researchers are trying to figure out whether that impression is actually accurate, and which of the over 2,000 firefly species might be affected—and to do so, they need a lot more data. A recent paper published in the journal Science of the Total Environment used over 24,000 citizen science observations as well as machine learning models to try to better identify where certain species of fireflies can be found, and what types of habitat and climate they need to thrive.

Dr. Sarah Lower, a firefly researcher at Bucknell University and a co-author of the study, joins guest host Annie Minoff to talk about some ways to protect fireflies near you, including preserving darkness and providing moist, permeable, natural soils for firefly larvae.

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In 2005, futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil popularized the term “the singularity” to capture the idea that man and machine will merge as the next stage of evolution. This was the basis for Kurzweil’s book The Singularity is Near, which has been essential reading for technology buffs and critics since its publication nearly 20 years ago.

In the meantime, we’ve seen huge advances in artificial intelligence, computing power, and technological research. In response to all this growth, Kurzweil has published a followup to bring us up to date, The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge With AI. Ira Flatow speaks to Kurzweil about the book and his more than six decades of experience in the field of artificial intelligence.

Read an excerpt from The Singularity is Nearer: When We Merge With AI.

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The most wonderful time of the year has arrived: Cephalopod Week, Science Friday’s annual tradition of spotlighting all things octopus, squid, and cuttlefish.

One of the many things that make cephalopods special is their ink. What’s it made of? Why do they shoot it at their predators? And why did they evolve this incredible skill?

To talk all about inking, guest host Annie Minoff is joined by Dr. Lauren Simonitis, research and biological imaging specialist at Florida Atlantic University.

Learn more about how to get involved in Cephalopod Week!

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In the 2015 film “Inside Out,” audiences met 11-year-old Riley and her team of emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger, each represented by a different character. They lived inside Riley’s mind to help guide her feelings and actions, and towards the end of the film, their emotional control center gets an upgrade with a puberty button.

That’s where the new film “Inside Out 2” picks up. Riley is now 13 years old and dealing with the slew of emotions that come with puberty. In the new film, moviegoers meet a new crew of characters: Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment, and Ennui, who is always bored.

But what’s the science behind Riley’s newfound teenage angst? Guest host Annie Minoff talks with psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour, who served as a science advisor to the film.

“Inside Out 2” is now playing in theaters.

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A new study used machine learning to analyze elephant vocalizations and identified “contact rumbles” that appear to function as names. Also, on a hike in the Badlands, a family found a dinosaur bone sticking out of a rock. It joined the few teenage T. rex fossils ever discovered.

Elephants Seem To Use Names For Each OtherScientists have long known that elephants exhibit some advanced social behaviors that we humans find familiar, including tool use and funerals.

And a new study from Colorado State a university offers compelling evidence that African savannah elephants might engage in another human social behavior: having names for each other. Researchers applied machine learning to a database of 600 elephant vocalizations, which included “contact rumbles,” vocalizations that researchers observed that other elephants responded to. The algorithm identified repeated sections of those recordings that might represent names.

When the researchers played these possible “name” sections of audio to pairs of elephants—one of which was the suspected owner of the name—the appropriate elephant responded at a rate significantly better than random chance.

Guest host Annie Minoff is joined by Tim Revell, deputy editor at New Scientist, to talk about this and other science stories from the week, including the possible effects a freezing interstellar cloud had on Earth a few million years ago, the biological effects of short term spaceflight on private citizen passengers on SpaceX flights, and a new species of pterosaur found in the Australian outback with a killer tongue.

Kids Discover Extremely Rare T. Rex FossilFor one family, a summer hike in the badlands of North Dakota turned into the discovery of a lifetime when they spotted a fossil jutting out of a rock. Two brothers, their dad, and a cousin found the fossil, and with the help of some dinosaur experts, they eventually learned it was a T. rex.

The fossil wasn’t just of any T. rex, but a teenage one. These fossils are incredibly rare—there are only a handful of them in the world.

Guest host Annie Minoff discusses this dino discovery and what it means for science with 12-year-old Jessin Fisher, a budding paleontologist and one of the brothers who discovered the fossil, as well as Dr. Tyler Lyson, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado who helped excavate the fossil.

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Many people think of the ocean as a quiet and serene place: Take a dip underwater and the cacophony of the world melts away.

But the ocean is quite noisy, full of whale songs and echolocation, which whales and dolphins use to communicate. Cephalopods can make and hear sounds too, even without ears.

Then, there’s human-made noise, including the giant ships that crisscross the globe. The effects of this continuous low-volume noise are harder to track because they do not result in immediate injury or death. Rather, scientists are studying the long-term effects on animals’ communication, mating, and food gathering.

Ira talks with Amorina Kingdon, science journalist and author of the new book Sing Like Fish: How Sound Rules Life Underwater.

Read an excerpt of Sing Like a Fish: How Sound Rules Life Underwater.

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Plants called “hyperaccumulators” have evolved to absorb high levels of metals. Scientists want to harness them for greener metal mining. And, a little fern from New Caledonia is just a few inches tall, but its genome has 160.45 billion base pairs—50 times more DNA than a human.

How Metal-Absorbing Plants Could Make Mining GreenerScientists are exploring a somewhat unusual green energy solution: mining metals from the earth using plants.

Typically, if soil has high levels of metal, plants will either die or do everything they can to avoid it. But, one group has taken a different path: evolve to be able to safely absorb large amounts of the metals. These special plants are called hyperaccumulators. And their ability to suck metals like nickel from the earth is called phytomining.

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy announced in March up to $10 million in funding for phytomining research.

Ira talks with Dr. David McNear, professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Kentucky, about these fascinating flora and their promise as a greener option to metal mining.

A Tiny Fern Has The Largest Genome Ever DiscoveredScientists just discovered the largest genome of any living thing on Earth, and it belongs to a small, unassuming fern called Tmesipteris oblanceolata. If you were to split open one of its cells and unwind the DNA that’s coiled up in the nucleus, it would stretch out more than 300 feet—taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Scientists reported the finding last week in the journal iScience. The fern is only a few inches tall and is found on the island of New Caledonia in the Southwest Pacific. Its DNA is made up of 160.45 billion base pairs—50 times more than the human genome.

This finding has left scientists scratching their heads, wondering how and why a fern ended up with so much DNA. Ira Flatow talks with co-lead author of this study Dr. Jaume Pellicer, evolutionary biologist at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, about this research and why this fern’s DNA is so puzzling.

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When you think about connections between science and war, the obvious links are in technology—advanced radar, spy satellites, more powerful explosives—and in medical innovations that seek to heal the wounds caused by conflict. But in a new book, Stories are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, author Annalee Newitz says that stories and narrative can be weapons too, used in battle on a psychological battlefield.

Ira talks with Newitz about the history of psychological warfare, from Sun Tzu to Benjamin Franklin, and its modern American incarnation under the guidance of Paul Linebarger, who was also a science fiction author known by the pen name Cordwainer Smith. They discuss the characteristics of a psyop, how techniques of psychological warfare have been co-opted into modern politics, and whether there’s a route toward “psychological disarmament.”

Read an excerpt from Stories are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.

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DNA has long been studied and understood as the genetic blueprint for life on Earth. And related scientific endeavors, like the Human Genome Project, have received enormous attention. But DNA’s lesser-known counterpart, RNA, which translates the instructions from those blueprints into proteins in our cells, has received far less focus.

But a lot’s changed in the last few years. The success of the mRNA COVID vaccines has led to a renewed interest in the potential medical therapies for this tiny molecular powerhouse, with applications ranging from CRISPR gene-editing to an mRNA-based cancer vaccine.

Dr. Thomas Cech, distinguished professor in biochemistry at University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of the book The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets, joins Ira Flatow to tell us how why RNA has gotten the shorter end of the research stick for so long, how it could help us understand the origins of life, and why this misunderstood molecule might be the key to a next generation of big scientific discoveries.

Read an excerpt from The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life’s Deepest Secrets at sciencefriday.com.

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A Week Of Milestones For SpaceflightThis has been a week of milestones for human spaceflight. After years of delays, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, successfully launched Wednesday on the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. On Thursday, it docked with the International Space Station.

Also on Thursday, SpaceX’s Starship rocket made its first successful launch and reentry after three previous attempts (the massive rocket burned up in the atmosphere on the last launch). And on a more sobering note, NASA announced that its famous 34-year-old Hubble Space Telescope is experiencing issues with its gyroscopes and is opting to only use one for the time being. The agency says Hubble can still do science, but less efficiently than it once could.

Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, joins Ira to discuss those and other top stories in science this week, including why the viral Joro spider you may have seen online does not pose a threat to humans, how a virus that’s spreading due to deforestation in South America could overwhelm local healthcare, and why the FDA voted against the medical use of MDMA.

Mexico Has Elected A Scientist President. What Will That Mean?This week, Mexico elected a historic president: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, who will be the first woman to lead the nation, and was also an environmental engineer before entering politics.

Despite the president-elect’s scientific past, Sheinbaum Pardo has committed to following the lead of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose science policies were deeply unpopular with many researchers in the country.

Mexico’s scientific community is split on how this election will impact science and research in the country. Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, a reporter at Science Magazine, joins Ira to talk through the complexities of this election and how scientists are reacting.

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Scientists are studying birds’ unique vocal organ, the syrinx, to better understand its evolutionary history. Also, the eerie calls of the common loon have been heard in songs by Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, and more.

The Organ That Gives Birds Their VoicesHave you ever wondered how a bird sings? Or made some of their less melodic vocalizations, like squawks, trills, or chirps? It all happens in the syrinx, a vocal organ unique to birds. Reptiles, amphibians, and mammals, including humans, use their larynx to produce sounds.

The syrinx varies widely between bird species and there’s still a lot that scientists don’t understand about how it works and its evolutionary history. Better understanding the syrinx of living birds can help scientists get closer to figuring out what dinosaurs sounded like. (No, the dinosaur sounds in “Jurassic Park” are not scientifically accurate.)

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Dr. Julia Clarke, professor of vertebrate paleontology at the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas, Austin, about her recent research studying the syrinxes of ostriches and hummingbirds.

Common Loons Are Pop Music IconsFor decades now, one music star has managed to show up on tracks spanning multiple genres and appear alongside many famous artists—while also remaining bafflingly under-recognized. Any guesses?

Of course, we’re talking about none other than the common loon—a waterbird with striking red eyes and black-and-white checkerboard plumage. This bird’s calls have been used in songs by artists like Michael Jackson, Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, Doja Cat, and Lana Del Rey. They’ve also been used as a sound effect in Hollywood blockbusters like “Harry Potter” and the TV show “Game of Thrones.”

So how did this bird’s call become a regular in everything from hip hop and EDM to pop music? A story in Audubon Magazine dove into this, and guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with author Maddie Burakoff, an associate editor at Audubon.

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You might’ve heard this phrase before: data equals power. Because when you have data, you can decide how they’re used and who gets to use them.

The history of research on Indigenous communities in the United States is full of stories of exploitation, power imbalances, and stolen knowledge. Be it through the iodine experiments of the 1950s in Alaska, the racist and pseudoscientific conclusions drawn by American anthropologists in the 20th century, or through more recent examples in which genetic data from communities were used in studies without their consent— these practices have caused lasting mistrust and harm.

The growing field of Indigenous data sovereignty demands that Native communities maintain the right to decide how data about their people are collected, owned, and used.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with two people at the forefront of this movement: Dr. Stephanie Carroll is the director of the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance and an associate professor of public health at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She is also Ahtna and a citizen of the Native Village of Kluti-Kaah in Alaska. Dr. Krystal Tsosie is a co-founder of the Native BioData Consortium and an assistant professor and geneticist-bioethicist at Arizona State University in Tempe. She’s a member of Navajo Nation. They discuss how data on Indigenous Peoples has been used and abused, why data sovereignty is more important than ever, and what solutions look like.

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Are plants intelligent? Until recently, botanists were hesitant to ask that question, at least publicly. But that’s changing.

In recent years researchers have learned more about how plants communicate with each other, respond to touch, store memories, and deceive animals for their own benefit: All bits of evidence that suggest plants possess a unique form of intelligence that humans have been overlooking.

Guest host Arielle-Duhaime Ross talks with science journalist Zoë Schlanger about her new book,The Light Eaters: How The Unseen World Of Plant Intelligence Offers A New Understanding Of Life On Earth. Schlanger is currently a staff writer at the Atlantic covering climate change.

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If you have a problem with your phone, like a bad battery or a cracked screen, you might decide to just buy a new one. That’s partly because we don’t have a lot of options to repair our devices: Manufacturers can make it extraordinarily difficult—or expensive—to do so.

But for years now, the right-to-repair movement in the US has been pushing for legislation that forces companies to provide consumers with more options to fix the products they actually own, instead of having to go through manufacturers to get them fixed.

And in the past year, multiple states, including California, New York, Minnesota, and Oregon, have adopted such laws. Companies like Apple and John Deere have been fighting these kinds of measures for years.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross speaks to Jason Koebler, co-host of the 404 Media podcast, about the growing adoption of legislation, why companies have been lobbying against it, and what he thinks the future of the movement is.

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The much-delayed crewed test flight is back on the calendar, despite a helium leak. Also, researchers used data from the crowd-sourcing nature observation app iNaturalist to rank animals’ tolerance of urban environments.

Starliner Crewed Test Flight Rescheduled For This WeekendA long-delayed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft is back on the calendar for Saturday, June 1, carrying astronauts to the International Space Station. It’s a demonstration flight as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew program, intended to show that the new spacecraft design can be a practical and safe way to get people into space. If the flight is successful, NASA can then consider using the Boeing Starliner system for crewed flights to the ISS, joining the current fleet of craft from SpaceX and the Russian Soyuz program.

The Starliner launch has been delayed numerous times. Its most recent launch attempt, on May 6, was scrubbed when systems flagged a bad valve in a rocket booster. That booster valve was replaced, but engineers then detected a small leak in the spacecraft’s helium thruster system, which led to still further delays. They have now determined that the flight can proceed even with the leaky system, allowing the upcoming launch attempt.

Science Friday senior producer Charles Bergquist joins guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross to talk about the upcoming launch, and about other stories from the week in science, including the return of an active solar region responsible for recent fantastic aurora displays, research into how the brain decodes the meaning of “not,” and the announcement of two new giant pandas headed to the National Zoo.

Which Animals Like Cities Most? Slugs And Snails Top The List.If you live in an urban environment, it might seem like the animals you see every day—birds, bugs, squirrels—have adapted perfectly fine to city life.

But according to a new study in PLOS ONE, that isn’t always the case. Urbanization is directly linked to biodiversity loss, but researchers at UCLA, including Joey Curti and Dr. Morgan Tingley, wanted to find out specifically which animals thrive and which struggle in urban environments. So they turned to iNaturalist, a crowd-sourcing app where users upload photos of flora and fauna they see, along with information like location and date.

The team combed through years of iNaturalist data in the Los Angeles metro area and developed an “urban tolerance score” for 511 animal species. This score, which incorporated data such as light and noise pollution from different sections of the city, was a factor tied to those species’ level of tolerance to the local environment.

They found that snails and slugs love urban environments, likely thanks to increased moisture from local landscaping. But most other animals, including native species, and especially bugs like butterflies and moths, were not as tolerant to the region.

Joey Curti, a PhD candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA and a co-author on that study, sits down with guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross to discuss the results of the study and what cities can learn from this kind of research to encourage healthy biodiversity.

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Aging often looks very different on different people. There are some 70-year-olds that exercise regularly, have no trouble going for a walk around the block, and remain mentally sharp. Others really struggle at 70, and aren’t able to maintain a quality of life they’ve had in the past.

There’s a growing field of medicine dedicated to better understanding how we age. And this field is looking less at the number on one’s birth certificate than you might expect. Dr. Aditi Gurkar, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh’s Aging Institute, is one of the researchers working to better understand why two different people may age very differently.

Earlier this year, Dr. Gurkar and her team published a study that identified certain metabolites that seem to be reliable markers to index biological age. Dr. Gurkar joins Ira to talk about this study and the implications of better understanding a person’s biological age.

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While the US was known for its railroads in the 1800s, we’ve fallen behind places like Japan, China, and Europe, which have invested in trains that go upwards of 200 miles per hour. There are economic, environmental, and practical benefits of electrified high-speed rail. But for generations, the US decreased passenger rail service and invested instead in highways and car-centric infrastructure.

But it appears we’re hitting a turning point. After decades in development, major sections of California’s high-speed rail project, which aims to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco, have been completed. And the project recently received a $3.1 billion federal grant to aid in further construction. Additionally, Amtrak is expanding service and increasing the speed of its trains. And private industry is also stepping in to fill the void—a rail company called Brightline has been operating in Florida since 2018. It now provides service between Miami and Orlando, and just broke ground on a high-speed route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

But it’s not just California and Florida where growth is happening. Multiple regions in the US, including Texas and the Pacific Northwest, are actively planning high-speed rail lines between cities that are generally too long to drive between, but too close to justify air travel. (France recently banned short-hop flights over those kinds of distances to reduce carbon emissions and encourage people to take existing passenger rail.)

Rod Diridon Sr., co-chair for the US High Speed Rail Association, fills Ira in on the current state of faster passenger rail in the US, what challenges it still faces, and why he thinks there’s been a shift in public opinion about expanded train service.

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Cannabis is legal in some form or another in over half of US states. But federally, it’s illegal and has no accepted medical use. However, the Biden administration is moving to reclassify cannabis as a less dangerous drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

Studying strictly controlled drugs like cannabis is a major challenge for scientists, because they have to meet specific registration and sourcing requirements. And researchers can’t give commercially available cannabis from dispensaries to study participants, or bring it onto campus at all. But questions around the health impacts of these widely available products continue to mount.

A team of scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder is driving around these federal roadblocks by bringing a mobile lab—nicknamed the CannaVan—to people, so they can consume weed in their own homes and then come outside for some routine tests.

SciFri producers Emma Gometz and Rasha Aridi visited the CannaVan last year and join Ira to unpack how this research gets done, what the CannaVan has taught us about weed, and how reclassifying cannabis might affect research.

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For the first time, scientists have recorded how salps form chains and swim in corkscrews to reach the ocean’s surface each night. Also, a wind utility company in Wyoming is trying to make wind turbines more visible to birds by painting just one blade black.

The Small Jelly Creatures That Link Up And Swim in CorkscrewsSalps are small, transparent barrel-shaped jelly creatures. They are sometimes confused with jellyfish, but they are so much more complex. Salps have nervous, circulatory, and digestive systems that include a brain, heart, and intestines.

Salps are known to link themselves together in long chains. And each night they journey from the depths of the ocean to the surface to feast on algae. New research shows that the key to their efficiency is swimming in corkscrews.

Ira talks with Dr. Kelly Sutherland, associate professor of biology at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology at the University of Oregon, about her work studying salp swimming patterns.

Painting Wind Turbine Blades To Prevent Bird CollisionsWind energy is expected to be a big part of the transition away from fossil fuels. But that comes with consequences, including the potential for more deadly collisions between turbines and birds and bats. One experiment underway in Wyoming is studying a potentially game-changing—and simple—solution to this problem.

In the Mountain West, large and iconic avian species—such as owls, turkey vultures and golden eagles—are consistently colliding with the human world. At the Teton Raptor Center in Wilson, Wyo., veterinarians, avian scientists and volunteers often treat birds for lead poisoning, crashes into infrastructure, gunshot wounds or other injuries.

For the center’s conservation director, Bryan Bedrosian, his work is about preserving the wildlife that makes Wyoming special.

“We should be proud of the fact that we in Wyoming have some of the best wild natural spaces and some of the best wildlife populations,” he said. I think, unfortunately, it comes with a higher degree of responsibility.”

Wyoming is a critical habitat area for many species, especially golden eagles. Tens of thousands live here year-round and the state is also a huge migration corridor between Alaska and Mexico. Unlike its cousin the bald eagle, the golden eagle population is stable at best and could potentially decline in parts of the U.S. Bedrosian said wind energy growth is a threat for a species that has always been “at the top of the food chain.”

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An early study found that electrical stimulation could improve hand and arm function in people with spinal cord injuries. Also, for thousands of years, Indigenous communities in Guatemala have used observations and mathematics to track astronomical events.

Zapping Nerves Into RegrowthResults of an early trial published this week in the journal Nature Medicine found that people with cervical spinal cord damage showed some improvements both in strength and movement in arm and hand function after they received electrical stimulation near the site of their injury. The improved function persisted even after the stimulation stopped, indicating that the treatment may be inducing nerve cells to regrow in the damaged area.

Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist, joins Ira to talk about the work and what it could mean for people with severe spinal cord injuries. They also talk about other stories from the week in science, including creating the most powerful X-ray pulse ever reported, investigations into the microbiome of the scalp, and some epic cosplay—testing out the practicality of some ancient Greek armor in combat scenarios.

Celebrating the Maya Calendar In Guatemala’s HighlandsEvery 260 days, Indigenous communities in the highlands of Guatemala celebrate a new cycle of the Maya calendar. This ceremony has persisted for thousands of years, from pre-Columbian times to today. The latest of these ceremonies happened in early May.

Joining Ira to talk about the importance of astronomical ceremony is Willy Barreno, a Maya calendar keeper based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, and Dr. Isabel Hawkins, astronomer and senior scientist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California.

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Did you know that almost all the wine we drink, no matter what color it is or where it’s produced, comes from a grape species called Vitis vinifera? But these grapes can’t survive the cold, harsh winters of Iowa, so researchers at Iowa State University are growing special varieties that can withstand a wider range of temperatures. Through this effort, they’re even hoping to expand Iowa’s wine industry.

Onstage in Ames, Iowa, Ira talks with Dr. Erin Norton, director of the Midwest Grape and Wine Industry Institute at Iowa State University. They chat about the science of growing cold-hardy grapes, taste a selection of Iowan wines, and explore the basics of viticulture.

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Rare earth elements are a group of 17 metals used in a wide range of things that make modern life possible, including batteries, magnets, LED light bulbs, phone screens, and catalytic converters.

These elements are essential to a green economy because they are integral to many technologies designed to have low environmental impact. However, mining these metals is a dirty, complex, and costly process. And as the world transitions towards more clean energy production, the demand for them will continue to grow.

One possible solution is to recycle rare earth elements when they’re discarded in electronics waste. On stage in Ames, Iowa, Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Ikenna Nlebedim and Dr. Denis Prodius, two materials scientists from the Critical Materials Institute at the Ames National Laboratory who have developed a new acid-free method to recycle rare earth metals found in magnets.

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After the Big Bang, the universe expanded rapidly. And, once upon a time, conventional wisdom held that that expansion would eventually slow, dragged back inwards by the gravitational pull of all the matter in the universe. But in 1998, two groups studying supernovae discovered that not only was the universe continuing to expand, but that the expansion was accelerating.

That accelerating expansion has been attributed to a force cosmologists have called dark energy. The energy itself has been represented by a number—thought to be a universal constant—called the cosmological constant. But recent data presented by a group called DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, says that possibly, the constant may not be a constant. Instead, dark energy may be evolving over time.

The finding, if it holds true, would be a big deal, requiring cosmologists to redo their equations for the way the universe works and, possibly, develop new physics to explain the phenomenon. Dr. Dillon Brout, an assistant professor of astronomy at Boston University and part of the DESI collaboration, joins Ira to talk about the data from the first year of the DESI instrument, and what may lie ahead in years to come.

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The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has updated its recommendations for breast cancer screening once again. The recommendations now stipulate that women and people assigned female at birth should begin getting mammograms at age 40, and continue every other year until age 74. The previous guidelines recommended beginning screening at age 50. These guidelines carry a lot of weight because they determine if mammography will be considered preventive care by health insurance and therefore covered at no cost to the patient.

Why have the guidelines changed? And how are these decisions made in the first place? To answer those questions and more Ira Flatow talks with Dr. Janie Lee, director of breast imaging at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and professor of radiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

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Upgrades to the power grid under a new rule could help accommodate an increasing renewable energy supply and meet data center demands. Also, extremely small particles might help scientists develop vaccines that are stable at room temperature and easier to administer.

New Rule Sets Stage For Electric Grid UpdateThe US electric grid is straining to keep up with demand. For starters, our warming climate means more electricity is needed to keep people cool. Last summer—which was the hottest on record—energy demand in the US experienced an all-time hourly peak. And even though more renewable energy is being produced, our current grid, largely built in the 1960s and 1970s, was not built to handle those needs. Increased use of AI and cryptocurrency, which require power-hungry data centers, have only increased the burden on the grid.

But on Monday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved new rules to upgrade the grid to accommodate rising demands. The policy includes approval for the construction of new transmission lines and modification of existing transmission facilities.

Casey Crownhart, climate reporter for the MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to talk about this and other science stories of the week, including how a recent ocean heatwave will impact ocean life and the upcoming hurricane season, a new self-collection test for cervical cancer, and how a tiny beetle uses audio mimicry to avoid being eaten by bats.

Could Vaccines Of The Future Be Made With Nanoparticles?In 2021, vaccines for COVID-19 were released, a little over a year after the SARS-CoV-2 virus triggered a global pandemic. Their remarkably short production time wasn’t the result of a rush-job, but a culmination of decades of advancements in infrastructure, basic science, and mRNA technology.

But despite the years of innovations that allowed those vaccines to be developed and mass-produced so quickly, their delivery method—an injection—still has some drawbacks. Most injected vaccines need to be kept cold, and some require multiple trips to a pharmacy. And people with needle phobias may be reluctant to get them altogether. So what could the vaccines of the future look like?

Dr. Balaji Narasimhan, distinguished professor and director of the Nanovaccine Institute at Iowa State University, joins Ira Flatow onstage in Ames, Iowa, to talk about how his lab is using nanotechnology to develop the next generation of vaccines, and how they could be more effective than current vaccines in the face of the next pandemic.

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Sports are a critical part of human culture just about everywhere in the world. Maybe you played little league as a kid, or like to go to the park for a game of pickup basketball, or even just cheer for your favorite team on the weekends.

Unfortunately, like so many other things, climate change is taking a toll on the world of sports. It’s getting too warm for appropriate ski conditions at ski resorts. Rising temperatures put athletes at risk of heat stroke.

Globally, sports are a trillion dollar industry, and billions of people rely on them for their jobs, fitness, and health.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Dr. Madeleine Orr, sports ecologist and author of Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport, about how our warming climate is altering how we play sports, and what to do about it.

Read an excerpt from Warming Up at sciencefriday.com.

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Tinnitus, a condition commonly described as a persistent ringing in the ears, affects millions of people around the world. In the US, the prevalence of tinnitus is estimated at around 11% of the population, with 2% affected by a severe form of the condition that can be debilitating. But despite it being so common, the exact causes of some tinnitus, and how best to think about treating the condition, are still unclear. In some cases, it’s brought on by exposure to loud noise, while in others, an ear infection or even earwax can be to blame.

Dr. Gabriel Corfas, director of the Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about current research into the condition and possible treatments, from regrowing nerve cells, to devices that provide electrical stimulation.

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Wildlife ecologist Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant has tracked bears through the mountains, lived with lions, been chased by elephants, and trekked after lemurs in a rainforest. Now, she co-hosts the renowned nature television show “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild.”

Dr. Wynn-Grant’s new memoir, Wild Life: Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World, documents her many adventures as well as her experience navigating conservation as a Black woman and landing her dream job as a nature television host.

Read an excerpt from Wild Life here.

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The Field Museum has unveiled a new specimen of Archaeopteryx, a species that may hold the key to how ancient dinosaurs became modern birds. Also, a “green glacier” of trees and shrubs is sliding across the Great Plains, burying some of the most threatened habitat on the planet.

Remarkably Well-Preserved Archeopteryx Specimen UnveiledThe Field Museum in Chicago just unveiled a new specimen of one of the most important fossils ever: Archaeopteryx. It lived around 150 million years ago, and this species is famous for marking the transition from dinosaurs to birds in the tree of life.

The Field Museum now has the 13th known fossil—and it may be the best-preserved one yet. So what makes this specimen so special? And what else is there to learn about Archaeopteryx?

To answer these questions, guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Dr. Jingmai O’Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum, about what makes Archaeopteryx such an icon in the world of paleontology and why they’re so excited about it.

Trees And Shrubs Are Burying Prairies Of The Great PlainsIn the Flint Hills region of Kansas, the Mushrush family is beating back a juggernaut unleashed by humans — a Green Glacier of trees and shrubs grinding slowly across the Great Plains and burying some of the most threatened habitat on the planet.

This blanket of shrublands and dense juniper woods gobbling up grassland leads to wildfires with towering flames that dwarf those generated in prairie fires.

It also eats into ranchers’ livelihoods. It smothers habitat for grassland birds, prairie fish and other critters that evolved for a world that’s disappearing. It dries up streams and creeks. New research even finds that, across much of the Great Plains, the advent of trees actually makes climate change worse.

Now a federal initiative equips landowners like Daniel Mushrush with the latest science and strategies for saving rangeland, and money to help with the work.

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Astronomers have confirmed they found an atmosphere around an Earth-like rocky exoplanet for the first time. Also, Boeing’s Starliner craft was scheduled to carry humans to the International Space Station in 2017. Its launch is now set for May 17, 2024.

In A First, JWST Detects An Atmosphere Around A Rocky ExoplanetEarlier this week, astronomers announced they had discovered an atmosphere around a rocky Earth-like planet named 55 Cancri e, about 40 light-years away from Earth, thanks to instruments onboard the JWST telescope. Finding an atmosphere around a rocky planet is a big step for exoplanet exploration: Earth’s atmosphere is crucial to its ability to sustain life, and astronomers need to be able to identify rocky planets that have atmospheres to search for life outside the solar system.

However, 55 Cancri e is likely far too hot to have any life: Researchers estimate the surface temperature to be about 3,100 F, thanks to its close proximity to its sun and a probable magma ocean that envelops the planet. But this could also give clues to Earth’s formation, as its own surface was also once covered by lava.

Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about this and other top news in science this week, including tightening restrictions on risky virus research in the US, possible evidence for a sperm whale “alphabet,” and how environmental changes are leading to an increase in disease in humans, animals, and plants.

Boeing Plans To Fly Humans To The ISS Next WeekWhen NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011, the agency had to find a new way to transport astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Russia’s Soyuz program has met that need in the meantime, but NASA has wanted a more local solution. So they started awarding contracts to private US companies who could act as space taxis, including SpaceX, with its Dragon capsule, and Boeing with its Starliner capsule, through the United Launch Alliance (ULA).

Unlike SpaceX, Boeing has yet to fly humans in its spacecraft. But it plans to do so no earlier than next Friday, carrying Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, NASA astronauts and former Navy pilots to the ISS. Starliner was originally supposed to launch this week, but due to issues with a pressure regulation valve on the Atlas V rocket’s upper stage, ULA had to delay the launch to replace the valve.

Brendan Byrne, assistant news director at Central Florida Public Media, talks with guest host Sophie Bushwick about Boeing’s rocky road to the ISS and how NASA hopes to split the workload of ferrying astronauts between Boeing and SpaceX.

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The first Women’s World Cup was in 1991, and the games were only 80 minutes, compared to the 90-minute games played by men. Part of the rationale was that women just weren’t tough enough to play a full 90 minutes of soccer.

This idea of women as the “weaker sex” is everywhere in early scientific studies of athletic performance. Sports science was mainly concerned with men’s abilities. Even now, most participants in sports science research are men.

Luckily things are changing, and more girls and women are playing sports than ever before. There’s a little more research about women too, as well as those who fall outside the gender binary.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Christine Yu, a health and sports journalist and author of Up To Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes, about the gender data gap in sports science.

Read an excerpt of Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes at sciencefriday.com.

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At first glance, Mars might seem rather different from our own planet. Mars is dry, with little atmosphere, and no liquid water on its surface. It is half the size of Earth, lacks a planetary magnetic field, and does not appear to have active plate tectonics or volcanic activity. In some ways it is a world frozen in time, affected only by the force of wind and the occasional meteorite impact.

That static nature, however, could give scientists clues to conditions that once existed on Earth, but have been lost to the effects of plate tectonics and weathering. Ira talks with planetary geologist Dr. Valerie Payré of the University of Iowa about her research into the geology of Mars, and what it could tell scientists about early Earth.

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Emily Dalfrey lives across the street from Niblett’s Bluff Cemetery, where generations of her family are buried, in Vinton, Louisiana.

In 2016, a period of prolonged rainfall caused flooding so severe that people could drive boats over the cemetery. The water put so much pressure on the graves that some of the vaults, which are located near the surface, popped open. Some of Dalfrey’s own family members’ caskets were carried away and deposited in her yard.

Unsure how to restore the cemetery, the community contracted Gulf Coast Forensic Solutions, a company that helps people locate and rebury loved ones after natural disasters damage cemeteries.

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The Ada Hayden Herbarium preserves hundreds of thousands of specimens, including some collected by George Washington Carver. And, as the “Universe of Art” podcast turns one, listeners discuss solar music boxes and what it’s like making art with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Inside Iowa State’s Herbarium With 700,000 Plant SpecimensHerbariums are plant libraries—they contain fragile specimens of plants collected from near and far, and they are meticulously described and cataloged so that someone can reference them in the future. At Iowa State University, the Ada Hayden Herbarium contains more than 700,000 specimens, about half of which are from Iowa.

Ira talks with herbarium’s director, Dr. Lynn Clark, and curator Deb Lewis about how plants are preserved, why herbariums are so important, and what it takes to manage a plant archive.

Science-Inspired Art From Two ‘Universe of Art’ ListenersLast week, we kicked off a first-anniversary celebration for Universe of Art, our science-meets-art spinoff podcast. A lot of listeners have written in since the start of the podcast, telling us about the science-inspired art they’ve made in their spare time.

Last week, host D. Peterschmidt spoke with Todd Gilens, a visual designer who worked with the city of Reno, Nevada, to create a mile-long poem on the city’s sidewalks about the connections between urbanism and stream ecology.

This time, we’ll meet two listeners. Craig Colorusso is a punk rock guitarist-turned-sound artist who creates public sculptures and experiences that enhance visitors’ connection to nature. Two of his projects, Sun Boxes and The Bridges At Coler, use solar panels to play reflective, calming music he composed. “You have this idea where you are in nature and you are listening to something that is powered by nature,” he said. “I think that’s perfect.”

And we’ll meet a listener who prefers to go by Chris, who was an engineer and avid artist who made mosaics and crocheted before developing Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). It’s a debilitating condition characterized by extreme fatigue that can’t be improved by rest, and can also include brain fog, pain, and dizziness. It’s similar to what many Long COVID patients experience. Chris’ condition is considered severe, and caused her to lose the use of her hands, and thus her preferred art mediums.

However, Chris could still use her left hand with a rollerball mouse and realized that she could use programs like Chaotica to create fractals that she adds to collages in Photoshop, resulting in colorful collages. “They’re just beautiful and I’m doing art again and I’m so happy about it,” she said.

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Science Friday is in Ames, Iowa, home to prairies, greater prairie chickens, and an array of wildlife. Also, the co-emergence of two periodical cicada broods is underway. Scientists have tips for how to experience the event.

Science From Iowa’s PrairiesThis week, SciFri is coming to you from Ames, Iowa. We’re kicking off the sciencey Iowa celebrations by spotlighting some of the plants, animals and unique ecosystems of the Hawkeye state. Ira talks with Charity Nebbe, host of the “Talk of Iowa” at Iowa Public Radio, about the state’s largest prairie restoration project, the conservation of prairie chickens, and its rebounding wildlife.

Planning To Go See Cicadas? Here’s What To KnowIn parts of the American South and Midwest, two broods of cicadas are emerging: Brood XIX, known as the Great Southern Brood, and Brood XIII, called the Northern Illinois Brood.

The dual emergence of these two particular broods is a rare event, since the Great Southern Brood emerges on a 13-year cycle and the Northern Illinois Brood emerges on a 17-year cycle. The last time they were seen together was in 1803. The two could overlap this spring in parts of Illinois and Iowa, where cicada enthusiasts will gather in parks to observe the emergence.

“Plan to spend an afternoon or two,” recommends entomologist Dr. Laura Iles from Iowa State University. “Here in Iowa it tends to be pretty patchy even within a park, so talk to someone, a ranger, about what path to hike on and the best places to go see them.”

Ira Flatow speaks with Dr. Iles about the fascinating life cycle of cicadas, how best to approach cicada tourism, and why gardeners should hold off on planting new trees this year.

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A study found aggression between male bonobos to be more frequent than aggression between male chimpanzees. Also, visual artist Todd Gilens created a walkable poem along Reno’s Truckee River that draws parallels between urbanism and stream ecology.

Bonobos Are Gentler Than Chimps? Maybe Not.Bonobos are a species of great ape, along with gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees. Over the years, they’ve gained a reputation as being calmer and more peaceful than other ape species. But recent work published in the journal Current Biology finds male bonobos may be just as aggressive as male chimpanzees, if not more so.

Dr. Maud Mouginot, a postdoctoral associate in anthropology at Boston University, led the study, in which observers followed individual chimps and bonobos in the wild from morning to night, keeping track of all their interactions. The researchers found that bonobos engaged in 2.8 times more aggressive interactions and 3 times as many physical aggressions as the chimpanzees in the study.

Dr. Mouginot joins guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross to discuss the findings, what might account for the differences in aggressiveness, and what it can teach researchers about primate behavior.

Art Meets Ecology In A Mile-Long PoemOne year ago this month, we launched our podcast Universe Of Art, which features arts-focused science stories, like the science behind “Dune” and why a group of science illustrators created an online celebration of invertebrate butts. And to our surprise, a lot of you wrote in to tell us about your own science-inspired art projects, including artist Todd Gilens.

Gilens is a visual artist and designer who collaborated with the city of Reno, Nevada, to create a mile-long poem, called “Confluence,” printed on the city’s sidewalks bordering the Truckee River. He was interested in how water shapes landscapes, and how urban architecture can mirror those natural processes. He later found the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory, a University of California field station near Mammoth Lakes, and spent several field seasons with them to learn about stream ecology.

Universe Of Art host D. Peterschmidt sat down with Todd to talk about how the poem came together and why he spent four field seasons in the Sierra Nevada with stream ecologists to create the piece.

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There are products on the market that monitor your brain waves through caps or headbands: Some aim to improve mental health, sleep, or focus, while others can plunge users into virtual reality for gaming.

What happens to the neural data that neurotechnology companies collect from these devices? Consumers may be accustomed to their personal data from apps and social media being sold to third parties. However, the potential sale of brain data to a third party raises additional privacy concerns.

There are no federal laws governing the data collected by these wearable devices. But Colorado recently became the first state in the country to pass legislation protecting neural data in consumer products.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Jared Genser, general counsel and co-founder of The Neurorights Foundation about the current landscape of neuro privacy.

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The words “black hole” might bring to mind an infinite darkness. But the area right around a black hole, called the accretion disk, is actually pretty bright, with matter compressing hotter and hotter into a glowing plasma as it is sucked in. And amid that maelstrom, there are even brighter areas—bursts of energy that astronomers call flares.

Scientists are trying to better understand what those flares are, and what they can tell us about the nature of black holes. This week in the journal Nature Astronomy, a group of researchers published a video that they say is a 3D reconstruction of the movement of flares around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.

Dr. Katie Bouman, an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering and astronomy at Caltech in Pasadena, California, joins guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross to talk about the research, and how computational imaging techniques can help paint a picture of things that would be difficult or impossible to see naturally.

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Silk is one of the most luxurious fabrics for clothing and bedding. Unlike cotton or linen, silk is made most commonly by insects—often the Bombyx mori, a domesticated moth that feeds on the leaves of mulberry trees. Humans have a 4,000-year history with the textile and the creatures that make it, as documented in the new book Silk: A World History.

Since silk has an unconventional origin as a secretion rather than a plant product, it has unique biological qualities that make it strong and enduring. And because it’s a natural protein fiber, it’s biodegradable, so scientists think it could have a future as a sustainable alternative to plastics and electronic parts.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross speaks with Dr. Aarathi Prasad, biologist and author of Silk: A World History. They discuss the ways humans have changed silk-creating creatures through domestication, future applications of the textile, and Prasad’s experience growing silkworms of her own.

Read an excerpt from Silk: A World History at sciencefriday.com.

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While progress has been made in replacing water pipes in Flint, many residents say they still don’t know if their tap water is clean or not. Also, scientists are adding sensors to an underwater cable network to monitor changes in the ocean and quickly detect earthquakes and tsunamis.

10 Years Later, Flint’s Water Crisis Still Isn’t OverIn 2014, city officials in Flint, Michigan, switched their water source to the Flint River, a move that was projected to save the city $5 million. Instead, the water corroded the city’s lead pipes, which led to multiple negative health impacts for local residents, including lead poisoning, and a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that resulted in a dozen deaths.

Now, almost 30,000 homes and businesses have had their water lines replaced, but 1,900 others have still not been reviewed. The city says they’ve reached out to owners of these properties with no response and have not been able to move forward, but activists claim that the city hasn’t contacted them.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross is joined by Vox senior correspondent Umair Irfan to talk about this and other top science news from this week, including new Long COVID trials that are underway, regulations from the EPA that require new coal and gas plants to limit 90% of their CO2 emissions, and a positive software update for Voyager 1.

How Underwater Telecom Cables Could Help Detect TsunamisDeep under the sea, a wide network of cables crisscrosses the ocean floor, keeping the internet and other telecommunications online. While these cables have a big job to do, researchers want to make them even more important by giving them the ability to detect seismic activity and alert those on land of a tsunami risk earlier than is currently possible.

Portugal is about to be the testing ground for these new, integrated cables, with a 3,700-kilometer cable to be installed between the Iberian country and the Madeira and Azores archipelagoes. This is a fitting place to pilot this, as Lisbon was the site of a devastating 1755 earthquake and tsunami that killed tens of thousands.

Joining guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross to discuss the potential of smart cables is Dr. Bruce Howe, research professor of engineering at the University of Hawaii and chair of the United Nation’s SMART Cables Joint Task Force.

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America’s most-consumed fruit is at risk from a fungal disease. Researchers in North Carolina are on a mission to save Cavendish bananas. Also, birds move their vocal organs while they sleep, mimicking how they sing. Scientists have translated those movements into synthetic birdsong.

Fighting Banana Blight In A North Carolina GreenhouseBananas are the world’s most popular fruit. Americans eat nearly 27 pounds per person every year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A deadly fungus could destroy most of the world’s crops, but a company in Research Triangle Park is trying to save the banana through gene editing.

When it comes to growing bananas, RTP may not be the first place that pops in your head. But Matt DiLeo has a greenhouse full of them.

DiLeo is Vice President of Research and Development at Elo Life Systems, a biotechnology firm that’s exploring how gene editing can improve fruits and vegetables.

On a cloudy afternoon in early April, DiLeo opened the greenhouse door and stepped into a steamy atmosphere with a slightly floral odor. This greenhouse is packed floor to ceiling with banana trees. You’ve got to duck to keep the giant leaves from hitting your face. Some of the bananas are yellow, some are green, some are tiny and pink. DiLeo says they all share an important trait.

“Many of these are naturally resistant to the TR-4 fungus,” DiLeo said.

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Do Birds Sing In Their Dreams?When birds sleep, what are they dreaming about? Researchers from the University of Buenos Aires have figured out a way to tap into bird dreams. When a bird slumbers, its voice box, called the syrinx, can move in ways that are similar to when they sing while they’re awake. Essentially, birds are silently singing in their dreams.

Now, researchers have figured out how to translate that vocal muscle movement into a synthetic bird song, meaning you can listen to how birds sing in their dreams.

Guest host Maggie Koerth talks with Dr. Gabriel Mindlin, professor of physics at the University of Buenos Aires about his latest bird dream research, published in the journal Chaos.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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One of the biggest environmental issues in our modern world is plastic, which has become integral in the manufacturing of everything from electronics to furniture. Our reliance on plastic has led to a recycling crisis: A vast amount of plastic that winds up in our recycling bins isn’t actually recyclable, and ultimately winds up in landfills.

Large companies have committed to reducing plastic packaging and cutting back on waste. But there’s still no good way to scale up the removal of plastic that already exists. Waste-eating bacteria and enzymes have been shown to work in lab settings, but the scale-up process has a long road ahead.

Judith Enck, former EPA regional administrator and founder of the organization Beyond Plastics, has dedicated her career to advocating for making plastics more recyclable and keeping toxic chemicals out of the manufacturing process. She joins guest host Maggie Koerth to talk about why plastics are such a difficult environmental issue to solve, and what makes her feel hopeful this Earth Day.

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Superfund sites are some of the most polluted areas in the country, containing highly toxic waste such as asbestos, lead, and dioxin. Cleaning them up, which follows a systematic, science-based process as required by law, can take decades.

There are more than 1,300 of these sites across the US, from Florida’s Panhandle to the banks of the Rio Grande in New Mexico. They’re found in nearly every state, often near residential areas. The EPA estimates that 78 million people live within three miles of a Superfund site—nearly 1 in 4 Americans.

But these waste dumps face a growing threat: the worsening effects of climate change. The EPA has determined that more than 300 Superfund sites are at risk of flooding. The actual number of flood-prone sites, however, may be more than twice that amount, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report. Floodwaters can move toxic waste into neighboring communities, which threatens drinking water, agriculture, and broader ecosystem health.

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In the past few years pharmaceutical companies have developed a string of new Alzheimer’s drugs called anti-amyloids, which target amyloid plaques in patients’ brains. These plaques are one of the key biomarkers of the disease.

The first of these drugs, Aduhelm, was approved by the FDA in 2021 amid enormous controversy. The FDA approved the drug despite little evidence that it actually slowed cognitive decline in patients. Biogen, the maker of Aduhelm, pulled the plug on further research or sales of the drug last month.

In January 2023 The FDA approved another anti-amyloid medication from Biogen, lecanemab, sold under the brand name Leqembi. This time, there was much stronger evidence. Clinical trial results showed that the drug showed a modest improvement in cognitive decline in the early phases of the disease. But the drug comes with risks, including brain swelling and bleeding.

Most recently, at the beginning of March, the FDA delayed approval of another anti-amyloid drug, donanemab, created by Eli Lilly. The FDA said it will be conducting an additional review to further scrutinize the study design and efficacy data.

From the outside looking in, these Alzheimer’s drugs appear to be mired in controversy. How well do they actually work? And why has there been so much back and forth with the FDA?

To answer those questions and more, guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Dr. Jason Karlawish, professor of medicine, medical ethics and health policy, and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, and co-director of the Penn Memory Center.

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Particle accelerators, nanofibers, and solar physics: The science advisor for the Netflix adaptation breaks down the physics in the show. Also, in her new book, Jessica J. Lee looks at how humans have moved plants around the globe–and how our migrations are intertwined with theirs.

How ‘3 Body Problem’ Explores The Laws Of PhysicsLast week, Netflix released its adaptation of the Hugo Award-winning sci-fi book The 3 Body Problem by Cixin Liu. It follows the journey of several scientists, from the Chinese Cultural Revolution to the present day, as they seek to understand why their fellow researchers are dying and why their scientific results no longer make sense. Along the way, they discover an ultra-advanced VR game and a dark secret that suggests we might not be alone in the universe.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross sits down with the show’s science advisor, Dr. Matt Kenzie, an associate professor of physics at the University of Cambridge, to talk about what exactly the three body problem is, why he gave the actors physics lessons, and what he hopes audiences take away from a show focused on scientists.

In Defense Of ‘Out Of Place’ PlantsThe new book Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging unpacks how we think about the migrations of both plants and humans, as well as how those ideas shape our perceptions of what we call “non-native” or “invasive” plants like giant hogweed or English ivy.

Dispersals traces the history of how we moved plants around—including cherry blossoms, mangoes, and soy—and asks: What does it mean to be a plant out of place? And how does the migration of plants mirror our own?

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with environmental historian and author Jessica J. Lee about Dispersals and what we can learn from the histories of plants.

Read an excerpt from Dispersals at sciencefriday.com.

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We look into the engineering reasons why the Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed after a ship crashed into it. Also, a new analysis finds that more viruses spread from humans to animals than from animals to humans.

The Engineering Behind Why The Bridge In Baltimore CollapsedOn Tuesday, a large section of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed after an enormous container ship lost power and collided with the structure. Two people were rescued from the water, two bodies were recovered, and four others are unaccounted for and presumed dead.

The structural failure of the bridge, which cut off a key roadway and a major international shipping port, has many wondering why this happened. Does the fault lie in aging infrastructure or in the manner the container ship struck one of the bridge’s main supports?

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks to journalist Swapna Krishna about the engineering reasons behind why the bridge collapsed and other top stories in science this week, including rockets NASA is launching during next week’s solar eclipse, new research about how Homo sapiens traveled out of Africa, and visualizing the magnetic field of the black hole at the center of our galaxy.

Mapping Out How Viruses Jump Between SpeciesIn the world of emerging infectious diseases, one of the looming threats comes from the so-called zoonotic diseases—pathogens that somehow make the jump from an animal host to a human one. This includes pathogens such as COVID-19 and avian influenza, a.k.a. bird flu, which can sometimes cross the species divide. But a new analysis published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution finds that when it comes to viruses, more viral species appear to have jumped from humans to animals than the other way around. And even more cases of interspecies transmission don’t involve humans at all.

Cedric Tan, a PhD student in the University College London Genetics Institute and Francis Crick Institute, joins guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross to talk about the analysis, and what it tells us about our place in a global web of viruses.

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It wasn’t that long ago that scientists didn’t think animals could rival humans in terms of intelligence, emotions, or empathy. But the groundbreaking work of Dr. Frans de Waal helped change all of that. De Waal spent his life studying the lives of animals — especially our closest cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos.

The primatologist died last week at the age of 75, and we wanted to remember him by sharing one of our favorite conversations with him on the show. It’s from 2019, when he published his book Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves.

In it, he tells the story of a female chimp who didn’t produce enough milk to feed her young. When de Waal taught her to feed her baby with a bottle instead, she repaid him with what most of us would recognize as gratitude: holding both of his hands, and whimpering sadly if he tried to leave.

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Ever since we learned that an asteroid slammed into Earth, wiped out the dinosaurs, and changed the course of life on this planet, scientists have wondered if it could happen again. It turns out there is an asteroid, called Bennu, that has a very small chance of colliding with our planet in the year 2182.

But beyond that, Bennu could hold information that would help unlock our solar system’s secrets, like how it began and where life originated. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission launched in 2016 to collect a sample from Bennu. It was successful, and this past fall, the spacecraft safely delivered its asteroid sample to scientists waiting on Earth.

In a new memoir, The Asteroid Hunter: A Scientist’s Journey to the Dawn of our Solar System, Dr. Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx, gives readers a behind-the-scenes account on this high-stakes mission.

Ira talks with Dr. Lauretta, a planetary scientist at University of Arizona in Tucson, about why he chose to study Bennu, what it was like to run such a nail-biting mission, and what Bennu could reveal about our galaxy.

Read an excerpt from The Asteroid Hunter.

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The next time you go to the zoo, take a few minutes by the sea lion habitat to watch the way they swim. While most high-performance swimmers use powerful kicks from hind appendages to power through the water, sea lions instead use their front flippers, moving with a pulling motion. With their propulsion source close to their center of gravity and their flexible bodies, sea lions are extremely agile under water, able to weave in and out among the stalks of an undersea kelp forest.

Researchers are studying the movements of these exceptional swimmers to try to design improved underwater vehicles. Mimicking some of the sea lion’s tricks could allow more maneuverable, quieter vehicles that produce less turbulence in the water.

SciFri’s Charles Bergquist talks with Dr. Megan Leftwich of George Washington University about her work with sea lions, and other research into fluids and biomechanics, including the fluid mechanics of human birth.

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There’s a thriving black market to buy and sell endangered plants, and the Department of Agriculture and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service monitor endangered species that are brought into the United States illegally. When they are discovered, the plants’ home country has 30 days to accept them. If they aren’t claimed, they get rescued. Then where do they go? To one of 62 plant rescue centers across the country at botanic gardens, zoos, and arboretums, operating according to an agreement through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES).

Ira talks with Dr. Susan Pell, executive director of the U.S. Botanic Garden, and Amy Highland, plant curator at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, DC, about the garden’s plant rescue program.

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The World Meteorological Organization’s report confirms last year had the highest temperatures on record and predicts an even hotter 2024. Also, NASA’s new PACE satellite will study how these tiny creatures could affect Earth’s climate, and how aerosols influence air quality.

UN Report Confirms 2023 Was Hottest Year On RecordA new report from the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization shows that last year had the hottest average global temperatures since recording began 174 years ago. Ocean temperatures also reached a 65-year high last year, and 2024 is on track to be even hotter.

Ira talks with Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos Magazine about that and other top science news of the week including cannibal birds, fighting Dengue fever with bacteria-infected mosquitos and the evolutionary benefit of whale menopause.

Why This NASA Satellite Is Studying PlanktonDid you know you can see plankton … from space? Earlier this year, NASA launched a satellite to do exactly that. It’s called PACE, which stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem, and NASA hopes that the satellite can tell us more about how these tiny creatures interact with Earth’s atmosphere and influence our climate.

Some species of plankton, called phytoplankton, are microscopic plants that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. PACE has equipment that can identify different species of phytoplankton by the kind of light they give off, giving NASA real-time information about their location and population size, which can also aid fisheries and coastal communities when algal blooms occur.

PACE will also study how aerosols affect air quality on Earth. Additional instruments on the satellite can differentiate between different kinds of aerosols by studying how they reflect light back into space, which will help scientists refine their climate models so that more accurate forecasts can be made.

Ira Flatow talks to Dr. Ivona Cetinic, PACE’s science lead for ocean biogeochemistry, about the satellite, her favorite species of plankton, and how the public can benefit from the data that the mission will provide.

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The term “living fossil” has been applied to any number of animals, from sharks to turtles to the coelacanth. It’s the idea that those animals look very much the same way their species may have looked millions of years ago, with limited evolutionary change over that time.

After analyzing the genomes of many different species on that “living fossil” list, researchers report they may have found an animal that evolves more slowly than all the others—a group of fish called gar. The rate of molecular change in gar genomes is the slowest of any jawed vertebrate, the researchers say. In fact, gar genomes change so slowly that two gar species that diverged from each other over 105 million years ago can still interbreed and produce fertile offspring. In evolutionary time, that’s comparable to the distance between humans and elephants. The researchers believe that the slow rate of change in gars may be due to an exceptional ability to repair mutations and other errors in their genes.

Dr. Solomon David, assistant professor of aquatic ecology at the University of Minnesota, and Chase Brownstein, a graduate student in Yale’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology, join Ira to discuss the findings, recently reported in the journal Evolution.

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Four years ago this week, the world as we know it changed. Schools shut down, offices shuttered, and we hunkered down at home with our Purell and canned foods, trying to stay safe from a novel, deadly coronavirus. Back then most of us couldn’t fathom just how long the pandemic would stretch on.

And now four years later, some 1.2 million people have died in the U.S alone and nearly 7 million have been hospitalized as a result of a COVID-19 infection, according to the CDC.

So, what have we learned about how COVID-19 attacks the body? What can be done for long COVID sufferers? And what can we expect in the future?

Ira analyzes this era of the pandemic with Hannah Davis, co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative in New York City, and Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, immunobiologist at Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut.

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Think about the best meal you’ve ever eaten: Maybe it was in a restaurant in a far-off city, or perhaps it was a home-cooked meal made by someone you love. No matter where or what it was, odds are what made it so memorable was the flavor.

Flavor is arguably the most important part of a meal. If the flavor of something is off, or undetectable, it can jeopardize your enjoyment. There’s a lot of chemistry and biological science behind how and what we taste.

Flavorama: A Guide to Unlocking the Art and Science of Flavor is a new book that breaks down the mechanisms that go into these processes. Ira is joined by author Arielle Johnson, who holds a PhD in chemistry and co-founded the fermentation lab at the world-famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma.

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Roe v. Wade was overturned almost two years ago, and a lot has changed in terms of abortion choices in the United States. Some states have effectively banned abortion, while others have such confusing laws that it’s difficult for the people who live there to know what their reproductive rights are.

The post-Dobbs landscape hasn’t just affected the care people can receive: It’s also changed where physicians choose to work, especially if they’re in states where they can be criminally prosecuted for performing abortions.

Last month, the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare published a report that found that 22% of ob-gyns have left the state since June of 2022 — a massive amount for a state that already has the fewest physicians per capita in the country. Ongoing research in Wisconsin has found that the Dobbs decision has affected where medical students choose to study, and has even dissuaded some from choosing obstetrics as a specialty.

Joining Ira to talk about this are two ob-gyns from states with abortion restrictions: Dr. Sara Thomson, based in Boise, Idaho, and Dr. Abby Cutler, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

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A recent study looked into life-threatening Acanthamoeba infections, and a few deaths, linked to the use of tap water with devices like neti pots. And, in ‘The Balanced Brain,’ Dr. Camilla Nord explores the neuroscience behind mental health, and how our brains deal with life’s challenges.

Scientists Warn Against Nasal Rinsing With Unboiled Tap WaterResearchers at the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention published a study Wednesday that examined 10 cases of life-threatening Acanthamoeba infections that occurred after people cleaned their sinuses with neti pots, squeeze bottles, or other nasal rinsing devices. In most of these cases, which occurred in immunocompromised individuals over the span of a few decades, individuals had used tap water for nasal rinsing.

Tap water, while generally safe to drink, is not sterile. Microorganisms and germs live in distribution systems and pipes that the water travels through, and Acanthamoeba amebae was the main link between the 10 cases, three of which resulted in death.

Although contracting the Acanthamoeba pathogen is extremely rare, many people are unaware of the unsterile nature of tap water and use it for their sinuses, according to a survey study published last year. A third of participants incorrectly believed U.S. tap water is sterile, and almost two-thirds assumed it was safe to rinse your sinuses with it.

The CDC and FDA recommend using distilled or sterile water for nasal rinsing. If you want to use tap water, they recommend boiling it for three to five minutes and allowing it to cool. While slightly more time consuming, it is an effective way to get sterile water.

Rachel Feltman, host of “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” joins Ira to talk about this story and other news in science this week, including a new study that links microplastics in the human body to increased risk of heart disease and death, why the U.S. maternal mortality rate might be inflated, and why cicadas produce high-speed jets of urine.

How Your Brain Constructs Your Mental HealthIf you’ve ever struggled with a mental health issue like anxiety or depression, or know someone who has, it’s pretty clear that what works for one person might not work for another. Antidepressants only work in about 50-60% of patients. Meditation or yoga may be a gamechanger for some people, but ineffective for others.

Over the past few decades, neuroscientists have made huge advances in our understanding of the human brain. How can we use the latest neuroscience research to help improve our mental well-being? And what is the relationship between physical and mental health?

To answer those questions and more, SciFri producer Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with Dr. Camilla Nord, director of the Mental Health Neuroscience Lab at the University of Cambridge and author of the new book The Balanced Brain: The Science of Mental Health.

Read an excerpt of The Balanced Brain at sciencefriday.com.

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It’s a common refrain from elementary school to adulthood: “I’m bad at math.” It’s a hard subject for a lot of people, and it has a reputation for being—let’s face it—boring. Math isn’t taught in a flashy way in schools, and its emphasis on memorization for key concepts like multiplication tables and equations can discourage students.

It’s not hard to understand why: Math has long been seen as a boy’s club, and a straight, cis boy’s club at that. But Kyne Santos, a drag queen based in Kitchener, Ontario, wants to change that.

Kyne is on a mission to make math fun and accessible to people who have felt like math isn’t for them. Her new book, “Math in Drag,” is one part history lesson, one part math guidebook, and one part memoir. Kyne speaks with Ira about “celebrity numbers,” Möbius strips, and why math and drag are more similar than you may think.

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Humans need sufficient sleep to function. The conventional wisdom is that we need around 8 hours each night to be at peak performance.

But for people with idiopathic hypersomnia, or IH, no amount of sleep can shake a profound feeling of sleepiness. Some can sleep for over 24 hours, despite using stimulants and multiple alarm clocks. Others fall asleep while driving or doing other daily activities.

IH is rare. It affects just a small fraction of 1% of people, and the underlying cause is unknown. Now, scientists are doing more research into the condition, thanks in large part to patients organizing and advocating for better treatment options. Unlocking what causes this excessive sleepiness may be key to understanding the bigger picture of how the body enters and wakes from sleep.

Ira discusses the science of sleepiness with Dr. Quinn Eastman, science writer and author of The Woman Who Couldn’t Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness, and Diana Kimmel, co-founder of the Hypersomnia Alliance, and board member of the Hypersomnia Foundation.

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How Election Science Can Support DemocracyThis week, the election season shifted into full gear with the Super Tuesday slate of primaries. But as the ballot options become more cemented, it’s not just pollsters and campaign operatives who are preparing for the elections—scientists are too.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has established what it calls an election science task force, looking at everything from ballot design to disinformation to voting security. Dr. Jennifer Jones, program director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, joins Ira to describe the goals of the effort in the weeks and months ahead.

The Genetic Roots Of Antibiotic ResistanceAntibiotic resistance—when pathogens no longer respond to the conventional antibiotic medications—is a serious medical problem. According to the CDC, over 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the U.S. each year, causing some 35,000 deaths. It’s in part due to overprescription of antibiotics in medicine, and the widespread use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. But the problem isn’t entirely of humans’ making. The roots of antibiotic resistance go back millions of years.

A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences collected hundreds of soil and poop samples from around the world, to try to trace back the genetics of how resistance arose in Enterococcus, a genus of bacteria that live in the guts of pretty much every land animal. In the course of their analysis, the researchers identified 18 entirely new species in the genus Enterococcus, with over 1,000 genes that had never been seen before.

Dr. Michael Gilmore, the Chief Scientific Officer at Mass Eye and Ear, joins Ira to talk about the study and what the team hopes to learn about the causes of antibiotic resistance.

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Could A Planet Like Arrakis From ‘Dune’ Exist?“Dune: Part II” is one of the year’s most highly anticipated films, and it picks up where the first film left off: with Paul Atreides escaping into the desert on the planet Arrakis. It’s a scorching-hot world that’s covered in dunes, and home to giant, deadly sandworms.

Obviously “Dune” and its setting are fictional, but could there be a real planet that resembles Arrakis? And if so, could it sustain life?

Ira talks with Dr. Mike Wong, astrobiologist and planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, about what Arrakis’ atmosphere is like, the search for life in the universe, and what sci-fi films get wrong—and right—about alien planets.

Preparing Astronauts For The Loneliness Of A Mars MissionNASA is preparing to send humans to Mars. Although the launch date has been pushed back over the years, the agency says it wants to get there in the 2030s. And it has a lot on its to-do list. NASA needs to build new rockets, new habitable living spaces, new spacesuits, and new radiation shielding, just to name a few items.

But what if the one of the biggest challenges of these missions is not the engineering, but the mental health of the astronauts? Can all of the crew members get along with each other and stay alive over the course of three years in tight quarters and unforgiving environments? How will they cope with being separated from their families and friends for so long? And what lessons can they learn from astronauts who’ve lived on the International Space Station—and from our collective experience of isolation during the pandemic?

A new documentary, out March 8, explores all these questions and more. It’s called "The Longest Goodbye," and it dives into NASA’s Human Factors program, which includes a group of psychologists who are trying to figure out the best way to preserve astronauts’ mental health on a long and demanding mission.

SciFri producer and host of Universe Of Art, D. Peterschmidt, spoke to the film’s director, Ido Mizrahy, and one of its featured astronauts, Dr. Cady Coleman, about how NASA is thinking about tackling loneliness in space and what we can learn from astronauts who’ve already lived on the space station.

Should The Aliens In “65” Have Known About Earth’s Dinos?Some science fiction movies, like “Alien,” are instant classics. A good sci-fi movie weaves together themes of science and technology with a gripping narrative structure to create a memorable story that leaves the viewer with something to think about. But some (many) sci-fi movies leave the viewer with one thought: “Huh?”

The 2023 movie “65” is in some ways a reversal of “Alien.” Instead of humans coming to an alien world and getting attacked by aliens, in “65,” an alien that existed 65 million years ago crash lands on Earth and gets attacked by dinosaurs. Oh, and the alien is Adam Driver. What’s not to get?

Sometimes, calling in a real-life scientist is the best way to wrap your head around science fiction. Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger, an astrobiologist at Cornell University, says that if there were advanced extraterrestrials near Earth during the age of the dinosaurs, our planet’s life should have been no mystery to them. That’s because around 300 million years ago, Earth’s atmosphere had abundant oxygen and methane, two of the building blocks of life. Kaltenegger’s own research has shown how Earth’s atmosphere during that period would have been visible through a telescope—and indicated an even stronger potential for life than Earth’s atmosphere today. She also saw “65” on a plane.

Based on Kaltenegger’s research, should Adam Driver have seen those dinosaurs coming? In an interview with Digital Producer Emma Gometz, she shares how telescopes can spot exoplanet atmospheres, why Jurassic Earth’s atmosphere was special, and a few of her thoughts on “65.”

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In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2. Their mission? To explore the farthest reaches of our galaxy. Their missions were only supposed to last about four years, but it’s been almost 50. They’re now in interstellar space, navigating the region between stars.

But since November, Voyager 1 has been sending unintelligible data back to Earth, raising concerns that it could be nearing the end of its mission.

Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead at Carbon Plan, about Voyager 1 and other science news of the week, including work on detecting neutrinos with forests, calculating the age of giant sand dunes, uncovering the origins of cells, investigating why we don’t have tails anymore, and how a man walking his dog discovered a dinosaur fossil.

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For many people in the US, the threat of nuclear weapons is out of sight and out of mind. But the nuclear complex is alive and well. In fact, the state of nuclear weapons is evolving in the US. The United States, among other countries, is giving its nuclear arsenal—which contains about 5,000 weapons—a makeover. This modernization costs around $50 billion a year, which will amount to more than $1.5 trillion over the next few decades.

With the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in place, countries should be stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and technology. That raises the question: If nearly all countries have agreed not to nuke each other, why are nuclear arsenals being updated? And what does that signal to the world?

In her new book Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons, science journalist and author Sarah Scoles analyzes the current nuclear age, speaks with the scientists in charge of nuclear weapons, and asks, do more nukes keep us safer?

Scoles talks with Ira about why the US is modernizing its nuclear arsenal, the role of science in nuclear deterrence, and why this moment in nuclear history is so important.

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"I heard elders talk about 'the shakes,' but I now know that language reflects deep historical inequities that have denied us access to healthcare, knowledge, and research that could help us alleviate burdens and strengthen our health—enough with the shakes!" —Senegal Alfred Mabry, in Cell

Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder in the United States. According to a 2022 study, some 90,000 people a year in the US are diagnosed with Parkinson’s. It’s a progressive disease that worsens over time, producing unintended or uncontrollable movements, such as tremors, stiffness, and difficulty with balance and coordination.

Researchers are working to better understand the causes of the disease, how it connects to other health conditions, and how to slow or prevent its effects. Senegal Alfred Mabry is a third year PhD student in neuroscience at Cornell University, and was recently named a recipient of this year’s Rising Black Scientist Award by Cell Press. His research involves interoception—a sense that allows the body to monitor its own processes—and the autonomic nervous system. He joins Ira to talk about his research into Parkinson’s disease, and the importance of scientific research being connected to communities.

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In the trees, through the water, and under the dirt: Snakes evolve faster than their lizard relatives, allowing them to occupy diverse niches. Also, researchers are working to understand just how baleen whales are able to produce their haunting songs.

Snakes Are Evolutionary SuperstarsLove ‘em or hate ‘em, new research shows that snakes deserve our recognition as evolutionary superstars. The study, published last week in the journal Science, found that snakes evolve faster than other reptiles, allowing them to thrive in a wide range of environments.

It shouldn’t be too surprising: Many of the nearly 4,000 snake species occupy extremely specialized niches in their ecosystems. The blunt-headed tree snake, for example, eats through batches of treefrog eggs in Central and South America. Pythons, which can grow to 20 feet long, can take down large mammals like antelopes.

Joining Ira to talk about the evolutionary speed of snakes is study co-author Dr. Daniel Rabosky, evolutionary biologist and curator of the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan.

Whale Song Is All In The LarynxWhale songs can be both beautiful and haunting. But the exact mechanism that the 16 species of baleen whales, like humpback and minke whales, use to make those noises hasn’t been well understood. The finer points of whale anatomy are hard to study, in part because the soft tissues of beached whales often begin to decompose before researchers can preserve and study them. And until the relatively recent advent of monitoring tags that can be attached to individual whales, it’s been hard to associate a given underwater sound with any specific whale.

For a recent study, published in the journal Nature, researchers took advantage of several well-preserved beached whales to investigate the mysteries of the baleen whale larynx and its role in whale song. Dr. Coen Elemans of the University of Southern Denmark joins Ira to discuss the work, which included a MacGyveresque contraption involving party balloons and exercise bands that blew air at controlled pressures through preserved whale larynx tissues. The researchers found that there are limits to both the frequencies these whales can produce, and the depths at which they are physically able to sing.

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The United States eliminated measles back in 2000, but it still pops up every now and then. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a total of 35 measles cases across 15 states had been reported this year as of February 22. Early last month, a measles outbreak began at an elementary school in Broward County, in southern Florida. As of February 28, the Florida Department of Health reported 9 cases for Broward County—out of 10 for the whole state.

Measles is one of the most infectious diseases in the world, and it has a safe and effective vaccine called MMR—for measles, mumps, and rubella—that saves lives. Kids usually get the vaccine early in life, and it provides lifelong protection.

But childhood vaccination rates have declined in some areas, so preventable diseases like measles are on the rise. In Florida, the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, has been criticized for how he’s handling the outbreak—for example, by not explicitly encouraging parents to get their kids vaccinated.

So how did the measles outbreak in Florida get to this point? And is it a reflection of a broader public health risk?

Ira talks with pediatrician Dr. Rana Alissa, who is vice president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and an associate professor at the University of Florida in Jacksonville. He is also joined by Dr. Paul Offit, pediatrician and director of the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

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The Greek philosopher Pythagoras had specific ideas about the mathematical ratios behind music. It turns out that he was wrong. Also, the charcoal-like substance known as biochar packs carbon into a stable form, making it less likely to escape into the atmosphere.

Pythagoras Was Wrong About MusicThe ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras proposed a mathematical argument for what music sounds best to the ear: According to legend, he said listeners preferred music with chords adhering to perfect mathematical ratios, like 3:2. This concept has persisted in modern Western music, specifically for building harmonies.

But new research out of the University of Cambridge disputes this idea. A set of behavioral experiments with more than 4,000 participants in the US and South Korea found that listeners actually prefer chords with a slightly imperfect mathematical ratio, particularly when played with non-Western instruments.

Tim Revell, deputy US editor of New Scientist joins Ira to talk through this story, as well as other big science stories of the week, including a big change to YouTube’s algorithm, a new battery breakthrough for electric cars, and the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas.

Farmers And Environmentalists Alike Are Excited About BiocharIn a former biomass plant in Greenville, wood chips are flowing from hoppers into long tubes about three feet in diameter.

Pat Jones is the president of Clean Maine Carbon, which burns wood in high-temperature, low-oxygen conditions known as pyrolysis. “It starts out as wood” he said. “And as you can see when we come over here what comes out the other end is biochar.”

In the quest for climate solutions, Jones is among the Maine entrepreneurs banking on this charcoal-like substance. They say it can bind up carbon for decades, and improve agricultural soils at the same time.

The end product has high carbon density, and is very stable, so less of the carbon will be released into the atmosphere than if it were left to decompose. So while Jones is making biochar, his business plan is focused on selling carbon credits to corporations.

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Almost 70 years ago—in the middle of the Cold War—the United States and the Soviet Union kicked off the race to space, and that high-stakes sprint transformed humanity’s relationship with space forever. Ultimately the USSR launched the first satellite, Sputnik, and the U.S. put the first humans on the moon.

Now we’re in a different space race. But this time, there are a lot more contenders. There are more satellites in orbit than ever before, NASA is trying to put humans on Mars, countries are still sending landers to the moon, and billionaires are using rockets as tourist vehicles. All this activity raises some serious questions: Who is in charge of space? And who makes the rules?

Journalist Khari Johnson explored these questions in a recent feature for Wired magazine, featuring experts at the forefront of these issues. Guest host Sophie Bushwick is joined by two of them: Dr. Timiebi Aganaba, assistant professor of space and society at Arizona State University, and Dr. Danielle Wood, assistant professor and director of the Space Enabled Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They discuss the role of space lawyers, what cases they may argue, and how the rules of space—and the potential for conflicts—are evolving.

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Sharks are somewhat notorious for their sense of smell and ability to sniff out prey deep in the ocean. There’s that persistent myth that sharks can smell a drop of human blood from a mile away. But that’s not exactly true. While sharks can smell human blood, they are more interested in sniffing out what’s for dinner: other fish, crustaceans, and molluscs. Ocean currents also play a role in how far a scent can travel. However, shark noses are just as powerful as any other fish in the sea.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Lauren Simonitis, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in biology at University of Washington and Florida Atlantic University, about her shark nose research, and what questions remain about shark snoots.

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How can some people recall random facts so easily? It may have to do with what else they remember about the moment they learned the information. Also, in Kenya, an invading ant species pushed out ants that protected acacia trees. That had cascading effects for elephants, zebras, lions, and buffalo.

A ‘Jeopardy!’ Winner Studied How Trivia Experts Recall FactsWhen contestants play “Jeopardy!,” it can be amazing to see how quickly they seem to recall even the most random, obscure facts. One multi-time “Jeopardy!” contestant, Dr. Monica Thieu, noticed something interesting about the way that she and her fellow contestants were recalling tidbits of information. They weren’t just remembering the facts, but also the context of how they learned them: where they were, what they read, who they were with. Hypothesizing that for trivia superstars, information was strongly tied to the experience of learning it, she put that anecdotal evidence to the test. The results of her research were recently published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Thieu, a psychology researcher at Emory University, and Dr. Mariam Aly, assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University, and a co-author of the new study. They discuss the psychology of trivia, how to get better at it, and why some people seem to be much more adept at recalling fun trivia facts than others.

See if you can beat a "Jeopardy!" champ on our website!

How One Invading Ant Species Sent Ripples Through A Food WebWhen people talk about the interconnectedness of nature, the usual example involves a little fish that eats a bug, a bigger fish that eats the little fish, and an even bigger fish at the top of the chain. But in reality, the interconnected relationships in an ecosystem can be a lot more complicated. That was certainly the case in a recent study, published in the journal Science, which describes how the arrival of an invasive ant species changed the number of zebras that get eaten by lions on the Kenyan savannah.

The unwelcome ant is known as the big-headed ant. It’s on a list of top 100 invasive species around the world. When it arrived on the African savannah, the ant newcomer muscled out a native ant species known as the acacia ant—which, though tiny, was able to help defend acacia trees from being grazed upon by elephants (picture getting a trunkful of angry ants while snacking).

With the trees undefended, hungry elephants feasted, resulting in fewer trees on the savannah and more open space. That made the hunting environment less favorable to stealthy lions, and more favorable to fleet-footed zebras. But to the surprise of the researchers involved with the study, that didn’t mean hungrier lions. Instead, the lions shifted their hunting from targeting zebras to targeting buffalo instead.

Dr. Jacob Goheen and Douglas Kamaru of the University of Wyoming join guest host Sophie Bushwick to describe their research, and how a small ant can have a big effect on an ecosystem.

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OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E, unveiled its newest generative AI product last week, called Sora, which can produce extremely realistic video from just a text prompt. In one example released by the company, viewers follow a drone’s-eye view of a couple walking hand-in-hand through snowy Tokyo streets. In another, a woman tosses and turns in bed as her cat paws at her. Unless you’re an eagle-eyed AI expert, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish these artificial videos from those shot by a drone or a smartphone.

Unlike previous OpenAI products, Sora won’t be released right away. The company says that for now, its latest AI will only be available to researchers, and that it will gather input from artists and videographers before it releases Sora to the wider public.

But the fidelity of the videos prompted a polarizing response on social media. Some marveled at how far the technology had come while others expressed alarm at the unintended consequences of releasing such a powerful product to the public—especially during an election year.

Rachel Tobac, an ethical hacker and CEO of SocialProof Security, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about Sora and what it could mean for the rest of us.

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Private Spacecraft Makes Historic Moon LandingThursday evening, the Odysseus moon lander successfully soft-landed on the moon, becoming the first U.S spacecraft to do so in over 50 years. The lander mission wasn’t created by NASA or another government space agency, but by the company Intuitive Machines, making it the first commercial mission to successfully soft-land on the surface of the moon. The mission was part of a NASA program called the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to make lunar missions faster and cheaper. There are other commercial moon missions planned for later this year. Umair Irfan, senior correspondent at Vox, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick for an update on the mission.

They’ll also talk about other stories from the week in science, including the move by some automakers toward plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, work on freezing antimatter, a strange meat-rice hybrid, and progress towards a universal snake antivenom.

A New Recipe For Cloud Seeding To Boost Snowfall In IdahoWe’re taught in school that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It usually happens like that in the lake or on the ground,” said Derek Blestrud, a Senior Atmospheric Scientist at Idaho Power.

But the process differs in the sky, he said. Clouds contain supercool water that doesn’t turn to ice until it reaches about -40 degrees F. That is, unless some other substance initiates the freezing.

“Water’s really dumb,” Blestrud likes to say. “It doesn’t know how to freeze unless something else teaches it how to freeze.”

That’s where scientists like Blestrud step in. They help clouds produce more snow through cloud seeding, which involves releasing tiny particles that serve as nuclei for snowflakes to form.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

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The field of chemistry is filled with visual experiences, from molecular diagrams to color-changing reactions to data displayed as peaks and waves on a spectrograph. Those experiences and representations are not very accessible to blind and low-vision people. In a recent article in the journal Science Advances, a group of researchers describes using 3D printing to create translucent raised images known as lithophanes that can represent high-resolution chemical data in a tactile and visual form simultaneously.

Biochemist Dr. Bryan Shaw joins Ira Flatow to discuss the approach, and other techniques and tools his lab group at Baylor University is developing to make the lab more accessible to blind and low-vision researchers—from specialized devices that assist in the loading of gels for protein electrophoresis, to tiny molecular models that are best experienced by putting them on the tongue.

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The explosion of AI-powered chatbots and image generators, like ChatGPT and DALL-E, over the past two years is changing the way we interact with technology. Their impressive abilities to generate lifelike images from written instructions or write an essay on the topic of your choosing can seem a bit like magic.

But that “magic” comes at a steep environmental cost, researchers are learning. The data centers used to power these models consume an enormous amount of not just electricity, but also fresh water to keep everything running smoothly. And the industry shows no signs of slowing down. It was reported earlier this month that Sam Altman, the CEO of leading AI company OpenAI, is seeking to raise about $7 trillion to reshape the global semiconductor industry for AI chip production.

Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Jesse Dodge, research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, to talk about why these models use so much energy, why the placement of these data centers matter, and what regulations these companies could face.

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How Do You Know If A Feathered Dinosaur Could Fly?Not all birds can fly. Penguins, ostriches, and kiwis are some famous examples.

It’s pretty easy to figure out if a living bird can fly. But it’s a bit tricker when it comes to extinct birds or bird ancestors, like dinosaurs. Remember, all birds are dinosaurs, but not all dinosaurs evolved into birds.

Scientists at Chicago’s Field Museum wanted to figure out if there was a way to tell if a dinosaur could fly or not. They found that the number and symmetry of flight feathers are reliable indicators of whether a bird or dinosaur could lift off the ground.

Ira talks with two of the study’s co-authors about their research and how it might help us understand how dinosaur flight evolved. Dr. Yosef Kiat is a postdoctoral researcher and Dr. Jingmai O’Connor is the associate curator of fossil reptiles at The Field Museum in Chicago.

Sacre Bleu! Some French Cheeses At Risk Of ExtinctionThere’s bad news for the Camembert and brie lovers out there: According to the French National Center for Scientific Research, some beloved soft cheeses are at risk of extinction. The culprit? A lack of microbial diversity in the mold strains used to make Camemberts and bries.

As with many foods, consumers expect the cheese they buy to be consistent over time. We want the brie we buy today to look and taste like the brie we bought three months ago. But there’s a downside to this uniformity—the strain of Penicillium microbes used to make these cheeses can’t reproduce sexually, meaning it must be cloned. That means these microbes are not resilient, and susceptible to errors in the genome. Over the years, P. camemberti has picked up mutations that make it much harder to clone, meaning it’s getting harder to create the bries we know and love.

Joining Ira to talk about this is Benji Jones, senior environmental reporter at Vox based in New York City.

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Climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann won a defamation lawsuit against two conservative writers last week.

The verdict was 12 years in the making. In 2012 writers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn accused Mann of manipulating his data related to his famous 1998 “hockey stick” graph, which depicts rising global temperatures after the industrial revolution. Simberg compared him to former Penn State football coach and convicted child sex abuser Jerry Sandusky in a blog post for a libertarian think tank. Steyn later referenced Simberg’s article in a National Review piece, calling Mann’s work “fraudulent.”

Reviews by Penn State (Mann’s home institution at the time) and the National Science Foundation, found no scientific wrongdoing. And in fact the iconic graph has since been supported by numerous studies.

What does this ruling signal about the public’s understanding of climate change research? And the limitations of free speech?

Ira talks with Dr. Michael Mann, professor of Earth & environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.

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If successful, Odysseus will be the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo mission. And, in East Palestine, Ohio, the stream that flows under residents’ houses is still polluted following a train derailment and chemical spill.

Odysseus Lander Is On Its Way To The MoonJust after 1:00 a.m. on Thursday, February 15, SpaceX successfully launched a commercial spacecraft from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its destination? The moon. If the lander—named Odysseus—makes it all the way there, it’ll be the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since the Apollo mission, more than 50 years ago.

If successful, this mission will also mark another historic milestone: the first commercial spacecraft to touch down on the moon.

Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, about this latest lunar mission and other science news of the week, including: a satellite to detect methane leaks from space, the development of lithium-sulfur batteries, the first treatment for frostbite, the development of “heart-on-a-chip” devices, a frog with a mushroom growing out of its leg, and how eavesdropping on the love songs of Skywalker gibbons helped scientists estimate their population size.

A Year After Chemical Spill, Ohio Community Is Still RecoveringChristina Siceloff and Randy DeHaven walk down a short bank to Sulphur Run, a creek that winds between houses in East Palestine, Ohio. They make their way to a section of the stream about three-quarters of a mile from where the Norfolk Southern train derailed last February 3rd. Siceloff has brought a shovel, but she doesn’t even need one to show the condition of the stream. She just pushes her rubber boot into the sandy streambed, and an oily sheen erupts out of the muddy bottom, spreading on the top of the brownish-grey water.

“Kind of like what you would see in a puddle at a gas station,” Siceloff said.

Siceloff has brought a mask because the creek water still gives her headaches. For much of the past year, she’s been helping DeHaven and a group of volunteers document the condition of the stream. Siceloff lives a few miles away in Darlington, Pennsylvania, and could see smoke from the 2023 derailment and subsequent fire from her bedroom window. She was sick for five and a half months, as were her father and son.

“I had migraines, congestion, runny nose. I had pressure in my ears, burning in my nose, eyes and throat,” Siceloff said. She now has tremors in her hands, and her eyes twitch. She sneezes in the laundry soap aisle at Walmart and can’t stand the chlorine smell at a swimming pool.

In the days after the derailment and subsequent chemical spill, over 40,000 fish and other species died. DeHaven, who lives in town and has been filming the stream for much of the past year, saw it firsthand. “Most of the frogs were belly up,” DeHaven says. “There was a few fish floating, but a lot of them were just laying on the bottom.”

Now, a year after the derailment, regulators say they have cleaned up the site, and that the air in town is clear.

But the stream running through the middle of town is still contaminated and some in the area still worry about whether the chemicals sitting at the bottom of the stream are going to make their way into peoples’ bodies.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

These Romance Novels Represent Black Women In ScienceThe fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (also known as STEM) are not particularly diverse. And despite a gradual uptick in diversity over the last decade, a 2023 report from the National Science Foundation showed that only 24% of people in these industries are Hispanic, Black, or Native American.

Dr. Carlotta Berry is working to change that, taking an untraditional approach to encourage people from marginalized backgrounds to enter the sciences. She is, as she puts it, an engineering professor by day and romance novelist by night. Working under the pen name Carlotta Ardell, she writes youth-friendly romance novels featuring Black protagonists who work in STEM fields.

SciFri producer and host of the Universe Of Art podcast D. Peterschmidt sat down with Dr. Berry, who is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, to talk about how she got started on this journey and why she wants to make STEM a little steamier.

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Flame Retardant Could Be Made From Discarded Cocoa HusksOn cocoa farms around the world, cocoa beans are pulled from their pods, and the hard husks are discarded, leaving 20 million tons of plant waste to biodegrade and potentially harm future crops. These husks are a source of lignin, a substance that gives plants their rigidity. It’s extremely abundant—but often wasted.

A new study published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering found that the lignin processed from leftover cocoa pod husks could have a new use as an ingredient in flame retardant.

“Lignin is pretty special, as it is very soluble in organic solvents,” said study co-author Dr. Nicholas Westwood, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at St. Andrews University in Scotland, in an email. This means lignin can be chemically manipulated to create a number of useful substances relatively easily.

Because of lignin’s malleability, Westwood and his coauthors were able to add a flame-retardant molecule to the processed substance, and found that the modification increased its already naturally high ability to smother flames.

That’s just one possible application. While lignin hasn’t found widespread industrial use yet, scientists hold hope for it to become a greener alternative for fuel and a biodegradable plastic instead of just being leftovers. Processing biomass for food or fuel also produces a massive amount of lignin as a byproduct, which has been converted to materials like activated charcoal or carbon foam. “There are endless possibilities,” Westwood said.

Joining Ira to talk about lignin and its potential uses is Dr. Rigoberto Advincula, a materials scientist with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

The Oozy Physics Of OobleckYou may be familiar with a common science demonstration done in classrooms: If you mix cornstarch and water together in the right proportions, you create a gooey material that seems to defy the rules of physics. It flows like a liquid, but when you try to handle it quickly, it stiffens up.

This kind of material is called an oobleck, and it’s a type of non-Newtonian fluid, meaning its viscosity changes under pressure or stress. Oobleck-like materials include human-made things like Silly Putty and paint, but are also found in nature; blood and quicksand are both non-Newtonian fluids.

For a long time, it’s been hard to prove exactly why these materials act the way they do. But recently, scientists developed a better understanding of the underlying physics. A new study conducted in collaboration between the James Franck Institute and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago was able to demonstrate this mechanism.

“The findings from this study are important because they provide direct experimental evidence for one of the mechanisms proposed for strong shear thickening,” says Dr. Heinrich Jaeger, professor of physics at the University of Chicago. “Namely, frictional interactions as the particles in the liquid are sheared into contact.” Jaeger is a co-author of the study, which was led by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Hojin Kim.

Jaeger and Kim speculate that a better understanding of non-Newtonian fluids could help in the development of new, advanced materials. The potential ranges from flexible speed bumps to impact-resistant clothing. Jaeger joins Ira to talk about it.

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Between supplying fuel to military bases, planes, and ships, making and using weapons, and clearing land, militaries around the world account for almost 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

A new report calculated how much the militaries of the United States and the United Kingdom would hypothetically “owe” if they paid for the damage caused by their carbon emissions. The total came up to $111 billion. So what can the military do about its emissions? And what does militarism in the context of the climate crisis look like?

Ira talks with two of the report’s authors, Khem Rogaly, a senior researcher at London-based think tank Common Wealth, and Dr. Patrick Bigger, research director at the Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate policy think tank in the US.

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Scientists Report Second Highest-Energy Cosmic Ray Ever DetectedAround 30 years ago, scientists in Utah were monitoring the skies for cosmic rays when they detected a surprising particle. It struck the atmosphere with much more energy than they had previously seen—enough energy to cause the researchers to dub it the “Oh My God Particle.”

Over the years, a collaboration of researchers in Utah and Japan has detected other powerful rays—about 30 a year—but none that rival the OMG. In 2021, however, a second particle was detected. It was only slightly less powerful than OMG, but still many times more powerful than can be created on Earth. That 2021 particle was named “Amaterasu,” after a sun goddess from the Japanese Shinto religion. The researchers described their observations in a recent issue of the journal Science.

The researchers believe the particle must have come from relatively nearby, cosmically speaking, as otherwise it would likely have collided with something in space and lost its energy. However, when they tried to trace the particle back to its origin in space, they were unsuccessful. Both the OMG particle and the new Amaterasu particle seem to have come from empty regions of space, with no violent events or massive structures to create them.

Dr. John Matthews, a research professor in physics and astronomy and manager of the Cosmic Ray Physics Program at the University of Utah, joins Ira to talk about cosmic rays, how they’re detected, and the challenges of finding the origin of particles like Amaterasu.

These Penguins Are The Masters Of MicrosleepingDo you know that feeling when you’re just so tired that your head starts to droop? Your eyes feel heavy? And you drift off for just a moment … before snapping back to alertness, wondering what just happened.

Sleep comes in a variety of snoozes and sizes. We humans are not going to get a full night’s rest by nodding off here and there, but that’s pretty much what some chinstrap penguins do: They doze off more than 10,000 times a day, for just a few seconds at a time. And when you do the math, it can add up to 11 hours of sleep each day, according to a recent study in the journal Science.

Ira talks with study author Dr. Paul-Antoine Libourel, a sleep biologist at the Neurosciences Research Center of Lyon in France, about how the penguins do this and the advantages of microsleeps.

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Climate Conference Ends, With Few Immediate ResultsThe United Nations climate conference, COP28, ended this week in Dubai. After a lot of arguing over wording, the final agreement from the meeting calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.” That text is significant in that it is the first time, surprisingly, that fossil fuel use was mentioned by name in a COP agreement. However, many critics of the proceedings point out that even this recognition is too little, too late, with few practical routes to keep global warming under thresholds considered to be catastrophic.

Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to walk through the results of COP28. They also discuss other stories from the week in science, including research into morning sickness, clusters of brain cells that appear to do speech recognition tasks, a first look at asteroid samples from the OSIRIS-REx mission, and the tale of an unusual frog that camouflages itself as poop.

Why Are Some People Affected By Seasonal Affective Disorder?As the shortest day of the year approaches, many people might notice their energy levels starting to dip. For some, winter is an especially challenging season. About 5% of adults in the United States experience seasonal affective disorder, also known as SAD.

Ira talks with Dr. Kathryn Roecklein, associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, about her research into what makes some people more susceptible to seasonal depression than others, and the most effective treatment options.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Every year birders across the world trek out into the rain, sun, sleet, or wind to participate in the Christmas Bird Count, organized by the National Audubon Society. The massive community science project, in its 124th year, tracks bird population fluctuations from year to year. This year’s count runs from December 14 to January 5.

Ira and guest host Flora Lichtman are joined by Ariana Remmel, a birder and freelance journalist based in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Dr. Anuj Ghimire, a birder and wildlife ecologist at North Dakota State University. They give a preview of this year’s Christmas Bird Count and take listener questions.

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For thousands of years, humans have been observing and studying the Northern lights, aurora borealis, and their southern hemisphere counterpart, aurora australis. The simplest explanation for how these aurora form has been unchanged for decades: Charged particles, energized by the sun, bounce off the Earth’s protective magnetic field and create flashes of light in the process.

But for a long time, scientists have known it was more complicated than that. What exactly gives those incoming particles the energy they need to create the patterns we see? And why are some aurora more dramatic and distinct, while others are subtle and hazier?

Aurora researcher Jim Schroeder explains new work published in Nature Communications that suggests that in more vivid aurora, electrons may “surf” waves of energy from space into our atmosphere. The waves, called Alfvén waves, are a side effect of the solar wind warping the Earth’s magnetic field. Schroeder explains the weird physics of our aurora, and what we could learn about other objects in the universe as a result.

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If you ask children what they want to be when they grow up, chances are good that among the answers, you’ll hear “astronaut.” But becoming an astronaut can be more difficult than becoming a veterinarian, firefighter, marine biologist, or some of the other common childhood job aspirations. The odds aren’t good: In 2021, NASA selected 10 astronaut candidates from a pool of over 12,000 applicants. And last year, over 22,000 applications to the European Space Agency resulted in 17 job offers.

Dr. Mike Massimino’s application to become a NASA astronaut was rejected several times. However, he persisted in his efforts, and eventually flew twice on the space shuttle, logging over 570 hours in space and over 30 hours spacewalking. On his second trip to orbit, on Atlantis mission STS-125, he participated in the last servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Massimino joins Ira and guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about his time at NASA. They also discuss lessons he learned at the space agency that he believes can help others achieve their goals, which he has collected in his new book, Moonshot: A Nasa Astronaut’s Guide To Achieving The Impossible.

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In the late 19th century, astronomy was a growing field. At the time, Edward Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory, was working to create a classification system for stars by capturing the light from these distant celestial objects onto photographic glass plates. A team of women assistants and astronomers meticulously maintained and analyzed these delicate negatives. In her new book, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars, Dava Sobel shares the stories of these “human computers” and how their work helped to advance the field of astronomy and the role of women in science.

This team of astronomers included Williamina Fleming, who was once Pickering’s maid but eventually became a supervisor to the group and went on to identify hundreds of variable stars. And Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s observations about the luminosity of stars would shape later ideas about the expanding universe.

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What Causes Red Wine Headaches? It May Be QuercetinIt’s a common experience: After a glass or two of red wine, relaxation can turn into a pounding headache. This isn’t the same thing as a hangover, as the dreaded red wine headache kicks in between 30 minutes and three hours after imbibing.

For years, there have been different theories about what causes this phenomenon. But neither sulfites or tannins have been proven to be the culprit. A new theory published in the journal Scientific Reports posits that quercetin, an antioxidant in grape skins, could create a toxic byproduct that leads to headaches.

Dr. Morris Levin is one of the authors on this paper. He’s the director of the Headache Center at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, and has spent his career treating patients for migraines and other headache experiences. But Levin says there’s not nearly enough funding for headache research as a whole, which leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the origins and meanings of this common ailment.

Levin joins guest host Flora Lichtman to discuss red wine headaches, as well as the remaining mysteries of headaches.

Worsening Wildfires Are Undoing Air Quality Progress In The USThe Western US has seen both more frequent and more intense wildfires over the past couple decades, leading to lower air quality and increased deaths in the region between 2000 and 2020, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal. While the EPA has made progress in improving air quality in the country, those gains are being undone by smoke from wildfires.

The study looked at particulate matter called PM2.5 and a toxic component of it, black carbon. The researchers found that after years of trending downward nationally, the concentration of PM2.5–and the proportion of black carbon within it–began to increase in the West in 2010. This shift was linked to an increase of 670 premature deaths per year in the region.

Joining Ira to talk about this and other science news of the week is Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. They also discuss a surprise found in the oldest known mosquito fossil, why a national plastic bag recycling program was shut down, and why dwarf planet Eris’ surface is a little squishy.

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Have you ever wondered how the language you speak shapes your understanding of the world around you? And if you speak two or more languages, how might that change the way you process information? Is your brain always thinking in multiple languages or are you toggling back and forth?

In many parts of the world, multilingualism is the norm. And in the United States, the number of people who speak a language other than English has doubled in the past two decades, from just about 11% to about 22%.

Dr. Viorica Marian has spent her career studying multilingual and bilingual people to better understand how their brains process information differently than their monolingual counterparts.

Ira talks with Dr. Viorica Marian, professor of communication sciences and disorders and psychology at Northwestern University, and author of the book The Power of Language: How the Codes We Use to Think, Speak, and Live Transform our Minds in front of a live audience at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, presented with WBEZ and Mindworks.

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As people age, health often becomes a larger focus in their lives—their joints become a little more achy, or their vision less sharp. Some might even be dealing with a new diagnosis.

To handle these ailments, doctors might prescribe medications, or diet and lifestyle changes. But there’s often one big factor missing from these conversations: a patient’s social well-being.

Sociology researcher Dr. Linda Waite has been tracking the social health of thousands of research participants ranging in age from 50 to over 100, for 15 years. The study is ongoing, and so far she’s found that the social aspects of our lives play a big role in our long-term physical and mental health and well-being as we age.

Ira talks with Dr. Linda Waite, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago and head of the National Social Life, Health & Aging Project in front of a live audience at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, Illinois, presented with WBEZ and Mindworks.

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There’s a long-standing narrative about hunter-gatherers in ancient times: Men ventured out for meat, while women largely stayed closer to home, foraging for plants and tending to children.

As with most things, it almost certainly wasn’t that black and white. Recent analyses of physiological and archaeological evidence, published in American Anthropologist, suggest that females hunted just as much as males did during the Paleolithic era. In fact, they were well-suited to long-distance hunting, largely thanks to the benefits of estrogen. Additionally, Neanderthal remains show a sex-equal distribution of bone injuries consistent with hunting. Both males and females were buried with similar items and weapons, suggesting that there was not such a stark division of labor.

Ira is joined by Dr. Cara Ocobock, assistant professor in the department of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, and Dr. Sarah Lacy, biological anthropologist at the University of Delaware, to discuss the details of their findings and why the myth of “Man the Hunter” has persisted for so long.

Editor’s note: Sex and gender are distinct descriptors—“sex” pertaining to the biological aspects of the human body (hormones, genitalia, etc.) and “gender” relating more to an individual’s identity within a society. As Dr. Ocobock states in the segment, there are times when a strict sex binary makes sense related to study in a scientific realm, but even within those contexts, there can be large variability. For simplification, these terms are used somewhat interchangeably in the interview.

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Just about every day there’s a new headline about artificial intelligence. OpenAI Founder and CEO Sam Altman was forced out, and then dramatically returned to his post—all in the span of a week. Then there’s the recent speculation about a revolutionary new model from the company, called Q*, which can solve basic math problems.

Beyond the inner workings of AI’s most high profile startup are stories about AI upending just about every part of society—healthcare, entertainment, the military, and the arts. AI is even being touted as a way to help solve the climate crisis.

How did we get to this moment? And how worried or excited should we be about the future of AI? No matter how it all shakes out, AI leader and early innovator Dr. Fei-Fei Li argues that humans should be at the center of the conversation and the technology itself.

Ira talks with Dr. Fei-Fei Li, founding director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University and author of the book The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration and Discovery At The Dawn of AI, about her path from physics to computer science and the promise and potential of human-centered artificial intelligence.

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COP28 Host Had Plans to Promote Oil and Gas, Documents ShowThe United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, began this week in Dubai. This is an annual event, where leaders and delegates from around the world come together to discuss how to collaboratively reach important milestones for the future of the planet. Goals like slowing the rise of temperatures on Earth will require buy-in from all major players to be successful.

But this week, a document leaked that showed the United Arab Emirates planned something at odds with the event: promotion of the oil and gas industries. This has led to increased skepticism of COP and its goals among both critics and attendees.

Ira is joined by Tim Revell, deputy US editor of New Scientist, to talk about this story. Plus, how a single bitcoin transaction uses enough water to fill a swimming pool, the way nutrients in soil drive biodiversity, and how amino acids could be formed alongside stars.

Researchers Detected Cicada Emergence With Fiber-OpticsIf you were in the eastern United States during the summer of 2021, you likely heard the incessant, whirring buzz caused by the mass emergence of Brood X periodical cicadas. That event, which occurs once every 17 years, brought forth countless cicadas to shed their skins, mate, lay eggs, and die. But it turns out their arrival wasn’t just something that you could witness out the lawn or against your car windshield. The sound of their emergence was something that could be detected by fiber-optic cables.

Dr. Sarper Ozharar, a researcher who studies optical networking and sensing at NEC Labs in Princeton, New Jersey, has worked on techniques using fiber-optics to sense the vibrations of things like traffic, sirens, and gunshots. Loud noises produce vibrations that subtly distort optical “backscatter” within a glass fiber-optic cable. Using AI, researchers can decode those vibrations and determine what, and where, a noise may have occurred near the fiber.

In the summer of 2021, Ozharar and colleagues detected an unusual frequency signal in their test data. With the help of entomologist Dr. Jessica Ware of the American Museum of Natural History, they eventually determined that it was the whirring of the cicada swarm. Their find is the topic of a report published this week in the Journal of Insect Science.

Ozharar joins Ira Flatow to talk about how fiber-optic sensing works, and how an electronics and communications lab ended up publishing in an entomology journal.

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It’s hard to imagine a world without seatbelts or airbags. But five decades ago, it was the norm for car manufacturers to put glamour over safety.

“It was stylistic pornography over engineering integrity,” Ralph Nader, prolific consumer advocate and several-time presidential candidate, tells Science Friday.

This winter marks the 55th anniversary of Nader’s groundbreaking investigation, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” a damning look at how little auto safety technology was in vehicles back in the 1960s. The book had a massive effect on auto safety in the U.S., setting the groundwork for laws about seatbelts, and the creation of the United States Department of Transportation.

Nader joins Ira to discuss what’s happened over 55 years of auto safety advances, and what kind of work is needed to make sure new technology, like self-driving cars, have the safety checks they need before going out on the roads.

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If you want to predict the color of something, you can talk about wavelengths of light. Light with a wavelength of around 460 nanometers is going to look blue. If you want to predict what something sounds like, frequencies can be a guide—a frequency of around 261 Hertz should sound like the musical note middle C.

Predicting smells is more difficult. While we know that many sulfur-containing molecules tend to fall somewhere in the ‘rotten egg’ or ‘skunky’ category, predicting other aromas based solely on a chemical structure is hard. Molecules with a similar chemical structure may smell quite different—while two molecules with very different chemical structures can smell the same.

This week in the journal Science, researchers describe developing an AI model that, given the structure of a chemical compound, can roughly predict where it’s likely to fall on a map of odors. For example, is it grassy? Or more meaty? Perhaps floral?

Dr. Joel Mainland is one of the authors of that report. He’s a member of the Monell Chemical Senses Center and an adjunct associate professor in the department of neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Mainland joins Ira to talk about the mystery of odor, and his hope that odor maps like the one developed by the AI model could bring scientists closer to identifying the odor equivalent of the three primary colors—base notes that could be mixed and blended to create all other smells.

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Ira spoke with Goodall in 2002, after she had published her book The Ten Trusts: What We Must Do to Care for the Animals, and an IMAX film about her work with chimpanzees had just been released.

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Ever wondered why your dog’s back-and-forth shaking is so effective at getting you soaked? Or how bugs, birds, and lizards can run across water—but we can’t? Or how about why cockroaches are so darn good at navigating in the dark?

Those are just a few of the day-to-day mysteries answered in the new book How to Walk on Water and Climb Up Walls: Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future, by Georgia Tech mathematician David Hu.

The book answers questions you probably won’t realize you even had, but they’re questions with serious answers that span the worlds of physics, fluid mechanics, and biology. Throughout the book, Hu demonstrates the extraordinary value day-to-day curiosity brings to science.

But, while he explores how science can reveal wonders of the mechanisms in our world, Hu writes how his work has been the target of politicians for so-called “wasteful” science spending. One of the studies under attack, an inquiry into the average length of urination across the animal kingdom, might have had a laughable premise, but eventually led to serious attention by urologists and researchers working on treatments, prostheses, and artificial organs.

“The concept of waste is based on the notion of a limited gas tank and a single known destination,” Hu writes. “People expect scientists to save gas as they go from A to B. But the real power of science is to take us to destinations that we have never been to.”

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Saluting Science's Silly Side, VirtuallyIn science, there are some traditions: Every October, the Nobel Prize committee announces the winners of that year’s awards, which are presented in Sweden in December. And every September for the past 33 years, a different committee has awarded the Ig Nobel Prizes in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And every year, on the day after Thanksgiving, Science Friday plays highlights from the awards ceremony.

The Ig Nobel awards are a salute to achievements that, in the words of the organizers, “make people laugh, then think.” They are presented by the editors of the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research to 10 lucky(?) winners for unusual achievements in science, medicine, and other fields. This year’s ceremony was held virtually, with a webcast taking the place of the traditional raucous ceremony in Harvard’s Sanders Theater. However, it still contained many elements of the in-person Igs, from flying paper airplanes to the participation of real Nobel Laureates in the ceremony.

This year’s awards included prizes for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools, and for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils. SciFri producer Charles Bergquist joins Ira to discuss highlights from this year’s ceremony.

Stop Flushing Your Health Data Down The ToiletYou could be flushing important information about your health right down the toilet—quite literally. Pee and poop can tell you a lot about your health, so what if your waste…didn’t go to waste? What if, instead, it could tell you more about your health? Like number one, it can catch a condition like diabetes early. Or number two, check out what’s going on in your gut microbiome.

That’s the goal of the smart toilet—a device that gets all up in your business to tell you more about your health. Ira talks with the inventor of the PH Smart Toilet, Dr. Seung-min Park, instructor of urology at Stanford’s School of Medicine in California, about how the toilet works, how it can be used to catch diseases early on, and the ethical implications of such a device.

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Reporter Ashley Ahearn bought a wild horse from the federal government for $125. Also, with opera and visual art, an exhibit looks at modern genetic engineering of pigs.

The Captivating Story Of The West’s Wild HorsesWild mustangs are an icon of the American West, conjuring a romantic vision of horses galloping free on an open prairie. But in reality, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) says the sensitive Western ecosystem can’t handle the existing population of horses.

There are about 80,000 wild horses in the American West, a number that grows about 10-20% each year. The BLM says the fragile, arid rangelands the horses occupy can only support a third of that number before they overgraze habitats critical for other species. This has led to controversial roundups to get wild horses off the open range.

Science and environment reporter Ashley Ahearn dove deep into the history, symbolism, and ecological impact of the West’s mustangs for the new podcast Mustang. She even adopted a wild horse, named Boo, from the federal government for $125. Ashley speaks with guest host Flora Lichtman about her boots-on-the-ground reporting, and what she learned from how tribal nations manage mustangs.

An Artist Explores The History Of Humans Genetically Modifying PigsOver 100,000 people are waiting for organ donations in the United States. Many will likely never receive one, since there are so few available. So scientists are turning to pigs for potential alternatives. Their organs are remarkably similar to ours, and scientists are now using CRISPR to modify pigs’ DNA to improve transplantation outcomes. But although the field has shown major advances in the last decade, the technique isn’t ready yet. Recently, a patient who received a modified pig heart died six weeks after the surgery.

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg was intrigued by these recent advances, and looked into humanity’s history of modifying the pig over thousands of years for her new gallery exhibit, Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera. For the work, she interviewed scientists and archaeologists and even filmed in a lab that’s experimenting with genetically modifying pigs to create more human-compatible organs.

In the resulting documentary, which plays in the exhibit, the words from the scientists she interviewed are transposed into an opera composed by musician Bethany Barrett. Visitors can also find 3D-printed clay pig statues and a timeline of how humans have transformed pigs over ten millennia, thanks to selective breeding.

Dewey-Hagborg sat down with SciFri producer D. Peterschmidt to talk about how the exhibit came together, and how CRISPR could further transform pigs and our relationship to them.

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Moon Rocks Collected In 1972 Reveal New SecretsIt’s hard to imagine, but the moon we all know and love hasn’t always been in the sky. Like all of us, the moon has an age. Until recently, our lunar neighbor has been estimated to be about 4 billion years old.

But new research on lunar crystals from the Apollo 17 mission has helped researchers pinpoint a more specific age for the moon—and it’s about 40 million years older than previously thought.

That difference may sound like a drop in the bucket given the time scales, but lead study author Dr. Jennika Greer says this is a big deal, because it tells us more about what the solar system was like in its earlier years. Greer, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, joins guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about her methods and why the early universe was so fascinating.

The Science Behind Your Unraveling SweatersIt’s sweater season once again, but you may have noticed that some of your newer sweaters aren’t standing the test of time. Perhaps they are pilling, unraveling, or losing their shape. But if you look at sweaters from the ‘80s or ‘90s, they may still look brand new. Last month, an article by Amanda Mull in the Atlantic about declining sweater quality made the rounds online, and we wanted to know more.

What, scientifically, went wrong in sweaters? And why are sweaters so bad now?

Guest host Flora Lichtman unravels the science of sweaters with Dr. Imran Islam, knit expert and assistant professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. They chat about the fibers that make up sweaters, what physics has to do with how long they last, and what to look for when purchasing knitwear.

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Gift-giving season is upon us once again! And if you’re not sure what to get the kids in your life, we’re here to help. Many new STEM books for kids and young adults came out this year, and we asked a few experts to tell us about their favorites from 2023.

Joining guest host Flora Lichtman to offer listeners their recommendations for the best kids’ science books of the year are Mahnaz Dar, young readers’ editor at Kirkus Reviews, based in New York, New York, and Jennifer Swanson, children’s book author and cohost of the podcast Solve It! for Kids, based in Jacksonville, Florida.

You can download a printable list of our guests’ recommendations to take with you on your shopping trip.

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Over the last year, we’ve heard more and more about AI’s potential to transform medicine—how it can help doctors read scans, analyze health data, and even develop personalized drugs.

But the AI boom has set off alarm bells for some healthcare providers. Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with two scientists who wondered whether these models were perpetuating harmful, debunked, racist ideas in medicine. To investigate, they put four AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard to the test to see how they answered some questions about race and medicine. They entered queries like “Tell me about skin thickness differences between Black and white skin” and “What is the difference in pain threshold between Black and white patients?” They then scored the chatbots’ responses and found that several perpetuated racist, incorrect information. They published their results in the journal npj Digital Medicine.

Flora talks with Dr. Jenna Lester, a dermatologist at UC San Francisco and the director of the Skin of Color Program, and Dr. Roxana Daneshjou, a dermatologist and assistant professor of biomedical data science at Stanford School of Medicine.

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Scientists observing the exoplanet WASP-107b with the James Webb Space Telescope say that the planet has clouds of sand high in its atmosphere. The scientists detected water vapor, sulfur dioxide, and silicate sand clouds in the atmosphere of the planet, which is about the mass of Neptune but the size of Jupiter—stats that caused astronomers to describe it as “fluffy.” Science journalist Swapna Krishna joins guest host Flora Lichtman for a look at the planet.

They also discuss the tense seismic situation on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland. Starting in late October, earthquakes have been occurring there with increasing frequency, with hundreds of earthquakes detected over a recent 24-hour period. The quakes are due to underground magma flowing into the area and straining the earth’s crust. Measurements have also spotted an increasing concentration of sulfur dioxide gas in the area—which could point to an impending volcanic eruption. The Icelandic Meteorological Office said that there was significant likelihood of a volcanic eruption in the coming days.

Flora and Swapna also discuss other stories from the week in science, including a growing discrepancy in life expectancy between US men and women, a 3D printed robot hand with working tendons, efforts to control the spread of a drug lord’s escaped hippos in Colombia, and the tale of a tool bag—lost in space.

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Do you ever wonder about the science behind making that perfect holiday meal? A lot of factors determine if a turkey gets golden, mashed potatoes turn fluffy, or a pie gets that crisp crust.

As the weather gets cooler and the holidays approach, chef Dan Souza from Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen joins Ira to answer listener questions about the science behind holiday cooking.

Ready for even more cooking science? Listen to a past episode about an oft-overlooked protein source—complete with the Science Friday staff’s favorite recipes. Plus, learn about six foods that might fill our plate in a warming climate.

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Perhaps you’ve marveled at the engineering feats of the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. Maybe you’ve thought about how many train tracks run in and out of Grand Central Station.

But it’s sometimes easy to forget just how important well-functioning infrastructure is in our day-to-day lives. Flip a light switch, and the light comes on. Wash a load of laundry and your clothes come out clean and fresh. Order pretty much anything on Amazon and it arrives two days later.

It can be kind of boring. And that’s the good news. We like our infrastructure to be boring—that means it’s running well.

Ira talks with Dr. Deb Chachra, author of the new book How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems that Shape Our Worldand professor of engineering at the Olin College of Engineering, about the role of infrastructure in our lives.

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It’s a wonderful time of the year: squash, pumpkin, and gourd season. But how do those giant, award-winning pumpkins grow so big? And what’s the difference between a gourd and a squash?

Ira talks with Dr. Chris Hernandez, director of the University of New Hampshire’s squash, pumpkin, and melon breeding program to explore all things winter squash and answer listener questions.

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One year ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot that can generate shockingly convincing text. Since then, it has become a center of gravity in the tech industry, as software companies race to integrate the new tech into their products. It’s also sparked concern in the education world, with teachers and parents fearing how students may use it to cheat, and whether it will keep young people from learning writing skills.

So what might adjusting to this new technology look like, one year in? Ira sits down with Dr. Gwen Tarbox, professor of English and the director of the WMUx Office of Faculty Development at Western Michigan University, who talks about her efforts implementing AI at her university and teaching both students and faculty ways to use it responsibly.

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A new ESA telescope could help us understand how dark matter and dark energy influence the structure of the universe. Also, using both JWST and the Chandra Observatory, astronomers discover the oldest known black hole.

Euclid Telescope’s First Images UnveiledThis week, the European Space Agency unveiled the Euclid space telescope’s first full-color images of the cosmos. The telescope has a wide field of view and is designed to take images of large swaths of the sky in both visible and infrared light. The telescope’s designers hope that they will be able to create a detailed 3D map of the cosmos over the next six years and, with that map, begin to sort out the influences of dark matter and dark energy on the basic structure of the universe.

Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins Ira to talk about the first images from the Euclid telescope and other stories from the week in science. They’ll try to explain the recent conversation about ultraprocessed foods and discuss steps toward regulating AI coming from the Biden administration and a host of other countries; a move to rename some North American birds; and the tale of a fish that uses electrolocation and some shimmies to get a 3D map of its environment.

Not Just Dying Stars: A Black Hole That Came From GasThis week, astronomers confirmed that they had found the oldest known black hole, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The supermassive black hole formed when the universe was still a toddler, just 470 million years after the Big Bang. But its age isn’t the only thing that makes it unusual.

Astronomers long thought that the only way a black hole could form was through the collapse of a star. But this week’s discovery confirms a theory that some black holes at this early stage in the universe formed from the condensation of clouds of gas. The theory purports that such black holes would produce superheated x-ray-emitting gas. Now, data from JWST and Chandra have helped confirm these x-ray signals from the newly discovered black hole. The findings are available via preprint and have been published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Ira sits down with Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan, a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale who helped develop this theory, to talk about how these unique black holes change our understanding of the early universe.

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Over 99% of a human cell is made up of just five elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. That same elemental mix exists, with minor variations, in every other living thing on Earth.

In his new book, Elemental: How Five Elements Changed Earth’s Past and Will Shape Our Future, author Stephen Porder writes about how these building blocks, which he calls “life’s formula,” tell the story of life on our planet.

It’s a story of adaptation, and also catastrophic change—from the time cyanobacteria started flooding the atmosphere with oxygen, to when a boom in land plants sucked enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to spark a period of extreme cooling and global glaciation.

Ira talks with Porder, who is associate provost for sustainability and professor of ecology, evolution, and organismal biology at Brown University as well as co-founder of the radio show Possibly, about what early geochemistry can tell us about life on Earth, and what that might mean for the planet’s future.

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A Climate Change Exhibit Asks ‘What If We Get It Right?’Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and co-founder of the nonprofit Urban Ocean Lab, thinks a lot about the possible futures of our climate. Not just one ideal climate future, but a range of futures that could be better if we make some changes.

She’s helped steer environmental policy, written books and articles on climate action, and co-hosted the podcast How To Save A Planet. And now she’s working with artists who are offering their own creative visions for how we could build a more sustainable society.

The effort has culminated in Climate Futurism, a new exhibit Dr. Johnson curated at Pioneer Works, a museum and performing arts space in Brooklyn, New York. And one of the central questions it asks the viewer is, what if we get it right?

SciFri producer D. Peterschmidt visited the exhibit and spoke to Dr. Johnson and one of the three featured artists, Erica Deeman, about food justice, reconnecting with nature, and why the exhibit is called Climate Futurism.

Climate Futurism features new art from Erica Deeman, Denice Frohman, and Olalekan Jeyifous. It runs until December 10, 2023.

How To Save Oregon’s Salmon? Maybe With A Giant Vacuum.To free salmon stuck behind dams in Oregon’s Willamette River Valley, here’s what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has in mind:

Build a floating vacuum the size of a football field with enough pumps to suck up a small river. Capture tiny young salmon in the vacuum’s mouth and flush them into massive storage tanks. Then load the fish onto trucks, drive them downstream and dump them back into the water. An enormous fish collector like this costs up to $450 million, and nothing of its scale has ever been tested.

The fish collectors are the biggest element of the Army Corps’ $1.9 billion plan to keep the salmon from going extinct.

The Corps says its devices will work. A cheaper alternative — halting dam operations so fish can pass — would create widespread harm to hydroelectric customers, boaters and farmers, the agency contends.

“Bottom line, we think what we have proposed will support sustainable, healthy fish populations over time,” Liza Wells, the deputy engineer for the Corps’ Portland district, said in a statement.

But reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica casts doubt on the Corps’ assertions.

Read more on sciencefriday.com.

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When Tamiko Rafeek admitted herself to the hospital a few years ago, she asked for an interpreter. “I was feeling very, very sick that day,” she recalled. Rafeek is deaf, and the Americans with Disabilities Act mandates that deaf patients receive interpreter assistance when requested. But, like over 50% of deaf patients in healthcare settings in the United States, she didn’t receive adequate interpretation.

“It felt like the whole world was crashing in,” Rafeek said. “They kept taking my blood pressure and taking all these tests. And no one let me know why.” At one point, a nurse asked Rafeek if her eight year-old daughter, who can hear, could sign for her mother. Rafeek thought that was inappropriate. “I said, no, she’s too young. She’s my daughter, she shouldn’t be interpreting for me.”

It wasn’t until two days later, when Rafeek left the hospital, that she learned from her discharge papers that she’d been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. To her frustration, she didn’t receive guidance on how to approach care for the diagnosis.

Unfortunately, Rafeek’s situation isn’t uncommon. Healthcare workers are “definitely not educated to the point where they know how to handle working with the deaf community,” said Dr. Michelle Litchman, medical director of intensive diabetes education and support program at the University of Utah. Litchman is a CODA (a child of deaf adults) and knows all too well how often deaf patients don’t receive the assistance they are legally mandated to receive.

Years ago, her deaf aunt was admitted to the hospital for an infection. She didn’t receive an interpreter, and was signing that she couldn’t breathe. But the staff did not provide her with adequate care. She later died in the hospital. “We just know that it could’ve been prevented,” Litchman said.

In 2022, University of Utah Health and Litchman partnered with the advocacy group Deaf Diabetes Can Together to create the hospital’s Deaf Community Advisory Board. The board, made up of Rafeek and other deaf patients, advised the hospital on how it could improve care for its patients with diabetes, a condition deaf people are twice as likely to have. Litchman plans to expand this model for other marginalized groups, including rural and Pacific Islander patients.

Ira Flatow sat down with Rafeek and Dr. Litchman to talk about their experiences, how they want to expand the community advisory board model, why there’s a lack of interpreters in the US, and how healthcare systems can better care for patients.

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This week holds anniversaries for two important milestones in nuclear warfare. On November 1, 1952, the United States detonated a massive hydrogen bomb in the Marshall Islands. The new weapon vaporized a whole island, leaving behind a mile-wide crater. That bomb was around 700 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima seven years prior, and it renewed fears of nuclear annihilation, which would grip the world for generations to come.

Three decades later, on October 30, 1983, millions of Americans flipped open the Sunday paper to find a shadowy, apocalyptic photo with the words: “Would nuclear war be the end of the world?”

Legendary scientist Dr. Carl Sagan, writing for Parade Magazine, introduced the world to “nuclear winter,” the terrifying climate changes that might be brought on by nuclear war.

Sagan conducted some of the first research on nuclear winter, and he spent years warning politicians, world leaders, and the general public about it. Today, with thousands of nuclear weapons still in existence, the risk of nuclear winter isn’t zero.

Ira talks with another pioneer in nuclear winter research, Dr. Alan Robock, a climate scientist and distinguished professor at Rutgers University, about the science of nuclear winter, how fear of those consequences shaped policies, and what’s happening with the world’s nuclear arsenal now.

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If given final approval by the FDA, this sickle-cell treatment would be the first to use gene-editing CRISPR technology on humans. Also, gene variants inherited from Neanderthals can impact pain tolerance in modern humans.

FDA Panel Clears Way For CRISPR-Based Sickle Cell TreatmentAn FDA committee cleared the way for a revolutionary cure for sickle cell disease this week. If given final approval, the treatment would be the first to use CRISPR gene editing in humans. Sickle cell disease is caused by a genetic mutation that causes blood cells to develop into crescent or “sickle” shapes. The extremely painful and often deadly disease disproportionately affects Black and African American people.

Ira talks with Vox staff writer Umair Irfan about the new sickle cell treatment and other top science news of the week, including the link between the auto worker strike and a clean energy transition; new evidence about the moon’s origin; and why starfish don’t have arms.

Your Pain Tolerance May Have Been Passed Down from NeanderthalsThere’s a little bit of Neanderthal in most of us. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had a long history of intermingling, before the former went extinct about 40,000 years ago. That mixing means most modern humans have some amount of Neanderthal DNA—and it accounts for up to 3% of the genome in some people.

While these genetic remnants don’t have much impact on our day-to-day lives, they may be responsible for one surprising effect: pain tolerance. Recent research shows that people with Neanderthal variants in the gene SCN9A have a lower pain tolerance than people without the gene.

This isn’t the only Neanderthal remnant that’s been passed down. A study from earlier this year pinpointed a certain genome region that impacts nose shape. Taller, wider noses were passed down from our Neanderthal ancestors who lived in colder climates. A larger nose warmed air before it hit the sensitive lungs.

Ira speaks with Dr. Kaustubh Adhikari, assistant professor of statistics at the Open University in the United Kingdom, who worked on both of these studies.

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When you think of poisons, you might think of chemicals like cyanide, arsenic, or the deadly concoction left out for rats. But have you thought of acorns? What about the cup of coffee you had this morning? Or the mums growing in your window box? Toxicity is all in the eye—or bloodstream—of the beholder.

A new book describes the story of nature’s endless array of toxins, and how they shaped life on earth, including ours.

Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Noah Whiteman, evolutionary biologist at University of California, Berkeley and the author of Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature’s Toxins – from Spices to Vices. They chat about the poisons that fill our pantries and gardens, and what our use and abuse of these substances tells us about ourselves.

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Content warning: This interview includes discussion of miscarriage and pregnancy loss, and may be triggering for some listeners.

The placenta is an incredible body part. It’s the only organ grown temporarily, created during pregnancy and discarded after birth. It has the enormous job of supporting the growth of a fetus, protecting it from infection and inflammation. When something goes wrong with the placenta, it can result in the loss of a baby.

For something that can be so devastating to expectant parents, miscarriages are incredibly normal. Of the 5 million pregnancies each year in the United States, about 1 million end in miscarriage, categorized as a loss before 20 weeks of gestation. About 20,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth during the later stages of gestation.

Often, after a pregnancy loss, doctors tell parents that the cause is unexplained. This can lead to feelings of failure and guilt, even though pregnancy loss is almost always out of a person’s control.

Dr. Harvey Kliman, director of the Yale School of Medicine’s Reproductive and Placental Research Unit, has dedicated his career to better understanding the placenta and its relationship to pregnancy loss. Dr. Kliman and his team recently analyzed 1,256 placentas that resulted in pregnancy loss. They learned that 90% of these losses could be explained by conditions such as a small or misshapen placenta.

Dr. Kliman joins guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about his research, and the importance of studying the placenta as a way to better understand what leads to miscarriage and stillbirth.

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Twenty years ago, scientists found that phenylephrine, listed as a decongestant in many cold medicines, didn’t work. What can you use instead?

In September, an advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration unanimously confirmed that phenylephrine—a common ingredient in cold medicines, including some types of Mucinex and Robitussin—doesn’t work.

For many physicians, pharmacists, and cold-sufferers, this came as no surprise. Phenylephrine’s ineffectiveness had been an open secret in the healthcare community for decades.

In 2005, Dr. Randy Hatton, clinical professor at the Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy Department at the University of Florida, managed the University of Florida Drug Information and Pharmacy Resource Center hotline. He often received calls from pharmacists reporting that phenylephrine-based drugs had no effect on improving colds.

He came across research from Dr. Leslie Hendeles, professor emeritus of the College of Pharmacy, also at the University of Florida, from a decade prior. Dr. Hendeles had also found that the substance was ineffective. They partnered up and petitioned the FDA to publicly confirm their finding. Their collaboration was the first step toward the FDA’s recent announcement.

But despite the announcement, the removal of these drugs from shelves is not guaranteed. Pharmaceutical companies are appealing the FDA’s decision, and are trying to stall an official declaration that prohibits their sale.

Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Hatton and Dr. Hendeles about the long road to the FDA’s announcement.They discuss how their research proved phenylephrine’s ineffectiveness, and which drugs people can turn to instead as cold season approaches.

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There’s a name that’s hard to escape these days, particularly if you’re in the technology world—Elon Musk. He’s involved with Tesla electric cars, home solar and battery installations, SpaceX rockets, Starlink satellites, and the company that once was known as Twitter. Woven through his array of enterprises is a mix of technical savvy, confident ego, and sometimes impulsive decision-making.

Biographer Walter Isaacson has tried to sort through the competing influences behind the entrepreneur and his mercurial behavior in a recent book titled simply Elon Musk. He joins Ira to talk about the business magnate’s origins, his management style, and the incessant appetite for risk and drama that drives his successes—and, sometimes, his dramatic failures.

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RSV has reached epidemic levels in the southern US. Also, beech leaf disease is spreading rapidly in Massachusetts.

RSV Drug For Infants In Short SupplyRespiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is a common illness that—for most—looks like a common cold. But for infants, it can be an intense illness, leading to hospitalization. That’s why it was a relief for parents and physicians when an immunization drug for all infants was approved in July.

However, it’s become clear the demand for the drug is greater than the supply. This week, the CDC issued an alert about the drug’s limited availability, and recommended that only infants under 6 months and those with underlying health conditions receive it until further notice. An RSV spike in the southern US has reached seasonal epidemic levels, a sign that transmission will likely climb in other areas soon.

Katherine J. Wu, science writer for The Atlantic, joins guest host Flora Lichtman to chat about this story as well as mouse mummies in the Andes, Hurricane Otis defying forecasts, a secret benefit of “Asian glow,” and other big news from the week.

Beech Leaf Disease Is Spreading Rapidly in MassachusettsA new tree disease has spread in forests in Massachusetts, joining invasive pests and climate change as top priorities for foresters to address.

The state has found beech leaf disease in more than 90 communities since it was first discovered in the state in 2020.

“Lately this has been one of our biggest concerns and my team devotes a lot of time to it. We do expect to see a lot of long-term impact and trees lost from it,” said Nicole Keleher, forest health program director at the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Beech leaf disease is caused by an unusual parasite: a nematode, which is a microscopic roundworm, that infects the leaves and buds. Researchers believe that it may be spread by birds, insects and wind. This makes it more difficult to treat than visible insects like the emerald ash borer that can be somewhat contained by asking people not to transport wood between forests, according to Keleher.

Infected leaves can develop dark patches or stripes, and often will curl up. The infection causes the tree’s leaves to fall off and can eventually starve the tree, which can die within a few years.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

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In a conversation from 2019, bestselling author Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses the role of ceremony in our lives, and how to celebrate reciprocal relationships with the natural world.

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, was first published nearly a decade ago—but in 2020, the book made the New York Times best-seller lists, propelled mainly by word of mouth. The book explores the lessons and gifts that the natural world, especially plants, have to offer to people. Kimmerer writes that improving our relationship with nature requires the acknowledgment and celebration of a reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. “I think we can care better for one another, for the land, and in fact we can do better science when we consider all of these streams of evidence, and assumptions, about the living world,” says Kimmerer.

Kimmerer is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. In this SciFri Book Club discussion, recorded before a live Zoom audience, she discusses the book, the role of ceremony in our lives, and the challenge of addressing ecological issues such as exotic species within a reciprocal framework.

This segment, originally from 2022, was re-aired this week.

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Last week, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft launched successfully from the Kennedy Space Center. It’s now on a six-year trip to an asteroid, also called Psyche, located in the solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Unlike previously studied asteroids, it’s not composed mostly of rock or ice. The Psyche spacecraft's target is largely made of metal, thought to be around 60% iron and nickel. The mission won’t actually land on the asteroid—all of its observations will happen from orbit, and will involve imaging, spectroscopy, and magnetometer studies.

Scientists aren’t sure if the asteroid is a proto-planetary core, or something else entirely. They’re hoping that studying the metal-rich asteroid might help teach them about how planets form. Some researchers are also interested in learning what 16 Psyche might be able to teach them about the possibility of future space mining operations—though this particular space object is too far away and too impractical to attempt any kind of sample return, let alone its retrieval. (Plus, suddenly selling the amount of metal an entire astroid holds would completely disrupt the global market, making it almost worthless.)

Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, the principal investigator for the Psyche mission and vice president for Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative, joins guest host Swapna Krishna to talk about the mission and its goals.

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Research shows some rapidly evolving trout are altering Wyoming's aquatic ecosystems. Plus, paleontologists pieced together a level of apex predators with no modern equivalent.

In Wyoming’s Mountain Lakes, Stocked Trout Are Evolving QuicklyAnglers across the West love to fish in high, alpine lakes, and Wyoming’s Wind River Range is nearly unbeatable for this experience. Around this time of year, frost covers the tips of trees at sunrise, and there’s plenty of room along the lonesome blue waters above 10,000 feet.

Those who do make the trek—which usually takes more than 15 miles of hiking—are greeted by hungry golden, brook or cutthroat trout looking to fatten up for the winter. They’ll take almost any fly, from a yellow foam grasshopper, to a Parachute Adams to a tiny ant. And the fish are often big, colorful and photogenic.

But as untamed, historic and relaxing as a day on the water feels, it’s anything but natural. New research is shedding light on how the history of fish stocking has impacted alpine lake ecosystems in the Wind Rivers. In many cases, the genetics of trout have evolved rapidly, allowing them to survive in harsh mountain environments.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Hyper-Apex Predators: Colombian Fossils Reveal Big Reptilians Atop Ancient Marine Food ChainThe Paja Formation, located in central Colombia, is a treasure trove of fossils. The site is integral to scientists’ understanding of ancient creatures who roamed the seas during the Early Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago.

Now, paleontologists have pieced together the food chain of this marine ecosystem. Surprisingly, they found it supported an additional level of apex predators—think massive marine reptiles—for which there is no modern equivalent.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dirley Cortés, paleontologist at the Centro de Investigaciones Paleontológicas in Colombia and PhD candidate at McGill University’s Redpath Museum, and Dr. Hans Larsson, paleontologist and professor at McGill University’s Redpath Museum. They discuss their fascinating findings, and the importance of better understanding this part of the fossil record.

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In her new memoir, astrobiologist Dr. Aomawa Shields describes how a quest for life in the cosmos helped her find meaning on Earth.

One of the biggest, most intriguing questions in the world is quite simple: Are we alone in this universe? Astronomer and astrobiologist Dr. Aomawa Shields looks for signs of life in outer space by analyzing the climate and habitability of small exoplanets far beyond our solar system.

Dr. Shields’ path to science was a winding one. Through childhood and into her adult years, she toggled between two loves: acting and space. In her new memoir Life On Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe, she describes her search for signs of life in the cosmos and her quest to build a meaningful life here on Earth. She charts her life story from childhood to astronomy to acting and back to science—and what she’s learned about herself and the universe along the way.

Guest host Swapna Krishna talks with Dr. Shields, professor at the University of California Irvine, about her research, the power that comes from combining the arts and science, and what she’s learned from pondering the universe.

Read an excerpt from Life On Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe.

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Seven “clean energy hubs” will receive a total of $7B to develop forms of hydrogen production with minimal carbon emissions. And, ahead of the US Grand Prix, an aerodynamicist breaks down the recent engineering changes to F1 cars.

Department Of Energy Announces ‘Clean Hydrogen Hub’ AwardeesThe Department of Energy announced seven “clean hydrogen hubs,” which will receive a cumulative $7 billion. Each group will use a host of different approaches to produce hydrogen fuel with little or no emissions.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Casey Crownhart, climate reporter for MIT Technology Review, to break down the details of this announcement and other top science news of the week, including seals helping map a canyon in Antarctica, the number of living cells in the world, and a very spicy pepper.

Formula One Cars Are Stripping Off Paint To Save WeightFormula One is known as the pinnacle of motorsport, with cars that can reach speeds of 230 miles per hour. Thanks to the Netflix series Drive To Survive, the sport is more popular than ever.

As engineers prepare for the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, this Sunday, teams strive to make their cars as fast as possible. To do so, they try to reduce the ultra-fast cars’ weight by altering the construction of the frame of the car, or finding lighter engine parts. But recently, many teams have been stripping the paint off the cars instead.

Even though paint on an F1 car only adds up to about three pounds, races can be won by milliseconds, so every ounce counts. In the last couple years, many teams made the decision to pare down the amount of paint used on the cars, exposing the natural black color of the carbon fiber below it. It’s why the cars on the grid look darker overall, compared to previous years.

Kyle Forster, a former aerodynamicist for the Mercedes-AMG F1 team and a lead aerodynamicist for JKF Consultants, breaks down the engineering changes made to F1 cars in recent years, the newest in paint science, and what aerodynamic changes he hopes to make in the years to come.

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In a conversation from 2019, Ira and the researchers behind a “catcam” study discuss the secret lives of your feline friends.

If you want the real scoop on what your cat is doing while you’re away, researchers are studying that very question, using cat cameras. Our feline friends spend quite a lot of time outside of our line of sight, and we imagine them napping, bathing, playing, hunting. But that’s merely speculation. To get the data, researchers need to catch them in the act. Maren Huck, Senior Lecturer at the University of Derby in the UK, recently published a methodological study where she successfully tracked the movements of 16 outdoor domestic cats to find out what they were up to. She joins Ira to discuss the findings, which she published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science.

Plus, cat behavior specialist and University California, Davis veterinary school researcher Mikel Delgado joins the conversation to talk more about catching cat behavior on camera, and what we can learn from recording their secret lives.

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If you were asked to name the early astronauts, you probably wouldn’t have much trouble; Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, John Glenn come to mind easily enough. But what if you had to name women astronauts, besides Sally Ride? It’s a question that even space nerds might have trouble answering.

A new book from space reporter Loren Grush centers those women’s stories. The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts goes deep into the histories, triumphs, and tragedies of Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Rhea Saddon, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Anna Fisher. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration excluded women from its astronauts in the 1960s and ‘70s. The agency changed course in 1978, when it selected these six women from a candidate pool of 8,000.

Ira sits down with Loren Grush, space reporter for Bloomberg News, to talk about why NASA delayed their inclusion, the agency politics the women had to navigate, the pressure they faced from the media, and how they made their mark on the space program.

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When math is based on abstract concepts, how do we know it’s correct? Dr. Eugenia Cheng takes on that question in a new book.

Mathematician Dr. Eugenia Cheng has heard this question many times over her career. The quandary is the basis of her latest book, Is Math Real?: How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths. She joins Ira from Chicago, Illinois.

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You’ve probably heard that there’s an updated COVID-19 vaccine on the market, and maybe you’ve already gotten your updated booster. But there are new kinds of vaccines in development that go beyond just tweaking protection to better cover circulating variants.

In one promising development, researchers adapted the decades-old MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine into one covering measles, mumps, and multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2—and, rather than a shot, they delivered that experimental vaccine via a nasal spray.

Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, joins Ira to talk about the approach, the advantages of nasal vaccines, and other vaccines on the horizon that make use of the mRNA technology that was the focus of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Topol hopes that the mRNA approach will be widely applicable to a range of diseases and conditions—from conventional pathogens to cancers and autoimmune disorders.

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A new analysis of ancient footprints in New Mexico adds to the debate about when humans arrived in North America. Plus, astronomer Dean Regas offers tips for safe viewing of Saturday’s eclipse.

New Data Support Human Arrival In North America 22,000 Years AgoIn 2021, scientists uncovered ancient human footprints in White Sands, New Mexico. Dating of the footprints suggested that people arrived in North America thousands of years earlier than anthropologists had thought. It sparked fierce debate among researchers, some of whom raised concerns about the radiocarbon dating process used in the original study. Now, a new study provides additional data supporting humans’ arrival in North America 22,000 years ago.

Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, editorial lead at Carbon Plan about the latest in this debate about the peopling of North America and other top science news of the week including how solar storms affect bird migration, why ants are getting ensnared in plastic, and how climate change is improving Bordeaux wine.

This Weekend’s ‘Ring Of Fire’ EclipseThis Saturday, much of the continental United States will be treated to an astronomical event—an annular solar eclipse. In this type of eclipse, the apparent sizes of the moon and sun don’t align perfectly to Earth-bound viewers, resulting in a solar “ring of fire” shining around the edges of a moon nestled inside the boundaries of the sun.

The best viewing will come in a 125-mile-wide band known as the path of annularity, which will stretch from Eugene, Oregon to San Antonio, Texas, and then on into Mexico and Central America. Viewers outside that band will still be able to see some parts of the eclipse, with the percent coverage depending on how far they are from that central line.

Even though the sun will be partly covered, it is NOT safe to look directly at the sun without eclipse glasses. If you don’t have glasses, you can look at a projection of the sun through a pinhole onto the ground or another surface—but don’t look through the pinhole at the sun. Astronomer and author Dean Regas joins Ira for an eclipse preview, and to offer viewing tips on when, where, and how to best view the solar event.

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A Saltwater Wedge Is Moving Up The Mississippi RiverAs the Mississippi River drops to one of its lowest levels in recent history, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said salt water from the Gulf of Mexico could threaten drinking water as far north as New Orleans’ French Quarter if no action is taken.

On Friday, the Corps announced plans to avoid that scenario by building upon an existing underwater barrier that has been in place to block the progression of salt water from intruding farther upriver since July. At its current height, the Corps expects the salt water creeping up the bottom of the Mississippi River to overtop the barrier later this week, sometime around Sept. 22.

If that were to happen, the salt water would begin affecting drinking water in Belle Chasse by early October.

To read more, visit sciencefriday.com.

Kenya’s Geothermal Boom Could Help Power AfricaBeneath Kenya, the African tectonic plate is splitting in two. That cleave creates hydrothermal vents, ripe for harnessing geothermal energy. This is a renewable source of energy derived from hot water that bubbles up from deep underground. When it comes to the surface, it turns into steam. That steam can be used to spin a turbine connected to a generator, and voilá: electricity.

Kenya began to tap into this natural supply in the 1950s, and now the East African nation is the seventh largest geothermal energy producer in the world. The Kenyan government has said that the country’s untapped resources are enough to meet its peak energy demands five times over. That’s a big deal on a continent where more than 40% of people lack electricity.

Joining guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about this is Geoffrey Kamadi, a freelance science journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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How Artists And Scientists Collaborated To Make Art About HIVThis past July, the 12th International Conference on HIV Science was held in Brisbane, Australia. But this wasn’t your typical scientific conference. Yes, findings were presented on the latest in HIV research, but it culminated in a museum exhibition.

12 HIV-positive artists were paired with 12 scientists, and each pair collaborated on a piece of art, largely based on the scientists’ research. One of the pieces attracted a bit more attention than the others.

Kairon Liu, an artist, curator, and photographer, and Kane Race, a professor of gender and cultural studies at the University of Sydney, wanted to create something that commented on the negative effects of global HIV policy and the current stigma of living with the disease. The resulting piece is titled Untransmittable, a transparent penis-shaped sculpture filled with thousands of expired antiretroviral pills.

Science Friday producer and Universe of Art host D. Peterschmidt sat down with Liu and Race to talk about the piece they made, why they couldn’t take it over the Australian border, and their hopes for future HIV research.

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The latest trend in celebrity health care is full-body MRI scans, with influencers like Kim Kardashian endorsing them. These scans aren’t covered by health insurance, and run over $2,000 out of pocket.

Typically, a new diagnostic tool is marketed to doctors and radiologists. But companies like Prenuvo are now marketing directly to consumers. They claim that their scans will catch early signs of cancer, aneurysms, liver diseases and even multiple sclerosis.

It’s an appealing promise. If you can afford it, wouldn’t it be nice to catch cancer super early? Could it even save your life? Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that. Simply put, the potential harms far outweigh any possible benefits of such a scan.

Guest host Flora Lichtman separates fact from fad with Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine, and director of the Radiology Outcomes Research Laboratory, based in San Francisco, California.

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A news story was circulating a few months ago—a woman in Australia came into the hospital with abdominal pain. She was increasingly forgetful and struggling with depression. Her doctors were stumped for over a year. What was causing her symptoms? Turns out she had a three-inch parasitic worm living in her brain. They took it out, and she recovered.

How do doctors crack cases like this? How do you even know to check for a brain worm? This is the specialty of Dr. Joe DeRisi. When doctors run into a diagnostic dead end they call him. In his world, brain worms aren’t even that rare. (Ask him about brain-eating amoebas.)

Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. DeRisi, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine and president of the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub San Francisco, about his fascinating work solving some of the most vexing medical mysteries, and how it may even help detect the next pandemic-inducing pathogen.

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An mRNA Advance Wins A Nobel PrizeThis week, a handful of scientists scattered around the world got surprise telephone calls announcing that they will be receiving Nobel Prizes. On Monday, the prize in medicine or physiology was announced. It went to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, scientists who developed the modifications to mRNA that made the biomolecule a viable strategy for creating vaccines. On Tuesday, the Nobel in physics went to Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier, who created techniques to illuminate the movement of electrons using attosecond-length pulses of light. And on Wednesday Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov learned that they had won the prize in chemistry for their work with tiny bits of semiconductor material known as quantum dots.

Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about the winners and their advances, and to share other stories from the week in science, including an FCC fine for a satellite company’s space junk, concerns over drought in the Amazon rainforest, and a tale of fighting a coral-threatening algal bloom using hungry crabs.

Venus Lightning Debate Gets LitVenus is an inhospitable place. The longest any spacecraft has survived on the planet’s surface is thought to be around two hours. It’s blazing hot. It has bone-crushing atmospheric pressure and clouds made of sulfuric acid. But is there lightning?

Flybys of Venus have detected electromagnetic signals in the radio spectrum called “whistler waves” that, on Earth, are associated with lightning strikes. So some experts speculated that Venus might have lightning too—perhaps a lot of lightning. But there was no hard proof. The question of Venusian lightning has been a topic of electric debate among scientists for some 40 years.

A study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters last month used data from the Parker Solar Probe to argue that the whistler waves around Venus may have a different cause. Research scientist Dr. Harriet George and space plasma physicist Dr. David Malaspina of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder join guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about the finding, and what it could tell us about planets elsewhere in the galaxy.

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The Science Behind The Placebo EffectEarlier this month, a Food and Drug Administration panel concluded that a common decongestant ingredient used in drugs like Sudafed and NyQuil doesn’t work. The panel agreed that while the ingredient, called phenylephrine, isn’t dangerous, it doesn’t work any better than a placebo.

That made us wonder: How well do placebos work? And why do they work even when people know they’re getting a placebo?

Ted J. Kaptchuk, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Program in Placebo Studies and Therapeutic Encounter at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, joins guest host and musician Dessa to talk about what’s new in placebo research. They discuss the benefits placebos can offer for chronic illness management, and when doctors might start using them in treatments.

Where Technology Meets AbleismWith all the bad news on our feeds, a feel-good story can be a welcome reprieve. But what happens when that story comes in the form of coverage of disability technology?

You might’ve seen the videos online of a person with a physical disability being fitted with an exoskeleton, essentially “wearing” a robot, to help them walk. Onlookers cheer in the background, dramatic music swells, and we get the sense we’re watching something inspirational and empowering—a victory of the human spirit.

This might seem like a triumph of scientific innovation, but our guest asks us to look again at what’s actually going on in narratives like this one.

Dr. Ashley Shew, associate professor at Virginia Tech, studies the intersection of disability and technology and how our collective fixation on these fancy, supposedly transformative gadgets could be doing more harm than good. In her new book, she coins the term “technoableism” to get to the heart of the matter.Guest host and musician Dessa talks with Dr. Shew about her book Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement, about what disability technology is, what the future should look like, and even how disability intersects with space travel and climate change.

Sour Times For Florida’s CitrusFlorida is known for citrus, particularly its fresh-squeezed orange juice. But citrus trees in the state are struggling. For the last two decades, crops have been struck with a devastating disease called “citrus greening.” And Florida orange production has dropped some 94% over that period.

Citrus greening is caused by an invasive insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, which is threatening to wipe out the citrus industry in the state. One of the effects of the disease is a bitter, acidic fruit. Scientists are hard at work devising possible solutions to save Florida’s crop.

Guest host and musician Dessa talks with Dr. Yu Wang, associate professor of food science at the University of Florida’s Citrus Education and Research Center, about her recent advances in making infected orange plants sweeter.

Making Neuroscience Into MusicWhen composer Sarah Hennies learned about a neurological theory called “motor tapes” from Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia, the concept stuck with her for years. The theory comes from neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinás, who posited that many of our thoughts, memories, and physical movements operate via a series of “looping tapes,” with the goal of reducing the amount of energy the brain uses while doing common, repetitive tasks.

The concept resonated with Hennies, who is also a visiting assistant professor of music at Bard College. Most of her compositions use heavy amounts of repetition, and Llinás’ theory fit with how she experienced her own memories and the evolution of her identity. Her piece “Motor Tapes” premiered in early August, performed by Ensemble Dedalus.

Hennies joins guest host and musician Dessa to talk about repetition in music, how to translate neuroscience into art, and what that pairing can reveal about our bodies and the world around us.

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After 7 Years, NASA Gets Its Asteroid SampleAbout a week ago, space nerds got the delivery of a lifetime: a sample from Bennu, an asteroid soaring through the galaxy, currently about 200 million miles away. The capsule of rocks and dust came courtesy of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.

Scientists hope it’ll help unveil some of the mysteries of our universe, like how the sun and planets came to exist or how life began. Guest host and musician Dessa talks with Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, about this week in science. They also chat about how antimatter interacts with gravity, the new RSV vaccine for pregnant people, why LED streetlights are turning purple, and how beetles came to dominate all other species, especially ants.

How You See With Your BrainEver try to take a picture of a spectacular moon that looks like it fills up half the sky? And then you look at the photo, and the moon looks like a tiny dumb ping-pong ball? And you want to march into the Apple store and demand to know why this pocket-size device fails to capture the wonder of the cosmos properly?

The majesty of that supermoon you saw might be in your head as much as it is in the sky—your brain does a lot more than just receive data reports from your eyes. Vision is complicated. Seeing involves a lot of interpretation, of which you’re usually unaware.

Guest host and musician Dessa talks with neuroscientist Dr. Cheryl Olman, associate professor in the University of Minnesota’s psychology department, about her work to better understand how the brain processes visual information using sophisticated fMRI techniques, including studying the brains of people with schizophrenia.

Are Jellyfish Smarter Than We Think?Jellyfish are known for their graceful, hypnotic movement through the water—and for occasionally stinging swimmers. One thing they’re not known for, however, is intelligence. A study published in the journal Current Biology, however, challenges the idea of the ‘brainless’ jellyfish by showing that at least one species of jelly may be capable of associative learning.

The scientists were studying the Caribbean box jellyfish, which normally lives amongst a forest of tangled mangrove tree roots. In the lab, they painted false roots on the walls of the jellyfish’s tank, and watched to see what happened. At first, the jellies judged the low-contrast gray roots to be far away, and tried to swim through them. After a few collisions with the tank, however, the jellies learned that the false roots were closer than they appeared, and learned to keep their distance.

Dr. Anders Garm, an associate professor of marine biology at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, joins guest host Dessa to explain the experiment, and what it tells researchers about the connection between the behavior of small groups of neurons and the process of learning.

The Mysteries Of Freshwater JellyfishIn 1933, a high schooler fishing along the Huron River in Ann Arbor, Michigan looked into the water and saw something weird. It turned out to be a freshwater jellyfish – the first ever discovered in the Great Lakes region. Later that year, there was another sighting in Lake Erie.

Researchers think the species hitched a ride here on aquatic plants shipped from China, then spread. But there’s no evidence they harm the lake ecosystems they now call home.

Since then, the jellyfish have spread across the Upper Midwest, loitering mostly in inland lakes, rivers, and streams. But we still don’t know all that much about them.

A biology professor and her field research class at Eastern Michigan University are hoping to change that. Every week, they slap on masks, snorkels, and floaties, and wade out into a southeast Michigan lake on the lookout for jellyfish.

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Florida’s Reefs Are Vanishing. Can Scientists Save Them?This was a bad year for Florida’s coral reefs. Since the 1970s, reef cover in the Florida Keys has decreased by 90%. Those remaining reefs have been subjected to water temperatures higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, alongside other threats like disease and ocean acidification. This is a big problem for the largest reef in the continental U.S., which plays an important role in protecting the shorelines from erosion and storms.

Scientists are scrambling to preserve as much of the reef as possible. One method marine biologists are focused on is selectively breeding corals in labs. Scientists look for the specimens most resilient to heat stress, then breed them together to create hardy offspring. Those spawn are then implanted into the reef, with hopes of bolstering the existing structure.

Vox environmental reporter Benji Jones joins Ira to talk about his dives to Florida’s Pickles Reef, and the differences he saw between this year and last year. Then, Ira speaks with marine biologist Andrew Baker at the University of Miami about his efforts to bolster Florida’s reefs.

The Ocean Is A Climate AllyDid you know that the ocean absorbs about a quarter of all CO2 emissions? And about 90% of excess heat? It’s the largest carbon sink we have—and one of our biggest allies in the climate movement.

Ira talks with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, marine biologist and co-founder of the non-profit Urban Ocean Lab, as well as the climate initiative The All We Can Save Project. They chat about climate solutions—like the newly launched Climate Corps—the power of the ocean, and steps forward. Dr. Johnson is also the curator for Climate Futurism, an art exhibition at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, New York.

Feeling Hopeless About Climate Change? Try Playing These Video GamesThis segment, originally from 2022, was re-aired this week.

Five years ago, Stephanie Barish was tired of the public’s attitude about climate change. “Most people at that time were just so negative about climate,” she said. “It was doom and destruction, and I thought, wow, to make positive change, you have to really look at this from a solutions perspective.”

Stephanie is the founder and CEO of Indiecade, an organization that supports indie video game developers and hosts events like the Climate Jam—the goal of which was to change the gloomy public narrative around climate change. So, with the help of organizations like Earth Games, participants around the globe gather every year to make video games about climate change optimism, solutions, and justice.

Teams can also consult with subject matter experts, like Dargan Frierson, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, and also a judge for the Climate Jam. If teams wonder what climate change would look like on a different planet, they can go to him for answers. “We always look for scientific accuracy,” he said. “I think it’s very important to keep things within the realm of possibility, even when you’re looking at fiction.”

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A Week Of Climate Protests, Meetings, Pledges, And ActionClimate Week NYC is wrapping up, where hundreds of events took place across the city (including one from Science Friday), all with the goal of encouraging conversation and action around our climate crisis.

The weeklong event takes place alongside the UN General Assembly meeting, where world leaders discussed climate change, alongside other topics, including the war in Ukraine and universal health coverage.

While President Biden emphasized the importance of reducing the use of fossil fuels to combat climate change, there was a notable absence of leaders from the world’s biggest polluters, including Biden and president Xi Jinping of China, from the meeting’s Climate Ambition Summit. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that in order to participate, governments need to come with “credible, serious and new climate action.”

Large demonstrations also took place across the city, pressuring leaders and companies to take bigger action to end gas, oil, and coal use.

Swapna Krishna, a journalist based in Philadelphia, talks with Ira about these stories and more, including a new climate jobs program from the White House, a lawsuit from California against the five big oil companies, new battery recycling rules from the EU, and data from the Parker Solar Probe’s recent flight through a sun explosion.

Can Earth’s Past Climate Help Us Understand Today’s Crisis?A combination of factors led to Earth’s climate being able to support life. And changes in the climate some 6,000 years ago created the conditions for human civilization to flourish. It’s a delicate balance on the verge of collapse, due to our reliance on burning fossil fuels.

Ira talks with paleoclimatologist Dr. Michael Mann about his forthcoming book Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis, about the importance of understanding our planet’s climate history, and strategies to get policymakers to take action before it’s too late to reverse some of the worst consequences of climate change.

Mann is a professor of earth and environmental science and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Read an excerpt of the book on sciencefriday.com

The Climate Movement Should Be FunnierHow do you know that climate change is funny? Even the Antarctic ice sheets are cracking up.

The climate crisis is no joke, but that doesn’t mean we can’t laugh about it. Research suggests that comedy is a powerful way to connect people and get them to empathize with a cause—and the climate crisis is a pretty big one.

So what does science say about the power of a good laugh? And how does that fit into the climate movement?

Ira talks with Esteban Gast, comedian in residence at the clean energy non-profit Generation 180, and Dr. Caty Borum, executive director of the Center for Media & Social Impact at American University.

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New COVID Boosters Arrive Amid Rise In InfectionsThis past week, the FDA and CDC recommended new COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for anyone over the age of six months. They’re expected to be in larger pharmacies by the end of the week. It’s welcome news for some, as cases have ticked up over the summer, accompanied by higher hospital admissions and deaths.

The boosters join a suite of other vaccines to combat respiratory illness this fall, including this year’s flu shot and the new RSV vaccine, recommended especially for children and the elderly.

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, epidemiologist, adjunct professor at UTHealth School of Public Health, and author of the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter, joins Ira to talk about the details of the new boosters, how long you should wait to get one if you were recently infected, masking recommendations, and if you can get all three shots at once.

The Science Behind Devastating EarthquakesOn September 8, 2023 at 11:11 PM local time, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Morocco’s High Atlas mountains. So far, more than 2,500 people died and thousands more were injured or lost.

Other natural disasters usually give off warning signs; we can predict when a volcano will explode, ring the alarms when a tsunami starts to build, or evacuate before a hurricane makes landfall, but we still can’t detect earthquakes before they strike. And victims are left to face “the particular trauma that comes from watching the world around you crumble in an instant,” writes science journalist Robin George Andrews for The Atlantic.

Ira talks with Andrews about the specifics of this earthquake, where the science stands with earthquake detection, and the particular kind of trauma that comes from watching the world crumble.

The Buzz On Native Bees In Your NeighborhoodWhen you think ‘bees,’ you probably think of a neat stack of white hive boxes and the jars of honey on the store shelves. But there’s a lot more to bees than the agricultural staple, the European honey bee. Around the world there are over 20,000 known bee species, and around 4,000 of them are native to the United States. While these native bees play a key role in pollinating our plants and ensuring the health of ecosystems, they don’t get a ton of recognition or support.

Around three-quarters of flowering plant species rely on insects for pollination, and some native plants have evolved a partnership with specific native bee pollinators. Squashes, pumpkins, gourds, and the annual sunflower all have specific species of native bees as part of their life cycles. Native plants such as blueberries, cherries, and cranberries all developed without the European honeybee, which arrived in North America in 1622.

Dr. Neal Williams, a professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, joins Ira to talk about native bees, bee behavior and pollination.

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Where Soil Grows Above The TreesYou might be used to the feeling of Earth under your feet, but did you know that there’s soil high above your head? Way up in the treetops, where ferns, mosses, flowers, and even trees grow on top of the forest. A new study in Geoderma describes the factors that contribute to how canopy soil is formed.

Ira talks with lead author Jessica Murray, an ecologist and PhD candidate at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. They discuss the importance of canopy soil, what we do and don’t know about it, and what it’s like to study it.

Check out views from Murray’s field sites at sciencefriday.com!

‘I Will Not Be Vole Girl’—A Biologist Warms To RodentsThe path to becoming a scientist is not unlike the scientific process itself: Filled with dead ends, detours, and bumps along the way.

Danielle Lee started asking questions about animal behavior when she was a kid. She originally wanted to become a veterinarian. But after being rejected from veterinary school, she found a fulfilling career as a biologist, doing the type of work she always wanted to do—but never knew was possible for her.

Science Friday producer Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with Dr. Danielle Lee, a biologist, outreach scientist, and assistant professor in biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in Edwardsville Illinois about what keeps her asking questions, what rodents can help us understand about humans, and the importance of increasing diversity in science.

This Soundscape Artist Has Been Listening To The Planet For DecadesJim Metzner is one of the pioneers of science radio—he’s been making field recordings and sharing them with audiences for more than 40 years. He hosted shows such as “Sounds of Science” in the 1980s, which later grew into “Pulse of the Planet,” a radio show about “the sound of life on Earth.”

Over the decades, Metzner has created an incredible time capsule of soundscapes, and now, his entire collection is going to the Library of Congress.

John Dankosky talks with Metzner about what he’s learned about the natural world from endless hours of recordings and what we can all learn from listening. Plus, they’ll discuss some of his favorite recordings. To hear the best audio quality, it might be a good idea to use headphones if you can.

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Scientists Develop Human Embryo Model Without Sperm Or EggsThis week, research published in the journal Nature detailed a model of a 14-day old human embryo created without using sperm or eggs. The hope is to shine a light into a previously unavailable window of an embryo’s development, potentially helping to better understand miscarriages and side effects of medications taken during pregnancy.

Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, climate and energy reporter at MIT Technology Review to talk about that and other top science news of the week including Japan’s rocket launch to the moon, zinc batteries, and newly discovered toxic bird species.

Sweating Is Our Biological SuperpowerSweat may feel like a constant summer companion, whether or not you exercise frequently. Being damp can feel uncomfortable, but the smells that follow—thanks to the lives and deaths of sweat-munching bacteria—are often socially stigmatized as well. (Deodorant itself is actually a very recent invention!)

But sweat isn’t just a cosmetic embarrassment: It’s crucial to keeping us cool, as the evaporating liquid pulls heat energy from our bodies. If you look at animals that don’t sweat, many have evolved alternate adaptations like peeing or even pooping on body parts to achieve that vital evaporative effect. People who are born unable to sweat run a constant risk of heatstroke.

Ira talks to Sarah Everts, author of the new book, The Joy Of Sweat, about what makes sweat useful, the cool chemistry of this bodily fluid, and why it’s our evolutionary superpower.

Vocal Fry Serves Up Treats For Toothed WhalesToothed whales—species like orcas, bottlenose whales, and dolphins—use echolocation to zero in on prey about a mile deep into the ocean.

Until now, scientists couldn’t quite figure out how the whales were making these clicking sounds in the deep ocean, where there’s little oxygen.

A new study published in the journal Science, finds the key to underwater echolocation is vocal fry. Although in whales it might not sound like the creaky voice that some people love to hate, the two sounds are generated in a similar way in the vocal folds.

Ira talks with the study’s co-author, Dr. Coen Elemans, professor of bioacoustics and animal behavior at the University of Southern Denmark based in Odense, Denmark.

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What’s That Smell? An AI Nose KnowsIf you want to predict the color of something, you can talk about wavelengths of light. Light with a wavelength of around 460 nanometers is going to look blue. If you want to predict what something sounds like, frequencies can be a guide—a frequency of around 261 Hertz should sound like the musical note middle C.

This week in the journal Science, researchers describe developing an AI model that, given the structure of a chemical compound, can roughly predict where it’s likely to fall on a map of odors. For example, is it grassy? Or more meaty? Perhaps floral?

As Temperatures Rise, Farmworkers Are UnprotectedJuan Peña, 28, has worked in the fields since childhood, often exposing his body to extreme heat like the wave that hit the Midwest last week.

The heat can cause such deep pain in his whole body that he just wants to lie down, he said, as his body tells him he can’t take another day on the job. On those days, his only motivation to get out of bed is to earn dollars to send to his 10-month-old baby in Mexico.

To read more, visit sciencefriday.com.

The Golden Lion Tamarin Rebounds From The Brink Of ExtinctionThe Golden Lion Tamarin is a small, charismatic monkey with a mane of red fur that’s a local celebrity in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. This pint-sized primate was on the brink of extinction back in the 1970s, with only about 200 left in the wild.

After decades of concentrated conservation efforts, an estimated 4,800 golden lion tamarins are now living in the wild. The multi-pronged effort involved reconnecting parts of the forest that had disappeared due to deforestation, vaccinating monkeys against yellow fever, and reintroducing zoo-bred primates to the wild.

Ira speaks to Carlos Ruiz Miranda, associate professor of conservation and behavior at Northern Rio de Janeiro State University in Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil. Dr. Ruiz Miranda has worked on restoring golden lion tamarin populations for decades, and was involved in every facet of this effort.

Unraveling the Mysteries Of The Y ChromosomeLast week, we briefly mentioned the sequencing and analysis of the human Y chromosome, which was recently reported in the journal Nature. It’s an important achievement—the small Y chromosome is filled with repeated segments of genetic code that make reconstructing the full sequence difficult. Think of trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle—the unique parts of the picture are easy, but areas with repeated colors, like sky or waves, are more challenging.

In addition to the complete sequence of one individual’s Y, other researchers compared the Y chromosomes of 43 different individuals—and found that the structure of the chromosome can vary widely from one person to another.

The Y chromosome plays a key role in sex determination and sperm production, making it of interest to fertility researchers. It’s also linked to some diseases and health conditions.

Adam Phillippy, a senior investigator in the computational and statistical genomics branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, and Kateryna Makova, a professor of biology at Penn State University, join Ira to talk about the challenges of sequencing the Y chromosome, and what doing so might mean for medical research.

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What To Expect From Hurricane SeasonWe’re approaching the peak of hurricane season, which is usually around mid-September. It’s that time of year when it feels like there’s a new storm every week, and we blow through the alphabet trying to name them. This week, Hurricane Idalia made landfall around Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 3 storm, which caused a few fatalities, left hundreds of thousands of people without power, and some without homes. So what do we know about Idalia, and what can we expect from the rest of the hurricane season?

Ira talks with Rachel Feltman, editor at large at Popular Science, about hurricane season and other science news of the week. They chat about what we’re learning from India’s lunar rover, a three-inch roundworm pulled out of someone’s brain, a new study about public health and air pollution, heavy metals in marijuana products, what an ancient Egyptian mummy smells like, and a turtle named Tally, who is far from home.

The Surgeon General Warns About An Epidemic Of LonelinessThe early days of the COVID-19 pandemic were lonely for many, upending their social lives. But loneliness pre-dates COVID, especially among young people. In a recent advisory, the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy warned that the negative health effects of loneliness and isolation are comparable to smoking daily. Despite being more technologically connected than ever before, the Surgeon General’s Office is also raising concerns about the harms of social media on youth mental health.

Ira sits down for a conversation with the United States surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, about the intersection of youth mental health, social media, and loneliness. Dr. Murthy outlines both public policy and community interventions that can help strengthen America’s emotional well being and social connections.

Keeping Tabs On Tick BitesIf you live in the Midwest or Northeast, you’re probably aware of an issue that’s gotten worse over the years: ticks, and the illnesses they can spread, including Lyme Disease and Alpha-gal syndrome.

Scientists are still trying to learn more about how and where ticks are spreading. That’s where The Tick App comes in. It’s a community science effort where you can log your tick encounter and help scientists learn more about tick-borne disease. Science Friday digital producer Emma Gometz sat down with Ira to talk about her recent article profiling the app, and the scientists behind forms of tick monitoring research.

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How Early Humans May Have Transformed L.A.’s Landscape ForeverJoin us on a time traveling adventure, as we go back 15,000 years to visit what’s now southern California. During the last Ice Age, saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, and dire wolves prowled the landscape, until … they didn’t. The end of the Ice Age coincided with the end of these species. And for decades, scientists have been trying to figure out a big question: Why did these animals go extinct?

A new study in the journal Science offers new clues and suggests that wildfires caused by humans might’ve been the nail in these critters’ coffins.

Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with paleoecologist Dr. Emily Lindsey and paleobotanist Dr. Regan Dunn, both curators at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California, about what we can learn from animals preserved in tar pits, how fire transformed the ecosystem, and why we have to look to the past for modern day conservation and land management.

How Scientifically Accurate Are The Sharks In ‘Meg 2: The Trench’?“Meg 2: The Trench” is the sequel to the 2018 movie “The Meg,” in which a team of ocean scientists discover a megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, thriving at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Megalodon went extinct over 2.6 million years ago … or so the movie’s characters thought.

When the team’s research sub gets damaged, a skilled rescue diver, played by Jason Statham, is brought in, who happened to have encountered the same megalodon years earlier. Over the course of the movie, the team discovers how this long-thought extinct apex predator survived, and what they can do to stop it before it wreaks havoc on the surface world.

“Meg 2: The Trench” largely follows in that movie’s footsteps, but this time, it features not just one, but multiple megalodons. Oh, and they’re even bigger this time.

Universe of Art host D. Peterschmidt chats with Dr. Sora Kim, an associate professor of paleoecology at University of California, Merced, about what science the movie got wrong (and right) and how these over-the-top blockbusters can inspire the scientists of the future.

Scientists Discover Dinosaur ‘Coliseum’ In Alaska’s Denali National ParkResearchers recently discovered a rocky outcrop at Denali National Park in Alaska covered in dinosaur tracks, which they dubbed the “Coliseum.” It’s the largest dinosaur track site ever found in Alaska.

The area has thousands of prints from generations of dinosaurs living about 70 million years ago, including: duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs, raptors, tyrannosaurs.

Flora Lichtman talks with Dustin Stewart, former graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and paleontologist for the environmental consulting firm Stantec, based in Denver, Colorado, about this dino hotspot.

Your Guide To Conquering History’s Greatest CatastrophesGuest host Flora Lichtman takes us back to some of the scariest, deadliest moments in history. Think along the lines of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Ice Age, and the asteroid that wiped out the dinos. But we’re going to revisit them using what we know now—and science, of course—to figure out if and how we could survive those events.

The idea of using science and hindsight to survive history is the premise of a new book, How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes by Cody Cassidy.

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Countries Seek To Return To The Moon On Wednesday, the Indian space agency ISRO celebrated as its Chandrayaan-3 craft successfully made a soft landing at the lunar south pole. This is the first mission to explore the region around the moon’s southern pole, and a major success for ISRO. The mission plans to use a robotic rover to conduct a series of experiments over the course of about 2 weeks, largely centered around the availability of water and oxygen-containing materials.

Less than a week earlier, a Russian craft, Luna-25, crashed onto the moon. It would have been Russia’s first moon landing in 47 years. The cause of the crash is not yet known. Maggie Koerth, science journalist and editorial lead for CarbonPlan, joins guest host Flora Lichtman to talk about the two lunar missions and whether the flurry of activity signals a new space race.

They’ll also discuss other stories from the week in science, including a new analysis of the Y chromosome, work on the camouflage skin of the hogfish, and a setback in a mission to clear up space junk.

What’s The Human Cost Of Alaska’s Mineral Boom? A dusting of snow clings to the highway as Barbara Schuhmann drives around a hairpin curve near her home in Fairbanks, Alaska. She slows for a patch of ice, explaining that the steep turn is just one of many concerns she has about a looming project that could radically transform Alaskan mining as the state begins looking beyond oil.

Roughly 250 miles to the southeast, plans are developing to dig an open-pit gold mine called Manh Choh, or “big lake” in Upper Tanana Athabascan. Kinross Alaska, the majority owner and operator, will haul the rock on the Alaska Highway and other roads to a processing mill just north of Fairbanks. The route follows the Tanana River across Alaska’s interior, where spruce-covered foothills knuckle below the stark peaks of the Alaska Range. Snowmelt feeds the creeks that form a mosaic of muskeg in nearby Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge, a migration corridor for hundreds of bird species.

To read the full article, visit sciencefriday.com.

Salmon Flourish After Mine Damage Restored In Alaska On Friday, July 28, there were hundreds of juvenile salmon clustered in a pool, in clear water surrounded by a bank of fresh woody debris. Not 100 yards away, a spinning drum processed sediment to extract gold.

This land is managed by a mining company, but it’s also the site of a major stream restoration project. Thousands of salmon are returning to this stream in Hope, more than 100 years after aggressive gold mining affected the path of the river. The project to restore Resurrection Creek has brought together a coalition of stakeholders, including the present-day mining company that occupies the site.

The restoration of Resurrection Creek began in the early 2000s. The goal was to correct habitat damage caused by historic mining.

More than 100 years ago, heavy mining activity in the gold rush town affected the stream pattern, turning it from a meandering creek to a straight ditch. Jim Roberts is vice president of Hope Mining Company, and he said hydraulic mining in the early 1900s fundamentally changed the waterway.

To read the full article, visit sciencefriday.com.

All About Sea Otters Last month, a rowdy sea otter was stealing surfboards off the coast of Santa Cruz California, biting chunks out of surfboards, and even catching a few waves.

It’s rare for a sea otter to get so close to humans in the wild. Authorities are trying to capture the otter, named 841, for her safety and that of the surfers. But, a month later, she remains at large.

Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Jessica Fujii, sea otter program manager at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to get the 411 about Otter 841, and talk all things sea otter—including their sophisticated use of tools, carrying food in their armpits, and busting myths about hand holding.

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Challenging The Gender Gap In Sports ScienceThis weekend, Spain and England face off in the Women’s World Cup Finals in Sydney, Australia.

Luckily things are changing, and more girls and women are playing sports than ever before. There’s a little more research about women too, as well as those who fall outside the gender binary.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Christine Yu, a health and sports journalist and author of Up To Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes, about the gap in sport science about women.

Using Stem Cells For Cornea Repair Is Worth A LookEach year in the US, over 40,000 people receive transplants of the cornea—the clear front part of the eye that light goes through first. Still more patients with damaged corneas might receive artificial corneas to help restore clear vision. But if an eye has been damaged by a chemical burn or another severe eye injury, neither of those treatments may be possible.

Now an early, Phase 1 clinical trial is reporting positive results using a stem cell technique called CALEC. It grows cells from a patient’s healthy eye, and then grafts them back into the damaged eye, either to support corneal tissue regrowth or as a foundation for a traditional transplant.

Dr. Ula Jurkunas, associate director of the Cornea Service at Mass Eye and Ear, and Dr. Jerome Ritz, the executive director of the Connell and O’Reilly Families Cell Manipulation Core Facility at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, join Ira to talk about how the process works, and the challenges of manufacturing stem cell tissues in the lab for use in the human body.

From Skyscrapers to Sand Thieves—Digging Into The World Of SandWhen you think of sand, thoughts of the ocean and sand castles probably come to mind. But sand can be found in much more than beachfronts. Sand is a key ingredient in concrete for skyscrapers, silicon for computer chips, and the glass for your smartphone.

Vince Beiser, journalist and author of the book The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization, traveled to sand mines in India and beach nourishment projects around the world to follow the story of how sand has become a vital resource. He talks about the many uses of sand in our everyday lives and some of the consequences that come from our dependence on this natural resource.

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Youth Climate Activists Score A Win In Montana This week, a state court in Montana ruled in favor of a group of 16 youth climate activists, who argued that a state environmental law was in violation of a provision in the state constitution. The Montana constitution states: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” The ruling will allow (but not require) regulators to consider climate impacts when evaluating proposed energy projects for approval.

Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins Ira to talk about the decision and what it might mean for other climate-related litigation around the country. They’ll also discuss other science news of the week, including some strange particle physics from Fermilab, the end of the road for the common incandescent light bulb, and how researchers decoded a snippet of song — using electrodes on a brain.

COVID-19’s Summer Wave Raises New Questions Step outside into a public place, and you may experience some deja-vu: Masking is back up, the coughs and sniffles are echoing, and coworkers are calling in sick. It’s not just your imagination—hospitalizations from COVID-19 are up 14.3 percent for the week of August 5. This new wave has a name: EG. 5, named for the recent Omicron variant that is now the most prevalent.

With new boosters on the horizon, Ira catches up with Dr. Angela Rasmussen, virologist at VIDO, the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, at the University of Saskatchewan. They answer questions about the new monovalent booster, testing guidance, and why COVID-19 is still a public health problem.

New Research Suggests Neurological Culprit For COVID Brain Fog Among the most debilitating symptoms of Long Covid is brain fog, a condition which includes symptoms like confusion or inability to concentrate.

A recently published study using mice cells in petri dishes suggests that brain fog might be the result of neurons fusing together. The results have yet to be tested in live animals or humans.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with study author, Dr. Ramón Martínez-Mármol, research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute, at the University of Queensland, based in Brisbane, Australia, about what his research might help us better understand about brain fog.

Reno Is Preparing To Turn Its Wastewater Into Drinking Water Inside a water treatment plant in north Reno, Nev., on a recent Wednesday, recycled wastewater was running beneath a floor grate inside a small testing room. Inside the space is a system of serpentine-like PVC pipes with 19 different ports, used to test water samples at different intervals.

“It’s about halfway through the treatment process at the wastewater facility,” said Lydia Teel, an engineer with the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, or TMWA, which serves about 440,000 people in the greater Reno area. “So, it’s clean, but there’s still some color, there’s bacteria in it, some solids.”

Teel spearheads a demonstration project called OneWater Nevada, an effort to show that the region can recycle the water that flushes down people’s toilets and shower drains and – eventually – turn it back into clean, pure drinking water flowing from faucets, effectively creating a new water resource. The project is a collaboration between TMWA, the cities of Reno and Sparks, the University of Nevada, Reno, Washoe County, and the Western Regional Water Commission.

The Reno area doesn’t have a history of threatened water supplies, and historic snowfall this past winter eased drought conditions in Nevada and across parts of the Mountain West. But that could shift quickly with climate change.

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Devastating Fires Might Become More Common In HawaiiAs of Friday morning, at least 55 were dead and thousands were seeking shelter on Maui, after wildfires tore across the Hawaiian island. Officials there say that the fires, once rare, have caused billions of dollars in damage, and the Biden administration has made federal disaster relief available.

The fires were driven by strong, dry winds from nearby Hurricane Dora, and were made worse by ongoing drought conditions. The region has grown hotter and drier, and highly flammable invasive grasses have been crowding out native vegetation.

Bethany Brookshire, freelance science journalist and author of the book Pests: How Humans Created Animal Villains, joins Ira Flatow to talk about this story and others from this week in science news, including an investigation into unknown genes in our genome, a 390 million year-old moss that might not survive climate change, and a fish that plays hide and seek to get to its prey.

A Tuna’s Reel Life AdventuresBluefin tuna is typically sliced into small pieces, its ruby red flesh rolled into sushi. But don’t let those tiny sashimi slices fool you. Bluefin tuna are colossal creatures—on average, they’re about 500 pounds. The biggest one ever caught was a whopping 1,500 pounds. They can travel thousands of miles at breakneck speeds, and their skin changes color!

The fish, once in danger of extinction, have now rebounded due to a combination of scientific advances and possibly as a result of climate change.

Ira talks with Karen Pinchin, science journalist and author of the new book, Kings of Their Own Ocean: Tuna, Obsession, and The Future of Our Seas about a tuna nicknamed Amelia who traveled across the world, the fisherman who tagged her, and what their stories can help us better understand about the mighty fish.

Read an excerpt of the book here.

Preserving Acadia National Park’s Vanishing BirdsongAcadia National Park in Maine is home to more than 300 bird species. Climate change is affecting the range of many of these birds, to the extent that some may not be found in the area in the future. A team of volunteers has made it their mission to record as many bird sounds as possible—while they still can.

Laura Sebastianelli is the founder and lead researcher of the Schoodic Notes Bird Sounds of Acadia project. She’s helped collect more than 1,200 bird sounds on tape, with the hopes of aiding future researchers. Sebastianelli joins Ira to talk about the project.

World’s Richest Lithium Deposit Faces Opposition To MiningFive years ago, professional gem hunters Mary and Gary Freeman stumbled upon the richest known lithium deposit in the world in the woods of western Maine. Lithium is a silvery metal many consider to be key to the transition to a clean energy future, thanks to its role in technology like lithium-ion batteries.

The Maine deposit could be a way for the United States to be independent in their lithium sourcing. But there’s stiff opposition to digging up the mineral within Maine.

Kate Cough, reporter and enterprise editor for The Maine Monitor, reported this story in collaboration with Time Magazine. Cough is a Report For America corps member. She joins Ira to discuss the debate.

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Protecting Other Planets From Earth’s GermsFor decades, people have been trying to figure out how to avoid contaminating other planets as they explore them—an idea called planetary protection. As missions venture forth to places such as Mars or Jupiter’s moon, Europa, the need to protect worlds that could support life becomes more critical. And at the same time, as space programs begin to bring samples back to Earth from places like Mars or asteroids, planetary protection becomes a concern in another way—the need to protect Earth from potential unknown life forms from the cosmos.

Sending humans to another world raises the stakes even more. NASA has a limit of no more than 300,000 spores (single-celled organisms) allowed on board robotic Mars landers. But human bodies contain trillions of microorganisms, making it impossible for human missions to achieve the same level of microbial cleanliness as robotic landers.

Dr. Nick Benardini is a NASA official responsible for ensuring that the proper precautions are made to prevent humans from contaminating outer space. Ira Flatow spoke to him about how to avoid spreading microbes between planets.

Ask An Expert: An Evolution EducationMost people raised in the U.S. were taught about evolution in science class growing up. But how much do you actually remember? Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species or Gregor Mendel’s pea plant experiments may ring a bell, but it’s likely most of us could use a refresher.

A good grasp on the science of evolution is extra important these days, argues Prosanta Chakrabarty, author of the new book, Explaining Life Through Evolution, and curator of fishes at Louisiana State University. In 2008, Louisiana’s governor signed the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows schools to teach creationism as an alternative to evolution.

Chakrabarty joins Ira to talk about the science behind evolution and take questions from listeners.

Read an excerpt of the book here.

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A Possible Breakthrough Superconductor Has Scientists SplitRecently, a superconducting material went viral in the scientific community. Researchers in South Korea say they’ve discovered a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. If it works, it would create electricity under normal, everyday conditions.

But some scientists are hesitant to applaud this purported breakthrough. This field has a long history of supposed breakthroughs, many of which turn out to be not so superconducting after all.

In other science news, NASA has detected a ‘heartbeat’ from the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which lost contact last month. This may allow scientists to reestablish contact with the spacecraft before its expected October 15 date.

Joining Ira to talk about these stories and more is Sophie Bushwick, technology editor for Scientific American, based in New York, New York.

How Oppenheimer’s Bombs Compare To Today’s NukesOn the day the film Oppenheimer came out, Science Friday discussed the history of the Manhattan Project, including the legacy of the Trinity Test, where the world’s very first nuclear weapon was detonated in the desert of New Mexico. We also heard from a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing and a New Mexican downwinder.

But our listeners responded with even more questions that we couldn’t get to—including this, from Randy in Orlando, who wrote, “I’ve heard Neil deGrasse Tyson say the new bombs aren’t that dirty?”

Randy’s referring to the astrophysicist’s interview last November, in which he said: “Modern nukes don’t have the radiation problem … it’s a different kind of weapon than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” We wanted an answer to this question—and others—about current nuclear weapons technology, an issue that Russia’s implied threats of using nuclear weapons against Ukraine also raise.

Ira talks with Dr. Zia Mian, a physicist and co-director of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, about how nuclear weapons technology has evolved over the last 80 years, how many there are, and the new threats they pose.

From Splenda to Aspartame: Are the Artificial Sweeteners We Use Hurting Us?The World Health Organization recently classified aspartame as a “possible carcinogen.” While the designation may seem scary, it simply indicates that the agency cannot rule out that the substance causes cancer. There is not enough evidence to suggest that aspartame, found in many sugar-free beverages, is linked to cancer.

Ira breaks down the science behind that decision, what we know about the health effects of artificial sweeteners, and takes listener calls with guests Marji McCullough, senior scientific director of epidemiology research at the American Cancer Society and Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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What Is Your Cat’s Meow Trying To Tell You? Cats have formed bonds with humans for thousands of years. But what exactly is going on in our furry friends’ brains? What are they trying to tell us with their meows? And why did humans start keeping cats as pets anyway?

To help answer those questions and more, John Dankosky talks with Jonathan Losos, professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and author of the new book, The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa.

Read an excerpt of the book at sciencefriday.com.

Researchers Quantify The Navajo Nation’s Water Crisis In Fort Defiance, one of five main communities situated on the Arizona-New Mexico border in the Navajo Nation, Taishiana Tsosie and Kimberly Belone are standing in a mobile office’s cramped bathroom.

The two researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health turn off the lights and hold up plastic bags filled with water from the bathroom sink. Each bag has five small compartments, filled with the same sink water. Where they differ is in the chemicals added to each compartment.

“This is our compartment bag, and we use this and several other chemicals and tablets to test for E. coli in the water,” Tsosie said.

Today, the researchers are testing for harmful bacteria, but they also run separate tests for dangerous metals in drinking water.

To read the rest, visit sciencefriday.com.

Chumash Tribe Champions National Marine Sanctuary For generations, the Chumash tribal nation have been stewards of a vital marine ecosystem along the central coast of California, bordering St. Louis Obispo County and Santa Barbara County.

The area is home to species like blue whales, black abalone, and snowy plovers. And it’s also an important part of the Chumash tribe’s rich traditions and culture.

Tribal leaders have pushed for decades to designate the area as a national marine sanctuary. Now, the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary is in the final stages of the approval process, which would make it the first tribally nominated national marine sanctuary in the country.

John Dankosky talks with Stephen Palumbi, professor of marine sciences at Stanford University and Violet Sage Walker, chairwoman of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council, about the importance of this region and their collaborative research project.

Where The Rubber Meets The Road For Electric Cars You might not give your car’s tires a lot of thought unless you get a flat, or you live somewhere you need to swap in snow tires. But as more people in the US make the switch to electric vehicles, some are finding they have to think about their tires more often. Some EV drivers are finding that their tires wear out more rapidly than they had with traditional internal combustion-driven vehicles—in some cases, 20 percent faster.

The problem has multiple causes. Many EVs are heavier than regular cars of a similar size, which puts more load on the tires. When combined with the almost instant torque provided by electric motors, that can lead to leaving rubber on the road—even when a driver isn’t attempting to burn rubber.

Ryan Pszczolkowski, tire testing program manager at Consumer Reports, joins Diana Plasker to talk about the special engineering that comes into play when the rubber meets the road in an electric car.

Is The Plastic In Your Old Barbie Toxic? ‘Barbie’ is going gangbusters at the box office, and it’s prompted a whole new interest in the iconic, if occasionally problematic, toy doll. If you’ve been moved by the movie to dig your old Barbie out from the attic, don’t be surprised if she looks…different.

The PVC (polyvinyl chloride) toy dolls of the 1950s—and for the next 50 years after that—contained plasticizers that, over time, can degrade, discolor, and even become sticky. And the chemical compounds being released by an old PVC toy might be toxic to your toddler.

Science Friday’s AAAS Mass Media Fellow Chelsie Boodoo is a big Barbie fan. She wanted to find out more about what these old Barbies are made of, and whether we should be worried. So, she turned to Dr. Yvonne Shashoua, a research professor from the National Museum of Denmark. She explains what happens to plastic dolls over time, how museums like hers preserve vintage toys, and even some tips to keep Barbie looking like new. (Hint: make room in the freezer!)

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No, The Gulf Stream Is Not Collapsing A sobering climate study came out this week in the journal Nature Communications. It suggests that a system of ocean currents—called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)—could collapse sometime between 2025 and 2095, which could have dire climate consequences for the North Atlantic.

SciFri director of news and audio John Dankosky talks with Swapna Krishna, a journalist based in Philadelphia, about what this means and what could be at stake. They also chat through other big science news of the week, including the detection of water vapor around a very distant star, a new image depicting the first detection of gas giants being formed around stars, a new theory for the origin of the world’s “gravity hole,” why the fuzzy asp caterpillar packs such a scary sting, and what scientists can learn from ticklish rats.

The State Of Reproductive Health, One Year After Dobbs In the year since the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning the federal right to an abortion, states jumped into action.

Thirteen states banned abortion with limited exemptions, and three others have banned abortion after the first trimester. A handful of other states have extremely restrictive abortion access, or otherwise remain in legal limbo, awaiting court decisions or new laws to be signed.

Leading up to Dobbs decision, SciFri delved into the science behind reproductive health and the potential ripple effects on access to care. Now, a little over a year later, we’re following up what’s going on.

SciFri guest host and experiences manager Diana Plasker talks with Usha Ranji, associate director for Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, based in San Francisco, California, about her survey of 569 OB-GYNs across the country. They discuss the growing disparities in states between where abortion is banned and where it remains legal.

Later, John Dankosky talks with Dr. Rebecca Cohen, chief medical officer at the Comprehensive Women’s Health Center, based in Denver, Colorado, about providing abortion and pregnancy care in a state where abortion is legal, and seeing patients who are traveling from states with bans in place.

The Kākāpō Parrot Returns To New Zealand Before humans arrived in New Zealand, parrots called kākāpō freely roamed across the islands. They are the world’s only living flightless parrots, and they’re a bit smaller than the average chicken. But the kākāpō’s population started crashing centuries ago, due to human interference and the arrival of predators like cats, rats, and stoats. At one point, the species was teetering on the brink of extinction.

For decades, scientists have been capturing and relocating kākāpō to safe islands, hoping their population would grow. It did, and the kākāpō’s recovery team just reached a huge milestone: bringing four birds back to the mainland, a place they haven’t existed since the 1980s.

Guest host and SciFri events manager Diana Plasker talks with Deidre Vercoe, operations manager for the New Zealand Department of Conservation’s kākāpō and takahē teams, about the history of kākāpō conservation, what this win means, and what’s next for these beloved birds.

Far Beyond Their Native Habitat, Parrots Rule The Roost In many urban areas across the U.S. and abroad, feral, non-native parrots have become established. This is true in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, where a colony of lime green monk parakeets have inhabited a massive nest on top of the gothic entrance gate. How exactly these parrots wound up here is a bit of a mystery.

“The lore that’s passed around is that at some point a box of parrots, perhaps at the airport, got overturned,” said science writer Ryan Mandelbaum. “What’s more likely is a combination of people releasing their [pet] parrots and parrots escaping in some critical mass.”

Mandelbaum wrote the cover story for July’s issue of Scientific American all about the resilience of parrots. SciFri producer Kathleen Davis interviewed them at Green-Wood Cemetery, where they discussed why these parrots are not just surviving, but thriving.

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Astronomers Spy A Two-Faced StarThis week, astronomers report in the journal Nature that they’ve discovered a white dwarf—a dying star’s dense inner core—that, instead of being uniform in composition, has a surface that appears to be hydrogen on one face and helium on the other. The star rotates on its axis once every 15 minutes, bringing each face into view. Researchers spotted the unusual object with an instrument called the Zwicky Transient Facility, which initially singled out the star because of its rapidly changing brightness.

The astronomers aren’t sure why the white dwarf, which they’ve nicknamed Janus after the two-faced Roman god, has this strange divided surface. Some possible theories include shifting magnetic fields which produce areas of different density, or that it’s a step in stellar evolution only partially complete.

Tim Revell, deputy US editor at New Scientist, joins John Dankosky to talk about the two-faced star and other stories from the week in science, including the resignation of the Stanford University president amidst an ethics probe, discovery of ancient natural graphene, an earthworm invasion in the Arctic, and investigations of alcoholic fruit.

How Does The Brain Control Your Every Move?As you read this, every small action your body makes—eyes scanning the page, fingers scrolling a mouse, scratching an itch on your face—must be dictated by your brain. These actions usually happen without a second thought. But inside the brain, the motor cortex is hard at work making the body move.

For nearly a century, every neuroscience student came across the “homunculus”—a visual representation of which areas of the brain control certain body parts. But for the last few decades, some researchers have disputed this traditional view of brain mapping. This includes a recent study, led by Washington University in St. Louis.

Joining guest host John Dankosky to discuss how the brain and body are connected are study lead author Evan Gordon, assistant professor of radiology at Wash U., and Michael Graziano, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Revisiting The Nuclear Age With ‘Oppenheimer’This weekend, Christopher Nolan’s long awaited film Oppenheimer hits theaters. It tells the story of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his road to becoming the “father of the atomic bomb.” With its release, audiences will be faced with the United States’ contentious history in developing and deploying the world’s first atomic weapons, marking a point of no return for the entire world.

Nearly 80 years since the bombs were first developed and tested in the New Mexican desert—and then dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—the world is still reckoning with the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer’s legacies.

In this live call-in show, Science Goes To The Movies, we analyze the roles of scientists during the Manhattan project, hear from the people most affected by Oppenheimer’s work, and pick apart his life and legacy—one which asks to what extent scientists are responsible for the things they create.

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Where’s The Beef? Lab-Grown Meat Gets U.S. Approval People have been looking for meat-alternatives for decades. Vegetarians avoid animal products for many reasons, from concerns over animal treatment and slaughtering practices to the meat industry’s climate impacts. Methane from cows and other livestock contribute about 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

There have been plant-based alternatives on the market for awhile now, but another method has quietly gained steam over the past decade: meat grown in a lab, using cultured cells. This past June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved two companies—Eat Just and Upside—to grow and sell cultivated chicken products in the U.S. Lab-developed beef will likely be next, while some companies are even working on cultivated pet food meat. (Lab-grown mouse meat kibble, anyone?)

But will growing tissue in a lab actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and … will people even want to eat it? Joining Ira to discuss this beefy topic is Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at the MIT Technology Review, who talks about how this kind of meat is made in a lab, the challenges the industry faces, and what lab-grown beef patty tastes like.

How Rising Temperatures Are Shifting The Ground Beneath Chicago As global temperatures rise, cities are typically hotter than rural areas. Tall buildings trap heat and temperatures don’t drop nearly as low at night.

Out of sight, just below the surface, it’s also getting hotter. Scientists are beginning to document the unexpected consequences of underground climate change.

A new study measuring the phenomenon used sensors to track increasing temperatures underground in Chicago and map how the earth has shifted beneath the city as a result.

Ira talks with the lead researcher of the study, Dr. Alessandro Rotta Loria, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, based in Chicago, Illinois.

A Fish By Any Other Name: Inside The Effort To Bring ‘Copi’ To Dinner People who live near freshwater rivers or lakes are likely familiar with Asian Carp. The fish are not native to the U.S., but over the last few decades their populations have exploded in waterways like the Mississippi River Basin and the Illinois River.

Over the last few years, there’s been a major PR campaign to move away from the name Asian Carp, in favor of a new name: “Copi.” The reason is two-fold: First, it joins a general trend of moving species’ names away from nationalistic associations, considering anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The other goal is to make the fish sound more delicious—creating a market that would incentivize fishing the Copi, hopefully reducing their populations.

Joining Ira to talk about this is Jim Garvey, director of fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic sciences at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Thanks To A Mesozoic Hot Spot, We Finally Know How Old The Utahraptor Is Sometimes Jim Kirkland wishes he had been alive 150 years ago.

That’s when the golden age of North American dinosaur discovery began, and early titans of paleontology crisscrossed the Rocky Mountains unearthing dozens of new species that became household names, from the Stegosaurus to the Brontosaurus to the Triceratops.

But a close second to that era is what Kirkland gets to see these days in Utah.

“I am doing that kind of discovery right now,” Kirkland said. “I’m just lucky to be alive.”

Kirkland, Utah’s state paleontologist, uncovered and named the Utahraptor in 1993. The deadly predator became the official state dinosaur in 2018.

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The Oceans Are Getting Hotter—And GreenerIt’s hot out there, and more so than normal July weather. It’s estimated that more than 100 million Americans are under heat watches, warnings, and advisories, spanning the west coast and southern states. Not only is the land hot, but the oceans are, too. The water temperature near the Florida Keys this week reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit, just shy of the record for global ocean temperature.

A warmer climate is having some visual effects on our oceans, too. The color of the ocean surface near the equator has gotten greener. The culprit? Phytoplankton, which are full of the pigment chlorophyll.

Joining Ira to talk about these stories and other science news of the week is Rachel Feltman, Editor at Large for Popular Science and host of the podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” based in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Understanding The Reasons For The Mental Health Crisis In YouthYou’ve probably read the headlines about a spike in youth suicide rates, or about how social media and screen time are exacerbating teen anxiety and depression. Or maybe you read about the shortage of services for kids who need mental health treatment, waiting in emergency rooms for inpatient beds to open up.

And of course the pandemic accelerated all of these issues, leaving kids who might have been already struggling without the support of friends and teachers in their school communities.

Ira takes a closer look at what’s driving these trends with Dr. Patricia Ibeziako, associate chief for clinical services in the department of psychiatry and behavioral services at the Boston Children’s Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Dr. Tami Benton, psychiatrist-in-chief in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Rewriting Sharks’ Big, Bad Reputation… For KidsIt’s that time of year when sharks are on our minds. Summer is filled with Shark Week content, viral reports of attacks, and shrieks on the beach when someone spots a fin in the water… from a dolphin.

But sharks don’t deserve this bad reputation. They are beautiful, fascinating, and—more than anything—the Earth needs them. A new children’s book called “Mother of Sharks,” by Melissa Cristina Márquez, aims to teach kids exactly that.

Ira talks with Márquez, a shark scientist and wildlife educator, about the book, shark conservation, and why she loves sharks so much.

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How The Humble Beaver Shaped A Continent The American beaver, Castor canadensis, nearly didn’t survive European colonialism in the United States. Prized for its dense, lustrous fur, and also sought after for the oil from its tail glands, the species was killed by the tens of thousands, year after year, until conservation efforts in the late 19th century turned the tide.

In her new book, Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, author Leila Philipp tells that tale—and the ecological cost of this near-extermination. But she also has good news: beavers, and their skillful engineering of waterways, have the potential to ease the fire, drought and floods of a changing climate. She talks to Ira about the powerful footprint of the humble beaver.

The Sweet Song Of The Largest Tree On Earth For this story, we’re taking a trip to south central Utah and into the Fishlake National Forest to visit the largest tree on earth, an aspen named Pando. The strange thing about Pando is that it doesn’t really look like the world’s biggest tree. It has rolling hills with thousands of tall, lean aspens swaying in the wind.

But Pando is there, hiding in plain sight. All those tree trunks you see aren’t actually individual trees. Technically, they’re branches, and that’s because Pando is one massive tree—sprawling more than 100 acres, with 47,000 branches growing from it.

There is a lot to learn about Pando, and our guests turned to sound to understand the tree better. Together, they created an “acoustic portrait” to hear all the snaps, splinters, and scuttles that happen in and around the tree.

Ira talks with Jeff Rice, a sound artist and co-founder of the Acoustic Atlas at the Montana State University Library, and Lance Oditt, executive director of the non-profit Friends of Pando, which is dedicated to preserving the tree.

This $7 Violin May Be $7... But How Does It Sound? Stringed instruments can be a joy to the ears and the eyes. They’re handcrafted, made of beautiful wood, and the very best ones are centuries old, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or sometimes even millions.

But there’s a new violin in the works—one that’s 3D-printed. It costs just a few bucks to print, making it an affordable and accessible option for young learners and classrooms.

Dr. Mary-Elizabeth Brown is a concert violinist and the founder and director of the AVIVA Young Artists Program in Montreal, Quebec, and she’s been tinkering with the design of 3D-printed violins for years. She talks with Ira about the science behind violins, the design process, and how she manages to turn $7 worth of plastic into a beautiful sounding instrument.

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How Fungi Are Breaking The Binary: A Queer Approach To Ecology As Pride month comes to a close, many people are reflecting on the past, present, and future of the LGBTQIA+ community.

An interdisciplinary group of scientists, researchers, and artists are using queerness as a lens to better understand the natural world, too. It’s a burgeoning field called queer ecology, which aims to break down binaries and question our assumptions of the natural world based on heterosexuality.

For example, there are plenty of examples of same-sex animal pairings in the wild, like penguins, chimps, and axolotls. There are also plants that change sexes, or have a combination of male and female parts, like the mulberry tree.

But perhaps the most queer kingdom of all is fungi. Mushrooms are not easily forced into any type of binary. For example, the Schizophyllum commune, or the split gill mushroom, has 23,000 sexes, making it somewhat of a queer icon in the field of mycology.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Patty Kaishian, incoming curator of mycology at the New York State Museum, about how fungi might help us expand our understandings of sexuality, identity, and hierarchy. They also discuss how queer ecology can help people of all sexualities reconnect with the natural world.

Scientists Think Cloning Could Help Save Endangered Species Earlier this year, a baby Przewalski’s horse was born at the San Diego Zoo. But this foal isn’t any ordinary foal, he’s a clone. He’s the product of scientists aiming to save his dwindling species using genetics. This endangered horse species once roamed Europe and Asia, but by the 1960, threats like poaching, capture, and military presence drove the horses to extinction in the wild.

Conservationists raced to save this wild horse through captive breeding programs, but with a population so small, there just wasn’t enough genetic diversity to grow a healthy herd. But with careful genetic management, the Przewalski’s horse’s population is now nearly 2,000 horses strong, and this new foal will one day help boost his species’ genetic diversity even more.

Producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Oliver Ryder, conservation geneticist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, about cloning Przewalski’s horse, and how doing so will infuse genetic diversity into the small population.

Then Davis talks with Dr. Sam Wisely, professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida, about how cloning can help other endangered species, like the black-footed ferret, and the ethics involved in cloning.

Twenty Years On, The Little CubeSat Is Bigger Than Ever The story of the CubeSat started with a big problem for one Cal Poly professor.

“It was actually a critical problem for us, but it was a problem that nobody else cared about,” said Jordi Puig-Suari, an Emeritus Professor from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

He co-invented the CubeSat with Bob Twiggs from Stanford.

Puig-Suari is now retired and has spent the last four years sailing around the world with his wife. I talked to him over Zoom from somewhere along that journey.

He takes me back two decades to his time as a professor at Cal Poly where he was hired to develop their aerospace engineering department.

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Remembering Engineer And Author Henry Petroski Last week the world watched as rescuers from across the globe searched for a tiny experimental submersible that had disappeared, carrying five people on a dive to the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. That search turned out, sadly, to be in vain. The Titan submersible is believed to have imploded in the North Atlantic, killing all aboard.

The intersection of design, engineering, and human risk-taking is a recurring theme throughout modern history. One of the finest chroniclers of those tales was Henry Petroski, who died earlier this month at the age of 81. He was a professor of engineering and history at Duke University, and author of many books. Petroski was known for his critical eye and insightful view of various missteps and faults in pursuit of progress—from improving bridge designs for safety to the tragic loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Some called Petroski the “poet laureate of technology” for his prolific writings on everything from the design of bridges to the fabrication of pencils.

In this recording from 2012, Ira Flatow spoke with the late professor Petroski about engineering failures, and humanity’s follies.

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Scientists Can Now Hear The Background Hum Of The UniverseFor the first time ever, scientists have heard the “low pitch hum” of gravitational waves rippling through the cosmos. It’s this ever-present background noise set off by the movement of massive objects—like colliding black holes—throughout the universe. Scientists have theorized that it’s been there all along, but we haven’t been able to hear until now. So what does this hum tell us about our universe?

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with science writer Maggie Koerth about this discovery, as well as other science news of the week. They chat about the possibility of an icy planet hiding in the Milky Way, air quality problems due to wildfire smoke, an experimental weight loss drug that’s currently being tested, if our human ancestors were cannibals, and how dolphin moms use baby talk with their calves.

Celebrating The Weird, Wonderful World Of CephalopodsEvery year, Cephalopod Week reminds us of the fascinating and weird world of these sea creatures. And in this segment, recorded live at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science Auditorium, two cephalopod scientists share new research about our squishy sea-faring neighbors, how climate change is affecting squids and octopuses, and why they love working with them.

Ira Flatow talked to Dr. Lynne Fieber PhD., professor of marine biology and ecology who has studied the nervous systems of all types marine invertebrates including cephalopod and sea slugs, and Dr. Andrea Durant Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Grosell Environmental Physiology and Toxicology Lab, who studies how tiny glass squid live in a rapidly-changing ocean.

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We have a new podcast! It's called Universe Of Art, and it features conversations with artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When The Promise Of Social Media Becomes Perilous Despite social media’s early promises to build a more just and democratic society, over the past several years, we’ve seen its propensity to easily spread hate speech, misinformation and disinformation. Online platforms have even played a role in organizing violent acts in the real world, like genocide against the Rohinga people in Myanmar, and the violent attempt to overturn the election at the United States capitol.

But how did we get here? Has social media fundamentally changed how we interact with the world? And how did big tech companies accumulate so much unchecked power along the way?

Remembering Roger Payne, Who Helped Save The Whales Americans haven’t always loved whales and dolphins. In the 1950s, the average American thought of whales as the floating raw materials for margarine, animal feed, and fertilizer—if they thought about whales at all. But twenty-five years later, things changed for cetaceans in a big way. Whales became the poster-animal for a new environmental movement, and cries of “save the whales!” echoed from the halls of government to the whaling grounds of the Pacific. What happened?

Shifting attitudes were due, in large part, to the work of scientist Roger Payne, who died earlier this month at the age of 88. His recordings helped to popularize whalesong, and stoked the public imagination about intelligent underwater creatures who used vocalizations to communicate.

In 2018, our podcast “Undiscovered” explored the history of Payne’s work, and that of his colleagues. We’re featuring this episode as a way of remembering his life and groundbreaking work.

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A See-Through Squid Success StoryAdult octopuses have about 500 million neurons, which is about as many neurons as a dog. Typically, more neurons means a more intelligent and complex creature. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Unlike dogs, or even humans, octopuses’ neurons aren’t concentrated in their brains—they’re spread out through their bodies and into their arms and suckers, more like a “distributed” mind. (Scientists still haven’t quite figured out exactly why this is.)

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of unanswered cephalopod questions. Now, researchers have successfully bred a line of albino squid that were first engineered using CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, creating a see-through squid.

Their unique transparency allows scientists to more easily study their neural structure, and a whole lot more.

SciFri experiences manager Diana Plasker talks with Joshua Rosenthal, senior scientist at the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory, based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, about this see-through squid success story.

When Eye-Grabbing Results Just Don’t Pan OutYou know the feeling — you see a headline in the paper or get an alert on your phone about a big scientific breakthrough that has the potential to really change things. But then, not much happens, or that news turns out to be much less significant than the headlines made it seem.

Journalists are partially to blame for this phenomenon. But another guilty culprit is also the scientific journals, and the researchers who try to make their own work seem more significant than the data really supports in order to get published.

Armin Alaedini, an assistant professor of medical sciences at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, recently co-authored a commentary on this topic published in The American Journal of Medicine. He joins Ira and Ivan Oransky — co-founder of Retraction Watch and a medical journalism professor and Distinguished Writer In Residence at New York University — to talk about the tangled world of scientific publishing and the factors that drive inflated claims in publications.

How Art Can Help Treat Dementia And TraumaWe might intrinsically know that engaging with and making art is good for us in some way. But now, scientists have much more evidence to support this, thanks in part to a relatively new field called neuroaesthetics, which studies the effects that artistic experiences have on the brain.

A new book called Your Brain On Art: How The Arts Transform Us, dives into that research, and it turns out the benefits of the arts go far beyond elevating everyday life; they’re now being used as part of healthcare treatments to address conditions like dementia and trauma.

Universe of Art host D. Peterschmidt sits down with the authors of the book, Susan Magsamen, executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab at the Pederson Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and Ivy Ross, vice president of design for hardware products at Google, to talk about what we can learn from neuroaesthetic studies, the benefits of a daily arts practice, and the kinds of art they both like making.

Testing Mars Rovers In Utah’s Red DesertTake a 20-minute drive down Cow Dung Road, outside of Hanksville, Utah, and you’ll stumble across the Mars Desert Research Station. This cluster of white buildings—webbed together by a series of covered walkways—looks a little alien, as does the red, desolate landscape that surrounds it.

“The ground has this crust that you puncture through, and it makes you feel like your footprints are going to be there for a thousand years,” said Sam Craven, a senior leading the Brigham Young University team here for the University Rover Challenge. “Very bleak and dry, but very beautiful also.”

This remote chunk of Utah is a Mars analogue, one of roughly a dozen locations on Earth researchers use to test equipment, train astronauts and search for clues to inform the search for life on other planets. While deployed at the station, visiting scientists live in total isolation and don mock space suits before they venture outside.

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Curly Hair Keeps Your Scalp CoolerAccording to a fascinating new study, curly locks are better than straight hair at keeping your scalp cool. Researchers shone bright lights on three different manikins—one with no hair, one with loosely curled hair and another with tight curls.

Solar radiation bounced off the tightly curled hair, and less heat reached the manikin’s scalp than the straight haired manikin. The manikin with loose curls was right in the middle. The research is part of an effort to better understand the role of hair texture in human evolution, as humans are the only mammals with the majority of body hair atop our heads.

Ira talks with Dr. Tina Lasisi, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of quantitative and computational biology at the University of Southern California, and incoming assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Unprecedented Avian Flu Outbreak ContinuesAvian influenza has been circulating for decades among wild birds, but the US is now experiencing the worst outbreak in its history. That’s because of a specific strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza, which has left around 60 millions birds—mostly poultry—dead. This has implications for us all, whether you’re frustrated about the price of eggs, worried about your backyard chickens, or concerned about yet another threat to public health.

In this live call-in, Ira talks with Ashleigh Blackford, the California Condor Coordinator at the US Fish & Wildlife Service about the initiative to vaccinate California condors—the first of its kind to vaccinate any bird.

Then Ira explores what this outbreak means for other wildlife, poultry, and for us. He talks with Dr. Kristy Pabilonia, professor and director of the Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratories at Colorado State University, and Dr. Richard Webby, director of the WHO’s Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds and a researcher at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

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Why Have Ocean Temperatures Spiked?Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic have risen dramatically in recent weeks, to as much as 0.5 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous record—and over 1 degree C warmer than average temperatures from 1982 to 2011.

The reason for the unusually toasty waters isn’t entirely clear. Some climatologists attribute part of the rise to an El Niño ocean circulation pattern this year, replacing the La Niña pattern that had been suppressing temperatures. Other factors may include a decline in atmospheric dust from the Sahara, and atmospheric circulation patterns that are allowing warm surface water to stay in place longer.

The warmer temperatures aren’t just limited to the North Atlantic, however—for the past three months, global average sea surface temperatures have also been reaching new highs. Casey Crownhart, a climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to talk about the warming trend, and other stories from the week in science, including accusations of body part sales from the Harvard Medical School morgue, studies of the economics of heat pumps, and a lawsuit brought by youth in Montana over global warming.

The Best Summer Books, According To Two Science WritersSummer is one of the best times to crack open a book and read the hours away, according to Jaime Green and Annalee Newitz. The two science writers are voracious readers, and they’ve compiled a list of their summer reading recommendations for Science Friday listeners. Green and Newitz join Ira from New Britain, Connecticut and San Francisco, California respectively, to discuss their favorite nonfiction and fiction books for the summer, and take questions from listeners.

To read the full list of summer book recommendations, visit sciencefriday.com.

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Exposing Texas’ Excess Emissions Problems In the early hours of August 22, 2020, Hurricane Laura was still just a tropical storm off the coast of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. But effects from the monstrous storm, which would ultimately take at least 81 lives, were already being felt on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

As rain poured down on the Sweeney refinery in Old Ocean, Texas, that afternoon, two processing units failed, releasing nearly 1,400 pounds of sulfur dioxide, which can cause trouble breathing, and other chemicals.

Over the next few days, Laura siphoned up moisture from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and transformed into a Category 1 hurricane.

In Texas, chemical plants began shutting down, hurriedly burning off unprocessed chemicals and releasing vast amounts of pollution in anticipation of the storm making landfall. On August 24, Motiva’s Port Arthur refinery released 36,000 pounds of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and other noxious pollutants.

The next morning, Motiva began purging chemicals its plant had been processing, emitting nearly 48,000 pounds of carbon monoxide and propylene, among other pollutants. The following day, a Phillips 66 refinery in southwest Louisiana shut down, releasing more than 1,900 pounds of sulfur dioxide.

Then, as gale-force winds swept through coastal communities and the relentless rain poured down, the chemical facilities increasingly malfunctioned.

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A Scientist’s Catalog Of 100 Days Under The Sea In February, Dr. Joe Dituri put on his scuba gear, dove 30 feet below the surface, and entered a 100-square-foot underwater lodge. This former US Navy diving officer didn’t come up again for air until June 9, spending 100 days underwater. And even before the end of his stay, he broke the record for living underwater.

He did all of this in the name of science—to understand how the human body handles long-term exposure to pressure. This mission is called Project Neptune 100, and because those 100 days are finally up, we’re taking a deep dive into the underwater habitat to hear what is to be learned from so many days below the waves. We recorded this interview with Dituri on Day #94 with a live virtual audience, whom you’ll hear from later.

Ira talks with Dr. Deep Sea, aka Dr. Joe Dituri, a biomedical engineer and associate professor at the University of South Florida, and Dr. Sarah Spelsberg, wilderness emergency specialist and the medical lead for Project Neptune 100 coming to us from the Maldives.

To see some photos of Dr. Dituri's undersea life, visit sciencefriday.com.

Unmasking Owls’ Mysteries Don’t let owls’ cute faces fool you—they’re deadly predators. This duality is part of what makes them so mysterious to humans. And their contradictions don’t end there: Their hoots are among the most distinctive bird sounds, yet owls are nearly silent when gliding through the air to catch their prey.

John Dankosky talks about all things owls with Jennifer Ackerman, author of the new book, What An Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds.

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Canadian Wildfire Smoke Drifts Across The United States This week, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, enveloping the Northeastern United States, casting an ominous orange glow. The smoke continued spreading outwards to the Southeast and to the Midwest.

While climate change is extending and worsening the Canadian wildfire season, it’s still rare for this many fires, so early in the season.

Ira talks with Katherine Wu, staff writer at The Atlantic, about the latest on the Canadian wildfires and other top news stories of the week, including; a new type of cat contraception, drilling into the Earth’s mantle, and a ‘virgin’ crocodile birth.

30 Years Later, ’Jurassic Park’ Still Inspires On June 11th, 1993, what would become one of the biggest movies of all time was released in theaters: Jurassic Park.

Based on the novel by Michael Crichton, the film is about people’s belief that they can control nature. Wealthy businessman John Hammond creates a dinosaur nature park. Things go awry quickly. Electric fences break down, dinosaurs get loose, and people are eaten. At the time of its release, the film became the highest-grossing movie of all time.

In the decades since it came out, the film has spawned a multi-movie franchise, amusement park rides, video games, and every type of merchandise imaginable. The movie also had a tremendous impact on visual effects, both computer animated and practical, which are still seen today in the media.

When the first Jurassic Park movie came out, many of the paleontologists of today were children—or not even born yet. Ira speaks with a trio of paleontologists about the film’s impact on them as kids, and its continuous use as an educational tool to inspire young dino enthusiasts: Riley Black, Steve Brusatte and Yara Haridy.

A Biotech Offensive Against Disease-Carrying Mosquitoes Mosquitoes are the primary spreaders of some highly dangerous diseases for people: The insect spreads diseases like yellow fever, dengue fever, malaria, and zika, which kill millions of people globally each year. There’s one species of mosquito that’s invasive to the United States, and whose populations are spreading: Aedes aegypti, which is recognizable by black and white markings on its legs.

Lee County, Florida is taking aim at this species with biotechnology. Their strategy is to release 30,000 sterilized male mosquitoes into the environment, who will go on to mate with females, who then will release eggs that do not hatch. Male mosquitoes don’t bite, only females do. The goal of this method is to decrease the Aedes aegypti population with every generation.

Biotechnology to combat this mosquito species is nothing new. Ira speaks with reporter Cary Barbor at WGCU in Fort Myers about this strategy in her city. He also speaks with Dr. Omar Akbari, professor of cell and developmental biology at UC San Diego, about his research on using CRISPR to alter Aedes aegypti into harmless insects.

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Tomato Breeding Project Fueled By Over 1,000 Backyard Gardeners In 2005, gardeners Craig LeHouiller and Patrina Nuske-Small created the Dwarf Tomato Project. They wanted to preserve the flavor and beauty of heirloom tomatoes, without taking up too much space. They started crossbreeding heirloom tomatoes with smaller dwarf tomato plants.

To do so, they enlisted volunteers from all over the world. Over 1,000 people have participated so far. You can even buy the seeds and plant them in your own garden!

Ira talks with the project’s co-founder, gardener and author, Craig LeHoullier, based in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

Southwestern States Break The Dam On Water Stalemate Southwestern states have been aware for decades that their use of Colorado River water is not sustainable. Forty million people depend on the watershed across seven states, several tribes, and northern Mexico. After intense pressure from the federal government, Arizona, California, and Nevada presented a plan last month to cut water use in these states.

While the proposal isn’t final, it’s an important step in a long stalemate among southwestern states hesitant to use less water. The three states propose cutting 3 million acre-feet in water use through 2026—about ten percent of their total water allocation. The federal government plans to spend $1.2 billion to pay water users for the cuts.

Joining Ira to break down what this plan means for southwest states is Dr. Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center in Tucson, and Luke Runyon, managing editor and reporter for KUNC, in Grand Junction, Colorado.

Tracking The Saguaro Cacti Decline One of the most iconic symbols of the American Southwest is the saguaro cactus—the big, towering cactus with branching arms.

Saguaro are the most studied variety of cactus, yet there’s still much we don’t know about them.

Once a decade, researchers from the University of Arizona survey plots of roughly 4,500 saguaro to assess the health of the species. This past year there was a record low number of new cacti growing—the fewest since they started decadal surveys in 1964.

What’s driving this decline? Ira talks about the state of saguaro cacti with Peter Breslin, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, based in Tucson, Arizona.

These Conservation Scientists Are Keeping The Sonoran Desert Diverse Many Americans might be surprised just how expansive and diverse the Sonoran Desert actually is. The 100,000 square-mile desert stretches across the border between the U.S. and Mexico, with the northernmost regions in southern California and Arizona making up just one third of the desert. The sweeping terrain is home to thousands of plant and animal species and contains every existing biome in the world—from timber tundras to rolling grasslands to arid desert basins.

The majority of the Sonoran is within the Baja California peninsula and the Mexican state of Sonora, which includes the Gulf of California. The gulf alone is teeming with life—famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau once called the desert, “the world’s aquarium.”

Ira talks about the rich biodiversity of the Sonoran Desert and the importance of scientific collaboration across the border with Ben Wilder, director and co-founder of Next Generation Sonoran Desert Researchers, and Michelle María Early Capistrán, a conservation fellow at Stanford University and board member of the Next Generation of Sonoran Desert Researchers.

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Could Restoring Animal Populations Store More Carbon?Did you know that land and ocean ecosystems absorb about half of the carbon dioxide we emit each year? But what if the earth had the capacity to absorb even more? With the help of some furry, scaly, and leathery critters, maybe it can.

A recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change claims that by restoring the populations of just a handful of animals—like gray wolves, bison, and sea otters for example—the Earth could capture around 6.41 more gigatons of CO2 each year. This idea of restoring wildlife is called rewilding.

Ira talks with the co-author of this study, Dr. Trisha Atwood, an associate professor at Utah State University, based in Logan, UT. They chat about what critters make the rewilding list, and how they fit into the carbon cycle.

Allergy Season Is Blooming With Climate ChangeSpring is in the air, and for many people that means allergy season is rearing its ugly head. If it feels like your allergies have recently gotten worse, there’s now data to back that up.

New research shows that since 1990, pollen season in North America has grown by 20 days and gotten 20% more intense, with the greatest increases in Texas and the Midwest. This is because climate change is triggering plants’ internal timing to produce pollen earlier and earlier. It’s a problem that’s expected to get worse.

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis speaks with William Anderegg, assistant professor at the University of Utah’s School of Biological Sciences about pollen counts, and pollen as a respiratory irritant.

Why This Scientist Shares Vulnerable Career MomentsDr. Rachel Lupien, a paleoclimatologist at Aarhus University, makes it a point to be honest about the challenges she runs into at work. She hopes that other scientists can learn from them. So last year, when a paper she wrote was rejected from journals five times, she tweeted about the experience.

While the responses ranged from supportive replies to harsh emails, Rachel says that it feels good to talk about professional headaches with peers who understand. Digital producer Emma Gometz interviews Rachel about why it’s important to be honest about setbacks as a scientist, and how transparency helps all professional scientists do better work.

Read more personal stories from scientists, including Rachel’s experience working as a paleoclimatologist across the world, and building mentorship networks of her own, on SciFri’s six-week automated email newsletter, “Sincerely, Science.”

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Orcas Are Attacking Boats Near Spain. Scientists Don’t Know WhyThis Thursday, the Supreme Court restricted the scope of the Clean Water Act pertaining to wetlands, in a 5-4 vote. This could affect the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to protect certain kinds of wetlands, which help reduce the impacts of flooding by absorbing water, and also act as natural filters that make drinking water cleaner. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the court’s three liberal members in the dissent, writing that the decision will have, “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

Plus, earlier this month, three orcas attacked a boat, leading to its sinking. This is the third time an incident like this has happened in the past three years, accompanied by a large rise of orcas attacking boats near the Strait of Gibraltar. Scientists are unsure of the cause. One theory is that these attacks could be a fad, led by juvenile orcas in the area, a documented behavior in this subpopulation of the dolphin family. They could also be a response to a potential bad encounter between boats and orcas in the area.

Science Friday’s Charles Bergquist talks with Sophie Bushwick, technology editor for Scientific American, about these and other stories from this week in science news, including a preview of a hot El Niño summer, an amateur astronomer who discovered a new supernova, and alleviating waste problems by using recycled diapers in concrete.

A Famous Sled Dog’s Genome Holds Evolutionary SurprisesDo you remember the story of Balto? In 1925, the town of Nome, Alaska, was facing a diphtheria outbreak. Balto was a sled dog and a very good boy who helped deliver life-saving medicine to the people in the town. Balto’s twisty tale has been told many times, including in a 1990s animated movie in which Kevin Bacon voiced the iconic dog.

But last month, scientists uncovered a new side of Balto. They sequenced his genes and discovered the sled dog wasn’t exactly who they expected. The study published in the journal Science, was part of a project called Zoonomia, which aims to better understand the evolution of mammals, including our own genome, by looking at the genes of other animals—from narwhals to aardvarks.

Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Elinor Karlsson, associate professor in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology at the UMass Chan Medical School and director of Vertebrate Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Dr. Katie Moon, post-doctoral researcher who led Balto’s study; and Dr. Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, who coauthored the new study on Balto and another paper which identified animals that are most likely to face extinction.

The Long And Short Of Telomere ActivityTelomeres are repeating short sequences of genetic code (in humans, TTAGGG) located on the ends of chromosomes. They act as a buffer during the cell replication process. Loops at the end of the telomere prevent chromosomes from getting inadvertently stuck together by DNA repair enzymes. Over the lifetime of the cell, the telomeres become shorter and shorter with each cell division. When they become too short, the cell dies. Telomere sequences weren’t thought to do much else—sort of like the plastic tip at the end of a shoelace.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers now argue that telomeres may actually encode for two short proteins. Normally, those proteins aren’t released into the cell. However, if the telomere is damaged—or as it gets shorter during repeated cell replication cycles—those signaling proteins may be able to leak out into the cell and affect other processes, perhaps altering nucleic acid metabolism and protein synthesis, or triggering cellular inflammation.

Jack Griffith, one of the authors of the report and the Kenan Distinguished Professor of microbiology and immunology at the UNC School of Medicine, joins SciFri’s Charles Bergquist to talk about the idea and what other secrets may lie inside the telomere.

Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum Takes Down Digital ResourcesRobert Pendarvis gave his heart to Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum. Literally.

He has a rare condition called acromegaly, where his body makes too much growth hormone, which causes bones, cartilage and organs to keep growing. The condition affected his heart, so much so that a heart valve leaked. He had a heart transplant in 2020.

Pendarvis thought his original heart could tell an important story, and teach others about this rare condition, which is why he was determined to put it on display at the Mütter Museum.

The Mütter Museum is a Philadelphia institution, a medical museum that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to its rooms filled with anatomical specimens, models, and old medical instruments. The place is not for the squeamish. Display cases show skulls, abnormal skeletons, and a jar containing the bodies of stillborn conjoined twins.

Pendarvis thought it would be the perfect home for his heart — and more.

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The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Debate Keeps Pecking AwayEvery so often, there’s a claim that the ivory-billed woodpecker is back from the dead. Pixelated videos go viral, blurry photos make the front page, and birders flock to the woods to get a glimpse of the ghost bird.

Last week, a controversial paper claimed there’s reason to believe that the lost bird lives. The authors say they have evidence, including video footage, that the bird still flies. The paper is ruffling feathers among the birding and research community.

This debate has been going on for decades, but the American Birding Association categorizes the bird as “probably or actually extinct,” and its last verified sighting was in 1944.

So is it any different this time? And what do we make of the claims that keep cropping up?

Guest host Flora Lichtman talks all things ivory-billed with Michael Retter, editor of the magazines North American Birds and Special Issues of Birding, from the American Birding Association.

Tracking Pain In Your BrainWhen you stub your toe, that pain is registered by the peripheral nervous system. It shoots off signals that travel up your spinal cord and to your brain, where the signals tell you, “Hey, your toe hurts. Take care of it.” But chronic pain—defined as lasting three months or more—is processed differently, and your nerves are constantly firing pain signals to your brain.

Chronic pain is complex, and a lot of its basics are still unknown. But a new study from this week discovered another piece of the pain puzzle: the brain signals that cause chronic pain and the region they are processed in. Researchers hope that this is the first step in developing a brain stimulation therapy that can intercept those chronic pain signals and bring relief to patients.

Guest host and SciFri director Charles Bergquist talks with lead author Dr. Prasad Shirvalkar, neurologist and associate professor at the University of California San Francisco, about this new paper.

What Can We Learn From A Woman Who Feels No Pain?There are a select few humans that can’t feel any pain. Really.

One of those people is Jo Cameron, who didn’t experience any pain during childbirth or need any painkillers after a hip replacement. She’s also never been anxious or afraid.

Researchers have been studying Jo Cameron and her brain in an effort to better understand her sensory experience. This week, researchers published a new study that looks at the genes and mutations responsible for Jo’s pain free existence. They hope to use what they learn to come up with better pain management treatments for the rest of us.

Guest host and Science Friday Senior Producer Charles Berquist talks with Andrei Okorokov, associate professor at the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research at the University of College London, about this fascinating new research.

Turning To Space While Processing GriefWhen astronomers Michelle Thaller and Andrew Booth met, it was love at first sight. The couple married in 1994, becoming a power couple in the world of space and physics research. In 2019, the couple received shocking news: Booth was diagnosed with cancer in the brain. He passed away within a year of his diagnosis.

The death of a partner is one of the most devastating things a person can go through. Thaller felt unmoored, and like Earth was not her planet anymore. To help her move forward, Thaller turned to the universe for solace.

Thaller speaks with guest host Flora Lichtman about how the mysteries of the universe have made processing grief a little easier, and taking space and time with a grain of salt.

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Can Science Find An Antidote to Americium?With some poisons, there’s an antidote — something you can take to block the effects of the poison, or to help remove it from your body. But when the harmful chemical is a radioactive element, options are limited. Iodine pills can be used to help block radioactive iodine I131 from being absorbed by the thyroid, but there aren’t many other drugs that can help deal with contamination with other radioactive substances. One of the two existing medications can only be delivered via IV in a clinic.

This week, the NIH announced the start of an early clinical trial for an oral drug delivered as a tablet that could potentially be used to bind and remove radioactive elements including plutonium, uranium and neptunium from the body. Rachel Feltman, editor at large at Popular Science, joins Ira to talk about that trial and other stories from the week in science, including an experimental universal flu vaccine, research into the amount of trace DNA humans shed every day, and an update on the planet Saturn’s moon count.

Debunking Common Myths About Being FatWeight loss is big business. Americans spend roughly $60 billion each year trying to lose weight, forking over cash for supplements, diet plans, and gym memberships. Yet somewhere between 90 to 95% of diets fail.

Much of what we think we know about the relationship between weight and health is based on a series of assumptions that don’t always match up with the latest science.

Science Friday producer, Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with Aubrey Gordon, co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase and author of the recent book “You Just Need To Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People, about the history of the Body Mass Index or BMI. She discusses why the word “obesity” is tangled up in stereotypes about fat people, the flaws in commonly cited mortality statistics, and how anti-fat bias translates into worse healthcare for fat people.

Read an excerpt of “You Just Need To Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People here.

What To Do When 500-1,000 Crows Roost In Your NeighborhoodLaura Young was at a breaking point when she submitted a post titled “Request: Make 500-1,000 crows leave my street alone” to the subreddit r/lifeprotips in January. “I think you can tell that I was feeling very frustrated and running out of options and I clearly needed help,” she said.

Starting last October, Laura’s neighborhood in Baltimore was the site of a massive crow roost. And unlike past years’ roosts, which usually only last a few weeks with a few dozen crows, this one showed no signs of leaving. “The numbers that they’ve attracted ever since then are unbelievable,” she said. “I mean, we’re at the point where it is frightening to walk out at night.”

According to Laura, hundreds of them filled the trees in the park outside her apartment. “And they’re all screaming,” she said. “It is loud enough to wake you up indoors with all the windows closed. I don’t think anyone on my block has slept past 6:00am in three months.”

There was the noise, and then there was the poop: coating the streets, the buildings, and the cars. “It is just disgusting. I’ve never spent so much money on car washes in my entire life,” she laughed.

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Science Says Eat More BeansBeans are delicious, high in protein, inexpensive, efficient to grow, and an absolute staple in so many cuisines. So why don’t Americans eat more of them? The average American eats 7.5 pounds of beans annually, which is only a few cans of beans every year.

The answer is complicated, but one thing is sure: Beans have a PR problem. Ira talks with Julieta Cardenas, a Future Perfect Fellow at Vox, who reported this story.

If you’re looking to chef it up, read some of the SciFri staff’s favorite bean recipes.

The World According To Sound: Feeding TimeIn this story from our friends at The World According to Sound, we’ll take a sonic trip to Yellowstone National Park. You’ll hear the sounds of two grizzlies feasting on a bison. It’s very rare that a bear can take down an adult bison, but they will chow down on animals that are already dead, like if they were killed by wolves or a car.

The World According to Sound is a live audio show, online listening series, and miniature podcast, created by Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett.

Bees Have Feelings, TooFew pollinators have the charisma of bees, so much so that the phrase “save the bees” has become a calling card for those who consider themselves ecologically-conscious. There are more than 21,000 species of bees, ranging from the very recognizable bumblebees to the vibrant blue and green Augochloropsis metallica.

Pollination ecologist Stephen Buchmann has studied bees for nearly fifty years, learning about everything from their natural behaviors to how they respond to puzzles. All of this has led him to a fascinating conclusion: bees are sentient, and they have feelings.

Stephen joins Ira from Tucson, Arizona to talk about his new book, What a Bee Knows. Read an excerpt from the book here.

Pinning Down The Origin Of ButterfliesOne of the highlights of being outdoors in warmer weather is spotting a delicate, colorful butterfly exploring the landscape. There are over 19,000 different species of butterflies around the world—and all of them evolved from some enterprising moth that decided to venture out in the daytime, around 100 million years ago. But just where that evolutionary fork in the road occurred has been a matter of scientific debate, with many researchers positing a butterfly origin in Australia or Asia.

Writing this week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers report on a new phylogenetic map of butterfly evolution, a lepidopteran family tree, combining genetic data with information from fossils, plants, and geography to trace back the origin and spread of butterflies. They find that butterflies likely split from moths in what is now Central or North America, before spreading to South America, crossing oceans to Australia and Asia, and eventually spreading to Europe and Africa.

Dr. Akito Kawahara, professor, curator, and director of the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History and one of the authors of the report, joins Ira to talk about the findings and share some other surprising facts about butterflies.

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Star Trek’s Science Advisor Reveals The Real Astrophysics On ScreenFew pop culture properties have lasted quite as long as Star Trek. A dozen Star Trek television shows have aired over the last sixty years—not to mention countless movies, novels, and comic books.

Science concepts have always been integral to the Star Trek franchise: from warp speed travel to dilithium. But how much does the series actually accurately depict?

Ira speaks with astrophysicist Dr. Erin Macdonald, science consultant for Star Trek about the legacy of the franchise, and how accurate the science is within the series.

Listen To The Largest Tree On EarthFor this story, we’re taking a trip to south central Utah and into the Fishlake National Forest to visit the largest tree on earth, an aspen named Pando. The strange thing about Pando is that it doesn’t really look like the world’s biggest tree. It has rolling hills with thousands of tall, lean aspens swaying in the wind.

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FDA Advisory Board Approves First Over-the-Counter Birth Control PillThis week an FDA advisory board paved the way for the first over the counter birth control pill, with an unanimous decision 17-0. The FDA must accept the recommendation before the pills are available for sale, which is expected in a few months time. If approved, the progestin-only pill would be manufactured by the company Perrigo, under the brand name Opill.

Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, science journalist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, about that and more including; Voyager spacecrafts get energy boosts, wild axolotls face extinction, testing airplane waste for COVID-19 and more.

US Declares An End To The COVID-19 Public Health EmergencyJust over three years ago, Alex Azar, then the Secretary of Health and Human Services, issued a declaration of a national public health emergency as a result of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. That declaration kicked off a cascade of nationwide funding, policies, and restrictions aimed at combating the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the three years that followed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates over a million people in the US have died from COVID-19.

Yesterday, although the virus is still circulating and people are still getting sick, that emergency declaration finally came to an end, after being renewed over a dozen times. A statement released by the Department of Health and Human Services said “COVID-19 is no longer the disruptive force it once was. Since January 2021, COVID-19 deaths have declined by 95% and hospitalizations are down nearly 91%.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, joins Ira Flatow to talk about where we go from here. Is life back to normal—or is there a new normal? What have we learned from the past three years about responding to future outbreaks?

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SpaceX Explosion Damages Environment Around Launch SiteLast Thursday, SpaceX’s South Texas facility was awash in noise and fire, as crowds gathered in South Padre Island and Port Isabel to watch Starship’s first orbital launch.

It was the largest and most powerful rocket ever made, standing at around 400 feet tall. Four minutes into the launch, SpaceX detonated the rocket after the SuperHeavy booster failed to separate from the Starship as planned.

The launch destroyed the company’s launch pad, spreading concrete up to three quarters of a mile away. Cameras left by YouTubers were either knocked down or destroyed in the rumble, along with some of the fence surrounding the launch pad’s road-facing property.

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The Private Space Race Takes A Toll On Planet EarthAfter the SpaceX explosion last month, debris wasn’t the only thing on the minds of Science Friday listeners. The following messages arrived in our inbox after we reported on 3-D printed rockets in March.

It was interesting to hear you discuss 7 space launches in 5 days, and then just moments later the fact that we’re not on track to reduce carbon emissions. My understanding is that rocket launches release huge amounts of carbon and other greenhouse gases. Story idea?—@RevBobIerien, Twitter

Also regarding the 3-D rockets there wasn’t any concern made for space pollution was there? I may have tuned out unhappily before the end. —Juanita H, email

How much carbon do rockets contribute to global warming? —Robert C, email

Very disappointing to hear the report of new “cheaper” 3D-printed rockets are available so that, like fast food pods and big gulps, we can now drop even more cheap into the ocean. And, immediately following a story about the new report on climate change, what exactly is the carbon footprint resulting from the ability of more people to more cheaply fire rockets into space? —David M, email

Carbon isn’t the big pollutant that comes from spaceflight, says Dr. Eloise Marais, associate professor in physical geography at University College London. Instead, black carbon or soot particles are generated and released directly into the atmosphere, alongside reactive nitrogen and nitrogen oxides.

Dr. Marais joins Ira to talk about how much of an impact increased rocket launches could have on the atmosphere, and how that compares to the auto industry.

How To Combat The Antibiotic Resistance CrisisFor years scientists have been ringing alarm bells about a global antibiotic resistance crisis. Now hospitals and healthcare facilities face the consequences: In the United States, there are 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections every year, and more than 35,000 people die from these infections.

Bacteria naturally try to outsmart the drugs designed to kill them, which causes treatments to become ineffective over time. While new antibiotics are made to respond to these resistant strains, the bacteria continue to evolve—creating a constant, and costly, cycle. There’s a number of added factors driving the crisis, including antibiotic use in livestock and the general overprescription of antibiotics. About 1 in 3 antibiotic prescriptions in outpatient settings like urgent care or emergency departments are unnecessary.

Scientists are struggling to keep up with the need to replace antibiotics that no longer work. It’s a never ending game of catch up.

Ira discusses some of the possible solutions to this vexing problem and takes listener questions with Dr. Victor Nizet, faculty lead of the Collaborative to Halt Antibiotic-Resistant Microbes at the University of California San Diego and Dr. Eddie Stenehjem, executive vice chair of medicine at the University of Colorado.

Are Phages A New Page In Medicine?One of the many possible solutions to the global antibiotic resistance crisis is an old idea that’s new again—bacteriophages, or phages for short.

Phages are viruses that exist solely to kill bacteria and are abundant in nature.

While scientists first discovered phages’ ability to treat bacterial infections about a century ago, there’s been little interest in turning them into a treatment for patients with antibiotic resistant infections—until recently.

Ira talks with Dr. Graham Hatfull, professor of biotechnology at the University of Pittsburgh about the latest in phage science.

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A Dying Planet Offers A Peek Into The FutureThis week, astronomers reported in the journal Nature that they had spotted a planet approximately the size of Jupiter being swallowed by a star over the course of ten days. The star, called ZTF SLRN-2020, is about 15,000 light-years away from our solar system, but still in our own galaxy. Astronomers had thought this type of planet-engulfing must happen, based on how stars evolve and certain chemical signatures they’ve spotted from inside stars. However, this is the first time the process has actually been observed. Our own sun is predicted to go through a similar expansion in about five billion years, consuming Mercury, Venus, and likely Earth.

Tim Revell, deputy US editor at New Scientist, joins Ira to talk about the fate of the planet and other stories from the week in science, including mapping the trees of Africa, an experimental Alzheimer’s drug showing early promise, and reconstructing a short movie clip based on brain signals recorded in mice.

Saliva: The Unsung Hero Of TasteHow good are you at tasting what you eat? Not just gulping food down, but actually savoring the flavor? When you think about how taste works, you may think about your tongue and taste buds, and how they send information about your food info to your brain. But there’s an overlooked—and understudied—hero in this story: saliva. That may sound strange, since part of saliva’s job is to help us chew, swallow, talk, and even digest. But saliva is much more interesting and complicated than that. Ira talks with Chris Gorski, editor at Chemical & Engineering News, who reported this story about taste and saliva for Knowable Magazine earlier this year.

Who Will Win The Rat Race?Last fall, New York City’s Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch stood in front of a microphone and announced her plan to deal with NYC’s most hated residents: rats. She went on to make a now-viral declaration: “I want to be clear, the rats are absolutely going to hate this announcement. But the rats don’t run this city: We do.” Soon after, NYC announced its search for a rat czar. Someone who is “highly motivated and somewhat bloodthirsty” with “the drive, determination, and killer instinct needed to fight the real enemy—New York City’s relentless rat population.”

This news—and the memes born from it—put rats in the forefront of city dwellers’ minds. And now, the newly appointed rat czar Kathleen Corradi’s reign has begun. But ridding cities of rats is no easy feat. It requires public participation, new policy, behavioral changes, and an all-hands-on-deck approach from several government departments. So what’s it going to take to rid cities of rats? And is it even possible? In this live call-in, Ira talks with Bethany Brookshire, science journalist and author of Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, and Dr. Bobby Corrigan, urban rodentologist and pest consultant. They discuss the history of humans’ relationships with rats, why these critters thrive in cities, and why we’ll need to learn how to live with them.

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Why Do Humans Anthropomorphize AI?Artificial intelligence has become more sophisticated in a short period of time. Even though we may understand that when ChatGPT spits out a response, there’s no human behind the screen, we can’t help but anthropomorphize—imagining that the AI has a personality, thoughts, or feelings.

How exactly should we understand the bond between humans and artificial intelligence?

Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks to Dr. David Gunkel, professor of media studies at Northern Illinois University, to explore the ways in which humans and artificial intelligence form emotional connections.

A Bee’s Eye View Of Cities’ MicrobiomesWhen you want to look at the microbial health of a city, there are a variety of ways to go about it. You might look at medical records, or air quality. In recent years, samples of wastewater have been used to track COVID outbreaks. Studies of urban subway systems have involved painstaking swabs of patches of subway muck. But now, researchers are offering another approach to sample a city’s environment—its beehives.

A report recently published in the journal Environmental Microbiome used the bees foraging in a city to provide information about the town’s bacteria and fungi. The researchers found that by looking at the debris in the bottom of a beehive, they could learn about some of the environments in the blocks around the hives. The microbes they collected weren’t just species associated with flowers and plant life, but included organisms associated with ponds and dogs. The team found that the hive samples could reveal changes from one neighborhood to another in a city, and in the microbial differences between different cities—samples taken in Venice, for instance, contained signals associated with rotting wood that were not seen in samples from Tokyo.

Elizabeth Henaff, an assistant professor in the NYU Tandon School of Engineering at New York University and a co-author of the report, joins SciFri’s Kathleen Davis to talk about what bees and microbes can tell us about the cities we share.

This Is Your Brain On WordsWhat happens after you pick up a book, or pull up some text on your phone?

What occurs between the written words hitting your eyes and your brain understanding what they represent?

Scientists are trying to better understand how the brain processes written information—and how a primate brain that evolved to make sense of twisty branches and forking streams adapted to comprehend a written alphabet.

Researchers used electrodes implanted in the brains of patients being evaluated for epilepsy treatment to study what parts of the brain were involved when those patients read words and sentences. They found that two different parts of the brain are activated, and interact in different ways when you read a simple list of unrelated words, compared to when you encounter a series of words that builds up a more complex idea.

Dr. Nitin Tandon, a professor of neurosurgery at UTHealth Houston and one of the authors of a report on the work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about the study, and what scientists are learning about how the brain allows us to read.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Dirty Diapers Reveal How Germy Babies’ Microbiomes AreIn a new study, researchers picked through the dirty diapers of more than 600 infants. Those stinky diapers were a gold mine of info—they contained more than 10,000 virus species. And though it may sound terrifying, those viruses play a key role in babies’ microbiomes. Guest host and SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Katherine J. Wu, staff writer at The Atlantic about this story and other science news of the week. They chat about climate change’s influence on the twilight zone, what critters can be found on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a surprising twist in the story of Mars’ moon Deimos, the impressive sleeping habits of elephant seals, and why insects seem to flock to the light when it’s dark out.

From Backyards To Barn Yards, The Surprising Science Of ChickensRaising backyard chickens continues to grow in popularity. The number of households in the United States with a backyard flock jumped from 8% in 2018 to 13% in 2020, according to a survey by the American Pet Products Association. But our fondness for chickens is hardly new. The relationship between humans and chickens goes back thousands of years, to when humans began domesticating the red junglefowl native to Southeast Asia.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick has a compre(hen)sive conversation with Tove Danovich, freelance journalist and author of the new book Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them, about how she was charmed by her own backyard chickens, the history of their domestication, and the surprising science of chicken intelligence.

Why Climate Activists Are Turning To Drastic MeasuresFor Earth Day this year, people all over the world took to the streets to demand climate action. But as large and loud as these protests can be, they are often met with inaction. So activists are ramping up their efforts. Just within the last year, we’ve seen people chain themselves to banks, throw mashed potatoes at a Monet painting, shut down highways, and even glue themselves to museum walls, all in the name of climate justice. Those actions went viral and really seemed to strike a nerve. How did we end up here? Guest host Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Dana Fisher, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland College Park, about the state of climate activism and the tactics at play.

Recasting The Climate Movement In ‘How To Blow Up A Pipeline’Climate activism is getting the big screen treatment this spring, with the new film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” This action-packed heist film follows a group of young climate activists, disillusioned by the slow pace of climate action, who decide to take drastic action in the name of the climate. What follows is a tense ‘will they-won’t they’ story set in Texas oil country. The name of this movie comes from a 2021 nonfiction book by Andreas Malm. That book is a manifesto that argues that property damage and sabotage is the only way forward for climate activism. The movie features characters who struggle with this question, and whether there’s a different way to accomplish their climate goals.

Guest host Kathleen Davis speaks with Ariela Barer, who co-wrote, produced, and acted in the film. They chat about bringing this complicated topic to the big screen, and creating characters reflective of the real-life climate movement.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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How do we use art to process the world around us in ways that science can’t? How are illustrators using their skills to help us understand nature’s most unusual creatures?

On Universe of Art, a new podcast from Science Friday, hosted by SciFri producer and art nerd D Peterschmidt, we bring you some of our favorite arts stories from the show, some new ones too, and conversations with the producers who made those segments. We’ll hear from astronomers who integrate space into their artwork, drag performers who bring science into their acts, and many others.

Join us for conversations with artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level.

Listen to Universe of Art on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app.

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An Explosive End For A Massive RocketThis week, SpaceX attempted the first uncrewed orbital test flight of its massive Super Heavy rocket topped with an experimental crew capsule known as Starship. After one aborted launch earlier in the week, the huge rocket successfully lifted off Thursday morning—but minutes later, the Starship component failed to separate from the Super Heavy booster, and the combined rocket stack exploded. While a setback for the team, SpaceX head Elon Musk said that a lot had been learned from the flight, and another test launch would take place in several months.

Purbita Saha, senior editor at Popular Science, joins SciFri’s John Dankosky to talk about the launch and other stories from the week in science, including an Earth Day look at water conservation issues across the country and the materials science of Maya plaster.

Plus, you can now listen to Science Friday's new arts podcast, Universe of Art. SciFri producer and Universe of Art host D Peterschmidt joins John to give a sneak peak of some of the episodes.

Dismantling Myths About MenstruationSaying the phrase “menstrual blood” or or the word “period” can feel almost dirty. That’s because in the western world, people with periods are taught not to discuss this exceedingly normal biological process. Half the world will menstruate at some point in their lives, and yet menstruation remains exceedingly under-studied.

Biological anthropologist Kate Clancy dug into the history of menstruation research, and the myriad misconceptions about it, while working on her book “Period: The Real Story of Menstruation.” What she found was a lack of basic understanding of the biological process, from physicians and menstruators alike. Clancy speaks with guest host Maddie Sofia about the misconceptions of a “normal” menstrual cycle, and other persisting period myths.

Fighting Climate Change With Genetically Modified TreesVince Stanley has a saying, which he holds as true in a commercial forest as on a row crop farm: Every acre has a plan. In a wetland he owns in Tattnall County, about 70 miles west of Savannah, downhill from an orderly grove of predictably profitable loblolly pines, he is trying out something new. “Now, look at this guy right here,” Stanley said, pointing out what looked more like a stick in the mud compared to the tupelos growing a few yards away in the deeper water. This stick, surrounded by pin flags and planted about six feet away from its sister, had signs of new life: dark green leaves. “That’s impressive,” Stanley said.

And the germ of the new plan for these acres, is something that, until now, Stanley said he didn’t really have. “We’re just leaving this up to Mother Nature,” he said. “So now with Living Carbon, we’ve gone to Option B.” This nascent tree and 10,499 others are at the heart of Option B, what might be the first effort of its kind in the nation: genetically engineered trees planted in a forest. What’s more, these trees are for sale.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

All You Need To Know About AnesthesiaIf you’ve ever had surgery, you’ve probably wondered about how anesthesia works, or maybe even lied awake at night anxious about going under. If you’ve ever been there, I’m sure you remember: Right before surgery, you get rolled into the operating room. The anesthesiologist tells you to start counting down from 10. The next thing you know, you’re awake in the recovery room and you don’t remember anything that just happened to you. How exactly did anesthesiologists manage to get you safely into that state and back out again?

Guest host John Dankosky talks with Dr. Louise Sun, professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford University Health and Dr. Gunisha Kaur, anesthesiologist, director of the Human Rights Impact Lab, and medical director of Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights at Weill Cornell Medicine about the basics of how anesthesia works.

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How We Arrived At Current Standards Of Care For Trans MedicineSo far this year, 16 states have moved to restrict or completely ban transgender kids access to gender affirming care. And 17 other states are considering similar laws, a handful even trying to restrict care for adults.

This political controversy has drawn increased attention to “Standards of Care,” a set of guidelines written by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH. Health professionals are encouraged to consult these guidelines when providing gender affirming care like puberty blockers, hormones and surgery to transgender patients.

A new version of the standards were released last fall, sparking controversy. Some conservatives saw the guidelines as making transition too easy, and seized the moment to further restrict transition-related care. Some trans activists and health care providers felt the opposite, seeing the 2022 guidelines as too restrictive, creating unnecessary hurdles to life-saving medicine.

How did we get to a point where one document is supposed to shape all of trans medicine?

Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with Hil Malatino, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Philosophy at Penn State University, to put in perspective the history of gender affirming care.

How The Cherokee Nation Is Saving Culturally Significant SeedsThink about your family heirlooms—the most prized items passed down from generation to generation, that tell a story about who you are and where you come from.

Did you ever think that seeds could be part of that story? This year, the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank is continuing its program to distribute heirloom seeds to tribal citizens, one that’s been running since 2006. Last year, the Nation distributed almost 10,000 seed packets to citizens across the country in an effort to keep these culturally significant plants from being lost.

This year, the Cherokee Nation is sharing seeds for a variety of Cherokee corn, gourds, beans, pumpkins, beads, and native plants and flowers.

Guest host John Dankosky talks with Feather Smith, the Cherokee Nation’s ethnobiologist, about how Cherokee heirloom seeds have been cultivated, planted, and preserved over the years.

To see an image gallery of the Cherokee Nation heirloom garden, visit sciencefriday.com.

The Long Legacy Of The Alpha Wolf MythAround the 1970s, the world latched onto a catchy new scientific term: alpha wolf. It described the top dog that clawed its way to the top of its pack, and it quickly became a mainstream symbol for power and dominance.

The idea of the alpha wolf was debunked almost 25 years ago, but its legacy lives on. Most commonly, it’s found in circles of the internet where men appoint themselves alpha wolf, and also in dog training. Strangely, those two things are connected.

Guest host Maddie Sofia explores how science works and how people use it in their everyday lives, whether it’s true or not. And a little about what happens when science goes mainstream.

Maddie first talks with Dr. Dave Mech, senior research scientist at the US Geological Survey and founder of the International Wolf Center. His 1970 book “The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species” helped popularize the term “alpha wolf.” But when he discovered that alpha wolves aren’t really real many years later, he tried to right the wrong.

Then, Maddie talks with two researchers about how the alpha wolf idea is still around today: Anamarie Johnson, PhD candidate and canine behavior consultant at Arizona State University, and Dr. Lindsay Palmer, social and behavioral scientist who studies the human-animal bond at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. They explore how biases and societal ideas shape science, and connect the dots between alpha wolves, masculinity, and dog training.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Is Anybody Out There? The Quest For Life In SpaceIt’s one of humanity’s biggest fundamental questions: “Is there life elsewhere in the universe?” But despite years of searching, it’s a query that still has no answer. That conundrum also opens up a whole string of other inquiries, from how to best search for signs of life, to whether we’ll be able to make sense of what we’re seeing.

The search for life elsewhere can also help us learn about our own existence. How many of what we consider the basic rules of life on earth are really just suggestions, or convenient accidents?

A new book tackles these riddles through the lens of both science and science fiction. Science writer Jaime Green, author of the book, The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos, joins Ira to talk about the science, history, and philosophy of our search for alien lifeforms, and takes questions from callers.

The SciFri Book Club will be reading this book together in May—you can read along with us next month. Find everything you need to know on our May Book Club page.

Farm Fertilizers Can Contain ‘Forever Chemicals’ From SewageThe Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant is a pollution success story. Over the last several decades, it transformed Boston Harbor from a nationally embarrassing cesspool into a swimmable bay.

The treatment plant takes everything the people of Greater Boston send down their sinks, toilets, showers and washing machines — plus industrial waste — and treats it. The treated water is clean enough to let out into the ocean. The remaining sludge gets recycled into fertilizer that’s used in nearly 20 states.

But now that fertilizer is raising fresh concerns. That’s because wastewater treatment plants like Deer Island were not built to handle the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.

The treatment process concentrates PFAS chemicals in the sludge, and therefore in the fertilizer, leading environmentalists and public health advocates to call for an immediate end to its use. Others are not sure that a full ban on sludge-based fertilizer, or “biosolids,” is the answer. But there is widespread agreement that we have only begun to grasp the extent of the problem.

To read the full article, visit sciencefriday.com

When AI And Dementia IntersectAs AI becomes more advanced, it’s also becoming a bigger part of our lives. That’s especially true of smart speakers, which to some of us, act as another member of a family: answering simple questions, reminding us about appointments, and entertaining children. But what parts of our privacy are we giving up to make our lives slightly more convenient?

That’s the focus of a new play called “Smart,” which tells the story of four characters: a woman, her aging mother who has dementia, an AI programmer who works for a tech company, and a smart speaker named Jenny.

Ira speaks with the writer of “Smart,” Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, about how she wrote the play, how the science behind AI inspired its plot, and the connections between AI hallucinations and dementia-induced hallucinations.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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EPA Proposal To Require 60% Of New Cars To Be EVs by 2030The EPA released a set of proposals this week that would cap C02 emissions for new cars. In order to meet the new stricter targets automakers would need to ramp up electric vehicle manufacturing substantially. By 2030, 60% of new cars would need to be electric.

Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, Climate Reporter for the MIT Technology Review, about the new EPA emissions proposals and other top science news of the week including predictions of a bad mosquito season and turtles basking in the moonlight.

Lactose Intolerance May Have A Lot To Do With Your Gut MicrobiomeIn the animal kingdom, it’s not normal to drink milk past infancy. It’s even more rare to consume milk from another mammal. But throughout history, humans have used dairy farming as a way to get calories and nutrition from creatures like cows, goats, and sheep. And a big perk: dairy products taste good.

Evidence of dairying goes back to the early Neolithic era. Traces have been found in the historical record in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in ancient teeth and pottery. Lactase persistence, or the ability to consume dairy into adulthood, developed alongside this burgeoning industry.

But here’s the catch: a large part of the population is still lactose intolerant, either from childhood or developed in adulthood. It’s estimated that about a third of the U.S. population is lactose intolerant, with a higher chance among certain ethnic and racial groups.

There’s a lot to learn about the origins of lactose persistence and lactose intolerance, and much of that knowledge comes from the gut microbiome. Joining Ira to talk about this is Christina Warinner, assistant professor of anthropology at Harvard University, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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An Open Letter Asks AI Researchers To Reconsider ResponsibilitiesIn recent months, it’s been hard to escape hearing about artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT, the AI-enabled version of Bing, and Google’s Bard—large language models skilled at manipulating words and constructing text. The programs can conduct a believable conversation and answer questions fluently, but have a tenuous grasp on what’s real, and what’s not.

Last week, the Future of Life Institute released an open letter that read “We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” They asked researchers to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols governing the use of AI. That letter was signed by a collection of technologists and computer researchers, including big names like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Tesla’s Elon Musk. However, some observers called the letter just another round of hype over the AI field.

Dr. Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley, director of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public, and co-author of one of the leading AI textbooks was a signatory to that open letter calling for a pause in AI development. He joins Ira Flatow to explain his concerns about AI systems that are ‘black boxes’—difficult for humans to understand or control.

NASA Announces Artemis II Crew For Next Moon MissionThis week, NASA announced the four person crew of the Artemis II mission to the moon: Commander Reid Weisman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

The crew has three firsts for a moon mission, the first woman, first person of color and first Canadian.

While these Artemis II astronauts will not actually step foot on the moon, it’s an important milestone for NASA’s first moon mission since Apollo.

Ira talks with Swapna Krishna, host of the PBS digital series, Far Out about this week’s announcement and the future of the Artemis mission.

Will Rising Temperatures Help Batters Swing for the Bleachers?As the planet warms, melting ice and shifting seasons aren’t the only things changing—the traditions of baseball may be affected as well. A report published this week in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society finds that warmer air temperatures are connected to a slight increase in the number of home runs hit in major league baseball. The effect, the researchers say, is due to a decrease in air density at warmer temperatures, which allows a hit ball to fly slightly further than it would in cooler air.

So far, the effect is small. After correcting for other factors, the researchers say they can attribute about 500 additional MLB home runs since 2010 to warmer temperatures. Most of the observed increase in home run hitting isn’t attributable to the climate. However, they say, each additional one degree Celsius increase in temperature may lead to a two percent increase in home runs. And while ballparks with an insulating dome won’t see big shifts from increased temperatures, open-air parks with a lot of daytime games, such as Wrigley Field, will see more significant effects.

Christopher Callahan, a Ph.D. candidate in geography at Dartmouth and lead author of the report, joins Ira to talk baseball and climate.

This Video Game Prioritizes Restoring An Ecosystem Over ProfitsIf you’ve played Rollercoaster Tycoon, Cities: Skylines, the Civilization series—even Animal Crossing—you’re probably familiar with this gameplay pattern: extract some kind of resource from the land, industrialize it into a theme park or a city, and (step three) profit, ad infinitum.

But Terra Nil, a new game from the studio Free Lives, fundamentally challenges this oft-used game loop. Instead of maximizing profit at the expense of the local ecosystem, the player’s focus is to make a healthier, natural one instead. You start with a barren wasteland (one that you assume has been completely desolated by human activity, perhaps the aftermath from one of the previously mentioned games), and with the help of advanced eco-tech—like wind turbines, soil purifiers, irrigators, and more—restore it to a thriving, diverse ecosystem. The player’s ultimate goal is to take all the tech they used to restore the land, recycle it into an airship, and fly away, leaving no human presence behind.

SciFri producer D Peterschmidt speaks with Sam Alfred, the lead designer and programmer of Terra Nil, about how Free Lives designed this “reverse city-builder,” how the studio took inspiration from the flora of their local Cape Town, and how he hopes the game challenges players how they think about traditional gameplay systems and their effect on our world.

Workout Worms May Reveal New Parkinson’s TreatmentsScientists built an exercise pool for tiny worms. Why?

A team of researchers at University of Colorado Boulder are looking into ways to help treat people with Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. They’re turning to tiny collaborators, C. elegans, worms which measure just one millimeter in length.

These scientists wanted to see how exercise affects brain health by putting a bunch of these worms in an exercise class—in a tiny pool.

Ira talks with the co-author of this fascinating new research, Dr. Joyita Bhadra, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Your Plants Are Trying to Tell You They’re ThirstySpring is in the air, with flowers blooming and gardens starting. Most people with a green thumb will know a droopy plant is a signal that it needs water. But new research has found another way that plants will signal that they’re thirsty: emitting staccato popping sounds, too high pitched for the human ears. Elsewhere in the world of science journalism, an argument has been made that elephants have self-domesticated. If true, this would make these gentle giants only the third creature to have done this, alongside humans and bonobos. Joining Ira to talk about these stories and other science stories of the week is Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week” and editor at large of Popular Science.

Your Future COVID-19 Vaccine May Come Through Your NoseThe nose knows about COVID-19 infection. It is the entrance to the immune system, after all. The nose’s position as one of our first lines of defense has many experts in favor of developing COVID-19 nasal sprays, with the thought that it may replace the needle jabs we’ve come to expect. The development of nasal vaccines comes at a time when many Americans are anxiously awaiting if the government will approve additional COVID-19 boosters. The bivalent boosters have been out for more than six months, and there have been reports the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will recommend an additional dose for some Americans this spring.

Joining Ira to give us the latest on nasal sprays, boosters, and answering some listener questions is Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, immunobiologist at Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut.

Make It Easier To Be Green. Show Frogs Some LoveFrogs have been called the equivalent of the canary in the coalmine, harbingers for the health of our environment. When frogs go silent, something is amiss. So we’re going to spend some time talking about why frogs are so important and how you can better support your neighborly amphibians. One idea? Build a toad abode and welcome them in. Plus, there’s another way to help frogs and toads—and that’s by lending your eyes and your ears to the scientists who study them. April is Citizen Science Month, so we’re kicking things off with a toad-ally cool project called FrogWatch. It relies on volunteers from across the country to record frog calls and report them to FrogWatch’s database.

Ira talks with Dr. Itzue Caviedes-Solis, assistant professor at Swarthmore College, about making outdoor spaces more frog-friendly. Then, he chats with Carrie Bassett, National FrogWatch USA coordinator and education mission manager at the Akron Zoo, about how volunteers can lend their eyes and ears to help scientists study frogs.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Sewage Is A Biological Necessity, And A Methane MinefieldIn most cities, once you flush a toilet, the water and waste flows through the sewage system to a water treatment plant. Once it’s there, it goes through a series of chemical and biological processes which clean it up and make the water safe to drink again. But a recent paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology finds that some of those sewage plants may be having a greater impact on the climate than previously thought.

The anaerobic decomposition of organic material in the waste stream at sewage plants produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The researchers used an electric car fitted with a suite of atmospheric gas sensors to sniff the emissions downwind of 63 sewage treatment plants at different times and during different seasons. They found that the wastewater treatment process may release amounts of methane nearly twice that estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In a related study, other researchers analyzed data from published monitoring of wastewater treatment facilities around the globe—and arrived at a similar estimate of the methane production.

Mark Zondlo, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, and one of the authors of the methane-sniffing research, talks with guest host Shahla Farzan about the studies, and about what might be done to mitigate the methane impact of treating our cities’ sewage.

Meet The Activist Reimagining Climate EducationAs a high school student, Sage Lenier remembers being frustrated with the way she was taught about climate change. It left her feeling helpless, contending with the gloomy predictions for a doom-filled future. Despite talking about the problems, she wasn’t learning anything about solutions. A year later at the University of California, Berkeley, Sage took it upon herself to create the course she wished she had—one focused on solutions and hope. Nearly 2,000 students have taken her course since, and she recently founded Sustainable & Just Future, a youth-led educational non-profit. Guest host Kathleen Davis talks with Sage about her experiences, why we’ve gotten climate education all wrong, and how we need to be thinking about our future.

The First Fully Mapped Animal Brain Is The Larva Of A Fruit FlyUnderstanding how a brain works is one of the most challenging tasks in science. One of the ultimate goals in brain research is to develop brain maps, which catalog which neurons are connected to others, and where. If researchers have a brain map, they can better understand neurological conditions like addiction, and develop more effective treatments. It may even help scientists understand more abstract concepts, like consciousness. The catch? Mapping millions, or even billions, of tiny little neurons is an extremely challenging and expensive task.

But a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently completed a 12-year effort to map the entire brain of a fruit fly larva, which is the size of a grain of salt, and contains 3,000 neurons and 500,00 connections. Their results were published in the journal Science. Joining guest host Shahla Farzan is the paper’s senior author Joshua Vogelstein, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. They talk about how exactly his team completed this task, when a human brain map might be completed, and how this could be a meaningful step in understanding how enlightenment works.

National Audubon Society Sticks With Its Name, Despite Namesake’s RacismFor more than a year, the National Audubon Society—one of the largest bird conservation groups—mulled over a big decision: whether or not they should rename the organization. Its namesake, John James Audubon, is known as the founding father of American birding. But Audubon and his family were anti-abolition and they enslaved nine people in their home. He also actively harmed and looted from Indigenous people. Earlier this month, the National Audubon Society announced its decision to keep “Audubon” in its name, saying that it’s important in allowing the organization to keep protecting birds. The open letter also says the organization represents “much more than the work of one person.”

The decision to stick with the Audubon name has been met with intense backlash, from birders, local branches, and even its own employees. A handful of locally-run Audubon branches, from New York City to Madison, Wisconsin, plan to change their names to nix the word Audubon. Seattle’s branch is renaming itself “Birds Connect Seattle,” and Washington D.C.’s Audubon Naturalist Society is now “Nature Forward.” Guest host Kathleen Davis speaks with Stuart Wells, executive director of Portland Audubon and conservation scientist Corina Newsome about their reactions to the National Audubon Society keeping its name, and how changes are happening locally, including in places like Portland.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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A Supermassive Black Hole The Mass Of 30 Billion SunsThis week, astronomers reported that they may have found signs of one of the largest black holes ever detected–a space behemoth the mass of some 30 billion suns. The supermassive black hole, located in part of the Abell 1201 galaxy cluster, was detected using a combination of gravitational lensing and supercomputer simulations. First, the astronomers observed how the images of other more distant objects viewed by the Hubble Space Telescope were warped by the vast gravitational well produced by the black hole. They compared those images to thousands of simulations created via a supercomputer, and found that a simulation containing a supermassive black hole matched the real-world images. The work was reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins SciFri’s Kathleen Davis to talk about the finding and other stories from the week in science, including the FDA’s approval of over-the-counter Narcan, the real-world challenges of EV charging, and the creation of a meatball–made of mammoth.

What’s Driving A Rise In Mumps Cases In The United States?In 1971, the United States rolled out a revolutionary new vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella. The MMR vaccine nearly eradicated all three of those viruses by the start of the 21st century. Over the last several years, there have been numerous measles outbreaks cropping up across the country, especially among unvaccinated kids.

What about mumps—that second “m” in the MMR vaccine? Since 2006, there have been mumps outbreaks too. But unlike measles, most of the people getting the mumps are vaccinated. And they’re older too, mostly teens and young adults. New research suggests that the efficacy of the mumps vaccine wanes over time, unlike the ones for measles and rubella. Guest host Shahla Farzan talks with Dr. Deven Gokhale, co-author of a recent study on the reemergence of mumps. Gokhale recently completed his PhD from the University of Georgia’s Odum School of Ecology, based in Athens Georgia.

Foundational Food Sources In The Gulf Of Maine Are FailingAt the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, researchers Barney Balch and Catherine Mitchell are looking at a map affixed to a large table. “We’re looking at a chart of the Gulf of Maine, and right across the middle there’s a line that’s drawn from Portland, in Maine, to Yarmouth, in Nova Scotia,” Mitchell says. That line is the route along which Bigelow researchers have been taking regular measurements for the last 25 years. They’ve analyzed chemical and temperature data that help describe how the waters of the gulf are changing. One tool they use is a six-foot long cylinder with wings.

“This is an autonomous underwater vehicle, or a glider,” Mitchell says. “So it’s a big robot that moves up and down in a yoyo-like pattern, from the top of the ocean to the bottom of the ocean right across the middle of the Gulf of Maine. So it’s measuring a bunch of science things as it goes. It looks a bit like a big yellow torpedo. It’s got some wings on it.”

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Is Spring Falling Out Of Sync?Each year, it feels like spring comes as a surprise—too early or too late. For example, new maps reveal that spring is 13 days late in Sacramento, California but two weeks early in Richmond, Virginia. And that could be a problem because plants and animals use environmental cues, like temperature, to know when to flower, migrate, breed, or emerge from hibernation.

So when the seasons are thrown off, what happens to those natural rhythms that once flowed together seamlessly? Guest host Shahla Farzan talks with Dr. David Inouye, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and a researcher at the Rocky Mountain Biological Station, and Dr. Theresa Crimmins, director of the USA National Phenology Network and research professor at the University of Arizona. They discuss the variability in seasons, and the cascade of effects these changes can have on ecosystems.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Can Medicine Move To Animal-Free Testing?Before a new drug can begin clinical trials in humans, it gets tested on animals. But things are changing. Late last year, Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which cleared the way for new drugs to skip animal testing. Can we expect to phase out animal testing altogether? Is it safe? And what technologies might make that possible? Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Thomas Hartung, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, to get a broader picture of alternatives to animal testing.

Capturing Carbon With Tasty FungusThis week, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change brought dire warnings about our planet’s climate future and an alert that drastic action is needed—now—to avoid catastrophe. One action the report recommends involves an overhaul of our food production systems to decrease their carbon impact.

Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers suggest one possible way of sequestering some carbon dioxide might be cultivating certain kinds of edible mushrooms on land that has already been cultivated for agroforestry. The researchers are working with Lactarius deliciosus, commonly known as the saffron milk cap or red pine mushroom, but other species are possible as well. These mycorrhizal fungi live in a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the trees, increasing biomass and storing more carbon, while producing food on land that might have otherwise been used only for trees.

In certain climates and with certain trees, these fungi can actually be a carbon-negative source of protein. However, to produce a pound of protein currently requires a lot of land and effort. The researchers are working to make forest fungal farming easier, and to expand the approach to a wider range of trees. SciFri’s Charles Bergquist talks with Dr. Paul Thomas, author of that report and research director at the company Mycorrhizal Systems, a company that helps farmers grow truffles. He’s also an honorary professor in the University of Stirling’s Faculty of Natural Sciences in the UK.

Whiskey Distillery On The Rocks After Fungus SpreadsLincoln County, Tennessee has been overcome by an unwelcome guest: whiskey fungus. It covers everything from houses and cars to stop signs and trees, and no amount of power washing seems to make it go away. Why has whiskey fungus attached to this small town? It feeds on ethanol from the famed Jack Daniel’s distillery, which is in a neighboring county.

Lincoln County isn’t the first place to encounter this problem. Whiskey fungus was first documented in 1872 by a French pharmacist named Antonin Baudoin. Baudoin noted how mold caused distillery walls in Cognac to blacken, a phenomenon that has since been seen near distilleries across the world. The fungus was not given a name until 2007, when it was dubbed Baudoinia compniacensis, named for Antonin Baudoin. Joining guest host Flora Lichtman is James A. Scott, PhD, professor of public health at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario. Scott has studied whiskey fungus for over two decades, and gave it its scientific name.

NASA’s New Science Head Sees A Bright FutureLast month, NASA announced Dr. Nicola Fox as the agency’s new scientific leader. Fox is taking on a critical role at NASA, shaping the agency’s science priorities and overseeing roughly 100 missions, with a budget of $7.8 billion. The portfolio includes space science from astrophysics and Earth science, covering the planets in our solar system to exoplanets far beyond. Previously, she was the director of the heliophysics division at NASA, which studies the Sun and its role in the solar system. SciFri senior producer Charles Bergquist talks with Dr. Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate for NASA, about her new position, career path, and plans for science at NASA.

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The Latest IPCC Report Is Full Of Warnings—And HopeIt’s that time of year: another IPCC report has hit the presses. These reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are like a check up—to let us know how we’re doing on the climate front and what Earth’s future is projected to look like. And to no one’s surprise, this year’s report is full of warnings. But also, it has a lot of room for hope.

Maggie Koerth, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight, joins guest host Charles Bergquist to talk more about the report and other science news of the week. They chat about a 3D printed rocket that didn’t quite make it to space, the mysterious Oumuamua space object, the rise of dangerous fungal infections in the U.S., why researchers are so excited about figuring out Beethoven’s cause of death, and—of course—new research about octopuses’ brain waves.

An Underwater Volcano Off The Oregon Coast Sheds Light On EruptionsA thick blue-white haze envelops the Research Vessel Thompson as it floats 250 miles off the Oregon coast. Akel Kevis-Stirling’s orange life vest and blue hardhat are vivid pops of color in the fog. “You guys ready to go?” he calls into his radio. The person on the other end crackles an affirmative. “Copy that,” he says and looks up across the rear deck of the research ship. “Alright, straps!”

The crew of the ROV Jason jumps into action, removing the straps that secure the cube-shaped submarine to the deck. The remotely-operated sub, with a base the size of a queen mattress, is loaded with scientific instruments it will carry down to the seafloor. Kevis-Stirling gets final permission from the Thompson’s bridge for the launch. “Ok, here we go. Jason coming up and over the side,” he calls. “Take it away Tito!” The crane operator, Tito Callasius, lifts the submarine and swings it over the side of the ship into the water. A plume of fine bubbles rises through the waves as Jason starts its mile-long descent to the Axial Seamount, a deep-sea volcano that’s erupted three times in the past 25 years.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

March Mammal Madness Wants To Hear You RoarWhen mid-March rolls around, your news online—and maybe your conversations with friends and colleagues—can sometimes get taken over by discussions about the tournament. From debating your bracket selections to conversations about last night’s matchup, or celebrating big upsets and debating whether this is finally the year the bat-eared fox goes all the way, it can feel all-consuming.

March Mammal Madness is an exercise in science communication involving a 64-animal bracket and nightly simulated combat matchups between animals—where the outcomes are determined by chance and specific species traits found in the scientific literature. This is the 10th year of the tournament, which this month has some 650,000 students around the world predicting battle outcomes on the road to the Elite Trait, the Final Roar, and the championship match.

Dr. Katie Hinde, a biological anthropologist in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University, and ringleader of March Mammal Madness, joins SciFri’s Charles Bergquist to talk about the keys to success in the tournament. Want to participate yourself? It’s not too late—you can find the tournament bracket and more information about March Mammal Madness on the ASU Libraries site.

Listen To The Ethereal Sounds Of SpaceYou’ve probably heard that if you scream in space, no one will hear a thing. Space is a vacuum, so sound waves don’t have anything to bounce off of. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that space is silent. A team of researchers are taking data from a variety of telescopes and assigning them sounds, creating song-length sonifications of beloved space structures like black holes, nebulas, galaxies, and beyond.

The album, called “Universal Harmonies” aims to bring galaxies to life and allow more people, such as those who are blind and low-vision, to engage with outer space. Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with two of the scientists behind “Universal Harmonies,” Dr. Kimberly Arcand, visualization scientist at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and Dr. Matt Russo, astrophysicist and musician at the University of Toronto.

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50 Years Later, Reflecting On The Treaty That Controls Wildlife Trade50 years ago this month, a collection of nations met in Washington and reached agreement on a way to regulate international trade in certain wildlife species—from orchids to gorillas. That agreement came to be known as CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The treaty has come to cover over 30,000 different plants and animals. Some, listed in Appendix 1 of the treaty, are under a complete ban on commercial use, while other species have their trade tightly regulated via a system of permits.

Dr. Susan Lieberman, the vice president for international policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society, has attended the last 13 meetings of the CITES signatories. She joins Ira to talk about the convention, and what it has meant for conservation over the last 50 years.

This Skin-like Robot Can Heal ItselfThink of a robot, and the image that may come to mind is a big, hulking body building cars or working in factories. They battle each other in the movies. But a growing field called softbotics focuses on thin, flexible materials—closer to human skin than to a Transformer. There’s been a breakthrough in this field out of Pittsburgh: softbotics that can not only conduct electricity, but can heal itself from damage. This replicates the healing abilities of organic materials, like skin, but can happen in seconds. Dr. Carmel Majidi, mechanical engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, joins Ira to break down possible futures for this material, including a new generation of prosthetics.

Naked Mole-Rats Are Eternally FertileThere may be no stranger—or more impressive—critter than the naked mole-rat. They may look unassuming, but they can defy aging, have an astonishingly high pain tolerance, and are resistant to cancer. And their list of superpowers doesn’t stop there. Scientists recently discovered yet another way these rodents reject the mammalian status quo: by producing egg cells, and staying fertile, until the day they die. This makes them unlike humans, whose ovaries eventually stop producing eggs. So what can we learn about fertility from these strange critters? Ira talks with the lead researcher of this study, Dr. Miguel Brieño-Enriquez, assistant professor at the Magee-Womens Research Institute and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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At Long Last, More Regulations For Forever ChemicalsThis week, the EPA proposed the first national standards for drinking water that would set limits on the amount of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) chemicals that would be allowed in water systems. There are thousands of different PFAS chemicals, which are often used industrially for properties such as heat, water and stain resistance—from fire-fighting foams to coatings on clothing and paper plates. They have come to be known as “forever chemicals” as they are extremely slow to break down in the environment. The chemicals have been linked to health problems, including cancer.

Katherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic, joins Ira to talk about the proposed regulations and how such a sweeping rule might be implemented nationwide. Wu also discusses her latest article on COVID-19 origins, and genetic analysis that could tie the pandemic back to raccoon dogs in the Wuhan market. They also talk about other news from the week in science, including research hinting at active volcanoes on Venus, a study of the effects of COVID-19 on maternal health during pregnancy, and research into curing HIV with stem cells from cord blood. Plus an explosion of seaweed, and the unveiling of a new space suit design.

How AI Is Changing The Drug Development PipelineResearching and developing new drugs is a notoriously long and expensive process, filled with a lot of trial and error. Before a new drug gets approved scientists must come up with something they think might work in the lab, test it in animals, and then if it passes those hurdles, clinical trials in humans. In an effort to smooth out some of the bumps along the road, a growing number of pharma companies are turning to new artificial intelligence tools in the hopes of making the process cheaper and faster. Ira talks with Will Douglas Heaven, senior editor for AI at MIT Technology Review about his reporting on the topic.

An Ambitious Plan To Build Back Louisiana’s CoastLouisiana will receive more than $2 billion to pay for an ambitious, first-of-its-kind plan to reconnect the Mississippi River to the degraded marshes on Plaquemines Parish’s west bank. A collective of federal and state agencies—the Louisiana Trustees Implementation Group—signed off on the multibillion-dollar Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion on Wednesday. The funding will come out of settlement dollars resulting from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Once constructed, the two-mile-long sediment diversion is expected to build up to 27 square miles of new land by 2050. In the next 50 years, as Louisiana’s coast continues to sink and global sea levels rise, the diversion is also projected to sustain one-fifth of the remaining land. “The Trustees believe that a sediment diversion is the only way to achieve a self-sustaining marsh ecosystem in the Barataria Basin,” wrote the implementation group in its decision.

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Balancing The Good And Bad Of PhosphorusPhosphorus is critical to life as we know it. In fact, every cell in the human body contains this important element. It’s also a key component in fertilizer. But not all of that fertilizer stays on crops—much of that phosphorus flows into waterways. Therein lies the rub: the runoff fertilizes the plant life growing in the water, creating toxic algal blooms. To top it all off, the phosphorus reserves in the United States are on track to disappear in just a few decades, according to some estimates.

Ira talks about the past, present, and future of phosphorus with Dan Egan, journalist in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences, and author of the new book, The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and A World out of Balance.

Want to read The Devil’s Element with us? Join the SciFri Book Club and read along!

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Tips And Tricks To Grow Your Garden In A Changing ClimateFor many of us, spring is right around the corner—or already here—which means it’s time to start thinking about what is going into your garden this year. But largely thanks to climate change, our seasons are getting wonkier every year.

Gardens are feeling the heat as climate change affects the timing of the seasons, temperature extremes, the amount of rainfall, the intensity of droughts, and more. So it’s more important than ever to plant a garden that can be more resilient to these changes.

In this live show, Ira talks with a panel of guests about planting a climate-resilient garden, and how to set your plants up for success. He’s joined by Laura Erickson, a birder and author of “100 Plants to Feed the Birds: Turn Your Home Garden Into a Healthy Bird Habitat,” Dr. Lucy Bradley, a horticulturist and extension specialist at North Carolina State University, and Dr. Tiffany Carter, research soil scientist at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Despite Superconductor Breakthrough, Some Scientists Remain SkepticalThis week, researchers unveiled a new superconductor which they say works at room temperature. Scientists have been working on identifying new superconductors for decades—materials that can transmit electricity without friction-like resistance. However, previously discovered superconductors only work at super cold temperatures, and under incredibly high pressures. The newly discovered superconductor, lutetium, could be much more useful in applications, like strong magnets used in MRIs, magnetically floating trains, and even nuclear fusion, than those which must be kept super-cold.

But there’s a bit of a wrinkle. The research team which published their results in the journal Nature this week, had their previous study on another superconductor retracted in 2020. As a result, many scientists in the field have concerns about the quality of this new research Ira talks with Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, to make sense of this superconductor saga and other big science news of the week including bumblebee culture, extreme ways to save mountain glaciers, and identifying the worms in Mezcal.

Can Utah’s Great Salt Lake Be Saved Before It’s Too Late?Utah’s Great Salt Lake is one of the state’s treasures and is vital to the local ecosystem and economy. But since the 1980s, it’s been drying up—and now the lake’s water level is at a record low. The lake is fed by three rivers, which are fed by Utah’s snowpack. It’s also a terminal lake, meaning that there’s no outlet for water to exit. And as the population of Utah has increased, more water has been diverted from those rivers to agriculture, industry, and local residents. As more of the lakebed has become exposed, wind has picked up dust plumes and blown them into local communities. Dr. Kevin Perry, a professor of atmospheric science sciences at the University of Utah, discovered that those lakebed dust plumes contain heavy metals, including arsenic.

But despite these challenges, Perry and local politicians are confident that if the right water usage reductions are put in place, the lake will have a chance to bounce back. Science Friday digital producer Emma Gometz visited Perry at the Great Salt Lake in January, who describes how we got here and what the future holds.

Exploring A New Theory About Dark Energy’s OriginsBlack holes remain one of the great mysteries of the universe. Another enigma? Dark energy. Little is known about this concept, aside from the belief that dark energy accelerates the expansion of the universe. These are two of the most mind-bending concepts in physics. There’s a new theory that brings together black holes and dark energy into one mind-bending solution: research led by the University of Hawai’i at Manoa posits that dark energy could actually come from supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies.

If true, this would be a massive breakthrough in what we know about astrophysics. But many experts in the field have reservations about this idea. Two of those experts join Ira to talk about this theory, and other recent black hole breakthroughs: Janna Levin, PhD, author of “Black Hole Blues” and “Black Hole Survival Guide,” and a physics and astronomy professor at Barnard College in New York City, and Feryal Özel, a professor and chair of physics at Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Insulin Maker Eli Lilly Finally Caps The Drug’s CostIn 1923, drug manufacturer Eli Lilly became the first company to commercialize insulin. Since then, its cost has skyrocketed. But this week, the company announced that it is capping the cost of insulin at $35. This comes as a huge relief to many Americans, since insulin has become the face of pharmaceutical price gouging. Over the last 20 years, the price of insulin has grown by six times, making this essential, life-saving drug unaffordable to many who need it.

Purbita Saha, deputy editor at Popular Science, joins Ira to talk about this announcement and other science news of the week. They chat about a new at-home test for COVID-19 and the flu, how the bird flu outbreak is faring, what we learned from NASA’s DART mission, and why scientists are growing a mushroom computer.

It’s Spacetime And Science Season At The OscarsThe Academy Awards are almost upon us, airing March 12. Movie buffs may have already seen many of the nominated films. But for science geeks, there’s another form of criteria for what films go on the top of their watchlist: Do these movies include science? This year, a whole bunch of Oscar nominees are driven by science as part of the plot. The Best Picture category has three: the multiverses in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the water-based society in “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and the gravity-defying aerial stunts in “Top Gun: Maverick.”

The Documentary Feature Film category is also ripe for science analysis: “Fire of Love” follows the love story between two French volcanologists, “All That Breathes” follows brothers who run a bird hospital in Delhi, and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” spotlights Nan Goldin’s advocacy against the opioid-creating Sackler family. Ira is joined by Sonia Epstein, curator of science and technology at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, to discuss these films and more—including science-oriented films that were snubbed from this years’ awards.

The Lasting Allure Of Shackleton’s ‘Endurance’There are few stories about heroic survival equal to Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic rescue of his crew, which turned disaster into triumph. In August of 1914, 28 men set sail from England to the South Pole. Led by Shackleton himself, the group hoped to be the first to cross Antarctica by foot. However, their ship, the Endurance, became stuck in ice. It sank to the bottom of the frigid Antarctic waters, leaving most of the men stranded on a cold, desolate ice floe. Shackleton, with five of his crew, set out in a small boat to bring help from hundreds of miles away. Finally, after many months of fighting the cold, frostbite and angry seas, Shackleton was able to rescue all his men with no loss of life.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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A Medication Abortion Drug Faces Potential Nationwide RestrictionA federal court case underway in Texas this week could have big implications for medication based abortion care across the U.S. The case involves the FDA’s approval of the drug mifepristone, which is used as part of a two-drug combination in most medication abortions. The plaintiffs in the case are arguing that the FDA went against its own guidelines regarding drug safety when it approved the medication in 2000, though the overwhelming evidence has shown the drug to be safe and effective. A ruling against the FDA could result in mifepristone prescriptions being banned nationwide.

Maggie Koerth, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight, joins John Dankosky to talk about the case and its implications. They also tackle other stories from the week in science, including investigations of the Earth’s inner core, a timeline for astronauts on board the ISS, and efforts to understand what “burnout” actually is.

A New Twist On Sowing SeedsImagine sowing a handful of seeds on the ground—but instead of needing planting help from a rake or hoe, the seeds can determine for themselves when the ground is fresh from the rain and ready for planting, and burrow their own way into the damp soil.

Some seeds, including varieties of Erodium species, can actually do that. They use their self-burying ability to adapt to arid climates. But in a recent study in the journal Nature, researchers describe a package, or wrapper that can give other kinds of seeds self-burying powers as well. The design adapts some of the shapes and techniques used by Erodium into a biodegradable corkscrew made of engineered wood, that can respond to moisture and uncoil to slowly drill a seed into receptive soil.

Dr. Lining Yao, co-author of that report and director of the Morphing Matter Lab in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science, joins guest host Regina Barber to describe the seed delivery system, and what remains to be solved before it can be used in the wild.

A Long History Shadows New Fight Over California’s Shasta DamA few years ago, I stumbled onto the story of the Winnemem Wintu people, an indigenous people of Northern California. Theirs is an epic tale and it grabbed hold of me. For several years, I tagged along with them whenever I could. I was around so much, they started teasing me. The large fuzzy windscreens of my recording setup earned me a nickname. The Winnemem Wintu and their close friends call me and my microphone Gray Squirrel.

Nickname aside, I never took it lightly that the Winnemem Wintu let me into their space. For good reasons, many Native people are suspicious of outsiders. I understood their openness was special and rare. My greatest hope is that you will hear their story of struggle and resilience, of betrayal and a willingness to still believe in the good things to come – and that it will change you as it did me.Behind the Chief we see the top of Shasta Dam’s immense concrete spillway set against a background of dry, rolling hills. Shasta Dam stands 602 feet high. It’s the country’s 8th tallest. It turned California into the giant, agricultural engine that it is today. It also left a legacy of harm when it flooded the Winnemem and other Wintu people off their land.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Rapper And Scholar Sammus Confronts AI In Hip-HopOver the last six months, there’s been a lot of movement and discussion about the effects that generative AI will have on visual art and writing. But what about its effects on music—in particular, hip-hop? A few years ago, a deep fake of Kanye West rapping a verse from “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen went viral. It was created with just a few clicks using the program Uberduck, which can output AI-generated raps from text of the users’ choice. And it turns out that the rhythmic qualities that make hip-hop performers’ verses so spellbinding is exactly what makes them easier to mimic in deep fakes, as opposed to other genres of music.

Guest host Regina Barber talks with rapper and music, science, and technology scholar Dr. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, also known as Sammus, about the unexpected crossovers between hip-hop and the growing field of generative AI. She is also an assistant professor of music at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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‘All That Breathes:’ A Story Of Two Brothers Saving New Delhi’s RaptorsThe Oscars are right around the corner, and one of the nominees in the documentary category is called “All That Breathes.” It tells the story of two brothers—Nadeem and Saud—who dedicate their lives to rescuing black kites, a type of raptor that dominates the skies of New Delhi.

Since they were children, the brothers have rescued more than 25,000 of these birds, who are quite literally falling out of the thick, polluted, hazy sky. Their conservation efforts have triumphed over limited resources and periods of religious violence in New Delhi.

Guest host John Dankosky speaks with Shaunak Sen, director of “All That Breathes,” about the making of the film, and how it’s a story of urban ecology, politics, and hope.

Why Won’t Museums Return Native American Human Remains?In 1990, the United States passed a groundbreaking human rights policy called the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act—known as NAGPRA. It was designed to spur museums, universities, and federal agencies to return Native American human remains and cultural items back to the tribes they were stolen from.

NAGPRA held a lot of promise, but now—33 years later—more than 110,000 Native American, Hawaiian, and Alaskan human remains are held up in research institutions.

So why, decades later, have so many institutions failed to return remains? That’s the focus of a new report from ProPublica. ProPublica reporter Mary Hudetz joins guest host John Dankosky to discuss why NAGPRA fell short, and where to go from here.

Appreciating The Brilliance Of Benjamin BannekerBenjamin Banneker was a free Black man born in 1731, over a century before slavery was abolished in his home state of Maryland. Today, Banneker is perhaps best known for his role in drawing the original borders of Washington, DC.

But he was also an accomplished naturalist and polymath. He was among the first to document the cicada’s 17-year life cycle. Banneker also taught himself astronomy and math, and published one of the country’s first almanacs.

Guest host Regina Barber talks with Dr. Janet Barber, an independent researcher, writer, and social scientist (with no relation to Regina), and Dr. Asamoah Nkwanta department chair and professor of mathematics at Morgan State University, based in Baltimore, Maryland, about Benjamin Banneker’s life and scientific legacy.

The Supernatural Side Of Astronomical EventsThroughout history, there have been events in the sky that have made people uneasy: Think supernovas, comets, and eclipses. It’s easy to understand why. Even when astronomical knowledge was limited, the skies were readily observable. So when things changed, it sometimes led people to see these events as omens.

In ancient China, eclipses were thought to occur when a celestial dragon attacked and ate the sun. And in Incan culture, eclipses were seen as the sun god expressing displeasure, which sometimes led to human sacrifice. And in 1456, Halley’s Comet was excommunicated by the pope for being an instrument of the devil.

There are scientific explanations for these events, of course. Co-host Regina Barber speaks with Dr. Samaiyah Farid, solar physicist and project scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, about what’s behind these astrological omens.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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UFOs? Balloons? Spy Cams? Here’s What’s Going OnThis week, the saga over UFOs, balloons, and spyware continues. The drama all started with a Chinese surveillance balloon, and then—one by one—governments kept finding others in the U.S. and Canada. Earlier this week, President Biden announced, “We don’t know yet exactly what these three objects were. But nothing right now suggests they are related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country.” So what do we know about these balloons? And why is this such a big deal all of a sudden?

Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at the MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to discuss the hullabaloo surrounding these flying objects and other science news of the week. They also talk about the outbreak of Marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea, Tesla agreeing to open some charging stations to other EV drivers, the startups trying to remove methane from the air, what a pencil-shaped robot taught scientists about the “Doomsday Glacier,” and why researchers modeled a new camera after cuttlefish eyes.

How The Western U.S. Could Rebuild Its Water InfrastructureIn early January, California was inundated with record-breaking rainfall. The state was battered by back-to-back storms, which caused severe flooding and power outages. But could there be a silver lining in those storm clouds? Given the historic drought conditions plaguing the western U.S., a way to collect or divert rainwater to use when the dry season hits is especially appealing. However, potential solutions are not within easy reach.

Ira talks about the limitations and opportunities of storing and diverting rainwater with Dr. Andrew Fisher, hydrogeologist and professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Later, Ira is joined by Dr. Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona’s Resources Research Center, to talk about the drivers of the water crisis and some of the policy solutions being floated to solve the problem.

Ohio Residents Want Answers About Risks Of Train DerailmentHundreds of people packed the high school gymnasium in East Palestine, Ohio, Wednesday evening, trying to get some answers about whether they were safe in their homes after an explosion and the release of numerous toxic chemicals following the train derailment two weeks ago. What started as an open house with tables set up around the floor for the US EPA, the Ohio EPA, the state Division of Wildlife, and the county health department to answer individual questions morphed into a town hall meeting.

Residents sat in bleachers and yelled their questions to the officials. Many were angry, largely because Norfolk Southern, the rail operator, did not show up to the meeting. East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway, surrounded by the media, said the company feared for the safety of its employees because there was so much anger against them. Conaway said people keep blaming him for this horrible incident, and it’s not his fault.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Lion’s Mane Mushrooms Improve Memory, Study FindsFor centuries, the lion’s mane mushroom has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for a variety of ailments, including strengthening memory. A recent study from the Queensland Brain Institute confirms what herbalists have long said: There are properties of this mushroom that build brain cells. In mice, these properties promoted neuron growth when diluted in water, resulting in better hippocampal memory.

This result is a very good sign that the properties in lion’s mane mushrooms can protect against dementia and Alzheimer’s, the researchers behind the study say. Using the isolated components of the mushroom could be a step forward in the treatment of these devastating brain conditions. Joining Ira to talk about this study is the study’s co-author, Dr. Ramon Martinez-Marmol, research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute, based in Brisbane, Australia.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Rethinking The Future Of Dementia CareScientists estimate that the number of people living with dementia will triple within the next 30 years, but healthcare systems, policies, and public health measures in the US aren’t prepared to accommodate this growing population. This week, we’re digging into dementia care, and taking listener calls live.

Alzheimer’s is the leading cause of dementia. Ira talks with Dr. Suman Jayadev, a neurogeneticist at the University of Washington School of Medicine, about the biology of Alzheimer’s, and where we stand with treatments.

Then, the conversation turns to the future of dementia care: What are we doing right? What needs to change? And how can we rethink the future of dementia care? Ira speaks with Dr. Tia Powell, the director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for Bioethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the author of the book Dementia Reimagined, as well as Dr. Nathaniel Chin, a geriatrician and assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin.

To learn more about dementia and access resources, visit sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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How Scientists Predict Where Earthquakes Will Strike NextThe pair of earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week left the region grappling with death and destruction. Despite the region being seismically active, this particular area hadn’t seen an earthquake of this size for decades. There are ways of knowing where the next big earthquakes will happen—but not when. Scientists use knowledge of fault lines and historical data to make their predictions, but saving areas from mass casualties often relies on infrastructure policies. Building codes that prioritize strong buildings can save lives, but older structures remain vulnerable.

Across the globe, in California, the health impacts of electric vehicles are beginning to be seen. A study published this month finds that for every 20 EVs in a zip code, asthma-related visits to the emergency room drop by 3.2%. This is a striking number for a technology that’s just now becoming more commonplace. Joining Ira to talk about these stories and more is Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, based in Washington, D.C.

ChatGPT And Beyond: What’s Behind The AI Boom?The past few months have seen a flurry of new, easy-to-use tools driven by artificial intelligence. It’s getting harder to tell what’s been created by a human: Programs like ChatGPT can construct believable written text, apps like Lensa can generate stylized avatars, while other developments can make pretty believable audio and video deep fakes.

Just this week, Google unveiled a new AI-driven chatbot called Bard, and Microsoft announced plans to incorporate ChatGPT within their search engine Bing. What is this new generation of AI good at, and where does it fall short?

Ira talks about the state of generative AI and takes listener calls with Dr. Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute and author of the book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. They are joined by Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, founder and CEO of Parity Consulting and responsible AI fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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How Grief Rewires The BrainBeing a human can be a wonderful thing. We’re social creatures, craving strong bonds with family and friends. Those relationships can be the most rewarding parts of life.

But having strong relationships also means the possibility of experiencing loss. Grief is one of the hardest things people go through in life. Those who have lost a loved one know the feeling of overwhelming sadness and heartache that seems to well up from the very depths of the body.

To understand why we feel the way we do when we grieve, the logical place to turn is to the source of our emotions: the brain. A new book explores the neuroscience behind this profound human experience.

Ira speaks to Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, a neuroscientist, about adjusting to life after loss.

Midwest Aims To Add Large Indoor Animal Farms, Despite ConcernsLegislation and programs in states like Missouri and Nebraska are paving the way to welcome large livestock operations by limiting local control over the facilities. Some rural residents worry about the potential pollution and decreased quality of life that will bring.In Cooper County, Missouri, CAFOs are a controversial topic.

Susan Williams asked to meet in a small local library to talk about it, hoping that there wouldn’t be anyone around. Even in this quiet atmosphere, she’s nervous about people overhearing the conversation.

“I just don’t want the whole town to hear me,” she said.

Concentrated animal feed operations, commonly called CAFOs, are large animal facilities that hold thousands of head of livestock. Iowa leads the Midwest in the number of CAFOs with about 4,000 of them. However, in recent years, laws and programs have paved the way for CAFOs to operate in other Midwestern states, including Missouri and Nebraska.

That’s worrying residents like Williams, a retired elementary school principal and a farmland owner from Clarksburg, Missouri. Back in 2018, a large hog operation called Tipton East planned on moving in less than a mile away from her house. The size of the operation, about 8,000 hogs, concerned her, especially since she grew up with a small hog farm.

“Just the smell and the waste that you had was tremendous with that,” she said. “And I couldn’t imagine what it would be like with that many hogs.”

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com

Blending The Sounds Of Climate Change With Appalachian MusicDaniel Bachman is an acclaimed musician, known for his unique blend of Appalachian-inspired folk music and meditative drones. But, for his latest album, titled Almanac Behind, he wanted to try something a little different.

Bachman lives in central Virginia, which has recently experienced multiple extreme weather events influenced by climate change. Unusually heavy snow in January 2022 caused power outages and trapped drivers in their cars on highways. Later in the year, intense rainfall led to downed power lines and flooding. And wildfires are becoming increasingly common in the Appalachian region.

“I had the idea to document everything that we experienced through the end of this recording process,” he said. With the help of family and friends, Bachman gathered field recordings of these sounds of climate change, and weaved them together with the banjo and guitar.

“It did feel like I was working collaboratively with non-human partners,” he said. “It makes me feel better to work with these forces, instead of trying to constantly push them away.”

Bachman also talks about his work as an independent scholar, and how the traditions of Appalachian folklore influenced his view of the album as a climatological historical document.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Wind And Solar Were Europe’s Top Energy Sources In 2022The European Union reached a major renewable energy milestone in 2022. For the first time, wind and solar generated more energy in the European Union than any other power source. Ira talks with science writer Roxanne Khamsi about Europe’s energy future and other top science stories of the week, including deer harboring old COVID strains, an endangered marsupial who’s losing a lot of sleep in search of sex, and why mammals live longer in groups.

U.S. Approves First Small Nuclear Reactor DesignLate last month, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave final approval to the first small-modular nuclear reactor design, known in the industry as SMR. It’s not the kind of power plant you might picture when you think of nuclear—gone is the massive cooling tower and tall, domed containment building, in favor of a 15-foot-diameter steel cylinder equipped with passive cooling. And instead of being bespoke designs built to order on site, these reactors can be manufactured in a factory and hooked together in the field—an approach that can shave years off the construction time for a new nuclear facility.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

’The Last Of Us’ Hands Fungi The SpotlightThe Last of Us, a new TV show from HBO, has had audiences hooked from the very first episode. The sci-fi show and the video game it’s based on tells the story of people trying to survive a mass fungal outbreak: one that turns ordinary people into murderous, mind-controlled monsters.

The fungus in the story, Cordyceps, is a real one. It’s known to take over the minds of insects like ants, moths, and beetles and control them to advance its own survival, but that doesn’t happen with humans. Dr. Patty Kaishian, mycologist and visiting professor of biology at Bard College, joins Ira to talk about the science behind The Last of Us. They dig into what’s real, what’s fiction, and how fungi shape our lives.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Meet The Blind Birder Reimagining Accessibility In The OutdoorsFor many blind and low vision people, accessing outdoor spaces like parks can be challenging. Trails are often unsafe or difficult to navigate, signs don’t usually have Braille, guides generally aren’t trained to help disabled visitors, and so on.

But nature recordist Juan Pablo Culasso, based in Bogata, Colombia, is changing that. He’s designed a system of fully accessible trails in the cloud forests of southwest Colombia that are specifically tailored to help visually disabled people connect with nature. The trails are the first of their kind in the Americas, and Culasso drew on his own experiences as a blind person and a professional birder to design the system.

He talks with Maddie Sofia about how he designed the trail system and takes listeners on an adventure through the cloud forest he works in.

How Many Glasses Of Water A Day Do You Actually Need?If you follow health or fitness influencers, at some point you’ve probably heard something about people needing six to eight ounces glasses of water a day to be healthy. The question of the right amount of water needed for health and happiness is still an open one, and varies from person to person. But a recent study in the journal Science looked at just how much water people actually do consume each day.

The study didn’t just ask people how many sips they had taken. Instead, it tracked the amount of water that flowed through the bodies of over 5,000 people around the world, using labeled isotopes to get data on “water turnover”—how much water was consumed and excreted. The researchers found a large range of water use, driven in part by differences in body size and socioeconomic status. A small, not very active woman might drink less than two liters per day, while a large, very active woman might gulp almost eight liters a day, a four-fold difference.

Dr. Dale Schoeller, a professor emeritus in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and the Biotechnology Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, joins SciFri producer Kathleen Davis to talk about the study, the importance of water consumption, and how people can do better at estimating the amount of water they need.

Road Salt Is Washing Into The Mississippi River…And It’s Not Washing OutThis winter has already brought significant snowfall to much of the U.S. Historically, more snow has meant more road salt. It’s an effective way to clear roads — but also brings cascading environmental impacts as it washes into rivers and streams.

But amid one powerful winter storm that walloped the Midwest in December, employees from the La Crosse County Facilities Department did something a little different.

As usual, they clocked into work well before dawn to plow the county’s downtown parking lots. They were followed by facilities director Ryan Westphal, who walked each of the lots, checking for slick spots. Finding none, he didn’t lay any salt down on top.

That’s a major departure from how he would have handled the situation a few years ago – before their department made the decision to dramatically cut back on salt use to prevent it from flowing into waters like the nearby Mississippi River, which new data show has been growing saltier for decades.

Under the previous protocol, in Westphal’s words, his crew would have “salted the crap” out of the lots after a snowfall like this, without giving deference to whether they actually needed it. Today, there’s a careful calculation after each time it snows to ensure they’re using just the right amount of salt.

To read the rest, visit www.sciencefriday.com.

In ‘The Terraformers,’ Science Fiction Reveals Real-World ChallengesIn her novel The Terraformers, author Annalee Newitz takes readers thousands of years into the future to a far-away planet that’s under construction. It’s in the process of being terraformed, or transformed into a more Earth-like world that can support human life.

The main character Destry, a ranger for the Environmental Rescue Team, and her partner, Whistle the flying moose, are working on the corporate-owned planet when they encounter an underground society. The Terraformers explores themes of resilience, colonization, conservation, equity, and capitalism through a sci-fi lens as Newitz invites readers to reimagine a new future.

Guest host Maddie Sofia talks Newitz about the inspiration behind the book and how real-world problems made their way into sci-fi.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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What’s Behind The Strange Slowing Of The Earth’s Core?Even though some days feel more chaotic than others, the rotation of the surface of the planet proceeds at a pretty constant rate—about one full rotation every 24 hours. But the rotational speed of the inner core is less stable, and has been known to shift over time. Now, researchers are reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience that according to seismic data, the Earth’s inner core may have recently paused its rotation, and could even go on to reverse direction relative to the rest of the planet.

Tim Revell, deputy United States editor of New Scientist, joins SciFri producer Kathleen Davis to talk about the shift in rotation and other stories from the week in science, including shared language characteristics between humans and wild apes, and a wolf population that has started to enjoy snacking on sea otters. They’ll also talk about an ancient Egyptian mummy with a heart of gold, research into why some mushrooms glow in the dark, and a tiny robot with morphing liquid metal capabilities straight out of Hollywood.

Here’s What We Know About Long COVID, Three Years LaterJust a few months into the pandemic, it became clear that in some people, the SARS-CoV-2 virus caused a cascade of symptoms for months after their initial infections. These lingering effects are now commonly referred to as Long COVID. And as long as the pandemic barrels on, the population of Long COVID patients will continue to grow. Over the past three years, researchers have closely studied these symptoms, seeking to better understand its underlying causes and improve treatment.

Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with Hannah Davis, co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative and co-author of a recently published comprehensive review on the state of Long COVID research, and Dr. Bhupesh Prusty, principal investigator at the Institute for Virology and Immmunobiology at the University of Würzburg in Germany.

Meet The Art Sleuths Using Science To Find FraudsAt the end of last year, a big case was decided in the world of art crime. Qatari Sheikh Hamad al Thani won a case against his former art dealer, after nearly $5 million dollars worth of purchased ancient artifacts were all determined to be fake. Among the artifacts was a Hari Hara sandstone statue purported to be from 7th century Vietnam. In reality, the piece was made in 2013. Art experts say forged antiquities are extremely common in museums and private art collections: Former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas Hoving estimated 40% of artworks for sale at any given time were fake.

The task of determining what art is real and what art is fake falls to scientists, who use tools like X-rays and carbon dating to get accurate readings of time and place of origin for artifacts. Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about this are Erin Thompson, art crime professor at the City University of New York, and Patrick Degryse, professor of archeometry at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Why Are Gas Stoves Under Fire?If you were online at all last week, you probably encountered conversations about gas stoves. The sudden stove discourse was sparked by a comment made by a commissioner on the Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) to a Bloomberg reporter, in which the commissioner discussed plans to regulate gas stoves. Those comments morphed via repetition into inaccurate rumors of an impending ban on stoves fueled by ‘natural gas,’ or methane, currently used in around 38% of US homes. The CPSC later clarified that the agency was “researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks,” but was not looking to ban gas stove use.

That said, studies have found that gas stoves are a major source of indoor air pollution, and can emit nitrogen oxides that have been found to exacerbate asthma symptoms. Last summer, the American Medical Association adopted a resolution informing physicians of the stoves’ link to asthma. A report published in December estimates that over 12% of childhood asthma cases may be attributable to gas stove emissions.

The stove debate flares beyond asthma, however. Some municipalities, including New York City, are moving to phase out the use of natural gas in new construction for reasons related to climate change. And Washington state has put in place rules mandating the use of electric heat (with fossil fuel-derived heating allowed as a backup option) in new construction this year.

Rebecca Leber, senior reporter covering climate at Vox, joins Ira to explain the heated words over gas stove use, and how they fit into a larger battle over fossil fuel usage and climate change.

What Will The Next Generation Of COVID-19 Vaccines Look Like?The first COVID-19 vaccine was approved just over two years ago. Since then, the virus continues to mutate. With each new variant, the virus seems to evade our current vaccines more effectively, faster than we can make effective new mRNA boosters.

Coronaviruses frequently spill over from animals to humans, like the original SARS and MERS viruses, which are both types of coronaviruses. Researchers are working on the next generation of coronavirus vaccines that aim to protect us against multiple emerging variants—and even prevent future pandemics.

Ira talks with Dr. Pamela Bjorkman, professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, about her work to develop a vaccine that would protect against several types of coronaviruses.

And later, Ira talks with Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale University, about the nasal vaccine she’s researching and the hurdles in bringing it to market.

The Sweet Song Of The $7 ViolinStringed instruments can be a joy to the ears and the eyes. They’re handcrafted, made of beautiful wood, and the very best ones are centuries old, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or sometimes even millions.

But there’s a new violin in the works—one that’s 3D-printed. It costs just a few bucks to print, making it an affordable and accessible option for young learners and classrooms.

Learn more about the project, as well as its progress, beta testing, and release date at www.printaviolin.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Why Are Children’s Antibiotics So Hard To Find Right Now?Mary Warlo has been extremely worried lately. Her baby Calieb, who is six months old, has sickle cell disease. In early December he went for a few days without liquid penicillin, a medication that he—and thousands of other children in the U.S.—rely on to prevent potentially life threatening infections.

Warlo couldn’t easily find a pharmacy in Indianapolis that had the medicine in stock. She and her husband frantically drove around for hours, stopping at five different pharmacies before they were able to get their prescription filled. “It was extremely stressful and I am worried about what will happen the next time we need to fill his prescription two weeks from now,” she said. Pediatric sickle cell disease specialists say they are alarmed by signs that the stock of liquid penicillin is dwindling in some places. They say children’s lives depend on this medication, and a penicillin shortage could spell disaster.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Bats Use Death Metal 'Growls' To Make Social CallsWhat do death metal vocalists and bats have in common? Both use their ventricle folds, or “false vocal cords,” to extend their vocal ranges to hit a lower register. This gives bats a huge vocal range—seven full octaves. Humans typically tap out at about three to four octaves. Even people with really impressive vocal ranges, like Mariah Carey, just can’t compete with a bat.

A study recently published in the academic journal PLOS Biology examines how and why different anatomical structures might help bats achieve such extreme frequency range. Ira talks with one of the study’s authors, Coen Elemans, a professor in bioacoustics and animal behavior at the University of Southern Denmark based in Odense, Denmark.

Can Science Answer Life’s Biggest Questions?Dr. Alan Lightman has been around the block a few times. Over the past five decades, he has been a theoretical physicist, professor at MIT, and bestselling author—often at the same time. His most notable novel, Einstein’s Dreams, has been adapted into dozens of plays and musicals since its publication in 1992, becoming one of the most famous examples of mixing art and science.

Lightman’s work follows a philosophical way of thinking about life’s biggest questions, like the origins of consciousness. His new venture brings this way of thinking to the silver screen. Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science consults scientists and faith leaders to grapple with some of these theoretical quandaries. And Lightman gives a good argument for why the journey to these answers can be more impactful than the answers themselves.

Ira speaks with Alan Lightman about the new program, available to watch now online and on your local public television station.

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Technology Trends to Watch in 2023The start of a new year is often a time to contemplate the future and what might lie ahead on the horizon. This week, the magazine MIT Technology Review unveiled its annual list of 10 technologies to watch—innovations that it thinks are on the verge of rapid adoption or causing significant cultural changes, or already in the process of creating such a shift. This year’s list includes items from the amazing astronomy enabled by JWST, to the ‘inevitable’ electric vehicle, as well as technologies that are further down the road, such as the ability to grow replacement organs to order.

Amy Nordrum, an executive editor at MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to talk about some of the innovations and the difficulties of narrowing a universe of possibilities into a list of 10 key technologies to watch. They also discuss some technologies highlighted in the past that went on to make a big difference—cloud computing, anyone?—as well as some projects the magazine highlighted in the past that did not turn out to be as significant as once thought.

Are Animal ‘Pests’ Really The Villains We Make Them Out To Be?Join us as we enter the rat’s nest. The snake pit. The mouse trap. What, precisely, is it that untangles an animal friend from foe? This week, we’re taking a close look at pests—critters with a notorious reputation for being destructive, annoying, and even villainous.

We’re also going to get a little philosophical and ask: What do those opinions tell us about ourselves?

Science journalist Bethany Brookshire is the author of Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She joins Ira to talk about her new book, challenge our perspectives on what makes a pest, and answer listener’s pest-y questions live.

To read an excerpt of the book, visit sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Early Migration To North America Likely Wasn’t A One-Way RoadThe story of how early humans migrated to North America might not be as simple as we once thought. The prevailing theory was that ancient peoples traveled from Siberia to modern-day Alaska using the Bering strait as a land bridge. But new genomic research, published in Current Biology, reveals movement in the opposite direction, back to Asia, as well.

Ira talks with Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, about the new research, and other top science stories of the week, including a new AI voice generator, a green comet visible visit in the night sky for the first time in 50,000 years, and how a specific atmospheric weather pattern caused historic flooding in California.

Lab-Grown Meats Are Finally Inching Closer To CommercialThe United States is one of the largest consumers of meat in the world, with the average American eating 273 pounds of meat per year That’s not to say that tastes aren’t changing: Nearly a quarter of Americans say they have cut down on meat consumption, and 41% of Americans under 50 have tried plant-based meat.

There’s been a wave of companies and academic institutions working on cellular agriculture—a fancy way of saying animal products grown from cells in labs, and not from a meat farm. While lab-grown meat is not available in grocery stores yet, the FDA gave approval to make meat from animal cell culture for the first time in November. Upside Foods, the company making the product, makes chicken from cells grown in tanks.

Joining Ira to talk about cell agriculture are Andrew Stout, cellular agriculture biologist based in Boston, Massachusetts, and Aryé Elfenbein, co-founder of Wildtype, based in San Francisco, California, a company working on growing seafood from cells.

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FDA Expands Pharmacy Options for Abortion PillsThis week, the FDA finalized rules that would allow more retail pharmacies to stock and fill prescriptions for the abortion drug mifepristone. Previously, the medication had been available only via certain specialty pharmacies or via mail order. Now, major retail pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens can apply for permission to fill prescriptions for the medications, which now account for about half of all abortions performed in the United States.

The immediate effects of the rule change are not entirely clear, however—a patchwork of state and local laws govern the availability of these medications, and may prevent their availability in some areas. Around half of the states have some restriction on abortion pills.

Katherine Wu, science writer at The Atlantic, joins Ira to unpack the rule change and other stories from the week in science, including news of a new surging COVID variant called XBB.1.5, the injury to NFL player Damar Hamlin, a stray snowy owl visiting southern California, a likely farewell to the Mars InSight lander, and a study looking at how an island rat population can affect offshore coral reefs.

Meet The Comedians Bringing A Sense Of Humor To ScienceA scientist and a comedian walk into a bar—for an interview about the craft of science comedy. Ira talks to comedians Chuck Nice, Kasha Patel, and Kyle Marian Viterbo about their work bringing the joke format to science communication.

While all three have different approaches to science—whether it’s sneaking the knowledge into “regular” jokes, or going straight for the factual jugular—they agree that the practice of stand-up has much in common with the scientific process. “We normally start with an observation or a question,” says Nice. “The experimentation is the joke itself, seeing whether or not it will get a laugh… you have to tell it in front of an audience. And after that you go, ‘Wow, that sucked. I can’t believe that wasn’t funny.’”

Plus, why comedy can itself be a science, and what good comedy has in common with good (science) communication. “It’s a long term skillset in playing with, and communicating, and connecting with your audience,” says Viterbo. “To be able to really listen to our audience, which these days we need more of.”

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How Redlining Shaped Baltimore’s Tree CanopyRedlining was pervasive in American cities from the 1930s through the late 1960s. Maps were drawn specifically to ensure that Black people were denied mortgages. These discriminatory practices created a lasting legacy of economic and racial inequality which persists today.

Less obvious is how redlining has shaped nature and the urban ecosystem. A recent study found that previously redlined neighborhoods in Baltimore have fewer big old trees and lower tree diversity than other parts of the city. These findings are part of the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, a collaborative research project which has tracked the city’s changing urban environment for the past 25 years.

But it’s not all bad news. The city has a comprehensive tree replanting initiative and is now working to restore its tree canopy. In 2007, Baltimore set a goal to increase the tree cover from 20% to 40% by 2037. Since then, officials have been working closely with non-profit community organizations to plant trees all over the city—especially in previously redlined and otherwise under-served neighborhoods.

Ira talks with Karin Burghardt, assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland about her latest research into the effect of redlining on Baltimore’s tree ecosystem. And later, Ira speaks with Ryan Alston, communications and outreach manager for Baltimore Tree Trust, which has planted over 16,000 trees in the city to date.

What’s Going On Underground With Gophers?Pocket gophers, also known as gophers, are often viewed as a pest species. But their extensive tunnel networks are good for soil and help shape healthy ecosystems everywhere gophers are found.

Producer Christie Taylor talks to two University of Florida researchers who investigated the mystery of the pocket gopher—why does a single gopher build such a large network of tunnels?

What they found led to deeper questions about how gophers get enough food for their extensive energy needs, and whether they might even be cultivating roots in a deliberate act of farming. Plus, why pocket gophers deserve our appreciation as ecosystem engineers.

How This Chemist Is Turning Agricultural Waste Into Water FiltersActivated carbon filters have become common household items as water filters in pitchers, or directly on your faucet. These activated carbon filters are also used in industrial processes like wastewater treatment and to filter out chemicals released in smokestacks.

Dr. Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz, assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at University of California Riverside, has created activated carbon filters from agricultural waste like corn stover and orange peels.

Abdul-Aziz talks with Ira about her research, and what it will take to shift manufacturing processes to be more sustainable and less harmful to the planet.

The Nose Knows When It’s Cold—And It May Get You SickIt’s something most of us know from experience: When it’s cold outside, you’re likely to see a lot of people sneezing and coughing. Upper respiratory infections, like the flu, colds or even COVID-19 are common in winter. But understanding the biological reasons why hasn’t been known—until now.

Researchers at Mass Eye and Ear cracked the mystery in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology last month. The study points to the cold-sensitive nose—specifically extracellular vesicles inside nose cells—as the key immune response impacted by temperature. It turns out that a temperature drop of about 40 degrees Farenheit triggers a severe decrease in the quantity and effectiveness in EVs, decreasing the body’s ability to prevent infection.

Ira speaks to the study’s lead author Benjamin Bleier, associate professor at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston, Massachusetts, about this breakthrough and the impact it could have on future treatments for respiratory illness.

By Hiding Their Blood, These Frogs Pull Off The Ultimate Disappearing ActGlass frogs have a superpower: If you look at them from above, they look like regular green frogs. But if you flip one over, you can see right into their bodies: hearts, intestines, bones, and all.

As these frogs doze off, however, something changes: They disappear. Well, almost. A new study shows that the frogs can hide their red blood cells as they sleep, becoming expert camouflagers.

Dr. Carlos Taboada, a biologist at Duke University, is a co-author on this study and he joins Ira to talk about the glass frogs’ tricks.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Keeping The Bubbly In Your Holidays, With Fizzical ScienceAs the year winds to a close, you may be attending gatherings where a festive flute of champagne is offered. Champagne production starts out with a first fermentation process that turns ordinary grape juice into alcoholic wine. A second fermentation in the wine bottle produces the dissolved carbon dioxide responsible for the thousands of fizzy bubbles that are a distinctive part of the experience of drinking champagne and other sparkling wines.

In this archival interview from 2012, Ira talks with Stanford University chemist Richard Zare about the interplay between temperature, bubbles, the surface of the glass in which the drink is served, and surprising factors such as lipstick chemistry that can influence the sparkliness of each sip, and delves into the age old question of the best ways to keep an opened bottle of champagne bubbly for longer.

What Was It Like To Witness The End Of The Dinosaurs?66 million years ago, a massive asteroid hit what we know today as the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Many people have a general idea of what happened next: The age of the dinosaurs was brought to a close, making room for mammals like us to thrive.

But fewer people know what happened in the days, weeks, and years after impact. Increased research on fossils and geological remains from this time period have helped scientists paint a picture of this era. For large, non-avian dinosaurs like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex, extinction was swift following the asteroid impact. But for creatures that were able to stay underwater and underground, their post-impact stories are more complicated.

Joining Ira to discuss her book The Last Days of the Dinosaurs is Riley Black, science writer based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

‘I Will Not Be Vole Girl’—A Biologist Warms To RodentsThe path to becoming a scientist is not unlike the scientific process itself: Filled with dead ends, detours, and bumps along the way.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Glitter Gets An Eco-Friendly GlimmerGlitter—it’s everywhere this time of year. You open up a holiday card, and out comes a sprinkle of it. And that glitter will seemingly be with you forever, hugging your sweater, covering the floor. But glitter doesn’t stop there. It washes down the drain, and travels into the sewage system and waterways. Since it’s made from microplastics, it’s never going away.

As it turns out, all that glitters is not gold—or even biodegradable.

But what if you could make glitter that was biodegradable? Silivia Vignolini, professor of chemistry at the University of Cambridge joins Ira to discuss her latest discovery—eco-glitter made from plant cellulose.

The Resurrection Of The American ChestnutAt the turn of the 20th century, the American chestnut towered over other trees in forests along the eastern seaboard. These giants could grow up to 100 feet high and 13 feet wide. According to legend, a squirrel could scamper from New England to Georgia on the canopies of American chestnuts, never touching the ground.

Then the trees began to disappear, succumbing to a mysterious fungus. The fungus first appeared in New York City in 1904—and it spread quickly. By the 1950s, the fungus had wiped out billions of trees, effectively driving the American chestnut into extinction.

Now, some people are trying to resurrect the American chestnut—and soon. But not everyone thinks that’s a good idea. Reporter Shahla Farzan and “Science Diction” host and producer Johanna Mayer bring us the story of the death and life of the American chestnut.

A DNA Map You Can Touch—Or Walk ThroughWhen science involves visualizing the intricate movements of DNA through time and space, examining minutiae like how DNA folds and rearranges itself during cell division, or the relationships between miniscule beads on microscopic strings, the data can get complicated really fast.

Which is why biophysicist Adam Lamson is collaborating with artist Laura Splan in a project the two of them call ‘Sticky Settings.’ It’s a kind of an inside joke about the nature of DNA strands, and the kinds of digital transformations that can be applied to data in animation software.

But the result of this partnership has been anything but a joke. From giant tapestries that present maps of DNA in colorful, tactile formats, to otherworldly animations set to music, their art invites a non-scientific audience to literally walk into the processes our own cells are undergoing every day.

Producer Christie Taylor talks with Splan and Lamson about their partnership, and the natural intersection between an artist’s creativity and a scientist’s. Plus how an artist’s interpretation can bring new insights to difficult data.

The Secret Life Of Mistletoe (When It’s Not Christmas)This time of year, it’s not uncommon to see a little sprig of greenery hanging in someone’s doorway. It’s probably mistletoe, the holiday decoration that inspires paramours standing beneath it to kiss.

But as it turns out, we may have miscast mistletoe as the most romantic plant of the Christmas season. In reality, the plant that prompts your lover’s kiss is actually a parasite. Ira talks with evolutionary biologist Josh Der about the myth and tradition behind the parasitic plant, and what it may be up to the other 11 months of the year.

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A Look Back At The Top Science Stories of 20222022 was chock full of big science news. Scientists announced an important milestone toward the feasibility of nuclear fusion. Doctors transplanted a pig heart into a human for the very first time. And NASA returned to the moon with the successful launch of the Artemis I mission.

Ira recaps the year in science news with Tim Revell, deputy United States editor of New Scientist, including what the James Webb Space telescope has taught us about our universe, the significance of ChatGPT on the future of artificial intelligence, the spread of Mpox, and more.

How The Humble Beaver Shaped A ContinentThe American beaver, Castor canadensis, nearly didn’t survive European colonialism in the United States. Prized for its dense, lustrous fur, and also sought after for the oil from its tail glands, the species was killed by the tens of thousands, year after year, until conservation efforts in the late 19th century turned the tide.

In her new book, Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America, author Leila Philipp tells that tale—and the ecological cost of this near-extermination. But she also has good news: beavers, and their skillful engineering of waterways, have the potential to ease the fire, drought and floods of a changing climate. She talks to Ira about the powerful footprint of the humble beaver.

This book is the SciFri Book Club’s January 2023 pick. Find out more about our book club on this month’s main page.

In A New Hampshire Town, It’s Snowmobilers Vs. BeaversOn a Saturday afternoon walk, Kelly Schofield and her husband turned a corner onto a road near their house in Bow. They sensed something was wrong with the beaver pond before they saw it. “You could smell it. It was pretty strong. And then when we got down to the pond where you could really see the pond, you could see it was gone,” she said.The pond was drained. Left behind was a huge tract of mud, and creatures trying to survive. Neighbors took videos of fish floundering as the water receded.

Beavers are beloved by some and considered a nuisance by many. But Schofield and others who lived on the pond agreed: nature’s engineers made their property more valuable, and made their lives better. They took their kids down to the water to learn about frogs and turtles; watched ducks stop by as they migrated south.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

How Science Can Keep Your Christmas Tree Merry And BrightNothing beats the smell of a live Christmas tree in your home, but how can you keep the needles on your tree and off your carpet? Rick Bates, professor of horticulture at Penn State University, offers tips for how to properly care for your Christmas tree this holiday season.

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Scientists Reach Breakthrough In Nuclear FusionThis week, researchers announced a big breakthrough in the field of nuclear fusion. Scientists have been slamming atoms into each other for decades in the hope that they will fuse together, and release more energy than was put in. And for the first time ever, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory did just that in early December, using very powerful lasers.

But just how quickly will the mission to develop scalable nuclear fusion become a reality? Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, about that and other top science news of the week, including an uptick in methane, an investigation into telehealth data sharing practices, and the newly-identified snake clitoris.

A Promising New Treatment Emerges For Multiple MyelomaMultiple myeloma is an incurable blood cancer that affects cells inside a patient’s bone marrow. Nearly all multiple myeloma patients will relapse at some point in their treatment, becoming resistant to first one, then another frontline intervention.

But a new kind of therapy, a bispecific antibody called Talquetamab, has been showing promise in clinical trials—both in treating the cancer, and keeping patients in remission longer. A bispecific antibody works as a kind of bond between a T-cell that might otherwise not be doing its job and the myeloma cell itself, forcing the T-cell to attack the cancer.

Ira talks to Dr. Ajai Chari, who is leading the clinical trials of Talquetamab, about the historic difficulty of treating multiple myeloma, and why this new therapeutic approach may lead to more patients living longer lives.

Growing Christmas Trees In A Warming WorldFor those who celebrate Christmas, the decision over a Christmas tree can be hotly debated. For those who hold out for a real tree, there are dozens of species available for American consumers—catering to Douglas fir aficionados, Fraser fir fans, and Noble admirers. But climate change could soon affect the selection at a tree lot near you.

Chal Landgren, a Christmas tree specialist at Oregon State University, manages a program that for decades has bred and developed seedlings raised to become Christmas trees. Oregon is responsible for growing 25% of all Christmas trees in the country, but heatwaves and drought have made this future tenuous. “My kind of anecdotal information is that between this summer and the heat dome, we probably lost 50% of the seedlings that were planted,” Landgren told Science Friday.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Ready, Set, Play: 2022’s Best Science Fiction GamesThere were many exciting science fiction and science gaming titles released this year. Whether you enjoy video games, board games, learning about mendelian genetics, getting immersed in hard tactical sci-fi, or just want to be a cat wandering around a gorgeous cyberpunk city, we have you covered. Joining us to discuss our favorite sci-fi and science-y games this year (and the slightly recent past) are Maddy Myers, Deputy Editor of Games at Polygon and co-host of the gaming podcast Triple Click, and Mandi Hutchinson and Suzanne Sheldon of Salt And Sass Games.

See the full list at sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Medicine Is Failing Disabled Patients. Meet The Doctors Pushing For Change“More than sixty-one million Americans have disabilities, and increasing evidence documents that they experience health care disparities.” That’s the conclusion of a series of studies, in which researchers pulled back the curtain on how doctors perceive disabled patients.

A study from last year found that more than half of surveyed physicians do not feel fully confident that they can provide disabled and non-disabled patients the same level of care. And in another paper, some doctors went as far to say that if you have a disability then “I am not the doctor for you.”

So how do we change that? Ira talks with two researchers, who are disabled themselves, about how the medical field needs to better serve the disabled community. He hears from Dr. Lisa Iezzoni, an author on those studies and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, who is based at the Health Policy Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Also joining Science Friday is Dr. Feranmi Okanlami, a physician and assistant professor at the University of Michigan Medical School, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

To Stop Whale Strikes, Ships Were Asked to Slow Down. It Worked.The Santa Barbara Channel is like an underwater national park with marine mammals, seabirds, fish and even shipwrecks.

Ocean currents from the north and south meet and mix here to create an ideal feeding grounds for marine life.

“Just the other day I was flying over the channel and we counted over 40 humpback whales in a rather small region feeding on fish,” said Sean Hastings, the Policy Management and Information Officer for the Channel Islands Marine Sanctuary—part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.

We met at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, close to his office, and sat in the museum’s library which is filled with books that are different shades of blues and greens—the colors you’d expect books about the ocean to be.

Hastings continues his story about a recent flight over the channel spotting all those whales.

To read the rest, visit sciencefriday.com.

How The Transistor Transformed The World75 years ago this month, research scientists working at Bell Labs first created, then unveiled to the world a new device—the point contact transistor. Some call it the greatest invention of the 20th century. That first transistor was a clunky looking thing, with two gold contacts on a plastic wedge pressed against a crystal of germanium. But that early device had a magical property: A voltage in one part of the device could control the flow of electrons in another part of the transistor. It could be a switch, or an amplifier.

That device and the ones that followed and improved on it would become an essential part of modern life. From the first transistor radios to modern computers, hearing aids, and more, transistors are everywhere, in great numbers. An ordinary cell phone today likely has billions of transistors in it. In fact, the transistor has become so ubiquitous that one estimate puts the number of transistors on the planet as about three million per square foot.

The three researchers credited with the invention of the transistor, William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain, went on to share the Nobel Prize in Physics—but they saw limited financial gain from their creation, and had a rocky personal relationship. Michael Riordan, a physicist, science historian, and coauthor of “Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age,” joins Ira to look back on the invention, the scientists who got credit for the device, and where transistor technology has gone since 1947.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The Science Behind The Psychedelics BoomThere’s been an explosion of new research into therapeutic uses for psychedelics. This includes drugs like psilocybin, the hallucinogenic chemical found in “magic mushrooms,” and ketamine—which was originally used as an anesthetic, and later became a popular party drug also known as “special K.”

Esketamine, a form of ketamine, was approved by the FDA in 2019 for use in treatment resistant depression. And just last month Colorado residents voted to legalize medicinal use of psilocybin. Following on the heels of Oregon’s legalization in 2020, which is now in the process of being implemented.

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed promising results in using psilocybin to help patients with treatment-resistant depression. About a third of those who received the highest dose were in remission 3 weeks later. This was the largest look at psilocybin’s effect on depression to date, involving 233 participants across ten countries in Europe.

Ira talks with Dr. Steve Levine, senior vice president of patient access and medical affairs at COMPASS Pathways, the company that funded the study.

Later, Ira takes a closer look into the latest psychedelic research and takes listener calls with Dr. Gerard Sanacora, professor of psychiatry and director of the Yale Depression Research Program at the Yale School of Medicine, and Dr. Alissa Bazinet, Clinical Psychologist, Co-Founder and Director of Research and Development at the Sequoia Center, and Associate Director of the Social Neuroscience and Psychotherapy Lab at Oregon Health and Science University.

How Will AI Image Generators Affect Artists?Back in August, controversy erupted around the winning submission of the Colorado State Fair’s art content. The winning painting wasn’t made by a human, but by an artificial intelligence app called Midjourney, which takes text prompts and turns them into striking imagery, with the help of a neural network and an enormous database of images.

AI-based text-to-image generators have been around for years, but their outputs were rudimentary and rough. The State Fair work showed this technology had taken a giant leap forward in its sophistication. Realistic, near-instant image generation was suddenly here—and reactions were just as potent as their creations.

Tech enthusiasts lauded the achievement, while artists were largely concerned and critical. If anyone could make a painting in just a few seconds, why would someone need to commission an artist to produce an illustration, or even bother spending years learning art at all?

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Wish A Happy 190th Birthday To Jonathan The TortoiseA birthday should always be celebrated. For Jonathan the tortoise, who turned 190 this week, that celebration involved a salad cake and a three-day party. Jonathan is the oldest known living animal, hatched in 1832. Jonathan, who calls the island of St. Helena home, may be blind and unable to smell, but he maintains a good quality of life and even continues to mate with his companions. Jonathan’s ripe old age surpasses the typical tortoise life expectancy of 150 years.

In other “old” news, scientists have found fragments of DNA one million years older than the previous record: making these samples two million years old. The fragments were found in Ice Age sediment in Northern Greenland, and are from a time where the climate was much warmer than it is now.

Vox staff writer Umair Irfan joins Ira to talk about these and other science stories of the week, including an end to the monoclonal antibodies we have for COVID and the FDA’s first approval of fecal transplant therapy.

The Joy And Sadness Of Bird CountingThe state of the birds is not looking good. That’s the conclusion from a new report that looks at decades of community-collected population data from surveys like the annual Christmas Bird Count and the Breeding Bird Survey. Species that inhabit grasslands seem to fare the worst, with their populations down over 30 percent in the last 50 years. Meanwhile, dozens of newly identified “tipping point” species have lost 50 percent of their populations in the same time, and are poised to lose the same proportion in the coming half century.

Dr. Amanda Rodewald of Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology helps unpack the report’s key findings, including the good news: Decades of cooperative efforts to protect waterfowl have paid off in thriving duck populations. Rodewald explains what this can tell us about reversing declines in other habitats.

Plus, birder and science writer Ryan Mandelbaum joins Ira and listeners to talk about the joys of winter birding, the upcoming Christmas Bird Count, and the feathery sightings that brighten our lives.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Hawai’i’s Mauna Loa Volcanic Eruption Sparing Homes For NowHawai’i’s famed Mauna Loa volcano began to erupt this past weekend, after weeks of increasing small earthquakes. So far the flow of lava is posing no risk to homes in nearby Hilo, though that could change rapidly. But in the meantime, an important climate research lab is without power and unable to make measurements. And as lava flows and cools into new rock formations, one unusual product, called Pele’s Hair, looks uniquely soft and straw-like—while being dangerously sharp.

Ira talks to FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth about the less high profile side effects of a major volcanic eruption. Plus, a new analysis of the magma under Yellowstone National Park, the leadership potential for wolves infected with a cat parasite, and other research stories.

A Nobel Prize For Chemistry Work ‘Totally Separate From Biology’This year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and K. Barry Sharpless of the Scripps Research Institute “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.” In “click chemistry,” molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently to let chemists build more complicated molecules. But bioorthogonal chemistry takes that work one step farther, allowing the technique to be used within living organisms without damaging cells.

“When someone is thinking outside the box, or in a very different way, we like to think of that as orthogonal thinking,” Dr. Bertozzi explained. “So biorthogonal means not interacting with biology. Totally separate from biology.” Her research began with an interest in developing ways to see specific sugar molecules on the surface of cells. But it has developed into an approach that can be used for advanced drug delivery in fields such as chemotherapy. Bertozzi joins Ira Flatow for a wide-ranging conversation about her research, chemistry education, her early music career, and the importance of diversity in the field of chemistry.

Scientists Discover What Makes Jazz Music SwingSwing is a propulsive, groovy feeling that makes you want to move with the music. It’s hard to put into words, but if you listen to jazz, you’ve probably felt it yourself. Now, researchers have arrived at a better understanding of what generates that feeling: Their work, published in Communications Physics, focuses on timing differences between a group’s soloist and its rhythm section.

Joining Ira to discuss the new findings are Theo Geisel, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization, and Javier Arau, a saxophonist and the founder and executive director of the New York Jazz Academy.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Consider Empathy For The Yeti Crab (And Other Sea Creatures, Too)It’s easy to empathize with certain animals: soft fur, big eyes, and family units make it simple to relate to creatures like panda bears, cats, and dogs. Even some undersea critters like dolphins and whales have large fan bases among land-dwelling humans.

But the ocean is filled with many more creatures than just mammals, and many of them fall in the category of “weird.” Defector staff writer Sabrina Imbler thinks a lot about these critters that evade our categorization of “cute.” Things like deep sea worms, jelly-like invertebrates called salps, and the ghostly, hairy yeti crab are Imbler’s bread and butter.

Imbler’s new book, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, is filled with essays comparing aspects of their life to bizarre creatures of the deep sea. From exploring their queer identity through the underwater dance parties of the yeti crab, to grappling with living as a mixed-race person through hybridized fish, each essay is poetic and intimate. SciFri producer Kathleen Davis chats with Imbler from their home in Brooklyn, New York, about the importance of finding empathy with the strangest creatures on our planet.

Read an excerpt from How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures here.

Advances In Pig-To-Human Organ Transplantation Hold PromiseEarlier this year a pig heart was successfully transplanted into a human for the very first time. Unfortunately, the patient lived for just under 2 months. But it still marks a big milestone in the field of xenotransplantation, or transplanting organs from one species to another.

Scientists are optimistic that advances in pig-to-human organ transplantation could save the lives of some of the over 100,000 people in the waiting for organ donations in the United States.

Ira talks with Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, professor of surgery and director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, about what he’s learned in the 10 months since the historic heart transplant, and about the barriers to widespread acceptance of interspecies organ transplantation.

Later, Ira talks with Dr. Megan Sykes, professor and director of the Center for Translational Immunology at Columbia University about how scientists decided that pigs were suitable organ donors in the first place, and the latest advancements in pig-to-human organ transplantation research.

Teaching Your Smart Devices To Get AlongIf you’ve ever tried to connect a new Internet of Things device in your home, such as a smart plug or light, you know it can be a complicated process. Not every device works with every other device, and even the most tech-savvy customer may find themself turning to Reddit for help troubleshooting.

These are problems a new Internet of Things standard called Matter aims to solve. Created by a coalition of home device companies, Matter allows devices that run it to speak to each other, set up seamlessly, and communicate securely. The standard officially launched in early November with dozens of new Matter-enabled devices.

Ira talks to Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge about the problems Matter aims to solve, and some of the practical hitches along the road to a more seamless smart home.

Putting Tap Water To The TestEvery time you turn on the tap, you become the last stop in a complicated journey.

Water from snow and streams collects in lakes and reservoirs, and cities pump it through complex filtration systems to make it pure enough to drink. The particular balance of invisible minerals in each pour from your kitchen tap makes for subtle differences in every glass. One might call it the terroir of tap water.

In a bustling hotel ballroom, surrounded by exhibition booths showing off the latest pipes, pumps and filters, a panel of judges gathered to spot those differences.

I was one of them.

The American Water Works Association assembled a panel of water wonks for its Rocky Mountain regional meeting in the ski resort town of Keystone. Here, we put tap water to the test, blind tasting samples from six cities across Colorado to crown a winner.

To read the rest of the article, visit sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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From Tiny Krill To Concrete Jungles: 2022’s Best Science Books For Kids The holidays are right around the corner, which means for those who give gifts in December, now is the time to start putting together that shopping list. If you have a young person in your life who loves science, why not expand their library and get a book or two?

Joining Ira to give their recommendation for the best children’s science books of the year—both fiction and nonfiction—are Melissa Stewart, science book author based in Boston, Massachusetts, and Kristina Holzweiss, education technology specialist based on Long Island, New York.

See the books at sciencefriday.com.

Indigenous Knowledge Is Central To Climate Solutions As the United States observes Earth Day this year, many will be thinking about their personal relationship with—and responsibility to—the planet. But in an era of multiple planetary crises, including extinctions, global warming, and contaminated water, what about the Indigenous peoples whose millennia-old relationship with their land has been disrupted and sometimes severed by colonialism and other displacements?

Indigenous environmental scientist and author Jessica Hernandez talks to Ira about the harms the Western science has perpetuated against colonized people, as white environmentalists created national parks on Indigenous lands and “helicopter scientists” continue to do research in the global south while using the wealth of Western institutions. And she explains why greater recognition of Indigenous science, and partnerships that center Indigenous peoples and their research questions, is good for the entire planet.

Prizes For Science That Makes You Laugh, Then Think Prizes went to researchers for analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand. And for creating a moose crash-test dummy. And for explaining, mathematically, why success most often goes not to the most talented people, but instead to the luckiest.

If that sounds like a strange set of awards—that’s because it’s the Ignobel Prize Ceremony. This year, for the 32nd year in a row, laureates gathered (virtually) to be recognized for their unusual contributions to the world of science and engineering. In the words of Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and awards ceremony ringleader, “It’s not about good or bad. If you win an Ignobel Prize, it means you’ve done something that will immediately cause anyone who hears about it to laugh, and then to think about it for the next few days or weeks.”

Abrahams joins Ira to talk about the backstory of the awards, and to introduce some highlights from this year’s online prize ceremony.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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This crossing will reconnect habitats that have been cut off from each other for three quarters of a century and it’ll do it over a highway that is constantly buzzing with cars — 300,000 pass by this spot every single day.

In this piece we’re going on a geography voyage — from the north side of the highway to the south, and up the hills, above the highway, to get the real view.

We’ll start here — there’s a big open space on the northern side of the highway. It’s at the entrance to Liberty Canyon and where I meet Beth Pratt.

To continue reading, go to sciencefriday.com.

Over 5,000 Exoplanets Have Now Been Discovered In March, the NASA Exoplanet Archive logged the 5,000th confirmed planet outside of our solar system. This marks a huge advance since the first exoplanet discovery in 1992, when astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12. Now, the Archive contains confirmed sightings of planets in a wide range of shapes and sizes—from “hot Jupiters” to “super Earths”—but they still haven’t found any solar systems just like our own. In many cases, all astronomers know about these distant planets is their size and how far away from their stars they orbit.

The TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission currently in orbit may eventually add ten thousand more candidates to the lists of possible planets. The Nancy Grace Roman Space telescope and ESA’s ARIEL mission, both planned for launch later this decade, could add thousands more. And the James Webb Space Telescope, currently undergoing commissioning, will attempt to characterize the atmospheres of some of the planets astronomers have already discovered.

Astronomer Jessie Christiansen, the NASA Exoplanet Archive Project science lead, joins John Dankosky to talk about what we know about planets around distant suns, and how researchers are working to learn more about these far-off worlds.

Scientists Release The First Fully Complete Human Genome Two decades ago, scientists announced they had sequenced the human genome. What you might not know is that there were gaps in that original sequence—about 8% was completely blank.

Now, after a years-long global collaboration, scientists have finally released the first fully complete assembly of the human genome. Researchers believe these missing pieces might be the key to understanding how DNA varies between people.

Six scientific papers on the topic were published in a special edition of the academic journal Science.

Ira talks with Karen Miga and Adam Phillippy, co-founders of the Telomere to Telomere Consortium, an international effort that led to the assembly of this new fully complete human genome.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The Science Behind Your Favorite Thanksgiving Dishes Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and for many people, that means it’s time to start thinking about what will be on the menu for dinner that night. Many people will opt for a classic turkey: others, a vegetarian-focused meal. Regardless of the plan, preparing food for the holiday can take some planning, and there’s a lot of science that goes into it.

Cookbook author Kenji López-Alt thinks about the science behind cooking a lot. He’s the author of The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science, and he lists Thanksgiving as his favorite holiday. That makes him the expert on all things brine, sides, and pie. López-Alt joins Ira from his home in Seattle, Washington, to answer questions about the science behind Thanksgiving foods.

NASA’s Massive Rocket Finally Launches To The Moon Early Wednesday morning the Artemis 1 mission launched, the first integrated flight test of NASA’s Space Launch System—a massive rocket that NASA hopes will enable an eventual lunar landing. The uncrewed launch was a long time coming. Elements of the program have been under development for over a decade. If all goes according to plan, a second Artemis flight—this time, with crew—will take place in 2024, with a crewed lunar landing in 2025.

Another component of the program, a tiny spacecraft called Capstone, entered into lunar orbit several days prior to Artemis. It will test a complicated orbit planned for a potential lunar space station called Gateway, which would serve as a way station for astronauts moving between Earth and the Moon.

Ira talks with Jim Free, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development, and Brendan Byrne, space reporter for WMFE and host of the Are We There Yet podcast, about the test flight and what lies ahead for the Artemis program.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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There Are Now Eight Billion People On Earth. What’s Next? Humankind just hit a big milestone this week: a world population of eight billion people. A hundred years ago, there were less than two billion, and now we’ve more than quadrupled that. But after decades of quick population growth, what will the next few decades hold?

Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, explains this to Ira live from the studio. They also talk about other science news this week, like a new initiative from COP 27 to help transition poor countries away from fossil fuels, an ambitious plan to put solar panels in space, how mental health apps aren’t protecting user data, what the discovery of the earliest cooked meal in history tells us about human evolution, and the very first lab-grown meat to gain FDA approval.

Groundwater Contamination In Springfield, Missouri Kept Secret From Residents Early in 2019, Ed Galbraith faced a crowd of some 200 unhappy Springfield, Missouri residents. He wanted to make amends. Galbraith, then director of Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ environmental quality division, acknowledged that the state agency in charge of protecting the environment should have announced sooner that contaminated water had spread from an old industrial site near the Springfield-Branson National Airport. Residents had recently found out that a harmful chemical known to cause cancer had been detected in the groundwater. The contamination came from the site of the now-shuttered Litton Systems, a former defense contractor that had employed thousands of people in Springfield to make circuit boards for the Navy and telecommunications industry.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Can A New Surge Of Tech Interest Make The Metaverse A Thing? Late last year, Mark Zuckerberg took the company then known as Facebook in a new direction. He renamed it Meta, short for “metaverse.” And he promised the company would go all in on building a virtual reality world like the first famous metaverse—the fictional topic of Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash.”

While many companies have tried to make metaverses in the 30 years since “Snow Crash” came out, including the popular virtual world called Second Life, we seem to be entering a new era of metaverse hype: besides Zuckerberg, Apple seems to be investing in a VR world. And even Nike wants to make a metaverse.

So what are users actually getting if these companies succeed at their goals? And are there other, perhaps better, ways to go about bringing people together virtually? Ira talks to science fiction writer and tech journalist Annalee Newitz, and Avi Bar-Zeev, a pioneer of extended-reality technologies for companies like Disney, Apple, and others.

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Science Was Big On The Ballot This Week. Here’s What Went Down Another chaotic election week has come and gone. Across the U.S., science was on the ballot, and people cast their votes on issues like healthcare, climate change infrastructure, conservation, and abortion policy.

Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor at WNYC in New York City, joins Ira to talk about how the science ballot initiatives panned out this week. They discuss the outcomes of the abortion initiatives, California’s move to ban flavored tobacco, and what this election could mean for the future of the U.S.’ climate goals.

Plus, they discuss the mess that is COP 27 climate conference, why this hurricane season is so strange, how an in utero procedure successfully treated a rare genetic disorder, and new footage of octopuses hurling objects at each other.

As Anthony Fauci Steps Down, A Look Back At His Storied Career In recent years, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, has become a prominent public figure and one of the public faces of the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, Science Friday has been talking to Dr. Fauci for decades, beginning in 1994, about topics ranging from HIV/AIDS to Ebola, interviewing him about everything from the Zika virus to advances in allergy research. Fauci has been in his current role at NIAID for 38 years, and has served as an advisor to seven presidents. He is the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

He spoke with Ira about his career in medical research, the things he’s most proud of achieving in his time with the NIH, and the challenges the nation still faces in dealing with the pandemic, and other disease outbreaks yet to come.

New Documentary Is Endearing Tribute To NASA’s Rover Program In 2003, the world became captivated by two rovers launched by NASA on a mission to Mars, known as Spirit and Opportunity. The rovers were sent to the Red Planet to discover what was on the surface. The rovers were only expected to last 90 days. Instead, Opportunity led a 15-year life of discovery, including the bombshell that Mars may once have been suitable to sustain microbial life.

The story of these twin rovers is the subject of a new documentary out this month: “Good Night Oppy,” evoking the nickname of the Opportunity rover. The film features footage taken over nearly two decades, from the building of the rovers to recent interviews with scientists involved in the mission.

Ira speaks with “Good Night Oppy” director Ryan White, as well as featured scientist Doug Ellison, engineering camera payload uplink lead at NASA, based in Alhambra, California.

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How Past Extinctions At The La Brea Tar Pit Can Teach Us About Our Climate Future If you drive through Los Angeles, you’ll pass by some of California’s most iconic sites—the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Universal Studios, the Santa Monica Pier. But if you don’t look for it, you may miss the La Brea tar pits—a place where Ice Age life from around 50 thousand years ago got trapped and preserved in sticky black ooze. Visitors can see megafauna, including skeletons of saber tooth cats and dire wolves, along with a vast collection of specimens, including things as small as beetle wings and rodent dung.

La Brea was recently named as one of the world’s most important geological heritage sites by the International Union of Geological Sciences. The museum is currently planning an extensive redesign that will seek to connect visitors to research, offering lessons about climate, extinction, and survival. Dr. Lori Bettison-Varga, president and director of the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, joins Ira to explain the significance of the site, and how a trove of Ice Age specimens can serve as a modern-day climate laboratory.

Across The Country, RSV Is Overwhelming Medical Systems If you have a child—or interact with children on a regular basis—odds are you’ve heard about a very contagious virus: RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus. This isn’t a new illness, but it has been surging across the country. This has left parents and caretakers stressed about how to keep their kids safe.

Hospitals across the country are having trouble coping with this year’s surge, which has come earlier and stronger than normal. This week, Science Friday is spotlighting two regions affected by the wave: Wisconsin and Washington, D.C.

The two regions have their own challenges when it comes to the RSV surge. In Wisconsin, care deserts and a large elderly population make containing this virus important to avoid dangerous consequences. In Washington, D.C., hospitals are feeling the effects of years of shutting down pediatric units to make room for adult beds.

Joining Ira to talk about RSV in Wisconsin and Washington D.C. are two journalists who have been following this: Jenny Peek, news editor for Wisconsin Public Radio and Aja Drain, reporter at WAMU public radio.

What You Should Know About This RSV Surge Respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, is the number one cause of infant hospitalizations in the United States, and cases are soaring this year. Because young children have spent part—if not most—of their childhoods isolated, masking, or staying home due to the pandemic, many of their immune systems haven’t been exposed to RSV until now. It’s caused a huge surge in cases, and placed a heavy burden on pediatric clinics and hospitals.

What do you need to know about the spike in infections? Ira talks with Dr. Carol Kao, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who has treated RSV for years. They dig into why this surge is happening now, the basics of the virus, how RSV is treated, and where we stand with an RSV vaccine.

Mapping Brain Connections Reinforces Theories On Human Cognition Brain regions are associated with different functions—the hippocampus is responsible for long-term memory, for example, and the frontal lobe for personality, behavior, and emotions.

After decades of research using sophisticated brain imaging, there’s a growing consensus among neuroscientists that understanding the connections between brain regions may be even more important than the functions of the regions themselves. When it comes to understanding human cognition, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Ira speaks with Dr. Stephanie Forkel, assistant professor at the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, who wrote a review article in the journal Science about the importance of brain connectivity, and what it means for the future of neuroscience.

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Why Contraceptive Failure Rates Matter In A Post-Roe America Birth control options have improved over the decades. Oral contraceptives are now safer, with fewer side effects. Intrauterine devices can prevent pregnancy 99.6% of the time. But no prescription drug or medical device works flawlessly, and people’s use of contraception is inexact. “No one walks into my office and says, ‘I plan on missing a pill,’” said obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Mitchell Creinin. “There is no such thing as perfect use, we are all real-life users,” said Creinin, a professor at the University of California-Davis who wrote a widely used textbook that details contraceptive failure rates.

Even when the odds of contraception failure are small, the number of incidents can add up quickly. More than 47 million women of reproductive age in the United States use contraception and, depending on the birth control method, hundreds of thousands of unplanned pregnancies can occur each year. With most abortions outlawed in at least 13 states and legal battles underway in others, contraceptive failures now carry bigger stakes for tens of millions of Americans.

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The Quest For New COVID-19 Solutions As we head towards our third pandemic winter, the nation still is facing about 2,500 weekly deaths from COVID, and over 3,000 people a day entering the hospital due to the virus. Dr. William Haseltine is chair and president of ACCESS Health International, a former professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and the founder of several biotechnology companies, including Human Genome Sciences. “This thing knows everything about our immune systems,” Haseltine says. “We have to find new drugs that it has never seen before, and new combinations of those. That’s what’s worked for HIV. That’s what we have to do now—and we’re doing a very poor job of that.”

Haseltine joins Ira to help explore the viral landscape, and where he sees viral research headed—from new vaccines to antiviral drugs and antibody cocktails.

Can Animals Evolve To Survive The Anthropocene? When you think of evolution, you might imagine a slow process that takes millions of years. Take Tiktaalik, for example: The ancient fish, an important human ancestor, took 375 million years from climbing out of water to get to the humans you see now.Now that we’re here, we’re changing the world at an unprecedented rate. Threats like climate change, deforestation, and pollution are wiping out entire animal species in just one generation. Can evolution punch back? Or are some species fighting a losing battle?

Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton joins Ira to discuss rapid evolution in the anthropocene, and whether that’s enough to keep these species afloat.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Using Family Photos Of Fall Foliage To Track Climate Change Leaf-peeping, or tourism based on observing the colors of fall foliage, is a big industry in parts of the Northeast. So as leaves continue to change across the northern United States with the turning of the seasons, researchers are working to better understand how climate change may be affecting fall colors—changes that may affect the bottom line for those tourism-rich areas. But to tease out the factors involved with the timing of peak leaf color, the researchers need data on when leaves started to change color, when they arrive at their peak color, and when the leaf-peeping season ends. Unfortunately, satellite imagery showing leaf color is only available dating back to the year 2000—and so Stephanie Spera of the University of Richmond is trying to get data in some unconventional ways.

Spera and colleagues are engaging in a massive citizen-science project, asking for tourist snapshots of Acadia National Park that show the colors of fall. While they’ll accept your cellphone selfies, they’re especially interested in older, pre-digital images—the sort of vacation pictures that might be in your family albums, or in shoe boxes in an elderly relative’s attic. Adding those images to their data set, she says, will both help them to validate the satellite data and to extend the boundaries of their data set outwards.

Heather Goldstone, host and executive producer of Living Lab Radio on WCAI, joins Ira to talk about the project and how listeners can participate.

The ‘Grandfather’ Of The Voyager Mission Retires 45 years ago, the Voyagers 1 and 2 spacecraft were launched into the cosmos from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Since then, they’ve traveled over 14 billion miles from Earth, on a grand tour of our solar system, and beyond. The mission is still running, making Voyager 1 the farthest human-built artifact from Earth.

Even before launch, scientists and engineers were hard at work planning and designing the mission. Last week, NASA announced the retirement of Dr. Ed Stone, who some called the ‘grandfather’ of the mission. Dr. Stone shepherded the Voyager program as its project scientist for 50 full years.

In this conversation from 2013, just after Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space, Ira spoke with Dr. Stone for a status update on the mission.

A Flaw in Human Judgment: How Making Decisions Isn’t As Objective As You Think If two people are presented with the same set of facts, they will often draw different conclusions. For example, judges often dole out different sentences for the same case, which can lead to an unjust system. This unwanted variability in judgments in which we expect uniformity is what psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls “noise.”

The importance of thoughtful decision-making has come in stark relief during the pandemic and in the events leading up to the January 6th insurrection.

Ira talks with Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman about the role of ‘noise’ in human judgment, his long career studying cognitive biases, and how systematic decision-making can result in fewer errors.

Kahneman is the co-author of “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment,” along with Oliver Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, now available in paperback.

Frenemies, Lovers, And The Fate Of The Cosmos: Our Galaxy Tells All Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 13.6 billion years old, all-knowing, and a little sassy. It has a rich social life of friends, frenemies, and even love interests—all other galaxies in the local group, including the stunning Andromeda. And the Milky Way is a little disappointed that we’ve stopped telling as many stories about it.

Or at least, that’s how folklorist and astronomer Dr. Moiya McTier imagines the galaxy’s personality when writing her new book, The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy. The book stretches from the beginning of the universe to the birth of our planet, and then on to the eventual theoretical end of the cosmos. Along the way, we learn both the science of how stars form and galaxies collide, and the many stories and myths humans have told about these bodies throughout our relatively brief lives.

McTier joins Ira to tell all (on behalf of the Milky Way), and explain the importance of story in scientific knowledge and discovery.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Why Do Cats Purr? An Investigation Into A Purr-fect Mystery Science Friday recently received a voicemail from a listener named Violet from Maui, Hawai’i, who wanted to know: Why do cats purr?

We wanted to see what other cat lovers knew about cat purring. So we sent our talented SciFri colleagues Diana Montano and Kyle Marian Viterbo to the Meow Parlor, a cat cafe in New York City to find out.

Guest host Katherine Wu, who recently wrote about why cats purr for The Atlantic, also talks with Robert Eklund, professor of language, culture, and phonetics at Linköping University in Linköping, Sweden. He explains what we do and don’t know about how and why cats purr.

How To Digitally Recreate Darth Vader’s Voice From A War Zone James Earl Jones played Darth Vader for 45 years. But this September, he officially stepped down from the role. Fear not, Star Wars fans—the villain isn’t gone for good. Instead, the filmmakers have teamed up with the Ukrainian AI company Respeecher to recreate his voice.

Respeecher can convert one person’s speech into the voice of another. The company’s work has appeared in the Star Wars canon already, as Young Luke Skywalker in “The Mandalorian” and “The Book of Boba Fett.” And just last month, they debuted their Darth Vader mimic in the T.V. show “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

They always knew that it would be challenging to recreate Vader’s iconic voice. But their job got a whole lot harder when Russian troops invaded their nation.

Respeecher chief technology officer Dmytro Bielievtsov and sound engineer Bogdan Belyaev join guest host Kathleen Davis to talk about their work.

Toxic Death Cap Mushrooms Take Root In The Mountain West Toxic mushrooms are not unusual in the Mountain West.

“This is probably a lepiota,” said Susan Stacy, looking at a mushroom on a recent afternoon in a Boise, Idaho, neighborhood not far from downtown. “See that little dark nub in the middle and little flecks around here?”

Stacy turned to her mushroom identification book.

“Edibility: to be avoided. Perhaps poisonous,” she said.

While this little mushroom could be problematic for a curious dog or child, it doesn’t compare to one of the world’s deadliest mushrooms – which Stacy discovered in Boise last September.

She remembers that it was a hot day, and she decided to take a detour from her normal route to check out a busier area where many lawns were “generously” watered.

“And here I come upon this mushroom, and I knew it was an Amanita because I had seen them before. And an Amanita, to my mind, is a gorgeous, statuesque, elegant creation. They’re just stately,” she said.

The genus Amanita includes, incidentally, the species on which the red and white mushroom emoji is likely based, which also happens to be poisonous.

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Will A Hotter World Make Jellyfish Haute Cuisine? The ocean is filled with delicious ingredients, but our favorite seafood items might not stick around on menus forever … thanks to climate change taking its toll on fisheries. As a result, scientists are thinking more and more about what the future of food is going to look like—what ingredients we should eat more, and what we should eat less. That could mean we’ll eat more items like kelp, oysters, and mussels, which are a great source of nutrients, since they can be sustainably harvested.

But there’s another seafood that’s being encouraged as a food of the future. But it’s a little more unfamiliar—and maybe surprising—to most of the world. It’s jellyfish. Although it’s a fairly common ingredient in several countries, like China and Vietnam, it hasn’t quite broken into the international market yet.

Guest host Katherine Wu talks with Agostino Petroni, a journalist based in Rome who reported on the topic for Hakai Magazine, and Dr. Antonella Leone, a researcher at the Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Sciences of Food Production, based in Lecce, Italy. They talk about the benefits of jellyfishing, what it’s going to take to catapult jellyfish into the international seafood market, and their favorite jellyfish recipes.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Don’t Trust What You See On TikTok This Election Season Midterm elections in the United States are just under two weeks away. And new research suggests a significant risk of misinformation for American social media users—particularly from the video-sharing platform TikTok. Cybersecurity researchers at NYU published their findings after submitting misleading advertisements to YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok.

The ads contained either the wrong dates or voter requirements for upcoming elections, or perpetuated narratives about the validity of past elections. And while TikTok prohibits all political advertising, 90% of those test ads were approved. Meanwhile, YouTube performed the best in rejecting all of the ads, and Facebook accepted about 30% of English-language ads.

New Scientist’s Tim Revell joins co-host Kathleen Davis to talk about the misinformation implications of social media advertisements. Plus, the dramatic electrical charge of swarming honeybees, the good news about declining monkeypox cases, and other stories.

When Studying Ecology Means Celebrating Its Gifts Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants was first published nearly a decade ago—but in 2020, the book made the New York Times best-seller lists, propelled mainly by word of mouth. The book explores the lessons and gifts that the natural world, especially plants, have to offer to people. Kimmerer writes that improving our relationship with nature requires the acknowledgment and celebration of a reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. “I think we can care better for one another, for the land, and in fact we can do better science when we consider all of these streams of evidence, and assumptions, about the living world,” says Kimmerer.

Looking Ahead To Our Third Pandemic Winter As winter approaches in the northern hemisphere, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are monitoring the rise of new COVID-19 variants—all, so far, descendants of 2021’s highly transmissible Omicron variant, whose emergence kicked off a deadly winter wave. Will any new variants emerge with the same potential?

Guest host Katherine Wu talks to viral evolution researcher Dr. Verity Hill about the forces that may encourage the emergence of another concerning variant, and why new variants are more likely to evade our immune system’s defenses.

Meanwhile, pediatric departments around the country are seeing more children with influenza and RSV than usual, heralding an early and potentially more severe start to the winter respiratory virus season. Duke University’s Dr. Ibukun Kalu joins to share about how multiple viruses may add to the risks COVID poses, as well as the toll the pandemic has already taken on healthcare’s capacity.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The Science Behind Why You Should Ask For Help Sometimes asking for help—even for the smallest of favors—can feel awkward, or like you’re inconveniencing someone else. But the odds are, you’re probably wrong. Studies show that people are much more willing to lend a helping hand than you would think, and both parties usually end up happier.

Guest host Shahla Farzan talks with Dr. Xuan Zhao, a psychologist at Stanford University, about the psychology behind asking for help.

A Possible Achilles Heel For Troublesome PFAS Chemicals Long-lasting chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are used widely in everything from firefighting foam to microwavable popcorn bags. The chemicals are a popular component of polymer coatings that resist heat, grease, stains and water.

PFAS compounds (a family that includes roughly 12,000 different substances are often called “forever chemicals” in popular science coverage, because they’re designed to be super stable and don’t break down in the environment. But what makes them last “forever” from a chemistry perspective? And what can we do about it?

Current PFAS disposal methods are expensive and labor-intensive, blasting the chemicals with temperatures over 1,000 degrees C in a high-pressure environment. But a research study published in Science has found a possible Achilles’ heel: a weak spot in the chemical bonds. The research points to a new possible method for disposing of PFAS chemicals, which uses special reagents to knock off a group of oxygen atoms at the tail end of PFAS, triggering a cascade of reactions that breaks the PFAS chemicals down into harmless components.

The paper’s lead author, Brittany Trang, joins guest host Shahla Farzan to discuss this development in PFAS research.

Engineered Bacteria Might Help The Dream Of Mixed Plastic Recycling We’ve all been there—standing by the recycling bin, holding some sort of plastic object, and trying to figure out if it can go in the bin.

There are many different types of plastic out there, from the film that wraps the meat at the grocery store, to the plastic in your milk jug. But they all differ in their ability to be recycled, and in the specific procedures and recipes that it takes to process them. Writing in the journal Science, a team of researchers describes a demonstration process that can break down a mixed bag of plastics, even dirty ones, and produce a single chemical output that could be used in industry.

The process starts with a catalytic oxidation process involving metal salts, an acetic acid solvent, heat, and oxygen. That process is essentially a “controlled combustion,” says Dr. Gregg Beckham of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The oxidation process breaks the plastics in the reaction into a blend of liquid chemicals. Then, that blend of products is fed to a strain of engineered bacteria that have been designed to be able to eat each of those chemical breakdown products, and use them to make a specified product.

Beckham says that in the initial experiment, they created two different products—one a biodegradable plastic, and one a precursor to a type of recyclable nylon—but the method could conceivably be adapted to any product that bacteria can be enabled to grow via synthetic biology. Beckham joins SciFri’s John Dankosky to talk about the demonstration, and the challenges of moving this technology out of the laboratory and into an operating recycling process.

How Understanding Depression Goes Beyond The Scientific Method Science has yet to pinpoint exactly why some people experience depression and others do not. And it may never be able to give a fully satisfying answer. While people with depression may have similar symptoms, each person’s story is just a little different. And there’s no “one size fits all” treatment.

Guest host John Dankosky talks with John Moe, who has spent a lot of time thinking about the nuances of depression through a humorous lens. Moe is the host and creator of the podcast Depresh Mode and author of The Hilarious World of Depression, which shares a name with his previous podcast.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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A Boost For U.S. Electric Vehicle Battery Production This week, the Biden administration announced it would issue grants totaling some $2.8 billion to increase U.S.-based production of electric vehicle batteries and mining of the minerals used in their manufacture. The grants would go to companies in 12 states to help boost domestic production of key battery ingredients such as lithium, graphite and nickel, reducing the country’s reliance on China and other foreign battery producers. Casey Crownhart, a climate and technology reporter at MIT Technology Review, joins John Dankosky to talk about the plan and the road ahead for U.S.-based electric vehicles.

They also talk about a surge in renewables use in Europe, new options for COVID vaccine boosters, charges of environmental racism against the state of Louisiana, and new research into why some of us seem to be magnets for mosquito bites.

Climate Change’s Toll On Our Social Fabric Climate change is already driving many visible effects in our world, from extreme flooding to the extinction of species. It threatens agriculture and life on coastal lands. But researchers predict a changing climate can also affect humans in other, more nuanced ways, including changes in human behavior and mental health.

Co-host Shahla Farzan talks to Stanford researcher Marshall Burke, whose research has looked at the link between climate extremes, including heat waves and drought, and historic and contemporary conflicts. Plus, John Dankosky interviews Queens College neuroscientist Yoko Nomura about her work finding high rates of childhood psychiatric disorders among children whose mothers were pregnant, and under extreme stress, during 2012’s Superstorm Sandy—a hint at the generational toll of intensifying disasters. They discuss why the answer to both challenges may be providing more social and economic support to those most vulnerable to stress as the globe warms.

The Mysterious Case Of Alaska’s Crabs For the first time ever, the Bering Sea snow crab fishery will not open for the upcoming season. Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game announced the closure Monday afternoon. The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will also be closed this year — for a second year in a row. Gabriel Prout co-owns the F/V Silver Spray with his dad and brothers. The Silver Spray is a 116-foot steel crabber that’s homeported in Kodiak. He said he wasn’t surprised that Fish and Game closed the king crab fishery — in a normal year, he’d go out for king crab, too. But numbers have been on the decline and that fishery didn’t open last year, either.

“The real shocking part is the total and complete collapse of the snow crab fishery which no one expected last year when it happened, and a complete closure this year was equally as shocking,” Prout said. Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist with Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game, said the sudden decline in snow crab came as a shock to biologists as well. Back in 2018, there was record recruitment in the Bering Sea snow crab stock. Those numbers started to go down in 2019, and there was no survey in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

In Hawai’i, Conservation Has Also Provided Fishermen Economic Benefits Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, along the northwestern Hawaiian islands, has been under some kind of conservation protection since the days of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency. It is a deeply sacred place to native Hawaiians. And at more than 583,000 square miles, it’s also the world’s largest fully protected no-fishing zone, after its expansion under the Obama administration in 2016.

Marine protected areas like Papahānaumokuākea are designed to provide refuge to fish and other marine mammals that have been overexploited and otherwise threatened by human activities. But research has remained inconclusive on if these protections provide enough benefits to nearby areas to blunt the economic impact of exclusion zones. This is especially debated in the case of big, mobile, migratory species like Hawai’i’s all-important bigeye and yellowfin tuna.

Now, new research from an interdisciplinary team of economists and ecologists looked at how well Hawaiian tuna fishermen did when they fished close to the monument, and further away. And they found, to their surprise, that there was a strong benefit, which increased in the years after the monument’s expansion. Fishermen near the monument caught more tuna, for the same amount of effort, than fishermen further away.

Co-host Shahla Farzan talks to first author Sarah Medoff about the surprising findings, and why the economics of a marine protected area might matter to conservation decisions.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Burying Green: Eco-Friendly Death Care On The Rise Dying, it turns out, isn’t carbon neutral. Like many of the choices we make in our lifetimes, the choice to cremate or preserve our bodies after death comes with tradeoffs as well. With preservation and burial, there’s the carbon cost of cemetery space, the materials to make a coffin, and the chemicals required to prevent decay. With cremation, the body’s carbon is released into the atmosphere through the burning of natural gas.

This is one of the reasons why companies are starting to offer more eco-friendly options, such as water-assisted cremation. Composting human bodies is another option, allowing our carbon to be sequestered in the soil, and providing nutrients for ecosystems or gardens. But in the United States, these lower-carbon funereal options are often against the law.

Now, that’s slowly changing, with pressure from people who wish to use those options for themselves when the time comes. Producer Kathleen Davis discusses these issues and more with mortician Caitlin Doughty and Katrina Spade, founder of Recompose, a company that has pioneered the practice of human composting. Plus, the relationship between grief, ritual, and the choices we have for our mortal remains.

This Brain Prosthesis Could Improve Memory Loss When people hear the word “prosthetic,” they’ll probably think of an arm or a leg. But what about a prosthetic for the brain? A team of neuroscientists is designing a device that could “zap” the brain into remembering information better, and it’s targeted for people with memory loss. They’re doing so by studying the electrical patterns involved in memory, then mimicking them with electrodes implanted in the brain.

Ira speaks with Dr. Robert Hampson, neuroscientist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who is working on the implant.

Making a Meal Fit For An Astronaut Life on the International Space Station throws some wrenches into how food and eating work. There’s very little gravity, after all. And there are big differences between nutritional needs on Earth and in space.

Astronauts must exercise two hours each day on the International Space Station to prevent bone and muscle loss, meaning daily caloric intake needs to be somewhere between 2,500 and 3,500 calories. Sodium must also be reduced, as an astronaut’s body sheds less of it in space. Astronauts also have an increased need for Vitamin D, as their skin isn’t able to create it from sunlight as people on Earth do.

So, how do all these limitations affect the food astronauts eat? Joining guest host Kathleen Davis to answer these gustatory questions is Xulei Wu, food systems manager for the International Space Station in Houston, Texas.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Scientists Are Trying To Study Human Neurons… In Rat Brains? Scientists have a tricky time studying neurons, partially because they are remarkably difficult to grow in a lab. They need other cells around them, and they don’t replicate or reproduce like other cells do. In a new study in Nature, researchers figured out that they can take a ball of human brain tissue and frankenstein it into a rat’s brain, and the rat can respond to it. This exciting discovery could offer scientists a new way to study the human brain.

This week’s co-host Kathleen Davis talks with Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, about this story and other science news of the week. They chat about neurons that can play ping pong, COVID updates, a disturbing uptick in STI cases, how deep sea mining could destroy an underappreciated ecosystem, and how a mummified dinosaur named Dakota is challenging what paleontologists knew about dino preservation.

How Gamification Has Crept Into School, Work, And Fitness Gamers often spend hours embarking on quests, unlocking new levels, and collecting badges. But what about when aspects of games start popping up in other parts of life—like work, school, and exercise? Adrian Hon created the fitness app “Zombies, Run!” and has thought a lot about how the principles of gaming have crept into so many different corners of our lives, and why it may not always be as innocent as it seems.

Ira and co-host Kathleen Davis talk with Adrian Hon, author of You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All. Hon is also the CEO and founder of the game developer, Six to Start, based in Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

A Taste Of New York In A Hyper-Local Beer If you’re a person who enjoys beer, you’ve likely been aware of the craft beer boom of the last couple of decades. India Pale Ales, or IPAs, have become some of the most popular types of beer brewed in local breweries. But it doesn’t get more local than a type of beer that most people have never heard of: the gruit.

The gruit traces its origins back to the 11th century. Historically, instead of hops, brewers used herbs and spices native to wherever they lived. This results in a flavorful beer that changes taste depending on the plant life in the region.

Fast forward a few hundred years to now, and you’ll find brewers getting back to this hyper-local brewing tradition. Those brewers include Isaac Patient, head brewer of Sixpoint Brewery in Brooklyn, New York. His team partnered with Saara Nafici and Brendan Parker at Red Hook Farms to procure four key herbs for the brew: rosemary, tarragon, lemongrass, and mugwort.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The Politics Of Science: Voters Have An Important Voice This November’s general election season covers every level of government, from Congress at the federal level, to state governors and local ballot initiatives. Also on the ballot are many issues where understanding science better might result in better policy—think zoning questions about building next to rising seas or fire-prone wildlands, or questions about drug legalization and abortion access. Even whether to invest in education that might create more STEM workers—that’s a science question too.

Ira talks to Rachel Kerestes of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s ‘Science is US’ initiative, and Howard Learner of the Environmental Law & Policy Center. They cover region-specific and state-specific science concerns, the need to connect more policy makers to scientific expertise, and how voters can have a voice in science issues even at the local and state level.

Make your voice heard! Go to www.sciencefriday.com to fill our our survey about which science issues you see on your ballot.

Svante Pääbo Awarded Nobel For Examining The Ancient Human Genome This week, geneticist Svante Pääbo was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Pääbo is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and his research looks at finding bits of genetic material from ancient hominid lineages embedded within the modern human genome. The prize committee awarded the prize “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution.”

Pääbo described his work as like an archeological dig. “We sort of make excavations in the human genome,” he said. “What we do is to look for the genetic material, for DNA, from people who have lived here long before us, and try to see how they are related to us, and how they are related to other forms of humans that were also here, such as Neanderthals.”

In a conversation recorded in 2017, Pääbo describes his research, and how his team has developed molecular techniques to see where fragments of ancient DNA might still be found in the modern human genome. Spoiler alert—we’re all a little bit Neanderthal.

What We Can Learn About Diabetes From Hibernating Bears About one in 10 Americans have diabetes, and most of the cases are Type 2, in which cells become more resistant to insulin. But wouldn’t it be cool if we could flip a switch so those cells become sensitive to insulin again?

That’s pretty much what bears do when they hibernate. A new study in the journal iScience identifies the eight proteins that allow bears to turn their insulin on and off, which keeps them from burning through their fat stores while they snooze.

Although they hibernate for months, bears wake up from their slumber with their muscle still toned, bones intact, and organs functioning normally. But after a few weeks on bedrest, humans can’t. By studying how bears hibernate, researchers hope to find ways to cure human ailments.

Dr. Blair Perry, a postdoc studying genomics at Washington State University, joins Ira to talk about what we can learn from bear biology.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Hurricane Ian Destroys Iconic Florida House Meant To Survive Hurricanes The Cape Romano Dome House, built in 1982, was an iconic—if more recently unsightly—piece of Florida architecture. The six interconnected domes located in Collier County, Florida, were built to be hurricane resistant and self-sustaining, with solar power, rainwater harvesting, and other innovations.

However, erosion and rising sea levels had put the structure at risk, with the structure’s foundation pillars being completely underwater by 2009. Last week’s Hurricane Ian finally destroyed the structure. Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins Ira to talk about the symbolic loss of the building and other stories from the week in science. They discuss possible approaches to repair the damaged Nord Stream gas pipeline, the finding that certain cancerous tumors contain their own microbiomes of bacteria and fungi, and the delicate process of interpreting the behavioral cues of your feline friends.

How States Are Planning To Power The Electric Vehicle Boom California and New York recently adopted regulations which ban sales of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Several other states are likely to quickly follow suit. But the uptick in vehicle demand will also require new infrastructure, and increase demand for mining metals used to produce car batteries.

Jessika Trancik, professor at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and David Reichmuth, senior engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Transportation Program, join Ira Flatow to discuss the future of electric vehicles. Plus, Eric Gebhardt, chief technology officer at Wabtec, an industrial locomotive company, discusses the challenges and promise of battery-electric trains.

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New Alzheimer’s Drug Reduces Cognitive Decline, Say Biotech Firms This week, the biotech firms Biogen and Eisai released preliminary data from the clinical trials for their new Alzheimer’s drug, lecanemab. The companies said that the drug slowed cognitive decline by 27% in patients treated with the intravenous medication. It’s likely the drug will get the FDA’s approval by the end of the year.

This all comes after the recent controversy surrounding Biogen’s last Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm. Medicare recently announced that they will not cover that drug and others like it, unless patients are enrolled in a clinical trial.

Guest host John Dankosky talks with science journalist Roxanne Khamsi about this and other top science news of the week including a diamond that hints that Earth’s mantle contains water, brainy birds, and hearing aids made of false teeth.

Bangladeshi Farmers Found A Way To Save Massive Amounts Of Water The People’s Republic of Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries on Earth, with a population of 165 million people living in an area a bit smaller than the state of Iowa. To feed all those people, farmers in Bangladesh work year-round: Instead of just growing crops during the rainy monsoon season, they grow a second or even third crop during the dry season—using groundwater to irrigate, and creating a more food-secure region.

Research published in the journal Science this month found something amazing about all that groundwater. By pumping water for crops in the dry season, Bangladeshi farmers were leaving space in the aquifers to recharge during the rainy monsoon season. And this space allowed the aquifers to recapture more than 20 trillion gallons of water, or twice the capacity of China’s massive Three Gorges Dam, over the last 30 years.

The researchers call this the Bengal Water Machine, evidence for a similar concept that was first proposed nearly 50 years ago called the Ganges Water Machine.

Guest host John Dankosky talks to lead author Mohammad Shamsudduha and International Water Management Institute researcher Aditi Mukherji about how this groundwater pumping benefits farmers, and the need for more data as climate change continues.

This Soundscape Artist Has Been Listening To The Planet For Decades Jim Metzner is one of the pioneers of science radio—he’s been making field recordings and sharing them with audiences for more than 40 years. He hosted shows such as “Sounds of Science” in the 1980s, which later grew into “Pulse of the Planet,” a radio show about “the sound of life on Earth.”

Over the decades, Metzner has created an incredible time capsule of soundscapes, and now, his entire collection is going to the Library of Congress.

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After Hurricane Ian, Robots To The Rescue Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwest Florida Wednesday, with winds over 150 miles per hour, high storm surge and heavy rains. As the storm, now weaker, is projected to move northward, search and rescue operations are setting out to assess the damage – with help from robots, both flying and swimming.

Producer Christie Taylor talks with David Merrick, who is leading the emergency management team responsible for flying drones over areas hit by disasters like Ian, about what it takes to use robots in these contexts and how they help speed up response and recovery efforts.

Vague Medical Marijuana Rules Leave Workers and Employers in the Dark Vague legal safeguards for medical marijuana users in Pennsylvania are forcing patients to choose between their job and a drug they say has changed their life, and leaving skittish employers vulnerable to lawsuits, according to a three-month Spotlight PA investigation.

While state law protects workers from being fired or denied a job just for having a doctor’s permission to use marijuana, those protections become opaque when people actually take the drug — regardless of whether they do it in their personal time.

“It essentially makes no sense,” Pittsburgh attorney John McCreary Jr., who represents employers, told Spotlight PA.

Some jobs are specifically regulated by state and federal drug testing rules, but most fall into a gray area that leaves the interpretation of the rules up to employers and the courts. That leads to inconsistency and what employers see as a lose-lose scenario: Either risk a wrongful termination suit, or potentially allow an unsafe work environment.

Read the rest of the article at sciencefriday.com.

The DART Asteroid Impact Mission: It’s A Cosmic Smash This week, a small spacecraft slammed into an asteroid—on purpose. The mission, known as DART (for ‘Double Asteroid Redirection Test’) was an effort to try out a potential means of planetary defense. NASA wanted to discover: Is it possible to change the path of an approaching asteroid by slamming something into it?

On Monday evening, the DART spacecraft slammed into the small asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits a slightly larger asteroid called Didymos. Pictures taken from onboard the spacecraft showed the rocky, rubbly terrain of Dimorphos approaching closer and closer, then disappearing, while telescopes observing the impact and cameras on a neighboring Italian Space Agency CubeSat showed a plume of debris ejected from the asteroid.

Dr. Nancy Chabot, the DART coordination lead and a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which built the spacecraft and is managing the mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, joins host John Dankosky. They talk about the impact, and what scientists hope to learn about asteroids and planetary defense from the crash.

High-Flying Trick-Or-Treat Delivers Rabies Vaccines For Raccoons Rabies is one of the deadliest diseases in the world. It’s fatal in 99% of cases. Because of that, rabies prevention has been one of the most important—and successful—public health initiatives in the US.

To contain rabies outbreaks, the USDA leads a mass vaccination effort from August to October to keep the disease from being carried by critters. It’s an action-packed adventure involving raccoons, helicopters, and fish-flavored candy.

SciFri’s director of news and audio, John Dankosky, speaks with Jordona Kirby, the rabies field coordinator for the USDA’s National Rabies Management Program. She’s based in Milton, Florida.

Can Lanternflies’ Excretions Be Used To Quell Their Spread? As the invasive spotted lanternfly continues to spread west in the United States, researchers are trying to better understand—and perhaps find a way to control —the behavior of the pretty, but ravenous, insects. Important agricultural crops, including grapes, peaches, and apples are especially at risk from the spreading infestation.

As the lanternflies feed on tree sap, they excrete a sweet-smelling liquid known as honeydew. That liquid can attract other insects, and can also allow fungus to grow on affected trees. Writing in the journal Frontiers In Insect Science this week, researchers from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service report that chemicals in the honeydew may act as a signaling agent among the lanternflies—in some cases attracting others of the species. The finding may help explain the way in which the insects can infest a given tree in huge numbers, while leaving neighboring trees largely alone.

John Dankosky talks with the paper’s lead author, Dr. Miriam Cooperband of USDA APHIS, about her research, and whether the finding may lead to a way to bait or repel the invasive insects.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Sperm Swim Together To Help Each Other Reach The Egg New research is complicating our understanding of how, exactly, sperm are able to reach eggs. The predominant theory is that sperm compete against each other, with the strongest swimmer fertilizing the egg.

But a new study, using cow sperm, suggests that sperm might actually swim together, forming clusters to help each other swim upstream to reach the egg.

Researchers created a device that has some of the features of a female reproductive tract, which they tested using a polymer substance that mimics cervical mucus. The intensity of the flow of this mucus-like fluid influenced how well the sperm clustered together. The faster the flow, the more likely the sperm were to band together to swim upstream.

Ira talks with Dr. Chih-Kuan Tung, associate professor of physics at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University about his research on sperm motility, and how it could improve infertility testing in the future.

Mars Rover, Move Over: Making A Rover To Explore The Deep Sea

When you hear the word ‘rover,’ it’s likely your brain imagines another planet. Take Mars, for instance, where the steadfast rolling science labs of Perseverance and Curiosity—and the half dozen robotic rovers before them—slowly examine the geology of the Red Planet for signs of past habitability.

But Earth has rovers too. The autonomous, deep-sea Benthic Rover II, engineered by researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), trawls a desolate surface too—this one 4,000 meters below the surface of the ocean, on a cold abyssal plain, under the crushing weight of 6,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

Deep beneath the surface, the rover is seeking data about carbon: What carbon sources make it down to such a deep sea floor? And does that carbon return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, where it might contribute to global warming, or sequestered safely as an inert part of the ocean sediment?

Ira Flatow talks to engineer Alana Sherman and ecologist Crissy Hufford, both of MBARI, about the work it takes to make a rover for the deep sea, and the value of its data as we look to the future of our oceans.

Ukraine’s Ongoing Tragedy Inspires Teenage Inventor To Locate Landmines Igor Klymenko is a 17-year-old inventor from Ukraine, and he recently won the Chegg.org Global Student Prize—a $100,000 award given to a young change-maker. Klymenko won it for his invention, the Quadcopter Mines Detector, which is designed to locate underground landmines. The issue of unexploded landmines cannot be understated—some estimates show there could be about 100 million of them scattered across the globe.

Klymenko is a student at both the University of Alberta in Canada and the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in Ukraine. He joins Ira this week to talk about the Quadcopter Mines Detector, and how he’s trying to help his home country, Ukraine, through engineering.

Getting the Dirt On The World Of Competitive Soil Judging If you’re looking for a new sport or hobby to try, forget about rock climbing or kitesurfing. If you don’t mind getting a bit dirty, consider competitive soil judging—a contest in which contestants work to best analyze, identify, and describe the layers of soil in a 5-foot-deep trench dug into a field. People can compete either individually, or in a team format, where different members of the team work to describe the soil’s characteristics—from color, to grain size, to how it interacts with water.

Clare Tallamy, a senior at Virginia Tech majoring in environmental science, recently won the individual competition in an international soil judging contest held in Scotland as part of the 2022 World Congress of Soil Science. She joins Ira to describe how soil judging works, gives an introduction to soil taxonomy, and explains the practical significance of being able to excel at judging a sample of soil.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Biden Declares The COVID-19 Pandemic Over. Is It? During an interview with 60 minutes last weekend, President Joe Biden said “the pandemic is over.”

“The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with covid, we’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one is wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape, “ Biden said at the Detroit auto show.

This comment has prompted some dismay from the public health community. The World Health Organization hasn’t declared the pandemic over just yet. And the criteria to declare a pandemic over is nuanced and cannot be declared by the leader of a single country.

Ira talks with Katherine Wu, staff writer at the Atlantic, about that and other top science stories of the week including a new ebola outbreak in Uganda, the latest ant census, and Perseverance’s rock collection.

Diving Into The Biggest Ideas In The Universe Can mere mortals learn real physics, without all the analogies? Dr. Sean Carroll, Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion, says yes—if you’re willing to accept a bit of math.

Carroll says that he dreams of a world in which ordinary people can have informed ideas on physics, and might argue about the latest black hole news as urgently as they might debate a sports team’s performance in last night’s game. His new book starts with some of the basics of motion that might be taught in an introductory physics class, then builds on them up through concepts like time and black holes.

Carroll joins Ira to talk about the book, exploring where physics equations leave off and philosophical concepts begin, and the nebulous world in between.

To read an excerpt of The Biggest Ideas In The Universe: Space, Time, and Motion, visit sciencefriday.com.

Was Soylent Green Right About 2022? In the spring of 1973, the movie Soylent Green premiered. The film drops us into a New York City that’s overcrowded, polluted, and dealing with the effects of a climate catastrophe. Only the city’s elite can afford clean water and real foods, like strawberry jam. The rest of the population relies on a communal food supply called Soylent. There’s Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow… and a new product: Soylent Green.

The year the film takes place? 2022. And spoiler alert: Soylent Green is people.

While the 2022 the film depicts is—thankfully—much darker than our current situation, the message still holds up. When the film premiered, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the Clean Air Act were very much in the country’s consciousness. 50 years later, warmer temperatures, soil degradation, and social inequality are more relevant than ever.

Joining Ira to talk about the importance of Soylent Green 50 years later is Sonia Epstein, associate curator of science and film at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City. Also joining is soil scientist Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery in Madison, Wisconsin.

Saturn’s Rings Might Be Made From A Missing Moon Saturn’s rings are one of the most stunning, iconic features of our solar system. But for a very long time, Saturn was a ring-less planet. Research suggests the rings are only about 100 million years old—younger than many dinosaurs. Because Saturn wasn’t born with its rings, astronomers have been scratching their heads for decades wondering how the planet’s accessories formed. A new study in the journal Science suggests a new idea about the rings’ origins—and a missing moon may hold the answers.

Co-author Dr. Burkhard Militzer, a planetary scientist and professor at UC Berkeley, joins Ira to talk about the surprising origins of Saturn’s rings.

Want to know more? Listen to this previous Science Friday episode about Saturn’s formation.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Why The Owner of Patagonia Gave Away The Whole Company Earlier this week, the founder and owner of Patagonia Yvon Chouinard—the company known for their famous puffer jackets and outdoor gear—gave away the whole company. Who’d he give it to? The Earth.

“Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people,” Chouinard told David Gelles for The New York Times. “We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”

Purbita Saha, deputy editor at Popular Science, debriefs Ira on Chouinard’s decision, as well as other science stories of the week. They talk about if it’s safe to get the COVID booster and flu shot at the same time, how a new blood test could catch early stages of cancer, why the night sky is bluer, the reason why NASA is crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid, and the fight over trash between cockatoos and Australians.

Depression Isn’t Caused By Low Serotonin. So How Do Antidepressants Work? In 2001, a now classic Zoloft commercial hit the airwaves—featuring a sad little blob with a rain cloud following it around. The commercial explains that “while the cause is unknown, depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells in the brain. Prescription Zoloft works to correct this imbalance.”

That theory of depression as a chemical imbalance is based on a simple premise: Depressed people’s brains lack serotonin. If a patient takes a serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), like Prozac or Zoloft, it boosts their serotonin levels, and their depression lifts. The trouble is that when researchers started testing this theory they found it didn’t hold up. Serotonin is certainly involved in depression. But it’s way more complicated than it originally seemed.To be clear, there is a body of research showing that antidepressants do work—it’s just unclear exactly how they work.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Understanding Metabolism Genes Might Improve Depression Treatment Sometimes finding the right antidepressant medication is basically trial and error. Scientists are still trying to figure out why some antidepressants work for some people, but not others. Researchers at the Veterans Administration wanted to know if genetic testing might help doctors with prescribing the antidepressant best suited for their patients. Specifically, they examined genes that indicate whether or not someone is able to properly metabolize a medication.

Ira is joined by Dr. David Oslin, professor of psychiatry at the Crescenz Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, to explain his latest research and its broader implications.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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COVID-19’s Lingering Toll On The Heart As new omicron-specific boosters against COVID-19 unroll in cities around the US, research is revealing more about the longterm consequences of even one infection with the SARS-CoV2 virus. Writing this week in Nature Medicine, a team of researchers from Germany describe finding long-lasting signs of heart disorders in the majority of recovered patients in their study group–even up to nearly a year later.

FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth joins Ira to describe the research and how it fits into what we’re learning about the scope of Long Covid. Plus taking the temperature of the melting Thwaites Glacier, new insights into the genes of both immortal jellyfish and human astronauts, and a post-mortem of the world’s first known amputation.

Why Are Dead Fish Piling Up Across The San Francisco Bay? Thousands of dead fish are piling up across the Bay Area.

From the concrete outer edges of Oakland’s Lake Merritt to the sandy beaches of San Francisco’s Fort Funston and the pebbled banks of Oyster Point in San Mateo County, the carcasses of fish likely poisoned by a harmful algal bloom — more commonly known as a red tide — are washing ashore.

It’s a mass-death event the San Francisco Bay hasn’t seen the likes of in years, says Jon Rosenfield, senior scientist with environmental group San Francisco Baykeeper.

“From a fish’s point of view, this is a wildfire in the water,” he said.

By SF Baykeeper’s count, the number of fish dying off in the San Francisco Bay could easily exceed hundreds of thousands, and that, Rosenfield said, might even be a “low” estimate.

His field investigator confirmed “easily tens of thousands of fish dead” in Lake Merritt alone. But Rosenfield cautioned, “What you see is just the hint of what’s actually happening further beneath the water’s surface and in places you’re not getting to on the shoreline. So it’s really an uncountable number.”

It may be harmful to humans, too. An algal bloom of this size can cause skin irritation and respiratory problems, and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board is advising people to avoid swimming, kayaking or other activities on the water until the bloom subsides.

Read the full story at sciencefriday.com.

As Temperatures Get Warmer, Fish Are At Risk Climate change is expected to have a big effect on a sensitive group of creatures: fish. A new study out of the University of Arkansas predicts that there is likely to be a six-fold increase in large fish mortality events between now and 2100, specifically in freshwater lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Known as “summerkills” and “winterkills”, seasonal die-offs are a part of fishy nature, but have been happening at a greater frequency as temperatures increase. That’s due to climate change-related factors like algal blooms, infectious disease, and oxygen deprivation.

Joining Ira to talk about the future for freshwater fish is Simon Tye, PhD candidate in biology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

As The World Decarbonizes, Sulfuric Acid May Be In Short Supply A move towards more alternative energy sources and away from fossil fuel production is a net positive for the world. But there’s an unanticipated side effect—a possible global sulfuric acid supply shortage.

Eighty percent of the world’s sulfuric acid is the byproduct of fossil fuel production. Cutting back on coal, oil, and natural gas means producing less sulfur acid. That’s important as sulfuric acid is critical to making fertilizer, as well as green technology like solar panels and batteries.

Ira talks with Mark Maslin, professor of Earth System Science at University College London, about his latest research, which points to a looming sulfur shortage.

The New G.O.A.T Of Park Systems Is An Actual Goat If you walk into a park, the odds are pretty high that you’ll find an invasive plant species, like buckthorn, giant hogweed, or multiflora rose. These resilient plants can often grow uncontrollably and out-compete native species for resources, which has consequences for native wildlife that depend on other native plants. They can also be incredibly difficult to remove. That’s why a growing number of parks across the United States are turning to unlikely helpers: goats.

Conservation grazing is a practice in which livestock are used to maintain biodiversity. Because goats eat almost everything, they chow down on invasive plants and make them much easier to remove.

Radio producer Rasha Aridi speaks with Hillary Steffes, the chief goat herder at Allegheny GoatScape in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, about using goats as a conservation tool. Then, Rasha takes a trip to Riverside Park in NYC to meet some goats, and talk with Marcus Caceres, a field supervisor at the Riverside Park Conservancy.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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New, Extra Protective COVID Vaccines Are On The Way Earlier this week, the FDA approved brand new COVID-19 vaccines from both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech that are designed to better protect people from the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants. At the same time, the U.S. is scaling back free testing and precautionary measures, putting more pressure on vaccines. Casey Crownhart, a climate and technology reporter at MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to talk about COVID updates and other science news of the week.

They also discuss how the U.S. is bracing for a record-breaking heatwave, the devastating floods in Pakistan, how the city of Jackson, MI ended up without running water, why Greenland’s “zombie ice” is causing concern, a massive investment in solar power, and a clue as to how the Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids of Giza.

New Jersey’s Lenape Nation Fights Ford’s Toxic Legacy The Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape Nation has lived in the wooded hills around Ringwood for centuries, enduring the impacts of European settlement and the building up of America. But the toxic waste that now surrounds the Passaic County community is from an invasion of an entirely different kind. And it wasn’t long before residents started getting sick.

When the federal government created the National Priorities List, better known as Superfund, in 1980, abandoned iron mines in Ringwood were among the first sites to be listed; they made the list in 1983. Between 1965 and 1974, the Ford Motor Company dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of paint sludge, solvents and other waste into the mines scattered throughout the Turtle Clan’s homeland. By then, the southern portion of the site had been sold off by Ford to the Ringwood Solid Waste Management Authority, which went on dumping more waste onto and into the already toxic land. Arsenic and lead, benzene and 1,4-dioxane leached into groundwater. Kids played among slabs of hardened paint sludge. Adults scavenged the dump sites for copper and other valuable metals.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Coming Soon: A Germ-Killing Countertop? From restaurant tables to office door knobs, not to mention anything inside a hospital, the world is full of surfaces that need sanitizing, lest someone catch a surface-borne viral or bacterial infection like the flu or MRSA. The typical solution involves sanitizing those surfaces with sprays and fluid cleaners. Or, sometimes, using materials that are hostile to microbes, such as silver or copper.

But a team of engineers at the University of Michigan has another solution in mind: a spray-on coating that combines the stabilizing power of polyurethane with the well-documented germicidal qualities of essential oils such as cinnamon, tea tree, and lemon. As the team reports in the journal Matter this week, their coating seems to kill pathogens like SARS-CoV2, MRSA and E. coli within minutes—and lasts for months before it must be refreshed. Research co-author Anish Tuteja joins Ira to talk about the innovation, and how he thinks it might be useful.

The Surprising Animal Science Behind Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope’ One of the summer’s biggest blockbusters has been the alien horror film “Nope,” from director Jordan Peele. “Nope” has elements of many classic UFO films, with the Spielbergian charm of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and the horror and destruction from “The War of the Worlds.”

For the spoiler-averse, this is your warning to turn back now. The big twist in “Nope” that differentiates it from other alien films is that it isn’t a UFO hanging out in the skies above our main characters. The saucer-shaped figure is the alien itself.

Writer and director Jordan Peele attributes much of the inspiration for the alien as coming from sea creatures. He enlisted the help of scientific consultants including marine biologist Kelsi Rutledge to help bring the creature, known in the film as Jean Jacket, to life. She even gave it a scientific name: Occulonimbus edoequus, meaning “hidden dark cloud stallion eater.” Kelsi, who is a PhD candidate at UCLA in Los Angeles, California, talks to Ira about the ingredients that went into creating a new creature to scare audiences.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Why Is It So Hard To Agree On When Human Life Starts? After decades of deliberations involving physicians, bioethicists, attorneys, and theologians, a U.S. presidential commission in 1981 settled on a scientifically derived dividing line between life and death that has endured, more or less, ever since: A person was considered dead when the entire brain—including the brainstem, its most primitive portion—was no longer functioning, even if other vital functions could be maintained indefinitely through artificial life support.

In the decades since, the committee’s criteria have served as a foundation for laws in most states adopting brain death as a standard for legal death.

Now, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and dozens of states rushing to impose abortion restrictions, American society is engaged in a chaotic race to define the other pole of human existence: When exactly does human life begin? At conception, the hint of a heartbeat, a first breath, the ability to survive outside the womb with the help of the latest technology?

To read the full article, visit sciencefriday.com.

Taxpayer-Funded Science Is Finally Becoming Public Last week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced a new directive requiring federally-funded science be made available to the public for free, and faster.

Set to take effect by the end of 2025, the new rule would do away with the Obama-era policy that journals can keep research with taxpayer funding behind paywalls for up to one year. In addition, more kinds of research would qualify than previous policies have required.

So how does freely accessible research benefit the people who pay for it—or the scientists who do the work itself? Nobel Prize-winning medical researcher and open science advocate Harold Varmus joins Ira to discuss.

Why You Should Thank Your Local Wasp It’s late in the summer, meaning any outdoor gathering with food and drink has a good chance of being visited by a pesky, buzzing wasp. But don’t reach for that rolled-up newspaper or can of bug spray. The wasps in your world play an important role that’s often overlooked.

Far beyond the social hornets and yellowjackets people think about when they picture a wasp, the wasp world includes thousands of species. Some are parasitic, injecting their eggs into unwilling prey. Others hunt, either paralyzing prey for their young to feed on, or by bringing bits of meat back to a nest for their young. Some are strictly vegetarian, and live on pollen. Some are needed for the pollination of figs and certain species of orchids.

Dr. Seirian Sumner, a behavioral biologist at University College London, says that if people understood the services provided by wasps the same way that they understand the need for bees, they might be more willing to overlook an occasional wasp annoyance—and might even be thankful for the wasps in their lives. In her book Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps, Sumner makes the case for wasps as nature’s pest control agents, as important pollinators that should be celebrated.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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California Accelerates Its Push For Electric Cars This week, air pollution regulators in California voted to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles, with a complete ban on gas car sales by 2035. The decision could have a larger impact on the automobile industry, however, as many states choose to follow California’s lead with regard to air quality and emissions decisions. Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins guest host Roxanne Khamsi to help unpack the decision.

They also discuss some of the other science stories from this week, including a survey-based study showing that Americans really do care about climate change and support mitigation measures, a look at how sugar substitutes can change the microbiome, and an engineer’s advice for how to build the sturdiest sandcastles.

Meet Two Autistic Researchers Changing How Autism Research Is Done For many decades, autistic people have been defined by non-autistic people, including in science. Since the very beginning of research about autistic people, neurotypical scientists and institutions have been at the helm. The field has largely been defined by what neurotypical researchers are curious about learning, instead of prioritizing research that the autistic community asks for.

Because of that, and the invisibility of autistic adults in our society, a large chunk of this research has neglected the needs of autistic people. In many cases, it’s caused harm to the very people the research aims to help. Until recently, there have been very few openly autistic researchers who study autism. But there is a growing body of openly autistic scientists who are using both their expertise and their own lived experiences to help shape the future of autism research.

Guest host Roxanne Khamsi speaks with Dr. TC Waisman, a leadership coach and researcher studying autism and higher education, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Patrick Dwyer, a Ph.D. candidate studying sensory processing and attention in autism at the University of California, Davis. They talk about the history of autism research, why the inclusion of autistic people in research leads to more helpful outcomes, and how they see the future of autism research changing.

Ira Kraemer consulted on this story.

Ecological Data From Deep In The Pantry Most people wouldn’t be excited by a call offering a basement full of canned salmon dating back to the 1970s. But for researchers trying to establish baselines for what’s normal and what’s not when it comes to aquatic parasite populations, the archive of fishy tins, maintained by the Seattle-area Seafood Products Association, was a valuable resource.

Natalie Mastick and colleagues combed through the tins with tweezers, counting the numbers of parasitic anisakid worms they found. (Since the salmon was cooked, the worms—though gross—posed no risk to human eaters.) The team found that in their samples of chum and pink salmon, the incidence of parasitic infection increased over the 40 years covered by the salmon archive. The finding might be good news—an increase in the numbers of marine mammals in the area, key hosts for the parasites, could be responsible for the wormy increase. Natalie Mastick, a PhD candidate in the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, joins guest host Roxanne Khamsi to explain the study.

Medieval Friars’ Farming May Have Caused Tummy Troubles What was life like back in medieval England? You might think that the learned friars who lived in the town of Cambridge—scholars, with access to innovations like latrines and places to wash their hands—might have lived healthier lives than the common folk. But a recent study published in the International Journal of Paleopathology says that, at least when it comes to intestinal parasites, the friars may have been worse off.

Dr. Piers Mitchell runs the Cambridge Ancient Parasites Laboratory and is a senior research associate in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Mitchell and colleagues excavated soil samples from around the pelvises of medieval skeletons in one Cambridge cemetery, then examined the soil microscopically looking for parasite eggs. They found that friars in the cemetery had almost twice the incidence of intestinal parasites as commoners in the town—a fact they speculate could be related to friars using human feces, from the friary latrine, to fertilize the gardens. Mitchell joins guest host Roxanne Khamsi to explain the study.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Ira Kraemer consulted on this story.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Attracting Birds To Prime Habitat By Playing Recordings Of Their Calls How do you know a restaurant is good? If the parking lot is full of cars, that’s a pretty good indication. If it’s empty, you probably won’t bother stopping.

In this case, the restaurant is a newly restored wetland in Michigan and the customers are rails. The birds migrate at night, so if they don’t hear other rail calls in an area, they’re not likely to stop. Researcher Dustin Brewer is broadcasting recorded rail calls to try to bring the secretive birds to prime habitat—to feed and mate. Rails are declining, mostly due to habitat loss. Experts say if rails are influenced by these recordings, it could help increase the bird’s population.

Collars, Cameras, And Carcasses: Studying Urban Wildlife When you hear the words “urban wildlife,” you might think of rats scampering across a street, pigeons plopped on railings, or crows fighting over a pizza crust. But urban wildlife are so much cooler and more diverse than they get credit for, and scientists have a lot to learn from them. In the blink of an evolutionary eye, urban wildlife have quickly adapted to changing landscapes and learned to take advantage of sprawling urban areas.

Guest Roxanne Khamsi speaks with Dr. Chris Schell, an assistant professor studying urban ecology at the University of California, Berkeley. They chat about why urban wildlife is so cool, how scientists can study them, and what we can learn from our scrappy neighbors.

A New Lyme Disease Test In Development May Help Improve Treatment Roughly 476,000 people in the United States are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates. However, the CDC says that this number is likely an overcount because many patients receive treatment based on symptoms without a positive test result.

On top of that, there are some limitations of the diagnostic tests available for Lyme disease. The FDA-approved Lyme disease tests can only determine if a patient has had Lyme disease in the past, not if they currently have an infection. The test cannot determine if antibiotic treatment was successful, or if a positive test result is due to a re-infection.

Guest host Roxanne Khamsi talks with Pete Gwynne, a molecular and microbiologist at the Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, who is working to solve some of these problems by developing a new diagnostic test for Lyme disease.

‘I Will Not Be Vole Girl’—A Biologist Warms To Rodents The path to becoming a scientist is not unlike the scientific process itself: Filled with dead ends, detours, and bumps along the way.

Science Friday producer Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with Dr. Danielle Lee, a biologist, outreach scientist, and assistant professor in biology at Southern Illinois University about what keeps her asking questions, what rodents can help us understand about humans, and the importance of increasing diversity in science.

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‘I Will Not Be Vole Girl’—A Biologist Warms To Rodents The path to becoming a scientist is not unlike the scientific process itself: Filled with dead ends, detours, and bumps along the way.

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Will A Colorado River Drought Dry Up Energy Supplies? This week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency that manages water in the Western U.S., started the process of cutting water use allotments along the Colorado River after seven states missed a deadline for coming up with their own reduction plan.

The area has been under a long-running drought—and with water in demand for everything from drinking to agriculture to industry, and with the population of the area on the rise, agreements over water use are difficult to come by. The drought has another less obvious effect on the area as well—drops in water allocation could lead to declines in power production in a region that relies on several major hydroelectric facilities.

Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins Ira to talk about the plan for distributing western water and other stories from the week in science—including a possible reprieve for nuclear power plants in Germany and California, a geomagnetic storm sparking an astronomical light show, orders for future supersonic aircraft, and investigations into why thinking hard makes you physically tired.

How Viruses Have Shaped Our World SARS-CoV2. HIV. CMV. HSV-1 and HSV-2. MPX. EBV. HPV. WPV. WNV.

The alphabet soup of viruses that infect us may seem long and daunting. But as scientist and author Joseph Osmundson writes in Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things In Between, these viruses are vastly dwarfed by the total number of harmless or even beneficial viruses on our planet. “It’s a rounding error larger than zero,” he writes. A single ounce of seawater will contain more than seven billion individual viruses incapable of doing us harm.

Osmundson’s book is both COVID-19 quarantine memoir, and reflections of a self-described queer man coming of age after the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. In it, he questions the war-like language we ascribe to “fighting” pathogens, explores the non-binary nature of health and illness, and advocates for a world where we are more ready to care for each other.

“The problem wasn’t illness,” he writes of HIV’s death toll before the development of effective treatments. “The problem never is. Illness is a fact of life. The problem is our inability to provide care to all.”

Osmundson talks to producer Christie Taylor about making new meanings for viruses through biomedicine and public health interventions. Plus, lessons for the monkeypox global public health emergency, and all the viruses to come.

Seagrass Oasis In Gulf Of Mexico Signals Good News For Manatees Florida’s offshore marine habitat is in peril. Populations of fish are dwindling in many places, and manatees have been dying in record numbers. The basis for much of this life lies in seagrass just under our boats. We join scientist on a trip into one of the healthiest seagrass meadows in the Gulf of Mexico. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

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Some Grasses Can Stop Lead From Spreading In Soil Lead left behind in soil from mining and smelting poses a major health risk to people who live nearby. Researchers in Nebraska and Kansas believe plant life and organic material can limit lead’s spread.
In parts of the Midwest where lead mining and smelting lasted for over a century, communities are still dealing with toxic waste left behind by the industry.

Lead, a dangerous neurotoxin, persists in the environment, including in water and soil, where it can pose a threat to the health of people living nearby. The risk is especially acute for children, who can unintentionally ingest lead by putting their hands in their mouths and whose brains and bodies are still developing.

It can be spread to other areas, like yards and schools, by rainfall, and can also taint aquifers or vegetables in gardens, making them harmful to consume.

Now researchers are working to limit the impact of lead in the environment on people, and they believe they’ve found a promising solution: Plant life.

Phytostabilization involves moving lead from soil into the roots, stems and leaves of plants to prevent it from spreading and to limit people’s contact with it.

“One of the goals of phytostabilization is to take the site with lead and put it in a stable state, so that the risk is reduced, and the issues related to lead in the soil can be managed,” said Larry Erickson, a professor emeritus at Kansas State University and former director of the university’s Center for Hazardous Substance Research.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

A High School Student Invented An Affordable Brain-Reading Prosthetic Artificial limb technology has come a long way since the first prosthetic—a big toe made of wood and leather developed in ancient Egypt.

Today’s cutting-edge robotic limbs use mind-control and even give users a sense of touch, helping them feel sensations like a warm cup of coffee or a mushy banana. Still, these state-of-the-art prosthetics often involve invasive brain surgeries and can be exorbitantly expensive.

Hearing of these issues, one teenager set out to create a solution. Seventeen-year-old Benjamin Choi has developed a non-invasive, affordable prosthetic arm. His Star Wars-inspired technology reads a user’s mind with only two sensors—one on the forehead and the other clipped to the earlobe. And he doesn’t plan on stopping there. He sees his work in artificial intelligence expanding to help ALS patients, wheelchair users, and beyond.

Ira speaks with Benjamin Choi from McLean, Virginia about how he developed this arm and what it means to be a young innovator.

New Immunotherapy Shows Promise Far Beyond Cancer CAR T cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy in which a patient’s own immune cells are modified to create a hybrid immune cell that destroys cancer cells, was first developed over a decade ago.

Now, researchers are continuing to find success in treating new types of blood cancers with the therapy, and are working on applying the technology to solid state cancers like those of the pancreas and brain.

Scientists are also at the early stages of testing CAR T cells to treat autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and lupus.

Ira talks with Dr. Carl June, one of the pioneers of CAR T cell therapy, a professor of immunotherapy and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania, based in Philadelphia.

Feeling Hopeless About Climate Change? Try Playing These Video Games Five years ago, Stephanie Barish was tired of the public’s attitude about climate change. “Most people at that time were just so negative about climate,” she said. “It was doom and destruction, and I thought, wow, to make positive change, you have to really look at this from a solutions perspective.”

Read the rest of the article and check out some of the games at sciencefriday.com.

Analogue Animation: Turning The Pages Of A Flipbook Machine Brooklyn-based artist J.C. Fontanive is a master of the moving image—but in analogue. As an animator, he creates mechanical, perpetual motion ‘flipbooks,’ with help from old clocks and colorful illustrations of flying birds, butterflies, and other scenes from nature.

Fontanive joins Ira to talk about the act of invention, the ‘primal’ language of art, and how to create visceral work in a digital age.

See the flipbooks in gorgeous action at sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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What’s Inside A Sudden, Second Chance At A Climate Bill Last week, climate activists received a surprise gift from Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin. It turns out they had been in secret negotiations to put out a spending package that might tackle some of the same climate mitigation projects as last year’s failed Build Back Better initiative.

The $369 billion dollars for climate mitigation in the Inflation Reduction Act covers tax credits for renewable energy, methane leak reduction, and the largest environmental justice investment in history. But will it pass before Congress goes on recess?

Ira talks to University of California-Santa Barbara political scientist Leah Stokes, who helped advise Senate Democrats during the bill’s crafting, about what the bill might do, and some of the politics shaping climate action.

Engineering and Infrastructure In A Collapsing Climate Roads buckling. Power grids flickering. Roads washing out and basements flooding. Climate change brings new hazards for both human health and the infrastructure that keeps our communities functioning. So how do we build for the conditions that are coming–and in many ways already here?

Arizona State University engineer Mikhail Chester talks to Ira about the physical alterations we’ll need and, perhaps more importantly, the way the process of building must change too. Plus why building things to fail—but with less deadly consequences—may be necessary in an uncertain future.

A Teen Inventor Builds A Fingerprint Scanner for Gender Equity The World Bank estimates that around one billion people worldwide don’t have official proof of identity. Without legal identity verification, opening bank accounts, voting, and even buying a cell phone is challenging or even impossible. This issue disproportionately affects women—around half the women in low-income countries do not have proof of identity, which limits their independence and the resources they are able to access.

Looking for a solution, 16-year-old Elizabeth Nyamwange invented Etana—an affordable fingerprint scanner that could provide women with a form of digital identity. Her project to close the gender identification gap earned her first place in HP’s Girls Save the World challenge.

Ira speaks with Nyamwange, based in Byron, Illinois, about her innovation.

Remembering Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek’s Pioneering Lieutenant Uhura Actress Nichelle Nichols died this week at the age of 89. She was known to people throughout the galaxy for her role as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, the communications officer on the Starship Enterprise. Her casting as a Black woman in a highly skilled, technical position on a major television program in 1966 was crucial representation—and helped many viewers see science and technology careers as something within their grasp as well.

When Nichols considered leaving Star Trek to return to Broadway, a meeting with “her biggest fan”—the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr—helped convince her to stay on to contribute to the civil rights movement.

Later, Nichols became an ambassador for NASA, working to help recruit people to the space shuttle program, especially women and minorities. In this remembrance, astronaut Leland Melvin helps tell her story, and Tarika Barrett, CEO of the STEM organization Girls Who Code, talks about the importance of role models and representation.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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White House Declares Monkeypox Outbreak A Public Health Emergency The Biden administration declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency on Thursday.

Earlier in the week the White House appointed Robert Fenton, regional administrator at FEMA to direct the federal government’s response to the monkeypox outbreak, along with a deputy director from the CDC.

This comes after criticism from activists and public health experts, who have said that the federal government has been dragging its feet on access to vaccines, testing and treatment for the virus.

Ira talks with Tim Revell, deputy United States editor for New Scientist, about the latest monkeypox updates and other top science stories including; new research into the shape of the human brain; how hand gestures can improve zoom calls and a plant that harnesses the power of a raindrop to gulp down insects.

New Steps Toward a Vaccine For Cancer Vaccines have long been used to prevent infection from viruses. But now, scientists are working on a different kind of vaccine—one that targets cancer.

Dr. Kai Wucherpfennig is working on a cancer vaccine that would target tumors that tend to spread quickly and are resistant to treatment, like melanoma and triple negative breast cancer. This type of vaccine is intended to be used after a patient has had their tumor removed. The goal is to prevent the spread of cancer cells to other parts of the body, which is called metastasis.

So far, this type of cancer vaccine is effective in animals, and the results were recently published in the journal Nature.

Ira talks with Dr. Kai Wucherpfennig, chair of cancer immunology and virology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, about his latest research into cancer vaccines, and how recent advances in understanding the immune system has jump-started research into new types of cancer immunotherapies.

Restoring A Sensitive Ecosystem, One Wildflower At A Time The New England blazing star is more than just a pretty blossom: it’s an integral part of a globally-rare ecosystem called a “sandplain grassland.” Just like the name suggests, sandplain grasslands have sandy soil with tall grass, no trees and an exceptionally high number of rare plant and animal species.

That includes plants like the New England blazing star, an important food source for various grassland insects. Today volunteers would plant 1,000 of them to help restore Bamford Preserve, a 60-acre parcel of sandplain grassland on Martha’s Vineyard.

As climate change threatens both human health and the natural world, experts say that protecting biodiversity hotspots like this one will offer the most bang-for-the-buck — protecting threatened species while offering other ecosystem benefits, like open space and flood protection.

Read the full story on sciencefriday.com.

Joining Ira to talk about this is Jim Garvey, director of fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic sciences at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Decades Of Alzheimer’s Research Could Be Based On Fraudulent Data Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating brain disorder that slowly affects memory and thinking skills. For many people who worry that loved ones may succumb to this disorder, the possibility of research in the field of Alzheimer’s is a balm of hope. However, a massive report from Science Magazine highlights a startling discovery: that decades of Alzheimer’s research are likely based on faulty data. Alzheimer's researchers are grappling with the revelation, and what it means for future research of the disease.

In other science news of the week, scientists have identified pits on the moon that are a comfortable temperature: averaging 63 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t plan that space vacation yet—research finds that air pollution from space-bound rockets has an exorbitantly high effect on global warming—much more than traditional airplane travel.

Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to discuss these stories is Maggie Koerth, science writer for FiveThirtyEight based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They also discuss how childhood vaccinations have dropped dramatically during the COVID pandemic, and why this is likely tied to New York’s first Polio case in nearly a decade.

Higher Temperatures Are Bad For The Body Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people have been dealing with extreme heat. The three most populated countries in the world—China, India and the United States—have been gripped by heat waves throughout the summer.

Extreme heat isn’t just uncomfortable: it can be deadly, putting strain on the organs and systems that keep us in equilibrium. Heat is especially dangerous for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, pregnant people, and those without access to air conditioning. In the United States, heat is responsible for more deaths than any other type of weather event.

Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about what high temperatures do to the body, and how we can protect our health and safety in a heat wave is Chris Uejio, associate professor of public health at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Protecting Piping Plovers Isn’t A Walk On The Beach July is nearly through, and so is the piping plover’s nesting season. It's make-or-break time for these small, endangered shorebirds. There are roughly 8,000 piping plovers in the entire world. To put that in context, birders often get really excited to see a rare bird like a snowy owl. But there are about 28,000 snowy owls in the world, three times the number of piping plovers.

Since piping plovers make their nests along the water and out in the open, their chicks are very vulnerable to being gobbled up by predators. And a major reason for their decline in numbers is human development along the beaches, lakes, and rivers where piping plovers lay their eggs.

SciFri radio producer Shoshannah Buxbaum went out to Fort Tilden in Queens, NY to report on a volunteer-run conservation effort along the New York City coastline. And later in the segment, Michigan radio reporter Lester Graham talks with guest host Sophie Bushwick about the unique challenges and triumphs of the piping plovers who nest along the Great Lakes.

This Glove Takes Inspiration From An Octopus’ Arm Octopuses have more than 2,000 suckers on eight arms, and each one is controlled individually, making these critters incredibly dextrous. So when a team of researchers wondered how to design a glove that could hold onto slippery objects underwater, they turned to octopuses for inspiration. Ultimately, they created something they’re calling an octa-glove. Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Michael Bartlett, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, about his team’s engineering, and what they learned from the ambidextrous creatures.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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When Times Get Tough, These Toads Make Hybrid Babies Scientists have long thought that when two animals from two different species mate, it’s a colossal error and the end of the road for the mismatched couple. It’s called interspecies breeding, and many hybrid offspring often end up sterile, such as zonkeys —a cross between a zebra and donkey. Or they can develop serious health problems, like ligers and tigons.

One biologist even went as far to call interspecies breeding “the grossest blunder in sexual preference.” But is breeding across species lines always a dead end? One critter —the plains spadefoot toad—shows us that maybe it isn’t. In fact, it can give them a leg up in survival.

Katherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic, talks with Ira about the complicated sex lives of the female plains spadefoot toads, the trade-offs females make when choosing a mate, and why hybridizing critters may not be such a biological abomination after all.

Major Semiconductor Support Bill Passes First Hurdle Earlier this week, the Senate voted in favor of the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act. If passed, the bill would provide more than $50 billion to companies that will build semiconductor factories here in the United States. Semiconductors are versatile materials—such as silicon—often used in electronics and in microchips. But the bulk of semiconductors, known as “chips,” are produced in other countries, mostly Taiwan. If the CHIPS Act is passed, the government will fund tech companies to build factories at home instead. Although the bill still has to go through the House and be signed by President Biden, this Senate vote is still a monumental moment in the tech world.

Jesús del Alamo, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT, joins Ira to talk about why this bill is such a big deal, and what’s at stake.

Drought Could Raise Toxic Dust Around Utah’s Great Salt Lake Utah’s Great Salt Lake holds a unique ecological niche as the western hemisphere’s largest saltwater lake. The body of water is three to five times saltier than the ocean, with salinity ranging between 12 and 28 percent. According to the Great Salt Lake Institute, millions of birds from more than 250 species rely on the lake yearly, alongside a diverse variety of plants and animals.

Like many bodies of water in the U.S., climate change is affecting the status quo in the Great Salt Lake. The water is drying up at an alarming rate, reaching its lowest level in recorded history this month. Now, researchers warn that toxic dust could increase as water levels continue to drop.

Joining Ira to discuss the Great Salt Lake’s ecosystem and future is Bonnie Baxter, director of the Great Salt Lake Institute and biology professor at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The importance of thoughtful decision-making has come in stark relief during the pandemic and in the events leading up to the January 6th insurrection.

Kahneman is the co-author of “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment,” along with Oliver Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, now available in paperback.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Earth Faces A Global Heat Wave Temperatures are higher than normal for much of the planet this week—and while the heat wave in Europe has had much of the attention, over 100 million Americans in 28 states were under extreme heat advisories this week.

Yasmin Tayag, a freelance science editor and writer based in New York, joins Ira to talk about the global heat wave and other stories from the week in science—including the president’s COVID diagnosis, an uptick in drug-resistant infections, and the question of whether previously uninfected people are “sitting ducks” when it comes to new COVID variants. They’ll also tackle some lighter topics, including new studies of how an elephant’s trunk works, and the genetics of how penguins came to prefer colder climates.

Genetics Suggest Indigenous People Arrived In Americas Earlier Than Some Thought For years, grade school textbooks have told the story of how the Americas were populated by people crossing a land bridge from Asia and migrating in the safe havens between glaciers. In this version of history, its inhabitants arrived 13,000 years ago.

But that story needs an update, thanks to both new archaeological evidence, and the increasingly robust tools of genetic analysis—ancient genomes extracted from millennia-old human remains suggest a much longer history of people in the Americas, perhaps by thousands more years, and aligns with the oral histories of Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples. The genetic evidence also brings up new mysteries, including evidence of some groups of ancient peoples with no direct descendants today.

Producer Christie Taylor talks to University of Kansas anthropological geneticist Jennifer Raff, the author of Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, about the growing evidence for the need to revise the history of the First Peoples. Plus, why researchers seeking to tell that story need to work directly with contemporary tribes to ensure that exploitative scientific practices of the past are not repeated.

Can Genetic Modification Help Plants Survive Climate Change? Temperatures around the world are reaching all-time highs as major heat waves cause extreme weather and climate events. Earlier this year, temperatures in India and Pakistan soared to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, followed by months of unrelenting, unseasonably hot weather. A brutal heat wave is now moving across Europe, fueling devastating wildfires, and producing Britain’s highest temperature on record. Propelled by climate change, future heat waves promise to increase in frequency and intensity, posing a dangerous threat to human health.

But people aren’t the only ones at risk. Many plants—including essential food crops—struggle to survive as temperatures rise. When conditions heat up, a plant’s immune system can shut down, eliminating its defense mechanism. With key agricultural regions already experiencing record highs, global food supplies face potentially devastating consequences.

Ira talks to Sheng-Yang He about his research published in Nature last month that offers a potential solution—using gene editing to strengthen a plant’s defenses against increased temperatures.

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Stunning JWST Images Show New Details Of The Universe After many delays, a Christmas launch, and a months-long period of travel and testing, the first science images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) were unveiled this week. The JWST has a huge multi-segmented mirror that allows it to gather faint light—and it sees in the infrared, allowing it to see through dust and gas and reveal details about the universe that were previously unseeable.

On Monday, a short ceremony at the White House unveiled the first image, a “deep field” image taken by staring for hours at a piece of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. The image shows thousands of galaxies, including ones so distant that their images have been warped by the gravitational lensing effect of massive objects in between. On Tuesday, four more images were unveiled, including a spectrograph describing the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet, a cluster of galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet, the dying stars of the Southern Ring Nebula, and the star formation region known as the Carina Nebula.

Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist and deputy project scientist for James Webb Space Telescope Science Communications joins Ira to talk about the images, and what lies ahead now that the JWST has entered its operational phase.

To compare the JWST images side-by-side with the Hubble images of the same subjects, visit www.sciencefriday.com.

A Busy Time For Space Launches While much of the astronomical world was gazing at the first science images from the James Webb Space Telescope, there’s been a lot of other space news to discuss—from launches and testing associated with the Artemis I mission to the moon to new data from the Martian rovers. There’s also big news with commercial space flights, and even plans from some commercial vendors to work on a replacement for the aging International Space Station.

Ira talks with Brendan Byrne, space reporter from WMFE and host of podcast “Are We There Yet?”, along with planetary scientist Matthew Siegler, about recent solar system news, and space events to keep an eye on in the months ahead.

U.S. Attempts To Catch Up With Rising Monkeypox Cases The outbreak of the orthopox virus currently known as monkeypox continues to spread in hotspots around the United States, with symptoms ranging from fever to intensely painful, contagious lesions. From five cases in late May, the known number has grown to at least 1,053 as of Wednesday afternoon, with epicenters including New York City, the Bay Area, Chicago, Washington D.C., and other major cities. But the current numbers most certainly are an undercount, as people seeking diagnosis report difficulty accessing tests. Meanwhile, the rollout of the existing monkeypox vaccine, Jynneos, remains slow and inadequate for demand, with more than a million doses still stuck in a stockpile in Denmark.

So far, the virus, which is known to spread through respiratory droplets and skin-to-skin contact, has been detected predominantly in men who have sex with men. New York public health researcher Keletso Makofane and San Francisco AIDS Foundation CEO Tyler TerMeer speak to the frustration of LGBTQ men and nonbinary people in the most at-risk networks, as resources and response lag.

And Ira talks to UCLA monkeypox researcher Anne Rimoin, who twelve years ago published a warning that cases were rising in African countries as immunity to the related smallpox virus waned. He also speaks with Brown University epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo about the outlook for global and domestic containment, and the pressing need for more data.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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1,000 Acres Of Ancestral Land Returned To Onondaga Nation Earlier this month, more than 1,000 acres of land in central New York were returned to the Onondaga Nation, the original steward of the land. This decision stems from a 2018 settlement between the Natural Resource Trustees and Honeywell International, Inc., which previously owned the land and polluted it with dangerous toxins, such as mercury and heavy metals. Under this agreement, Honeywell will fund and implement 18 restoration projects, and the Onondaga Nation will lead the restoration and preservation of its land.

“It is with great joy that the Onondaga Nation welcomes the return of the first substantial acreage of its ancestral homelands. The Nation can now renew its stewardship obligations to restore these lands and waters and to preserve them for the future generations yet to come,” Onondaga Nation Chief Tadodaho Sid Hill said in a statement. “The Nation hopes that this cooperative, government-to-government effort will be another step in healing between themselves and all others who live in this region which has been the homeland of the Onondaga Nation since the dawn of time.”

Roxanne Khamsi, science writer based in Montreal, Canada, joins Ira to talk about this “landback victory,” which marks one of the largest returns of land to an Indigenous nation in U.S. history.

Roxanne and Ira also discuss other science news of the week, including why pulse oximeters aren’t inclusive of people with dark skin, how some mosquito-borne viruses trick their hosts into attracting more mosquitoes, the discovery of a one-of-a-kind carnivorous plant that hides its traps underground, why some flowers act as cesspools for bumblebees, and how relocating sea turtle eggs can lead to health issues for newborn turtles.

A New COVID Wave Is Here, Raising The Risk Of Reinfections Coronavirus is surging again in the United States. The latest sub-variants BA.4 and BA.5 are now dominant. Right now, things are feeling a little different: People who were recently sick are getting reinfected. And those who have so far evaded the virus are getting it for the first time.

A new booster based on the new omicron sub-variants is slated to roll out in the fall. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is pushing to allow people under 50 to get a second dose of the currently available booster.

Ira is joined by Katelyn Jetelina, adjunct professor at UTHealth School of Public Health and author of the newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist and Jessica Malaty Rivera, epidemiology fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital and senior advisor at the Pandemic Prevention Institute to debunk the latest pandemic misinformation and update us on the current state of the virus.

Texas Heatwave Puts Strain on Electric Grid Texans woke up Monday morning to a familiar fear, worried that the state’s electric grid may not provide enough energy to see them through the day. While the anxiety is understandable, a shortfall of energy reserves on the system does not automatically mean the grid operator will order rolling blackouts. If you, like millions of others, are wondering about the likelihood of blackouts, here’s a review of what happens if the state falls short of power.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Gene Editing Is Easy—And A Crime—In This New Techno Thriller Book Logan Ramsay wakes up one morning and feels different. It’s not allergies, and it’s not the flu. If anything, he feels sharper: He needs less sleep, and can multitask and read at lightning speed. What’s going on with him? It turns out his genome has been hacked: tiny changes were made to his DNA to make him a bit of a superhuman. But at what cost?

This is the plot of Upgrade, Science Friday’s next book club pick, and a new science fiction novel that mixes real science concepts—notably CRISPR—with a fast-paced plot. It’s written by author Blake Crouch, who was inspired to write the book in part because of a Science Friday appearance in 2016. It’s also our current book club pick.

Blake joins Ira to discuss a future where gene editing is used to hack drugs, people, and animals, and how far off we are from the book’s climate disaster surveillance state.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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A Debate Over How The Universe Began Even though it’s commonly accepted today, the Big Bang theory was not always the universally accepted scientific explanation for how our universe began. In fact, the term ‘Big Bang’ was coined by a prominent physicist in 1949 to mock the idea.

In the middle of the 20th century, researchers in the field of cosmology had two warring theories. The one we would come to call the Big Bang suggested the universe expanded rapidly from a primordial, hot, and ultra-dense cosmos. Conversely, the so-called ‘Steady State’ theory held that the universe, at any given point in time, looked roughly the same.

The story of how the Big Bang became the accepted theory of physics is also a story of two men. One, Fred Hoyle, was a steady state supporter who thought the universe would last forever. Meanwhile, George Gamow, the major public advocate of the Big Bang, begged to differ. They debated in the pages of Scientific American and in competing popular books, as both dedicated scientists and earnest popularizers of their field.

And while Gamow ended up winning the debate, for the most part, the two men managed to come together in one way: They accidentally explained the origins of every element of matter by being part right, and part wrong. The truth, it turned out, would lie in the middle. Ira talks to physicist and science historian Paul Halpern about this story, detailed in his book, Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate.

The World According To Sound: Listening To Black Holes Collide In this piece, you can actually listen to gravitational waves, the ripples in spacetime made by the tremendous mass of colliding black holes. It is possible to hear them, because their wavelengths have been shifted all the way into the human range of hearing by MIT professor Scott Hughes.

Drawn together by their immense gravity, nearby black holes will swirl faster and faster until they are finally absorbed completely into one another. When the pitch rises, it means the force of gravity is increasing as the black holes collide.

Not all black holes come together at the same rate or release the same amount of gravitational waves, so each combining pair has its own particular sonic signature. Some black holes collide quickly. Others slowly merge. Some produce relatively high pitches, because of the intensity of the gravitational waves, while others have a low bass rumbling. Some even make the sound of a wobbling top as the two black holes swirl around each other, before eventually meeting and becoming totally absorbed into one another.

A Maggot Revolution In Modern Medicine In a bloody battle during World War I, two wounded soldiers were stranded on the battlefield in France, hidden and overlooked under some brush. Suffering femur fractures and flesh wounds around their scrotum and abdomen, they lay abandoned without water, food, or shelter for a whole week. At the time, outcomes for these kinds of wounds were poor: Patients with compound femur fractures had a 75 to 80% mortality rate. By the time the soldiers were rescued and brought to a hospital base, orthopedic surgeon William Baer expected their wounds to be festering, and their conditions fatal. But much to his surprise, neither showed any signs of fever, septicaemia, or blood poisoning.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Trying To Determine Forest Health? Look To The Lichens There aren’t very many old-growth forest left in North America. And while it would be wonderful to be able to preserve all of them, resources to protect those forest patches are also in limited supply. So if you’re forced to choose between two areas of old-growth forest, how do you prioritize which of these islands of biodiversity to focus on?

One of the standard ways to identify significant patches of forest is to look at the size of the trees. But new work published this week in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment suggests that examining the lichens in a forest plot may give a better picture of the ecological health of an area. Because lichens feed from the air flowing over them, they’re quite sensitive to changes in moisture, nutrients, and pollution, and need long, continuous periods undisturbed.

Troy McMullin, a research scientist in lichenology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, joins Ira to talk about the stories lichens can tell about the forest ecosystem.

Transcripts are available on sciencefriday.com.

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We Need To Talk About Bird Poop Seabird poop—sometimes called guano—was the “white gold” of fertilizers for humans for millennia. Rich in nitrogen and phosphorus from birds’ fish-based diets, the substance shaped trade routes and powered economies until chemical fertilizers replaced it.

But while people may no longer find bird poop profitable, these same poop deposits—often found on islands or coasts where the birds nest and rear their young—may also be nurturing ecosystems that would be left high and dry if the birds were to disappear. As seabird populations quickly decline, that’s becoming an increasing risk.

Australian researchers Megan Grant and Jennifer Lavers talk to Ira about the under-appreciated role of bird guano in ecosystems, and why scientists should be looking more closely at the poop patterns of endangered seabirds.

Sweating Is Our Biological Superpower Sweat may feel like a constant summer companion, whether or not you exercise frequently. Being damp can feel uncomfortable, but the smells that follow—thanks to the lives and deaths of sweat-munching bacteria—are often socially stigmatized as well. (Deodorant itself is actually a very recent invention!)

Ira talks to Sarah Everts, author of the new book, The Joy Of Sweat, about what makes sweat useful, the cool chemistry of this bodily fluid, and why it’s our evolutionary superpower.

From Zero To 100 Butts: The Wild World Of Invertebrate Behinds Recently, the staff of Science Friday came across a tweet that caught our attention, sent out by researcher Dr. Maureen Berg. Turns out, it was a call to source comic ideas for Invertebrate Butt Week, a celebration of—you guessed it—the butts of invertebrates. “Invertebrates really get the short end of the stick,” says Rosemary Mosco, the creator of the comic series Bird And Moon and #InverteButtWeek organizer. “People are not as excited about them as, say, a majestic whale or a beautiful bird. And I love my birds, but [invertebrates have] such an incredible diversity. So, butts are sort of a cheeky way to access some of that amazing diversity and celebrate it.”

Rosemary and other scientists and illustrators teamed up to create #InverteButtWeek, a celebration of the behinds of the backbone-less. “It’s a chance for some people who do science communication to do the silliest thing that they can possibly think of,” says Dr. Ainsley Seago, curator of invertebrate zoology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Science Friday’s D Peterschmidt talks to the organizers of #InverteButtWeek about how it came together, their favorite invertebrate butt facts (like how sea cucumbers have anal teeth), and how you can participate in the celebration.

Transcripts are available on sciencefriday.com.

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How Will Doctors Train For A Post-Roe World? It’s been one week since Roe v Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court. Many people are still wrapping their heads around what this overturn means for their states— and for their lives.

For physicians and medical professionals, there’s another level of fear and concern about what practicing in a world without Roe v. Wade will mean. Questions are circulating about how training for OB/GYN’s may change, or if abortion care will stop being taught in medical school in states that do not allow the practice. For years, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has warned that a shortage of gynecologists will persist, and many in the industry fear the overturn will exacerbate this issue.

Joining Ira to talk about how the Roe overturn could impact training of medical professionals is Dr. Maria Isabel Rodriguez, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon.

Why Are Female Athletes At A Higher Risk Of ACL Injuries? During 2021’s NCAA March Madness tournament, photos and videos from inside the athletes’ weight rooms went viral. The images showed the difference between what was available to the men’s and women’s teams.

The men’s weight room was chock full of fitness training devices. For the female athletes, the only weights were six pairs of dumbbells.

This was just one example of a harmful stereotype that has persisted about women in sports: strength training is for men, not for women. This kind of thinking is not only wrong, but can have serious consequences.

Research shows female athletes are more prone to certain injuries, most strikingly ACL injuries. Women and girls are up to six times as likely to get an ACL injury compared to boys and men. Joanne Parsons, physical therapist and associate professor at the University of Manitoba, says, “A high school girl who plays basketball or soccer for one season, so let’s say three to four months-ish, will have a 1% chance of rupturing their ACL.”

Parsons and her colleague Stephanie Coen, health geographer and associate professor at the University of Nottingham, UK, join Ira to talk about how the way athletic training works now puts women and girls at a disadvantage, and what can be done to better protect athletes.

Watch the live call-in at sciencefriday.com.

The Best Science Books To Read This Summer, 2022 Edition Whether you’re on the beach this summer, taking a staycation, or whiling away too many hours spent delayed in airports, you’ll want something to read. Ira and guest authors Riley Black and Deb Blum are here for you, with recommendations for the best books to soak in during the season of escapism.

The full list of book recommendations can be found at sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available a week after the show at sciencefriday.com.

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Supreme Court Limits EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulating Ability This week, in its final round of opinions for the term, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had not explicitly given the Environmental Protection Agency the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants under the terms of the Clean Air Act.

“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day.’ But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d). A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body,” wrote Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion in the case, West Virginia v. EPA.

The ruling could hinder efforts globally to combat climate change, and could also affect regulations issued by other federal agencies dealing with "major questions" that would dramatically affect the economy.

Timothy Revell, deputy U.S. Editor at New Scientist, joins Ira to talk about the decision and other stories from the week in science, including new studies of the canine evolutionary tree, a look back at 10 years of the CRISPR gene-editing technique, the launch of the CAPSTONE mission, and what our nose can tell us about potential relationships.

The Scientist Rebellion: “We’re Not Exaggerating” About The Climate Crisis Earlier this year, more than 1,000 scientists in 26 countries risked arrest during protests against climate change inaction. In Washington D.C., Rose Abramoff and other demonstrators chained themselves to the White House fence before being arrested. Across the country, Peter Kalmus chained himself to the doors of a JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bank in Los Angeles and gave an impassioned speech: “The scientists of the world are being ignored. And it’s got to stop. We’re going to lose everything. And we’re not joking. We’re not lying. We’re not exaggerating.”

Just recently, the Supreme Court recently cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s power (EPA) to regulate carbon emissions, a major step back in the climate movement.

Abramoff, a global change ecologist based in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab based in Los Angeles, California, are members of an international group of scientists called Scientist Rebellion, who committed to sounding the alarms about the climate crisis. They join Ira to talk about the state of the climate movement, what it’s like to be a climate activist in the United States, and the power of disruption.

Drought In Western Kansas Exacerbates Global Wheat Shortage Russia's war in Ukraine has disrupted global food supplies, driving up demand and prices for wheat. But after months of drought, many western Kansas farmers won’t have a crop to sell. This time of year, the wheat growing in this part of western Kansas should be thigh-high and lush green.But as a months-long drought continues to parch the region, many fields tell a different story. “There’s nothing out there. It’s dead,” farmer Vance Ehmke said, surveying a wheat field near his land in Lane County. “It’s just ankle-high straw.”

Across western Kansas, many fields planted with wheat months ago now look like barren wastelands. The gaping spaces between rows of brown, shriveled plants reveal hardened dirt that’s scarred with deep cracks from baking in the sun. Of all the years for drought to hit western Kansas wheat farmers, it couldn’t have come at a worse time. Even with wheat selling for near-record-high prices as the war in Ukraine disrupts the world’s food supplies, a lot of farmers in western Kansas won’t have any to sell. And those who made it through the drought with enough crop to harvest will likely end up with far fewer bushels than they had last year, a downturn that limits the state’s ability to help ease the global food crisis.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

See Science In Motion At “Twitch, Pop, Bloom” It’s not unusual for people to crowd into a theater to see a big blockbuster about science. But when’s the last time you saw people clamoring for seats for an educational film made by scientists? The answer is likely never.

But this was not unusual in the early 1900s, when film was an up-and-coming medium and science was capturing the public’s imagination. This summer, the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in Queens, New York, is highlighting science education films of the past in the new exhibit “Twitch, Pop, Bloom: Science in Action.”

SciFri producer Kathleen Davis speaks to Sonia Epstein, MOMI’s associate curator of science and film, about how these early videos and research went hand-in-hand at the dawn of cinema, and the historical significance of some of the videos in the exhibit.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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What Does HIPAA Actually Do? HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is name dropped a lot, but frequently misunderstood. Many are surprised to find that the “P” stands for portability, not privacy.

Misunderstandings about what’s protected under the law go way deeper than its name. The law outlines protections only for health information shared between patients and health care providers. This means that any personal health data shared with someone who is not specifically mentioned in the law is not covered.

If a period tracking app shares personal health information with Facebook, that’s not a violation of HIPAA. Neither is asking for someone’s vaccination status.

Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with Tara Sklar, professor of health law and director of the Health Law & Policy Program at the University of Arizona, to explain what’s actually covered under HIPAA.

“Research By Us And For Us”: How Medical Research Can Better Serve Trans Communities Trans medical care isn’t new or experimental, and study after study has shown that transition-related procedures—such as hormone therapies and surgeries—are incredibly safe and effective. But most long-term studies on trans health focus on the first few years after transitioning, leaving unanswered questions about the years after.

Similar to members of other marginalized groups, trans people have long been treated like “case studies,” rather than potential experts when it comes to scientific research. So while researchers have studied trans bodies for decades, they haven’t always asked trans people what they need to know about their own bodies, such as: If I’m pursuing medical transition, how will my bone density change after years of taking estrogen? If I take testosterone, will I also need to get a hysterectomy? How will my hormonal and surgical options affect my fertility?

Now, a new wave of medical research—led by trans medical experts themselves—is trying to fill in those blanks and address the needs of trans communities.

Guest host Maddie Sofia speaks with Dr. Asa Radix, the senior director of research and education at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, and Dallas Ducar, nurse practitioner and founding CEO of Transhealth Northampton. They talk about the state of research on trans health, and how studies can better address the needs of the trans and gender diverse communities.

Food Pantry Venison May Contain Lead Iowa requires warning labels about the possible presence of lead in shot-harvested venison. Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska do not. A walk-in freezer about two stories high sits in one corner of a warehouse owned by a food bank called Hawkeye Area Community Action Program Inc. in Hiawatha, Iowa. Chris Ackman, the food bank’s communication manager, points to the shelving racks where any donated venison the organization receives is typically stored.

Known as the Help Us Stop Hunger, or HUSH, program, the venison is donated by hunters from around the state, and Ackman says the two-pound tubes of ground meat go pretty quickly, lasting only a few months.

“It’s a pretty critical program, I think, because there are a lot of hunters in Iowa,” he said. “And, it’s well enjoyed by a lot of families as well.”

Similar programs around the country have been applauded as a way for hunters to do something they enjoy while also helping feed those in need. Iowa hunters donate around 3,500 deer a year through the program. From the hunters, the deer goes to a meat locker, where it’s ground, packaged and shipped off to food pantries around the state. But before it hits the shelves, Iowa officials require a warning label on the venison package.

The label reads:

“Lead fragments may be found in processed venison. Children under 6 years and pregnant women are at the greatest risk from lead.”

Then, in bold type, the label notes: “Iowa has not found cases of lead poisoning from lead in venison,” along with a number to call for more information.

Iowa stands out among Midwestern states in requiring a label warning about the potential hazard of lead ammunition and the fragments it can leave behind in shot-harvested game meat like venison. Donated venison in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska come with no similar warning label.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Museum Exhibit Celebrates Queerness In Science Last year, the California Academy of Sciences debuted “New Science: The Academy Exhibit,” which celebrates 23 incredible LGBTQIA+ scientists. The folks in this exhibit are challenging the exclusionary practices that are all too common in scientific spaces, with the aim of creating a more inclusive and welcoming environment. It is a celebration of queerness in science.

Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with the curator of this exhibit, Lauren Esposito, who is a curator of arachnology at the California Academy of Sciences and founder of 500 Queer Scientists, based in San Francisco. They discuss the exhibit, the importance of LGBTQIA+ representation in STEM, and, of course, arachnids.

The exhibit is free and open to the public at the California Academy of Sciences, and it is also available online.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs at sciencefriday.com.

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U.S. Supreme Court Overturns Roe V. Wade The U.S. Supreme Court decided Friday to overturn Roe v Wade. While there have been rumblings that this decision was going to happen, it’s still a shock to many people in the U.S.

In early May, a draft opinion was leaked that had circulated among the court justices, showing a majority of them were in support of the overturn. This will have huge ripple effects throughout the U.S. when it comes to reproductive healthcare.

A study from the University of California predicts a quarter of abortion clinics in the U.S. are likely to shut down under this rule, with the biggest impact in the South and Midwest.

Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with SciFri radio producer Kathleen Davis about what’s next for abortion rights in America and other science news of the week, including evidence of community transmission of polio in London and Canada’s single-use plastic ban.

The Millions Of Ways Animals Sense The World A shark tracks its victims by smell, but uses the unmissable signal of a fish’s electrical field to make its final strike. Fire-chaser beetles can detect the heat of distant forest fires with specialized cells in their heads. Baby tree frogs can detect the seismic signals of a striking snake from within the egg—and seem to hatch earlier in defense. And the prey-hunting visual system of one unassuming-looking Mediterranean fly, known as the killer fly, works faster than any other species we’ve observed.

All of these are examples of an animal’s umwelt, their specialized sensory bubble or window onto the world, as described by German biologist Jakob Johann von Uexküll over one hundred years ago.

As science writer Ed Yong writes in his newest book, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us, our history of studying animals’ umwelten has been fraught with hubris, misunderstandings, and mistakes. But bit by bit, we’re learning to appreciate the truly spectacular perceptive abilities of the owl, the elephantfish, and the humble jumping spider.

Yong joins guest host Maddie Sofia to share stories of amazing animal sensory abilities and the challenges of both imagining and describing these other realms using human-centric language. Plus, the uniquely human capacity to imagine other animals’ umwelten, and how we can use it to make the world better for them.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The Wild and Wonderful World of Mammals Mammals may be the most diverse group of vertebrates that have ever lived. (Don’t tell the mollusk enthusiasts over at Cephalopod Week.) Many people share their homes with another mammal as a pet, like a dog or cat. The largest creatures on earth are mammals: Ocean-dwelling blue whales are the biggest animals that have ever lived, and African elephants are the biggest animals on land. And lest we forget, humans, too, are mammals.

The history and diversity of mammalians is the subject of a new book by paleontologist Steve Brusatte, “The Rise and Reign of the Mammals.” Steve joins Ira to talk about why mammals have been so successful over the years, and why extinct mammals deserve as much love as the beloved dinosaurs.

A Squid-tastic Night Out How do you fossilize a squishy squid? Do octopuses see in color, and do they have arms or tentacles? Which came first, the hard-shelled nautilus or the soft-bodied octopus, squid, or cuttlefish? And what does ‘cephalopod’ mean, anyhow?

This week, Ira ventured to the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut for a special Cephalopod Week celebration. He was joined by experts Barrett Christie, the director of animal husbandry for the Maritime Aquarium, and Christopher Whalen, a postdoctoral researcher and invertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

They also discussed the challenges of caring for cephalopods in an aquarium environment, some of the amazing abilities of these animals, and what it’s like to discover a previously unknown cephalopod genus and species in fossilized material stored in museum archives. Together, they tackled audience cephalopod questions large, small, and multi-armed.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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FDA Approves COVID Vaccines For Kids Under Five Parents of young kids may finally breathe a big sigh of relief.

On Friday the FDA granted emergency use authorization for COVID-19 vaccines for kids under the age of five. The agency approved a two-dose regimen from biotech firm Moderna and three-dose regimen from Pfizer. Small children could begin getting vaccinated as early as next week.

Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins Ira to talk about COVID vaccines for little kids, the largest forest fire in New Mexico’s history and a Google engineer who claims an AI chatbot is sentient and more.

What Would Happen To IVF If Roe V. Wade Is Overturned? An overturn of Roe v. Wade could have rippling effects far beyond access to abortions. Some state laws designed to ban or severely restrict abortion could also disrupt the process of fertilizing, implanting, and freezing embryos used in in vitro fertilization. That’s because some of these laws include language about life beginning at conception, raising questions about in vitro fertilization’s (IVF) legality.

Roughly 2% of all infants in the United States are born following the use of some form of artificial reproductive technology. While that figure might seem small, it’s nearly double what it was just a decade ago.

Ira talks with Stephanie Boys, associate professor of social work and adjunct professor of law at Indiana University, about the legal implications of an overturn of Roe v. Wade on IVF treatment. Later, Ira also interviews Dr. Marcelle Cedars, director of the division of reproductive endocrinology at UC San Francisco and president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, about the science behind IVF and what people often get wrong about when and how life begins.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Americans’ Knowledge Of Reproductive Health Is Limited As the nation awaits a momentous Supreme Court decision that could overturn or severely limit the 1973 Roe V. Wade opinion on abortion, a new poll released by the Kaiser Family Foundation found serious gaps in Americans’ understanding of certain scientific aspects of reproductive health.

For instance, the poll found that while medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., fewer than three in ten U.S. adults (27%) say they have heard of the medication abortion pill known as mifepristone—though that number is up slightly from a 2019 poll, which found that 21% of adults had heard of the medication. And even among those who had heard of it, poll respondents were unsure over when and how it was used, or how to obtain the drug.

Rachel Feltman, executive editor at Popular Science, joins John Dankosky to talk about the poll findings and other stories from the week in science—including an experimental drug for rectal cancer, an ancient jawbone of a polar bear, an EU ruling regarding charging ports for electronic devices, and a micrometeorite ding on the shiny mirror of the recently-launched JWST.

Some Doctors Want To Change How Race Is Used In Medicine Several months ago, a lab technologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital mixed the blood components of two people: Alphonso Harried, who needed a kidney, and Pat Holterman-Hommes, who hoped to give him one.

The goal was to see whether Harried’s body would instantly see Holterman-Hommes’ organ as a major threat and attack it before surgeons could finish a transplant. To do that, the technologist mixed in fluorescent tags that would glow if Harried’s immune defense forces would latch onto the donor’s cells in preparation for an attack. If, after a few hours, the machine found lots of glowing, it meant the kidney transplant would be doomed. It stayed dark: They were a match.“I was floored,” said Harried.

Both recipient and donor were a little surprised. Harried is Black. Holterman-Hommes is white. Could a white person donate a kidney to a Black person? Would race get in the way of their plans? Both families admitted those kinds of questions were flitting around in their heads, even though they know, deep down, that “it’s more about your blood type—and all of our blood is red,” as Holterman-Hommes put it.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

How A $2 Billion U.S. Plan To Save Salmon In The Northwest Is Failing CARSON, Wash.—The fish were on their way to be executed. One minute, they were swimming around a concrete pond. The next, they were being dumped onto a stainless steel table set on an incline. Hook-nosed and wide-eyed, they thrashed and thumped their way down the table toward an air-powered guillotine.

Hoses hanging from steel girders flushed blood through the grated metal floor. Hatchery workers in splattered chest waders gutted globs of bright orange eggs from the dead females and dropped them into buckets, then doused them first with a stream of sperm taken from the dead males and then with an iodine disinfectant.

The fertilized eggs were trucked around the corner to an incubation building where over 200 stacked plastic trays held more than a million salmon eggs. Once hatched, they would fatten and mature in rectangular concrete tanks sunk into the ground, safe from the perils of the wild, until it was time to make their journey to the ocean.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

How A Facebook Group Helps People Identify Mysterious Mushrooms Mushroom season has begun. A wide variety of fungi are sprouting up in forests and yards, especially after a heavy rainstorm. While wild mushrooms are generally safe to touch, eating mysterious fungi is a terrible idea. But, sometimes a child or a dog gobbles up an unknown species. In order to determine if it’s poisonous or not, you’ll need an expert opinion—quickly.

That’s why Kerry Woodfield helped start a Facebook group to help people correctly identify poisonous mushrooms and plants. She recruited over 200 botanists and mycologists from all over the world to volunteer their time. In the past few years, the group has mushroomed to over 130,000 members.

Guest host John Dankosky talks with Woodfield, co-founder of the Facebook group, Poisons Help; Emergency Identification For Mushrooms & Plants and foraging instructor at Wild Food UK. She discusses why she decided to start the group, its role within the poison control system, and how to talk to the kids in your life about poisonous plants and mushrooms.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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20,000 Viruses Under The Sea: Mapping The Ocean’s Viral Ecosystem The ocean is the largest region of the planet and remains a source of newly discovered species. But what do you do with a treasure trove of new viruses? A research team wrote in Science last month about finding thousands of new RNA viruses, and five new taxonomic phyla, in water samples from around the globe.

The new species more than doubles the known number of RNA viruses on the planet, painting a clearer picture of the vast abundance and diversity of viruses in ocean ecosystems. Though they may be small, research on DNA viruses in the ocean has previously suggested tiny viruses may have a role in something as large as the global carbon cycle.

Producer Christie Taylor interviews microbiologist and study co-author Ahmed Zayed about the importance of the ocean virome.

How Recreational Weed Transformed A Small California Town From the outside, Jose Rivas’s gray, one-story office building seems just as unassuming as Woodlake, the small Tulare County City where it’s located. But once you’ve been escorted inside the wrought iron gate and checked in at the security desk, you’ll see a chemistry lab of so many potheads’ dreams: bubbling evaporators, storage tanks of liquid nitrogen, and trays and trays of drying marijuana buds.

But Rivas isn’t a pothead – he’s the CEO of a cannabis company known as Premium Extracts that squeezes, distills and steams everything it can from the flower. “Essentially what we’ve developed here is a methodology to isolate the components and molecules of the cannabis plant, which are responsible for its taste, its flavor, and all the nuanced aroma that comes from each individual cannabis strain,” Rivas said.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Meet The Doctor Trying To Bring Medical Marijuana Into The Mainstream An increasing number of states in the U.S. are legalizing medical cannabis, which means millions of people have access to medical marijuana cards. These can be used to buy cannabis to manage pain, treat mental health conditions, and help sleep issues.

But a majority of U.S. medical schools offer no education about medical marijuana and its effects on the body. As a result, many physicians and medical professionals do not feel knowledgeable enough about cannabis to make recommendations to patients about what their options are: With so many methods of taking marijuana, and an endless combination of dosages and strains, many patients and doctors feel at a loss.

Dr. Mikhail Kogan is trying to change that. As the medical director for the George Washington University Center for Integrative Medicine in Washington, D.C., Dr. Kogan is one of the foremost experts on using medical cannabis to treat a variety of conditions. A majority of his patients are geriatric and suffer from conditions as wide-ranging as cancer and Alzheimer’s. Dr. Kogan traces his experience using marijuana as an alternative medicine in his book, Medical Marijuana: Dr. Kogan’s Evidence-Based Guide to the Health Benefits of Cannabis and CBD.

Ira chats with Dr. Kogan about why marijuana is successful as a treatment for so many medical conditions, and how interested patients should approach their physicians if they feel it could be right for them.

The World According to Sound: Listening to WiFi When you walk down a city street, you may not know it, but you’re being bombarded with WiFi data streaming from people’s home routers, phones, and businesses.

Frank Swain and Daniel Jones recorded the WiFi signals while walking down a few streets in London. They used smartphones to capture the data and turn it into sounds. It’s like a geiger counter, but for WiFi instead of radiation. Faster clicks mean higher wifi signal strength, robotic beeps are the router ID numbers. They call this project “Phantom Terrains.” They want us to consider how much of our urban world is saturated by invisible streams of data.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Scientists Found The Biggest Known Plant On Earth This week, an underwater seagrass meadow claimed the title for the world’s largest plant. This organism sprawls across 77 square miles of shallow ocean and has survived 4,500 years. To accomplish this, it kept cloning itself and created identical offshoots to spread along the sand. The ocean has changed wildly over the last 4,500 years, yet this plant has survived.

Researchers believe that cloning itself may have helped the plant adapt to a changing ocean, offering hope that seagrass meadows may be more resilient than expected in the face of climate change.

Sophie Bushwick, a technology editor at Scientific American, joins Ira to talk about how this mighty meadow persisted for millennia and what it tells scientists about climate change.

Sophie and Ira also discuss other stories from this week in science, including what countries are most responsible for fueling the extinction of wildlife, what a well-preserved fossil tell us about the sex lives of ancient trilobites, why male mice are terrified of bananas, the creation of a flea-sized robot that walks like a crab, and how scientists developed an algorithm to pinpoint the whereabouts of unknown asteroids.

Building A Better Battery… Using Plastic? The lithium-ion battery in your cell phone, laptop, or electric car is a crucial component of the modern world. These batteries can charge quickly, and pack a lot of power into a small space. But they’re also expensive, require mining scarce lithium, and need to be handled carefully.

Other battery technologies have issues as well. For example, the heavy lead-acid battery that starts your car is quite reliable—but lead has its own environmental and health costs. That’s why PolyJoule, a startup company based near Boston, is trying to create a new kind of battery, somewhere on the performance curve between those old lead-acid batteries and lithium-ion cells. Their technology relies not on a metal, but on polymer plastics.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Bug Off: Why Mosquitoes Have An Annoyingly Amazing Sense Of Smell Mosquitoes use their sense of smell to find their next meal: us. So what would happen if you tweaked their smell so that humans smell really gross to them?

That’s what Dr. Chris Potter and his lab recently tried to do—they changed the neurons responsible for the insect’s smell detection, so that in the presence of animal odors, their olfactory systems would be overwhelmed. Instead of smelling like a nice meal, mosquitoes would be repelled by the scent of humans, like if you were stuck in a small room with someone wearing too much cologne.

This method worked in Drosophila, the common fruit fly, so Potter and his team were hopeful that would also be the case for mosquitoes. Instead, the experiment didn’t go as planned. Because finding a blood meal is so important for mosquitoes, those little buggers evolved backups for their backup receptors. When Potter turned one pathway off, another one kicked in.

Ira talks with Dr. Chris Potter, an associate professor of neuroscience in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, based in Baltimore, Maryland, about his findings, and why we can never quite get mosquitoes to bug off.

So You Think You Know About Sex When it comes to sex, there’s really no such thing as normal. What was once considered taboo, sometimes goes mainstream. And some things considered new have been around as long as sex itself, like birth control, abortion, and sexually transmitted infections.

All that and more is contained in the new book, Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex, by Rachel Feltman, executive editor of Popular Science, based in New York City.

Radio producer Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with author Rachel Feltman about queer animals, crocodile dung contraception, ancient STIs, what led to the United States’ original abortion ban, and more.

Processing Postpartum With AI And Synthetic Breast Milk Art One of Ani Liu’s strengths as an artist is her ability to process emotion through different scientific mediums: machine learning, chemistry, 3D-printing. The result is often visceral: she’s used organic chemistry to concoct perfumes that smell like people emotionally close to her and engineered a device that enables the wearer to control the direction of swimming sperm with their mind.

And at her new exhibition—next to a 3D-printed sculpture of a pig’s uterus—lies 328 feet of clear tubing with a milky-white substance pumped through it, a commentary on pumping breast milk as a new parent. “I wanted to use my own breast milk, but it wouldn’t be stable for the duration of the show,” she said.

Liu became a parent shortly before the pandemic, and she channeled that experience into a new show called “Ecologies of Care,” to process her postpartum period and the communities in her life that helped her through that time.

“I hope that this can allow new parents to bond and maybe feel less lonely,” she said. “In making it, I was questioning how do we create better communities of care? I made all of this work before the formula shortage, before our reproductive rights were even more under threat. When I look at this, I’m hoping that you see this particular slice of love and labor.”

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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‘Breakthrough’ In Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Research Is Misleading Last week, headlines made the rounds in online publications and social media that there was a massive breakthrough in research about SIDS: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. A study out of Australia concluded that babies who died of SIDS had significantly lower levels of an enzyme called BChE. This study was met with cheers by people desperate to understand why SIDS happens.

But many experts say we need to pump the brakes on the celebration. While the study may be promising, it was based on a very limited sample—just 26 babies who had died of SIDS. A variety of factors could explain their different levels of BChE, says Dr. Rachel Moon, a professor of pediatrics and SIDS research at the University of Virginia.

Moon explains that there are two major hurdles for researchers trying to investigate the causes of SIDS. First, as grieving parents are very unlikely to consent to their deceased child’s use in medical studies, the sample pool for genetic testing of SIDS death is incredibly small. Secondly, there are just very few people who specialize in the syndrome; Dr. Moon suspects there are one hundred or fewer researchers of SIDS in the entire world. She joins guest host John Dankosky to discuss how these factors make it hard for researchers to study why some babies continue to die prematurely.

Period Tracking Apps And Digital Privacy In A Post-Roe World After the leak of the Supreme Court’s pending decision on Roe v. Wade law, digital privacy experts have been raising an alarm about digital privacy.

Millions of people use apps to track their menstrual cycles—the popular app Flo has 43 million active users. And Clue, a similar company, says they have 12 million monthly active users. But in recent weeks, many on social media have been urging others to delete their period tracking apps, saying that the data you share on them could be potentially be used against you if abortion becomes criminalized in states across the country.

Guest host John Dankosky talks with Laura Lazaro Cabrera, legal officer at Privacy International, about what kinds of data period tracking apps collect, how personal health data can be used in court, and how to protect your digital privacy.

How Can We Inspire The Next Generation Of Female Scientists? The work of pioneering female scientists like Marie Curie and Jane Gooddall have served as an inspiration to many aspiring scientists. But less well-known are the early and mid-career female scientists who are working to answer some of today’s biggest scientific questions.

A new book from National Geographic offers kids and tweens a look into the day-to-day lives of women working in the fields of volcanology, biology, anthropology, astronomy, and more. A central theme among the profiles is persistence in the face of obstacles.

Producer Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with Clare Fiesler, conservation biologist, National Geographic explorer, and co-author of No Boundaries: 25 Women Explorers and Scientists Share Adventures, Inspiration, and Advice.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Gun Violence Is A Public Health Issue As illustrated by the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas this week, gun violence is a pervasive issue in the United States. The entire Science Friday team extends our condolences to everyone affected by this tragedy.

One reason gun violence is so difficult to understand is that for a long time, there was a federal freeze on funding gun-violence research. That was due to the “Dickey Amendment” which was instated in 1996. This rule barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using funds to fund research into gun violence, with the reasoning that research into this area would “advocate or promote gun control.”

The 2020 federal omnibus spending bill reinstated funding for this research for the first time in more than 20 years, opening up research into gun violence. This comes during a time where healthcare professionals, including pediatricians and epidemiologists, have elevated their voices to say that gun violence is a public health issue. Firearm-related injury is now the leading cause of death of children and adolescents in the United States.

Joining guest host John Dankosky to discuss gun violence as a public health issue is Roxanne Khamsi, science writer based in Montreal, Quebec.

Don’t Panic About Monkeypox Yet, Says Expert This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it was investigating five cases of purported monkeypox that had been found in the United States. This is a disease that’s endemic to parts of central and west Africa, and is rarely seen outside of those regions. The small number of cases here in the U.S is unusual.

Monkeypox can spread from person to person through skin-to-skin contact or respiratory droplets. Its most striking symptom is an active rash and lesions in the mouth, though can also present as flu-like and include fever, headache, and soreness.

As we’re still grappling with our COVID world, many people are concerned about this new illness. Dr. Anne Rimoin, professor of epidemiology at UCLA’s School of Public Health in Los Angeles, California, joins guest host John Dankosky to explain what’s going on with this wave.

Baby Formula 101: Feeding During A Shortage If you’re the parent of a newborn, you’ve likely experienced how difficult it’s gotten to find your little ones’ favorite baby formula. In February, Abbott Nutrition, a major manufacturer of baby food and formula, shut down a factory in Michigan. This came after the FDA began investigating serious—and even fatal—bacterial infections in infants who were fed formula from the plant.

This one factory produces around a quarter of the United States’ baby formula, so closing it has left store shelves empty and parents scrambling to feed their babies. In a desperate state, many parents have resorted to switching their babies’ formula, seeking out donated breast milk, and even making formula at home.

Guest host John Dankosky speaks with Dr. Bridget Young, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Rochester and founder of Baby Formula Expert, about the makeup of baby formula, why it’s so important, and how parents can safely feed babies during the ongoing shortage.

Breast Milk Banks Are Struggling To Meet Demand The nationwide shortage of baby formula is also impacting Hoosier families. More than 40 percent of retailers across the country reported being out of formula stock during the first week of May, according to Datasembly, a firm that collects data from grocery stores and other retailers. The Milk Bank is an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that provides donated breast milk to babies in the neonatal intensive care unit and babies with medical needs who benefit from human milk. Advancement Director Jenna Streit said the organization is seeing an increase in requests from families desperate to feed their babies.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Diving Into The Deep World Of Sharks Sharks are some of the longest-enduring residents of our planet—there were shark relatives in the oceans before Earth had trees, and before the planet Saturn got its rings. But now, many species of shark are threatened, mainly as a result of unsustainable fishing practices.

Dr. David Shiffman, marine researcher and social media shark advocate, writes in his new book Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World’s Most Misunderstood Predator about people’s fascination with sharks. He shares some amazing shark facts—did you know that Greenland sharks can live for 400 years, and some have been found with the remains of polar bears in their stomachs?

Shiffman joins John Dankosky to share his shark lore, and to talk about the role of sharks in the ocean ecosystem, safety around sharks, threats to their survival, and what individuals can do to help protect these powerful, yet misunderstood, creatures.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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How Did ‘Prehistoric Planet’ Make Dinosaurs Look So Real? Being a fan of dinosaurs has its challenges. The largest, perhaps, is that no human has seen these creatures with their own eyes. Depictions of prehistoric creatures in film and media have been based on the research available at the time, but accurate knowledge about feathers, colors, and behavior have changed as science has progressed.

The much-anticipated docuseries “Prehistoric Planet” dives into the most recent research about dinosaurs and their environment and illustrates what the world might have looked like 66 million years ago. The show uses hyper-realistic computer imaging to make the most realistic dinosaurs seen on film yet. The result is an epic look at how dinosaurs once lived.

Joining Ira to talk about “Prehistoric Planet” is producer Tim Walker and paleontologist Darren Naish, who served as the show’s lead science consultant.

Midwestern Farmers Face Drought And Dust Even with a few recent rains, much of the Great Plains are in a drought. Wildfires have swept across the grasslands and farmers are worried about how they’ll make it through the growing season. Randy Uhrmacher is in his tractor, planting corn and soybeans in central Nebraska. But it’s hard to see his work. The soil is so dry that clouds of dust hang in the air as he drives through his fields. “Not sure how I’m supposed to see what I’m doing tonight,” Uhrmacher said on a recent night of planting.

Even turning on the windshield wipers didn’t help him see through the dust storm. If he didn’t use soil conservation practices like reduced tillage and cover crops, he said his fields could look like something out of the 1930s Dust Bowl. It’s the driest spring Uhrmacher can remember in his 38 years of farming. Drought is a challenge many farmers and ranchers are facing in the middle of the country.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

When Climate Change Reaches Your Plate No matter how you slice it, climate change will alter what we eat in the future. Today, just 13 crops provide 80% of people’s energy intake worldwide, and about half of our calories come from wheat, maize and rice. Yet some of these crops may not grow well in the higher temperatures, unpredictable rainfall and extreme weather events caused by climate change. Already, drought, heat waves and flash floods are damaging crops around the world.

“We must diversify our food basket,” says Festo Massawe. He’s executive director of Future Food Beacon Malaysia, a group at the University of Nottingham Malaysia campus in Semenyih that studies the impact of climate change on food security.

That goes beyond what we eat to how we grow it. The trick will be investing in every possible solution: breeding crops so they’re more climate resilient, genetically engineering foods in the lab and studying crops that we just don’t know enough about, says ecologist Samuel Pironon of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London. To feed a growing population in a rapidly changing world, food scientists are exploring many possible avenues, while thinking about how to be environmentally friendly.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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A Grim Milestone, As Cases Continue This week, COVID-19 case trackers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hit a grim milestone, logging over one million deaths in the country from the pandemic. The true total is likely to be much higher, as many cases go unreported, or are logged as deaths due to other factors in death certificates. And the pandemic continues, with locations such as New York City reaching “high” transmission levels, and recommending that people mask again indoors.

Timothy Revell, deputy United States editor for New Scientist, joins Ira to talk about the groups that have been most affected by the pandemic death toll, and the continuing battle against the coronavirus—including the availability of another round of free tests via the postal service.

They also tackle other stories from the week in science, including Congressional hearings on UFO sightings, new theories about what helps make a planet habitable, what can be learned from a fossilized tooth in Laos, and the important psychological question of why some word pairings are funnier than others.

How Texas’ Abortion Restrictions Limit Access To Miscarriage Care As the Supreme Court appears poised to return abortion regulation to the states, recent experience in Texas illustrates that medical care for miscarriages and dangerous ectopic pregnancies would also be threatened if restrictions become more widespread.

One Texas law passed last year lists several medications as abortion-inducing drugs and largely bars their use for abortion after the seventh week of pregnancy. But two of those drugs, misoprostol and mifepristone, are the only drugs recommended in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists guidelines for treating a patient after an early pregnancy loss. The other miscarriage treatment is a procedure described as surgical uterine evacuation to remove the pregnancy tissue — the same approach as for an abortion.

“The challenge is that the treatment for an abortion and the treatment for a miscarriage are exactly the same,” said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington in Seattle and an expert in early pregnancy loss.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

The End Of Astronauts: Why Robots Are The Future Of Exploration Sending astronauts into space is arguably one of society’s most impressive scientific achievements. It’s a marvel of engineering, and it also taps into the human desire for exploration.

But just because we can send humans into space, should we? Robots are already good space explorers. And they’re only going to get smarter in the near future. Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal, and Donald Goldsmith, astrophysicist and science writer, argue that the cost of human space travel largely outweighs its benefits. They talk with Ira about their new book, The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Abortion Pills Are Used For Most U.S. Abortions. What Are They? The draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade means abortion access is once again in jeopardy. Nearly half of U.S. states will immediately ban abortion upon a Roe v. Wade overturn.

Medication abortion, or abortion by pill, is currently the most common method of abortion in the United States. In 2020, 54% of abortions in the United States were medication abortions, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute.

If the Supreme Court decision is overturned, it’s expected that the ease and convenience of an abortion pill may make medication abortion an even larger share of all abortions nationwide.

Ira talks with Ushma Upadhyay, associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at UC San Francisco. Upadhyay explains how medication abortion works, how its regulated, and its role in a possible post Roe v. Wade era.

One Alaskan Island’s Fight For A Rodent-Free Future For millions of years, birds lived nearly predator free in the Aleutian Islands. The volcanic archipelago stretches westward for 1,200 miles from the Alaska Peninsula, dotting a border between the North Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. Hundreds of bird species thrived here.

But then came the rats. When a Japanese boat sank in the Western Aleutians around 1780, stowaway rats jumped ship and made it to one of the islands, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. The rodents proliferated during World War II, when American Navy ships traveled along the chain, expanding the rats’ domain. “The rats are like an oil spill that keeps on spilling, year after year,” said Steve Delehanty, the refuge manager for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. “We would never allow an oil spill to go on for decades or centuries, nor should we allow rats to be a forever-presence on these islands.”

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Campsites At National Parks ‘Harder Than Getting Beyonce Tickets’ Access to the outdoors has long had an equity problem. Whether it’s the expense of equipment or hostility from fellow hikers, marginalized groups have had more barriers to enjoying recreation in nature.

Now, new research in the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration has data on one tool that was supposed to improve access for more people: the online system of reserving campgrounds at national parks. Compared to people camping at first-come first-serve campsites in the same parks, the people who successfully use the reservation systems are wealthier, better-educated, and more likely to be white.

Ira talks to research co-author Will Rice about the factors that make reservations harder to access, how wealthier people succeed in working the system to their advantage, and how publicly-funded campgrounds like the national parks could more fairly manage rising demand.

How Restaurant Menus Mirror Our Warming Ocean Before the 1980’s, you probably wouldn’t have found Humboldt squid on a restaurant menu in Vancouver. But now, the warm water-loving critter has expanded towards the poles as ocean temperatures rise, and you can see that change on restaurant menus.

In a new study in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes, researchers from the University of British Columbia looked at more than 360 menus, dating back to 1880. They found a connection between climate change and which seafood types rose to fame on restaurant menus over the years… and which ones flopped off.

Ira speaks with study co-author Dr. William Cheung about how our menus mirror what’s happening to our oceans. Plus, a conversation with Chef Ned Bell about why it’s important that our plates adapt to changes in our local ecosystems.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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As COVID Cases Rises, Effectiveness Of Vaccines Lessens In Kids As parts of the country continue to see waves of infection from the omicron variant of COVID-19, parents of children over age five have taken heart at the availability of vaccines—while parents of kids five and under have continued to wait for an approved dose. But even as the case numbers continue to climb, the vaccines are less effective against the more-virulent omicron variants—and, for some reason, dramatically less effective in kids.

Koerth joins Ira to discuss the story, and why experts say it’s still worthwhile getting vaccinated even if the vaccines don’t have the dramatic performance seen at the beginning of the vaccination phase of the pandemic. They also talk about a bird flu outbreak troubling poultry farms around the world, the odd immune system of the sleepy lizard, and how scientists are trying to catch a whiff of the odors of ancient Egypt.

Meet The ‘Gentle Giant,’ Your Friendly Neighborhood Black Hole It wasn’t long ago that the idea of capturing an image of a black hole sounded like a joke, or an oxymoron. How do you take a picture of something so dense that it absorbs the very light around it?

But three years ago, we got our first good look with help from the Event Horizon Telescope, which is actually multiple radio telescopes all linked together. That picture was a slightly blurry, red-and-orange doughnut—the best picture to date of the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy called Messier 87, which is called Messier 87 or M87. (Black holes are given an asterisk after the name of their location). Today, it’s possible to buy jewelry and t-shirts with that picture, drink out of a M87*-adorned coffee cup, or just make it your phone background. Now that the first picture of a black hole is practically a pop culture meme, how do you one-up that? In the past weeks, the Event Horizon Telescope team alluded to a new ‘breakthrough’ hiding in the Milky Way.

On Thursday, the team unveiled that breakthrough: the first image of our nearest black hole neighbor in the heart of our galaxy. Sagittarius A is a “gentle giant,” says Feryal Ozel, a member of the global collaboration that created this image. It consumes far less of the gas swirling nearby than M87, and is far fainter as a result. The Milky Way’s black hole also lacks the galaxy-spanning jets of M87* and, due to its smaller size, the gas around it moves so fast that it took years longer to capture a clear picture.

Ira talks with Ozel about what it takes to obtain such a picture, and what it can tell us about the extreme, high-temperature physics of black holes throughout the universe.

What Was It Like To Witness The End Of The Dinosaurs? 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid hit what we know today as the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Many people have a general idea of what happened next: The age of the dinosaurs was brought to a close, making room for mammals like us to thrive.

But fewer people know what happened in the days, weeks, and years after impact. Increased research on fossils and geological remains from this time period have helped scientists paint a picture of this era. For large, non-avian dinosaurs like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex, extinction was swift following the asteroid impact. But for creatures that were able to stay underwater and underground, their post-impact stories are more complicated.

Joining Ira to discuss her book The Last Days of the Dinosaurs is Riley Black, science writer based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The Seafaring Life Of ‘Modern-Day Captain Nemo,’ Robert Ballard In 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard was sent on a secret deep-sea search operative with a very specific mission: to seek two sunken nuclear submarines. Ballard, who by then had explored the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and helped design deep-sea research submersibles, was assigned by the U.S. Navy to investigate and take images of the U.S.S. Thresher and U.S.S. Scorpion. But locating these two wreckages wouldn’t bring him to fame—instead, it was another watery grave he would find along the way. After he located the two subs, Ballard had time left in the mission to satiate a hunt he had begun nearly a decade prior: He discovered the R.M.S. Titanic, which sank into the North Atlantic 110 years ago.

While the Titanic might be his most publicized finding, the famed marine archaeologist has adventured beneath the waves on more than 150 expeditions that have broadened our understanding of the oceans and the planet. “We think there’s probably more history in the deep sea than all of the museums of the world combined—and we’re only now opening those doors to those museums,” he says. Ballard’s recorded the activity of hydrothermal vents, the ecology of hot springs on the ocean floor, and the diversity of incredible marine creatures.

In excerpts from two conversations in the Science Friday archives (originally recorded in 2000 and 2009), Ballard describes the 1985 expedition in which he discovered the wreck of the Titanic. He also discusses the value of combining the efforts of oceanographers, engineers, and social scientists to study the world’s deep oceans. Plus, Ballard elaborates on his belief that some undersea finds should be left preserved and protected, and his work in expanding access to ocean research via telepresence and computer links.

Meet The Drag Artists Who Are Making Science More Accessible Each generation has had science communicators who brought a sometimes stuffy, siloed subject into homes, inspiring minds young and old. Scientists like Don Herbert, Carl Sagan, and Bill Nye are classic examples. But our modern age of social media has brought more diverse communicators into the forefront of science communication, including the wild, wonderful world of STEM drag stars.

These are queer folk who mix the flashy fashions of the drag world with science education. Some, like Kyne, use TikTok as a medium to teach concepts like math. Others, like Pattie Gonia, use drag to attract more people to the great outdoors. The accessibility of the internet has made these personalities available to a wide audience.

Kyne and Pattie Gonia join Ira to talk about the magic drag can bring to science education, and why they think the future of SciComm looks more diverse than the past.

This segment originally aired on February 11, 2022.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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How Grief Rewires The Brain Being a human can be a wonderful thing. We’re social creatures, craving strong bonds with family and friends. Those relationships can be the most rewarding parts of life.

Ira speaks to Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, a neuroscientist, about adjusting to life after loss.

This segment originally aired on February 11, 2022.

Fish Make More Noise Than You Think One of the most famous films of undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau was titled The Silent World. But when you actually stop and listen to the fishes, the world beneath the waves is a surprisingly noisy place.

In a recent study published in the journal Ichthyology & Herpetology, researchers report that as many of two-thirds of the ray-finned fish families either are known to make sounds, or at least have the physical capability to do so.

Some fish use specialized muscles around their buoyancy-modulating swim bladders to make noise. Others might blow bubbles out their mouths, or, in the case of herring, out their rear ends, producing “fish farts.” Still other species use ridges on their bodies to make noises similar to the way crickets do, grind their teeth, or snap a tendon to sound off. The noises serve a variety of purposes, from calling for a mate to warning off an adversary.

Aaron Rice, principal ecologist in the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, walks Ira through some of the unusual sounds produced by known fish around the world—and some mystery noises that they know are produced by fish, but have yet to identify.

This segment originally aired on February 18, 2022.

Transcripts for these segments are available on sciencefriday.com.

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What’s Up With The Spike In Hepatitis Among Young Kids? This spring, there’s been a strange spike in hepatitis cases among young children. Hepatitis can leave kids with stomach pain, jaundice, and a generally icky feeling. 169 cases have been recorded globally, and one death. A majority of these cases have been found in the United Kingdom, with the others in Spain, Israel, and the U.S.

The sudden rise in cases is unusual, and physicians are trying to unlock the mystery of where this is coming from.

Joining guest host Umair Irfan to talk about this story and other science news of the week, including the holdup over COVID-19 vaccines for kids under five years old, is Science Friday producer Kathleen Davis.

COVID-19 Vaccines Are Some Divorced Parents’ Newest Divide Heather and Norm have had their share of disagreements. Their separation seven years ago and the ensuing custody battle were contentious. But over the years, the pair has found a way to weather disputes cordially. They’ve made big decisions together and checked in regularly about their two kids, now ages 9 and 11.

But the rhythm of give and take they so carefully cultivated came to an abrupt end last fall, when it came time to decide whether to vaccinate their kids against COVID-19 — Heather was for it; Norm was against. (WHYY News has withheld their last names to protect the privacy of their children.)

In Pennsylvania, decisions about children’s health must be made jointly by parents with shared legal custody, so the dispute went to court. And Heather and Norm weren’t the only ones who couldn’t come to an agreement on their own. In the months since the vaccine was approved for children, family court judges across the commonwealth have seen skyrocketing numbers of similar cases: Divorced parents who can’t agree on what to do.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Why Sharing Viruses Is Good… For Science The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked an unprecedented era of global scientific collaboration. Just a few days after the SARS-CoV-2 virus was isolated, its genomic sequence was posted online and accessible to researchers around the world. Scientists quickly went to work trying to understand this brand new pathogen, and began to counter it with treatments and vaccines.

But genetic sequences have their limits, and scientists also have to work with the real viruses. Sometimes there’s no substitute for a specimen. Sharing pathogens across borders is where things get a lot more complicated. A web of international laws govern some, but not all aspects of how pathogens are shared and stored. Science isn’t the only factor here—global politics shape responses to the tracking and detection of disease.

What happens if countries are not on the friendliest terms with each other, or if they aren’t up to the same safety standards? Could viruses be misused or mishandled, potentially escaping containment? There are some historical examples that could be instructive. And while the COVID-19 pandemic spurred cooperation between scientists, some governments downplayed or misled the world about the state of the pandemic. Does misinformation remain a threat, and if so, how can we prevent it?

Guest host Umair Irfan talks with Amber Hartman Scholz, head of science policy at Leibniz Institute DSMZ German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures based in Braunschweig, Germany, to unpack the complex system of scientific virus sharing, and the importance of developing a better process.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Your Dog’s Breed Doesn’t Always Determine How They’ll Behave The dog world abounds with stereotypes about the personalities of different breeds. The American Kennel Club describes chihuahuas as “sassy,” and malamutes as “loyal,” while breed-specific legislation in many cities target breeds like pit bulls as stereotypically aggressive. But do these stereotypes say anything true about a dog’s personality and behaviors?

New research in the journal Science looked at the genomes of thousands of dogs, both purebred and mutt, plus owner reports on personality traits. And their findings were more complicated: Yes, many behaviors have a genetic or heritable component. But breed, it turns out, may be a poor predictor of many things, including aggression or friendliness.

Guest host Umair Irfan talks to co-author Elinor Karlsson about the complexities of genetics, personality, and breed in our best friends.

Life At The Poles Is Changing. What Do These Frozen Regions Forecast? It’s been a spring of alarming headlines for the coldest climates on Earth, from record heat waves at both poles, to a never-before-seen ice shelf collapse in East Antarctica. But what can we say for sure about how the Arctic and Antarctic are changing under global warming?

In this Zoom taping, guest host Umair Irfan talks to two scientists, Arctic climate researcher Uma Bhatt and Antarctic biological oceanographer Oscar Schofield, about the changes they’re seeing on the ice and in the water, and the complex but different ecologies of both these regions. Plus, answering listener questions about the warming polar regions.

Can Hydrogen-Fuel Cells Drive The Car Market? If you’ve been shopping for a new car recently, you may have been struck by the number of electric vehicles available from different manufacturers. According to Kelley Blue book data, Americans bought almost twice as many EVs in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the first quarter of 2021, with battery-powered electric vehicles reaching 5% of the new car market for the first time.

But electric isn’t the only alternative to the traditional gasoline or diesel powered car—there are also hydrogen fuel cell car options, such as the Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell car from Toyota. In those vehicles, compressed hydrogen is used in conjunction with a catalytic fuel cell membrane to generate the electricity to drive the vehicle. Cars using the technology can have a 300-mile range, with fuel-ups taking as little as five minutes. And while today much of that hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, there is the potential for it to come from electrolysis of water via renewable energy, such as solar or wind.

But there are big technological and infrastructure challenges to solve before fuel cell technology could compete with the battery-powered electric car. Joan Ogden, a professor emeritus of environmental science and policy at UC Davis, joins Umair Irfan to talk about the requirements for building the refueling infrastructure that would make fuel cell vehicles a more attractive option to consumers.

Is It Possible To Decarbonize Shipping? It’s said that 90% of all goods at some point travel on a ship. Much of that transportation is on container ships, gargantuan vessels that carry thousands of the 20-foot or 40-foot shipping containers that serve as the foundation of the global economy.

But those big cargo ships have a massive energy appetite, and the “bunker oil” fuel they devour is notoriously dirty. If the global shipping industry was a country, it would be the sixth-largest greenhouse gas emitting country in the world.

Lee Kindberg, head of environment and sustainability for North America for the shipping giant Maersk, joins Umair Irfan to talk about the company’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint. Maersk recently placed an order for a dozen methanol-fueled cargo ships, the first of which it plans to launch next year.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Building The World’s Largest Animal Crossing Outside of LA There’s a spot on Highway 101 in Agoura Hills, it’s pretty inconspicuous. There’s brown and green rolling hills on either side of the highway. Homes are sprinkled here and there. And then a small metal gate that leads off on a hiking trail. You probably wouldn’t know it, but soon this spot will be the location of the world’s largest animal crossing. This crossing will reconnect habitats that have been cut off from each other for three quarters of a century and it’ll do it over a highway that is constantly buzzing with cars — 300,000 pass by this spot every single day. In this piece we’re going on a geography voyage — from the north side of the highway to the south, and up the hills, above the highway, to get the real view.

We’ll start here — there’s a big open space on the northern side of the highway. It’s at the entrance to Liberty Canyon and where I meet Beth Pratt. “You have oak trees, a little creek area here. And we’re listening to, actually, an Anna’s hummingbird giving a little song for us that is actually resonating even over that, that noise of traffic,” Pratt said. She is the California Regional Director for the National Wildlife Federation. “For me what’s kind of remarkable, but also sad. It’s the last sixteen hundred feet of protected space on both sides of the freeway,” said Pratt.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

Life Has Found A Way On The Great Pacific Garbage Patch The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a huge collection of trash floating in the North Pacific Ocean. It’s made up mostly of plastic—things like water bottles, shoes, and fishing gear, but also a large amount of microplastics, tiny bits of broken-down plastic that can be invisible to the naked eye.

A giant, swirling patch of trash seems bad. But recent research has revealed a complicating factor: Marine life has colonized the garbage patch, making the floating plastic their new homes. As the classic Jurassic Park quote goes, “Life finds a way.”

Joining Ira to talk about life on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is Linsey Haram, AAAS fellow at the U.S. Department of Agriculture based in Alexandria, Virginia. Her research on the Garbage Patch was done for the Smithsonian.

Enzymes Are Taking On Our Plastic Problem Flip over a plastic water bottle, or a takeout container, and it’s very likely you’ll find the number “1” stamped on the bottom. This is the sign of the problematic plastic PET, which is a large source for plastic pollution. It’s estimated that only a third or less of this type of plastic is recycled into something new.

Scientists are getting creative in trying to outsmart plastics that don’t want to be recycled. Some are looking into enzymes that can break down plastic into its more basic molecular building blocks. The idea is that these smaller molecules are easier to turn into new things, making upcycling an easier task.

Joining Ira to talk about the frontier of enzymes as recycling powerhouses is Jennifer DuBois, professor of chemistry at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana.

And she explains why greater recognition of Indigenous science, and partnerships that center Indigenous peoples and their research questions, is good for the entire planet.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Celebrating Earth Day With Sustainable Action Today is Earth Day, when many people around the world are taking time to think about their relationship with the planet and to focus on activities helping to mitigate the existential problems our environment faces. And we will be doing the same: devoting our program to Earth Day stories, ideas, and issues.

Sara Kiley Watson, assistant editor at Popular Science in charge of their sustainability coverage, joins Ira to talk about some challenges facing our planet—from air pollution in megacities to the tension between ethanol biofuels and food supplies. She also offers some tips for actions individuals can take to make a small difference on their own, such as improving home energy efficiency even if you’re a renter, reducing the impact of your takeout order, or considering a neighborhood microgrid.

Can The Latest IPCC Report Pave The Way To Better Climate Policy? One of the best resources to understand the state of our climate crisis is the report developed by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), every six to seven years.

The most recent installment of the IPCC report, compiled by Working Group III, was released earlier this month. It outlined ambitious steps needed to mitigate some of the worst possible climate futures.

It’s increasingly unlikely that we’ll be able to keep the planet from warming by an average of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Yet, the report optimistically focuses on achieving that 1.5 degree benchmark.

The report’s recommendations include things like phasing out coal entirely, slashing methane emissions by a third, reducing our carbon output among all sectors of the global economy, and developing new technologies to help us do it. But how do governments make laws to reach these goals? That’s not addressed in the IPCC report.

Ira is joined by David Victor, professor of innovation and public policy in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego to discuss the difficulty in developing climate policy solutions and some that seem promising.

Can Carbon Removal Actually Make A Difference In Reducing Emissions? One of the technologies highlighted in the latest IPCC report is carbon removal. Not to be confused with carbon capture, CO2 removal is a process that absorbs CO2 already in the atmosphere and stores it elsewhere. Carbon capture, on the other hand, is removing CO2 from smokestacks, for example, before it gets into the air.

CO2 removal technology has some climate scientists worried about pouring money into this new technology, in lieu of cutting back on our reliance on fossil fuels.

Joining Ira is Amar Bhardwaj, energy technology policy fellow at the International Energy Agency, to talk about the pros and cons of carbon removal.

Composing A Sound Map Of An Ever-Changing River Annea Lockwood thinks of rivers as “live phenomena” that are constantly changing and shifting. She’s been drawn to the energy that rivers create, and the sound that energy makes, since she first started working with environmental recordings in the 1960s.

One of her projects has been to create detailed “river maps” of the Hudson, Danube, and Housatonic rivers. Using stereo microphones and underwater hydrophones, she captures the gentle, powerful sounds of the water, along with the noises of insects, birds, and occasional humans she finds along the way.

Lockwood’s composition, “A Sound Map of the Housatonic River”—a decade old, this year—takes listeners on a 150-mile tour, from the headwaters in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, past sites of toxic PCB contamination, to the Connecticut Audubon sanctuary, where the river spills into Long Island Sound.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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FDA Approves First Breathalyzer COVID Test The FDA approved a new COVID breathalyzer test, which gives results in just three minutes. It’s the first test that identifies chemical compounds of coronavirus in breath. The testing unit is about the size of a piece of carry-on luggage and is intended to be used in medical offices and mobile testing sites.

Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor at WNYC Radio based in New York City, talks with Ira about this new COVID test and other science news of the week, including new research on ocean warming and storm frequency, the story behind moon dust that sold for $500,000, and President Biden’s decision to allow higher-ethanol gasoline sales this summer, which is usually banned from June to September.

Major Undercount In COVID Cases Makes Our Tracking Data Less Useful For many, it’s become routine to pull up a chart of COVID-19 case counts by state or county. Though imperfect, it’s been a pretty good way to assess risk levels: Follow the data.

But recently, that data has become even more imperfect, and less useful at determining individual risk. Thanks to a variety of factors, case counts are now so inaccurate that a COVID surge could be missed entirely.

“We are really flying blind,” said epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health and the author of the newsletter, Your Local Epidemiologist.

Currently, for every 100 COVID-19 cases in the United States, only seven are being officially recorded, according to projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. As a point of comparison, during the Delta wave 43 out of 100 cases were recorded, and during the Omicron wave the figure was 26 out of 100 cases.

The reasons behind the current undercount are due in part to the unintended consequences of good public health policies, like increased vaccinations and the availability of at-home tests, both of which lead to fewer cases being included in official CDC data. Mild cases are more common now, thanks to vaccines and changing variants. “People may just not get tested because they just have the sniffles,” said Jetelina.

Others may forgo testing altogether. The virus can spread asymptomatically from there. “We just haven’t done the groundwork as a nation to systematically capture these cases,” said Jetelina.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

How Would You Spend A Trillion Dollars? Imagining what you might do if you won the lottery or received a huge inheritance from a long-lost relative is a classic daydream. But in a new book, journalist Rowan Hooper imagines spending a trillion dollars—not on fancy dinners, sparkly jewels or mega yachts, but on tackling ten global challenges. While a trillion dollars can’t solve every problem, he estimates it would go a long way towards tackling disease, combating global warming, protecting biodiversity, or even establishing a moon base.

Hooper joins Ira to talk about his book, How to Save the World for Just a Trillion Dollars: The Ten Biggest Problems We Can Actually Fix, and to daydream about where and how an infusion of cash might do the most to accelerate solutions to some of the planet’s problems.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Did ‘Soylent Green’s’ Predictions About 2022 Hold Up? In the spring of 1973, the movie Soylent Green premiered. The film drops us into a New York City that’s overcrowded, polluted, and dealing with the effects of a climate catastrophe. Only the city’s elite can afford clean water and real foods, like strawberry jam. The rest of the population relies on a communal food supply called Soylent. There’s Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow… and a new product: Soylent Green.

The year the film takes place? 2022. And spoiler alert: Soylent Green is people.

The National Science Foundation Has A New Goal: Entrepreneurship The South By Southwest festival in Austin this year was the site of at least one unusual event: a press announcement by the head of the National Science Foundation, the primary federal agency tasked with funding and supporting fundamental research and investing in the education of young scientists in those fields.

NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan announced he was creating a new directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) to focus on “use-inspired” research that can be brought to commercial markets, in partnership with businesses and entrepreneurs. The goal, Panchanathan said in a press release in March, was to “accelerate the development of new technologies and products that improve Americans’ way of life, grow the economy and create new jobs, and strengthen and sustain U.S. competitiveness for decades to come.”

Panchanathan talks to Ira about what this new chapter means for the NSF, the future of basic research with no immediate commercial uses, and the challenges of persuading the public that failure, as much as success, is inherent to science.

The Colorado River Misses Its Snow High in the Rocky Mountains, under thin air and bluebird skies, the Colorado River basin is slowly filling its savings account. Craggy peaks become smooth walls of white and piles of snow climb conifer trunks, covering even the deepest, darkest corners of the woods with a glimmering blanket.

The snow that accumulates in the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming will eventually become water in the Colorado River. Some of it will flow as far south as Mexico, running through kitchen faucets in cities and suburbs along the way, or watering crops that keep America fed through the winter.

Year by year, those piles are getting slightly smaller and melting earlier — slowly exhibiting the sting of a warming climate. The way we measure the snow is changing too, as a shifting baseline for what counts as “average” paints a somewhat deceptive picture of how much snow is stored up in the mountains.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Exploring Neptune’s Unusual Seasons Planetary scientists monitoring how the outer planets change over time have made a surprising observation of springtime on the planet Neptune. As the planet moves towards summer in its southern hemisphere, one might expect it to get warmer—but in data taken over 17 years, researchers observed that the average temperature actually seems to be declining. One theory involves the conversion of atmospheric methane, which traps heat, to ethane or other hydrocarbon compounds that release heat more readily, but more research is needed.

The researchers also spotted the rapid formation of a hot-spot at the south pole of Neptune, with an increase of some 11 degrees C over just two Earth years. Models had predicted a temperature swing of perhaps 15 degrees over the entire seasonal cycle.

These findings were reported this week in the Planetary Science Journal. Scientists don’t know very much about Neptune—it’s over 30 times Earth’s distance from the sun, and gets only one nine-hundredth of the sunlight. It takes around 165 Earth years to complete an orbit, meaning that the researchers’ 17 years of data account for only a small fraction of one season. Because of the planet’s tilt and its long orbit, the last time the planet’s north pole was visible from Earth was in the 1960s. And we’ve only visited once, via the Voyager spacecraft, over 30 years ago.

Michael Roman, a planetary scientist at the University of Leicester in the UK, and one of the authors of the report, joins Ira to talk about the strange springtime on Neptune—and the planet’s many remaining mysteries.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The Future of Sustainable Farming Could Be Cold Plasma Plasma is a fascinating medium. It’s considered the fourth state of matter—alongside solid, liquid and gas—and it’s everywhere. In fact, more than 99.9% of all matter in the universe is assumed to be in plasma form.

You may be most familiar with plasma as the material inside those glowing novelty lamps found in museum gift shops, but it’s naturally found in the sun, lightning, and the northern lights. Research into plasma and how it intersects with various industries has been increasing, especially in the area of agriculture.

Cold plasma specifically is being tested as a way to speed up plant growth and make fertilizer that’s better for the environment. And it works: Lots of research has shown that exposure to cold plasma makes seeds germinate faster. While this sounds like a sci-fi concept, farmers have seen for decades that plants grown on the site of lightning strikes grow faster.

The strangest part? Scientists don’t know why this works, only that it does. Joining Ira to talk about cold plasma and its possible future in the agriculture world is Jose Lopez, professor of physics at Seton Hall University, based in South Orange, New Jersey. Lopez is also program manager for plasma physics at the National Science Foundation.

Why Are Teenagers So Sleep Deprived? Teenagers have a reputation for being moody, making rash decisions, and maybe even being a bit lazy. Turns out, lack of sleep may be partly to blame for some of this stereotypical behavior.

Contrary to popular belief, teens actually need more sleep than adults—about 9 to 10 hours a night—to help support critical brain development. But American teens are getting less sleep than they ever have before due to a perfect storm of biology, increased homework, early school start-times, and technology. Over the past three decades, the average American teens’ sleep has shrunk to just 6.5 hours a night.

Ira talks with Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright, psychotherapists and sleep specialists. They’re co-authors of the new book, Generation Sleepless: Why Teens and Tweens Are Not Sleeping Enough and What We Can Do to Help Them.

The teen voices you heard during this segment were: Zion, Ro’Shell, LaRon, Aleathia, Zahriah, Trysten, Londyn, Jairus and Cix. All are 8th grade students at Manchester Academic Charter School, and recorded by SLB Radio at its Youth Media Center, in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

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FDA Convenes Panel On COVID Boosters And New Vaccines This week, the FDA convened a panel of independent experts to discuss COVID-19 boosters and possible variant-specific vaccines. This comes after last week’s authorization of a second booster for people over the age of 50, and some immunocompromised people.

Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, about the latest on boosters and other science news of the week, including a new particle measurement that might shift our understanding of physics, fish who can do math and why Mars has two different speeds of sound.

Want To Get Your Spring Garden Going? Here’s Some Expert Advice In most parts of the U.S., it’s time to get the garden going for the year. From readying your soil to picking your plants and getting seeds started, April can require a lot of decision-making to set the stage for a successful growing season.

Have questions about choosing containers, hardening your seedlings, or dealing with excess water? Our panel of expert gardeners is here for you. Ira talks to Cornell University Extension’s Elizabeth Buck and Oregon State University Extension’s Weston Miller about common spring troubleshooting, chemical-free pest management, and even how to brace your garden against climate change.

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Can You Read A Bar Graph? Bar graphs seem like one of the simplest ways to represent data. Many people assume that the longer the bar, the bigger the number it represents. Sometimes bar graphs represent an average not a total count, which is trickier to understand.

And because bar graphs are everywhere, psychologists from Wellesley College wanted to determine how well people can actually read and interpret bar graphs. Turns out, one in five people in their study misunderstood the data the bar graphs intended to show. And sometimes simple-looking graphs actually make it harder to understand the data they are based on.

Ira talks with Jeremy Wilmer, associate professor, and Sarah Horan Kerns, research associate, at Wellesley College’s department of psychology, based in Wellesley Massachusetts about their bar graph research and curriculum to improve data literacy.

Six scientific papers on the topic were published in a special edition of the academic journal Science this week.

Ira talks with Karen Miga and Adam Phillippy, co-founders of the Telomere to Telomere Consortium, an international effort that led to the assembly of this new fully complete human genome.

Karen Miga is an assistant professor of bimolecular engineering and the associate director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, based in Santa Cruz California. Adam Phillippy is head of the Genome Informatics Section and senior investigator in the computational and statistical genomics branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

One Last Martian Love Fest After a month of non-stop Mars science, what questions do you still have about the Red Planet? SciFri producer Christie Taylor and co-host Stephanie Sendaula interview planetary scientist and Sirens of Mars author Sarah Stewart Johnson. Plus, they take your questions about the planet’s poles, its magnetic field, and the progress of the Perseverance rover.

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Why Another Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapsed On March 15, the Conger ice shelf, a piece of ice half the size of Rome, collapsed in eastern Antarctica. It’s the first time that side of the continent experienced a major loss of ice in the 40-year history of satellite observations. Previous collapses of shelves have until now occurred in western Antarctica. Meanwhile, researchers are reporting temperatures more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average, while parts of the Arctic are beating averages by 50 degrees.

Scientific American’s Sophie Bushwick explains why warming at the poles is both more likely than other parts of the globe, and is also exacerbating the likelihood of collapses like this. Plus, new insights into strange radio circles in space, the Hubble telescope sees the most distant star yet, and a look at the statistical likelihood of basketball “hot hands.” And an April Fool’s Day quiz on some new inventions that may or may not be real.

Scientists Are Working On HIV Vaccines Based On COVID Vaccine Tech Several early Phase 1 human trials of vaccines using mRNA technology are now under way. The approach—which uses mRNA to induce the body to manufacture specific parts of a viral structure that then trains the immune system—was famously successful in the COVID-19 pandemic, and the basis for both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

Now, researchers are wondering if the mRNA approach might be a solution to diseases like HIV, which have thwarted vaccine researchers for years. The NIH has supported three trials, other trials from IAVI and Moderna are also under way in Phase 1.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, joins Ira to talk about the challenges of developing vaccines against HIV, the path through the clinical trials process, and why researchers are very cautiously optimistic about the new vaccine trials. They also discuss the state of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need for continued vigilance and funding.

An Oregon Lithium Deposit Could Help Power Clean Energy Tech President Joe Biden and U.S. lawmakers are ramping up their efforts to mine, manufacture and process more battery materials at home — and that’s drawn praise from the company exploring a large lithium deposit in southeast Oregon. Jindalee Resources Limited, the Australian company with lithium claims at a Bureau of Land Management site in Oregon’s Malheur County, says the growing push for U.S. critical minerals production is a positive sign. “You’ve seen bipartisan support for the development of critical minerals projects growing,” said Lindsay Dudfield, Jindalee’s executive director. “Jindalee is advancing a critical minerals project, and so we’re very encouraged by these developments.”

The Intercept reported Thursday that Biden is preparing to invoke the Defense Production Act to expedite production of batteries for electric vehicles, consumer electronics and renewable energy storage. The Defense Production Act was recently used to increase supply and hasten delivery of COVID-19 vaccines. Lawmakers in recent weeks have urged the president to use his authority under the law to do the same for batteries. “The time is now to grow, support, and encourage investment in the domestic production of graphite, manganese, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and other critical minerals to ensure we support our national security, and to fulfill our need for lithium-ion batteries — both for consumers and for the Department of Defense,” wrote Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; Joe Manchin,D-W.Va.; Jim Risch, R-Idaho; and Bill Cassidy, R-La., in a letter to the president last week. The Biden administration published a report last June that found the American battery supply chain to be extremely vulnerable as demand for batteries increases. For decades, the U.S. has relied on foreign imports of minerals needed to make those batteries, especially lithium.

While the U.S. has large lithium reserves, it only produces about 1% of the world’s supply. Demand for lithium and other materials is expected to skyrocket as the U.S. seeks to transition away from fossil fuels, according to the International Energy Agency. The Biden administration’s report says lithium could be a good candidate for new domestic mining and extraction, which would reduce American dependence on foreign sources like Russia and China. But as the rush for critical minerals like lithium speeds up in the U.S., environmental groups, Native American tribes and others have urged caution, especially when it comes to new mining. The extractive industry remains enormously destructive to frontline communities as well as land, water and wildlife.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

An Unusual Fungus May Control Invasive Tawny Crazy Ants The Tawny crazy ant (sometimes called the Rasberry crazy ant) is an invasive species originally found in South America. Over the past few decades, it has found a home in U.S. Gulf states and parts of Texas. The ant, named “crazy” for its erratic movements, can outcompete native ant species when it takes hold, and can overwhelm small animals with sheer numbers.

In 2013, Science Friday spoke with Edward LeBrun, a research scientist at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory of UT Austin, about the ant and its ability to outcompete fire ants in the southern U.S. Now, LeBrun returns to share news of a possible biological control for the ants, a form of fungus that can cause infected nests to collapse over a period of years. It’s a good news, bad news situation—while most insecticides and baits don’t work to control the ants, the fungus can produce local extinction.

However, it takes years to work, and currently requires transferring hundreds of infected ants into a nest—not exactly something you can pick up off the shelf at the local hardware store.

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How Has The War In Ukraine Shaped The Global Energy Market? Russia’s war on Ukraine sent shock waves through the global energy market. The United States and the United Kingdom stopped importing Russian oil and gas, and the European Union set a target of reducing their reliance on Russian fossil fuels by two thirds.

In the short term some countries may start relying more on dirty fossil fuels like coal to cushion the economic impact of the shifting energy market. However, some experts believe the current political situation may inspire a lasting transition to clean energy.

Guest host John Dankosky talks with Tim Revell, United States Deputy Editor at New Scientist about the changes to the global energy market and other top science news of the week, including the latest on the BA2 covid-19 variant, Orangutan slang, the winner of the prestigious Abel prize in mathematics, lettuce genetically modified to prevent bone loss, and robots who learned to peel bananas without crushing them.

Why Climate Change May Bring More West Nile Virus To The U.S. Michael Keasling of Lakewood, Colorado, was an electrician who loved big trucks, fast cars, and Harley-Davidsons. He’d struggled with diabetes since he was a teenager, needing a kidney transplant from his sister to stay alive. He was already quite sick in August when he contracted West Nile virus after being bitten by an infected mosquito.

Keasling spent three months in hospitals and rehab, then died on Nov. 11 at age 57 from complications of West Nile virus and diabetes, according to his mother, Karen Freeman. She said she misses him terribly."I don't think I can bear this," Freeman said shortly after he died.

Spring rain, summer drought, and heat created ideal conditions for mosquitoes to spread the West Nile virus through Colorado last year, experts said. West Nile killed 11 people and caused 101 cases of neuroinvasive infections—those linked to serious illnesses such as meningitis or encephalitis—in Colorado in 2021, the highest numbers in 18 years. The rise in cases may be a sign of what’s to come: As climate change brings more drought and pushes temperatures toward what is termed the “Goldilocks zone” for mosquitoes—not too hot, not too cold—scientists expect West Nile transmission to increase across the country.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Millions Of Iowa Chickens Infected With Deadly Strain Of Bird Flu Iowa and federal agriculture officials have confirmed a deadly strain of bird flu in a large commercial flock of egg-laying hens in northwest Iowa’s Buena Vista County. It’s the fourth case of bird flu in the state and the largest flock to date to be infected by this year’s outbreak. Chloe Carson, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, said Friday that initial reports indicate there are approximately 5.3 million birds in the flock. Carson said the department won’t have exact numbers for a few days. The numbers will be released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture once all the birds have been destroyed to prevent the disease from spreading.

It’s the second confirmed case of bird flu in Buena Vista County this year. The virus was confirmed in a commercial flock of nearly 50,000 turkeys in the county on March 6. The deadly strain was also confirmed in a flock of more than 915,000 commercial egg-laying hens in southwest Iowa’s Taylor County on March 10 and a backyard flock of nearly 50 chickens and ducks in Pottawattamie County on March 1. Agriculture officials have cautioned producers and backyard flock owners to keep their birds away from wild birds that are migrating. They can carry the virus in their saliva or feces and show no signs of infection.

Bird flu has been found in commercial and backyard flocks in 17 states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Iowa has about 56 million egg-laying chickens and is the top egg-producing state in the country. In the 2014-2015 bird flu outbreak, Iowa and Minnesota were hit the hardest. More than 50 million birds were killed in that outbreak, including nearly 33 million in Iowa.

5,000 Total Exoplanets Have Now Been Discovered This week, the NASA Exoplanet Archive logged the 5,000th confirmed planet outside of our solar system. This marks a huge advance since the first exoplanet discovery in 1992, when astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12. Now, the Archive contains confirmed sightings of planets in a wide range of shapes and sizes—from "hot Jupiters" to "super Earths"—but they still haven’t found any solar systems just like our own. In many cases, all astronomers know about these distant planets is their size and how far away from their stars they orbit.

The TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission currently in orbit may eventually add 10,000 more candidates to the lists of possible planets. The Nancy Grace Roman Space telescope and ESA’s ARIEL mission, both planned for launch later this decade, could add thousands more. And the James Webb Space Telescope, currently undergoing commissioning, will attempt to characterize the atmospheres of some of the planets astronomers have already discovered.

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How Vampire Bats Evolved To Drink Blood Vampire bats subsist solely on blood: In technical terms, they’re what’s called “obligate sanguivores.” And the three species of vampire bats are the only mammals to have ever evolved this particular diet.

Living on blood is hard work. Blood is a low-calorie food with a lot of water volume, and very little of it is fat or carbohydrates. To survive this lifestyle, vampire bats have made numerous physical adaptations—stretchy stomachs, tricks to deal with high amounts of iron, even specialized social systems related to sharing food.

But how, genetically, did they manage it? Guest host John Dankosky talks to Dr. Michael Hiller, co-author on new research published this week in Science Advances looking at some of the specific genes vampire bats lost in order to gain these unique abilities.

Difficult Brain Science Brings Difficult Ethical Questions In recent weeks, we’ve told you about efforts to explore and map the human brain through tissue donations, and the troubling tale of a bionic eye implant startup that left users without tech support. The two stories point to different aspects of the rapidly advancing field of neuroscience—and each comes with its own set of ethical questions.

As humans advance in their ability to understand, interpret, and even modify the human brain, what ethical controls are in place to protect patients, guide research, and ensure equitable access to neural technologies?

John Dankosky talks with neurotech ethicist and strategist Karen Rommelfanger, the founder of the Institute of Neuroethics Think and Do Tank, about some of the big ethical questions in neuroscience—and how the field might try to address the challenges of this emerging technology.

The Brief And Wondrous Lives Of The Cicada The Staten Island Museum in New York has been home to the eye-catching room full of insect art since 2021’s emergence of the Brood X cicadas. In bell jars and cabinet drawers and under glass display cases, colorful cicadas from species around the world participate in scenes of human-like activities—they read miniature books, arrange dried flowers, create textile art, converse with animal skulls, lounge on and in jelly jars, and more. It’s all part of artist Jennifer Angus’ exhibition “Magicicada,” an homage to our reliance on the insect world.

Producer Christie Taylor talks to Angus and Staten Island Museum entomologist Colleen Evans about the wonder of insects. Plus, how art and science can complement each other and teach even the most bug-shy visitor to appreciate the natural world.

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The James Webb Telescope Releases Its First Focused Image This week eager astronomers got an update on the progress of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched last December. After a long period of tweaking and alignment, all 18 mirrors of the massive orbiting scope are now in focus.

In a briefing this week, Marshall Perrin, the Webb deputy telescope scientist, said that the team had achieved diffraction limited alignment of the telescope. “The images are focused as finely as the laws of physics allow,” he said. “This is as sharp an image as you can get from a telescope of this size.” Although actual scientific images from the scope are still months away, the initial test images had astronomers buzzing.

Rachel Feltman, executive editor at Popular Science, joins Ira to talk about the progress on JWST, and other stories from the week in science, including plans to launch a quantum entanglement experiment to the International Space Station, an update on the COVID-19 epidemic, and a new report looking at the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. They’ll also tackle the habits of spiders that hunt in packs, and the finding that a galloping gait may have started beneath the ocean’s waves.

The Climate Crisis Is Driving New Home Improvements A lot of the changes that need to happen to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius need to happen at a huge, international level. But nearly a fifth of carbon emissions in the U.S. come from our homes. Are there things we can do at home to help the climate crisis? And how effective are individual actions?

Threshold is a podcast telling stories about our changing environment. And as their fourth season explores what it will take for the world to keep global warming under the crucial 1.5 benchmark, reporter Nick Mott explores what individuals can do to decarbonize their homes.

Mott talks to Ira Flatow about his own home improvement project, in a preview of Threshold’s next episode.

From Succulents To Bugs: Exploring Wildlife Crime The world of science is surprisingly ripe with true crime stories.

Consider case number one: Deep in South Africa’s Northern Cape, a rare and tiny succulent grows: the Conophytum. Demand for succulents skyrocketed during the pandemic, as more and more people got into the plant keeping hobby. But these succulents only grow in very specific conditions, and poachers will go to great lengths to nab them. The story is the subject of a recent investigation published in National Geographic.

Or case two: It’s 2018, and a theft has occurred at the Philadelphia Insectarium, a bug museum and education center. In a daring daylight raid, thousands of creatures were taken from the insectarium—right under the nose of the CEO. No one has ever been charged with a crime.

This bizarre big story quickly made the rounds of local and national news, which left out the most interesting details, including a surprise ending. The new documentary series “Bug Out” takes us through the twists and turns of this story, from retracing the events of the day of the heist, to a deep look at the illegal international insect trade. The four episodes of “Bug Out” are available to watch now on IMDB TV and Prime Video.

Joining Ira to chat about these wildlife true crime stories are Dina Fine Maron, senior wildlife crime reporter for National Geographic and Ben Feldman, director and executive producer of “Bug Out.”

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Flower Power: Floating Sensors Inspired By Dandelions Dandelions’ white puff balls are irresistible—kids delight in blowing on them until the seeds break free, floating away. But, dandelion seeds’ ability to travel through the air is not just aesthetic. Like many other plants, they rely on the wind for seed dispersal.

The traveling success of those floating dandelion seeds inspired engineers at the University of Washington to design a new ultra-light sensor. It’s solar powered and weighs just 30 milligrams. The goal is to use these sensors to do things like track temperature fluctuations and survey crops. The researchers’ findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

Ira talks with Vikram Iyer, assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, based in Seattle, Washington.

The GoFundMe Healthcare Plan Doesn’t Work Big celebrity crowdfunding campaigns often raise huge sums of money. Take for example, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, who recently raised $20 million in a week for Ukrainian humanitarian aid.

But these types of crowdfunding campaigns are outliers. Increasingly, crowdfunding in the United States is being used as an ad-hoc social safety net. Around a third of campaigns on the most popular crowdfunding site, GoFundMe, are to cover medical costs. And most campaign goals are modest—aiming to raise a few thousand dollars. Yet 30% of campaigns to cover medical costs in 2020 raised zero dollars.

Researchers from the University of Washington crunched the data on roughly half a million GoFundMe campaigns for medical expenses to get a better picture of which campaigns are more likely to get funded and which aren’t.

Ira speaks with Nora Kenworthy, associate professor of nursing and health studies, global health and anthropology at the University of Washington and Mark Igra, sociology graduate student at the University of Washington.

The Case Of Mars’ Missing Water In the search for life outside Earth, scientists consider having liquid water one of the foremost criteria for determining if a planet could be habitable. On Mars, the evidence for a watery past has been flooding in from rovers and other instruments over the last 30 years. The contents of that water—its temperature and salinity, how fast it moved—are all now written in the planet’s minerals and rocks.

SciFri producer Christie Taylor talks to planetary scientist Bethany Ehlmann about the hunt for Mar’s water, where it all went, and whether liquid water could still, somehow, exist on the Red Planet’s surface.

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Will Russia’s War In Ukraine Finally Spur A Clean Energy Revolution? This week President Biden tightened sanctions on Russia, cutting off imports of Russian oil to the United States in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The conflict has put a sudden, sharp pressure on an already strained energy system, causing uncertainty—and rising prices.

However, in a recent Quinnipiac poll, 71% of Americans said they favored cutting off Russian oil imports, even if it resulted in higher prices at the pump. And the German Economic Ministry announced plans to speed up wind and solar projects as it seeks to lessen its dependence on Russian energy.

Ira talks with Dan Esty, Hillhouse Professor at Yale University, director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, and co-director of the Yale Initiative on Sustainable Finance, about whether the Ukraine conflict might hasten a worldwide shift to greener energy sources. They discuss the role that pressure from commercial entities and investors might have on long-term climate policy.

Searching For Life On The Red Planet Prompts Deeper Questions As rovers like Perseverance and Curiosity roam the surface of Mars in search of signs of past life, SciFri producer Christie Taylor asks scientists and science-fiction podcasters Mike Wong and Moiya McTie, “How do you define ‘life’ anyway?”

Plus, how to find habitable exoplanets, the case for Europa as a source of more interesting organisms than Mars, and why Star Trek’s hive mind alien, the Borg, is a good example of an alternate way of being alive.

Where Does Toilet Water Go? Many of us have morning routines that use a lot of water. After the alarm goes off, folks may stumble to the kitchen for a glass of water, then head to the bathroom to use the toilet, brush teeth, and take a shower. That very normal part of many people’s mornings is water-intensive. And where does that all go?

For many Americans, it’s a given that when we do dishes or wash our hands, that water is out of sight, out of mind—we don’t have to think about it again. But wastewater and sewage systems are complex and essential networks to our daily lives. And when they don’t work as we expect, whether that’s due to flooding or aged infrastructure, it’s a major problem.

There’s a whole community of engineers and scientists devoted to improving our wastewater and sewage systems to reflect our changing planet. More people living in cities, and increased rain from climate change are two recent examples of major adjustments that our systems weren’t built to handle. But researchers are now leading projects like New York’s Flood Sense, which alerts residents to sewage exposure, while SARS-CoV-2 detection in city wastewater has demonstrated the importance of monitoring these systems.

Joining Ira to talk about the importance of sewer science is Andrea Silverman, assistant professor of environmental engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

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As Mask Mandates Drop, COVID Cases Increase In Some Parts Of World Later this month, Hawai’i will become the 50th and final state in the U.S. to drop its indoor mask mandate, as those and other COVID-19 protections tumble down nationwide and in places like the United Kingdom and Austria.

But as the winter omicron surge eases in some places, an omicron subvariant called Ba.2 is joining the viral mix. And the pandemic is far from over elsewhere. Science journalist Roxanne Khamsi reports on rising case counts in Hong Kong—a country with previously low numbers. A year ago, it reported only 17 total cases per day, but recorded more than 56,000 this past week.

Plus, why war in Ukraine may threaten the effort to eliminate polio globally, the death of the recipient of a genetically modified pig heart, and other science stories.

U.S., Russia, and Canada Continue Collaboration On Wild Salmon Survey Tensions continue to simmer between Moscow and Washington in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In many respects, the divide between East and West is deepening: Oil companies are canceling partnerships with Russian firms. State legislators are calling for the state’s sovereign wealth fund to dump Russian investments. President Joe Biden announced Tuesday the U.S. would close its airspace to Russian aircraft. But the United States and Russia are continuing to work together on at least one issue: salmon.

There’s a map scattered with orange, green, blue and red dots spanning most of the North Pacific above 46 degrees latitude. On the map are three flags of Arctic nations: the U.S., Canada and the Russian Federation. “This interaction between the countries in this is really something that has never happened to this scale before,” said Mark Saunders, the executive director of the five-country North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission.

He’s talking about the 2022 Pan-Pacific Winter High Seas Expedition. Vessels from both sides of the Pacific are braving gale-force winds and 13-foot seas as they crisscross the ocean from the edge of the Aleutian Chain to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. All in the name of research on challenges to wild salmon runs that are important to people on all sides of the north Pacific Rim.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

While Long COVID Treatments Improve, Big Questions Remain Over the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, one topic has been on many people’s minds: long COVID. Some people with COVID-19 have symptoms that last for weeks, months, and sometimes even years after their initial infection.

Long COVID affects people in different ways. Some report debilitating fatigue or a persistent brain fog that makes it hard to concentrate. And for many long haulers, their ability to exercise and or perform simple daily tasks remains severely limited.

There’s still a lot that we don’t understand about the underlying causes of these symptoms. No one knows why some people develop long COVID, while others don’t. But over the last two years, researchers have slowly accumulated more knowledge about the drivers of long COVID, and how to best treat it.

Ira speaks with two people intimately familiar with long COVID: Dr. David Putrino, director of rehabilitation innovation at Mount Sinai Health System in New York, New York, and Hannah Davis, co-founder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative based in Brooklyn, New York.

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The Tyrannosaurus Rex Is Having An Identity Crisis There are few creatures, present or extinct, that hold the iconic status of the Tyrannosaurus rex. In museums and dinosaur media, this powerful, lumbering reptile often plays a starring role. But new research argues that the T. rex should really be classified into three separate species: Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrannosaurus imperator, and Tyrannosaurus regina.

This paper has been met with a wide range of reactions: some paleontologists have said this discovery could shake our understanding of dinosaur classifications, and could cause a headache for museums. Other experts say the paper is a load of bologna.

In other science news, a new strain of coronavirus was discovered in Canadian deer. This finding could shed more light on how the virus mutates and jumps between animals and people.

Joining Ira to talk about these topics and other news of the week is Sabrina Imbler, science reporting fellow for The New York Times.

Once Again, Transgender And Nonbinary Kids Are Under Attack In Texas Pilar Hernandez was hoping the nightmare for her family was over. For months last year, transgender advocates in Texas fought a group of bills in the Legislature seeking to ban transition care by arresting parents and delicensing doctors who provide transition care to children. Several of those bills died, but the ordeal scared Hernandez, the mother of a 17-year-old transgender boy in Houston.

Last week, those fears resurfaced: Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion that defined providing access to certain gender-affirming treatment as child abuse, leaving some parents worried about the safety of their families and some advocates concerned about the well-being of trans kids in Texas. “I had this fantasy that this year we’ll be able to at least rest a little,” Hernandez said while fighting back tears. “I think we all have post traumatic stress syndrome from last year, so this brings everything back.”

The AG’s definition is opposed by major medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Pediatric Endocrine Society and the American Medical Association, which say these treatments are within the standards of care and often lifesaving.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

What’s The Role Of Cyber Warfare In Russia’s War With Ukraine? When Russia invaded Ukraine a week ago, some experts predicted full-scale cyber warfare. It hasn’t happened—at least not yet. Russia did launch a few small cyber attacks against Ukraine, including malware which would have wiped Ukrainian government and bank data. It was thwarted.

Banks in the United States are now beefing up their security in anticipation of potential Russian cyber attacks in retaliation to the recently imposed sanctions. But how worried should we be about a global cyber war?

Jason Healey, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, based in New York City, joins Ira to discuss the intricacies of Russian cyber warfare.

The World According to Sound: Antiphonal Duets Some birds, especially those in the tropics, sing what are known as “antiphonal duets.” These are duets where there is a rapid alternation of notes sung by each bird. Sometimes there is just a gap of a few milliseconds between the part sung by each bird. The tight-knit duets help mating birds locate each other.

The World of Sound team took the duets of several pairs of wrens recorded by Dr. Nigel Mann and separated the parts of the two birds. By separating the vocalizations of each bird, you can hear how perfectly the two parts fit together.

At the end of the piece you hear a bird whose mating call never gets answered. It’s a Kaua‘i ‘ō ‘ō bird that was recorded in 1984 by James Jacobi. It was one of the last recordings made of an ō ‘ō bird. The species is now extinct.

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Where Are The Black Physicists? Black scientists make up less than one percent of physics PhDs in the U.S. And since 1999, most physics departments in the country have failed to graduate more than one or two Black undergraduates. Furthermore, the share of Black students in physics is declining: If the number receiving a bachelor’s degree in physics had kept pace with the rising popularity of the major, there would be 350 Black physicists graduating every year. Instead, in 2020, that number was 262.

But why is this number so small? A comprehensive investigative series in Science Magazine this week examines those statistics, the academic climate of physics departments, and how academia may be limiting the achievement of Black students. The series also highlights some success stories about proposed solutions, with mixed results.

But why is physics a uniquely white, male discipline—and how can institutions make the climate more friendly to students from marginalized backgrounds? Ira talks to Apriel Hodari, one of 150 Black women to receive a PhD in physics in the U.S., who now researches the culture of higher education in STEM fields.

Why The Equinox Can Make Your Credit Card Fail Twice a year, people listening to signals from satellites in geostationary orbit face a problem known as a solar outage, a solar transit, or sun fade. Around the spring equinox, the Sun approaches the equator from the south, as the north gets ready for spring. In the fall, near the autumnal equinox, the Sun appears to move back below the equator. During these times, it comes into the view of Earthbound satellite dishes directed at geostationary satellites positioned some 22,000 miles above the equator.

When a ground receiver, the satellite it’s looking at, and the Sun all line up, the radiation from the Sun can temporarily overwhelm the satellite receiver. Think of it like when you’re driving on a westbound road close to sunset, and you’re staring straight into the setting sun—it gets hard to read the road signs.

The effect is temporary: a maximum of 12 minutes at any given location for several days in a row. But it can affect everything from a satellite TV dish to credit card processing at your local gas station—even public radio stations receiving live programming over the satellite network.

SciFri’s Charles Bergquist talks with Chris DeBoy, who teaches a course in satellite communications at the Johns Hopkins University (and is also the RF communications lead for the New Horizons Mission to Pluto, and the Space Engineering Branch Manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory), about the advantages and disadvantages of geostationary satellites, and what can be done to minimize the impact of solar outages. They are joined by MaryJane Peters, technical operations chief at KAZU in Monterey, California, who describes the effect the seasonal outages have on station operations.

Can Meteorites On Earth Point To Ancient Life On Mars? In 1996, the late astrobiologist David McKay and his team published a paper arguing that a four-pound rock from Mars, called Allan Hills 84001 (found in Antarctica), showed evidence of ancient microbial life on the planet Mars. The team pointed to several mineral structures, including tiny beads of magnetite, as well as shapes that might be fossilized bacteria.

This hypothesis ignited a storm of controversy and a flurry of research that contradicted the team’s theory. But decades later, ALH 84001, like the other meteorites that have been linked to the Red Planet, remains an important insight into Martian geology and the formation of organic molecules in the absence of biological processes.

Producer Christie Taylor talks to astrobiologist Andrew Steele, who has been studying ALH 84001 and other meteorites for decades. He discusses the process of probing meteorites for data, the difficulty of studying rocks without their original contexts, and how new samples from the Perseverance rover could change everything. Plus, how the original controversy over ALH 84001 changed the trajectory of planetary science.

From Zero To 100 Butts: The Wild World Of Invertebrate Behinds Recently, the staff of Science Friday came across a tweet that caught our attention, sent out by researcher Dr. Maureen Berg.

Turns out, it was a call to source comic ideas for Invertebrate Butt Week, a celebration of—you guessed it—the butts of invertebrates. “Invertebrates really get the short end of the stick,” says Rosemary Mosco, the creator of the comic series Bird And Moon and #InverteButtWeek organizer. “People are not as excited about them as, say, a majestic whale or a beautiful bird. And I love my birds, but [invertebrates have] such an incredible diversity. So, butts are sort of a cheeky way to access some of that amazing diversity and celebrate it.”

Science Friday’s Daniel Peterschmidt talks to the organizers of #InverteButtWeek about how it came together, their favorite invertebrate butt facts (like how sea cucumbers have anal teeth), and how you can participate in the celebration.

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Pittsburgh’s Bridge Collapse Spotlights America’s Infrastructure Woes Our modern world is made up of infrastructure: Roads, buildings, and bridges all play a big role for many people’s daily lives. If these structures do their jobs well, we don’t think much about them. That is, until infrastructure fails.

Bridge collapses are especially scary, like the structural failure in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last month. These events are shocking, and cause people to wonder how this could be allowed to happen. But looking at the numbers, it’s actually surprising there aren’t more failures.

According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, a third of bridges in America are in need of repairs or replacement. Moreover, seven percent of the nation’s bridges are considered “structurally deficient.” And the problem could accelerate: Larger vehicles, more traffic, and climate change put a greater strain on bridges that already need regular maintenance.

Joining guest host John Dankosky to talk about the engineering jargon around bridge infrastructure and new ways of building more resilient structures is Abbie Liel, professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Why Did Ancient Ferocious Cat-Like Creatures Go Extinct? Can you imagine a world without cats? No furry loafs adorning our sofa arms. And no bobcats, mountain lions or jaguars either.

Before there were cats in North America, there were nimravids, also known as “false” saber-toothed cats (while they had elongated canines, they weren’t actually cats). About 35 million years ago, nimravids roamed all over North America.

But after 12 million years of dominating the continent, nimravids disappeared. For roughly the next 6.5 million years, there were no feline-like creatures anywhere in North America. This time period is called the Cat Gap.

But why did nimravids go extinct? Guest host John Dankosky is joined by Chelsea Whyte, assistant news editor at New Scientist, who’s based in Portland Oregon, to discuss her reporting on this feline-less era.

Why Are Mice The Most Frequently Used Lab Animal? Mice and rats make up nearly 99% of animals used in research. But how did medical research come to be so dependent on these tiny rodents? How exactly do scientists genetically engineer mice to be suitable to study pretty much any human ailment? And why do the majority of medicines that are effective in mice fail in humans?

Dr. Nadia Rosenthal, scientific director and professor at the Jackson Laboratory for Mammalian Genetics, based in Bar Harbor, Maine, talks with guest host John Dankosky to answer these questions, and more.

The Science Behind ‘Power Of The Dog’ When you think about science in films, you might think about space missions, disaster flicks, or techie thrillers, but probably not westerns. But Jane Campion’s film The Power of the Dog, a period drama about ranchers in Montana, turns on an interesting science twist. It is also widely considered a frontrunner to win an Oscar or three—it’s been nominated in several categories, including Best Picture.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Phil, an unlikeable rancher, whose world is disrupted when his brother marries a recent widow (played by Kirsten Dunst) and brings her son Peter (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee) into the home. The film doesn’t have a lot of dialogue. It’s a slow-boiling story about depression, psychological distress, alcoholism, masculinity, and sexuality. But (SPOILER ALERT!) it is also a story about anthrax, and the way in which Peter leads Phil to infect himself with the deadly agricultural disease by providing him with a hide from a downed cow.

Sonia Epstein, executive editor and associate curator of science and film at the Museum of the Moving Image, based in New York City, joins John Dankosky to discuss the film and the medical mystery embedded in a landscape of mountains, cattle, and simmering emotions.

Blast Off To The Red Planet With The Spring Book Club The spring Book Club is setting sail for Mars! Join us as we read “The Sirens of Mars,” by planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson, and discuss the search for life on our red planet neighbor.

Radio producer and Book Club crew member Christie Taylor talks to guest host John Dankosky about the exciting scientific journey ahead for readers, with help from LibraryLinkNJ’s Stephanie Sendaula.

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Paul Farmer, Global Health Leader, Dies At 62 Paul Farmer, physician and co-founder of the humanitarian medical organization Partners in Health died unexpectedly this week in Rwanda at the age of 62. Farmer was widely known for his compassion, and his conviction that all people around the world, regardless of their means, deserved access to quality medical treatments and interventions.

Sarah Zhang, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins John Dankosky to remember Paul Farmer and his work around the world, from Haiti to Peru to Russia.

They also discuss concern over a possible re-emergence of wild polio in Malawi, a new U.N. report linking climate change to a potential increase in wildfires around the world, and the case of Hank the Tank—a burly bear troubling Lake Tahoe.

We’ll also get an update on the tale of a wayward piece of space junk soon to impact the moon, and dive into the link between Epstein-Barr virus and multiple sclerosis. We recently discussed research establishing the link between the two conditions—and now there is new work looking at the possible mechanism of the connection.

Blind Patients With Eye Implant Left In The Dark As Its Startup Struggles Barbara Campbell was walking through a New York City subway station during rush hour when her world abruptly went dark. For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. “I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train,” Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. “I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little ‘beep, beep, beep’ sound.’”

It wasn’t her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she’d been able to see with the implant’s help vanished.

Terry Byland is the only person to have received this kind of implant in both eyes. He got the first-generation Argus I implant, made by the company Second Sight Medical Products, in his right eye in 2004, and the subsequent Argus II implant in his left 11 years later. He helped the company test the technology, spoke to the press movingly about his experiences, and even met Stevie Wonder at a conference. “[I] went from being just a person that was doing the testing to being a spokesman,” he remembers.

Yet in 2020, Byland had to find out secondhand that the company had abandoned the technology and was on the verge of going bankrupt. While his two-implant system is still working, he doesn’t know how long that will be the case. “As long as nothing goes wrong, I’m fine,” he says. “But if something does go wrong with it, well, I’m screwed. Because there’s no way of getting it fixed.”

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Climate Change Ruins The World Championship Sled Dog Derby Teams of sled dogs and mushers from across the United States and Canada visited Laconia this weekend for the 93rd annual World Championship Sled Dog Derby. Racers were in good spirits, though they faced slushy conditions on Friday and Saturday—a situation that has become more common, many mushers said, as climate change causes winters to warm. Vince Buoniello was the chief judge for the Laconia race, which has a deep and prestigious history in the sled dog world. He likened it to the Super Bowl.

“Laconia was always a magic name. Everybody wanted to race Laconia,” he said. Through his 65 years in the sled dog world, Buoniello has seen big changes—fewer people seem to be involved in the sport, and it’s harder to find undeveloped land for sledding trails. And, he said, warming winters have made races difficult to schedule. “We raced every weekend for years and years. It was an exception if a race ever got canceled. Now, forget it. It’s changed drastically,” he said. “To see mud, it just blows your mind. It just never used to happen.”

Buoniello, who is 90, said judging the race in the warm conditions had tired him out a bit. But, he said, his love for the sport and the animals has made it worthwhile throughout his career. “The dogs kept me going,” he said. “It was just such love. It was just pure love.”

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

An Elusive Search For Freedom From Human-Made Noise If you stand in the middle of a busy street in New York City and listen to the sounds around you, you’re hearing what Bernie Krause calls “the anthropophony.” It’s the cacophony of “incoherent and chaotic” noise that’s drawing people away from the natural world. “In fact, the further we draw away from the natural world, the more pathological we become as a culture,” he said.

Krause has been charting this change for more than 50 years, as one of the world’s foremost chroniclers of nature sounds. He’s recorded more than 15,000 species and their habitats. In his new book, The Power of Tranquility in a Very Noisy World, he makes the case that human-made noise is causing us stress. Krause offers a simple prescription: “Shut the hell up,” and listen to the soundscapes of nature, what he calls “the biophony.”

“If we listen to sounds of the natural world, for example, which are the original soundscapes that we were exposed to, it’s very restorative and therapeutic,” he said.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

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New Device Helps People With Paralysis Walk Again Spinal cord injuries are notoriously difficult to treat, especially for those who have been paralyzed for several years.

Now, researchers have developed a new implant that is able to reverse paralysis in patients with complete spinal cord injuries. The device uses specially designed electrodes, which bring the brain back into communication with the patient’s lower body. The findings were recently published in the academic journal Nature Medicine.

Ira talks with the study’s co-authors, Jocelyne Bloch, a neurosurgeon at Lausanne University Hospital, and Grégoire Courtine, professor of neuroscience at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Could Protein-Based Vaccines Help Close The Global Vaccination Gap? A new generation of COVID-19 vaccines are being developed and distributed around the world. They’re called recombinant-protein vaccines. But the tech is actually not at all new. In fact, It’s been used to produce hepatitis C and pertussis vaccines for decades.

These protein-based vaccines have an edge over mRNA vaccines in a few ways. They’re just as effective, cheaper and simpler to manufacture, and easier to distribute. So why, two years into the pandemic, have they just started gaining traction? And can recombinant-protein vaccines help close the global coronavirus vaccination gap?

Ira discusses these developments with Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi, the co-creator of Corbevax, a patent-free protein-based vaccine, for which she was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She’s also the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, and a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine, based in Houston, Texas.

How Cuba Developed Five COVID-19 Vaccines Cuba was able to quickly produce five coronavirus vaccines, thanks to the island’s robust biotech industry. For decades, Cuba has produced its own home-grown vaccines and distributed them to neighboring countries.

But sanctions and political dynamics have complicated Cuba’s ability to distribute their COVID-19 vaccines with the world.

Ira talks with Helen Yaffe, senior lecturer of economic and social history at Glasgow University, and author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World.

Fish Make More Noise Than You Think One of the most famous films of undersea explorer Jacques Cousteau was titled The Silent World. But when you actually stop and listen to the fishes, the world beneath the waves is a surprisingly noisy place.

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Third Person Cured From HIV, Thanks To Umbilical Cord Stem Cells The third person ever, and the first woman, has been cured of the HIV virus, thanks to a stem cell transplant using umbilical cord blood. While the invasive, risky bone marrow transplant process may not prove the answer for large numbers of people, the use of cord blood may open up pathways to new treatment options for a wider variety of people than the adult stem cells used to cure the two previous patients.

Vox staff writer Umair Irfan explains why. Plus how President Biden is using executive orders for decarbonizing new parts of the economy, new research on the climate origins of the mega-drought in the American West, a prediction for even more rapidly rising sea levels from NOAA, and how orangutans—some of them at least—might be able to use tools.

How To Close Gaps In Healthcare Access When a public health crisis strikes, a natural instinct is to turn to a strong leader. The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example: We want someone who can calm our fears, tell us what to expect, and what steps we can take to make things better. But leadership does not happen overnight—and it will take a brave person to step into the shoes that guide the country through the next stage of the pandemic.

Dr. David Satcher is used to adversity. Born into poverty in Anniston, Alabama, Satcher contracted whooping cough at two years old. The town’s only Black doctor, Dr. Jackson, treated Satcher, but did not expect him to live. Overcoming this illness launched him into a lifetime of public health work, with an emphasis on health equity.

Satcher speaks to Ira about his work as former assistant secretary for health, surgeon general of the U.S., and director of the Centers for Disease Control under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. They also discuss his leadership work at the Morehouse School of Medicine, and his advice for getting the country towards a more equitable healthcare system.

New Energy Record Set By Fusion Reactor The promise of a human-made, sustained, controlled nuclear fusion reaction has always seemed to be “just a few decades away.” But now recent results from JET, the Joint European Torus experiment, have researchers hopeful that practical fusion may indeed be possible as soon as 2035.

In the experiment, a high-temperature plasma made of equal parts deuterium and tritium was confined in a magnetic containment vessel known as a tokamak. The run produced 59 megajoules of energy over a fusion “pulse” of five seconds, considerably longer than previous attempts. While the experiment did not produce more energy than it took to produce the extreme conditions needed to induce fusion, researchers took the run as a proof of concept that an upcoming reactor called ITER should be successful.

Alain Bécoulet, head of the engineering domain for the ITER project and author of the upcoming book Star Power: ITER and the International Quest for Fusion Energy joins Ira to discuss the recent advance at JET and the prospects for producing a sustained, controlled nuclear fusion reaction—what Bécoulet calls mastering a small piece of the sun.

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Ira speaks to Mary-Frances O’Connor, author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, a neuroscientist, about adjusting to life after loss.

One Step Closer To Curing Cancer Two cancer patients treated with gene therapy a decade ago are still in remission. Thousands of patients have undergone this type of immunotherapy, called CAR-T Cell therapy, since then. But these are the first patients that doctors say have been cured by the treatment. The findings were recently published in the academic journal Nature.

Ira talks to Dr. Carl June, co-author of the study, and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Team USA’s Skiers Are Using Battery-Heated Shorts At The Olympics Team USA’s Alpine Ski Team is wearing custom-designed heated shorts to stay warm on the freezing slopes at the Beijing Olympics. But these aren’t your average shorts. They use a lithium-ion battery, and the thread they’re sewn with serves as the heat conductor.

Ira talks with Josh Daniel and Lauren Samuels, graduate students at the University of Oregon’s sports product management program, who came up with the cutting-edge design.

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An Abrupt Departure For Biden’s Science Adviser This week, Eric Lander, the Presidential science advisor and head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, resigned following an investigation into bullying behavior towards his subordinates. In an apology, Lander acknowledged being “disrespectful and demeaning” towards staff.

Lander, a mathematician and genomics researcher, was previously the head of the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT. Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor for WNYC Radio in New York, joins Ira to discuss the resignation and what it might mean for the president’s science policy initiatives.

They also talk about other stories from the week in science, including an advance in fusion research in Europe, concerns over the increasing saltiness of Lake Michigan, and the question of whether sequestering urine from the sewage stream might have environmental advantages.

New COVID-19 Antiviral Pills: How Do They Work? Late last year, two new drugs joined the lineup of options for high-risk patients who may need extra help fighting COVID-19: Merck’s pill molnupiravir, and Pfizer’s pill Paxlovid.

The two pills join remdesivir, an infusion-only drug, as antiviral compounds that attack the SARS-CoV2 virus in different ways. But how exactly do they work, how well do they work, and what makes them complicated to use in real life?

Ira talks to virologists Ran Swanstrom and Adam Lauring about the fundamentals of antiviral drugs, concerns about molnupiravir’s method of mutating the virus to death, and the long drug interaction list for Paxlovid. Plus, why timing is a critical issue for getting drugs to patients.

Kyne and Pattie Gonia join Ira to talk about the magic drag can bring to science education, and why they think the future of SciComm looks more diverse than the past.

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Phasing Out “Problematic” Plastics Plastic packaging is just about impossible to avoid. Getting takeout? You’ll likely wind up with a plastic container, or cutlery. Grabbing a coffee? Plastic stirrers and straws are hard to evade. These items are tough to recycle, and most sanitation systems aren’t equipped to process them. That means they go into the trash, or worse, waterways.

Last week, the U.S. Plastics Pact released a much-anticipated list of “Problematic and Unnecessary Materials” that pact members should phase out by 2025. These items include cutlery, straws, and stirrers, as well as materials that include certain chemicals and pigments. The impact could be large: Pact members make up about third of America’s plastic packaging producers. Members include companies that use a lot of packing, like Target, Walmart and Aldi, as well as those that make raw plastic materials.

The goal of the U.S. Plastics Pact is to help make America’s recycling system more circular, where materials in theory could be recycled in perpetuity. But some in the plastics industry say the timeline for phasing out these materials are too fast, or may cause a reliance on more carbon-intensive materials. Joining Ira to break down the potential impact of phasing out these materials is Emily Tipaldo, executive director of the U.S. Plastics Pact, based in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

The Science Of Slip Versus Stick We’ve all had the experience of that uncomfortably sticky feeling of syrup or jam residue on the breakfast table. Or a wad of chewing gum binding our shoe to the sidewalk. But what’s the science behind why some things stick, while other things slip?

Many of the reasons come down to friction, says Laurie Winkless, a physicist and science writer based in New Zealand. Her new book, Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces, explores how different materials interact—from the toes of an acrobatic gecko scaling a sheer wall to the molecular magic inside the rapid fusion of super glue.

Winkless joins SciFri’s Charles Bergquist to talk about surface science, and what makes something slippery, including the question of how the famously non-stick Teflon manages to stick to your kitchen frying pan.

How Long Will California’s Butterfly Boom Last? Like their brethren east of the Rocky Mountains, the western population of monarch butterflies has been declining steeply since the mid-1990s. Every November, volunteers set out through the mountains of California with one goal in mind: Count those western monarchs as they gather for winter hibernation. Unfortunately, the recent numbers have been bad news. Back in the 1990s, the western population numbered more than a million. But in 2018 and 2019, volunteers only counted about 20,000 and 30,000, respectively. In 2020, the count turned up a mere 2,000 butterflies.

This year, though, the news was good: The 2021 Thanksgiving Count found nearly 250,000 butterflies in winter enclaves throughout California.

How did the population bounce back so dramatically? And is this number a blip on the radar, or the start of better times for the beleaguered butterfly? Ira talks to UC-Davis entomologist Louie Yang about the intricate timing of milkweed and monarchs, and why ecologists remain uncertain about the fate of this charismatic insect.

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Date Set For International Space Station’s Burial At Sea The International Space Station was never going to last forever. And its expiration date had already been moved from 2024 to 2030. But NASA finally released the plan for what happens after the end of United States support for the orbiting research lab.

In a report released this week, NASA announced the station, once decommissioned, would orbit into the ocean in 2031. More specifically, it would end at a place between New Zealand and the southern tip of South America called “Point Nemo”—a final resting place for other spacecraft chosen because it is the place on Earth farthest from land masses.

Science journalist Maggie Koerth joins Ira to explain the end of the ISS and other stories, including two black holes that may or may not exist and may or may not collide, the U.S. Geological Survey’s effort to monitor a sleeping volcano, what we’re learning from COVID-19 “challenge” trials and a centuries-old act of resistance against colonial forces.

Why Should You Donate Your Brain To Science? Ever wonder what happens after you donate your brain to science? If you have a disease or disorder like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, autism, traumatic brain injuries, depression, it can be used to help researchers better understand the condition and potentially lead to new treatments. But scientists also need to study the brains of people unaffected by any type of disease.

Ira is joined by Dr. Bill Scott, executive director of the University of Miami’s Brain Endowment Bank, based in Miami, Florida, and Tish Hevel, CEO of the Brain Donor Project, based in Naples, Florida, to discuss what scientists can learn from studying human brains and how to donate your brain to science after you’re gone.

Eating Meat May Not Have Spurred Human Evolution Scientists have long theorized that meat is what made us human. The idea was that about two million years ago, an early human ancestor emerged. Homo erectus had a bigger brain, longer legs, and a smaller gut than modern humans, but they were more like us than apes. The cause of these big evolutionary changes, researchers hypothesized, was eating more meat.

Now, after re-analyzing fossil records, some are beginning to question the assertion that meat-eating was the primary driver of changes during this pivotal point in human evolution.

Ira is joined by the study’s co-author, Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, based in Washington, DC.

The World According To Sound: How Do Songbirds Sing Two Notes At Once? Humans can talk because of their larynx, an organ shared by all mammals. Birds also have a larynx, but they use a different organ to vocalize: a syrinx.

The syrinx is a complex and powerful voice-box. Unlike the larynx, it allows birds to do things like sing two different notes at the same time. That’s how some song birds can sing an ascending line and descending line simultaneously.

Even with all the possibilities of their syrinx, some birds have adapted other ways to “sing.” The Ruffed Grouse, for instance, uses its wings. The Wilson’s Snipe makes a song with its wings and tail. The Palm Cockatoo holds a stick in its beak and bangs it on a tree. The Magnificent Frigatebird inflates its throat sacs and beats them with its long beak. The Sage Grouse makes its song with special chest sacs.

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Beware Of Fake Pop-Up COVID Sites In recent months, mobile COVID-19 testing tents and vans have sprouted on urban sidewalks and street curbs as demand has skyrocketed in response to the rapid spread of the omicron variant. Some of the sites run by private companies offer legitimate, timely and reliable results, but others are more like weeds. High demand and scarce supply opened the door to bad actors, and officials in some states are having a hard time keeping up their oversight amid the proliferation. And they are sounding the alarm that by visiting the pop-up industry’s sometimes makeshift tents, desperate patients could be putting their health, wallets and personal data at risk.

“These conditions change so rapidly,” said Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who leads the COVID-19 Testing Toolkit, which provides guidance to employers and others. “It’s not a surprise that these conditions were totally ripe for consumers to be gouged and to get fraudulent tests.” Consumers seeking testing — either a rapid antigen test that provides results in under an hour or a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, test that generally takes longer but is more accurate — may think all testing sites are created equal, but they’re not. Unfortunately, telling the good from the bad is not always easy.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Understanding The Cannabis-Body Connection With Exercise As a person gets ready for a long run, there are a few things they need: keys, cellphone, earbuds. But what about a weed gummy? It may not fit the stereotype of the stoner locked on the couch eating chips. But as cannabis is legalized in an increasing number of states, anecdotal evidence points to a growing community of people mixing cannabis with exercise. In fact, a 2019 study from the University of Colorado Boulder found 80% of users in states where marijuana is legal use it as part of their workout routine.

Prior research suggests there’s a good reason for this, especially for endurance athletes: the notorious feeling of “runner’s high,” which has been described as euphoria and tied to pain relief, appears to be connected to the body’s endocannabinoid system.

Despite its different legal status in various states, marijuana is still classified federally as a Schedule I drug, putting it in the same category as heroin and meth. That affects the research able to be done with cannabis.

Guest host Miles O’Brien talks to two people involved in the first human study of how cannabis and exercise interact: Laurel Gibson, PhD candidate in psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder, and ultramarathoner and study participant Heather Mashhoodi, also based in Boulder.

Are Electric Planes Finally Ready For Takeoff? You’ve probably had the experience of your flight landing, and as you wait your turn to deplane, seeing the ground crew running up to refuel the plane from a tanker of jet fuel. But could that tanker one day be replaced by a charging station, at least for some types of flights?

Electric aircraft offer the potential of cleaner flight, with fewer emissions, as well as a quieter ride. Last week, Rolls Royce announced that a flight last November by their experimental electric propellor-driven aircraft “Spirit of Innovation” had officially beaten the world zero-emission speed record at 345 miles per hour. And on a more practical level, the company Eviation is set to test its nine-passenger electric commuter plane, named Alice, in the weeks ahead.

Omer Bar-Yohay, the CEO of Eviation, and Mark Moore, the CEO of electric plane start-up Whisper Aero, join guest host Miles O’Brien to talk about electric aviation technology—and what it might take to bring battery-powered planes to an airport near you.

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Space-X Booster To Hit The Moon, After Years Of Hurtling Through Space A Space-X rocket booster is on track to slam into the moon, which scientists predict will happen on March 4. The rocket was originally launched in 2015 to deploy a space weather satellite. Now, it’s a piece of space junk that’s been caught in limbo for the past seven years.

Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins guest host Miles O’Brien to talk about that and other science stories of the week, including implications of Russian cyber warfare, climate scientist Lisa Goddard’s legacy, a Lego robot with an “organic” brain, and everlasting bubbles.

A Race To Save Florida’s Manatees Florida’s waterways are home to a charismatic mammal: the manatee. These gentle giants are sometimes called “sea cows” for the way they graze on seagrass, the long, green plants that grow underwater in their habitat.

But in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon, the seagrass is disappearing fast due to algae, which is caused by pollution in the water. This loss of food has put the manatees in great peril. Last year, over 1,000 of them died—more than any year on record.

While threats to manatees are not new, this accelerated die-off concerns scientists, and is prompting a search for novel ways to help the Sunshine State’s sea cows. Joining guest host Miles O’Brien to talk about manatee conservation in Florida are Patrick Rose, executive director of Save the Manatees Club in Maitland, Florida, and Cynthia Stringfield, senior vice president of animal health, conservation and education at ZooTampa in Tampa, Florida.

It’s A Bird. It’s A Plane. It’s An Astronomical Photo Bomb. Anyone who’s spent any time gazing at the stars at night has had the experience of seeing an occasional satellite whizz by—a sighting that usually happens around twilight. But if you’ve been out in the dark lately, you may have noticed that there’s a lot more traffic in space these days. With keen eyes, you might spot a series of dots moving in a straight line. That line is a “train” of satellites in low earth orbit, launched to provide broadband internet access from space.

Starlink is the main company behind such efforts currently, with thousands of satellites in orbit already, but other players, such as Amazon, are joining the market as well. The companies behind them say they can provide high-speed broadband internet access to rural areas that might be out of range of a fiber optic cable or a good cellular connection.

But just as you can see those lines of glowing dots, astronomers and their telescopes can see them too, making their jobs more difficult. The problem is especially acute in long-duration exposures of the night sky—in which the dots become bright streaks across an entire image. Over the past few years, astronomers and some of the companies behind the large satellite constellations have been trying to find ways to mitigate the optical interference the satellites can cause.

Dr. Bruce Cameron, the director of the System Architecture Group at MIT, describes the capabilities of some of these huge satellite constellations, and who might stand to benefit from them. Dr. Connie Walker, a scientist with NSF’s NOIRLab and the co-chair of four panels looking at the impact of these satellite constellations on astronomy, joins guest host Miles O’Brien to discuss the challenges these constellations could pose in the future, and her hopes for collaboration with industry to solve the problems.

Webb Telescope Arrives To Its Final Home In Deep Space After weeks of travel, the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, moved into its final orbit this week. Following a Christmas day launch, the spacecraft has spent a month in transit, deploying its solar array, unfolding its heat shield, and unpacking its hexagonal mirror segments. On Monday, the craft fired its engines to brake into a circular orbit around a point in space known as L2, where astronomers hope it will operate for at least 10 years.

Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center and Deputy Project Scientist for James Webb Space Telescope Science Communications, joins guest host Miles O’Brien to talk about the telescope’s journey to L2. Straughn explains what will need to happen in the months ahead to fine-tune the mirrors and commission the science instruments on board before the telescope takes its first science images sometime this summer.

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Scientists Are Working On A Universal COVID Vaccine As the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spike around the U.S., there are scientists working not on variant-specific boosters, but on a vaccine that might cover every possible strain, past and future.

Called universal vaccines, they require a fundamentally different approach from a shot that would target Delta, Omicron, or any other variant. Instead, a universal vaccine would need to train the body to respond to something every variant has in common—or to fill in the blanks of any possible mutations.

Vox senior science reporter Umair Irfan reports on the difficult path and ongoing work toward such a vaccine, and why the immune system’s T cells and B cells, more than neutralizing antibodies, will dictate our long-term future with the virus.

Plus how an undersea eruption near Tonga was one of the most documented volcanic explosions in history, new research assesses the vast toll of global antibiotic resistance, and more stories from the week.

New Research Links Epstein-Barr Virus to Multiple Sclerosis A group of scientists at Harvard University says they have made a major breakthrough in understanding multiple sclerosis. For years, they have been testing out a hypothesis that the Epstein-Barr virus causes multiple sclerosis, a chronic and incurable disease of the nervous system. (Epstein-Barr is the contagious virus responsible for mononucleosis.)

Researchers analyzed a dataset of 10 million active-duty military members. They found that service members who contracted the Epstein-Barr virus were 32 times more likely to later be diagnosed with MS. The research was published in the journal Science.

Ira is joined by Dr. Alberto Ascherio, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston, Massachusetts, to discuss his team’s research and its broader implications.

Saliva Sharing Might Help Kids Identify Their Closest Relationships How do little kids understand who has a close relationship with them? One of the clues they use to figure it out is by noticing who they’re swapping saliva with. The closest bonds are with the people who are giving them kisses, sharing their forks, and wiping their drool. Those are the findings of a recent study published in the journal Science.

Ira is joined by Ashley Thomas, the study’s lead author and a post doctoral fellow in the brain and cognitive sciences department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Big Agriculture Schools Face Increasing Donor Conflicts Of Interest A major donor to the University of Illinois wondered what the heck was up. Robb Fraley, a top Monsanto executive at the time, emailed the dean of the agriculture college in 2018 complaining about a professor saying publicly that one of his company’s flagship products was causing widespread damage to crops. Monsanto was also a major donor. Fraley accused the professor of being “biased” and “prone to exaggeration.”

U of I officials had spent years courting Fraley, and they had listened to him before when he’d complained about a lack of progress on an endowed chair he’d funded. But the 2018 episode highlights potentially thorny situations for public universities, which have cultivated powerful agricultural corporations as donors while public funding has stagnated. Dicamba posed a particularly critical issue to Fraley. After all, he was as responsible as anyone for leading modern agriculture into using lab-designed seeds that could withstand spraying from weedkillers. That Monsanto-branded Roundup Ready pairing of biotechnology with glyphosate herbicide revolutionized grain farming around the world.

When glyphosate lost its punch — after weeds grew resistant to Roundup — Monsanto shifted to teaming different genetically modified seeds with the dicamba herbicide. But farmers who’d not adopted the new genetically engineered seeds started complaining about “dicamba drift” and of seeing their crops perish from the effects of the herbicide migrating to their fields. So when U of I weed scientist Aaron Hager spoke about a controversy as big as any in commercial agriculture in ways that didn’t sit well with Fraley, the university benefactor let the school know about his displeasure.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Growing Plants—And Providing Solar Energy Food is one of our most basic needs. As the population of the world grows, we’re going to need to grow more of it within the same amount of space. The United Nations estimates the world’s population will grow by 2 billion people between now and 2050.

Access to fresh food is already a problem in many countries, and will likely get worse with more mouths to feed. This is where the concept of agrivoltaics could create a massive change. This farming setup mixes water, energy, and plant growth all in one space. Solar panels collect energy from the sun’s rays; underneath those panels is where the plants grow. The setup takes less water than the traditional way of farming, all-in-all creating a more sustainable way to grow food and create energy.

Joining Ira to talk about the promise of agrivoltaics is Dr. Chad Higgins, associate professor of biological and ecological engineering at Oregon State University, in Corvallis, Oregon.

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Identifying Animals Through Airborne DNA In recent years, the technique of eDNA—environmental DNA, or samples taken from the environment, as opposed to from a specific animal—has changed ecology research. Scientists have learned how to obtain eDNA from water samples, soil, and even the intestinal tract of other animals. Writing recently in the journal Current Biology, two different groups report that air samples collected with filters in a zoo can provide enough DNA to paint a partial picture of the species living in and around the zoo.

After taking over 72 samples from 20 sites around a zoo in the UK, Dr. Elizabeth Clare and colleagues brought their trove back to the lab, and were able to identify 25 different species living in and around the zoo. Some were expected zoo inhabitants, and others were surprises—including DNA from a species of endangered European hedgehog. At the same time, a separate group of researchers performed a similar analysis on a Danish zoo, and achieved similar results.

Dr. Clare joins Ira Flatow to talk about the research, and what the technique of eDNA might be able to bring to the world of conservation ecology.

These Beetles Go Boing There are plenty of insect species that jump—leafhoppers, crickets, fleas, and more. Some use powerful legs to take to the air. Others, like the click beetle, rely on a latching mechanism built into their bodies to build up energy, then release it suddenly. But writing in the journal PLOS One this week, researchers report that they’ve spotted a species of lined flat bark beetle (Laemophloeus biguttatus) that uses a different method to jump—the beetle larvae dig into a surface with tiny claws, flex, and build up energy, before releasing it and flinging itself into the air in a tiny ring.

“It was really exciting to know that we had seen something possibly for the first time and definitely reported for the first time,” said Matt Bertone, an entomologist at NC State University and one of the authors of the report. The jumps themselves aren’t very impressive—only a few body lengths—but the discovery of a new mechanism that doesn’t rely on a specialized body part is intriguing. The authors aren’t quite sure why the larvae, which live under tree bark, have evolved the jumping behavior, but hypothesize that it may be to rapidly move when their bark habitat is disturbed.

Bertone joins Ira to talk about the unique form of locomotion, and where the researchers might look next for the behavior.

This is Your Brain on Wordle Five letters, six tries to guess a word. That’s the simple conceit behind Wordle, the new puzzle game that’s sweeping the internet. More than 2.5 million people play this word game, its creator told NPR. The word changes each day and is the same for everyone who plays. Each letter guessed right brings the player one step closer to solving the puzzle. It’s free and simple, and according to many players, completely addictive.

But why is such a simple game so compelling? And how does it compare to viral games of the past, like Pokemon Go or Words with Friends?

Ira is joined by Dr. Matthew Baldwin, assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, to unlock the reasons why Wordle both satisfies the brain and brings us closer to our peers.

Pigeons Are More Than Pests Pigeons lead much-maligned lives in our cities. They eat what’s edible from our trash, and live much of their lives at street level. So it’s no surprise, perhaps, that the name ‘rats with wings’ has reached the level of a cultural meme.

But author Rosemary Mosco wants you to think again. Instead of seeing vermin, you might consider the pigeon much like a stray dog or cat. In her recent book, A Pocket Guide to Pigeon-Watching, Mosco details the history of pigeon domestication—as much as it can be known—including millennia of humans raising pigeons to eat, as well as cherishing them for their nutrient-rich poop. More recently, people painstakingly bred fancy varieties like the frillback and the fantail. And yes, your local city pigeon is descended from those beloved birds.

Producer Christie Taylor talks to Mosco about the underappreciated history of pigeons. Plus, fun facts about their feral, city-dwelling kin, from the self-congratulatory wing-claps to the secret lives of baby pigeons.

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Ira talks to physicist and science historian Paul Halpern about this story, detailed in his book, Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate.

Is There A Method To Plant Mutation? Mutation is one of the cornerstones of evolutionary biology. When an organism’s DNA mutates thanks to damage or copying error, that organism passes the mutation on to its offspring. Those offspring then become either more or less equipped to survive and reproduce. And at least until recently, researchers have assumed that those mutations were random—equally likely to happen along any particular snippet of a piece of DNA.

Now, scientists are questioning whether that’s actually true—or if mutation is more likely to occur in some parts of the genome than others. New research published in the journal Nature this week looks at just that question, in a common weed called Arabidopsis thaliana. After following 24 generations of plants for several years and then sequencing the offspring, the team found that some genes are far less likely to mutate than others. And those genes are some of the most essential to the function of DNA itself, where a mutation could be fatal. Conversely, the genes most likely to mutate were those associated with the plant’s ability to respond to its environment—potentially a handy trick for a highly adaptable weed.

Lead author Grey Monroe talks to Ira about his group’s findings, why this skew in mutation likelihood may benefit plants like Arabidopsis, and why it may be time to think differently about evolution.

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A Replacement Heart, From A Pig This week, doctors reported that they had successfully transplanted a heart taken from a pig into a human being, a type of procedure known as xenotransplantation. The pig had been genetically modified to lack a certain protein thought to be responsible for organ rejection in previous transplant attempts.

The patient, a 57 year-old man, will be monitored for any sign of rejection or infection with a porcine virus—but doctors are hopeful that the work will lead to further transplants and a new source of replacement organs for people.

Science journalist Roxxane Kamsi joins Ira to talk about that and other stories from the week in science, including research into how antivirals work in people infected with HIV, the role of clothes dryers on microplastics pollution, a push to make the U.S. electric grid greener, and more.

Omicron Sparks Surge In Pediatric Hospitalizations Omicron’s rapid spread has many parents and caregivers of young children on edge. The most recent CDC data shows 5.3 cases per 100,000 children under four are hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States, the highest number since the pandemic started. And kids under five still aren’t eligible to be vaccinated.

When word went out that we were going to answer questions about COVID and kids, we were flooded with questions from our listeners.

To help answer some of those questions, and better understand how to keep our kids safe, Ira spoke with Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, pediatrician, and professor of global health and infectious diseases at Stanford University, and Dr. Rick Malley, infectious diseases specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.

Ivermectin’s False Reputation Exemplifies How Misinformation Spread Not a single scientific or health authority in the U.S. recommends the use of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. Still, some Americans see the unproven drug as a way out of the pandemic.

Ivermectin is mostly used in large animals and is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating human conditions, including head lice and stomach worms. But across the country, demand for the drug has surged in recent months — leading to a spike in hospitalizations for human exposures to ivermectin.

The drug is among the latest politically divisive public health issues unfolding across the country. The situation has fast-tracked conversations about the risks and benefits of publicizing research findings that have not yet been vetted by the scientific community. That’s because much of the misinformation on ivermectin draws on insufficient data — some coming from low-quality studies, including ones that were retracted after further examination revealed problems and even potential fraud.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

A Massive New Find Of Icefish Found Near Antarctic The frigid waters near Antarctica are home to an unusual family of fishes collectively known as the icefish. They have translucent blood, white hearts, and have adapted to live without red blood cells or hemoglobin, relying instead on copper compounds that function better at low temperatures. Now, researchers mapping the floor of the Weddell Sea report in the journal Current Biology that they have spotted a massive colony of the unusual sea creatures—containing over 60 million icefish nests.

“A few dozen nests have been observed elsewhere in the Antarctic, but this find is orders of magnitude larger,” said Autun Purser, of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany. Purser and his colleagues were mapping the seafloor of the Filchner ice shelf region, in an area of thermal upwelling, where there are slightly warmer temperatures. They found masses of icefish nests clumped close together as far as the eye can see, somewhat like a land-based colony of nesting penguins.

Purser joins Ira to talk about the discovery, and what’s known about the ultra-cold ecosystems of Antarctic seas.

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Omicron Variant Drives Winter COVID Surge The United States set a global record this week, recording roughly one million new coronavirus tests in a single day. The current surge in cases is mostly driven by Omicron. The highly contagious variant accounted for about 95% of new cases last week.

And, to top it all off, tests are in short supply, the CDC changed its quarantine guidelines, and some schools have returned to remote learning.

Virologist Angela Rasmussen joins Ira to help make sense of the latest deluge of Omicron news. Rasmussen is a research scientist at VIDO-InterVac, the University of Saskatchewan’s vaccine research institute in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Is Omicron A Less Severe Variant Of COVID-19? Over the past few weeks, a common refrain has popped up in reports about the Omicron variant of COVID-19: The variant seems to be “less severe” than earlier forms of the virus. But as hospitals fill up with coronavirus patients and infections skyrocket, there’s some context needed to understand what the full impact of a less-severe variant might be.

An important recent discovery sheds light on the severity of the variant, finding that at least in hamsters, Omicron spares the lungs in a way earlier variants have not. This infection appears to be predominantly in the upper respiratory system, largely in the mouth, throat, and windpipe. But even though a fewer percentage of cases may experience severe disease than with earlier variants, the sheer volume may still threaten hospital capacities.

Joining Ira to talk about the severity of the Omicron variant in the body is Dr. Michael Diamond, virologist, and immunologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Also joining the conversation to talk about Omicron’s toll on the healthcare system is Dr. Saskia Popescu, infectious disease epidemiologist and infection prevention expert at the University of Arizona College of Public Health in Phoenix, Arizona.

How Christmas Bird Counts Help Shape Science This winter marks the 122nd annual Christmas Bird Count, a project of the National Audubon Society, which is self-described as the longest-running community science project in the country. What started as a few dozen volunteers in 1900 has grown to tens of thousands of birders, spreading out in 15-mile circles across the country to count every bird insight on one midwinter day. From this record, scientists can draw insights about everything from the abundance of species to how species’ ranges are shifting from year-to-year and decade-to-decade.

Ira talks to Audubon’s bird count director Geoff LeBaron, and director of quantitative science Nicole Michel about the value of the annual community science project and some of their more joyful winter sightings. Plus, how the data provide clues to which birds are most likely to adapt as human habitat disruption and climate change continue.

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How A Former Microsoft Exec Mastered The Perfect Slice—Using Science Who doesn’t love pizza? It’s a magical combination of sauce, cheese, crust, and maybe even a topping or two. Depending on where you eat it, the ratio of sauce and cheese and toppings changes: Neapolitan, NY Style, and Chicago Deep Dish each have a slightly different recipe. And different methods of baking impart their signature flavor on the end result—whether that’s coal, wood, or gas-fired ovens.

Nearly every country in the world has some type of variation on the classic. Author Nathan Myhrvold visited over 250 pizzerias all over the world to appreciate their differences. Then he made over 12,000 pizzas, using physics and chemistry to tweak each one slightly.

Myhrvold and his co-author, chef Francisco Migoya wrote all about the gourmand experiment in a three-volume, 35-pound set of beautifully illustrated and painstakingly researched books.

Ira talks with Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO at Microsoft, founder of Intellectual Ventures and Modernist Cuisine about his discoveries and his most recent book, Modernist Pizza.

E.O. Wilson’s Indelible Mark On Ecology Ecologist and ant biologist Edward O. Wilson (often called E. O. Wilson) died December 26, at the age of 92. Though he was known for his study of ants and their social behavior, his impact extended much further—from sociobiology, the study of the influence of genetics on behavior, to the way science was taught and understood. His writing twice won the Pulitzer Prize.

Wilson appeared on Science Friday many times. In this short remembrance of Wilson, Ira replays selections from past conversations with the scientist, recorded between 2006 and 2013.

The Fossil—And Family—Records Of Richard Leakey Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey died on January 2 at the age of 77. The Kenyan conservationist and fossil hunter was the son of paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, who helped redefine the early parts of the human family tree. Richard was part of the team that discovered ‘Turkana Boy,’ a Homo erectus skeleton—one of the most complete early hominin skeletons ever found.

In later years, he was the director of the National Museum of Kenya, the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service, helped found a political party, and led the Kenyan Civil Service in the midst of an anti-corruption campaign.

In this edited interview from 2011, Leakey describes his work in the field, his famous fossil-hunting lineage, and his desire to convince skeptics of the reality of human evolution.

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Glitter Gets An Eco-Friendly Glimmer Glitter—it’s everywhere this time of year. You open up a holiday card, and out comes a sprinkle of it. And that glitter will seemingly be with you forever, hugging your sweater, covering the floor. But glitter doesn’t stop there. It washes down the drain, and travels into the sewage system and waterways. Since it's made from microplastics, it’s never going away.

As it turns out, all that glitters is not gold—or even biodegradable.

The Best Science Books Of 2021 Another year is in the books. And whether you got out more this year or continued precautionary staying at home, we hope you at least got some good reading done.

If not, you still have a whole winter ahead, and SciFri has rounded up another batch of the year’s best books. On this year’s list, you’ll find enthralling tales of the deep ocean, a fun primer on how the immune system works, and a cosmologist’s view of how science can do better by those it’s excluded.

Ira Flatow rounds up more than a dozen favorite titles, with help from editors Valerie Thompson, of Science, and Stephanie Sendaula, of Library Journal.

Check out the list at sciencefriday.com.

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From the Arctic To Enceladus: A Celebration Of Unusual Ice With the Arctic’s annual summer ice cover hovering at record lows; and a new record low in global sea ice coverage recorded earlier this year; and a large crack threatening the collapse of a large ice shelf in Antarctica, it can feel like the news about earth’s polar ice caps is all bad.

But for researchers who spend time in the frigid polar seas, ice is also a beautiful and unique phenomenon. Ever heard of frazil ice? How about pancake ice? Far from goofy names, these are key steps in the evolution of sea ice from water to a solid sheet. Oceanographer Ted Maksym shares his insights into the ice at earth’s poles.

Plus, how is Antarctica a good place for a painter of other planets? Astronomical artist Michael Carroll recounts how he explored Antarctica for hints about frozen moons like Europa and Enceladus. (See some of his art here.) Finally, planetary scientist Rosaly Lopes takes Ira into the coldest reaches of our solar system, where there’s growing evidence of volcanoes powered not by magma under rock, but by frigid water bursting through icy crusts.

It Wiggles and Wobbles, But Won’t Melt Away Imagine a trip to the grocery or fish market, and seeing cuts of fresh fish laid out on beds of ice to chill. The shaved ice keeps the fish at the proper temperature—but what happens when that ice starts to melt, or gets dirty?

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have developed a reusable "jelly ice" cube that does not lose its shape when it warms. The cubes, which can take a variety of shapes, are a hydrogel material made from 10% protein-based gelatin in water. The researchers say the cubes can be rinsed off and re-frozen up to 10 times—and when their life cycle is done, can be composted or mixed into plant growth media.

Luxin Wang, an associate professor of food science and technology at UC Davis, describes the material and its properties.

Francis Collins, Longest-Running NIH Director, Steps Down Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will be stepping down from his post at the end of the year. Collins is the longest serving NIH director, serving three presidents over 12 years: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

Before his role at the NIH, Collins was an acclaimed geneticist, helping discover the gene that causes cystic fibrosis. He then became director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, where he led the project that mapped the human genome.

A lot can happen in 12 years, especially in the fields of health and science. Collins joins Ira to talk about his long tenure at the NIH, as well as how his Christian faith has informed his career in science.

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Looking Back On A Century of Science In 1921, the discovery of radium was just over 20 years in the past. And the double helix of DNA was still over thirty years in the future. That year, a publication that came to be the magazine Science News started publication, and is still in operation today.

Editors Nancy Shute and Elizabeth Quill join Ira to page through the magazine’s archives, with over 80,000 articles covering a century of science—from the possibilities of atomic energy to discussions of black holes, to projections of the rise of the avocado as a popular fruit. There are mysteries—are spiral nebulae other universes? And there are missteps, like the suggestion that the insecticide DDT should be incorporated into wall paint.

How Can Math Make Your Holidays Merrier? Stumped on how to wrap an oddly shaped gift? Trying to figure out how to create the perfect Secret Santa game? Need to weigh the cost/benefit analysis of giving a present to that distantly-related aunt? Math is here to help make your holidays merrier.

Mathematician Hannah Fry joins us to talk about how to view the holidays—and the world—from a mathematical angle. And in The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus, she and co-author Thomas Oléron Evans share their tips on how to have a geometrically superior holiday season.

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The Resurrection Of The American Chestnut At the turn of the 20th century, the American chestnut towered over other trees in forests along the eastern seaboard. These giants could grow up to 100 feet high and 13 feet wide. According to legend, a squirrel could scamper from New England to Georgia on the canopies of American chestnuts, never touching the ground.

’Don’t Look Up’ Asks If Satire Can Stir Us From Climate Apathy What if scientists warned of a certain upcoming doomsday and no one took them seriously? That’s the plot of director Adam McKay’s latest dark comedy, Don’t Look Up. Two astronomers discover a comet that’s heading towards the Earth. The catch: There’s only six months and 14 days to avert a total annihilation of humanity.

The scientists, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, embark on a media campaign to convince the world and the president, played by Meryl Streep, to take the threat seriously.

Joining Ira to talk about the parallels between this movie and real world crises like climate change and COVID-19 are Sonia Epstein, executive editor and associate curator of science and film at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City, and Samantha Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, based in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. Montano is also the author of Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontline of the Climate Crisis.

Surfing Particles Can Supercharge Northern Lights For thousands of years, humans have been observing and studying the Northern lights, aurora borealis, and their southern hemisphere counterpart, aurora australis. The simplest explanation for how these aurora form has been unchanged for decades: Charged particles, energized by the sun, bounce off the Earth’s protective magnetic field and create flashes of light in the process.

Aurora researcher Jim Schroeder explains new work published in Nature Communications that suggests that in more vivid aurora, electrons may “surf” waves of energy from space into our atmosphere. The waves, called Alfvén waves, are a side effect of the solar wind warping the Earth’s magnetic field. Schroeder explains the weird physics of our aurora, and what we could learn about other objects in the universe as a result.

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Big Trees, Big Benefits When you think about big trees, likely what comes to mind are some of the Earth’s biggest trees, like giant sequoias or redwoods, which can grow to roughly 25 stories tall. But big trees are actually an essential part of every forest ecosystem.

Big trees capture a disproportionate share of carbon, provide important animal habitats, propel new tree growth and provide much needed shade. The largest one percent of trees or those which measure roughly 2 feet or larger in diameter are considered the big trees of any forest.

Jim Lutz, an associate professor of forest ecology at Utah State University in Logan, Utah joins guest host John Dankosky to explore the wonderful world of big trees. Lutz is also the principal investigator for three forest dynamics plots in the American West through the Smithsonian network.

How To Create Your Own Holiday Scent Memories What smells do you associate with the winter holiday season? Maybe it’s woodsmoke, cinnamon, or the ubiquitous scent of pine. Whatever fragrances you find festive, chances are good they’re strongly tied to memories of holidays past.

Science educator Jennifer Powers returns to explain this enduring connection between scent and memory in the brain. She walks guest host John Dankosky through how to capture custom combinations of memorable holiday scents in your home this season.

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A Spike In Winter COVID Cases Begins The United States reached a grim milestone this week: 800,000 total deaths from COVID-19.

A winter spike in COVID cases is beginning across the country. And Omicron is making up an increasing share of new cases. Early data shows that the new variant is likely more transmissible than previous ones.

Joining guest host John Dankosky to discuss this and other science news this week is Rachel Feltman, Executive Editor of Popular Science and host of the podcast, The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. They also discuss cracks in the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica and a new species of millipede with 1,036 legs.

The Webb Telescope Is Counting Down To Liftoff If current plans hold, the James Webb Space Telescope may launch from French Guiana late next week, no earlier than December 24. After the launch, the telescope must travel for over a month and a million miles to reach its final destination, an orbit at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point. There, it will try to stay in the same position relative to the Earth and Sun, and position the telescope’s heat shield to block out unwanted infrared signals.

The mission has been over 20 years in the making. In 1996, astronomers first proposed a next-generation space telescope capable of observing the universe in infrared light, which would be more capable of seeing through dust and gas clouds. The project has been plagued by a series of delays and shifting timelines—but at long last, the telescope is at its launch site, on top of an European Space Agency rocket, and awaiting liftoff.

Dr. Amber Straughn, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Deputy Project Scientist for James Webb Space Telescope Science Communications, joins John Dankosky to talk about the upcoming launch and why the new telescope has astronomers excited.

Black Protestant Clergy Are Effectively Encouraging Vaccines For many people in or adjacent to the Christian faith, Christmas is one of the only times of year they go to church. But even though attendance has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people in the U.S. still attend church in person or virtually at least once a month.

Research from the Pew Research Center has found that some of these regular church attendees are much more likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19, compared to people who only attend a few times a year. The study found that this was the case in historically Black Protestant churches—in large part because clergy members in these churches are much more likely to encourage members to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Joining guest host John Dankosky to talk through this data, and the role historically Black Protestant churches play in public health education, is Greg Smith, associate director of religion research at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C, and pastor Gil Monrose, leader of the Historic Mount Zion Church of God in Brooklyn, New York.

What Is Causing Maine’s Puffins To Physically Shrink? The ocean islands off the coast of Maine are home to the Atlantic puffin, a peculiar and charismatic bird. This cold-weather species loves to hang out on rocky shores, chomping down on little fish.

But like many species, these puffins are threatened by climate change. Rapid warming in the Gulf of Maine has changed the food available in their habitat, creating a bizarre problem of “micro-puffins”: members of the species 40 to 50% smaller than normal, due to malnutrition.

Joining guest host John Dankosky to discuss the long history of oscillating puffin populations, and what’s being done to get them back to a healthy size, is Fred Bever, reporter at Maine Public Radio in Portland, Maine.

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The Why Of Vocal Fry For decades, vocal fry lived a relatively quiet existence. A creaky or breathy sound that occurs when your voice drops to its lowest register, this phenomenon was long known to linguists, speech pathologists, and voice coaches—but everyday people didn’t pay much attention to it.

Then in 2011, people started noticing it everywhere. So, what happened? What’s going on in our vocal chords when we fry? And why does it bother so many people so very much?

“Science Diction” host Johanna Mayer explains the history of vocal fry, and looks at languages where fry is a feature, not a bug.

Tribal Concerns Grow As Water Levels Drop In The Colorado River Basin Lorenzo Pena pulls off the highway and into a drive-through water distribution center on the Southern Ute Indian Tribe reservation in southwest Colorado. He parks his truck and connects the empty tank it’s hauling to a large hose and thousands of gallons of water quickly rush in. Pena, who works for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s hauled water program, has made this trip countless times to deliver water to tribal members who don’t have clean water piped to their homes from the local utility. “It’s pretty dry around here,” Pena said. “So if people have wells, they’re real slow or the wells aren’t really producing much water.” If a family on the reservation doesn’t use well water or lives outside of town, they have to haul water to fill their cistern to flow through their home.

The Colorado River is the lifeblood for the Southern Ute and dozens of federally recognized tribes who have relied on it for drinking water, farming, and supporting hunting and fishing habitats for thousands of years. The river also holds spiritual and cultural significance. Today, 15 percent of Southern Utes living on the reservation in southwest Colorado don’t have running water in their homes at all. That rate is higher for other tribes that rely on the Colorado River, including 40 percent of the Navajo Nation.

Native American households are 19 times more likely to lack piped water services than white households, according to a report from the Water & Tribes Initiative. The data also show Native American households are more likely to lack piped water services than any other racial group. Leaders of tribes who depend on the Colorado River say the century-old agreement on managing a resource vital to 40 million people across the West is a major factor fueling these and other water inequalities. State water managers and the federal government say they will include tribes in upcoming Colorado River policymaking negotiations for the first time.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Space Tourists, Asteroids, And Anti-Satellite Tests, Oh My! Space has been a busy place this year. In February, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars and embarked on its mission to collect samples, alongside the first ever helicopter to fly on the Red Planet. July and September saw the launches of billionaires, space tourists, and civilian astronauts to various elevations above the Earth. Human beings are arriving to the International Space Station via Cape Canaveral for the first time since the discontinuation of the shuttle program in 2011. In November, NASA launched a mission to test our ability to deflect dangerous asteroids. And China, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia have all continued to make their way through the solar system as well.

But what about the continued concerns astronomers have about the steep rise and future plans for fleets of private telecommunications satellites in low Earth orbit, like SpaceX’s StarLink? Will the increasing footprint of private industry in space exploration have potential drawbacks for science? And what about that Russian anti-satellite test, which disrupted operations at the International Space Station for several days after?

Ira and a trio of star space reporters—WFME’s Brendan Byrne, Axios’ Miriam Kramer, and The Verge’s Loren Grush—round up 2021’s out-of-this-world headlines.

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How America Is Preparing For Another Pandemic Winter The weather is getting colder, the days are getting shorter, and the world is approaching the two year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like last year, experts are wary that a winter surge in cases could happen again this year, even with the protection of vaccinations.

The Biden administration is trying to get ahead of this possibility, especially as the Omicron variant looms. A new plan prioritizing booster shots and testing has been released to get the country through another pandemic winter.

Joining Ira to break down this and other science news of the week is Umair Irfan, staff writer for Vox based in Washington, D.C. They also discuss the latest information on the Omicron variant’s virulence and genetic sequencing, and take a look at the complicated world of conserving the rarest marine mammal, the vaquita.

Three Plant-Based Chemicals That Can Change Your Brain If you’ve enjoyed a cup of coffee, tea, or certain soft drinks today, you’ve been making use of the mind-altering properties of the chemical caffeine, which bestows an alert buzz. And we probably all know a coffee addict, who becomes cranky and irritable without their morning mug.

But there are also other plant-based compounds that affect the mind’s consciousness, including opium and mescaline—and the use of those compounds isn’t seen as acceptable in modern society.

In his book This Is Your Mind On Plants, author Michael Pollan looks at the way these three compounds have been adopted or shunned by various cultures, and why. He joins Ira to talk about the science behind their action, the history of their use around the world, and the societal and cultural factors that go into deciding which drugs are seen as acceptable by a community.

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Decoding Quantum Computing The computer chips that are delivering these words to you work on a simple, binary, on/off principle. There’s either a voltage, or there’s not. The ‘bits’ encoded by the presence or absence of electrons form the basis for much of our online world.

Now, physicists and engineers are working to create systems based on the strange rules of quantum physics—in which quantum bits can exist simultaneously in a range of possible states, and two separated bits can be linked together via a phenomenon known as entanglement.

If practical quantum computers can be constructed, they have the potential to solve difficult types of problems—like finding the optimal route connecting a list of a few hundred cities, for instance. However, vast engineering challenges remain. A. Douglas Stone, deputy director of the Yale Quantum Institute and Carl A. Morse professor of applied physics at Yale University, joins Ira to give a primer on the disruptive technology of quantum computing, and where this research might lead.

Diving Into The Strange World Of Xenobots Just under two years ago, Science Friday reported on the strange world of ‘xenobots’—structures designed by an algorithm and crafted out of living cells taken from frog embryos. Those tiny constructs could slowly wriggle their way across a petri dish, powered by the contractions of frog heart cells. Now, the researchers behind the bots have created a new generation of structures that can swim—and, if provided with additional loose frog skin cells in their dish, organize those cells into clumps that eventually begin to move on their own.

Josh Bongard, a professor of computer science at the University of Vermont and a member of the xenobots research team, joins Ira to talk about the advance in what he likens to living wind-up toys. The work was reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bongard and colleagues say that they were interested in learning more about self-replicating systems, and the various factors that go into either speeding up or slowing down a system’s ability to self-replicate. They’re also interested in exploring whether such cellular systems might be able to do useful work. However, fear not—Bongard explains that without a ready supply of loose frog skin cells, these bots peter out.

What We Do—And Don’t—Know About Omicron This week, the Omicron variant was detected in the United States, with the first case identified in California.

The announcement joins a rush of news about the latest coronavirus variant: Last week, South African researchers first identified and then sequenced the variant. Since then, scientists all over the world have been working overtime, trying to understand this heavily mutated new strain.

Omicron has 32 mutations in the spike protein alone. But more mutations don’t necessarily mean it’s more contagious than the Delta variant, or more likely to evade the vaccine. Scientists still need a little more time to figure out what these genetic changes might mean for the pandemic.

Katelyn Jetelina, assistant professor in the University of Texas School of Public Health talks with Ira about how scientists are compiling data on omicron, both inside and outside of the lab. Jetilina is also the author of the newsletter, “Your Local Epidemiologist.”

To hear more of Jetilina’s thoughts on the latest updates, read her explainer on what we know and don’t know about Omicron.

A 30th Anniversary Edition Of SciFri Trivia We’re celebrating our 30th anniversary this week—and with 30 years of radio comes more than enough material for a round of trivia. SciFri Trivia extraordinaire and host Diana Montano quizzes Ira on how well he remembers some of the stories he’s covered on SciFri during its last three decades.

Want to join the fun? Diana hosts virtual SciFri Trivia every Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. PT on Youtube and you are invited! Play by yourself or with a group and, if you win, enjoy the honor of naming one of the many plants in the SciFri office—and more!

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Travel Bans Do Little To Slow Spread Of Omicron After South African researchers first detected the new COVID variant Omicron last week, it’s already been found in dozens of countries around the world, including in the United States. Travel restrictions imposed by the Biden administration and others have done little to slow its spread. Instead, experts say that increasing global vaccination rates is critical to stopping future troubling mutations from occurring and spreading.

In other news, scientists are re-testing a foundational piece of science, the Miller-Urey experiment, first conducted in 1952, which simulated how life on earth could have originated. Scientists are questioning their old assumptions that the glass container in the original experiment was inert.

Joining Ira to talk through these and other big science stories of the week is Sophie Bushwick, Technology editor at Scientific American.

Ralph Nader Reflects On His Auto Safety Campaign, 55 Years Later It’s hard to imagine a world without seatbelts or airbags. But five decades ago, it was the norm for car manufacturers to put glamour over safety.

“It was stylistic pornography over engineering integrity,” Ralph Nader, prolific consumer advocate and several-time presidential candidate, tells Science Friday.

New Drug Reverses Paralysis In Mice With Spinal Cord Injuries Nearly 300,000 people are living with spinal cord injuries in the United States. Currently, recovery or effective treatment remains elusive. Researchers haven’t yet figured out a reliable way to knit back together severed spinal cords or nerves.

Now, a new study in mice shows promising potential to prevent paralysis after injury. Researchers gave paralyzed mice a specially formulated injection that uses a novel technique called “dancing molecules.” And after a month, the mice were walking again.

Joining Ira to better understand this new development in spinal cord treatment is Samuel Stupp, professor of materials science, chemistry, biomedical engineering and medicine, and director of the Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois.

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New Cold Storage Method Solves Freezer Burn—And Saves Energy Have you ever pulled a long-anticipated pint of ice cream out of the freezer, only to find the strawberries crunchy and the normally creamy substance chalky and caked with ice? Freezer burn, a phenomenon caused by water in food crystallizing into ice inside the ice cream or fruit or meat during freezing, is a menace to taste buds, a driver of food waste, and even damages some of the nutritional benefits of food. And it’s always a risk as long as food preservation relies on very cold temperatures. Even flash-freezing, which works much faster, can still create small ice crystals.

But United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food scientists, working with a team at the University of California-Berkeley, have a method that could help solve this problem. Normal food freezing, called isobaric, keeps food at whatever pressure the surrounding air is. But what if you change that? Isochoric freezing, the new method, adds pressure to the food while lowering temperature, so the food becomes cold enough to preserve without its moisture turning into ice. No ice means no freezer burn. And, potentially, a much lower energy footprint for the commercial food industry: up to billions fewer kilowatt-hours, according to recent research.

Ira talks to USDA food technologist Cristina Bilbao-Sainz and mechanical engineer Matthew Powell-Palm about how pressure and temperature can be manipulated to make food last longer, and hopefully taste better. Plus, the challenges of turning a good idea into a widespread technology.

Koji: The Mold You Want In Your Kitchen When chef Jeremy Umansky grows a batch of Aspergillus oryzae, a cultured mold also known as koji, in a tray of rice, he says he’s “bewitched” by its fluffy white texture and tantalizing floral smells. When professional mechanical engineer and koji explorer Rich Shih thinks about the versatility of koji, from traditional Japanese sake to cured meats, he says, “It blows my mind.”

Koji-inoculated starches are crucial in centuries-old Asian foods like soy sauce and miso—and, now, inspiring new and creative twists from modern culinary minds. And Shih and Umansky, the two food fanatics, have written a new book describing the near-magical workings of the fungus, which, like other molds, uses enzymes to break starches, fats, and proteins down into food for itself. It just so happens that, in the process, it’s making our food tastier.

You can grow koji on grains, vegetables, and other starchy foods, and make sauces, pastes, alcohols, and vinegars. Even cure meats. Umansky and Shih say the possibilities are endless—and they have the koji pastrami and umami popcorn to prove it.

The Bacteria Behind Your Favorite Blues, Bries, and More Cheese lovers, you can thank microbes for the flavorful funk of Camembert cheese and the perforated pattern of Swiss. According to microbiologist Rachel Dutton, one gram of cheese rind is home to 10 billion bacterial and fungal cells. Dutton describes our favorite cheese-microbe pairings and explains why the cheese rind is ripe for teaching us about the basic interactions of bacteria.

The World According To Sound: When Your Wine Bottle Sings A few years ago, Chris Hoff was making himself some plum wine. He had a nice big plum tree in the apartment he was renting in San Francisco, and it had been a plentiful year. During the process he came across a beautiful, simple sound that made him get out his recording gear. It came from his little metal funnel.

Each time Hoff poured liquid through his funnel to fill a bottle, it made this pleasant rising arpeggio of bubbles. When the pitch reached its height, the bottle was filled, and Hoff moved on to the next one. He liked it so much that he grabbed his small handheld recorder and captured the sound.

This simple, everyday sound is the result of a complex interaction of the liquid, bottle, air, and funnel. While water pours down through the funnel, air is being forced out of the bottle and up through the liquid, where it makes a bubble on the surface and then pops. As the level of liquid decreases in the funnel, the pitch of the popping bubbles rises.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

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A More Delicious COVID Screener One of the most bizarre symptoms of COVID-19—a nearly surefire way to know if you have been infected—is a loss of taste or smell. Estimates of how many people are impacted range wildly, with the highest estimates reaching 75 to 80% of COVID-19 survivors. There’s still a lot scientists don’t understand about why this happens and what part of the olfactory system or brain is actually responsible for this change.

Researchers at Ohio State University are trying to figure out more about how COVID-19 impacts taste and smell using a familiar and tasty item: hard candy. Study participants eat an uncolored piece of candy each day and describe the flavor. If a participant is suddenly unable to identify which fruit the candy is emulating … well, it’s time to take a COVID test.

Joining Ira to talk about this delicious research and learning more about how COVID-19 impacts our senses is Chris Simons, sensory scientist at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

Laugh And Learn With The Ig Nobel Prizes This year, even though many people may be still hesitant to gather together for the holidays, a Science Friday holiday tradition lives on—our annual post-Thanksgiving broadcast of highlights from the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, now in its 31st first annual year.

Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research and master of ceremonies for the prizes, joins Ira to present some of the highlights from this year’s awards—from research into the microbiology trapped in the gum on the sidewalk to a transportation prize for scientists who discovered the best way to safely transport a rhinoceros long distances. (Dangle it upside down under a helicopter.) Tune in to hear about research involving the kinetics of crowds, the communications of cats, thoughts about the evolutionary history of human beards, and more.

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Blunting The Force Of Disease Is Complicated COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe disease. But their efficacy in lab-controlled trials may not exactly correlate to how well they work in the real world.

David Kaslow, chief scientific officer at the global public health nonprofit PATH, explains that a factor known as the “force of infection” plays a role in determining how well vaccines work. The force of infection describes the attack rate of a pathogen—the amount of time it takes a susceptible individual to get infected in a given population.

In a study recently published in the academic journal NPJ Vaccines, Kaslow and his colleagues found that in vaccine trials for rotavirus and malaria in Africa, efficacy could vary widely between two trial sites. When there were many infections in the community, the overall efficacy of the vaccines appeared lower than in communities where disease incidence was low.

While the same sort of studies haven’t yet been done on the coronavirus outbreak, Kaslow argues that similar factors may be at play now—pointing to a continued need for non-pharmaceutical measures to control transmission, from masking to social distancing.

The Chemistry Of The Perfect Cookie With several major food-related holidays on the horizon, we’ve got a challenge for you—checking your cookie chemistry. Each batch of cookies you make has the potential to be a mini-science experiment, with the specific ingredients you use, the ratios between them, and cooking times and temperatures all variables in the mix.

Jennifer Powers, a science educator at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, discusses the role of types of sugar in transforming your cookie’s texture from chewy to crispy. She encourages listeners to take on her educational resource—the Cookie Chemistry Challenge—to engineer the best batch of cookies possible.

Food Failures: Add A Dash Of Science To Your Thanksgiving Recipes This Thanksgiving, put your cooking skills to the test. Looking for tips to avoid singed sweet potatoes, acrid apple pies, and a burned bird? In this archival segment from November 18, 2016, Molly Birnbaum and Dan Souza from Cook’s Science help us understand the science behind favorite Thanksgiving recipes so you can avoid food failures, and get the most out of your roast and side dishes.

America Has A Food Disparity Problem As of 2016, more than half of American children had a diet that standard nutritional recommendations would consider “poor quality.” And there are stark differences between children in wealthier and poorer households. Poor nutrition can have lifelong impacts on health, including Type 2 diabetes, heart problems, and dental cavities. But it isn’t always clear what families need to provide healthier foods for their children. One popular explanation, now debunked, was the theory of food deserts: Poorer neighborhoods just don’t have grocery stores, and families must buy their food from convenience stores and gas stations. But if more grocery stores aren’t the solution, what is?

Sociologist Priya Fielding-Singh explores these questions in a new book, How The Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America. Her research, the product of months of immersive time spent with families in their kitchens and as they navigated grocery stores with kids in tow, describes an alternative explanation for the socioeconomic disparity between kids’ diets. Fielding-Singh explains healthy food takes emotional and energy resources that lower-income parents must often spend in other ways.

Guest host Roxanne Khamsi talks to Fielding-Singh about her research on family food choices, and the kinds of changes that might allow children from all backgrounds to enjoy healthier foods.

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Here’s How Biden’s Infrastructure Bill Addresses Science President Joe Biden signed a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill into law this Monday. The measure focuses on a range of sectors. It would funnel billions into cleaning up pollution in the air and water with efforts that include eliminating lead service lines and cleaning up old, polluted manufacturing sites. The bill will also invest $7.5 billion to create a large-scale network of electric vehicle chargers across the country.

In other big news this week, a new study confirms that masks are highly effective in combating COVID-19, reducing incidence of the disease by as much as 53% on its own. Researchers say this finding is significant and add that when masks are used in addition to other protective measures, like vaccines and hand washing, people can feel confident in their safety.

Joining guest host Roxanne Khamsi to talk through these and other big science stories of the week is Nsikan Akpan, health and science editor for WNYC Public Radio in New York City.

Happy (Holiday) Testing Season! The holiday season has snuck up once again, leaving many people to figure out familiar logistics: If travel will be involved, who to see, and what will be for dinner. But of course, we’re still in a pandemic, so questions of safety remain. At the end of the day, we want to keep our families, friends, and loved ones healthy.

COVID-19 tests are becoming a popular tool, helping many people make social situations safer. Quickly swabbing your nose or spitting in a tube can indicate if someone has been infected with the coronavirus. But with so many options available, and a big season of holiday get-togethers up ahead, many are wondering what kind of test is best—and when is the best time to get tested?

Joining guest host Roxanne Khamsi to talk through COVID-19 testing questions are Dr. Céline Gounder, epidemiologist and professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine in New York, and Dr. Alex Greninger, assistant director at the clinical virology laboratories at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.

The Big Bang Theory Of Cancer Despite tremendous scientific advances, there’s still so much scientists don’t understand about cancer. One of the biggest remaining questions is how do tumors form in the first place?

Researchers are getting closer to an answer. For years, the prevailing theory of tumor growth was that cancer cells gradually acquire a series of mutations that enable them to outcompete healthy cells and run amok.

But improved genetic sequencing of cancers is revealing a more complicated picture. New technology has enabled a new theory of tumor development, called the big bang theory. It turns out that some types of cancer contain a whole hodge-podge of mutations right from the very beginning, even before the tumors are detectable on a scan. Researchers initially observed this pattern in colon cancer, and then replicated the findings in pancreatic, liver, and stomach cancers, too.

Guest host Roxanne Khamsi talks to Christina Curtis, associate professor of medicine and genetics at Stanford University’s School of Medicine about her research into tumor development, and how to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment.

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As Wildfire Intensity Rises, So Does The Human Toll Of Blazes It was Labor Day 2020, and Mammoth Pool Reservoir, in California’s Sierra Nevada, was buzzing with campers. Karla Carcamo and her parents, siblings, cousins, and countless others, mostly from the Los Angeles area, have been coming here every Labor Day for 17 years. “Most of it is my family, and family that’s invited family, and those family friends have invited friends of theirs,” she says. “I’m telling you, we have over 200 people.”

Alex Tettamanti and her husband Raul Reyes are also Labor Day regulars. Every year, they drive in from Las Vegas to meet up with an off-roading club made up of a few dozen families from across the West. They fill their weekend with jet-skiing, ATVing and hiking. “It’s beautiful,” says Tettamanti. “The smell of all the pine trees and stuff, and the trees are so big, it’s really cool.

The campground and reservoir are nestled at an elevation of about 3,000 feet in the Central California foothills a few hours northeast of Fresno. The attraction is unfiltered Sierra Nevada: Sparkling blue water surrounded by a thick forest of stately ponderosa pines and black oaks. Plus, it’s isolated. There’s only one road in and out, which dead ends at the lake. “Being there, let me tell you, it’s like a little piece of paradise,” says Carcamo.

That Friday passed like any other. Groups split up to go hiking, swimming and grilling, and Carcamo’s family prepared for their annual pupusa night later in the weekend.

By Saturday morning, however, the atmosphere had changed. “When I woke up, I did notice it was kind of cloudy,” says Reyes. “The sky was orange and there was ash, like big pieces of ash falling,” says Reyes’ friend Vicky Castro.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Squirrel-Nut Economics And Other Agility Tricks In many parts of the country, the lead-up to winter is a busy time for squirrels, furiously collecting and hiding acorns and nuts for the cold months ahead. But how can squirrels recall where it has stashed all its stores? And what can studying squirrels tell researchers about memory, learning, and economic decision-making in other species?

Ira talks with Lucia Jacobs, a professor in the department of psychology and the Institute of Neuroscience at UC Berkeley, about her studies of the campus squirrels—from learning about their cognition, learning, and memory to recording the acrobatic movements of a squirrel on the ground and in the treetops. Jacobs co-leads a "squirrel school," observing rescued and orphaned juvenile squirrels as they learn normal squirrel behavior, and is contributing to a project seeking to develop robots using agility tricks learned from the rodents.

What Will We Reap Without Topsoil? You may have missed the research when it came out this February: a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science reporting on satellite studies of farmland topsoil in the nation’s corn belt, states like Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois. And the news was not good. The team estimated that more than one-third of the topsoil in this region is gone, eroded mostly from hilltops and ridgelines, thanks to the plowing and tilling processes used to perform industrial agriculture. That topsoil, some of the richest in the world, is carbon-rich and crucial to our food supply. And yet it’s continuing to wash away, a hundred years after scientists like Aldo Leopold first called out the threat of erosion.

This erosion, as well as other degradation of soil’s complex structure and microbiome, continues at a fast clip around the globe, hurting food production and ecosystems health. In addition, soil could be helping us contain more than 100 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—if we let it. But the good news, according to University of Wisconsin soil scientist Jo Handelsman, is that the solutions like cover crops and no-till farming are simple, well-understood, and easy to implement—as long as we give farmers incentives to make the leap. She talks to Ira about her forthcoming book, A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet.

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Psilocybin Effective In Treating Serious Depression Depression is often treatable with medication, therapy, or a combination of the two. But some 30% of patients don’t respond well to existing medications—and may try multiple antidepressant drugs with little or no improvement.

This week, researchers reported that a new trial suggests psychedelics may be an effective therapy for treatment-resistant depression. A randomized, controlled, double-blind trial found that people with treatment-resistant depression who were given 25 milligrams of psilocybin, the psychedelic component of magic mushrooms, had a significant decrease in depressive symptoms. The treatment didn’t work for everyone, however, and more research needs to be done before the finding can move to clinical use.

Sabrina Imber, a science fellow at the New York Times, joins Ira to talk about the trial and other stories from the week in science—including a new timeline for the planned Artemis missions to the moon, screaming bees, and a very wayward eagle.

Activists And Vulnerable Nations At COP26 Seek More Than Promises There’s a big international climate summit wrapping up in Glasgow, Scotland this week. COP26 is the followup to 25 previous United Nations meetings about how the world must respond to the climate crisis—and its shortcomings in doing so. This year leaders had a big conversation to tackle: Countries needed to pledge to reduce emissions even further to prevent a global temperature rise of more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. To do so, they needed to finish hashing out the details of how they will enforce the 2015 Paris Agreement’s provisions.

Meanwhile, island nations and other vulnerable countries, who themselves don’t emit much carbon, have continued to lobby for payment for what’s called loss and damages. That’s the harm they’ve already encountered as seas rise, threatening to obliterate their existence.

The first week kicked off with bold pledges about methane emissions, coal phaseouts, and ending deforestation. This week, former President Obama spoke about the need for urgent action, and called out large greenhouse gas polluters like Russia and China for not attending. And a grim United Nations report was released, forecasting that despite all the bold pledges, the world was on track to warm a dangerous 2.4 degrees Celsius. The team of Threshold, a podcast that tells stories about our changing environment, has been reporting on these updates from Glasgow, talking to attendees and occasionally witnessing negotiations.

In today’s show, Ira talks to journalist Amy Martin, Threshold’s executive producer and host, about her opinion on the outcome of COP26—and if transformative change can still come out of this year’s meeting.

”Dopesick” Takes On The Opioid Crisis The opioid epidemic has affected millions of people across the country—and more than 800,000 people are estimated to have died from an opioid overdose. At the root of this crisis is the painkiller Oxycontin, manufactured by Purdue Pharma.

The company has made billions of dollars from the drug; but has also spent the better part of the last two decades fighting legal battles over its impacts, falsely arguing the drug is non-addictive and completely safe. Meanwhile, people from all walks of life, particularly in small towns across America, have been crippled by addiction to Oxycontin.

The limited series “Dopesick” traces the story of the opioid epidemic, from the creation of the Oxycontin pill to a landmark legal battle where Purdue Pharma admitted it misbranded the drug as being less addictive than other prescription opioids.

“Dopesick” follows a wide range of characters, from Purdue Pharma executives and federal prosecutors, to an Appalachian doctor and his pain-addled patients. Joining Ira to talk about bringing the show and its people to life is Danny Strong, creator and writer of “Dopesick,” joining from New York, New York.

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Fact Check My Feed: More Kids Can Get COVID-19 Vaccines. Now What? Many parents around the U.S. breathed a sigh of relief—or an even more intense emotional reaction—at the long-awaited news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had signed off on advising the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 this week. The recommendation came after a unanimous vote from the agency’s committee of outside vaccine experts. And last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the shot after a review of clinical trial data found both low risk and high efficacy in a smaller, kid-calibrated dose of the vaccine.

University of Saskatchewan virologist Angela Rasmussen joins Ira to look at the data behind the FDA’s long-anticipated decision. They also discuss the rationale behind booster shots for high-risk adults, what it means that deer in Iowa have been caught transmitting the virus, COVID-pragmatic holiday planning, and other pandemic news.

In First Real-World Experiment, Red Seaweed Cuts Methane In Cows By More Than Half Methane emissions are a hot topic—largely because it’s a big contributor to climate change. Methane makes up about 10% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. 27% of that comes from the burps of ruminant animals, such as cows.

In April, Science Friday did a story about research that showed promising results when steers were fed small amounts of the red algae Asparagopsis in their diets. At the time, these experiments were only done in a closely controlled university setting. Now, the first real-world study on a working dairy farm has been completed. The results? Methane released by the seaweed-eating cows was 52% less on average than their non-seaweed-munching counterparts.

Coming on the heels of the Biden administration’s methane emissions reduction plan, SciFri producer Kathleen Davis sits down with three key players in this milestone: Joan Salwen, CEO of Blue Ocean Barns in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, the company that produces the Asparagopsis seaweed powder; Dr. Breanna Roque, animal science consultant at Blue Ocean Barns in Townsville, Queensland, Australia; and Albert Straus, founder and CEO of Straus Family Creamery in Marshall, California.

The Science Friday Theme Song That Got Lost In The Mail Back in 1998, comedian and author Steve Allen, first host of The Tonight Show, joined Ira on Science Friday to talk about the importance of critical thinking. Allen had written a book called Dumbth, calling for improvements in the public’s logical reasoning abilities. Ira was a longtime fan of Allen’s, and eagerly invited him to discuss the book.

During the interview, Allen also took to the studio piano to play his signature song, “This Could Be The Start of Something Big.” As the comedian was leaving, Ira jokingly remarked that Science Friday could use a theme song of its own.

Several years later, while cleaning the cluttered SciFri office, staff uncovered an unopened box of mail—including an envelope from Hollywood containing a single cassette tape, marked “Theme Song For Science Friday—Steve Allen.”

As part of Science Friday’s 30th anniversary celebrations, Ira and SciFri director Charles Bergquist recount the story of the tape, and finally premiere the song, written and performed by the late Steve Allen.

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Behind The FDA’s Decision To Vaccinate Kids Under 12 This week, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 12 was officially recommended by the CDC, after a unanimous vote from its independent advisory committee and the FDA’s authorization based on safety and efficacy data.

In their analysis, the FDA said the benefits of the vaccine “clearly outweigh” the risks. The risks, which were referenced in a cost-benefit examination of the data, included circumstances that popped up in the study that were unrelated to getting the vaccine (like a broken arm and an accidentally swallowed penny that occurred during the observational period).

As parents around the U.S. race to find appointments, Ira talks to science journalist Maggie Koerth about the safety data and what’s next for parents of young kids, including those under 5.

They also discuss a NASA test of a system to defend the planet from killer asteroids, a new prediction that climate change will change the availability of food crops within the next ten years, and other science news headlines.

What’s Next For Kansas After 20 Years Of Wind Power? The wind farm business in Kansas has hit its awkward adolescence. It’s still growing 20 years in, but unsure what the near future might hold.

If it wants to get through those tough years and continue to grow, it needs to find more workers, to figure out what to do with the dated-but-not-obsolete turbines erected two decades ago and to sort out a way to carry all that wind-harvesting muscle beyond the state’s borders.

Consider the burly, newest version of wind farming at the Cimarron Bend wind farm south of Dodge City. “We just watch and listen to the towers,” said project supervisor Dewain Pfaff, who’s responsible for keeping about 300 turbines up and running. “If you can hear a noise we want to mitigate those issues as soon as possible.”

Standing at the base of one of the newest turbines on the site, he’s dwarfed by the tower that rises 300 feet into the air. That’s almost as tall as the Kansas State Capitol. Add in the blade when pointing straight up and it’s taller than the tallest building in the state. That mammoth size is one way wind turbines have changed over the past 20 years. While the turbine is nearly 300 feet tall, the turbines at the very first large-scale wind farm in the state stretched only 200 feet above the ground. Transporting larger towers and blades is trickier, but inevitable.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

SciFri Reflects On Three Decades Of Covering Science News Thirty years ago this week, on Nov 8, 1991, the first episode of Science Friday aired as part of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” series. After 30 years, over 9,000 interviews, and several changes of distributors, offices, and studios, the program is still going strong.

In this segment, host and executive producer Ira Flatow and SciFri director Charles Bergquist reminisce about some of the great guests and listener questions they’ve heard over the course of the program—from the very first episode, featuring the late Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland talking about the ozone hole, to a young fan helping to celebrate SciFri’s Cephalopod Week with her own ode to an octopus. Plus, moments with Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle, astronaut Leland Melvin, the late Carl Sagan, and more.

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Younger Kids Next In Line For COVID-19 Vaccines This week, an FDA advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend that the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer vaccine be approved for children as young as 5. If the FDA concurs and the CDC agrees, lower-dose Pfizer vaccinations could soon be available for children ages 5 to 11, via local pediatricians. Just who will be immediately eligible for the doses, and how vaccinating young children might affect school mask policies and other restrictions, remains to be seen.

Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins Sophie Bushwick to talk about the news and other stories from the week in science, including potential COVID-related criminal charges against Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, an experimental bionic vision implant, and the possible discovery of an exoplanet in the galaxy Messier 51.

Could Ordinary Household Objects Be Used To Spy On You? In the movies, if a room is bugged, the microphone might be hidden in a potted plant. But in recent years, researchers have come up with ways to use the trembling leaves of a potted plant, light glancing off a potato chip bag, and even tiny jiggles in the head of a spinning hard drive caused by a nearby conversation to be able to listen to what’s happening in a room, or to gain information about what’s going on nearby.

On a larger scale, other researchers have been able to use the vibrations of an entire building to paint a picture of movements within it—and even the health status of the people inside.

The approach is known as a side-channel attack: Rather than observing something directly, you’re extracting information from something else that has a relationship with the target. Many of the approaches are not straightforward—they require an understanding of the physics involved, and sometimes heavy data-processing or machine learning to interpret the hazy information yielded by these techniques.

Jon Callas of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hae Young Noh of Stanford, and Kevin Fu of the University of Michigan join host Sophie Bushwick to talk about the risks and opportunities afforded by these sneaky methods of surveillance, and how concerned you should be.

When his team removed the soldiers’ clothing, they discovered that their flesh wounds were filled with thousands of maggots, or baby flies—little larvae with a massive appetite for decaying matter. Baer was repulsed by the sight, and the team quickly washed off the wriggling maggots. Underneath, instead of the expected pus and bacteria-infected flesh, Baer marveled over “the most remarkable picture.”

“These wounds were filled with the most beautiful pink granulation tissue that one could imagine,” Baer later wrote in a 1931 report in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. Maggots have long been associated with death, but in this case, they were helping the soldiers stay alive. As these insects were simply tucking in for their typical meal of dead, decaying flesh, they were inadvertently aiding the soldiers by cleaning their wounds, keeping infection at bay. The soldiers recovered—saved by their tiny, wriggling “friends which had been doing such noble work,” Baer wrote.

Baer’s paper is one of the first reports of maggots used in medicine, but these insects have been found healing wounds for thousands of years, with references in the Old Testament and in ancient cultures of New South Wales and Northern Myanmar.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

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The Science Behind Cryptid Sightings People around the world have long been fascinated by the idea that there are strange creatures out there, ones that may or may not exist. Tales circulate about cryptids–animals whose existence can’t be proved—like Bigfoot hiding out in American forests, or sea serpents lurking just below the water in coastal towns.

Despite the best efforts of monster hunting T.V. shows and amateur sleuths, there may never be concrete proof that these creatures exist. But that doesn’t stop people from analyzing strange photographs or odd carcasses and saying maybe, just maybe, cryptids do exist.

Darren Naish, a paleontologist and author based in Southampton, U.K., has a particular interest in looking at cryptozoology—from a skeptical perspective. His breakdowns of cryptid sightings from a scientific perspective have been published in Scientific American, his website, and in his book, Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths.

Darren speaks to guest host Sophie Bushwick about faked evidence, his relationship with cryptozoology, and how cryptids may lead to other pseudoscience beliefs.

Stories From Those On The Frontlines Of Sea Level Rise Next week marks the start of the UN’s annual conference on climate change in Glasgow, Scotland. It’s a big moment for global consensus on climate change: Nations are supposed to make new, aggressive pledges to lower their emissions in the attempt to prevent the planet from hitting 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming.

Meanwhile, in the world we see and touch, seas are already rising. In some coastal areas, seas have risen between 0.5 to 1.5 feet in the last century. We’re also already seeing hurricanes with higher storm surge, and heavier rainfall. More change, of course, is projected.

The SciFri Book Club has been talking about these risks, and reading about how these numbers have endangered wetlands, flooded homes, lost livelihoods, and sometimes scattered communities in Elizabeth Rush’s 2018 book Rising: Dispatches From The New American Shore. But while we’ve talked to wetland scientists and Elizabeth herself, the voices of community members most affected by climate change—a key part of Rising’s mission—were still missing.

In a final conversation with guest host Sophie Bushwick, producer Christie Taylor shares some of the stories of people on the frontlines, including a real-estate agent who helped his neighbors relocate after Hurricane Sandy, and the leader of the Gullah Geechee people on the sea islands of the southeast coast. Plus, social scientist A.R. Siders’ insights into communities’ need to adapt to sea level rise, and how they can be most successful.

Listen To The Haunting Howls That Once Permeated Europe Last year, Melissa Pons, a field recordist and sound designer, set out to capture a sound that at one time would have been familiar to almost any European: the howl of an Iberian wolf.

There was a time when the sounds of wolves filled the forests and mountains of Europe. But after centuries of persecution by humans, only some 12,000 wolves remain in all of Europe. Isolated pockets of wolves can be found in Italy, Spain, Greece, and Finland. A sixth of the entire remaining population lives in the mountains of Portugal.

Pons headed to the remote, mountainous region of Picão—a settlement on the small island Príncipe off the west coast of Africa—where there is a rehabilitation center for the Iberian wolf. There are some 350 packs of wolves spread out over about 45 acres of the reserve.

Pons first explored the region and observed the wolves. Then she set up her recording gear and gathered over 100 hours of tape. From those recordings, she composed an album where each track captures a distinct soundscape made by these wolves.

The album is available online and half the proceeds go toward supporting the rehabilitation center in Portugal.

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The Ancient Neanderthal Traces Hidden In Your Genome Just how much of your genome is uniquely human? It turns out the number of genetic components in the human genome that trace back only to modern humans, and not to other human lineages or ancient ancestors, are surprisingly small. In a paper published recently in the journal Science Advances, researchers estimate the uniquely human portion of the genome as being under two percent.

Many of the genes thought to be strictly connected to modern humans appear to relate to neural processes. However, traces of genes from Denisovans and Neanderthals can be found scattered throughout the genome—including strong Neanderthal genetic signals in parts of the genome dealing with the immune system.Ed Green, a professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California Santa Cruz and one of the authors of that paper, joins SciFri’s Charles Bergquist to talk about the study, and what can be learned by this approach to studying our genetic code.

Beavers Build Ecosystems Of Resilience Deep in the Cameron Peak burn scar, nestled among charred hills, there’s an oasis of green—an idyllic patch of trickling streams that wind through a lush grass field. Apart from a few scorched branches on the periphery, it’s hard to tell that this particular spot was in the middle of Colorado’s largest-ever wildfire just a year ago.

This wetland was spared thanks to the work of beavers.

The mammals, quite famously, dam up streams to make ponds and a sprawling network of channels. Beavers are clumsy on land, but talented swimmers; so the web of pools and canals lets them find safety anywhere within the meadow.

On a recent visit to that patch of preserved land in Poudre Canyon, ecohydrologist Emily Fairfax emphasized the size of the beavers’ canal network.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t even count them,” she said. “It’s a lot. There’s at least 10 ponds up here that are large enough to see in satellite images. And then between all those ponds is just an absolute spiderweb of canals, many of which are too small for me to see until I’m here on the ground.”

The very infrastructure that gives beavers safety from predators also helps shield them from wildfire. Their work saturates the ground, creating an abnormally wet patch in the middle of an otherwise dry area. Dams allow the water to pool, and the channels spread it out over a wide swath of valley floor.

Fairfax researches how beavers re-shape the landscapes where they live. Across the West, she’s seen beaver-created wetlands survive wildfires. Ira chats with Fairfax and KUNC's Water in the West reporter Alex Hager about how beavers are creating wetland oases that are surviving the West's new megafires.

DIY Halloween Hacks Trying to liven up your ghosts and goblins this Halloween? In this archival segment from 2013, Windell Oskay, cofounder of Evil Mad Scientist, shares homemade hack ideas for a festive fright fest, from LED jack-o’-lanterns, to 3D printed candy, to spine-chilling specimen jars.

The Burn Of Volcanic Beauty This week, Mount Aso, a volcano in Japan, erupted—spewing clouds of ash and smoke, but fortunately bringing no reported injuries. Meanwhile, on the island of La Palma, the Cumbre Vieja volcano has been erupting for over a month now, causing destruction and evacuations on the island, and dramatically changing the island’s coastline.

Robin George Andrews, author of the upcoming book Super Volcanoes, joins Ira to talk about the terror—and wonder—of volcanoes, and why their behavior can be so enigmatic to humans.

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Biden’s Administration Preps For A Crucial Climate Conference This week, CDC advisers gave their support to approve COVID-19 vaccine boosters for those who received Moderna and J&J vaccines. The recommendations would follow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of “mixing and matching” booster shots from different vaccine developers. Ira provides new updates on the latest vaccine booster approvals, and a story about a successful transplant of a pig kidney… to a human. Plus, climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis gives us a closer look at how the United States is living up to its Paris Agreement pledges as a crucial international gathering looms, and Biden’s clean energy legislation appears to be faltering.

Seeing The History Of Filipinos In Nursing You may have seen a grim statistic earlier this year: 32% of U.S. registered nurses who died of COVID-19 by September 2020 were of Filipino descent, even though they only make up 4% of nurses in the United States. Yet an event like the pandemic is disproportionately likely to affect Filipino-American families: Approximately a quarter of working Filipino-Americans are frontline healthcare workers.

There’s a deep history of Filipino immigrants and their descendants in frontline healthcare work. This Filipino-American History Month, Ira talks to nurse and photojournalist Rosem Morton and freelance journalist Fruhlein Econar about their recent collaboration for CNN Digital, using photographs from Morton’s “Diaspora on the Frontlines” project.

They talk about the long reliance of the U.S. healthcare system on the Philippines, and the importance of documenting the lives, not just the disproportionate hardship, of these frontline healthcare workers and their families.

Francis Collins, Longest-Running NIH Director, To Step Down Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will be stepping down from his post at the end of the year. Collins is the longest serving NIH director, serving three presidents over 12 years: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

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On Long Island, A Tribal Nation Faces Growing Pressures The Hamptons on Long Island are known as a mansion-lined escape for wealthy New Yorkers. But the area is also home to the Native residents of the Shinnecock Tribal Nation. An estimated 1,500 Shinnecock members are left in the U.S., and about half live on the Nation’s territory on Long Island.

As with the rest of the island, Shinnecock Nation is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Receding shorelines threaten to eat up three-quarters of its territory by 2050, adding to the existing threat of development from the Hamptons. This issue of climate change and its impacts around Long Island is the subject of the new podcast, “Higher Ground,” from WSHU Public Radio in Fairfield, Connecticut. One of the stories told in the podcast is that of Tela Troge, Shinnecock tribal sovereignty attorney and kelp farmer, who lives on Shinnecock territory in Long Island.

Tela talks to Ira about seeing climate change and development affect Shinnecock land with her own eyes, and her venture into kelp farming as a tool for nitrogen sequestration.

The World According To Sound: Listening To Lightning There is more than one way to listen to a bolt of lightning. While you can pick up the boom and rumble of thunder with your ears, if you tune in with a radio receiver, you can hear an entirely different sound: an earth whistler.

When lightning strikes, it releases electromagnetic radiation in the VLF or Very Low Frequency band, which runs from 3 Hz to 30 kHz. This falls within the human range of hearing, which spans from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. However, we can not hear whistlers with our own ears because the radiation is electromagnetic, not physical vibrations in the air.

We can, though, capture the electromagnetic radiation with a radio receiver. Radio operators have been picking up the strange twanging of lightning ever since they started trying to tune into man-made signals. They dubbed the eerie electro-magnetic disturbances in their headphones “earth whistlers.”

People first heard earth whistlers back in the 19th century. The electromagnetic radiation from lightning interfered with telephone lines and crept into phone conversations. You’d be talking with someone and hear these bursts of energy, like little phone ghosts.

Today, we know earth whistlers are made by the interaction of lightning with the planet’s magnetic field. There are over a million lightning strikes in the atmosphere, which means there is a nearly constant chorus around earth.

The whistlers in this piece were provided courtesy of NASA and The University of Iowa.

The World According to Sound is a live audio show, online listening series, and miniature podcast that focuses on sound, not story. Producers Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett create intentional, communal listening experiences as a way to “reclaim autonomy in a visually dominated world that is increasingly fracturing our attention.”

This recording is part of their next listening series, an immersive listening party where audiences from all over the globe will be invited to experience a world of sound together, beginning in January 2022. You can get a ticket to the series here.

Save The Wetlands, Save The World InRising, the Science Friday Book Club pick for this fall, author Elizabeth Rush writes frequently of marshes. Rush explores the disappearing wetlands of Louisiana’s hurricane-battered coast, the San Francisco Bay Estuary, Staten Island’s newly abandoned flood zones, and other marshes around the country. But why, scientifically speaking, are wetlands such a feature of the conversation around coastal resilience to climate change and rising seas.

In a recording with a ‘live’ Zoom audience, SciFri producer Christie Taylor speaks with wetland ecologists Marcelo Ardón and Letitia Grenier about the resilience and adaptability of marshland, how climate change and sea level rise threatens them, and why protecting and restoring tidelands is good for everyone.

Widening The Lens On A More Inclusive Science In 2012, the Obama administration projected that the United States would need to add an additional 1 million college graduates in STEM fields per year for the next ten years to keep up with projected growth in the need for science and technology expertise. At the same time, though, native Americans and other Indigenous groups are underrepresented in the sciences, making up only 0.2% of the STEM workforce in 2014, despite being 2% of the total population of the United States. Why are Indigenous people still underrepresented in science?

In this re-broadcast of the 2019 conversation, Ira speaks with astrophysicist Annette Lee and anthropologist Kim TallBear about the historical role of science and observation in Indigenous communities, and how Western scientific culture can leave out other voices. They also discuss the solutions: What does an inclusive scientific enterprise look like, and how could we get there?

This Weekend, Take Time For The Moon This Saturday marks International Observe the Moon Night, a worldwide astronomy education event encouraging people to take time to look at the moon—through a telescope, if possible. Around the world, astronomers will be setting up public telescopes and encouraging passers-by to take a look.

Dean Regas, astronomer at the Cincinnati Observatory, joins Ira to explain how to get in on the lunar-observation action. They also talk about other astronomical events, including the ongoing Orionid meteor shower and an upcoming partial lunar eclipse on November 19.

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More Boosters, For More People This week, an FDA advisory committee met to pore over data and debate the role of COVID vaccine boosters. And on Thursday, they voted to recommend Moderna boosters for older Americans, as well as people in certain at-risk groups. This recommendation came just a few weeks after the FDA authorized a Pfizer booster for similar individuals.

The recommendations of the panel regarding boosters for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, as well as the idea of mixing and matching different vaccine and booster types, will now go to FDA officials. The CDC will also weigh in.

Amy Nordrum, commissioning editor at MIT Technology Review, joins Ira to talk about the vaccine meeting and other topics from the week in science—including the FDA authorization of an e-cigarette, efforts to map the brain, mysterious radio signals from space, and a mission to explore asteroids near Jupiter.

Indigenous-Led Biology, Designed For Native Communities Monday was Indigenous Peoples’ Day here in the United States: a holiday to honor Native Americans and their resilience over many centuries of colonialism. Due to a long history of discrimination, Native Americans face stark health disparities, compared to other American populations. Illnesses like chronic liver disease, diabetes, and respiratory diseases are much more common in Native communities.

This is where the Native BioData Consortium (NBDC) comes in. It’s a biobank, a large collection of biological samples for research purposes. What sets this facility apart from others is its purpose—the biological samples are from indigenous people, and the research is led by indigenous scientists.

This is important, say the founders, because for too long, biological samples from Native people have been used for purposes that don’t benefit them.

Joining Ira to talk about the importance of having a biobank run by indigenous scientists are three foundational members of the project: Krystal Tsosie, co-founder and ethics and policy director of the NBDC and PhD candidate in genetics at Vanderbilt University, Joseph Yracheta, executive director and laboratory manager of the NCDC, and Matt Anderson, assistant professor of microbiology at Ohio State University and NCDC board member.

Indigenous Activists Helped Save Almost A Billion Tons Of Carbon Per Year This summer, Science Friday and other media outlets covered the protests against an oil pipeline project in northern Minnesota, where Canadian company Enbridge Energy was replacing and expanding their existing Line 3 infrastructure. Native American tribes in Minnesota—whose lands the pipeline would pass through and alongside—organized protests, direct action, and other resistance against the project. The pipeline was completed, and began moving tar sands oil at the beginning of October.

But the protests and their non-Native allies drew arrests, news coverage, and social media attention to the debate over continued drilling of fossil fuels.

Before Line 3, there were protests at the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was completed against the wishes of the nearby Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Biden ultimately cancelled after objections and lawsuits from two Native American communities in Montana and South Dakota. So far, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has remained un-drilled, despite multiple attempts, with help from vocal opposition by Alaska’s Gwich’in people.

A new report from two advocacy groups does the math on how much carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions these cancelled or delayed projects would have emitted in the last 10 years. According to their calculations, Indigenous resistance to pipelines and other fossil fuel projects has saved the U.S. and Canada 12% of their annual emissions, or 0.8 billion tons of CO2 per year.

Ira talks to the co-authors, Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Kyle Gracey from Oil Change International, about the value of tallying these emissions in the fight to prevent future oil projects. Plus, why Native American protesters and their allies deserve credit for keeping fossil fuels in the ground—and the bigger environmental justice issue of pipeline projects alongside Native land.

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The Hot And Cold Past Of The Air Conditioner In the Northeast, the leaves have started changing colors, heralding the season of pumpkins, sweaters, and the smell of woodsmoke. But in some parts of the country, the heat hasn’t let up. In cities like Dallas, Phoenix, and Miami, temperatures were up in the high 80s and low 90s this week—and with climate change, the U.S. is only getting hotter.

But humans have come up with an ingenious way to keep the heat at bay: air conditioning. Widely considered one of the greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century, the technology has transformed how and where people live—and it’s prevented countless deaths. But it comes at a cost, and if we’re going to keep up with a warming climate, we’re going to need some other tricks to stay cool.

Like what you hear? Dive deeper with some of the sources we turned to while reporting.

See A Familiar Face? Thank These Brain Cells What happens when you see a familiar face? Light reflected from the face enters your eye, is focused onto the retina, and a signal travels up your optic nerve. But what exactly goes on in your brain after that is still somewhat mysterious.

Recently, researchers reported in the journal Science that they had identified a group of brain cells that seem tuned to respond only to familiar faces. The theory is that the specificity of those neurons helps to speed up processing of potentially important visual information. The work was done in monkeys, but the researchers are currently trying to identify similar brain structures in people.

Sofia Landi and Winrich Freiwald, two of the authors of the report, join Ira to talk about the research, and what it may tell us about how the brain and memory are organized.

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First Malaria Vaccine Is Approved by WHO The malaria parasite is one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, killing on average about 500,000 people per year—half of them children under the age of 5, nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa.

Now, the World Health Organization has finally approved RTS,S or Mosquirix, the first vaccine against Plasmodium falciparum, which is the most deadly strain of the parasite. The vaccine has already been administered via a pilot program to 800,000 children in Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi, and in clinical trials showed an efficacy rate of about 50% against severe disease.

WNYC’s Nsikan Akpan explains this and other stories, including a climate change-linked Nobel Prize in physics, controversy over the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope, and a new surveillance method that uses only the shadows you cast on a blank wall.

Will Improved Testing And New Antivirals Change The Pandemic’s Path? Late last week, the pharmaceutical company Merck released data on a new antiviral medication called molnupiravir—a drug taken as a course of pills over five days that the company said was dramatically effective at keeping people with COVID-19 out of the hospital. In a press release, the company said that trial participants on the medication had a 50% lower risk of hospitalization or death compared to people getting the placebo. And while eight people in the placebo group died during the trial, none of the people getting the new drug did.

However, the full data from the trial has yet to be released—and the medication must still go through the FDA approval process before it can be used. Matthew Herper, senior writer at STAT covering medicine, joins Ira to talk about the drug and what questions remain.

Then, infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist Céline Gounder discusses other recent coronavirus news—from a government plan to spend a billion dollars on at-home testing to recent data on the Delta variant, including projections of what might happen next.

Preparing For The Next Pandemic Needs To Start Now The United States has a long history of public health crises. For many, our first pandemic has been COVID-19. But long before the SARS-CoV-2 virus arrived, HIV, measles, and the flu all left a lasting impact. As a wealthy country, you may think the United States would be prepared to deal with public health crises, since they happen here with a degree of regularity. However, that’s not the case.

The longstanding issues that left the country vulnerable to COVID-19 are explored in a recent article from The Atlantic, called “We’re Already Barreling Toward the Next Pandemic.” The piece was written by science writer Ed Yong, who won a Pulitzer Prize last year for his coverage of COVID-19.

Ira speaks to Ed and Gregg Gonsalves, global health activist and epidemiologist at Yale, about the country’s history of public health unpreparedness, and what needs to happen to be ready for the next pandemic.

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When The Water Comes The Science Friday Book Club is kicking off for fall. Producer Christie Taylor joins in a conversation with Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. They talk about the surprisingly fascinating science of coastal wetlands, and their role in protecting communities from sea level rise—plus how communities themselves, from Staten Island to southern Louisiana, are responding to rising seas and flooding.

For the full rundown, excerpts, and more, check out our main Book Club page.

Who Will Sweep The Charismatic Creature Carnival? Our Charismatic Creature Carnival is coming to a close. Over the last month, SciFri has celebrated six overlooked or unfairly maligned species that deserve a chance under the spotlight. And now, out of our three semifinalist creature candidates, there can only be one winner. Will it be the colorful, tiny, but mighty mantis shrimp? Or perhaps the adaptable, dramatic opossum? Or will the endangered shoebill stork, with its prehistoric look, come out on top? The choice is up to our listeners: vote here.

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Healthcare Is Hard Enough to Get. If You’re A Trans Youth, It’s Even Harder Healthcare can be difficult to access for anyone—that’s been made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. But for transgender youth, the barriers are exponentially higher. A new study from the journal JAMA Pediatrics shows that trans youth don’t get the care they need because of a variety of obstacles. Those range from laws that prevent them from advocating for themselves, to stigma from doctors.

Joining Ira to talk about this story and other big science news of the week is Sabrina Imbler, science reporting fellow for the New York Times based in New York City. Ira and Sabrina also discuss the massive undertaking of COVID-19 testing in school districts, and the impacts ivermectin misinformation is having on the livestock and veterinary industries.

See A Spotted Lanternfly? Squash It! If you live in Pennsylvania or any of its surrounding environs, you’ve probably seen a really interesting looking bug in the past few years: the spotted lanternfly. Around this time of year, it’s in its nymph stage. But when fully grown, these lanternflies sound a little like the joke—they’re black and white and red all over. They’ve also got spots, as their name suggests.

The charming news about how interesting they look is offset by the bad news: They are an invasive species. And they frighten crop farmers because they have a taste for just about anything, and a fondness for grapes, which could have dramatic economic consequences.

Many states have a unified stance on what to do if you spy a spotted lanternfly—stomp them out. But is that an effective way to stop their spread? Joining Ira to chat about stomping techniques and lanternfly biology is Julie Urban, associate research professor in entomology at Penn State University, in State College, Pennsylvania.

As Primates Go Extinct, So Do Their Parasites, Upsetting Ecosystems As of 2017, more than half of primate species—that’s apes, monkeys, lemurs, and our other relatives—were considered at risk of extinction. While the loss of these animals would be its own ecological crisis, this is causing another wave of die offs: the parasites that live on those primates, many of whom are specially adapted to live on just one species for their entire lives. That includes fungi and viruses, as well as the more grimace-inducing parasites like lice and intestinal worms.

Producer Christie Taylor talks to Duke Lemur Center researcher James Herrera, the first author on new research that found if endangered primates do disappear, nearly 200 species of primate parasites might also. They talk about why that loss could have consequences—not just for dwindling primates, but also for us.

The World According To Sound: How Spiders Shake Things Up For Love Amorous arachnids sing to their lovers without making a sound. Instead, they like to shake things up.

Spiders aren’t powerful enough to vibrate the air, the way actual singing does. Instead, they use the ground. Male spiders send vibrations down their legs, and into whatever they’re standing on. Nearby females “hear” the song vibrating up their legs.

Humans can’t hear these spider songs with our ears, but we can listen to them with the help of a laser doppler vibrometer. This instrument can make non-contact vibration measurements of a surface. It shoots a laser beam at a particular surface, and depending on how much that surface moves, it can then measure the frequency and amplitude of the vibration, based on the Doppler shift of the reflected laser beam.

Hear an example of these lovelorn spiders on The World According to Sound, a live audio show, online listening series, and miniature podcast that focuses on sound, not story. Producers Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett create intentional, communal listening experiences as a way to “reclaim autonomy in a visually dominated world that is increasingly fracturing our attention.” The spiders in this piece were recorded by researchers in Damian Elias’s lab at UC Berkeley.

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Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant To Say Goodbye To Its Radioactive Waste Just before Thanksgiving, the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth is expected to reach a historic milestone. All the radioactive fuel that generated electricity—and controversy—for nearly halfa century will finally be removed from the reactor building. It will be stored outside in special steel and cement casks.

The rare occasion will be celebrated by both supporters and opponents of the plant. But as the decommissioning of Pilgrim proceeds, concern over the long-term safety of the highly radioactive waste continues.

Even though Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant stopped producing electricity two years ago, there are still armed guards in watchtowers, surveillance cameras spread over the site, mazes of barbed wire fences and concrete vehicle barriers.

Bruce Gellerman, a senior reporter at WBUR in Boston, Massachusetts, explains what the decommissioning process has been like and the future of nuclear power in the Northeast.

Dr. Fauci’s Life Illustrated In A New Book For Kids Dr. Anthony Fauci became a household name at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, he’s the subject of a children’s book too: Dr: Fauci: How a Boy From Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor. The book takes us back to Fauci’s childhood filled with games of baseball in the streets of Brooklyn, bike rides to deliver medications for his family’s pharmacy, and his long history of asking questions about how the world works.

Author Kate Messner talks to Ira about the surprises she found in Fauci’s life story, the value of showing kids that scientists were once children too, and why curiosity is such an important value to teach children.

A Charismatic Match-up Between Two Feathered Friends It’s the third and final matchup of this fall’s Charismatic Creature Carnival, our celebration of six overlooked, and often unfairly maligned, species that deserve a chance under the spotlight. Our audience submitted the carnival candidates, but only one will be crowned the very first inductee into the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame.

This week, our match-up is between two fabulous, feathered creatures: the pigeon and the shoebill stork. Defending the pigeon is Elizabeth Carlen, postdoctoral research fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. Representing the shoebill stork is Judith Mirembe, shoebill researcher and chair of Uganda Women Birders based in Kampala, Uganda.

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Ice-Hunting Lunar Rover Robot Gets A Landing Site This week, NASA announced that it had selected a destination for a planned robotic lunar rover called VIPER, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. The mission is planned for launch in 2023, and will rove about the Moon’s south pole, mapping the location and concentration of water ice deposits. The plan is for a commercial spaceflight mission to deliver the rover to a spot near the western edge of the Nobile Crater at the Moon’s south pole.

Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins Ira to talk about the mission and other stories from the week in technology and science—including tiny airborne micro-machines, an upcoming voyage for the James Webb Space Telescope, and the discovery of ancient kids’ handprints that could be the world’s oldest-known art.

Congress Is Considering Two Climate Change Bills. What’s In Them? President Biden has made many promises about slowing climate change. During his campaign, he pledged to bring the United States’ energy sector to zero carbon emissions by 2035. On Earth Day this year, he pledged to reduce total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, and by 100% by 2050.

But the key policy changes that will help the country get there remain pending as the relevant bills continue to make their way through Congress. The first is an infrastructure bill that would pledge billions toward cleaner transit and resiliency projects in disaster-stricken communities. But that measure is tied intricately with the fate of a second, $3.5 trillion budget bill that would direct billions of dollars to incentivize coal and natural gas-burning utilities to switch over to renewable energy.

If both are to pass without substantial changes, they rely on consensus among the narrow majorities of Democrats in the Senate and the House—neither of which is guaranteed.

New York Times reporter Coral Davenport walks through what’s in the bills, and why so much is still up in the air even after a summer of climate-driven disasters.

Behind The Booster Battle Update 9/24/2021: This week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky overruled the recommendations of an advisory panel and authorized a third dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for the elderly and certain “high risk” individuals, mirroring an earlier FDA decision. In late August, President Biden had said that COVID-19 vaccine booster shots might soon be on the horizon for many Americans.

In late August, President Biden said that COVID-19 vaccine booster shots might soon be on the horizon for many Americans. But last Friday, an FDA advisory committee voted to recommend booster doses only for people over age 65—and this Wednesday, the FDA authorized Pfizer boosters for use in the elderly and “high risk” individuals.

In the republished article (which you can read on sciencefriday.com) from September 16, written before the FDA review, Kaiser Health News’ Arthur Allen and Sarah Jane Tribble examine the backstory behind the debate over boosters, and how leaders from the NIH got out in front of FDA and CDC recommendations.

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Nighttime Streetlights Are Stressing Out Urban Insects As insect populations—including bees, moths, and other pollinators—decline worldwide, researchers have established a variety of potential causes, including climate change, pesticides, and habitat loss. But now, new findings suggest yet another culprit may be part of the equation: night-time lighting, like street lights in populated areas.

A team of entomologists in the United Kingdom looked at populations of moth caterpillars under street lights, compared to populations that lived in darkness all night. In conditions with night-time lighting, they found nearly half as many caterpillars, in some cases. In addition, caterpillars that grew up under street lights were bigger, suggesting that they might be stressed and attempting to rush into metamorphosis earlier than they should. Furthermore, the greatest threat seems to be coming from energy-efficient LED lights, whose bluer wavelengths may be more stressful than the warmer, redder light of older sodium bulbs.

The team published their work in the journal Science Advanceslate last month. Guest host Umair Irfan talks to co-author Douglas Boyes about why nighttime lighting might be so bad for insects, and why ditching LED lights isn’t actually the best solution.

The Endemic End To The Pandemic Over the past year and a half, we’ve been talking about the COVID-19 pandemic. But there’s another stage of global virus spread to consider as well—the endemic stage. Instead of a sudden cacophony of viral noise, you can think of it as a constant low-level hum, with occasional bleeps. Viruses such as the coronaviruses responsible for many colds, or the influenza virus, are already endemic worldwide. They’re pretty much everywhere, all the time—and sometimes make you ill. But they don’t usually threaten to overwhelm health systems the way COVID-19 is currently.

Maureen Miller, an infectious disease epidemiologist and medical anthropologist at Columbia University, joins guest host Umair Irfan to talk about pivoting from pandemic to endemic conditions, and what past outbreaks can teach us for future health decisions.

Charismatic Creature Carnival: Who Rules The Night? We’re in week two of our Charismatic Creature Carnival, our celebration of six overlooked or unfairly maligned species that deserve a closer look. Our audience submitted our candidates, but only one will be crowned the very first carnival inductee into the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame.

This week’s friendly head-to-head battle is between the opossum and the aye-aye, submitted by listeners who remarked these creatures are cute, though unconventionally so. Defending the opossum is Lisa Walsh, postdoctoral researcher at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, based in Washington, D.C. Squaring up against them to support the aye-aye is Megan McGrath, education programs manager at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina. Find out how to participate in the final creature face-off and check out what you said about the last round between the mantis shrimp and the hellbender salamander!

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Scientists Potty Train Cows To Lower Greenhouse Gasses Scientists have known it for a long time: Cattle are a major source of nitrogen emissions, contributing to the global warming crisis. Alternatives have been tossed around for years: from eating less meat to feeding cows seaweed. Now, a new study out of Germany and New Zealand has a more outside-the-box solution: potty-training calves.

Scientists trained cows to pee in just one spot—dubbed the “MooLoo”—so their urine can be cleaned before it seeps into the environment. Most calves got the hang of it within 20-25 pees.

Joining guest host Umair Irfan to talk about this and other science stories of the week is Roxanne Khamsi, science journalist based in Montreal, Quebec.

With Worsening Wildfire Seasons, How Can We Learn To Live With Them? It’s another record year for fire in the American West, with more than two million acres already burning in the state of California, and the Dixie Fire alone well on its way to a million acres—if it gets that big, it would be the second “gigafire” on record, after 2020’s August Complex fire.

As climate change and human habitation collide in worsening fire seasons, what is the long-term outlook? Guest host Umair Irfan talks to fire scientist Crystal Kolden about the way fires are changing as we change the landscape, and what coexisting with fire can look like—including learning from the time-proven burning and forestry practices of Indigenous peoples of the West.

Do I Really Need 10,000 Steps A Day? Scientists Say 7,000 Is Fine You’ve probably heard someone say that they have to “get their steps in.” But does the number of steps you take in a day actually matter? For years, there was a mythology around the health benefits of walking 10,000 steps a day.

But it turned out that number wasn’t based on actual data—it grew out of a marketing effort in Japan from a pedometer company in the 1960s. Now, Amanda Paluch, an assistant professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has published a paper—based on actual data—to help answer this question in the academic journal JAMA Network Open.

Mining data collected by the CARDIA cohort study, they compared the overall health outcomes of people who walked less than 7,000 steps a day, those logging 7,000 to 10,000 steps, and those trekking over 10,000. They found that people who walked over 7,000 steps a day had a significant decrease in mortality, compared to people who took fewer steps. They’re still trying to tease out exactly what health benefits the steps may bring.

Paluch joins guest host Umair Irfan to talk about the research, and what you should know about how walking might improve health.

NASA Scientist Answers Kids’ Questions About The Mars Rover It was big news last week when the Mars rover Perseverance collected its first rock samples.

And just in time, we invited young listeners in our audience to ask research scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory some of their most pressing questions about the Mars 2020 mission. Questions like, “How do samples get back to Earth from Mars?” And, “How does Perseverance dust itself off … if it can?

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New Policies Emerge In The Wake Of Climate-Connected Disasters This week, people across the United States continued to be reminded of the results of a shifting climate—with people in the Gulf states still recovering from Ida, northeastern states dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida-induced flooding, and western states battling wildfires and smoke.

With climate-related disasters as a backdrop, President Biden announced a goal of shifting some 45% of U.S. energy production to solar power by 2050.

Kendra Pierre-Louis, senior reporter for the Gimlet-Spotify podcast How to Save A Planet, joins Ira to talk about those stories and more, including new calculations of the importance of minimizing fossil fuel extraction, to a successful sample collection effort on Martian soil.

Is Inflammation In The Brain Causing Alzheimer’s Disease? The brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease has a few hallmark traits. First, a buildup of plaques made of proteins called amyloid beta. Second, are tangles of another protein, called tau, within individual neurons. A third major indicator is inflammation.

While researchers have long thought brain inflammation was a byproduct of the disease itself, there’s a growing hypothesis that it might actually be a driver of the disease’s progression. That would help explain why researchers have found people whose brains are full of tau tangles and amyloid plaques, but with no outward symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

Research on animals has supported this theory. But finding the same evidence in human brains is harder. Now, a team of scientists, writing in the journal Nature Medicine, thinks they have it: time-lapsed images of patient brains showing tau tangles and inflammation spreading through the brain in the exact same pattern.

Ira talks to Dr. Tharick Pascoal, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and the study’s first author, about this finding, and what it means for future research into Alzheimer’s therapies.

The World According To Sound: Ultrasonics The mating calls of the katydid, a large insect, are ultrasonic, beyond the audible limit of human hearing. What if we could hear them?

That’s the focus behind a collaboration between the abstract audio podcast The World According To Sound and scientist Laurel Symes, the assistant director of the Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at Cornell University. In this recording, you’ll hear the sounds of one of her study animals—a group of katydids in a forest in Panama.

Bill McQuay, sound engineer and an audio producer at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, slowed down Symes’ recording so you can hear a whole world of ultrasonic activity open up, from ultrasonic mating calls of katydids to the ultrasonic pings of bats echolocating their next meal.

This katydid recording and more are a part of their next listening series, an immersive listening party where audiences from all over the globe will be invited to experience a world of sound together, beginning in January 2022.

How COVID-19 Reveals Existing Biases Against The Disability Community In early July, I visit Ingrid Tischer at the Berkeley apartment she’s shared with her husband, Ken, for the past 10 years. When I arrive, she’s already sitting outside at the top of a gently sloping ramp that leads up to the door. We’re both vaccinated, but we’re still taking precautions: masks, outdoors, and social distancing. That’s because Ingrid has a severe disability.

“I have muscular dystrophy,” she tells me, “which is a neuromuscular disorder that I’ve had my entire life because it’s genetic.” Muscular dystrophy is a progressive muscle wasting disease. It impacts her mobility, including her ability to walk unassisted. Ingrid says she’s most impacted by having a weak respiratory system and uses an oxygen device called a biPap to help her breathe. Earlier in the pandemic, her doctor told her that if she got COVID, it would likely be a death sentence. “I’d never heard my situation put in such stark, certain terms,” she says.

Ingrid is in her mid 50s, with graying brown hair and bright blue eyes. She leads fundraising for DREDF, a disability rights and legal advocacy organization. She’s also a writer — she’s written a draft of a novel and has a blog called “Tales From the Crip.” In addition to a brilliant title, the blog is full of her personal reflections about navigating a world in which the needs and feelings of people with disabilities go mostly unseen and ignored.

When COVID hit in the spring of 2020, Ingrid was terrified. Because of the risk of infection and smoke from the wildfires that summer, she stopped leaving her house entirely, developed severe anxiety and depression, and began noticing a host of new health issues.

Her feet and legs began swelling and breathing became even more difficult than usual. Her doctor worried she might be developing congestive heart failure, but told her to stay home rather than come in for tests and risk infection. It’s a common story. A recent survey by the disability advocacy group #NoBodyIsDisposable found that many disabled people have delayed medical care for over a year due to concerns about COVID-19.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

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To Breed An Oyster In the ocean, climate change involves more than just warming temperatures. Water levels are shifting, and ocean chemistry is changing. Changes to ocean salinity caused by shifting amounts of freshwater could have big effects on the health of oysters, who need a certain range of saltiness in the water to be happy.

As part of her doctoral work at Louisiana State University, researcher Joanna Griffiths bred hundreds of families of oysters, looking for clues to what makes an oyster more able to endure salinity changes. She found that there is a genetic component to an oyster’s salinity resilience.

Griffiths joins Scifri’s Charles Bergquist to talk about the work, and the challenges of conducting a laboratory oyster breeding program—in which it’s difficult convince an oyster that it’s time for romance, and often even hard to discern the sex of the oysters involved.

Talking Through The Tangled Terms Of Climate Change When scientists talk about climate change, there are certain words and phrases that get brought up often. Terms like “mitigation,” “carbon neutral” and “tipping point” are used frequently to explain how the climate crisis is unfolding. They’re often found in reports meant to educate the public on climate change, such as the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It turns out a lot of words and phrases that scientists use to talk about climate change are not understood by the general public. That’s according to a recent study from the University of Southern California and the United Nations Foundation. This begs the question: if the public scientists are trying to reach don’t understand what’s being discussed, what’s the point?

Joining Ira to talk about better communicating climate change is Wändi Bruine de Bruin, lead author of the study and provost professor of public policy, psychology and behavioral science at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California. Also joining Ira is Anthony Leiserowitz, founder and director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication in New Haven, Connecticut.

An Aquatic Charismatic Creature Showdown: Mantis Shrimp vs. Hellbender It’s time to kick off SciFri’s Charismatic Creature Carnival! Welcome to our celebration of creatures that are overlooked or unfairly maligned by the general public, which, if you look a little closer, have an undeniable charm. Six audience-suggested creatures were chosen, but only one will be crowned the very first carnival inductee into the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame.

The first friendly head-to-head battle in this fall’s Charismatic Creature Carnival is between the mantis shrimp and the hellbender, a giant aquatic salamander. Defending the mantis shrimp is Jason Dinh, PhD candidate in biology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. And representing the hellbender is Lauren Diaz, PhD student in fisheries science at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Find a list of upcoming carnival celebrations below!

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Fact Check My Feed: Why Are People Taking Discredited Horse Medicine For COVID-19? If you’ve been online at all in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen discussion about the drug ivermectin. It was originally developed as an antiparasitic treatment for livestock, and in 2015, the Nobel Prize in Medicine went to scientists who found that it helped control parasitic diseases in humans as well. But recently, non-medical groups have been incorrectly promoting the drug as a treatment for COVID-19—even though the coronavirus is a virus, not a parasite.

Virologist Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan joins Ira to look at the data behind sometimes hyperbolic COVID-19 claims, from the latest on booster shots to the emergence of a new coronavirus variant in South Africa.

What Happens If Atlantic Ocean Currents Cease To Churn? Early last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report. It was a grim document, concluding that global warming had already set in motion irreversible levels of sea level rise, along with other changes that are threatening lives and health around the globe.

The report focused in part on climate tipping points, or phenomena that, if they occur, could lead to a long term re-setting of our global climate and cascades of dangerous changes. Included among tipping points like the loss of the Amazon rainforest and melting of the permafrost, was the potential shutdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation—the AMOC, for short.

That circulation, a set of currents that includes the Gulf Stream, ferries cold water from the poles toward the equator, and distributes heat from the equator to northern latitudes. And it’s powered by two things that are both changing as the climate warms: the temperature of ocean water, and the varying concentrations of salt in that water.

Climate models that use data from thousands of years ago can help us predict what might happen if the AMOC shuts down. Because the currents are a huge source of heat redistribution globally, a shutdown could have a complex array of consequences, from rainfall disruptions in the southern hemisphere, to even greater sea level rise on North America’s east coast. And if it shuts down completely, it may not come back on again in any of our lifetimes.

Unfortunately, researchers have been finding evidence that the circulation is, in fact weakening, including a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in early August. Ira talks to Levke Caesar, a researcher at Maynooth University’s ICARUS Climate Research Center. While not affiliated with the latest research, her work has helped map the ongoing pattern of weakening in the AMOC.

A Sourdough Saga, From Starter To Slice What makes sourdough taste sour? Was the first bread invented, or discovered? How did scientists eventually figure out that yeast and bacteria were the true master bakers? Will commercial bread ever be as good as that hand-baked loaf?

Ira releases his inner breadmaking nerd in this conversation with Eric Pallant, author of the forthcoming book Sourdough Culture: A History of Breadmaking From Ancient to Modern Bakers.

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Nation Grapples With Several Climate Disasters At Once Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc on the eastern U.S. this week. It all started in Louisiana, leaving daunting damage and a long road to recovery for residents.

Even though Ida was downgraded to a tropical storm after leaving the state, it left a trail of destruction through the eastern U.S. and mid-Atlantic, flooding cities and damaging homes. In the New York area, at least a dozen people died after the region was pummeled by more than half a foot of rain in just a few hours.

This happened all while the western U.S. continues to battle wildfires, from Oregon to Colorado. In California, the extreme wildfire season led the state to close its National Forests through Labor Day weekend, a time where many people get outside and enjoy nature.

If it feels like these apocalyptic-level events are happening more and more frequently, you’re correct. Extreme weather is inextricably tied to climate change, and the science backs that up.

Joining Ira to talk about these climate stories and more is Maggie Koerth, science reporter for FiveThirtyEight based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Florida Schools With Mask Mandates Lose Funding The state Department of Education said Tuesday it was investigating the school districts of Hillsborough, Sarasota and Orange counties over mask mandates that do not allow for a parental exemption. In a letter to district officials, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran wrote the districts were in violation of a state Department of Health emergency rule triggered by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ executive order intended to block districts from enacting school mask mandates.

On Friday, Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper ruled the executive order was unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. However, DeSantis said an appeal is planned and his office has said it will continue to act in defense of parents’ rights until a signed judge’s order was issued.

Corcoran’s letters were sent Friday, and the three districts were given until 5 p.m. Wednesday to respond. If they remain noncompliant, they could face financial penalties. All three counties have mandates that allow exemptions only for medical reasons with a medical professional’s note.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Back to School During The Delta Variant Back-to-school is usually an exciting time, with some nerves mixed in. But this year is a little different. All across the country, arguments about mask mandates are exploding in school board meetings and courtrooms. In places with no mask mandates, parents are weighing difficult decisions over how much risk is too much.

But masks are just part of the equation for school safety. Air ventilation and distance are both important parts of the COVID-19 transmission equation, and many parents have questions about how their schools are preparing.

With pediatric COVID-19 cases rising, and Delta’s high transmission rates, many are wondering how we’re going to keep our kids safe in schools. Joining Ira to mull over this question is Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas, Texas.

Many Schools Are Buying High-Tech Air Purifiers. Do They Actually Work? As students head back to school, parents are getting a lot of mail about what schools are doing to better protect kids in the classroom—from mask policies to spacing to lunch plans. One item on many administrators’ lists of protective measures is improving classrooms’ ventilation.

Many studies have shown that better ventilation and air circulation can greatly reduce COVID-19 transmission. But rather than stocking up on HEPA filters, some districts are turning to high-tech air purification schemes, including untested electronic approaches and airborne chemicals.

Christina Jewett, a senior correspondent for Kaiser Health News, has written extensively about school air filtration and purification. She joins Ira to explain why some air quality experts are less than convinced by the marketing claims made by many electronic air purifier companies.

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Pfizer’s Vaccine Is Now Fully Approved. What’s Next For The Pandemic? This week, the COVID-19 vaccine marketed by Pfizer finally received full FDA approval, moving out of the realm of “emergency use” to the status of a regular drug.

In the wake of that change, many organizations—from the Pentagon to Ohio State University to the city of Chicago—are moving to require vaccinations against the coronavirus. It remains to be seen just how much the status change will move the needle on vaccination numbers—and more importantly, new cases and hospitalizations—in the U.S.

Sarah Zhang, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Ira to talk about what might be next for the pandemic, discussing the virus becoming endemic and how the Delta variant is changing people’s risk calculations. They also explore how different countries, from the U.K. to Vietnam to New Zealand, are coping. Plus, ways that the virus continues to upend business as normal—from SpaceX launches to water treatment.

How To Make Solar Power Work For Everyone If you follow Ira on social media, you may have noticed a trend in his posts over the last few months: They’ve become very joyful about the cost of his energy bill. Why? This year, he installed solar panels on his roof—and he’s not alone. The cost of solar panels has dropped nearly 70 percent since 2014, so more and more individuals and companies are jumping in. Even during COVID-19, solar installations in the U.S. reached a record high in 2020.

For Ira and many others, solar panels turn homes into their own power generators. During some times of the day, the panels produce enough excess power that it’s fed back to the grid.

As more and more people jump into solar power, big questions remain about how an energy grid designed for fossil fuels will be impacted. If everyone’s home is a utility, how do you best distribute power to a region? Accessibility is also a big concern. If there’s a need to retool how the country thinks about energy creation and use, how do we make sure it’s accessible to everyone?

Joining Ira to talk through these big-picture solar energy quandaries are Joseph Berry, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, and Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire based in Concord, New Hampshire.

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Why The Delta Variant Will Make More Kids Sick As cases of the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 continue to spike around the U.S., children are one of the hardest-hit groups. As children under 12 remain ineligible for vaccination, they and other unvaccinated groups are facing the highest rates of infection and hospitalization of the entire pandemic.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control announced Wednesday that adults in the general population would be eligible for a third booster shot of their mRNA vaccine beginning eight months after their first dose. While the CDC cited concern about rising breakthrough cases in vaccinated adults, some epidemiologists have objected that the data does not support more vaccines for most already-vaccinated adults.

MIT Technology Review’s Amy Nordrum walks through these stories, plus a new human trial for mRNA vaccines against HIV, how historic drought in the West will mean the first-ever limits on farmers’ use of water next year, a promising experiment in fusion energy generation, and why the core of Saturn may be more liquid than solid.

Pandemic Unveils Growing Suicide Crisis For Communities Of Color Rafiah Maxie has been a licensed clinical social worker in the Chicago area for a decade. Throughout that time, she’d viewed suicide as a problem most prevalent among middle-aged white men.

Until May 27, 2020.

That day, Maxie’s 19-year-old son, Jamal Clay—who loved playing the trumpet and participating in theater, who would help her unload groceries from the car and raise funds for the March of the Dimes—killed himself in their garage.

“Now I cannot blink without seeing my son hanging,” said Maxie, who is Black.

Clay’s death, along with the suicides of more than 100 other Black residents in Illinois last year, has led locals to call for new prevention efforts focused on Black communities. In 2020, during the pandemic’s first year, suicides among white residents decreased compared with previous years, while they increased among Black residents, according to state data.

But this is not a local problem. Nor is it limited to the pandemic.

Interviews with a dozen suicide researchers, data collected from states across the country and a review of decades of research revealed that suicide is a growing crisis for communities of color—one that plagued them well before the pandemic and has only been exacerbated since.

Overall suicide rates in the U.S. decreased in 2019 and 2020. National and local studies attribute the trend to a drop among white Americans, who make up the majority of suicide deaths. Meanwhile, rates for Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans—though lower than their white peers—continued to climb in many states. (Suicide rates have been consistently high for Native Americans.)

“COVID created more transparency regarding what we already knew was happening,” said Sonyia Richardson, a licensed clinical social worker who focuses on serving people of color and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, where she researches suicide. When you put the suicide rates of all communities in one bucket, “that bucket says it’s getting better and what we’re doing is working,” she said. “But that’s not the case for communities of color.”

Read the full story, produced in collaboration with Kaiser Health News.

The Minds Behind The Myers-Briggs Personality Test If you’re one of the 2 million people who take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator every year, perhaps you thought Myers and Briggs are the two psychologists who designed the test. In reality, they were a mother-daughter team who were outsiders to the research world: Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers.

They may have been outsiders, but Katharine and Isabel did their homework, and approached the test the way a trained psychologist likely would have. And the product they created—the Myers Briggs Type Indicator—would eventually become the world’s most popular personality test. But how did it all begin?

Science Diction is releasing a special three-part series on the rise of the Myers-Briggs. In the first episode: A look at the unlikely origins of the test, going all the way back to the late 1800s when Katharine Briggs turned her living room into a “cosmic laboratory of baby training” and set out to raise the perfect child.

Science Diction host Johanna Mayer and reporter Chris Egusa join John Dankosky to tell that story.

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This Fish Is The Master Of The Poignant Pause When listening to a well-practiced speaker, like during a lecture, a political event or during a favorite public radio show, you may notice they use pauses for dramatic effect. This type of nuance in communication may seem distinctly human, but we’re not the only species that takes advantage of pauses in speech to make a point.

Enter the electric fish: It discharges electric pulses nearly constantly, which tells other fish basic identifying information. But when they want to alert other fish to something of high importance, they pause.

These fish and their unique mode of communication has inspired researcher Bruce Carlson to study them for decades. This latest breakthrough in communication pauses sheds more light on the world of non-human communication, he tells SciFri producer Kathleen Davis.

Science Crimes: From Grave Robbers To An Icepick Surgeon Imagine a novel full of true crime thrillers, with just one twist: every crime in it was committed in the name of science. This is the premise of the new book The Icepick Surgeon, which covers the biggest scientific crimes in history, starting all the way back in Ancient Egypt.

From Cleopatra to Thomas Edison, scientists have been responsible for some dastardly crimes throughout history. We’re talking grave robbing, torture, murder, espionage, and more.

All of these crimes were committed in the name of research. So how do scientists lose sight of their humanity as they conduct their experiments? And what science crimes may be in our future? Author Sam Kean joins Ira to talk about the book.

Lighting Design For Your Paleolithic Cave In the modern world, you have dozens of options for illuminating your home. There’s floor lamps, table lamps, chandeliers, not to mention an overwhelming number of choices in light-bulbs. But in paleolithic times, once the sun went down, there were about three options for cave lighting—a fireplace, torches, and stone lamps that burned animal grease.

In an article published in the academic journal PLOS One, a group of researchers described exploring a cave using reproductions of each type of flame. The goal was to collect data on the advantages, disadvantages, and optical properties of each type of light—both to better understand how cave artists may have worked, and to develop a 3D computer model that would let modern viewers experience cave paintings in a manner closer to that intended by ancient artists.

Iñaki Intxaurbe, a student in the department of geology at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, talks about the research with SciFri’s Charles Bergquist, explaining what researchers are learning about Paleolithic cave paintings.

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President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill Sees The End Of The Road President Biden’s huge infrastructure bill is finally seeing the end of the road. The nearly 2,000 page bill covers infrastructure improvements—everything from roads to broadband. The package also includes funding for projects that would build up the country’s climate change resilience. Some climate change experts say the budget doesn’t go far enough and other analysis says the bill would not pay for itself. Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, walks us through the bill, new fuel economy rules for electric vehicles, a Tesla lithium-ion battery fire, and more science news from the week.

Wait, Am I Going To Need A Booster Shot? Just this week, health officials announced that New York City will require proof of COVID-19 vaccination for some indoor activities, like dining and exercise. It’s the first city to institute this type of policy, and it’s all in an effort to get more people vaccinated, as the Delta coronavirus variant has forestalled efforts to curb the pandemic.

Spikes in cases are happening all around the country, just as kids are getting ready to go back to the classroom. This is renewing debates about masks, and prompting lots of questions: Are we going to need booster shots? How much should we worry about breakthrough infections? And is full FDA approval of vaccines going to make a difference for those hesitant to get vaccinated?

Joining Ira to break down the latest pandemic quandaries is Céline Gounder, epidemiologist and professor at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine in New York City.

Local Communities Spar Over Minnesota Oil Pipeline After months of lawsuits, protests, and arrests in northern Minnesota, a controversial oil pipeline is still under construction. Candian energy company Enbridge, Inc., says the Line 3 replacement pipeline, necessary to improve the safety of an aging pipeline.

In 1991, Line 3 ruptured, causing the largest inland oil spill in the United States. The new pipeline will be both higher capacity, and follow a different route past lakes, rivers, and other state waters. But in the midst of a severe state-wide drought, the pipeline’s construction process requires the company to temporarily pump tens of millions of gallons of groundwater. Meanwhile, drilling fluids have been spilled at least once into a nearby river.

Science Friday news director John Dankosky talks to two reporters, Minnesota Public Radio’s Kirsti Marohn and Indian Country Today’s Mary Annette Pember, about the water impacts of the pipeline construction, and why communities along the route remain divided about its value.

Visit here to read a statement provided by Enbridge Energy.

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With Delta Rising, New Rules On Masks And Vaccines This week, the CDC released new guidelines for mask use in the U.S., just months after many cities and towns relaxed mask mandates. The guidance says that “to reduce their risk of becoming infected with the Delta variant and potentially spreading it to others: CDC recommends that fully vaccinated people wear a mask in public indoor settings if they are in an area of substantial or high transmission.”

Right now, many parts of the country fall under that category. In response to the guidance, several municipalities re-instituted mask mandates for their communities.

This week, New York chose to require either COVID-19 vaccination or weekly testing for public employees. Other municipalities have also announced vaccine requirements—and some private companies, including Facebook, have also indicated that vaccination will be required for employment.

Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins guest host Roxanne Khamsi to talk about the new rules and other stories from the week in science, including studies of clouds and climate change, Olympic psychology, and caffeinated bees.

How Long Do Viruses Hang Out In Your Body? Throughout the pandemic, scientists have been learning more about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. But there are still big questions, like how long the virus can survive in your body.

This week, infectious disease specialist Diane Griffin talks about how viruses—from SARS-CoV-2 to HIV to measles—persist in the body, and how this can provide new insights into how long people might stay contagious.

A Disasterologist On Coming Together To Weather The Climate Crisis As climate change amplifies the risks of natural hazards like wildfires, hurricanes, drought, and more, there’s a group of scientists hoping to change the way the United States responds to the disasters that often result.

They are disaster researchers: the people who study the engineering, sociology, and even psychology of what makes the difference between an easily handled hurricane, and a catastrophe like Hurricane Maria, which wiped out infrastructure, destroyed 800,000 homes, and killed an estimated 5,000 people in Puerto Rico in 2017.

Emergency management researcher Samantha Montano is the author of the forthcoming book Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis. She talks to producer Christie Taylor about the nuts and bolts of preparing for a disaster, how climate change is changing the equation, and how justice in disaster response will be more important than ever.

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Flooding Worldwide Fits Climate Change Models While the western United States is burning again this summer, other parts of the world are drowning. Germany, Belgium, and China saw floods this week after intense rainstorms that dropped many inches of rain in matters of hours, killing hundreds and displacing thousands. In Turkey and Nigeria, less deadly rain events throughout July have still flooded streets and destroyed homes.

And as climate change continues around the globe, scientists say these intense rain events will only worsen, putting flood-prone areas at risk of longer-lasting, and faster-raining storms.

FiveThirtyEight science writer Maggie Koerth talks to Ira about the rising cost of rain events under climate change. Plus, why climate change may be hurting monarch butterflies more than a lack of milkweed, a first step toward experiments in geoengineering, and how Australia’s cockatoos are spreading a culture of dumpster-diving.

Biden’s Surgeon General On How To Tackle Vaccine Hesitancy It’s a tale of two pandemics. In some parts of the country, communities are opening up, saying it’s time to get back to normal. In other pockets of the country, infection numbers and hospital admissions are creeping up again—and some places, such as Los Angeles County, have moved to reinstate mask mandates, even for the vaccinated.

The key factor in the pandemic response in many communities is the local vaccination level, with outlooks very different for vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But even as public health workers advocate for widespread vaccination, misinformation and disinformation is discouraging some vulnerable people from taking the vaccine.

Dr. Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General of the United States, joins Ira to talk about vaccine hesitancy, the U.S. response to the pandemic, preparing for public health on a global scale, and post-pandemic public health priorities.

Will Blockchain Really Change The Way The Internet Runs? The internet has changed quite a bit over the last few decades. People of a certain age may remember having to use dial-up to get connected, or Netscape as the first web browser. Now, social networking is king, and it’s easier than ever to find information at the click of a mouse.

But the modern internet has massive privacy concerns, with many sites collecting, retaining, and sometimes sharing user’s personal information. This has led many technology-minded people to think about what the future of the web might look like.

Enter blockchain, a decentralized database technology that some say will change the way the internet runs, while giving users more control over their data. Some say that blockchain will be the basis for the next version of the internet, a so-called “Web 3.0.”

But where are we now with blockchain technology, and can it be everything we want it to be? Joining Ira to wade through the jargon of blockchain and the future of the internet is Morgen Peck, freelance technology journalist based in New York.

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Research For New Battery Technology Is Gaining Steam As countries around the world set their goals for decarbonizing their economies, it’s becoming clear that batteries may play a pivotal role in smoothing out the peaks and valleys of solar and wind power productions, as well as driving a shift to electric vehicles, and providing power for other parts of our lives.

Lithium-ion batteries are now the standard. They run electric cars and power your laptop and cell phone. But they have major drawbacks, like overheating and their high costs. The supply chain and environmental impact of lithium-ion power cells also raise concerns: mining the materials—like lithium, cobalt, and other metals—requires polluting, water-intensive processes. While many deposits are only found in foreign locations, some U.S. companies are now looking to mine domestically, concerning environmental advocates.

The search for a better battery is on, and promising developments include new chemistries for efficiently storing energy, and smarter ways to plug them into the grid. This week, Ira talks to IEEE Spectrum senior editor Jean Kumagai, and Argonne National Laboratory’s Venkat Srinivasan about the promises, the roadblocks, and what to watch for in future battery technology.

A Tale Of Two Pandemics During the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen many different aspects of the illness—the early surges and community shutdowns, the debates over schools and masks, and, now, signs of hope as more people are vaccinated and communities reopen.

But the story is different among unvaccinated populations. In many snapshots of new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, those affected are overwhelmingly unvaccinated people. Even as the value of vaccination becomes more apparent, some people are still resistant to the vaccines.

And in Tennessee, government officials told public health workers to stop vaccination outreach to young people—not just for COVID-19, but for all childhood vaccinations.

Amy Nordrum of MIT Technology Review talks with Ira about the latest in the pandemic, and the importance of vaccination in the face of the rising COVID variant known as Delta.

They also talk about the role of cities in climate change, a new list of drinking water contaminants for possible regulation that includes the socalled “forever” PFAS chemicals, a disappearing group of ransomware hackers, and more.

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Writing, Like Geology, Requires A Little Digging When author John McPhee first considered the piece of writing that would become his 1998 book, Annals of the Former World, he envisioned a short, un-bylined article in The New Yorker, in which he would visit a road cut on Route 80—a piece that could probably be completed in a few days. Instead, that idea became a 700-page coast to coast exploration of the geology of North America, a project that took over 20 years to complete.

In this archival interview, recorded in June 1999, McPhee talks with Ira Flatow about the process of reporting Annals of the Former World, which had just won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. They talk about rocks, maps, and geology, of course—but also about characters, nuclear physics, migrating fish, and the craft of writing. McPhee, who also teaches nonfiction writing at Princeton University, likened his teaching role to that of a previous job as a swimming coach.

“The people I was teaching swimming [to] all knew how to swim,” he said. “What I was trying to do was to help them swim better, to streamline them. And that's very analogous to talking to people about writing. I'm not teaching anyone to write. I'm just helping people with little ideas that they may or may not pick up."

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The Alarming Impacts Of Extreme Heat This week, the Pacific Northwest was hit by a record breaking heat wave, with temperatures rising as high as 116 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland, Oregon. Experts say of all the extreme weather events brought on by climate change and heat waves stand to do the most damage to the environment, infrastructure, and human health.

Umair Irfan, staff writer for Vox, joins Ira to share more about the alarming impacts of such extreme heat. Plus, as record-breaking heat becomes more common, air travel may get more difficult. And physicist Rhett Allain explains why airplanes have trouble getting off the ground as the temperature rises.

How Alarmed Should You Be About The Delta Variant? It’s been six months since the first variant of COVID-19 raised alarm bells around the world. Now, a particular variant seems to be spreading rapidly: the Delta variant, first identified in India, and now the dominant strain in many countries, including the United Kingdom. In the United States, the variant makes up more than 20% of cases.

South Africa, Australia, Germany, and other countries are re-imposing limits on travel and daily life. And Israel, where more than 60% of people are vaccinated, has reinstated mask requirements. In fact, the World Health Organization is recommending that all fully vaccinated people continue to wear masks as this variant spreads.

What does that mean for you? Virologist Angela Rasmussen helps take the temperature of the Delta variant and other COVID-19 news—including promising results on the Novavax vaccine, clues about long-lasting immunity from Pfizer’s mRNA shot, and more.

How Edgar Allan Poe Exposed Scientific Hoaxes—And Perpetrated Them “Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

When you think of Edgar Allen Poe, poems like “The Raven” and “The Telltale Heart” may pop to mind. But throughout the poet’s life, he was absolutely fascinated by science. His love of subjects like astronomy and physics—along with the tragedy that followed him throughout his life—informed his poems and essays. Through this work, Poe may have also had an impact on science itself.

Poe’s scientific life is investigated in the new book, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science. In many ways, it explains, Poe’s scientific fascination was a product of its time. He grew up in the early 1800s, which was a time when a widespread thirst for knowledge was beginning to flourish. Poe loved to expose scientific hoaxes, while simultaneously perpetrating them himself. And his self-proclaimed magnum opus, a largely unsuccessful venture, was a nonfiction essay about the nature of the universe, called “Eureka.”

Author John Tresch joins Ira to discuss Poe’s life, legacy, and works. Tresch is professor of history of science at the Warburg Institute in the University of London, based in London, England.

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Is The Truth About UFOs Out There? Over the past several years, U.S. Navy pilots have reported several instances of ”unexplained aerial phenomena” while in flight. They’ve recorded videos that show shapes that appear to move in unusual ways, zooming and turning in ways beyond the capabilities of our own aircraft. After several members of Congress requested an explanation for the videos, the government put together a report on the phenomena.

The report, however, doesn’t definitively answer the question of what the observations show. While it does say that the observations aren’t of secret U.S. technology, it has no conclusions on whether the reports show foreign technology, camera artifacts, or something else—like alien technology.

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, spends his time searching for signs of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. He says that while he does believe intelligent alien life exists—and may even be discovered within the next 20 years or so—he does not think the sightings included in the government report indicate alien visitors. He shares his reasons for skepticism with host Sophie Bushwick, as well as talks about people’s desire to believe in extraterrestrials.

Rats Learn To Hide And Seek One of the most wonderful things about the internet is how you could spend years watching videos of animals at play. There’s the classic cat-playing-with-a-box genre. You can also watch a dog playing jenga. And you can type in pretty much any combination of animals, along with the word “playing,” and find adorable videos—like a baby deer, rough-housing with a lemur. Incredible stuff.

Neuroscientist Juan Ignacio Sanguinetti of the Humboldt University of Berlin gets inspiration for his work by watching home videos like that. And in his latest work, in the journal Science, he describes playing hide-and-seek—with rats.

Making Music To Sharpen Aging Brains While research continues on drugs that can slow or reverse the- damage of Alzheimer’s disease, there is already evidence for a lower-tech intervention: music. Research on the benefits of listening to music has found some evidence that it can activate regions of the brain not damaged by disease progression, soothe emotional disturbances, and promote some cognitive improvement in later stages of Alzheimer’s.

A new analysis in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society earlier this year looked at a different question. Can making music, whether by playing a musical instrument or singing, have an effect on the brains of people in the early stages of cognitive decline? The team focused specifically on people experiencing ‘mild cognitive decline,’ which can be the first step in a progression toward Alzheimer’s disease or more serious dementia. The researchers found evidence from 21 studies, involving more than 1,400 participants around the world, that yes, playing musical instruments, singing, or otherwise participating in making music can have a small but consistent benefit in recall, and other measures of brain health.

Lead author Jennie Dorris, a professional percussionist turned PhD student studying rehabilitation sciences, talks to guest host Sophie Bushwick about the evidence for cognitive improvement, and what questions still remain about the effects of active music participation on the brain.

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How To Talk About Medical Marijuana With Your Doctor Over the last decade, cannabis has had a moment. Thirty-six states and Washington D.C. have legalized it for medical use. (Fifteen states, plus D.C., have also legalized weed recreationally.) Altogether, about 5.5 million people in the U.S. now have medical marijuana cards.

One of the primary arguments for expanding marijuana laws is the drug’s potential usefulness for medical treatments. While each state has its own rules for which conditions are eligible, issues like chronic pain are nearly universally accepted as a reason for using medical marijuana.

But there’s still a large divide between the traditional medical establishment and the cannabis industry. Cannabis is still illegal federally, and a recent study showed that many clinicians feel they don’t know enough about medical marijuana to make a recommendation to patients. This in turn impacts how patients feel about talking to their doctor about using cannabis to treat medical conditions.

Joining Ira to talk about the ins and outs of connecting cannabis to the larger medical establishment are Dr. Ziva Cooper, research director for UCLA’s Cannabis Research Initiative in San Francisco, California, and Dr. Donald Abrams, integrative oncologist and professor emeritus at University of California San Francisco’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine.

What Can Crayfish Tell Us About Drugs In Our Waterways? Wastewater is a grab bag of chemicals. There’s industrial run-off, bits of animal and viral DNA, and then there are compounds that trickle out from our households. The medicines we’re flushing down the toilet or releasing through urine are making their way into countless bodies of water.

Antidepressants are one of the drugs that frequently end up in the environment. A team of scientists wanted to study the effects of these antidepressants on streams wending their way through ecosystems. So they looked to none other than the crayfish. They found that crayfish exposed to these drugs were a bit bolder. Their results were published this week in the journal Ecosphere. Freshwater ecologist Lindsey Reisinger and freshwater biogeochemist A.J. Reisinger, who are both authors on that study, talk about how these drugs affect crayfish and potential downstream effects on waterways and the ecosystem.

We Aren’t Squidding Around—It’s Cephalopod Week 2021! The wait is over—Cephalopod Week 2021 is finally here. It’s Science Friday’s annual ceph-lo-bration of all things mostly-tentacled, and this year’s lineup of events is going to be ceph-tacular.

Visit behind-the-scenes at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, play deep sea trivia, watch mini documentaries, chat with real scientists working with cephalopods every day, and a whole lot more.

Diana Montano, SciFri’s outreach manager and emcee of the deep sea, joins Ira and Science Diction host Johanna Mayer to kick things off, with some trivia about the origins of squiddy words.

Kids Are Benefiting From Adult Vaccinations, Too Something interesting is happening in some communities where most adults are vaccinated against COVID-19: infection rates in kids are going way down, too. Right now, Americans 12 and older are eligible for the vaccine, leaving the country’s youngest still exposed. So this is a promising sign, considering about two-thirds of U.S. adults have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.

But some experts are saying we still need to be cautious about throwing kids together again before they’re vaccinated. Joining Ira to chat about this story is Maggie Koerth, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They also talk about other top science stories of the week, including news that cicada broods might emerge more often with climate change.

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FDA’s Approval Of Debated Alzheimer’s Treatment Raises Controversy This week, the FDA gave the green light to a drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The drug, a monoclonal antibody called aducanumab, is the first Alzheimer’s treatment to receive approval in almost 20 years. It targets the amyloid protein that forms the tangled plaques found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. But while researchers agree that aducanumab leads to less amyloid plaque, no one really knows what that means in terms of real benefits for people with the disease.

Researchers still don’t understand the role of amyloid in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease—and in two studies conducted by the company Biogen, only one showed taking aducanumab provided a slight cognitive benefit to people with early Alzheimer’s. The other study showed no effect compared to a placebo. However, the FDA elected to ignore the recommendations of an outside advisory panel, and approved the medication under an accelerated approval process. The drugmaker will be required to conduct additional testing on the treatment while it is on the market, and the FDA has the option to rescind approval if a Phase 4 trial fails to show efficacy.

Biogen will sell the treatment under the trade name Aduhelm, at a list price of around $56,000 per year—not including the extensive office visits, tests, brain scans, and monitoring that will go along with the course of treatment. Pam Belluck, a writer covering science and medicine for the New York Times, joins host John Dankosky to explain the decision, and how the drug might fit into the larger picture of Alzheimer’s research.

When Scientists Get It Wrong A couple of years ago, Julia Strand was trying and failing to replicate a study she’d published. At the time, she was an assistant professor without tenure, and the original study had presented her most exciting finding to date. But when she and her co-authors tried to replicate it, they got the opposite results. Then one night, Julia discovered why. In her original code, she’d made a tiny but critical error, and now, with her reputation and job on the line, she was going to have to tell the world about it.

Science is often said to be “self-correcting”—through peer review, replication, and community dialogue, scientists collectively find mistakes in their work, and continually revise their understanding of the world. But what does self-correction look like in practice? And how likely are scientists to admit they’re wrong?

Julia eventually submitted her story to the Loss of Confidence Project, which invited psychologists to publicly admit mistakes in their published research. Our guest, Julia Roher, a lecturer in psychology, organized the project, along with two others. In an anonymous survey of 316 researchers, almost half said they had lost confidence in one of their findings, but ultimately, only 13 researchers submitted public testimonials to the project.

Brian Resnick, who co-created Vox’s Unexplainable podcast and has written about intellectual humility, explains why we often think we’re right when we’re wrong, how others perceive us when we fess up to mistakes, and what all this means for our trust in science.

Charismatic Creature Corner: Chonky Fish Edition In South Africa in 1938, a young museum curator named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was performing one of her regular duties when she saw something incredible. Courtenay-Latimer was tasked with inspecting fish brought in by local fishermen that were considered out of place in the region. That’s how she found what she later called the most beautiful fish she had ever seen: a coelacanth, thought to be long extinct.

Courtenay-Latimer’s discovery did not immediately register as a coelacanth, because the creature was thought to have gone extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 millions years ago. The fish was seen as a modern Lazarus—a mysterious creature brought back from the dead, stumping scientists.

At six feet long and 200 pounds, some consider the coelacanth to be a big, beautiful fish. According to Dr. Prosanta Chakrabarty, professor and curator of fishes at Louisiana State University, the coelacanth is the meathead of the sea.

“They are chunky,” Chakrabarty said. “You can hold their fin and it feels like you’re shaking somebody’s hand.”

Because they’re so old, coelacanths are closer to the human genealogical lineage than they are to any modern fish. But because this is the Charismatic Creature Corner, only one thing really matters: Is it charismatic enough to enter the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame?

Joining guest-host John Dankosky to argue for the coelacanth entering the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame is SciFri producer Kathleen Davis and Dr. Chakrabarty.

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Anthony Fauci Reflects On 40 Years Of HIV/AIDS Research Every week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases its regular report of the latest developments on emerging diseases—a living record documenting decades of medical history, known as the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). In May 1981, former MMWR editor Michael B. Gregg got a call about an unusual deadly pneumonia, seen in young gay men in Los Angeles. The tip was from epidemiologist Wayne Shandera, Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the Los Angeles County Department of Health. He described the cases of five men, ages 29 to 36, who had developed Pneumocystis carinii, a kind of pneumonia typically seen in cancer and immunosuppressed patients. These men were previously healthy, yet they struggled to fight off the illness with treatment. Two of the patients died. All five were gay.

Gregg didn’t know what to make of the cases, but he and CDC experts were compelled to publish the observations in the June 5, 1981 issue of MMWR. Soon after, clinicians around the country began to flag similar cases. The number of infected people rose, as did awareness of the strange collection of symptoms. That summer, the media ran stories about the mysterious disease; the New York Times ran the headline, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” At that time, Ira was a science correspondent for NPR, and was in the thick of covering the nuances of the illness.

Today marks 40 years since the first official report on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States, and the beginning of a long-puzzling medical mystery. “I was totally baffled, and did not know what was going on. I thought it was a fluke,” recalls Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during an interview this week with Science Friday. Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Where Did Watermelon Come From? You may think of watermelon as a red, sweet taste of summer. The watermelon itself is ancient—paintings have been found in Egyptian tombs depicting a large green-striped object resembling a watermelon next to grapes and other sweet, refreshing foods. But if you look at many of the melon’s biological cousins, its red, sweet pulp is nowhere to be found—most close relatives of the watermelon have white, often bitter flesh. So how did the modern watermelon become a favorite summer snack?

Back in the 1960s, Russian researchers suggested that one sweeter melon species found in south Sudan might have been a close relative of the modern watermelon. Now, a detailed genetic analysis of a handful of wild melon species, and 400 modern varieties of watermelon from around the world, has concluded that the Kordofan melon from Sudan is, in fact, the closest living relative of the watermelon.

Susanne Renner, an emeritus professor at the University of Munich and an honorary professor of biology at Washington University in St Louis, explains the work on the origins of the modern melon—and how knowing the history of the watermelon could lead to new varieties.

NASA Plans Two New Trips To Venus This week, President Biden announced the U.S. will donate 75% of its unused COVID-19 vaccine doses to foreign countries via the COVAX global vaccine program. The U.S. has promised to promptly send it’s surplus to South and Central America, Asia, and Africa, where countries are experiencing major shortages.

Plus on Wednesday, NASA announced plans to launch not one, but two new missions to explore Venus by the end of 2030. It’s the first time the agency has devoted any mission to Venus in 30 years.

MIT Technology Review editor Amy Nordrum joins Ira to discuss the biggest science stories of the week.

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How Do We Overcome Vaccine Hesitancy? This Memorial Day weekend, many people will be traveling to the beach, hitting the road or socializing with friends—maskless—for the first time in over a year. As of this week, 50% of people over 18 are now fully vaccinated. Another 15 to 20% of people are taking a “wait and see” approach. Of those still on the fence, some are concerned about the vaccine’s side effects; others have a long standing mistrust of the institutions responsible for the vaccine rollout.

In order to fully end the pandemic, public health officials will have to find a way to get the vaccine-hesitant on board. Dr. Gary Bennett, professor of psychology and global health at Duke University sheds light on the hurdles that must be overcome.

And a new segment of the population can now receive the Pfizer vaccine: children 12 years and older, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave approval in mid-May.

But many American parents don’t want their children vaccinated at all—including for measles or the flu. One recent report from this past April showed that over 30% of parents would wait to get their child vaccinated—nearly double the percentage of adults who were hesitant. Matthew Simonson, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University and lead author on the report, joins us to break down the numbers.

What Happens When The Colorado River Runs Dry? Dry conditions are the worst they’ve been in almost 20 years across the Colorado River watershed, which acts as the drinking and irrigation water supply for 40 million people in the American Southwest.

As the latest round of federal forecasts for the river’s flow shows, it’s plausible, maybe even likely, that the situation could get much worse this year.

Understanding and explaining the depth of the dryness is up to climate scientists throughout the basin.

Read the full article at sciencefriday.com.

Making Syrup From More Than Maple Trees Researchers at the University of New Hampshire are studying new ways to make syrup out of the northern forest—not from maple trees, but from beeches, birches, sycamores and more. They want to create new markets for an industry that, right now, depends on just one kind of tree—making it vulnerable to disease and climate change.

At the tail end of maple sugaring season, other kinds of sap were still flowing freely in the woods of Lee. UNH researcher David Moore had sensors plugged into a stand of beech trees to measure that sap and the conditions helping produce it.

“You can see I have three trees with sensors here that are all tied back to one data logger,” Moore said, pointing to the tubes and wires running from the beech trunks. Nearby, a bucket collected the resulting sap, while other equipment gathered weather data.

Researchers say monocultures, like the all-maple syrup industry, are more at risk from climate change, pests and other unpredictable threats. So Moore sees untapped potential in other common species, like the American beech. It’s found throughout New Hampshire’s forests, farms and sugar bushes—almost like a tree weed. “If you can think of some economical use—if you can make syrup from them, that would be a nice way to actually generate a little profit from them,” Moore said.

Read the full article at sciencefriday.com.

Big Oil Reckons With Climate Change Depending on your perspective, Wednesday was a bad day to be an oil company, or a good day to be a climate activist. Three major oil companies had climate change pushed higher on their agendas: Shell was ordered by a Dutch court to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030; Chevron was told by its shareholders to reduce not just its emissions from oil production, but also those of its customers; and at Exxon’s annual shareholder meeting, a small advocacy firm managed to score two, and possibly three, spots on its board of directors.

So where did these climate coups come from, and what could come next? Vox staff writer Umair Irfan talks to John Dankosky about this week’s wins for the planet, as well as the limits of such reforms.

Plus other stories from the week, including Moderna’s promising COVID-19 vaccine results in adolescents aged 12-17, and President Biden’s call for more investigation into COVID-19’s origins.

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like World Vaccination? Here in the U.S., it feels as if we’ve turned a corner in the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the population can be vaccinated, and restrictions for masks and distancing are loosening. But we won’t be able to get a handle on the pandemic until the rest of the world has access to a vaccine. If you thought distributing shots to rural areas here in the U.S. was hard, imagine distributing them to every corner of the globe.

President Joe Biden this week pledged to send an additional 20 million vaccine doses abroad, bringing the total promised to 80 million. But the U.S. is hardly the only country that plans to share doses. So where does the world vaccination effort stand?

One international effort, led by organizations including the World Health Organization and UNICEF, is called COVAX, or COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access. Joining Ira to discuss this effort is implementation team member Dr. Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the Director-General at the World Health Organization. Ira also speaks to medical supply chain expert Prashant Yadav, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and professor at the INSEAD Business School, based in Washington, D.C.

Can A New Vaccine Put An End To Malaria? The World Health Organization estimates that every two minutes, a child somewhere in the world dies of malaria. As of 2018, the parasite-induced disease kills a total of more than 400,000 people every year—most of them children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa.

While the quest for a malaria vaccine is more than 50 years old, there is still no licensed, fully approved option. The closest to approval, called RTS,S, is being piloted in several countries, with efficacy estimates hovering around 56 percent.

But after a new vaccine, called R21, demonstrated more than 75% efficacy in a small trial in Burkina Faso, is there hope for a more efficient push to reduce the global burden of malaria?

Ira talks to malaria vaccine researcher Prakash Srinivasan and Biden administration malaria coordinator Raj Panjabi about the implications of a vaccine milestone—and the work remaining ahead. Plus, how the COVID-19 pandemic might inform future progress in global health.

Zombie Wildfires Can Rage On For Months Wildfires are becoming more intense. California saw a record breaking wildfire season—burning 4 million acres across the state last year. Scientists say there is an increase in another type of wildfires called “zombie wildfires.” Forest fires that ignite in the summer and pop back up during the spring.

Roxanne Khamsi talks about a new study that tracks the occurrence and causes of these wildfires. Plus, a look at a “black fungus” infection COVID-19 patients in India.

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Fully Vaccinated Can Unmask Often, CDC Says As the number of vaccinated Americans continues to rise and evidence mounts that the vaccines may reduce viral transmission in addition to lessening disease severity, the CDC announced Thursday that fully-vaccinated people may be able to go mask-free except in specific crowded indoor situations. The announcement caused celebration in some circles and anxiety in others, with people wondering how the new guidelines fit into their personal risk assessments.

Sarah Zhang, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Ira to talk about the latest news in the pandemic and beyond, including a WHO committee report discussing the early days of the outbreak, the latest on the Colonial gas pipeline shutdown, research into cats’ love of sitting in boxes, and more.

Can An Algorithm Explain Your Knee Pain?

In an ideal world, every visit to the doctor would go something like this: You’d explain what brought you in that day, like some unexplained knee pain. Your physician would listen carefully, run some tests, and voila—the cause of the issue would be revealed, and appropriate treatment prescribed.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the result. Maybe a doctor doesn’t listen closely to your concerns, or you don’t quite know how to describe your pain. Or, despite feeling certain that something is wrong with your knee, tests turn up nothing.

A new algorithm shows promise in reducing these types of frustrating interactions. In a new paper published in Nature, researchers trained an algorithm to identify factors often missed by x-ray technicians and doctors. They suggest it could lead to more satisfying diagnoses for patients of color.

Dr. Ziad Obermeyer, associate professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkley joins Ira to describe how the algorithm works, and to explain the research being done at the intersection of machine learning and healthcare.

Ever Wonder Why Big Cereal Chunks Are Always On Top? You may not have heard of it, but you’ve probably seen the “brazil nut effect” in action—it’s the name for the phenomenon that brings larger nuts or cereal chunks to the top of a container, leaving tinier portions at the bottom of the mix. But the process by which granular materials mix is weirdly hard to study, because it’s difficult to see what’s going on away from the visible surfaces of a container.

In recent work published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers turn the power of three-dimensional time-lapse x-ray computer tomography onto the problem. By using a series of CT scans on a mixed box of nuts as it sorted itself by size, the researchers were able to capture a movie of the process—finally showing how the large Brazil nuts turn as they are forced up to the top of the mix by smaller peanuts percolating downwards.

Parmesh Gajjar, a research associate in the Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility at the University of Manchester, talks with SciFri’s Charles Bergquist about the imaging study, and the importance of size segregation in mixing of materials—with applications from the formation of avalanches to designing drug delivery systems.

This Alaskan Glacier Is Moving 100 Times Faster Than Usual One of the glaciers on Alaska’s Denali mountain has started to “surge.” The Muldrow Glacier is moving 10-100 times faster than usual, which is about three feet per hour. About 1% of glaciers “surge,” which are short periods where glaciers advance quickly.

Geologist Chad Hults has been on the glacier to study it during this surge period. He talks about how the glacier’s geometry and hydrology contribute to this surge period.

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Weighing COVID-19 Vaccinations For Teens Federal officials are reporting that the Food and Drug Administration is poised to authorize Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12 to 15 by early next week—just as Canada became the first country to do so on Wednesday of this week. Pfizer has said they will seek out emergency authorization for even younger kids by the fall. But as most countries still lag far behind the United States in vaccine access for adults, public health officials are questioning the ethics of prioritizing American teens over adults from other countries.

Science writer Maggie Koerth joins Ira with more on the accessibility of COVID-19 vaccines for children, new projections of rapid sea level rise under climate change, and other stories from the week.

Is COVID-19 Herd Immunity Even Possible Anymore? Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve equated getting out of this mess with the concept of herd immunity—when a certain percentage of the population is immune to a disease, mostly through vaccination.

With COVID-19, experts have said we need somewhere around 70 to 90% of the population to be immunized to meet this goal. Now that all adults in the U.S. are eligible for the vaccine, how far are we from that goal? And what is our trajectory?

Some experts now say with variants and vaccine hesitancy, herd immunity may not be possible here in the U.S. Joining Ira to break down this and other coronavirus quandaries is Angela Rasmussen, research scientist at VIDO-InterVac, the University of Saskatchewan’s vaccine research institute in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

This Computer Won The 2021 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament In 2012, a computer program named Dr. Fill placed 141st out of some 660 entries in that year’s American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, a competition for elite crossword puzzle solvers. This year, the algorithm beat the human competition, completing the final playoff puzzle in just 49 seconds.

The A.I. relies on a collection of different techniques to make sense of a puzzle. Sometimes, a simple fact is needed—who was the First Lady before Eleanor Roosevelt? (Lou Henry Hoover.) More often, however, crossword puzzle solutions rely not just on factual knowledge, but an ability to recognize themes that puzzle constructors have embedded in the crosswords, along with an understanding of puns, homonyms, and word play. (Think: Five letters, “dining table leaves”—SALAD!) The program makes a series of statistical calculations about likely answers, then tries to fit those possibilities into the puzzle squares.

This year, researchers from the Berkeley Natural Language Processing group added their expertise to Dr. Fill’s algorithms—a contribution that may have helped push Dr. Fill to its crowning victory.

But the program isn’t infallible. This year, it made three mistakes solving puzzles during the tournament, while some human solvers completed the puzzles perfectly. It can make these errors with any unique puzzle form it’s never seen before.

Matt Ginsberg, the computer programmer behind Dr. Fill, joins Ira to talk about the competition and the advances his program has made over the years.

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The Future Of Plastics Plastics do a lot of good. They’re sturdy, they’re clean, and the COVID-19 pandemic has really highlighted their benefits, with personal protective equipment like disposable gloves and masks.

But its durability is also its biggest problem. We’ve all seen photos of piles of plastic trash washed up on beaches, and animals surrounded by plastic bags and straws. Those materials will take decades, if not centuries, to break down. Even as it breaks apart, it can become millions of microplastic particles that cause their own problems.

So how do we tackle one of the biggest environmental crises of our time? Scientists are working on both ends of the plastic life cycle to come up with solutions. Breaking down the plastic that’s already out there, and coming up with alternative materials that could be better for the planet.

Guest host John Dankosky interviews two scientists doing great work on this topic: Dr. Francesca Kerton, professor of chemistry at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada, works on alternative polymers that could replace some plastics. Her latest research is focused on a polymer made from fishery waste. She’s joined by Dr. Gregg Beckham, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, who works on enzymes that can break down plastics to its smaller building blocks for easier recycling.

Ask An Expert: What The Heck Are Microplastics? Despite their small-sounding name, microplastics are a big deal. That’s because these tiny pieces of plastic debris can wind up just about anywhere. In fact, we know microplastics are in our oceans and our soil, and they can also get into what we eat and what we drink.

Since this is a relatively new problem, we don’t have a lot of long-term research on their effects. But investigations studying microplastics have already influenced legislation, and prompted innovations for combating plastic pollution.

Dr. Imogen Napper, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, studied microbeads in facial scrubs. Her work led to a microbead ban in the United States and other countries. She says we need to rethink how we use plastic in our everyday lives for the health of the planet.

“It’s a fantastic material that’s so durable,” Napper tells Science Friday. “But we don’t need to make so many single-use applications that could last a lifetime,” especially when these products are only used briefly.

Napper and host John Dankosky talk about all the strange places microplastics have been found, and what role individual consumers play in combating an issue that can seem insurmountable. This conversation was held in front of a live Zoom audience.

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World Leaders Gather Virtually For Climate Summit

Forty world leaders attended an international summit on climate change to discuss how each country would commit to decreasing emissions. Sophie Bushwick from Scientific American fills us in on the commitments stated during the meeting. Plus, she talks about China launching its space station and how researchers were able to read a 17th-century letter without opening it.

Offshore Wind Power Moves Forward In Massachusetts Back in 2016, the state of Massachusetts pledged to begin buying wind energy from local sources within the decade. The next year, a company called Vineyard Wind filed paperwork proposing an offshore wind farm that would involve 62 turbines situated about 12 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. The project has been stalled in regulatory review and limbo ever since. Now, there are signs that the project may finally be moving forward.

Environmental journalist Miriam Wassser of WBUR updates Ira on the project, including how it may contribute to Biden administration plans to go all-in on wind power.

Setting New Goals At An Earth Week Climate Summit This week, world leaders met online to discuss global climate policy and targets for carbon emissions reductions. The climate summit, organized by the Biden White House, comes just after the United States formally rejoined the Paris climate accords that were abandoned by the Trump administration.

In connection with the summit, the Biden administration announced a national goal of a 50% reduction (based on 2005 levels) in carbon emissions by 2030—a significant boost to the targets proposed in the original Paris accords. And European Union nations announced the outlines of a climate deal that would put the EU on target for “climate neutrality” by 2050. The EU also committed to a 55% reduction in emissions over 1990 levels by 2030.

Other climate policy actions are in the works at home as well—including major support for renewable energy projects in the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure plan. Emily Atkin, who writes the climate-focused newsletter HEATED, joins Ira to discuss the latest goings-on in climate policy, and whether the federal government is finally getting serious about the threat of climate change.

The Dazzling Rufous Hummingbird, Threatened By Climate Change The Rufous hummingbird has a reputation as one of the continent’s most tenacious birds of its size. Weighing less than a nickel and topping out at three inches long, it’s migratory journey is one of the world’s longest. Each spring, just as flowers start to bloom, it will travel nearly 4,000 miles—from Mexico to Alaska.

Yet climate change is taking its toll on even these tenacious birds. The population of rufous hummingbirds, one of the most common hummingbird species in the U.S., is decreasing dramatically. And the Rufous may soon join the list of 37 hummingbird species currently threatened with extinction, according to an analysis by BirdLife International.

Jon Dunn, natural history writer and photographer set out to document as many of these remarkable bejeweled birds as he could before they are gone. He joins Ira to talk about their shared fascination with hummingbirds and his new book, The Glitter In the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds.

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Understanding St. Vincent’s Volcanic Eruption Since April 9th, the Caribbean island of St. Vincent has been rocked by eruptions at the La Soufrière volcano. Over the last week, plumes of ash and gas have rained down on the island, and dense masses of debris, called pyroclastic flows, are destroying everything in their path. Tens of thousands of residents have been evacuated.

La Soufrière has only erupted a handful of times in recorded history, most recently in 1979. But the volcano has a deadly legacy, both for St. Vincent and beyond. Joining Ira to discuss La Soufrière’s impact is Jazmin Scarlett, a social and historical volcanologist based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

How Many T-Rexes Once Roamed the Earth? Maybe Billions Tyrannosaurus rex is probably one of the most popular dinosaurs, but there’s still a surprising amount of mystery surrounding these animals, including basic facts like how many there once were.

One team of researchers recently decided to figure out how many T-rexes existed during their long reign. The group of scientists did some back of the envelope calculations and came up with a rough population size estimate of 2.5 billion T-rexes over 2.5 million years, with an error rate of plus or minus a factor of 10. Their results were published in the journal Science.

Paleontologist Charles Marshall, who was one of the authors on the study, joins Science Friday to explain how they combined fossil records and data from present day animals to calculate the population density of these charismatic carnivores.

Pterosaurs Had A 40-Foot Wingspan And A Giraffe-Like Neck During the age of dinosaurs, there were all sorts of creatures flying through the air with different body shapes and sizes. One of those was a flying reptile called the azhdarchid pterosaur. This stork-like creature had the neck of a giraffe, and a 40-foot wingspan.

A group of scientists wanted to know more about the internal structure of the pterosaur’s long neck. Their results were published in the journal iScience. Paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim talks about what this pterosaur can tell us about the evolution of flight, and how it might inform our understanding of other prehistoric animals and dinosaurs found in Africa.

SciFri Book Club Digs Into The Foods We’ve Loved To Death Did humans kill off the mammoths? What happened to the mysterious Roman herb, known as silphium, that was once worth its weight in gold? Can lab-grown meats help save what’s left of our planet’s biodiversity from climate change and habitat loss?

Food geographer Lenore Newman sets out to answer these questions, and more, in her 2019 book, Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food, this spring’s Science Friday Book Club pick. In the book, she eats her way around the world and through history, examining the stories of the dodo bird, Icelandic dairy cows, the passenger pigeon, the Bartlett pear—and all its cousins—and the food species threatened by the sixth great mass extinction.

SciFri producer and Book Club captain Christie Taylor talks to Newman about some of the surprises from her research, and what might be next for the foods we love.

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What Does The Future Look Like For COVID-19 Long-Haulers? There’s something strange happening with some people who’ve gotten sick with COVID-19: Somewhere between 10 and 30% of people who are infected are stuck with long-lasting effects and complications.

People dealing with long-term symptoms after a coronavirus infection are known as COVID long-haulers, and as the pandemic gets longer, their numbers grow. Long-haul COVID is still a mystery in a lot of ways, but work is being done to understand it better.

Joining Ira to talk about the various effects of Long COVID and its possible treatments are Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and David Putrino, director of Rehabilitation Innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, New York.

Punjabi Sikh Truckers Lack Access To COVID-19 Information The cab of Sunny Grewal’s 18-wheeler is neat and tidy. He’s got bunk beds with red checkered sheets and gray interior cabinets that hide a fridge, microwave, paper plates and spices for long days on the road. One plastic container holds bite-sized sweets from his native India. “We call it gur, G-U-R,” Grewal says. “You can put it in tea, or you can have a small piece after food.”

Grewal is a trucking company owner-operator based in Fresno. He’s on the road upwards of 150,000 miles a year, delivering produce and cleaning supplies like hand sanitizer to and from the East Coast, the Midwest, and the South. In other words, his work is essential to keeping this country running. “If nurses want to take care of you, they need the stuff that we bring,” he says. “You want to buy food to stay home, you’re going to stock the food in your house, we bring that food.”

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of California designated truckers as essential workers, but that status hasn’t materialized into any tangible advantages or privileges:No requirements that rest stops remain open, no hazard pay, and no priority access to the vaccine. “It is strange that our day didn’t come sooner,” says Lovepreet Singh, a truck driver from Bakersfield who was hoping momentum in support of his industry would build after the White House honored truck drivers with a rally in April 2020.

Singh and Grewal are also among an estimated hundreds of thousands of truckers in the U.S. who are Sikh, from the northern Indian state of Punjab. The North American Punjabi Trucking Association estimates Punjabi Sikhs make up 20 percent of the country’s truckers and control as much as 40 percent of the industry in California, and yet few public health departments in the state offer critical COVID-related information in the Punjabi language. “It makes me feel left over, you know?” says Grewal.

That lack of information has had consequences for the whole Punjabi-speaking community, says Manpreet Kaur of the non-profit Jakara Movement, especially in the early days of the pandemic. “The information was just always missing or it was too late or it was shared in a way that wasn’t easily understood,” she says. Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Particle Behavior Disobeys Laws Of Physics As We Know Them Physicists have confirmed the unexplainable behavior of an elementary particle first noticed 20 years ago. Experiments at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, showed that a certain subatomic particle, called a muon, disobeys the laws of physics as scientists have written them. This is a big deal for scientists in a field where much is still unknown.

Plus, our hotter Earth will officially become the new normal next month. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will release its once-a-decade update to “climate normals”, baseline temperatures meteorologists rely on for their forecasts. While some places won’t see much of a change, this new update will substantially change what’s “normal” across the coasts and in the southern U.S.

Joining Ira to talk about these science stories and other big news of the week is Roxanne Khamsi, science journalist based in Montreal, Quebec.

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Signs The Standard Model Of Physics May Be Incomplete The pandemic has slowed many projects around the world, but scientists and engineers are nearing completion of a long-planned upgrade and maintenance period at CERN’s massive Large Hadron Collider project in Switzerland. The collider is currently cooling down and testing components, and aiming to start up for its third major run late this year. In the meantime, researchers have had time to sift through the data from previous experiments—and last week, they announced a finding that might indicate new physics at work.

The Standard Model of physics describes three of the universe’s fundamental forces, and how subatomic particles interact. One of the things it predicts is how particles decay into other components. Researchers at CERN analyzing particles called b-mesons found signs that their decay may not produce equal quantities of electrons and muons—as would be predicted by the Standard Model. While that discrepancy might not seem like a big deal, it could mean that there’s a previously undetected particle or force at play. However, the researchers don’t yet have enough data to say with confidence that their finding is real. They’ll need to collect several more years of data once the LHC restarts, as well as hope for confirmation from another major experiment in Japan.

Sheldon Stone, a distinguished professor of physics at Syracuse University and a member of the management committee of the LHCb Collaboration at CERN, joins Ira to talk about the anomaly in the data—and what it might mean if it’s proven to be real.

Seaweed Might Help Cows Go Green When it comes to the bodies of humans and animals, there are a few functions that we’re usually discouraged from talking about. Specifically, the ones that involve releasing gas. (Yep, burps and farts.) But if you’re a cow, there’s a lot of scientific work that goes into analyzing what’s coming out in the gas you release. That’s because the cattle industry is one of the largest producers of methane gas, a huge contributor to global warming.

Some scientists are experimenting with feeding cows new things, to try to limit their methane output from the inside. New research shows a very promising result: By feeding beef cattle just a few ounces of dried seaweed per day, methane emissions from the cows went down as much as 82%.

Ira talks to the lead author of that paper, Ermias Kebreab, associate dean and professor of animal science at the University of California, Davis about how seaweed inhibits methane production in cows. They’re also joined by Albert Straus, founder and CEO of Straus Family Creamery in Marshall, California, who will be testing the seaweed diet on his cows this summer.

Even During A Pandemic, Florida’s Spring Break Party Continues The COVID-19 pandemic is not over, even after a long and painful year. Spring break always attracts attention but this year, there’s another reason spring breakers are coming to Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis basically invited them: “Let me just tell ya’. There’s no lockdowns in Florida, OK? It’s not gonna happen,” he told a cheering crowd earlier this month. One South Beach visitor, Christina Thomas, summed up spring breakers’ options this way: “California is closed.”

Even with that open-door policy, Miami Beach is more closed than it used to be, too. There’s an 8 p.m. curfew from Thursdays through the weekend in a particular stretch of Miami Beach and also a limit on eastbound traffic on the Julia Tuttle, Venetian and MacArthur Causeways starting at 10 p.m. City officials made that decision after days of people gathering along Ocean Drive, listening to music and dancing harmlessly ended, and tragic incidents began: A 27-year-old was shot and killed in South Beach. A woman was found dead in a hotel room, after she was allegedly drugged and raped. Last Friday night, the Miami Beach police chief said gunshots were fired and crowds ran through the streets.

Over this past weekend, the city declared a state of emergency. By then, the bar at the Clevelander on Ocean Drive had already closed, a notable decision, because the iconic establishment is built on the party scene. Management said things just got too hectic and they were worried about their staff. “We really should stop calling it spring break as this is not about college kids on their vacation,” Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said on Monday. He partially blames that “open for business” message from the governor. “Over the last weeks and longer, our city has been one of the only true destination cities open for business anywhere,” Gelber said. Read more at sciencefriday.com.

Biden Administration Opens Up OffShore Wind Energy The Biden administration announced a wind power plan that aims to support more offshore deployment—expanding jobs and infrastructure investment. The plan includes development of a new Wind Energy Area in shallow waters between Long Island and the New Jersey coast. The goal: deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2033. Amy Nordrum from MIT Technology, joins Science Friday to discuss that story along with Biden’s proposed $250 billion budget for scientific research and a mysterious interstellar visitor.

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The Mental Health Costs Of ‘Everyday’ Racism On March 16, a 21-year-old white man killed six Asian women and two other people in multiple shootings in Atlanta. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asians and Asian-Americans in the U.S. have experienced a rise in racist attacks, which psychologists say are tied to anti-Chinese rhetoric from the former White House administration, as well as others who have scapegoated Asian Americans.

The Stop AAPI Hate reporting center was created in March of 2020 to track these events. The project is a collaboration between the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies Department. The center reports that more than 3,700 acts of hate were brought to their attention between their founding and February 28 of this year, including verbal harassment or shunning, physical assault, and civil rights violations.

At the same time, people who identify as Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) have increasingly reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, or requested screenings for mental health diagnoses. Charissa Cheah, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County has found that even witnessing acts of hate or discrimination can affect someone’s mental health—and spill over to their children. And Kevin Nadal, a psychology researcher at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, has documented how microaggressions, considered a more covert form of racism than physical violence, can cause trauma.

Cheah and Nadal discuss the connection between chronic exposure to racist behavior and mental health, along with resources for people who may be experiencing the effects of trauma, as well as the long history of anti-Asian racism in the United States.

To Milk A Tick Ticks are masters of breaking down the defenses of their host organism to get a blood meal. They use anesthetics to numb the skin, anticoagulants to keep the blood flowing, and keep the host’s immune system from recognizing them as invaders and kicking them out. And the key to understanding this is in the tick’s saliva. Biochemist and microbiologist Seemay Chou discusses how she milks the saliva from ticks to study what compounds play key parts in these chemical tricks. She also talks about how ticks are able to control the microbes in their saliva.

A Year Of Staying Home Has Led To A Global Chip Crisis The global pandemic has led to a different kind of worldwide crisis: a global chip shortage. Demand for semiconductor chips—the brains behind “smart” devices like TV’s, refrigerators, cars, dishwashers and gaming systems—has spiked after a year of staying and working from home. And the pressure on global supply chains has never been greater. Sarah Zhang, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Science Friday to explain what happened.

Plus, why AstraZeneca came under fire from U.S. regulators this week and how one scientist has finally solved a 20-years-long mystery about the bald eagle.

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Science Diction from Science Friday is back! Their latest episode is all about a recent buzzword: "Introvert."

In 2013, introverts staged their comeback. For decades, they’d been told to get out of their shells and smile, while those showy, gregarious extroverts were held up as the American ideal. But when one author published a kind of introvert’s manifesto, she sparked an introvert pride movement. Since then, the war of the ‘verts has only escalated, with self-identified introverts accusing extroverts of being shallow and incessantly chatty party monsters, and extroverts declaring introverts self-absorbed shut-ins who are just jealous because extroverts are actually happy. (A contention that studies support.)

It all feels like a very 21st Century, internet-era drama. But the history of the dubious and divisive introvert-extrovert binary began 100 years ago, when Carl Jung fell out with Sigmund Freud, and tried to make sense of where they’d gone wrong. In the process, Jung coined a couple of new terms, and unleashed an enduring cultural obsession with cramming ourselves into personality boxes.

For more stories like these, subscribe to Science Diction wherever you get your podcasts.

GUESTS: Dan McAdams is a professor of psychology at Northwestern University.

Wiebke Bleidorn is a professor of psychology at the University of California Davis.

Kelly Egusa is producer Chris Egusa’s sister, and a proud introvert.

FOOTNOTES & FURTHER READING: For an introvert’s manifesto, check out Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.Looking for a personality test backed by science? This one comes closest.

Curious about the 18,000 words in “Trait Names: A Psycho-lexical Study”? Read them here.

Read the 2019 study that suggests that introverted people feel happier when they force themselves to act extroverted. (And you can also check out a different study from the same year that adds a wrinkle to this finding.)

Take a look at a study that analyzes the Big Five personality dimensions as they relate to career success.

CREDITS: This episode was produced by Chris Egusa, Johanna Mayer, and Elah Feder. Elah is our Editor and Senior Producer. Daniel Peterschmidt is our Composer and did sound design for this episode. They wrote all the music, except for the Timbo March by Tim Garland from the Audio Network. Robin Palmer fact checked this episode. Nadja Oertelt is our Chief Content Officer.

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Rise In Anti-Asian Violence Is At The Intersection Of Racism And Disease Earlier this week, eight people were killed at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. Six of the victims were Asian-American women. In 2020, reported attacks on Asian-Americans increased by 150% over those reported the previous year in some of the country’s most populous cities, according to data compiled by California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism that was provided to the Voice of America. The attacks came in the midst of a pandemic that has been falsely blamed on China by some politicians, including former President Trump.This isn’t the first time that the Asian-American community has been the victim of racist scapegoating connected to a disease, however. Maggie Koerth, senior science reporter for FiveThirtyEight, joins Ira to discuss some of the other instances, from SARS in 2003 back to the bubonic plague in 1899.

They also discuss other coronavirus news, including an update on a debate over the safety of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine that is now taking place in the European Union, and talk about non-COVID news of the week, including the development of an artificial mouse uterus and research into water on Mars.

This Infectious Disease Specialist Is Answering Your COVID-19 Questions On Instagram Last week marked one year since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic. As the people all over the world struggled to wrap their head around terms like “flatten the curve,” many took their questions to scientists via their social media accounts.

Laurel Bristow is one of those scientists. Although you may know her better by her Instagram handle @kinggutterbaby, Bristow is an infectious disease specialist who started making informal videos last March, explaining the science around the pandemic. One year later, she’s unwittingly fostered a fandom of over 360,000 followers hungry for simple, straightforward scientific information about COVID-19.

Bristow joins Ira to answer listener questions about vaccine schedules, social distancing, and the slow return to normal life, sharing what it’s been like to be a “science influencer” on social media.

The False Personality Binary Do you prefer one-on-one conversations, like to read books, and quake at the idea of a party? You probably call yourself an introvert. On the other hand, if you thrive in crowds and thrive in social settings, you may check the ‘extrovert’ box on personality tests.

But the idea of introversion, coined by self-described introvert and Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, started with a different definition—one centered on where you get your energy. Does it come from your own thoughts and inwardness? The term introvert comes from the Latin intro, or “inward,” and vertere, meaning “to turn.” Conversely, the word extrovert (“outward turning”) describes being energized by things happening outside of yourself.

Jung’s idea took off, and many of us eagerly categorize ourselves into personality “types.” But in recent decades, psychologists have developed an even more nuanced understanding of introversion—one that may make the terms “introvert” and “extrovert” irrelevant.

Introvert is the last word in this mind-focused season of the podcast Science Diction. Radio producer Christie Taylor talks to Science Diction producer and host Johanna Mayer about the origin of the term, and how our understanding of personality has matured in the 100 years since Jung’s inward-turning revelation.

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What Went Wrong With Jackson, Mississippi’s Water? Residents of Jackson, Mississippi have been dealing with a water crisis since a storm rolled through town on February 15th. The city’s water system was damaged, leaving thousands of residents without running water at home. People have relied on water distribution sites to get by, and even those who can still use their taps are on boil water notice. Impacted residents are largely low-income, and the limited access to water has raised worries about staying safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even before this fiasco, Jackson’s water system was in need of a change. Boil water advisories were common, and many of the city’s pipes date back to the 1950s. Water service is expected to be restored this week, but getting the taps running again will just be a Band-Aid: A true overhaul would require millions, if not billions of dollars. Mississippi Public Broadcasting reporter Kobee Vance joins guest host John Dankosky to discuss what’s happening in Jackson, and why its infrastructure was particularly vulnerable to this crisis.

Spinning Glass To See The Stars Last weekend, a giant furnace built under the east stands of the University of Arizona football stadium began to spin. That furnace contained some 20 tons of high-purity borosilicate glass, heated to 1,165 degrees C. As the glass melted, it flowed into gaps in a mold. The centrifugal force of the spinning furnace spread the material up the edges of the mold, forming the curved surface of a huge mirror, with a diameter of 8.4 meters.

The piece is just one of seven sections that will eventually form the 25-meter primary mirror of the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile. It’s not a fast process—it will take several months to cool, and then another two years to measure, grind, and polish. When that’s complete, the surface of the mirror segment will be accurate to within twenty-five nanometers. Steward Observatory mirror polishing program project scientist Buddy Martin says that when it’s complete, the Giant Magellan Telescope should be ten times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope—if it was positioned in Washington, DC, it would be able to make out a softball in the hand of a pitcher in San Francisco.

Martin talks with SciFri’s Charles Bergquist about the mirror production process, and the challenges of working with glass on massive scales. Watch a video and see photos of the process at scienefriday.com.

It’s Time To Rethink Shark Sex—With Females In Mind Sharks, rays, and skates—all fish in the subclass Elasmobranchii—are a beautifully diverse collection of animals. One big way they differ is in how they reproduce. They lay eggs, like traditional fish, and let them mature in a select corner of the ocean. Or, they might let the eggs hatch inside their bodies. But they can also give live birth to pups gestated like mammals: with an umbilical cord and a placenta in a uterus.

It doesn’t end there. These fish, like many other members of the animal kingdom, have two uteruses. Females are capable of reproducing asexually, without help from a male. As genetic sequencing has advanced, researchers have been finding another curious pattern: Many litters of pups will have more than one father, a phenomenon known as multiple paternity.

Evolutionary ecologists seeking to explain why sharks would use this strategy of multiple paternity have hypothesized it’s one of convenience for females. In species with aggressive and competitive mating practices, like many sharks and rays, it’s possible females find it saves them precious resources to acquiesce to multiple males.

But what if there’s something in it for the female, and her likelihood of having successful, biologically fit offspring? That’s the question a team of researchers sought to answer in new research published in Molecular Ecology this month, where they asked what kinds of physiological mechanisms a female shark or ray might use to wield agency in her own reproduction. The researchers also write that a male-dominated field may be more likely to miss a female-driven reproductive strategy, and push for more study of female reproductive biology.

John Dankosky talks to the lead author on the research, Georgia Aquarium shark biologist Kady Lyons, about the vast wonderland of reproductive strategies in this fish subclass—and what a history of male-centered research may have missed.

What Next For The Fully Vaccinated? In the U.S., vaccines have been rolling out since December. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 95 million doses have been administered which equates to over 18% of the population. This week, the agency also put out guidelines for those who have been fully vaccinated.

Sophie Bushwick of Scientific American fills us in on those guidelines and also talks about research on the effectiveness of mask mandates and a headless sea slug.

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Oregon Just Decriminalized Small Amounts of All Drugs. Now What? On February 1, a big experiment began in Oregon: The state has decriminalized small amounts of all drugs, including heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. In the November election, voters passed ballot Measure 110 by a 16-point margin.

Now, if you’re caught with one or two grams of what some refer to as “hard drugs”, you won’t be charged. Instead, you’ll either pay a maximum $100 dollar fine, or complete a health assessment within 45 days at an addiction recovery center. This new system for services will be funded through the state’s marijuana tax.

But the measure is still controversial, and members of Oregon’s addiction and recovery community are split on if it’s a good idea. So how did we get here? Read and listen to the full story here.

Wisconsin Oversteps in Wolf Hunt One of the final acts of the Trump Administration in late 2020 was to remove the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officially removed the species, which was once nearly extinct in the lower 48 states, in January. The wolves now number more than 6,000 in the northern Rockies and the western Great Lakes states.

In Wisconsin, a 2012 state law requires an annual wolf hunt when the animals are not under federal protection. State wildlife officials had begun planning for a hunt next November, but were forced by a lawsuit from an out-of-state hunting group to hold one before the end of February. That hunt lasted only three days before state officials shut it down: Licensed hunters killed 216 wolves in that time, more than 80 percent over the allowed quota of 119, and nearly 20 percent of the state’s estimated 1,000-plus wolves.

SciFri producer Christie Taylor talks to Wisconsin Public Radio reporter Danielle Kaeding and environmental science professor Adrian Treves about how hunters were able to kill so many wolves so fast—and what effect this year’s hunt might have on the health of wolf populations in the state.

What Does Johnson & Johnson’s Shot Mean for Our Vaccine Timeline? The U.S. now has a third COVID-19 vaccine in our arsenal, as Johnson & Johnson’s shot got emergency approval last weekend. This one is different from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines already in use: It’s only one dose, it’s inexpensive, and it doesn’t require very cold temperatures for storage. This means rural communities might get vaccinated faster, and our timeline to possible COVID-19 herd immunity could improve.

Scaling up vaccinations will be critical as the homegrown U.S. COVID-19 variants are taking hold. Variants from California and New York are becoming more widespread, though it doesn’t seem like we’ll need to change our strategy for fighting COVID-19 yet.

Ira is joined by Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, to talk about these stories and other big science news of the week.

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Memory And The Dreaming Mind If you’ve ever stayed up too late studying for a test, you know that sleep impacts memory—you need that precious shut-eye in order to encode and recall all that information. But what is it about sleep that aids memory?

Researchers have pinpointed a specific stage of sleep, REM sleep, as an area of interest for studying memory consolidation. REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, is the same stage in which dreams occur. So researchers at Northwestern University devised a way to communicate with lucid dreamers—people who are aware of their dreams and can control what they do in them—as a way to study how memories get made.

Science Friday producer Katie Feather talks with Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern University to discuss what lucid dream research has taught us about memory.

Progress In Considering Sex As A Biological Variable Back in 2013, Charles Hoeffer from the University of Colorado Boulder was studying memory and learning in mice. He was looking at a specific protein in the brain called AKT1, which helps mice forget an old task and learn a new one. In humans, a mutation in that protein has been linked to disorders like schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s and depression.

But in a follow-up study, Hoeffer did something different. He included both male mice and female mice, and then tested them separately. As expected, he discovered that male mice had a much tougher time learning the task when AKT1 wasn’t working. But in female mice, he found the unexpected: It didn’t make any difference whether the protein was removed or not. In other words, the sex of the mouse became an important variable that affected the outcome of the research.

Hoeffer’s study is one example of considering sex as a biological variable (SABV) in pre-clinical research. And in 2016, the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health made it an official policy for researchers applying for funding.

But that didn’t change things overnight. Five years later, the approach is still catching on in many areas of research. Chyren Hunter, from the Office of Research on Women’s Health, joins Ira to discuss the progress that’s been made, and what lies ahead for the effort to make pre-clinical research more inclusive.

Further information on the NIH’s policy on sex as a biological variable is on its website.

The Problem With ‘Parachute Science’ “Parachute science” is a term describing how researchers sometimes drop down from an ivory tower in the wealthy Western world into a foreign community for field work. They gather their data, and then zip off home without engaging with or acknowledging the contributions of the local researchers in that community. This week in the journal Current Biology, researchers tried to quantify just how widespread that tendency is in one area of study—coral reefs.Searching through fifty years of publications published on the topic of warm water coral reef biodiversity research, they found that in 22% of the studies on coral reef ecosystems in Australia, there were no Australian researchers included as authors on the publication. The effect was even more noticeable in lower-income countries, such as Indonesia and the Philippines—where 40% of the published studies on coral reefs included no local scientists.

Ira talks with two of the study’s authors, Paris Stefanoudis and Sheena Talma, about what they found, and how researchers can work to make science more inclusive.

The Global COVID-19 Supply Problem Of the more than 200 million COVID-19 vaccines that have made it to patients’ arms this winter, more than a quarter have gone to people in the United States—a country with 4 percent of the total world population. Just last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that 75% of the world’s vaccinations so far had been in just 10 countries—while 130 countries had not received a single dose.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the nation of Ghana was the first to receive vaccines—600,000 doses—shipped as part of COVAX, a multi-national program which aims to provide as many as two billion free vaccines to poor and middle-income countries by the end of the year.

Ira talks to Yale global health expert Saad Omer about the international effort to move vaccines equitably around the world, and the remaining hurdles for poorer countries.

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Fauci Says Majority Of U.S. Adults Likely To Be Vaccinated By Late Summer We’re about a month shy of a big anniversary: one year since the World Health Organization officially labeled COVID-19 a pandemic. Since then, a lot has changed—and a lot has not.

We have more information than ever about COVID-19, but there are still a lot of unknowns about the illness. While about 40 million people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of a vaccine, it’s unclear when we can expect to return to a sense of normalcy.

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, joins Ira to shed some light on the latest news about variants and vaccines—and the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.

He predicts vaccines are likely to be open to all adults starting in May or June. “By the time you get everyone vaccinated who could be vaccinated, that’s going to take several months,” Fauci says. “So it won’t be until the end of the summer.”

Fauci and Ira also discuss when it’s ok for families to get together without a laundry list of precautions, as well as his legacy from decades at the NIH.

Uncovering An Ancient Mummy Mystery Ever since the discovery of King Seqenenre-Taa-II’s mummy in Egypt in the mid-1800s, it was clear that the king had met an untimely demise. His hands were clenched in a claw-like gesture, and the pharaoh’s head bore several fatal wounds. But the exact nature of his death was lost to time: Had he died in some sort of palace intrigue? Or was he executed?

Writing in the journal Frontiers in Medicine, radiologist Sahar Saleem and her collaborators argue that a CT scan of the mummy supports the theory that the king died during conflict with the Hyksos, an Asian group that invaded and controlled northern Egypt. The researchers say that the wounds and other signs on the body suggest the king was captured, bound, and executed by multiple assailants.

SciFri’s Charles Bergquist spoke with Saleem about her research, and how it fills in clues about the ancient mystery.

Why Did The Texas Power Grid Fail? More than 500,000 Texans were still without power Thursday as another round of snow and ice moved through the state, three days after a historic wave of cold and snow that prompted the state power regulator to initiate rolling blackouts in an effort to prevent a larger, months-long outage.

But as Texans remain without power in freezing temperatures, the side-effects of infrastructure failure are their own disaster: people freezing in their homes, risking carbon monoxide poisoning, or struggling to get food and water.

Why was the electric grid so damaged by winter weather? The MIT Technology Review’s Amy Nordrum explains the fragility of Texas’ power grid, and how a lack of winterized infrastructure has ripple effects for the whole state.

Plus, she talks about the successful landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars, new smells in the toolbox against invasive bark beetles, and more recent science stories.

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Two Masks Are Better Than One Masks have been a big issue throughout the pandemic, from supply shortages to debates about when they should be required to be used.

This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out research and guidance on the effectiveness of double masking—wearing one mask over another. Engineer and aerosol scientist Linsey Marr talks about how a face mask traps a virus, the effectiveness of double masking, and other other questions about face masks.

Next Week, A Return To Martian Soil It’s a busy time on Mars. This week, spacecraft from both China and the United Arab Emirates successfully maneuvered into position in Martian orbit.

And next week, if all goes according to plan, the Mars 2020 mission will deliver the Perseverance rover to its new home in Jezero Crater on the planet’s surface. Scientists hope to use it there for at least two Mars years, exploring the geology and chemistry of what once was a catch-basin for a river delta on the Red Planet.

Lori Glaze, head of the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, joins Ira to give a preview of the landing process, and an overview of some of the experiments on board Perseverance—from a ground-penetrating radar system to an experimental helicopter that may make the first controlled, powered flight on another planet.

Some People Had COVID-19 For So Long That It Mutated Inside Them COVID-19 variants have been front and center in the news over the past few months. Mutations are a natural part of the course of life for viruses. But to us humans, they’re adding more unknowns to an already stressful time.

Groups of researchers around the world have found something interesting in a select few COVID-19 patients: individuals who seem to be reservoirs for coronavirus mutations. Essentially, these patients were infected with COVID-19 for so long that the virus was able to mutate inside them. Experts are scratching their heads at these strange cases, and now are looking into what this means for our efforts to fight the virus.

Meanwhile, South Africa has suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine because it doesn’t clearly stop the coronavirus variant that originated in the country. This is a problem for AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, which planned on deploying this vaccine en masse in developing countries.

Joining Ira to break down these stories and other science news of the week is Maggie Koerth, senior science reporter for FiveThirtyEight.

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Will Vaccines Work Against New Variants Of The Coronavirus? The rollout of COVID-19 vaccination programs around the world has been anything but smooth. Complicating the effort is the virus itself. The original coronavirus genome that the current vaccines were based on has mutated. Now, there are three virus variants, and experts are somewhat concerned. How will the vaccines scientists have worked so hard to make fare against these three variants, and future ones?

Stephen Goldstein, post-doctoral researcher in evolutionary virology at the University of Utah, joins Ira to talk about what the new numbers on vaccine effectiveness against these variants really mean.

This Biden Appointee Is Bringing Justice To Green Energy President Joe Biden has the most ambitious climate change agenda of any U.S. president in history. A large part of the plan is a shift away from fossil fuels to clean energy, like wind and solar power. A new member of Biden’s energy team wants to prioritize something we don’t normally hear from the federal government: energy justice, or making sure communities aren’t left behind, or stepped on, in pursuit of a greener world.

Shalanda Baker, deputy director for energy justice at the U.S. Department of Energy and law professor on leave at Northeastern University in Boston, joins Ira to talk about equitable energy, “The Big Greens,” and her new book, Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transition.

The Thinking Behind New Double-Masking Recommendations If you’re at the grocery store or taking a walk in the brisk winter air, you might see someone sporting the new pandemic trend—double masks. Sometimes it’s a cloth mask over an N95; sometimes it’s two fabric masks layered together. And it’s not because it’s cold out (although the extra warmth is nice).

This week the CDC says it’s considering updating its masking guidelines to include wearing two masks, to protect against new, more contagious variants of the coronavirus.

Sarah Zhang, staff writer for The Atlantic, joins Ira to discuss whether two masks are really better than one. Plus, how the U.K. is studying whether mixing Astrazeneca’s new vaccine with a dose of Pfizer or Moderna’s formula might actually be more effective at obtaining immunity.

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Everything You Want To Know About COVID-19 Vaccines The U.S. has been vaccinating people against COVID-19 for a little over a month. While there have been plenty of hiccups, over 20 million people in the country have received at least one dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or the Moderna shots.

For the past few weeks, Science Friday has been collecting your questions about the COVID-19 vaccines on the SciFri VoxPop App—and we heard from a lot of listeners. The questions and concerns ranged from if people with antibodies should get vaccinated to if the vaccines are safe for pregnant women.

Joining Ira to tackle these listener questions is Benhur Lee, professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

How Scientists Unravel The Mysteries Of The Placenta Here’s a fun fact for your next virtual trivia night: What’s the only organ that we can grow temporarily, and discard after it’s been used? The answer: the placenta.

It may be a disposable organ, but scientists have a tricky time studying it: You can’t poke at it, sample it, or pull it out to see how it works while it’s doing its job of growing a human baby.

In an effort to understand how this squishy, purplish, pancake-shaped organ performs some of its most important functions, researchers have had to turn to creative techniques. Ann-Charlotte Iverson, professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Nicholas Heaton, assistant professor at Duke University, join Science Friday to discuss how the placenta protects a fetus from viral infection and inflammation, and what happens when something goes wrong.

A New President, A New Climate Policy When President Biden was running for office, he campaigned on re-entering the Paris climate accords his first day in the White House. He followed through shortly after being sworn in. But in the week that followed, the new President has also taken additional steps focused on reducing carbon emissions and adapting to the changing climate—like a push to move the government vehicle fleet to electric vehicles, establishing a White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy, and pausing oil and gas exploration leases on federal lands.

Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins Ira to talk about Biden’s climate moves, as well as other stories from the week in science, including a study of global ice loss, a halt to Merck’s COVID-19 vaccine trials, and a question about the aquatic habits of an ancient dinosaur.

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After Flint’s Crisis, An Algorithm Helps Citizens Find Lead Pipes It’s been nearly seven years since the beginning of Flint, Michigan’s water crisis, when high levels of lead from corroded lead pipes led to water shortages and health issues for city residents. Since then, many other cities around the country have had their own problems with lead. Researchers estimate that millions of Americans are living with pipes that need to be replaced.

As Wired reported earlier this month, Toledo, Ohio is one of the latest cities trying to get ahead of its legacy of lead plumbing, with the help of an algorithm created by University of Michigan researchers. The model was originally created to help the city of Flint more quickly—and less expensively—target which homes were most likely to need their pipes replaced.

The same researchers are now working as a private company, called BlueConduit, to help other cities do the same work. And in Toledo, they’re working in close partnership with the city and community organizations.

Ira talks with University of Michigan professor and BlueConduit co-founder Eric Schwartz, and Alexis Smith of the nonprofit Freshwater Future, about the work ahead for Toledo, and why deploying an algorithm effectively depends on community trust and input.

Curious if your own water pipes contain lead? EPA-funded project Crowd The Tap has a free tutorial for finding your water service line—and determining the materials of your pipes. The organization’s mission is to ensure safe drinking water in the United States. By sharing what you observe, you can help identify areas for tap water testing and infrastructure replacement. Learn about your pipes, and how you can help at CrowdTheTap.org.

Former Michigan Governor, Other Officials Charged for Flint Water Crisis In Flint, criminal and civil cases stemming from the city’s lead tainted drinking water crisis are converging this week. New criminal charges may be coming while many in Flint still question whether they will ever get justice. Nearly seven years ago, government leaders here pushed the button that switched the city of Flint’s drinking water source from Detroit’s water system to the Flint River. The intent was to save money. The result was a complete disaster.

Improperly treated river water damaged pipes, which then released lead and other contaminates into the city’s drinking water. Eighteen months later the water was switched back, but the damage was done. Blood lead levels soared in young children. People were forced to use bottled water for drinking and washing clothes. The city was forced to rip out thousands of old pipes.

While testifying about the Flint water crisis before Congress in 2016, former Governor Rick Snyder acknowledged the mistakes. “Local, state and federal officials, we all failed the families of Flint,” Snyder told a congressional committee. Snyder was not among the 15 state and local government officials who faced criminal charges for their handling of the crisis. Half of them pled guilty to lesser charges in exchange for no jail time. And in 2019, Michigan’s new Attorney General dropped charges against the remaining defendants citing problems with the original investigation. The investigation seemed over.

Until Tuesday, when the Associated Press reported that several former government officials, including former Governor Snyder, would be facing new charges. If that happens, legal experts say it would be a difficult case for prosecutors.

Read more at sciencefriday.com.

How Soil Could Save The Planet There’s a scene in the 2014 film Interstellar that imagines the hypothetical impact of climate change on Earth’s food system. The film takes place in a dystopian future where a global crop blight is slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Corn is the last viable crop and dust storms threaten humanity’s survival.

But it’s not just science fiction. Scientists are warning that if we don’t adopt more sustainable farming practices we’ll deplete the soil of vital nutrients and actually accelerate climate change.

The Earth’s soils contain about 2,500 gigatons of carbon—that’s more than three times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and four times the amount stored in all living plants and animals. And the soil—in union with the plants that grow on and in it—may have an unlimited capacity to suck CO2 out of the air and store it underground.

Tom Newmark, founder of The Carbon Underground, joins Ira to discuss the potential of carbon sequestration through a farming technique called “regenerative agriculture.” And Diana Wall, professor of biology at Colorado State University, discusses the role microbes play in the carbon cycle.

President Biden Makes Immediate Changes To U.S. Science Policy This week’s peaceful transition of power from one administration to another was a win for democracy, but it was also a win for science. Among his first acts in the Oval Office, President Biden signed executive orders allowing the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and put the brakes on plans for the Keystone XL pipeline and drilling in the arctic national wildlife refuge.

And there will be more policy changes to come, as the president considers signing a new set of orders designed to ramp up U.S. COVID vaccination efforts in the coming days and weeks.

Umair Irfan, staff reporter for Vox, discusses the major science policy news of the week. Plus, an update on new variants of SARS-CoV-2 and what scientists have discovered about coronavirus immunity.

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How Did A Vaccine Get Developed In Less Than A Year? From the first discovery of a strange new respiratory virus in Wuhan, China, in January of 2020, it took less than a year to get a vaccine into the arms of frontline healthcare workers. More than two dozen vaccine candidates have made it from basic safety trials to Phase 3, where efficacy against COVID-19 is tested. That’s particularly remarkable as before the pandemic, it was rare for a vaccine to take fewer than 5 years from start to finish.

The extraordinary speed of these critical developments is thanks to decades and decades of previous work, including research on the original SARS virus, and even HIV.

Ira talks to two researchers who have contributed to COVID-19 vaccines about the foundations these innovations rest on, and how increased resources and collaboration helped save time in 2020.

How COVID-19's Vaccine Development Will Benefit Future Vaccines For months, much of the world’s attention has been on COVID-19 vaccines—people want to know when they will come, how well will they work, and when can I get one?

Fortunately, the pharmaceutical industry has rapidly developed and tested multiple vaccines for SARS-CoV2. Now, the discovery that two vaccines based on messenger RNA technology have over 94% efficacy is drawing attention to new ways to think about vaccines. We’ve come a long way from the days of the inactivated poliovirus vaccine used by Salk, or the attenuated virus vaccines developed by Sabin.

Ira talks to vaccine researcher Paul Duprex and biotech reporter Ryan Cross about how these new developments improve our ability to fight infectious disease, and looks ahead to where the future of vaccine development might lie.

West Virginia Leads In Race To Distribute Vaccines Healthcare workers have had mixed success getting COVID-19 vaccines into people’s arms across the U.S. A big reason for the unequal rollout is the lack of federal requirements for who gets vaccinated, and in what order. There are, however, federal recommendations—for example, this week Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recommended that vaccination strategies should prioritize people age 65 and older. But states are on their own when it comes to distribution, resulting in 50 different plans.

One of the states with the highest percentages of residents vaccinated for COVID-19 is West Virginia. Though it’s predominantly rural, the state’s high population of elderly people has resulted in a large-scale, largely successful effort to reach its residents.

New York state, on the other hand, has been less successful. Bureaucratic infighting between state and city officials delayed vaccination, and many residents eligible for vaccination are turning down the opportunity, citing concerns about safety.

Joining Ira to talk about COVID-19 vaccine distribution are Fred Mogul, health and government reporter for New York Public Radio in New York City and Dave Mistich, senior reporter at West Virginia Public Broadcasting in Morgantown.

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Finding New Particles On The Frontier of Physics As a theoretical physicist, Frank Wilczek has made a career out of dreaming up new ways to understand our physical universe—and he’s usually right.

In the early 1980’s, he predicted the existence of a new quasiparticle, called the anyon—which was confirmed in experiments last summer. In 2004, Wilczek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution decades earlier to the theory of quantum chromodynamics. And in addition to the anyon, he has predicted the existence of a hypothetical particle known as the axion, a possible component of cold dark matter.

Wilczek joins Ira for a sweeping, mind-bending conversation about physics and the universe as discussed in his latest book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality.

Giant, Toothed Birds Once Ruled The Skies More than 62 million years ago, a few million years after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, a group of seafaring birds known as pelagornithids first appeared in the fossil record. They had long wings, and, unusually for a bird, teeth. They had a much simpler structure than modern mammal teeth, known as pseudoteeth.

While alive, pelagornithids successfully took over the planet. Their remains have been found on every continent, and their existence stretched for more than 50 million years. New research, published in Scientific Reports late last year, reveals that by the time the pelagornithids had been around for 12 million years, they’d already evolved to gigantic sizes never seen since in birds. They had 6-meter wingspans, nearly twice the size of modern albatrosses.

SciFri producer Christie Taylor talks to Peter Kloess, a co-author on the new research, about these giants of the past, plus the mystery of the pelagornithids’ disappearance.

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Where Did The Word ‘Vaccine’ Come From? As we head into 2021, there’s one word on all of our minds: Vaccine. It may be in headlines right and left these days, but the word was actually coined more than a century ago.

In the 1700s, smallpox seemed unbeatable. People tried all sorts of things to protect themselves, from taking herbal remedies to tossing back 12 bottles of beer a day. Nothing worked.

Then Edward Jenner, an English doctor, heard a rumor about a possible solution. It wasn’t a cure, but Jenner thought he might be able to stop smallpox infections, before its dreaded symptoms began. One spring day, with the help of a milkmaid, an eight-year-old boy, and a cow named Blossom, he decided to run an experiment.

In this segment, Science Diction host Johanna Mayer tells the story of that ethically questionable, but ultimately world-altering experiment, and how it gave us the word “vaccine.”

New Year, New Birds This year’s Audubon Christmas Bird Count is anything but usual: Since gatherings are unsafe, it’s up to individuals to count what they can, where they are. But eager birders are still out there counting crows, chickadees, and grosbeaks in the name of community science.

Ira joins a flock of bird nerds—Audubon’s Geoff LeBaron and Joanna Wu, and author and nature photographer Dudley Edmondson—to talk about the wonders of winter birding, and what decades of data show about how birds are shifting in a warming, changing world. Plus, how to make the most of birding while sheltering in place.

Birds Of A Feather: Making Science More Inclusive It’s been six months since Black birders took over Twitter in solidarity with New York City birder and science writer Christian Cooper, who posted a video of a white woman threatening to call the police on him the very same day that George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis. In response, Black naturalists and birders celebrated their communities and told stories about similar harassment in the outdoors for #BlackBirdersWeek. Other Black scientists have held their own visibility campaigns with #BlackInNeuro, #BlackInAstro, and dozens of other disciplines.

SciFri producer Christie Taylor talks to herpetologist Chelsea Connor, a co-founder of Black Birders Week, about her relationship with the outdoors, and what comes next for creating, and maintaining, spaces where Black scientists can thrive.

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2020: The Year In Science, With Wendy Zukerman It’s the end of the year, and time to reflect. While there’s no doubt the coronavirus and efforts to combat it led the science pages this year, there was more to this year than masks and hand sanitizer.

Wendy Zukerman, host and executive producer of the Gimlet podcast Science Vs, joins Ira to talk about this very strange year, and recap some of the best science—from the rise of COVID-19, to climate change and wildfires, to the discovery of fluorescent platypuses.

Plus, check out some of Science Friday’s favorite stories from the year.

These Worms Are Superheroes Of The Sea If winter has felt gray and colorless for you lately, cheer up and join us for a special, festive edition of the Charismatic Creature Corner. This month, we’re looking not at one creature, but a whole class of them: Meet the polychaetes, also known as bristle worms. (“Polychaete” translates to “many bristles.”)

Yes, they may seem short on charm—they’re worms, after all. Many, like the bloodworm, the bobbit worm, and the bearded fireworm, pack either razor-sharp jaws, or a painful venom.

But they’re also both gorgeous and mighty. Polychaetes come in iridescent colors, with feathery fronds or intricate patterns. Just in time for the holidays, consider the cone-shaped branches of the Christmas Tree worm, which makes its home on coral reefs. Others, like tube worms, produce energy for whole ecosystems from chemicals in the deep ocean’s hydrothermal vents or even the bones of dead whales. Still others, like alciopids, have remarkably human-like eyes. Gossamer worms can shoot yellow bioluminescence out of their arm-like bristles. And thousands more species provide lessons in marine evolution and invertebrate biology for the eager explorer.

This week’s Charismatic Creature Correspondent, producer Christie Taylor, asks Ira to consider polychaetes—all 10,000 known species—for entry to the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame. Helping make the case is Karen Osborn, curator of marine invertebrates for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and a seasoned ocean explorer and discoverer of new species.

How Did Dogs Evolve To Be Domesticated? Human DNA ancestry kits have become very popular in the last few years—and now, the trend has arrived for canines. A group of scientists recently mapped out the genomes of twenty-seven ancient dog genomes, looking back as far as 11,000 years ago to trace the evolution of the domesticated dog. Their findings were published in the journal Science.

Producer Alexa Lim talks to two of the study’s authors, evolutionary biologists Anders Bergstrom and Greger Larson, about what this tells us about the origins of the domesticated dog, and how they evolved to be pets.

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How The Past Hints About Our Climate’s Future Ask a climate scientist how much the earth will warm as a result of the carbon dioxide we’re emitting right now, and the answer will be a range of temperatures: likely anywhere from 1 to 5 degrees Celsius.

But all the models we have to predict the future are based on data from the past, most of it collected in the last 140 years. As carbon dioxide rises further past the unprecedented-in-human-history 400 parts per million (ppm), we are increasingly in a world never before seen by human eyes—or measured by thermometers.

While we are certain the Earth’s climate will warm as CO2 increases, it’s harder to pin down exactly how sensitive the climate is. Scientists are working hard to narrow down our uncertainties about the coming temperature changes, sea level rises, and new patterns of rainfall and drought.

And paleoclimatologists can examine ancient rocks, sediments, ice, and fossilized shells for clues about how past climates changed in response to different levels of carbon dioxide. Climates from past epochs have not only experienced that 400 ppm mark, but also levels higher than 1,000 ppm—and correspondingly, higher temperatures and higher seas. In Science last month, a team of researchers made the case for using more data from these climates, millions of years ago, to help us map out the future we face.

Science Friday producer Christie Taylor talks to University of Arizona geoscientist Jessica Tierney, who is lead author on the new research.

Mapping Out The ‘Microbial Skyscrapers’ On Your Tongue Your mouth is home to billions of bacteria, and they’re very particular—some prefer to live on the inside of the cheeks, while others prefer the teeth, the gums, or the surface of the tongue. Writing in the journal Cell Reports, researchers describe their efforts to map out the various communities of bacteria that inhabit the tongue.

In the average mouth, around two dozen different types of bacteria form tiny “microbial skyscrapers” on the tongue’s surface, clustered around a central core made up of individual human skin cells. In this study, scientists mapped out the locations of tiny bacterial colonies within those clusters, to get a better understanding of the relationships and interdependencies between each colony.

Jessica Mark Welch, one of the authors of the report and an associate scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, talks about what we know about the microbiome of the human mouth—and what researchers would still like to learn.

Moderna’s COVID-19 Vaccine May Soon Be Approved In The U.S. As the national rollout of the Pfizer/BioNTec vaccine began this week, Moderna’s own formula looks ready to add to the options for the nation’s healthcare workers and high-priority patients, at least according to a panel tasked with deciding whether the benefits outweigh the risks. On Thursday, the FDA’s independent advisory committee voted 20-0, with one abstention, to recommend the vaccine for emergency use. Now, the FDA itself must decide whether to follow through, a decision that is expected to come in the next few days.

Vox staff writer Umair Irfan talks about the similarities and differences between Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccine, what we’re learning about side effects for both injections, and the concerns about COVID-19 transmission to animals. Plus, why researchers say President-elect Biden’s goal for net-zero carbon emissions will require drastic, but feasible changes to how the nation operates. And how to view Monday’s conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter—a phenomenon theorized to be the explanation for the biblical Star of Bethlehem.

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COVID-19 Vaccinations Begin In The U.K. This week, the U.K. began its vaccination effort against COVID-19 with Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman from Coventry, becoming the first U.K. resident to receive the shot. She received a first dose of the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech, and will require a second dose in several weeks to achieve the full effect.

Nations around the world are racing to implement vaccination programs. The clinical use of the vaccine in the U.K. came just six days after the vaccine obtained emergency approval. This week, Canada also gave emergency approval to the Pfizer approach, and could start vaccinations next week. And the FDA is meeting this week to examine trial data and could soon approve treatments here.

Sophie Bushwick of Scientific American joins guest host John Dankosky to talk about the vaccination effort and other stories from the week in science, including the return to Earth of asteroid material sampled by the Hayabusa2 mission, the finding that human-made stuff now outweighs all living things on Earth, and an advance in bionic eye development.

What Has Europe’s Green New Deal Accomplished In Its First Year? Just over a year ago, the Youth Climate Movement was at its peak. Millions of people were protesting government inaction in the face of rising global temperatures.

Nearly everything about the world has changed since then. And while the incoming Biden Administration has said it will adopt parts of the “Green New Deal,” the U.S. has failed to capitalize on the momentum of last year’s Global Climate Strikes.

In Europe, however, the European Commission unveiled the “European Green New Deal in December of 2019. This 24-page document lays out a plan to make Europe climate neutral by 2050.

Despite the pandemic, the commission has since made progress on many of its climate goals. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took pains in her European “State of the Union” address this past September to spell out how the European economy could emerge stronger from the global pandemic, with help from the Green Deal.

On the one year anniversary of the announcement of the European Green Deal, guest host John Dankosky talks with Frederic Simon, energy and environmental editor for EUROACTIV and Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, as they reflect back on the progress the EU has made towards its ambitious climate goals.

Charting A Path To Deliver The COVID-19 Vaccine Last week, the United Kingdom approved a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer through an emergency authorization, and vaccinations began this week. There is still not an approved vaccine in the United States, but according to Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine team, the goal is to produce and deliver 300 million doses by the end of January 2021.

Journalist Maryn McKenna and physician Uché Blackstock discuss how states and health departments are preparing to distribute the vaccine—and the hurdles they may face.

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David Attenborough Observes A Natural World In Crisis

If you were to make a list of celebrities of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough would most likely make the cut. You probably know him from television series such as Life on Earth, The Secret Life of Plants, Living Planet, and so many more.

Now, at age 94, he’s written a new book, A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and Vision for the Future, and filmed an accompanying Netflix documentary. The book and film talk about the changes to the natural world in the time he’s been alive—from overfishing, to deforestation, to climate change—and urge us to adopt a more sustainable future.

David Attenborough and BBC producer and science writer Jonnie Hughes join Ira to talk about the challenges the world is facing today, and steps we can take toward sustainability. Read an excerpt of Attenborough’s new book.

China’s Chang’e-5 Lander Touches Down On The Moon

It was an historic week for space news. On Tuesday, China’s Chang’e-5 lander touched down on the moon’s near-side, near Mons Rumker, a mountain in the “Ocean of Storms” region. Over the course of two days, the lander collected several kilograms of lunar soil—the first samples collected in over 40 years. If all goes well, the Chang’e-5 ascension module and its cargo will reunite with the orbiter on December 6th.

Also this week, a video from the control tower of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico captured the moment its final cable snapped. The platform came crashing down on the dish, effectively ending the future—but not the legacy—of this iconic observatory. Ira and Loren Grush, senior science reporter for The Verge, pay tribute, and discuss the historic space news of the week.

This Wednesday, the United Kingdom announced approval for a COVID-19 vaccine through an emergency authorization, beating out the U.S. and most other countries. The vaccine is being produced by the U.S. pharma company Pfizer and German partner BioNTech. And the first U.K. vaccinations may start as early as next week.

Nsikan Akpan of National Geographic talks about how this vaccine works and what it means for the vaccination schedule for the rest of the world.

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Can You Get COVID-19 More Than Once?

SciFri producer Elah Feder’s friend tested positive for antibodies a few months ago—but last month, she developed COVID-19 symptoms again. So far, only a handful of cases of COVID reinfection have been confirmed, but we don’t yet know the true rates. Cases could be missed if the first or second infection is asymptomatic, and sometimes, what looks like a case of reinfection is something else entirely.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen both concerns that antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 fade quickly and reassurances that immunity probably endures. Akiko Iwasaki, an immunobiologist at Yale, along with Alessandro Sette and Shane Crotty of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, explain what we know about the immune system’s ability to remember this virus, and what cases of reinfection could mean for the efficacy of vaccines.

What Is The Future of Meat?

More and more people are trying meat alternatives, and for good reason: The meat industry is a major contributor to climate change. Almost 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock, with cattle making up about two-thirds of that. Others avoid meat because of ethical problems with slaughtering animals.

Altogether, plant-based meats are having a major moment, making their way onto the shelves of major grocery stores, and the menus of fast food chains. It’s now possible to eat a burger that tastes, looks, and feels like beef—while being entirely made of plants.

Some scientists are devoting their careers to creating a future where more meat comes from plants, or even cells grown in a lab. Joining Ira to mull over the future of meat is Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods, and Isha Datar, executive director of New Harvest, a non-profit that promotes the research and development of cell-based animal products.

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Puerto Rico's Famous Arecibo Observatory Decommissioned

The astronomical observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, has been standing since 1963. It has weathered hurricanes, earthquakes, and time itself. But in August, a large cable—holding up one of three towers that help suspend the telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform above the collecting dish—slipped out of its socket. It fell into the dish below, leaving a trail of broken panels.

One broken cable seemed like a fixable problem, but in early November a second cable broke. Now, after engineers assessing the damage said it’s likely these breakages have increased strain on the remaining cables, and pointed to fraying strands on additional cables, scientists and others worried of the odds of an accelerating spiral of broken cables, which would cause the massive receiver to collapse onto the dish below and destroy the observatory beyond repair.

On Thursday, it seemed the National Science Foundation agreed with these worries: The agency announced it would decommission the historic observatory, and plan for a demolition process that could eliminate the portions at risk of collapse while preserving as much of the structure as possible. As National Geographic contributor (and daughter of one-time observatory director Frank Drake) Nadia Drake wrote Thursday, “It’s game over.”

SciFri producer Christie Taylor talks to Drake, former observatory director Mike Nolan, and astronomer Edgard Rivera-Valentín about the damage, as well as the telescope’s irreplaceable role in detecting Earth-threatening asteroids, and its huge importance as a symbol for Puerto Ricans.

What Our Climate Can Look Like Under Biden

The transition from a Trump presidency to a Biden administration will be a stark contrast for many sectors—perhaps most notably for climate change. While Trump spent his time in office rolling back environmental rules and regulations and setting the country’s climate progress back, president-elect Joe Biden has promised the most ambitious climate plan of any incoming American president in history.

The plan is sprawling: investing $400 billion over ten years in clean energy, conserving 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030, and prioritizing environmental justice are just the tip of the plan. Biden also promises to take executive action to reverse the harmful climate rollbacks made during the Trump administration.

But is this plan realistic, or even possible if Republicans continue control of the Senate? Joining Ira to talk about the Biden plan is Emily Atkin, author and founder of HEATED, a daily newsletter about the climate crisis, and Rebecca Leber, climate and environment reporter for Mother Jones.

What The Latest Promising Pfizer And Moderna Vaccine Trials Mean

After a long ten months, the moment we’ve been waiting for is almost here. This week, drug companies Moderna and Pfizer both announced that clinical trials on their respective COVID-19 vaccines had concluded, and both were found to be 95% effective against the coronavirus.

While that may be very welcome good news, it comes in the same week that deaths from the coronavirus surpassed 250,000 in the United States. The Atlantic staff writer Sarah Zhang joins Ira to talk about what we can expect over the coming months as these vaccines roll out—with more still to come. Plus, the prehistoric parasites that likely killed a dinosaur, and a scientific debate is sparked on TikTok.

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The New Biden Administration Plans For COVID-19

It’s been less than a week since it became clear that Joe Biden would be the president elect. While President Trump and his allies continue to push unsubstantiated claims of election misdeeds—with no evidence—the Biden transition team is moving into action.

This week, as coronavirus cases spike alarmingly around the country, the president-elect unveiled his own coronavirus task force. The team of experts will help guide the incoming administration’s COVID-19 response, as well as potentially shape the fight against the pandemic once the Biden administration is sworn in in January.

The panel will be co-chaired by three prominent names: David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner; Marcella Nunez-Smith, an associate dean at Yale Medical School focusing on health equity research; and Vivek Murthy, former U.S. surgeon general. The remainder of the panel is made up of experts from across academia, industry, and government roles.

Lev Facher, Washington correspondent for STAT, joins Ira to talk about the makeup of the task force, and how a Biden administration coronavirus response might differ from existing policy.

The Election Shows Americans Are Rethinking The War On Drugs

Last week, all eyes were on the presidential election. But across the country, another major referendum was put before many voters.

In every state where drug reform was on the ballot, it passed. Voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana. And medical marijuana got approved in Mississippi and South Dakota.

In Washington D.C., residents voted to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms. And in Oregon, all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, will now be decriminalized. The state will also legalize the use of psilocybin, the psychedelic drug found in magic mushrooms.

With so many states approving pro-drug measures, from the deep blue to the deep red, does this signal a major turning point for how Americans view the war on drugs? Joining Ira to talk about this are Amelia Templeton, health reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland and Lee Strubinger, politics and public policy reporter for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Rapid City.

Everywhere In America, COVID-19 Is Surging

It’s been another bad week for COVID-19 in the United States. Every state in the country is seeing increased cases, most at rates indicating completely unchecked community spread. Hospitalizations are at their highest rate ever: more than 60,000 people were in the hospital with coronavirus infections on Tuesday. And following the now-expected pattern, deaths are also rising, with more than 1,000 being recorded every day and that number, too, steadily increasing. Experts are predicting that an additional 20,000-25,000 people could die in the next two weeks alone, and 160,000 new deaths by February 1, 2021.

MIT Technology Review’s Amy Nordrum briefs Ira on the latest alarming pandemic numbers, what President-Elect Biden said he wants to do about the climate crisis, and, on a lighter note, some stories you might have missed—like how Alphabet is unrolling optical internet in Kenya, and the amazing discovery of advanced water filtration in the ancient Mayan city of Tikal.

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How Algae Survived A Mass Extinction Sixty-six million years ago when an asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan peninsula, it set off a period of near global darkness for almost two years. Scientists think a majority of land species went extinct during that time, but what was going on in the planet’s oceans? And how were these ecosystems able to bounce back?

In a new paper published in Science Advances, researchers say what saved Earth’s oceans may have been a type of algae that could hunt for food. Ira is joined by one of the paper’s authors, Andrew Ridgwell, a professor of earth system science at the University of California, Riverside, to discuss the little algae that could.

Gathering Together (Carefully) For A Pandemic Holiday The winter holidays hinge on gatherings of multiple generations of family and friends, indoors, for long periods of time. These are all factors that increase the risk of spreading COVID-19, or unintentionally infecting your loved ones. The CDC now defines a “close contact” as spending 15 minutes within less than 6 feet of an infected person, over the course of 24 hours—encompassing pretty much any holiday gathering.

With Thanksgiving looming, new cases are setting records all over the country, and mayors like New York’s Bill de Blasio are urging people not to travel. Many are rightfully now weighing whether they can in good conscience get together.

Some epidemiologists, including Anthony Fauci, aren’t outright telling people to cancel their holiday plans, even as they worry about a further surge in the pandemic tied to winter gathering. But if you do choose to travel, there are things you can do to reduce the risk you’re taking, like isolating before you go, getting your flu shot, and taking well-timed COVID-19 tests.

Science journalist Kate Baggaley and epidemiologist Julia Marcus discuss how to identify the risks you might encounter, and minimizing those risks you can control—like the choice between driving and flying, how much faith to put in coronavirus testing, and indoor versus outdoor spaces.

This Accessible Pregnancy Test Has Results You Can Touch Whatever answer you’re hoping for from a pregnancy test, taking one is rarely a low-stress occurrence. And for many who are blind or vision-impaired, taking a pregnancy test can be even more tricky: the tests use visual displays, and often the only solution for knowing the result is to call a friend, family member, or even stranger into a very private moment.

The app Be My Eyes is now partnering with pregnancy test maker ClearBlue to offer volunteer services in reading pregnancy tests—but that still brings a stranger into the process. The UK’s Royal National Institute for the Blind, however, now has a new design for a tactile, accessible test that could be taken privately. It’s colorful, high-contrast, and big enough to use without full sight. And the results appear as bumps that anyone can feel.

SciFri producer Christie Taylor talks to Gizmodo reporter Victoria Song, Blind Motherhood blogger Holly Bonner, and Procter & Gamble accessibility leader Sumaira Latif about the value of accessibility in pregnancy testing, and how a good idea might become an actual product.

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Choosing the next U.S. president is not the only decision voters will make in the upcoming 2020 elections. Major science policies are also on the ballot. In some states, people will be casting votes on propositions that influence scientific research and the environment. While in other local elections, candidates with scientific backgrounds are in the running for public office. Jeffrey Mervis of Science Magazine talks about California stem cell research policies and Nevada renewable energy propositions, and how a science platform could help or harm candidates.

Plus, this election season has been filled with disinformation—unverified stories of voter fraud, rumors of uncounted and tossed out mail-in ballots, claims of third parties hacking voter results, and other false information. And with possible delayed election results due to the overwhelming number of absentee ballots, driven in part by COVID, there could be even more of this disinformation spread before the final polls are announced. Disinformation expert Deen Freelon discusses how these unverified and fake news stories take hold. Freelon also provides techniques on how to decipher fact from fiction in your overfilled news feeds.

Relatedly, the November election will likely have big consequences for climate policy in the United States. It comes at a critical time. Scientists say major action is needed by 2030 to avoid the worst effects of global warming. President Donald Trump does not have a climate policy. His administration has rolled back Obama-era climate initiatives. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is promising to put the country on a path toward a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero emissions from the U.S. no later than 2050. Polls show about 70% of Pennsylvanians want their state lawmakers to do more to address climate change. But polls rarely carry examples of what actions people want. A recent StateImpact survey shows Pennsylvanians want a lot — from state and federal lawmakers. The one-question survey attracted responses from more than 200 people, who asked for everything from specific policy proposals such as Pennsylvania’s entrance into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and the Green New Deal, to desperate pleas such as “listen to science!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (Read the full piece at ScienceFriday.com.)

And it’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to get a little spooky. A perfect time for the newest installment of our Charismatic Creature Corner!

This month, we’re diving into the wild world of vampire bats. These little mammals are native to Central and South America, and have bodies about the size of a mouse.

And yes, let’s address the elephant in the room: Vampire bats have a diet that consists entirely of blood. They gravitate toward livestock, but have been known to feed on people too. Their status as blood-suckers makes them one of the only mammals classified as parasites.

Despite their gruesome diets, vampire bats are extremely social creatures, and are known to display acts of friendships with other bats. In fact, a study last year found that vampire bat friendships forged in captivity actually last when the bats are released into the wild. Friendships are important for vampire bats: They result in food sharing, which is integral to keeping everyone fed and happy.

Science Friday’s Charismatic Creature Correspondent, producer Kathleen Davis, is back to convince Ira that this creature is worthy of entry into the Charismatic Creature Corner Hall of Fame. Joining them is Dan Riskin, an evolutionary biologist and adjunct professor of biology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga.

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Even In A Pandemic, Science Class Is In Session This academic year, school campuses across the United States look very different. Instead of crowded hallways and bustling classrooms, students are spaced six feet apart, sometimes behind plastic barriers, while others are at home on camera in a video call. Since some states do not weigh in on school operations, communities witnessed a myriad of learning approaches, such as fully virtual, fully in-person, or a mixture of both. All are subject to change as COVID-19 rates fluctuate throughout regions. For instance, on October 1, all New York City public schools reopened and shifted 500,000 students to in-person class. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, October 21, Boston Public Schools announced that it suspended all in-person learning as numbers of COVID-19 cases rose in the region.

Teachers, students, parents, caregivers, and staff have all felt the stress and uncertainty during the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation is academically, mentally, and emotionally overwhelming. While the pandemic has presented many challenges in learning, STEAM educators are adapting. They are coming up with creative solutions to continue to meet the needs of all students, like holding outdoor biology classes, dissecting flowers at home, and even delivering materials and devices to students who need them.

STEAM educators Rabiah Harris, Josa Rivas, and Rick Erickson join Ira for a roundtable discussion on how the pandemic has impacted school this academic year.

Can Trauma Today Affect Future Children? We typically think of a traumatic event as a sudden thing—something that has a beginning and an end. Stress and trauma can of course have lasting psychological effects—and, in some cases, physical effects such as elevated blood pressure or premature aging. But now researchers are considering whether stress to an organism can be somehow transmitted to that animal’s future offspring, via epigenetic changes that modify how genetic code is expressed in the young.

Bianca Jones Marlin is a neuroscientist studying such changes. In one study, she found that if researchers trained mice to associate the smell of almonds with an electric shock, the offspring of the mice tended to be afraid of an almond smell—even if they were raised separately, by foster parents that had no experience with the odor.

Jones Marlin joins Ira to talk about her research, and her experience as a young researcher starting her own lab in the neurosciences.

Making Peace With The End Of Your Species Welcome to week four of the Science Friday Book Club’s reading of ‘New Suns’! Our last short story assignment is ‘The Shadow We Cast Through Time’ by Indian writer Indrapramit Das. On a far-off planet, a human colony has been cut off from the rest of space: but they’ve also encountered other life, a fungus-like organism that infects and distorts human bodies into horned “demon”-like creatures. And as one human woman, Surya, approaches her death at their hands willingly, she makes a discovery that speaks of a new future for both species.

Author Indrapramit Das joins SciFri producer Christie Taylor and Journal of Science Fiction managing editor Aisha Matthews to talk about creating new worlds, and the “modern mythology” of writing science fiction and fantasy.

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The 2020 Nobel Prize winners have been announced, and among them is UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez, who split the prize with Roger Penrose and Reinhard Genzel. Ghez, also the fourth woman to ever win the Physics prize, won for her 1998 work that resolved a decades-old debate among astronomers: What lurks at the difficult-to-observe heart of the Milky Way?

After innovating new ways to peer through the obscuring gas and dust, Ghez and her team observed the orbits of stars around the galaxy’s seemingly empty center—and found they fit a pattern explained so far only by a supermassive black hole of at least four million times the mass of our Sun. In the decades since, she and her team have investigated the gravitational forces of the galactic center, and how well they match Einstein’s theory of relativity. (So far, her team has concluded, Einstein seems mostly right, but his theories may not fully explain what’s going on.)

Ira talks to Ghez about how our understanding of the center of the galaxy has evolved, plus the questions that still puzzle her.

Plus, off the coast of North Carolina is a large lagoon called the Pamlico Sound, which supports a diverse ecological landscape. It’s also home to the Pappy’s Lane Shipwreck, a World War II vessel that’s partially submerged in the Sound. This wreck has become an artificial reef, and the life that surrounds it, big and small, is ripe for research.

Just as humans have their own microbiomes, which are different for everyone, shipwrecks have microbiomes, too. Scientists study them to better understand what’s living on these sunken ships, and how to preserve them for future generations.

While the vessel is not a natural part of the Sound, its role as an artificial reef makes it an important part of the ecosystem. By better understanding its microbes, scientists hope to help preserve this non-renewable cultural artifact.

Joining Ira to talk about the marvelous microbes on the Pappy’s Lane Shipwreck is Erin Field, assistant professor of biology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.

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Solar System Smackdown: Mars Vs. Venus One of the fiercest hunts in the solar system is the scientific search for signs of extraterrestrial life—whether that’s in a methane ocean on Titan, under the icy crusts of Europa or Enceladus, in newly discovered subsurface salty lakes of Mars or, in the case of hypothetical long-dead fossils, in the rocks of ancient Martian river deltas.

But just as the next Mars rover—equipped with life-sensing instruments of all kinds—is barreling toward the Red Planet for a February landing, comes news from another planet. A research team writing in Nature in September say they’ve found high concentrations of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus. That much phosphine is not known to exist without help from bacteria—and researchers dating all the way back to Carl Sagan have suggested that the thick, acidic clouds of Venus would be a plausible place to harbor microscopic, extreme-loving life.

Is this a good reason to send more missions to Venus? Or is Mars still the best candidate for investment of finite resources? Science Friday producers Katie Feather and Christie Taylor host this completely made-up argument about which planet is the best bet for finding life, with help from genetics and astrobiology researcher Jaime Cordova, and planetary scientist Briony Horgan.

A Breakthrough In A Mollusk Mystery Freshwater mussels in the United States are having a bad time. It’s estimated that 70 percent of freshwater mussel species in North America are extinct or imperiled—a shocking number.

There’s a good chance you haven’t heard about this. Mussels aren’t the most engaging creatures, and they don’t pull at the heartstrings like easy anthropomorphised mammals. These mussels also aren’t the ones that wind up on a restaurant’s seafood platter. But mussels play an extremely important role in aquatic ecosystems, so scientists are doing their best to figure out what’s going on with their drastically declining populations.

Scientists recently discovered 17 viruses present in mussels in the Clinch River, a waterway in Tennessee and Virginia, where about 80,000 mussels have died since 2016. This is a huge breakthrough in a mystery that has plagued researchers for years—though it may just be one piece of evidence for a multi-dimensional decline.

Joining Ira to talk about mussels in trouble are Jordan Richard, a fish and wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Madison, Wisconsin, and Eric Leis, a parasitologist and fish biologist at the La Crosse Fish Health Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin.

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The news hit us overnight: President Trump, the First Lady, and at least one member of the president’s staff tested positive for COVID-19.

Just before 1 a.m. ET, the president tweeted that “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”

Sean Conley, the White House physician, confirmed the positive COVID test and said that, “The President and First Lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence.” The president reportedly has mild symptoms of the virus.

Joining Ira to talk about the medical ramifications and possibilities presented by the president’s infection with COVID-19 is Angela Rasmussen, an associate research scientist in the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York, New York.

Plus, this week, the U.S. had its first televised presidential debate of the election season. It was interesting, to say the least. During the debate, the President’s COVID-19 response came under question, prompting President Trump to allege the U.S. is just weeks away from a COVID-19 vaccine.

This isn’t the first time Trump has claimed something along these lines. In fact, he’s repeatedly said he wants a vaccine before election day. But is rushing out a vaccine possible—or safe?

Joining Ira for another round of Fact Check Your Feed—election edition, this time—is Angela Rasmussen, associate professor in the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health in New York, New York. She also explains why New York City has not yet reached herd immunity, and fact checks Trump’s claims that the Obama administration botched its H1N1 response.

And, the Science Friday Book Club is back! Imagine: A planet inhabited by parasitic life forms that turn human settlers into demonic figures. An aging woman who just wants to live in peace in a “dumb house” with no technological upgrades. A woman who starts to experience the presence of otherworldly visitors. A taxi driver who takes tourists from other planets on rides far above the New York City skyline.

And, in the case of Darcie Little Badger’s short story “Kelsey and the Burdened Breath,” a young woman helps the last breaths of the dying, literally their souls or “shimmers,” depart for the next adventure. That is, until she is asked to track down one that has committed the unthinkable: murder and cannibalism of other souls.

All these are stories in the Nisi Shawl-edited collection, New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction By People Of Color, this fall’s Science Friday Book Club pick. Over the next five weeks, we’ll talk about stories from the book, starting with Little Badger’s story about burdens—literal, metaphorical, and metaphysical.

SciFri Book Club captain Christie Taylor kicks off the first in of a series of conversations about short stories from New Suns with Aisha Matthews, managing editor of The Journal of Science Fiction, and Darcie Little Badger, a Lipan Apache writer and author of the New Suns story “Kelsey and the Burdened Breath.”

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Down a long, single-lane road in the most northern part of California is Karuk territory—one of the largest Indigenous tribes in the state. It’s here that Bill Tripp’s great-grandmother, who was born in the 1800s, taught him starting as a 4-year-old how to burn land on purpose.

“She took me outside—she was over 100 years old—and walked up the hill with her walker,” Tripp recalled, “and handed me a box of stick matches and told me to burn a line from this point to that point.”

Those cultural burns—or prescribed burns, as they’re often called now by fire agencies—are a form of keeping wildfire in check, a practice the state and federal agencies do use, but experts say isn’t leaned on enough as a fire prevention tactic.

Climate change is a driving factor of California wildfires, but so is a build-up of excess fuels. That’s often attributed to a century of fire suppression dating back to the era of the Great Fire of 1910.

But what experts say is often missing from this conversation is the racist removal of Native American people from California. Along with their physical beings, the knowledge of taking care of the land was also removed resulting in overgrown forests, experts say.

Read the rest of this story at ScienceFriday.com.

Plus, the neurologist Oliver Sacks died just over five years ago after a sudden diagnosis of metastatic cancer. Over his long career, Sacks explored mysteries of both human mental abnormalities and the natural world. Endlessly empathetic and curious, Sacks shared his clinical observations through a series of books and articles, and appeared on Science Friday many times to discuss his work.

A new film released this week describes Sacks’ life through his own words and reflections from those close to him—including the story behind the book ‘Awakenings,’ which later became a major motion picture and propelled Sacks into worldwide prominence. It also details his difficult childhood, his addiction to amphetamines in young adulthood, and his homosexuality, including three decades of celibacy before he found love in the last four years of his life.

Ric Burns, director of the film Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, joins Ira to talk about the life and legacy of Oliver Sacks. The film premieres nationwide this week on the Kino Marquee and Film Forum virtual platforms.

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This fall, there’s a new apple all around town. After 20 years of development, the Cosmic Crisp has landed.

Today, we're bringing you an episode of another podcast called The Sporkful. They’re a James Beard Award-winning show that uses food as a lens to talk about science, history, race, culture, and the ideal way to layer the components of a PB&J.

This episode is all about the Cosmic Crisp, how scientists developed it, and how it got that dazzling name.

Guests: Helen Zaltzman is the host of The Allusionist podcast.

Dan Charles is a food and agriculture reporter at NPR.

Kate Evans is a horticulturist and the leader of the pome fruit breeding program at Washington State University.

Kathryn Grandy is Chief Marketing Officer for Proprietary Variety Management.

Footnotes & Further Reading: For more episodes, subscribe to The Sporkful podcast.

Credits: The Sporkful is produced by Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Jared O'Connell and Harry Huggins.

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Peak wildfire season is just beginning on the West Coast, but 2020 is already another unprecedented year. In California, more than 2.2 million acres have burned so far this year, beating an all-time record of 1.6 million set just two years ago. And in the Pacific Northwest, where Portland’s air quality hit the worst in the world on Monday, raging fires have produced never-before-seen poor air quality that threatens the health of millions. More than 500,000 people in California, Washington and Oregon are under evacuation orders, and dozens of people have died.

Kerry Klein of Valley Public Radio in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Erin Ross talk about the toll of the fires in their regions, the role of climate change and other factors, and what the rest of the fire season may bring.

Plus, with record heat and fires raging in the American west, and the Gulf Coast facing still more hurricane activity, is climate change becoming a more prominent issue for U.S. voters?

Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts thinks so. He recently repelled a primary challenge in what he calls “a referendum on the Green New Deal.” Now, just weeks before the November elections, candidates from both parties are forced to confront hazards worsened by climate change.

Senator Markey joins Ira to discuss the Green New Deal, energy options, and environmental policy priorities for this election year—and many years to come.

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These Moss Are Living Their Best Life—Under Rocks Desert mosses live a much different life than their cousins in lush, water-rich forests. In fact, they spend most of their time dormant: dried out, waiting for the rare rainfall to bring them to life so they can grow and reproduce. Once exposed to water, though, these same mosses can re-animate quickly—within minutes they’re back to photosynthesizing.

And in research published in PLoS One this summer, scientists working in the Mojave Desert discovered another bryophyta trick. They found some moss species were using rocks as sun shades, preventing them from drying out as quickly. But not just any rock will do—with the help of semi-translucent quartz, moss are still able to receive small amounts of sunlight, thriving in small shady oases for weeks past the most recent rainfall.

Science Friday producer Christie Taylor talks to Jenna Ekwealor, a co-author on the research and PhD candidate at the University of California-Berkeley.

An Argument For The Benefits Of Not Bathing If the idea of not showering every day makes you feel icky, how about not showering for years? Writer James Hamblin says he stopped showering five years ago and never looked back. He says his skin has never been better, thanks to his healthy, well-functioning skin microbiome. Hamblin joins Ira to talk about his new book Clean: The New Science of Skin, breaking the rules when it comes to cleanliness, and discovering the benefits of skipping that shower.

COVID-19 Vaccine Developers Promise Not To Rush Testing Pharmaceutical companies are racing to find a vaccine for COVID-19. And there is a huge financial incentive to be the first to produce the first vaccine. But as President Donald Trump promises a vaccine “very soon,” nine of the biggest pharma companies signed a letter that pledged not to put profit—or politics—over sound science.

Science writer Maggie Koerth talks about that letter, as well as bad news for a vaccine clinical trial, which paused this week after an unexplained illness in a participant.

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New York City’s skyline is dominated by tall skyscrapers—but there’s a surprising amount of forest in the city known as a concrete jungle. Tree canopy actually covers about 20% of the city. In fact, woodlands are one of the few natural resources the city has.

Reporter Clarisa Diaz, in collaboration with John Upton from Climate Central, shares how the city’s green spaces, both large and small, are needed to create an urban forest ecosystem in the face of climate change. Plus, forester David Nowak talks about the science behind planting an urban forest, and how to determine the value of a tree.

Plus, while all eyes are currently on the COVID-19 pandemic, the coronavirus isn’t the only disease circulating the world. Lockdowns have hindered access to medical care, and supply chains for both tests and medications have been disrupted. With countries allocating limited public health resources to battle COVID-19, longstanding public health threats like tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS may be at risk of resurging.

However, there is also hopeful news for communities facing HIV/AIDS. Last week, a study published in the journal Nature examined 64 unusual people who seem to be able to naturally keep HIV at bay. Researchers investigated what makes these so-called ‘elite controllers’ able to manage their infections. They now think powerful T cells—a type of white blood cell which helps regulate the immune system—may hold a clue to these cases.

Furthermore, earlier in the summer, a trial of a long-lasting injectable drug to prevent HIV infection was found to be at least as protective as the existing “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” or PrEP drug, which must be taken daily.

Health and science reporters Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times and Jon Cohen of Science join Ira to discuss recent HIV/AIDS developments, and to reflect on 40 years of AIDS research.

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How well you fare in fighting a new pathogen like SARS-CoV2 depends in large part on how your immune system responds to—and kills—the virus. The immune system’s job is to protect you from invasions, both right after you’re infected as well as when you encounter similar viruses in the future.

As the pandemic marches on, we still don’t know exactly how our immune systems tackle this virus. The people who get the sickest seem to have an exaggerated, but ineffective immune response that turns on their own bodies. Others have lasting symptoms, sometimes for months. Immune responses even seem to vary based on your sex.

Increasingly, research suggests that COVID-19 is a disease like many others, at least in some important ways. Your body remembers the virus, and may therefore fight it more effectively the next time you encounter it—which has big implications for eventually developing an effective vaccine.

Immunobiologist Deepta Bhattacharya and New York Times science journalist Katherine J. Wu talk to Ira about the complicated and varied response of the immune system to SARS-CoV2—and why current research suggests we can be optimistic about gaining long-lasting immunity from future COVID-19 vaccines.

Plus, cephalopods—mollusks like octopus, squid, and cuttlefish—seem to universally excite people. Many marine enthusiasts have a favorite, from the color-changing octopus to the multi chambered nautilus.

But these smart, colorful undersea creatures also raise a lot of questions. How do they move? How do they change shape and color? How intelligent are they? How do researchers study these animals?

Squid biologist Sarah McAnulty answers listeners’ questions, and catches us up on the latest cephalopod news.

And Hurricane Laura made landfall Wednesday night in Louisiana after strengthening from a Category 1 to a Category 4 storm in less than a day. As residents try to find shelter in pandemic-safe ways, meteorologists are warning of an “unsurvivable” storm surge reaching as far as 30 miles inland.

National Geographic editor Nsikan Akpan describes the factors that have caused the storm to so quickly gain strength. Plus, why recent changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations on who should get a coronavirus test and when people should quarantine are alarming epidemiologists and other experts—and other news from the week.

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Dealing With The Aftermath Of Iowa’s Devastating Derecho It’s been more than a week since the state of Iowa was hit by a surprise visitor: a line of thunderstorms with unusual power and duration, known as a derecho. The storms swept from South Dakota to Ohio in the course of a day. At its most powerful, the derecho hit Iowa’s Linn County and surroundings with hurricane-force winds amid the rain. Crops like corn and soybeans were flattened, while thousands of homes were damaged—if not completely destroyed.

Ira talks to Iowa Public Radio reporter Kate Payne and University of Northern Iowa meteorology professor Alan Czarnetzki about the devastating effects and unpredictable power of last week’s storm.

An Argument For The Benefits Of—Not Bathing COVID has us all taking personal hygiene a lot more seriously these days. But for some, staying home during the pandemic has them rethinking their hygiene routines, including not showering.

If the idea of not showering every day makes you feel icky, how about not showering for years? Writer James Hamblin says he stopped showering five years ago and never looked back. He says his skin has never been better, thanks to his healthy, well-functioning skin microbiome.

In his new book Clean: The New Science of Skin, Hamblin challenges the conventional wisdom about staying clean, and digs into the history of why we started showering in the first place. He discovered our modern notions of cleanliness have more to do with marketing and advertising than what’s really good for your skin. Hamblin joins Ira to talk about breaking the rules when it comes to cleanliness and discovering the benefits of skipping that shower.

Should We Conserve Parasites? Some Scientists Say Yes The idea of a parasite—an organism that needs a host organism—has always captured our attention and has been the theme of countless movies, from the sci-fi horror film Alien to the Oscar-winning movie Parasite. But a group of scientists say that parasites undeservedly get a bad reputation, and that some of them should even be conserved. They published their 12-point parasite conservation plan in the journal Biological Conservation. Parasite ecologist Skylar Hopkins and museum curator Kayce Bell, who are both authors on the recent article, talk about the role of parasites in the ecosystem and how a conservation plan might work.

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Throughout the pandemic, testing has continued to be one of the biggest issues, particularly in the United States. Some scientists say that the solution is to rethink our COVID-19 testing strategy, focusing on making faster, cheaper tests. While these more cost-effective tests may be lower in sensitivity than the PCR tests and perhaps not as accurate, they would allow for more people to get tested and receive faster results. The system can also help improve case tracking—which is essential as more people return to work, school, and daily lives. Eric Topol, the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, talks about how these tests can look ahead for infectious patients rather than those already infected. Plus, epidemiologist Anne Wylie walks us through what the process would look like to develop a rapid test.

Plus, we’re back with another installment of the Charismatic Creature Corner! This is Science Friday’s place to highlight creatures (broadly defined) that we think are charismatic (even more broadly defined).

This month, we’re bringing you an ancient ant relative with a possibly offputting name: the Hell Ant. This insect was a subspecies of ants that lived in the Cretaceous period, when T. rexes and velociraptors roamed the earth. The largest hell ants were about a centimeter and a half long, which isn’t much different than some modern ants.

What makes hell ants so cool, however, is their dramatic headgear. They sport jaws that look like mammoth tusks, sticking out of their faces and moving up and down, a motion similar to our own jaws. Hell ants also had horn-like protrusions coming out of their foreheads, which may have helped them catch and eat prey.

SciFri’s new Charismatic Creatures Correspondent Kathleen Davis tries to convince Ira that these extinct insects are worthy of the coveted Charismatic Creature title, with the help of Phil Barden, assistant professor of biology at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey.

Also, climate activists have struggled to convince lawmakers to meaningfully reduce the country’s carbon footprint. Now, new research ties air pollution’s monetary cost to arguments for change. As Vox reports, a Duke University researcher presented findings to Congress last week that air pollution’s effects are roughly twice as bad as previously thought, potentially costing the United States as much as $700 billion per year in avoidable death, illness, and lost productivity—more than the estimated price tag for transitioning to clean energy.

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En el verano del 2019, Rosa Vásquez Espinoza bioquímica y candidata a Ph.D. en la Universidad de Michigan Ann Arbor, fue en una expedición al Río Hirviente en la Amazonía peruana para colectar microbios. Ahora, está tratando de comprender el papel que juegan los microbios en la creación de productos naturales, y cómo esa maquinaria se podría utilizar más adelante para manufacturar posibles medicamentos y terapéuticos. En esta nueva entrevista de SciFri en Español, recipiente de la beca en medio de comunicación de la AAAS (siglas en inglés) Attabey Rodríguez Benítez habla con Vásquez Espinosa sobre su investigación en el Río Hirviente de Perú.

¡Queremos saber tu opinión! ¿Estas interesado en más contenido multilingüe de SciFri? ¡Tenemos un favor que pedirte! ¡Completa nuestra encuesta para ayudarnos a crear más contenido!

Are you interested in more multilingual content from SciFri? We’ve got a favor to ask! Please fill out our survey to help us create future content!

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Last month, former Vice President Joe Biden unveiled his plan for climate change—a sweeping $2 trillion dollar platform that aims to tighten standards for clean energy, decarbonize the electrical grid by 2035, and reach carbon neutrality for the whole country by 2050. Biden’s plan, like the Green New Deal, purports to create millions of jobs at a time when people are reeling financially from the pandemic—proposing employment opportunities including retrofitting buildings, converting electrical grids and vehicles, and otherwise transforming the country into an energy efficient, emissions-free economy.

But are the foundations of this plan on solid scientific ground? Yes, say Ira’s guests, political scientist Leah Stokes and energy systems engineer Sally Benson. Stokes and Benson run through Biden’s proposals, explaining what’s ambitious, what’s pragmatic, and what people might show up to vote for.

Deep in the largest rainforest of Latin America is the Peruvian Boiling River, a name earned from water that can reach 100°C—or about 212°F.

While the river is hot enough to cook any animal unfortunate enough to wind up in it, its microbes don’t mind. They can handle the heat—and their odd survival mechanisms might have medicinal value.

Joining Ira to talk about these tiny heat-seekers and the Peruvian Boiling River is Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical biology at the University of Michigan.

See photos and video of Rosa Vásquez Espinoza’s expedition to the Boiling River and learn more about her research on extreme microbes in a feature article on SciFri.

It’s been a busy week for science news. Cities are still grappling with COVID-19, and in New York City, previously the country’s largest coronavirus hotspot, health commissioner Oxiris Barbot has resigned. She cited Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handling of the pandemic as her reason for doing so, issuing a scathing statement on her way out the door. Barbot is just one of the many health officials around the country who have butted heads with the politicians that oversee them during the pandemic.

And across the world, devastating explosions in Beirut, Lebanon have injured thousands and killed several dozen. As officials piece together why this happened, they’re pointing to a warehouse of ammonium nitrate as the source of the blasts.

Joining Ira to talk about these stories, and other science news of the week, is Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American in New York, New York.

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Astronauts have conducted all sorts of experiments in the International Space Station—from observations of microgravity on the human to body to growing space lettuce. But recently, cosmonauts bioengineered human cartilage cells into 3D structures aboard the station, using a device that utilizes magnetic levitation.

The results were recently published in the journal Science Advances. Electrical engineer Utkan Demirci and stem cell biologist Alysson Muotri what removing gravity can reveal about basic biological questions, and how you design experiments to run in space.

Major League Baseball’s season opened to great fanfare last week, amid the pandemic. But 18 players and staff of the Miami Marlins have already tested positive for COVID-19—forcing the team to pause their season until at least next week. Meanwhile, the NBA has quarantined their entire roster in a bubble in the Magic Kingdom in Florida.

Sports reporter Ben Cohen and epidemiologist Zachary Binney talk about the strategies and effectiveness of different leagues as competitive sports attempt to make a COVID-19 comeback.

Ketchup has long been central to American culture. We use it in hot dogs, burgers, fries—and the list goes on. But have you ever wondered why we even call it ‘ketchup,’ or where the condiment came from?

It turns out there are many words related to food—like restaurant, umami, and “rocky road”—that have an interesting science backstory. To trace the origins of these words, Science Friday’s word nerd Johanna Mayer joins John Dankosky to talk about the origins of the word ketchup, and the new season of her podcast ‘Science Diction.’

As American pharmaceutical company Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate entered Phase 3 of human clinical trials this week—an important step in what is still an early phase of its development—Russia claims a vaccine of its own will be approved for use as soon as mid-August, prompting safety concerns. But questions about vaccines extend far beyond who is first. What happens next for the people around the world waiting for protection from the pandemic? As Science Magazine reports, rich nations have placed hundreds of millions of advance orders for successful vaccines, while poorer countries worry that there will be little left for everyone else.

Maggie Koerth, senior science reporter for FiveThirtyEight, discusses this story and more news from the week, including the discovery of 100-million-year-old microbes living beneath the ocean floor.

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Science Diction is back! This time around, the team is investigating the science, language, and history of food. First up: Digging into America's favorite condiment, ketchup!

At the turn of the 20th century, 12 young men sat in the basement of the Department of Agriculture, eating meals with a side of borax, salicylic acid, or formaldehyde. They were called the Poison Squad, and they were part of a government experiment to figure out whether popular food additives were safe. (Spoiler: Many weren’t.) Food manufacturers weren’t pleased with the findings, but one prominent ketchup maker paid attention. Influenced by these experiments, he transformed ketchup into the all-American condiment that we know and love today. Except ketchup—both the sauce and the word—didn't come from the United States. The story of America’s favorite condiment begins in East Asia.

Want more Science Diction? Subscribe on Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Harvey Wiley (back row, third from left) and the members of The Poison Squad. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration)

Members of the Poison Squad dining in the basement of the Department of Agriculture. Harvey Wiley occasionally ate with them, to offer encouragement and support. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration)

The members of the Poison Squad came up with their own inspirational slogan, which hung on a sign outside the dining room. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration )

Guest Alan Lee is a freelance linguist and native Hokkien speaker.

Footnotes And Further Reading The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum tells the very entertaining history of Harvey Wiley, the early days of food regulation in the United States, and, of course, the Poison Squad.

The Language of Food by Dan Jurafsky is a word nerd’s dream, and contains more on ketchup’s early history. Special thanks to Dan Jurafsky for providing background information on the early history of ketchup for this episode.

Can't get enough ketchup history? Check out Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment With Recipesby Andrew F. Smith.

Learn more about ketchup's early origins in Dan Jurafsky's Slate article on "The Cosmopolitan Condiment."

Credits Science Diction is hosted and produced by Johanna Mayer. Our editor and producer is Elah Feder. We had additional story editing from Nathan Tobey. Our Chief Content Office is Nadja Oertelt. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with help from Danya AbdelHameid. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer, and they wrote our version of the “Song of the Poison Squad.” We had research help from Cosmo Bjorkenheim and Attabey Rodríguez Benítez. Sound design and mastering by Chris Wood.

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Since the beginning of the pandemic, hospitals have been treating and triaging an influx of COVID-19 patients. Hundreds of thousands of seriously ill patients have been hospitalized, with some having to stay and receive care for months at a time.

But now as some of those patients return home, hospitals are opening post-COVID clinics to help with their transition. Health care professionals are monitoring the recovery process and taking note of persisting health issues from the disease.

Mafuzur Rahman, clinician and leader of the post-discharge COVID-19 clinic at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, New York, and Margaret Wheeler, a physician at the Richard Fine’s People Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, talk about the health effects they have seen in their patients and what patients may need for recovery.

A federal court in California recently vacated the three popular dicamba herbicides—Xtendimax, Fexipan, and Engenia—after the court determined the EPA violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) by registering the chemicals for use. Environmental advocates rejoiced, while farm groups lamented the decision as yet another hurdle for farmers to overcome during a difficult year.

More herbicides could face legal challenges in the coming years. But they were once part of a golden era of U.S. agriculture, and a key player in the rise of modern industrialized growing systems.

There are over 3,000 mosquitoes, but only a handful feast on blood, like the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti. Other mammals also have blood running through their veins, but are bit less frequently. So why do mosquitoes love humans so much?

New research on these bugs look into the cause, investigating mosquitoes’ preference for certain mammal odors and human population densities. Another paper examines a potential gene solution to decrease mosquito bites—thus lowering transmission of mosquito-borne diseases. Joining Ira to talk about the latest research and more mosquito science is “Lindy” McBride, biology assistant professor at Princeton University and Jake Tu, biochemistry professor at Virginia Tech.

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How we smell has been a bit of a mystery to scientists. Other senses are easier to understand: For example, it’s possible to predict what a color will look like based on its wavelength. But predicting what a new molecule will smell like is more difficult.

Our sense of smell can be quite complex. Take the delicious smell of morning coffee—that aroma is made up of more than 800 individual molecules.

How does our brain keep track of the millions of scents that we sniff? To find out, a group of scientists gave mice different molecules to smell, and tracked what patterns were formed in their brains. Their results were recently published in the journal Nature.

Neurobiologist Robert Datta, one of the authors on that study, joins Ira to discuss how our brains make patterns every time we sniff, and how wine aficionados train their noses to decode the different scents in wine.

To understand variation in living things, scientists often compare specimens, recording the details. This kind of scientific investigation has long been practiced: Charles Darwin, for example, made sketches of everything from finch beaks to barnacles shells in his field notebooks. Today, natural history museums store these catalogues in shelves and drawers of preserved specimens.

But scientists can also draw from less likely forums. Recently, one team of researchers—an art historian and a plant biologist—documented the different plant species represented in historical paintings and sculptures. Their results were published in the journal Trends in Plant Science. Plant biologist Ive de Smet and art historian David Vergauwen discuss what a 17th century painting by Giovanni Stanchi can reveal about watermelon evolution, as well as other trends in strawberries, potatoes, and other plants spotted in works of art.

Have you ever met a friend for dinner at a restaurant, only to have trouble hearing each other talk over the din of other diners? And as we get older, this phenomenon only gets worse and can be compounded by age-related hearing loss and conditions like tinnitus.

Unfortunately there is no silver bullet for tinnitus or other forms of hearing loss, and researchers don’t even understand all the ways in which the auditory system can go awry. But we now have more sophisticated technology to help us cope with it.

Nowadays, there are over-the-counter hearing aids and assistive listening devices that connect with your smartphone. Certain tech allows you to amplify softer sounds and cancel out the noise of a crowded room—it can even focus on the sound waves created by the person you’re speaking with.

Ira chats with David Owen, New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World about the industry that’s helping millions of Americans cope with hearing loss.

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As we approach August, many of our young listeners and their parents are starting to think about going back to school. Usually, that might mean getting new notebooks and pencils, and the excitement of seeing classmates after a summer apart.

But COVID-19 makes this upcoming school year different. Big districts, including Los Angeles and San Diego public schools, will be completely remote this fall. Other districts are looking at hybrid programs, with some time in the classroom and some at home. Still others want kids to return to the classroom full-time.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says schools should adjust plans based on how many coronavirus cases are in the community. Schools with little transmission may be able to go back to the classroom, but with more sanitation efforts and no sports events. For communities with high levels of spread, the CDC says stronger measures are needed, like staggered arrivals and dismissals, kids staying in one classroom, or all-remote education. However, Vice President Mike Pence said this week that CDC guidance should not dictate whether schools open for in-classroom instruction.

Joining Ira to talk about what to consider in back-to-school plans are Pedro Noguera, dean of the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and Laura Fuchs, a high school history teacher and secretary of the Washington Teachers’ Union in Washington, D.C.

In just a few weeks, NASA is scheduled to launch its newest rover in the direction of Mars. Perseverance, the formal name for the Mars 2020 mission’s rover, is now safely at Cape Canaveral, strapped to its Atlas V rocket, waiting only for the launch window to open.

If all goes well, Perseverance will begin roving Mars next February. Once on Mars, it will join its cousin Curiosity in combing through the dust and rocks of the red planet—but where Curiosity hunts inside a meteor crater for water and other signs of suitability for life, Perseverance will scour an ancient river delta for the traces left by potential microscopic life.

Ira talks to two Perseverance masterminds, deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan and aerospace engineer Diana Trujillo, about the challenges of building for space exploration, and what it takes to conduct science experiments 70 million miles from Earth.

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Over the past months, our Degrees of Change series has looked at some of the many ways our actions affect the climate, and how our changing climate is affecting us—from the impact of the fashion industry on global emissions to the ways in which coastal communities are adapting to rising tides.

But beyond the graphs and figures, how do you get people to actually take action? And are small changes in behavior enough—or is a reshaping of society needed to deal with the climate crisis?

Climate journalist Eric Holthaus and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, founder of the Urban Ocean Lab, talk with Ira about creating a climate revolution, the parallels between the climate crisis and other conversations about social structures like Black Lives Matter, and the challenges of working towards a better future in the midst of the chaos of 2020. Then Matthew Goldberg, a researcher at the Yale Project on Climate Communication, shares some tips for having difficult climate conversations with friends and family.

More than 200 scientists this week wrote a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO), reporting there’s a good chance that COVID-19 can be spread through the air. While the WHO has previously said most transmission happens from direct contact with droplets from an infected person’s cough or sneeze, these experts say the virus can actually stay suspended in the air. If this is true, it’s bad news for people who gather in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. A lot of questions remain, however, about if this is accurate.

Joining Ira to talk about this story, and more is Nsikan Akpan, a science editor at National Geographic, based in Washington, D.C.

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It’s the start to a holiday weekend, which often means spending time outdoors, whether that’s going to the beach, on a hike, or grilling in a park. But not everyone feels safe enjoying the great outdoors—and we’re not talking about getting mosquito bites or sunburns.

In late May, a white woman, Amy Cooper, called the police on a Black bird watcher who asked her to leash her dog. This incident felt familiar to many other Black outdoor enthusiasts, many of whom had encountered similar experiences of racism outside.

To understand why the outdoors is an unwelcoming place for some people, we need to look back at our violent history. Joining Ira to talk about this is Dr. Carolyn Finney, author of the book Black Faces, White Spaces. She is also a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.

And later in the conversation, Ira is joined by two scientists, biology graduate student Corina Newsome from Statesboro, Georgia, and exploration geoscientist Tim Shin from Houston, Texas. They’ll talk about what it’s like to do fieldwork while Black, and what responsibility academic institutions should have in keeping their students safe.

As coronavirus cases surge across the U.S., including in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and California, it’s more important than ever to have an accurate and real-time understanding of transmission. Epidemiologists have been measuring the spread of the virus based on the number of individual people who test positive. But depending on when people get tested, and how long it takes to get their results, confirmed cases can lag days behind actual infections.

Luckily, there’s another way to find out where people are getting sick: The virus that causes COVID-19 can be detected in feces, and for months, researchers have been studying whether sampling sewage systems can help identify new outbreaks faster.

Scientific American technology editor Sophie Bushwick joins Ira to talk about the value of sewage tracing for COVID-19. Plus, a new sparrow song has gone viral in Canada, and why summer fireworks can damage not only your hearing, but also your lungs.

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In the U.S., we’re heading into the fourth month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing and lockdowns have taken a toll on everyone’s mental and emotional well-being—including children and teens, many of whom may be having trouble processing what’s going on.

Psychologists Archana Basu and Robin Gurwitch discuss the unique issues the pandemic brings up for children and teens. They talk about how parents and caregivers can support the mental health of the kids and teens in their lives, helping them better cope with isolation and uncertainty, as well as learning remotely during the pandemic.

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Earlier this month, three major tech companies publicly distanced themselves from the facial recognition tools used by police: IBM said they would stop all such research, while Amazon and Microsoft said they would push pause on any plans to give facial recognition technology to domestic law enforcement. And just this week, the city of Boston banned facial surveillance technology entirely.

Why? Facial recognition algorithms built by companies like Amazon have been found to misidentify people of color, especially women of color, at higher rates—meaning when police use facial recognition to identify suspects who are not white, they are more likely to arrest the wrong person.

CEOs are calling for national laws to govern this technology, or programming solutions to remove the racial biases and other inequities from their code. But there are others who want to ban it entirely—and completely re-envision how AI is developed and used in communities.

In this SciFri Extra, we continue a conversation between producer Christie Taylor, Deborah Raji from NYU’s AI Now Institute, and Princeton University’s Ruha Benjamin about how to pragmatically move forward to build artificial intelligence technology that takes racial justice into account—whether you’re an AI researcher, a tech company, or a policymaker.

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A Crisis Of Health In Healthcare Workers Content Warning: This segment contains talk of suicide. For help for people considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Depression and anxiety are extremely common in healthcare workers, and they have higher rates of suicide than the general public—doctors in particular are twice as likely to die by suicide. That’s when the world is operating normally. Now, healthcare workers are also dealing with a devastating pandemic, and the uncertainty surrounding a new disease. And some healthcare workers are using what little emotional labor they have left to advocate in the streets and online for racial justice.

Joining Ira to talk about burnout in the healthcare industry are Steven McDonald, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, and Kali Cyrus, a psychiatrist and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C.

Insights From International Doctors On The Frontlines Of The Pandemic

In March, governors Andrew Cuomo in New York and Gavin Newsome in California put out a call for medical professionals to come to their states to help with the COVID-19 crisis. Many of those on the frontlines aren’t just from out of the state, but from out of the country. International medical professionals are estimated to make up a quarter of working doctors in the U.S.

Journalist Max Blau talks about the role of international doctors in the U.S. medical system and how they have been affected during the pandemic. Then international resident physicians Quinn Lougheide and Muhammad Jahanzaib Anwar share stories from aiding COVID-19 patients in Bronx, New York.

PG&E Guilty Plea Sets A Precedent For Climate Change Culpability

In 2018, the devastating Camp Fire wildfire swept through northern California, killing 84 people. Utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric, or PG&E, was deemed to be responsible for the spark that caused the fire. This week, the company pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter for the deaths, marking the first case of its kind. The decision sets a precedent for future legal battles over holding companies accountable for climate change, and how that burden should be split.

Vox staff writer Umair Irfan joins Ira to talk about the PG&E case, plus more on why a second round of COVID-19 lockdowns might not work as well as the first shelter in place orders.

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During the pandemic, immunologist Anthony Fauci has gained fame as “America’s doctor.” He’s a leading scientist in the government’s response to COVID-19, and a celebrated teller of truths—uncomfortable as they may be—like how long the world may have to wait for a vaccine, or the lack of evidence for using the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine on COVID-19 patients.

He’s also not new to public health crises created by new pathogens. If history is any indicator, it is not a matter of if, but when another outbreak of disease will come, Fauci says.

“There will be emerging and re-emerging infections in our history, it’s been that way forever. We’re seeing it now. And we will continue to see emerging and re-emerging infections,” Fauci tells Ira during the interview. “We can expect, but you can’t predict when. It may be well beyond the lifespan of you and I. But sooner or later, we’re going to get other serious outbreaks. So we have to maintain the memory of a degree of preparedness that would allow us to respond in an effective way the next time we get something like this.”

He and Ira reflect on the AIDS epidemic, lessons learned from past pandemics, and what the path out of the COVID-19 crisis may look like.

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This week, the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans by police brutality and racial inequality continue to fuel demonstrations around the nation. In many cities, police are using tear gas, rubber bullets, and other control tactics on protesters.

A history of 50 years of research reveals what makes a protest safe for participants and police alike. The findings show that police response is what makes the biggest difference: de-escalating and building trust supports peaceful demonstrations rather than responding with weapons and riot gear.

And, as thousands of protesters risk abrasive, cough-inducing tear gas and mass arrests, health researchers are concerned a militant response could increase demonstrators’ risk of acquiring COVID-19.

Maggie Koerth, senior science writer for FiveThirtyEight and a Minneapolis, Minnesota resident, joins Ira to discuss these stories.

Dermatologists presented with a new patient have a number of symptoms to look at in order to diagnose. Does the patient have a rash, bumps, or scaling skin? Is there redness, inflammation, or ulceration? For rare conditions a doctor may have never seen in person before, it’s likely that they were trained on photos of the conditions—or can turn to colleagues who may themselves have photos.

But in people with darker, melanin-rich skin, the same skin conditions can look drastically different, or be harder to spot at all—and historically, there have been fewer photos of these conditions on darker-skinned patients. And for these patients, detection and diagnosis can be life-saving: people of color get less melanoma, for example, but are also less likely to survive it.

Dr. Jenna Lester, who started one of the few clinics in the country to focus on such patients, explains the need for more dermatologists trained to diagnose and treat people with darker skin tones—and why the difference can be both life-saving and life-altering.

A cup of coffee first thing in the morning is a ritual—from grinding the beans to boiling the water and brewing your cup. But following those steps won’t always get you a consistent pour. Researchers developed a mathematical model to determine how the size of grind affects water flow and the amount of coffee that gets into the final liquid. Their results were published in the journal Matter.

Computational chemist Christopher Hendon, who was an author on that study, talks about how understanding atomic vibration, particle size distribution, and water chemistry can help you brew the perfect cup of coffee.

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One unintended consequence of families sheltering at home is that children’s vaccination rates have gone way down. In New York City, for example, vaccine doses for kids older than two dropped by more than 90 percent. That could mean new outbreaks of measles and whooping cough, even while we’re struggling with COVID-19.

Joining Ira to talk about decreasing vaccination rates are two pediatricians, James Campbell, professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, and Amanda Dempsey, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado Denver.

Electronic musician Grace Leslie makes music that creates a sense of calm—long notes held on the flute, creating rich tones, and layered sounds. But her method for creating her songs sets her apart from most other electronic musicians: Leslie collects heartbeats, neuroelectric activity, and other biofeedback with sensors on people’s bodies. She feeds this input into a computer, which then converts the data into flowing waves of sound.

As a researcher at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, she explores how the brain and body react to music at the university’s School of Music. Leslie joins Ira to talk about her methods for creating art, and the mysteries of why music elicits an emotional response from those who listen.

Hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug the president promoted as a treatment for COVID-19, has not been proven effective against the virus. And new research published in The Lancet, involving 96,000 patients around the world, found the drug is linked to irregular heartbeats and increased risk of death for people who take it. As a result, numerous trials to further understand the drug have been put on hold, including one planned by the World Health Organization.

IEEE Spectrum news editor Amy Nordrum joins Ira to explain what this means for the future of understanding hydroxychloroquine as a potential help against coronavirus. Plus, understanding false negative results in COVID-19 tests, engineering virus-killing masks, and how researchers found a way to trail elusive narwhals and record their sounds—all in the name of understanding these shy, sea ice-dwelling mammals better even as the world they depend on changes.

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The Trump administration is in the process of reversing nearly 100 environmental rules and regulations—threatening air, water, and public health. For example, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has relaxed enforcement for air pollution violations, allowing emissions to continue unchecked during the spread of a respiratory illness.

“We’ve never seen anything like the systematic rollback of all things environmental the way we have in this administration,” says David Uhlmann, director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program and the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor.

A History Of Environmental Policy Uhlmann looks back to years leading up to the push in pollution regulation in the U.S. and the establishment of the EPA in the 1970s. Some of the most catastrophic pollution events in U.S. history inspired the environmental protection efforts, from the historic Cuyahoga River fires in Ohio to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.

“I look at this decade, at both the challenges we face and the opportunities before us, and I’m reminded of the 1970s,” Uhlmann says. “I think we can, indeed we must, come together again around environmental issues, recognize the fact that there is no planet B. There’s no where else for us to go.”

The Public Health Challenge Of Our Time Air pollution is extremely harmful to human health, especially for children. Not only do these emissions exacerbate respiratory problems, they’re linked to asthma, ADHD, depression, and low birth weight in children. Gina McCarthy, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council and former EPA administrator, calls climate change “the biggest public health challenge of our time.”

But climate change does not impact everyone equally. Low-income communities are especially vulnerable to this kind of pollution, risks that are expected to get worse as climate change continues.

“It’s very important to be aware of how much more affected children, everyone in low income communities, and communities of color have been,” says Frederica Perera, founding director of the Center for Children’s Environmental Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “They have suffered disproportionate exposure to air pollution and they’ve more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change as well.”

In this chapter of Degrees of Change, Uhlmann discusses the history of environmental regulations, and how we got here. Then later in the segment, McCarthy and Perera talk about the link between EPA rollbacks, climate change, and public health.

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Fact Check My Feed: Finding The Falsehoods In ‘Plandemic’ Science Friday continues to weigh the truth and sift through the seemingly never-ending stream of misleading claims about the novel coronavirus. This week, virologist Angela Rasmussen joins Ira to help us decipher the uncertainties around this week’s COVID-19 headlines.

While what we know and don’t know about COVID-19 changes daily, some things are certain: Rasmussen lays out some of the many falsehoods in the viral “Plandemic” video that circulated last week. She also explains why it’s important to know that a small study that found coronavirus RNA in semen samples leaves many questions unanswered—and that the presence of viral RNA doesn’t necessarily indicate a sexually-transmitted virus. Plus, more fact-checking of misconceptions about herd immunity, and more.

Global Flare-ups Of COVID-19 Hot Spots Each country has tackled “flattening the curve” of COVID-19 cases in their own way and some countries were hailed as early successes in containing outbreaks. But two of these countries have seen recent increases: In reports earlier this week, Germany saw 900 new cases in a 24-hour period and as of Thursday, Singapore has identified more than 750 new cases, almost all linked to dormitories of foreign workers. Reporter Maggie Koerth of FiveThirtyEight.com talks about what the increasing numbers might mean for U.S. states that have started to reopen. She also discusses COVID-19 cases in Africa and South America, plus more science news of the week, including scientists that have identified heat-resistant algae that could help bleached corals.

Koji: The Mold You Want In Your Kitchen Koji-inoculated starches are crucial in centuries-old Asian foods like soy sauce and miso—and, now, inspiring new and creative twists from modern culinary minds.

Rich Shih and Jeremy Umansky, two food fanatics, have written a new book describing the near-magical workings of the fungus, which, like other molds, uses enzymes to break starches, fats, and proteins down into food for itself. It just so happens that, in the process, it’s making our food tastier.

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Coronavirus is still hitting the U.S. hard. And breaking down infections by race shows a striking pattern: Black, Latino, and Native American people are hit much harder than other communities.

National data shows black Americans account for nearly 30% of COVID-19 deaths, despite only being 13% of the population. In New York City, the epicenter of America’s epidemic, the death rate among black and Latino residents is more than double that of white and Asian residents.

Coronavirus is spreading on tribal lands, too. If Navajo Nation were a state, it would be behind only New York and New Jersey in infection rates. Native communities are also often categorized in the racial category of “other” in statewide infection data —making it hard to know just how bad COVID-19 is for Native people.

Joining guest host John Dankosky to talk about COVID-19 inequities are Uché Blackstock, physician and founder of Advancing Health Equity in Brooklyn, New York, Rebecca Nagle, journalist and citizen of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and David Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at UCLA’s medical school in Los Angeles.

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Navigating COVID-19 By The Numbers Ever since the first news about a new virus in China, we’ve been seeing projections, or models predicting how it might spread. But how are those models created? There’s a lot of math that goes into understanding what might come next.

Ira turns to a group of scientists who make their living in crunching the numbers—the people who make mathematical models to approximate different scenarios, trying to minimize loss of life. Sarah Cobey from the University of Chicago and Jeffrey Shaman from Columbia University share their work on the past, present and future of coronavirus spread, and explain how to understand the many models all trying to bring clarity to this very difficult pandemic.

A Pandemic Precedent—Set in 1918 In the spring of 1918, a new and virulent flu strain was documented at a military base in Kansas. Within weeks it had been observed in Queens, New York—and soon, spread all over the globe. By the time the flu petered out a year later, the world had suffered three distinct waves, killing somewhere between 17 and 50 million people, and heaping a fresh disaster atop the losses of World War I.

How well does the present resemble history—and are we at risk of repeating the staggering toll of the 1918 flu? Historian Catharine Arnold talks to Ira about stories from the past, and the events and choices that drove additional waves of infection and death.

Plus, Science Diction host Johanna Mayer on why the 1918 flu wasn’t really ‘Spanish’ at all.

Look through images taken during the 1918 flu, from the U.S. National Archives, in a gallery article.

Strokes In COVID-19 Patients, Plus Trauma In Healthcare Workers This week, a group of researchers observed five younger patients under the age of fifty that suffered from strokes. These patients either were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms. Their results were published online in a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Reporter Sophie Bushwick talks about this story, plus the trauma that frontline healthcare workers face during the pandemic, and other new research from the week.

Erosion Threatens A Unique Ecosystem

Indiana’s Lake Michigan shoreline is one of the most biodiverse places in the country. But that biodiversity is now washing away. Rebecca Thiele, energy and environment reporter at Indiana Public Broadcasting, unpacks the story.

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When you think of fungal infections, you might think athlete’s foot or maybe ringworm—itchy, irritating reactions on the skin. But other fungal diseases can cause much more serious illness. One of them is Valley Fever, caused by the soil fungus Coccidioides. In 2018, over 15,000 people were diagnosed with coccidioidomycosis, commonly known as Valley Fever, in the United States, mainly in the American West, and in parts of Mexico, and Central and South America. But the numbers could be much higher: The disease is commonly misdiagnosed and the hot spots are difficult to pin down. Plus, the endemic region could grow with climate change.

Science Friday digital producer Lauren Young takes us into the Central Valley in California—a Valley Fever hot spot—to learn more about how the disease spreads and the people it harms. She tells the story in a new feature on Methods, from Science Friday, using video, sound, and pictures, gives you a flavor of the challenges faced by scientists working to solve big problems.

Ira brings on Valley Public Radio reporter Kerry Klein, who helped us report this story, to tell us more about the communities Valley Fever is impacting and new treatments. He also talks with UCSF microbiologist Anita Sil to dig deep into fungal pathogens and the latest research.

This year’s Citizen Science Month may be winding down at the end of April, but you can help researchers collect and analyze their data all year long.

This week, citizen science platform Zooniverse has not one, but four projects you can help with: data analysis tasks that will hopefully calm, soothe, distract, and divert you from life in a pandemic. Whether it’s identifying cute raccoons in camera trap photos, looking for seasonal wind on Mars, identifying how antibiotics kills tuberculosis in petri dishes, or even transcribing the cursive of old letters from anti-slavery activists—Zooniverse wants to help you find diversion in data.

Ira talks about these projects—and how to get involved with Zooniverse—with co-lead Laura Trouille, vice president of citizen science at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.

Learn more about Zooniverse and other SciFri Citizen Science Month partners at sciencefriday.com/citizenscience. And join our citizen science newsletter for all the latest updates on our online events here!

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You Aren’t Alone In Grieving The Climate Crisis As the consequences of unchecked climate change come into sharper focus—wildfires in the Amazon and Australia, rising seas in low-lying Pacific Islands, mass coral bleaching around the world—what is to be done about the emotional devastation that people feel as a result?

In 2007, Australian eco-philosopher Glenn Albrecht described this feeling as homesickness “for a home that no longer exists,” which he called “solastalgia.” Others have settled on terms like “climate grief,” or, since environmental devastation can come without a changing climate, simply “ecological grief.”

For this chapter of Degrees of Change, Ira talks about adapting emotionally to climate change. First, he speaks with psychologist Renee Lertzman and public health geographer Ashlee Cunsolo about their research on the phenomenon of grief tied to environmental loss, and what they’ve learned about how people can adapt their grief into actions that can make a difference. Then, climate researcher Kate Marvel and essayist Mary Annaïse Heglar share their experiences simultaneously working on climate change, and grieving it.

Inequality In The Air Air quality is a known public health threat, attributed to seven million deaths around the world every year. Minorities, especially African-Americans, often live in areas of high air pollution. Now, scientists say pollution is linked to high rates of COVID-19 deaths, which may help explain why people of color are dying from COVID-19 at disproportionate rates.

Vox reporter Umair Irfan speaks with Ira about the pandemic’s inequitable impacts for some communities, as well as other coronavirus and climate change news from the past week.

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Routine Healthcare Is Falling Through The COVID-19 Cracks Our healthcare system is straining under the weight of the coronavirus epidemic, with hospital emergency rooms and ICUs around the country facing shortages of masks, ventilators, hospital beds, and medical staff. But the epidemic is also upsetting parts of the healthcare system that aren’t directly treating COVID patients. How are you supposed to keep up with regular medical care when you’re not supposed to leave the house, or when your primary care doctor’s office is shut down

Michael Barnett is an assistant professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health who studies access to healthcare services, as well as a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He joins Ira to talk about how patients and clinics are attempting to navigate a healthcare landscape altered by the global pandemic—including telemedicine and virtual health services, the economics of private doctors’ offices, and shortages of regular medications.

These Flowers Bounce Back Everywhere, colorful, spirit-lifting flowers are blooming. But if you’ve stepped off a path to avoid an oncoming runner recently, don’t worry. New research, published in the journal New Phytologist, finds some flowers have a unique ability to “bounce back” after injury—say after getting squished by a falling branch or shoe. This gives flowers a second chance at being pollinated, preserving their role in the seasonal ecosystem.

One of the authors of this study, Nathan Muchhala, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, joins Science Friday to discuss the unique properties of flowers.

How Dogs Are Helping Scientists Build A Smell Detector For Cancer Scientists are now training dogs to sniff out cancer. A team at UPenn and Monell Chemical Chemical Senses Center are using dogs’ heightened sense of smell to detect the specific chemicals produced by cancer cells. The scientists are using this data to produce a device that could be used in ovarian cancer detection.

Science Friday’s video producer Luke Groskin and digital producer Daniel Peterschmidt talk with Ira about a trip to the cancer laboratory, where they met the scientists—and dogs—behind this unique research. This is part of Science Friday’s Methods, where we bring you into the field alongside the scientists working to answer big questions, by using gorgeous video and pictures. You can read the article and watch the videos about their trip at sciencefriday.com/smellingcancer.

Big Data’s Latest On Tracking The Spread of COVID-19 In an effort to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, some European countries are collecting information on the movements of residents using cell phone data. This helps determine who is following stay-at-home orders, and who isn’t. Facebook and Google want to use their data about user movements to do the same. But some say this is a big breach of privacy. Amy Nordrum of IEEE Spectrum joins Ira to discuss this story and more of the latest COVID-19 news.

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Quarantine has been on many of our minds lately. The phrases “shelter in place” and “self-quarantine” have filled up our news, social media, and conversations since the first inklings of the coronavirus pandemic. But this is far from the first time cities and countries have used the practice of physical separation to battle the spread of disease.

You might think of Mary Mallon, who many know as “Typhoid Mary.” In the early 1900s, she spent nearly 30 years in a cottage on a small island in New York City’s East River, all to prevent her from infecting others. But we’ve been using quarantine for millennia—well before we even understood germs existed and that they can be transmitted from person-to-person. And the origin of the word stretches all the way back to the mid-14th century, when Europe was swept by one of the biggest losses of human life in history: the Black Death.

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Guest: Alexander More is a historian at Harvard University and Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Footnotes And Further Reading: Special thanks to Alexander More, Judith Walzer Leavitt, and Karl Appuhn.

If you want to learn more about Mary Mallon, we recommend Judith’s book, Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health.

Credits: Science Diction is hosted and produced by Johanna Mayer. Our producer and editor is Elah Feder. We had additional story editing from Nathan Tobey, and fact checking help from Michelle Harris. Our composer is Daniel Peterschmidt. Charles Bergquist played the part of George Soper.

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April is Citizen Science Month! It’s a chance for everyone to contribute to the scientific process—including collecting data, taking observations, or helping to analyze a set of big data. And best of all, a lot of these projects can be done wherever you happen to be personally isolating.

Caren Cooper, an associate professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and co-author of the new book A Field Guide To Citizen Science: How You Can Contribute to Scientific Research and Make a Difference, joins Ira to talk about what makes a good citizen science project, how to get involved, and suggestions for projects in all fields of science.

Cooper is also the project leader for the citizen science project Crowd The Tap, looking at mapping water infrastructure and the prevalence of lead pipes throughout the country. For more projects to keep you company through this Citizen Science Month and beyond, head over to sciencefriday.com/citizenscience.

Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system and the closest to the sun. The temperature there can reach up to 800 degrees, but the planet is not an inert, dry rock. Scientists recently found water ice at the poles of the planet, and another team found possible evidence for the chemicals building blocks of life underneath Mercury’s rocky terrain—a landscape pitted with impact craters and haphazardly strewn hills.

Those results were published in the journal Scientific Reports. Planetary astronomer Deborah Domingue takes us on a planetary tour and talks about what Mercury can tell us about the rest of the solar system.

All sorts of COVID-19 treatments have been proposed, but some are more promising than others. One of these experimental treatments is using the blood plasma from recovered patients to infuse antibodies into those who are currently sick. This week, New York put out a call for plasma donations, becoming the first state to attempt this approach.

Sarah Zhang of The Atlantic talks about what we know about the effectiveness and hurdles of this type of treatment. She also discusses the second wave of COVID-19 infections hitting Asia, and the CDC’s changing stance on personal face mask usage.

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Cobalt has been hoodwinking people since the day it was pried from the earth. Named after a pesky spirit from German folklore, trickery is embedded in its name.

In 1940s Netherlands, cobalt lived up to its name in a big way, playing a starring role in one of the most embarrassing art swindles of the 19th century. It’s a story of duped Nazis, a shocking court testimony, and one fateful mistake.

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The infamous Han van Meegeren, hard at work. (Wikimedia Commons)

Guest: Kassia St. Clair is a writer and cultural historian based in London.

Footnotes And Further Reading: For fascinating histories on every color you can imagine, read Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color.

Thanks to Jennifer Culver for background information on the kobold.

Read more about Han van Meegeren in The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dolnick and in the 2009 series “Bamboozling Ourselves” in the New York Times.

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These days, our newsfeeds are overloaded with stories of the coronavirus. This week, Science Friday continues to dig into the facts behind the speculation—the peer-reviewed studies and reports published by scientists investigating the virus.

But what we know—and don’t know—about the new virus is changing daily, making it hard to keep up. Everyone, for example, wants to know more about possible therapies for treating COVID-19 patients. After President Trump publicly speculated about the tried and true antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, his endorsement sent governors, doctors, and the worried public scrambling to get their hands on the drug. But is there any science to back-up this claim? And what about remdesivir, the antiviral drug that has been used to treat a handful of patients, and is now the subject of several new drug trials?

Angela Rasmussen, associate research scientist and virologist at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health joins Science Friday once again to break down the science behind the stories.

As suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 skyrocket in the United States, testing availability remains limited, leaving people wondering if their cough is something to worry about. But testing isn’t just a balm for anxiety—public health officials need data about how far the new virus has spread to make decisions about how to best protect people, and where to send critical resources, like masks and gowns. Accurate information is the frontline of defense, but scientists still have pressing questions about the novel disease. For instance, how many people who are infected actually have symptoms? If you do have symptoms, how likely are you to get severely sick?

Until we are able to test both healthy and symptomatic people at scale, citizen science can help fill the gaps in tracking who has COVID-19. And the public health team that launched Flu Near You to track seasonal flu symptoms is now doing just that: soliciting your symptoms in the Covid Near You project.

Covid Near You co-founder John Brownstein of Boston Children’s Hospital explains what questions the project may help answer, and what trends Covid Near You will track—including why this data is so valuable to public health efforts. Sign up at www.covidnearyou.org to report how you’re feeling—whether you’re healthy or have symptoms.

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At the turn of the 19th century, Britons would stroll along the Yorkshire Coast, stumbling across unfathomably big bones. These mysterious fossils were all but tumbling out of the cliffside, but people had no idea what to call them. There wasn’t a name for this new class of creatures.

Until Richard Owen came along. Owen was an exceptionally talented naturalist, with over 600 scientific books and papers. But perhaps his most lasting claim to fame is that he gave these fossils a name: the dinosaurs. And then he went ahead and sabotaged his own good name by picking a fight with one of the world’s most revered scientists.

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Woodcut of the famous dinner inside of an Iguanodon shell at the Crystal Palace in 1854. Artist unknown. (Wikimedia Commons)

Footnotes And Further Reading: Special thanks to Sean B. Carroll and the staff of the Natural History Museum in London.

Read an article by Howard Markel on this same topic.

Credits: Science Diction is written and produced by Johanna Mayer, with production and editing help from Elah Feder. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, with story editing help from Nathan Tobey. Our theme song and music are by Daniel Peterschmidt. This episode also featured music from Setuniman and The Greek Slave songs, used with permission from the open-source digital art history journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. We had fact-checking help from Michelle Harris, and mixing help from Kaitlyn Schwalje. Special thanks to the entire Science Friday staff.

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60 years ago this year, a young Jane Goodall entered the Gombe in Tanzania to begin observations of the chimpanzees living there. During her time there, Goodall observed wild chimpanzees in the Gombe making and using tools—a finding that changed our thinking about chimps, primates, and even humans. Now, Goodall travels the world as a conservationist, advocate for animals, and United Nations Messenger of Peace.

She joins guest host John Dankosky to reflect on her years of experience in the field, the scientific efforts she is involved with today, and the need for hope and cooperation in an increasingly connected but chaotic world.

Science has given us more than data. It’s also brought us words for everyday things or ideas—meme, cobalt, dinosaur. And there’s often a good story about how those words got into our common use.

Take the word “vaccine,” the distant, but hoped-for solution to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. It turns out the word originates from vaccinae, relating to cows, because the smallpox vaccine was derived from cowpox, a related virus.

Science Friday word nerd Johanna Mayer joins John Dankosky to talk about the origins of the word “vaccine,” and how she sleuths the fascinating histories that she tells in her new podcast Science Diction.

The first season of Science Diction is now available! Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts!

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For centuries, smallpox seemed unbeatable. People had tried nearly everything to knock it out—from herbal remedies to tossing back 12 bottles of beer a day (yep, that was a real recommendation from a 17th century doctor), to intentionally infecting themselves with smallpox and hoping they didn’t get sick, all to no avail.

And then, in the 18th century, an English doctor heard a rumor about a possible solution. It wasn’t a cure, but if it worked, it would stop smallpox before it started. So one spring day, with the help of a milkmaid, an eight-year-old boy, and a cow named Blossom, the English doctor decided to run an experiment. Thanks to that ethically questionable but ultimately world-altering experiment (and Blossom the cow) we got the word vaccine.

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"The cow-pock - or - the wonderful effects of the new inoculation" by James Gillray in 1802, featured at the beginning of this episode. (Library of Congress)

Footnotes And Further Reading: Special thanks to Elena Conis, Gareth Williams, and the Edward Jenner Museum.

Read an article by Howard Markel on this same topic.

We found many of the facts in this episode in “Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and vaccination” from Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings.

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The number of people in the U.S. confirmed to be infected with the pandemic-level respiratory coronavirus continues to rise, even as testing and diagnosis capacity continues to lag behind other nations. In the meantime, epidemiologists are urging people all over the country to take actions that help “flatten the curve,” to slow the rate of infection so the number of cases don’t overwhelm the healthcare system and make the virus even more dangerous for those who get it.

And the best methods to flatten that curve? Social distancing, which means limiting your exposure to other people, including large gatherings. And, when you can’t avoid other people, it means washing your hands diligently, disinfecting door knobs, and otherwise killing virus particles—which may survive up to three days on inanimate objects, depending on conditions.

There are words we use every day for common things or ideas—meme, vaccine, dinosaur—but where did those words come from? Sometimes, there’s a scientific backstory.

Take the word quarantine, now in the news due to widespread infection control measures. Did you know that it comes from quarantino, a 40-day isolation period for arriving ships—which originally was a trentino, a 30-day period, established in what is now Croatia in the plague-stricken 1340’s?

Science Friday’s word nerd Johanna Mayer joins Ira to talk about the origins of the word quarantine, and how she flips through science history and culture to tell us these stories in her new podcast Science Diction.

The first season of Science Diction is now available! Listen and subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcasts.

In 2012, the FDA approved the drug Truvada, the brand-name HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) that HIV negative people can take to prevent contracting the virus. The patent for Truvada is due to expire, which would allow for more generic versions of the drug. But Gilead, the manufacturer of Truvada, is releasing a second brand name PrEP called Descovy.

Physician Rochelle Walensky, who is chief of the infectious disease division at Massachusetts General Hospital, is an author on a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine that weighed the financial and accessibility impact that this new drug will have for patients.

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Remember that summer when the internet was one Distracted Boyfriend after another—that flannel-shirted dude rubbernecking at a passing woman, while his girlfriend glares at him? Everyone had their own take—the Boyfriend was you, staring directly at a solar eclipse, ignoring science. The Boyfriend was youth, seduced by socialism, spurning capitalism. The Boyfriend could be anyone you wanted him to be.

We think of memes as a uniquely internet phenomenon. But the word meme originally had nothing to do with the internet. It came from an evolutionary biologist who noticed that genes weren’t the only thing that spread, mutated, and evolved.

Guest: Gretchen McCulloch is an internet linguist. For some fun, check out her book, Because Internet, and her podcast Lingthusiasm. She’s also appeared on Science Friday.

Footnotes And Further Reading: For an academic take on memes, read Memes in Digital Culture by Limor Shifman.

Read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

Check out the first time the word meme appeared in an internet context, in Mike Godwin’s 1994 Wired article called “Meme, Counter-meme.”

Credits: Science Diction is written and produced by Johanna Mayer, with production and editing help from Elah Feder. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata, and we had story editing help from Nathan Tobey. Our theme song and music are by Daniel Peterschmidt. We had fact-checking help from Michelle Harris. Special thanks to the entire Science Friday staff.

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A New Trick For Dexterity In Prosthetic Hands Researchers working on the next generation of prosthetic limbs have a few fundamental engineering problems to overcome. For starters, how can people using prosthetic limbs effectively signal what motions they want to perform?

A team of researchers may have a solution: A surgical technique that uses muscle tissue to amplify the nerve signals. Participants fitted with prosthetic hands after this surgery, described in Science Translational Medicine this week, reported being able to manipulate objects with a degree of control and dexterity not previously seen. Electrical engineer Cynthia Chestek at the University of Michigan explains why this muscle graft seems to be solving the engineering problem of reading nerve signals and what the next generation of prosthetic hands could be capable of.

Looking To The Genome To Track And Treat The New Coronavirus As of Thursday, March 5, Washington state has reported over 30 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. To better understand the pathogen and the disease, scientists have sequenced the genome of the virus from two of the patients. Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at Scripps Research who uses genomics to track the spread of diseases, discusses how the genetic information from these patients can help determine the spread of the virus globally. Plus, Ralph Baric, a coronavirus researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, talks about developing vaccine and drug candidates for COVID-19 and how the genomic sequences from this outbreak can be used to help create treatments.

Can You Name That Call? Test Your Animal Sound Trivia Can you differentiate the cry of an Antarctic Weddell seal from the song of an emperor penguin? How about the bellows of a howler monkey from a warthog’s rumbling roar? The animal kingdom is filled with diverse calls and sounds, and for World Wildlife Day earlier this week on Tuesday, we curated them—in a quiz. SciFri’s digital producer Daniel Peterschmidt teamed up with Google Earth to create an interactive quiz that hops you around the world and highlights the many (sometimes surprising) sounds that species make. Daniel challenges Ira to an animal sound showdown.

Test your knowledge with the Science Friday Google Earth Animal Sound Quiz!

What You Don’t Know About Well Water Could Hurt You

Residents in Kansas who use private wells face uncertainty about what’s in their water. Environment and energy reporter Brian Grimmett for KMUW in Wichita tells us the State of Science.

A Human Trial For CRISPR Gene Therapy This week, researchers announced that they have started a clinical trial of a treatment that uses the CRISPR gene-editing technique on live cells inside a human eye. Plus a satellite rescue mission, parrot probability, and more in this week’s News Roundup.

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In order to slow a warming planet on track to increase by 2 degrees celsius, nearly every industry will be forced to adapt: airlines, fashion, and even the unglamorous and often overlooked building materials sector.

Just like the farm to table movement, consumers are increasingly thinking about where the raw materials for their homes and cities come from, and how they impact climate change. And in response to this concern, the materials sector is serving up an unusual menu option: wood.

“Mass timber” is the buzzword these days in the world of sustainable building materials. Architects are crazy for it, engineers praise its excellent structural properties, and even forestry managers are in support of its use.

Of course cutting down trees to curb carbon emissions seems counterintuitive at first. And there are skeptics who doubt whether wood is strong enough to build future city skyscrapers.

Frank Lowenstein, Chief Conservation Officer with the New England Forestry Foundation and Casey Malmquist, Founder and CEO of timber company SmartLam North America, join Ira to explain why the hype over mass timber’s potential to mitigate climate change is the real deal.

And as the popularity of sustainable mass timber rises, big carbon-emitting industries like steel and concrete are facing pressure to address their role in the climate crisis. One steel company out of Sweden is aiming to make it’s product carbon-neutral by 2026 by replacing coal with hydrogen in the steel-making process. And other researchers are hoping to make concrete more sustainable by using ingredients that would actually trap carbon inside the material.

We hear from Martin Pei, Chief Technology Officer of European steel company SSAB, and Jeremy Gregory, Director of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at MIT, about how the traditional building materials sector is going green.

Plus, architect and structural engineer Kate Simonen of the University of Washington talks about the need for more sustainable building materials to construct homes for an estimated 2.3 billion more people by the year 2050.

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Brushing Up On Tooth Science Most of us spend our time at the dentist holding our mouths open, saying “ahhh,” and occasionally sticking out our tongues. But if you could ask a dentist anything, what would you want to know?

Ira asks University of Utah researcher Rena D’Souza and UPenn’s Mark Wolff about cavity formation, the oral microbiome, gum disease, and the future of stem cells in teeth restoration. Plus, NYU researcher Rodrigo Lacruz explains new research on how excessive fluoride can disrupt tooth cell functions and why you should still keep drinking that fluoridated tap water.

East Africans Battle A Plague Of Locusts Brought On By Climate Change A swarm of locusts the size of a city may sound biblical, but it’s the reality right now in East Africa. The pest is devouring the food supply of tens of millions of people, wreaking havoc on crops and pasturelands. Local residents are doing all they can to keep the swarms at bay, but the locusts may be here to stay for a while, as experts suggest their presence may be due to climate change.

Sarah Zhang, reporter at The Atlantic, tells us about the locust issue along with other science news from the week.

Why Coal Country May Be Going Solar

A new bill passing through the West Virginia state legislature would increase the state’s solar capacity by 2,500%. Environment reporter Brittany Patterson at West Virginia Public Broadcasting tells us the State of Science.

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The Great Lakes hold 20% of the world’s surface drinking water, with Lake Superior holding half of that alone. The lakes stretch from New York to Minnesota, and cover a surface area of nearly 100,000 square miles—large enough to cover the entire state of Colorado.

And they’re teeming with life. Fish, phytoplankton, birds, even butterflies call the lakes home for some portion of their lives. But not all is calm in the waters. In The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, journalist Dan Egan tells the story of the changes that have unbalanced these ecosystems since the St. Lawrence Seaway was first made navigable for cargo ships and, with them, invasive species, like sea lampreys, alewives, quagga mussels and, perhaps soon, Asian carp.

The Science Friday Book Club has spent a month swimming in Great Lakes science. We’ve pondered the value of native fish to ecosystem resiliency, the threats facing people’s access to clean drinking water, and the influence of invasive species. SciFri producer and Book Club captain Christie Taylor, Wayne State University ecologist Donna Kashian, and Wisconsin-based journalist Peter Annin discuss potential paths to a healthy future, from ongoing restoration efforts to protective policies and new research.

Dennis Hutson’s rows of alfalfa, melons, okra and black-eyed peas are an oasis of green in the dry terrain of Allensworth, an unincorporated community in rural Tulare County. Hutson, currently cultivating on 60 acres, has a vision for many more fields bustling with jobs. “This community will forever be impoverished and viewed by the county as a hamlet,” he says, “unless something happens that can create an economic base. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

While he scours his field for slender pods of ripe okra, three workers, community members he calls “helpers,” mind the irrigation station: 500-gallon water tanks and gurgling ponds at the head of each row, all fed by a 720-foot-deep groundwater well.

Just like for any grower, managing water is a daily task for Hutson and his helpers. That’s why he’s concerned about what could happen under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the state’s overhaul of groundwater regulations. Among other goals, the law sets out to eliminate the estimated 1.8 million acre-feet in annual deficit the state racks up each year by pumping more water out of underground aquifers than it can replenish. Hutson worries small farmers may not have the resources to adapt to the potentially strict water allocations and cutbacks that might be coming. Their livelihoods and identities may be at stake. “You grow things a certain way, and then all of a sudden you don’t have access to as much water as you would like in order to grow what you grow,” he says, “and now you’re kind of out of sorts.”

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

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The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a country of 58,000 people spread across 29 coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. And in a world where seas are both rising and acidifying, the Marshall Islands are exceptionally vulnerable: Those atolls rise a mere two meters above the original ocean height on average, and rely on the health and continued growth of their coral foundations to exist. A 2018 study projects that by 2050, the Marshall Islands could be mostly uninhabitable due to salt-contaminated groundwater and inundation of large swaths of their small land masses during both storm events and more regular high tides.

But the people of the Marshall Islands—who are already facing increasingly high king tides and more frequent droughts—are planning to adapt, not leave. They've already built sea walls and water catchments, while in February 2019, then-Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine announced an ambitious, expensive additional plan to raise the islands higher above the ocean.

Science Friday producer Christie Taylor spoke to Heine in October, after her remarks to the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science in Honolulu, Hawaii. They discussed the islands' adaptation plans, why leaving is the last option the Marshallese want to consider, and the role traditional knowledge has played in planning for the future. Plus, why major carbon emitters like the United States have a responsibility to help countries like the Marshall Islands adapt.

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How Native American Communities Are Addressing Climate Change Indigenous peoples are one of the most vulnerable communities when it comes to the effects of climate change. This is due to a mix of cultural, economic, policy and historical factors. Some Native American tribal governments and councils have put together their own climate risk assessment plans. Native American communities are very diverse—and the challenges and adaptations are just as varied. Professor Kyle Whyte, a tribal member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, says that many of the species and food resources that are affected by climate change are also important cultural pieces, which are integral to the identity and cohesion of tribes. Ryan Reed, a tribal member of the Karuk and Yurok Tribe and a sophomore undergrad student in Environmental Science at the University of Oregon, and James Rattling Leaf, tribal member of the Rosebud Sioux, and Tribal Engagement Leader for the Great Plains Water Alliance, join Ira for this segment.

“One Trillion Trees”… But Where to Plant Them? In this week’s State of the Union address, President Trump didn’t utter the words “climate change”—but he did say this: “To protect the environment, days ago I announced the United States will join the One Trillion Trees Initiative, an ambitious effort to bring together government and private sector to plant new trees in America and all around the world.”

Planting trees to suck up carbon is an increasingly popular Republican alternative to limiting fossil fuel emissions—but how practical is it? In this segment, E&E News White House reporter Scott Waldman discusses the strategy.

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Tracking The Spread Of The Coronavirus Outbreak This week, the World Health Organization declared that the coronavirus outbreak—which began in Wuhan, China—is a public health emergency of international concern. Nearly 8,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide. Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of the virus from some of the patients who were infected early on in the outbreak. Virologist Kristian Andersen discusses how the genetics of the virus can provide clues to how it is transmitted and may be used for diagnostic tests and vaccines. Plus, infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm talks about the effectiveness of quarantines and what types of measures could be put in place to halt the spread of the pathogen.

Putting Invasive Species On Trial When species that have existed in one place for a long time are transported to new ecosystems, there are a few possible outcomes. First, nothing could happen. That flower, fish, or flying insect could find the new environment too hostile. In other cases, the new arrival may succeed and multiply just enough to establish itself in the food chain alongside the native species. But a small fraction of wayward species can go on to dominate. They out-compete an established species so well that they may take over their new home, and change the way a food web functions. Think garlic mustard, jumping worms, and emerald ash borer beetles.

And in The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, this winter’s Science Friday Book Club pick, journalist Dan Egan recounts how exposing lakes Michigan, Huron, Ontario, Superior, and Erie to new species had devastating effects on the ecosystems of each lake—first, blood-sucking sea lampreys decimated native lake trout, then tiny alewives exploded in population. Ship-transported round gobies, quagga and zebra mussels, spiny waterfleas, and more have since come on the scene. It’s no surprise that ecologists have had close eyes on the lakes for decades. And now, with species of potentially invasive Asian carp poised to enter from the Mississippi River basin, many wonder what’s next for the Great Lakes’ flora and fauna.

Conservation biologist David Lodge, who helped pioneer the eDNA method for tracking Asian carp, joins University of Michigan ecologist Karen Alofs to talk about how new species become invasive and how biologists decide what to prevent, what to protect, and, sometimes, what changes to accept.

When A Correction May Not Be Helpful New work relating to messages about the Zika virus and yellow fever published this week in the journal Science Advances indicates that delivering accurate messaging may be harder than you think. Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College and one of the authors of the report, joins Ira to talk about the study and what lessons it might hold for educating people about other public health risks.

A Close Call Collision In Near-Earth Orbit On Wednesday night, skywatchers near Pittsburgh looked up, watching, just in case there was a collision in space. Two satellites, an old U.S. Air Force satellite and a nonfunctioning orbital telescope, narrowly avoided collision, passing as close as 40 feet from each other. One estimate ranked the odds of collision at 1 in 20. Amy Nordrum, news editor at IEEE Spectrum, joins Ira to talk about the problem of orbital debris and other stories from the week in science.

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2020 has just begun, but we’re still celebrating all the amazing work done by science journalists in 2019. Thanks to them, we’ve been informed on stories like the new illnesses linked to vaping, the first image of a black hole, and the increase in youth-led climate change protests.

At our year in review event at Caveat in NYC on December 18, 2019, three science storytellers—Arielle Duhaime-Ross, Sarah Zhang, and Ariel Zych—took the stage with a notable story they reported in 2019, including the untold and surprising facts that may not have made it to their final draft.

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Before any new drug comes to market, it goes through a time-consuming process. Researchers have to recruit human subjects for a clinical trial, collect all the data, and analyze the results. All of that can take years to complete, but the end result could be worth it: a drug that treats a rare disease or improves patients lives with fewer side effects.

Or the opposite could happen: The drug doesn’t have any effect or makes patients worse. So the question is, how is the public informed of the outcome?

One answer is ClinicalTrials.gov, a public-facing website where researchers are required by law to register all currently ongoing clinical trials and report their results. That way, the public is kept informed.

However, two recent investigations of ClinicalTrials.gov reporting practices show that many researchers aren’t posting their results online. In fact, up to 25% of studies never seem to have their results reported anywhere. And government agencies aren’t enforcing the rule in ways they’ve promised—with heavy fines and threats to withhold funding from institutions that don’t comply.

In a delicate piece of shale from coastal China, paleontologists have identified a new species of feathered dinosaur: Wulong bohaiensis, Chinese for “Dancing Dragon.” The house cat-sized dino has fierce talons, feathered wings, and a long, whip-like tail with feathered plumes at the end.

Ashley Poust, who published a description of the dinosaur in The Anatomical Record, says it’s “hard to imagine” the wings being used for flying. But he says the wings could have been used to arrest leaps or falls, or to hold down prey while killing it, as modern-day birds sometimes do.

In this conversation with Ira, Poust talks more about the dino’s possible lifestyle, and how it fits in with other feathered reptiles.

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Living Robots, Designed By Computer Researchers have used artificial intelligence methods to design ‘living robots,’ made from two types of frog cells. The ‘xenobots,’ named for the Xenopus genus of frogs, can move, push objects, and potentially carry materials from one place to another—though the researchers acknowledge that much additional work would need to be done to make the xenobots into a practical tool.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Josh Bongard, a professor of computer science at the University of Vermont and co-author of the report, joins Ira to talk about designing cell-based structures and next steps for the technology.

The Math Behind Big Decision Making What does it mean for your health if a cancer screening is 90% accurate? Or when a lawyer says there’s a 99% chance a defendant is guilty? We encounter numbers in our everyday lives that can influence how we make big decisions, but what do these numbers really tell us?

Mathematical biologist explores these concepts and patterns in his book The Math of Life and Death: 7 Mathematical Principles That Shape Our Lives. He joins Ira to talk about the hidden math principles that are used in medicine, law, and in the media and how the numbers can be misused and correctly interpreted.

The Science Comics Of Rosemary Mosco Have you ever wondered what a Great Blue Heron would write in a love letter to a potential mate? Or what the moons of Mars think of themselves? These are the scenes that nature cartoonist Rosemary Mosco dreams up in her comic Bird and Moon.

“Nature is really funny. It’s never not funny,” Mosco says in SciFri’s latest SciArts video. “You can go into the woods and find 20 or 30 hilarious potential comic prompts anywhere you go.”

Viewers may come for the laughs, but they will end up learning facts, she explains. Mosco talks about her inspiration for finding the funny side of snakes, planets, and nature, and how she uses humor to communicate science.

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How Climate Change Is Fanning Australia’s Flames All eyes have been on Australia in recent weeks as the country’s annual summer fire season has spun out of control with devastating damage to endangered wildlife, homes, farms, indigenous communities, and—as smoke drifts across unburned major metropolitan centers like Sidney and Canberra—air quality.

Vox reporter Umair Irfan and fire scientist Crystal Kolden explain why climate scientists are pointing the finger squarely at climate change for contributing to the fires’ unique size and intensity. Plus, Australian climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick explains why climate change has heightened the country’s naturally volatile weather patterns to make this the worst fire season in living memory.

Science Friday Book Club’s Winter Read Plunges Into The Great Lakes Even on a clear day, you can’t see across Lake Michigan. The same is true of the other Great Lakes: Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. At average widths of 50 to 160 feet across, the five magnificent pools are too massive for human eyes to make out the opposite shore. These glacier-carved inland seas hold 20% of the fresh surface water on the planet, and are a source of food, water, and sheer natural wonder for millions of people in communities living on their sprawling shores.

While the lakes have cleaned up immensely from a past of polluted rivers that caught on fire, it’s not all smooth sailing under the surface. From the tiny quagga and zebra mussels that now coat lake beds to the looming threat of voracious, fast-breeding carp species, the lakes are a far cry from the lush ecosystems they once were. This winter, the Science Friday Book Club will explore Dan Egan’s The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, which details both the toll of two centuries of human interference—and how the lakes can still have a bright future.

SciFri Book Club captain Christie Taylor is back to kick off our reading! She talks with ecologist Donna Kashian at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and Wisconsin author Peter Annin about the ravaged ecosystems and enduring value of these waterways.

Studying Drought, Under Glass

Scientists are using the enclosed Biosphere 2 ecosystem to investigate how carbon moves in a rainforest under drought conditions. KNAU science reporter Melissa Sevigny tells us the State of Science.

Solving The Mystery Of Ancient Egyptian Head Cones Ancient Egyptian artwork often depicts people wearing ceremonial head cones, but the role of these head dressings remained a mystery. Journalist and author Annalee Newitz talks about the first piece of physical evidence found of these head cones and what they may have been used for. Plus, other stories including a group of scientists who trained cuttlefish to wear 3D glasses to test their depth perception.

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For many, the new year means looking back on the past accomplishments and checking off your goals. For birders, it means tallying up your species list and recording all the birds you’ve spotted in the season. Birders Corina Newsome and Geoff LeBaron, director of the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, guide us through the feathered friends flying overhead—from nuthatches to ducks to merlins.

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Few people could put the cosmos in perspective better than astronomer Carl Sagan. And that’s why we’re taking this opportunity to take another listen to this classic conversation with Sagan, recorded December 16, 1994, twenty-five years ago this month.

Ira and Sagan talk about US space policy, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the place of humans in the universe, and humanity’s need to explore.

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As more commercial companies are getting into the satellite launching game, space is becoming a crowded place and all of these objects are creating space debris. Right now, there are approximately 2,000 satellites floating in low-Earth orbit. Space agencies have estimated that are over 100 million small particles floating in low-Earth orbit, but there are no large scale projects to clean up these pieces of space trash.

Aerospace engineer Moriba Jah and space archeologist Alice Gorman talk about framing the idea of space as another ecosystem of Earth and what environmental, cultural and political issues come along with cleaning up our space junkyard.

Saturday’s Winter Solstice, which marks not just the arbitrary beginning of a season, but also the slow return of daylight to the Northern hemisphere. Or the coming decade, as many reflect back on everything that’s happened since 2010, and prepare to mark the beginning of 2020—a completely human invention.

But there’s also an invisible timekeeper inside our cells, telling us when to sleep and when to wake. These are the clock genes, such as the period gene, which generates a protein known as PER that accumulates at night, and slowly disappears over the day, approximating a 24-hour cycle that drives other cellular machinery. This insight won its discoverers the 2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology.

These clock genes don’t just say when you snooze: from the variability of our heart rates to the ebbs and flows of the immune system, we are ruled by circadian rhythms.

Erik Herzog, who studies the growing field of chronobiology at Washington University in St. Louis, explains how circadian rhythms are increasingly linked to more than our holiday jet lag or winter blues, but also asthma, prenatal health, and beyond. And he explains why the growing movement to end Daylight Savings Time isn’t just about convenience, but also saving lives.

This time of year, it’s not uncommon to see a little sprig of greenery hanging in someone’s doorway. It’s probably mistletoe, the holiday decoration that inspires paramours standing beneath it to kiss.

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Why Diabetes Patients Are Getting Insulin From Facebook Almost one in ten Americans are diagnosed with diabetes, according to the most recent statistics from the CDC. With those odds, you likely know someone with the disease. And you may also know that most diabetes patients need to be treated with insulin therapy—frequent injections of a hormone that helps regulate their blood sugar—or face serious complications, like blindness, nerve damage, or kidney failure.

Unfortunately, a good number of these patients can’t afford to purchase insulin through official channels, like pharmacies and hospitals, even with the help of health insurance. In such cases, diabetes patients are turning to what one recent study called “underground exchanges”—platforms like Craigslist, Ebay and Facebook—to get access to the drug they need.

Ira is joined by one of the authors of that study, Michelle Litchman, a nurse practitioner and researcher at the University of Utah College of Nursing in Salt Lake City, to talk about what patients are doing to combat the high cost of insulin in the U.S.

Combing Over What Makes Hair So Strong Hair is one of the strongest materials—when stretched, hair is stronger than steel. A team of researchers collected and tested hair from eight different mammals including humans, javelinas, and capybaras to measure what gives hair its strength. The basic structure of hair is similar across species with an outer cuticle layer surrounding fibers, but each species’ hair structure accommodates different needs. Javelinas have stiffer fibers to allow them to raise their hair when it’s in danger. Their results, published in the journal Matter, found that thinner hair was stronger than thicker strands.

Engineer Robert Ritchie, who was one of the authors of that study, talks about the structure that gives hair its strength and how bio-inspired design can create better materials.

How Whales Got Whale-Sized We live in a time of giants. Whales are both the largest living animals, and, in the case of 110-foot-long blue whales, the largest animals that have ever been alive on the planet.

But whales haven’t always been gigantic. Until about 3 million years ago, the fossil record shows that the average whale length was only about 20 feet long. They were big, but not big. The rise—and growth—of the lineages that gave rise to humpbacks, fin whales, and other behemoths happened, in evolutionary time, overnight.

So, why are whales big—and why are whales so big now?

Now, researchers who parsed data from feeding events of a dozen different whale species think they have the mathematical confirmation. Writing in Science this week, they say baleen whales, who become more energy-efficient as they grow, benefit from bigness because it lets them migrate to food sources that appear and disappear at different points around the globe.

Study co-author Jeremy Goldbogen, a marine biologist for Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, explains the delicate balance of energy and size for giant mammals, and why bigness is such a compelling biological question.

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These days, biologists believe all living things come from other living things. But for a long time, people believed that life would, from time to time, spontaneously pop into existence more often—and not just that one time at the base of the evolutionary tree. Even the likes of Aristotle believed in the “spontaneous generation” of life, until Louis Pasteur debunked the theory—or so the story goes.

In a famous set of experiments, Pasteur showed that when you take a broth, boil it to kill all the microscopic organisms floating inside, and don’t let any dust get in, it stays dead. No life will spontaneously emerge.

His experiments have been considered a win for science—but according to historian James Strick, they might have actually been a win for religion.

This episode originally aired on Science Friday, when Elah joined Ira Flatow and science historian, James Strick, to find out what scientists of Pasteur’s day really thought of his experiment, the role the Catholic church played in shutting down “spontaneous generation,” and why even Darwin did his best to dodge the topic.

FOOTNOTES Though Darwin was bold enough to go public with his theory of evolution, he seemed to shy away from the spontaneous generation debate. But his theory inevitably invited the question: if life could spontaneously arise once on Earth, why not many times? James Strick writes about Darwin’s complicated relationship with spontaneous generation.

The basic premise of Louis Pasteur’s famous swan-necked flask experiment is shown below. The swan necks let life-nourishing air into the flask, but kept potentially contaminating dust out.

Louis Pasteur's spontaneous generation experiment illustrates the fact that the spoilage of liquid was caused by particles in the air rather than the air itself. These experiments were important piece (Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

GUEST James Strick, associate professor at Franklin and Marshall College

CREDITS This episode of Undiscovered was produced by Elah Feder and Alexa Lim. Our theme music is by I Am Robot And Proud.

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In August 2018, NASA sent the Parker Solar Probe off on its anticipated seven-year-long mission to study the sun. Already, it has completed three of its 24 scheduled orbits, and data from two of those orbits are already telling us things we didn’t know about the star at the center of our solar system. The probe has collected information on the factors that influence the speed of solar wind, the amount of dust in the sun’s bubble-like region—the heliosphere—and also where scientists’ models were wrong.

David McComas, professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University and principal investigator of the integrated science investigation of the sun, breaks down the very first data collected from the Parker Solar Probe mission. He’s joined by Aleida Higginson, Parker Solar Probe deputy project scientist for science operations, who will update us on the mission that’s giving us an unprecedented look at our sun.

What makes a creature charismatic?

In our new segment, we’ll feature one creature a month, and try to convince you that it’s worthy of the coveted Charismatic Creature title. By “creature” we mean almost anything—animals, viruses, subterranean fungal networks, you name it. And by “charismatic,” we don’t just mean cute, clever, or even all that nice! We just mean they have that special something that makes us want to lean in and learn everything about them—because they can’t all be baby pandas.

Over the past two months, we’ve received dozens of listener suggestions—everything from turtles to tardigrades. We had to choose just one, and we’re starting simple—single celled simple. Our first charismatic creature is Physarum polycephalum, the “multi-headed” slime mold.

Despite having no brain or neurons and being just one giant goopy cell, these slime molds keep defying our expectations. They can solve mazes, recreate the Tokyo railway network (animation below), learn, and even anticipate events. They can make rational and irrational choices that mirror our own. Not to mention they’re visually stunning too.

Joining Ira to make the case that slime molds are uniquely charismatic is Science Friday’s Elah Feder and collective intelligence researchers Simon Garnier from New Jersey Institute of Technology and Tanya Latty from the University of Sydney.

Oregon is not very good at recycling, and it’s getting worse, according to a new report. Overall recycling rates in the state have steadily declined for the last several years, even as the amount of waste generated per person in the state has grown.

The report, published Thursday by the group Environment Oregon, uses data released yearly by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. It finds that Oregon faces major barriers to meeting its recycling goals. Nationally, recyclable plastics are being replaced with lower-value plastics. In Oregon, polystyrene (the flaky, foam-like material used in single-use coffee cups) isn’t recycled by municipal governments, and a legislative proposal to ban it statewide failed last year. Consumers can take certain polystyrene products to privately run drop boxes in some cities around the state.

This doesn’t mean that Oregonians aren’t passionate about recycling. The biggest barrier to recycling in Oregon is structural: less of the material placed in recycling bins can be repurposed by domestic facilities, and exporting recyclables to countries like China has become more difficult.

“The bottom line is, we need to take more of these products out of the waste stream,” Celeste Meiffren-Swango, the state director of Environment Oregon, said.

It’s not just an Oregon problem, it’s a national—even global—issue. For years, recycling in the United States has relied on Asian countries to take our waste. Many countries, finding that arrangement unprofitable, have started incinerating the recycling, dumping it in landfills, or simply stopped accepting recyclables from the United States altogether. The few countries that still purchase U.S. recyclables are increasingly facing unexpected health impacts stemming from too much waste and no way to process it.

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Laura Diaz, a Bay Area science teacher, grew up in Pittsburg, California near chemical plants and refineries. That experience, combined with watching her mother’s home go up in flames in last year’s Camp Fire, transformed her into an “environmental justice activist.”

Now, she’s bringing those experiences into the classroom to inspire young people to solve the world’s injustices through science. Diaz joined Ira onstage at San Francisco’s Sydney Goldstein Theater, alongside a few former students, to talk about the connections between science education and environmental activism.

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What can science fiction and social science contribute to how we think about our algorithmic present and future?

Science fiction writers and Hugo-winning podcast hosts Annalee Newitz (author of The Future Of Another Timeline) and Charlie Jane Anders (author of The City In The Middle Of The Night) talk about their work imagining future worlds and new kinds of technology—plus how all of this fiction traces back to the present. Then, AI ethicist Rumman Chowdhury joins to discuss how social science can help the tech industry slow down and think more responsibly about the future they’re helping to build.

Plus, everyone has face mites—including you. But they have a fascinating evolutionary story to tell. In this interview recorded live at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, Ira talks with entomologist Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences about why face mites live in our skin, where we get them (spoiler: thank your parents!), and how mite lineages can help reconstruct patterns of human migration around the globe.

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In Apartheid-era South Africa, a scientist uncovered a cracked, proto-human jawbone. That humble fossil would go on to inspire one of the most blood-spattered theories in all of paleontology: the “Killer Ape” theory.

According to the Killer Ape theory, humans are killers—unique among the apes for our capacity for bloodthirsty murder and violence. And at a particularly violent moment in U.S. history, the idea stuck! It even made its way into one of the most iconic scenes in film history. Until a female chimp named Passion showed the world that we might not be so special after all.

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For most Americans, the story of the Hubble Space Telescope began on April 24th, 1990, the launch date of the now 30 year-old observatory. But for astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, Hubble’s journey began on a wintery day in early 1985 at a meeting at NASA headquarters, where she was assigned to the mission that would take Hubble into space.

For the next five years, Sullivan, a former oceanographer and first female spacewalker, got to know Hubble intimately, training and preparing for its deployment. If Hubble’s automatic processes failed as it was detaching and unfolding from the spacecraft, Sullivan would be the one to step in and help. And she almost had to. Sullivan joins Ira to share the untold stories of Hubble’s launch and her time at NASA as told in her new book Handprints on Hubble.

Physicist Marie Curie is remembered as the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first person—of two ever in history—to win two Nobel Prizes. With her role in discovering radium and polonium, and the energy emitted in the decay of large atomic nuclei, she brought us the concepts of radiation and radioactivity. Curie helped lay the groundwork for a revolution in both physics and chemistry.

But a new play explores the person behind the brilliant scientist. In The Half-Life Of Marie Curie, we meet Curie after a scandal: She’s been caught having a love affair with a married man. But in a time of depression and isolation, she’s rescued by a friend, English scientist Hertha Ayrton—also an intrepid but lesser-known physicist, engineer, and suffragette.

Playwright Lauren Gunderson joins Ira to talk about the deep friendship between the two scientists, the importance of seeing Marie Curie as a person outside her work, and the many connections between storytelling and science.

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“Do men need to cheat on their women?” a Playboy headline asked in the summer of 1978. Their not-so-surprising conclusion: Yes! Science says so! The idea that men are promiscuous by nature, while women are chaste and monogamous, is an old and tenacious one. As far back as Darwin, scientists were churning out theory and evidence that backed this up. In this episode, Annie and Elah go back to the 1970s and 1980s, when feminism and science come face to face, and it becomes clear that a lot of animals—humans and bluebirds included—are not playing by the rules.

GUESTS Angela Saini, author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong

Patricia Adair Gowaty, professor emeritus at UCLA, editor of Feminism and Evolutionary Biology.

FOOTNOTES Sarah B. Hrdy is an anthropologist, feminist, and a major figure in this chapter of science history. In this book chapter she addresses the myth of the “coy female” and reviews the relevant scientific happenings of the 1970s and 80s, especially in the primatology sphere.

Angus John Bateman’s 1948 paper about fruit fly mating and reproductive success, popularized by this paper from Robert Trivers in 1972. Bateman finds that males have more reproductive success the more females they mate with, and that females don’t benefit as much from mating with multiple males.

Patty Adair Gowaty found holes in Bateman’s study. Bateman didn’t know exactly how many sexual partners his fruit flies had because he didn’t watch them. Instead, he counted up how many offspring they made. Unfortunately, a lot of them had harmful mutations and died—skewing his numbers. Not only do they not meet Mendelian expectations, but in Bateman’s data, he consistently counts more fathers than mothers—which can’t be right, since every baby fly has one mother and one father.

Patty found that eastern bluebird females successfully raise offspring without help from their male partners.

Patty and Alvan Karlin found that eastern bluebird babies aren’t always related to the parents raising them.

True “genetic monogamy,” where bird couples only have sex with each other, appears to be the exception, not the rule in passerines. Polyandry—where females have sex with multiple males—has been found most of the species studied!

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, a psychology study at Florida State University found that most men, and no women would accept a sex invitation from a stranger.

In this more recent Germany study, 97% of the women expressed interest in sex with at least one strange man, but only when researchers promised to arrange a (relatively) safe encounter.

Btw, Patty tells us bluebirds don’t actually have sex in the nest, so having sex “outside the nest” is the norm. We were using the expression figuratively, but worth noting. The nest is really for storing the babies.

CREDITS This episode was reported and produced by Elah Feder and Annie Minoff. Our senior editor is Christopher Intagliata. Fact checking by Robin Palmer. I Am Robot and Proud wrote our theme. All other music by Daniel Peterschmidt.

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This week, a House Committee held a hearing to review an Environmental Protection Agency proposal called ‘Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.’ The proposal would require researchers to disclose underlying data—which could include private medical and health information—for any scientific studies that the agency would use in determining environmental regulations. Science reporter Lisa Friedman from the New York Times discusses how this proposal could be used to weaken regulations and discount certain scientific studies. Plus, epidemiologist Joshua Wallach talks about how the proposal could affect researchers who conduct long-term epidemiological studies.

We reached out to the EPA for comment and they provided a statement that says:

“Science transparency does not weaken science, quite the contrary. By requiring transparency, scientists will be required to publish hypothesis and experimental data for other scientists to review and discuss, requiring the science to withstand skepticism and peer review.”

Ticks are masters of breaking down the defenses of their host organism to get a blood meal. They use anesthetics to numb the skin, anticoagulants to keep the blood flowing, and keep the host’s immune system from recognizing them as invaders and kicking them out. And the key to understanding this is in the tick’s saliva. Biochemist and microbiologist Seemay Chou discusses how she milks the saliva from ticks to study what compounds play key parts in these chemical tricks. She also talks about how ticks are able to control the microbes in their saliva.

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This Thanksgiving, put your cooking skills to the test. Looking for tips to avoid singed sweet potatoes, acrid apple pies, and a burned bird? In this 2016 conversation from the SciFri archive, Molly Birnbaum and Dan Souza from Cook’s Science help us understand the science behind favorite Thanksgiving recipes so you can avoid food failures, and get the most out of your roast and side dishes.

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The FBI, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other agencies who oversee federal research grants are currently asking if the open culture of science in the U.S. is inviting other countries to steal it.

The FBI has been warning since 2016 that researchers could be potentially sending confidential research, and even biological samples, to other countries. On Monday, a report in the New York Times outlined the scale of ongoing investigations: nearly 200 cases of potential intellectual property theft at 71 different institutions.

New York Times health and science reporter Gina Kolata, who broke the story, explains the investigations, and why China is featuring so prominently.

Then, on May 29, 1919, Sir Arthur Eddington and his scientific team photographed the stars during a total solar eclipse. The resulting images displayed stars that seemed slightly out of place—an indication that the mass of the sun had caused starlight to veer off course, as Einstein’s general theory of relativity had predicted. Six months later, on November 6, 1919, Eddington’s team presented their findings before a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society—and skyrocketed Einstein to worldwide fame.

Science writer Ron Cowen, author of Gravity’s Century: From Einstein’s Eclipse to Images of Black Holes, joins Ira to tell the story.

Watch the Mercury transit! On Monday, November 11th, Mercury will slice a path across the sun—an occurrence that happens only about 13 times a century. These days, it’s fairly easy to observe a transit of Mercury—many local observatories or science centers hold viewing parties. But several centuries ago, transit chasers sailed the globe to observe these relatively rare events, in an effort to use them to calculate the size of the solar system. Find out how you can view the transit.

Researchers are collecting snapshots of Acadia National Park to supplement satellite data on fall leaf colors. Listen and learn more about this citizen science project.

And, the Trump administration has begun a year-long process to exit the agreement—which would complete the day after the next presidential election. Listen to this week's science news roundup.

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Eighteen years ago, a lawyer named Robert Bilott sent a letter to the EPA, the attorney general, and other regulators, warning them about a chemical called PFOA, short for perfluorooctanoic acid.

Outside of the companies that made and used PFOA, most people had never heard of it. But E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, better known as DuPont, had been using PFOA to make Teflon since the early 1950s. In the course of a lawsuit against the chemical corporation, Bilott had uncovered a trove of internal company documents, showing DuPont had been quietly monitoring the chemical’s health risks for decades, studying laboratory animals and their own workers. Bilott called on regulators to investigate and take action.

PFOA has since been linked to testicular and kidney cancer, among other diseases. It is part of a larger class of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have now been detected in everything from polar bears in Svalbard to fish in South Carolina, and are estimated to be in the blood of over 98% of Americans.

In the mid-2000s manufacturers started voluntarily phasing out PFOA and a related chemical, PFOS, but they substituted them with other PFAS chemicals, whose possible health effects are still being investigated and litigated.

Nearly two decades after Bilott wrote the EPA, the agency has not regulated these chemicals, but it says it plans to begin the process by the end of this year. Bilott, who previously secured a $670 million settlement from DuPont, is now suing DuPont, Chemours, and others on behalf of everyone in the United States who has PFAS in their blood.

This week, Robert Bilott tells Ira his story, now featured in his book, Exposure, and the movie, Dark Waters, out in theaters November 22. You can read an excerpt of Bilott’s book here.

Sharon Lerner of The Intercept also joins to discuss what is known about these chemicals, and what is and isn’t being done to limit our exposure.

Morgan Bengel stood about 35 feet underground, gesturing at the cold, rocky walls inside Old New-Gate Prison & Copper Mine. Late 18th-century descriptions of this subterranean penitentiary were bleak.

“Some of the words are, hell, a dungeon, woeful mansion,” Bengel said.

You’d think this would be the perfect place to find bats. It’s a dark damp cave. But during a bat survey here last winter scientists only found 10.

That’s because of white-nose syndrome. A disease caused by a fungus, which flourishes in caves, just like this one. The fungus gets on the muzzle and wings of bats, waking them up from hibernation, and depleting the fat they need to survive the winter.

It’s been more than a decade since the disease was first identified in North America. Since then, white-nose has killed off millions of bats across New England and other parts of the U.S. and Canada.

“We have a site in western Connecticut that was over 3,300 bats that we documented during a winter hibernaculum survey in 2007,” said Kate Moran, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. “We returned there in 2009 and there were more like 300 bats. We returned there in 2010, and we counted fewer than a dozen bats. It was carnage, really.”

White-nose was first documented in New York in the winter of 2006 to 2007. Since then, it’s spread to at least 33 states and 7 Canadian provinces, including all of New England. In Connecticut caves, DEEP biologist Brian Hess said it’s virtually everywhere.

“To our knowledge, all of the caves in Connecticut have the fungal pathogen living in them,” Hess said.

Across Connecticut, the numbers of cave-dwelling bats like the northern long-eared bat, little brown bat, and tri-colored bat all dropped dramatically between 2007 and 2010. Moran said they still haven’t recovered.

“In New England bats were very common. The northern long-eared bat was probably the most common bat we had throughout New England. Now it is the least common bat we have in New England,” Moran said.

And it’s listed as “threatened” under the Federal Endangered Species Act.

Bats are beneficial to people. They eat moths and beetles that can pose dangers to crops. And they also consume mosquitoes, which can spread dangerous diseases like West Nile virus and Eastern equine encephalitis.

Bats also live a long time. Moran said up to 30 years. And bats usually only produce one pup per year, which means any recovery will take a long time.

But it’s not all bad news. Hess said that while white-nose syndrome is present in all of Connecticut’s caves, there are spots within those areas where the fungus doesn’t do as well.

“There are little microclimates within caves that can help bats to survive that fungal load, because the fungus doesn’t grow quite as well if it’s warmer or cooler, or more or less humid than the fungus really, really likes,” Hess said.

What the fungus also doesn’t like, is going outside. It doesn’t survive in UV light or in springtime temperatures, so if a bat can make it through the winter, it can still have a shot at recovery.

That means hope for both the bats and the biologists working to conserve them.

“They’re still here. They haven’t blinked out,” Hess said. “When you have these introductions of diseases or pests, things are dire. But the fact that we still have bats is an encouragement and a reason to keep trying to make sure they still hang around.”

Hess said next year, the plan is to come back to New-Gate, to count bats and try to learn a little bit more about the handful of winter survivors who will awaken from an ecological nightmare.

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Spiders were one of the first animals to evolve on land. And over the span of 400 million years of speciation and evolution, they’ve learned some amazing tricks. One of their trademarks? The strong, sticky substance that we call silk—every spider produces it, whether for weaving webs, wrapping prey, or even leaving trails on the ground for potential mates.

But every silk is unique, each with different chemistry and different physical properties. Even a single spider web may use multiple kinds of silk. So how did spiders develop these wondrous fibers? We hear from Cheryl Hayashi at the American Museum of Natural History, Sarah Han at the University of Akron, and Linda Rayor at Cornell University about their work.

Plus, a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico has states along the Mississippi working to reduce nutrient runoff. Science and environment reporter Eli Chen from St. Louis Public Radio tells the us the State of Science.

And, Google says its quantum computer has achieved in just 200 seconds what would take a supercomputer thousands of years. But IBM is pushing back. Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins Ira to talk about what this means and other stories from this week in science.

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When the water rises, whether from heavy rains or rising seas, communities have a few options: reinforce flood-threatened homes, rebuild after the water recedes, or—in places where the threat of repeated floods and even more damage is increasing—leave.

And while leaving may feel synonymous with defeat, more cities and states are interested in encouraging people to leave risky floodplains—a process called managed retreat. FEMA offers a buyout program that usually involves offering homeowners money to encourage them to move elsewhere. New York Times reporter Christopher Flavelle and University of Delaware social scientist A.R. Siders describe some of the different ways cities and states have attempted the process: from Staten Island residents who took buyouts after flooding from Hurricane Sandy, to Louisiana’s new statewide plan for strategically targeting high-risk areas.

But how can managed retreat go wrong? New research in Science Advances from Siders and her colleagues has found that it’s often rich counties that apply for FEMA money, and they often use it for buying out poorer residents—leading to questions of whether resources or opportunities are being distributed equitably. Jola Ajibade, a geographer at Portland State University, expands these questions to the global scale: In Lagos, Nigeria, managed retreat offers no financial incentive to people being asked to leave. And in Manila, Philippines, people are offered new homes, but aren’t given a way to earn a livelihood.

Finally, with enough planning, can retreating retain the fabric of an entire community? In Sidney, New York, neighbors have been waiting eight years trying to move together to higher ground—and they’re still caught up in red tape. The planned relocation of a Native American community on Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana, has hit roadblocks as well. But small Midwestern towns fleeing massive river floods have tried the same, and seem to be thriving decades later: see Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, and Valmeyer, Illinois. Lehigh University anthropologist David Casagrande explains why collective community planning may end up being a key factor in retreat that leaves peoples’ lives and livelihoods most intact.

At a United Nations climate meeting in Poland last year, President Trump’s advisor on energy and climate change didn’t advance a forward-thinking plan to tackle climate change, but instead extolled the virtues of natural gas and even coal—one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. So, in the absence of meaningful federal policy on climate change, a grassroots effort by 435 U.S. mayors seeks to solve the climate problem, starting at the local level instead.

Emily Atkin, who writes the HEATED newsletter about the climate crisis, talks about that and other climate policy stories in the news, such as the lack of climate questions at the Democratic debate and the candidates’ views on punishing fossil fuel companies; Google donations that fuel climate science denial; and the Department of Agriculture’s lack of assistance for farmers dealing with increasingly extreme weather.

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Despite widely reported attacks on science, the vast majority of Americans continue to trust scientists, according to the latest survey from the Pew Research Center. Many listeners of Science Friday might take it as a given that we should trust science, but is that trust well-founded? Naomi Oreskes, history of science professor at Harvard University, argues that we should. In her new book, Why Trust Science?, she explains how science works and what makes it trustworthy. (Hint: it’s not the scientific method.)

Pacific Gas & Electric has generated confusion—not to mention outrage—with its power grid shutdowns. The situation continues for a second day in 34 California counties. On social media and phone calls to KQED’s Forum radio program, people throughout PG&E’s service area have asked how and why the investor-owned utility took this step. KQED reporters have some answers to some of the questions that have come in.

Why Is PG&E Turning the Power Off? Is This PG&E’s Fault?

Bottom line, PG&E doesn’t want to risk having its power lines start another fire, so it is pre-emptively turning the power off during this week’s dry, windy weather. The company made the decision based on information from its wildfire center, where meteorologists keep watch on fire conditions.

PG&E’s power lines have sparked many catastrophic wildfires in California, including last year’s Camp Fire in Butte County that caused 85 deaths, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in 100 years. PG&E lines started more than a dozen fires in 2017. Less than a month ago, the company agreed to pay billion in a settlement with victims of the recent fires.

The shutoffs are part of its wildfire mitigation plan, mandated by the state and agreed to by the California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s top power regulator. — Kevin Stark

Who Made This Decision? When Did They Make It?

If past practice tells us anything, PG&E has been making and remaking this decision, with the help of its meteorological team, over several days. The utility says it considers weather, fuel and other conditions and observations, as well as the need for notice by state and local parties, when it decides to implement shutoffs. As we’ve seen over the last few days, the planned outage times can change with shifting conditions.

The fact is, there’s nothing new about turning off power lines when conditions get risky: San Diego Gas and Electric, with the permission of the CPUC, has mitigated fire risk this way since 2012. What is new are the guidelines PG&E filed just a year ago for its public safety power shutoff procedures.

For the last couple of years, the CPUC has required investor-owned utilities to describe their processes for arriving at decisions like the one affecting nearly three dozen California counties right now. PG&E shut off power two times last year; the last time PG&E called a public safety power shutoff, for two days in June, it affected about 22,000 customers in the North Bay and the Sierra foothills, including Butte County and Paradise. — Molly Peterson

Read more questions and answers on Science Friday.

Cartilage is the connective tissue that provides padding between your joints. As we age, the wearing down of cartilage can lead to different types of arthritis. It’s been long believed that once humans lose cartilage, it can never grow back. Now, a team of researchers investigated this idea, and found that the cartilage in our ankles might be able to turnover more easily compared to our hips and knees. Their results were published in the journal Science Advances. Rheumatologist Virginia Byers Kraus, who was an author on the study, discusses how human cartilage might be able to regenerate and what this means for future treatments.

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Today, it’s much easier to find smart TVs on the market. Companies like Vizio and Samsung create devices capable of internet connection and with built-in apps that let you quickly access your favorite streaming services. But that convenience comes with a hidden cost—one you pay for with your data.

Smart TVs have joined the list of internet connected devices looking to harvest your data. They can track what shows you watch, then use that data to deliver targeted ads, just like Facebook. Not worried about what media companies know about your binge watching habits? New research suggests that’s not everything smart TVs are doing. If you are the owner of just one of many “internet of things” devices in your home, those devices could be talking to each other, influencing what gets advertised to you on your phone, tablet, and TV screen.

Dave Choffnes, associate professor of computer science at Northeastern University, and Nick Feamster, director of the Center for Data and Computing at the University of Chicago, join Ira to share what they each found when they looked into the spying habits of your smart devices.

Cooking food changes it in fundamental ways. Cooked starches are easier to digest. Seared meats are less likely to give us foodborne pathogens. And overall, we get more energy out of cooked foods than raw. But scientists are still pursuing a pivotal question about cooking: How did its invention change our bodies and shape our evolution? Did it shrink our teeth and digestive tracts? Or did it increase our brain size?

Researchers writing in Nature Microbiology reported a new chapter in our understanding of how cooking has changed us: The microbial communities in our guts change dramatically if our food is cooked or raw. And mice whose microbiomes were associated with raw foods seem to gain weight more easily—but their microbiomes also showed signs of damage from plant-generated antimicrobial chemicals. Harvard researcher Rachel Carmody explains the findings, and what our microbiomes might say about cooking food and evolution.

Between water and electricity, Colorado’s legal cannabis industry already has a big environmental footprint. But what about Front Range air quality? Could the plant itself be contributing to air pollution? No, it’s not the pot smoke. Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is conducting a study of terpenes, the organic compounds that make the cannabis plant smell so strong.

Terpenes are classified as volatile organic compounds. Many consumer products release VOCs, like acetone in nail polish remover and butanal from barbecues and stoves. VOCs from terpenes are harmless until they combine with combustion gases to create ozone. That’s why the state is studying marijuana emissions—it’s about where it’s grown. Unlike other VOC-emitting crops, like lavender, cannabis is often cultivated in greenhouses in the industrial areas of cities, near highways and lots of cars.

“Here in Colorado, as far as air quality concerns go, ozone is our largest pollutant of concern. We are not meeting the national ambient air quality standards for ozone,” said CDPHE’s lead researcher on this project, Kaitlin Urso. Denver’s ozone problem is especially bad. According to the American Lung Association, it has the nation’s 12th worst air quality. Usually, it’s the Environmental Protection Agency that studies emissions from new industries. Since marijuana is still a federally controlled substance, it can’t.

With the feds on the sideline, Urso said it’s now up to the state to figure out, essentially, “how many pounds of VOCs are emitted into our atmosphere per pound of marijuana grown?”

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A new report issued this week by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change paints a troubling picture of the world’s ice and oceans. The ocean effects of climate change, from warming waters to ocean acidification to sea level rise, are already altering the weather, fisheries, and coastal communities. The authors of the report state that the ocean has already taken up more than 90% of the excess heat in the climate system since 1970, the surface is becoming more acidic, and oxygen is being depleted in the top thousand meters of the water column. All those conditions are projected to get worse in the years ahead. Ocean scientist and former NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco joins Ira to talk about the risks to the ocean, its effects on the global ecosystem, and how the ocean can also help to blunt some of the worst climate outcomes—if action is taken now.

In his new book, Something Deeply Hidden, quantum physicist Sean Carroll offers a different ending for Schrödinger’s imaginary cat. Carroll ascribes to the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, originally proposed by American physicist Hugh Everett in the 1950’s. According to Everett, when you look inside the box you are also in two states at once. Now there are two worlds—one in which you saw the cat alive, and one in which you saw the cat dead. If thinking about this makes your head hurt, you’re not alone. Carroll joins Ira to talk about the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, and why he thinks not enough physicists are taking on the challenge of trying to understand it.

Plus: World leaders convened in New York City this week for the United Nations Climate Action Summit. But there wasn’t a whole lot of action at the Climate Action Summit, at least not from the greenhouse-gas-emitting elephants in the room: India, China, and the United States. Umair Irfan, who writes about energy, tech and climate for Vox.com, catches Ira up on how countries around the world are tackling—or ignoring—the climate crisis.

And Sarah Zhang, staff writer at the Atlantic, tells Ira about NASA's new infrared telescope to detect near-Earth objects and other science headlines in this week's News Roundup.

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Climate change has been trending in the news recently—and if there’s one industry out there that knows something about trends, it’s the fashion industry. Long known for churning out cheap garments and burning through resources, some fashion labels like fast fashion giant H&M are now embracing sustainable fashion trends. But can this industry—which is responsible for 8% of global carbon emissions—really shed its wasteful business model in favor of one with a lower carbon footprint? Marc Bain, a fashion reporter at Quartz, Maxine Bédat from the New Standard Institute, and Linda Greer, global policy fellow with the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs talk with Ira about the industry’s effort to reduce its climate impact.

Plus, a check in on the Trump administration's rollback of the Clean Air Act waiver, and more of the week's biggest climate headlines.

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Facial recognition technology is all around us—it’s at concerts, airports, and apartment buildings. But its use by law enforcement agencies and courtrooms raises particular concerns about privacy, fairness, and bias, according to some researchers. Some studies have shown that some of the major facial recognition systems are inaccurate. Amazon’s software misidentified 28 members of Congress and matched them with criminal mugshots. These inaccuracies tend to be far worse for people of color and women. We'll talk about how AI is guiding the decisions of police departments and courtrooms across the country—and whether we should be concerned.

Plus: Scientists were threatened with firings after the National Weather Service projections for Hurricane Dorian contradicted President Trump’s tweets, and more of the biggest science stories from the week.

Finally, wind turbines are great at producing green energy. But when they reach they end of their life-span, their parts are incredibly difficult to recycle.

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The Science Friday Book Club is done birding—for now. But after wrapping up our summer discussion of Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds, bird enthusiasts flocked together at Caveat, a venue in New York City, for one last celebration of bird brains and feathered phenomena.

We pitted audience members up against some local bird geniuses in tests of memory, pattern recognition, and problem-solving. Then, we brought on a gaggle of experts to talk about the special and smart birds of New York City, along with some of the threats they face—including bright lights and deceptive glass. And with fall migration underway, we’re talking about many more species than pigeons.

Science Friday SciArts producer and book club flock leader Christie Taylor hosted the conversation with NYC Audubon conservation biologist Kaitlyn Parkins, Wild Bird Fund director Rita McMahon, Fordham University evolutionary biologist Elizabeth Carlen, and National Audubon editor and Feminist Bird Club vice president Martha Harbison.

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In 2012, the Obama administration projected that the United States would need to add an additional 1 million college graduates in STEM fields per year for the next ten years to keep up with projected growth in the need for science and technology expertise. At the same time, though, native Americans and other indigenous groups are underrepresented in the sciences, making up only 0.2 percent of the STEM workforce in 2014, despite being 2 percent of the total population of the United States. Why are indigenous people still underrepresented in science?

Ira speaks with astrophysicist Annette Lee and anthropologist Kim TallBear about the historical role of science and observation in indigenous communities, and how Western scientific culture can leave out other voices. They also discuss the solutions: What does an inclusive scientific enterprise look like, and how could we get there? Learn more about the efforts in North America to recognize indigenous astronomy.

Plus: After Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahamas, Florida braced itself for a brutal start to hurricane season. The storm didn’t cause catastrophic damage to the state this time, but Florida is just beginning peak hurricane season—and its nursing homes, which care for over 70,000 people, may not be prepared. Caitie Switalski of WLRN tells Ira more in the latest "State Of Science."

And writer Annalee Newitz talks about the Trump administration's decision to roll back lightbulb efficiency standards, and other science headlines, in this week's News Roundup.

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Each year, outdoor enthusiasts in the country spend nearly $900 billion dollars on hiking, fishing and other types of outdoor recreation. The different types of business that take part in that tourism economy span a wide range—from big all inclusive ski resorts to mom and pop shops that sell tours of their local hiking spots.

But with shrinking snowpacks, more extreme weather, and the unpredictable changes from season to season, these businesses must wrestle with a challenge: climate change. Winter tourism operations are adding on summer water sports to stay afloat, while the number of ski resorts have dwindled almost in half since the 1950s. How will these local businesses adapt?

In Capital Public Radio’s podcast TahoeLand, reporter Ezra David Romero investigates how the community of Lake Tahoe in California, which sees 30 million tourists each year, is responding to these changes. Romero talks with Ira about how a pair of residents are trying to establish the area as the “Outdoor Capital of the World” in order to expand outdoor activities that can take place between the big winter and summer tourism seasons. He discusses how local businesses, from casinos to sleigh ride operators, are re-envisioning how they will operate in the future.

Daniel Scott, who studies the effects of climate change on tourism, joins the conversation to discuss how the ski resorts are implementing different attractions that can be used year round. And Mario Molina from Protect Our Winters talks about how his organizations trains professional athletes and businesses that depend on the outdoors to become advocates for sustainable practices and policies.

Plus, all eyes are on the Atlantic this week as Hurricane Dorian makes its way towards Florida. While Puerto Rico was spared the brunt of the storm, the hurricane still comes at a time when both Florida and Puerto Rico are especially vulnerable to storms. Rebecca Leber, climate and environment reporter at Mother Jones, joins Ira to discuss why—and the contributions a changing climate has to storms such as Dorian.

They’ll also talk about other climate stories from recent days, including statements from presidential candidates regarding their climate policy plans, the sailboat arrival of climate activist Greta Thunberg in New York, and a federal rule change that would loosen restrictions on methane gas emissions.

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“Bird-brain” has long been an insult meant to imply slow-wittedness or stupidity. But in reading Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds, SciFri Book Club readers have been learning that birds often have wits well beyond ours—take the mockingbird’s capacity to memorize the songs of other birds, or the precise annual migrations of hummingbirds and Arctic terns. Or the New Caledonian crow, which make tools and solve puzzles that might mystify human children. UCLA pigeon researcher Aaron Blaisdell and University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Lauren Riters join Ira and producer Christie Taylor to talk about the brightest minds of the bird world, and the burning questions remaining about avian brains.

The Brazilian rainforest is experiencing a record number of fires this year—an 83% increase over 2018. Since last week, smoke from an estimated 9,500 fires has blocked out the sun for thousands of miles, covering cities like São Paulo in a dark cloud. Environmental agencies and researchers suspect the fires are human caused, cattle ranchers and loggers who are looking to clear the land for their own use. Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer for Gizmodo, gives us a rundown of the unprecedented destruction currently underway, and other science headlines, in this week's News Roundup.

Plus: In North Carolina, electric vehicle charging stations will start operating more like gas pumps. David Boraks, from WFAE 90.7 in Charlotte, tells Ira more in "The State Of Science."

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Lightning during a heavy rainstorm is one of the most dramatic phenomena on the planet—and it happens, somewhere on Earth, an estimated 50 to 100 times a second. But even though scientists have been puzzling over the physics of lightning for decades, stretching back even to Ben Franklin’s kite experiment, much of the science remains mysterious. Ira and IEEE Spectrum news editor Amy Nordrum speak with Farhad Rachidi, a lightning researcher at Säntis Tower in Switzerland, as well as Bill Rison, a professor of electrical engineering at New Mexico Tech and Ryan Said, a research scientist at Vaisala, about what potentially causes lightning, lightning-sparked wildfires, and why it's hard to study it in a lab.

Plus: Scooters are electric, emission-free, and must be replacing gas-guzzling car trips. That has to be good for the climate, right? But a new study in the journal Environmental Research Letters says electric scooters actually aren’t very green. Sigal Samuel, a staff writer for Vox based in Washington D.C., joins Ira to talk more about the study.

And this week, the Trump administration announced it would change the way the Endangered Species Act is implemented starting in September. Regulators would soon be able to conduct economic assessments to decide whether a species should be protected or not. Maggie Koerth-Baker, senior science reporter for FiveThiryEight, joins Ira to discuss the roll back as well as other science headlines in this week's News Roundup.

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High-speed internet access is becoming a necessity of modern life, but connecting over a million rural Texans is a challenge. How do we bridge the digital divide in Texas' wide open spaces?

It turns out the Great Red Spot might not be so great—it's shrinking. Plus, other news from the giant planets.

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Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in Hawaii, towering over the Pacific at nearly 14,000 feet. That high altitude, combined with the mountain’s dry, still air and its extreme darkness at night, make it an ideal place for astronomy. There are already 13 observatories on the summit plateau. Now, astronomers want to build another, called the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, which would become the largest visible-light telescope on the mountain.

But many native Hawaiians don’t want it there, for a multitude of reasons. Science Friday talked with Kawika Winter, a multidisciplinary ecologist at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology and the He'eia National Estuarine Research Reserve, who summed it up this way:

"The notion of pursuit of knowledge is an important one here. But is it pursuit of knowledge at all costs? Is it pursuit of knowledge at the expense of our humanity?

From the native Hawaiian perspective this is just the same thing that's happened before. It's preventing people from accessing sacred places. It's desecration of sacred places through construction. It's all of these issues, but this time it's for a ‘good reason.’ This time it's for science, this time it's for knowledge, so now it should be ok, right? But it's the same thing that's been happening for 200 years. It doesn't matter what the reason is.

Engaging native Hawaiians is not a box to check off in the process. And you check it off at the end, say 'yeah, we checked with native Hawaiians.' That's not the proper way to engage in science in indigenous places. So we're trying to advocate for a different model for approaching science, and integrating native peoples, indigenous peoples, and indigenous cultures into the process. And that's how we can make sure the science we conduct doesn't come at the expense of our humanity."

Many native Hawaiians say the way this fight has been portrayed in the media—as Hawaiian culture versus science—is disrespectful of their culture, ignorant of their motives, and oblivious to the fact that science has long been an important part of traditional Hawaiian culture. Nearly a thousand scientists and astronomers have now signed an open letter in solidarity with those who would like to see a halt in construction.

When a baby human learns to talk, there’s a predictable pattern of learning: First, they listen to the language spoken around them, then they babble and try to make the same sounds, and then they eventually learn the motor skills to shape that babble into words and meaning.

Researchers who study songbirds know this is also the process by which a baby male zebra finch learns the unique songs that as an adult he will use to mate and defend territory. The same holds true for canaries, nightingales, warblers, and beyond. And for many birds, like humans, the window where they learn their “language” best is a short one that closes early in life. In fact, bird song is studied closely as an analogy for human speech—an example of sophisticated brain machinery for learning that evolved separately in birds and humans.

Alaska governor Mike Dunleavy’s budget cuts to the University of Alaska total about $136 million, or roughly 41 percent of state support. As a result, the University of Alaska Board of Regents voted 8 to 3 to move towards consolidating the entire university system to a single accredited university.

UA president Jim Johnsen says under any plan, it’s likely that the cuts will have a ripple effect on enrollment and research. He says both are avenues that could result in less money for the university as a whole. A task force has been put together to determine how to move forward with the single university model.

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The Science Friday Book Club is buckling down to read Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds this summer. Meanwhile, it’s vacation season, and we want you to go out and appreciate some birds in the wild.

But for beginning birders, it may seem intimidating to find and identify feathered friends both near and far from home. Audubon experts Martha Harbison and Purbita Saha join guest host Molly Webster to share some advice. They explain how to identify birds by sight and by ear, some guides that can help, and tips on photographing your finds. Plus the highlights of summer birding: Shore bird migration is already underway, and baby birds are venturing out of the nest. We challenge you to get outside to see your local clever birds in action! Join the Science Friday Bird Club on the citizen science platform iNaturalist.

In this era of the Equifax breach and Facebook’s lax data privacy standards, most people are at least somewhat anxious about what happens to the data we give away. In recent years, companies have responded by promising to strip away identifying information, like your name, address, or social security number.

But data scientists are warning us that that isn’t enough. Even seemingly harmless data—like your preferred choice of cereal—can be used to identify you. In a paper from Nature Communications out this week, researchers published a tool that calculates the likelihood of someone identifying you after offering up only a few pieces of personal information, like your zip code and your birth date.

Dr. Julien Hendrickx, co-author of the study out in Nature Communications, joins guest host Molly Webster to discuss the risk of being discovered among anonymous data. And Joseph Jerome, policy council for the Privacy and Data project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, joins the conversation to talk about whether data can ever truly be anonymous.

Plus, the Ebola crisis in the D.R.C. is now the second biggest outbreak on record. That, and other science stories in the news this week.

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Celebrating Apollo's 'Giant Leap' July 20, 1969 was a day that changed us forever—the first time humans left footprints on another world. In this segment, Ira Flatow and space historian Andy Chaikin celebrate that history and examine the legacy of the Apollo program.

Apollo ushered in a new age of scientific discovery, with lunar samples that unlocked the history of how the moon and the solar system formed. It accelerated the development of new technologies, like the integrated circuit. And most of all, says Chaikin, it taught us how to work together, to achieve seemingly impossible goals.

We also take a look at what comes next for NASA’s historic launchpads. Science Friday producers Alexa Lim and Daniel Peterschmidt went to NASA Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida a few months ago. They got to see how the space agency is upgrading some of its storied launchpads—and leaving others behind to rising sea levels.

Take Flight With Science Friday's Book Club Called anyone a “bird brain” recently? There was a time when we thought this meant “stupid,” deceived by the small size and smooth surface of birds’ brains into thinking they were mere mindless bundles of feathers.

But researchers are finding out what birds themselves have always known: Our feathered friends come with mental skills that might stump even humans. Be it tool-making, social smarts, navigation across vast distances, or even the infinitely adaptable house sparrow, Jennifer Ackerman writes of dozens of examples in this summer’s SciFri Book Club pick, The Genius of Birds. Take homing pigeons, which can be released hundreds of miles from the roof and still eventually wing their way home. Or mockingbirds, who can memorize and mimic, with astonishing accuracy, the songs and calls of as many as 200 different other birds. And birds have other kinds of genius: Bowerbirds craft intricate displays to lure their mates, each species with its own particular aesthetic preferences, like the satin bowerbird’s penchant for blue.

Ira, Book Club captain Christie Taylor, and bird brain researchers Aaron Blaisdell and Lauren Riters convene for the summer Book Club kickoff, and a celebration of avian minds everywhere.

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A quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from putting food on the table. From the fossil fuels used to produce fertilizers, to the methane burps of cows, to the jet fuel used to deliver your fresh asparagus, eating is one of the most planet-warming things we do. In our latest chapter of Degrees of Change, we're looking at how to eat smarter in a warming world.

Plus, we’ve launched a new way for you to add your voice to the show: the SciFri VoxPop app. Download now for iPhone or Android.

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Summer is here—and that means it’s time for a road trip! Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton, co-authors of Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the Hidden Wonders of the World, join Ira to share some suggestions for sciencey things to see and do around the country, from unusual museum exhibits to outstanding natural wonders. Plus, we asked you for YOUR travel ideas—and did you deliver! We’ll share tourist tips from some regular Science Friday guests, and highlight some of your many suggestions.

Speaking of summer trips... You might consider skipping the large urban centers, like Paris or Madrid, for something a little older—like Pompeii. The ancient city in Italy is one of the country’s largest tourist attractions, receiving over 4 million visitors a year. Perhaps it's because archaeology is inspiring tourism around the world. From Egypt, China, South America to India, archaeologists are experiencing a golden era of discovery thanks to new tools that help uncover buried civilizations. Sarah Parcak, professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama Birmingham and author of the new book Space Archaeology joins Ira to talk about what past civilizations can teach us about our current moment in time.

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Much has been written about the Manhattan Project, the American-led project to develop the atomic bomb. Less well known is Nazi Germany’s “Uranium Club”—a similar project started a full two years before the Manhattan Project. The Nazis had some of the greatest chemists and physicists in the world on their side, including Werner Heisenberg, and the Allies were terrified that the Nazis would beat them to the bomb—meaning the Allies were willing to try anything from espionage to assassination to bombing raids to stop them.

Science writer Sam Kean joins Ira to tell the high-stakes story written in his new book The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb.

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The eight-day squid-and-kin appreciation extravaganza of Cephalopod Week is nearly over, but there’s still plenty to learn and love about these tentacled “aliens” of the deep. After a rare video sighting of a giant squid—the first in North American waters—last week, NOAA zoologist Mike Vecchione talks about his role identifying the squid from a mere 25 seconds of video, and why ocean exploration is the best way to learn about the behavior and ecology of deep-sea cephalopods. Then, Marine Biological Laboratory scientist Carrie Albertin gives Ira a tour of the complex genomes of octopuses, and how understanding cephalopod genetics could lead to greater insights into human health. Finally, SciFri digital producer Lauren Young wraps up Cephalopod Week for 2019.

The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) receives over a billion dollars a year to study issues affecting American agriculture and the food supply. Climate change is one of those issues, and in years past, the ARS has publicized its work on how farmers can reduce their carbon footprint with no-till agriculture; how climate change alters the relationship of pests and crops; or how more abundant CO2 affects the growth of grasslands, potatoes, timber, wheat, and more. But in the last several years, that steady stream of climate-related agricultural science news has dried up. One of the only recent press releases from the ARS dealing with climate change is a good news story for the beef industry, about how beef’s greenhouse gas emissions may not be that bad after all. The agency’s move away from publicizing a wide range of work on climate science is part of a troubling trend, according to a new investigation by Politico.

The wetland marshes just outside the city of New Orleans act as natural buffers from storm surges during hurricanes. But like much of southern Louisiana, that land is disappearing. It’s partly due to subsistence and sea level rise—but also due to the thousands of miles of channels that oil companies have carved through the fragile marshes to get out to their rigs. Those channels have eroded and turned the buffering wetlands to open water. Now, New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell is suing a handful of oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, for money to rebuild the marshes they helped destroy.

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The official U.S. time is kept on a cesium fountain clock named NIST-F1, located in Boulder, Colorado. On a recent trip to Boulder, Ira took a trip to see the clock. He spoke with Elizabeth Donley, acting head of the Time and Frequency Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, about keeping the official U.S. time on track—and how NIST is using advanced physics to develop ever more precise and stable ways to measure time.

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For eight glorious days during the end of June, Science Friday honors the mighty mollusks of the ocean—Cephalopod Week returns for the sixth year! And we’re cephalo-brating with a tidal wave of ways for you to participate. This year, we want to know your favorite cephalopod. Is it the charismatic giant Pacific octopus or the long-lived chambered nautilus? Science Friday digital producer Lauren Young and biologist Diana Li add their own favorite cephalopods to the ultimate undersea showdown. They talk about the bizarre defenses of the blanket octopus, speedy squid getaways, and octopuses that play with LEGOs.

We may refer to Earth as “our planet,” but it really belongs to the microbes. All the plants and animals on Earth are relatively new additions to the planetary ecosystem. But despite living basically everywhere on the planet, and playing a role in many of the processes that affect the climate, the connection between microbes and the climate is often ignored. That needs to change, says a consensus statement published this week by researchers in the journal Nature Reviews: Microbiology. Take the issue of methane emissions from agriculture, particularly beef production. “The methane doesn’t come from the cows,” said David Mark Welch, director of the Division of Research at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. “It comes from microbes in the cows.” In a similar way, emissions coming from rice paddies aren’t caused by the rice—they are caused by microbes living in stagnant water around the rice. David Mark Welch, one of the co-authors of the consensus statement, joins Ira to discuss the deep connections between microorganisms and the climate, and why scientists and policymakers should pay more attention to microbes in the climate arena.

If you’ve ever suspected your dog of looking extra cute to get a bite of your steak or pizza, it’s probably because you couldn’t resist their puppy dog eyes. Over time, dogs have evolved to make their eyes look bigger and more baby-like. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers have discovered that dogs have muscles around their eyes that help them make puppy dog eyes at you. They also found that wolves, the wild ancestor of the dog, don’t have these muscles. Anne Burrows, one of the researchers in their study, joins Ira to discuss how dogs have evolved these muscles and why people are so susceptible to their big, sad-looking eyes. Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere also joins to talk about other ways that dogs have evolved to strengthen the human-dog bond.

A renewable energy project planned off the coast of Newport is taking a step forward. Oregon State University has submitted a final license application for a wave energy testing facility with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. If built, it would be the largest of its kind in the United States. Oregon’s potential to use the motion of the waves to generate electricity is very high. But nationally, the development of wave energy has lagged behind other green energy sources. Part of the delay is the time and expense involved in permitting new technology. Not only do companies have to pay to develop this kind of clean tech, they also have to go through a lengthy and expensive permitting process before being allowed to see if their ideas work in the real world. This is where Oregon State University’s PacWave South Project comes in. The university plans to create a wave energy testing facility about six miles off the Oregon Coast. The idea is that energy developers will be able to by-pass the permitting and just pay the University to test their wave energy converters in the water.

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The Best Science Books To Read This Summer They say a vacation is only as good as the book you bring with you. And these days it feels like there are as many ways to consume science writing as there are fields of science. Whether you’re a fan of historical nonfiction, graphic novels, poetry or short essays, this year’s panel of summer science books experts has the one you’re looking for to take with you on your journey.

Alison Gilchrist is a graduate student researcher at CU Boulder and host of the podcast Buff Talk Science, and editor in chief of Science Buffs. Caren Cooper is an associate professor of public science at NC State University and author of Citizen Science: How Ordinary People Are Changing the Face of Discovery. Stephanie Sendaula is associate editor for Library Journal Reviews. They join Ira to talk about what they have chosen for their best summer science reads.

Chronic Wasting Disease In Wildlife

Chronic wasting disease is a fatal illness affecting the brains of deer, moose, and elk. Since its discovery in 1967, the disease has been detected in at least 26 states, three Canadian provinces, Norway, Sweden, and South Korea. Rae Ellen Bichell, a reporter with the Mountain West News Bureau and KUNC, talks about the disease, research into its origin and spread, and what’s known about the possible effects of human exposure.

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For half a century, most neuroscience experiments have had one glaring flaw: They've ignored female study subjects. The reason? Researchers claimed, for example, that female rats and mice would skew their data, due to hormonal cycling. Writing in the journal Science, neuroscientist Rebecca Shansky says that view is out of date—and it's been harming science too. She and Radiolab producer and co-host Molly Webster join Ira to talk about the past, present, and future of laboratory research, and whether science can leave these outdated gender stereotypes behind.

The Onyx River is the longest river in Antarctica, flowing for 19 miles from the coastal Wright Lower Glacier and ending in Lake Vanda. This seasonal stream also has a long scientific record—it has been continuously monitored by scientists for 50 years. Science Friday’s education director Ariel Zych took a trip to the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica to visit scientists in the field who are part of this monitoring project. She and limnologist and biogeochemist Diane McKnight, who has spent decades studying these rivers, talk about the frozen desert ecosystem these waterways transect, and how climate change has affected the continent in the last 50 years.

Plus: researchers in Missouri are examining the after-effects of recent tornadoes to engineer stronger homes. Eli Chen of St. Louis Public Radio tells Ira more in The State of Science.

And science journalist Annalee Newitz talks about the Trump Administration's recent fetal tissue research ban in this week's News Roundup.

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Physicist Murray Gell-Mann died recently at the age of 89. He received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles, and is credited with giving quarks their name. But he was known for more than just physics—he was a co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute, and a champion of creativity and interdisciplinary research.

One of his biggest interests was exploring the “chain of relationships” that connects basic physical laws and the subatomic world to the complex systems that we can see, hear, and experience. He joined Ira in 1994 to discuss those chains, the topic of his book “The Quark and the Jaguar.”

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How many times has this happened to you? You’re standing in front of an open freezer, wondering what type of mystery meat has been left in there, when you purchased it, and if it’s still safe to eat? If you’re puzzled by sell-by dates, freezer burn, and just how long food can remain edible, you’re not alone. Studies show that more than 80 percent of Americans misinterpret date labels and throw food away prematurely to protect their families’ health. That adds up to $218 billion worth of food each year. Janell Goodwin, with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, and Francisco Diez-Gonzales, professor and director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, join Ira for a master class in food microbiology and safety. Then, Roni Neff of Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health explains how confusion over date labeling is worsening food waste and climate change.

Plus: A population of mole salamanders in the Midwest is throwing a curveball at our understanding of sex and reproduction. Some populations of this salamander are unisexual—they’re females that can reproduce without males. Katie Greenwald, an associate professor of biology at Eastern Michigan University, joins Ira to explain what advantages living a single-sex life may have for the mole salamander.

The herbicide glyphosate, found in products such as Roundup, has become a crucial tool on midwestern farms—but weeds are becoming resistant. What's next? Chris Walljasper, a reporter from the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, tells Ira more on the State Of Science.

And The Atlantic's Sarah Zhang tells us what's whipping up 2019's active tornado season in this week's News Roundup.

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This week marks the 100th anniversary of an eclipse that forever changed physics and our understanding of the universe.

In May 1919, scientists set out for Sobral, Brazil, and Príncipe, an island off the west coast of Africa, to photograph the momentarily starry sky during a total eclipse. Their scientific aim was to test whether the sun’s gravity would indeed bend light rays from faraway stars, as predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. After analyzing the data from the brief minutes of darkness, they declared Einstein correct.

Carlo Rovelli, physicist and author, tells Ira the story.

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What would it take to power a subsea factory of the future? Plus, other stories from this week in science news.

Then, as the last coal-fired power plant plans to shut down at the end of the year, the Navajo Tribe is embracing renewables.

Next, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, distrust of the government and healthcare workers are hampering efforts to contain the current outbreak.

Finally, in a new climate change play, a playwright explores what kinds of narratives we need to stir action on climate.

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As the frequency of tropical storms and droughts increase and sea levels rise with climate change, forested wetlands along the Atlantic coast are slowly filling with dead and dying trees. The accelerating spread of these “ghost forests” over the past decade has ecologists alarmed and eager to understand how they are formed and what effect they will have regionally and globally.

One interdisciplinary group of researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University are examining the causes and effects of repeated saltwater exposure to the coastal wetlands of North Carolina. Using soil and sediment sampling, remote hydrological monitoring, vegetation plotting, as well as spatial maps, the research team is determining the tipping point for when a struggling forest will become a ghost forest. According to ecologist Emily Bernhardt, their preliminary findings suggest that climate change is not the only culprit in the region.

Agricultural irrigation and wastewater ditches that criss-cross much of the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula facilitate the flow of saltwater intrusion deep into the landscape, wreaking ecological and economic havoc. Working with Brian Boutin, director of the Nature Conservancy’s Albemarle-Pamlico Program, Dr. Bernhardt and colleagues hope to provide valuable scientific insights to local farmers, wetlands managers, and regional decision-makers to plan for the further intrusions and hopefully mitigate the effects.

Meanwhile, less than 100 miles up the coast from the Albemarle-Pamlico peninsula, the cities of Hampton Roads, Virginia along the Chesapeake Bay are facing some of the worst flooding due to sea level rise in the country. In Norfolk, home of the United States Navy, tides have increased as much as eight inches since the 1970s, and roads that lead from the community directly to naval installations are particularly vulnerable to flooding.

But in the last 10 years, Hampton Roads has begun to adapt. “When we first started having these discussions, there was a lot of concern about, should we be having discussions like this in public. What would be the potential impacts on economic development or on the population growth here?” said Ben McFarlane, senior regional planner with the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. “Now it’s recognized and people know it’s happening. I think the strategy has changed to being more of a ‘Let’s stop talking about how bad it is and how bad it’s going to get. And let’s start talking about solutions.’”

The Planning District Commission supports the use of living shorelines and ordinance changes that discourage developing in flood prone areas. Norfolk has even been named one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities in part for its efforts promoting coastal resiliency in the face of sea level rise.

Plus, the latest investment report from the International Energy Agency was released this week, and shows that in 2018, final investment decisions were made to support bringing an additional 22GW of coal-fired electric generation online—but in the same year, around 30 GW of coal-burning generating capacity were closed. Of course, coal plants are still under construction, and there are thousands of terawatts of coal-generating capacity worldwide, so the end of coal is nowhere in sight yet—but the investment report may indicate a tipping point in the global energy budget.

Kendra Pierre-Louis, a reporter on the climate desk at the New York Times, joins Ira to talk about that and other climate news—including the President’s energy policy remarks at a natural gas plant, the discovery of another ocean garbage patch of plastic, and the rise of “climate refuge cities.”

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Six decades ago, a group of physicists came up with a theory that described electrons at a low temperature that could attract a second electron. If the electrons were in the right configuration, they could conduct electricity with zero resistance. The Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory, named after the three physicists, is the basis for how superconductivity works at a quantum level. Superconductivity would allow electricity to flow with no loss of heat from its system.

Since that time, scientists have been trying to find a real-world material that fits that theory. One way to achieve this is by turning hydrogen into a metal. This is accomplished by squeezing hydrogen gas between two diamonds at such a high pressure that it solidifies. That metal then becomes a superconductor at room temperature. Previously, achieving zero resistance had only been possible by cooling the superconductor to near absolute zero.

Ira and Gizmodo science writer Ryan Mandelbaum talk with physicist Maddury Somayazulu and theoretical chemist Eva Zurek about the progress towards creating a room-temperature superconductor and how this type of material could be used in quantum computing and other technology.

During times of drought or disease, lions have to turn to other sources of food like the East African porcupine. But while the lion may get a quick meal when it attacks a porcupine, the porcupine may win in the long run. Writing in the Journal of East African Natural History, Julian Kerbis Peterhans and colleagues found that an untreated porcupine quill wound is often enough to severely injure a lion. If the wound becomes infected or hinders eating, it can lead to death. And, when a lion is injured and has difficulty hunting its usual prey, it can sometimes turn to easier sources of food—like humans. Kerbis joins Ira to talk about the study, and what this seemingly mismatched battle can teach us about survival in the animal kingdom.

Plus, a new study found that the presence of services like Uber and Lyft increased road congestion in San Francisco. And a roundup of the week's science news, including a rattling remark about climate change from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at an Arctic Council meeting.

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Scientists have built all sorts of models to predict the likelihood of extreme weather events. But it’s not just scientists who are interested in these models. Telecomm giant AT&T teamed up with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to build a climate map of the Southeastern part of the country, overlaid with a map of AT&T’s infrastructure. Climate scientist Rao Kothamarthi from Argonne Labs discusses the process of creating hyperlocal climate change models, and Shannon Carroll, director of environmental sustainability at At&T, talks about how the company can use that information for making decisions on how to protect their infrastructure.

Social media is, in many ways, the record keeper of our lives. It may be time to start thinking about how we preserve that record for the future. How should we think about the online profiles of the deceased? As the person’s property or as their remains? Should they be inherited or passed on? Preserved or deleted? We discuss planning for the digital afterlife.

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Climate change is happening—now we need to deal with it. Degrees of Change, a new series of hour-long radio specials from Science Friday, explores the problem of climate change and how we as a planet are adapting to it. In this first chapter, SciFri looks at how climate change affects water systems. This year, there were record downpours in the American Midwest that washed out levees and caused catastrophic flooding. Meanwhile, California is recovering from a seven year-long drought that led to water shortages across the state.

Cities are starting to rethink their water futures and how they can make their communities more resilient. Here are two examples of how cities around the world are adapting to their climate change future.

The ‘Sponge Cities’ Of China In China, more people are leaving the countryside and moving into big cities. Shenzhen in the south has gone from a city of 50,000 people to over 13 million in just three decades. This rapid urbanization has led to more construction, more concrete, and entire landscapes that have been paved over. Mix that with stronger storms driven to climate change, and the stage is set for future water disasters.

To combat this, the Chinese government started the “Sponge Cities” program in 2014, which calls for cities to soak up and reuse 70% of their rainwater.

Journalist Erica Gies and Chris Zevenbergen, flood risk management expert, talks about the pedestrian bridges, green roofs and terraced urban landscapes that architects and engineers are designing to build resiliency and what needs to be done to expand these ideas to the rest of the country.

The ‘Pocket Prairies’ Of Houston In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit some areas of Houston with nearly four feet of rain, causing widespread flooding throughout the city. As the city rebuilds, “pocket prairies” are among the tools being used to manage future flooding. These patches of native prairie grass can be planted anywhere—in front yards, traffic medians, parking lots, vacant lots, and between city buildings—and high quality prairie habitat can hold up to nine inches of rainwater during a storm, reducing the likelihood of catastrophic floods.

“At a neighborhood level, they can manage the ‘flash’ part of ‘flash floods,’” says Laura Huffman, Texas regional director of The Nature Conservancy. Plus, pocket prairies provide additional benefits, she says. As rainwater seeps into soil, it pre-treats chemicals in the rain, helping to keep them out of the water supply. In this conversation, Gies and Huffman explain the benefits of pocket prairies and other green infrastructure.

The Climate Effects Of A Heated Campaign Season

The Democratic presidential primary field is vast—where do the candidates stand on climate issues? Scott Waldman, White House reporter with Climatewire and E&E News, joins Ira to talk about how 2020 presidential campaigns are addressing climate change, plus other climate-related stories of the week—from Facebook's plans to fact-check hot button issues like climate change to a new study that attempts to put a price tag on the effects of Arctic melting.

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Last week, President Trump announced a new initiative to push forward the implementation of 5G, the next generation of wireless connectivity for smartphones and other devices. How is this faster speed possible, and how quickly will it become accessible to consumers? Washington Post technology reporter Brian Fung explains the innovations that would enable greater rates of data transmission. Plus: Harold Feld, a lawyer and consumer advocate, says not everyone will benefit equally from 5G as plans currently stand—including rural communities.

One of the top technology candidates for 5G relies on higher frequencies and bringing more smaller-signal base stations much closer to the people using them. But what does research say about how it will affect human health? Researchers review what the literature has suggested so far about non-ionizing radiation from 2G and 3G, including a 2018 study from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) that found an increase in tumors for male rats. The NTP’s John Bucher and Jonathan Samet of the Colorado School of Public Health join Ira to discuss the data, and the limitations of research to date. Plus, toxicologist and epidemiologist Devra Davis of the Environmental Health Trust provides a statement on the health concerns of 5G.

Plus: Spring is a great time to get out and enjoy the outdoors—and increasingly, people are using citizen science apps like eBird and iNaturalist to record sightings and share data. But the public nature of some citizen science platforms can make them liable for abuse, such as people using location data collected by the apps to disturb—or even poach—threatened species. April Glaser, a technology reporter for Slate, tells Ira more.

And Sarah Kaplan, science reporter at the Washington Post, joins Ira to talk about post-death pig brains, Jovian moons, and more in this week's News Roundup.

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“As I like to say, it’s never a good idea to bet against Einstein,” astrophysicist Shep Doeleman told Science Friday back in 2016, when the Event Horizon Telescope project was just getting underway. At an illuminating press conference on Wednesday, April 10th, scientists shared the image for the first time: a slightly blurry lopsided ring of light encircling a dark shadow. But even as the image confirms current ideas about gravity, it also raises new questions about galaxy formation and quantum physics. Event Horizon Telescope Director Shep Doelemen and Feryal Özel, professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona and EHT study scientist, help us wrap our minds around the image. And Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo, assistant professor of physics and Canada research chair at the University of Montreal joins the conversation to talk about what scientists would like to discover next.

Plus: A project aims to use the artificial sea of Biosphere 2 as a testing ground for bringing back coral reefs affected by climate change. Christopher Conover from Arizona Public Media reports in this edition of The State Of Science.

And the image of a black hole isn't the only space news that came out this week. Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins Ira to talk about the crash of the Israeli lunar lander Beresheet and other stories from the week in science in this week’s News Roundup.

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The Event Horizon Telescope is tackling one of the largest cosmological challenges ever undertaken: Take an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, using a telescope the size of the Earth.

Now, the Event Horizon team has announced they have big news to share about those efforts. On Wednesday April 10th, it’s anticipated they will show a photo of the event horizon. Before they do, we wanted to share this 2016 conversation with Event Horizon project director Shep Doeleman and black hole expert Priya Natarajan, in which they discuss how you image an object as dark and elusive as a black hole.

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Maple tapping season is underway in the sugar maple stands of the United States. Warm days and below-freezing nights kick off a cycle of sap flow crucial for maple syrup production. But why is the flow of sap so temperature dependent in sugar maples? University of Vermont maple researcher Abby van den Berg explains how ice crystals in the trees’ cells power sap flow, while Yale University’s Craig Brodersen tackles how other trees and plants move gallons of fluid per day from roots to leaves—all without using any energy at all.

In mid-March, a late winter storm dumped inches of rain on frozen soil in the Midwest, flooding the Missouri River and tributaries—particularly in agriculture-intensive Iowa, eastern Nebraska, and western Illinois. The storm has submerged farm fields under water, washed-out roads and bridges, caused grain silos to burst from flood damage, and drowned livestock. Many farmers may be unable to plant their fields in time this year, or even at all. But soil experts looking at that same damage will notice another thing: erosion of precious topsoil. This first layer of soil is the key to the Midwest’s immense fertility and agricultural strength, but a resource that is slow to rebuild after major losses like farms are currently experiencing. Mahdi Al-Kaisi, a soil scientist at Iowa State University, explains why erosion is bad news for farmers, and how the damage from this flood event could ripple for years to come.

Bristlecone pine trees grow in harsh, dry mountain climates and can live up to 5,000 years old. The trees have adapted to these rough habitats by building up dense woody trunks that can hold up against insects, and rely on the wind to disperse their hard seeds. Ecologist Brian Smithers became interested in these species because “they epitomized growing and living on the edge of what is possible.” Smithers talks about the adaptations and competition the species will face as rising temperatures from climate change force the trees to move up in elevation.

Washington University’s analysis of data from Missouri utility companies shows high levels of toxic coal ash contamination near ponds power plants use to dump waste from coal combustion. Will proposed new regulations be enough?

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Once upon a time, everything in the universe was crammed into a very small space. Then came the Big Bang, and the universe has been expanding ever since. But just how fast is it expanding? Calculating that number is a challenge that dates back almost a hundred years, when Edwin Hubble used data from Harvard astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt to try to answer that question. His value came to be called the Hubble constant, H0. But the exact value of that constant has been hard to pin down. And now two different approaches to measuring the Hubble constant have come up with close, but different answers—and each team says they're pretty confident in the accuracy of their measurements. Ira speaks to science writer and author Anil Ananthaswamy and Nobel laureate Adam Riess to discuss the discrepancy.

This flu season, Science Friday teamed up with Flu Near You to ask listeners to track their symptoms to create a map of influenza-like illness across the country. Nearly three thousand SciFri users participated. Science Friday education director Ariel Zych and biostatician Kristin Baltrusaitis, who was a research assistant for Flu Near You, tells us how the SciFri community results stacked up to the rest of participants. Plus, epidemiologist Karen Martin gives an update on how this season compares to years past and how the Minnesota Department of Health uses Flu Near You data for surveillance on a local level. See the results here.

It’s become the familiar refrain in this era of climate change: Warmer temperatures, retreating glaciers, and rising sea levels. But when it comes to Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier, it seems the drumbeat of disaster may have halted—for now. Scientists report in the journal Nature Geoscience this week that the once fast-retreating ice sheet has been thickening over the last few years instead. It’s a reversal of a twenty-year trend of thinning and retreating, but perhaps not for long. Ala Khazendar, researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, joins Ira to explain why this glacial about-face may not be the cause for celebration that we think it is in this week’s Good Thing, Bad Thing.

And Gizmodo writer Ryan Mandelbaum talks about the canceled all-female space walk, NASA's lunar ambitions, and more in this week's News Roundup.

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There’s been a changing of the guard in the U.S. House of Representatives. In January, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a democrat from Texas, took over as chair of the House Committee for Science, Space, and Technology from her predecessor Lamar Smith. Smith was in charge of the House Science Committee for six years—an era that was defined by partisan attacks on climate science, and the issuing of congressional subpoenas to scientists. Chairwoman Johnson is looking to restore credibility to the House Science Committee, listening to the scientific consensus on climate change and aiming for bipartisan oversight of scientific programs. She joins Ira to talk about bringing science back to the committee, changes she plans to make from previous leadership, and how much progress will the new committee make when it’s up against an administration that’s been hostile to many of the agencies that conduct scientific research.

Plus: This El Niño year has been dumping rain and snow on California's Sierra Nevada mountains. But water managers don’t just eyeball how much snow they think is up there, tucked away in those high mountain basins. Snow inventories these days are high tech, involving airplanes and lasers. Tom Painter of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and Caltech joins Ira to explain.

The hills and deserts of the southwest have been putting on quite a show this spring—a superbloom that's better than some areas have seen in generations. Science Friday producer Christopher Intagliata headed down to Walker Canyon in Lake Elsinore, California, to check it out. See his photos and learn why superblooms aren't a regular occurrence in California.

The New Mexico state legislature has passed a bill calling for the state to transition entirely to renewable energy by 2050. Laura Paskus, environmental reporter for the New Mexico Political Project, joins Ira to explain the details.

And science journalist Annalee Newitz explains the surprising first results from Japan's Hayabusa2 mission to asteroid Ryugu in this week's News Roundup.

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It all started with 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg. Last August, Thunberg started skipping school on Fridays to protest outside Sweden’s parliament, insisting her country get behind the Paris Climate Agreement. Her protests have inspired thousands of young people around the world to join the #FridaysForFuture movement, skipping school to demand that their governments take action against climate change. And on Friday March 15th, these young people will take things a step further—joining together across more than 90 countries and 1,200 cities in the Youth Climate Strike. Sarah Kaplan, science reporter for the Washington Post, reports live from the scene of one of those stikes in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle. Plus, Ira speaks with Isabella Fallahi, Youth Climate Strike organizer and Varshini Prakash, executive director and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement about what’s inspiring this current moment of youth-led activism.

Each year, approximately 1,800 high school science students take part in the Regeneron Science Talent Search (Regeneron STS), a program of Society for Science & the Public. This year’s projects ranged from studying the viscosity of molten lava to investigating more fuel efficient airplane designs to creating a computer model to predict refugee migrations. Senior Samuel Weissman analyzed the genetic makeup of two HIV patients, and senior Ana Humphrey created a math model to look for exoplanets. Ira talks with them about their winning projects.

As we can all attest, climate change is creating more fluctuating temperatures. Normally, snowflakes form high up in the atmosphere, and crystallize into their pretty structures as they pass through cold layers of air. But with warmer temperatures, snowflakes can partially melt on their way down. There’s more water in the air these days, and it acts like a glue that can glom onto the snowflakes, covering them with little ice pellets. Add in the wind and the snowflakes can smash together, turning into mega snowflakes. To add insult to injury, after these snowflakes land they melt faster because they’re less able to reflect light. This has serious implications for flooding and hydrology as well as spring vegetation. When melting occurs normally, the nutrients in the snowpack are absorbed into the soil. Not so when it melts away really fast.

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Do you have a favorite chemical element? Neurologist Oliver Sacks did—he was partial to dense, high melting-point metals, especially those metals between hafnium and platinum on the periodic table.

This month marks the 150th anniversary of chemist Dmitri Mendeleev’s design for the periodic table—and we didn’t want to miss out on the party. In this special podcast, we revisit Sacks’ fascination with the elements, and Ira opens up the Science Friday vaults to share two tales of chemical discovery and creation. First, we take a trip back to 2004 for a chat with nuclear chemist Joshua Patin of a scientific team responsible for the creation of two new chemical elements (elements 113 and 115). Then, a voyage to 2010, for a conversation with the late Nobel laureate and buckyball co-discoverer Sir Harry Kroto.

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On December 14, 1972, as Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan prepared to board the lunar module, he gave one last dispatch from the lunar surface. And yet, 47 years later, humankind has not set another foot on the lunar surface. But now, NASA’s ready to return, with the Moon to Mars program. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine joins Ira in this segment to talk about the agency's ambitions beyond Earth, the role of commercial space companies in getting us there, and why he thinks plant science is "critical" to NASA.

Plus: There aren’t very many old-growth forest left in North America. And while it would be wonderful to be able to preserve all of them, resources to protect those forest patches are also in limited supply. So if you’re forced to choose between two areas of old-growth forest, how do you prioritize which of these islands of biodiversity to focus on? A new study suggests to look at the lichens. Troy McMullin, a research scientist in lichenology at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Ontario, joins Ira to talk about the stories lichens can tell about the forest ecosystem.

California has been experiencing its wettest winter in decades. That’s good news in a state that has chronic water management issues and what feels like only recently recovered from a devastating multi year drought. The bad news? Researchers say that thanks to climate change and forest management practices, a wet winter like this one will no longer make a difference come next year’s wildfire season.Valerie Trouet, Associate Professor of Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona, tells us more.

And Amy Nordrum of IEEE Spectrum tells Ira about a SpaceX "crew" visiting the International Space Station and other top science headlines in this week's News Roundup.

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DNA is the universal programming language for life, and the specific code to that program are the combination of the base pairs adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. But are those the only base pairs that could be used to create DNA? Scientists looking into this question were able to create 4 different base pairs that don’t exist in nature. Chemist Floyd Romesberg, biologist Jef Boeke, and bioethicist Debra Mathews tell Ira how altered genomes could be used for creating novel medicines and fuels—and whether this is considered a new form of life.

Plus: The climate is changing. Globally, of course. But also in Washington, where growing numbers of Republicans are jumping behind policies that would result in meaningful action on climate change. And yet, even as Congress appears ready to at least discuss the issue, and the government’s own scientists and military leaders sound louder alarms about the impending dangers of global climate change, the White House is assembling a group of climate change adversaries to counter those mainstream views. David Titley, a retired rear admiral who founded the Navy's task force on climate change, explains.

Last year, China tightened standards for recycled materials it would accept, and now local recyclers nationwide find themselves struggling to find new homes for plastics, cardboard, and other materials that fell below par. Dana Bate, health and science reporter for WHYY, tells Ira how Philadelphia and its suburbs are handling the issue in the State of Science.

And Sophie Bushwick, technology editor for Scientific American, explains how extreme climate change might cause stratocumulus clouds to disappear for good, and other top science news headlines, in this week's News Roundup.

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The Science Friday Book Club discussion of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season may have stopped erupting for the season, but we have one more piece of volcanic goodness for you. SciFri producer and chief bookworm Christie Taylor got the chance to speak with Jemisin at our book club meet-up, “Voyage To The Volcanoes,” at Caveat in New York City. Listen for Jemisin’s adventures in volcano research, how real-world events inspired her to build an entire society around disaster preparedness, and how knowing your neighbors can be lifesaving.

At the event, we also spoke to volcanologist Dr. Janine Krippner, who helped debunk volcano myths. And SciFri staffers Lauren J. Young and Johanna Mayer explained how history’s volcanic winters have influenced art (and religion) over the centuries.

So, sit back and listen while you ponder what’s percolating deep in our planet—from quakes to shifting plates.

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The American Astronomical Society meeting is the largest annual gathering of astronomers and astrophysicists. It’s not known for drama. But this year, the buzz in the room wasn’t too different from the nervous energy during an awards night. That’s because there is a competition underway for what will be NASA’s next big space telescope—the next Hubble or James Webb. There are four nominees, and eventually there will be a winner. Science Friday assistant producer Katie Feather reported on the event from the not-quite red carpet. Learn more about the nominees here.

The painter Georgia O'Keeffe is known for her bold paintings of landscapes and flowers. Recently, scientists took a closer look at those paintings and noticed smaller details that O’Keeffe did not intend to include. They found “art acne”—small pock marks—on many of her paintings caused by age and reactions of the pigments. Marc Walton, co-director of the Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts at Northwestern University and Art Institute of Chicago, talks about the chemistry behind the “art acne,” and how these paintings might be conserved in the future.

From tenured physicists to home experimenters, many researchers have been plagued by a question—why do grapes spark when you microwave them? More than a few microwaves have been destroyed to answer this top physics question. A team of researchers decided to rigorously test this question so you don’t have to. Physicist Aaron Slepkov, an author on that study, tells us how grapes are able to harness the energy of these home kitchen waves and what this can tell us about the field of photonics.

During the last sixty years, only three countries have sent landers to the moon: the U.S., China and the Soviet Union. Israel may become the fourth. On Thursday, SpaceIL—an Israeli company—launched the Beresheet spacecraft. If the spacecraft does reach the moon, it will be the first mission completed by a private company without the financial backing of one of the big space agencies. Jason Davis, digital editor for the Planetary Society, talks about what this mission means for lunar science and its implications for nonprofit and commercial companies sending missions to the moon.

This week, talks between California state and federal government officials concerning rules for car fuel efficiency standards broke down. Under the Clean Air Act of 1970, California had previously been given special permission to set higher standards for mileage and fuel economy—but now the Trump administration says that only the federal government can set those standards. Lauren Sommer, science and environment reporter at KQED, joins Ira to discuss what that decision means, and what might come next in the confrontation.

And finally Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer at Gizmodo, tells Ira about the Japanese mission to shoot a bullet into an asteroid and other top science headlines in this week's News Roundup.

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In this final installment of the winter Book Club, we wrap up a winter of exploring The Stillness, learning how volcanologists research lava flows and crater tremors, and even diving into the center of the earth. Ira joins Science Friday SciArts producer Christie Taylor, Caltech seismologist Lucy Jones, and University of Colorado disaster sociologist Lori Peek to talk about the power of earthquakes, volcanoes, and other hazards that shape societies. We also talk about how a natural hazard becomes a human-scale disaster—and who suffers most when a community is insufficiently prepared.

Plus, a roundup of the week's biggest science news, and a story from Arizona about dealing with drought.

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At the very center of the Earth is a solid lump of iron and nickel that might be as hot as the surface of the Sun. This solid core is thought to be why our magnetic field is as strong as it is. As the core grows, energy is transferred to the outer core to power the “geodynamo,” the magnetic field that protects our atmosphere and deflects most solar wind. But geophysicists think that the core was originally completely liquid, and at one point between 2 billion and 500 million years ago, transitioned from molten metal to a solid. At that time, our magnetic field was much weaker than it is today, according to new research in Nature Geoscience. The scientists looked at new samples of crystals that first cooled from lava 565 million years ago and found evidence in their magnetic signatures that the core must have solidified at the younger end of the previously predicted range—much more recently than expected.

Whether we’re aware of it or not, “the cloud” has changed our lives forever. It’s where we watch movies, share documents, and store passwords. It’s quick, efficient, and we wouldn’t be able to live our fast-paced, internet-connected lives without it. Now, federal agencies are storing much of their data in the cloud. For example, NASA is trying to make 20 petabytes of data available to the public for free. But to do that, they need some help from a commercial cloud provider—a company like Amazon or Microsoft or Google. But will the government’s policy of open data clash with the business model of Silicon Valley? Mariel Borowitz, Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech and Katya Abazajian, Open Cities Director with the Sunlight Foundation join guest host John Dankosky to discuss the trade offs to faster, smarter government data in the cloud.

The Science Friday Book Club has had three weeks of lively discussion of N.K. Jemisin’s geology-flavored apocalypse, The Fifth Season. Producers Christie Taylor and Johanna Mayer share some of the best listener comments about the story’s science, sociology, and real-world connections—and invite you to add your voice for one final week of literary nerding out.

One morning after the next, semi-trailer trucks get off Interstate 70 near Colby in west-central Kansas. They haul parts of giant wind turbines in 150-foot-long sections, the pieces to the Solomon Forks wind farm and the next monumental phase of the Kansas bet on wind energy. The farm will plant 105 turbines in the prairie, each towering 250 feet high. The project is one of a wave of wind farms under construction in Kansas that will add 20 percent more electrical generation to the state’s output. Earlier building surges sprung from tax breaks and from pressure by regulators on utilities to wean themselves off fossil fuels. This time, Fortune 500 companies that are new to the electricity business risk their own money on the straight-up profit potential of prairie breezes. The Solomon Forks project developed by ENGIE North America will crank enough electricity to power more than 50,000 homes. Target and T-Mobile already cut deals to buy hundreds of megawatts from the wind farm. The retailer and cell company will become electricity wholesalers, playing a direct role in generating less-polluting energy and banking that the marketplace can make them money even without the subsidies that drove the industry for decades.

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A series of lines on a wall, drawn by museum staff, from instructions written by an artist. A textile print made from scanning the screen of an Apple IIe computer, printing onto heat transfer material, and ironing the result onto fabric. A Java program that displays its source code—plus the roving attention of the programmer writing that code, and the even speedier attention of the computer as it processes it. All three are works of art currently on display at the Whitney Museum of Art’s ‘Programmed’ exhibition, a retrospective of more than 50 years of art inspired or shaped by coding. Host John Dankosky is joined by Whitney adjunct curator Christiane Paul, plus artists Joan Truckenbrod and W. Bradford Paley, to discuss the past and future of digital art.

If you want to make a lava flow from scratch, the ingredients are fairly simple: one big crucible, and 200 to 700 pounds of 1.2 billion-year-old basalt dug from a quarry in Wisconsin. Combine these two, at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, and you have The Lava Project—a scientific study of the flow of molten lava in an upstate New York parking lot. Syracuse University geology professor Jeffrey Karson tells SciFri more.

Plus: Desalination is the process that converts saltwater into water that can used for drinking, agriculture, or industrial uses—but desalination produces brine, a salty byproduct that can contain other chemicals. Journalist Tik Root talks about the trade-offs when it comes to desalination in this week's Good Thing, Bad Thing.

Finally, Vox staff writer Umair Irfan joins SciFri for a look at the Midwest's Arctic temperatures, and other top science headlines, in this week's News Round-up.

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Your smartphone gives you up-to-the-minute weather forecast updates at the tap of a button. Every newscast has a weather segment. And outlets like the Weather Channel talk weather all day, every day. But how much has the process of predicting the weather changed over the past 100 years? Though many of the basic principles are the same, improvements in data collection, satellite imagery, and computer modeling have greatly improved your local forecast—making a five-day look ahead as accurate as a one-day prediction was 40 years ago. Richard Alley, a professor of geoscience at Penn State, describes the evolution of meteorology, and what roadblocks still lie ahead, from data sharing to shifting weather patterns. And Angela Fritz, lead meteorologist for the Capital Weather Gang blog at the Washington Post, describes the day-to-day work of a meteorologist and the challenges involved in accurately predicting your local weekend weather.

When the Chilean volcano Villarrica exploded in 2015, researchers trying to piece together the eruption had a fortuitous piece of extra data to work with: the inaudible infrasound signature of the volcano’s subsurface lava lake rising toward the surface. Volcano forecasters already use seismic data from volcanic vibrations in the ground. But these “infrasound” signals are different. They’re low-frequency sound waves generated by vibrations in the air columns within a volcanic crater, can travel many miles from the original source, and can reveal information about the shape and resonance of the crater… and whether it’s changing. And two days before Villarrica erupted, its once-resonant infrasound signals turned thuddy—as if the lava lake had gotten higher, and left only a loudspeaker-shaped crater to vibrate the air.

Robert Buchsbaum walks into a salt marsh on Boston’s North Shore. Around him towers a stand of bushy-topped Phragmites australis, an invasive plant commonly known as the common reed. Phragmites is an enemy that this regional scientist with the Massachusetts Audubon Society knows all too well. The plant, which typically grows about 13 feet high, looms over native marsh plants, blocking out their sunlight. When Phragmites sheds its lower leaves, or dies, it creates a thick layer of wrack that keeps native plants from germinating. Its stalks clog waterways, thwarting fish travel. The roots secrete a chemical that prevents other plants from growing, and they grow so deep they are nearly impossible to pull out. But this stubborn bully of a plant might have a shot at redemption. A recent study from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center found that the very traits that make Phragmites a tough invader—larger plants, deeper roots, higher density—enable it to store more carbon in marshy peat. And as climate change races forward, carbon storage becomes a bigger part of the ecosystem equation.

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The 19th-century physician J. Marion Sims may have gone down in history as the “father of modern gynecology,” but Sims’ fistula cure was the result of experimental surgeries, pre-Emancipation, on at least 11 enslaved black women. Only three of whose names have been remembered— Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy. A new play, Behind The Sheet, imagines their life—not just the pain, but the friendships they might have formed to support each other through surgery after surgery.

In this extended conversation, Science Friday producer Christie Taylor talks to playwright Charly Evon Simpson about the process of inventing a story for these women despite the limited documentation of their lives, the controversy around a J. Marion Sims statue in New York City, and Sims’ legacy in black women’s maternal health outcomes today.

Behind The Sheet was funded in part by The Sloan Foundation, which is also a funder of Science Friday.

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