Science Friday

A Plan to Cap Insulin Prices May Not Be Helpful

30 million people in the U.S. live with diabetes, and access to insulin can be expensive. More than 1 in 5 people with private insurance pay more than $35 a month for this necessary medication. The U.S. Senate has a plan to cap insulin prices for certain diabetics, but critics say this plan would not help make insulin affordable for a majority of people.

Plus, many people have been following the discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, with baited breath. Astronomers may have found the youngest exoplanet we know of. And a deep space hoax of a chorizo slice fooled the astronomy community.

Joining Ira to talk about these stories and other science news of the week is Katherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic based in New Haven, Connecticut.

Last week, the White House declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency.

Currently there are a little over 9,000 confirmed cases in the United States, and just under 30,000 worldwide. Since the end of May, monkeypox has been spreading in countries where it has not been previously reported.

The virus is mainly spreading within gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men. And because of that there is stigma associated with the outbreak.

Ira talks with Rachel Roper, virologist at the Brody Medical School at East Carolina University, and Perry Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers University School of Public Health, to explain the basics of transmission, answer listener questions, and debunk misinformation about the monkeypox outbreak.

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.

Read an excerpt of the book on sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For The Love Of Volcanoes

A new documentary, “Fire of Love,” tells the story of French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. The married couple spent two decades chasing volcanic eruptions across the world. Katia was a geochemist and Maurice a geologist. Together, they studied the science of volcanoes and produced films showcasing their power. That is, until their deaths in 1991, when they were killed by the very thing they loved so much.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Sara Dosa, director of the documentary “Fire of Love,” which is in theaters nationwide, and will be available on Disney+ later this year.

Joshua Miele has spent his career trying to make the world more accessible for blind and visually impaired people. As a blind person, his lived experiences have shaped the way he thinks about technology and how it can be used to better serve disabled people. He’s invented products like YouDescribe—a tool that adds audio description to YouTube videos—and Tactile Maps Automated Production, a software that creates tactile maps for people to feel.

Although adaptive technologies try to help disabled people access information, it isn’t always driven by the input and needs of disabled people. There needs to be more disabled designers, engineers, and researchers spearheading this work, Miele says. Now, he works as a principal accessibility researcher at Amazon’s Lab126, where he helps make products like the Echo and Fire tablets more accessible.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick speaks with Miele about how his own experiences shape his work, and the importance of disability inclusion in designing new technologies.

When it comes to researching human genitals and the organs called, in simple terms, “reproductive,” the penis has long been the star of the show.

“It doesn’t help to only look at one or the other. Only by zooming out can we see them in their full range of variation and possibility,” writes science journalist Rachel E. Gross in her book, Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage, which tells the long history of neglected research into the vagina and its companion organs—the uterus, clitoris, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries. The book takes readers through myths, mysteries, and the legacy of shame around sexuality. It also introduces researchers who are finally making breakthroughs in our understanding of fertility, pleasure, and even immune health that’s been linked to these organs.

The book interviews doctors who are using that knowledge to make life better for everyone—including cancer patients and older people going through menopause, transgender women who want their own vaginas, people with endometriosis, and those, including intersex people, looking to regain pleasure and agency after childhood genital cutting.

Producer Christie Taylor interviews Gross about our growing understanding of clitoral anatomy, the long-misunderstood egg cell, the uterus’ ability to heal, and more. Plus, why these organs are important for whole-body health, and why everyone needs to understand them better.

To read an excerpt from Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage by Rachel E. Gross, visit sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available a week after the show airs at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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!)

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are Invasive Jumping Worms Taking Over?

Most gardeners are thrilled when they find earthworms tunneling through their gardens. Normally, they’re a sign of rich soil, happy plants, and a bustling ecosystem. But one unwanted visitor is squirming its way into gardens and forests all across the country: the invasive jumping worm, known for its thrashing, restless behavior.

Gardeners and scientists have become more and more concerned with these worms, which can cause damage in yards and forests. They’re known for taking dense, healthy soil and churning it into a coffee ground-like mixture, which can lead to erosion and make it more challenging for plants to anchor themselves. But it turns out that most earthworms we find in the U.S. are already invasive, and the jumping worm is just the newest one to join the party. How different is this invasive worm from the ones we’re more familiar with?

To learn more, guest host John Dankosky speaks with Bernie Williams, a plant pest and disease specialist at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources based in Madison, Wisconsin. They talk about how to spot these worms, what kind of damage they inflict, and just how concerned we should be.

Squids, octopuses, cuttlefishes, and other humble members of the cephalopod class of mollusks are many-armed (or tentacled) wizards. They change colors—despite being unable to see color themselves—to camouflage themselves. They squirt ink to escape danger. They have huge brains compared to their body sizes, which, in the case of octopuses, are distributed throughout their bodies. They can even edit their RNA to allow whole new kinds of chemistry in their bodies, potentially allowing them to adapt more quickly to changing environments.

This year, SciFri continues the tradition of Cephalopod Week, celebrating the fancy tricks and ineffable strangeness of these animals. Cephalopod researchers Carrie Albertin and Z. Yan Wang talk to John Dankosky about the newest puzzles coming to light in cephalopod genomes, including genes never seen in any other animals. Plus, learn more about the dramatic, self-destructive process by which mother octopuses die after laying their eggs—powered, it seems, by steroids.

The phrase “plastic surgery” may evoke different connotations for different people. For many, what’s conjured is a procedure done for cosmetic purposes, something likely not deemed medically necessary, and probably not covered by insurance.

But the history of plastic surgery goes back to a time where facial reconstruction was often a matter of life and death. The practice got its start on the gritty, European battlefields of World War I, where surgeons and nurses had to learn fast to fix the often horrific facial injuries sustained in battle. For the men with these injuries, the innovative, often traumatic procedures were life-changing.

No matter the reason, the decision to get plastic surgery is very personal, and reflects a desire to change something about one’s appearance. The World War I history of plastic surgery, and how it set the stage for today’s uses, is the subject of the new book The Facemaker, written by medical historian and author Lindsey Fitzharris. Lindsey joins guest host John Dankosky from Washington, D.C.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

‘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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

This segment originally aired on February 11, 2022.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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 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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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 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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. 

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.

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.”

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.