Science Friday

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

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

It’s winter, and the SciFri team is already dreaming of warmer weather. How about a mind vacation to one of the hottest places on earth, an erupting volcano? Tamsin Mather has trekked to volcanoes in Chile, Guatemala, Italy, and beyond to learn their secrets. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to field your burning volcano questions, like what’s the deal with glass shards that look like hairballs? 

Guest: Dr. Tamsin Mather is a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Oxford in the UK.

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

The sound of a choir performing in a cathedral is iconic for a reason. It’s this beautiful human experience: being side-by-side with other people, feeling the sound vibrate through you, reverberating around the space.

But how long has that been a part of our culture? And what role did sound play in the lives of people who lived during the Ice Age or the Stone Age? That’s the focus of a growing field of archaeology called archaeoacoustics, where researchers use the scientific tools of today to investigate the role of sound and music in the past...

As the planet warms, the world’s glaciers are melting faster than snow can replenish the ice. That has implications for sea level rise, ocean currents, and global weather patterns. But collecting data at the edge of a melting glacier can be risky.

Glaciologist Erin Pettit and her colleagues are listening to the sounds melting glaciers make—from the sizzling of trapped air bubbles bursting, to the deep rumbles of underwater calving of icebergs. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to share some glacial sounds, and describe the multi-stage robot tools she uses to monitor melting ice.

Gu...

In cancer research, the “seed and soil” hypothesis posits that the tumor is like a seed of misbehaving cells taking root in the body. Whether it grows—and where it grows—depends on the conditions, or soil. Since this hypothesis was proposed more than 100 years ago, most research and treatments have focused on the seed, or tumor. 

For nearly 50 years, Rakesh Jain has been studying the soil. But in a seed-focused field, his work was seen as wasteful and radical. Now, that very same research has led to seven FDA-approved treatments for diseases including lung and liver cancer, a...

For many people, bubonic plague is an illness that seems squarely situated in medieval times. But each year, a handful of human cases pop up in the western United States. Plague can be treated successfully with modern medicine. But why does it still exist, and how should we think about it both locally and globally? 

Plague researcher Viveka Vadyvaloo joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk all things spread and containment.

Guest: Dr. Viveka Vadyvaloo is a plague researcher and director of the Allen School for Global Health at Washington State University.

Transcripts for e...

Today we’re spotlighting an underappreciated group of marine creatures: sea slugs. Don’t let their humble name fool you. They come in vivid neon colors, with patterns that rival the most beautiful butterflies and feather-like external gills and tentacles.

There are an estimated 10,000 species of sea slugs and they are incredibly diverse. Some are smaller than a quarter. And one species can weigh more than a terrier, up to 30 pounds. Not to mention their contributions to brain research—understanding their neural networks was the basis for a Nobel Prize in 2000.  

Marine biologist Patrick Krug joins Ho...

There’s an enormous buildout of data centers underway across the country to fuel the AI boom. Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been spent on data centers, with talk of spending trillions more. And these data centers use a lot of power: According to the Times Picuayune, Meta’s new data center under construction in Louisiana will require nearly three times the power that New Orleans uses in a year. Residents across the country have taken note, and rising utility rates have become an issue in some recent elections.

Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT...

You might think about bats as flitting around in the dark and hunting insects, but some species feed on fruits or flowers—and play an important role as pollinators. One place that role is crucial is in the relationship between bats and agave plants. Bat conservationist Kristen Lear joins Host Ira Flatow to describe efforts to restore agaves in the Southwest and Mexico, which has consequences for bats, for the ecosystems around the agave, and for your liquor cabinet, since agave is the source of drinks like tequila and mezcal.

Plus, journalist Dan Fagin joins Ira to di...

The spotted owl has been a conservation flashpoint for more than 30 years. While habitat loss has been their historic foe, their most recent threat comes from within the owl family tree: the barred owl. Barred owls have expanded into the Pacific Northwest and are now outcompeting spotted owls for food and habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has put forth a strategy that some experts say is the only way to save the spotted owl, and it could involve killing hundreds of thousands of barred owls.

Ecologist and spotted owl expert Rocky Gutierrez joins Host...

A team of scientists is trying to jumpstart a global conservation movement, on par with efforts to save the rainforests or protect the oceans. But it might be even more ambitious because the target of their quest is invisible, everywhere, and mostly something we try to hand-sanitize away: microbes.

So how do you conserve something that is everywhere and in everything? And why do microbes need protecting to begin with? Host Flora Lichtman digs into it with microbial ecologist Jack Gilbert, who is leading this charge. They chat about the thinking behind microbe conservation plans, and why...

When we try to commune with nature, many of us turn toward the living: a walk in the woods among swaying trees, chirping birds, blooming flowers.

But earth scientist Anjana Khatwa says not to overlook the inanimate—don’t sleep on rocks. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her love for rocks beyond the scientific and her new book, The Whispers of Rock.

Read an excerpt from The Whispers of Rock: The Stories That Stone Tells about Our World and Our Lives.

Guest: Dr. Anjana Khatwa is a geologist and author of T...

Each year, the Ig Nobel Prizes recognize scientific research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think. For instance, researchers who investigated the pizza preferences of lizards on the island of Togo. Or a man who kept track of his fingernail growth for 35 years.

As is Thanksgiving tradition, we’re sharing highlights from this year’s Ig Nobels on Science Friday. Annals of Improbable Research editor Marc Abrahams acts as master of ceremonies for the 35th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes, which include 10 awards, several 24-second scientific lectures, and a mini-opera about indigestion.

Guest: Marc...

A good workout can make you feel triumphant. And even if that isn’t your relationship with exercise, you’ve probably heard that working out can lift your mood, fight depression, and make you more resilient when life knocks back. But why exactly does exercise improve mental health? Is it all about those endorphins? Does the type or duration of a workout matter if you’re looking for a mental wellness boost?

To help answer those questions and more, Host Flora Lichtman talks with Eduardo Esteban Bustamante and Jack Raglin, who both study the relationship between physical activi...

It’s a wonderful time of the year: squash, pumpkin, and gourd season. But how do those giant, award-winning pumpkins grow so big? And what’s the difference between a gourd and a squash? 

In a conversation from 2023, Ira talks with Dr. Chris Hernandez, director of the University of New Hampshire’s squash, pumpkin, and melon breeding program to explore all things winter squash and answer listener questions.

Guests: Dr. Chris Hernandez is an assistant professor of Plant Breeding at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire.
Dan Souza is co-Editor of Cook’s...

Have you ever gotten to the end of, say, a jar of peanut butter and wondered if it should go in trash or recycling? If it’s worth rinsing out? And where will it actually end up?

Journalist Alexander Clapp had those same questions, and went to great lengths to answer them—visiting five continents to chronicle how our trash travels. Along the way, he discovered a multibillion-dollar trash trade run by shady waste brokers, and a global industry powered by slimy spoons, crinkled plastic bags, and all the other stuff we throw away. It’s a putrid...

Twenty years ago, a young oncologist started journaling to process his experience treating cancer patients. That cathartic act became the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

Fifteen years after the book was published, how has our understanding of preventing and treating cancer changed? Host Flora Lichtman is joined by author Siddhartha Mukherjee to talk about what we now understand about screening, environmental risks, and rising cancer rates in young people.

Read an excerpt of the new chapters added to The Emperor of Maladies on the 15th anniversary of the...

African grey parrots are internet stars. It’s easy to see why—the charismatic birds sing, tell jokes, and sling profanities. But how do the endangered birds get from African forests to your feed? 

Wildlife crime reporter Rene Ebersole joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her investigation into the global parrot trade, and the black market for wild African greys that is threatening their existence.

Guest: Rene Ebersole is Editor In Chief at Wildlife Investigative Reporters and Editors (WIRE).

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

...

After years of getting your emails and phone calls, we know that SciFri listeners are in the 99th percentile when it comes to nerdy knowledge. We’re putting your fact retention skills to the test with the first ever Super Food Science Excellence Trivia Blowout (SFSETBO).

Host Flora Lichtman teams up with trivia kingpin Mangesh Hattikudur, co-host of the podcast “Part-Time Genius,” to quiz one lucky listener on her food science knowledge.

Guest: Mangesh Hattikudur is the co-host of “Part-Time Genius” and co-founder of Kaleidoscope.

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

Some animals have a very different relationship to aging than we do: They don’t get cancer, they never go through menopause, and they live absurdly long lives. 

For instance, one bat species can live for more than 40 years, which may not sound like very long but that’s about nine times longer than expected based on its size. For comparison, if we aged on that scale, we’d live for hundreds of years. These bats aren’t the only animal super-agers—there’s a whole menagerie of them.

So what’s their secret? And can we learn an...

Proteins are crucial for life. They're made of amino acids that “fold” into millions of different shapes. And depending on their structure, they do radically different things in our cells. For a long time, predicting those shapes for research was considered a grand biological challenge.

But in 2020, Google’s AI lab DeepMind released Alphafold, a tool that was able to accurately predict many of the structures necessary for understanding biological mechanisms in a matter of minutes. In 2024, the Alphafold team was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for the advance.

Five years later after its releas...

If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to drill a hole? A team of researchers wondered that too and set out to investigate, by putting tiny muscle monitors on eight downy woodpeckers and recording them with high-speed video as they pecked away in the lab.

Integrative organismal biologist Nick Antonson, co-author of a report on the work, joins Host Flora Lichtmen to peck away at the mystery.

Our memories make us who we are—just ask Barbra Streisand. But despite the lyrics in many popular songs, memories aren’t frozen in time. When we call them up, the details shift and change. And neuroscience research shows that we might be able to take that a step further—to manipulate our memories and even implant false ones.

Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez joins Host Ira Flatow to explain how memory manipulation could revolutionize the way we treat brain disorders. They also discuss Ramirez’s book, How to Change a Memory: One Neuroscientist's Quest to Alter the Past, and how...

Bearded vultures build giant, elaborate nests that are passed down from generation to generation. And according to a new study, some of these scavengers have collected bits and bobs of human history over the course of centuries. Scientists picked apart 12 vulture nests preserved in Spain and discovered a museum collection’s worth of objects, including a woven sandal that could be more than 700 years old.  

Host Flora Lichtman talks with study author Ana Belen Marín-Arroyo, an archaeologist who studies ancient humans, about how the nests are giving us a glimpse into vulture culture as well as the...

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

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

Host Flora Lichtman sits down with Mike and his research collaborator, neuroscientist Greg Appelbaum, to unpack their research so far and how...

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

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

Guest: D...

Over the last five years, billions of people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. New research has found an unanticipated result of these vaccines: Cancer treatments are more effective for some vaccinated patients, and many live longer than their unvaccinated counterparts. This news comes at a time where the federal government is slashing funding for mRNA research. 

Host Ira Flatow speaks to lead study author Adam Grippin and vaccine expert Eric Topol.

Guests: Dr. Adam Grippin is a radiation oncologist at the MC Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. 
Dr...

One of the biggest debates in the dinosaur world is what was happening right before they went extinct. Were they already declining, or would they have thrived if not for the asteroid? Two recent studies shed some light on this question: one that analyzes a trove of fossils from New Mexico and suggests there was more diversity in the Americas than previously thought, and another that reanalyzes a long-debated juvenile T. rex fossil and finds it’s likely a separate, smaller species.

Host Ira Flatow is joined by authors on those separate studies, paleontologists Steve Brusatte and Li...

As Black Friday approaches, you’re probably being inundated with ads for bigger, better televisions. But just how good is good enough? Are there limits to what our eyes can even make out?

Visual perception researcher Maliha Ashraf joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her new study on display resolution—including a display calculator she and her colleagues developed to help you determine the optimal display characteristics for a given room. And retinal neuroscientist Bryan Jones joins the conversation to delve into the workings of human vision.

Guests:
Dr. Maliha Ashraf is a postdoctoral rese...

Decades ago, non-native carp were brought onto fish farms on the Mississippi River to control algae and parasites. They escaped, thrived, and eventually flooded the Illinois River, outcompeting native species and wreaking havoc. If the carp find their way into the Great Lakes, they could do major damage to those vital ecosystems.

There’s a proposed project to stop the fish—but it’s expensive, and not everyone agrees it’s the best solution. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with WBEZ and Grist reporter Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco and carp expert Cory Suski.

Guests: Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco is an environm...

Axolotls are one of the most charismatic and beloved amphibians out there. But did you know that there’s only one place in the whole world where you can find them in the wild? It’s Lake Xochimilco in Mexico City.

There, scientists are scrambling to save them from extinction by creating refuges, using environmental DNA to track them down, and tag-teaming with the farmers who work on the lake. Luis Zambrano, one of the world’s leading axolotl experts, and Alejandro Maeda-Obregón, a molecular biologist, talk with Host Flora Lichtman about their work to protect these b...

Endometriosis is a painful disease that occurs when endometrium-like tissue grows outside of the uterus. It’s extremely common—if you have a uterus, you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it. Yet, it takes seven years on average to receive a formal diagnosis. What does the latest science tell us about the biology of the condition and how to treat it? And why do so many people have such a difficult time getting diagnosed? 

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by endometriosis researcher and patient Linda Griffith to answer those questions and more. 

Guest: Dr. Linda...

We've figured out how to harness renewable energy from many natural systems, like solar, wind, and geothermal power. But what about the ocean’s waves? It might seem like converting wave power into electricity on a large scale would’ve been figured out by now, but the tech is actually just getting its sea legs. Why has it been so hard to develop? And just how promising is it?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Jes Burns, who reported on Oregon’s massive wave energy test site; and then she checks in with Deborah Greave...

For Halloween, we bring you an ode to three quintessentially creepy creatures: bats, arachnids, and snakes. First, bat researcher Elena Tena joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe tracking the greater noctule bat in flight and learning that it can feed on migratory birds. Then, arachnologist Paula Cushing describes the camel spider, which is neither a camel nor a spider. And herpetologist Sara Ruane highlights one of her favorite snakes, the tiger keelback, which is both venomous and poisonous. 

Plus, what makes a lake spooky? A pond possessed? Flora talks with Geo Rutherford, creator of the Spooky Lake M...

There’s an established playbook for getting one’s affairs in order before death—create a will, name legal guardians, and so on. But there’s also a newer consideration: what will happen to our digital presences, like social media accounts, files, photos, videos, and more. So how do we manage them, and make sure we’re not turned into AI chatbots without permission? (It does happen.) 

Information scientist Jed Brubaker studies digital afterlives, and joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss how we can manage our digital legacies. 

Guest: Jed Brubaker is an information scientist and head of...

At first blush, the plots of many horror movies don’t seem particularly appealing. Take “The Shining”: A murderous psychopath tries to kill his family in a haunted, secluded hotel. But horror movies have had devoted fans for as long as they’ve been around, and lately, scary movies and television shows like “Sinners” or “The Walking Dead” have made a big splash. Why? What draws us to horror? And why are some people more thrill-seeking or morbidly curious than others? 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with two psychologists on opposite poles of horror fandom to flesh out some of the answe...

For decades, peanut allergies were on the rise in the US. But a study released on October 20 found that peanut allergies in babies and young children are now decreasing. This drop correlates with a change in guidance from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 2017, the agency started recommending exposing children to peanuts “early and often.” Since that recommendation, the prevalence of peanut allergies has dropped significantly.

Sharon Chinthrajah, a physician specializing in allergies and immunology, churns through the findings with Host Flora Lichtman.  

Guest: Dr. Sharon Chinthrajah is a physician specializing in aller...

Bacteria have been around for billions of years. Could they have come up with complex behaviors that we just don’t understand yet? Could they have their own language? Their own culture? Their own complex societies playing out right under, and in, our noses?

Microbiologist Bonnie Bassler has been studying these questions for more than 30 years. She talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the wild world of bacterial communication, and how understanding microbes could help us understand ourselves.

Guest: Dr. Bonnie Bassler is a microbiologist at Princeton University.

The transcript for this episode is...

After years of development, lab-grown fish is taste-test ready for the public. Four restaurants in the US are serving up cultivated salmon made by the company Wildtype. Producer Kathleen Davis gives Host Flora Lichtman a rundown on how Wildtype tastes, initial public perception, and the upstream battle to take cultivated meat mainstream. 

Plus, SciFri heads to Burlington, Vermont, where scientists are cooking up the foods of the future—including the building blocks of cell-cultured meat. Flora digs in with foodie researchers Alexis Yamashita and Rachael Floreani about why innovation is critical to a sustainable food future.

G...

Do science documentaries need a refresh? What if the goal wasn’t just teaching you something, but making you feel something? A new series from the BBC, airing on PBS, called “Human” tries to do just that. It tells the tale of our ancient family tree, embracing the complex and dramatic sides of the story. It asks: Who were the different species of humans that lived on this planet before us? What must it have been like to be in their shoes? And how did we become the only ones left standing? 

Ella Al-Shamahi, a paleoanthropologist and host of...

TikTok and other social media sites are full of mental health content—often short, grabby, first-person videos detailing symptoms for conditions like ADHD and autism. But what does this mean for teens and young adults who spend hours a day scrolling?

A new study published in PLOS One analyzes the 100 most viewed TikTok videos about ADHD to assess both how accurate they are and how young people respond to them. Researchers found that about half of the videos were inaccurate or missing key context, and that the more TikToks young adults watched, the less critical they were of...

We’re taking a polar plunge into the science of sea unicorns, also known as narwhals!

Narwhals are mysterious arctic whales with long, twirly tusks protruding from their foreheads, like a creature out of a fairy tale. And it turns out that we don’t know too much about them, partly because they live so far north in the remote Arctic.

An international team of researchers used drones to observe narwhals in the wild and learned new things about their behavior, including how they use their tusks to hunt and play.

Host Flora Lich...

Astrophysicists may have spotted evidence for “dark stars,” an unusual type of star that could possibly have existed in the earliest days of the universe, in data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Instead of being powered by nuclear fusion as current stars are, the controversial theory says that these ancient dark stars would have formed by mixing a huge cloud of hydrogen and helium with a type of self-annihilating dark matter. Dark stars would not have been dark—researchers believe that if they existed, they would actually have been bigger and brighter than current stars.

Astrophysicists Kather...

AI is everywhere these days, and though there’s debate about how useful it is, one area where experts think it could be game-changing is scientific research. It promised to be particularly useful for speeding up drug discovery, an expensive and time-consuming process that can take decades. But so far, it hasn’t panned out.

The few AI-designed drugs that have made it to clinical trials haven’t been approved, venture capital investment in these efforts has cratered in the last few years, and many startups have shut their doors. So why has it been so hard to mak...

It’s easy to take maps for granted. After all, most of us have a pretty good map in our pockets at all times, ready to show us how to get anywhere on the globe. But to make a map useful, you have to decide what to keep in and what to leave out—and, most importantly, which mathematical equations to use. Beyond navigating from point A to point B, math and maps come together for a wide variety of things, like working out the most efficient route to deliver packages, calculating the depth of the ocean floor, and more...

It seems like every week, there’s a new headline about some kind of sci-fi-esque organ transplant. Think eyeballs, 3D-printed kidneys, pig hearts.

In her new book, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy, science writer Mary Roach chronicles the effort to fabricate human body parts—and where that effort sometimes breaks down. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Roach about everything from hair transplants to 3D-printed hearts, and why our anatomy is so hard to replicate in the first place.

Guest: Mary Roach is a science writer and the author of Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anat...

Remember “The Biggest Loser”—the show where people tried to lose as much weight as quickly as possible for a big cash prize? The premise of the show was that weight loss was about willpower: With enough discipline, anyone can have the body they want.

The show’s approach was problematic, but how does its attitude toward weight loss match our current understanding of health and metabolism? The authors of the book Food Intelligence, nutrition scientist Kevin Hall, who studied “Biggest Loser” contestants at the NIH; and science writer Julia Belluz, join Host Flora Lichtman and answer listener que...

In July 1925, physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Wolfgang Pauli sharing his new ideas about what would eventually become known as quantum theory. A hundred years later, that theory has been expanded into a field of science that explains aspects of chemical behavior, has become the basis of a new type of computing, and more. But it’s still really weird, and often counterintuitive. Physicist Chad Orzel joins Host Ira Flatow to celebrate 100 years of quantum science, and separate quantum fact from science fiction.

Guest: Dr. Chad Orzel is the R. Gordon Gould Associate Professor of Ph...

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to three people whose combined discoveries outlined the role of the peripheral immune system—how the immune system knows to attack just foreign invaders and not its own tissues and organs. But when the phone rang for Shimone Sakaguchi, Mary E. Brunkow, and Fred Ramsdell, only two of them picked up.

Host Ira Flatow talks with Nobel Prize winner Fred Ramsdell, co-founder and scientific advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics.

Plus, Ira talks with bioengineering professor César de la Fuente, who looks for solutions to the antib...

It’s World Space Week, and we’re fueling up the rocket for a tour of some missions and projects that could provide insights into major space mysteries. Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi joins Host Flora Lichtman to celebrate the wonders of space science, from the recently launched IMAP, which will study the solar environment, to the new Vera Rubin Observatory, and big physics projects like LIGO. 

Plus, the latest in climate tech: MIT Technology Review has published its annual list of climate tech companies that show great promise in work ranging from producing sodium ion batteries to recycling rare...

The Klamath River, which runs from southern Oregon to California, used to be a top salmon run. But after a series of hydroelectric dams was installed along the river around 100 years ago, salmon populations tanked.

This is the prologue to a remarkable story of a coalition that fought to restore the river. Led by members of the Yurok Nation, who’ve lived along the river for millennia, a group of lawyers, biologists, and activists successfully lobbied for the removal of the dams. The fourth and final dam was taken down last year.

Joining Host Flora Li...

Archeologists in movies have a reputation for being hands-on, like Indiana Jones unearthing hidden treasure, or Lara Croft running through a temple. Archeology in real life tends to be a bit more sedentary. But some archeologists are committed to getting their hands dirty—even recreating the stinky, slimy, and sometimes tasty parts of ancient life.

Science writer Sam Kean enmeshed himself in the world of experimental archaeology for his new book Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists are Recreating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations. He joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss making st...

If you’re a moth trying to stay uneaten, there are competing strategies. Some moths rely on camouflage, trying to blend in. Other moths take the opposite approach: They’re bold and bright, with colors that say “don’t eat me, I’m poison.” Biologist Iliana Medina joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe a study that placed some 15,000 origami moths in forests around the world to investigate which strategy might work best. 

Then, mammologist Anderson Feijó and evolutionary biologist Rafaela Missagia join Flora to dive into another evolutionary conundrum: why so many rodents have thumbnails. 

Guests: Dr. Ili...

Our country’s public health system is ailing. With layoffs and leadership changes at the CDC, changing vaccine guidelines, a government shutdown, and declining public trust—where do we go from here? Can state and local public health agencies pick up the slack? Are there other solutions?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with former CDC director Tom Frieden to put these questions into perspective.

Guest: Dr. Tom Frieden is a former CDC director, president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, and author of The Formula for Better Health: How to Save Millions of Lives—Including Your O...

There’s fresh drama in the field of human origins! A new analysis of an ancient hominid skull from China challenges what we thought we knew about our ancestral family tree, and its timeline—at least according to the researchers who wrote the paper. The new study claims that Homo sapiens, and some of our relatives, could have emerged at least half a million years earlier than we thought. But big claims require big evidence.

Anthropologist John Hawks joins Host Flora Lichtman to piece together the details.

Guest: Dr. John Hawks is an anthropologist and prof...

Jane Goodall, renowned primatologist, conservationist, and humanitarian, died on October 1 at the age of 91. Goodall was born in London in 1934, and her curiosity about the natural world led her to the forests of Gombe, Tanzania, where she made groundbreaking observations of chimpanzee behavior, including tool use. Her research challenged the accepted scientific perceptions of our closest relatives.

Host Ira Flatow shares his memories of Dr. Goodall, including an interview from 2002 in which she discussed her life and work.

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

S...

Roughly 1 in 10 Americans take antidepressants. The most common type is SSRIs, or  selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, like Prozac, Lexapro, and Zoloft. But what happens when you stop taking them? Studies don’t point to a single conclusion, and there’s ongoing debate among physicians and patients about the severity and significance of SSRI withdrawal symptoms. The discourse reached a fever pitch when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. compared SSRI withdrawal to heroin withdrawal in January.

Host Flora Lichtman digs into the data on SSRI withdrawal with psychiatrists Awais Aftab and Mark Horowitz.

Guests: Dr. Awais...

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

Host Flora Lichtman talks with de Vos about her path into science, what it means to be the first Sr...

In mid-September, artists from around the country convened in Laurel, Maryland, for one of the splashiest events in the wildlife art world: the Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest. At the annual event, artists compete to have their excruciatingly detailed waterfowl painting appear on the Federal Duck Stamp, which is a waterfowl hunting license. This year, Digital Producer Emma Gometz was there to watch the duck drama unfold. They join Host Flora Lichtman to explain why artists take this competition so seriously, how duck stamps support conservation, and who took the crown this year.

Read our article about...

Football season is well underway, and fans know those athletes get hit hard. Could better helmets and guidelines around concussion prevention someday eliminate head injuries from the sport? 

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with concussion doctor Michael Collins and helmet specialist Barry Miller about how our understanding of head injuries and equipment has evolved. 

Guests:  Dr. Michael Collins is the clinical and executive director of the Sports Medicine Concussion Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Dr. Barry Miller is the director of outreach at the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab.

Transcripts for eac...

At a news conference on September 22, President Trump claimed that taking acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, during pregnancy “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism.” Many experts have pushed back on the statement, saying it’s a false claim that downplays the risks of fever during pregnancy, which Tylenol may be used to treat.

Autistic people and their families also raised concerns about the language used and the premise that autism is a scourge that needs to be eliminated.

Host Flora Lichtman digs into what we know about acetaminophen use during pregna...

Robots are just about everywhere these days: circling the grocery store, cleaning the floor at the airport, making deliveries. Not to mention the robots on the assembly lines in factories. But how far are we from having a human-like robot at home? For example, a robot housekeeper like Rosie from “The Jetsons.” She didn’t just cook and clean, she bantered and bonded with the Jetsons. 

Stanford roboticist Karen Liu joined Host Ira Flatow to talk about how AI is driving advances in humanoid robotics at a live show at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City, California.

Gu...

In the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, scientists are on the cutting edge of growing coral. Rising ocean temperatures have caused mass coral bleaching, and experts are racing against the clock to figure out how to help corals be more resilient to stress.

Coral scientist Rebecca Albright joined Host Ira Flatow at our live show at the Fox Theater in Redwood City, California, to talk about the work her lab does to help corals reproduce—romantic lighting and full moons included.

Guest: Dr. Rebecca Albright is a coral reef biologist, an associate cura...

Sift through your memories and excavate an image of a fossil. Maybe you’re picturing dinosaur bones, the imprint of an ammonite, or the fronds of a fern etched into stone. But there’s a whole other category of fossilized remains that can tell us about life way before T. rexes, or even twigs, existed on this planet. That’s fossilized evidence of microbes.

Microbiologist Paula Welander uses these ancient remains to understand how life began on Earth. She joined Host Flora Lichtman for our live show at the Fox Theater in Redwood City, California, to talk about...

Nigeria is home to 100 known species of bats—about a third of Africa’s bat species—but scientists don’t know much about them. Ecologists Iroro Tanshi and Benneth Obitte, collaborators and life partners, are trying to change that. In addition to studying and protecting the bats of their homeland, they’re also working to raise up a whole network of bat scientists across West Africa. 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with them about how they started their work, what they’ve learned, and how they’re paving the way for other bat conservationists. 

Guests:
Dr. Iroro Tanshi...

The overall state of birds can seem rather grim. Almost a third of North American bird species are in decline, and in the last five decades, more than 100 species have lost over half of their populations. This is primarily due to lack of food—fewer insects to eat—and habitat loss, like the development of grasslands. 

But there’s a bright spot: Some birds that were once rare are now abundant, like the merlin, sandhill crane, and pileated woodpecker. 

Host Ira Flatow talks with biologist Tom Langen, who explains these birds’ remarkable comebacks, and discusses his conser...

Codependency between humans gets a bad rap. But in nature, species often rely on each other for survival. While humans think they’re in control of relationships between other species, like dogs and even the yeast for our breads, the opposite is often true.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with ecologist Rob Dunn, whose new book, The Call of the Honeyguide, argues that mutualisms are the story of life itself.

Read an excerpt of The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life.

Transcripts fo...

You might remember news reporting from earlier this year that a 180-foot asteroid had about a 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. And if it did, it would unleash energy equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs. After further observations, astronomers revised that probability way down, to close to zero. So what is our current capability to spot Earthbound asteroids? And how are governments preparing to communicate and respond to a potential impact on a populated area?

Joining Host Ira Flatow with some of the answers are Kelly Fast, from NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and Leviticus “L.A.” Lewi...

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

Geneticist Mary-Claire King and her lab were the first to identify that gene. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk...

What makes someone a genius? Are they the smartest, most creative, most innovative people? Those with the highest IQ? Who we consider a genius may actually tell us much more about what we value as a society than any objective measure of brilliance. A compelling or quirky life story often shapes who is elevated to genius status.

Host Ira Flatow unpacks the complicated and coveted title of genius with Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of A Dangerous Idea.

Read an excerpt of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of A...

A video shown on Capitol Hill on September 9 reportedly shows an American hellfire missile attacking and simply bouncing off a UAP (the military term for a UFO). When videos like this come out, speculation about aliens often follows. But our obsession with aliens isn’t new—and it didn’t begin with 1950s alien invasion movies like “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” or even with Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” mock news bulletins of the 1930s.

As science reporter Becky Ferreira writes in her upcoming book, First Contact: The Story Of Our Obsession With Aliens, humans have been...

It all started harmlessly enough: People bought kits to grow mushrooms at home. But then, scientists in the upper Midwest noticed something strange. The golden oyster mushroom, which is not native to the United States, was thriving in local forests. Those homegrown mushrooms escaped our basements into the wild. Fungal ecologist Aishwarya Veerabahu joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what impact these invasive mushrooms might have on the ecosystem.

Plus, nightshade expert Sandra Knapp describes the evolution of the potato plant, and how a lucky crossbreeding millions of years ago may have given rise to the starchy...

If you’ve flipped through an issue of National Geographic or scrolled through their social media, and caught a stunningly detailed photo of a tiny creature—like one where you can make out the hairs on a honeybee’s eyeballs, or the exact contours of a hummingbird’s forked tongue—you have probably seen the work of Anand Varma. He’s an award-winning science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab, a storytelling studio in Berkeley, California.

Varma speaks with Host Flora Lichtman and takes us behind the lens to show what it takes to capture i...

Dietary supplements are big business, with one recent estimate showing the industry is worth almost $64 billion in the United States alone. Take a casual scroll through your social media and you’ll find influencers hawking all kinds of supplements. But how effective are they? How are they regulated? And why are these “natural” remedies so appealing to millions of Americans? 

To size up the science and culture of supplements, Host Flora Lichtman talks with supplement researcher Pieter Cohen, and Colleen Derkatch, author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture. 

Guests: Dr. Pieter Cohen is...

Put on your party hat and wet suit because it is Cephalopod Week, Science Friday’s annual celebration of all things, octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. To kick things off, we’re bringing you an ode to the octopus arm. You may have heard that octopuses can use their arms to “taste” their surroundings, which they use for finding food. Now, researchers have unlocked a key mechanism in the octopus sensory system. Octopuses use their suckers to detect harmful microbes on the surface of crab shells or even their own eggs.  

Host Flora Lichtman talks with molecular biologist Nicholas B...

On August 27, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the White House fired CDC director Susan Monarez after only a month on the job. Right after she was ousted, other senior leaders resigned from the agency, including Demetre Daskalakis, an infectious disease physician and former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.

Dr. Daskalakis speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about the state of the agency and what these developments mean for public health.

Guest: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis is the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory...

Earlier this summer, astronomers discovered something strange whizzing past Jupiter: an interstellar object. Scientists named it 3I/ATLAS. It’s only the third interstellar object ever observed, and it’s due to leave the solar system by the end of the year, so the race is on to learn as much as we can about it. Host Flora Lichtman talks with astrochemist Stefanie Milam about what this object could teach us about other solar systems—and ours.

And, for the past two years, researchers have been studying samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, trying to tease out detail...

You have probably given some thought to outdoor air pollution, whether it’s wildfire smoke or smog from traffic. You may even check AQI measurements on your phone. But what about the air inside your home? Host Flora Lichtman talks to civil and environmental engineer Nusrat Jung, who studies indoor air pollution, about how we create toxic air without even knowing it, and what we can do to avoid it. 

Guest: Dr. Nusrat Jung is a civil and environmental engineer at Purdue University.

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

In some places, sand dunes protect shorelines from the onslaught of ocean waves. In other places, the dunes themselves are on the move, and threaten human structures.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with mechanical engineer Nathalie Vriend, who studies the structure of sand dunes, about what makes a heap of sand a dune, and what scientists still hope to learn about sand.

Guest: Dr. Nathalie Vriend is an associate professor in mechanical engineering and leader of the Granular Flow Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1...

Summer may be winding down, but we’re not quite ready to let go of beach days, backyard cookouts, or ice cream cones. We love ice cream here at SciFri, so we’re pulling a few of our favorite ice cream science stories out of the freezer this week.

Back in 2015, ice cream expert Maya Warren sat down with Host Ira Flatow to help us understand a science mystery of “unmeltable” ice cream that made the evening news in Cincinnati.

That same summer, Ira spoke to Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks, and Brian Smith, f...

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, and the levees designed to protect New Orleans failed. Huge swaths of the city flooded, and 1,600 people were trapped inside Charity Hospital. Physician Erica Fisher was working in Charity’s emergency room at the time, and she and her colleagues fought for days to keep their patients alive.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Dr. Fisher, now an emergency medicine physician at University Medical Center in New Orleans, about Hurricane Katrina and the vulnerability of our healthcare systems in the face of disasters.

Plus, science writer Maggie Ko...

Researchers recently used near-infrared photography to get a detailed look at ancient artwork showing scenes of wild animals tangled in a fight. But these weren’t paintings on a cave wall. They were tattoos on the arms of a Siberian woman who lived 2,300 years ago. What can ancient ink tell us about our ancestors? 

Sticking and poking their way into this with Host Flora Lichtman are archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf and his research collaborator, tattoo artist Danny Riday.

Guests: Aaron Deter-Wolf is an archaeologist for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville, Tennessee.
Danny Riday is...

You might think of a star as a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is turned into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. But researchers recently reported that they’d observed some of what lies beneath all that hydrogen and helium, at least inside one unusual supernova. The star, named supernova 2021yfj, had its outer layers stripped away, leaving behind a silicon- and sulfur-rich inner shell.

Astrophysicist Steve Schulze joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe what the team spotted in the heart of a dying star.

Guest: Dr. Steve Sc...

Gray wolves are native to the Rocky Mountains, but decades of hunting nearly eradicated them from the western United States by the 1940s. In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, and it’s been a conservation success story, but not a straight path out of the woods.

Host Flora Lichtman digs into the last 30 years of wolves in the West with Heath Druzin, creator of the podcast “Howl,” from Boise State Public Radio and The Idaho Capital Sun. Druzin reported the podcast and companion written series with Clark Corbin.

Guest: Heath Druzin is host of the...

What do Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, lime Jell-O, and Kraft Creamy French Salad dressing have in common? They've all gotten a glow-up from artificial food dyes. Petroleum-based food dyes have become a target of RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—but what does science say about their effects on health? 

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss is Asa Bradman, an expert in the health effects of food dyes and other things we’re exposed to in our environment.

Guest:
Dr. Asa Bradman is a professor of public health at the University of California Merced based...

This month, the Department of Health and Human Services terminated almost $500 million in mRNA vaccine development grants and contracts. While HHS has said that these cuts won't affect mRNA cancer research, some researchers have expressed concern about the impact on their ongoing work. In light of these developments, we’re revisiting a conversation from February.

A team at Memorial Sloan Kettering is developing an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, which is notoriously difficult to treat. A few years ago, the team embarked on a small trial to test the vaccine’s safety. Sixteen patients with pancreatic cancer rece...

Since President Trump returned to office, his administration has been aggressive in rolling back clean energy initiatives. But that isn’t the whole story. Texas, California, and other states are bringing so much solar and battery power online that in March, fossil fuels generated less than half the electricity in the US for the first time ever. And internationally, solar has gotten so cheap to build and install that it’s fundamentally transforming many countries’ power grids. So where exactly does solar adoption stand in the US and across the world right now?

Climate activist Bill McKibben joins...

Fireflies’ magical blinking lights are tiny beacons in the warm dark night. Who can resist catching one? Not scientists.

Because their light comes from bodily chemicals, fireflies’ power of illumination has long been used as a tool in medical research. And that has driven scientists to investigate the inner workings of the blinking beetle itself. Researchers have recently discovered that fireflies’ glowing lanterns are only one of the ways they communicate.

Host Ira Flatow talks with entomologist Sarah Lower and biochemist Stephen Miller about the latest advances in firefly science.

Guests: Dr. Sarah Lower...

Throughout history, humans have been on a search for truth. From the ancient Greeks and their belief in a universal truth, to our Founding Fathers writing, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” In a world of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and the rising influence of artificial intelligence, where does truth fit in? Mathematician Adam Kucharski, author of Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty, joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the complicated truth.

Read an excerpt of Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty.

Guest:
Dr. Adam Kucharski is a...

Did you know that murder mystery writer Agatha Christie had a background in chemistry? In about half of her stories, the murder is committed using poison—something she was very, very familiar with. She had even trained in apothecaries to mix prescriptions by hand before she became a novelist. Chemist-turned-author Kathryn Harkup wrote about them in her new book, V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death. Harkup talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the science of poisons, why they’re so popular in whodunnits, and how to get away with murder (in fiction writing, of course).

G...

On August 5, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the Department of Health and Human Services would terminate almost $500 million in mRNA vaccine development grants and contracts, affecting 22 projects. Biologist and mRNA researcher Jeff Coller joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about what this move means for future mRNA research in the US beyond these immediate projects.

Plus, reporter Casey Crownhart joins Ira to discuss the latest in climate news, including flooding in Juneau, Alaska; how Ford is pursuing further electric vehicle manufacturing despite federal roadblocks; and a startup using Earth itself as a giant battery.<...

If you’ve found yourself scrolling through the breastfeeding world online, you know that people have a lot of strong opinions about breast milk. But what exactly do we know about the biology of it? Does breast milk really adapt to a baby’s needs? Does it confer immunity? How does making breast milk impact the breastfeeder? Joining Host Flora Lichtman to spin through the science of this sophisticated substance are experts Shelley McGuire and Deepshika Ramanan.

Guests: 
Dr. Shelley McGuire is the director of the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the Unive...

Science journalist Tom Zeller Jr. has suffered from debilitating cluster headaches for three decades. Like other cluster headache sufferers, his episodes would leave him unable to function, and the fear of the next one happening was constant. In a quest to better understand his own condition, Zeller learned that headaches remain a great neurological mystery, with basic mechanisms behind why they happen still unknown. He joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about his new book, The Headache: The Science of a Most Confounding Affliction – and a Search for Relief.

Guest:
Tom Zeller Jr. is editor in ch...

Last week, astronaut James Lovell died at the age of 97. In April of 1970, he was the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which launched with three astronauts en route to the moon. While in space, however, the craft encountered a serious problem: an explosion in one of its fuel tanks that severely damaged the craft and disabled its electrical system, prompting the famous phrase, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” In 1995, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the mission, Host Ira Flatow spoke with Lovell about the historic flight and how good luck and ingenuity among the crew and mi...

Fungal networks in the soil are arguably the basis of much of life on Earth, but they’re understudied and underappreciated in the conservation world. Scientists at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) are trying to fix that. They just unveiled a global map of mycorrhizal fungal networks, which highlights how widespread they are and how little protection they have. Host Flora Lichtman talks with two of the SPUN mapmakers, Adriana Corrales and Michael Van Nuland, about the importance of fungal networks and why they need more protection.

Guests: Dr. Adriana Corrales is a fo...

The mechanisms behind Alzheimer’s disease have eluded scientists for decades. But a new breakthrough points to lithium as a possible explanation—not only does it occur naturally in the brain, but a deficiency causes dementia in mice. This research is one of thousands of projects that have lost funding due to President Trump’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

Host Ira Flatow speaks with Alzheimer’s researcher Bruce Yankner about this new finding, and then to epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina and immunologist Elisabeth Marnik about the country’s “quiet engine of science,” the NIH.

Guests:  Duration: 00:26:30

If social media and certain influential podcast hosts are to be believed, cold plunges can do everything from boosting your immune system to reducing inflammation to acting as an antidote for depression. But what does the science say? Joining Host Flora Lichtman to throw at least a few drops of cold water on this science of plunging is biologist François Haman, who studies human performance and cold exposure.

And, with the help of the HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” a minor league baseball team in Pennsylvania rebranded themselves the Erie Moon Mammoths. That comes just a few m...

Dr. Masao Tomonaga was only 2 years old when the United States bombed his home city of Nagasaki. He survived, and grew up to become a physician for other survivors, known as hibakusha. He also studied hematology, and his research on leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes was foundational for understanding how radiation affects the body. On the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he speaks with Host Ira Flatow about his life’s work, how hibakusha lived with the medical consequences of the bombs, and his message to the world.

Guest: 
Dr. Masao Tomonaga is a s...

The first complete draft of the human genome was published back in 2003. Since then, researchers have worked both to improve the accuracy of human genetic data, and to expand its diversity, looking at the genetics of people from many different backgrounds. Three genetics experts join Host Ira Flatow to talk about a recent close examination of the genomes of 65 individuals from around the world, and how it may help researchers get a better understanding of genomic functioning and diversity.

Guests:

Dr. Christine Beck is an associate professor of genetics and genome sciences in the University...

For almost their entire 4.5 billion-year existence, Earth and its moon have been galactic neighbors. And the moon isn’t just Earth’s tiny sidekick—their relationship is more like that of siblings, and they’re even cut from similar cosmic cloth.

Without the moon, Earth and its inhabitants wouldn’t be what they are today: The climate would be more extreme, lunar tides wouldn’t have given rise to life on Earth, biological rhythms would be off-beat, and even timekeeping and religion would have evolved differently. The new book Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed The Planet, Gu...