Science Friday - Podcast

The storm flooded mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, which supply the tech industry with some of the purest quartz in the world. Also, researchers ...

Herbicides Approved For Public Land | Hidden Physics In Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’

Publication Date: 2024-10-03

This summer, the Bureau of Land Management approved seven herbicides to fight invasive plants in the West. Also, when scientists analyzed the swirls i...

Improving Hospitals’ Support For Teens In Mental Health Crises

Publication Date: 2024-10-02

Emergency departments often handle incidents of self-inflicted injury. Equipping them better could save lives.

Greenhouse Gases From Anesthesia | Fighting Militarization In The Mariana Islands

Publication Date: 2024-10-01

Emissions from anesthesia are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases from hospitals. This anesthesiologist wants to change that. And, a cultur...

Empowering Older Adults To Step Up For The Climate

Publication Date: 2024-09-30

Climate activists Bill McKibben and Akaya Windwood say it isn’t fair to leave the climate crisis for younger generations to solve.

Microsoft Makes Deal To Restart Three Mile Island | Fish That Use Their Legs To Taste

Publication Date: 2024-09-27

The company is betting big on nuclear energy to meet increasing power needs of data centers and new technologies like AI. Also, new research into a st...

Former NIH Director Reflects On Public Mistrust In Science

Publication Date: 2024-09-26

In his new book, Dr. Francis Collins explores how the pandemic increased skepticism of the scientific process and what to do about it.

How Are AI Chatbots Changing Scientific Publishing?

Publication Date: 2024-09-25

Generative AI is boosting production of fake scientific papers. How are journal publishers adjusting to this new reality?

These Artists Serve Up Environmental Crises Through Food

Publication Date: 2024-09-24

May we interest you in a smog-infused cookie? The Center for Genomic Gastronomy is making foods that capture environmental crises.

Surgeon General Takes On Parental Stress And Mental Health

Publication Date: 2024-09-23

In his latest advisory, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy adds parents’ wellbeing to his agenda of improving the nation’s mental health.

Earth May Once Have Had A Ring Like Saturn | An AI For Sand

Publication Date: 2024-09-20

The ring would have gradually fallen to Earth as meteorites, correlating to a spike of impacts seen in the geological record. Also, a new AI tool can ...

Physicists Create Heaviest Antimatter Nucleus | Bird Species May Team Up For Migration

Publication Date: 2024-09-19

The heaviest antimatter nucleus to date was spotted in a particle accelerator. It could provide new insights into the nature of matter. And, research ...

Your Questions About The Updated COVID Vaccines, Answered

Publication Date: 2024-09-18

Immunologist Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire answers audience questions about when to get the latest COVID shot, rapid test efficacy, and more.

To Confront Climate Change, Imagine Getting It Right

Publication Date: 2024-09-17

In her new book, climate policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson explores what ideal climate solutions look like to a lineup of experts.

What Research Shows About Smartphone Bans In Schools

Publication Date: 2024-09-16

Researchers, educators, and parents discuss smartphones in school. Plus, why research on how social media affects teens defies easy answers.

First Citizen Spacewalk | First Successful Whole-Eye Transplant, Over A Year Later

Publication Date: 2024-09-13

Two citizen astronauts on SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission left their capsule and returned safely. Also, while Aaron James can’t see out of his new eye, ...

‘Time Capsule’ Rocks And Earth’s Mantle | Genetically Engineering Stronger Wood

Publication Date: 2024-09-12

Samples of 2.5 billion-year-old mantle rocks found at spreading ocean ridges could put bounds on models of how the planet formed. And, researchers dec...

To This Neuroscientist, Cows Are Like Puppies

Publication Date: 2024-09-11

In a new book called “Cowpuppy,” neuroscientist and farmer Gregory Berns investigates cow intelligence.

Fishing For—And Saving—Sharks | Scientists Identify ‘ManhattAnt’ Spreading Across NYC

Publication Date: 2024-09-10

Shark fishing is alive and well, but the fishermen who do it are increasingly prioritizing conservation. And, an unknown ant was spotted in Manhattan ...

Using DNA To Boost Digital Data Storage And Processing

Publication Date: 2024-09-09

Researchers are harnessing DNA’s incredible capacity for information storage by turning genetic code into binary code.

An Asteroid Impact, Spotted In Advance | Extreme Heat Is Making Learning More Difficult

Publication Date: 2024-09-06

ESA officials said it was only the ninth time an asteroid was spotted before reaching Earth’s atmosphere. And, as the climate changes and summer tempe...

Dino-Killing Asteroid Was Rich In Carbon | The Dogs Sniffing Out Spotted Lanternflies

Publication Date: 2024-09-05

A new study suggests that the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs may have originated from the outer parts of the solar system. And, invasive spotted l...

Why Eels Are So Mysterious—And In Demand

Publication Date: 2024-09-04

In her new book, Ellen Ruppel Shell covers the natural history of eels and the crime ring that has sprung up from illegally trafficking them.

Webb Telescope Data Point To Six ‘Rogue Worlds’

Publication Date: 2024-09-03

Rogue worlds float around in the cosmos, untethered to a specific star. They could help scientists understand the formation of the Milky Way.

Could ‘Season Creep’ Affect Human Behavior?

Publication Date: 2024-09-02

The seasons are arriving at different times than they used to. A psychologist weighs in on whether these shifts could impact our behavior.

Mosquito-Borne Diseases Are Spreading | ‘Slingshot’ And A Space Mission Gone Wrong

Publication Date: 2024-08-30

Several states have reported cases of the rare but serious mosquito-borne illness eastern equine encephalitis. And, the new sci-fi movie "Slingshot,\...

The History Of Teeth, From Ancient Fish To Humans

Publication Date: 2024-08-29

In “Bite,” author Bill Schutt takes readers on a dental adventure spanning half a billion years and much of the animal kingdom.

Errors On Death Certificates May Be Skewing Mortality Data

Publication Date: 2024-08-28

Misreporting on death certificates could lead to inaccurate mortality data, including for key statistics like maternal mortality rates.

Astronaut Cady Coleman On ‘Sharing Space’

Publication Date: 2024-08-27

Cady Coleman discusses her reaction to seeing Earth from orbit, the challenges of her path into space, and her new book.

Protecting Sequoias From Wildfire Gets Tricky | Ancient Cave Art And Human Creativity

Publication Date: 2024-08-26

Sequoia National Park is largely designated as wilderness. That complicates efforts to protect its iconic trees from worsening wildfires. Also, archae...

Plastic In Human Brains | Local Anesthetics Recommended For IUD Insertion

Publication Date: 2024-08-23

A new study measuring microplastics in organs of the recently deceased found that about two dozen brain samples were 0.5% plastic by weight. Also, hav...

Don’t Just Walk In The Woods—Touch, Smell, and Taste Them, Too

Publication Date: 2024-08-22

September’s SciFri Book Club pick, “Forest Walking,” teaches readers how to use all five senses to engage with forests in a deeper way.

Are Space Elevators Really A Possibility?

Publication Date: 2024-08-21

The space elevator has long been a part of science fiction, but some experts believe it could soon be a reality.

Could Light And Sound Therapy Treat Alzheimer’s?

Publication Date: 2024-08-20

Exposing mice to a specific frequency of light and sound decreases Alzheimer’s biomarkers and symptoms. Now it’s being tested on humans.

Dr. Fauci On A Life Of Medical Research And Public Service

Publication Date: 2024-08-19

His new book “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service” chronicles his work on health crises from HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.

Evidence For Liquid Water On Mars | Making Campsite Booking Fairer

Publication Date: 2024-08-16

Data from the Mars InSight lander points to the presence of liquid water underneath its crust. Also, some national and state parks are changing the wa...

Dinosaurs’ Secrets Might Be In Their Fossilized Poop

Publication Date: 2024-08-15

Analyzing fossilized feces, called coprolites, is key to better understanding ancient ecosystems and dinosaur diets.

The Promise Of Perovskite Solar Panels

Publication Date: 2024-08-14

This specific type of solar cell is more efficient than what’s currently on the market. But what is it, and can it be scaled up?

An Expert Vegetable Breeder On Innovating Crops For The Future

Publication Date: 2024-08-13

As the climate changes, we need vegetables resilient to drought, pests, and heat. An expert explains how to breed plants for harsh conditions.

What The Private Sale Of Fossils Means For Paleontology

Publication Date: 2024-08-12

After a stegosaurus skeleton sold for $44.6 million, paleontologists are concerned about how selling dinosaur fossils affects research.

Starliner Leaves Astronauts Stuck | Could We Get Weather Forecasts Years In Advance?

Publication Date: 2024-08-09

The Boeing capsule is having issues with its thrusters and cannot bring astronauts back to Earth, leaving NASA scrambling for alternatives. Also, move...

Why Does COVID-19 Spike In Summer?

Publication Date: 2024-08-08

This is the fourth summer the U.S. has seen a COVID-19 surge. And no, it’s not a coincidence.

Deep-Sea ‘Nodules’ May Produce Oxygen | A Bird’s Physics Trick For High-Altitude Flying

Publication Date: 2024-08-07

New research suggests that polymetallic nodules found 13,000 feet deep produce “dark oxygen” by electrolyzing water. Also, at higher altitudes, the ai...

PLATO’s Mission To Discover Exoplanets Like Earth

Publication Date: 2024-08-06

The European Space Agency mission aims to discover new exoplanets in habitable zones. It is scheduled for launch in late 2026.

Why Cancer Death Rates Have Decreased Over The Last 30 Years

Publication Date: 2024-08-05

Cancer treatment and prevention has come a long way in the past few decades. Here’s what’s new, and where challenges persist.

Hawaiʻi Wildfire Survivors Join Health Study | Wind Turbine Blade Sinks Off Massachusetts Coast

Publication Date: 2024-08-02

The University of Hawaiʻi study will be the largest of its kind to investigate the health and social impacts of the Maui wildfires. Also, fiberglass i...

The Science And History Of Refrigeration

Publication Date: 2024-08-01

In her book ‘Frostbite,’ Nicola Twilley examines how refrigeration changed the world and spoiled us—and our food.

Sodium Replaces Lithium In A New Type Of Battery

Publication Date: 2024-07-31

Researchers developed the first anode-free solid-state battery that’s based on sodium, which is cheaper and more abundant than lithium.

Inside The Race To Save Honeybees From Parasitic Mites

Publication Date: 2024-07-30

Varroa destructor mites are killing honeybees and their babies at alarming rates.

What A Rodent Brain Shows Us About Love | If Colorado Was Flattened, How Big Would It Be?

Publication Date: 2024-07-29

Monogamous prairie voles may help us understand how our brains respond to love, and how they move on after heartbreak. Also, science suggests Colorado...

Curiosity Rover Discovers Pure Sulfur On Mars | A Science Hero, Lost and Found

Publication Date: 2024-07-26

In a first, NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered pure sulfur on Mars. And, we revisit a conversation from 2015 about Alexander von Humboldt and Andre...

What Are The Risks Of Drinking Raw Milk?

Publication Date: 2024-07-25

As public figures promote raw milk, and sales increase, experts warn about the risks from pathogens like salmonella and avian flu.

A Space Suit To Turn Pee Into Water | A Bitcoin Mine Causing A Health Crisis In Texas

Publication Date: 2024-07-24

Researchers developed a prototype of a space suit that could replace the high-absorbency diapers that astronauts wear on space walks. And, a bitcoin m...

How A Shark Scientist Forged Her Own Path

Publication Date: 2024-07-23

In her book, marine biologist Jasmin Graham writes about uplifting young scientists of color and why she pursues research outside of academia.

FDA Panel Rejects MDMA Therapy For PTSD

Publication Date: 2024-07-22

The panel raised concerns about the study’s methods and failure to address previous instances of research misconduct.

A Small Meteor Blazes Over New York City | Tornado Science From ‘Twisters’

Publication Date: 2024-07-19

The foot-long meteor passed through the Earth’s atmosphere near the Statue of Liberty. Don’t worry, it was fine. Also, the follow-up to the 1996 movie...

Why Are There So Many Drug Shortages In The U.S.?

Publication Date: 2024-07-18

It’s not just Ozempic. There are 323 ongoing drug shortages in the U.S., leaving patients scrambling for necessary medications.

What The Small Intestine Can Tell Us About Gut Health

Publication Date: 2024-07-17

Most gut microbiome research focuses on the colon. But understanding the small intestine might unlock better treatments for GI disorders.

Helping Queen Conchs Mate In The Florida Keys

Publication Date: 2024-07-16

Rising temperatures shut down some conchs’ impulse to reproduce. So scientists are ferrying them to colonies in deeper, cooler waters.

How Congestion Pricing Can Impact Human Health

Publication Date: 2024-07-15

Congestion pricing increases commuting costs in cities, but it can also mean better air quality and a healthier population.

Galaxies ‘Dance’ In Stunning New JWST Image | Why Some Cats Scratch Furniture

Publication Date: 2024-07-12

As the James Webb Space Telescope marks two years of operations, NASA unveils a new image of two galaxies interacting. And, new research shows that ca...

Your Pain Tolerance May Have Been Passed Down From Neanderthals

Publication Date: 2024-07-11

Gene variants inherited from Neanderthals can impact pain tolerance and nose shape in modern humans. What else could they influence?

How Can Iowa’s Agriculture Adapt To Climate Threats?

Publication Date: 2024-07-10

From drought-resistant crops to making sure farmers of color thrive, here’s how experts in Iowa are looking at the future of agriculture.

How Do They Actually Store The Declaration Of Independence?

Publication Date: 2024-07-09

At a live event in Washington, Ira talks to restoration experts about the science of preserving America’s founding documents.

How Politics And Diplomacy Shape Panda Conservation

Publication Date: 2024-07-08

In this story from 2023, we look back at 80 years of panda conservation, and how “panda diplomacy” paved the way for groundbreaking science.

The Best Science Books For Summer 2024

Publication Date: 2024-07-05

Two science writers and voracious readers have compiled their summer reading recommendations, just for Science Friday fans.

Avoiding Grilling and Barbecue Pitfalls

Publication Date: 2024-07-04

In a conversation from 2014, Ira talks marinade myths, charcoal chemistry, and the elusive “smoke ring”—the science behind barbecue and grilling.

From Microbes To Mammoths: How Life Transformed The Planet

Publication Date: 2024-07-03

In “Becoming Earth,” author Ferris Jabr reexamines our relationship to Earth, and makes the case that Earth itself is alive.

Study Shows Which Kids Are Getting Periods Younger Than Others

Publication Date: 2024-07-02

The age of first menstruation trended downward from 1950 to 2005, but more so among low-income kids and kids of color.

What To Do When Your Hypothesis Is Wrong? Publish!

Publication Date: 2024-07-01

In an effort to learn from scientific failure, The Journal of Trial Error only publishes “negative” results.

The Sample From The Far Side Of The Moon | Will The Seine Be Clean Enough For The Olympics?

Publication Date: 2024-06-28

China’s Chang’e 6 return capsule landed in Mongolia, carrying samples from the far side of the moon. Also, Paris has invested $1.5B in cleaning up the...

The Octopus Overlooked By Science | Squid With ‘Giant’ Eggs Could Be New Species

Publication Date: 2024-06-27

The larger Pacific striped octopus is unusually social. But it wasn’t recognized by scientists until 2015, despite one man’s efforts. And, a deep-sea ...

House Stalls On Bill To Compensate Victims Of Nuclear Testing

Publication Date: 2024-06-26

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act expired on June 10, but supporters are still fighting to expand it.

Crowdsourced Data Identifies 126 ‘Lost’ Bird Species

Publication Date: 2024-06-25

Researchers analyzed photos, videos, and audio from crowdsource platforms to identify bird species that have not been spotted in over a decade.

20 Years Later, How Are City Climate Plans Actually Going?

Publication Date: 2024-06-24

When the federal government wavered in its commitment to climate action, cities stepped up. But goals, and success, are hard to define.

It’s Hot. But How Hot? | Canine Cancer Vaccine Shows Promising Results

Publication Date: 2024-06-21

Researchers say the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature is a better indicator of heat stress. Also, cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs. A new vaccine...

Mannequins Help Teach People How To Spot Ticks | Protecting A Flickering Symbol Of Summer Nights

Publication Date: 2024-06-20

Two mannequins walk into a science lab, and one’s got a big tick problem. She can teach humans how to check for ticks. Also, researchers used citizen ...

‘The Singularity Is Nearer,’ Says Futurist Ray Kurzweil

Publication Date: 2024-06-19

Two decades after his book “The Singularity is Near,” Kurzweil is back with more predictions about the future of AI.

Why Do Cephalopods Make Ink?

Publication Date: 2024-06-18

Squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish use ink to confuse predators and to communicate. But there’s still a lot we don’t understand about inking.

Meet The Emotions Behind Teenage Angst In ‘Inside Out 2’

Publication Date: 2024-06-17

Psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour helped make the film more scientifically accurate to how a teenager’s mind works.

Elephants Seem To Use Names For Each Other | Kids Discover Rare T. Rex Fossil

Publication Date: 2024-06-14

A new study used machine learning to analyze elephant vocalizations and identified “contact rumbles” that appear to function as names. Also, on a hike...

How Sound Rules Life Underwater

Publication Date: 2024-06-13

In her new book, science journalist Amorina Kingdon explores the astonishing variety of sound in the ocean, and how it affects ecosystems.

Metal-Absorbing Plants Could Make Mining Greener | A Tiny Fern's Gigantic Genome

Publication Date: 2024-06-12

Plants called “hyperaccumulators” have evolved to absorb high levels of metals. Scientists want to harness them for greener metal mining. And, a littl...

How Psychological Warfare Moved From Battlefields To Politics

Publication Date: 2024-06-11

A new book looks at the history of psychological warfare, its connections to science fiction, and how it’s been adapted to modern politics.

Step Aside, DNA. It’s RNA’s Time To Shine.

Publication Date: 2024-06-10

The COVID vaccines proved that RNA could be extremely powerful. A new book explores even more medical applications for the tiny molecule.

A Week Of Milestones For Spaceflight | Mexico Has Elected A Scientist President

Publication Date: 2024-06-07

Boeing’s Starliner successfully launched and docked at the ISS, SpaceX’s Starship rocket launched and returned. Also, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo brings s...

The Organ That Gives Birds Their Voices | Common Loons Are Pop Music Icons

Publication Date: 2024-06-06

Scientists are studying birds’ unique vocal organ, the syrinx, to better understand its evolutionary history. Also, the eerie calls of the common loon...

Indigenous Nations Are Fighting To Take Back Their Data

Publication Date: 2024-06-05

Indigenous data sovereignty is the idea that Indigenous Peoples should decide how to collect, own, and use their own data.

The Unseen World Of Plant Intelligence

Publication Date: 2024-06-04

Science journalist Zoë Schlanger discusses plants’ ability to communicate, store memories, and more in her new book, “The Light Eaters.”

Right-To-Repair Laws Gain Steam In State Legislatures

Publication Date: 2024-06-03

A growing number of states are adopting laws that force companies to give consumers better options to repair their devices.

Starliner Crewed Test Flight Rescheduled | Slugs And Snails Like Cities

Publication Date: 2024-05-31

The much-delayed crewed test flight is back on the calendar, despite a helium leak. Also, researchers used data from the crowd-sourcing nature observa...

Your ‘Biological Age’ Could Be Different Than How Old You Are

Publication Date: 2024-05-30

Metabolic markers could eventually result in a test for “biological age,” which considers how things other than time age the body.

High-Speed Rail Gets A Boost In The U.S.

Publication Date: 2024-05-29

After decades of under-development, spending on high-speed rail projects is ramping up in California, Florida, and the Northeast Corridor.

Using A Lab On Wheels To Study Weed From Dispensaries

Publication Date: 2024-05-28

A van outfitted as a mobile laboratory helps scientists study how legal cannabis products affect users—without breaking the law.

Jelly Creatures That Swim In Corkscrews | Keeping Wind Turbines Safe For Birds

Publication Date: 2024-05-27

For the first time, scientists have recorded how salps form chains and swim in corkscrews to reach the ocean’s surface each night. Also, a wind utilit...

Zapping Nerves Into Regrowth | Celebrating the Maya Calendar In Guatemala’s Highlands

Publication Date: 2024-05-24

An early study found that electrical stimulation could improve hand and arm function in people with spinal cord injuries. Also, for thousands of years...

Fine-Tuning Grapes For Iowa’s Wine Industry

Publication Date: 2024-05-23

Scientists are breeding wine grapes that will grow in Iowa’s climate in hopes of expanding the state’s wine industry.

How To Recycle Rare Earth Elements

Publication Date: 2024-05-22

Scientists have developed a way to recycle rare earth elements found in discarded electronics without using acid or harsh chemicals.

New Evidence Questions Dark Energy’s ‘Constant’ Nature

Publication Date: 2024-05-21

Early data from the DESI collaboration suggests that dark energy, which powers the universe’s accelerating expansion, may evolve over time.

New Guidelines Recommend Earlier Breast Cancer Screening

Publication Date: 2024-05-20

The latest update moves the recommended age to start mammograms from 50 down to 40. How are these decisions made?

New Rule Sets Stage For Electric Grid Update | Harnessing Nanoparticles For Vaccines

Publication Date: 2024-05-17

Upgrades to the power grid under a new rule could help accommodate an increasing renewable energy supply and meet data center demands. Also, extremely...

How Climate Change Is Changing Sports

Publication Date: 2024-05-16

Sports ecologist and author Dr. Madeline Orr discusses how climate change is affecting sports, from ski conditions to athletes’ health.

Why Is Tinnitus So Hard To Understand And Treat?

Publication Date: 2024-05-15

Medical researchers are working to better understand—and hopefully mute—tinnitus, a persistent “ringing in the ears.”

Finding Purpose In A ‘Wild Life’

Publication Date: 2024-05-14

In her new book, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant shares how her lifelong love for the natural world led her to become a nature TV show host.

Archeopteryx Specimen Unveiled | Trees And Shrubs Burying Great Plains' Prairies

Publication Date: 2024-05-13

The Field Museum has unveiled a new specimen of Archaeopteryx, a species that may hold the key to how ancient dinosaurs became modern birds. Also, a “...

JWST Detects An Atmosphere Around A Rocky Exoplanet | Boeing Plans To Fly Humans To The ISS Next Week

Publication Date: 2024-05-10

Astronomers have confirmed they found an atmosphere around an Earth-like rocky exoplanet for the first time. Also, Boeing’s Starliner craft was schedu...

Challenging The Gender Gap In Sports Science

Publication Date: 2024-05-09

In a conversation from 2023, SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks to journalist Christine Yu about how most participants in sports research are still ...

What Martian Geology Can Teach Us About Earth

Publication Date: 2024-05-08

The geology of Mars could provide a snapshot of what our planet was like as the crust was forming and plate tectonics began.

How Louisiana Is Coping With Flooding In Cemeteries

Publication Date: 2024-05-07

As climate change intensifies storms, Louisiana is dealing with catastrophic flooding of cemeteries. Now other states face similar problems.

Inside Iowa State’s Herbarium | Science-Inspired Art From ‘Universe of Art’ Listeners

Publication Date: 2024-05-06

The Ada Hayden Herbarium preserves hundreds of thousands of specimens, including some collected by George Washington Carver. And, as the “Universe of ...

Science From Iowa’s Prairies | Planning To Go See Cicadas? Here’s What To Know

Publication Date: 2024-05-03

Science Friday is in Ames, Iowa, home to prairies, greater prairie chickens, and an array of wildlife. Also, the co-emergence of two periodical cicada...

Maybe Bonobos Aren't Gentler Than Chimps | Art Meets Ecology In A Mile-Long Poem

Publication Date: 2024-05-02

A study found aggression between male bonobos to be more frequent than aggression between male chimpanzees. Also, visual artist Todd Gilens created a ...

When Products Collect Data From Your Brain, Where Does It Go?

Publication Date: 2024-05-01

An array of new products monitors users’ brain waves using caps or headbands. That neural data has few privacy protections.

Visualizing A Black Hole’s Flares In 3D

Publication Date: 2024-04-30

Researchers are trying to develop a better picture of what’s happening in the regions closest to a black hole’s event horizon.

The 4,000-Year History of Humans and Silk

Publication Date: 2024-04-29

For her new book, Aarathi Prasad spent years researching the past and future of silk—and even grew her own silkworms.

Flint’s Water Crisis, 10 Years Later | Underwater Cables Could Help Detect Tsunamis

Publication Date: 2024-04-26

While progress has been made in replacing water pipes in Flint, Michigan, many residents say they still don’t know if their tap water is clean or not....

Fighting Banana Blight | Do Birds Sing In Their Dreams?

Publication Date: 2024-04-25

America’s most-consumed fruit is at risk from a fungal disease. Researchers in North Carolina are on a mission to save Cavendish bananas. Also, birds ...

Why Is Solving The Plastic Problem So Hard?

Publication Date: 2024-04-24

Plastics are everywhere, in packaging, clothing, and even our bodies. Could they be made less integral to manufacturing and more recyclable?

What Worsening Floods Mean For Superfund Sites

Publication Date: 2024-04-23

Superfund sites contain extreme pollution. Flooding—made worse by climate change—could carry their toxic contaminants into surrounding areas.

The Global Mental Health Toll Of Climate Change | Capturing DNA From 800 Lakes In One Day

Publication Date: 2024-04-22

An explosion of research is painting a clearer picture of how climate change is affecting mental health across the globe. Also, a citizen science proj...

Clean Energy Transition Progress | Avian Flu In Cattle And Humans Has Scientists Concerned

Publication Date: 2024-04-19

Global temperature increases are slowing, electric vehicle sales are growing, and renewable energy is now cheaper than some fossil fuels. Also, in a r...

A Cheer For The Physics Of Baseball

Publication Date: 2024-04-18

When you watch a baseball game, you’re also enjoying a spectacular display of science—from physics to biomechanics.

Carbon Cost Of Urban Gardens And Commercial Farms | Why There's No Superbloom This Year

Publication Date: 2024-04-17

Some food has a larger carbon footprint when grown in urban settings than on commercial farms, while for other foods the reverse is true. Also, what’s...

Inside The Race To Save Honeybees From Parasitic Mites

Publication Date: 2024-04-16

Varroa destructor mites are killing honeybees and their babies at alarming rates.

The Brain’s Glial Cells Might Be As Important As Neurons

Publication Date: 2024-04-15

These lesser-known nervous system cells were long thought to be the “glue” holding neurons together. They’re much more.

Limits On ‘Forever Chemicals’ In Drinking Water | An Important Winter Home For Bugs | Eclipse Drumroll

Publication Date: 2024-04-12

A long-awaited rule from the EPA limits the amounts of six PFAS chemicals allowed in public drinking water supplies. Also, some spiders, beetles, and ...

Investigating Animal Deaths At The National Zoo

Publication Date: 2024-04-11

When an animal dies at Washington, D.C.’s National Zoo, a pathologist gathers clues about its health and death from a necropsy.

Eating More Oysters Helps Us—And The Chesapeake Bay

Publication Date: 2024-04-10

In the ever-changing and biodiverse Chesapeake Bay, conservation and food production go hand in hand.

How Trees Keep D.C. And Baltimore Cool

Publication Date: 2024-04-09

Satellite technology—and community outreach—can help harness trees’ cooling power for city residents.

Predicting Heart Disease From Chest X-Rays With AI | Storing New Memories During Sleep

Publication Date: 2024-04-08

Dr. Eric Topol discusses the promise of “opportunistic” AI, using medical scans for unintended diagnostic purposes. Also, a study in mice found that t...

Recipient Of Pig Kidney Transplant Recovering | Answering Your Questions About April 8 Eclipse

Publication Date: 2024-04-05

A Massachusetts man who received a kidney from a genetically modified pig is recovering well. Also, on April 8, a total solar eclipse will plunge part...

Our Inevitable Cosmic Apocalypse

Publication Date: 2024-04-04

We revisit a 2020 interview with cosmologist Katie Mack about how the universe could end. Plus, remembering psychologist Daniel Kahneman.

The Complicated Truths About Offshore Wind And Right Whales

Publication Date: 2024-04-03

Officials say offshore wind turbines aren’t killing North Atlantic right whales. So why do so many people think otherwise?

The Bumpy Road To Approving New Alzheimer’s Drugs

Publication Date: 2024-04-02

After a controversial Alzheimer’s medication was discontinued, a new anti-amyloid drug receives extra scrutiny from the FDA.

‘3 Body Problem’ And The Laws Of Physics | In Defense Of ‘Out Of Place’ Plants

Publication Date: 2024-04-01

Particle accelerators, nanofibers, and solar physics: The science advisor for the Netflix adaptation breaks down the physics in the show. Also, in her...

Baltimore Bridge Collapse | Mapping How Viruses Jump Between Species

Publication Date: 2024-03-29

We look into the engineering reasons why the Francis Scott Key bridge collapsed after a ship crashed into it. Also, a new analysis finds that more vir...

The Legacy Of Primatologist Frans de Waal

Publication Date: 2024-03-28

In a conversation from 2019, Dr. Frans de Waal tells the story of a female chimp who didn’t produce enough milk to feed her young. The prominent prima...

The ‘Asteroid Hunter’ Leading The OSIRIS-REx Mission

Publication Date: 2024-03-27

In a new memoir, planetary scientist Dr. Dante Lauretta takes readers behind the scenes of a mission to secure a sample from the asteroid Bennu.

Swimming Sea Lions Teach Engineers About Fluid Dynamics

Publication Date: 2024-03-26

Understanding how sea lions move through water could help engineers design better underwater vehicles.

Introducing Our New Podcast: Universe Of Art

Publication Date: 2023-04-22

How do we use art to process the world around us in ways that science can’t? How are illustrators using their skills to help us understand nature’s mo...

Anesthesia 101, Carbon-Sequestering Poplars, Period Book. April 21, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-04-21

An Explosive End For A Massive Rocket This week, SpaceX attempted the first uncrewed orbital test flight of its massive Super Heavy rocket topped with...

The Myth of the Alpha Wolf, Cherokee Nation Seed Banks, History of Gender Affirming Care. April 21, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-04-21

How We Arrived At Current Standards Of Care For Trans Medicine So far this year, 16 states have moved to restrict or completely ban transgender kids a...

‘Possibility Of Life’ Book, PFAS Sewage, ‘Smart’ Play. April 14, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-04-14

Is Anybody Out There? The Quest For Life In Space It’s one of humanity’s biggest fundamental questions: “Is there life elsewhere in the universe?” But...

EV Proposal, Lactose Intolerance. April 14, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-04-14

EPA Proposal To Require 60% Of New Cars To Be EVs by 2030 The EPA released a set of proposals this week that would cap C02 emissions for new cars. In ...

Artemis II Astronauts, AI Research Pause, Terra Nil Video Game. April 7, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-04-07

An Open Letter Asks AI Researchers To Reconsider Responsibilities In recent months, it’s been hard to escape hearing about artificial intelligence pla...

Plants Make Sounds, Frog Science, COVID Vaccine Update. April 7, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-04-07

Your Plants Are Trying to Tell You They’re Thirsty Spring is in the air, with flowers blooming and gardens starting. Most people with a green thumb wi...

Mapping An Insect Brain, Climate Education, Audubon Name, Wastewater Methane. March 31, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-03-31

Sewage Is A Biological Necessity, And A Methane Minefield In most cities, once you flush a toilet, the water and waste flows through the sewage system...

Early Spring, Mumps On The Rise, Gulf Of Maine, Supermassive Black Hole. March 31, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-03-31

A Supermassive Black Hole The Mass Of 30 Billion Suns This week, astronomers reported that they may have found signs of one of the largest black holes...

New NASA Science Head, Climate and Fungus, Whiskey Fungus, Animal Testing Alternatives. March 24, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-03-24

Can Medicine Move To Animal-Free Testing? Before a new drug can begin clinical trials in humans, it gets tested on animals. But things are changing. L...

March Mammal Madness, Underwater Volcano, Listening to Space. March 24th, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-03-24

The Latest IPCC Report Is Full Of Warnings—And Hope It’s that time of year: another IPCC report has hit the presses. These reports from the Intergover...

Smart Toilet, Soft Robotics, Naked Mole Rats. March 17, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-03-17

Stop Flushing Your Health Data Down The Toilet You could be flushing important information about your health right down the toilet—quite literally. Pe...

Drugs Designed By AI, The Phosphorus Paradox, Regulating PFAS Chemicals. March 17, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-03-17

At Long Last, More Regulations For Forever Chemicals This week, the EPA proposed the first national standards for drinking water that would set limits...

Tips And Tricks To Grow Your Garden In A Changing Climate. March 10, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-03-10

Tips And Tricks To Grow Your Garden In A Changing Climate For many of us, spring is right around the corner—or already here—which means it’s time to s...

A New Controversial Black Hole Theory, Saving The Great Salt Lake. March 10, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-03-10

Despite Superconductor Breakthrough, Some Scientists Remain Skeptical This week, researchers unveiled a new superconductor which they say works at roo...

Science At The Oscars, Finding Shackleton’s “Endurance” Ship. March 3, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-03-03

Insulin Maker Eli Lilly Finally Caps The Drug’s Cost In 1923, drug manufacturer Eli Lilly became the first company to commercialize insulin. Since the...

Social Media’s ‘Chaos Machine,’ Whale Vocal Fry, Distant Galaxies. March 3, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-03-03

Inside The ‘Chaos Machine’ Of Social Media Despite social media’s early promises to build a more just and democratic society, over the past several ye...

AI And Hip Hop, Self-Planting Seeds, Abortion Pill Facing Restrictions. Feb 24, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-02-24

A Medication Abortion Drug Faces Potential Nationwide Restriction A federal court case underway in Texas this week could have big implications for med...

“All That Breathes’ Film, Repatriating Native American Remains, Benjamin Banneker. Feb 24, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-02-24

‘All That Breathes:’ A Story Of Two Brothers Saving New Delhi’s Raptors The Oscars are right around the corner, and one of the nominees in the documen...

Spy Balloons, Cost of Cancer Care, Seaweed, Chocolate Mouthfeel. Feb 17, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-02-17

Eyes In The Sky: The Science Behind Modern Balloons This month, the news cycle has been dominated by updates about suspicious objects being detected i...

Ohio Train Spill, Mushroom And Memory, Water Infrastructure. Feb 17, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-02-17

UFOs? Balloons? Spy Cams? Here’s What’s Going On This week, the saga over UFOs, balloons, and spyware continues. The drama all started with a Chinese ...

Rethinking Dementia Care. February 10, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-02-10

Rethinking The Future Of Dementia Care Scientists estimate that the number of people living with dementia will triple within the next 30 years, but he...

ChatGPT And The Future Of AI, Turkey Earthquakes. February 10, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-02-10

How Scientists Predict Where Earthquakes Will Strike Next The pair of earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week left the region grappling with d...

Climate Change Music, Industrial Animal Husbandry, Grief Book. Feb 3, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-02-03

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 relati...

Science Of ‘The Last Of Us’ Fungi, New U.S. Nuclear Power. Feb 3, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-02-03

Wind And Solar Were Europe’s Top Energy Sources In 2022 The European Union reached a major renewable energy milestone in 2022. For the first time, win...

Accessible Birding, Human Water Consumption, Road Salt Impacts, Terraformers Book. Jan 27, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-01-27

Meet The Blind Birder Reimagining Accessibility In The Outdoors For many blind and low vision people, accessing outdoor spaces like parks can be chall...

Art Crime Science, Long Covid Update, Earth's Slowing Core. Jan 27, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-01-27

What’s Behind The Strange Slowing Of The Earth’s Core? Even though some days feel more chaotic than others, the rotation of the surface of the planet ...

Gas Stoves, Next Gen Vaccines, Printed Violins. January 20, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-01-20

Why Are Gas Stoves Under Fire? If you were online at all last week, you probably encountered conversations about gas stoves. The sudden stove discours...

Children’s Antibiotics Shortage, Bat Vocalizations, Life’s Biggest Questions. January 20, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-01-20

Why Are Children’s Antibiotics So Hard To Find Right Now? Mary Warlo has been extremely worried lately. Her baby Calieb, who is six months old, has si...

Tech To Watch, Pests. January 13, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-01-13

Technology Trends to Watch in 2023 The start of a new year is often a time to contemplate the future and what might lie ahead on the horizon. This wee...

Lab-Grown Meat Progress, Early Human Migration Updates. January 13, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-01-13

Early Migration To North America Likely Wasn’t A One-Way Road The story of how early humans migrated to North America might not be as simple as we onc...

Science Comedy, Shifting Rules For Abortion Pills. Jan 6, 2023, Part 1

Publication Date: 2023-01-06

FDA Expands Pharmacy Options for Abortion Pills This week, the FDA finalized rules that would allow more retail pharmacies to stock and fill prescript...

Redlining and Baltimore Trees, The Root Of A Gopher Mystery, Cold and the Nose, Glass Frogs. Jan 6, 2023, Part 2

Publication Date: 2023-01-06

How Redlining Shaped Baltimore’s Tree Canopy Redlining was pervasive in American cities from the 1930s through the late 1960s. Maps were drawn specifi...

Astronaut Food, Nope Creature, Nature Soundscapes. Dec 30, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-12-30

This Soundscape Artist Has Been Listening To The Planet For Decades Jim Metzner is one of the pioneers of science radio—he’s been making field recordi...

Champagne Fizzics, Last Days of the Dinosaurs, Vole Girl. Dec 30, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-12-30

Keeping The Bubbly In Your Holidays, With Fizzical Science As the year winds to a close, you may be attending gatherings where a festive flute of cham...

Top Science Stories Of 2022, Beavers, Christmas Tree Care. Dec 23, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-12-23

A Look Back At The Top Science Stories of 2022 2022 was chock full of big science news. Scientists announced an important milestone toward the feasibi...

Glitter, Chestnuts, DNA Data Art, Mistletoe. Dec 23, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-12-23

Glitter Gets An Eco-Friendly Glimmer Glitter—it’s everywhere this time of year. You open up a holiday card, and out comes a sprinkle of it. And that g...

Fusion Advance, Cancer Clinical Trial, Christmas Trees And Climate, Best Video Games. December 16, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-12-16

Scientists Reach Breakthrough In Nuclear Fusion This week, researchers announced a big breakthrough in the field of nuclear fusion. Scientists have be...

Improving Care For Disabled Patients, Transistor Anniversary, Whale Strikes. December 16, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-12-16

Medicine Is Failing Disabled Patients. Meet The Doctors Pushing For Change “More than sixty-one million Americans have disabilities, and increasing ev...

Medicinal Psychedelics Study, AI Art. December 9, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-12-09

The Science Behind The Psychedelics Boom There’s been an explosion of new research into therapeutic uses for psychedelics. This includes drugs like ps...

The Future Of Birds In North America, 190th Birthday For Tortoise. December 9, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-12-09

Wish A Happy 190th Birthday To Jonathan The Tortoise A birthday should always be celebrated. For Jonathan the tortoise, who turned 190 this week, that...

Hawai'i's Volcanic Eruption, Science Of Chemistry Nobel, What Is ‘Swing’ In Jazz? Dec 2, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-12-02

Hawai’i’s Mauna Loa Volcanic Eruption Sparing Homes For Now Hawai’i’s famed Mauna Loa volcano began to erupt this past weekend, after weeks of increas...

Xenotransplantation, Internet of Things, Sea Life Essays, Water Taste-Testing. Dec 2, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-12-02

Consider Empathy For The Yeti Crab (And Other Sea Creatures, Too) It’s easy to empathize with certain animals: soft fur, big eyes, and family units ma...

Best Science Books For Kids, Indigenous Science, Ignobel Prizes. November 25, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-11-25

From Tiny Krill To Concrete Jungles: 2022’s Best Science Books For Kids The holidays are right around the corner, which means for those who give gifts...

Largest Animal Crossing, First Complete Human Genome, Exoplanet Discoveries. November 25, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-11-25

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...

NASA Artemis Mission Launches To The Moon, Science Behind Thanksgiving Meals. November 18, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-11-18

The Science Behind Your Favorite Thanksgiving Dishes Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and for many people, that means it’s time to start think...

What Is The Metaverse, Missouri Groundwater Contamination, Eight Billion People On Earth. November 18, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-11-18

There Are Now Eight Billion People On Earth. What’s Next? Humankind just hit a big milestone this week: a world population of eight billion people. A ...

Dr. Fauci’s Exit Interview, Goodnight Oppy Mars Film, Science On The Ballot. Nov 11, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-11-11

Science Was Big On The Ballot This Week. Here’s What Went Down Another chaotic election week has come and gone. Across the U.S., science was on the ba...

The US Battles RSV, Neural Connections, La Brea Tar Pits. Nov 11, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-11-11

How Past Extinctions At The La Brea Tar Pit Can Teach Us About Our Climate Future If you drive through Los Angeles, you’ll pass by some of California’...

Contraceptive Failures, Future Of Combating Covid, Rapid Evolution In The Anthropocene. Nov 4, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-11-04

Why Contraceptive Failure Rates Matter In A Post-Roe America Birth control options have improved over the decades. Oral contraceptives are now safer, ...

Fall Foliage Research, Voyager Scientist Retires, Flaws in Human Judgement, Milky Way Tell-All. Nov 4, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-11-04

Using Family Photos Of Fall Foliage To Track Climate Change Leaf-peeping, or tourism based on observing the colors of fall foliage, is a big industry ...

Cat Purrs, AI Darth Vader Voice, Deathcaps, Eating Jellyfish. Oct 28, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-10-28

Why Do Cats Purr? An Investigation Into A Purr-fect Mystery Science Friday recently received a voicemail from a listener named Violet from Maui, Hawai...

SciFri Book Club Returns, Upcoming Winter Illnesses. Oct 28, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-10-28

Don’t Trust What You See On TikTok This Election Season Midterm elections in the United States are just under two weeks away. And new research suggest...

Asking For Help, PFAS Chemicals, Plastics Recycling, Depression Book. October 21, 2022. Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-10-21

The Science Behind Why You Should Ask For Help Sometimes asking for help—even for the smallest of favors—can feel awkward, or like you’re inconvenienc...

Societal Climate Impacts, Alaskan Crab Shortage, Protected Fisheries Surprise. October 21, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-10-21

A Boost For U.S. Electric Vehicle Battery Production This week, the Biden administration announced it would issue grants totaling some $2.8 billion to...

Eco-Death Care, Brain Memory Prosthetic, Space Food. Oct 14, 2022, Part 2

Publication Date: 2022-10-14

Burying Green: Eco-Friendly Death Care On The Rise Dying, it turns out, isn’t carbon neutral. Like many of the choices we make in our lifetimes, the c...

How Gamification Has Taken Over, Brewing An Ancient Beer Again. Oct 14, 2022, Part 1

Publication Date: 2022-10-14

Scientists Are Trying To Study Human Neurons… In Rat Brains? Scientists have a tricky time studying neurons, partially because they are remarkably dif...

Garden Hotline, Benjamin Franklin. July 2, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-07-02

The Science Of Your Summer Vegetable Garden Planting and tending to a vegetable garden is both an art and a science. If all goes well, you’ll be enjoy...

Extreme Heat, COVID Delta Variant, Poe’s Science. July 2, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-07-02

The Alarming Impacts Of Extreme Heat This week, the Pacific Northwest was hit by a record breaking heat wave, with temperatures rising as high as 116 ...

Cephalopod Week Wrap Up, California Carbon Credits Error. June 25, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-06-25

California’s Climate Program Is Actually Adding Carbon To The Atmosphere California has a reputation as the state that’s doing the most about climate ...

UFO Report, Animal Play, Alzheimers and Music. June 25, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-06-25

Is The Truth About UFOs Out There? Over the past several years, U.S. Navy pilots have reported several instances of ”unexplained aerial phenomena” whi...

Immunocompromised and Covid, Summer SciFi Reading. June 18, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-06-18

COVID-19 Vaccines May Not Protect Immunocompromised People This week, California and New York, two of the states hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic,...

Marijuana And Medicine, Cephalopod Week, Environmental Antidepressants. June 18, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-06-18

How To Talk About Medical Marijuana With Your Doctor Over the last decade, cannabis has had a moment. Thirty-six states and Washington D.C. have legal...

Health Equity And Trans Health, Human-Robot Relationship. June 11, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-06-11

Biden’s New Assistant Secretary Of Health On Protecting Trans Youth The American healthcare system is facing some incredible challenges: Black and Lat...

Alzheimer’s Treatment Controversy, Science Mistakes, Chonky Fish. June 11, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-06-11

FDA’s Approval Of Debated Alzheimer’s Treatment Raises Controversy This week, the FDA gave the green light to a drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s ...

Genetics of Depression, Engineering Humans for Space, Tech Ethics. June 4, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-06-04

Research Reveals 178 Genes Are Associated With Depression If you have a family member that suffers from depression, chances are you may have more than...

Fauci On 40 Years Of HIV/AIDS, Watermelon Origins, Venus Missions. June 4, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-06-04

Anthony Fauci Reflects On 40 Years Of HIV/AIDS Research Every week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) releases its regular report o...

Sand Sustainability, Jane Goodall, Morphing Pasta, Cicada Snacks. May 28, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-05-28

Shifting The Sand Business To Greener Practices Sand is one of the most in-demand natural materials on the planet—some 50 billion tons of sand and gra...

Vaccine Hesitancy, Colorado River Drought, Alternative Syrups. May 28, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-05-28

How Do We Overcome Vaccine Hesitancy? This Memorial Day weekend, many people will be traveling to the beach, hitting the road or socializing with frie...

Cybersecurity, Baseball Physics, Opioid Trial. May 21, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-05-21

Americans’ Online Security Needs An Update Last week, all eyes were on the shutdown of a gas pipeline that delivered fuel to large portions of the Sou...

Global Vaccination, Malaria Vaccine, Zombie Wildfires. May 21, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-05-21

How Do You Solve a Problem Like World Vaccination? Here in the U.S., it feels as if we’ve turned a corner in the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the popula...

NFTs and Art, Neuralink, Preserving Endangered Foods. May 14, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-05-14

What’s Behind The Blockchain-Based Art Boom? From multi-million dollar art sales to short NBA video clips, non-fungible tokens have taken off as a way...

New Mask Rules, Pain Algorithm, Assorted Nuts, Muldrow Glacier. May 14, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-05-14

Fully Vaccinated Can Unmask Often, CDC Says As the number of vaccinated Americans continues to rise and evidence mounts that the vaccines may reduce v...

Beetles, Wildfires, Woodchip Bioreactor. May 7, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-05-07

A Beetle’s Chemical (And Plastic) Romance For many species of beetle, the key to finding a mate is scent: Both females and males give off pheromones t...

Herd Immunity, Crossword Program. May 7, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-05-07

Weighing COVID-19 Vaccinations For Teens Federal officials are reporting that the Food and Drug Administration is poised to authorize Pfizer’s COVID-1...

Viking Metal, Possible Futures, Global Pollination. April 30, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-04-30

Uncovering Metal Crafts Of The Viking Age Vikings are often associated with scenes of boats and fiercely-pitched battles. But new research, published ...

The Past And Future Of Plastics Tech. April 30, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-04-30

The Future Of Plastics Plastics do a lot of good. They’re sturdy, they’re clean, and the COVID-19 pandemic has really highlighted their benefits, with...

Gender-Affirming Health Care, Defining ‘Life’. April 23, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-04-23

Proposed Legislation Threatens Trans Rights Nationwide Since the start of the 2021 legislative session, members of more than 30 state legislatures hav...

Climate Summit, Offshore Wind, Hummingbirds. April 23, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-04-23

World Leaders Gather Virtually For Climate Summit Forty world leaders attended an international summit on climate change to discuss how each country w...

History Of Conservation, Right Whales Decline. April 16, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-04-16

Conserving More Than Just the Planet’s ‘Beloved Beasts’ Historically, “conservation” simply meant not overhunting a game animal, preserving sufficient...

Understanding Caribbean Volcano Eruption, Billions Of T-Rexes, Pterosaur Necks, Lost Feasts. April 16, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-04-16

Understanding St. Vincent’s Volcanic Eruption Since April 9th, the Caribbean island of St. Vincent has been rocked by eruptions at the La Soufrière vo...

Piano AI, Giraffes, Alzheimer’s, Mime Psychology. April 9, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-04-09

New AI Composes Songs From Silent Performance Videos There have been many awkward attempts in the quest to train algorithms to do what humans can. Mus...

Future For Long COVID Patients, Getting COVID Info To Sihk Truckers. April 9, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-04-09

What Does The Future Look Like For COVID-19 Long-Haulers? There’s something strange happening with some people who’ve gotten sick with COVID-19: Somew...

Pollination, Beekeeping How-To, Sunflower Project. April 2, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-04-02

The Buzz Over Non-Bee Pollinators When you think of pollinators, bees are probably the first insect that comes to mind. But there are actually all sor...

Unexpected Physics, Controlling Cow Methane, Spring Break. April 2, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-04-02

Signs The Standard Model Of Physics May Be Incomplete The pandemic has slowed many projects around the world, but scientists and engineers are nearing...

Spring Climate Effects, Octopus Sleep, Housing and Health. March 26, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-03-26

In New York, Essential Workers Face Eviction If you walk through many towns during this pandemic, you can tell that something is different just by loo...

Racism And Mental Health, How To Milk Ticks. March 26, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-03-26

The Mental Health Costs Of ‘Everyday’ Racism On March 16, a 21-year-old white man killed six Asian women and two other people in multiple shootings in...

SciFri Extra: The Origin Of The Word 'Introvert'

Publication Date: 2021-03-20

Science Diction from Science Friday is back! Their latest episode is all about a recent buzzword: "Introvert." In 2013, introverts staged their co...

Greenland Plants, Privacy and Big Data, Rainbows. March 19, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-03-19

Under A Mile Of Ice, A Climate Clue Scientists studying sediment taken from a core sample of the Greenland ice sheet just 800 miles from the North Pol...

COVID Questions, Introvert Origin. March 19, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-03-19

Rise In Anti-Asian Violence Is At The Intersection Of Racism And Disease Earlier this week, eight people were killed at three Atlanta-area massage par...

Virtual Disease, Daydreaming, Geoengineering. March 12 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-03-12

Learning From World Of Warcraft’s Virtual Pandemic The widespread infection of roughly four million virtual characters all started with a giant snake ...

Jackson Water Woes, Giant Telescope Mirror, Shark Sex. March 12 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-03-12

What Went Wrong With Jackson, Mississippi’s Water? Residents of Jackson, Mississippi have been dealing with a water crisis since a storm rolled throug...

Conversations, Baby Teeth, Tasmanian Tiger. March 5, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-03-05

When Is It Time To Say Goodbye? Imagine you’re having a conversation with someone. You may get the sense that they have somewhere else to be. Or you m...

Implementing Oregon’s Drug Policy, Wisconsin Wolf Hunt, Johnson & Johnson Vaccine. March 5, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-03-05

Oregon Just Decriminalized Small Amounts of All Drugs. Now What? On February 1, a big experiment began in Oregon: The state has decriminalized small a...

Texas Storm, NASA Climate Advisor, Mars Sounds. Feb 26, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-02-26

Does A Vaccine Help You If You’ve Already Had COVID-19? Vaccines doses have started to rollout and are getting into the arms of people. We know that i...

Lucid Dreaming, Sex As A Biological Variable, Parachute Science, Global Vaccine Access. Feb 26, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-02-26

Memory And The Dreaming Mind If you’ve ever stayed up too late studying for a test, you know that sleep impacts memory—you need that precious shut-eye...

Tech Unions, Color Perception, Fish Vs Birds. Feb 19, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-02-19

Reprogramming Labor In Tech More than 6,000 warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama are midway through voting on whether they should unionize. If the ‘...

Fauci On Vaccines and Variants, Mummy Mystery, Texas Power Grid Failure. Feb 19, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-02-19

Fauci Says Majority Of U.S. Adults Likely To Be Vaccinated By Late Summer We’re about a month shy of a big anniversary: one year since the World Healt...

Fish Eye Secrets, Human Genome Project, Science Diction 'Mesmerize.' Feb 12, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-02-12

Seeing The World Through Salmon Eyes The saying goes, “The eyes are the window to the soul.” But for fish, the eyes are the window to the stomach. As...

The Effectiveness Of Double-Masking, Mars Landing Preview. Feb 12, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-02-12

Two Masks Are Better Than One Masks have been a big issue throughout the pandemic, from supply shortages to debates about when they should be required...

Four Lost Cities, Sourdough Microbiome, Queen Bees, Bison. Feb 5, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-02-05

National Bison Range Returns To Indigenous Management Hundreds of years ago, tens of millions of bison roamed North America. They were an essential re...

COVID Variants And Vaccines, U.S. Energy Justice. Feb 5, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-02-05

Will Vaccines Work Against New Variants Of The Coronavirus? The rollout of COVID-19 vaccination programs around the world has been anything but smooth...

Medieval Bones, Vaccine Rollout, Florida Panthers. Jan 29, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-01-29

A Skeletal Record Of Medieval England Society If you’ve ever fractured a bone, that skeletal trauma stays with you forever, even after it heals. So re...

Your Questions About COVID-19 Vaccines Answered, Placenta Science. Jan 29, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-01-29

Everything You Want To Know About COVID-19 Vaccines The U.S. has been vaccinating people against COVID-19 for a little over a month. While there have ...

Orange Bat, Greenland Bacteria, COVID Anniversary, Alien Argument. Jan 22, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-01-22

Orange Is The New Black—For Bats For a newly-described bat from West Africa, dubbed Myotis nimbaensis (mouse-eared bat from the Nimba Mountains), scie...

Finding Lead Pipes Through Algorithm, How Soil Could Save The Planet. Jan 22, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-01-22

After Flint’s Crisis, An Algorithm Helps Citizens Find Lead Pipes It’s been nearly seven years since the beginning of Flint, Michigan’s water crisis, ...

Valley Fever And COVID-19, Structure of Conspiracy Theories, New Climate Wars. Jan 15, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-01-15

How The West Is Battling COVID-19 And Valley Fever For the past year, the COVID-19 crisis has taken up much of our attention. But the pandemic can com...

How The COVID-19 Vaccine Was Developed And Is Being Distributed. Jan 15, 2021, Part 1

Publication Date: 2021-01-15

How Did A Vaccine Get Developed In Less Than A Year? From the first discovery of a strange new respiratory virus in Wuhan, China, in January of 2020, ...

Fundamentals of Physics, Giant Ancient Birds, 2021 Space Outlook. Jan 8, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-01-08

Finding New Particles On The Frontier of Physics As a theoretical physicist, Frank Wilczek has made a career out of dreaming up new ways to understand...

They Might Be Giants, Animal Sounds Quiz, Luxury Ostrich Eggs. Jan 1, 2021, Part 2

Publication Date: 2021-01-01

They Might Be Giants With A Timely Reminder: “Science Is Real” Fans of the band They Might Be Giants are likely to be familiar with the band’s version...

Black Holes, Scallop Die-off, River Sound Map. Dec 18, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-12-18

What Would Happen If You Fell Into A Black Hole? A new book, Black Hole Survival Guide, explores different theories of what would happen if you jumped...

Future Of Climate Change, Tongue Microbiome. Dec 18, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-12-18

How The Past Hints About Our Climate’s Future Ask a climate scientist how much the earth will warm as a result of the carbon dioxide we’re emitting ri...

Biden’s COVID Transition Team, Election Drug Policy Reform. Nov 13, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-11-13

The New Biden Administration Plans For COVID-19 It’s been less than a week since it became clear that Joe Biden would be the president elect. While P...

Climate Policy And The Election, COVID Winter Forecast, Murder Hornets. Nov 6, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-11-06

What Will The Pandemic Look Like During The Winter? It’s been almost a year since officials in China announced the spread of a mysterious pneumonia, ...

Ancient Algae, COVID Holidays, Accessible Pregnancy Test. Nov 6, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-11-06

How Algae Survived A Mass Extinction Sixty-six million years ago when an asteroid slammed into what is now the Yucatan peninsula, it set off a period ...

Book Club Finale, Floating Nuclear Plants. Oct 30, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-10-30

Pushing Boundaries In Fantastical Fiction The Science Friday Book Club has spent all of October immersed in short stories by Indigenous, Black, Chican...

Science And The Election, Disinformation, Vampire Bats. Oct 30, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-10-30

Choosing the next U.S. president is not the only decision voters will make in the upcoming 2020 elections. Major science policies are also on the bal...

Should We Trust Election Forecasting, COVID Dreams. Oct 23, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-10-23

The first “scientific” election poll was conducted in 1936 by George Gallup, who correctly predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would win the preside...

Teaching in a Pandemic, Inheriting Stress, Book Club. Oct 23, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-10-23

Even In A Pandemic, Science Class Is In Session This academic year, school campuses across the United States look very different. Instead of crowded h...

U.S. COVID Spikes, Blockchain Chicken Farm, Book Club: Chicanafuturism. Oct 16, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-10-16

Across The Country, A Spike In Coronavirus Cases Over 217,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the U.S., and many states are seeing an upswing in case ...

The Black Hole At The Center Of The Galaxy, Shipwreck Microbes. Oct 16, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-10-16

The 2020 Nobel Prize winners have been announced, and among them is UCLA astronomer Andrea Ghez, who split the prize with Roger Penrose and Reinhard ...

Science News, Nobel Roundup, Book Club. Oct 9, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-10-09

What Is The Status Of President Trump’s COVID-19 Case? Late last week, President Trump announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and was admi...

Solar System Smackdown: Mars v. Venus, Mussel Mystery. Oct 9, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-10-09

Solar System Smackdown: Mars Vs. Venus One of the fiercest hunts in the solar system is the scientific search for signs of extraterrestrial life—wheth...

Antarctic Ice, Itching, Ancient Birds. Oct. 2, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-10-02

New Study Shows No Second Chance For Antarctic Ice Shelves From the heat waves and wildfires in the western U.S. to the active hurricane season in the...

Trump Tests Positive For Coronavirus, COVID-19 Fact Check, SciFri Book Club. Oct. 2, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-10-02

The news hit us overnight: President Trump, the First Lady, and at least one member of the president’s staff tested positive for COVID-19. Just befor...

Summer Science Books, Naked Mole Rats. July 3, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-07-03

The pandemic has nixed many summer vacation plans, but our summer science book list will help you still escape. While staying socially distant, you c...

Bio-Inspired Concrete, Nose Microbiome, Space News. May 29, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-05-29

The human microbiome—our own personalized bacteria profile—plays a part in our health. The different parts of our body, from our skin to our gut, eac...

Vaccine Rate Decrease, Mind-Body Music. May 29, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-05-29

One unintended consequence of families sheltering at home is that children’s vaccination rates have gone way down. In New York City, for example, vac...

Ancient East Asian Genomes, COVID And Clotting, And Cassowary Plumage. May 22, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-05-22

The cassowary, a large flightless bird native to Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands, has a reputation for aggression and wickedly clawed feet ...

Degrees Of Change: Regulatory Rollbacks. May 22, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-05-22

The Trump administration is in the process of reversing nearly 100 environmental rules and regulations—threatening air, water, and public health. For...

Galileo, Home COVID Monitoring Tech, Origin Of The Feces. May 15, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-05-15

Galileo’s Battle Against Science Denial Galileo Galilei is known as the father of observational astronomy. His theories about the movement of the Eart...

Global COVID Hotspots, Fact Check My Feed, Koji Fermenting. May 15, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-05-15

Fact Check My Feed: Finding The Falsehoods In ‘Plandemic’ Science Friday continues to weigh the truth and sift through the seemingly never-ending stre...

Moon Maps, Brain Replay, Contact Tracing. May 8, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-05-08

Have you ever had to learn something new and repeat it over and over—until it feels like you’re doing it in your sleep? Maybe you are. In research pu...

COVID-19 Inequalities. May 8, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-05-08

Coronavirus is still hitting the U.S. hard. And breaking down infections by race shows a striking pattern: Black, Latino, and Native American people ...

Evolutionary Biologist Neil Shubin, Bee Virus Behavior, Search for Lost Apples. May 1, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-05-01

The Twists And Turns Of The Evolution Of Life On Earth In an evolutionary tree, neat branches link the paths of different species back through time. A...

COVID-19 By The Numbers, 1918 Flu. May 1, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-05-01

Navigating COVID-19 By The Numbers Ever since the first news about a new virus in China, we’ve been seeing projections, or models predicting how it mi...

Vaccine Process, Hubble Space Telescope Anniversary, Alchemy Of Us. April 24, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-04-24

Over 50 pharmaceutical companies and biotech firms around the world are now racing to develop vaccines for the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. ...

Valley Fever, Citizen Science Month Finale. April 24, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-04-24

When you think of fungal infections, you might think athlete’s foot or maybe ringworm—itchy, irritating reactions on the skin. But other fungal disea...

COVID-19 Factcheck, Digital Earth Day, City Nature Challenge, Ancient Antarctic Forest. April 17, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-04-17

Can Coronavirus Reactivate In Patients After Recovery? These days, newsfeeds are overloaded with stories of the coronavirus, but Science Friday contin...

Degrees of Change: Climate Anxiety and Depression. April 17, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-04-17

You Aren’t Alone In Grieving The Climate Crisis As the consequences of unchecked climate change come into sharper focus—wildfires in the Amazon and Au...

Spring Sounds, Luxury Ostrich Eggs, ISeeChange. April 10, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-04-10

Enjoying Spring From Quarantine You may be trapped inside, but outside, it’s bird migration season. Flowers are blooming from coast to coast, and even...

Healthcare Ripple Effects, Resilient Flowers, Cancer Detection. April 10, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-04-10

Routine Healthcare Is Falling Through The COVID-19 Cracks Our healthcare system is straining under the weight of the coronavirus epidemic, with hospit...

SciFri Extra: Science Diction On The Word 'Quarantine'

Publication Date: 2020-04-07

Quarantine has been on many of our minds lately. The phrases “shelter in place” and “self-quarantine” have filled up our news, social media, and conv...

DIY Masks, Neanderthal Diet, Symbiotic Worms. April 3, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-04-03

During the global COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals across the country are running low on PPE—personal protective equipment. This includes masks, gowns, f...

COVID-19 Supplies Shortage, Citizen Science Month, Mercury Discovery. April 3, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-04-03

April is Citizen Science Month! It’s a chance for everyone to contribute to the scientific process—including collecting data, taking observations, or...

SciFri Extra: Science Diction On The Word 'Cobalt'

Publication Date: 2020-03-31

Cobalt has been hoodwinking people since the day it was pried from the earth. Named after a pesky spirit from German folklore, trickery is embedded i...

Squid Lighting, Tongue Microbiome, Invasive Herbivores. March 27, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-03-27

How Humboldt Squid Talk To Each Other In The Dark Cephalopods are masters of changing their bodies in response to their environments—from camouflaging...

COVID Near You Citizen Science, Fact-Check Your Feed. March 27, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-03-27

These days, our newsfeeds are overloaded with stories of the coronavirus. This week, Science Friday continues to dig into the facts behind the specul...

SciFri Extra: Science Diction On The Word 'Dinosaur'

Publication Date: 2020-03-24

At the turn of the 19th century, Britons would stroll along the Yorkshire Coast, stumbling across unfathomably big bones. These mysterious fossils we...

Coronavirus Fact-Check, Poetry of Science, Social Bats. March 20, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-03-20

As new cases of coronavirus pop up across the United States, and as millions of people must self-isolate from family and friends at home, one place m...

Jane Goodall, Coronavirus Update, Science Diction. March 20, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-03-20

60 years ago this year, a young Jane Goodall entered the Gombe in Tanzania to begin observations of the chimpanzees living there. During her time the...

SciFri Extra: Science Diction On The Word 'Meme'

Publication Date: 2020-03-10

Remember that summer when the internet was one Distracted Boyfriend after another—that flannel-shirted dude rubbernecking at a passing woman, while h...

Astronaut Training, Marsquakes, Whale Migration. March 6, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-03-06

Astronaut Training, Marsquakes, Whale Migration

Coronavirus Genetics, Prosthetic Hands. March 6, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-03-06

Coronavirus Genetics, Prosthetic Hands

Coronavirus Update, Genuine Fakes, Neanderthal News. Feb. 21, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-02-21

What Is Real And Fake? There are two ways to grow a diamond. You can dig one up from the Earth—a product of billions of years of pressure and heat pla...

Ask A Dentist. Feb. 21, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-02-21

Brushing Up On Tooth Science Most of us spend our time at the dentist holding our mouths open, saying “ahhh,” and occasionally sticking out our tongue...

Building A Ghost Heart, The Effect Of Big Tech. Feb 14, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-02-14

The human heart is one of the most complicated organs in our body. The heart is, in a way, like a machine—the muscular organ pumping about 2,000 gall...

Great Lakes Book Club Wrap-Up, California Groundwater. Feb 14, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-02-14

The Great Lakes hold 20% of the world’s surface drinking water, with Lake Superior holding half of that alone. The lakes stretch from New York to Min...

Breast Cancer Cultural History, Butterfly Wings. Jan 31, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-01-31

‘Radical’ Explores The Hidden History Of Breast Cancer Nearly 270,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, along with a couple thousand...

Coronavirus Update, Invasive Species. Jan 31, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-01-31

Tracking The Spread Of The Coronavirus Outbreak This week, the World Health Organization declared that the coronavirus outbreak—which began in Wuhan, ...

SciFri Extra: Revisiting Unique Science Stories Of 2019

Publication Date: 2020-01-27

2020 has just begun, but we’re still celebrating all the amazing work done by science journalists in 2019. Thanks to them, we’ve been informed on sto...

Migraines, Galaxy Formation. Jan 10, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-01-10

The Mysteries Of Migraines What do sensitivity to light, a craving for sweets and excessive yawning have in common? They’re all things that may let yo...

Australia Fires, Great Lakes Book Club. Jan 10, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-01-10

How Climate Change Is Fanning Australia’s Flames All eyes have been on Australia in recent weeks as the country’s annual summer fire season has spun ...

Geoengineering Climate Change, Tasmanian Tiger, New Water Plan. Jan 3, 2020, Part 1

Publication Date: 2020-01-03

In the context of climate change, geoengineering refers to deliberate, large-scale manipulations of the planet to slow the effects of human-induced g...

Christmas Bird Count. Jan 3, 2020, Part 2

Publication Date: 2020-01-03

For many, the new year means looking back on the past accomplishments and checking off your goals. For birders, it means tallying up your species lis...

2019 Year In Review. Dec 27 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-12-27

In 2019 we experienced some painful and heartbreaking moments—like the burning of the Amazon rainforest, a worldwide resurgence of measles cases, an...

Looking Back at the Pale Blue Dot. Dec 27, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-12-27

Few people could put the cosmos in perspective better than astronomer Carl Sagan. And that’s why we’re taking this opportunity to take another listen...

Emerging Technologies, Pokémon In The Brain, Colds And Flu. Dec 20, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-12-20

Back when Science Friday began in 1991, the Internet, as we know it, didn’t even exist. While ARPA-NET existed and the first web pages began to come ...

Space Junk, Chronobiology, Mistletoe. Dec 20, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-12-20

As more commercial companies are getting into the satellite launching game, space is becoming a crowded place and all of these objects are creating s...

Degrees of Change: Transportation. December 13, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-12-13

Transportation—whether it be your car, aircraft, cargo ships, or the heavy trucks carrying all those holiday packages—makes a big contribution to the...

Insulin Marketplace, Hair, Whale Size. December 13, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-12-13

Why Diabetes Patients Are Getting Insulin From Facebook Almost one in ten Americans are diagnosed with diabetes, according to the most recent statisti...

Undiscovered Presents: Spontaneous Generation

Publication Date: 2019-12-11

These days, biologists believe all living things come from other living things. But for a long time, people believed that life would, from time to ti...

Best Science Books and Board Games of 2019. Dec 6, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-12-06

In a year jam-packed with fast-moving science news and groundbreaking research, books can provide a more slower-paced, reflective look at the world a...

Parker Solar Probe, Slime Molds. Dec 6, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-12-06

In August 2018, NASA sent the Parker Solar Probe off on its anticipated seven-year-long mission to study the sun. Already, it has completed three of ...

SciFri Extra: Bringing Environmental Justice To The Classroom

Publication Date: 2019-11-30

Laura Diaz, a Bay Area science teacher, grew up in Pittsburg, California near chemical plants and refineries. That experience, combined with watching...

Science Awards Of The Sillier Sort. Nov 29, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-11-29

The 2019 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony is a tribute to offbeat and quirky scientific studies. Here's some examples: Does pizza have a protective effect aga...

Imagining The Future Of AI / Face Mites. Nov 29, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-11-29

What can science fiction and social science contribute to how we think about our algorithmic present and future? Science fiction writers and Hugo-wi...

Undiscovered Presents: Planet Of The Killer Apes

Publication Date: 2019-11-27

In Apartheid-era South Africa, a scientist uncovered a cracked, proto-human jawbone. That humble fossil would go on to inspire one of the most blood-...

Degrees of Change: Coral Restoration. Nov 22 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-11-22

A quarter of the world’s corals are now dead, victims of warming waters, changing ocean chemistry, sediment runoff, and disease. Many spectacular, he...

Astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, Marie Curie Play. Nov 22, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-11-22

For most Americans, the story of the Hubble Space Telescope began on April 24th, 1990, the launch date of the now 30 year-old observatory. But for as...

Undiscovered Presents: Like Jerry Springer For Bluebirds

Publication Date: 2019-11-20

“Do men need to cheat on their women?” a Playboy headline asked in the summer of 1978. Their not-so-surprising conclusion: Yes! Science says so! The ...

Volume Control, Dermatology In Skin Of Color, Kelp Decline. Nov 15, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-11-15

Dermatologists presented with a new patient have a number of symptoms to look at in order to diagnose. Does the patient have a rash, bumps, or scalin...

EPA Transparency Proposal, Tick Milking. Nov 15, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-11-15

This week, a House Committee held a hearing to review an Environmental Protection Agency proposal called ‘Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Sc...

SciFri Extra: Add A Dash Of Science To Your Thanksgiving Recipes

Publication Date: 2019-11-13

This Thanksgiving, put your cooking skills to the test. Looking for tips to avoid singed sweet potatoes, acrid apple pies, and a burned bird? In this...

Infant Formula, AI Weirdness, Venus Fly Traps. Nov. 8, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-11-08

Would you feel comfortable consuming a product that listed “whey protein concentrate” and “corn maltodextrin” on its list of ingredients? What about ...

Biomedical Espionage, Einstein’s Eclipse, Transit Of Mercury. Nov. 8, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-11-08

The FBI, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other agencies who oversee federal research grants are currently asking if the open culture of scie...

Moths, Alan Alda, Graveyard Lichens. Nov 1, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-11-01

There are over 160,000 species of moths worldwide, and they come in all different shapes and sizes. For example, the Comet Moth, native to the rainfo...

PFAS Lawsuit, Bat Disease. Nov 1, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-11-01

Eighteen years ago, a lawyer named Robert Bilott sent a letter to the EPA, the attorney general, and other regulators, warning them about a chemical ...

“Black Software” Book, Mucus. Oct 25, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-10-25

When the World Wide Web was first being developed, African American software engineers, journalists and entrepreneurs were building search engines, d...

Spiders, Quantum Supremacy, Missouri Runoff. Oct 25, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-10-25

Spiders were one of the first animals to evolve on land. And over the span of 400 million years of speciation and evolution, they’ve learned some ama...

Policing And Mental Health, Ancient Clams, Moon Plan. Oct. 18, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-10-18

In the 1980s and 1990s, in the midst of rising crime rates and a nationally waning confidence in policing, law enforcement around the country adopted...

Degrees Of Change: Climate Change Migration. Oct. 18, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-10-18

When the water rises, whether from heavy rains or rising seas, communities have a few options: reinforce flood-threatened homes, rebuild after the wa...

Office Air Pollution, Tetris Decisions, Alzheimer's Update. Oct 11, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-10-11

If you live and work in an urban area, you might think about the air quality outside your home or workplace. But what about the air quality inside th...

Trust In Science, California Power Outages, Regrowing Cartilage. Oct 11, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-10-11

Despite widely reported attacks on science, the vast majority of Americans continue to trust scientists, according to the latest survey from the Pew ...

Bread Baking Science And Denial In Climate Report. Oct 4, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-10-04

Flour, salt, yeast and water are the basic ingredients in bread that can be transformed into a crusty baguette or a pillowy naan. But what happens wh...

Data-Collecting Smart TVs, Microbiome Cooking, Cannabis Pollution. Oct 4, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-10-04

Today, it’s much easier to find smart TVs on the market. Companies like Vizio and Samsung create devices capable of internet connection and with buil...

Bitters And Botany, Whale Evolution. Sept 27, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-09-27

Can conservation be concocted in your cocktails? Yes, according to the botanist authors of Botany at the Bar, a new book about making your own bitter...

Oceans And Climate, Quantum Mechanics. Sept 27, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-09-27

A new report issued this week by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change paints a troubling picture of the world’s ice and oceans. The oce...

Climate And Farming, Mars 2020, Fireflies. August 23, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-08-23

From cutting back on fossil fuels to planting a million trees, people and policymakers around the world are looking for more ways to curb climate cha...

Book Club Birds, Amazon Burning. August 23, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-08-23

“Bird-brain” has long been an insult meant to imply slow-wittedness or stupidity. But in reading Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds, SciFri Book...

Live in San Antonio: Deadly Disease, Bats, Birds. Aug. 16, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-08-16

Imagine stepping into a white suit, pulling on thick rubber gloves and a helmet with a clear face plate. You can only talk to your colleagues through...

Lightning, Electric Scooters, News Roundup. Aug. 16, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-08-16

Lightning during a heavy rainstorm is one of the most dramatic phenomena on the planet—and it happens, somewhere on Earth, an estimated 50 to 100 tim...

Northwest Passage Project, Birds and Color. Aug 9, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-08-09

First, tardigrades on the moon, feral hogs on Earth, and more news from this week’s News Roundup. Scientists and students navigated the Northwest Pas...

Wiring Rural Texas, Visiting Jupiter and Saturn. Aug 9, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-08-09

High-speed internet access is becoming a necessity of modern life, but connecting over a million rural Texans is a challenge. How do we bridge the di...

Is Chemical Sunscreen Safe, Slime, Amazon Deforestation. August 2, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-08-02

Sunscreen has been on the shelves of drugstores since the mid-1940s. And while new kinds of sunscreens have come out, some of the active ingredients ...

Ethics Of Hawaiian Telescope, Bird Song, Alaska Universities Budget Cut. August 2, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-08-02

Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in Hawaii, towering over the Pacific at nearly 14,000 feet. That high altitude, combined with the mountain’s dry, s...

Ice Cream Science, Online Language. July 26, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-07-26

Have you ever tried to make your favorite rocky road flavored ice cream at home, but your chocolate ice cream turns out a little crunchier than you h...

Anonymous Data, Birding Basics. July 26, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-07-26

The Science Friday Book Club is buckling down to read Jennifer Ackerman’s The Genius of Birds this summer. Meanwhile, it’s vacation season, and we wa...

Moon Art, Space History, And NASA's Megarocket. July 19, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-07-19

Our Lunar Muse Most of us remember that iconic photograph of the Apollo 11 moon landing: Buzz Aldrin standing on a footprint-covered moon, one arm ben...

Apollo Anniversary And Bird Book Club. July 19, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-07-19

Celebrating Apollo's 'Giant Leap' July 20, 1969 was a day that changed us forever—the first time humans left footprints on another world. In this segm...

Mosquitos and Smell, Fermentation, Model Rocket Launch. July 12, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-07-12

If you’ve ever tried brewing your own beer or raising your own sourdough, then you know that the process of fermentation isn't easy to get right. How...

Degrees of Change: Food and Climate. July 12, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-07-12

A quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from putting food on the table. From the fossil fuels used to produce fertilizers, to the meth...

The Bastard Brigade, Spontaneous Generation. July 5, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-07-05

Much has been written about the Manhattan Project, the American-led project to develop the atomic bomb. Less well known is Nazi Germany’s “Uranium Cl...

Science Road Trips, Archaeology From Space. July 5, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-07-05

Summer is here—and that means it’s time for a road trip! Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton, co-authors of Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the Hidden...

Paternity, Musical Proteins, Microbiome In Runners. June 28, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-06-28

These days, a scientific paternity test is easily acquired, and its results are seen as almost indisputable. But what about the days before so-called...

Cephalopod Week Wrap-Up, USDA Climate Change, Sinking Louisiana. June 28, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-06-28

The eight-day squid-and-kin appreciation extravaganza of Cephalopod Week is nearly over, but there’s still plenty to learn and love about these tenta...

SciFri Extra: About Time

Publication Date: 2019-06-25

The official U.S. time is kept on a cesium fountain clock named NIST-F1, located in Boulder, Colorado. On a recent trip to Boulder, Ira took a trip t...

Smoke Chasers, Colorado Apples, Pikas. June 21, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-06-21

When wildfires rage in the West, Colorado State University atmospheric scientist Emily Fischer hops into a plane, and flies straight into the smoke. ...

Cephalopod Week 2019, Climate and Microbes, Puppy Eyes, Wave Energy. June 21, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-06-21

For eight glorious days during the end of June, Science Friday honors the mighty mollusks of the ocean—Cephalopod Week returns for the sixth year! An...

Degrees Of Change: Urban Heat Islands. June 14, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-06-14

We’ve known for more than 200 years that cities are hotter than surrounding rural areas. All that concrete and brick soaks up the sun’s rays, then re...

The Best Summer Science Books. June 14, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-06-14

The Best Science Books To Read This Summer They say a vacation is only as good as the book you bring with you. And these days it feels like there are ...

Quantum Leaps, Cancer Drugs, Cat Cameras. June 7, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-06-07

The “spooky physics” of the quantum world has long been marked by two key ideas: The idea of superposition, meaning that a quantum particle can exist...

Gender Bias In Research Trials, Antarctica, Tornado Engineering. June 7, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-06-07

For half a century, most neuroscience experiments have had one glaring flaw: They've ignored female study subjects. The reason? Researchers claimed, ...

SciFri Extra: Remembering Murray Gell-Mann

Publication Date: 2019-06-04

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann died recently at the age of 89. He received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary parti...

Spoiler Alert, Glyphosate, Unisexual Salamanders. May 31, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-05-31

How many times has this happened to you? You’re standing in front of an open freezer, wondering what type of mystery meat has been left in there, whe...

SciFri Extra: A Night Of Volcanoes And Earthquakes With N.K. Jemisin

Publication Date: 2019-02-27

The Science Friday Book Club discussion of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season may have stopped erupting for the season, but we have one more piece of vo...

Black Holes, California Megaflood. Feb 22, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-02-22

When it floods in California, the culprit is usually what’s known as an atmospheric river—a narrow ribbon of ultra-moist air moving in from over the ...

Telescope Decisions, Grape Plasma, Israeli Moon Lander. Feb 22, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-02-22

The American Astronomical Society meeting is the largest annual gathering of astronomers and astrophysicists. It’s not known for drama. But this year...

Declining Insects, Sunny Day Flooding, Liquid Rules. Feb 15, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-02-15

That once vibrant forest has gotten quieter and emptier, as many of the insects— and the animals that depend on them—have disappeared. In a worldwid...

SciFri Book Club: ‘The Fifth Season.’ Feb 15, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-02-15

In this final installment of the winter Book Club, we wrap up a winter of exploring The Stillness, learning how volcanologists research lava flows an...

Buttons, Grand Canyon Maps, Mosquitoes. Feb 8, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-02-08

The button is everywhere. It allows us to interact with our computers and technology, alerts us when someone is at the front door, and with a tap, ca...

Earth’s Core, Govt Data In The Cloud, Book Club. Feb 8, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-02-08

At the very center of the Earth is a solid lump of iron and nickel that might be as hot as the surface of the Sun. This solid core is thought to be w...

Sleep and the Immune System, Measuring Carbon, Specimens of Hair. Feb 1, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-02-01

Some citizen scientists collect minerals or plants. But 19th-century lawyer Peter A. Browne collected hair—lots and lots of hair. His collection star...

Digital Art, Lava Lab, Desalination. Feb 1, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-02-01

A series of lines on a wall, drawn by museum staff, from instructions written by an artist. A textile print made from scanning the screen of an Apple...

Medical Conflict Of Interest, Saturn’s Rings, Bear Brook Podcast. Jan 25, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-01-25

Most scientific journals go by the honor system when it comes to conflicts of interest: They ask, and the researchers tell. But that system might be ...

Weather Advances, Listening to Volcanoes, Phragmites. Jan 25, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-01-25

Your smartphone gives you up-to-the-minute weather forecast updates at the tap of a button. Every newscast has a weather segment. And outlets like th...

SciFri Extra: ‘Behind The Sheet’ Of Gynecology’s Darker History

Publication Date: 2019-01-22

The 19th-century physician J. Marion Sims may have gone down in history as the “father of modern gynecology,” but Sims’ fistula cure was the result o...

Gynecology’s Dark History, Antarctic Ice, Moon Craters. Jan 18, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-01-18

Nineteenth-century physician J. Marion Sims has gone down in history as the “father of modern gynecology.” He invented the speculum, devised body pos...

Book Club, Green New Deal, Louisiana Shrimpers. Jan 18, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-01-18

In a world roiled continuously by earthquakes, volcanoes, and other tectonic disasters large and small, a cataclysmic earthquake is about to change t...

Heart and Exercise, Consumer Electronics Show, Black Holes. Jan 11, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-01-11

You’ve heard the news that smoking is bad for your health. But it turns out not exercising could be even worse for your chances of survival, accordin...

Shutdown and Science, Smartphone and Overdoses. Jan 11, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-01-11

The partial shutdown of the U.S. government is approaching its third week, and it has caused a backlog for scientists employed or funded by the gover...

Diets, Crowd Physics, Snowflake Citizen Science. January 4, 2019, Part 1

Publication Date: 2019-01-04

Earlier this week, hundreds of thousands of revelers huddled together under the pouring rain in Times Square for an annual tradition: to watch the Ne...

Winter Birding. January 4, 2019, Part 2

Publication Date: 2019-01-04

Every year in the dead of winter, bird lovers flock in large numbers to count as many birds as they possibly can on a single day. This is the Audubon...

2018 Scifri Year In Review. Dec 28, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-12-28

In 2018, natural disasters around the world bore the unmistakable fingerprints of human-caused climate change. The federal government’s 1,600-page Na...

American Eden, New Horizons To Ultima Thule. Dec 28, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-12-28

Every holiday season, tourists throng Rockefeller Center to see the famous tree, soaring above the paved plazas and fountains. But more than 200 year...

Fetal Cell Research, Schadenfreude, Deer Disease. Dec 21, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-12-21

The Trump administration is cracking down on federal scientists seeking fetal tissue for their work, while it conducts a “comprehensive review” of re...

Food Myths, Kids Flu Shot, Europe Plastics Ban. Dec 21, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-12-21

You’ve probably heard of the five second rule, when you drop a cookie on the floor and take a bite anyway because it’s only been a few seconds. What ...

Future Telescopes, Caterpillars. Dec 14, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-12-14

28 years ago, astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery gently raised the Hubble Space Telescope, or HST, up from the shuttle bay, and released it int...

Cancer Immunotherapy, Raccoons, Frog Calls. Dec 14, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-12-14

For years, cancer treatment has largely involved one of three options—surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. In recent years, however, a new treatment o...

Microbes and Art, Science Books 2018. Dec 7, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-12-07

Here at Science Friday, our jobs involve reading a lot of science books every year. We have piles and piles of them at the office. Hundreds of titles...

Hemp and CBD, Phytosaurs, Mosquito Control. Dec 7, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-12-07

Good news could be coming soon for anyone interested in hemp, the THC-free, no-high strain of cannabis whose use ranges from fibers to food to pharma...

Gene-Editing Humans, Asymmetry, Ancient Whale Ancestor. Nov 30, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-11-30

The first CRISPR-edited babies are (probably) here. The news raises social, ethical, and regulatory questions—for both scientists and society. Then, ...

Climate Report, Wind Energy, SciFri Educator Collaborative. Nov 30, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-11-30

This Monday, Mars fans rejoiced as NASA’s lander Mars InSight successfully parachuted safely onto the large, flat plain of Elysium Planitia. In the d...

Caves And Climate, Environmental Archeology, Scanning The Past. Nov 23, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-11-23

When you think of an archaeologist, you might imagine a scientist in the field wielding shovels and pickaxes, screening through dirt to uncover artif...

2018 Ig Nobel Prizes. Nov 23, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-11-23

When you go to the zoo, maybe you imitate the chimps, copying their faces, their gestures, or their walk. But it turns out the chimps imitate you jus...

California Fires, Fire Engineering, Flu Near You. Nov 16, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-11-16

When wildfires strike, the conversation typically centers around natural factors: forest management, climate change, or hot dry winds that fan the fl...

Smell Science, Reader Come Home, Sonar Smackdown. Nov 16, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-11-16

If you had to give up one of your senses, which would you pick? If you think that “smell” might be the obvious answer, consider that your nose plays ...

Immigration and the Microbiome, Spice Trends. Nov 9, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-11-09

‘Tis the season for pumpkin spice lattes. Even if you’re not a fan of the fall beverage, we’ve all been touched by the 15-year dominance of Starbucks...

Heart History, Disease Seasonality, Beatboxing. Nov 9, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-11-09

The case presented a medical mystery. A man had entered his doctor’s office complaining of chest pain, so his doctors ordered an angiogram, an X-ray ...

Physics Mysteries, Appendix and Parkinson’s, Paralysis Treatment. Nov 2, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-11-02

Ever wondered why your dog’s back-and-forth shaking is so effective at getting you wet? Or how bugs, birds, and lizards can run across water—but we c...

Local Science Issues, Dolphin Calls, Kepler Death. Nov 2, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-11-02

With the midterm elections less than a week away, science is on voters’ minds even when it’s not on the ballot. From coastal floods in Florida, to th...

Science Goes To The Movies: First Man, Driverless Car Ethics, Beetle Battles. Oct 26, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-10-26

Damien Chazelle’s film First Man reconstructs the personal trials of astronaut Neil Armstrong in the years leading up to his famous first steps on th...

Blood, Spatial Memory, Gerrymandering. Oct 26, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-10-26

Blood is essential to human life—it runs through all of our bodies, keeping us alive—but the life-giving liquid can also have a mysterious, almost ma...

Music And Technology, Social Critters, Sleep And Genetics. Oct 19, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-10-19

Mark Ramos Nishita, more popularly known as Money Mark from the Beastie Boys, has created the “Echolodeon.” The custom-built machine converts origina...

C-Section Increase, Puerto Rican Hurricane Recovery, A Turtle Tiff. Oct 19, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-10-19

The World Health Organization recommends that the C-section rate should be about 15% of births, for optimal outcomes for mothers and babies. But a se...

Squirrel Monkeys, Salmon Migration, The Realness. Oct 12, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-10-12

Squirrel monkeys have big brains for their size, they’re chatterboxes, and they’ve even been to space. There may even be parallels between squirrel m...

Election Security, Channel Islands, IPCC Report. Oct 12, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-10-12

The voting infrastructure is a vast network that includes voting machines, registration systems, e-poll books, and result reporting systems. This sum...

Dung Beetles, Exomoon, Poison Squad. Oct 5, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-10-05

Before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was formed in 1906, you might have been more weary of pouring milk over your morning cereal. Milk could ...

Nobels, Argument Logic. Oct 5, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-10-05

This week the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology, and medicine awarded its top scientists with its highest honor, the Nobel Prize. And this yea...

Water Wars, Air Pollution And Fetuses, Electric Blue Clouds. Sept. 28, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-09-28

Yemen is gripped by civil war—and some experts say it could be the first of many “water wars” to come, as the planet grows hotter and drier. In This ...

Utah National Monuments, North Carolina Coal Ash, Asteroids. Sept. 28, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-09-28

Back in December, the Trump administration announced reductions to two of Utah’s national monuments: Grand Staircase-Escalante, which runs from the G...

Undiscovered Presents: The Magic Machine. Sept. 25, 2018

Publication Date: 2018-09-25

As a critical care doctor, Jessica Zitter has seen plenty of “Hail Mary” attempts to save dying patients go bad—attempts where doctors try interventi...

Endangered Crow, Hawaiian Biodiversity, Mars Simulation. Sept. 21, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-09-21

About five million years ago, the island of Kauai emerged from the ocean waves, and a new chain of island habitats was born, right in the middle of t...

Utah Dino Bones, Salt Lake Migrations, Tree Canopies. Sept. 21, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-09-21

If you stood in southeastern Utah over 200 million years ago, you’d be overlooking the ocean. The landlocked state wasn’t quite the same landscape of...

Undiscovered Presents: The Holdout. Sept 18, 2018.

Publication Date: 2018-09-18

Since the 1980s, Gerta Keller, professor of paleontology and geology at Princeton, has been speaking out against an idea most of us take as scientifi...

Soil Future, Plant Feelings, Science Fair. Sept 14, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-09-14

Climate change is increasing temperatures and causing heavier rainfalls across the country. Scientists are studying how these changes will affect dif...

Florence Flooding, Algorithms, Dino Demise. Sept. 14, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-09-14

Last month, California passed a bill ending the use of cash bail. Instead of waiting in jail or putting down a cash deposit to await trial at home, d...

Undiscovered Presents: I, Robovie. Sept 11, 2018.

Publication Date: 2018-09-11

A decade ago, psychologists introduced a group of kids to Robovie, a wide-eyed robot who could talk, play, and hug like a pro. And then, the research...

Grazing, Work-Life Imbalance. Aug. 7, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-09-07

Each spring, animals move from their winter grazing grounds in search of greener pastures. For birds, where and when to start that journey is based o...

Tick Repellents, Robot Relationships. Aug. 7, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-09-07

If you were given a robot and asked to break it, would you do it? The amount of Furby destruction videos on Youtube suggest it wouldn’t be that hard....

Eric Kandel and the Disordered Mind, Death. Aug 31, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-08-31

The human brain contains an estimated 100 billion neurons. When those cells malfunction, the disrupted process can lead to schizophrenia, PTSD, and o...

Outdoor Influencers, Northwest Passage, Undersea Volcanoes. Aug 31, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-08-31

NASA is exploring a deep-sea volcano off the coast of Hawaii as a test run for human and robotic missions to Mars and beyond. The mission, dubbed SUB...

SciFri Special Edition: A Time Traveler Cocktail Party. Aug 28, 2018.

Publication Date: 2018-08-28

In 2009, Stephen Hawking decided to throw a party for time travelers, famously sending the invitations after the date of the party. For the 30th anni...

Yellow Fever and Ebola, Trans-boundary Aquifers, Probiotics. Aug 24, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-08-24

From 1976 to 2017, the Democratic Republic of the Congo experienced eight outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus. Then, for 10 weeks earlier this year, ...

Hurricane Lane, Disposable Contacts, Brief History of Time. Aug 24, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-08-24

This year was both the 30th anniversary of Stephen Hawking’s science blockbuster A Brief History of Time, but also the year the famed physicist himse...

Ant Traffic Flow, Natural Reactors, David Quammen. August 17, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-08-17

Worker ants keep the nest alive. They look for food, take care of the eggs, and dig all the tunnels. Fire ant colonies, for example, have hundreds of...

Coastal Flooding, Elephants and Cancer, Yosemite Bears. August 17, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-08-17

More than five years after the devastating 14-foot high waters of Superstorm Sandy flooded New York and New Jersey, the Army Corps of Engineers is st...

Parch Marks, Wildfires, The Beatles. August 10, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-08-10

The Mendocino Complex fire in northern California has spread to more than 300,000 acres—a swath of land bigger than New York City. The blaze is the s...

The Story Of Sand, Science And Dance. August 10, 2018, Part 2.

Publication Date: 2018-08-10

When you think of sand, thoughts of the ocean and sand castles probably come to mind. But sand can be found in much more than beachfronts. Sand is a ...

Bacteria Extinction, Facial Recognition, Solar Probe. August 3, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-08-03

Long before we walked the Earth, bacteria took it over. They’re in every ecosystem on the Earth, and researchers have hopes to someday find them on o...

"Lost in Math," Alan Alda, A Radical Brain Surgery, New Jersey Floods. August 3, 2018. Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-08-03

For decades, physicists trying to uncover the large and small structures of the universe have been coming up empty—no evidence of supersymmetry at th...

Ant Socialization, Smoky Skies, Dust Storm, Mars Lake. July 27, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-07-27

Many ant species have a queen, the member of the colony that lays eggs. The rest of the ants are divided into different roles that support the queen ...

PFAS, Urban Evolution, Science Diction. July 27, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-07-27

If you thought city life was stressful, imagine being a wild animal trying to outlive speeding cars, toxic chemicals and heavy metals, or even the un...

Heredity, Oldest Bread, Jupiter's Moons. July 20, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-07-20

Have you ever taken a peek at your family tree? If you trace back along those branches, you might discover some long ago celebrities, kings, and phil...

Yeast Superbug, Dino Dinner, Toxic Algae. July 20, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-07-20

If you hear the word “superbug,” you’re likely to think about drug-resistant bacteria or even viruses. But in a case that’s been unfolding since 2009...

Nerve Agents, Straws, Soccer Flops, Happiness. July 13, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-07-13

Four months ago, an ex-Russian spy and his daughter were hospitalized in the U.K. They came into contact with a substance known as Novichok—a nerve a...

Neutrinos, Book Club, Air Conditioning. July 13, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-07-13

In 1988, physicist Stephen Hawking’s wildly popular A Brief History of Time introduced general audiences around the world to scientists’ questions ab...

19th-Century Surveyor, News Roundup, Eagles' Nests. July 6, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-07-06

In the 19th century, the American West was an arid climate yet to be fully explored. But surveyors like geologist John Wesley Powell, the second dire...

Jurassic World, Rhino Comeback, Uranus Collision. July 6, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-07-06

It’s the 25th anniversary of the debut of Jurassic Park. And with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom currently at the top of the summer movie food chain,...

Bee News, Summer Science Reading. June 29, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-06-29

Bumblebees and honeybees are two species of bees that form colonies. The colonies of bumblebees are smaller compared to their honeybee cousins, who’s...

Beef Genetic Testing, Chasing Whales, Radiolab Gonads. June 29, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-06-29

Whales are majestic, awe-inspiring animals. Some species can reach up to 150 tons and take in a living room-sized volume of water in one gulp. They c...

Math And Social Justice, Chicago Coyotes, Meteorites. June 22, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-06-22

Math isn’t often thought of as a tool for social justice. But mathematical thinking can help us understand what’s going on in society too, says mathe...

Alcohol Study, Cephalopod Week, Coral Oasis. June 22 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-06-22

Last week, the National Institutes of Health cancelled a $100 million study of alcohol and health after an internal investigation found “early and fr...

CRISPR, Colors, Narwhals. June 15, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-06-15

Over less than a decade, the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 has taken the biology world by storm. But two new studies indicate that ther...

Dinosaurs, Celebrating Cephalopods. June 15, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-06-15

Like a kraken rising from the depths (or a cuttlefish emerging from the sand), Cephalopod Week is back! Every year, Science Friday spends a week hono...

Mars Organics, Museum Collections, Kelp Farming. June 8, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-06-08

In 1832, less than a year into the first voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin found a beetle in Argentina. Turns out, discovering new species in the ...

Ocean Conservation, Dark Matter Hunt. June 8, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-06-08

Planets, stars, and physical “stuff” make up a tiny fraction of the universe. Most of the universe's mass is instead invisible dark matter, which mak...

Sea Floor Mapping, Hurricane Season Forecast. June 1, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-06-01

The deep sea is the largest habitat on Earth, but it’s also one of the least understood. As mining companies eye the mineral resources of the deep se...

Scientist Politicians, Microbiome, Wildlife Car Accidents. June 1, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-06-01

This year’s midterm elections have seen an upswing in the number of scientists running for office. There are approximately 60 candidates with STEM ba...

AI Conversation, Robot Trust, AI Music. May 18, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-05-25

Should autonomy be the holy grail of artificial intelligence? Computer scientist Justine Cassell has been working for decades on interdependence inst...

Sleep Questions, Portable Museums, Digital Health Records. May 25, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-05-25

What’s the difference between being fatigued and sleepy? Do melatonin and other sleeping aids work? And what can you do if you just can’t sleep?Neuro...

Psychedelics With Michael Pollan And Intel Student Science Fair. May 18, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-05-18

In his latest book, How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan writes of his own consciousness-expanding experiments with psychedelic drugs like LSD and...

Consciousness In 'Westworld,' Heart Cells On Graphene, Bike Safety App. May 18, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-05-18

In HBO’s series Westworld, human-like robots populate a theme park where human guests can have violent, gory adventures in the Wild West without the ...

Does Time Exist, Elephant Seismology, Produce Safety. May 11, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-05-11

How do you think about time? Most people experience it as Newton described it—as something that passes independent of other events, that’s the same f...

Hawaii Eruption, Antibiotic Resistance, Florida Sea Rise. May 11, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-05-11

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano—located on the Big Island—has been continuously erupting for the past 30 years. But on May 3, magma began spewing through fi...

DNA Privacy, Dog Cognition. May 4, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-05-04

Genetic testing sites are nothing new. They’ve grown enough in popularity over the past decade that the idea of spitting into a tube and sending it i...

Chasing Pluto, Space Warps. May 4, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-05-04

In July of 2015, the world was stunned to learn that Pluto, a tiny, distant dot that some didn’t even consider a planet, was a dynamic, complex, and ...

Frozen Frogs, Yeast, Paleobotany. April 27, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-04-27

When winter comes, animals have several options for survival. They can leave their habitats entirely for warmer environments, search for a cozy cave,...

Historical Climate Change, Weighing Galaxies, Great Lakes Water Rights. April 27, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-04-27

It’s not uncommon these days to hear scientists and journalists say that our planet is experiencing record-setting temperatures due to climate change...

Ocean Migrations, Deep Divers, Summer Skies. April 20, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-04-20

Every night, the largest migration on Earth happens underwater, as jellies, crustaceans and fish swim up hundreds of meters towards the surface to fe...

Drone Radar, Fracking Seismology, Massive Earthquakes. April 20, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-04-20

The 1783 eruption of Laki in Iceland lasted eight months, blanketing parts of the island in lava flows 50 feet deep, and spewing noxious gases that d...

Immunotherapy, The Evolution Of Eyebrows, Unconventional Bird Calls. April 13, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-04-13

Tumors are masters of disguise. The field of immunotherapy—teaching our immune system to recognize cancer—is burgeoning with solutions to this proble...

Beach Health, Extraterrestrial Communication, Maggots. April 13, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-04-13

Some private citizens, scientists, and entrepreneurs are sending some focused messages through the cosmos, which could theoretically be intercepted b...

Levee Wars, New Neurons, Animal Farts. April 6, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-04-06

The mighty Mississippi is shackled and constrained by a series of channels, locks, and levees. The height of those levee walls is regulated by the Ar...

Celebrating '2001: A Space Odyssey' And Whales. April 6, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-04-06

On April 3, 1968, hundreds of audience members walked out of the theatrical premier of a strange, long, dialogue-sparse science fiction film. Now reg...

13,000-Year-Old Footprints, Climate Court, Native Bees, Cell Phones And Cancer. March 30, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-03-30

Planting tomatoes in the garden this year? Better hope you have bumblebees too, because tomato flowers need a good shaking to get the pollen out. “Wh...

Predicting Gun Deaths, Bat Flight, New Organ. March 30, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-03-30

According to CDC data, more than 13,000 people die from gun homicides every year—and most of them are people of color who live in urban areas. Many o...

13,000-Year-Old Footprints, Climate Court, Native Bees, Cell Phones And Cancer. March 30, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-03-30

Planting tomatoes in the garden this year? Better hope you have bumblebees too, because tomato flowers need a good shaking to get the pollen out. “Wh...

Dung Microbes, Gun Research, Airplane Germs, Kepler Mission. March 23, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-03-23

Guns kill more people in the United States than alcohol—from homicides and suicides, to mass shootings like the one that left dead 17 high school stu...

Climate Risks, Power Grid Security, Necrobiome. March 23, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-03-23

A report issued last week by the Department of Homeland Security said that throughout 2016 and 2017, Russian hackers had worked to gain access to con...

Ancient Tools, Life On Mars, An Aurora Named Steve. March 16, 2018, Part 2.

Publication Date: 2018-03-16

Scientists have been trying for a long time to piece together a question: When did traits of modern humans—like complex thinking and behaviors—first ...

Stephen Hawking, Women In Blockchain, Dinosaurs. March 16, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-03-16

Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking died this week at the age of 76. Hawking challenged and inspired a generation of physicists, an...

‘Broad Band’ Computing History, Science Talent Search. March 9, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-03-09

In the history of male-dominated computer science, there are a few women who have gotten attention and credit for their contributions. Famously, Ada ...

BRCA Gene Test, Bacteriophages, Synesthesia. March 9, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-03-09

Overuse of antibiotics has lead to bacteria becoming resistant to the drugs. In the United States, at least two million people become infected with a...

Wild Horses, Hidden Structures Behind Structures, Florida Flamingos. Feb 23, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-02-23

The gentle curve of a beam. The particular shape of a clay brick. The sharp angles of a series of trusses. You might view these elements of buildings...

Biohybrid Robots, Neanderthal Art. Feb 23, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-02-23

A group of engineers are building softer, squishier robots—ones you might knowingly invite into your home to hang out. Instead of sporting bodies of ...

The Physics Of Figure Skating, Aerosols, Volatile Organic Compounds. Feb 16, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-02-16

While oohing and ahhing at the powerful leaps and nimble spins on the ice at the Olympics, you may not realize you’re watching physics in action. Eac...

Distorting Reality With AI, Cryptocurrency Mining, Science Standards In Idaho Schools. Feb 16, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-02-16

One woman’s dubious dance with a cow parasite left her rubbing her eyes—and medical experts scratching their heads. The Idaho legislature is debating...

Venomous Or Poisonous, Crayfish Clones, Immune System Cancer Injection. Feb 9, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-02-09

Do you know the difference between a poisonous creature and a venomous one? One distinction is that poisons are often ingested or absorbed by the ski...

Frankenstein Goodbye, Chocolate And Bugs, Ozone Problems. Feb 9, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-02-09

The Science Friday Book Club nerds out about ‘Frankenstein’ one last time. A menagerie of insects thrive among cacao trees—and that biodiversity migh...

Egyptian Dinosaurs, Leaking Data, Huntington’s Research, Mole Rats. Feb 2, 2018, Part 2

Publication Date: 2018-02-02

Dinosaurs existed all over the world—fossils have been found on every continent. Africa is no exception, but far fewer fossils have been found there ...

Agricultural Bees, China’s Energy Future, Frankenstein In Class. Feb 2, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-02-02

China's thirst for energy is rising. But to save its cities from suffocating pollution, leaders are looking to carbon-free energy sources and electri...

Great Lakes Wind, Boosting Vaccination Rates, Flu. Jan 26, 2018, Part 1

Publication Date: 2018-01-26

What we are learning about how to convince people that vaccines are safe and necessary. Plus, flu infection boosts the risk of heart attack six fold....

Music and Language, Jellyfish, Crystals.

Publication Date: 2018-01-26

The untold story of jellyfish is one of perception versus reality.Plus, researchers tested if listeners could identify lullabies, dance, love, and he...

News Roundup: Offshore Drilling, Predictive Algorithms and Public Policy, Tech Frankensteins

Publication Date: 2018-01-19

Algorithms in are being used to aid decision-making in courts, child welfare, and other areas of public policy. Plus the unintended consequences of t...

Undersea Volcanoes, Flu, Sleep Apps

Publication Date: 2018-01-19

Most volcanic activity happens under the seaÃ¢Â€Â”but we know very little about it. Plus, are sleep apps and gadgets really doing anything?

News Roundup: Missing Satellite, Squishing Cells, Cosmic Salt Crystals, Bitter Water

Publication Date: 2018-01-12

Scientists study meteorites carrying organic matter, including blue salt crystals, to Earth. Plus how squeezing, squishing, and stretching cells can ...

Physics Dialogues, Frozen Soil

Publication Date: 2018-01-12

A graphic novel that addresses the quantum questions vexing physicists today. And the ecosystem of frozen soil.

Growing Better Skin, AI and the Environment, Tinnitus and Hearing

Publication Date: 2018-01-05

Lucas Joppa, chief environment officer at Microsoft, says that artificial intelligence has the potential to help answer big environmental questions. ...

News Roundup: IV Shortage, Cybersecurity, Frankenstein

Publication Date: 2018-01-05

Everyday it seems there are more ways to get hacked. We will catch you up on the latest security tricks. Plus, we kick off our first book club of the...

Science Friday 2017 Year In Review

Publication Date: 2017-12-29

From colliding neutron stars to the completion of the Cassini mission, a look at 2017’s most important science stories.

Wonderful World of Flies, Bourbon Quiz

Publication Date: 2017-12-29

We take alook inside the woderful world of flies and maggots. Plus, fermenting, distillation and aging — test your spirit smarts in the SciFri Bourbo...

Hr2: Finance and Climate, Bird Count

Publication Date: 2017-12-22

From snowy owls to corn crakes, the annual Christmas Bird Count turns its gaze toward all our feathered friends flying overhead during the winter migr...

Hr1: News Roundup, Urban Air, Physics On The Edge

Publication Date: 2017-12-22

There is a lot we still do not know about matter, time, and the contents of the universe. That is both a challenge and a thrill for physicists. Plus, ...

News Roundup: Urban Air, Physics On The Edge

Publication Date: 2017-12-22

There is a lot we still do not know about matter, time, and the contents of the universe. That is both a challenge and a thrill for physicists. Plus,...

Hr2: Humans and Wildfire, Aging Research, Holiday Math

Publication Date: 2017-12-15

Researchers continue to chip away at the one thing we all have in common —getting older. Plus, in heavily populated regions, human influence on wildfi...

Hr1: News Roundup, LED Lighting, Green Transportation, Bitcoin Energy Draw, Data

Publication Date: 2017-12-15

More and more data is born into this world as digital bits, with no analog counterpart. How can we preserve it for future generations? Plus, we have e...

Hr2: CA Wildfire, Narwhal Heartbeats, Jellyfish Eater, ISS Microbiome, Holiday Safety

Publication Date: 2017-12-08

Record summer temperatures and dry, searing winds triggered a devastating California wildfire season. Plus, stressed narwhals, jellyfish eaters, the m...

Hr1: News Roundup, Coastal Restoration, Science Book Picks

Publication Date: 2017-12-08

From Oliver Sacks to graphic novels, Maria Popova and Deborah Blum discuss their favorite science books of the year. Plus, a curated list of engaging ...

Hr2: Early Farming Women, Southern HIV, Robot Muscles, Flame Challenge

Publication Date: 2017-12-01

Nearly half of people living with HIV in the US live in the South. A look at the underlying causes and interventions to stop the spread of the disease...

Hr1: News Roundup, Yeti, Net Neutrality, Grad Student Taxes

Publication Date: 2017-12-01

The internet grew for decades without 2015s net neutrality rules. So what happens if the FCC repeals them? Plus, two graduate students have developed ...

Hr1: Ig Nobel Prizes - From Cat Rheology To Operatic Incompetence

Publication Date: 2017-11-24

The 2017 Ig Nobel Prizes saluted the strange and silly in scientific studies.

Hr2: Coal, Bats, Icy Worlds

Publication Date: 2017-11-24

Bioacoustician Laura Kloepper trudges through mountains of guano as she works to decode the mysterious communication of bats. Plus, what a closer look...

Hr2: Artemis Builds An Lunar City, Crows, Passenger Pigeons

Publication Date: 2017-11-17

In his new novel, author Andy Weir creates a sprawling moon metropolis. Plus an ode to the brainy antics of the corvid family, from funerals to tool u...

Hr1: News Roundup, Coal Ash, Geoengineering, Blood Video

Publication Date: 2017-11-17

Spraying sulfur into the stratosphere could slow global warming--but climate engineering is not without risks. Plus, a method to see all the way down ...

Hr2: Mathematical Careers, Net States

Publication Date: 2017-11-10

Three mathematicians give us a peek into their abstract and beautiful world. Plus, should large tech companies be subject to the same regulations as n...

Hr1: News Roundup, Florida Panthers, Climate Policy, Tiny Bees

Publication Date: 2017-11-10

As the world works together to lower carbon emissions, what role will the United States play in fighting climate change? Plus, some small bees—the siz...

Hr2: Cancer Microbiome, World Microbiome, Math in the Courtroom

Publication Date: 2017-11-03

Researchers found that patients who responded well to immunotherapy had a more diverse mix of gut bacteria. And Supreme Court justices appear befuddle...

Hr1: Freelance Science, Thinking Critcally, Space Rock, Cone Snails

Publication Date: 2017-11-03

Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Gates Foundation, says scientists and science journalists can do more to help the public think critically about scien...

Hr2: Cancer Microbiome, World Microbiome, Math in the Courtroom

Publication Date: 2017-11-03

Researchers found that patients who responded well to immunotherapy had a more diverse mix of gut bacteria. And Supreme Court justices appear befuddle...

Hr1: Freelance Science, Thinking Critcally, Space Rock, Cone Snails

Publication Date: 2017-11-03

Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Gates Foundation, says scientists and science journalists can do more to help the public think critically about scien...

Hr2: Robo-Insect, CRISPR Advances, Soonish

Publication Date: 2017-10-27

Scientists expand the gene editing functions of CRISPR, making it safer and more precise. Plus, an insect-like robot can take off using - and from und...

Hr1: News Roundup, CAPTCHAs, Death Practices, Spiders

Publication Date: 2017-10-27

Caitlin Doughty traveled the world to document how different cultures deal with their dead. Now, she challenges us to develop a better relationship wi...

Hr2: Robo-Insect, CRISPR Advances, Soonish

Publication Date: 2017-10-27

Scientists expand the gene editing functions of CRISPR, making it safer and more precise. Plus, an insect-like robot can take off using-and from under...

Hr1: News Roundup, CAPTCHAs, Death Practices, Spiders

Publication Date: 2017-10-27

Caitlin Doughty traveled the world to document how different cultures deal with their dead. Now, she challenges us to develop a better relationship wi...

News Roundup, Wifi Security, LIGO Update, DaVinci

Publication Date: 2017-10-20

Walter Isaacson discusses how Leonardo da Vinci combined the arts and sciences to create his masterworks. Plus, astronomers talk about the impact of a...

Hr2: Post-Wildfire Health, Unconscious Mind, Blade Runner 2049

Publication Date: 2017-10-20

A look at the potential health hazards of the smoke and debris from Califonia wildfires. Plus, a new book explains how hidden influences affect our be...

Hr1: News Roundup, Wifi Security, LIGO Update, DaVinci

Publication Date: 2017-10-20

Walter Isaacson discusses how Leonardo da Vinci combined the arts and sciences to create his masterworks. Plus, astronomers talk about the impact of a...

Hr2: US Space Goals, Other Worlds

Publication Date: 2017-10-13

From other planets to our own future, writers can take us places we’ve never seen. Authors Cory Doctorow, N.K. Jemisin, and Annalee Newitz are among t...

Hr1: News Roundup, P-Values, Jane Goodall, Baby Talk

Publication Date: 2017-10-13

Jane Goodall reflects on her life, and A.I. researchers decode baby talk.

Hr2: US Space Goals, Other Worlds

Publication Date: 2017-10-13

From other planets to our own future, writers can take us places we've never seen. Authors Cory Doctorow, N.K. Jemisin, and Annalee Newitz are among t...

Hr1: News Roundup, P-Values, Jane Goodall, Baby Talk

Publication Date: 2017-10-13

Jane Goodall reflects on her life, and A.I. researchers decode baby talk.

Hr2: Neanderthal DNA, Mustangs, CFS, Science Club

Publication Date: 2017-10-06

Some 75,000 wild horses roam the sagebrush-lined slopes and basins of the American West—and the government can not figure out what to do with them. Pl...

Hr1: News Roundup, Flooding, Cryptocurrency, New York Whales

Publication Date: 2017-10-06

The ABCs of altcoins, blockchains and cryptocurrency. Plus, one of the largest animals in the world is making a return to New York harbor.

Hr2: Neanderthal DNA, Mustangs, CFS, Science Club

Publication Date: 2017-10-06

Some 75,000 wild horses roam the sagebrush-lined slopes and basins of the American Westâand the government can not figure out what to do with them. ...

Hr1: News Roundup, Flooding, Cryptocurrency, New York Whales

Publication Date: 2017-10-06

The ABCs of altcoins, blockchains and cryptocurrency. Plus, one of the largest animals in the world is making a return to New York harbor.

Hr1: News Roundup, Offshore Wind, Nuclear War, Puerto Rico

Publication Date: 2017-09-29

In Puerto Rico, how will rescue efforts progress on a flooded island? Plus, we break down what would actually happen during a nuclear war.

Hr2: The Experiments of Darwin, Bored and Brilliant

Publication Date: 2017-09-29

Paddling a duck foot in water and other small experiments led to Darwins big theory of evolution. Plus, how our smartphones are robbing us of an under...

Hr1: News Roundup, Offshore Wind, Nuclear War, Puerto Rico

Publication Date: 2017-09-29

In Puerto Rico, how will rescue efforts progress on a flooded island? Plus, we break down what would actually happen during a nuclear war.

Hr2:Jellyfish Sleep, Why Dinos Matter, Memory

Publication Date: 2017-09-22

Hr1: News Roundup, Malaria Test, Wildfires, Glow Worm

Publication Date: 2017-09-22

Hr2:Jellyfish Sleep, Why Dinos Matter, Memory

Publication Date: 2017-09-22

Is memory manipulation the stuff of Hollywood, or a glimpse into the near future? Plus, long dead dinosaurs have plenty to teach us about the future o...

Hr1: News Roundup, Malaria Test, Wildfires, Glow Worm

Publication Date: 2017-09-22

Most wildfires are started by humans. Will that number increase in the future? Plus, how does a glow worm glow? Hint: not the same way as a firefly.

Hr2:Ancient Inland Sea, Beetles, Ancient Americans

Publication Date: 2017-09-15

Hr1: Hurricane Irma, Cassini Farewell

Publication Date: 2017-09-15

Hr2: Tongue Muscles, Jill Tarter, Aging Aircraft

Publication Date: 2017-09-08

Hr1: News Roundup, Big Chicken, Black-Footed Ferrets

Publication Date: 2017-09-08

Hr2: Florida Textbooks, Education Myths, Educator Collaborative

Publication Date: 2017-09-01

Hr1: News Roundup, Flood Planning, Hurricane Harvey

Publication Date: 2017-09-01

Hr2: Renewable Energy Transition, Speech and Pitch, Max Tegmark

Publication Date: 2017-08-25

Hr1: News Roundup, Teenage Brain, Voyager, Indoor Microbiome

Publication Date: 2017-08-25

Hr2: FDA Fast Track, Evolution, Solar Eclipse App for Visually Impaired

Publication Date: 2017-08-18

Hr1: News Roundup, 13 Reasons, Volcanoes, Fake Flavors

Publication Date: 2017-08-18

Hr2: FDA Fast Track, Evolution, Solar Eclipse App for Visually Impaired

Publication Date: 2017-08-18

Researchers say fast-tracked drugs are not being rigorously tested after the approval process. Plus, modern evolutionary science has some advantages D...

Hr1: News Roundup, 13 Reasons, Volcanoes, Fake Flavors

Publication Date: 2017-08-18

Researchers are using magma trapped in crystal structures to study the life beneath volcanoes. Plus, modern fake flavors owe more to the chemistry of ...

Hr2: Lunar Magetism, Curiosity, Eclipse Balloons

Publication Date: 2017-08-11

Hr1: News Roundup, Oroville Dam, Biometrics, Sweat

Publication Date: 2017-08-11

Hr2: Lunar Magetism, Curiosity, Eclipse Balloons

Publication Date: 2017-08-11

Curiosity drives much of our learning and creativity. Where do we get it from, and how does it change our brains? Plus, the NASA Eclipse Ballooning Pr...

Hr1: News Roundup, Oroville Dam, Biometrics, Sweat

Publication Date: 2017-08-11

Fingerprint scanners are standard on new smartphones, and new ID methods are on the way. But security researchers say biometrics are still too easily ...

Hr2: Gene Editing, Voting Machine Hacks, Neutrinos, Midnight Scan Club

Publication Date: 2017-08-04

Hr1: News Roundup, Eclipse Special

Publication Date: 2017-08-04

Hr2: Gene Editing, Voting Machine Hacks, Neutrinos, Midnight Scan Club

Publication Date: 2017-08-04

Researchers can fix genetic mutations in human embryos. But should they? Plus, physicists were able to take the first measurement of a neutrino intera...

Hr1: News Roundup, Eclipse Special

Publication Date: 2017-08-04

Just three weeks remain before the total solar eclipse. Are you ready?

Hr2: Harassment and Bias, Alan Alda

Publication Date: 2017-07-28

What will it take to bring true equality to research labs? And Alan Alda discusses how he teaches scientists using theater improvisation and other emp...

Hr1: Haptics, Pseudoscience, Superhero Physics

Publication Date: 2017-07-28

Scientists are developing tools that allow you to digitally feel textures like wood and cotton. Plus, a walks through Martin Gardner’s 1950s catalog o...

Hr2: Harassment and Bias in Science / Alan Alda on Science Communication

Publication Date: 2017-07-28

Hr1: Haptics, Pseudoscience, Superhero Movie Physics

Publication Date: 2017-07-28

Hr2: Alzheimers Care, Particle Physics, Air

Publication Date: 2017-07-21

Hr1: News Roundup, Forest Payments, Asteroid Defense, Quindar

Publication Date: 2017-07-21

Hr2: Alzheimers Care, Particle Physics, Air

Publication Date: 2017-07-21

Physicists have observed subatomic particles decaying in a way that does not jibe with the predictions of the Standard Model, suggesting, if the resul...

Hr1: News Roundup, Forest Payments, Asteroid Defense, Quindar

Publication Date: 2017-07-21

NASA wants to test our ability to deflect asteroids that could come too close to Earth for comfort. Plus, how Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and a...

Hr 2: Diatoms, Ant Towers, 'Chasing Coral' Documentary

Publication Date: 2017-07-14

Hr 1: News roundup, Grazing, Smart Grid, Ice Science

Publication Date: 2017-07-14

Hr2: Diatoms, Ants, Chasing Coral

Publication Date: 2017-07-14

Ants can build awesome colonies underground. But did you know they can build tall towers too? A look at what engineers can learn by studying a social ...

Hr1: News Roundup, State of Science, Smart Grid, Ice Science

Publication Date: 2017-07-14

The booming growth of solar and wind power is stressing out our ancient electrical grid. How can our grid get a grip? A look at that challenge, and so...

Hr2: DC Science Staffing, Skype A Scientist, No-Heat Cooking

Publication Date: 2017-07-07

Hr1: News Roundup, Kilogram, Roman Concrete, Science Road Trip

Publication Date: 2017-07-07

Hr2: DC Science Staffing, Skype A Scientist, No-Heat Cooking

Publication Date: 2017-07-07

A new Food Failures segment teaches us how to make delicious dishes without turning up the heat. Plus, President Trump has yet to name a presidential ...

Hr2: Rover AI, Vax Patch, Gastrophysics

Publication Date: 2017-06-30

Hr1: News Roundup, CA Solar Glut, Nuclear Safety, Polar Bears

Publication Date: 2017-06-30

Hr2: Rover AI, Vax Patch, Gastrophysics

Publication Date: 2017-06-30

From color to crunch, there are subtle cues that make our food taste better. Plus, a new autonomous system lets the Mars rover conduct research even w...

Hr1: News Roundup, CA Solar Glut, Nuclear Safety, Polar Bears

Publication Date: 2017-06-30

USGS wildlife biologist Karyn Rode monitors how populations of polar bears are affected by shrinking sea ice and other changing conditions in the Arct...

Hr2: Marijuana Policy and Opioids, Placenta, Exoplanets, DNA Replication

Publication Date: 2017-06-23

Hr1: News Roundup, Climate and Coffee, Cephalopod Week

Publication Date: 2017-06-23

Marijuana Policy and Opioids, Placenta, Exoplanets, DNA Replication

Publication Date: 2017-06-23

A new way to look at fetal health, using the placenta. Plus, the Kepler mission found thousands of new planet candidates, including 10 possible rocky ...

Hr2:Political Math, Great Lakes

Publication Date: 2017-06-16

Hr1: News Roundup, Amazon Pharmacy, Flatworms in Space, Milkshake Mindset, Cephalopod Week

Publication Date: 2017-06-16

Hr2:Political Math, Great Lakes

Publication Date: 2017-06-16

The North American Great Lakes are changing under the influence of pollution, invasive species, and climate change. How well will they weather this st...

Hr1: News Roundup, Amazon Pharmacy, Flatworms in Space, Milkshake Mindset, Cephalopod Week

Publication Date: 2017-06-16

Cephalopod Week kicks off with an octopus matchmaker and cephalopod defense moves. And how your mindset might change the way you metabolize a milkshak...

Hr2:Algorithm Accountability, CRISPR, Gravitational Lensing, Hottest Exoplanet

Publication Date: 2017-06-09

Hr1: News Roundup, Telescope, Sunscreen, Paleoanthropology

Publication Date: 2017-06-09

Hr2:Algorithm Accountability, CRISPR, Gravitational Lensing, Hottest Exoplanet

Publication Date: 2017-06-09

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna describes her work on developing the CRISPR-Cas9 technique and the ethical concerns of using the revolutionary tool. Plus, ...

Hr1: News Roundup, Telescope, Sunscreen, Paleoanthropology

Publication Date: 2017-06-09

A new report says only one quarter of SPF products on the market are up to snuff. And a customizable melanin-like material could offer better protecti...

Hr2: Allergies, Bionic Limb Connections, Exosuit

Publication Date: 2017-06-02

Hr1: News Roundup, Fisheries, Hedy Lamarr, LIGO

Publication Date: 2017-06-02

Hr2: Allergies, Bionic Limb Connections, Exosuit

Publication Date: 2017-06-02

A look at why our immune systems turn on us, and why we are still powerless to stop the attack. Plus, an innovative muscle graft could help people wit...

Hr2: Jupiter, Useless Research, Leland Melvin

Publication Date: 2017-05-26

Hr1: News Roundup, Fidget Spinners, Award-Winning Space Tracker, Science Budget, Undiscovered

Publication Date: 2017-05-26

Hr2: Jupiter, Useless Research, Leland Melvin

Publication Date: 2017-05-26

Scientists report the first scientific results from the Juno mission, now in orbit around Jupiter. Plus reviving a case for foundational science that ...

Hr1: News Roundup, Fidget Spinners, Award-Winning Space Tracker, Science Budget, Undiscovered

Publication Date: 2017-05-26

Amber Yang, 18, won Intel's Young Scientist Award with her novel space debris tracker. Plus, a look at the White House's proposed science budget.

Hr2: Springtime Soil, Muskox

Publication Date: 2017-05-19

Hr1: News Roundup, Forensic Science, Hack Stockpile, Undiscovered

Publication Date: 2017-05-19

Hr2: Springtime Soil, Muskox

Publication Date: 2017-05-19

Moldy compost? Compacted soil? Here comes some soil science to help your garden spring into shape. Plus how one researcher plays pretend to shed light...

Hr1: News Roundup, Forensic Science, Hack Stockpile, Undiscovered

Publication Date: 2017-05-19

A look at efforts to improve forensics after the death of a key federal commission. Plus, when should the government alert the computer industry abou...

Hr2: Microwaves, Sea Spray, THC, Sea Lion Pups

Publication Date: 2017-05-12

Hr1: News Roundup, Bird Tracking, Homo Naledi, Undiscovered

Publication Date: 2017-05-12

Hr2: Microwaves, Sea Spray, THC, Sea Lion Pups

Publication Date: 2017-05-12

We have been microwaving our food for 50 years. Why are some people still worried about their safety? And new research looks at the connections betwee...

Hr1: News Roundup, Bird Tracking, Homo Naledi, Undiscovered

Publication Date: 2017-05-12

The team of paleoanthropologists that discovered fossils of Homo naledi in a South African cave two years ago say the bones are between 335,000 and 23...

Undiscovered Episode 1: Boss Hua and the Black Box

Publication Date: 2017-05-10

On China’s most influential microblogging platform, a watch aficionado named Boss Hua accuses a government official of corruption. But, his posts aren...

Hr2: Endurance, Borne, Giant Larvacean

Publication Date: 2017-05-05

Hr1: News Roundup, Spacesuits, Eclipse, Aurora, Hypoliths

Publication Date: 2017-05-05

Hr2: Star-nosed Moles, Transportation Infrastructure, Richard Garwin Biography

Publication Date: 2017-04-28

Hr1: News Roundup, Worry, Human Settlement of the Americas, Genius, Spirals

Publication Date: 2017-04-28

Can Science Survive In A More Politicized Age?

Publication Date: 2017-04-21

Forensic Ornithology, Internet Privacy, Health Research

Publication Date: 2017-04-21

Hr2: Heiltsuk Archaeology, Brain Difference, Water Widget, Shoelace Physics

Publication Date: 2017-04-14

Hr1: News Roundup, PIN Security, Not A Scientist, Simulating Mars, Enceladus

Publication Date: 2017-04-14

Hr2: Giant Virus, Radio Astronomy, SETI, Lyme

Publication Date: 2017-04-07

Hr1: News Roundup, Noise, Michael Mann, Mars Wheel, Splashing

Publication Date: 2017-04-07

Hr2: Engineering New Ideas, Bionic Arm, Robotic Prospecting

Publication Date: 2017-03-31

Hr1: News Roundup, Dino Family Tree, What-If Physics, Impact Glass

Publication Date: 2017-03-31

Hr2: Wildflowers and Bees, Infinity and Beyond

Publication Date: 2017-03-24

Hr1: News Roundup, Residents Hours, BP Oil Spill, Gerrymandering

Publication Date: 2017-03-24

Hr2: Vibrato Physics, Satellite Repair, Charting Physics History

Publication Date: 2017-03-17

Hr1: News Roundup, Autonomous Ambulances, New York 2140, Climate and Food

Publication Date: 2017-03-17

Hr2: Atmospheric Microbiome, Content Moderation, Scraps for Dinner

Publication Date: 2017-03-10

Hr1: News Roundup, Gamifying Communication, Trump and the EPA, Tuvan Throat Singing

Publication Date: 2017-03-10

Hr2: Atmospheric Microbiome, Content Moderation, Scraps for Dinner

Publication Date: 2017-03-10

In their book Scraps, Wilt & Weeds, Mads Refslund and Tama Matsuoka Wong describe creative ways to use the parts of produce that we usually toss ...

Hr1: News Roundup, Gamifying Communication, Trump and the EPA, Tuvan Throat Singing

Publication Date: 2017-03-10

How the president and Congress have been quietly and successfully tearing down U.S environmental and climate change policy. Plus, Tuvan throat singers...

Hr2: Ancient Earth Crust, Farmers and Conservation, California Water Supply

Publication Date: 2017-03-03

Hr1: News Roundup, Bee Intelligence, Genetic Data Storage

Publication Date: 2017-03-03

Hr2: Ancient Earth Crust, Farmers and Conservation, California Water Supply

Publication Date: 2017-03-03

Some farmers are using techniques like no-till and dry irrigation that conserve natural resources as a way to cultivate crops according to the biology...

Hr1: News Roundup, Bee Intelligence, Genetic Data Storage

Publication Date: 2017-03-03

Bees are more intelligent than we thought, and can count and recognize faces. Plus, could DNA become a mainstream data storage option?

Hr2: Antibiotic Discovery, Regrowing Sensory Hair in the Ear, Trappist-1 Exoplanets

Publication Date: 2017-02-24

Hr1: News Roundup, Gene Editing Embryos, Computer Hacks of the Future, and How to Prevent Them

Publication Date: 2017-02-24

Hr2: Antibiotic Discovery, Regrowing Sensory Hair in the Ear, Trappist-1 Exoplanets

Publication Date: 2017-02-24

Scientists have discovered seven Earth-size planets orbiting a nearby star that could hold the conditions for life. Plus, a look at the scientific obs...

Hr1: News Roundup, Gene Editing Embryos, Computer Hacks of the Future, and How to Prevent Them

Publication Date: 2017-02-24

As self-driving cars and other artificial intelligence advance, how safe will we be from A.I. hacks and attacks? Plus, a report from a National Academ...

Hr2: Net Neutrality, The Price of Privacy, Expanse

Publication Date: 2017-02-17

Hr1: News Roundup, Emotion Translator, Battery Technology

Publication Date: 2017-02-17

Hr2: Net Neutrality, The Price of Privacy, Expanse

Publication Date: 2017-02-17

As we trade more and more of our personal data to big companies in exchange for their services, internet users must decide for themselves where to dra...

Hr1: News Roundup, Emotion Translator, Battery Technology

Publication Date: 2017-02-17

Is there a new battery that can beat lithium ion in electric vehicles? We plug into the world of battery research to find out. Plus, how to squeeze mo...

Hr2: Heat-sensitive Prosthetic Skin, Flint Water, Ingestible Electronics

Publication Date: 2017-02-10

Hr1: News Roundup, Ice, Holographic Cosmology

Publication Date: 2017-02-10

Hr2: Heat-sensitive Prosthetic Skin, Flint Water, Ingestible Electronics

Publication Date: 2017-02-10

Three years after the Flint water crisis began, lead concentrations in the water are below federal action levels, but residents are still drinking fil...

Hr1: News Roundup, Ice, Holographic Cosmology

Publication Date: 2017-02-10

Researchers who study icy places have discovered uncanny phenomena. Plus, Holographic cosmology is a way of simplifying mind-boggling mathematical mod...

Hr2: Mesh Networks, Frog Tongues, Solid Hydrogen, Science March

Publication Date: 2017-02-03

Hr1: News Roundup, Chimeras, Astrobiology

Publication Date: 2017-02-03

Hr2: Mesh Networks, Frog Tongues, Solid Hydrogen, Science March

Publication Date: 2017-02-03

March for Science organizers want to boost appreciation for research they see as under threat. Plus, scientists theorize that metallic hydrogen could ...

Hr1: News Roundup, Chimeras, Astrobiology

Publication Date: 2017-02-03

New advances in stem cell research will one day make it possible to grow human transplant organs in animal hosts. And astrobiologists are looking at u...

Hr2: Immunizing Against Fake News, Fighting Online Extremism, Paperfuge

Publication Date: 2017-01-27

Hr1: News Roundup, Jerry Brown, Brilliant Girls

Publication Date: 2017-01-27

Hr2: Soft Robots, Carlo Rovelli, Seahorse Pregnancy

Publication Date: 2017-01-20

Hr1: Special Coverage: How Will Scientific Research Fare Under President Donald Trump?

Publication Date: 2017-01-20

Hr2: Automation, Twisted Science, Worm Indecision, Concussions

Publication Date: 2017-01-13