It's our latest roundup of science news! This time, with Ailsa Chang of NPR's All Things Considered, who joins us to discuss three stories that take us on a journey through space — from the sounds of Earth's magnetosphere, to the moons of Jupiter, to a distant phenomenon NASA calls "an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space." Learn more about NASA's Harp Project here: https://listen.spacescience.org/ We love hearing what you're reading and what science is catching ...
Apr 24, 2023•12 min•Ep 889•Transcript available on Metacast In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice is shrinking as the climate heats up. In the Western U.S., wildfires are getting increasingly destructive. Those two phenomena are thousands of miles apart, but scientists are uncovering a surprising connection. The ice is connected to weather patterns that reach far across North America. And as the climate keeps changing and sea ice shrinks, Western states could be seeing more extreme weather, the kind that fuels extreme wildfires. Check out the full series about ho...
Apr 21, 2023•12 min•Ep 888•Transcript available on Metacast Melting glaciers are leaving behind large, unstable lakes that can cause dangerous flash floods. Millions of people downstream are threatened. In today's episode, NPR Climate Desk reporter Rebecca Hersher and producer Ryan Kellman take Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong to a community high in the mountains of Nepal where residents are on the front lines of this new climate threat, and explains how scientists are looking for solutions that can save lives around the world. Check out the full series ab...
Apr 19, 2023•15 min•Ep 887•Transcript available on Metacast Endangered North Atlantic right whales are disappearing from their native waters, a serious danger for a species with only 340 animals left. The mystery behind this change took NPR's climate reporter Lauren Sommer 2,000 miles away to the world's second-largest ice sheet, sitting on top of Greenland. On today's episode, Lauren takes Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong on an expedition to Greenland's ice sheet and then to the Gulf of Maine to break down the ripple effects of climate change. Reach the s...
Apr 17, 2023•13 min•Ep 886•Transcript available on Metacast This week, New York City crowned Kathleen Corradi its first rat czar. The new position is part of a multipronged approach from city officials. Reporter and New Yorker Anil Oza called up rodentologists to understand — does their approach withstand the test of scientific research? We love hearing your musings and questions about the science in your everyday life. Reach us by emailing shortwave@npr.org . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Apr 14, 2023•14 min•Ep 885•Transcript available on Metacast When Tove Danovich decided to dabble in backyard chicken keeping, she embraced a tried and true journalistic practice — reading everything there is to find on the subject. In her search, she found plenty of how-to guides, but what she really wanted was to know more about the science. She wanted to understand their evolution and unique relationship with humans. "As I was reading more and as I was wanting this book that increasingly it seemed like it it just didn't exist. I wound up writing it ins...
Apr 12, 2023•13 min•Ep 884•Transcript available on Metacast In 1957, the Space Age began with the launch of Sputnik , the first artificial satellite. Since then, the number of objects humans have hurled toward the stars has soared to the thousands. As those objects have collided with one another, they've created more space debris in Earth's orbit. According to some estimates , all of that debris and human-made space trash, the number of objects — from satellites to screws — could be in the millions. In this iteration of our AAAS live show series, Short W...
Apr 10, 2023•13 min•Ep 883•Transcript available on Metacast In this Friday round up of science news we can't let go, not everything is as it seems. Meatballs are not made of fresh meat from the cattle range. Robots are keeping something from you. And plants have secrets they keep out of your earshot. It's deceptive science, Short Wave -style. We love hearing what you're reading and what science is catching your eye! Reach the show by emailing shortwave@npr.org . Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Apr 07, 2023•14 min•Ep 882•Transcript available on Metacast Katie Wu is a bona fide cat person. She has two of them: twin boys named Calvin and Hobbes. Every night, they curl up in bed with her, bonking their little noses together, rubbing their fur and whiskers everywhere, and leaving behind inevitable cat residue. It's certifiably cute ... and a little bit gross. It's also the worst nightmare for the cat-allergic. Which, just shy of a decade ago, Katie was. In a stroke of luck, Katie's debilitating cat allergy disappeared. The reasons for her immune ov...
Apr 05, 2023•14 min•Ep 881•Transcript available on Metacast The phenomenon of zoonotic spillover — of viruses jumping from animals to people — is incredibly common. The question is: which one will start the next pandemic? NPR science desk correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff brings us her reporting on Influenza D, an emerging virus spreading among cows and other livestock in the United States. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Apr 03, 2023•14 min•Ep 880•Transcript available on Metacast Today, most climate science is done with satellites, sensors and complicated computer models. But it all started with a pioneering female physicist and two glass tubes. Eunice Foote, the woman behind that glass tube experiment, has largely been left out of the history books. Until about 10 years ago, John Tyndall was seen as the grandfather of climate science for setting the foundation for the understanding of the greenhouse gas effect. But Eunice's experiment, done three years prior, showed tha...
Mar 31, 2023•12 min•Ep 879•Transcript available on Metacast To really understand the human brain, scientists say you'd have to map its wiring. The only problem: there are more than 100 trillion different connections to find, trace and characterize. But a team of scientists has made a big stride toward this goal, a complete wiring diagram of a teeny, tiny brain: the fruit fly larva. With a full map, or connectome, of the larval fruit fly brain, scientists can start to understand how behaviors shape, and are shaped by, the specific wiring of neural circuit...
Mar 29, 2023•11 min•Ep 878•Transcript available on Metacast Rice is arguably the world's most important staple crop. About half of the global population depends on it for sustenance. But, like other staples such as wheat and corn, rice is cultivated annually. That means replanting the fields year after year, at huge cost to both the farmers and the land. For years, scientists have been tinkering with rice strains to create a perennial variety – one that would regrow after harvest without the need to be resown. Today, Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barb...
Mar 27, 2023•13 min•Ep 877•Transcript available on Metacast After reading the science headlines this week, we have A LOT of questions. Why did the Virgin Islands declare a state of emergency over a large blob of floating algae? What can a far-off asteroid tell us about the origins of life? Is the ever-popular bee waggle dance not just for directions to the hive but a map? Luckily, it's the job of the Short Wave team to decipher the science behind the day's news. This week, co-host Aaron Scott , Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber and science correspo...
Mar 24, 2023•11 min•Ep 876•Transcript available on Metacast A few weeks ago, raw data gathered in Janaury 2020 from Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China — the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic — was uploaded to an online virology database. It caught the attention of researchers. A new genetic analysis from an international team provides the strongest evidence yet for natural origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of one animal in particular: raccoon dogs. Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong talks with Katherine Wu , a staff writer at ...
Mar 23, 2023•14 min•Ep 875•Transcript available on Metacast From text churned out by ChatGPT to the artistic renderings of Midjourney, people have been taking notice of new, bot-produced creative works. But how does this artificial intelligence software fare when there are facts at stake — like designing a rocket capable of safe spaceflight? In this episode, NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel and Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong drill into what this AI software gets wrong, right — and if it's even trying to detect the difference in the first place. W...
Mar 22, 2023•13 min•Ep 874•Transcript available on Metacast Dotted across the Great Basin of the American West are salty, smelly lakes. The largest of these, by far, is the Great Salt Lake in Utah. But a recent report found that water diversions for farming, climate change and population growth could mean the lake essentially disappears within five years. Less water going in means higher concentrations of salt and minerals, which threatens the crucial ecological role saline lakes play across the West, as well as the health of the people who live nearby. ...
Mar 21, 2023•13 min•Ep 873•Transcript available on Metacast Planetary scientists announced some big news this week about our next-door neighbor, Venus. For the first time, they had found direct evidence that Venus has active, ongoing volcanic activity. "It's a big deal," says Dr. Martha Gilmore , a planetary geologist at Wesleyan University. "It's a big deal in that there are no other planets, actually, where we've seen active volcanism." (Moons don't count - sorry Io !) What makes that fact so striking is how inhospitable a place Venus is now – crushing...
Mar 20, 2023•14 min•Ep 872•Transcript available on Metacast Our friends at NPR's TED Radio Hour podcast have been pondering some BIG things — specifically, the connection between our physical, mental, and spiritual health. In this special excerpt, what if you could control a device, not with your hand, but with your mind? Host Manoush Zomorodi talks to physician and entrepreneur Tom Oxley about the implantable brain-computer interface that can change the way we think. Keep an eye on NPR's TED Radio Hour podcast feed the next few weeks, as they unveil the...
Mar 18, 2023•20 min•Ep 871•Transcript available on Metacast For the past few winters, researchers have been intentionally flying into snowstorms. And high in those icy clouds, the team collected all the information they could to understand—how exactly do winter storms work? With more accurate data could come more accurate predictions about whether a storm would cause treacherous conditions that shut down schools, close roads and cancel flights. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce recently took to the skies for one of these flights and shares h...
Mar 17, 2023•13 min•Ep 870•Transcript available on Metacast As a leading expert on paleogenomics , Beth Shapiro has been hearing the same question ever since she started working on ancient DNA: "The only question that we consistently were asked was, how close are we to bringing a mammoth back to life?" In the second part of our conversation ( listen to yesterday's episode ), Beth tells Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott that actually cloning a mammoth is probably not going to happen. "But there are technologies that will allow us to resurrect extinct traits,...
Mar 16, 2023•12 min•Ep 869•Transcript available on Metacast Research into very, very old DNA has made huge leaps forward over the last two decades. That has allowed scientists like Beth Shapiro to push the frontier further and further. "For a long time, we thought, you know, maybe the limit is going to be around 100,000 years [old]. Or, maybe the limit is going to be around 300,000 years," says Shapiro, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz. "Well, now we've been working with a horse fossil in Alaska that's about 800,000 years old....
Mar 15, 2023•14 min•Ep 868•Transcript available on Metacast This March 14, Short Wave is celebrating pi ... and pie! We do that with the help of mathematician Eugenia Cheng , Scientist In Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and author of the book How to Bake Pi . We start with a recipe for clotted cream and end, deliciously, at how math is so much more expansive than grade school tests. Click through to our episode page for the recipes mentioned in this episode. Plus, Eugenia's been on Short Wave before! To hear more, check out our ep...
Mar 14, 2023•13 min•Ep 867•Transcript available on Metacast A new drug for Alzheimer's disease, called lecanemab, got a lot of attention earlier this year for getting fast-tracked approval based on a clinical trial that included nearly 1,800 people. It was the most diverse trial for an Alzheimer's treatment to date, but still not enough to definitively say if the drug is effective for Black people. "[In] the world's most diverse Alzheimer's trial, a giant trial of 1,800 people that lasted for a much longer time than most trials did, we're still not sure ...
Mar 13, 2023•14 min•Ep 866•Transcript available on Metacast Reading the science headlines this week, we have A LOT of questions. Why are more animals than just humans saddled — er, blessed — with vocal fry? Why should we care if 8 million year old plankton fossils are in different locations than plankton living today? And is humanity finally united on protecting the Earth's seas with the creation of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty? Luckily, it's the job of the Short Wave team to decipher the science behind the headlines. This week, t...
Mar 10, 2023•11 min•Ep 865•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever wondered how biologists choose what animal to use in their research? Since scientists can't do a lot of basic research on people, they study animals to shed light on everything from human health to ecosystems to genetics. And yet, just a handful of critters appear over and over again. Why the mouse? Or the fruit fly? Or the zebrafish? Cassandra Extavour , an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, talked with Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott about her favorite new model critter on the blo...
Mar 09, 2023•14 min•Ep 864•Transcript available on Metacast The whitebark pine is a hardy tree that grows in an area stretching from British Columbia, Canada south to parts of California and east to Montana. It's a keystone species in its subalpine and timberline ecosystems and plays an outsized role in its interactions with other species and the land — feeding and providing habitat for other animals, and providing shade to slow glacial melt to the valleys below. But it's increasingly threatened — by more intense fires, by mountain pine beetle infestatio...
Mar 08, 2023•11 min•Ep 863•Transcript available on Metacast Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of coal for electricity. And it's also an emerging economy trying to address climate change. The country recently signed a highly publicized, $20 billion international deal to transition away from coal and toward renewable energy. The hope is the deal could be a model for other countries. But Indonesian energy experts and solar executives worry much of this deal may be " omong kosong " — empty talk. Today, NPR climate solutions reporter Julia Simon break...
Mar 07, 2023•12 min•Ep 862•Transcript available on Metacast The Roman Colosseum is a giant, oval amphitheater built almost two thousand years ago. Despite its age and a 14th century earthquake that knocked down the south side of the colosseum, most of the 150-some foot building is still standing. Like many ancient Roman structures, parts of it were constructed using a specific type of concrete. Scientists and engineers have long suspected a key to these buildings' durability is their use of this Roman concrete. But exactly how this sturdy concrete has co...
Mar 06, 2023•13 min•Ep 861•Transcript available on Metacast Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist at the University of New Hampshire . It's her job to ask deep questions about how we — and the rest of the universe — got to this moment. Her new book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred , does exactly that. It's an examination of the science that underpins our universe and how the researchers seeking to understand those truths, in turn, shape the science. As we close out Black History month, we re...
Mar 03, 2023•16 min•Ep 860•Transcript available on Metacast 
