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 When Abra Lee became the landscape manager at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, she sought some advice about how to best do the job. The answer: study the history of gardening. That led to her uncovering how Black involvement in horticulture in the U.S. bursts with incredible stories and profound expertise, intertwined with a tragic past. She's now teaching these stories and working on a book, Conquer the Soil: Black America and the Untold Stories of Our Country's Gardeners, Farm...
Mar 02, 2023•15 min•Ep 859•Transcript available on Metacast As a kid, Clarice Phelps dreamed of being an astronaut, or maybe an explorer like the characters on Star Trek. Her path to a career in science turned out to be a bit different than what she expected, including lengthy stints on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. But that path led her to being a part of something big: the discovery of a new element on the periodic table. Clarice talks to Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott about her role in creating Tennessine , one of the heaviest elements known to ...
Mar 01, 2023•13 min•Ep 858•Transcript available on Metacast Population geneticist Dr. Janina Jeff is the host and executive producer of In Those Genes , a hip-hop inspired podcast that uses genetics to uncover the those lost identifies of African descended Americans through the lens of Black culture. Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong speaks with Janina about what a person's genetic ancestry test does and does not reveal, and the complicated intersection of genetics, history and race. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR...
Feb 28, 2023•15 min•Ep 857•Transcript available on Metacast This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold a public hearing about its remediation plan for cleaning up chemicals in and around East Palestine, Ohio. It follows the derailment of a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous chemicals like vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate near the town earlier this month. Residents were temporarily evacuated from the area two days later to allow for a controlled burn of the chemicals. EPA health officials have been monitoring the air and water ...
Feb 27, 2023•12 min•Ep 856•Transcript available on Metacast In the Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon, there is a giant walk-in fridge housing tens of thousands of seeds. They belong to the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). Scientists from around the world use the seeds for research. ICARDA seeds have improved food security in several countries. They've transformed Ethiopian agriculture to use more drought-resistant crops. A new chickpea can be planted in winter. And now, NPR's Middle East correspondent Ruth Sherlock h...
Feb 24, 2023•14 min•Ep 855•Transcript available on Metacast In this Back To School episode we consider the "List of Life": the criteria that define what it is to be a living thing. Some are easy calls: A kitten is alive. A grain of salt is not. But what about the tricky cases, like a virus? Or, more importantly, what about futuristic android robots? As part of our Black History Month celebration, developmental biologist Crystal Rogers and scientist-in-residence Regina G. Barber dig into what makes something alive, and wade into a Star-Trek-themed debate....
Feb 23, 2023•11 min•Ep 854•Transcript available on Metacast Monday another earthquake struck southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border. This time, the quake registered as a magnitude 6.3 — an order lower than the initial, devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake and the magnitude 7.5 aftershock that struck the area two weeks ago on Feb. 6. A magnitude 6.3 is still considered strong , according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). And as NPR previously reported , some locals were inside buildings trying to recover belongings lost in the initial qu...
Feb 22, 2023•10 min•Ep 853•Transcript available on Metacast The video game series that spawned the new hit HBO drama, The Last of Us, is the zombie genre with a twist. Instead of the standard viral pandemic or bacterial disease that's pushed humanity to the brink, but a fungus that has evolved to survive in human bodies in part due to climate change. Short Wave's Aaron Scott talks with fungal researcher Asyia Gusa about the science that inspired The Last of Us and the real threats fungal researchers see in the ever-warming world. Learn more about sponsor...
Feb 21, 2023•13 min•Ep 852•Transcript available on Metacast Many of us are off today for President's Day. In the meantime, we want to share this episode from our friends at NPR's Life Kit podcast. In it, they discuss the importance of birds as an "indicator species" – their health helps us understand the health of our environment. Plus, they collect expert tips on how we can help birds survive, and thrive. For more of Audrey's reporting, check out " North American birds are in decline. Here are 8 simple ways you can help ." Learn more about sponsor messa...
Feb 20, 2023•19 min•Ep 851•Transcript available on Metacast After reading the science headlines this week, we have A LOT of questions. Is chocolate really that good for your health? How do solar flares affect life on earth? And what's the big deal about scientists identifying the chemical motivation for tsetse fly sex? Luckily, it's the job of Short Wave co-hosts Emily Kwong and Aaron Scott and Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber to decipher the science behind the headlines. Hang out with us as we dish on some of the coolest science stories in this V...
Feb 17, 2023•12 min•Ep 850•Transcript available on Metacast In Disney's new animated feature 'Strange World,' a band of multigenerational explorers journeys to the center of their fantastical homeland. Along the way, they fend off, make friends with, and unearth secrets about the curious creatures who call this place home. There's the filterlopes, six-legged deer-forms with fan-like antennae. Or scouts, squishy blue balls with 12 elastic limbs. But as fantastical as these creatures sound, each one is grounded in the physics and biology of its real-world ...
Feb 16, 2023•14 min•Ep 849•Transcript available on Metacast A few years ago, a team of scientists set out on a field expedition in the rugged, dry Northern Territory of Australia. There, they found a plant that was both strange and familiar hiding in plain sight. After careful research during the pandemic, the newly described tomato recently made its debut in PhytoKeys , a peer-reviewed, open-access journal. Today, Short Wave Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber talks to lead author Tanisha Williams about the plant's journey from the side of a trail i...
Feb 15, 2023•10 min•Ep 848•Transcript available on Metacast You may have heard of the "love hormone," or oxytocin. But you may not know that scientists have relied on cuddly rodents like the prairie vole to help us understand how this protein works in our brains. Voles are stocky, mouse-like little mammals that range over most of North America. One species in particular, the prairie vole, is known for its fidelity: Prairie voles pair-bond and mate for life. And so, for years, scientists have known that oxytocin is important in facilitating the feeling of...
Feb 14, 2023•11 min•Ep 847•Transcript available on Metacast 
