We are at the height of the Sun's activity in its eleven year cycle, known to astronomers as the solar maximum. This means that over the next several months there's going to be a lot of solar activity. It's got us thinking back to 1859. That's when astronomer Richard Carrington was studying the Sun when he witnessed the most intense geomagnetic storm recorded in history. The storm, triggered by a giant solar flare, sent brilliant auroral displays across the globe causing electrical sparking and ...
Feb 21, 2024•12 min•Ep 1026•Transcript available on Metacast Lately, paleoecologist Audrey Rowe has been a bit preoccupied with a girl named Elma. That's because Elma is ... a woolly mammoth. And 14,000 years ago, when Elma was alive, her habitat in interior Alaska was rapidly changing. The Ice Age was coming to a close and human hunters were starting early settlements. Which leads to an intriguing question: Who, or what , killed her? In the search for answers, Audrey traces Elma's life and journey through — get this — a single tusk. Today, she shares her...
Feb 19, 2024•14 min•Ep 1025•Transcript available on Metacast Every year, billions of animals across the globe embark on journeys. They fly, crawl, walk or slither – often across thousands of miles of land or water – to find better food, more agreeable weather or a place to breed. Think monarch butterflies, penguins, wild Pacific salmon. These species are crucial to the world as we know it. But until this week, there has never been an official assessment of the world's migratory animals. So today on the show, correspondent Nate Rott shares the first-ever r...
Feb 16, 2024•13 min•Ep 1024•Transcript available on Metacast In a Valentine's Day exclusive report, NPR has learned there is currently a gay anteater couple at Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington D.C.But this couple is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to queerness in the animal world – it's been documented in hundreds of species. We spoke with wildlife ecologist Christine Wilkinson of the "Queer is Natural" TikTok series to uncover the wildest, queerest animals of the bunch. Questions, comments o...
Feb 14, 2024•12 min•Ep 1023•Transcript available on Metacast Happy Lunar New Year! According to the Chinese lunisolar calendar, the new year began Saturday. For many, like our host Regina G. Barber , this calendar and its cultural holidays can feel completely detached from the Gregorian calendar. Growing up, she associated the former with the Spring Festival and getting money in red envelopes from relatives, and the other with more American traditions. But the Chinese calendar has a deep, centuries-long shared history with the Gregorian calendar. To learn...
Feb 12, 2024•13 min•Ep 1022•Transcript available on Metacast At least, that's what a group of researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University thinks. The team recently published a study in the journal Experimental Biology suggesting that Amphiphrion ocellaris , or clown anemonefish, may be counting. Specifically, the authors think the fish may be looking at the number of vertical white stripes on each other as well as other anemonefish as a way to identify their own species. Not only that — the researchers think that the...
Feb 09, 2024•9 min•Ep 1021•Transcript available on Metacast If you've ever watched part of a professional football game, you've probably seen a tight spiral pass. Those perfect throws where the football leaves the player's hand and neatly spins as it arcs through the air. But those passes? They seem to defy fundamental physics. And for a long time, scientists couldn't figure out exactly why — until experimental atomic physicist Tim Gay cracked the case just a few years ago. His answer comes after two decades of hobby research and more than a couple late ...
Feb 07, 2024•12 min•Ep 1020•Transcript available on Metacast In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, releasing radioactive material into northern Ukraine and Belarus. It was the most serious nuclear accident in history. Over one hundred thousand people were evacuated from the surrounding area. But local gray wolves never left — and their population has grown over the years. It's seven times denser than populations in protected lands elsewhere in Belarus. This fact has led scientists to wonder whether the wolves are genetically either resistant...
Feb 05, 2024•14 min•Ep 1019•Transcript available on Metacast Back in the day, many of us heard that the appendix is a vestigial organ — at best, a body part that lost its purpose all those many years ago. At worst, an unnecessary clinger-on to the human body that, when ruptured, could be life threatening. But what if that narrative is wrong? Heather Smith became obsessed with the appendix after hers was removed at age 12. After years of anatomy research, she's found that the appendix is not, in fact, useless. Reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin is in the host ...
Feb 02, 2024•13 min•Ep 1018•Transcript available on Metacast An all-out "naked mole rat war" has broken out at Smithsonian's National Zoo, after the queen of the colony was mortally wounded by one of her own children. Short Wave 's Pien Huang and Margaret Cirino visit the battleground – a series of deceptively calm-looking plexiglass enclosures at the Zoo's Small Mammal House. There, the typically harmonious, eusocial rodents are now fighting their siblings with their big front teeth to determine who will become the new queen. Pien and Marge talk with zoo...
Jan 31, 2024•15 min•Ep 1017•Transcript available on Metacast Every year, lightning is estimated to cause up to 24,000 deaths globally. It starts forest fires, burns buildings and crops, and causes disruptive power outages. The best, most practical technology available to deflect lightning is the simple lightning rod, created by Benjamin Franklin more than 250 years ago. But lightning rods protect only a very limited area proportional to their height. In today's encore episode, we explore why a group of European researchers are hoping the 21 century upgrad...
Jan 29, 2024•12 min•Ep 1016•Transcript available on Metacast When the U.S. government and state of Florida unveiled a new plan to save the Everglades in 2000, the sprawling blueprint to restore the wetlands became the largest hydrological restoration effort in the nation's history. Two decades later, only one project is complete, the effort is $15 billion over budget and the Everglades is still dying. The new podcast Bright Lit Place from WLRN and NPR heads into the swamp to meet its first inhabitants, the scientists who study it and the warring sides str...
Jan 27, 2024•16 min•Ep 1015•Transcript available on Metacast At the Ol Pejeta Conservancy , a wildlife preserve in central Kenya, lions and cheetahs mingle with zebras and elephants across many miles of savannah – grasslands with "whistling thorn" acacia trees dotting the landscape here and there. Twenty years ago, the savanna was littered with them. Then came invasive big-headed ants that killed native ants — and left the acacia trees vulnerable. Over time, elephants have knocked down many of the trees. That has altered the landscape — and the diets of o...
Jan 26, 2024•9 min•Ep 1014•Transcript available on Metacast Scientists know that Black people are at a greater risk for health problems like heart disease , diabetes and Alzheimer's disease than white people. A growing body of research shows that racism–in health systems and the effects of experiencing racial discrimination–contributes to these long-standing health disparities for Black communities. Now, some researchers are asking whether part of the explanation involves how racism changes the brain. Today on the show, science correspondent Jon Hamilton...
Jan 24, 2024•14 min•Ep 1013•Transcript available on Metacast Honeyguides are wild birds that team up with humans and then lead them to honey. Researchers recently found that the calls these birds respond to are unique and tied to their location. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce talks about this relationship and shares how researchers followed honeyguides to learn about their call behaviors. Read Nell's full story here . Hear about an amazing wildlife phenomenon? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcast...
Jan 22, 2024•13 min•Ep 1012•Transcript available on Metacast At least one in four women — and a much smaller proportion of men — experiences intimate partner violence in their lifetime. For people in violent relationships, brain injuries are unfortunately common. But little is known about what exactly happens inside the brains of people dealing with domestic violence — and how these kinds of traumatic brain injuries may be different from those that come out of contact sports like football. Host Regina G. Barber talks with NPR brain correspondent Jon Hamil...
Jan 19, 2024•11 min•Ep 1011•Transcript available on Metacast Winter is upon us – and with the holiday travel and time spent indoors comes a triple threat of respiratory diseases: RSV, flu and COVID-19. Most of the country has been experiencing high or very high respiratory virus levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Host Regina G. Barber talks with NPR health correspondent Pien Huang about the annual 'tripledemic': what makes this winter different from winters past, who's most at risk and whether or not we're over the season...
Jan 17, 2024•11 min•Ep 1010•Transcript available on Metacast Time is a concept so central to our daily lives. Yet, the closer scientists look at it, the more it seems to fall apart. Time ticks by differently at sea level than it does on a mountaintop. The universe's expansion slows time's passage. "And some scientists think time might not even be 'real' — or at least not fundamental," says NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel . In this encore episode, Geoff joins Short Wave Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber to bend our brains with his learnings ...
Jan 15, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you work at home or in an office, you might spend a lot of your day sitting down and staring at a computer screen. That can have lots of negative effects – but it's hard to carve out significant time in the day to counteract that. Our friends at NPR's TED Radio Hour wanted to know if small, frequent movement breaks might do the trick instead. Along with Columbia University Medical Center, they conducted a study of over 20,000 listeners and asked them to incorporate these movement breaks into ...
Jan 13, 2024•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since they were discovered in 2019, strange, glowing circles of light in space have mystified researchers. Now called odd radio circles, or ORCs, these rings of light sit in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. They pulse out of the centers of some galaxies – and until now, no one knew why. In this episode, host Regina G. Barber talks to Alison Coil , a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California San Diego, about her latest research. They break down what ORC...
Jan 12, 2024•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Human beings are hardwired for social connection – so much so that we think of even the most basic objects as having feelings or experiences. (Yup, we're talking to you, Roomba owners!) Social robots add a layer to this. They're designed to make us feel like they're our friends. They can do things like care for children, the elderly or act as partners. But there's a darker side to them, too. They may encourage us to opt out of authentic, real-life connections, making us feel more isolated. Today...
Jan 10, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast A winter storm brought heavy rain and snow to parts of the East Coast this weekend, which got us thinking about snowflakes. Those intricate, whimsical crystals are a staple of magical wintry scenes, but how big can they really get? Well, according to the Guinness World Record keepers, the " largest snowflake " ever recorded was a whopping 15 inches in diameter. It was spotted near Missoula, Montana in 1887. But Kenneth Libbrecht , a physicist at Caltech, has long been skeptical of that record. S...
Jan 08, 2024•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast The winter is usually when insects die or go into a state of paused development, but for tiny specks on the white snow called snow flies, it's time to run around, find a lover and make baby snow flies. Neuroscientist John Tuthill has been studying these creatures since he first came across them in 2016. He's found that not only can they survive in the cold, but if one of their limbs starts to freeze, they can self-amputate and pop it right off. That buys the snow fly time to find a mate and make...
Jan 05, 2024•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast In celebration of our 1000th episode, we're wrapping our heads around big numbers. Educational neuroscientist Elizabeth Toomarian talks about why humans' evolutionarily-old brains are so bad at comprehending large quantities–like the national debt and the size of the universe–and how to better equip ourselves to understand important issues like our finances and the impacts of climate change. Interested in other ways our brains make sense of the world? Email us at shortwave@npr.org . Learn more a...
Jan 03, 2024•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ever gotten a scarlet, hot face after drinking? Or know someone who has? Many people felt it as they ring in the New Year with champagne toasts. That's because this condition, commonly called "Asian flush" or "Asian glow," affects an estimated half a BILLION people, who can't break down aldehyde toxins that build up in their bodies. But what if there's a benefit to having Asian glow? Katie Wu , a staff writer for The Atlantic , has looked into the research a theory as to why the condition might ...
Jan 01, 2024•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 2023 was filled with scientific innovation, exploration and new discoveries. A few of the biggest threads we saw unraveling this year came from the James Webb Space Telescope, the changing climate and artificial intelligence. Today, host Regina G. Barber wraps up these three areas of science news with the help of correspondent Geoff Brumfiel and All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro. Got more science news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. Listen to Short Wave on Spotify , Apple Podcasts and Googl...
Dec 29, 2023•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast As 2023 comes to a close, Short Wave teamed up with our friends at All Things Considered to round up some of our favorite stories of the year — this time, about the science behind music. First, science correspondent Rob Stein talks to researchers (and Phish's Mike Gordon) about what happens to our brains on music . Then, All Things Considered host Juana Summers and investigations correspondent Sacha Pfeiffer share a study about why lead singers, like Jeff Beck, have gotten quieter over the years...
Dec 28, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Are people ever satisfied? Two social psychologists, Ethan Ludwin-Peery and Adam Mastroianni , fell down a research rabbit hole accidentally answering a version of this very question. After conducting several studies, the pair found that when asked how things could be different, people tend to give one kind of answer, regardless of how the question is asked or how good life felt when they were asked. Short Wave 's Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber digs into the research—and how it might re...
Dec 27, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Would you survive as a doctor in The Sims 4 ? What's an appropriate amount of free food to take from a public sample station before it's greedy? And how much do clock towers affect sleep? These are the types of questions answered in the Christmas issue of The BMJ — one of the journal's most highly anticipated issues each year. And we find out the answers in this very episode. So, sit back, relax and prepare to be amused by this ghost of Christmas Past (encore). Check out what's been published so...
Dec 25, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast LED light bulbs are the future. They're better for the environment and the pocket book. But for some people, certain LEDs lights — particularly holiday lights—are also a problem. They flicker in a way that causes headaches, nausea and other discomfort. Today, we visit the "Flicker Queen" to learn why LEDs flicker — and what you can do about it. Wondering about other quirks of lighting and engineering? Email us at shortwave@npr.org – we might cover it on a future episode! Learn more about sponsor...
Dec 22, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
