Across the animal kingdom, menopause is something of an evolutionary blip. We humans are one of the few animals to experience it. But Sam Ellis , a researcher in animal behavior, argues that this isn't so surprising. "The best way to propagate your genes is to get as many offspring as possible into the next generation," says Ellis. "The best way to do that is almost always to reproduce your whole life." So how did menopause evolve? The answer may lie in whales. Ellis and his team at the Universi...
Mar 22, 2024•10 min•Ep 1039•Transcript available on Metacast The number of newborns born with syphilis – a serious sexually transmitted infection – has skyrocketed 755% from 2012 to 2021. These babies have congenital syphilis, which is when the infection is passed from mother to baby during pregnancy. It can have dire consequences if left untreated. The surge has left medical professionals and public health leaders scrambling for solutions to stop the spread. Today on the show, Chicago based journalist Indira Khera talks to Emily Kwong about what's behind...
Mar 20, 2024•13 min•Ep 1038•Transcript available on Metacast When Shohini Ghose was studying physics as a kid, she heard certain names repeated over and over. "Einstein, Newton, Schrodinger ... they're all men." Shohini wanted to change that — so she decided to write a book about some of the women scientists missing from her grade school physics textbooks. It's called Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe . This episode, she talks to Short Wave host Regina G. Barber about uncovering the women physicists she adm...
Mar 18, 2024•13 min•Ep 1037•Transcript available on Metacast Nuclear fusion could one day change the world by producing energy at lower costs than we generate it now — without greenhouse gas emissions or long-term nuclear waste. If we can get it to work. People have been promising nuclear fusion as a new, clean source of power for decades without much tangible success. But lately, billions of dollars from venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs have flowed into the field. Science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel shares his reporting on some of the companie...
Mar 15, 2024•13 min•Ep 1036•Transcript available on Metacast "Long COVID has affected every part of my life," said Virginia resident Rachel Beale said at a recent Senate hearing. "I wake up every day feeling tired, nauseous and dizzy. I immediately start planning when I can lay down again." Beale is far from alone. Many of her experiences have been echoed by others dealing with long COVID. It's a constellation of debilitating symptoms that range from brain fog and intense physical fatigue to depression and anxiety. But there's new, promising research that...
Mar 13, 2024•13 min•Ep 1035•Transcript available on Metacast Coming down from the buzz of the Oscars, we're taking a look at Christopher Nolan's award-winning film 'Oppenheimer.' It chronicles the life and legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the first director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and the so-called "Father of the Atomic Bomb." The movie does not shy away from science — and neither do we. We talked to current scientists at Los Alamos about the past and present science of nuclear weapons like the atomic bomb. Read more about the Manhattan Project....
Mar 11, 2024•12 min•Ep 1034•Transcript available on Metacast Neuroscientist Nathan Sawtell has spent a lot of time studying the electric elephantnose fish. These fish send and decipher weak electric signals, which Sawtell hopes will eventually help neuroscientists better understand how the brain filters sensory information about the outside world. As Sawtell has studied these electric critters, he's had a lingering question: why do they always seem to organize themselves in a particular orientation. At first, he couldn't figure out why, but a new study re...
Mar 08, 2024•9 min•Ep 1033•Transcript available on Metacast The Voyager 1 space probe is the farthest human-made object in space. It launched in 1977 with a golden record on board that carried assorted sounds of our home planet: greetings in many different languages, dogs barking, and the sound of two people kissing, to name but a few examples. The idea with this record was that someday, Voyager 1 might be our emissary to alien life – an audible time capsule of Earth's beings. Since its launch, it also managed to complete missions to Jupiter and Saturn. ...
Mar 06, 2024•12 min•Ep 1032•Transcript available on Metacast Recently, the US Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its-kind cancer therapy to treat aggresive forms of skin cancer. It has us thinking of the long history of cancer. One of the first recorded mentions of cancer appears in an ancient Egyptian text from around 3000 B.C. And although we now know much more about how cancer begins — as a series of mutations in someone's DNA — it's a disease people are still grappling with how to cure cancers today. This episode, cancer epidemiologist M...
Mar 04, 2024•14 min•Ep 1031•Transcript available on Metacast The sci-fi film Dune: Part Two is out in theaters now. The movie takes place on the harsh desert planet, Arrakis, where water is scarce and giant, killer sandworms lurk just beneath the surface. But what do planetary scientists and biologists think about the science of these worms, Arrakis and our other favorite sci-fi planets? Today on the show, Regina G. Barber talks to biologist (and Star Trek consultant!) Mohamed Noor and planetary scientist Michael Wong about Dune , habitable planets and ho...
Mar 01, 2024•14 min•Ep 1030•Transcript available on Metacast According to the United Nations , about ten percent of the world is undernourished. It's a daunting statistic — unless your name is Hannah Ritchie. She's the data scientist behind the new book Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet . It's a seriously big thought experiment: How do we feed everyone on Earth sustainably? And because it's just as much an economically pressing question as it is a scientific one, Darian Woods of The Indicator from P...
Feb 28, 2024•11 min•Ep 1029•Transcript available on Metacast An Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos can be considered "extrauterine children" under state law has major implications for how in vitro fertilization, commonly called IVF, is performed. Since the first successful in vitro fertilization pregnancy and live birth in 1978, nearly half a million babies have been born using IVF in the United States. Reproductive endocrinologist Amanda Adeleye explains the science behind IVF, the barriers to accessing it and her concerns about fertility t...
Feb 26, 2024•13 min•Ep 1028•Transcript available on Metacast In the green tree canopies of forested areas in Myanmar, you might wake up to the sounds of gibbons singing love songs. Gibbons start their day with passionate duets and, though these love songs may sound a little different than the ones in your playlists, they just helped researchers figure out that Myanmar has the largest population of an endangered gibbon species on Earth. They're called skywalker gibbons , and until recently, scientists thought there were fewer than 200 of them – all living ...
Feb 23, 2024•9 min•Ep 1027•Transcript available on Metacast 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 
