Ig Nobel Prizes, Koji Alchemy. Nov 27, 2020, Part 2
Laugh Along At Home With The Ig Nobel Awards We know traditions are different this year. Maybe you’re having a small family dinner instead of a huge gathering. Maybe you’re just hopping on a video call instead of going over the river and through the woods. At Science Friday, our holiday tradition of broadcasting highlights from the annual Ig Nobel Awards ceremony is different this year too. Ra...
48m Nov 27, 2020
48m
Your Cheese’s Microbiome, COVID Reinfection Questions, Future Of Meat. Nov 27, 2020, Part 1
Can You Get COVID-19 More Than Once? SciFri producer Elah Feder’s friend tested positive for antibodies a few months ago—but last month, she developed COVID-19 symptoms again. So far, only a handful of cases of COVID reinfection have been confirmed, but we don’t yet know the true rates (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/covid-reinfection/) . Cases could be missed if the first or second in...
47m Nov 27, 2020
47m
Roman Mars, Disinformation, Ancient Female Big Game Hunters. Nov 20, 2020, Part 2
Exploring The Invisible Architecture Of Cities With Roman Mars On a walk through your city or town, there are all sorts of sights and sounds to take in—big buildings, parks and patches of green space, roaring vehicles, and people strolling around. But according to Roman Mars, host of the 99% Invisible podcast, you need to look at the smaller, often unseen details to decode what’s really going ...
48m Nov 20, 2020
48m
Famous Arecibo Observatory Decommissioned, Biden’s Climate Change Plan. Nov 20, 2020, Part 1
Puerto Rico's Famous Arecibo Observatory Decommissioned The astronomical observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, has been standing since 1963. It has weathered hurricanes, earthquakes, and time itself. But in August, a large cable—holding up one of three towers that help suspend the telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform above the collecting dish—slipped out of its socket. It fell into the dish be...
49m Nov 20, 2020
49m
Body Temperature, COVID Vaccines, Dog Genomics. Nov 13, 2020, Part 2
Our Average Body Temperature Is Getting Cooler We’ve all been getting our temperature checked on the regular these days. Most restaurants and businesses have been scanning peoples’ foreheads with thermometer guns to check for signs of fever as a safety precaution for COVID-19. We’ve been told that our temperature should be around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (or 37 degrees Celsius), the “normal” hu...
49m Nov 13, 2020
49m
Biden’s COVID Transition Team, Election Drug Policy Reform. Nov 13, 2020, Part 1
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 President Trump and his allies continue to push unsubstantiated claims of election misdeeds—with no evidence—the Biden transition team is moving into action.  This week, as coronavirus cases spike alarmingly around the country, the president-elect...
49m Nov 13, 2020
49m
Climate Policy And The Election, COVID Winter Forecast, Murder Hornets. Nov 6, 2020, Part 1
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, and identified the first COVID-19 patients. On January 21, the first U.S. COVID-19 case was confirmed in Washington State. And new record highs for cases were set this week.  Since March, just about every country in the world has tried to get a h...
48m Nov 06, 2020
48m
Ancient Algae, COVID Holidays, Accessible Pregnancy Test. Nov 6, 2020, Part 2
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 of near global darkness for almost two years. Scientists think a majority of land species went extinct during that time, but what was going on in the planet’s oceans? And how were these ecosystems able to bounce back?  In a new paper (https://ad...
48m Nov 06, 2020
48m
Book Club Finale, Floating Nuclear Plants. Oct 30, 2020, Part 2
Pushing Boundaries In Fantastical Fiction The Science Friday Book Club has spent all of October immersed in short stories by Indigenous (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/book-club-launch/) , Black (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/book-club-afrofuturism/) , Chicanx (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/book-club-colonization/)  and South Asian (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segme...
48m Oct 30, 2020
48m
Science And The Election, Disinformation, Vampire Bats. Oct 30, 2020, Part 1
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 ballot. In some states, people will be casting votes on propositions that influence scientific research and the environment. While in other local elections, candidates with scientific backgrounds are in the running for public office. Jeffrey Mervis of...
48m Oct 30, 2020
48m
Should We Trust Election Forecasting, COVID Dreams. Oct 23, 2020, Part 1
The first “scientific” election poll was conducted in 1936 by George Gallup, who correctly predicted that Franklin D. Roosevelt would win the presidential election. Since Gallup, our appetite for polls and forecasts has only grown, but watching the needle too closely might have some unintended side effects. Solomon Messing, chief scientist at ACRONYM, a political digital strategy nonprofit, te...
47m Oct 23, 2020
47m
Teaching in a Pandemic, Inheriting Stress, Book Club. Oct 23, 2020, Part 2
Even In A Pandemic, Science Class Is In Session This academic year, school campuses across the United States look very different. Instead of crowded hallways and bustling classrooms, students are spaced six feet apart, sometimes behind plastic barriers, while others are at home on camera in a video call. Since some states do not weigh in on school operations, communities witnessed a myriad of ...
48m Oct 23, 2020
48m
U.S. COVID Spikes, Blockchain Chicken Farm, Book Club: Chicanafuturism. Oct 16, 2020, Part 2
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 numbers as we head into fall (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/wisconsin-wyoming-coronavirus/) .  In rural Wyoming, there have been over 8,100 cases, with 57 deaths to date. More populated Wisconsin has seen over 167,000 cases—and recently...
47m Oct 16, 2020
47m
The Black Hole At The Center Of The Galaxy, Shipwreck Microbes. Oct 16, 2020, Part 1
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 Genzel. Ghez, also the fourth woman to ever win the Physics prize, won for her 1998 work that resolved a decades-old debate among astronomers: What lurks at the difficult-to-observe heart of the Milky Way? (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/ce...
47m Oct 16, 2020
47m
Science News, Nobel Roundup, Book Club. Oct 9, 2020, Part 1
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 admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.  This Tuesday, he left the hospital and returned to the White House. And many questions still remain (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/trump-covid-19-status/) . Reporter Umair Irfan dis...
47m Oct 09, 2020
47m
Solar System Smackdown: Mars v. Venus, Mussel Mystery. Oct 9, 2020, Part 2
Solar System Smackdown: Mars Vs. Venus One of the fiercest hunts in the solar system is the scientific search for signs of extraterrestrial life—whether that’s in a methane ocean on Titan, under the icy crusts of Europa or Enceladus, in newly discovered subsurface salty lakes of Mars or, in the case of hypothetical long-dead fossils, in the rocks of ancient Martian river deltas. But just as t...
47m Oct 09, 2020
47m
Antarctic Ice, Itching, Ancient Birds. Oct. 2, 2020, Part 2
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 Gulf, the climate crisis is intensifying. Sea ice is melting in the Arctic, and the ice sheets covering Antarctica are shrinking.  Now, researchers have released the results of a study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2727-5)  using ...
48m Oct 02, 2020
48m
Trump Tests Positive For Coronavirus, COVID-19 Fact Check, SciFri Book Club. Oct. 2, 2020, Part 1
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 before 1 a.m. ET, the president tweeted that “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” Sean Conley, the White House physician, confirmed the...
47m Oct 02, 2020
47m
Feather Communication, Thermal Imaging Wildfires, Tick Saliva. September 25, 2020, Part 2
Thermal Imaging Technology Helps Firefighters See Through Smoke Wildfires are still raging out west (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/thermal-imaging-smoke/) , and states are using anything in their arsenals to fight back. This year, for the first time, Oregon’s Department of Forestry is using thermal imaging technology to see through thick smoke to the fires below. The state’s firefight...
47m Sep 25, 2020
47m
Indigenous Fire Management, Oliver Sacks Film. September 25, 2020, Part 1
Down a long, single-lane road in the most northern part of California is Karuk territory—one of the largest Indigenous tribes in the state. It’s here that Bill Tripp’s great-grandmother, who was born in the 1800s, taught him starting as a 4-year-old how to burn land on purpose. “She took me outside—she was over 100 years old—and walked up the hill with her walker,” Tripp recalled, “and handed ...
47m Sep 25, 2020
47m
SciFri Extra: After 20 Years, The ‘Cosmic Crisp’ Has Landed
This fall, there’s a new apple all around town. After 20 years of development, the Cosmic Crisp has landed. Today, we're bringing you an episode of another podcast called The Sporkful (http://www.sporkful.com/) . They’re a James Beard Award-winning show that uses food as a lens to talk about science, history, race, culture, and the ideal way to layer the components of a PB&J.  This episode is...
33m Sep 21, 2020
33m
Nursing Homes, Volcano Science. Sept 18, 2020, Part 2
America’s Elder Care Has A Problem Since the pandemic began, long-term care facilities across the country have experienced some of its worst effects: One of the first major outbreaks in the U.S. began in a nursing home in Washington state. Since then, the virus has ravaged through care centers across the country—as of September 16, more than 479,000 people (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
47m Sep 18, 2020
47m
West Coast Fires, Sen. Ed Markey, Deafness Cures. Sept 18, 2020, Part 1
Peak wildfire season is just beginning on the West Coast, but 2020 is already another unprecedented year. In California, more than 2.2 million acres have burned so far this year, beating an all-time record of 1.6 million set just two years ago. And in the Pacific Northwest, where Portland’s air quality hit the worst in the world on Monday, raging fires have produced never-before-seen poor air q...
48m Sep 18, 2020
48m
Medium Black Holes, World of Wonders, Warsaw Typhus. Sept 11, 2020, Part 2
Why A Medium-Sized Black Hole Is Surprising Physicists If you’re looking for a black hole (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/medium-black-hole/) , they normally come in two sizes. There’s the basic model, in which a large, dying star collapses in on itself, and the gravity of its core pulls in other matter. Then there are the supermassive black holes, millions of times the mass of our sun...
47m Sep 11, 2020
47m
The Wonders of Moss, Clean. Sept 11, 2020, Part 1
These Moss Are Living Their Best Life—Under Rocks Desert mosses live a much different life (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/moss/) than their cousins in lush, water-rich forests. In fact, they spend most of their time dormant: dried out, waiting for the rare rainfall to bring them to life so they can grow and reproduce. Once exposed to water, though, these same mosses can re-animate qui...
47m Sep 11, 2020
47m
Fact Check Your Feed, Climate And Fungi, Cells Solve A Maze. September 4, 2020, Part 2
Can Fungus Survive Climate Change? One of the most extensive global networks for sharing information and moving around essential nutrients is hidden from us—but it’s right below our feet.  Networks of fungi often connect trees and plants to one another. But scientists are just starting to untangle what these fungal connections look like, and how important they are. Mycologist Christopher Fern...
47m Sep 04, 2020
47m
Urban Forests And Climate Change, HIV Treatment Progress. September 4, 2020, Part 1
New York City’s skyline is dominated by tall skyscrapers—but there’s a surprising amount of forest in the city known as a concrete jungle. Tree canopy actually covers about 20% of the city. In fact, woodlands are one of the few natural resources the city has. Reporter Clarisa Diaz, in collaboration with John Upton from Climate Central, shares how the city’s green spaces, both large and small, ...
47m Sep 04, 2020
47m
Milky Way Gas, COVID Ventilation, Immunotherapy And The Microbiome. August 28, 2020, Part 2
Recently, a group of scientists studying the Milky Way through the world’s largest ground-based radio telescope identified something they had never seen—a cold, dense gas that had been ejected at high speed from the galaxy’s center (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/milky-way-gas/) . The mystery of this gas—what caused it, how it could move so fast, and where it will end up—prompted resea...
47m Aug 28, 2020
47m
Coronavirus Immunity, Ask A Cephalopod Scientist. August 28, 2020, Part 1
How well you fare in fighting a new pathogen like SARS-CoV2 depends in large part on how your immune system responds to—and kills—the virus. The immune system’s job is to protect you from invasions, both right after you’re infected as well as when you encounter similar viruses in the future. As the pandemic marches on, we still don’t know exactly how our immune systems tackle this virus. The p...
47m Aug 28, 2020
47m
Pregnancy And Coronavirus, Good News For Corals. August 21, 2020, Part 1
There’s no guidebook for how to have a baby during a pandemic. Experiences like having loved ones present at the delivery, or inviting grandparents over to meet a newborn have not been an option for everyone during this time. Lockdowns across the U.S., and varying procedures at hospitals and clinics, have created a whole new set of limitations and concerns for new parents. Many new parents are...
48m Aug 21, 2020
48m
Iowa Derecho, Showering And Hygiene, Parasites. August 21, 2020, Part 2
Dealing With The Aftermath Of Iowa’s Devastating Derecho  It’s been more than a week since the state of Iowa was hit by a surprise visitor: a line of thunderstorms with unusual power and duration, known as a derecho. The storms swept from South Dakota to Ohio in the course of a day. At its most powerful, the derecho hit Iowa’s Linn County and surroundings with hurricane-force winds amid the ra...
48m Aug 21, 2020
48m
Contraceptive Access, Robot Bias, Story Structure. August 14, 2020, Part 2
Roboticists, like other artificial intelligence researchers, are concerned about how bias affects our relationship with machines that are supposed to help us. But what happens when the bias is not in the machine itself, but in the people trying to use it? Ayanna Howard, a roboticist at Georgia Tech, went looking to see if the “gender” of a robot, whether it was a female-coded robotic assistant...
48m Aug 14, 2020
48m
Faster COVID-19 Testing, Hell Ants. August 14, 2020, Part 1
Throughout the pandemic, testing has continued to be one of the biggest issues, particularly in the United States. Some scientists say that the solution is to rethink our COVID-19 testing strategy, focusing on making faster, cheaper tests. While these more cost-effective tests may be lower in sensitivity than the PCR tests and perhaps not as accurate, they would allow for more people to get tes...
47m Aug 14, 2020
47m
SciFri en Español: El Río Hirviente De Perú Tiene Más De Lo Que El Ojo Ve
En el verano del 2019, Rosa Vásquez Espinoza bioquímica y candidata a Ph.D. en la Universidad de Michigan Ann Arbor, fue en una expedición al Río Hirviente en la Amazonía peruana para colectar microbios. Ahora, está tratando de comprender el papel que juegan los microbios en la creación de productos naturales, y cómo esa maquinaria se podría utilizar más adelante para manufacturar posibles medi...
21m Aug 12, 2020
21m
The End of Everything, Bright Fluorescence, Gene Editing a Squid. August 7, 2020, Part 2
When it comes to the eventual end of our universe, cosmologists have a few classic theories: the Big Crunch, where the universe reverses its expansion and contracts again, setting the stars themselves on fire in the process. Or the Big Rip, where the universe expands forever—but in a fundamentally unstable way that tears matter itself apart. Or it might be heat death, in which matter and energy...
47m Aug 07, 2020
47m
Biden Climate Plan, Boiling River. August 7, 2020, Part 1
Last month, former Vice President Joe Biden unveiled his plan for climate change—a sweeping $2 trillion dollar platform (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/bidens-climate-plan/) that aims to tighten standards for clean energy, decarbonize the electrical grid by 2035, and reach carbon neutrality for the whole country by 2050. Biden’s plan, like the Green New Deal, purports to create millions...
47m Aug 07, 2020
47m
COVID In Prisons, How Sperm Swim. July 31, 2020, Part 2
As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread, it’s become clear certain populations are particularly at risk—including those serving sentences in prisons and jails (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/prisons-coronavirus/) . The virus has torn through correctional and detention centers across the U.S., with more than 78,000 incarcerated people testing positive for COVID-19 as of July 28, according to...
48m Jul 31, 2020
48m
Science In Space, Sports and COVID, Science Diction. July 31, 2020, Part 1
Astronauts have conducted all sorts of experiments in the International Space Station—from observations of microgravity on the human to body to growing space lettuce. But recently, cosmonauts bioengineered human cartilage cells into 3D structures aboard the station, using a device that utilizes magnetic levitation.  The results were recently published in the journal Science Advances. Electrica...
47m Jul 31, 2020
47m
SciFri Extra: The Origin Of The Word 'Ketchup'
Science Diction (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/science-diction) is back! This time around, the team is investigating the science, language, and history of food. First up: Digging into America's favorite condiment, ketchup! At the turn of the 20th century, 12 young men sat in the basement of the Department of Agriculture, eating meals with a side of borax, salicylic acid, or formaldehyde...
19m Jul 28, 2020
19m
Three Missions To Mars, COVID Fact Check, Solar Probes. July 24, 2020, Part 1
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, your news feed is likely still overflowing with both breaking research and rumors. Virologist Angela Rasmussen of Columbia University joins Ira once again to Fact Check Your Feed (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/coronavirus-antibodies/) , discussing everything from two vaccine trials’ hopeful early results to what antibody production might mean for long...
49m Jul 24, 2020
49m
Long-Term COVID Effects, Dicamba and Agriculture, Mosquitoes. July 24, 2020, Part 2
Since the beginning of the pandemic, hospitals have been treating and triaging an influx of COVID-19 patients. Hundreds of thousands of seriously ill patients have been hospitalized, with some having to stay and receive care for months at a time.   But now as some of those patients return home, hospitals are opening post-COVID clinics to help with their transition. Health care professionals ar...
48m Jul 24, 2020
48m
How Brains Organize Smells, Plant Evolution In Art, New Hearing Aids. July 17, 2020, Part 2
How we smell has been a bit of a mystery to scientists. Other senses are easier to understand: For example, it’s possible to predict what a color will look like based on its wavelength. But predicting what a new molecule will smell like is more difficult. Our sense of smell can be quite complex. Take the delicious smell of morning coffee—that aroma is made up of more than 800 individual molecu...
47m Jul 18, 2020
47m
Coronavirus And Schools, New Mars Rover. July 17, 2020, Part 1
As we approach August, many of our young listeners and their parents are starting to think about going back to school. Usually, that might mean getting new notebooks and pencils, and the excitement of seeing classmates after a summer apart. But COVID-19 makes this upcoming school year different. Big districts, including Los Angeles and San Diego public schools, will be completely remote this f...
47m Jul 17, 2020
47m
Great Indoors, Science Museums, Who Owns The Sky. July 10, 2020, Part 2
A whole lot of folks’ summer plans have been cut short this season. Maybe you were planning a family road trip to visit a national park. Or your local science museum. Now, you can watch from home, as Emily Graslie, executive producer, host, and writer for the PBS series “Prehistoric Road Trip (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/emily-graslie-roadtrip/) ,” takes us along for the ride to some...
47m Jul 10, 2020
47m
Degrees of Change: Changing Behavior. July 10, 2020, Part 1
Over the past months, our Degrees of Change (https://www.sciencefriday.com/spotlights/degrees-of-change/)  series has looked at some of the many ways our actions affect the climate, and how our changing climate is affecting us—from the impact of the fashion industry on global emissions (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/doc-climate-and-fashion/)  to the ways in which coastal communities ar...
46m Jul 10, 2020
46m
Summer Science Books, Naked Mole Rats. July 3, 2020, Part 2
The pandemic has nixed many summer vacation plans, but our summer science book list will help you still escape. While staying socially distant, you can take a trip to the great outdoors to unlock the mysteries of bird behaviors. Or instead of trekking to a museum, you can learn about the little-known history of lightbulbs, clocks, and other inventions. Our guests Stephanie Sendaula and Sarah O...
47m Jul 03, 2020
47m
Making The Outdoors Great For Everyone. July 3, 2020, Part 1
It’s the start to a holiday weekend, which often means spending time outdoors, whether that’s going to the beach, on a hike, or grilling in a park. But not everyone feels safe enjoying the great outdoors—and we’re not talking about getting mosquito bites or sunburns. In late May, a white woman, Amy Cooper, called the police on a Black bird watcher who asked her to leash her dog. This incident ...
48m Jul 03, 2020
48m
Honeybee Health, Assessing COVID Risk, Seeing Numbers. June 26, 2020, Part 2
This past year was a strange one for beekeepers. According to a survey from the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership, U.S. beekeepers lost more than 40% of their honey bee colonies between April of 2019 and April of 2020. That’s significantly more than normal. (https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/bees-in-trouble/) The Bee Informed Partnership has surveyed professional and amateur beekeepers f...
47m Jun 26, 2020
47m
Checking In On Kids’ Mental Health During the Pandemic. June 26, 2020, Part 1
In the U.S., we’re heading into the fourth month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing and lockdowns have taken a toll on everyone’s mental and emotional well-being—including children and teens, many of whom may be having trouble processing what’s going on.  Psychologists Archana Basu and Robin Gurwitch discuss the unique issues the pandemic brings up for children and teens. They talk ab...
47m Jun 26, 2020
47m
SciFri Extra: A Pragmatic Wishlist For AI Ethics
Earlier this month, three major tech companies (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/amazon-ibm-and-microsoft-wont-say-which-police-departments) publicly distanced themselves from the facial recognition tools used by police: IBM said they would stop all such research, while Amazon and Microsoft said they would push pause on any plans to give facial recognition technology to dom...
17m Jun 24, 2020
17m