New discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines — in just under 15 minutes. It's science for everyone, using a lot of creativity and a little humor. Join hosts Emily Kwong and Regina Barber for science on a different wavelength. If you're hooked, try Short Wave Plus. Your subscription supports the show and unlocks a sponsor-free feed. Learn more at plus.npr.org/shortwave
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Great Pacific Garbage Patch Podcasts
The great pacific garbage patch
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Breaking news on the environment, climate change, pollution, and endangered species. Also featuring Climate Connections, a special series on climate change co-produced by NPR and National Geographic.
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Jean-Michel Cousteau and his expedition team set sail to explore dangerous and spectacular locales across the globe to reveal the oceans' mysteries in "Jean-Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures." Find out more about this PBS series at: pbs.org/oceanadventures.
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Here’s an Idea is Tech Briefs' original podcast series features the stories behind today’s most innovative technologies and the inventors responsible for creating them.
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Each week, join Nicole Roberts as she explores the globe meeting the wildest people doing the work that truly makes the world better. From the peaks of the Himalayas to miles under the sea, everywhere we go The Global Good Podcast team is seeking out the dreamers and the doers. Send your stories to: [email protected]
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What Marsquakes Reveal About The Planet's Habitability
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Mars is known for its barren desert landscape and dry climate. But two recent studies in the journals Nature and Science go beneath the surface, exploring the interior of the red planet using seismic data from NASA’s InSight mission. And now, this data is also giving scientists a glimpse into the planet’s history – to see how Mars evolved over bill…
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For a long time, scientists have suspected that stuttering — a common speech condition that affects an estimated 1 in every 100 people — could be heritable. Despite how common it is, it's still a remarkably understudied condition. Geneticists Piper Below and Dillon Pruett were determined to fix that. With the help of 23andMe data, they recently ide…
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Stopping SSRIs Can Be Hard. Researchers Are Unsure Why
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More than 1 in 10 people in the United States take an antidepressant. And the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant are SSRIs — or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That includes drugs like Zoloft, Prozac and Lexapro. But what happens when some patients decide they want to stop taking their SSRIs? While doctors know stopping SSRIs …
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Monday night football is back! What better way to celebrate than a close look at some of the physics powering the sport? Specifically, the spiral pass. If you've ever watched part of a professional football game, you've probably seen a tight spiral pass. They're those perfect throws where the football leaves the player's hand and neatly spins as it…
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The United Nations estimates that there were over 1.5 million new cases of skin cancer in 2022. That number might have you reaching for the nearest tube of sunscreen. And it might also have you wondering what truth there is to the hype around Korean and European sunscreens. Click around online and you’ll see lots of claims about the superiority of …
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A Lock of Hair Could Rewrite Knowledge Of The Inca Empire
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The Inca Empire in South America was one of the most powerful pre-Columbian societies. It was known for the architecture of Machu Picchu, an extensive road network and a system of terraces for agriculture. The society also kept records known as khipu, which involved a system of tying knots to encode sophisticated information. Literacy in this form …
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Nature Quest: What Does Climate Change Sound Like?
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Feel like summers are hotter than they used to be? It’s not just your imagination. Climate researchers say that average annual temperatures around the country have been trending upwards for the past 50 years — and are still on the rise. But it can be hard to represent those numbers in a way that makes sense to everyday people. So Gulf States Newsro…
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Deep sea mining for rare earth elements could start as early as 2026, even as 38 countries have called for a moratorium on it. The metals that companies are targeting are used in many green technologies like electric cars and wind turbines – but mining them is destructive to the environment. Some in the mining industry say the mining is necessary t…
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Chocolate may fill grocery store shelves around the world, but the raw product that powers chocolate is far more selective. The majority of chocolate farms are found in West Africa and South America – just 20 degrees north or south of the equator. Each farm produces chocolate of a different flavor. Some cocoa tastes fruitier; others, more floral. N…
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Thirty years ago, park rangers reintroduced grey wolves into Yellowstone National Park. They wanted to restore the ecosystem and get the elk population, which had decimated the plant community, in check. And it worked – or so the popular narrative suggests. But is it really so simple? Today on the show, we explore how the Yellowstone ecosystem has …
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Imagine, you’re a toxic toad hanging around South America. No other animals are gonna mess with you, right? After all, you’re ~toxic~! So if anyone tries to eat you, they’ll be exposed to something called a cardiotonic steroid — and may die of a heart attack. Well, unfortunately, for you, some animals have developed adaptations to these toxic stero…
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Sea Camp: Why Scientists Want To Map The Entire Seafloor
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Scientists have mapped less than 30% of the world's seafloor. Experts say that getting that number up to 100% would improve everything from tsunami warnings to the Internet and renewable energy. That's why there's currently a global effort to create a full, detailed map of the seabed by 2030. On today's Sea Camp episode, we talk to Dawn Wright, a m…
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Alive Or Not Alive... Is A Tricky Question
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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, developmen…
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Neurotic, anxious robots like C-3P0 from Star Wars' C-3P0 and Marvin from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are a staple of science fiction — but they're not as common in the real world. Most of the time, the chatbots and artificial intelligence "robots" we encounter are programmed to be extraverted, confident and cheerful. But what if that chan…
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Why Gene-Edited Babies May Be Closer Than Ever
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A Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, made a shocking announcement to the world in 2018: He had secretly engineered the birth of the first gene-edited babies. The birth of the twins was seen as reckless and unethical by the scientific community. That’s because, among other things, the CRISPR gene-editing technique Jiankui used was so new. NPR science co…
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Sea Camp: Did Life Start In Hydrothermal Vents?
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How did life start on Earth? The answer is a big scientific mystery scientists are actively investigating. After talking with many scientists, host Regina G. Barber found that an abundance of water on Earth is most likely key, in some way, to the origin of life — specifically, in either deep sea hydrothermal vents or in tide pools. It's for this re…
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Why Do Some 80 Year-Olds Have Extraordinary Memories?
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The human brain tends to slow down as we age — even healthy brains shrink. That can make learning and memory harder as people age. But some people’s brains shrink more slowly than their peers. This lucky group is called “SuperAgers.” They’re people aged 80 or older. But they have the memory abilities of someone 50-to-60 years old. This week in the …
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Every September, the small town of La Junta, Colorado puts on a whole festival to celebrate a beloved local animal: the tarantula! Around this time of year, thousands of mature male tarantulas start to migrate en masse – but until recently, scientists didn’t know what triggered them to move out of their cozy burrows. On today’s show, biologist Dall…
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'Zombie' Cells Could Explain Aging — And Help Scientists Slow It
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It’s no secret that stress isn’t good for you. But just how bad is it? Well, in the last few decades, scientists have linked psychological stress to changes in our DNA that look a lot like what happens on the molecular level as we age. Today on the show, host Regina G. Barber talks to freelance science journalist Diana Kwon about the latest researc…
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The bathypelagic zone of the ocean is 1,000 to 4,000 meters below the surface. Sometimes it's called the midnight zone because it's too deep for sunlight to reach. Most animals here are much smaller than their shallow-water counterparts. But occasionally, researchers find the rare deep sea giant: giant isopods, giant squids, colossal squids, sea sp…
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Climate Change Is Here For Your Chocolate
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Last year, we reported how extreme weather events may be dwindling the future of chocolate. Just last week, we saw an inkling of that: The Hershey Company announced it would significantly raise the cost of its candy in the face of historically high cocoa prices. So, we're revisiting host Emily Kwong's conversation with Yasmin Tayag, a food, health …
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Climate Change Is Here For Your Chocolate
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Last year, we reported how extreme weather events may be dwindling the future of chocolate. Just last week, we saw an inkling of that: The Hershey Company announced it would significantly raise the cost of its candy in the face of historically high cocoa prices. So, we're revisiting host Emily Kwong's conversation with Yasmin Tayag, a food, health …
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Why Illusions Are A Brain Feature, Not A Bug
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A grayscale ballerina who appears to be moving. A human who can fit in a doll box. A black-and-white prism that appears to change shape when viewed from three different directions. Those are the top winners of the 2024 Best Illusion of the Year Contest, open to illusion makers around the world and co-created by neuroscientist Susana Martinez-Conde.…
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This Underwater Sculpture Garden Protects Italian Fishing Grounds
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Mermaids, giants and huge eyes look up from the waters near Talamone, Italy. It's one fisherman's way of protecting fishing grounds from the damage of trawling nets. Artists' sculptures are sunk to the bottom of the Mediterranean sea along with concrete blocks to break the nets of the trawlers that devastate marine life. Learn more about sponsor me…
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Nature Quest: Are Summers Getting Hotter?
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Much of the country is deep in the middle of a heat wave right now. And every summer, Duane Stilwell's town in Arizona seems to get hotter. It has him worried — and he's not the only one. Since 1980, the average number of heat waves in the U.S has doubled and the average length of a heat wave season has increased from 40 days to 70. Future summers,…
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Nature Quest: Are Summers Getting Hotter?
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Much of the country is deep in the middle of a heat wave right now. And every summer, Duane Stilwell's town in Arizona seems to get hotter. It has him worried — and he's not the only one. Since 1980, the average number of heat waves in the U.S has doubled and the average length of a heat wave season has increased from 40 days to 70. Future summers,…
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Sea Camp: The Largest Daily Migration On Earth
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The twilight zone of the ocean is a mysterious place. At 200-1000 meters below the surface, it's a tough place to study. That's why, during World War II, people reading sonograms from this zone were perplexed when it looked as if the ocean floor was moving up. Every day. And then back down again before dawn. In this latest installment of Sea Camp, …
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