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PODCAST

Science Friday

Science Friday, as heard on PRI, is a weekly discussion of the latest news in science, technology, health, and the environment hosted by Ira Flatow. Ira interviews scientists, authors, and policymakers, and listeners can call in and ask questions as well.

society & culture

All Episodes

18:39

1157: Why Hasn’t Wave Energy Gotten Its Sea Legs Yet?

Science Friday ·

2025/11/01

We've figured out how to harness renewable energy from many natural systems, like solar, wind, and geothermal power. But what about the ocean’s waves? It might seem like converting wave power into electricity on a large scale would’ve been figured out by now, but the tech is actually just getting its sea legs. Why has it been so hard to develop? And just how promising is it?Host Flora Lichtman talks with Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Jes Burns, who reported on Oregon’s massive wave energy

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30:30

1156: A Halloween Monster Mashup, And A Spooky Lakes...

Science Friday ·

2025/10/31

For Halloween, we bring you an ode to three quintessentially creepy creatures: bats, arachnids, and snakes. First, bat researcher Elena Tena joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe tracking the greater noctule bat in flight and learning that it can feed on migratory birds. Then, arachnologist Paula Cushing describes the camel spider, which is neither a camel nor a spider. And herpetologist Sara Ruane highlights one of her favorite snakes, the tiger keelback, which is both venomous and

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18:45

1155: What Happens To Your Digital Presence After You...

Science Friday ·

2025/10/30

There’s an established playbook for getting one’s affairs in order before death—create a will, name legal guardians, and so on. But there’s also a newer consideration: what will happen to our digital presences, like social media accounts, files, photos, videos, and more. So how do we manage them, and make sure we’re not turned into AI chatbots without permission? (It does happen.) Information scientist Jed Brubaker studies digital afterlives, and joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss how we can

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30:47

1151: A Lab-Grown Salmon Taste Test And More Foodie...

Science Friday ·

2025/10/24

After years of development, lab-grown fish is taste-test ready for the public. Four restaurants in the US are serving up cultivated salmon made by the company Wildtype. Producer Kathleen Davis gives Host Flora Lichtman a rundown on how Wildtype tastes, initial public perception, and the upstream battle to take cultivated meat mainstream. Plus, SciFri heads to Burlington, Vermont, where scientists are cooking up the foods of the future—including the building blocks of cell-cultured meat. Flora digs

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12:55

1148: Footage Shows How Narwhals Use Tusks To Hunt...

Science Friday ·

2025/10/21

We’re taking a polar plunge into the science of sea unicorns, also known as narwhals!Narwhals are mysterious arctic whales with long, twirly tusks protruding from their foreheads, like a creature out of a fairy tale. And it turns out that we don’t know too much about them, partly because they live so far north in the remote Arctic. An international team of researchers used drones to observe narwhals in the wild and learned new things about their behavior, including how they use their tusks to hunt

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13:04

1147: Have Astrophysicists Spotted Evidence For ‘Dark...

Science Friday ·

2025/10/20

Astrophysicists may have spotted evidence for “dark stars,” an unusual type of star that could possibly have existed in the earliest days of the universe, in data from the James Webb Space Telescope. Instead of being powered by nuclear fusion as current stars are, the controversial theory says that these ancient dark stars would have formed by mixing a huge cloud of hydrogen and helium with a type of self-annihilating dark matter. Dark stars would not have been dark—researchers believe that if they

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12:51

1135: Anthropologists Have A Bone To Pick With New...

Science Friday ·

2025/10/03

There’s fresh drama in the field of human origins! A new analysis of an ancient hominid skull from China challenges what we thought we knew about our ancestral family tree, and its timeline—at least according to the researchers who wrote the paper. The new study claims that Homo sapiens, and some of our relatives, could have emerged at least half a million years earlier than we thought. But big claims require big evidence.Anthropologist John Hawks joins Host Flora Lichtman to piece together the

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12:25

1130: Is Tylenol Use During Pregnancy Connected To...

Science Friday ·

2025/09/26

At a news conference on September 22, President Trump claimed that taking acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, during pregnancy “can be associated with a very increased risk of autism.” Many experts have pushed back on the statement, saying it’s a false claim that downplays the risks of fever during pregnancy, which Tylenol may be used to treat.Autistic people and their families also raised concerns about the language used and the premise that autism is a scourge that needs to be

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25:23

1120: The Human Obsession With Aliens Goes Way, Way Back

Science Friday ·

2025/09/12

A video shown on Capitol Hill on September 9 reportedly shows an American hellfire missile attacking and simply bouncing off a UAP (the military term for a UFO). When videos like this come out, speculation about aliens often follows. But our obsession with aliens isn’t new—and it didn’t begin with 1950s alien invasion movies like “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” or even with Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” mock news bulletins of the 1930s.As science reporter Becky Ferreira writes in her upcoming

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18:55

1118: A Photographer Captures Nature In Mind-Boggling...

Science Friday ·

2025/09/10

If you’ve flipped through an issue of National Geographic or scrolled through their social media, and caught a stunningly detailed photo of a tiny creature—like one where you can make out the hairs on a honeybee’s eyeballs, or the exact contours of a hummingbird’s forked tongue—you have probably seen the work of Anand Varma. He’s an award-winning science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab, a storytelling studio in Berkeley, California.Varma speaks with Host

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19:31

1115: How Shoddy Science Is Driving A Supplement Boom

Science Friday ·

2025/09/09

Dietary supplements are big business, with one recent estimate showing the industry is worth almost $64 billion in the United States alone. Take a casual scroll through your social media and you’ll find influencers hawking all kinds of supplements. But how effective are they? How are they regulated? And why are these “natural” remedies so appealing to millions of Americans? To size up the science and culture of supplements, Host Flora Lichtman talks with supplement researcher Pieter Cohen, and

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19:50

1117: Octopuses Use Suckers To ‘Taste’ Harmful Microbes

Science Friday ·

2025/09/08

Put on your party hat and wet suit because it is Cephalopod Week, Science Friday’s annual celebration of all things, octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. To kick things off, we’re bringing you an ode to the octopus arm. You may have heard that octopuses can use their arms to “taste” their surroundings, which they use for finding food. Now, researchers have unlocked a key mechanism in the octopus sensory system. Octopuses use their suckers to detect harmful microbes on the surface of crab shells or even

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13:46

1116: After CDC Director Is Ousted, More Senior...

Science Friday ·

2025/09/05

On August 27, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the White House fired CDC director Susan Monarez after only a month on the job. Right after she was ousted, other senior leaders resigned from the agency, including Demetre Daskalakis, an infectious disease physician and former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC. Dr. Daskalakis speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about the state of the agency and what these developments mean for public

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19:00

1114: Meet 3I/Atlas, An Object From Another Solar System

Science Friday ·

2025/09/04

Earlier this summer, astronomers discovered something strange whizzing past Jupiter: an interstellar object. Scientists named it 3I/ATLAS. It’s only the third interstellar object ever observed, and it’s due to leave the solar system by the end of the year, so the race is on to learn as much as we can about it. Host Flora Lichtman talks with astrochemist Stefanie Milam about what this object could teach us about other solar systems—and ours.And, for the past two years, researchers have been studying

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17:48

1112: The Shape-Shifting Science Of Sand Dunes

Science Friday ·

2025/09/02

In some places, sand dunes protect shorelines from the onslaught of ocean waves. In other places, the dunes themselves are on the move, and threaten human structures.Host Flora Lichtman talks with mechanical engineer Nathalie Vriend, who studies the structure of sand dunes, about what makes a heap of sand a dune, and what scientists still hope to learn about sand. Guest: Dr. Nathalie Vriend is an associate professor in mechanical engineering and leader of the Granular Flow Laboratory at the

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18:49

1111: Food Science Experts On Perfecting At-Home Ice...

Science Friday ·

2025/09/01

Summer may be winding down, but we’re not quite ready to let go of beach days, backyard cookouts, or ice cream cones. We love ice cream here at SciFri, so we’re pulling a few of our favorite ice cream science stories out of the freezer this week. Back in 2015, ice cream expert Maya Warren sat down with Host Ira Flatow to help us understand a science mystery of “unmeltable” ice cream that made the evening news in Cincinnati. That same summer, Ira spoke to Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks, and

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25:27

1110: An ER Doctor Reflects On Hurricane Katrina, 20...

Science Friday ·

2025/08/29

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, and the levees designed to protect New Orleans failed. Huge swaths of the city flooded, and 1,600 people were trapped inside Charity Hospital. Physician Erica Fisher was working in Charity’s emergency room at the time, and she and her colleagues fought for days to keep their patients alive.Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Dr. Fisher, now an emergency medicine physician at University Medical Center in New Orleans, about Hurricane Katrina

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12:38

1107: How Have Gray Wolves Fared 30 Years After...

Science Friday ·

2025/08/26

Gray wolves are native to the Rocky Mountains, but decades of hunting nearly eradicated them from the western United States by the 1940s. In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, and it’s been a conservation success story, but not a straight path out of the woods.Host Flora Lichtman digs into the last 30 years of wolves in the West with Heath Druzin, creator of the podcast “Howl,” from Boise State Public Radio and The Idaho Capital Sun. Druzin reported the podcast and

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18:34

1106: Are Food Dyes Really Bad For You?

Science Friday ·

2025/08/25

What do Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, lime Jell-O, and Kraft Creamy French Salad dressing have in common? They've all gotten a glow-up from artificial food dyes. Petroleum-based food dyes have become a target of RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—but what does science say about their effects on health? Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss is Asa Bradman, an expert in the health effects of food dyes and other things we’re exposed to in our environment. Dr. Asa Bradman is a professor of public

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18:45

1105: mRNA Vaccine For Pancreatic Cancer Continues To...

Science Friday ·

2025/08/22

This month, the Department of Health and Human Services terminated almost $500 million in mRNA vaccine development grants and contracts. While HHS has said that these cuts won't affect mRNA cancer research, some researchers have expressed concern about the impact on their ongoing work. In light of these developments, we’re revisiting a conversation from February.A team at Memorial Sloan Kettering is developing an mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer, which is notoriously difficult to treat. A few

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