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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

48:26

621: Placebo Effect, Technoableism, Florida Citrus,...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/29

The Science Behind The Placebo Effect Earlier this month, a Food and Drug Administration panel concluded that a common decongestant ingredient used in drugs like Sudafed and NyQuil doesn’t work. The panel agreed that while the ingredient, called phenylephrine, isn’t dangerous, it doesn’t work any better than a placebo. That made us wonder: How well do placebos work? And why do they work even when people know they’re getting a placebo? Ted J. Kaptchuk, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School

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50:06

620: Vision and the Brain, Jellypalooza. Sept 29,...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/29

After 7 Years, NASA Gets Its Asteroid Sample About a week ago, space nerds got the delivery of a lifetime: a sample from Bennu, an asteroid soaring through the galaxy, currently about 200 million miles away. The capsule of rocks and dust came courtesy of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid. Scientists hope it’ll help unveil some of the mysteries of our universe, like how the sun and planets came to exist or how life began. Guest host and musician Dessa

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48:05

619: Ocean Climate Solutions, Florida Corals, Climate...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/22

Florida’s Reefs Are Vanishing. Can Scientists Save Them? This was a bad year for Florida’s coral reefs. Since the 1970s, reef cover in the Florida Keys has decreased by 90%. Those remaining reefs have been subjected to water temperatures higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, alongside other threats like disease and ocean acidification. This is a big problem for the largest reef in the continental U.S., which plays an important role in protecting the shorelines from erosion and storms. Scientists are

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47:52

618: Our Fragile Moment, Climate Comedy. Sept 22,...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/22

A Week Of Climate Protests, Meetings, Pledges, And Action Climate Week NYC is wrapping up, where hundreds of events took place across the city (including one from Science Friday), all with the goal of encouraging conversation and action around our climate crisis. The weeklong event takes place alongside the UN General Assembly meeting, where world leaders discussed climate change, alongside other topics, including the war in Ukraine and universal health coverage. While President Biden emphasized the

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48:24

617: New Covid Vaccine, Moroccan Earthquake, Native...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/15

New COVID Boosters Arrive Amid Rise In Infections This past week, the FDA and CDC recommended new COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for anyone over the age of six months. They’re expected to be in larger pharmacies by the end of the week. It’s welcome news for some, as cases have ticked up over the summer, accompanied by higher hospital admissions and deaths. The boosters join a suite of other vaccines to combat respiratory illness this fall, including this year’s flu shot and the new RSV

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47:41

616: Radioactive Wildlife, Bus Stop Heat, Football...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/15

Astronomers Find Exoplanet That May Be Covered In Water Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope made an exciting discovery this week: Exoplanet K2-18 b, 120 light years away from our solar system, could be covered by a water ocean, similar to Earth. Astronomers say this could be a big leap in our exploration of life on other planets. This news comes amid another JWST discovery: The earliest black holes seem to be much larger than black holes today. This news also provides evidence that black

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47:38

615: Tree Soil, Rodent Biologist, Soundscape Artist....

Science Friday ·

2023/09/08

Where Soil Grows Above The Trees You might be used to the feeling of Earth under your feet, but did you know that there’s soil high above your head? Way up in the treetops, where ferns, mosses, flowers, and even trees grow on top of the forest. A new study in Geoderma describes the factors that contribute to how canopy soil is formed. Ira talks with lead author Jessica Murray, an ecologist and PhD candidate at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. They discuss the importance of canopy soil, what we

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47:50

614: Embryo Model, Sweat, Whale Vocal Fry. September...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/08

Scientists Develop Human Embryo Model Without Sperm Or Eggs This week, research published in the journal Nature detailed a model of a 14-day old human embryo created without using sperm or eggs. The hope is to shine a light into a previously unavailable window of an embryo’s development, potentially helping to better understand miscarriages and side effects of medications taken during pregnancy. Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, climate and energy reporter at MIT Technology Review to talk about that

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48:18

613: An AI for Smell, Heat and Agricultural Workers,...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/01

What’s That Smell? An AI Nose Knows If you want to predict the color of something, you can talk about wavelengths of light. Light with a wavelength of around 460 nanometers is going to look blue. If you want to predict what something sounds like, frequencies can be a guide—a frequency of around 261 Hertz should sound like the musical note middle C. Predicting smells is more difficult. While we know that many sulfur-containing molecules tend to fall somewhere in the ‘rotten egg’ or ‘skunky’ category,

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47:53

612: US Surgeon General On Mental Health, Tracking...

Science Friday ·

2023/09/01

What To Expect From Hurricane Season We’re approaching the peak of hurricane season, which is usually around mid-September. It’s that time of year when it feels like there’s a new storm every week, and we blow through the alphabet trying to name them. This week, Hurricane Idalia made landfall around Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 3 storm, which caused a few fatalities, left hundreds of thousands of people without power, and some without homes. So what do we know about Idalia, and what can we

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47:59

611: Old Things Considered: La Brea, Megalodon, Dino...

Science Friday ·

2023/08/25

How Early Humans May Have Transformed L.A.’s Landscape Forever Join us on a time traveling adventure, as we go back 15,000 years to visit what’s now southern California. During the last Ice Age, saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, and dire wolves prowled the landscape, until … they didn’t. The end of the Ice Age coincided with the end of these species. And for decades, scientists have been trying to figure out a big question: Why did these animals go extinct? A new study in the journal Science

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47:39

610: Sea Otters, Alaskan Minerals, Salmon...

Science Friday ·

2023/08/25

Countries Seek To Return To The Moon On Wednesday, the Indian space agency ISRO celebrated as its Chandrayaan-3 craft successfully made a soft landing at the lunar south pole. This is the first mission to explore the region around the moon’s southern pole, and a major success for ISRO. The mission plans to use a robotic rover to conduct a series of experiments over the course of about 2 weeks, largely centered around the availability of water and oxygen-containing materials. Less than a week

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47:56

609: Women Athletes, Stem Cell Cornea Repair, Sand....

Science Friday ·

2023/08/18

Challenging The Gender Gap In Sports Science This weekend, Spain and England face off in the Women’s World Cup Finals in Sydney, Australia. The first Women’s World Cup was in 1991, and the games were only 80 minutes, compared to the 90-minute games played by men. Part of the rationale was that women just weren’t tough enough to play a full 90 minutes of soccer. This idea of women as the “weaker sex” is everywhere in early scientific studies of athletic performance. Sports science was mainly

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48:21

608: Covid Update, Brain Fog Research, Toilet to Tap....

Science Friday ·

2023/08/18

Youth Climate Activists Score A Win In Montana This week, a state court in Montana ruled in favor of a group of 16 youth climate activists, who argued that a state environmental law was in violation of a provision in the state constitution. The Montana constitution states: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” The ruling will allow (but not require) regulators to consider climate impacts when

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48:15

Pod Pregnancy Movie, Increase In Deep-Sea Mining,...

Science Friday ·

2023/08/11

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. In ‘The Pod Generation,’ Pregnancy Goes High-TechIn the new movie The Pod Generation, a wife named Rachel, played by Emilia Clarke, and her husband Alvy, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, want to start a family. In the movie’s near future, you don’t have to have a baby by getting pregnant, or

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47:53

Hawai’i Wildfires, Blue-Fin Tuna Science, Maine’s New...

Science Friday ·

2023/08/11

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Devastating Fires Might Become More Common In HawaiiAs of Friday morning, at least 55 were dead and thousands were seeking shelter on Maui, after wildfires tore across the Hawaiian island. Officials there say that the fires, once rare, have caused billions of dollars in damage, and the

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47:52

Answering Evolution Questions, Planetary Protection....

Science Friday ·

2023/08/04

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Protecting Other Planets From Earth’s GermsFor decades, people have been trying to figure out how to avoid contaminating other planets as they explore them—an idea called planetary protection. As missions venture forth to places such as Mars or Jupiter’s moon, Europa, the need to protect

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47:38

Artificial Sweetener Safety, Nuclear Weapons Tech....

Science Friday ·

2023/08/04

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. A Possible Breakthrough Superconductor Has Scientists SplitRecently, a superconducting material went viral in the scientific community. Researchers in South Korea say they’ve discovered a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. If it works, it would create electricity under

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48:23

The Cat’s Meow, Chumash Marine Sanctuary, EV Tires....

Science Friday ·

2023/07/28

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. What Is Your Cat’s Meow Trying To Tell You?Cats have formed bonds with humans for thousands of years. But what exactly is going on in our furry friends’ brains? What are they trying to tell us with their meows? And why did humans start keeping cats as pets anyway? To help answer those

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48:26

Kākāpō Conservation, NYC Parrots, One Year After the...

Science Friday ·

2023/07/28

We have a new podcast! It’s called Universe Of Art, and it’s all about artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. No, The Gulf Stream Is Not CollapsingA sobering climate study came out this week in the journal Nature Communications. It suggests that a system of ocean currents—called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC)—could collapse sometime between 2025 and 2095, which could have

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