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PODCAST

Short Wave

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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All Episodes

13:20

The Giants Lurking In The Deep Sea

Short Wave ·

2025/08/04

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 spiders. While these giants sound like the subjects of some people's nightmares, deep sea biologist Craig McClain dreams about them. And today on the show,

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13:27

Climate Change Is Here For Your Chocolate

Short Wave ·

2025/08/01

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 and science writer at The Atlantic. They get into the cocoa shortage: What's causing it, how it's linked to weather and poor farming conditions and what

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11:36

Why Illusions Are A Brain Feature, Not A Bug

Short Wave ·

2025/07/30

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. Today on the show, we get lost in the magic and science of visual illusions. Have a neuroscience question? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. Listen to every

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13:47

Nature Quest: Are Summers Getting Hotter?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/29

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, experts say, will be even hotter. But why exactly is that happening, and what can people do to protect themselves from the heat?This episode is part of

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12:47

Sea Camp: The Largest Daily Migration On Earth

Short Wave ·

2025/07/28

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, we explore what this historical mystery has to do with the Earth's ability to cycle and store carbon in the ocean's watery depths.SIGN UP FOR OUR SEA CAMP

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8:51

Did Spiders' Ancestors Come From The Ocean?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/25

Whether you love spiders or can't be within 10 feet of them, you probably think of them crawling around on land. Historically, most researchers would probably say the same thing: Based on the fossil record, they've thought the earliest arachnid ancestors existed around 450 million years ago, living and diversifying exclusively on land. But a new study out this week in the journal Current Biology suggests arachnid brains may have originated much earlier in the ocean. Want to hear more stories about

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13:45

Eating Disorder Recovery In A Diet Culture World

Short Wave ·

2025/07/23

Eating disorders are complicated illnesses that skyrocketed among teenagers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pediatrician Eva Trujillo says they "literally rewire the brain," decrease brain size, and make it harder to concentrate and to regulate emotions. Malnutrition can slow the metabolism, impact bone density and even lead to cardiac arrest. But Eva says, with the right treatment, people can also recover fully. She's the president of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals and

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13:05

Will Federal Budget Cuts Affect Space Science?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/22

Earlier this year, the White House proposed a nearly 24% cut to NASA's 2026 fiscal year budget — the largest in the agency's history. The trims are largely aimed at the NASA's fundamental science research and would halt science that has already been partially paid for, like the Mars sample return and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Many scientists and policy experts are also worried that the reduced funding would cause a scientific brain drain. But within the last month, Congress has started

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13:00

Sea Camp: Is Better Human Health Hidden In The Sea?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/21

For this week's Sea Camp, we're diving below the ocean's surface to explore the sunlight zone, the portion of ocean that's 0-200 meters deep. Here, we zoom in on some spineless inhabitants envied for their "superpowers." Marine biologist Drew Harvell tells us about stealthy sea slugs, sea stars with super strength and life-saving sponges. Also, exciting news!! WE HAVE A NEWSLETTER! It lets you go even deeper with the marine research each week of Sea Camp. Sign up here!Plus, check out the comic we

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2:01

Congress has voted to eliminate government funding...

Short Wave ·

2025/07/18

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13:33

These Scientists Are Using AI To Listen To Frogs

Short Wave ·

2025/07/18

If you were a miner in California during the Gold Rush, you might have dined on a California red-legged frog. The largest native frog in the western United States, this Golden State denizen used to be found as far inland as the Sierra Nevada mountains and south, into Baja California. But today, they're listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Conservationists have worked to translocate new populations of the red-legged frog back to California in hopes that their numbers can be

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12:36

Who Is Using The 988 Crisis Line?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/16

The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — 988 — launched on this day exactly three years ago. People who call the line seeking support are connected to a local network of crisis centers and a trained crisis counselor. And while millions of people have contacted the line since its launch, a new study shows portions of the country still don't know about it. Short Wave host Emily Kwong speaks to Jonathan Purtle, one of the lead researchers of on this study, about the findings, how the hotline differs

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12:31

How Realistic Are Movie Dinosaurs?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/15

Jurassic Park: Rebirth is the latest installment in the Jurassic World series. And while dinosaur paleontologist Matt Lamanna has loved dinos — and the Jurassic Park franchise — his whole life, he says some of the films are more accurate than others. So how accurate are the ones unveiled in this latest movie? Matt gets into it with Short Wave host Regina G. Barber, who got a tour of the dinosaur exhibits where Matt works: the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. They also discuss the

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14:35

These Critters Call The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Home

Short Wave ·

2025/07/14

For this second installment of the Sea Camp series, we explore the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's the largest of five gigantic garbage patches in the sea. These patches hang out at the nexus of the world's ocean currents, changing shape with the waves. These areas were long thought to have been uninhabited, the plastics and fishing gear too harmful to marine life. But researchers have uncovered a whole ecosystem of life in this largest collection of trash. Today, with the help of marine biologist

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8:43

Meet the Third Ever (!!) Interstellar Comet

Short Wave ·

2025/07/11

A rare visitor from another star system has been spotted: the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS! It was detected July 1 by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS. Most known comets orbit the Sun and are bound by the gravity of the solar system ... but this object came from far beyond the pull of our Sun, traveling 137,000 miles per hour from another star. Now, scientists are racing to get a good image of it, in the hopes it can answer big questions like: What is the

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12:37

Evolution Went On Trial 100 Years Ago. Where Are We Now?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/09

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" — where a teacher was charged with the crime of teaching Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. At the time, it was illegal in Tennessee to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The trial, which was orchestrated to be a media spectacle, foreshadowed the cultural divisions that continue today

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13:11

Itchy? Air Pollution May Be Making It Worse

Short Wave ·

2025/07/08

Short Wave producer Hannah Chinn has adult-onset eczema. They're not the only one. Up to ten percent of people in the United States have it, according to the National Eczema Association — and its prevalence is increasing. Despite its ubiquity, a lot about this skin condition remains a mystery. So today, Hannah's getting answers. In this encore episode, they sat down with Raj Fadadu, a dermatologist at the University of California, San Diego, to ask: What is eczema? What triggers it in the first

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12:06

Sea Camp: Why Are Ocean Currents Shifting?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/07

A warming climate doesn't just affect dry land — it affects the ocean, too. For years, Earth's ocean has acted as a heat sink for climate change: A large part of the heat generated by human use of fossil fuels is being absorbed by the ocean. And while the deep sea is largely unaffected by this heat absorption, oceanographers have discovered that the upper ocean currents are accelerating. That acceleration has the potential for huge knock-on effects, including sea level rise, changing fish migration

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9:54

Why Dew Point Is This Summer's 'It Girl'

Short Wave ·

2025/07/04

Happy Independence Day, Short Wavers! Do you have plans outdoors this weekend and want to figure out just how swampy it's gonna feel? For that kind of mental preparation, we're revisiting an episode in which some meteorologists are telling us to pay more attention to dew point temperature, not relative humidity. Interested in more weather episodes? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+

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12:44

Is The Milky Way On A Collision Course?

Short Wave ·

2025/07/02

The Andromeda galaxy lies just beyond (...OK, about 2.5 million light-years beyond) our galaxy, the Milky Way. For the past hundred years or so, scientists thought these galaxies existed in a long-term dance of doom — destined to crash into one another and combine into one big galactic soup. But today on the show, Regina and computational astrophysicist Arpit Arora explain why a recent paper out in the journal Nature Astronomy suggests this cosmic game of bumper cars may never come to a head at all

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1,382 results

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