Science Friday

00:18:05

How do concussions affect the brain?

Science Friday ·

2026/09/28

Football season is upon us and a new study is making headlines. Researchers found that roughly 1 in 4 NFL players will develop CTE, a neurodegenerative disease, in their lifetime. While most of us are not professional athletes, concussions are still a relatively common injury. Millions of Americans get concussions each year, but the exact number is hard to pin down because many people don’t seek treatment.So what are we learning about how concussions affect the brain? And how are the best practices

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00:18:18

Underwater archeology reveals clues about Ice Age humans

Science Friday ·

2026/09/23

During the last ice age, America’s coastlines and waterways looked much different than they do today. When glaciers melted, coasts and shorelines were inundated, burying early human settlements underwater. This is where underwater archeology comes in. Donning scuba gear and trowels, researchers are finding remarkably well-preserved artifacts that tell us more about what life was like in the early Americas.Joining Flora to talk about this is reporter Reid Frazier, who accompanied an underwater

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00:18:28

Bringing hard electronics into soft and squishy bodies

Science Friday ·

2026/09/21

A lot of things in life are squishy, including your skin, your organs, and all the goo inside you. But technology tends to be rigid and hard. Figuring out how to get those two worlds to work together can be challenging. How do you connect an electronic sensor to a soft, beating heart?As an inventor of biocompatible electronic devices, John A. Rogers has designed things like flexible probes, a pacemaker smaller than a grain of rice, and wireless sensors that stick to skin like a temporary tattoo. He

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00:18:34

Hot flashes and hormone therapy: the science of...

Science Friday ·

2026/09/17

Perimenopause affects more than 4 billion people, but has historically been neglected by medicine. It’s the time before menopause when hormones start fluctuating wildly, leaving women with brain fog, hot flashes, dropping bone density, and mood changes. Thanks in part to social media, it’s more prominent in public discourse than it used to be.But it’s not just awareness that’s blown up: It’s also the promise that you don’t have to suffer like those before you, thanks to hormone therapy. After

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00:14:08

Did the fire at the Library of Alexandria set...

Science Friday ·

2026/09/15

In 48 B.C.E., a massive fire ripped through the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, one of the largest and most significant ancient libraries. An estimated 100,000 works of literature were lost. Throughout history, there are lots of examples of things being “lost”: cities, like Pompeii, graves of figures like Genghis Khan, and works of art from masters like Leonardo di Vinci.Author Sam Kean explores these historical losses in his new book, “The Museum of Lost Things.” He joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss

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00:18:27

Recall rodeo: A food safety update + Why cars are...

Science Friday ·

2026/09/08

Between E. coli in blueberries, glass in popsicles, and that dreaded cyclospora, this summer was all about keeping a wary eye on the groceries in the fridge. But how does the recall data stack up against previous years? And are federal cuts to food safety agencies to blame? Flora talks to food safety expert Brian Ronholm to get the big picture.Plus, more than 1.5 million cars have been recalled this year for risk of bursting into flames. As automotive journalist Jason Torchinsky explains, it's a

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00:18:04

Is there science behind the ‘nervous system reset’?

Science Friday ·

2026/09/07

On social media, the vagus nerve often gets billed as the gateway to nervous system nirvana: It’s your ticket to better rest, relaxation, and health if you “stimulate” it correctly. Where did this idea come from, and what does the research say?In March, Host Flora Lichtman talked with neurosurgeon Kevin Tracey, a pioneer of a field called bioelectronic medicine, which uses techniques to stimulate the nervous system with electricity. Back in the 1990s, he was the first to discover that the vagus

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00:09:59

Why it's so hard to tell the age of a fungus

Science Friday ·

2026/09/02

When you see a mushroom popping up from the forest floor, that mushroom is just the tip of the fungal iceberg for a vast world beneath the surface. But the nature of fungal life makes it hard to answer some basic questions. What exactly does it mean to be one individual organism? And how do you tell how old a fungus is, when parts of it can recycle, regenerate, and grow again?Flora talks with fungal researcher Kristin Aleklett about the challenge of fungal age, and how researchers are trying to

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00:18:14

What should astronauts do first when they reach Mars?

Science Friday ·

2026/08/31

When humans finally land on Mars, what should they do? A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine lays out the science objectives for a crewed Mars mission. In January, planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who co-chaired the report committee, joined Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the plans to send people to Mars.We also get an update on the mission to survey the asteroid Psyche. Elkins-Tanton tells us how she managed the team that made the Psyche mission

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00:18:07

How GPS shaped our world

Science Friday ·

2026/08/26

GPS is such an essential part of our lives that it’s easy to forget there was once a world without it. But, like many tech advancements of the 20th century, GPS was originally created by the U.S. military. So how did it become a part of daily civilian life? And how vulnerable is it to manipulation?Katherine Dunn has written all about this and more in her book, “Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World.” Guest: Katherine Dunn is a science journalist and author of “Little Blue Dot: How GPS

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00:12:36

Making a case for physicists to join climate research

Science Friday ·

2026/08/20

When you think of physics, your mind might go to forces—like gravity, friction, and magnetism—or to astrophysics, like galaxies and exoplanets. But many of the same principles used to understand how the universe works can also be used to study Earth’s climate systems. At its core, climate change is a physics problem. But traditionally, research institutions have kept climate science and physics separate.Morgan O’Neill has spent her career with one foot in the classical physics world and the other

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00:12:01

What we get wrong about vaccine hesitancy

Science Friday ·

2026/08/13

Over 2,400 people have contracted measles in the United States so far this year, topping the total number of cases for 2025 in just seven months. At the same time, vaccination rates have been declining, and there’s a lot of conversation about what’s driving vaccine hesitancy and how to combat misinformation.Elisabeth Marnik has lived in both worlds: She wasn't vaccinated as a kid because her parents were concerned that vaccines could do harm. In high school, she fell in love with science. She went

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00:18:22

Why this lab studies the speed of bug pee and other...

Science Friday ·

2026/08/12

In a lab in the Rocky Mountains, a group of scientists is hard at work trying to find answers across biology, physics, and engineering: They’re looking into things like the hydrodynamics of insect pee and the physics of sheepdog herding, and working to designing robots that resemble squid and hearing aids that only cost a dollar.These endeavors may seem unrelated, but they’re glued together by bioengineer Saad Bhamla’s philosophy of science driven by curiosity, and how to make the most of the lab’s

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00:18:18

A Nagasaki survivor and physician recounts his life's...

Science Friday ·

2026/08/06

Dr. Masao Tomonaga was only 2 years old when the United States bombed his home city of Nagasaki. He survived, and grew up to become a physician for other survivors, known as hibakusha. He also studied hematology, and his research on leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes was foundational for understanding how radiation affects the body. In August 2025, the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he spoke with Host Ira Flatow about his life’s work, how hibakusha lived with the

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00:14:51

The reality of living with extreme heat in India

Science Friday ·

2026/07/29

At one point this year, the 50 hottest cities on the planet were all in one country: India. The average peak temperature in those cities was 112 F. India is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world, and weather disasters, such as heat waves, have become more extreme and more common in recent years. So how is this extreme heat affecting people in India? And what needs to change to keep people safe? Flora speaks with Gulrez Azhar, a physician and researcher who has spent much of his

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00:12:42

The Black women codebreakers of the Cold War

Science Friday ·

2026/07/27

During the early Cold War era, the United States Army and later the NSA began recruiting and training codebreakers and intelligence officers to decipher intercepted Soviet messages.Among those recruits were a group of highly skilled Black women who were employed as cryptologists to decode these messages. But their role in Cold War intelligence operations has been largely overlooked, until now. Host Flora Lichtman talks with historian Sarah Valentine about her book, “Decoding the Devil: Black Women

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00:18:09

Asha de Vos’ journey from deck hand to marine science...

Science Friday ·

2026/07/24

The tropical waters of Sri Lanka, an island off the coast of India, are home to a population of blue whales unlike any other. These whales stay put, while every other known population migrates. That discovery was made by budding scientist Asha de Vos more than 20 years ago—it made a splash, and so did she. She later became the first Sri Lankan to earn a PhD studying marine mammals, charting a new scientific path in her country.De Vos joined Host Flora Lichtman in 2025 to discuss her path into

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00:16:10

Why worry about my data If I have nothing to hide?

Science Friday ·

2026/07/23

In the last couple months, Vermont, Alabama, and Oklahoma have passed data privacy laws. Massachusetts is negotiating its own version. Meanwhile, congressional lawmakers have introduced national privacy bills that would preempt these state laws. In light of all this legislation, we’re revisiting an interview from February about how the United States’ data ecosystem makes it possible for any number of government agencies and businesses to buy our private data, from facial scans to health records to

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00:30:10

Peering through dust clouds to the center of the galaxy

Science Friday ·

2026/07/22

In 2020, Andrea Ghez shared the Nobel Prize for her observations of a supermassive compact object at the center of the Milky Way galaxy—an object that has all the hallmarks of a supermassive black hole. Ghez had developed techniques that allowed her to peer through galactic dust clouds with the Keck telescopes and observe the movements of stars orbiting the galactic center. Measuring their velocity and orbits provided information about the galactic core. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about

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00:12:17

Why a paper about relocating coastal communities hit...

Science Friday ·

2026/07/21

Back in May, a paper published in Nature Sustainability reignited a decades-old debate about coastal Louisiana: Should people leave? Climate researchers wrote that due to rising sea levels, coastal Louisiana has crossed the point of no return and that governments should be making plans now for places like New Orleans to relocate. Jessica Dandridge-Smith, who runs The Water Collaborative in New Orleans, speaks with Flora about why this paper sparked such a strong reaction, and how she thinks about

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