Regina Barber

speaker

5,613 appearances 195 recordings 8 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard yesterday

Regina Barber’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 127 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 33.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Short Wave · Plot twist: We're probably way undercounting insects on Earth · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

We have another story that looks at quasars, bright lights from ancient galaxies. voice-verified

So these are really, really old fireflies that can tell us more about the formation of the universe. voice-verified

They're these, like, tiny wasps, like, really, really tiny. voice-verified

Like millimeters tiny, says Melissa Guzman, an entomologist at Cornell University. voice-verified

But don't worry, these are not hatching out of human chests. voice-verified

It's going to be okay. voice-verified

What? voice-verified

Yes, a lot. voice-verified

But scientists wanted to take it a step further to get a sense of how many types of all insects there were in the reserve in Costa Rica. voice-verified

So they used that modeling and a larger sample of insects to get a number. voice-verified

So scientists wanted to know how many species of insects existed on the entire planet. voice-verified

And the best estimate to this point, based on studies of beetles, is that there are roughly 6 million. voice-verified

Yeah, between 14 and 20 million at minimum. voice-verified

So up to three times as many species as previously believed. voice-verified

Here's Melissa again. voice-verified

Yeah. voice-verified

So they are blazing bright centers of galaxies. voice-verified

And at the center of that is a supermassive black hole, millions of billions of times the mass of our sun. voice-verified

And dust and gas is spiraling into that black hole. voice-verified

It heats up and starts to glow. voice-verified

Showing 2021–2040 of 5,613 · page 102 of 281