Short Wave

Fluoride: Fact vs. Fiction

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fluoridating the public water supply has been common practice for nearly 80 years in the U.S. It's an acclaimed public health intervention that helps ...

How Two Veterans Developed The Same Rare Brain Condition

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Some weapons used by the U.S. military are so powerful they can pose a threat to the people who fire them. Today, we meet two Marines, William Wilcox ...

The Great Space (Clock) Race

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are hundreds of atomic clocks in orbit right now, perched on satellites all over Earth. We depend on them for GPS location, Internet timing, sto...

Jimmy Carter's Triumph Over The Guinea Worm

04 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Funeral services begin today for former President Jimmy Carter. He died Sunday, at 100-years-old. Carter brought attention to global health challeng...

The Dubious World's Largest Snowflake Record

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

(encore) Snowflakes. These intricate, whimsical crystals are a staple of magical wintry scenes, but how big can they really get? Well, according to th...

The Trouble With Zero

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Happy New Year, Short Wavers! What better time to contemplate the conundrum that is zero than this, the reset of the year? Zero is a fairly new concep...

The Biggest Health Stories of 2024

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

2024 was full of science news. There was a total solar eclipse, the Paris Olympics, elections in the United States and elsewhere, technological breakt...

Bird Backpacks Could Help This Parrot Bounce Back

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The thick-billed parrot is the only surviving parrot species native to the United States. These brightly colored birds once roamed across the American...

Why These Squirrels Are Eating Meat

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In pop culture, squirrels are often seen as jerky, excited critters on the hunt for nuts to stuff themselves with and tuck away for later. But squirre...

Will GMOs Bring Back The American Chestnut Tree?

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 20th century, a blight fungus wiped out most of the 4 billion American chestnut trees on the eastern seaboard. The loss was ecologically ...

Hear Christmas Carols And Talk To Santa On Ham Radio

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On Christmas Eve, scientists at field stations across Antarctica sing carols to one another...via shortwave. On today's episode, the Short Wave podcas...

How Does An Airplane Stay In The Air?

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are many statistics out there that prove that flying on a commercial airplane is safe, that plane crashes are overall pretty unlikely. Still, up...

The First Woman To Get A New Kind Of Kidney Transplant

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Towana Looney became the first living person in the world to get a kidney from a new kind of genetically modified pig last month. Health correspondent...

This Huge Mining Pit Is About To Be A Lake

18 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Old mines leave behind a a pressing problem: Huge holes that make the landscape look like a chunk of swiss cheese. But in Germany, some scientists and...

Why Big Tech Wants Nuclear Power

17 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

AI uses a lot of power. Some of the next generation data centers may use as much power as one million U.S. households. Technology companies like Micro...

How Racism – And Silence – Could Hurt Your Health

16 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Racism is often covered as a political, cultural, or news story. But how is it affecting people's health? That's the question Cara Anthony, a KFF News...

What's A Weather Forecast Worth?

14 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The federal government has been tracking the weather for more than 150 years. Yet over the last few decades, the rise of the Internet and big tech hav...

Conan The Bacterium's Superpower: Resisting Radiation

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1950s, scientists exposed a tin of meat to a dose of radiation that they expected would kill all forms of life. But one organism defied the odd...

In The Club, We All ... Archaea?

11 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Thor. Loki. Heimdall. They're not just Norse gods or Marvel characters. They're also the names of various Asgard archaea. These microscopic organisms ...

Grape Growers' Next Collaborators? Robots

10 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you crossed WALL-E with a floor lamp, it might look a little like the PhytoPatholoBot. These robots aren't roving through space or decorating a liv...

Who Does Science? Under Trump, That Could Change

09 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The next four years may be challenging for foreign-born scientists who want to work in the United States. Foreign-born workers account for about half ...

The Comeback Of The Southwest Peach

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Centuries ago, Southwest tribal nations tended vast orchards of peach trees. But in 1863, thousands of those trees were cut down by the United States ...

The Ambitious Quest To Genetically Map All Known Vertebrates

04 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Vertebrate Genomes Project: It's an ambitious effort by an international group of scientists to create a "Genome Ark" by sequencing the genomes of...

These Rats Can Drive. What's Happening In Their Brains?

03 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In neuroscientist Kelly Lambert's lab at the University of Richmond, rats hop into cars, rev their engines and skid across the floor of an arena. Rese...

Why Your Brain Loves Sales

02 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This Cyber Monday, a meditation on holiday sales. A quick trip to pick up presents can turn into an hours-long shopping spree thanks to all the ways s...

This Hazelnut May Help The Land Back Movement In Canada

29 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Beaked hazelnuts are a wild food native to North America. Indigenous peoples in British Columbia have passed down stories of these hazelnuts as a vit...

This COP29, It's All About The Numbers

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This year's United Nations climate talks, COP29, wrapped Saturday. Throughout the talks, it was all about the numbers. With the help of NPR climate re...

How Do You Preserve An Endangered Language?

26 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

By the end of the century, more than 40% of the world's estimated 7,000 languages are in danger of disappearing. Those include indigenous languages in...

The Battle To Save Monarch Butterflies

25 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Monarch butterfly populations have plummeted due to habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change. In early December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serv...

Are Starship Launches Trashing Texas?

22 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

SpaceX's Starship rocket took off again Tuesday for its sixth test flight. Crowds, including President-elect Donald Trump, gathered at the launch site...

The Mystery of the Dead Coho Salmon

20 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, Coho salmon were turning up dead in urban streams the Pacific Northwest. The salmon would stop swimming straight, and then die before the...

How To Have Hard Conversations

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Many people are gearing up for holiday conversations with loved ones who may disagree with them — on everything from politics to religion and lifest...

Don't Let Jet Lag Ruin Your Holiday Plans

18 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Getting enough sleep regularly can be tough — and even harder when you're traveling for the holidays. "We need sleep like we need water," says Jade ...

The Mystery Mollusk Roaming The Midnight Zone

15 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This critter lurks in the ocean's midnight zone, has a voluminous hood, is completely see through and is bioluminescent. It's unlike any nudibranchs d...

Should Humans Live On Mars?

13 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As global warming continues and space technology improves, there is more and more talk about the growing possibility of a sci-fi future in which human...

These Drones Could Help Keep Your Lights On

12 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One in four U.S. households experiences a power outage each year. Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are working on technology they hope will...

Eating Breakfast? You Can Thank Fermentation

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, you're invited to the fermentation party! Join us as we learn about the funk-filled process behind making sauerkraut, sourdough and s...

Picking Up Cosmic Vibrations

08 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A pivotal week in Corey Gray's life began with a powwow in Alberta and culminated with a piece of history: The first-ever detection of gravitational w...

A Better Life For Trafficked Turtles

06 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In North-Central New Jersey, there is a backyard teeming with around 200 turtles. Many of these shelled creatures have been rescued from the smugglin...

Elections Are One Big Math Problem

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's Election Day in the United States. Across the nation, millions of ballots are being cast. But what would happen if the rules of our electoral sys...

Did Life Start In Hydrothermal Vents?

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How did life start on Earth? The answer is a big scientific mystery scientists are actively investigating. After talking with many scientists, host Re...

The Best (And Oldest) Tadpole Ever Discovered

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For years, we've been asking, "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" Maybe what we should have been asking is, "Which came first: the frog or the...

The Sound Of Fear: Why Do Animals Scream?

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

NOTE: This episode contains multiple high-pitched noises (human and other animals) that some listeners might find startling or distressing.In this epi...

Embracing Death: Why We Age

29 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Humans have seen a significant increase in life expectancy over the past 200 years — but not in overall lifespan. Nobody on record has lived past 12...

Honey, They Cloned The Apples!

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What's your favorite apple? Maybe it's the crowd-pleasing Honeycrisp, the tart Granny Smith or the infamous Red Delicious. Either way, before that app...

Saving The Hawaiian Tree Snails

25 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

More than a million species are at risk of extinction, many within decades, because of human actions. Among them? The kāhuli, Hawaii's native tree sn...

A Brand New Kind of Schizophrenia Treatment

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For the past 70 years, schizophrenia treatments all targeted the same chemical: dopamine. While that works for some, it causes brutal side effects for...

'Ghost Genes' Could Help Save The American Red Wolf

22 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Every American red wolf alive right now is descended from only 14 canids. In the 1970s, humans drove the red wolf to the brink of extinction. Because ...

Game Night With 'Shrooms

21 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Calling all foragers! The new board game Undergrove, co-designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and Mark Wootton, is all about the symbiotic relationships betw...

New Frogs Just Dropped

18 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the humid rainforests of northern and eastern Madagascar reside seven newly described frog species. They often hang out near fast, flowing rivers. ...

Europa Clipper And The Search For Life In Space

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

NASA's Europa Clipper mission launched Monday, beginning its years-long journey to the distant icy moon it's named after. This mission is designed to ...

5-Year-Olds Asked Us Science Questions. We Answer

15 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In honor of our show turning 5 (!!) today... 5 Short Wave staffersanswer 5(x2) questionsfrom some of our 5-year-old listenersand explain the science ....

Why Traditional Plant Knowledge Is Not A Quick Fix

14 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Host Regina G. Barber talks with Rosalyn LaPier about ethnobotany--what it is and how traditional plant knowledge is frequently misunderstood in the e...

What The Heck Is A Rock Glacier?

11 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Even though there are more than 10,000 rock glaciers in the western United States, most people would look at one without knowing it. Unlike the snowy ...

Anxious? Try Watching A Scary Movie

09 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In human history, fear kept us safe when running from predators and anxiety kept us from going back to that lion-infested area. But what happens when ...

How Do You Spot A Liar?

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For over a century, we've been inventing technology to catch liars in the act. To this end, the polygraph was invented and became wildly popular in th...

Mapping The Entire Fruit Fly Brain

07 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Fruit fly brains are smaller than a poppy seed, but that doesn't mean they aren't complex. For the first time, researchers have published a complete d...

What Lightning And Black Holes Have In Common

04 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Lightning: It happens all the time, and yet the exact details of how it's made has long eluded scientists. That is, until now. New research out this w...

Why Astronomers Are Teaching Climate Change

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Years ago, astronomy professors started noticing something that troubled them: Many of their students didn't understand climate change and the science...

If Fungi Win, Will We Be Ready?

01 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over six million fungal species are believed to inhabit planet Earth. Outsmarting them is the work of Arturo Casadevall's lifetime. What If Fungi Win?...

Do NYC Birds Hold The Clues To The Next Pandemic?

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Most viruses that become epidemics in humans begin in other animals. It's how scientists suspect COVID-19 emerged. And now, less than five years after...

Hurricane Helene Is Here And Powerful

27 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Governors across the southeastern United States have declared statewide states of emergency as Hurricane Helene continues its ascent. After forming in...

The Reality Of OCD

25 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Around 2% of the global population struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. That's roughly 163 million people who go through cycles of ob...

Harnessing The Ghost Particles Blasting Through You

24 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the beginning of the universe, annihilation reigned supreme. Equal amounts of matter and antimatter collided. There should have been nothing left. ...

Solving The EV Battery Recycling Puzzle

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Electric vehicle batteries will all, eventually, reach the end of their lives. When that happens, they should be recycled. But what breakthroughs coul...

How To Get A Haircut In Space

21 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, Short Wavers! Today we're sharing an excerpt of the new NPR podcast How To Do Everything. How To Do Everything is half advice show, half survival...

The Scuba Diving Lizards Breathing By Bubble

20 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What's scaly, striped and breathes underwater like a scuba diver? Water anoles! These lizards can form a bubble over their head to support breathing u...

Are Crabs The Final Form?

18 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Evolution keeps making crabs. In fact, it's happened so often that there's a special scientific term for an organism turning crab-like: carcinization....

The physics of wheelchair basketball, from a Paralympian

17 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Patrick Anderson is widely recognized as the greatest wheelchair basketball player of all time. He's represented Canada at the Paralympics six times a...

What's Up With The Hot Ocean Temperatures?

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hurricane season is heating up: Hurricane Francine hit Louisiana last week and dumped rain across the South, and forecasters expect more stormy activi...

Solutions Week: Reducing The Food Waste Problem

13 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We close out Climate Solutions Week with a look at the final step in the food system: waste. Roughly 30-40% of all food produced globally gets thrown ...

Solutions Week: Reinventing Chocolate

11 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Climate change is contributing to erratic weather where cocoa beans are grown and threatening the global chocolate supply. Record rainfall last year l...

Solutions Week: The Cost Of Food Delivery

10 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Since the height of the pandemic, there has been a boom in the use of food delivery services. Day 2 of NPR's Climate Solutions Week is all about the e...

Solutions Week: Climate Change Is Coming For Your Wine

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In California's Napa Valley, the nation's unofficial wine capital, one varietal reigns supreme: cabernet sauvignon. But climate change is threatening ...

Body Electric: How AI Is Changing Our Relationships

07 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, Short Wavers! Today, we have a special present for all of you: An episode from our good friends at NPR's Body Electric podcast all a bout artific...

Dogs Go Viral For 'Talking' To Humans — But Can They?

06 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, a dog named Bunny went viral on TikTok for pressing buttons with words on them to "communicate" with her owner. But can dogs even understan...

Feeling Itchy? Air Pollution Might Be Making It Worse

04 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Are You Overestimating The Algorithm?

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Humans hallucinate. Algorithms lie. At least, that's one difference that Joy Buolamwini and Kyle Chayka want to make clear. When ChatGPT tells you tha...

Batteries: The Lemonade Of Life

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Just in time for the return of the school year, we're going "Back To School" by revisiting a classic at-home experiment that turns lemons into batteri...

Detecting Pests By Eavesdropping On Insects

30 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From Indonesia to Wisconsin, farmers all over the world struggle with a huge problem: pests. On top of that, it's tough for farmers to identify where ...

What's Missing From The Invasive Species Narrative?

28 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At first glance, the whole narrative of aquatic invasive species may seem straightforward: A bad non-native species comes into a new ecosystem and ove...

Preserving Your Humanity In The Age Of Robots

27 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Human beings are hardwired for social connection – so much so that we think of even the most basic objects as having feelings or experiences. (Yup, ...

This Unremarkable Ant From Europe Quietly Conquered NYC

26 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

New York: The city that never sleeps, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of and more recently ... home to a mysterious ant spreading across the...

Feeling Bored? Stop Swiping

23 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever scrolled through a TikTok without finishing it? Switched between YouTube videos halfway through one or the other? Pressed "fast forward"...

What COVID Going Endemic Means For You

21 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

U.S. health officials now say COVID-19 is an endemic disease. That means it's here to stay – circulating fairly regularly like the flu. Even though ...

Solve A Moon Mystery! With Radiolab

20 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

All summer long, we've been on a 10-episode odyssey through the changing universe (check out the series). But there was one big set of objects that we...

The Power Of Braille Literacy

19 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For blind and low vision adults, the ability to read braille can be life-changing. Braille literacy is directly linked to higher rates of academic suc...

Firing A Weapon Might Hurt Your Brain

16 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Some weapons used by the United States military are so powerful, they can pose a threat to the people who fire them — even in training. When weapons...

How To Beat The Heat, Olympian-Style

14 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the next week, forecasts project extreme heat across much of the South, Midwest and parts of the West. So, this episode, health correspondent Pie...

How Will the Universe End?

13 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we're bringing you the final installment of our space summer series ... with the end ... of EVERYTHING. Will the universe end in a huge cosmic ...

To Save The Grizzly Bear, You Gotta Think Like One

12 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Grizzly bears in the contiguous United States have been taken off — then put back on — the endangered species list twice since they were first lab...

What Is An Unfair Advantage In Sports?

10 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We at Short Wave have been following all things Olympics, from the medals and new records to the ugly accusations that two women boxers aren't really ...

These Sea Lions Are Basically Scientists

09 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do you study unmapped areas of the ocean and identify critical habitat for an endangered species? You include the study animal in the scientific p...

Was The Paris Olympic Pool Slow?

07 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the last week, we've seen swimmers diving headfirst into the 2024 Paris Olympics pool, limbs gracefully slicing through the water. And yet, world a...

We're All Swimming In Big Bang Juice

06 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Big Bang: The moment when our universe — everything in existence — began....Right? Turns out, it's not quite that simple. Today, when scientis...

The Toll Of Social Media On Mental Health

05 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Rates of depression and anxiety have risen among teens over the last decade. Amid this ongoing mental health crisis, the American Psychological Associ...

What Makes Simone Biles The GOAT, Scientifically

02 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Another Olympics, another set of stellar performances by the U.S. women's artistic gymnastics team. Thursday, the team won two medals in the women's a...

The Mathematical Marvel Of The Rubik's Cube

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Rubik's Cube was created 50 years ago by Hungarian inventor Ernő Rubik. Since then, over 500 million of them have been sold. We dive into this gl...

The Curious Case Of The Supermassive Black Hole

30 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Black holes are one of the most mysterious cosmological phenomena out there. Astrophysicist Priya Natarajan calls them "the point where all known laws...

We Hate To Tell You This, But Some Leeches Can Jump

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Generally, we at Short Wave are open-minded to the creepies and the crawlies, but even we must admit that leeches are already the stuff of nightmares....