Short Wave

What to Know About The Measles Outbreak

18 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases known to science – more contagious than Ebola, smallpox or COVID-19. Declining vaccination...

Could 'Severance' Become Our Reality?

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What if we had the ultimate work-life balance? This fundamental question underlies the hit Apple TV+ show Severance – now in its second season. Ahea...

Love Fruit? Thank (Dinosaur) Mass Extinction

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Move over, TikTokers. It's time to shine a spotlight on some of the earliest influencers around: dinosaurs. When these ecosystem engineers were in the...

Let's Talk About (Biological) Sex, Baby

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Biological sex is all over the news lately. Whether it's via President Trump's executive order affecting passport policy, moving trans inmates between...

Is The Trump Administration Breaking Science?

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In its first 50 days, the Trump administration made sweeping changes to scientific arms of the government like the Department of Health and Human Serv...

The Great Antarctic Food Web Puzzle

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tourists to Antarctica are fueling research on some of the tiniest, most influential organisms on Earth: phytoplankton. These itty bitty critters make...

Stone Age To Bone Age?

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Archeologists know early humans used stone to make tools long before the time of Homo sapiens. But a new discovery out this week in Nature suggests ea...

Will Bark For Science

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On their second job ever, Collette Yee and her partner were assigned a difficult job: locate transient whale poop in the ocean before it sinks. Luckil...

Reviving The Woolly Mammoth ... With Mice

04 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You've heard of the woolly mammoth. But have you heard of woolly mice? These critters were genetically modified by the Dallas-based biotech company Co...

What It's Like Taking Alzheimer's Drugs

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are now two fully approved drugs on the market that can, sometimes, slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Both have been shown to sl...

When Batteries Get A Face Lift, So Do Renewables

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Batteries are everywhere. They're in our phones, our remote controls, smart-watches, electric cars and so much more. They could also be the solution t...

This Radio Wave Mystery Changed Astronomy

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1967 Jocelyn Bell Burnell made a discovery that revolutionized the field of astronomy. She detected the radio signals emitted by certain dying star...

Extracting Brains ... For Science

25 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A year and a half ago, neuroscientist Kamilla Souza got the call she'd been waiting for: A baby humpback whale had died just offshore. She wanted its ...

What Happens While You're Under Anesthesia?

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Picture a relaxing scene. Maybe a beach in Tahiti, your toes in the sand, a cold drink in hand. Now imagine your favorite music playing in the backgro...

This Is Your Brain On Dessert

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ever eat a full meal ... and find you still have room for dessert? If so, you're not alone. Sugar is a quick form of energy that many people crave —...

Party In Peru: New Critters Just Dropped

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What happens when a team of scientists and local Awajún guides go on a 38-day trip into the Alto Mayo region of Peru? Over 2000 species are identifie...

When AI Cannibalizes Its Data

18 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Asked ChatGPT anything lately? Talked with a customer service chatbot? Read the results of Google's "AI Overviews" summary feature? If you've used the...

Could This Particle 'Clean Up' A Cosmic Mystery?

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Physics has a bit of a messy problem: There's matter missing in our universe. Something is there that we can't see but can detect! What could this mys...

Lessons in Love From Voles

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For years, scientists have known that oxytocin is important in facilitating the feeling of love in humans. How do they know? Prairie voles. For years,...

Stopping A Deadly Disease On Apache Lands

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is one of the deadliest tickborne diseases in the United States, often killing people within about a week if left untreat...

What Happens Inside A Top-Secret U.S. Nuclear Facility?

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The U.S. tested nuclear weapons until the early 1990s. Since then, scientists have been using supercomputers and experiments to simulate nuclear test ...

The Dangers Of Mirror Cell Research

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For people with two hands, one is usually dominant. On a molecular level, life takes this to the extreme. All of the DNA in earthly living things twis...

How Physics Could Make Big Crowds Safer

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What do large crowds of people and water have in common? They both act like fluids. When crowds cheer, sway and clump together, the movements look lik...

Microbes: It's Complicated

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For a long time, microbes like the ones in Yellowstone's hot springs were studied in isolation. Molecular ecologist Devaki Bhaya says we should be stu...

Why Black Holes Are More Than They Seem

04 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Black holes are notorious for gobbling up, well, everything. They're icons of destruction, ruthless voids, ambivalent abysses from which nothing can r...

Not All Nature Comebacks Are Equal

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ecologist Gergana Daskalova moved back to the small Bulgarian town of her childhood. It's a place many people have abandoned — and that's the very ...

10 Technologies To Watch

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a world brimming with innovation and limited time, it can be hard to tell what technology has the potential to really shift life. Yet, every year, ...

Farts To The Rescue

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Farts are funny and sometimes smelly. But are they a legitimate topic of research? More than 40% of people worldwide are estimated to suffer from some...

The Latest On Bird Flu

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bird flu, or avian influenza, is spreading among livestock and other mammals in the United States, raising concerns that another pandemic may be loomi...

Moths, Owls And Fungi With Over 20,000 Sexes...Oh My!

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Put on your headphones. In today's episode, host Emily Kwong leads us on a night hike in Patuxent River State Park in Maryland. Alongside a group of n...

Peeing Is Contagious!

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At least, it's contagious among a group of captive chimpanzees at the Kumamoto Sanctuary. How do researchers know? A very dedicated grad student at Ky...

Where Are We In The Quest To Find Alien Life?

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Around the turn of the century, 3.8 million people banded together in a real-time search for aliens — with screensavers. It was a big moment in a ce...

How Will Future Forests Survive Climate Change?

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Forests are the lungs of our planet. Not only do they absorb carbon dioxide and create oxygen, they also regulate temperature, absorb rainwater to hel...

The Science Behind The FDA Ban On Food Dye Red No. 3

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration announced it is banning the dye called Red No. 3, a food dye additive in many processed foods, like sod...

All Of Life Has A Common Ancestor. What Was LUCA?

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine the tree of life. The tip of every branch represents one species, and if you follow any two branches back through time, you'll hit an intersec...

Some Dinos Had Feathers. Did They Fly?

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When you picture a dinosaur, what does it look like? For Jingmai O'Connor, paleobiologist and associate curator of reptiles at the Field Museum of Chi...

Bone Marrow Cells: Key To Vaccine Longevity?

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine generates enough of an antibody response to protect against severe disease for six months. But other vaccines offer years-lo...

The Science Behind Wildfire Smoke

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Air quality in the Los Angeles region has plummeted due to smoke from the ongoing wildfires. With all that smoke comes possible risks to human health....

What Are California's Santa Ana Winds?

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Over 29,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area are on fire right now. The fires emerged after the Santa Ana winds swept into the Los Angeles area T...

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...