Short Wave

When Your Body Rejects The Kidney It Needs

24 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In February 2021, pandemic restrictions were just starting to ease in Hawaii, and Leila Mirhaydari was finally able to see her kidney doctor. Transpla...

Two Squirrely Responses To Climate Change

22 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kwasi Wrensford studies two related species: the Alpine chipmunk and the Lodgepole chipmunk. The two have very different ways of coping with climate c...

The Physics Behind The Perfect Gummy Candy

19 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week for our science news roundup, superstar host of All Things Considered Ari Shapiro joins Short Wave hosts Emily Kwong and Regina G. Barber to...

Why You Can't Tell Your Race From A DNA Test

17 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Race is a social construct — so why are DNA test kits like the ones from 23andMe coded like they reveal biological fact about the user's racial make...

Long COVID Scientists Try To Unravel Blood Clot Mystery

15 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The COVID-19 public health emergency has ended, but millions across the globe continue to deal with Long COVID. Researchers are still pursuing basic q...

Move over, humans—lemurs have rhythm, too

12 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There's a lot for scientists to learn about the origins of humans' musical abilities. In the last few years, though, they've discovered homo sapiens h...

We Need To Talk About Teens, Social Media And Mental Health

10 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week, the American Psychological Association issued its first-of-kind guidelines for parents to increase protection for children online. It comes...

What Could We Do With A Third Thumb?

08 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today on the show, we meet a prosthetic designer and a neuroscientist fascinated with understanding how the brain and body might adapt to something we...

Some people get sick from VR. Why?

05 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Another week comes by, and luckily so does our roundup of science news. This time, we've got some questions about better understanding our health: Why...

Will Artificial Intelligence Help — Or Hurt — Medicine?

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A doctor's job is to help patients. With that help, often comes lots and lots of paperwork. That's where some startups are betting artificial intellig...

Shoring Up The Future With Greener Batteries

01 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today on the show, next-generation energy innovators Bill David and Serena Cussen challenged us to think about the future of clean energy storage. The...

SUPERBLOOM: An Upside To The California Downpours

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

California's wet winter has devastated many local communities. It has also benefited some of the state's endangered ecosystems. Those benefits are on ...

Worm Blobs In The Bowels Of The Earth

26 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the toxic waters of Sulphur Cave in Steamboat Springs, Colo. live blood-red worm blobs that have attracted international scientific interest. We do...

The News Roundup Goes Intergalactic

24 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It's our latest roundup of science news! This time, with Ailsa Chang of NPR's All Things Considered, who joins us to discuss three stories that take u...

Fire And Ice: Linking Intense Wildfire And The Melting Arctic

21 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the Arctic Ocean, sea ice is shrinking as the climate heats up. In the Western U.S., wildfires are getting increasingly destructive. Those two phen...

The Race To Protect Millions Of People From Melting Glaciers

19 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Melting glaciers are leaving behind large, unstable lakes that can cause dangerous flash floods. Millions of people downstream are threatened. In toda...

Where are the whales? Scientists find clues thousands of miles away

17 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Endangered North Atlantic right whales are disappearing from their native waters, a serious danger for a species with only 340 animals left. The myste...

Are Rats Running This Podcast?

14 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week, New York City crowned Kathleen Corradi its first rat czar. The new position is part of a multipronged approach from city officials. Reporte...

Peep The Delightful Science Of Chickens

12 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Tove Danovich decided to dabble in backyard chicken keeping, she embraced a tried and true journalistic practice — reading everything there is...

Launching Into Space — Sustainably!

10 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1957, the Space Age began with the launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. Since then, the number of objects humans have hurled toward t...

News Round Up: Mammoth Meatballs, Stressed Plants And Apologetic Robots

07 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this Friday round up of science news we can't let go, not everything is as it seems. Meatballs are not made of fresh meat from the cattle range. Ro...

Allergies Are Weird. So Are Cats

05 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katie Wu is a bona fide cat person. She has two of them: twin boys named Calvin and Hobbes. Every night, they curl up in bed with her, bonking their l...

Why We Should Care About Viruses Jumping From Animals To People

03 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The phenomenon of zoonotic spillover — of viruses jumping from animals to people — is incredibly common. The question is: which one will start th...

Eunice Foote: The Hidden Grandmother Of Climate Science

31 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today, most climate science is done with satellites, sensors and complicated computer models. But it all started with a pioneering female physicist an...

Why Scientists Just Mapped Every Synapse In A Fly Brain

29 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To really understand the human brain, scientists say you'd have to map its wiring. The only problem: there are more than 100 trillion different connec...

Perennial Rice: Plant Once, Harvest Again And Again

27 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rice is arguably the world's most important staple crop. About half of the global population depends on it for sustenance. But, like other staples suc...

News Round Up: Algal Threats, An Asteroid With Life's Building Blocks And Bee Maps

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After reading the science headlines this week, we have A LOT of questions. Why did the Virgin Islands declare a state of emergency over a large blob o...

Why Pandemic Researchers Are Talking About Raccoon Dogs

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A few weeks ago, raw data gathered in Janaury 2020 from Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China — the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandem...

If ChatGPT Designed A Rocket — Would It Get To Space?

22 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From text churned out by ChatGPT to the artistic renderings of Midjourney, people have been taking notice of new, bot-produced creative works. But how...

What we lose if the Great Salt Lake dries up

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Dotted across the Great Basin of the American West are salty, smelly lakes. The largest of these, by far, is the Great Salt Lake in Utah.But a recent ...

Venus And Earth: A Tale Of Two 'Twins'

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Planetary scientists announced some big news this week about our next-door neighbor, Venus. For the first time, they had found direct evidence that Ve...

Tweeting Directly From Your Brain (And What's Next)

18 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our friends at NPR's TED Radio Hour podcast have been pondering some BIG things — specifically, the connection between our physical, mental, and spi...

Flying Into Snowstorms ... For Science!

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For the past few winters, researchers have been intentionally flying into snowstorms. And high in those icy clouds, the team collected all the informa...

Could de-extincting the dodo help struggling species?

16 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As a leading expert on paleogenomics, Beth Shapiro has been hearing the same question ever since she started working on ancient DNA: "The only questio...

It's Boom Times In Ancient DNA

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Research into very, very old DNA has made huge leaps forward over the last two decades. That has allowed scientists like Beth Shapiro to push the fron...

How To Bake Pi, Mathematically (And Deliciously)

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This March 14, Short Wave is celebrating pi ... and pie! We do that with the help of mathematician Eugenia Cheng, Scientist In Residence at the School...

How Well Does A New Alzheimer's Drug Work For Those Most At Risk?

13 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A new drug for Alzheimer's disease, called lecanemab, got a lot of attention earlier this year for getting fast-tracked approval based on a clinical t...

Ocean World Tour: Whale Vocal Fry, Fossilizing Plankton and A Treaty

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Reading the science headlines this week, we have A LOT of questions. Why are more animals than just humans saddled — er, blessed — with vocal fry?...

'Are You A Model?': Crickets Are So Hot Right Now

09 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever wondered how biologists choose what animal to use in their research? Since scientists can't do a lot of basic research on people, they s...

The Race To Save A Tree Species

08 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The whitebark pine is a hardy tree that grows in an area stretching from British Columbia, Canada south to parts of California and east to Montana. It...

The $20 Billion Deal To Get Indonesia Off Coal

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Indonesia is the world's largest exporter of coal for electricity. And it's also an emerging economy trying to address climate change. The country re...

Rome wasn't built in a day, but they sure had strong concrete

06 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Roman Colosseum is a giant, oval amphitheater built almost two thousand years ago. Despite its age and a 14th century earthquake that knocked down...

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein's Disordered Cosmos

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist at the University of New Hampshire. It's her job to ask deep questions about how we — and the re...

Honoring The 'Hidden Figures' Of Black Gardening

02 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Abra Lee became the landscape manager at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, she sought some advice about how to best do the job. T...

This Navy vet helped discover a new, super-heavy element

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As a kid, Clarice Phelps dreamed of being an astronaut, or maybe an explorer like the characters on Star Trek. Her path to a career in science turned ...

What DNA kits leave out: race, ancestry and 'scientific sankofa'

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Population geneticist Dr. Janina Jeff is the host and executive producer of In Those Genes, a hip-hop inspired podcast that uses genetics to uncover t...

Measuring Health Risks After A Chemical Spill

27 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will hold a public hearing about its remediation plan for cleaning up chemicals in and around Eas...

Ancient Seeds: A Possible Key To Climate Adaptation

24 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the Bekaa Valley region of Lebanon, there is a giant walk-in fridge housing tens of thousands of seeds. They belong to the International Center for...

Seriously...what IS life?

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this Back To School episode we consider the "List of Life": the criteria that define what it is to be a living thing. Some are easy calls: A kitten...

Understanding Earthquake Aftershocks

22 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Monday another earthquake struck southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border. This time, the quake registered as a magnitude 6.3 — an order lower th...

The Fungal Science Behind HBO's 'The Last of Us'

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The video game series that spawned the new hit HBO drama, The Last of Us, is the zombie genre with a twist. Instead of the standard viral pandemic or ...

Life Kit: Help Save The North American Bird Population

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Many of us are off today for President's Day. In the meantime, we want to share this episode from our friends at NPR's Life Kit podcast. In it, they d...

News Round Up: Chocolate, A Solar Valentine And Fly Pheromones

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

After reading the science headlines this week, we have A LOT of questions. Is chocolate really that good for your health? How do solar flares affect l...

The Science Fueling Disney's 'Strange World'

16 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Disney's new animated feature 'Strange World,' a band of multigenerational explorers journeys to the center of their fantastical homeland. Along th...

Congrats! It's A Tomato

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A few years ago, a team of scientists set out on a field expedition in the rugged, dry Northern Territory of Australia. There, they found a plant that...

Mix Up LOVE, And You Get V-O-L-E

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You may have heard of the "love hormone," or oxytocin. But you may not know that scientists have relied on cuddly rodents like the prairie vole to hel...

Meet One Engineer Fixing A Racially Biased Medical Device

13 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the COVID-19 pandemic, one measurement became more important than almost any other: blood oxygen saturation. It was the one concrete number tha...

Lightning Protection: Lasers, Rockets or Rods?

10 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, lightning is estimated to cause up to 24,000 deaths globally. It starts forest fires, burns buildings and crops, and causes disruptive pow...

The Social Cost of Carbon Is An Ethics Nightmare

09 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most important tools the federal government has for cracking down on greenhouse gas emissions is a single number: the social cost of carbon...

Why Can't We Predict Earthquakes?

08 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the wake of the massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria, many scientists have been saying this area was "overdue" for a major quake. But no one knew...

Who Gets The First Peek At The Secrets Of The Universe?

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The James Webb Space Telescope is by far the most powerful space-based telescope ever deployed by the United States. But it is only one instrument, an...

Can You See What I See?

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone sees the world differently. Exactly which colors you see and which of your eyes is doing more work than the other as you read this text is di...

A Dirty Snowball, Cancer-Sniffing Ants And A Stressed Out Moon

03 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A green comet, cancer-sniffing ants, stealthy moons ... hang out with us as we dish on some of the coolest science stories in the news! Today, Short W...

A Fatal Virus With Pandemic Potential

02 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Nipah virus is on the World Health Organization's short list of diseases that have pandemic potential and therefore pose the greatest public healt...

The Ancient Night Sky And The Earliest Astronomers

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Moiya McTier says the night sky has been fueling humans' stories about the universe for a very long time, and informing how they explain the natural w...

Can you teach a computer common sense?

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past decade, AI has moved right into our houses - onto our phones and smart speakers - and grown in sophistication. But many AI systems lack ...

Gas Stoves: Sorting Fact From Fiction

30 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Gas stoves are found in around 40% of homes in the United States, and they've been getting a lot of attention lately. A recent interview with Richard ...

Meet The Bony-Eared Assfish And Its Deep Sea Friends

27 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Yi-Kai Tea, a biodiversity research fellow at the Australian Museum in Sydney, has amassed a social media following as @KaiTheFishGuy for his sassy wr...

6 Doctors Swallow Lego Heads ... What Comes Out?

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As an emergency physician at Western Health, in Melbourne, Australia, Dr. Andy Tagg says he meets a lot of anxious parents whose children have swallow...

The Math And Science Powering 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'

25 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Film directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively: Daniels) reimagined the multiverse movie in their breakout film Everything Everywhere A...

Our Perception Of Time Shapes The Way We Think About Climate Change

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Most people are focused on the present: today, tomorrow, maybe next year. Fixing your flat tire is more pressing than figuring out if you should buy a...

Fossil CSI: Cracking The Case Of An Ancient Reptile Graveyard

23 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This mystery begins in 1952, in the Nevada desert, when a self-taught geologist came across the skeleton of a massive creature that looked like a cros...

New Tech Targets Epilepsy With Lasers, Robots

20 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

About three million people in the United States have epilepsy, including about a million who can't rely on medication to control their seizures. For y...

What Cities Should Learn From California's Flooding

19 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Winter storms have flooded parts of California, broken levees and forced thousands to evacuate. Climate change is altering the historic weather patter...

Time Is So Much Weirder Than It Seems

18 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Time is a concept so central to our daily lives. Yet, the closer scientists look at it, the more it seems to fall apart. Time ticks by differently at ...

A Course Correction In Managing Drying Rivers

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Historic drought in the west and water diversion for human use are causing stretches of the Colorado and Mississippi rivers to run dry. "The American ...

How You Can Support Scientific Research

16 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're off today in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In the meantime, we want to share this episode from our friends at NPR's Life Kit podcas...

Things Could Be Better

13 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Are humans ever satisfied? Two social psychologists, Ethan Ludwin-Peery and Adam Mastroianni, fell down a research rabbit hole accidentally answering ...

Behold! The Mysterious Ice Worm

12 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Inside the mountaintop glaciers of the Pacific Northwest lives a mysterious, and often, overlooked creature. They're small, black, thread-like worms t...

How Glaciers Move

11 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There's always a moment of intense isolation when Jessica Mejía gets dropped off on the Greenland ice sheet for a multi-week research stint. "You kno...

Zircon: The Keeper Of Earth's Time

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The mineral zircon is the oldest known piece of Earth existing on the surface today. The oldest bits date back as far as 4.37 billion years — not to...

Redlining's Ripple Effects Go Beyond Humans

09 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When Dr. Chloé Schmidt was a PhD student in Winnepeg, Canada, she was studying wildlife in urban areas. She and her advisor Dr. Colin Garroway came a...

An Atmospheric River Runs Through It

06 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

From space, it looks almost elegant: a narrow plume cascading off the Pacific Ocean, spilling gently over the California coast. But from the ground, i...

The Period Talk (For Adults)

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every month, 1.8 billion people menstruate globally. For those people, managing periods is essential for strong reproductive and emotional health, soc...

Houston, We Have Short Wave On The Line

04 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Speaking to Short Wave from about 250 miles above the Earth, Josh Cassada outlined his typical day at work: "Today, I actually started out by taking m...

Time Cells Don't Really Care About Time

03 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Time is woven into our personal memories. If you recall a childhood fall from a bike, your brain replays the entire episode in excruciating detail: Th...

A New Year's Mad Lib!

02 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To ring in the new year, producer Berly McCoy brings host Emily Kwong this homemade science mad lib!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastc...

I'm Crying Cuz... I'm Human

30 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

From misty eyeballs to full-on waterworks, what are tears? Why do we shed them? And what makes humans' ability to cry emotional tears unique? Hosts Em...

The Woman Behind A Mystery That Changed Astronomy

29 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell made a discovery that revolutionized astronomy. She detected the radio signals emitted by certain dying stars called pul...

Pumpkin Toadlet: Neither Pumpkin, Nor Toad

28 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Being small has its advantages - and some limitations. One organism that intimately knows the pros and cons of being mini is the pumpkin toadlet.As an...

TikTok's favorite zoologist quizzes us on the most dangerous animals

27 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mamadou Ndiaye uses comedy to teach animal facts, but there's nothing funny about these deadly ones.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastc...

A Holiday Fact Exchange!

26 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Host Emily Kwong and editor Gisele Grayson exchange the gift of facts - in this quick hello from us to you, our wonderful listeners!Learn more about s...

Climate Change Stresses Out These Chipmunks. Why Are Their Cousins So Chill?

23 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Kwasi Wrensford describes the subjects of his research as "elfin": skittish little squirrel-cousins with angular faces, pointy ears and narrow, furry ...

Can COP 15 Save Our Planet's Biodiversity?

22 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week, the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) wrapped up in Montreal, Canada. Nations from around the world came together to establish a new set ...

Brain Scientists Are Tripping Out Over Psychedelics

21 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Psychedelic drugs – like LSD, salvia, ayahuasca, Ibogaine, MDMA (AKA ecstasy), or psilocybin (AKA 'magic mushrooms' or 'shrooms') – are experienci...

Confessions Of A Math Convert

20 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Math is a complex, beautiful language that can help people understand the world. And sometimes math is hard! Science communicator Sadie Witkowski says...

Your Multivitamin Won't Save You

19 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dietary supplements — the vitamins, herbs and botanicals that you'll find in most grocery stores — are everywhere. More than half of U.S. adults o...

The Hope For Slowing Amazon Deforestation

16 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Brazil's president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is renewing calls to protect the Amazon and rein in the deforestation. Climate scientists are enc...

A Step Closer To Nuclear Fusion Energy

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

On Dec. 5 at 1 o'clock in the morning local time, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California used lasers to zap a tiny pe...

From Scientific Exile To Gene Editing Pioneer

14 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Gene editing was a new idea in the mid-1970s. So when Harvard and MIT planned new research in recombinant DNA, alarm bells went off. "People were worr...