Short Wave
Episodes
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...
You Know That Gut Feeling You Have?...
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
TFW when you're so excited you get those butterflies in your stomach - or maybe when you see something icky, you feel ill. On today's show, producer B...
The Myth of Plastic Recycling
12 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For many, recycling feels like a tangible way to personally combat climate change and to positively affect the environment. But after a years long inv...
DART: The Impacts Of Slamming A Spacecraft Into An Asteroid
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If an asteroid were hurling through space, making a beeline straight to Earth, how would humans prevent it from doing what it did to the dinosaurs? Wo...
The Biologist Who Talks With Cells
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The human body is made up of more than 30 trillion cells, but how do they all work together? It's all about communication! "They talk through molecule...
What Makes Hawaii's Erupting Volcanoes Special
07 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Just after Thanksgiving, for the first time in almost 40 years, Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano erupted. It's one of several ongoing eruptions – includin...
'One Mississippi...' How Lightning Shapes The Climate
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When lightning strikes a giant tree in the tropical rainforest, there's usually no fire, no blackened crater — you might not even notice any damage....
Don't Call It Dirt: The Science Of Soil
05 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's easy to overlook the soil beneath our feet, or to think of it as just dirt to be cleaned up. But soil wraps the world in an envelope of life: It ...
Arts Week: Physics Meets The Circus
02 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Julia Ruth's job takes a lot of strength, a lot of balance, and a surprising amount of physics. She's a circus artist — and has performed her acroba...
Arts Week: The Life Cycle Of A Neuron
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
An exhibit that blended science and technology for an immersive art experience went on display in Washington, DC and New York City in 2021 and 2022. I...
Arts Week: The Literary Magazine Dissecting Health And Healing
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
New York's Bellevue Hospital is the oldest public hospital in the country, serving patients from all walks of life. It's also the home of a literary m...
Arts Week: How Art Can Heal The Brain
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Arts therapies appear to ease a host of brain disorders from Parkinson's to PTSD. But these treatments that rely on music, poetry or visual arts haven...
Arts Week: Harnessing Bacteria For Art
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Pull out your art supplies because it's time to get crafty—with agar! We're beginning Arts Week at the intersection of biology and art. Therein lies...
Happy Thanksgiving, All!
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Emily and Aaron wish you a Happy Thanksgiving, and explain how you can help the show. Hint: It's giving us feedback about what you love and think we c...
Three Takeaways From The COP27 Climate Conference
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The climate meeting known as COP27 has wrapped. Representatives from almost 200 countries attended to talk about how to tackle climate change and how ...
A Taste Of Lab-Grown Meat
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The idea came to Uma Valeti while he was working on regrowing human tissue to help heart attack patients: If we can grow tissue from cells in a lab, w...
A Deeply Personal Race Against A Fatal Brain Disease
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the mornings, Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel's first job is to get their two garrulous kids awake, fed and out the door to daycare and kindergarten...
Science Couldn't Save Her, So She Became A Scientist
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first time Sonia Vallabh understood something was very wrong with her mother Kamni was on the phone on her mom's 52nd birthday. She wasn't herself...
Killer Proteins: The Science Of Prions
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Prions are biological anomalies – self-replicating, not-alive little particles that can misfold into an unstoppable juggernaut of fatal disease. Pri...
Where Do Climate Negotiations Stand At COP27?
16 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Climate negotiations continue at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Tens of thousands of attendees from around the world have gathered in the seaside re...
Searching For A New Life
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we pass the mic to our colleagues at All Things Considered to share the first piece in their series on the impact of climate change, global mig...
Corey Gray Is Picking Up Cosmic Vibrations
14 Nov 2022
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...
Climate Tipping Points And The Damage That Could Follow
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If Earth heats up beyond 1.5 degrees, the impacts don't get just slightly worse--scientists warn that abrupt changes could be set off, with devastatin...
Depression And Alzheimer's Treatments At A Crossroads
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Researchers are launching a make-or-break study to test the conventional wisdom about what causes Alzheimer's disease. And in a recent small study, th...
Why Do We Cry?
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last month, Short Wave explored the evolutionary purpose of laughter. Now, we're talking tears. From glistening eyeballs to waterworks, what are tears...
Traditional Plant Knowledge Is Not A Quick Fix
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Regina G. Barber talks with Dr. Rosalyn LaPier about ethnobotany--what it is and how traditional plant knowledge is frequently misunderstood in the er...
COP-out: Who's Liable For Climate Change Destruction?
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
World leaders have gathered in Egypt this week to begin climate talks at the 27th Conference of the Parties. However, there are still outstanding ques...
Control: Eugenics And The Corruption Of Science
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, a book about the evolution of non-human animals by natural selection. In its wake, a poli...
Should Daylight Saving Time Be Permanent?
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Correspondent Allison Aubrey talks to host Emily Kwong about the pros and cons of adopting permanent Daylight Saving Time or year-round Standard Time....
Allergic To Cats? There's Hope Yet!
02 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Katie Wu is a cat person. She has two of them: twin boys named Calvin and Hobbes. But up until grad school, she couldn't be anywhere close to a cat wi...
Saving The Pacific Lamprey
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Pacific lamprey have lived on Earth for about 450 million years. When humans came along, a deep relationship formed between Pacific lamprey and Native...
Donate Your Body To Science?
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Halloween calls to mind graveyards and the walking dead, so, naturally, Short Wave wanted to know what happens when you donate your body to real scien...
100 Years Of Box Turtles
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The common box turtle is found just about anywhere in the continental United States east of Colorado. For all their ubiquity, it's unclear how many th...
He Had His Father's Voice: Tracking A Rare Bird Hybrid
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Steve Gosser heard the song of a scarlet tanager in the woods, he knew to look for a bright-red bird with black wings. But when he laid eyes on t...
The Tigray Medical System Collapse
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The civil war in Ethiopia is destroying the medical system in the northern Tigray region, which serves nearly 7 million people. Doctors are operating ...
When Autumn Leaves Start To Fall
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Botanist and founder of #BlackBotanistsWeek Tanisha Williams explains why some leaves change color during fall and what shorter days and colder temper...
New Discoveries In Underwater Plant Sex
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plants living underwater can't count on pollinating insects to get it on. The prevailing theory has been that pollen moves underwater simply by floati...
Brain Cells In A Dish Play Pong And Other Brain Adventures
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The world of brain research had two incredible developments last week. Researchers have taught a dish of brain cells to play the video game Pong to he...
These Animals Will Mess You Up
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The natural world is filled with treats ... and tricks. Today, Internet zoologist and TikTok star Mamadou Ndiaye takes over to talk about some of thos...
Beyond Condoms!
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Contraceptive research has historically prioritized women because they bear the burden of pregnancy and most contraceptive options available today are...
Choose Your Own (Math) Adventure
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ever read those Choose Your Own Adventure books of the 80s and 90s? As a kid, Dr. Pamela Harris was hooked on them. Years later she realized how much ...
You're 50, And Your Body Is Changing: Time For The Talk
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Perimenopause, the period of transition to menopause, is still a largely misunderstood chapter of reproductive life. It brings about both physical and...
Pop Quiz! Short Wave Birthday Edition
14 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Short Wave hosts Aaron Scott and Emily Kwong quiz All Things Considered hosts Mary Louise Kelly and Sacha Pfeiffer on some science questions Short Wav...
Why Do We Laugh?
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Laughter: We do it spontaneously, we do it forcefully, we do it with each other and by ourselves. But why did we evolve to giggle in the first place? ...
We Baked A Cake For Our 3rd Birthday!
12 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Of course we have to have cake for Short Wave's third birthday! Sugar-ologist and biochemist Adriana Patterson talks to producer Berly McCoy to give u...
The Quest To Save The California Condor
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The California condor used to soar across the western skies of North America, but by the 1980s, the bird was on the edge of extinction — just 22 rem...
IVF Has Come A Long Way, But Many Don't Have Access
07 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Since the first successful in vitro fertilization pregnancy and live birth in 1978, nearly half a million babies have been born using IVF in the Unite...
The Scorpion Renaissance Is Upon Us
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Scorpions: They're found pretty much everywhere, and new species are being identified all the time. Arachnologist Lauren Esposito says there's a lot t...
A New Drug For A Relentless Brain Disease
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
ALS is a disease that destroys the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord we need for voluntary movement. There is no cure, but now there is a newly...
Why Disaster Relief Underserves Those Who Need It Most
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When a disaster like Hurricane Ian destroys a house, the clock starts ticking. It gets harder for sick people to take their medications, medical devic...
Predicting Landslides: After Disaster, Alaska Town Turns To Science
03 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On August 18, 2015, in Sitka, Alaska, a slope above a subdivision of homes under construction gave way. This landslide demolished a building and kille...
Sustainable Seafood? It's A Question Of Data
30 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The last several decades have taken a toll on the oceans: Some fish populations are collapsing, plastic is an increasing problem and climate change is...
Why The Bladder Is Number One!
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When's the last time you thought about your bladder? We're going there today! In this Short Wave episode, Emily talks to bladder expert Dr. Indira Mys...
Grasslands: The Unsung Carbon Hero
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What's in a grassland? There are all sorts of wildflowers, many insects, animals like prairie dogs, bison and antelope — and beneath the surface, th...
One Park. 24 Hours.
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's easy to take city parks for granted, or to think of them as separate from nature and from the Earth's changing climate. But the place where many ...
Asteroid Deflection Mission, Activate!
26 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In movies, asteroids careening towards Earth are confronted by determined humans with nuclear weapons to save the world! But a real NASA mission wants...
Rise Of The Dinosaurs
23 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dinosaurs ruled the earth for many millions of years, but only after a mass extinction took out most of their rivals. Just how that happened remains a...
Working With Tribes To Co-Steward National Parks
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the final episode of Short Wave's Summer Road Trip series exploring the science happening in national parks and public lands, Aaron talks to Nation...
Water Water Everywhere, But How Much Do You Really Need?
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The water advice is everywhere - how much to drink (8 cups a day - really?), what to drink, when to drink, and all its benefits. On this episode we pr...
Three Sisters And The Fight Against Alzheimer's Disease
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly a decade ago, Karen Douthitt and her sisters June Ward and Susie Gilliam set out to learn why Alzheimer's disease was affecting so many of thei...
How Muggy Is It? Check The Dew Point!
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, Lauren Sommer talked with Short Wave about the dangerous combination of heat and humidity in the era of climate change and how the heat ind...