Science Friday

It’s winter, and the SciFri team is already dreaming of warmer weather. How about a mind vacation to one of the hottest places on earth, an erupting volcano? Tamsin Mather has trekked to volcanoes in Chile, Guatemala, Italy, and beyond to learn their secrets. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to field your burning volcano questions , like what’s the deal with glass shards that look like hairballs? Gue...

The sound of a choir performing in a cathedral is iconic for a reason. It’s this beautiful human experience: being side-by-side with other people, feeling the sound vibrate through you, reverberating around the space. But how long has that been a part of our culture? And what role did sound play in the lives of people who lived during the Ice Age or the Stone Age? That’s the focus of a growing fie...

As the planet warms, the world’s glaciers are melting faster than snow can replenish the ice. That has implications for sea level rise, ocean currents, and global weather patterns. But collecting data at the edge of a melting glacier can be risky. Glaciologist Erin Pettit and her colleagues are listening to the sounds melting glaciers make —from the sizzling of trapped air bubbles bursting, to the...

In cancer research, the “seed and soil” hypothesis posits that the tumor is like a seed of misbehaving cells taking root in the body. Whether it grows—and where it grows—depends on the conditions, or soil. Since this hypothesis was proposed more than 100 years ago, most research and treatments have focused on the seed, or tumor. For nearly 50 years, Rakesh Jain has been studying the soil. But in a...

For many people, bubonic plague is an illness that seems squarely situated in medieval times. But each year, a handful of human cases pop up in the western United States. Plague can be treated successfully with modern medicine. But why does it still exist , and how should we think about it both locally and globally? Plague researcher Viveka Vadyvaloo joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk all things sp...

Today we’re spotlighting an underappreciated group of marine creatures: sea slugs. Don’t let their humble name fool you. They come in vivid neon colors, with patterns that rival the most beautiful butterflies and feather-like external gills and tentacles. There are an estimated 10,000 species of sea slugs and they are incredibly diverse. Some are smaller than a quarter. And one species can weigh m...

There’s an enormous buildout of data centers underway across the country to fuel the AI boom. Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been spent on data centers, with talk of spending trillions more. And these data centers use a lot of power: According to the Times Picuayune, Meta’s new data center under construction in Louisiana will require nearly three times the power that New Orleans uses...

You might think about bats as flitting around in the dark and hunting insects, but some species feed on fruits or flowers—and play an important role as pollinators. One place that role is crucial is in the relationship between bats and agave plants. Bat conservationist Kristen Lear joins Host Ira Flatow to describe efforts to restore agaves in the Southwest and Mexico, which has consequences for b...

The spotted owl has been a conservation flashpoint for more than 30 years. While habitat loss has been their historic foe, their most recent threat comes from within the owl family tree: the barred owl. Barred owls have expanded into the Pacific Northwest and are now outcompeting spotted owls for food and habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has put forth a strategy that some experts say is...

A team of scientists is trying to jumpstart a global conservation movement, on par with efforts to save the rainforests or protect the oceans. But it might be even more ambitious because the target of their quest is invisible, everywhere, and mostly something we try to hand-sanitize away: microbes. So how do you conserve something that is everywhere and in everything? And why do microbes need prot...

When we try to commune with nature, many of us turn toward the living: a walk in the woods among swaying trees, chirping birds, blooming flowers. But earth scientist Anjana Khatwa says not to overlook the inanimate —don’t sleep on rocks. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her love for rocks beyond the scientific and her new book, The Whispers of Rock. Read an excerpt from The Whispers of...

Each year, the Ig Nobel Prizes recognize scientific research that first makes you laugh, then makes you think. For instance, researchers who investigated the pizza preferences of lizards on the island of Togo. Or a man who kept track of his fingernail growth for 35 years. As is Thanksgiving tradition, we’re sharing highlights from this year’s Ig Nobels on Science Friday. Annals of Improbable Resea...

A good workout can make you feel triumphant. And even if that isn’t your relationship with exercise, you’ve probably heard that working out can lift your mood, fight depression, and make you more resilient when life knocks back. But why exactly does exercise improve mental health? Is it all about those endorphins? Does the type or duration of a workout matter if you’re looking for a mental wellnes...

It’s a wonderful time of the year: squash, pumpkin, and gourd season. But how do those giant, award-winning pumpkins grow so big? And what’s the difference between a gourd and a squash?  In a conversation from 2023, Ira talks with Dr. Chris Hernandez, director of the University of New Hampshire’s squash, pumpkin, and melon breeding program to explore all things winter squash and answer listener qu...

Twenty years ago, a young oncologist started journaling to process his experience treating cancer patients. That cathartic act became the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Fifteen years after the book was published, how has our understanding of preventing and treating cancer changed? Host Flora Lichtman is joined by author Siddhartha Mukherjee to talk...

African grey parrots are internet stars. It’s easy to see why—the charismatic birds sing, tell jokes, and sling profanities. But how do the endangered birds get from African forests to your feed? Wildlife crime reporter Rene Ebersole joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe her investigation into the global parrot trade, and the black market for wild African greys that is threatening their existence....

After years of getting your emails and phone calls, we know that SciFri listeners are in the 99th percentile when it comes to nerdy knowledge. We’re putting your fact retention skills to the test with the first ever Super Food Science Excellence Trivia Blowout (SFSETBO).Host Flora Lichtman teams up with trivia kingpin Mangesh Hattikudur, co-host of the podcast “Part-Time Genius,” to quiz one lucky...

Some animals have a very different relationship to aging than we do: They don’t get cancer, they never go through menopause, and they live absurdly long lives. For instance, one bat species can live for more than 40 years, which may not sound like very long but that’s about nine times longer than expected based on its size. For comparison, if we aged on that scale, we’d live for hundreds of years....

Proteins are crucial for life. They're made of amino acids that “fold” into millions of different shapes. And depending on their structure, they do radically different things in our cells. For a long time, predicting those shapes for research was considered a grand biological challenge. But in 2020, Google’s AI lab DeepMind released Alphafold, a tool that was able to accurately predict many of the...

If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to drill a hole? A team of researchers wondered that too and set out to investigate, by putting tiny muscle monitors on eight downy woodpeckers and recording them with high-speed video as they pecked away i...

Our memories make us who we are—just ask Barbra Streisand. But despite the lyrics in many popular songs, memories aren’t frozen in time. When we call them up, the details shift and change. And neuroscience research shows that we might be able to take that a step further—to manipulate our memories and even implant false ones. Neuroscientist Steve Ramirez joins Host Ira Flatow to explain how memory...

Bearded vultures build giant, elaborate nests that are passed down from generation to generation. And according to a new study, some of these scavengers have collected bits and bobs of human history over the course of centuries. Scientists picked apart 12 vulture nests preserved in Spain and discovered a museum collection’s worth of objects, including a woven sandal that could be more than 700 yea...

The band Phish has toured for over 40 years. One of the draws of their legendary live shows—which can go on for 8 hours—is finding moments of “flow,” when the band members lock into an improvised jam, finding new musical ideas in real time. Phish fans live for these transcendent moments, but so do the musicians—to the point that Mike Gordon, the band’s bass player, is funding scientific research t...

Around 25 years ago, Ardem Patapoutian set out to investigate the fundamental biology behind our sense of touch. Through a long process of gene elimination, he identified a class of sensors in the cell membrane that turn physical pressure into an electrical signal. He changed the game in the field of sensation and perception, and in 2021 shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his wor...

Over the last five years, billions of people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. New research has found an unanticipated result of these vaccines: Cancer treatments are more effective for some vaccinated patients, and many live longer than their unvaccinated counterparts. This news comes at a time where the federal government is slashing funding for mRNA research. Host Ira...