Short Wave

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 living room — they're monitoring the stems, leaves and fruit of Cornell AgriTech's vineyards, rolling down each row and scanning for mildew. In this episode, host Emily Kwong and producer Hannah Chinn take a trip to Cornell to check out these new robots...

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 of the doctoral-level scientists and engineers working in the U.S., but the incoming Trump administration wants to make it harder for them to get H-1B visas. Some scientists worry a scarcity of H-1B visas may prompt top foreign researchers to work in...

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 government when it ordered the Diné to leave their land as part of the Long Walk. Horticulturalist Reagan Wtysalucy wants to bring that those Southwest peaches back. Want to hear more Indigenous science? Email us at shortwave@npr.org to let us know!...

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 about 70,000 animal species. The hope is that through all of this gene sequencing, scientists will be able to answer some basic but important questions like: What makes a bird, well, a bird? What makes a mammal a mammal? Plus, with so many species o...

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. Researchers taught these tiny rodents to drive — and turns out, they really like it. But why? Host Regina G. Barber talks with Kelly about her driving rats, and what they tell us about anticipation, neuroplasticity, and decision making. Plus, why optimi...

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 stores use research from fields like consumer neuroscience and neuromarketing to entice you. Retailers create urgency and scarcity to push you to give into the emotional part of your brain, motivated by the release of dopamine. But with the help of NP...

Beaked hazelnuts are a wild food native to North America. Indigenous peoples in British Columbia have passed down stories of these hazelnuts as a vital food source their ancestors planted and cultivated. These stories motivated Chelsea Geralda Armstrong of Simon Fraser University to look more deeply at the genetics of the beaked hazelnut and determine just how widely it was cultivated. Indigenous...

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 reporters Julia Simon and Alejandra Borunda , we home in on two. First, $300 billion. That's the amount of money wealthy countries agreed to give developing countries to help them adapt to climate change and reduce pollution. Second, 1.5C. That's a war...

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 Amazon. The United Nations also estimates that an Indigenous language dies every two weeks . Today, we focus on two endangered languages spoken in the Vaupés region of northwest Amazonia: Desano and Siriano. Linguist Wilson de Lima Silva at the...

Monarch butterfly populations have plummeted due to habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change. In early December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is going to decide whether the monarch should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. If that comes to pass, the migratory butterfly would be one of the most widespread species to receive this listing. Want to hear more on the animals that su...

SpaceX's Starship rocket took off again Tuesday for its sixth test flight. Crowds, including President-elect Donald Trump, gathered at the launch site in Texas to watch it fly part way around the world to the Indian Ocean. Starship – the largest rocket ever built – is the dream of Elon Musk, who hopes to make humans a multiplanetary species. But building the rocket is having a real impact on Earth...

For decades, Coho salmon were turning up dead in urban streams the Pacific Northwest. The salmon would stop swimming straight, and then die before they had a chance to spawn. Researchers worried that unless they figured out the cause, the species would eventually go extinct. Enter a formidable crew of biologists, modelers, community scientists, environmental chemists. After eventually ruling out t...

Many people are gearing up for holiday conversations with loved ones who may disagree with them — on everything from politics to religion and lifestyle choices. As the conversations unfold, these divisions are visible in our brains too. These conversations can get personal and come to a halt fast. But today on the show we get into research in neuroscience and psychology showing that as much as we...

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 Wu , a behavioral sleep medicine psychologist and author of the book Hello Sleep . She and host Regina G. Barber discuss what's happening to our bodies when we get jet lag and the clocks in our body get out of whack. They also get into the science of t...

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 deep sea experts have ever seen before — and now, the researchers who spent twenty years studying them have finally published their findings. Have another scientific discovery you want us to cover on a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — w...

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 humans become a multiplanetary species. Specifically, that we could live on Mars. Biologist Kelly Weinersmith and cartoonist Zach Weinersmith have spent the last four years researching what this would look like if we did this anytime soon. In their new bo...

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 help fix electric grids: drones. They're betting that 2-ft. large drones connected to "smart" electric grids are a cost-effective step to a more electrified future. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by si...

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 sour beer. Plus, no fermentation episode is complete without a lil history of our boy, yeast. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Pri...

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 waves from the collision of two neutron stars. Corey was on the graveyard shift at LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Hanford, Washington, when the historic signal came. This episode, Corey talks about the discovery, the...

In North-Central New Jersey, there is a backyard teeming with around 200 turtles. Many of these shelled creatures have been rescued from the smuggling trade and are now being nursed back to health in order to hopefully be returned to the wild. Science reporter Ari Daniel joins host Regina G. Barber to tell the story behind one man's efforts to care for these turtles and to ensure they have a chanc...

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 system were changed? Certain states are about to find out. This year, several places have alternative voting systems up for consideration on their ballots, and those systems could set an example for voting reform throughout the rest of the country. Shor...

How did life start on Earth? The answer is a big scientific mystery scientists are actively investigating. After talking with many scientists, host Regina G. Barber found that an abundance of water on Earth is most likely key, in some way, to the origin of life — specifically, in either deep sea hydrothermal vents or in tide pools. It's for this reason some scientists are also exploring the potent...

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 tadpole?" A new paper in the journal Nature details the oldest known tadpole fossil. Ringing in 20 million years earlier than scientists previously had evidence of, this fossil might get us closer to an answer. Have another scientific discovery you...

NOTE: This episode contains multiple high-pitched noises (human and other animals) that some listeners might find startling or distressing. In this episode, host Regina G. Barber and NPR correspondent Nate Rott dive into the science behind the sound of fear. Along the way, they find out what marmot shrieks, baby cries and horror movie soundtracks have in common — and what all of this tells us abou...

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 122 years. So, for this early Halloween episode, host Regina G. Barber asks: Why do we age and why do we die? Microbiologist Venki Ramakrishnan explains some of the mechanisms inside of our bodies that contribute to our decay — and tells us if it's possi...