Science Friday

This week, China’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft sent back its first image from space. It’s headed to a rendezvous with the asteroid Kamoʻoalewa, one of Earth’s “quasi-moons,” where it will collect samples in 2026. The mission comes after several successful lunar missions, including a lunar rover and a sample return mission from the far side of the moon. Host Ira Flatow talks with reporter Ling Xin from th...

The prairie might just be the most underappreciated landscape in the United States. Beginning in the early 1800s, the majority of these grasslands were converted into big industrial farms. Now, some unaffectionately refer to it as “flyover country.”Host Ira Flatow talks with Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty, authors of Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin and Redemption of Nature on the American Prair...

Bedbug infestations are not just a modern problem—these pests have been with early human ancestors for 245,000 years, causing problems long before the invention of beds. Lindsay Miles, an entomologist at Virginia Tech, has found that changes in bedbug population size mirrored those of humans, proving they might be our first pest. Miles talks with Host Flora Lichtman about our history with bedbugs...

Manu Prakash is many things—biologist, engineer, inventor, philosopher—but what he isn’t is conventional. Following his instincts has led Manu to his most ambitious project yet: mapping the whole tree of life, with the help of everyone on this planet. Step one: make a cheap microscope anyone can use. Foldscope co-inventor Jim Cybulski describes their invention, and their dream to supply millions o...

A mysterious disease called acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) has been appearing in emergency rooms for about a decade. The disease has caused otherwise healthy children to lose the ability to move their arms and legs, and some become completely paralyzed. AFM is caused by a virus that's a cousin of the polio virus, earning it the nickname "the new polio.” Journalist and physician Eli Cahan joins Host...

It’s a precarious time for science in the United States. Federal funding is being slashed, career scientists are being laid off, and researchers are considering leaving to work abroad. On top of that, public trust in science and experts has declined. Besides acknowledging the federal attacks on science, a lot of scientists are also asking themselves: What are we doing wrong? How do we engage the p...

South American cane toads were brought to Australia in 1935 to help eradicate native beetles that were destroying sugar cane crops. The toads didn’t care much for the beetles, but they did spread across the coast of Queensland and beyond, with no natural predators to stop them. Their own deadly toxin devastated local reptiles along the way, and they now number over 200 million. Invasive biologists...

Birding is a hobby that attracts a very particular group of people: the kind who get up at sunrise, go into the woods, and wait for hours for a little tiny feathered friend to fly past. Author and illustrator Rosemary Mosco guides us into the world of birding with her new book, The Birding Dictionary . Plus, biologist Sara Lipshutz fills us in on the surprisingly high-drama world of some female bi...

As a young plant scientist, Joanne Chory shook up the research establishment with her unconventional approach to figuring out how plants work. Her methods and success changed the field, and led her to her biggest project yet—tackling climate change, with the help of millions of plants. Colleagues Steve Kay, Detlef Weigel, and Jennifer Nemhauser describe what made Joanne outstanding in the field of...

Grant funding by the National Science Foundation has been cut by more than half this year, bringing the foundation’s science funding to its lowest level in decades. Katrina Miller, who covers science for the New York Times , joins Host Flora Lichtman to unpack the cutbacks and discuss where the funding changes might lead. And, the FDA has cleared a blood test to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease....

At the end of April, air traffic control radar surveillance and radio communication systems at Newark airport went dark for over a minute. A week and half later, radar went down again briefly. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has since cut down the number of flights in and out of Newark. But, how does our air traffic control system work? How do air traffic controllers keep track of all of...

At the beginning of May, the National Institutes of Health, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced a plan to develop a universal vaccine platform. Think: a single shot for flu or COVID-19 that would last years, maybe a lifetime. The plan—called Generation Gold Standard—has a reported budget of $500 million, and a tight deadline. But will it work? And where does the science...

Betül Kaçar started her scientific career as a biochemist, working on an enzyme found in zebrafish. But then she found her calling: investigating some of the hardest questions in evolutionary biology by resurrecting ancient life forms. NASA administrator Melissa Kirven-Brooks recalls the fellowship application that put Betül on her radar. And evolutionary biologist and geneticist Harmit Malik weig...

The “Mission: Impossible” franchise is known for its big stunts, and the newest film is no exception. Producer Kathleen Davis talks to the film’s stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, about the science behind one big underwater scene. Plus, psychologist Kenneth Carter joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about what makes high-adrenaline adventurers tick. Take this questionnaire to see where you fall on t...

Climate scientist Jagadish Shukla grew up in a small village in rural India, where people starved if the monsoon season didn’t bring rain. To help his village, he set out to become a scientist and discover a way to predict the seasons—an unthinkable idea at the time, in the 1960s and ‘70s. Shukla became a pioneer in modern weather forecasting , and he tells his unlikely story in his new memoir, A...

In recent years, digital touchscreens have replaced many of the buttons and knobs that control various functions in cars. But when Host Ira Flatow went shopping for a new car, he noticed that physical controls seemed to be making a comeback. But will the rise of technologies like voice recognition and automation make cars more button-centric, or less? Ira talks with car ergonomics engineer James F...

Tomatoes come in all kinds of colors, sizes, and flavors. But what’s going on at the genetic level? What makes a tomato red or yellow? Tiny or giant? Researchers are mapping the genomes of 22 varieties of nightshades—the family of plants that includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants. They located the genes that control the size of tomatoes and eggplants and then used CRISPR gene editing to grow...

As a teenager living in St. Vincent, Richie Robertson saw first-hand what a volcanic eruption did to life on the island. Forty years later, he was the scientist the community turned to when the same volcano roared back to life. Richie’s colleague, Stacey Edwards of the UWI Seismic Research Centre, explains how Richie earned the trust of the community, and why it was important to have a Vincentian...

The lesser prairie chicken was granted endangered species status in 2023. Now the Department of the Interior is moving to revoke those protections . What can this bird known for its flamboyant courtship rituals tell us about the Trump administration’s approach to environmental policy and protections for endangered species? Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Producer Shoshannah Buxbaum and Vox enviro...

Firefighting is a career with an inherent cancer risk, but a full understanding of what those risks are has been elusive. An important registry designed to help understand the link between firefighters and cancer was taken offline on April 1 because of federal cuts, then restored six weeks later. Host Flora Lichtman discusses this with firefighter health researcher Sara Jahnke and reporter Murphy...

What does it take to create and maintain one of the largest repositories of botanical information in the world? For starters, it can mean helicopter-ing into remote nooks of the Amazon, hiking through rough terrain, looking for strange fruits and flowers, and climbing trees to pluck specimens from the branches. Then there’s all the science required to identify, classify, and codify those species. ...

Medical sculptor Damon Coyle walks around with a Mary Poppins bag of body parts. Fake ones, that is. At the University of Missouri, his lab creates hyperrealistic body parts designed to help medical providers practice for real-world surgeries and procedures. They make things like lifelike arms for practicing blood draws or a set of eyeballs for ocular trauma training. On stage in Columbia, Missour...

Biochemist Kati Karikó spent decades experimenting with mRNA, convinced that she could solve the problems that had kept it from being used as a therapeutic. Her tireless, methodical work was dismissed and she was ridiculed. But that work laid the foundation for the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines that saved millions of lives, and was recognized by a Nobel Prize in 2023. Kati shares her secr...

Proposed budget cuts for NASA would jeopardize space research. And an executive order could change the political tides for deep sea mining. On May 2, the Trump Administration proposed a 24% budget cut for NASA. It would slash funding for science while setting billions aside for initiatives to send humans to the moon and Mars. New Scientist editor Sophie Bushwick joins us to talk about this, as wel...

Bacteria have been around for billions of years. Could they have come up with complex behaviors that we just don’t understand yet? Could they have their own language? Their own culture? Their own complex societies playing out right under, and in, our noses?  Microbiologist Bonnie Bassler has been studying these questions for more than 30 years. She talks with Host Flora Lichtman about the wild wor...