Science Friday

American chestnut trees once towered over the landscape, dominating forests in parts of the eastern United States. But in the late 1800s, a fungal blight virtually wiped them out across the country. Chestnut restoration scientist Jared Westbrook tells Host Ira Flatow how new genetic work could speed up efforts to breed fungal resistance into hybrid chestnuts and create a heartier chestnut populati...

On February 12, the Environmental Protection Agency dealt a major blow to the government’s power to fight climate change by rescinding a key piece of research called the endangerment finding . The finding, issued in 2009, basically says: Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare—and because they’re harmful, they must be regulated. It's the legal basis for the federal government’s...

An estimated 500,000 people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in the United States each year, but the causes and mechanisms of the condition remain a neurological mystery. A recent study looked at the role of variants in a gene called APOE in Alzheimer’s, and found that while it’s not a simple determinant of developing the disease, that one gene seems to play a significant role in promoting d...

Does the availability of “hemp-derived” THC products have you dazed and confused? A legal loophole in the 2018 Farm Bill lets these items be sold over the counter. But state actions, and a federal law that could come in November, aims to snuff these products out. Host Flora Lichtman talks to cannabis expert Cinnamon Bidwell about the confusing legal landscape, and the real differences between prod...

Despite major advances in our understanding of the biology of mental health disorders,  there’s no blood test or brain scan that will confirm if you have depression, anxiety, PTSD, or any other psychiatric illness . And yet, the American Psychiatric Association recently announced that it will be including biomarkers for mental conditions in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual...

There’s a long-held idea that autism is more prevalent in boys than girls—the CDC says it’s three times as common. But a growing body of research suggests the reality is more complicated. In a new study , researchers tracked autism diagnoses in millions of Swedish people born from 1985 to 2022. They found that the prevalence of autism is actually pretty even across the sexes, but people with “fema...

The gap between vaccine science and vaccine policy has been widening under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Now, the American Medical Association and the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota, have announced that they are partnering to create their own vaccine review process, effectively creating a parallel system to the CDC’s. Host Ira Flatow talks with Michael Ost...

While parts of the eastern and southern US have had unusually high snowfall this year, the West is in a snow drought. The abysmal winter sports season is just the tip of the melting iceberg: Snowpack is key to providing water throughout the year for the drought-stricken region. Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about this unusual winter are reporter David Condos and climate scientist Brad Udall....

Figure skating is a fan favorite at the Winter Olympics—for every event, the stands are packed to watch competitors glide, jump, and spin . But what does it take to pull off these seemingly effortless moves? Figure skating researcher Deborah King joins Host Ira Flatow to unfold the science of the sport, from the impressive jumps of US skater Ilia Malinin, to the g-forces endured by the ankles of a...

In Oregon and Colorado, you can book an appointment for psilocybin therapy , where a licensed therapist takes you on a guided trip using the drug that makes “magic” mushrooms hallucinogenic. Under federal law, psilocybin is illegal. But within the past few years, both states greenlit the drug for supervised medical use, and New Mexico may soon follow. It’s being used to treat certain conditions, i...

You may have heard that a little dirt is good for kids. It helps them build up their immune systems, and sets them on a path to future health. But what kind of filth does the trick? Producer Kathleen Davis digs into the latest science on the benefits of exposing kids to the outdoors with microbiologist Jack Gilbert and pediatric epidemiologist Amber Fyfe-Johnson. Guests: Dr. Jack Gilbert is a micr...

With so many dating apps—and so many people using them—why are a record number of American adults single? Is marriage as important as it was a generation or two ago? Evolutionary biologist and sex researcher Justin Garcia joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about dating and mating, and what evolutionary biology can tell us about our need to form a “pair bond” … or not. Read an excerpt from Justin’s...

Our ability to imagine is part of what makes us who we are—not just as individuals, but also as humans. It turns out, though, that we may not be the only species capable of playing pretend. In a string of experiments, scientists sat down, set the table, and hosted pretend tea parties with a bonobo named Kanzi to see if he’d play along—and he did. Producer Kathleen Davis chats with study author Ama...

Screens are ubiquitous in today’s world, and concerns about how they affect kids are mounting. Last month, Australia banned social media use for kids under 16, with some European countries poised to follow. But what’s the science on how neverending YouTube videos or TikToks affect kids’ brains and bodies? Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss are neuroscientist John Foxe and behavioral developmen...

Wandering through a museum, you can get a glimpse of what life in ancient societies looked like. But what did it smell like? And is it even possible to get a whiff of, say, a freshly embalmed mummy , or a 5,000-year-old Saudi Arabian incense burner? That’s exactly what some chemists and olfactory designers are trying to do. Producer Kathleen Davis talks with archeo-chemist Barbara Huber and perfum...

Cyanobacteria may be the ultimate lesson in resilience . These 3.5 billion-year-old organisms have lived through hell-on-earth conditions, and found creative ways to persevere. While the state of the world feels out of control, Host Flora Lichtman talks to molecular microbiologist Devaki Bhaya about the planet’s ultimate survivalists. Guest: Dr. Devaki Bhaya is a molecular microbiologist at Carneg...

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the largest particle collider in the United States, collided its last particles in early February. RHIC is a massive accelerator ring and set of instruments based at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and was designed to accelerate gold ions to near-light speed before collision. It was the second most powerful accelerator on the planet, second on...

This year’s Winter Olympics feature a new event called “skimo,” or ski mountaineering. The racing event involves periods of skiing uphill using “skins” for traction, sprinting uphill on foot, and a downhill ski slalom to the finish. Mountaineering historian Peter Hansen joins Host Flora Lichtman for an introduction to skimo , and the scientific connections of early modern mountaineers. Then, wildl...

As ICE cracks down in Minneapolis and across the country, reporters and privacy advocates have drawn attention to how the agency is using technology : scanning people’s faces without consent, using private health records to make arrests, tracking people’s location in real time with phone data. So how does all this work? How does the United States’ data ecosystem make it possible for not just ICE,...

The new dietary guidelines from the USDA call for Americans to “eat real food” and consume less “highly processed” food. But how? By some estimates, ultraprocessed foods make up nearly 60% of the average American adult diet, and they’re all over school lunch menus. Health policy expert Laura Schmidt and nutrition policy researcher Alyssa Moran join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about ultraprocessed...

In an effort to make their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable, some farmers are experimenting with agrivoltaics: growing crops underneath solar panels. This dual harvest is working for some, but what will it take for agrivoltaics to work on a larger, more industrial scale? Joining Host Ira Flatow are journalist Jana Rose Schleis and environmental economics expert Madhu Khanna....

Point systems are everywhere. Ready for movie night? Consult Rotten Tomatoes. Vetting a new pediatrician? See how many stars they have. At work, it can be even more pervasive: There’s KPIs and ROIs because success has to be measurable.  But what happens when we boil something down to one nice number ? What do we lose? Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, author of the new book The Score , joins Host Flora L...

We’re bringing you a special bonus episode from our friends at the live call-in show “The Middle with Jeremy Hobson .” Jeremy is joined by Science Friday Host Flora Lichtman and theoretical astrophysicist Priya Natarajan to talk about how trust in science can be restored. It took a hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Trump Administration has now elevated science skeptics to positions of power...

All the pups we love—from chihuahuas to great danes—are descendants of the mighty gray wolf. But how did we end up with so many breeds? The story that's often told is that dog diversity really took off with the Victorians in the 1800s, but new research is unleashing a different tale. Host Flora Lichtman talks with bioarchaeologist Carly Ameen about the diversification of dogs. Plus, a long-running...

We keep hearing that these are unprecedented times for science: scientific skeptics running federal agencies, growing mistrust of vaccines, and messaging from the highest levels of government that scientists are in the pocket of industry. To understand how unique this time really is, we’re talking to Naomi Oreskes, a science historian who has spent her career studying skepticism in science. She jo...