Science, Spoken

On a rocky island just off the coast of West Antarctica, ecologist Lars Boehme is standing face-to-face with a 1,500-pound elephant seal, eyeing the animal’s bulbous nose and jowls to see if he’s finished shedding his fur. When the seal opens his mouth wide to bellow, Boehme waves his hand in front of his face like he’s just smelled something foul. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

You’ve probably heard about the plague of plastic trash in the oceans. You’ve seen YouTube videos of sea turtles with drinking straws in their noses, or whales with stomachs full of marine litter. But how much plastic is out there? Where is it coming from? We don’t really know, because we haven’t measured it. “There’s a paucity of data,” says Marcus Eriksen, cofounder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a n...

It was just after midnight at mission control center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Carl Sagan was exuberant. The Voyager 2 spacecraft had just completed its decade-long mission by making its closest pass to Neptune, before continuing on into interstellar space. It was the first—and so far only—spacecraft to visit the mysterious blue ice giant lurking at the edge of the solar system. Lea...

On a large screen inside a packed Snohomish County courtroom, in Washington, a young Canadian couple smiled out at the dimmed room from the relaxed, faded scene of a party. It was the last known picture taken of Tanya Van Cuylenberg and Jay Cook together before they disappeared in November 1987. Their bodies were discovered days after they went missing, more than 60 miles apart. Thirty-one years l...

This story begins thousands of feet up in the air with migratory birds, and ends with a robotic fish swimming through the water below. To prepare for their journeys, birds fatten up big time, perhaps doubling their weight, essentially turning themselves into feathered batteries. Over many days and many miles, they burn that energy reserve to power their wings and keep themselves from starving and...

The flooding that devastated the Midwest this spring damaged infrastructure and prevented farmers from getting crops planted on time. Though scientists can’t say if one storm or one wet season is the result of climate change, so far this year’s heavy rains are a perfect illustration of what scientific models of climate change predict for the region. And it’s only going to get more intense. Learn m...

I was fairly impressed with the first episode of Savage Builds, which is now airing on the Discovery Channel. It's basically a show that lets Adam Savage (from MythBusters) do whatever he wants. In this case, he attempts to build an actual real-life Iron Man suit. SPOILER ALERT: He mostly succeeds. This is accomplished by printing out Iron Man armor pieces in titanium and then adding the jet suit...

Eleanor Lutz has a running list of scientific topics she wants to find data sets for. It’s not her job exactly. A biologist with wide-ranging curiosity, Lutz moonlights as a data-driven illustrator who transforms public data sets into arrestingly beautiful visual objects. She’s made digital trading cards of animated viruses (who knew HPV could be so mesmerizing), and infographics on plant species...

Later this month, a small satellite will hitch a ride on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for the world’s first demonstration of “green” satellite propellant in space. The satellite is fueled by AFM-315, which the Air Force first developed more than 20 years ago as an alternative to the typical satellite juice of choice, hydrazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The image is hard to look at now without crying: a thick red scar, carved across Gabriele Grunewald’s midriff as she flies around the track. At first it looks like it shouldn’t be there; perhaps it’s just an out-of-place shadow. But soon it becomes obvious what it truly is: a symbol of perseverance and pain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s hard to feel sorry for the California utility PG&E, considering that officials blamed its equipment for starting nearly every major fire in the state in 2017. Last year, it was responsible for igniting the Camp Fire, which killed 85 and destroyed almost 20,000 structures. The problem is typically wind, which jostles electric lines, raining sparks onto parched vegetation below. So just cut the...

It's amazing that we can get electrical power just from the wind, but that's exactly what happens with a wind farm. It's a collection of wind turbines in a particular location with abundant wind. And as with many things, bigger is better. The Hornsea Wind Farm, for example, is being built 75 miles off the coast of Yorkshire, England, and upon completion it is expected to be the biggest offshore wi...

In 1961—the year before he became the anchorman for CBS News—Walter Cronkite visited Camp Century, an unusual military compound on the Greenland ice sheet. Carved under the snow and ice, Camp Century had a main street and prefab housing for 250 soldiers and scientists—all powered by a pint-sized nuclear reactor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So you have $52 million burning a hole in your pocket and just can’t decide what to do with it. Buy a private island? Too cliche. A new McLaren? You have enough of those. Pay off college administrators? Your kids have already graduated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This story originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Once seen as spooky sci-fi, geoengineering to halt runaway climate change is now being looked at with growing urgency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If we ever have giant inflatable telescopes in space, you can thank Chris Walker’s mom. Years ago, Walker was making chocolate pudding when he had to interrupt his culinary undertaking to field a phone call from his mother. He took the pudding off the stovetop, covered it with plastic wrap, and placed the pot on the floor by his couch. When the call was finished, he was startled to find an image o...

On a clear day, from the middle of a well-trafficked stretch of reinforced concrete that spans the Snoqualmie River, you can just make out the hulking, ice-covered flanks of Mount Rainier. Locals bring their dogs here to the “High Bridge” to swim on their lunch breaks; high school kids in oversized hoodies pick their way through the raspberry thickets looking for a shady spot to light up. Learn mo...

In an airy Denver cafe populated almost entirely by young people staring at laptops, Travis Tyler Fluck—dressed in an orange velour jacket, over which is draped a thin braided lock of hair—takes out his phone and pulls up Craigslist. A quick search lands him on a post advertising $10 magic mushrooms, with a poorly lit photo of said mushrooms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....

NASA is welcoming for-profit companies to space, Californians are slipping out of their measles vaccinations, and we've got some Father's Day gift ideas for you. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the last few years California has gained ground in its fight to protect children from infectious diseases. But new data released this week shows that the state’s vaccination rate declined for the second year in a row. Last fall 94.8 percent of California kindergartners had received all their shots, down from 95.6 in 2016-2017. That drop may look small, but California has about as many kindergar...

California’s Monterey Bay is one of the more pure, more dynamic coastal ecosystems on Earth. Otters—once hunted nearly to extinction—float among towering kelp forests, which themselves have rebounded thanks to the booming otter population’s appetite for kelp-loving sea urchins. Great whites visit from time to time, as do all manner of whales and dolphins. All told, it’s one of the greatest success...

What if Texas oilmen (oilfolks?) could save the planet from climate change? Hardy-har-har. Given that the Lone Star State ranks sixth in heat-trapping carbon emissions worldwide, just behind Germany and ahead of South Korea, the idea sounds pretty far-fetched. But some recent developments have made the prospect a bit more conceivable. Texas is all about oil and gas. Learn more about your ad choice...

Every restriction on access to abortion draws the metaphoric walls closer. On who can dispense drugs, on what clinical tests are required first, on how far along the pregnancy can be—the rules are all designed to delay, deter, and delegitimize. It’s a Death Star Trash Compactor. The box around abortion gets smaller and smaller. That’s policymaking; technology, meanwhile, tends to see boxes as some...

Since the birth of the space age, the dream of catching a ride to another solar system has been hobbled by the “tyranny of the rocket equation,” which sets hard limits on the speed and size of the spacecraft we sling into the cosmos. Even with today’s most powerful rocket engines, scientists estimate it would take 50,000 years to reach our closest interstellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If humans e...

This story is part of a series on how we make time—from productivity hacks and long walks to altering the function of our own circadian clocks. Before there was electricity or the internet or screens illuminated by thousands of liquid crystals rotating polarized pulses of photons, humans mostly lived by the daily comings and goings of the yellow burning ball of gas in the sky. Learn more about you...