Short Wave

Last year, a dog named Bunny went viral on TikTok for pressing buttons with words on them to "communicate" with her owner. But can dogs even understand those words on a soundboard in the first place? A new study in the journal PLOS One seeks answers. Host Regina G. Barber and producer Rachel Carlson break down that story and more of the week's news with the help of All Things Considered's Ari Shap...

Short Wave producer Hannah Chinn has adult-onset eczema. They're not the only one. Up to ten percent of people in the United States have it, according to the National Eczema Association — and its prevalence is increasing. Despite its ubiquity, a lot about this skin condition remains a mystery. So today, Hannah's getting answers. They sat down with Raj Fadadu , a dermatologist at UC San Diego, to a...

Humans hallucinate. Algorithms lie. At least, that's one difference that Joy Buolamwini and Kyle Chayka want to make clear. When ChatGPT tells you that a book exists when it doesn't – or professes its undying love – that's often called a "hallucination." Buolamwini, a computer scientist, prefers to call it "spicy autocomplete." But not all algorithmic errors are as innocuous. So today's show, we g...

Just in time for the return of the school year, we're going "Back To School" by revisiting a classic at-home experiment that turns lemons into batteries — powerful enough to turn on a clock or a small lightbulb. But how does the science driving that process show up in household batteries we use daily? Host Emily Kwong and former host Maddie Sofia talk battery 101 with environmental engineer Jenell...

From Indonesia to Wisconsin, farmers all over the world struggle with a huge problem: pests. On top of that, it's tough for farmers to identify where exactly they have the pests and when. Reporter Lina Tran from NPR member station WUWM in Milwaukee joins host Emily Kwong to tell the story of how researchers in the Midwest are inventing new forms of pest detection that involve eavesdropping on the...

At first glance, the whole narrative of aquatic invasive species may seem straightforward: A bad non-native species comes into a new ecosystem and overruns good native species. But the truth? It's a little more complicated. To tear down everything we thought we knew about invasive species and construct a more nuanced picture, host Emily Kwong talks to experts Ian Pfingsten , who works on the Unite...

Human beings are hardwired for social connection – so much so that we think of even the most basic objects as having feelings or experiences. (Yup, we're talking to you, Roomba owners!) Social robots add a layer to this. They're designed to make us feel like they're our friends. They can do things like care for children, the elderly or act as partners. But there's a darker side to them, too. They...

New York: The city that never sleeps, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of and more recently ... home to a mysterious ant spreading across the city — before continuing across metropolitan and even state lines. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce joins host Regina G. Barber to trace the MahattAnts' takeover, explain why they're an interesting invasive species case study. Plus, ho...

Have you ever scrolled through a TikTok without finishing it? Switched between YouTube videos halfway through one or the other? Pressed "fast forward" on a Netflix episode that just wasn't holding your interest? That habit is called "digital switching" — and it might be causing the exact thing you're trying to avoid: boredom. Emily and Regina break that and more of the week's news down with the he...

U.S. health officials now say COVID-19 is an endemic disease. That means it's here to stay – circulating fairly regularly like the flu. Even though that changes how public health officials think about managing the virus, they say it doesn't mean being less cautious or vigilant during surges, like the current one this summer. COVID still poses significant risks for older individuals and those with...

All summer long, we've been on a 10-episode odyssey through the changing universe ( check out the series ). But there was one big set of objects that we skipped over: moons. So now we're back, with special guest, Radiolab 's Latif Nasser , to talk about yes, our moon — and the many moons and quasi-moons beyond it. Where did our Moon come from? How many moons are out there? What's this "quasi-moon"...

For blind and low vision adults, the ability to read braille can be life-changing. Braille literacy is directly linked to higher rates of academic success and better employment outcomes for them. But there's a problem. The U.S. is facing a national shortage of qualified braille teachers and there's a lack of scientific research around braille overall. An interdisciplinary team led by linguist Robe...

Some weapons used by the United States military are so powerful, they can pose a threat to the people who fire them — even in training. When weapons are fired, an invisible blast wave travels through the brains of anyone nearby. Exposure to lots of these blasts over time — even low level ones — has been shown to cause brain health problems for service members. If you liked this episode, consider c...

Over the next week, forecasts project extreme heat across much of the South, Midwest and parts of the West. So, this episode, health correspondent Pien Huang helps us take heat training cues from Olympians, many of whom spent weeks preparing for a sweltering Paris Olympics, by training in the heat to get their bodies used to hot, humid weather. But heat training is not just for competitive athlete...

Today, we're bringing you the final installment of our space summer series ... with the end ... of EVERYTHING. Will the universe end in a huge cosmic unraveling? A slow and lonely dissolution? Or a quantum-level transition that breaks the laws of physics? Theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack breaks down three possible scenarios for how the universe as we know it will finally come to an end. To ce...

Grizzly bears in the contiguous United States have been taken off — then put back on — the endangered species list twice since they were first labeled as threatened almost 50 years ago. Now, the issue is on the table again. Today, we get into the complicated science behind grizzly recovery, how humans have sliced up their habitat and what it will take to stitch that habitat back together again. In...

We at Short Wave have been following all things Olympics, from the medals and new records to the ugly accusations that two women boxers aren't really women. Last year, the boxers failed gender tests, according to the International Boxing Association. The IBA claims the women have a "hormonal imbalance" that gives them women an unfair advantage. The International Olympic Committee has condemned the...

How do you study unmapped areas of the ocean and identify critical habitat for an endangered species? You include the study animal in the scientific process! Researchers from the University of Adelaide fitted endangered Australian sea lions with cameras and tracking devices to better understand where they spent their time. The information could help scientists protect critical sea lion habitat and...

In the last week, we've seen swimmers diving headfirst into the 2024 Paris Olympics pool, limbs gracefully slicing through the water. And yet, world and Olympic records weren't broken at quite the rate some expected, leading many on social media to speculate: Was the pool the culprit? With the help of NPR correspondents Bill Chappell and Brian Mann, we investigate. Read Bill Chappell's full story...

The Big Bang: The moment when our universe — everything in existence — began....Right? Turns out, it's not quite that simple. Today, when scientists talk about the Big Bang, they mean a period of time – closer to an era than to a specific moment. Host Regina Barber talks with two cosmologists about the cosmic microwave background, its implications for the universe's origins and the discovery that...

Rates of depression and anxiety have risen among teens over the last decade. Amid this ongoing mental health crisis, the American Psychological Association issued guidelines for parents to increase protection for teens online. In this encore episode, NPR science correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff looks into the data on how that change has impacted the mental health of teenagers. In her reporting, s...

Another Olympics, another set of stellar performances by the U.S. women's artistic gymnastics team. Thursday, the team won two medals in the women's all-around final: a gold for Simone Biles and a bronze for Sunisa Lee. The medals add to the team's overall count, which also includes a gold for the women's team final. Simone and Suni are expected to lead the team to more medals in the coming days....

The Rubik's Cube was created 50 years ago by Hungarian inventor Ernő Rubik. Since then, over 500 million of them have been sold. We dive into this global phenomenon that's captured the imagination of countless people around the world and inspired all kinds of competitions — even solving with your feet! But no matter the cube, the process of solving one involves math — specifically, algorithms. Rom...

Black holes are one of the most mysterious cosmological phenomena out there. Astrophysicist Priya Natarajan calls them "the point where all known laws of physics break down." On the list of perplexing qualities: The origins of supermassive black holes. That story was only confirmed within the last year. Check out more of our series Space Camp on the weird and mysterious in space at npr.org/spaceca...

Generally, we at Short Wave are open-minded to the creepies and the crawlies, but even we must admit that leeches are already the stuff of nightmares. They lurk in water. They drink blood. There are over 800 different species of them. And now, as scientists have confirmed ... at least some of them can jump! Interested in more critter science? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to consider y...