Science Friday

Once upon a time, much of what we call “science” was performed by people called “natural philosophers,” delving into mysteries of nature, physics, chemistry, and more. Physicist and author Carlo Rovelli argues that there’s still a great need for philosophy, and that the two fields can and should learn from each other in investigating reality.   Rovelli joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about big...

Between E. coli in blueberries, glass in popsicles, and that dreaded cyclospora, this summer was all about keeping a wary eye on the groceries in the fridge. But how does the recall data stack up against previous years? And are federal cuts to food safety agencies to blame? Flora talks to food safety expert Brian Ronholm to get the big picture. Plus, more than 1.5 million cars have been recalled t...

On social media, the vagus nerve often gets billed as the gateway to nervous system nirvana: It’s your ticket to better rest, relaxation, and health if you “stimulate” it correctly. Where did this idea come from, and what does the research say? In March, Host Flora Lichtman talked with neurosurgeon Kevin Tracey, a pioneer of a field called bioelectronic medicine, which uses techniques to stimulate...

Much of the code that describes the inner workings of social networks, helps apps predict your musical interests, and underlies innovations in AI traces back to advances in mathematical theory and data science that fundamentally describe how massive networks behave. Jennifer Chayes helped create that field of math. She also spent 20 years at Microsoft building interdisciplinary research labs. Now,...

A new mRNA vaccine for melanoma is making headlines. Moderna and Merck recently announced results from their clinical trial suggesting that this new vaccine, in combination with the cancer drug Keytruda, reduced recurrence rates in patients. The companies have not yet released full data from the trial. So, how does the vaccine work? And does this mark the beginning of a new era of cancer treatment...

When you see a mushroom popping up from the forest floor, that mushroom is just the tip of the fungal iceberg for a vast world beneath the surface. But the nature of fungal life makes it hard to answer some basic questions. What exactly does it mean to be one individual organism? And how do you tell how old a fungus is, when parts of it can recycle, regenerate, and grow again? Flora talks with fun...

There’s been wave after wave of bad news about the ocean: warming temperatures, overfishing, acidification, coral bleaching. But in the last few years, there have also been some big wins for the big blue— as well as a narrative shift , in which the ocean itself has almost become its own larger-than-life character in conservation conversations. So how should we think about the future of the seas? A...

When humans finally land on Mars, what should they do? A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine lays out the science objectives for a crewed Mars mission. In January, planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who co-chaired the report committee, joined Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the plans to send people to Mars. We also get an update on the mission to surve...

AI is popping up in many corners of society, but how are doctors using it in their practice? We asked our physician listeners to call in, and many of you did. What we heard mirrored broad trends: that more and more doctors are using AI tools for diagnosis, paperwork, and getting up to speed on patients. But they also have concerns. So how is AI changing medical care? And how is it affecting patien...

We’ve been hearing for years that climate change makes weather more extreme, and extreme weather more frequent. But what’s been more difficult to measure is exactly how climate change influences a particular weather event. For example, how much more intense was Hurricane Lala because of climate change? How much more deadly were India’s heat waves this summer? A growing field called attribution sci...

GPS is such an essential part of our lives that it’s easy to forget there was once a world without it. But, like many tech advancements of the 20th century, GPS was originally created by the U.S. military. So how did it become a part of daily civilian life? And how vulnerable is it to manipulation? Katherine Dunn has written all about this and more in her book, “Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the...

A controversial pipeline project in Michigan has been stuck in legal limbo for years. But this month, the Michigan Supreme Court sided with environmentalists and leaned on an ancient legal framework: the public trust doctrine. This doctrine, which dates back to the Roman Empire, says that natural resources, like water, belong to the public, and development must do no harm. Legal experts say this a...

When the James Webb Space Telescope started sending back images in 2022, something mysterious appeared: little red dots, speckled across the sky. They didn’t look like any known celestial objects, and astronomers began racing to figure out what they were. There was a lot of hot debate, but researchers are making progress—the dots appear to be black holes, but black holes like we’ve never seen them...

In the new movie “The End Of Oak Street,” bits of a suburban Michigan neighborhood get sucked back through time to a prehistoric world of dinosaurs. It made us wonder, aside from the danger of getting snacked on by an allosaurus, what other challenges would modern humans face in that ancient world? Flora talks with paleontologist Steve Brusatte about the conditions of the late Cretaceous era. Gues...

Microplastics have been documented throughout the human body, including the reproductive system. But the field of microplastics research is very new, and it’s not yet clear if, or how, these tiny particles affect our health. Producer Kathleen Davis has been reporting on the handful of scientists trying to uncover what microplastics mean for pregnancy and fetal development. She joins Host Flora Lic...

When you think of physics, your mind might go to forces—like gravity, friction, and magnetism—or to astrophysics, like galaxies and exoplanets. But many of the same principles used to understand how the universe works can also be used to study Earth’s climate systems. At its core, climate change is a physics problem. But traditionally, research institutions have kept climate science and physics se...

When you ask an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude a question, the model goes through its massive amount of training data and guesses the answer by mathematically predicting the word most likely to appear next in a sentence. This model, experts say, will not work well for technology designed to navigate the physical world. Something like a robot that works in a warehouse will instead require a “world mode...

Watching a loved one with Alzheimer's or dementia slowly lose their cognitive abilities can be heartbreaking. While the person you once knew seems to be slipping away, sometimes people with Alzheimer's briefly seem like their old selves again. They may remember a long-forgotten name or suddenly regain the ability to have a fluid conversation. What do these moments of lucidity really mean for the p...

Winter in Colorado looked very different this year. Many parts of the state experienced record-high temperatures and record-low snowpack , which had downstream effects on farming, sports, tourism, and more. For those economies and livelihoods that rely on snow, what happens when snow becomes unreliable? And can we prepare for it? Producer Kathleen Davis speaks with Halle Zander, news director at A...

The earth is facing a biodiversity crisis, and there’s a lot of attention on species that are threatened, or at risk of dying out completely. But, there’s another critter category that’s a little more mysterious: species that are “lost to science.” This means scientists aren’t quite sure how many of them there are out there—or if there are any left at all. Producer Kathleen Davis talks to biologis...

President Trump has signed an executive order calling for a change to the childhood vaccination schedule. Specifically, he wants to separate the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps, and rubella, into three separate shots. There’s no scientific research to indicate that these changes would be beneficial, and the order has sparked backlash from medical associations and drug manufactur...

In a lab in the Rocky Mountains, a group of scientists is hard at work trying to find answers across biology, physics, and engineering: They’re looking into things like the hydrodynamics of insect pee and the physics of sheepdog herding, and working to designing robots that resemble squid and hearing aids that only cost a dollar. These endeavors may seem unrelated, but they’re glued together by bi...

Human childbirth is often difficult and incredibly painful—just ask anyone who’s been through it. And for a long time, childbirth seemed to be uniquely difficult for humans. But a new study suggests that we aren’t alone: Some small primates birth offspring whose heads are nearly twice the size of the mother’s pelvic area.   So how do those primates go through difficult childbirths? Why didn’t evol...

Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, was the first Native person to hold a cabinet position. Now she’s running to be governor of New Mexico.  Haaland joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her new memoir, “A Voice Like Mine,” her time at the Interior Department, and why she thinks lawsuits are a good thing when it comes to the environment.  Read an excerpt f...

Keeping your butt in a seat for hours a day increases the risk of heart attacks, diabetes, psychiatric conditions, and more. But in our tech-filled world, many of us lead sedentary lives , whether because of school, work, or leisure. Researchers set up an experiment to see how much movement would make a difference for people who spend their days at a desk—and 23,000 people signed up. Joining Flora...