Living Lab Radio

Cranberries are a staple on the American Thanksgiving table, but they used to be much more than a once-a-year novelty. They were a staple of Native American diets, and later, of early colonial diets. The ways that cranberries have been grown and eaten have changed a lot over the centuries.

For many, the country's political divide has become intensely personal – dividing families and even breaking up Thanksgiving traditions. We all know the old adage about avoiding politics and religion at the dinner table, but it seems harder to do these days. And frankly, it doesn't seem to be helping.

Our monthly rundown of science headlines from Nature News, this time with video and podcast editor Benjamin Thompson as tour guide: Researchers now have at least a draft genome sequence for every butterfly species in the U.S. and Canada. The treasure trove of data is leading to new insights about butterfly evolution, including the importance of interbreeding between closely related species. Astronomers have assembled data from the Cassini probe into the first global map of Saturn’s largest moon,

“The sky was always there; the sky was the storyboard, filled with tales about the meaning of life and social relations. And people were making patterns on this storyboard even before they were painting on the walls of caves. Certainly, prehistoric people were doing it. And the story depends so much on who's the teller - the teller who has to make the story have legs. It's got to be a story that means something and that you can transfer from one culture to another as time changes.” – Anthony

We don’t tend to acknowledge this, but at the heart of Living Lab Radio lies the belief that science can provide factual information that can help us make better decisions as individuals, as communities, and as societies. But why should we trust science? How can we be sure that what we hear today won’t be proved wrong in the future? Naomi Oreskes addresses these questions in her new book Why Trust Science?

Climate change is complicated. Every part of our daily lives can play a role in causing it, from electricity, to transportation, the homes we live in, the food we eat, even the healthcare services we rely on. And all of those aspects of our lives are also affected by climate change.

We've known for some time that, on average, women are most comfortable at room temperatures that are slightly higher than what men prefer. Now, for the first time, researchers have looked into how differing preferences play out, that is, how men and women view the decision-making process around setting the thermostat. Interestingly, women in the study tended to see the interactions as conflicts, while men said that there was agreement or compromise.

A proposed rule change at the EPA is back in the news almost a year and a half after it was first proposed – and met with strong pushback from the science community. It’s called the “ Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science Rule ,” and members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee heard testimony on the proposal this week. The EPA declined to make anyone available for interview, but the agency website states that the goal of the rule is to “ensure that the regulatory

"That's the kind of backdrop for me in terms of thinking about science, is to think about the risks of rejecting science that's true versus the risks of accepting science that's false. And I argue that in our current world, with the threat of climate change bearing down upon us, the risk of ignoring what scientists are telling us is very, very grave indeed." - Naomi Oreskes

In 2007, a mysterious disease killed thousands of bats in a handful of caves in upstate New York. The culprit, dubbed white nose syndrome, was soon found to be a fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans , that thrives in cold, dark, humid environments and can kill entire bat colonies.