Science Friday

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 foods and our food supply. What might they be doing to our health, and what steps could policymakers take to help Americans eat less of them? 

Guests:
Dr. Laura Schmidt is a professor at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Alyssa Moran is deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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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.

Guests:
Jana Rose Schleis is a news producer at KBIA in Columbia, Missouri. Her podcast series, “The Next Harvest,” is available on podcast platforms.
Dr. Madhu Khanna is a professor of environmental economics and director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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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 Lichtman to explore how metrics can be soul-crushing in work and in life, yet keeping score is freeing in the world of games. 

Read an excerpt from The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.

Guest:
Dr. C. Thi Nguyen is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He’s the author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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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 and proposed giant cuts in scientific research.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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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 experiment to tame silver foxes is cluing us into how domestication happens. Canine researcher Erin Hecht gives us a glimpse into the experiment and what it tells us about domesticated brains.

Guests:
Dr. Carly Ameen is a bioarcheologist and lecturer at the University of Exeter in England.
Dr. Erin Hecht is an evolutionary biologist at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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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 joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss our current moment, and how ghostwriting in scientific papers is harming public trust in science.

Guest: Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, based in Cambridge, MA.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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In a speech last week in a speech at the World Economic Forum, President Trump said China was making a lot of wind turbines, but not using much wind power in their own country. Is that right? 

China studies professor Jeremy Wallace joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the renewable energy landscape in China. They’ll dig into how China is flooding the world with affordable solar technology, making it the cheapest form of electricity in history. Plus, what energy tech China is manufacturing, what it's using domestically, and what it's exporting.

Guest: Dr. Jeremy Wallace is the A. Doak Barnett Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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Forty years ago this week, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in flight, 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. All seven crew members were killed. In the months that followed, the tragedy was traced to a failed O-ring in one of the shuttle’s rocket boosters. Now, with the Artemis II mission preparing for launch to lunar orbit, what have we learned about spaceflight and risk? 

Former astronaut Jim Wetherbee joins Host Ira Flatow to remember the Challenger tragedy, and look ahead to the age of private spaceflight and the upcoming Artemis II mission.

Guest: Jim Wetherbee is a former NASA astronaut, the former head of flight crew operations for NASA, and the author of Controlling Risk: Thirty Techniques for Operating Excellence.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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A rogue strain of flu, subclade K, has sickened more than 19 million people in the US so far this season. And the flu shot hasn’t offered that much protection. What’s going on with this superflustorm?

Joining Host Flora Lichtman with some answers is Jennifer Duchon, a pediatric infectious disease specialist.

Guest: Dr. Jennifer Duchon is a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

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This time last year, Los Angeles was on fire, and more than 16,000 homes and buildings burned to the ground. Cars, batteries, solar panels, insulation, and cleaning supplies went up in flames, releasing chemicals like lead, benzene, and asbestos into giant smoke plumes that wafted across the city.

A year later, scientists are trying to understand the fallout of this urban wildfire—what chemicals got left behind, how to remediate them, and the threats to our health. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Yifang Zhu and Francois Tissot, who are at the forefront of this research. And for one of them, this work is personal.

Guests:
Dr. François Tissot is a professor of geochemistry at Caltech in Pasadena, California. 
Dr. Yifang Zhu is a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.