Science Friday

California Accelerates Its Push For Electric Cars

This week, air pollution regulators in California voted to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles, with a complete ban on gas car sales by 2035. The decision could have a larger impact on the automobile industry, however, as many states choose to follow California’s lead with regard to air quality and emissions decisions. Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins guest host Roxanne Khamsi to help unpack the decision.

They also discuss some of the other science stories from this week, including a survey-based study showing that Americans really do care about climate change and support mitigation measures, a look at how sugar substitutes can change the microbiome, and an engineer’s advice for how to build the sturdiest sandcastles.

For many decades, autistic people have been defined by non-autistic people, including in science. Since the very beginning of research about autistic people, neurotypical scientists and institutions have been at the helm. The field has largely been defined by what neurotypical researchers are curious about learning, instead of prioritizing research that the autistic community asks for.

Because of that, and the invisibility of autistic adults in our society, a large chunk of this research has neglected the needs of autistic people. In many cases, it’s caused harm to the very people the research aims to help. Until recently, there have been very few openly autistic researchers who study autism. But there is a growing body of openly autistic scientists who are using both their expertise and their own lived experiences to help shape the future of autism research.

Guest host Roxanne Khamsi speaks with Dr. TC Waisman, a leadership coach and researcher studying autism and higher education, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Patrick Dwyer, a Ph.D. candidate studying sensory processing and attention in autism at the University of California, Davis. They talk about the history of autism research, why the inclusion of autistic people in research leads to more helpful outcomes, and how they see the future of autism research changing.

Ira Kraemer consulted on this story.

Most people wouldn’t be excited by a call offering a basement full of canned salmon dating back to the 1970s. But for researchers trying to establish baselines for what’s normal and what’s not when it comes to aquatic parasite populations, the archive of fishy tins, maintained by the Seattle-area Seafood Products Association, was a valuable resource.

Natalie Mastick and colleagues combed through the tins with tweezers, counting the numbers of parasitic anisakid worms they found. (Since the salmon was cooked, the worms—though gross—posed no risk to human eaters.) The team found that in their samples of chum and pink salmon, the incidence of parasitic infection increased over the 40 years covered by the salmon archive. The finding might be good news—an increase in the numbers of marine mammals in the area, key hosts for the parasites, could be responsible for the wormy increase. Natalie Mastick, a PhD candidate in the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, joins guest host Roxanne Khamsi to explain the study.

What was life like back in medieval England? You might think that the learned friars who lived in the town of Cambridge—scholars, with access to innovations like latrines and places to wash their hands—might have lived healthier lives than the common folk. But a recent study published in the International Journal of Paleopathology says that, at least when it comes to intestinal parasites, the friars may have been worse off.

Dr. Piers Mitchell runs the Cambridge Ancient Parasites Laboratory and is a senior research associate in the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Mitchell and colleagues excavated soil samples from around the pelvises of medieval skeletons in one Cambridge cemetery, then examined the soil microscopically looking for parasite eggs. They found that friars in the cemetery had almost twice the incidence of intestinal parasites as commoners in the town—a fact they speculate could be related to friars using human feces, from the friary latrine, to fertilize the gardens. Mitchell joins guest host Roxanne Khamsi to explain the study.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Attracting Birds To Prime Habitat By Playing Recordings Of Their Calls

How do you know a restaurant is good? If the parking lot is full of cars, that’s a pretty good indication. If it’s empty, you probably won’t bother stopping.

In this case, the restaurant is a newly restored wetland in Michigan and the customers are rails. The birds migrate at night, so if they don’t hear other rail calls in an area, they’re not likely to stop. Researcher Dustin Brewer is broadcasting recorded rail calls to try to bring the secretive birds to prime habitat—to feed and mate. Rails are declining, mostly due to habitat loss. Experts say if rails are influenced by these recordings, it could help increase the bird’s population.

When you hear the words “urban wildlife,” you might think of rats scampering across a street, pigeons plopped on railings, or crows fighting over a pizza crust. But urban wildlife are so much cooler and more diverse than they get credit for, and scientists have a lot to learn from them. In the blink of an evolutionary eye, urban wildlife have quickly adapted to changing landscapes and learned to take advantage of sprawling urban areas.

Guest Roxanne Khamsi speaks with Dr. Chris Schell, an assistant professor studying urban ecology at the University of California, Berkeley. They chat about why urban wildlife is so cool, how scientists can study them, and what we can learn from our scrappy neighbors.

Roughly 476,000 people in the United States are diagnosed and treated for Lyme disease each year, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates. However, the CDC says that this number is likely an overcount because many patients receive treatment based on symptoms without a positive test result.

On top of that, there are some limitations of the diagnostic tests available for Lyme disease. The FDA-approved Lyme disease tests can only determine if a patient has had Lyme disease in the past, not if they currently have an infection. The test cannot determine if antibiotic treatment was successful, or if a positive test result is due to a re-infection.

Guest host Roxanne Khamsi talks with Pete Gwynne, a molecular and microbiologist at the Tufts Lyme Disease Initiative, who is working to solve some of these problems by developing a new diagnostic test for Lyme disease.

The path to becoming a scientist is not unlike the scientific process itself: Filled with dead ends, detours, and bumps along the way.

Danielle Lee started asking questions about animal behavior when she was a kid. She originally wanted to become a veterinarian. But after being rejected from veterinary school, she found a fulfilling career as a biologist, doing the type of work she always wanted to do—but never knew was possible for her.

Science Friday producer Shoshannah Buxbaum talks with Dr. Danielle Lee, a biologist, outreach scientist, and assistant professor in biology at Southern Illinois University about what keeps her asking questions, what rodents can help us understand about humans, and the importance of increasing diversity in science.

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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Teen Innovator’s New AI Tool Helps Create Affordable Drugs

The U.S. has some of the highest prescription drug prices in the world, which can push patients into bankruptcy over medications they cannot afford. More than three in four American adults think the prices of prescription drugs are unaffordable, prompting the Senate to recently pass a bill intended to help lower prescription drug costs for seniors.

One young innovator set out to find his own solution. 17 year-old Rishab Jain developed ICOR, a tool to improve the rapid production of drugs like COVID-19 vaccines. Ira talks with  Jain from Portland, Oregon, about his innovation and vision for the future.

The spotted lanternfly, an invasive species, was first introduced to the U.S. in Pennsylvania, around 2014. Since then, it has spread aggressively, and has now been spotted in 11 states. The bug is pretty—adult spotted lanternflies are about an inch long, and feature striking spotted forewings and a flashy red patch on the hindwings. But they are also very hungry, and pose a significant threat to agricultural crops, including grapevines.

Many control efforts have focused on either stomping the insects on sight, or on spotting and destroying the egg masses that the lanternflies lay in the fall. However, researchers have been developing trapping techniques for the bugs as well. One, involving a sticky band looped around a tree, is effective—but can also snare other insects and even birds. Experts at the Penn State Extension have come up with a new style of circle trap for lanternflies, based upon an existing trap for pecan weevils. Now, STEM educators at Rutgers University are using that design as the starting point for an engineering design challenge, asking K-12 teachers and students to come up with improvements to the design. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Should Kids Get Vaccinated If They’ve Already Had COVID-19?

It’s nearing the end of August, which means it’s back-to-school season. There’s a big difference between this school year and last: All children are now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. This means the risk of disease will likely be way down, compared to the past two autumns, according to vaccine researcher and pediatrician Paul Offit.

But for kids who have already been infected by COVID-19, will the vaccine add meaningful immunity?

“My answer to that question is yes,” Dr. Offit tells Ira. “Then you can be sure that they will then develop the kind of immunity that will likely lead to fairly long-lived protection against serious illness.” Ira and Dr. Offit also discuss the risk of monkeypox and polio spreading in schools, and how to best keep our kids safe against infectious disease this fall.

NASA’s largest and most powerful rocket ever began inching its way to Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday night. Over twelve years in the making, the long-delayed, over-budget Space Launch System rocket is finally nearing its first chance for liftoff at the end of this month. The August 29th targeted launch will mark the beginning of the Artemis program—NASA’s series of missions designed to send humans to the Moon and, eventually, Mars.

The multi-billion dollar orange rocket now stands taller than the Statue of Liberty, resembling a colossal upside-down carrot. Its maiden uncrewed flight will carry a trio of mannequins equipped with radiation sensor vests in preparation for crewed flights slated for 2024. These future missions will be the first to return people to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on 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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Will A Colorado River Drought Dry Up Energy Supplies?

This week, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency that manages water in the Western U.S., started the process of cutting water use allotments along the Colorado River after seven states missed a deadline for coming up with their own reduction plan.

The area has been under a long-running drought—and with water in demand for everything from drinking to agriculture to industry, and with the population of the area on the rise, agreements over water use are difficult to come by. The drought has another less obvious effect on the area as well—drops in water allocation could lead to declines in power production in a region that relies on several major hydroelectric facilities.

Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, joins Ira to talk about the plan for distributing western water and other stories from the week in science—including a possible reprieve for nuclear power plants in Germany and California, a geomagnetic storm sparking an astronomical light show, orders for future supersonic aircraft, and investigations into why thinking hard makes you physically tired.

SARS-CoV2. HIV. CMV. HSV-1 and HSV-2. MPX. EBV. HPV. WPV. WNV.

The alphabet soup of viruses that infect us may seem long and daunting. But as scientist and author Joseph Osmundson writes in Virology: Essays for the Living, the Dead, and the Small Things In Between, these viruses are vastly dwarfed by the total number of harmless or even beneficial viruses on our planet. “It’s a rounding error larger than zero,” he writes. A single ounce of seawater will contain more than seven billion individual viruses incapable of doing us harm.

Osmundson’s book is both COVID-19 quarantine memoir, and reflections of a self-described queer man coming of age after the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. In it, he questions the war-like language we ascribe to “fighting” pathogens, explores the non-binary nature of health and illness, and advocates for a world where we are more ready to care for each other.

“The problem wasn’t illness,” he writes of HIV’s death toll before the development of effective treatments. “The problem never is. Illness is a fact of life. The problem is our inability to provide care to all.”

Osmundson talks to producer Christie Taylor about making new meanings for viruses through biomedicine and public health interventions. Plus, lessons for the monkeypox global public health emergency, and all the viruses to come.

Florida’s offshore marine habitat is in peril. Populations of fish are dwindling in many places, and manatees have been dying in record numbers. The basis for much of this life lies in seagrass just under our boats. We join scientist on a trip into one of the healthiest seagrass meadows in the Gulf of Mexico. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on 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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Some Grasses Can Stop Lead From Spreading In Soil

Lead left behind in soil from mining and smelting poses a major health risk to people who live nearby. Researchers in Nebraska and Kansas believe plant life and organic material can limit lead’s spread.In parts of the Midwest where lead mining and smelting lasted for over a century, communities are still dealing with toxic waste left behind by the industry.

Lead, a dangerous neurotoxin, persists in the environment, including in water and soil, where it can pose a threat to the health of people living nearby. The risk is especially acute for children, who can unintentionally ingest lead by putting their hands in their mouths and whose brains and bodies are still developing.

It can be spread to other areas, like yards and schools, by rainfall, and can also taint aquifers or vegetables in gardens, making them harmful to consume.

Now researchers are working to limit the impact of lead in the environment on people, and they believe they’ve found a promising solution: Plant life.

Phytostabilization involves moving lead from soil into the roots, stems and leaves of plants to prevent it from spreading and to limit people’s contact with it.

“One of the goals of phytostabilization is to take the site with lead and put it in a stable state, so that the risk is reduced, and the issues related to lead in the soil can be managed,” said Larry Erickson, a professor emeritus at Kansas State University and former director of the university’s Center for Hazardous Substance Research.

Read the rest on sciencefriday.com.

Artificial limb technology has come a long way since the first prosthetic—a big toe made of wood and leather developed in ancient Egypt.

Today’s cutting-edge robotic limbs use mind-control and even give users a sense of touch, helping them feel sensations like a warm cup of coffee or a mushy banana. Still, these state-of-the-art prosthetics often involve invasive brain surgeries and can be exorbitantly expensive.

Hearing of these issues, one teenager set out to create a solution. Seventeen-year-old Benjamin Choi has developed a non-invasive, affordable prosthetic arm. His Star Wars-inspired technology reads a user’s mind with only two sensors—one on the forehead and the other clipped to the earlobe. And he doesn’t plan on stopping there. He sees his work in artificial intelligence expanding to help ALS patients, wheelchair users, and beyond.

Ira speaks with Benjamin Choi from McLean, Virginia about how he developed this arm and what it means to be a young innovator.

CAR T cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy in which a patient’s own immune cells are modified to create a hybrid immune cell that destroys cancer cells, was first developed over a decade ago.

Now, researchers are continuing to find success in treating new types of blood cancers with the therapy, and are working on applying the technology to solid state cancers like those of the pancreas and brain.

Scientists are also at the early stages of testing CAR T cells to treat autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) and lupus.

Ira talks with Dr. Carl June, one of the pioneers of CAR T cell therapy, a professor of immunotherapy and director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the University of Pennsylvania, based in Philadelphia.

Five years ago, Stephanie Barish was tired of the public’s attitude about climate change. “Most people at that time were just so negative about climate,” she said. “It was doom and destruction, and I thought, wow, to make positive change, you have to really look at this from a solutions perspective.”

Stephanie is the founder and CEO of Indiecade, an organization that supports indie video game developers and hosts events like the Climate Jam—the goal of which was to change the gloomy public narrative around climate change. So, with the help of organizations like Earth Games, participants around the globe gather every year to make video games about climate change optimism, solutions, and justice.

Teams can also consult with subject matter experts, like Dargan Frierson, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, and also a judge for the Climate Jam. If teams wonder what climate change would look like on a different planet, they can go to him for answers. “We always look for scientific accuracy,” he said. “I think it’s very important to keep things within the realm of possibility, even when you’re looking at fiction.”

Read the rest of the article and check out some of the games at sciencefriday.com.

Brooklyn-based artist J.C. Fontanive is a master of the moving image—but in analogue. As an animator, he creates mechanical, perpetual motion ‘flipbooks,’ with help from old clocks and colorful illustrations of flying birds, butterflies, and other scenes from nature.

Fontanive joins Ira to talk about the act of invention, the ‘primal’ language of art, and how to create visceral work in a digital age.

See the flipbooks in gorgeous action at sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on 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 Plan to Cap Insulin Prices May Not Be Helpful

30 million people in the U.S. live with diabetes, and access to insulin can be expensive. More than 1 in 5 people with private insurance pay more than $35 a month for this necessary medication. The U.S. Senate has a plan to cap insulin prices for certain diabetics, but critics say this plan would not help make insulin affordable for a majority of people.

Plus, many people have been following the discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, with baited breath. Astronomers may have found the youngest exoplanet we know of. And a deep space hoax of a chorizo slice fooled the astronomy community.

Joining Ira to talk about these stories and other science news of the week is Katherine Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic based in New Haven, Connecticut.

Last week, the White House declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency.

Currently there are a little over 9,000 confirmed cases in the United States, and just under 30,000 worldwide. Since the end of May, monkeypox has been spreading in countries where it has not been previously reported.

The virus is mainly spreading within gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men. And because of that there is stigma associated with the outbreak.

Ira talks with Rachel Roper, virologist at the Brody Medical School at East Carolina University, and Perry Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers University School of Public Health, to explain the basics of transmission, answer listener questions, and debunk misinformation about the monkeypox outbreak.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 13.6 billion years old, all-knowing, and a little sassy. It has a rich social life of friends, frenemies, and even love interests—all other galaxies in the local group, including the stunning Andromeda. And the Milky Way is a little disappointed that we’ve stopped telling as many stories about it.

Or at least, that’s how folklorist and astronomer Dr. Moiya McTier imagines the galaxy’s personality when writing her new book, “The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy.” The book stretches from the beginning of the universe to the birth of our planet, and then on to the eventual theoretical end of the cosmos. Along the way, we learn both the science of how stars form and galaxies collide, and the many stories and myths humans have told about these bodies throughout our relatively brief lives.

McTier joins Ira to tell all (on behalf of the Milky Way), and explain the importance of story in scientific knowledge and discovery.

Read an excerpt of the book on sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on 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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What’s Inside A Sudden, Second Chance At A Climate Bill

Last week, climate activists received a surprise gift from Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin. It turns out they had been in secret negotiations to put out a spending package that might tackle some of the same climate mitigation projects as last year’s failed Build Back Better initiative.

The $369 billion dollars for climate mitigation in the Inflation Reduction Act covers tax credits for renewable energy, methane leak reduction, and the largest environmental justice investment in history. But will it pass before Congress goes on recess?

Ira talks to University of California-Santa Barbara political scientist Leah Stokes, who helped advise Senate Democrats during the bill’s crafting, about what the bill might do, and some of the politics shaping climate action.

Roads buckling. Power grids flickering. Roads washing out and basements flooding. Climate change brings new hazards for both human health and the infrastructure that keeps our communities functioning. So how do we build for the conditions that are coming–and in many ways already here?

Arizona State University engineer Mikhail Chester talks to Ira about the physical alterations we’ll need and, perhaps more importantly, the way the process of building must change too. Plus why building things to fail—but with less deadly consequences—may be necessary in an uncertain future.

The World Bank estimates that around one billion people worldwide don’t have official proof of identity. Without legal identity verification, opening bank accounts, voting, and even buying a cell phone is challenging or even impossible. This issue disproportionately affects women—around half the women in low-income countries do not have proof of identity, which limits their independence and the resources they are able to access.

Looking for a solution, 16-year-old Elizabeth Nyamwange invented Etana—an affordable fingerprint scanner that could provide women with a form of digital identity. Her project to close the gender identification gap earned her first place in HP’s Girls Save the World challenge.

Ira speaks with Nyamwange, based in Byron, Illinois, about her innovation.

Actress Nichelle Nichols died this week at the age of 89. She was known to people throughout the galaxy for her role as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, the communications officer on the Starship Enterprise. Her casting as a Black woman in a highly skilled, technical position on a major television program in 1966 was crucial representation—and helped many viewers see science and technology careers as something within their grasp as well.

When Nichols considered leaving Star Trek to return to Broadway, a meeting with “her biggest fan”—the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr—helped convince her to stay on to contribute to the civil rights movement.

Later, Nichols became an ambassador for NASA, working to help recruit people to the space shuttle program, especially women and minorities. In this remembrance, astronaut Leland Melvin helps tell her story, and Tarika Barrett, CEO of the STEM organization Girls Who Code, talks about the importance of role models and representation.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on 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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White House Declares Monkeypox Outbreak A Public Health Emergency

The Biden administration declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency on Thursday.

Earlier in the week the White House appointed Robert Fenton, regional administrator at FEMA to direct the federal government’s response to the monkeypox outbreak, along with a deputy director from the CDC.

This comes after criticism from activists and public health experts, who have said that the federal government has been dragging its feet on access to vaccines, testing and treatment for the virus.

Ira talks with Tim Revell, deputy United States editor for New Scientist, about the latest monkeypox updates and other top science stories including; new research into the shape of the human brain; how hand gestures can improve zoom calls and a plant that harnesses the power of a raindrop to gulp down insects.

Vaccines have long been used to prevent infection from viruses. But now, scientists are working on a different kind of vaccine—one that targets cancer.

Dr. Kai Wucherpfennig is working on a cancer vaccine that would target tumors that tend to spread quickly and are resistant to treatment, like melanoma and triple negative breast cancer. This type of vaccine is intended to be used after a patient has had their tumor removed. The goal is to prevent the spread of cancer cells to other parts of the body, which is called metastasis.

So far, this type of cancer vaccine is effective in animals, and the results were recently published in the journal Nature.

Ira talks with Dr. Kai Wucherpfennig, chair of cancer immunology and virology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, about his latest research into cancer vaccines, and how recent advances in understanding the immune system has jump-started research into new types of cancer immunotherapies.

The New England blazing star is more than just a pretty blossom: it’s an integral part of a globally-rare ecosystem called a “sandplain grassland.” Just like the name suggests, sandplain grasslands have sandy soil with tall grass, no trees and an exceptionally high number of rare plant and animal species.

That includes plants like the New England blazing star, an important food source for various grassland insects. Today volunteers would plant 1,000 of them to help restore Bamford Preserve, a 60-acre parcel of sandplain grassland on Martha’s Vineyard.

As climate change threatens both human health and the natural world, experts say that protecting biodiversity hotspots like this one will offer the most bang-for-the-buck — protecting threatened species while offering other ecosystem benefits, like open space and flood protection.

Read the full story on sciencefriday.com.

People who live near freshwater rivers or lakes are likely familiar with Asian Carp. The fish are not native to the U.S., but over the last few decades their populations have exploded in waterways like the Mississippi River Basin and the Illinois River.

Over the last few years, there’s been a major PR campaign to move away from the name Asian Carp, in favor of a new name: “Copi.” The reason is two-fold: First, it joins a general trend of moving species’ names away from nationalistic associations, considering anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The other goal is to make the fish sound more delicious—creating a market that would incentivize fishing the Copi, hopefully reducing their populations.

Joining Ira to talk about this is Jim Garvey, director of fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic sciences at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on 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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Decades Of Alzheimer’s Research Could Be Based On Fraudulent Data

Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating brain disorder that slowly affects memory and thinking skills. For many people who worry that loved ones may succumb to this disorder, the possibility of research in the field of Alzheimer’s is a balm of hope. However, a massive report from Science Magazine highlights a startling discovery: that decades of Alzheimer’s research are likely based on faulty data. Alzheimer's researchers are grappling with the revelation, and what it means for future research of the disease.

In other science news of the week, scientists have identified pits on the moon that are a comfortable temperature: averaging 63 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t plan that space vacation yet—research finds that air pollution from space-bound rockets has an exorbitantly high effect on global warming—much more than traditional airplane travel.

Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to discuss these stories is Maggie Koerth, science writer for FiveThirtyEight based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They also discuss how childhood vaccinations have dropped dramatically during the COVID pandemic, and why this is likely tied to New York’s first Polio case in nearly a decade. 

Across the globe, hundreds of millions of people have been dealing with extreme heat. The three most populated countries in the world—China, India and the United States—have been gripped by heat waves throughout the summer.

Extreme heat isn’t just uncomfortable: it can be deadly, putting strain on the organs and systems that keep us in equilibrium. Heat is especially dangerous for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, pregnant people, and those without access to air conditioning. In the United States, heat is responsible for more deaths than any other type of weather event.

Joining guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about what high temperatures do to the body, and how we can protect our health and safety in a heat wave is Chris Uejio, associate professor of public health at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. 

July is nearly through, and so is the piping plover’s nesting season. It's make-or-break time for these small, endangered shorebirds. There are roughly 8,000 piping plovers in the entire world. To put that in context, birders often get really excited to see a rare bird like a snowy owl. But there are about 28,000 snowy owls in the world, three times the number of piping plovers. 

Since piping plovers make their nests along the water and out in the open, their chicks are very vulnerable to being gobbled up by predators. And a major reason for their decline in numbers is human development along the beaches, lakes, and rivers where piping plovers lay their eggs. 

SciFri radio producer Shoshannah Buxbaum went out to Fort Tilden in Queens, NY to report on a volunteer-run conservation effort along the New York City coastline. And later in the segment, Michigan radio reporter Lester Graham talks with guest host Sophie Bushwick about the unique challenges and triumphs of the piping plovers who nest along the Great Lakes.

Octopuses have more than 2,000 suckers on eight arms, and each one is controlled individually, making these critters incredibly dextrous. So when a team of researchers wondered how to design a glove that could hold onto slippery objects underwater, they turned to octopuses for inspiration. Ultimately, they created something they’re calling an octa-glove. Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Michael Bartlett, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, about his team’s engineering, and what they learned from the ambidextrous creatures.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on 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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For The Love Of Volcanoes

A new documentary, “Fire of Love,” tells the story of French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. The married couple spent two decades chasing volcanic eruptions across the world. Katia was a geochemist and Maurice a geologist. Together, they studied the science of volcanoes and produced films showcasing their power. That is, until their deaths in 1991, when they were killed by the very thing they loved so much.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks with Sara Dosa, director of the documentary “Fire of Love,” which is in theaters nationwide, and will be available on Disney+ later this year.

Joshua Miele has spent his career trying to make the world more accessible for blind and visually impaired people. As a blind person, his lived experiences have shaped the way he thinks about technology and how it can be used to better serve disabled people. He’s invented products like YouDescribe—a tool that adds audio description to YouTube videos—and Tactile Maps Automated Production, a software that creates tactile maps for people to feel.

Although adaptive technologies try to help disabled people access information, it isn’t always driven by the input and needs of disabled people. There needs to be more disabled designers, engineers, and researchers spearheading this work, Miele says. Now, he works as a principal accessibility researcher at Amazon’s Lab126, where he helps make products like the Echo and Fire tablets more accessible.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick speaks with Miele about how his own experiences shape his work, and the importance of disability inclusion in designing new technologies.

When it comes to researching human genitals and the organs called, in simple terms, “reproductive,” the penis has long been the star of the show.

“It doesn’t help to only look at one or the other. Only by zooming out can we see them in their full range of variation and possibility,” writes science journalist Rachel E. Gross in her book, Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage, which tells the long history of neglected research into the vagina and its companion organs—the uterus, clitoris, Fallopian tubes, and ovaries. The book takes readers through myths, mysteries, and the legacy of shame around sexuality. It also introduces researchers who are finally making breakthroughs in our understanding of fertility, pleasure, and even immune health that’s been linked to these organs.

The book interviews doctors who are using that knowledge to make life better for everyone—including cancer patients and older people going through menopause, transgender women who want their own vaginas, people with endometriosis, and those, including intersex people, looking to regain pleasure and agency after childhood genital cutting.

Producer Christie Taylor interviews Gross about our growing understanding of clitoral anatomy, the long-misunderstood egg cell, the uterus’ ability to heal, and more. Plus, why these organs are important for whole-body health, and why everyone needs to understand them better.

To read an excerpt from Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage by Rachel E. Gross, visit sciencefriday.com.

Transcripts for each segment will be available a week after the show airs at sciencefriday.com.

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