Science Friday

Nigeria is home to 100 known species of bats—about a third of Africa’s bat species—but scientists don’t know much about them. Ecologists Iroro Tanshi and Benneth Obitte, collaborators and life partners, are trying to change that. In addition to studying and protecting the bats of their homeland, they’re also working to raise up a whole network of bat scientists across West Africa. 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with them about how they started their work, what they’ve learned, and how they’re paving the way for other bat conservationists. 

Guests:
Dr. Iroro Tanshi is an ecologist at the University of Washington and cofounder of the Small Mammal Conservation Organization.
Dr. Benneth Obitte is a conservation ecologist at Texas Tech University and cofounder of the Small Mammal Conservation Organization.

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The overall state of birds can seem rather grim. Almost a third of North American bird species are in decline, and in the last five decades, more than 100 species have lost over half of their populations. This is primarily due to lack of food—fewer insects to eat—and habitat loss, like the development of grasslands. 

But there’s a bright spot: Some birds that were once rare are now abundant, like the merlin, sandhill crane, and pileated woodpecker. 

Host Ira Flatow talks with biologist Tom Langen, who explains these birds’ remarkable comebacks, and discusses his conservation work to bring threatened fish species back from the brink. 

Guest: Dr. Tom Langen is a professor of biology at Clarkson University.

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

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Codependency between humans gets a bad rap. But in nature, species often rely on each other for survival. While humans think they’re in control of relationships between other species, like dogs and even the yeast for our breads, the opposite is often true.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with ecologist Rob Dunn, whose new book, The Call of the Honeyguide, argues that mutualisms are the story of life itself.

Read an excerpt of The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life.

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You might remember news reporting from earlier this year that a 180-foot asteroid had about a 3% chance of hitting Earth in 2032. And if it did, it would unleash energy equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs. After further observations, astronomers revised that probability way down, to close to zero. So what is our current capability to spot Earthbound asteroids? And how are governments preparing to communicate and respond to a potential impact on a populated area?

Joining Host Ira Flatow with some of the answers are Kelly Fast, from NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and Leviticus “L.A.” Lewis, former FEMA liaison for that office.

Guests: Dr. Kelly Fast is the acting planetary defense officer in NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, based in Laurel, Maryland.
Leviticus “L.A.” Lewis is a former FEMA liaison to the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

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

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It’s common knowledge that many diseases and conditions have some kind of genetic link. But that wasn't always the case. In 1990, long before the Human Genome Project tied so many health issues to differences in genetics, researchers identified a gene called BRCA1. It was the first gene linked to a hereditary form of any common cancer. People with certain variants of BRCA1 stood a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer than those without those mutations.  

Geneticist Mary-Claire King and her lab were the first to identify that gene. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her background, her research, and her approach to science.

Guest: Dr. Mary-Claire King is an American Cancer Society Professor in the departments of Genome Sciences and Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.

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

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What makes someone a genius? Are they the smartest, most creative, most innovative people? Those with the highest IQ? Who we consider a genius may actually tell us much more about what we value as a society than any objective measure of brilliance. A compelling or quirky life story often shapes who is elevated to genius status.

Host Ira Flatow unpacks the complicated and coveted title of genius with Helen Lewis, author of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of A Dangerous Idea.

Read an excerpt of The Genius Myth: A Curious History of A Dangerous Idea. 

Guest: Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic, based in London, who writes about politics and culture.

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A video shown on Capitol Hill on September 9 reportedly shows an American hellfire missile attacking and simply bouncing off a UAP (the military term for a UFO). When videos like this come out, speculation about aliens often follows. But our obsession with aliens isn’t new—and it didn’t begin with 1950s alien invasion movies like “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” or even with Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” mock news bulletins of the 1930s.

As science reporter Becky Ferreira writes in her upcoming book, First Contact: The Story Of Our Obsession With Aliens, humans have been fascinated with the potential for alien life for about as long we’ve been around. She joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss how our views of beings from other worlds changed throughout the millennia, and where we’re at now with scientific exploration of life beyond Earth.

Plus, science journalist Umair Irfan joins Ira to share other stories from the week in science, including what’s going on in a decision-making brain, the trouble with vector-borne illnesses, and the unusual tale of an ant queen that breeds ants of another species.

Guests:
Becky Ferreira is a science reporter at 404 Media and author of First Contact: The Story Of Our Obsession With Aliens.
Umair Irfan is a senior correspondent at Vox, based in Washington, D.C.

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

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It all started harmlessly enough: People bought kits to grow mushrooms at home. But then, scientists in the upper Midwest noticed something strange. The golden oyster mushroom, which is not native to the United States, was thriving in local forests. Those homegrown mushrooms escaped our basements into the wild. Fungal ecologist Aishwarya Veerabahu joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what impact these invasive mushrooms might have on the ecosystem.

Plus, nightshade expert Sandra Knapp describes the evolution of the potato plant, and how a lucky crossbreeding millions of years ago may have given rise to the starchy tubers we eat today.

Guests:
Aishwarya Veerabahu is a fungal ecologist and PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Sandra Knapp is a Merit Researcher at the Natural History Museum in London.

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

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If you’ve flipped through an issue of National Geographic or scrolled through their social media, and caught a stunningly detailed photo of a tiny creature—like one where you can make out the hairs on a honeybee’s eyeballs, or the exact contours of a hummingbird’s forked tongue—you have probably seen the work of Anand Varma. He’s an award-winning science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab, a storytelling studio in Berkeley, California.

Varma speaks with Host Flora Lichtman and takes us behind the lens to show what it takes to capture iconic images of creatures that are so often overlooked.

Guest: Anand Varma is a science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab. He’s based in Berkeley, California.

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

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Dietary supplements are big business, with one recent estimate showing the industry is worth almost $64 billion in the United States alone. Take a casual scroll through your social media and you’ll find influencers hawking all kinds of supplements. But how effective are they? How are they regulated? And why are these “natural” remedies so appealing to millions of Americans? 

To size up the science and culture of supplements, Host Flora Lichtman talks with supplement researcher Pieter Cohen, and Colleen Derkatch, author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture. 

Guests: Dr. Pieter Cohen is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at the Cambridge Health Alliance where he leads the Supplement Research Program. 
Dr. Colleen Derkatch is the author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture and professor of rhetoric at Toronto Metropolitan University.

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

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