Science Friday

In a new book, author John Green traces how the disease has impacted culture, geography, and even fashion over the centuries.

Tuberculosis (TB) has had an incredibly large impact on human history. One staggering statistic? It’s been estimated that by the start of the 1800s, the disease had killed one in seven people who had ever lived. Because of this, tuberculosis affected human culture, geography, and fashion—and even killed off some of literature and media’s most famous heroines.

While TB incidence has gone down tremendously in the United States, it remains a massive issue in low-resource nations. About 1.25 million people die of TB each year, making it still the deadliest infectious disease in the world.

Author John Green explores humankind’s relationship with TB in the new book Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. Green speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about how TB’s path reflects our society and culture. He joins us from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers built the largest 3D map of our universe yet. What they found supports the idea that dark energy could have evolved over time.

One of the mysteries of the universe is why it expands at the rate that it does. Back in 1998, two teams of researchers observed that not only was the universe expanding, but that the rate of expansion was increasing. That observation was the basis for a concept now known as dark energy. In the years since, cosmologists have been trying to get a handle on better measurements of that effect, and hoping to figure out what dark energy actually might be.

This week, researchers on a project called DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, released results based on their first three years of data at an international physics conference. They found that it appears possible that dark energy—whatever it is—has changed over the lifetime of the universe. In other words, the so-called cosmological constant may not, in fact, be a constant. The data is not quite statistically significant yet, so researchers can’t definitively say that this is true, which leaves many questions about the nature of dark energy still unresolved.

Dr. Andrei Cuceu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Dr. Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the new research, and what remains to be discovered in dark energy.

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

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After nine months aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally landed back on Earth. Also, a German physicist and homebrewer discovered brief, intense physical reactions that happen when you uncork a bubbly swing-top bottle.

After 286 days aboard the International Space Station—278 days longer than their initial planned mission—NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams landed safely back on Earth on Tuesday, off the coast of Florida. Their mission turned into a nine-month stay on the station after their Boeing Starliner capsule had issues with its thrusters and NASA deemed it unsafe to carry the astronauts back. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule instead ferried them to Earth earlier this week. And they had a splashdown surprise: A pod of curious dolphins greeted them after they landed.

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, to catch us up on that and other big science stories from this week, including why a company is trying to “refreeze” a massive glacier, why the 10 hottest years on record are the last 10, and how the London Zoo is trying to conserve a unique frog that incubates its young in its vocal sacs.

For a lot of us, uncorking a bottle is the sound of celebration. It’s also a sound that we may not think too much about—until we open our next bottle.

But Dr. Max Koch, a physicist at the University of Göttingen who does home brewing on the side, got to wondering what actually makes that popping sound. What’s happening inside that bottle, physics-wise? To find out more, he recorded the uncorking of an unsuccessful batch of his ginger beer using microphones and a high-speed camera, and analyzed the bubbly results with a physicist’s rigor. His team’s findings were published in the journal Physics of Fluids.

Dr. Koch sits down with Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the brief but intense changes to temperature, sound, and speed that happen when you uncork a swing-top glass bottle.

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

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The framework of Adverse Childhood Experiences started with an unexpected finding over 30 years ago. How is our approach changing? 

We know that experiences from our childhood, both good and bad, shape who we become as adults. But, understanding what kinds of early experiences have staying power into adulthood and the wide range of impacts they can have is an emerging science.

In the 1980s, Dr. Vincent Felitti ran a weight loss clinic in San Diego, California. He noticed that some patients who regained weight were more likely to have experienced sexual abuse in childhood.This eventually led him to conduct research on a larger scale to better understand the correlation between what he and his colleagues dubbed adverse childhood experiences, or ACES, and mental and physical health challenges later in life.

This same 10-question survey Dr. Felitti gave participants in the 1990s is still used by researchers and clinicians to assess childhood trauma. But recently, some psychology experts have begun to question how accurately the ACES framework identifies trauma in diverse populations, since it was originally developed for a mostly white and affluent study population.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Preeti Simran Sethi, science writer and Rosalyn Carter Mental Health Journalism fellow, about her reporting for Science Friday about adverse childhood experiences.

Also, to see more butterfly stories from our listeners, visit our story from last week. 

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

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Former NIH director Dr. Harold Varmus speaks out about what recent budget cuts and policy changes could mean for science.

One of the areas targeted by President Trump’s administration for cuts has been the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cost-cutting actions have included the layoffs of some 1,200 NIH employees, the termination of research grants, a pause in the “study sections” that evaluate and award grant funding, and a cap on indirect costs included in research grants. Some of those moves have been paused following court cases. 

Dr. Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the actions, and the impact he fears they could have on the future of biomedical research in the United States.

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

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Fungal networks in the ground ferry crucial nutrients to plants. But how do brainless organisms form complex supply chain networks? Also, in this year’s baseball spring training, the new Automated Ball-Strike System is helping settle challenges to home plate pitch calls.

As the leaves start to pop out, it’s natural to look up and admire the trees. But actually, there’s a lot of action happening underneath your feet. Beneath you is a complex network of fungal trade routes carrying essential nutrients to the roots of plants, mined from the soil by fungus. It’s a subterranean supply chain.

But how exactly do these complex networks form? How does the fungus decide where to ship which resources, or where to build roads? Basically, how does a brainless thread make decisions?

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Dr. Toby Kiers, an author on a recent study of those networks, and professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije University in Amsterdam. She’s also the executive director of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN).

Baseball fans are eagerly awaiting opening day. And while spring training is a time for teams to test out new players and strategies, it’s also a time for Major League Baseball to trial new rules and procedures. One of the things that the league has been testing this year is a robotic system to call balls and strikes.

The Automated Ball-Strike System, which is based on the same technology used for line judging in tennis, isn’t calling every pitch, but is used to back up a challenge system at the plate. The tech is already in use in Triple-A games, and could make it to the major leagues in the years ahead. Baseball writer Davy Andrews joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the technology, and how it could subtly change the rules of the game.

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

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Layoffs at the agency, which releases weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, could have serious implications. Also, funds for climate and sustainability-focused farming projects have been indefinitely frozen, even though the USDA has already signed contracts.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA, impacts and provides services for Americans every day. The agency releases daily weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, and it also conducts research into global weather and climate change.

Along with many other federal science agencies, NOAA is being subjected to layoffs in the name of cost-cutting: 10% of the agency’s workforce has been laid off, with 1,000 more cuts potentially to come. According to Dr. Timothy Gallaudet, acting NOAA administrator during Trump’s first term, this is likely to lead to declines in quality of service and access to information about weather events.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks to Umair Irfan, science correspondent at Vox, who has been covering the turmoil at NOAA. They also discuss other science stories of the week, including the death of prolific blood donor James Harrison.

Around the country, farmers are planning and planting this year’s crops. It can be uncertain work, made even more tenuous by some of the Trump administration’s changes to climate and conservation policies.

The administration has frozen billions of dollars in grants to farmers for sustainable agriculture, conservation, and “climate smart” projects. In some cases, farmers had already signed contracts with the government and begun work on these projects.

While some funding from the Inflation Reduction Act was recently released, many farmers across the country are still in limbo.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Patrick Brown, a farmer in Warren County, North Carolina; and Dr. Kitty O’Neil, an agricultural climate resiliency specialist at Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension about the future of farming in a changing climate.

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

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It’s March 14, or Pi Day, that day of the year where we celebrate the ratio that makes a circle a circle. The Greek letter that represents it is such a part of our culture that it merits our irrational attention.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to help slice into our pi’s is Dr. Steven Strogatz, professor of math at Cornell University and co-host of Quanta Magazine’s podcast “The Joy Of Why.” They talk about how pi was “discovered,” the ways it’s figuring into recent science, and how AI is changing the field of mathematics.

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

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When you imagine prehistoric life, it’s likely that the first thing that comes to mind are dinosaurs: long-necked Apatosauruses, flying Pterosaurs, big toothy Tyrannosaurs. But what don’t get as much attention are the prehistoric plants that lived alongside them.

Plants, shrubs, and trees played a key part in the food chains of dinosaurs, and many dinosaurs evolved to match the plant life available to them. The Apatosaurus’ long neck, for example, developed to reach leaves high up in prehistoric trees.

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to defend the importance of prehistoric plants is Riley Black, author of the new book When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals and Evolution’s Greatest Romance. She’s based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Read an excerpt from When the Earth Was Green at sciencefriday.com.

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

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An international team of researchers used drones to study narwhals and learn more about their behavior. And, a total lunar eclipse will be visible across most of North and South America in the early morning hours of March 14.

We’re taking a polar plunge into the science of sea unicorns, also known as narwhals!

Narwhals are mysterious arctic whales with long, twirly tusks protruding from their foreheads, like a creature out of a fairy tale. And it turns out that we don’t know too much about them, partly because they live so far north in the remote Arctic.

An international team of researchers used drones to observe narwhals in the wild and learned new things about their behavior, including how they use their tusks to hunt and play.

Host Flora Lichtman gets on the horn with Dr. Gregory O’Corry-Crowe, research professor and biologist at Florida Atlantic University, who was an author on the new narwhal study, published last month in Frontiers in Marine Science.

Early on Friday, March 14 (or super late on Thursday, March 13, depending on your time zone) people across the U.S. will be able to watch a total lunar eclipse, if skies are clear. The partial eclipse will begin at 1:09 a.m. Eastern time on Friday the 14th, with totality lasting from 2:26 to 3:31 a.m. Eastern.

Astronomer Dean Regas joins Host Flora Lichtman to tell us what to expect, and share some tips for comfortable lunar eclipse viewing.

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

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