Science Friday

A sweeping new study on one of the most beloved insects, maybe the only truly beloved insect—the butterfly—details its rapid population decline in the United States. The new research, published in the journal Science widens the butterfly net and looks at how more than 500 species have fared over the past 20 years.

Researchers found that many populations are taking a nosedive. What’s causing the downswing, and is there anything we can do?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with two of the study authors, Dr. Elise Zipkin, Red Cedar distinguished professor of quantitative ecology and director of the ecology, evolution and behavior program at Michigan State University; and Dr. Nick Haddad, professor of integrative biology also at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.

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

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On the very first day of Donald Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order targeting foreign aid programs, especially the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Comprising less than 0.1% of the federal budget, USAID provides international humanitarian and development aid for poverty eradication, education, disease prevention, and medical programs. The Trump administration has cut off funding for these programs and most of the USAID staff was placed on leave or laid off.

Since January, hospitals and clinics in places like Thailand, Syria, and India have shuttered; clinical trials on HIV and maternal health have been canceled; and projects on polio, malaria, and tuberculosis prevention have been stopped.

Then, this week, the Supreme Court rejected a bid to keep some aid funds frozen. But what does that mean in practice for USAID’s global health initiatives?

Host Flora Lichtman talks about the global health implications of dismantling USAID with Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon and former head of global health at USAID; and Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist and director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa.

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

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Scientists aren’t always encouraged to be politically active. But recent political interference by the Trump administration has many fired up. And, the Blue Ghost lunar lander, part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, completed the first fully successful commercial moon landing.

Scientists and defenders of science are gathering in cities across the U.S. today as part of Stand Up for Science rallies, events to protest recent political interference by the Trump administration in science funding. The main rally in Washington, D.C. features speakers including Bill Nye, Dr. Frances Collins and Dr. Atul Gawande, and will advocate for ending censorship, expanding scientific funding, and defending diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks to science reporter Anil Oza, a Sharon Begley Fellow at STAT and MIT, about the runup to Stand Up For Science, and what he’s heard from organizers and attendees. Then, Flora speaks with two listeners, D.C.-based planetary scientist Mike Wong and University of Louisville student Emily Reed, about why they’re fired up to attend local rallies. 

Last weekend, the Blue Ghost lander, built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace, became the first commercial spacecraft to execute a fully successful landing on the surface of the moon. On board the lander were 10 NASA instruments flown as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The lander will be in operation on the moon over the course of one lunar day (about 2 Earth weeks), before running out of battery power as the lunar night falls.

Kevin Scholtes, an engineer at Firefly Aerospace, and Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about building a commercial spacecraft, the role of private companies in spaceflight, and some of the science the mission aims to achieve.

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

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Last year, 9,000 deceased donor kidneys were discarded due to storage and time limitations. A kidney “life support” machine could change that. Also, the SS United States will join Florida’s 4,300 artificial reefs—human-made places for fish and other marine life to live. How do these reefs work?

Sylvia Miles was diagnosed with lupus in 2006, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack healthy tissue—including her kidneys.

Miles, who lives in Indianapolis, was later diagnosed with advanced kidney disease, and was in need of a kidney transplant.

Kidney diseases are one of the leading causes of death in the United States with 37 million people living with chronic kidney disease. Together with advanced kidney disease—the later stage of CKD—it cost Medicare billions of dollars in recent years.

People like Miles, who need a kidney transplant, wait an average of five years—often on dialysis.

But despite the long waitlists and organ shortages, around 9,000 kidneys from deceased donors last year were discarded due to perceived issues with their viability. A new Indiana-based organization, 34 Lives, is working to limit that waste and rehabilitate the organs.

Read the rest of this article on sciencefriday.com.

This week, after a notable career, the SS United States, a 1950s ocean liner, took her sunset cruise. Like many retirees, the ship is heading south—from Philadelphia to Florida—where she’ll be reinventing herself. In this next chapter, the SS United States will have new passengers: fish and other marine creatures. The ship will be sunk to the bottom of the sea and turned into an artificial reef, joining more than 4,300 artificial reefs off the coast of Florida.

Other sunken ships have become artificial reefs in the past, which have helped boost marine life as well as scuba diving and fishing tourism. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Scott Jackson, a regional specialized agent with the Florida Sea Grant and University of Florida IFAS extension, about the science behind artificial reefs, and what has been learned from decades of research.

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

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A journalist traveled to five continents to learn about the afterlife of our trash, and why most “recyclable” plastic actually isn’t.

Have you ever gotten to the end of, say, a jar of peanut butter and wondered if it should go in trash or recycling? If it’s worth rinsing out? And where will it actually end up?

Journalist Alexander Clapp had those same questions, and went to great lengths to answer them—visiting five continents to chronicle how our trash travels. Along the way, he discovered a multibillion dollar trash trade run by shady waste brokers, and a global industry powered by slimy spoons, crinkled plastic bags, and all the other stuff we throw away. It’s a putrid business that we’re a part of, and many of us know little about.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Clapp about the garbage business and his new book Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife Of Your Trash.

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

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A study finds that Peto’s Paradox, which states that larger animals are no more likely to get cancer than smaller ones, may not hold up. Also, a nearly complete predator skull was found in the Egyptian desert. Its lineage indicates that it was a top carnivore of the age.

If you throw a huge party, there’s more of a chance of problems than if you host a quiet get-together for a couple of friends. The logic is simple: Having more people around means more opportunities for chaos. Similarly, it would seem to make sense that in animals, a bigger species with more cells might have a greater chance of something going wrong with one of those cells, including mutations leading to cancer.

Back in 1977, a British epidemiologist named Richard Peto observed that that didn’t seem to be true. Bigger animals didn’t seem to have a greater risk of cancer than smaller ones. That became known as Peto’s Paradox, and has been a topic of debate among cancer biologists ever since.

Research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a new look at Peto’s Paradox using an unusual set of data—death reports from zoos around the world. Dr. Sarah Amend of Johns Hopkins Medical School joins Host Flora Lichtman to explain why, in their findings, Peto’s Paradox doesn’t seem to hold up—and what studying animal cancer rates could teach scientists about improving human health.

Once upon a time, some 30 million years ago, what is now Egypt’s Western Desert was a lush forest. Humans had not evolved yet, the nearest relatives being monkey-like creatures. And through those forests stalked Bastetodon syrtos, a newly described apex predator from an extinct lineage known as the Hyaenodonts—one of the top carnivores of the age.

Researchers recently discovered a nearly complete skull of the creature. They reported on the find in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Shorouq Al-Ashqar of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center about the discovery, and the picture it helps paint of ancient life.

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

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Changes limiting programs, grants, and even the nature of studies are already underway at the NIH, NSF, FDA, CDC, and more.

On President Trump’s first day in office, he signed an executive order to end what he calls “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” referencing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the federal government. The repercussions of this are already being felt across science agencies.

Things are changing fast: Last week, a federal judge in Maryland temporarily blocked parts of the DEI purge from being carried out. At the same time, federal research agencies have already made changes. For example, the National Institutes of Health suddenly pulled a program that provides grants to PhD students from marginalized backgrounds, and has already canceled studies mid-project, like one on LGBTQ cancer patients. The National Science Foundation has begun reviewing active research science projects that may not comply with Trump’s executive orders. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down resources for HIV prevention, LGBTQ+ health, contraception, and more—then partially restored them, as ordered by a judge. And the Food and Drug Administration pulled its guidance on the importance of having some diversity in clinical trials, like those to test drugs and medical devices.

So, what does banning diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts mean for medical research? And what does it mean for our health?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Rachel Hardeman, director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; and Dr. Melissa Simon, an ob-gyn at Northwestern Medicine, and director of the Center for Health Equity Transformation in Chicago.

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

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The acting head of the NIH reportedly pushed back against legal guidance to resume grant funding, leaving federal workers in the lurch. Also, though fungi make up a tiny part of the human microbiome, they play an important role in both the prevention and development of many diseases.

Just over a month after President Trump’s inauguration, federal science in the US is in a state of disarray. Executive orders to halt grant funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have faced court challenges. Last week, a federal judge extended a restraining order on a proposal to cap NIH grant funding for indirect costs, costs that experts say are critical to their work. But according to new reporting, staff within the NIH have been left without clear guidance about moving forward with those grants, with the NIH’s acting director reportedly pushing back against legal guidance from the agency’s lawyers to restart distribution of the funding.

Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Katherine J. Wu, staff writer for The Atlantic, who reported on the turmoil at the NIH. They also talk about other science news of the week, including an update on the measles outbreak in Texas, how to see every planet in the solar system this week, and how scientists think runner Faith Kipeygon could be the first woman to break a four-minute mile.

You’ve heard of the microbiome, the community of bacteria, viruses, archaea parasites, and fungi that live in our bodies. But that last member of the group, fungi, get a lot less attention than the others. And perhaps that’s unsurprising. After all, bacteria outnumber fungi 999 to 1 in our guts.

But now, scientists are beginning to piece together just how important fungi truly are. Disruption in the fungal balance can play a role in the development of Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel disease, celiac disease, colorectal cancer, some skin diseases, and more.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum, microbiologist and professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, who has dedicated his career to studying the fungi in our bodies, and coined the term mycobiome over a decade ago.

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

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The bone and joint structures in mammal tails help them keep their balance. Could those benefits be adapted for robots? And, in her first children’s book, conservationist Bindi Irwin takes little readers on a journey through Australia Zoo.

If you have met a cat, you’ve probably at some point been amazed by how acrobatic they are. They’re able to reorient themselves effortlessly, even in midair. It turns out that a lot of that twistiness comes down to having a top-tier tail. While most reptile tails can swing only in one plane of movement, mammal tails have more joints, leading to better inertial control. That lets mammals tweak their balance better, much as holding a balance pole can help an acrobat navigate a tightrope.

In a recent study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers explored the biomechanics of different tails, and considered how a better tail could help build a better robot. Dr. Talia Moore, a roboticist at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Ceri Weber, a cellular and developmental biology postdoc at UC San Diego, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk tails.

Almost 30 years ago, conservationists Terri Irwin and the late Steve Irwin captured the world’s attention with their show “The Crocodile Hunter.” It introduced millions of people to Australia Zoo and the strange, often scary, sometimes cute, critters from Down Under.

Now, Terri and her children—Bindi and Robert—are at the helm of the zoo, which is the setting for Bindi’s new children’s book, You Are a Wildlife Warrior!: Saving Animals & the Planet. In it, Bindi takes little readers and her own daughter, Grace, on an adventure through the zoo.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Bindi about her family’s legacy, how motherhood fuels her approach to conservation, and what it’s like to run a zoo.

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

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Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, and about 90% of diagnosed patients die from the disease. A team at Memorial Sloan Kettering has been working to improve those outcomes by developing a new mRNA vaccine for pancreatic cancer.

A few years ago, the team embarked on a small trial to test the vaccine’s safety. Sixteen patients with pancreatic cancer received it, and even though it was a small study, the results were promising: Half the participants had an immune response, and in those patients the cancer hadn’t relapsed after 18 months.

This week, the team released a new study in Nature following those same patients, and found six out of eight who responded to the vaccine in the first study did not have their cancer return more than three years later.

Joining host Flora Lichtman to talk about these results, and what they could mean for the future of cancer treatment, is study author and surgeon Dr. Vinod Balachandran, director of The Olayan Center for Cancer Vaccines at Memorial Sloan Kettering, based in New York City.

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

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