Short Wave

By NPR

What's Short Wave about?

New discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines — all in about 10 minutes, every weekday. It's science for everyone, using a lot of creativity and a little humor. Join hosts Emily Kwong and Aaron Scott for science on a different wavelength.If you're hooked, try Short Wave Plus. Your subscription supports the show and unlocks a sponsor-free feed. Learn more at plus.npr.org/shortwave

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LAST EPISODE

A Dirty Snowball, Cancer-Sn...

02.03.2023

A green comet, cancer-sniffing ants, stealthy moons ... hang out with us as we dish on some of the coolest science stories in the news!

Short Wave episodes:

02.03.2023 A Dirty Snowball, Cancer-Sniffing Ants And A Stressed Out Moon A green comet, cancer-sniffing ants, stealthy moons ... hang out with us as we dish on some of the coolest science stories in the news!
02.02.2023 A Fatal Virus With Pandemic Potential Nipah virus can rapidly infect and kill members of a community. Exactly how does it cross over from bats to humans?
02.01.2023 The Ancient Night Sky And The Earliest Astronomers Moiya McTier says the night sky has been fueling humans' stories about the universe for a very long time, and informing how they explain the natural world. In fact, Moiya sees astronomy and folklore as two sides of the same ...
01.31.2023 Can you teach a computer common sense? Over the past decade, AI has moved right into our houses - onto our phones and smart speakers - and grown in sophistication. But many AI systems lack something we humans take for granted: common sense. In this episode Emily ...
01.30.2023 Gas Stoves: Sorting Fact From Fiction Gas stoves emit pollutants like nitrogen oxide and methane. Today, why stove makers have long known how to make cleaner stoves—but haven't fixed them.
01.27.2023 Meet The Bony-Eared Assfish And Its Deep Sea Friends Kai the Fish Guy takes us on a tour of the ocean floor and the fantastical creatures that call it home, from the deep-sea batfish to the bony-eared assfish.
01.26.2023 6 Doctors Swallow Lego Heads ... What Comes Out? Six doctors swallowed Lego pieces in the name of science—and to reassure worried parents. Today, what came out at the other end.
01.25.2023 The Math And Science Powering 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively: Daniels) on the starring role science plays in their film Everything Everywhere All At Once.
01.24.2023 Our Perception Of Time Shapes The Way We Think About Climate Change Most people are focused on the present: today, tomorrow, maybe next year. Fixing your flat tire is more pressing than figuring out if you should buy an electric car. Living by the beach is a lot more fun than figuring ...
01.23.2023 Fossil CSI: Cracking The Case Of An Ancient Reptile Graveyard This mystery begins in 1952, in the Nevada desert, when a self-taught geologist came across the skeleton of a massive creature that looked like a cross between a whale and a crocodile. It turned out to be just the beginning. ...
01.20.2023 New Tech Targets Epilepsy With Lasers, Robots About three million people in the United States have epilepsy, including about a million who can't rely on medication to control their seizures. For years, those patients had very limited options. But now, in 2023, advancements in diagnosing and treating ...
01.19.2023 What Cities Should Learn From California's Flooding Climate change is altering the historic weather patterns used to build existing infrastructure like buildings and waterways. Today: innovating to adapt.
01.18.2023 Time Is So Much Weirder Than It Seems Time is a concept so central to our daily lives. Yet, the closer scientists look at it, the more it seems to fall apart. Today, we count the ways.
01.17.2023 A Course Correction In Managing Drying Rivers Historic drought and water diversion are causing stretches of the Colorado and Mississippi Rivers to run dry. Today: rethinking water management.
01.16.2023 How You Can Support Scientific Research We're off today in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In the meantime, we want to share this episode from our friends at NPR's Life Kit podcast about how to become a community scientist — and better scientific research.
01.13.2023 Things Could Be Better Are humans ever satisfied? Two social psychologists, Ethan Ludwin-Peery and Adam Mastroianni, fell down a research rabbit hole accidentally answering a version of this very question. After conducting several studies, the pair found that when asked how things could be ...
01.12.2023 Behold! The Mysterious Ice Worm Inside the mountaintop glaciers of the Pacific Northwest lives a mysterious, and often, overlooked creature. They're small, black, thread-like worms that wiggle through snow and ice. That's right, ice worms! Little is known about them. But one thing scientists are ...
01.11.2023 How Glaciers Move There's always a moment of intense isolation when Jessica Mejía gets dropped off on the Greenland ice sheet for a multi-week research stint. "You know you're very much alone," said Jessica, a postdoctoral researcher in glaciology at the University of ...
01.10.2023 Zircon: The Keeper Of Earth's Time To peer into Earth's deep time, meet a hardy mineral known as the Time Lord: Zircon.
01.09.2023 Redlining's Ripple Effects Go Beyond Humans Does the echoes of systemic racism affecting human residents of neighborhoods also affect local wildlife?
01.06.2023 An Atmospheric River Runs Through It From space, it looks almost elegant: a narrow plume cascading off the Pacific Ocean, spilling gently over the California coast. But from the ground, it looks like trouble: flash flooding, landslides and power outages. California is enduring the effects of ...
01.05.2023 The Period Talk (For Adults) 1.8 billion people have periods each month, yet many haven't been educated about them since childhood, if at all. Today, the period talk — revisited.
01.04.2023 Houston, We Have Short Wave On The Line Speaking to Short Wave from about 250 miles above the Earth, Josh Cassada outlined his typical day at work: "Today, I actually started out by taking my own blood," he said. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station are themselves ...
01.03.2023 Time Cells Don't Really Care About Time Special neurons in your brain called time cells let you recall how memories unfolded. Today, how they work—and why "time" cells is kind of a misnomer.
01.02.2023 A New Year's Mad Lib! To ring in the new year, producer Berly McCoy brings host Emily Kwong this homemade science mad lib!
12.30.2022 I'm Crying Cuz... I'm Human From misty eyeballs to full-on waterworks, what are tears? Why do we shed them? And what makes humans' ability to cry emotional tears unique? Hosts Emily Kwong and Aaron Scott get into their feelings in this science-fueled exploration of why ...
12.29.2022 The Woman Behind A Mystery That Changed Astronomy In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell made a discovery that revolutionized astronomy. She detected the radio signals emitted by certain dying stars called pulsars. Today, Jocelyn's story. Scientist-in-residence Regina G. Barber talks to Jocelyn about her winding career, her discovery and ...
12.28.2022 Pumpkin Toadlet: Neither Pumpkin, Nor Toad Being small has its advantages - and some limitations. One organism that intimately knows the pros and cons of being mini is the pumpkin toadlet. As an adult, the animal reaches merely the size of a chickpea. At that scale, ...
12.27.2022 TikTok's favorite zoologist quizzes us on the most dangerous animals Mamadou Ndiaye uses comedy to teach animal facts, but there's nothing funny about these deadly ones.
12.26.2022 A Holiday Fact Exchange! Host Emily Kwong and editor Gisele Grayson exchange the gift of facts - in this quick hello from us to you, our wonderful listeners!
12.23.2022 Climate Change Stresses Out These Chipmunks. Why Are Their Cousins So Chill? Kwasi Wresnford describes the subjects of his research as "elfin": skittish little squirrel-cousins with angular faces, pointy ears and narrow, furry tails. He studies two species in particular: the Alpine chipmunk and the Lodgepole chipmunk. As the climate warms, these ...
12.22.2022 Can COP 15 Save Our Planet's Biodiversity? This week, the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) wrapped up in Montreal, Canada. Nations from around the world came together to establish a new set of goals to help preserve the planet's biodiversity and reduce the rate of loss of ...
12.21.2022 Brain Scientists Are Tripping Out Over Psychedelics Psychedelic drugs – like LSD, salvia, ayahuasca, Ibogaine, MDMA (AKA ecstasy), or psilocybin (AKA 'magic mushrooms' or 'shrooms') – are experiencing a resurgence of interest in their potential medical benefits. At the Neuroscience 2022 meeting held by the Society of ...
12.20.2022 Confessions Of A Math Convert Math is a complex, beautiful language that can help people understand the world. And sometimes math is hard! Science communicator Sadie Witkowski says the key to making math your friend is to foster your own curiosity and shed the fear ...
12.19.2022 Your Multivitamin Won't Save You Dietary supplements — the vitamins, herbs and botanicals that you'll find in most grocery stores — are everywhere. More than half of U.S. adults over 20 take them, spending almost $50 billion on vitamins and other supplements in 2021. Yet ...
12.16.2022 The Hope For Slowing Amazon Deforestation Brazil's president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is renewing calls to protect the Amazon and reign in the deforestation. Climate scientists are encouraged but so far there aren't a lot of specifics of how this might happen. NPR's Kirk Siegler ...
12.15.2022 A Step Closer To Nuclear Fusion Energy On Dec. 5 at 1 o'clock in the morning local time, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California used lasers to zap a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel. The lasers hit their target with 2.05 megajoules of energy, ...
12.14.2022 From Scientific Exile To Gene Editing Pioneer Gene editing was a new idea in the mid-1970s. So when Harvard and MIT planned new research in recombinant DNA, alarm bells went off. "People were worried about a 'Frankengene,'" says Lydia Villa-Komaroff, then a freshly minted PhD. Amidst a ...
12.13.2022 You Know That Gut Feeling You Have?... TFW when you're so excited you get those butterflies in your stomach - or maybe when you see something icky, you feel ill. On today's show, producer Berly McCoy looks at this relationship between our gut and our brain. Berly ...
12.12.2022 The Myth of Plastic Recycling Very little plastic is truly recycled. Instead, most is single-use, ending as landfill trash. It's a growing issue: Plastic production is on the rise.
12.09.2022 DART: The Impacts Of Slamming A Spacecraft Into An Asteroid If an asteroid were hurling through space, making a beeline straight to Earth, how would humans prevent it from doing what it did to the dinosaurs? Would we bomb it? Would we shoot lasers at it like a scene from ...
12.08.2022 The Biologist Who Talks With Cells The human body is made up of more than 30 trillion cells, but how do they all work together? It's all about communication! "They talk through molecules going from one cell to the adjacent cell," says Dr. Sandra Murray, a ...
12.07.2022 What Makes Hawaii's Erupting Volcanoes Special Just after Thanksgiving, for the first time in almost 40 years, Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano erupted. It's one of several ongoing eruptions – including Kilauea, also on Hawaii, and Indonesia's Mount Semeru. At just over half the size of the ...
12.06.2022 'One Mississippi...' How Lightning Shapes The Climate When lightning strikes a giant tree in the tropical rainforest, there's usually no fire, no blackened crater — you might not even notice any damage. But come back months later, as Evan Gora does, and you may find that tree ...
12.05.2022 Don't Call It Dirt: The Science Of Soil It's easy to overlook the soil beneath our feet, or to think of it as just dirt to be cleaned up. But soil wraps the world in an envelope of life: It grows our food, regulates our climate, and makes ...
12.02.2022 Arts Week: Physics Meets The Circus Julia Ruth's job takes a lot of strength, a lot of balance, and a surprising amount of physics. She's a circus artist — and has performed her acrobatic Cyr wheel routine around the world. But before she learned her trade ...
12.01.2022 Arts Week: The Life Cycle Of A Neuron An exhibit that blended science and technology for an immersive art experience went on display in Washington, DC and New York City in 2021 and 2022. It invited visitors to explore the cells in their brain. The installation was a ...
11.30.2022 Arts Week: The Literary Magazine Dissecting Health And Healing New York's Bellevue Hospital is the oldest public hospital in the country, serving patients from all walks of life. It's also the home of a literary magazine, the Bellevue Literary Review, which is now more than 20 years old. In ...
11.29.2022 Arts Week: How Art Can Heal The Brain Arts therapies appear to ease a host of brain disorders from Parkinson's to PTSD. But these treatments that rely on music, poetry or visual arts haven't been backed by rigorous scientific testing. Now, artists and brain scientists have launched a ...
11.28.2022 Arts Week: Harnessing Bacteria For Art Pull out your art supplies because it's time to get crafty—with agar! We're beginning Arts Week at the intersection of biology and art. Therein lies a creative medium that's actually alive. Scientists and artists practice etching designs on petri dishes ...

Older episodes

Short Wave

What's Short Wave about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Short Wave episodes:

A Dirty Snowball, Cancer-Sniffing Ants And A Stressed Out Moon

A Fatal Virus With Pandemic Potential

The Ancient Night Sky And The Earliest Astronomers

Can you teach a computer common sense?

Gas Stoves: Sorting Fact From Fiction

Meet The Bony-Eared Assfish And Its Deep Sea Friends

6 Doctors Swallow Lego Heads ... What Comes Out?

The Math And Science Powering 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'

Our Perception Of Time Shapes The Way We Think About Climate Change

Fossil CSI: Cracking The Case Of An Ancient Reptile Graveyard

New Tech Targets Epilepsy With Lasers, Robots

What Cities Should Learn From California's Flooding

Time Is So Much Weirder Than It Seems

A Course Correction In Managing Drying Rivers

How You Can Support Scientific Research

Things Could Be Better

Behold! The Mysterious Ice Worm

How Glaciers Move

Zircon: The Keeper Of Earth's Time

Redlining's Ripple Effects Go Beyond Humans

An Atmospheric River Runs Through It

The Period Talk (For Adults)

Houston, We Have Short Wave On The Line

Time Cells Don't Really Care About Time

A New Year's Mad Lib!

I'm Crying Cuz... I'm Human

The Woman Behind A Mystery That Changed Astronomy

Pumpkin Toadlet: Neither Pumpkin, Nor Toad

TikTok's favorite zoologist quizzes us on the most dangerous animals

A Holiday Fact Exchange!

Climate Change Stresses Out These Chipmunks. Why Are Their Cousins So Chill?

Can COP 15 Save Our Planet's Biodiversity?

Brain Scientists Are Tripping Out Over Psychedelics

Confessions Of A Math Convert

Your Multivitamin Won't Save You

The Hope For Slowing Amazon Deforestation

A Step Closer To Nuclear Fusion Energy

From Scientific Exile To Gene Editing Pioneer

You Know That Gut Feeling You Have?...

The Myth of Plastic Recycling

DART: The Impacts Of Slamming A Spacecraft Into An Asteroid

The Biologist Who Talks With Cells

What Makes Hawaii's Erupting Volcanoes Special

'One Mississippi...' How Lightning Shapes The Climate

Don't Call It Dirt: The Science Of Soil

Arts Week: Physics Meets The Circus

Arts Week: The Life Cycle Of A Neuron

Arts Week: The Literary Magazine Dissecting Health And Healing

Arts Week: How Art Can Heal The Brain

Arts Week: Harnessing Bacteria For Art

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