Short Wave

By NPR

What's Short Wave about?

New discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines — all in about 10 minutes. It's science for everyone, using a lot of creativity and a little humor. Join hosts Emily Kwong, Aaron Scott and Regina Barber 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

Monday Night Football And P...

11.27.2023

As kids, some of us dream of multiple careers: being an astronaut AND the next president. Or digging up dinosaurs AND selling out concert stadiums. As we get older, there's pressure to pick one path. But what if we didn't ...

Short Wave episodes:

11.27.2023 Monday Night Football And Pursuing Two Careers With John Urschel As kids, some of us dream of multiple careers: being an astronaut AND the next president. Or digging up dinosaurs AND selling out concert stadiums. As we get older, there's pressure to pick one path. But what if we didn't ...
11.24.2023 What Fossilized Poop Can Teach Us About Dinosaurs Walking into Karen Chin's office at the University of Colorado, Boulder, one of the first things you might notice is that petrified poops are everywhere. They're in shallow boxes covering every surface and filling up shelves, cabinets and drawers. She's ...
11.22.2023 The Thanksgiving Quest For The (Scientifically) Best Turkey Turkey is the usual centerpiece of the Thanksgiving dinner, but it's all too easy to end up with a dry, tough, flavorless bird. For NPR science correspondent Maria Godoy, it got so bad that several years ago, her family decided ...
11.20.2023 3 Major Ways Climate Change Affects Life In The U.S. Every five years, the United States government releases the National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive analysis of how climate change is affecting the country. The fifth assessment was recently released. It's the first to include includes standalone chapters about climate change's ...
11.17.2023 Cutting A Teaspoon Of Salt Is Comparable To Taking Blood Pressure Medication How much salt is too much salt? Most likely, the amount you're consuming. A new study published this week in the journal JAMA found that cutting one teaspoon of salt a day results in a decline in blood pressure comparable ...
11.15.2023 Thousands of earthquakes in Iceland may spell a volcanic eruption Saturday, the entire coastal town of Grindavik, Iceland was evacuated. That's because over the weekend, the country experienced nearly 2,000 earthquakes within 48 hours. And they've kept coming since then – in swarms. Scientists think the quakes are indicative of ...
11.13.2023 How Venus got caught up in an 18th century space race In the 18th century the world was focused on Venus. Expeditions were launched in pursuit of exact measurements of Venus as it passed between Earth and the Sun. By viewing its journey and location on the Sun's surface, scientists hoped ...
11.10.2023 Trailblazing Computer Scientist Fei-Fei Li on Human-Centered AI AI is popping up everywhere nowadays. From medicine to science to the Hollywood strikes. Today, with computer scientist and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, we dig deeper into the history of the field, how machines really learn and how computer scientists ...
11.08.2023 To Figure Out The Future Climate, Scientists Are Researching How Trees Form Clouds If you've ever looked up at the clouds and wondered where they came from, you're not alone. Atmospheric researcher Lubna Dada is fascinated by the mystery of how clouds form and what role they play in our climate. Today, host ...
11.06.2023 Mapping The Seafloor Is Daunting But Key To Improving Human Life Scientists have mapped less than 25% of the world's seafloor. Experts say that getting that number up to 100% would improve everything from tsunami warnings to the Internet and renewable energy. That's why there's currently a global effort to create ...
11.03.2023 Pulling An All-Nighter Is A Temporary Antidepressant What your parents didn't tell you about pulling an all-nighter? It just might ease depression for several days. At least, that's what researchers found happens to mice in a study published in the journal Neuron Thursday. Most people who've stayed ...
11.01.2023 Sky Vaccines: Ridding Raccoons Of Rabies En Masse Every year, the USDA drops millions of oral rabies vaccines across fourteen states, mostly along the eastern seaboard. In urban and suburban areas, they use vehicles, but in rural areas, they drop the vaccines from planes. Host Regina G. Barber ...
10.30.2023 Thanks, Neanderthals: How our ancient relatives could help find new antibiotics Antibiotics have changed the world. They've made it possible to treat diseases that used to mean anything from discomfort to death. But no new classes of antibiotics have made it to the market since the 1980s. What if humans' closest, ...
10.27.2023 Scientist Just Made The Largest Brain Map Ever The human brain has more than 170 billion cells. A newly published atlas offers the most detailed maps yet of the location, structure and, in some cases, function of more than 3,000 types of brain cells. The atlas could help ...
10.25.2023 How Climate Change Is Testing The Endangered Species Act Some people keep dogs in their backyards. In the Florida Keys, some residents have deer the size of a golden retriever in their yards. As sea levels rise and salt water climbs higher on the islands, it's shrinking habitat for ...
10.23.2023 Why Gray Hair Is Coming For You As a kid, host Aaron Scott would dress up for Halloween as an older version of himself — complete with a cane, a set of polyester britches and painted gray hair. These days, that costume is becoming a bit more ...
10.20.2023 Light Show! The Science Behind The Orionid Meteor Shower We're about to hit peak Orionid meteor shower! According to NASA, it's one of the most beautiful showers of the year. The Orionids are known for their brightness and speed — they streak through the sky at 66 km/s! And ...
10.18.2023 Why Scientists Are Reanimating Spider Corpses For Research That spider you squished? It could have been used for science! Today, we're bringing you Halloween a little early – Short Wave style! Host Regina G. Barber talks to Anil Oza about the scientists reanimating dead spiders: How they do ...
10.16.2023 How AI Is Speeding Up Scientific Discoveries Artificial intelligence can code computer programs, draw pictures and even take notes for doctors. Now, researchers are excited about the possibility that AI speeds up the scientific process — from quicker drug design to someday developing new hypotheses. Science correspondent ...
10.13.2023 The Microbiologist Studying The Giant Floating Petri Dish In Space Microbiologist Monsi Roman joined NASA in 1989 to help design the International Space Station. As the chief microbiologist for life support systems on the ISS, Roman was tasked with building air and water systems to support crews in space. That ...
10.11.2023 Florida Corals Are Dying. Can A 'Coral Gym' Help Them Survive? Coral reefs in Florida have lost an estimated 90% of their corals in the last 40 years. And this summer, a record hot marine heat wave hit Florida's coral reefs, exacerbating that problem. Scientists are still assessing the damage as ...
10.09.2023 Choose Your Own Adventure — But Make It Math Ever read those Choose Your Own Adventure books of the '80s and '90s? As a kid, mathematician Pamela Harris was hooked on them. Years later she realized how much those books have in common with her field, combinatorics, the branch ...
10.07.2023 Body Electric: The Body Through The Ages Being inside, hunching in front of a computer screen for hours at a time – these things take a toll on our minds and our bodies. Today on the show, TED Radio Hour's Manoush Zomorodi brings their new series Body ...
10.06.2023 It's Fat Bear Week! Y'all, it's the most wonderful time of the year: Fat Bear Week! Brown bears in Katmai National Park and Preserve are putting on the pounds before they hibernate. During this time, their metabolism, heart and breathing rate slow way down ...
10.04.2023 Why Chilean Mummies Are Decomposing After 7,000 Years Here on Short Wave, we're getting into the Halloween spirit a little early with a look at the world's oldest mummies. They're found in modern-day northern Chile. The mummies are well-preserved, so over the past 7,000 years, some have been ...
10.02.2023 Seaweed is piling up on beaches. This robot might be its match A new robot is designed to sink sargassum before the stinky seaweed comes ashore. Blooms of sargassum, a leafy brown seaweed, have increased in size and number over the past decade. As the blooms have grown, so too has their ...
09.29.2023 The Tiny Worm At The Heart Of Regeneration Science A tiny worm that regenerates entire organs. A South American snail that can regrow its eyes. A killifish that suspends animation in dry weather and reanimates in water. These are the organisms at the heart of regeneration science. But exactly ...
09.27.2023 Osiris-REx and the quest to understand the solar system's origin In 2016, NASA launched a spacecraft to do something rarely attempted before: Collect space rocks from a potentially dangerous asteroid. The mission, named OSIRIS-REx, was successful. Tuesday, scientists opened a sealed canister containing the samples from the asteroid Bennu. Science ...
09.25.2023 Itchy? Here's why Ever had an itch you can't scratch? It can be maddening. And even though itch has a purpose — it's one of our bodies' alert systems — it can also go very wrong. Dermatologist Dr. Shawn Kwatra talks to host ...
09.22.2023 Can't Match The Beat? Then You Can't Woo A Cockatoo Today on the show, All Things Considered co-host Mary Louise Kelly joins Regina G. Barber and Maria Godoy for our bi-weekly science roundup. They talk through some of the latest eye-catching science news, including the percussion-intensive mating life of cockatoos, ...
09.20.2023 Why Sustainable Seafood Is A Data Problem The last several decades have taken a toll on the oceans: Some fish populations are collapsing, plastic is an increasing problem and climate change is leading to coral bleaching — as well as a host of other problems. But marine ...
09.18.2023 The James Webb Space Telescope Is Fueling Galactic Controversy We're entering a new era of astrophysics. The James Webb Space Telescope is helping scientists test existing ideas and models of how the universe was created—on a whole new level. This telescope is sending back images of galaxies forming under ...
09.15.2023 The Latest COVID Booster Is Here. Should You Get It? This week, the Food and Drug Administration approved new COVID vaccines this week. It comes at a time when COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths are on the rise. It's also the first time that the federal government is not paying ...
09.13.2023 Animal Crossing: The Destructive Nature of Roads 40 million miles of road unite us. They also cause mass destruction for many species. Today, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb and host Aaron Scott go on a tour of that destruction — the subject of Ben's new book Crossings: How ...
09.11.2023 Why A Proposed Marine Sanctuary Could Make History More than 5,000 square miles of central California coast could soon become the newest national marine sanctuary in the United States. It could also make history as one of the first federal sanctuaries to be initiated by a Native American ...
09.08.2023 Air Pollution May Be Increasing Superbugs Today on the show, All Things Considered co-host Ari Shapiro joins Aaron Scott and Regina G. Barber for our science roundup. They talk about how antibiotic resistance may spread through particulate air pollution, magnetically halted black holes and how diversified ...
09.06.2023 Recurring UTIs: The Infection We Keep Secretly Getting Have frequent, burning pee? Cramping or the urge to pee even though you just went? If you haven't yet, you probably will eventually—along with an estimated 60% of women and 10% of men. That's the large slice of the population ...
09.04.2023 The Deadly Toll Heat Can Take On Humans This year, the hottest July ever was recorded — and parts of the country were hit with heat waves that lasted for weeks. Heat is becoming increasingly lethal as climate change causes more extreme heat. So in today's encore episode, ...
09.01.2023 Food Allergies Are On The Rise. Are You Affected? Food allergies have risen in the United States over the last few decades. Research suggests that 40 years ago the actual prevalence of food allergies was less than 1%. But this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) ...
08.30.2023 'Speedboat Epidemiology': Eradicating Disease One Person At A Time Smallpox is a deadly virus. At one point, it killed almost 1 in 3 people who had it. Almost 300 million of those deaths were in the 20th century alone. It was extremely painful, highly contagious and many people thought ...
08.28.2023 What Do We Do With Radioactive Wastewater? Workers in Japan started releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday. Reactors at the plant began melting down after a 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit the area. To stop ...
08.25.2023 A Tale Of Two Lunar Landing Attempts A journey through some of the latest science stories catching our eyes. This time, we consider the Russian and Indian lunar landing attempts, how scientists are reconstructing music from people's brains and lessons from wildfires that contributed to a mass ...
08.23.2023 What Made Hilary Such A Weird Storm One name has been on millions of minds — and all over the news — in the past week: Hilary. It's been decades since a storm like this has hit Southern California, so even some scientists were shocked when they ...
08.21.2023 Fixing Our Failing Electric Grid... On A Budget It's no secret that our electric grid is a flaming hot mess — and in order to reduce emissions, the U.S. needs to get a lot more renewables onto the grid. But there's a problem: Our electric grid is too ...
08.18.2023 The Key To Uncovering An Ancient Maya City? Lasers Today we enter into the plot of a summer blockbuster adventure movie. Regina talks to NPR reporter Emily Olson about the recently uncovered ancient Maya city, Ocomtun. The large site, which researchers found using LiDAR technology, even seems to have ...
08.16.2023 Is Math Real? Kids ask, "Why?" all the time. Why does 1+1=2? Why do we memorize multiplication tables? Many of us eventually stop asking these questions. But mathematician Dr. Eugenia Cheng says they're key to uncovering the beauty behind math. So today, we ...
08.14.2023 Sperm Can't Really Swim And Other Surprising Pregnancy Facts There's the birds and the bees. And then there's what happens after. The process that leads to the beginning of pregnancy has a lot more twists and turns than a happenstance meeting. Today on Short Wave, NPR health reporter Selena ...
08.11.2023 The Fish That Conceal Themselves To Hunt All Things Considered host Juana Summers joins Regina G. Barber and Berly McCoy to nerd-out on some of the latest science news buzzing around in our brains. They talk NASA shouting across billions of miles of space to reconnect with ...
08.09.2023 The Science Of Happiness Sounds Great. But Is The Research Solid? How do we really get happier? In a new review in the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers Elizabeth Dunn and Dunigan Folk found that many common strategies for increasing our happiness may not be supported by strong evidence. In today's ...
08.07.2023 Black Metallurgists, Iron And The Industrial Revolution The ability to create wrought iron cheaply has been called one of the most significant innovations in the British Industrial Revolution. It's known today as the Cort process, named after British banker Henry Cort, who patented the technique. But Dr. ...

Older episodes

Short Wave

What's Short Wave about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Short Wave episodes:

Monday Night Football And Pursuing Two Careers With John Urschel

What Fossilized Poop Can Teach Us About Dinosaurs

The Thanksgiving Quest For The (Scientifically) Best Turkey

3 Major Ways Climate Change Affects Life In The U.S.

Cutting A Teaspoon Of Salt Is Comparable To Taking Blood Pressure Medication

Thousands of earthquakes in Iceland may spell a volcanic eruption

How Venus got caught up in an 18th century space race

Trailblazing Computer Scientist Fei-Fei Li on Human-Centered AI

To Figure Out The Future Climate, Scientists Are Researching How Trees Form Clouds

Mapping The Seafloor Is Daunting But Key To Improving Human Life

Pulling An All-Nighter Is A Temporary Antidepressant

Sky Vaccines: Ridding Raccoons Of Rabies En Masse

Thanks, Neanderthals: How our ancient relatives could help find new antibiotics

Scientist Just Made The Largest Brain Map Ever

How Climate Change Is Testing The Endangered Species Act

Why Gray Hair Is Coming For You

Light Show! The Science Behind The Orionid Meteor Shower

Why Scientists Are Reanimating Spider Corpses For Research

How AI Is Speeding Up Scientific Discoveries

The Microbiologist Studying The Giant Floating Petri Dish In Space

Florida Corals Are Dying. Can A 'Coral Gym' Help Them Survive?

Choose Your Own Adventure — But Make It Math

Body Electric: The Body Through The Ages

It's Fat Bear Week!

Why Chilean Mummies Are Decomposing After 7,000 Years

Seaweed is piling up on beaches. This robot might be its match

The Tiny Worm At The Heart Of Regeneration Science

Osiris-REx and the quest to understand the solar system's origin

Itchy? Here's why

Can't Match The Beat? Then You Can't Woo A Cockatoo

Why Sustainable Seafood Is A Data Problem

The James Webb Space Telescope Is Fueling Galactic Controversy

The Latest COVID Booster Is Here. Should You Get It?

Animal Crossing: The Destructive Nature of Roads

Why A Proposed Marine Sanctuary Could Make History

Air Pollution May Be Increasing Superbugs

Recurring UTIs: The Infection We Keep Secretly Getting

The Deadly Toll Heat Can Take On Humans

Food Allergies Are On The Rise. Are You Affected?

'Speedboat Epidemiology': Eradicating Disease One Person At A Time

What Do We Do With Radioactive Wastewater?

A Tale Of Two Lunar Landing Attempts

What Made Hilary Such A Weird Storm

Fixing Our Failing Electric Grid... On A Budget

The Key To Uncovering An Ancient Maya City? Lasers

Is Math Real?

Sperm Can't Really Swim And Other Surprising Pregnancy Facts

The Fish That Conceal Themselves To Hunt

The Science Of Happiness Sounds Great. But Is The Research Solid?

Black Metallurgists, Iron And The Industrial Revolution

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