Short Wave

The idea came to Uma Valeti while he was working on regrowing human tissue to help heart attack patients: If we can grow tissue from cells in a lab, why not use animal cells to grow meat?

Food production accounts for as much as a third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The idea behind cultivated meat is to help feed the world while dramatically reducing human contributions to global warming and avoiding killing animals. NPR Health Correspondent Allison Aubrey has been visiting production facilities and talking with both food and climate scientists to understand how far away lab-grown meat is from store shelves, and what a meal of cultivated chicken tastes like.

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Election observers were concerned misinformation would have an outsized impact on the 2022 elections, as it did in 2020. But, that ended up not being the case. Why?

This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, voting correspondent Miles Parks, and disinformation correspondent Shannon Bond.

This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Fact-checking by Katherine Swartz.

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In the mornings, Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel's first job is to get their two garrulous kids awake, fed and out the door to daycare and kindergarten. They then reconvene at the office and turn their focus to their all-consuming mission: to cure, treat, or prevent genetic prion disease.

Prions are self-replicating proteins that can cause fatal brain disease. For a decade, Sonia Vallabh has been living with the knowledge that she has a genetic mutation that will likely cause in her the same disease that claimed her mother's life in 2010. Upon discovering she had the mutation, Sonia and her husband made a massive pivot: They went from careers in law and urban planning to earning their Ph.D.s, and founding a prion research lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. On today's episode, Sonia and Eric talk with Short Wave's Gabriel Spitzer about what it's like to run a lab with one's spouse, cope with the ticking clock in Sonia's genes, and find hope in a bleak diagnosis.

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Attorney General Merrick Garland has named Jack Smith, the Justice Department's former public integrity chief, to oversee the investigations into the former president.

This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson.

This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Fact-checking by Katherine Swartz.

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The first time Sonia Vallabh understood something was very wrong with her mother Kamni was on the phone on her mom's 52nd birthday. She wasn't herself. By the end of that year, after about six months on life support, Kamni had died.

The disease she died from would upend Sonia and her husband Eric's lives, and send them on a careening journey toward a completely new calling: to prevent or cure the disease that's stalking Sonia's family." Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel join Short Wave to tell their story in this second of three episodes on prion disease.

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Pelosi, 82, is honoring a pledge she made in 2018 to pass the baton after another two terms at the party's helm. She says she will remain in Congress to help guide the party's transition to new leadership.

This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and political correspondent Susan Davis.

This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Fact-checking by Katherine Swartz.

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Prions are biological anomalies – self-replicating, not-alive little particles that can misfold into an unstoppable juggernaut of fatal disease. Prions don't contain genes, and yet they make more of themselves. That has forced scientists to rethink the "central dogma" of molecular biology: that biological information is always passed on through genes. The journey to discovering, describing, and ultimately understanding how prions work began with a medical mystery in a remote part of New Guinea in the 1950s. The indigenous Fore people were experiencing a horrific epidemic of rapid brain-wasting disease. The illness was claiming otherwise healthy people, often taking their lives within months of diagnosis. Solving the puzzle would help unlock one of the more remarkable discoveries in late-20th-century medicine, and introduce the world to a rare but potent new kind of pathogen. For the first episode in a series of three about prion disease, Short Wave's Gabriel Spitzer shares the science behind these proteins with Emily Kwong, and explains why prions keep him awake at night.

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Former president Donald Trump, 76, has now filed to run for president again in 2024. President Biden, 79, also appears likely to run for reelection. In conversations across the country, many voters told NPR that they'll support one of the men in a general election — but would prefer to see their party nominate a different candidate.

This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national political correspondent Mara Liasson.

This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Fact-checking by Juma Sei.

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Climate negotiations continue at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Tens of thousands of attendees from around the world have gathered in the seaside resort town. They've come to discuss some of the key issues to figure out how to combat climate change, remedy its effects, and to focus on implementing the big changes discussed last year in Glasgow.

Correspondent Nathan Rott joins Emily Kwong to walk through the biggest debates at this year's COP, like loss and damage payments. And, he talks about how the war in Ukraine and the U.S. midterm elections are affecting discussions as well.

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The California Republican got his start in national politics as a self-styled "young gun" whose inveterate politicking has allowed him to outshine his contemporaries and rise to the top of the House GOP. Now comes the hard part: can he wrangle his narrow majority to accomplish his goals?

This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Susan Davis, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.

This episode was produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It was edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Fact-checking by Katherine Swartz.

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