Artificial intelligence has become more sophisticated in a short period of time. Even though we may understand that when ChatGPT spits out a response, there’s no human behind the screen, we can’t help but anthropomorphize—imagining that the AI has a personality, thoughts, or feelings.

How exactly should we understand the bond between humans and artificial intelligence?

Guest host Sophie Bushwick talks to Dr. David Gunkel, professor of media studies at Northern Illinois University, to explore the ways in which humans and artificial intelligence form emotional connections.

When you want to look at the microbial health of a city, there are a variety of ways to go about it. You might look at medical records, or air quality. In recent years, samples of wastewater have been used to track COVID outbreaks. Studies of urban subway systems have involved painstaking swabs of patches of subway muck. But now, researchers are offering another approach to sample a city’s environment—its beehives.

A report recently published in the journal Environmental Microbiome used the bees foraging in a city to provide information about the town’s bacteria and fungi. The researchers found that by looking at the debris in the bottom of a beehive, they could learn about some of the environments in the blocks around the hives. The microbes they collected weren’t just species associated with flowers and plant life, but included organisms associated with ponds and dogs. The team found that the hive samples could reveal changes from one neighborhood to another in a city, and in the microbial differences between different cities—samples taken in Venice, for instance, contained signals associated with rotting wood that were not seen in samples from Tokyo.

Elizabeth Henaff, an assistant professor in the NYU Tandon School of Engineering at New York University and a co-author of the report, joins SciFri’s Kathleen Davis to talk about what bees and microbes can tell us about the cities we share.

What happens after you pick up a book, or pull up some text on your phone?

What occurs between the written words hitting your eyes and your brain understanding what they represent?

Scientists are trying to better understand how the brain processes written information—and how a primate brain that evolved to make sense of twisty branches and forking streams adapted to comprehend a written alphabet.

Researchers used electrodes implanted in the brains of patients being evaluated for epilepsy treatment to study what parts of the brain were involved when those patients read words and sentences. They found that two different parts of the brain are activated, and interact in different ways when you read a simple list of unrelated words, compared to when you encounter a series of words that builds up a more complex idea.

Dr. Nitin Tandon, a professor of neurosurgery at UTHealth Houston and one of the authors of a report on the work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, joins guest host Sophie Bushwick to talk about the study, and what scientists are learning about how the brain allows us to read.

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

In a new study, researchers picked through the dirty diapers of more than 600 infants. Those stinky diapers were a gold mine of info—they contained more than 10,000 virus species. And though it may sound terrifying, those viruses play a key role in babies’ microbiomes. Guest host and SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Katherine J. Wu, staff writer at The Atlantic about this story and other science news of the week. They chat about climate change’s influence on the twilight zone, what critters can be found on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a surprising twist in the story of Mars’ moon Deimos, the impressive sleeping habits of elephant seals, and why insects seem to flock to the light when it’s dark out.

Raising backyard chickens continues to grow in popularity. The number of households in the United States with a backyard flock jumped from 8% in 2018 to 13% in 2020, according to a survey by the American Pet Products Association. But our fondness for chickens is hardly new. The relationship between humans and chickens goes back thousands of years, to when humans began domesticating the red junglefowl native to Southeast Asia.

Guest host Sophie Bushwick has a compre(hen)sive conversation with Tove Danovich, freelance journalist and author of the new book Under the Henfluence: Inside the World of Backyard Chickens and the People Who Love Them, about how she was charmed by her own backyard chickens, the history of their domestication, and the surprising science of chicken intelligence.

For Earth Day this year, people all over the world took to the streets to demand climate action. But as large and loud as these protests can be, they are often met with inaction. So activists are ramping up their efforts. Just within the last year, we’ve seen people chain themselves to banks, throw mashed potatoes at a Monet painting, shut down highways, and even glue themselves to museum walls, all in the name of climate justice. Those actions went viral and really seemed to strike a nerve. How did we end up here? Guest host Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Dana Fisher, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland College Park, about the state of climate activism and the tactics at play.

Climate activism is getting the big screen treatment this spring, with the new film “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” This action-packed heist film follows a group of young climate activists, disillusioned by the slow pace of climate action, who decide to take drastic action in the name of the climate. What follows is a tense ‘will they-won’t they’ story set in Texas oil country. The name of this movie comes from a 2021 nonfiction book by Andreas Malm. That book is a manifesto that argues that property damage and sabotage is the only way forward for climate activism. The movie features characters who struggle with this question, and whether there’s a different way to accomplish their climate goals.

Guest host Kathleen Davis speaks with Ariela Barer, who co-wrote, produced, and acted in the film. They chat about bringing this complicated topic to the big screen, and creating characters reflective of the real-life climate movement.

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

How do we use art to process the world around us in ways that science can’t? How are illustrators using their skills to help us understand nature’s most unusual creatures?

On Universe of Art, a new podcast from Science Friday, hosted by SciFri producer and art nerd D Peterschmidt, we bring you some of our favorite arts stories from the show, some new ones too, and conversations with the producers who made those segments. We’ll hear from astronomers who integrate space into their artwork, drag performers who bring science into their acts, and many others.

Join us for conversations with artists who use science to bring their creations to the next level.

Listen to Universe of Art on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app.

This week, SpaceX attempted the first uncrewed orbital test flight of its massive Super Heavy rocket topped with an experimental crew capsule known as Starship. After one aborted launch earlier in the week, the huge rocket successfully lifted off Thursday morning—but minutes later, the Starship component failed to separate from the Super Heavy booster, and the combined rocket stack exploded. While a setback for the team, SpaceX head Elon Musk said that a lot had been learned from the flight, and another test launch would take place in several months.

Purbita Saha, senior editor at Popular Science, joins SciFri’s John Dankosky to talk about the launch and other stories from the week in science, including an Earth Day look at water conservation issues across the country and the materials science of Maya plaster.

Plus, you can now listen to Science Friday's new arts podcast, Universe of Art. SciFri producer and Universe of Art host D Peterschmidt joins John to give a sneak peak of some of the episodes. 

Saying the phrase “menstrual blood” or or the word “period” can feel almost dirty. That’s because in the western world, people with periods are taught not to discuss this exceedingly normal biological process. Half the world will menstruate at some point in their lives, and yet menstruation remains exceedingly under-studied.

Biological anthropologist Kate Clancy dug into the history of menstruation research, and the myriad misconceptions about it, while working on her book “Period: The Real Story of Menstruation.” What she found was a lack of basic understanding of the biological process, from physicians and menstruators alike. Clancy speaks with guest host Maddie Sofia about the misconceptions of a “normal” menstrual cycle, and other persisting period myths.

Vince Stanley has a saying, which he holds as true in a commercial forest as on a row crop farm: Every acre has a plan. In a wetland he owns in Tattnall County, about 70 miles west of Savannah, downhill from an orderly grove of predictably profitable loblolly pines, he is trying out something new. “Now, look at this guy right here,” Stanley said, pointing out what looked more like a stick in the mud compared to the tupelos growing a few yards away in the deeper water. This stick, surrounded by pin flags and planted about six feet away from its sister, had signs of new life: dark green leaves. “That’s impressive,” Stanley said.

And the germ of the new plan for these acres, is something that, until now, Stanley said he didn’t really have. “We’re just leaving this up to Mother Nature,” he said. “So now with Living Carbon, we’ve gone to Option B.” This nascent tree and 10,499 others are at the heart of Option B, what might be the first effort of its kind in the nation: genetically engineered trees planted in a forest. What’s more, these trees are for sale.

Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.

If you’ve ever had surgery, you’ve probably wondered about how anesthesia works, or maybe even lied awake at night anxious about going under. If you’ve ever been there, I’m sure you remember: Right before surgery, you get rolled into the operating room. The anesthesiologist tells you to start counting down from 10. The next thing you know, you’re awake in the recovery room and you don’t remember anything that just happened to you. How exactly did anesthesiologists manage to get you safely into that state and back out again?

Guest host John Dankosky talks with Dr. Louise Sun, professor of anesthesiology, perioperative and pain medicine at Stanford University Health and Dr. Gunisha Kaur, anesthesiologist, director of the Human Rights Impact Lab, and medical director of Weill Cornell Center for Human Rights at Weill Cornell Medicine about the basics of how anesthesia works.

So far this year, 16 states have moved to restrict or completely ban transgender kids access to gender affirming care. And 17 other states are considering similar laws, a handful even trying to restrict care for adults.

This political controversy has drawn increased attention to “Standards of Care,” a set of guidelines written by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH. Health professionals are encouraged to consult these guidelines when providing gender affirming care like puberty blockers, hormones and surgery to transgender patients.

A new version of the standards were released last fall, sparking controversy. Some conservatives saw the guidelines as making transition too easy, and seized the moment to further restrict transition-related care. Some trans activists and health care providers felt the opposite, seeing the 2022 guidelines as too restrictive, creating unnecessary hurdles to life-saving medicine.

How did we get to a point where one document is supposed to shape all of trans medicine?

Guest host Maddie Sofia talks with Hil Malatino, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Philosophy at Penn State University, to put in perspective the history of gender affirming care.

Think about your family heirlooms—the most prized items passed down from generation to generation, that tell a story about who you are and where you come from.

Did you ever think that seeds could be part of that story? This year, the Cherokee Nation Seed Bank is continuing its program to distribute heirloom seeds to tribal citizens, one that’s been running since 2006. Last year, the Nation distributed almost 10,000 seed packets to citizens across the country in an effort to keep these culturally significant plants from being lost.

This year, the Cherokee Nation is sharing seeds for a variety of Cherokee corn, gourds, beans, pumpkins, beads, and native plants and flowers.

Guest host John Dankosky talks with Feather Smith, the Cherokee Nation’s ethnobiologist, about how Cherokee heirloom seeds have been cultivated, planted, and preserved over the years.

To see an image gallery of the Cherokee Nation heirloom garden, visit sciencefriday.com.

Around the 1970s, the world latched onto a catchy new scientific term: alpha wolf. It described the top dog that clawed its way to the top of its pack, and it quickly became a mainstream symbol for power and dominance.

The idea of the alpha wolf was debunked almost 25 years ago, but its legacy lives on. Most commonly, it’s found in circles of the internet where men appoint themselves alpha wolf, and also in dog training. Strangely, those two things are connected.

Guest host Maddie Sofia explores how science works and how people use it in their everyday lives, whether it’s true or not. And a little about what happens when science goes mainstream.

Maddie first talks with Dr. Dave Mech, senior research scientist at the US Geological Survey and founder of the International Wolf Center. His 1970 book “The Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species” helped popularize the term “alpha wolf.” But when he discovered that alpha wolves aren’t really real many years later, he tried to right the wrong.

Then, Maddie talks with two researchers about how the alpha wolf idea is still around today: Anamarie Johnson, PhD candidate and canine behavior consultant at Arizona State University, and Dr. Lindsay Palmer, social and behavioral scientist who studies the human-animal bond at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School. They explore how biases and societal ideas shape science, and connect the dots between alpha wolves, masculinity, and dog training.

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

It’s one of humanity’s biggest fundamental questions: “Is there life elsewhere in the universe?” But despite years of searching, it’s a query that still has no answer.  That conundrum also opens up a whole string of other inquiries, from how to best search for signs of life, to whether we’ll be able to make sense of what we’re seeing. 

The search for life elsewhere can also help us learn about our own existence. How many of what we consider the basic rules of life on earth are really just suggestions, or convenient accidents?   

A new book tackles these riddles through the lens of both science and science fiction. Science writer Jaime Green, author of the book, The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos, joins Ira to talk about the science, history, and philosophy of our search for alien lifeforms, and takes questions from callers. 

The SciFri Book Club will be reading this book together in May—you can read along with us next month. Find everything you need to know on our May Book Club page.

The Deer Island Wastewater Treatment Plant is a pollution success story. Over the last several decades, it transformed Boston Harbor from a nationally embarrassing cesspool into a swimmable bay.

The treatment plant takes everything the people of Greater Boston send down their sinks, toilets, showers and washing machines — plus industrial waste — and treats it. The treated water is clean enough to let out into the ocean. The remaining sludge gets recycled into fertilizer that’s used in nearly 20 states.

But now that fertilizer is raising fresh concerns. That’s because wastewater treatment plants like Deer Island were not built to handle the toxic “forever chemicals” known as PFAS.

The treatment process concentrates PFAS chemicals in the sludge, and therefore in the fertilizer, leading environmentalists and public health advocates to call for an immediate end to its use. Others are not sure that a full ban on sludge-based fertilizer, or “biosolids,” is the answer. But there is widespread agreement that we have only begun to grasp the extent of the problem.

To read the full article, visit sciencefriday.com

As AI becomes more advanced, it’s also becoming a bigger part of our lives. That’s especially true of smart speakers, which to some of us, act as another member of a family: answering simple questions, reminding us about appointments, and entertaining children. But what parts of our privacy are we giving up to make our lives slightly more convenient? 

That’s the focus of a new play called “Smart,” which tells the story of four characters: a woman, her aging mother who has dementia, an AI programmer who works for a tech  company, and a smart speaker named Jenny. 

Ira speaks with the writer of “Smart,” Mary Elizabeth Hamilton, about how she wrote the play, how the science behind AI inspired its plot, and the connections between AI hallucinations and dementia-induced hallucinations.

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

The EPA released a set of proposals this week that would cap C02 emissions for new cars. In order to meet the new stricter targets automakers would need to ramp up electric vehicle manufacturing substantially. By 2030, 60% of new cars would need to be electric.

Ira talks with Casey Crownhart, Climate Reporter for the MIT Technology Review, about the new EPA emissions proposals and other top science news of the week including predictions of a bad mosquito season and turtles basking in the moonlight.

In the animal kingdom, it’s not normal to drink milk past infancy. It’s even more rare to consume milk from another mammal. But throughout history, humans have used dairy farming as a way to get calories and nutrition from creatures like cows, goats, and sheep. And a big perk: dairy products taste good.

Evidence of dairying goes back to the early Neolithic era. Traces have been found in the historical record in Europe, Asia, and Africa, in ancient teeth and pottery. Lactase persistence, or the ability to consume dairy into adulthood, developed alongside this burgeoning industry.

But here’s the catch: a large part of the population is still lactose intolerant, either from childhood or developed in adulthood. It’s estimated that about a third of the U.S. population is lactose intolerant, with a higher chance among certain ethnic and racial groups.

There’s a lot to learn about the origins of lactose persistence and lactose intolerance, and much of that knowledge comes from the gut microbiome. Joining Ira to talk about this is Christina Warinner, assistant professor of anthropology at Harvard University, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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

In recent months, it’s been hard to escape hearing about artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT, the AI-enabled version of Bing, and Google’s Bard—large language models skilled at manipulating words and constructing text. The programs can conduct a believable conversation and answer questions fluently, but have a tenuous grasp on what’s real, and what’s not.

Last week, the Future of Life Institute released an open letter that read “We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” They asked researchers to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols governing the use of AI. That letter was signed by a collection of technologists and computer researchers, including big names like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Tesla’s Elon Musk. However, some observers called the letter just another round of hype over the AI field.

Dr. Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley, director of the Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public, and co-author of one of the leading AI textbooks was a signatory to that open letter calling for a pause in AI development. He joins Ira Flatow to explain his concerns about AI systems that are ‘black boxes’—difficult for humans to understand or control.

This week, NASA announced the four person crew of the Artemis II mission to the moon: Commander Reid Weisman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen.

The crew has three firsts for a moon mission, the first woman, first person of color and first Canadian.

While these Artemis II astronauts will not actually step foot on the moon, it’s an important milestone for NASA’s first moon mission since Apollo.

Ira talks with Swapna Krishna, host of the PBS digital series, Far Out about this week’s announcement and the future of the Artemis mission.

As the planet warms, melting ice and shifting seasons aren’t the only things changing—the traditions of baseball may be affected as well. A report published this week in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society finds that warmer air temperatures are connected to a slight increase in the number of home runs hit in major league baseball. The effect, the researchers say, is due to a decrease in air density at warmer temperatures, which allows a hit ball to fly slightly further than it would in cooler air.

So far, the effect is small. After correcting for other factors, the researchers say they can attribute about 500 additional MLB home runs since 2010 to warmer temperatures. Most of the observed increase in home run hitting isn’t attributable to the climate. However, they say, each additional one degree Celsius increase in temperature may lead to a two percent increase in home runs. And while ballparks with an insulating dome won’t see big shifts from increased temperatures, open-air parks with a lot of daytime games, such as Wrigley Field, will see more significant effects.

Christopher Callahan, a Ph.D. candidate in geography at Dartmouth and lead author of the report, joins Ira to talk baseball and climate.

If you’ve played Rollercoaster Tycoon, Cities: Skylines, the Civilization series—even Animal Crossing—you’re probably familiar with this gameplay pattern: extract some kind of resource from the land, industrialize it into a theme park or a city, and (step three) profit, ad infinitum.

But Terra Nil, a new game from the studio Free Lives, fundamentally challenges this oft-used game loop. Instead of maximizing profit at the expense of the local ecosystem, the player’s focus is to make a healthier, natural one instead. You start with a barren wasteland (one that you assume has been completely desolated by human activity, perhaps the aftermath from one of the previously mentioned games), and with the help of advanced eco-tech—like wind turbines, soil purifiers, irrigators, and more—restore it to a thriving, diverse ecosystem. The player’s ultimate goal is to take all the tech they used to restore the land, recycle it into an airship, and fly away, leaving no human presence behind.

SciFri producer D Peterschmidt speaks with Sam Alfred, the lead designer and programmer of Terra Nil, about how Free Lives designed this “reverse city-builder,” how the studio took inspiration from the flora of their local Cape Town, and how he hopes the game challenges players how they think about traditional gameplay systems and their effect on our world.

Scientists built an exercise pool for tiny worms. Why?

A team of researchers at University of Colorado Boulder are looking into ways to help treat people with Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. They’re turning to tiny collaborators, C. elegans, worms which measure just one millimeter in length.

These scientists wanted to see how exercise affects brain health by putting a bunch of these worms in an exercise class—in a tiny pool.

Ira talks with the co-author of this fascinating new research, Dr. Joyita Bhadra, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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

Spring is in the air, with flowers blooming and gardens starting. Most people with a green thumb will know a droopy plant is a signal that it needs water. But new research has found another way that plants will signal that they’re thirsty: emitting staccato popping sounds, too high pitched for the human ears. Elsewhere in the world of science journalism, an argument has been made that elephants have self-domesticated. If true, this would make these gentle giants only the third creature to have done this, alongside humans and bonobos. Joining Ira to talk about these stories and other science stories of the week is Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week” and editor at large of Popular Science.

The nose knows about COVID-19 infection. It is the entrance to the immune system, after all. The nose’s position as one of our first lines of defense has many experts in favor of developing COVID-19 nasal sprays, with the thought that it may replace the needle jabs we’ve come to expect. The development of nasal vaccines comes at a time when many Americans are anxiously awaiting if the government will approve additional COVID-19 boosters. The bivalent boosters have been out for more than six months, and there have been reports the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will recommend an additional dose for some Americans this spring.

Joining Ira to give us the latest on nasal sprays, boosters, and answering some listener questions is Dr. Akiko Iwasaki, immunobiologist at Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut.

Frogs have been called the equivalent of the canary in the coalmine, harbingers for the health of our environment. When frogs go silent, something is amiss. So we’re going to spend some time talking about why frogs are so important and how you can better support your neighborly amphibians. One idea? Build a toad abode and welcome them in. Plus, there’s another way to help frogs and toads—and that’s by lending your eyes and your ears to the scientists who study them. April is Citizen Science Month, so we’re kicking things off with a toad-ally cool project called FrogWatch. It relies on volunteers from across the country to record frog calls and report them to FrogWatch’s database.

Ira talks with Dr. Itzue Caviedes-Solis, assistant professor at Swarthmore College, about making outdoor spaces more frog-friendly. Then, he chats with Carrie Bassett, National FrogWatch USA coordinator and education mission manager at the Akron Zoo, about how volunteers can lend their eyes and ears to help scientists study frogs.

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

In most cities, once you flush a toilet, the water and waste flows through the sewage system to a water treatment plant. Once it’s there, it goes through a series of chemical and biological processes which clean it up and make the water safe to drink again. But a recent paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology finds that some of those sewage plants may be having a greater impact on the climate than previously thought.

The anaerobic decomposition of organic material in the waste stream at sewage plants produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. The researchers used an electric car fitted with a suite of atmospheric gas sensors to sniff the emissions downwind of 63 sewage treatment plants at different times and during different seasons. They found that the wastewater treatment process may release amounts of methane nearly twice that estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In a related study, other researchers analyzed data from published monitoring of wastewater treatment facilities around the globe—and arrived at a similar estimate of the methane production.

Mark Zondlo, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, and one of the authors of the methane-sniffing research, talks with guest host Shahla Farzan about the studies, and about what might be done to mitigate the methane impact of treating our cities’ sewage.

As a high school student, Sage Lenier remembers being frustrated with the way she was taught about climate change. It left her feeling helpless, contending with the gloomy predictions for a doom-filled future. Despite talking about the problems, she wasn’t learning anything about solutions. A year later at the University of California, Berkeley, Sage took it upon herself to create the course she wished she had—one focused on solutions and hope. Nearly 2,000 students have taken her course since, and she recently founded Sustainable & Just Future, a youth-led educational non-profit. Guest host Kathleen Davis talks with Sage about her experiences, why we’ve gotten climate education all wrong, and how we need to be thinking about our future.

Understanding how a brain works is one of the most challenging tasks in science. One of the ultimate goals in brain research is to develop brain maps, which catalog which neurons are connected to others, and where. If researchers have a brain map, they can better understand neurological conditions like addiction, and develop more effective treatments. It may even help scientists understand more abstract concepts, like consciousness. The catch? Mapping millions, or even billions, of tiny little neurons is an extremely challenging and expensive task.

But a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins University recently completed a 12-year effort to map the entire brain of a fruit fly larva, which is the size of a grain of salt, and contains 3,000 neurons and 500,00 connections. Their results were published in the journal Science. Joining guest host Shahla Farzan is the paper’s senior author Joshua Vogelstein, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. They talk about how exactly his team completed this task, when a human brain map might be completed, and how this could be a meaningful step in understanding how enlightenment works.

For more than a year, the National Audubon Society—one of the largest bird conservation groups—mulled over a big decision: whether or not they should rename the organization. Its namesake, John James Audubon, is known as the founding father of American birding. But Audubon and his family were anti-abolition and they enslaved nine people in their home. He also actively harmed and looted from Indigenous people. Earlier this month, the National Audubon Society announced its decision to keep “Audubon” in its name, saying that it’s important in allowing the organization to keep protecting birds. The open letter also says the organization represents “much more than the work of one person.”

The decision to stick with the Audubon name has been met with intense backlash, from birders, local branches, and even its own employees. A handful of locally-run Audubon branches, from New York City to Madison, Wisconsin, plan to change their names to nix the word Audubon. Seattle’s branch is renaming itself “Birds Connect Seattle,” and Washington D.C.’s Audubon Naturalist Society is now “Nature Forward.” Guest host Kathleen Davis speaks with Stuart Wells, executive director of Portland Audubon and conservation scientist Corina Newsome about their reactions to the National Audubon Society keeping its name, and how changes are happening locally, including in places like Portland.

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