Today on the show, we meet a prosthetic designer and a neuroscientist fascinated with understanding how the brain and body might adapt to something we haven't had before — a third thumb. Dani Clode and Tamar Makin spoke to Short Wave in Washington D.C., at the 2023 annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

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What Could We Do With A Third Thumb?

New discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines — in just under 15 minutes. It's science for everyone, using a lot of creativity and a little humor. Join hosts Emily Kwong and Regina Barber for science on a different wavelength.

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NPR's Tom Dreisbach is back in the host chair for a day. This time, he reports on a story very close to home: The years-long battle his parents have been locked in with the local wild beaver population. Each night, the beavers would dam the culverts along the Dreisbachs' property, threatening to make their home inaccessible. Each morning, Tom's parents deconstructed those dams — until the annual winter freeze hit and left them all in a temporary stalemate.

As beaver populations have increased, so have these kinds of conflicts with people...like Tom's parents. But the solution may not be to chase away the beavers. They're a keystone species that scientists believe could play an important role in cleaning water supplies, creating healthy ecosystems and alleviating some of the effects of climate change. So, today, Tom calls up Jakob Shockey, the executive director of the non-profit Project Beaver. Jakob offers a bit of perspective to Tom and his parents, and the Dreisbachs contemplate what a peaceful coexistence with these furry neighbors might look like.

Have questions or comments for us to consider for a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

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Beavers Can Help With Climate Change. So How Do We Get Along?

Roughly 196 million tons of fish were harvested in 2020, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The organization also notes that the number of overfished stocks worldwide has tripled in the last century.  All of this overfishing has led to the decline of entire species, like Atlantic cod.  

Enter the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch. It and other free guides give consumers an overview of the world of fish and seafood, helping people to figure out the most sustainable fish available to them. With the help of Life Kit's Clare Marie Schneider, we figure out how to make informed decisions about what we eating – whether that's at a restaurant or the local supermarket.

Check out more from Life Kit on sustainable seafood.

Have questions or comments for us to consider for a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

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Sustainable Seafood Is All Around You — If You Know Where To Look

When the dinosaurs walked the Earth, massive marine reptiles swam. Among them, a species of Ichthyosaur that measured over 80 feet long. Today, we look into how a chance discovery by a father-daughter duo of fossil hunters furthered paleontologist's understanding of the "giant fish lizard of the Severn." Currently, it is the largest marine reptile known to scientists.

Read more about this specimen in the study published in the journal PLOS One. 

Have another ancient animal or scientific revelation you want us to cover? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we might talk about it on a future episode!

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An 11-Year-old Unearthed Fossils Of The Largest Known Marine Reptile

500 million years ago, the world was a very different place. During this period of time, known as the Cambrian period, basically all life was in the water. The ocean was brimming with animals that looked pretty different from the ones we recognize today — including a group of predatory worms with a throat covered in teeth and spines. 

Researchers thought these tiny terrors died out at the end of the Cambrian period. But a paper published recently in the journal Biology Letters showed examples of a new species of this worm in the fossil record 25 million years after scientists thought they'd vanished from the Earth. One of the authors of the paper, Karma Nanglu, tells us how this finding may change how scientists understand the boundaries of time. 

Curious about other weird wonders of the ancient Earth? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

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The Nightmarish Worm That Lived 25 Million Years Longer Than Researchers Thought

We've all been there: You sit down for one episode of a reality TV show, and six hours later you're sitting guiltily on the couch, blinking the screen-induced crust off your eyeballs. 

Okay. Maybe you haven't been there like our team has. But it's likely you have at least one guilty pleasure, whether it's playing video games, reading romance novels or getting swept into obscure corners of TikTok. It turns out that experiencing – and studying – pleasure is not as straightforward as it might seem. And yet, pleasure is quite literally key to the survival of humanity. So today on the show, we explore the pleasure cycle: What it is, where it lives in the brain and how to have a healthier relationship with the things that make us feel good. 

Want more on the brain? Email us the neuroscience you want us to talk about at shortwave@npr.org! (Also please email us if you would like to gush about any of the books you've been loving — romantasy or otherwise!)

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What Could We Do With A Third Thumb?

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