Have you noticed that your newer appliances are serenading you? Many new washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, and vacuums have sonic signatures. But why? And who are the composers making music for the machines in your home?

Flora talks to sonic branding experts Audrey Arbeeny, who has developed sounds for washing machines; and Joel Beckerman, who has composed for Roomba. 

Guests: 

Audrey Arbeeny is the owner and executive producer of Audiobrain. She?s composed for Whirlpool, KitchenAid, the London Olympic Games, and Microsoft?s Xbox 360. 

Joel Beckerman is a composer and founder of Made Music Studio, and author of ?The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel, and Buy.? He?s composed for the NFL, IMAX, and the Roomba vacuum. 

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Scientists studying climate models say there?s a high chance this will be an El Niño year?and that we could be in for a ?super? El Niño. The difference is indicated by sea surface temperatures in part of the Pacific Ocean rising a little?or a lot?above their long-term average.

El Niño is one half of what climatologists call the ENSO, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The oscillation operates on a roughly 3-7 year cycle, changing the path of the jet stream and shifting weather conditions around the world. An El Niño year, for instance, typically brings wetter weather in the western U.S. but dryer conditions in the Pacific Northwest, and can be a drought buster for regions such as southern California.  But shifting ocean currents also have the potential to affect marine ecosystems, leading to algal booms, coral bleaching, and more.  

Climate scientist Dillon Amaya joins Host Ira Flatow to describe the role of the El Niño in shaping world weather, and what effects a particularly strong El Niño year might have on global ecosystems.

Guest: 

Dr. Dillon Amaya is a research scientist at the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.  

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In April, the crew of Artemis II got an unprecedented tour of the far side of the moon, and they brought back a proverbial shoebox full of pictures. Lunar scientist Kelsey Young stayed on Earth, and helped guide the astronauts through their photo shoots from Mission Control.

Young talks with Host Flora Lichtman about how the science team chose their shot list, how to lead distant astronauts in their scientific observations, and what researchers are learning from the images and in-the-moment descriptions captured by the Artemis II crew.

Guest: 

Dr. Kelsey Young is the Artemis science flight operations lead for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

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When Kemi Doll was in medical school, she learned that Black women are twice as likely to die from uterine cancer as white women, and also suffer disproportionately from other uterine-related conditions. What wasn?t explained was why. Now a gynecologic oncologist, Doll has made it her mission to change these trends and improve care for Black women. 

She joins Flora to discuss her new book, ?A Terrible Strength: The Hidden Crisis of the Black Womb and Your Survival Guide to Healing.? They explore the way systemic racism and the normalization of Black women?s pain lead to later diagnoses of uterine cancer and poorer health outcomes for a range of gynecologic conditions including fibroids, endometriosis, and heavy periods. And Doll explains the problem with using reproductive health as a synonym for uterine health. 

Guest: 

Dr. Kemi Doll is a gynecologic oncologist and professor at the University of Washington Schools of Medicine and Public Health. 

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Cameras and sensors are just about everywhere, recording your face, how you walk, where you go, your heart rate. And AI is making it easy to amass and analyze that data about all of us. 

Privacy attorney Anne Toomey McKenna joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the ubiquity of biometric surveillance and how data brokers are gathering and selling our information, including to law enforcement. 

Guest: 

Anne Toomey McKenna is an attorney specializing in privacy and biometric surveillance. She?s on the Advisory Board for AI Policy at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers - USA. 

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Breaking news out of eastern Oklahoma! A hole in the sky has opened. Through it, an unidentified turtle-shaped craft has descended. Alerts say that this is first contact. 

So it goes in the sci-fi thriller ?Hole in the Sky.? In the book, author Daniel H. Wilson imagines this moment where we meet alien life for the first time. It?s set in the heart of Cherokee Nation and follows characters including a military man, a NASA scientist, and a Cherokee father named Jim who is just trying to survive the alien entity.

Wilson joins Flora for a conversation about the book and how he integrated elements of Cherokee culture with science fiction. They get into the ways we project our own fears?like genocide and slavery?onto aliens, and how science fiction helps us imagine the unimaginable. 

The SciFri Book Club is reading ?Hole in the Sky? during May and June. Join us to read along! 

Read an excerpt from ?Hole in the Sky.?

Guest: 

Dr. Daniel H. Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and bestselling author of ?Robopocalypse,? ?Hole in the Sky,? and several other books. He holds advanced degrees in machine learning and robotics and lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Beavers are having a moment, thanks to the new Pixar movie ?Hoppers.? Amid some body-swapping shenanigans, the film is about humans coexisting with wildlife?particularly oversized rodents capable of reworking landscapes in profound ways. 

The beaver science consultant on ?Hoppers,? Emily Fairfax, joins Flora to talk about beavers? brilliant, chaotic landscape engineering, and how the creatures show up in the movie. Then, reporter Zac Ziegler walks Flora through a successful beaver-centric engineering project in Oregon. 

Guests: 

Emily Fairfax is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Minnesota. She was a science consultant for the Pixar movie ?Hoppers.?

Zac Ziegler is a reporter at KLCC in Eugene, Oregon.

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Deep in an active nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario, researchers are installing and calibrating a set of sensitive detectors. They hope that the location roughly 6,800 feet underground will screen out much of the ordinary radiation and cosmic rays felt on the surface, and allow their detectors to sense tiny disturbances caused by a dark matter particle passing close to the nucleus of one of the germanium atoms in a target material.

If successful, the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment may shed some light on the nature of dark matter, an unseen something that is thought to make up around 85% of the matter in the universe.

Priscilla Cushman, a physicist who has been working on the project for over 20 years, joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe the hunt, the timeline of the experiment, and the big unknowns facing the SuperCDMS team. 

Guest: 

Dr. Priscilla Cushman is spokesperson for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, and a professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota.

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Hurricane season officially begins in June. And in the event of a big storm, local and state governments often rely on help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. But, President Trump has questioned the value of the agency.  

?I've never been a big fan of FEMA. I like to keep it local. I like to see governors and neighboring states help each other as opposed to FEMA,? Trump said in March.

We?ve heard this from the administration about other federal agencies, but FEMA is a special case. People have mistrusted this agency since its founding in the late 1970s.  

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Micah Loewinger, co-host of the show ?On The Media,? who traced FEMA?s history in a new series called ?American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA.?

Guest: 

Micah Loewinger is co-host of On The Media.Other episodes you may enjoy:

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Animal neuroaudiologist Pete Scheifele joins us to answer some burning questions from SciFri listener Paul: Why can dogs and cats hear a wider range of frequencies than we do? Is it in their ears, their brains? And what would life be like if you had dog ears or cat ears?

And, scientists have created the first ?smell map? of the nose using a mouse model. Host Flora Lichtman talks with neurobiologist Bob Datta about this latest research, and what it tells us about olfaction.

Guests: 

Dr. Pete Scheifele is a neuroaudiologist at the University of Cincinnati and executive director of the FETCHLAB, an animal audiology clinic and lab.

Dr. Bob Datta is a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School.

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The news we hear about plastic is often alarming: We have a spoon?s worth of plastics in our brains, and there are microplastics in our hearts, lymph nodes, and bloodstreams. Plastics are ubiquitous, but the reality might be more complicated than it seems. 

It turns out that measuring microplastics is really, really difficult. One reason? Because we?re surrounded by plastics! Think of the pipettes and petri dishes and gloves we use in labs.

Host Flora Lichtman chats with microplastics researcher Cassandra Rauert about the difficulties of studying plastics in the human body and what she?s doing about it?like how she designed a whole lab made almost entirely of stainless steel and glass. 

Guest: 

Dr. Cassandra Rauert is a senior research fellow studying microplastics exposure at the University of Queensland in Australia. 

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In mid-April, President Trump issued an executive order to set aside funding and loosen the bureaucratic process at the FDA to fast-track psychedelic therapy research. One obscure psychedelic got a particularly bright spotlight: ibogaine.

Originating from the root bark of the iboga plant of central Africa, the psychedelic has shown promise for curbing opioid addiction and treating PTSD. But it also can be risky to take, and hasn?t made it to the medical mainstream like psilocybin or ketamine. So what?s the story with this drug? 

Joining Host Flora Lichtman to talk about its history is neurologist and pharmacologist Deborah Mash, who secured the first FDA approval for clinical trials involving ibogaine in the 1990s. And to tell us how it fits in with the growing interest in medical psychedelics is Jane Hu, journalist for The Microdose newsletter. (Disclosure: Deborah Mash is founder and CEO of a company that?s developing a therapeutic drug based on ibogaine.) 

Guests: 

Jane C. Hu is a journalist for the psychedelic science newsletter The Microdose, based in Seattle, WA.

Dr. Deborah Mash is professor emeritus of neurology and molecular and cellular pharmacology at the University of Miami School of Medicine. She is the also founder and CEO of DemeRx.

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Comparing a backyard sparrow to a fearsome velociraptor seems odd, but modern birds are indeed living dinosaurs. Scientists are finding more and more connections between the past physiology of dinos and the present physiology of birds. 

Joining Ira Flatow to talk about some forgotten species from the past tens of millions of years?think gorilla-sized penguins?is Steve Brusatte, paleontologist and author of ?The Story of Birds: A New History from their Dinosaur Origins to the Present.?

Read an excerpt from ?The Story of Birds?

Guest: 

Dr. Steve Brusatte is a paleontologist and author of ?The Story of Birds: A New History from their Dinosaur Origins to the Present.? He?s based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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Our bodily systems are rife with mutations. In fact, your DNA is mutating right now. These errors, and attempts to repair them, are a key to understanding immune function, aging, and even how heart disease develops. Gene mutations can even mitigate the harm caused by some inherited diseases. 

Host Ira Flatow goes on a journey through the illuminating science of genetic mutations with Roxanne Khamsi, science writer and author of ?Beyond Inheritance: Our Ever-Mutating Cells and a New Understanding of Health.?

Guest: 

Roxanne Khamsi is a science writer and author of the book, ?Beyond Inheritance: Our Ever-Mutating Cells and a New Understanding of Health.?

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Data centers make controversial neighbors: They?re loud, they use a lot of water, and can drive electricity prices up. Following public concern and organizing efforts, Maine nearly implemented an 18-month ban on data center construction, before a governor veto.

Joining Flora to talk about real changes communities can advocate for in regards to data centers are Pete McGuire, climate reporter at Maine Public, and Lauren Keeler, director of ASU?s Just Energy Transition Center.

Guests: 

Pete McGuire is climate reporter at Maine Public. 

Dr. Lauren Keeler is an associate professor and director of the Just Energy Transition Center at Arizona State University.

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The way ancient societies like the Greeks, Maya, and Khmer Empire built their cities can tell us a lot about how a place was governed. Did rulers live in ornate palaces or alongside other residents? Are there large, open spaces for community gatherings? 

In a new study, archaeologists document how they use the design of ancient temples, plazas, and cities to understand how a society was governed. So what does ancient architecture reveal about democracy? And do the democratic design principles hold true today? 

Host Flora Lichtman chats with anthropologist Jake Holland-Lulewicz about ancient democracies, and with archaeologist Jeff Hou about how the role of public spaces in democracies has changed.

Guests: 

Dr. Jacob Holland-Lulewicz is an anthropologist and assistant professor at Penn State.

Dr. Jeff Hou is the head of the architecture department at the National University of Singapore.

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What did the universe look like before any stars turned on? Astronomers call that time the ?dark ages,? and while they think it may be possible to see remnants of it in very low frequency radio signals, hearing those signals from Earth can be challenging.  

One possibility is to put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, where it would have periods of observation shielded from interference both from Earth and from the sun?and potentially be able to receive that dark ages signal. The LuSEE-Night mission will explore that approach. A small demonstration radio telescope is slated for launch in late 2026 to serve as a proof of concept for low frequency radio astronomy on the lunar far side.

Astronomer An?e Slosar, lead scientist for LuSEE-Night, joins Host Ira Flatow to describe the telescope project and what astronomers hope to achieve by sending it to the moon.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

Guests: 

Dr. An?e Slosar is science lead for the LuSEE-Night project. He?s based at Brookhaven National Lab.

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To mark Earth Day, we asked you to tell us about your favorite places on the planet. You took us to the woods near Traverse City, Michigan, to a lake in Oklahoma, to Long Island Harbor where you spent your summers as a kid. 

Basking in a sea breeze and admiring a sunset are basic human pleasures. But how do you take these moments and turn them into meaning? How do you pin those feelings down with words? 

Joining Host Flora Lichtman are two poets who make that attempt for their livelihood: Jane Hirshfield, founder of Poets for Science, and Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and former Wisconsin poet laureate.

Guests: 

Kimberly Blaeser is a poet, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets, and former Wisconsin Poet Laureate.

Jane Hirshfield is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of ?Ledger? (Knopf, 2020) and nine other books of poetry. She?s based in San Francisco, California.

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What makes Earth special, and why are we here at all? In his book ?Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe That Make You Possible,? astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi tackles the conditions needed to put life on Earth, from the formation of stars, to self-organizing molecules, to quantum weirdness and the nature of time. He joins Host Flora Lichtman to celebrate our place in the cosmos. 

Read an excerpt from "Why Do We Exist?"

Guest: 

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi is an astrophysicist and author of ?Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe that Make You Possible.?

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Nearly all Americans have some type of PFAS, commonly known as ?forever chemicals,? in their blood. The chemicals, which are linked to numerous health issues, were first regulated in drinking water at the federal level two years ago (though some limits have been rolled back).

But, back in 2018, New Jersey became the first state to adopt its own drinking water standards for PFAS. Now, researchers at Rutgers University have crunched the data to see how well it worked. They found that levels of the regulated chemicals dropped by as much as 55%. 

Host Ira Flatow talks with the lead author of the study, cancer epidemiologist Hari Iyer about the significance of his findings and his plans to study the possible link between PFAS and prostate cancer.

Want to filter PFAS from your tap at home? Learn more:

Guest: 

Dr. Hari Iyer is an assistant professor of cancer epidemiology and health outcomes at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. 

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A new imaging technique using a particle accelerator is giving researchers an unprecedented level of detail of our organs, producing scans 100 billion times brighter than a CT scanner. Those 3D models are now part of a public database called the Human Organ Atlas, available to researchers and the medically curious.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to explain why they needed so much power and what kind of research advances will follow is imaging scientist Claire Walsh, director of the Human Organ Atlas hub.

Check out images from the Human Organ Atlas on our website.

Guest: 

Dr. Claire Walsh is an associate professor at the UCL department of mechanical engineering and director of the Human Organ Atlas Hub.

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In the 2010s, inventor Simone Giertz (pronounced ?Yetch?) began making videos that straddled the line between practical and absurd. What if you had a robot that could feed you soup? Or a drone that could cut your hair? As time went on, her projects became more polished and more ambitious, like converting a Tesla sedan into a pickup truck.

Today, with almost 3 million subscribers to her YouTube channel, Simone is still designing and building objects that are quirkily useful?a fruit bowl that changes size for instance?but that could also be at home in a high-end design store. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about her approach to problems, and the joy of making physical objects in an increasingly online world.

Guest: 

Simone Giertz is an engineer, maker, YouTube creator and founder of Yetch Studio.

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What are dolphins actually saying with their iconic, high-pitched whistles? Dolphin communication researcher Laela Sayigh is trying to find out. She?s been compiling a database of whistles from a pod of dolphins in Sarasota, Florida, the longest-studied group of cetaceans in the world. 

She joins Flora to discuss fundamental questions about dolphin dialects, including how dolphins? ?signature? whistles can change depending on context, and the process of decoding new types of whistles. 

Guest: 

Dr. Laela Sayigh is a senior research specialist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. 

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?This was not easy, being 200,000+ miles away from home. Like before you launch, it feels like it's the greatest dream on earth. And when you're out there, you just wanna get back to your families and your friends.? ? Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman

Last week, the crew of Artemis II made it safely home. Throughout the journey, we heard the astronauts talk about moonjoy, awe, wonder, and?without exception?gratitude for their families. 

To learn more about what it's like to be part of an astronaut family, Host Flora Lichtman chats with Tracy Scott, whose dad was a commander during the Apollo missions. Now, as a sociologist who studies the Moonshot era, Scott gives us a glimpse into astronaut life and the social context of the Apollo and Artemis missions.

Guest: 

Dr. Tracy Scott is a sociologist at Emory University studying the lives and families of Apollo era astronauts. She?s based in Atlanta, Georgia.

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If you?re a gardener, thinking about getting your soil in shape probably means thinking about compost. But composting can be a mysterious process. What can go into the pile? How do you balance carbon and nitrogen? And how do you do it in a city?

Compost expert Cassandra Marketos joins Host Ira Flatow to break down the basics of what she calls ?purposeful decomposition,? and give practical tips for the backyard composter.

Read an excerpt from Marketos? new book, ?Compost after Reading.?

Guest: 

Cassandra Marketos is the author of ?Compost After Reading: A Practical Manifesto for Purposeful Decomposition.?

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How do we know what we know? That's where science comes in?it gives us a method for testing our ideas and getting trustworthy results. But some researchers have warned that many scientific studies can't be replicated.

To find out how deep the problem goes, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded one of the largest analyses of social science, called the SCORE project. They checked the results of thousands of papers across economics, education, and psychology?and found that only half of them could be replicated.

Joining Host Ira Flatow to discuss the findings are Tim Errington, one of the leads on this project, and economist Abel Brodeur, who recently released the results of a separate replication study that found more encouraging results than SCORE did.

Guest:

Dr. Tim Errington is senior director of research at the Center For Open Science in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Abel Brodeur is a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa and founder of the Institute for Replication.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Movies may be a largely visual medium, but sound plays a huge role in setting tone, creating new worlds, and fleshing out characters. Sound designer Erik Aadahl has brought some of Hollywood?s iconic creatures to life with sound, like the Transformers, 2014?s Godzilla, and Rocky the alien from ?Project Hail Mary.? He joins Flora to talk about the science of sound design, and how he uses his background in biology to look for sounds in the animal kingdom.

Guest: 

Erik Aadahl is a sound designer and editor at E² in Los Angeles, California.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound are prescribed for weight loss, diabetes, and blood-sugar management. But as more people use them, patients are reporting a decrease in cravings for drugs and alcohol. Researchers are now investigating whether GLP-1s might be effective for treating alcohol and drug addiction. 

How much do we know? What are the risks? And do these drugs tell us anything new about the biology of addiction?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with neuroscientist Joseph Schacht, who is conducting a clinical trial on GLP-1s and alcohol use; and Sarah Carstens, addictions clinical director of Outpatient Services at Penn Medicine?s Princeton House Behavioral Health.

Guests:

Dr. Joseph Schacht is the co-director of the Division of Addiction Science, Prevention, and Treatment at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine. 

Sarah Carstens is the addictions clinical director of Outpatient Services at Penn Medicine?s Princeton House Behavioral Health. 

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Scientists recently published the first footage of a sperm whale birth, and it was a crowded ordeal. More than 10 other sperm whales were there for the delivery and helped keep the baby whale afloat?and not all of them were related to mom. How much do we actually understand whale culture? And how should we think about altruism in the animal kingdom?

Host Flora Lichtman chats with whale biologist Shane Gero about what it was like to witness this birth and what it tells us about whale culture. 

Guest:

Dr. Shane Gero is a whale biologist at Carleton University, founder of The Dominica Sperm Whale Project, and biology lead for Project CETI. He?s based in Ottawa, Canada.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Last year, Chinese carmaker BYD sold millions of electric vehicles, overtaking Tesla to become the world?s biggest seller of EV cars. And BYD cars weren?t just for the Chinese market. They went to Europe, Asia, and Mexico, and may soon be available in Canada. But thanks to tariffs and regulations, BYDs are not available to U.S. buyers.

China policy expert Kyle Chan joins Host Ira Flatow for a look at the growing EV market worldwide, and how the U.S. seems to be putting the brakes on battery-powered cars.

Guest: 

Kyle Chan is an expert on Chinese technology and industrial policy.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Microplastics and nanoplastics have been found just about everywhere: in our soil, our bodies, and our water. Recent research involving bioengineered algae has had success in capturing and removing microplastics from water.

Environmental reporter Kate Grumke joins Producer Kathleen Davis to talk about the latest approaches to addressing microplastics, and researcher Susie Dai discusses her work using algae to pull them out of wastewater.

Guests: 

Dr. Susie Dai is a professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the University of Missouri.

Kate Grumke is a senior environmental reporter for St. Louis Public Radio.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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On Wednesday, NASA?s Artemis II mission launched, kicking off on a roughly 10-day trip that will carry four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth. The flight is another test of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion capsule that are intended to be used for an eventual crewed lunar landing.

Space reporter Brendan Byrne joins Producer Kathleen Davis to share his impressions of the launch and what?s ahead for the Artemis program. Then, moon book author Rebecca Boyle joins the discussion to tackle an important listener question: What if Earth didn?t have a moon?

Guests: 

Brendan Byrne is the host of the ?Are We There Yet?? podcast, and assistant news director for Central Florida Public Media in Orlando, Florida.

Rebecca Boyle is a science journalist and author of ?Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed The Planet, Guided Evolution, And Made Us Who We Are.? 

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In 2006, a vote by the International Astronomical Union determined that Pluto was no longer a planet. The decision sparked a heated public debate, and many planetary scientists disagreed with kicking Pluto out of the planet club. 

Twenty years later, Pluto is back in the news: NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said he wants to make Pluto great again by declaring it? a planet again. And he?s urging President Trump to do so by executive order. Why does this Plutonian debate keep rearing its head? And does the president have the power to do that?

To answer those questions and more, Host Ira Flatow talks with planetary scientists and Pluto champions Amanda Bosh and Alan Stern. 

Guests:

Dr. Amanda Bosh is the executive director of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, where Pluto was first discovered.

Dr. Alan Stern is the vice president at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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For many of us, what happens in the bathroom stays in the bathroom: According to a recent survey, 1 in 3 Americans are too embarrassed to talk about their poop or gut issues with their doctor. Gastroenterologists like Trisha Pasricha say that?s a problem, and that that stigma is getting in the way of our health and happiness.

She joins Host Flora Lichtman to share some crucial gut knowledge, and talk about her new book, ?You?ve Been Pooping All Wrong.?

Read an excerpt from ?You?ve Been Pooping All Wrong: How To Make Your Bowel Movements A Joy.?

Guest: Dr. Trisha Pasricha is a physician-scientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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A listener recently called in asking how they might get a pair of functioning web shooters so they could operate as a local Spider-Man. While web shooters (sadly) don?t exist, we can say that the ways real spiders use silk put Peter Parker?s powers to shame. Spiders can use their sticky threads to sail through the air, capture prey larger than them, and even live underwater. And scientists trying to harness those powers. 

Host Flora Lichtman chats with spider-silk aficionado Cheryl Hayashi about the wonders of silk, and Fiorenzo Omenetto shares how his engineering lab uses silk in the design of biomedical tools, like vaccines and sensors.

Guests:

Dr. Cheryl Hayashi is the senior vice president and provost of science at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. 

Dr. Fiorenzo Omenetto is a biomedical engineer and director of the Silklab at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have announced that they discovered a new subatomic particle. Roughly four times more massive than a standard proton, this short-lived piece of matter called ?cc?(Xi-cc-plus) is like an extra-heavy proton, researchers say. Physicist Hassan Jawahery joins Host Flora Lichtman to unpack how the particle was found, and what its discovery means for theoretical physics. 

Then, astronomer Eric Bellm describes a new alert system that could flag potentially significant changes in the southern night sky in real time. On its first night of testing at the Rubin Observatory in Chile, the system fired off 800,000 alerts.

Guests:

Dr. Hassan Jawahery is a distinguished university professor at the University of Maryland and a member of the LHCb consortium. 

Dr. Eric Bellm is alert product group lead for the Rubin Observatory and a research associate professor at the University of Washington.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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When ChatGPT first came onto the scene, it wowed users with its writing abilities, but drew laughs for generating images of seven-fingered hands and struggling with basic math, where 2+2 didn?t always equal 4. But more recently, things have changed: Google and OpenAI?s models bagged gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad last year, and now some experts say AI could pose an existential threat to the field of mathematics itself.

Mathematicians Emily Riehl and Daniel Litt join Host Flora Lichtman to explore how this technology could change the way math discoveries are made?and what could be lost if things go too far.

Guests:

Dr. Emily Riehl is a professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD.

Dr. Daniel Litt is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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When Punch the monkey was abandoned by his mother, zookeepers gave him a surrogate and unexpected source of comfort: a stuffed animal. Videos of Punch snuggling the stuffie went viral, and, as his stardom rose, millions of us began wondering,  ?Is Punch OK? Does he have a girlfriend? Is he being bullied by the zoo's other macaques?? Primatologist Christine Webb joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the ways humans relate to our closest relatives, and whether we can?and should?map human feelings onto other primates.

Guest:

Christine Webb is an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University. She is the author of ?The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters.?

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Bird flu has flown off the national news radar, with only scattered, local reports of dead birds in parks and poultry farms. Is it simply no longer a concern, or have cuts to federal science funding disrupted monitoring for this disease? Airborne pathogens expert Seema Lakdawala gives a flyover view on where bird flu stands today, and whether the government?s current monitoring efforts are enough to help prevent another pandemic.

Guest:

Dr. Seema Lakdawala is co-director of the Center for Transmission of Airborne Pathogens and an associate professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Flowers peeking up through the soil are a welcome sight after a long cold winter?and are one of the first markers of spring. Biologist David George Haskell argues that flowers aren?t just beautiful: They?re also critical to most ecosystems and the diversity of life as we know it. Flowering plants also make up a large part of human diets (rice, maize, and wheat are all flowers). And homing in on orchids, Haskell says, can help us understand the complex relationship between flowers and pollinators.

Guest:

Dr. David George Haskell is a biologist and author of: ?How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature?s Revolutionaries?

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The Apple Computer Company was founded on April 1, 1976, and in the 50 years since, the company has evolved from a handful of Silicon Valley misfits to a global technology and media powerhouse. 

Tech journalist David Pogue talks with Ira Flatow about the backstory of the company, and the leadership of the mercurial Steve Jobs. He offers a peek into some lesser known chapters of the company?s history, like the ill-fated Apple Paladin, a prototype Apple-produced fax machine. Pogue chronicles the company?s history in his latest book, ?Apple: The First 50 Years.?

Guest:

David Pogue is a tech journalist, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, and author of the book ?Apple: The First 50 Years.?

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Science fiction nerds, rejoice: the long-awaited adaptation of ?Project Hail Mary? is in theaters now. Host Flora Lichtman chats with book author Andy Weir and astrobiologist Mike Wong about the film?s aliens, and how they buck the trend of what extraterrestrials usually look like on screen.

Guest:

Andy Weir is the author of ?Project Hail Mary? and ?The Martian.?

Dr. Mike Wong is an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at Carnegie Science in Washington, D.C.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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A project called Antscan has generated high resolution images of thousands of ants, representing over 700 species. To make it happen, researchers brought preserved ants from collections around the world to a particle accelerator in Germany. There, a powerful synchrotron X-ray source combined with a vial-swapping robot allowed the researchers to build a collection of 3D ant images, inside and out. Each voxel (like a 3D pixel) has a resolution of 1.22 micrometers?enough to see the tiny hairs on ant bodies, and distinguish individual muscle fibers.

Antscan researcher Julian Katzke joins us to describe the background of the project, and how the images could be used for science and art.

Check out Antscan images at our website.

Guest:

Dr. Julian Katzke is a postdoc at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.  He worked on the AntScan project while a PhD student at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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For decades, renowned environmental writer Elizabeth Kolbert has taken readers to remote corners of the planet to understand how all life is connected?and how our planet is changing. She?s covered everything from the collapse of insect populations to the success of one town?s effort to go carbon neutral. 

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Kolbert about the undeniable heaviness of our current climate moment, how the splendor of the Great Barrier Reef ?tilted? her worldview, and the messy business of trying to solve environmental problems. 

In March and April, the Science Friday Book Club is reading Kolbert?s latest book, ?Life on a Little-Known Planet.? It?s a collection of essays she?s written over the years. Check out the Book Club to read along.

Guest:

Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of several books, including ?Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World.?

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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There?s an idea bubbling up in medicine called the ?digital twin.? The concept is to take personal health data like genetics, blood test results, tissue samples, MRI scans, and family history, and create a digital model of a patient that can be used to predict how a treatment might work for them. Think personalized medicine supercharged by AI. 

For example, cancer researchers are working on models that would create radiation and chemotherapy treatment plans based on the specifics of a patient?s tumor. But these models aren?t ready for the clinic yet, and with so much patient data involved, privacy concerns abound. 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Caroline Chung, a radiation oncologist at the forefront of digital twin research.

Guest:

Dr. Caroline Chung is a radiation oncologist and the co-director of the Institute for Data Science Oncology at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Farmers? Almanacs have been around for hundreds of years, offering detailed advice about things like the best time to plant certain crops, and when to wean your calves. But do farmers actually use them? Host Flora Lichtman discusses their place in modern life with astronomer and Farmers? Almanac contributor Dean Regas, and Missouri farmer Liz Graznak. 

Plus, zebra finches build their nests with a keen eye for color. But is their style easily swayed by feathered peer pressure? Zebra finch expert Lauren Guillette fills us in.

Guests:

Dean Regas is an astronomer and former Farmers? Almanac contributor based in Cincinnati.

Liz Graznak is an organic farmer and owner of Happy Hollow Farm based in Columbia, Missouri. 

Lauren Guillette is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Ecology at the University of Alberta.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In February, conservationists released 158 young tortoises onto Floreana Island in the Galapagos. The Floreana tortoise subspecies had long been thought extinct, but the discovery of close relatives on another island made a captive breeding effort possible. 

SciFri turtle correspondent Charles Bergquist talks with conservationist Penny Becker about the science behind the reintroduction, and what it was like to return the species to an island that had not seen them since the 1850s. Plus, the latest on sea turtle nesting season, and an ancient sea turtle stampede.

Guest:
Dr. Penny Becker is CEO of the nonprofit Island Conservation.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The military use of AI is capturing headlines this month. After a dustup with the Pentagon, the AI company Anthropic is out, and OpenAI is in. Meanwhile, in the US war with Iran, AI is being deployed in ways we?ve never seen.

To make sense of it all, Host Flora Lichtman talks with journalist Karen Hao, who covers AI and is the author of the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI.

Guest:
Karen Hao is a tech journalist and author of the book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.
 

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On social media, the vagus nerve often gets billed as the gateway to nervous system nirvana: It?s your ticket to better rest, relaxation, and health if you ?stimulate? it correctly. Where did this idea come from, and what does the research say? 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with neurosurgeon Kevin Tracey, a pioneer of a field called bioelectronic medicine, which uses techniques to stimulate the nervous system with electricity. Back in the 1990s, he was the first to discover that the vagus nerve regulates the immune system and inflammation.

Guest:

Dr. Kevin Tracey is a neurosurgeon, and president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health. He is the author of The Great Nerve.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In recent months, AI music has moved from novelty act into the realm of listenable music. For the first time, AI-generated songs from AI-generated artists are on the Billboard top 100 charts, and more musicians are coming out saying they use AI in their songwriting process. 

Is this just another tech upgrade to the music-making process or does it signal something bigger in the industry? To investigate, SciFri producer and musician Dee Peterschmidt talks to journalist Kristin Robinson, who covers AI in the music industry, and Laurie Spiegel, an electronic and algorithmic music pioneer.

Guests:
Kristin Robinson is a senior writer for Billboard, based in Los Angeles, CA.
Laurie Spiegel is a composer and programmer based in New York, NY

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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