Category: ScienceNews

Healthy forests help combat climate change, provide humans with drinking water and even improve mental and physical health. But it’s hard to imagine an entire forest in the middle of a big city. That’s where micro-forests come into play — public forests on a smaller scale, filled with native plants. They exist around the world, and producer Rachel Carlson went to visit the largest micro-forest in California. She joins host Emily Kwong to chat about what she saw. 

Interested in more of the science behind urban nature? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.


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In 2016 psychologist Paul Bloom wrote a book titled Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (a naming decision he still wrestles with). In the book, as in his career and in this Social Science Bites podcast, Bloom deconstructs what is popularly meant by empathy. "Everybody seems to have their own notion," he tells interviewer David Edmonds, "and that's totally fine, but we end up talking past each other unless we're clear about it." And so he outlines several widely used definitions -- think compassion, for example -- before offering several more scholarly ways of viewing empathy, such as "cognitive empathy" and "emotional empathy."

A key to understanding his work is that Bloom is not actually against empathy, at least not in general, even though he tells Edmonds, "I think empathy is -- in some way -- a great cause for our worst behavior." But the use of what he terms "emotional empathy" concerns him because, as he explains, it's not evenly distributed or applied, and thus allows harm to occur under the guise of benevolence. "Empathy is sort of vulnerable to all the biases you would think about. This includes the traditional in-group, out-group biases -- race, nationality, religion. It includes attractiveness -- it's easier to feel empathic for somebody who's cute versus someone who's ugly."

Bloom and Edmonds also discuss how empathy leaches into the realm of artificial intelligence, where what might be judged empathetic responses from AIs can devolve into a humanity-extracting feedback loop.

In his work as a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, and as the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University, Bloom studies how children and adults make sense of the world, with, as his website notes, "special focus on pleasure, morality, religion, fiction, and art." He is editor of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and has written a number of public-facing books, including 2016's Against Empathy, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind, and The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning.

What happens behind the scenes of a dinosaur exhibit? Short Wave host Regina Barber got to find out … by taking a trip to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. In the museum’s basement, she talked to a paleobiologist, checked out a farmland fossil find and even touched a 67 million-year-old bone. Because, as it turns out, there’s a lot of science that can be found in a museum basement.

Learn more about the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s exhibit “The Stories We Keep”.


Interested in more archaeology and dino-related science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.


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CrowdScience listener Limbikani in Zambia is always being told he has his Dad’s laugh, so he set us the challenge of trying to find out whether a laugh can be passed down in our genes or if it’s something we learn from our environment.

Presenter Caroline Steel steps into the world of one of the world’s greatest laughter experts, Professor Sophie Scott, neuroscientist at University College London. In her office stuffed with memorabilia of a life filled with fun, they discuss how the shape of our bodies could play a role in how we laugh.

Also joining the fun is Dr Gil Greengross, evolutionary psychologist at Aberystwyth University in Wales, UK. Gil tells us how Charles Darwin was the first person to question how laughter evolved.

Caroline also speaks to Dr Nancy Segal, Professor of Developmental Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center at California State University, Fullerton. Nancy is an expert in studies that demonstrate the role of nature vs nurture in how who we are and how we behave. She tells the story of the ‘Giggle Twins’, who were separated at birth but found they laughed identically when they met three decades later.

So does that mean that we really do inherit our laughs from our parents?

Presenter: Caroline Steel

Producer: Tom Bonnett

Editor: Ben Motley

Credit: The sound of rats laughing (slowed down so that our ears can detect the ultrasound) is courtesy of Dr. Jaak Panksepp

(Photo: Father and son on yellow background- stock photo Credit: Georgijevic via Getty Images)

Choose your fighter for the origin of water on Earth! Was it always here or did it come to this planet from somewhere else in space? And, either way, what does this mean for other water worlds in our galaxy? To find out, we talk with Michael Wong, an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at Carnegie Science. He gets into scientists’ strongest candidates for the ways water could have come to our planet many, many years ago – including whether it could have been made here. Buckle up: This is a hot debate in astrobiology right now.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our Space Camp series and our episode on whether life started on the ocean floor..

Interested in more space science and more unresolved hypotheses about how the universe came to be how it is today? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.

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We revisit our listeners’ favourite topics and dig deeper in this special programme.

First, we hear from some of our insomniac listeners and explore how we fall asleep with neuroscientist Dr Ada Eban-Rothschild from the University of Michigan.

Next, we return to our favourite food facts with a small surprise for one of the presenters.

Then, we put our knowledge to the test with extra quizzes and examine the randomness of multiple-choice questions.

Finally, we’re joined by Dr Alyn Euritt to discuss the importance of connection, especially between Marnie, Caroline and all the loyal listeners of the show.

All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.

Presenters: Caroline Steel and Marnie Chesterton Producers: Imaan Moin, with Margaret Sessa-Hawkins and Lucy Davies

What better time to contemplate the conundrum that is zero than the start of a new year? Zero is a fairly new concept in human history and even more recent as a number. It wasn't until around the 7th century that zero was used as a number. That's when it showed up in the records of Indian mathematicians. Since then, zero has, at times, been met with some fear — at one point the city of Florence, Italy banned the number.

Today, scientists seek to understand how much humans truly comprehend zero — and why it seems to be different from other numbers. That's how we ended up talking to science writer Yasemin Saplakoglu in this encore episode about the neuroscience of this number that means nothing.


Read more of Yasemin's reporting on zero for Quanta Magazine. Plus, check out our episode on why big numbers break our brains.
Interested in more math episodes? Let us know what kind of stories you want to hear from us in 2026 by emailing shortwave@npr.org!
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Science in the United States took some big hits this year. The Trump Administration disrupted federal funding for all kinds of scientific pursuits. Administration officials say those changes were a step towards reinvigorating federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health. But many scientists disagree. NPR health and science correspondents Rob Stein and Katia Riddle chat with host Emily Kwong about what these cuts could mean for the future of science.

Interested in more stories on the future of science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.

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The private space economy is growing significantly and the year ahead could be a big one. The first private space station is expected to launch next spring, new commercial space flights will be offered and SpaceX is considering a public stock offering. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on a space start-up in New Zealand catching some attention of its own. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Gen Z and younger millennials are generally the most climate literate generations. As an age cohort that started learning about climate change in school, they're worried about how to plan for their future jobs, houses and, yes, kids. With climate-related disasters and global warming likely to worsen, climate anxiety is giving way to reproductive anxiety. So, what do experts say about how to navigate the kid question?

On this encore episode of Nature Quest, Short Wave speaks to Alessandra Ram, a journalist covering climate change, who just had a kid. We get into the future she sees for her newborn daughter and ask, how do we raise the next generation in a way that's good for the planet?

Here are the resources recommended by the experts we interviewed for this story:

Action Tools and Community Resources

• The High-Impact Climate Action Guide by Kimberly A. Nicholas
• The Climate Mental Health Network and Climate Emotions Wheel
• The Climate Café® Hub - for finding a local group

Books and Research Papers

• Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future, by Jade S. Sasser
• Parenting in a Changing Climate: Tools for cultivating resilience, taking action, and practicing hope in the face of climate change, by Elizabeth Bechard
• Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World, by Kimberly A. Nicholas
• The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions, Nielsen, K.S., Nicholas, K.A., Creutzig, F. et al. 
  

Got a question about changes in your local environment? Send a voice memo to shortwave@npr.org with your name, where you live and your question. You might make it into our next Nature Quest episode!

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