Category: ScienceNews

Bulgaria is famous for its yoghurt, a fermented milk food full of ‘good’ bacteria that has kept hungry Bulgarians healthy for over 4000 years.

Inspired by that, and a question from a CrowdScience listener in California USA, Marnie Chesterton and Caroline Steel are immersing themselves in Bulgarian culture with a programme about Bulgarian cultures, recorded at the 2025 Sofia Science Festival.

So, are the ‘live’ cultures in fermented foods actually alive by the time you eat them, and how can you tell? If you can eat the mould in blue cheese, can you eat the mould on cheese that isn’t supposed to be mouldy? Is traditional food really better for you? And if you put a drop of vanilla into a litre of milk, how come it all tastes of vanilla?

Marnie and Caroline are joined by a chemist who was a member of Sofia University’s ‘Rapid Explosion Force’, a food technologist with a PhD in sponge cakes and a Professor of molecular biology who says that we contain so much bacteria that we’re only 10% human.

With questions on food from around the world and from the audience in Sofia, Marnie and Caroline will be digesting the answers, as well as some local delicacies.

Presenter: Marnie Chesterton & Caroline Steel Producer: Emily Knight Series Producer: Ben Motley

This month will see thousands of people take to streets around the world to test their feats of endurance. It’s marathon season. And this week, we’re looking at the science behind what keeps you running. We’ll learn about the psychological preparation that goes into undertaking mammoth challenges, like marathons and expeditions, and meet a scientist from the UK Space Agency who’s endured the Antarctic winter, and is now training to be an astronaut. We’ll find out just how genetic our ability to cope with endurance exercise is. How air pollution could be affecting your running times. And find out how evolution has gifted our animal friends with some unique ways of getting ahead. As well as all that, there’s the science of what makes something ugly. And an exciting innovation that could see us using cow dung to fuel our cars. All that and more in this week’s Unexpected Elements.     Presenter: Alex Lathbridge, Chhavi Sachdev and Candice Bailey Producers: Robbie Wojciechowski with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Imaan Moin, and Minnie Harrop

Approximately 80% of orange cats are males, including the four orange cats owned by the Short Wave team. Scientists have long suspected that orange color was a sex-linked trait — hiding somewhere on the X chromosome. Now, scientists at Stanford University and Kyushu University in Japan have characterized the mutation responsible for orange cat coloration. Both groups published their results in the journal Cell Biology this week.

Have a question about the animals all around us? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

In 2015, the World Health Organisation set the goal of eradicating rabies deaths from dog-bites to “Zero by 2030”. A team at the University of Glasgow and colleagues in Tanzania have been assessing the efficacy of dog vaccination schemes for reducing the numbers of human infections over the last 20 years. As Prof Katie Hampson tells Science in Action, in rural areas especially, vaccinating dog populations does work, but you need to keep at it, and not leave patches untouched. It should be funded as a public health measure, rather than a veterinary issue.

Last weekend, the remains of a failed 1972 Soviet mission to Venus landed harmlessly somewhere back on earth. As the BBC’s Maddie Molloy explains, the fears were that the robust lander craft would survive re-entry into earth’s atmosphere as it was originally engineered to withstand the harsh pressures and chemistry of Venus.

How and why then would sketches be emerging of Chinese plans to launch a sample-return mission to Venus in the next decade? Science Journalist Andrew Jones describes some of the challenges they will face collecting droplets of the highly acidic atmosphere somewhere 60km above the surface and turning round to head back to earth.

Why? William Bains of Cardiff University is one of a growing number of scientists interested in exploring some of the more exotic possibilities for complex organic biology in the otherwise destructive sulphuric, hot, dense, low pH clouds they will find. Could a different sort of information-encoding molecular chemistry enable life, though not as we know it?

Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jasmine Cerys George and Josie Hardy

Photo: A domestic dog receives a rabies vaccine during a mass vaccination in Bunda, Tanzania, October 8, 2012. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Most bats use echolocation to navigate and hunt, but some use their ears for another trick: eavesdropping.

"And then these frog-eating bats, for example, they are actually listening in on the mating calls of frogs that are much, much lower in frequency," says behavioral ecologist Rachel Page.

But how the bats knew this eavesdropping trick was a mystery. So she set up and experiment with baby bats and a speaker.

Have a question about the animals all around us? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Becoming fluent in a second language is difficult. But for adults, is it impossible? Science says no. In this encore episode, Short Wave host Emily Kwong dissects the "critical period hypothesis," a theory which linguists have been debating for decades — with the help of Sarah Frances Phillips, a Ph.D. student in the linguistics department at New York University. Together, Emily and former Short Wave host Maddie Sofia explore where the theory comes from, how it applies to second-language acquisition and what it means for Emily's efforts to learn Mandarin Chinese as an adult.

Have a linguistics or neuroscience question? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Today, we're airing an episode of NPR's daily economics podcast, The Indicator from Planet Money. It's about a group of people we know well: scientists.

President Trump's federal cuts and scrutiny of academic institutions are forcing some U.S. scientists to head for the border. On today's show, an entomologist keeping America's farms safe from pests reconsiders America. And a CEO of a Canadian hospital explains how they are benefiting from the exodus.

Want to learn more about the intersection of science and the economy? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

Clarification: Armando Rosario-Lebrón, who was working at the Smithsonian Institution, is the Eastern region vice president of the National Association of Agriculture Employees. All NAAE union representatives are employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Cheetahs, the fastest mammals on Earth, are now in a race against extinction. It’s estimated that fewer than 7,000 exist in the wild. John Yang speaks with Laurie Marker, a woman who has already helped dramatically reduce one threat to cheetahs and is tackling new ones that have emerged, for our Weekend Spotlight. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

The deep sea covers about two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, but according to a new study, humans are estimated to have observed less than .001 percent of the deep seafloor — an area roughly the size of Rhode Island. Stephanie Sy speaks with the study’s author, Katy Croff Bell, who is working to change that. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

You may have grown up hearing the saying “red sky at night, sailor’s delight, red sky in morning, sailor’s warning” - or maybe a variation of it. CrowdScience listener Alison, who sees many dazzling red skies from her home in the Yukon, Canada, certainly did. And now she wonders if the saying is a sensible prediction of coming weather or just another old wives’ tale.

Alison and presenter Anand Jagatia run a little experiment, getting up at the crack of dawn and staying up until dusk for 5 days to record if the sunset and sunrise can predict their local weather.

While we wait for the results, we track this weather proverb back to its ancient roots to find out how important it may have been to the people without satellites or even thermometers to guide them.

We also tap into the expertise of modern-day weather predictors, meteorologists. What are the atmospheric pressure systems that cause red skies, and how do they influence the weather globally? And what exceptions to the rules might turn a trusty old proverb on its head?

Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Ella Hubber Series Producer: Ben Motley