The 2025 Nobel prizes are announced this week – how did Science in Action’s predictions fare? Science author and thinker Philip Ball judges.
Also, a new “Human Disease Blood Atlas” gets a boost, as described by Mathias Uhlén of SciLifeLab.
Meanwhile Nozair Khawaja of Free University of Berlin has been revisiting data from the Cassini mission to Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, back in 2008. His new analysis increases the prospects of habitable conditions deep on the ocean floor beneath the icy crust.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
(Image: Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry explains a model during a press conference. Credit: Jonathan Nackstrand via Getty Images).
Some scientific discoveries take place in a lab. Others are made deep in the rainforest, along the ocean floor or on the dark side of the moon. And still others are made squelching through mud and ice on the northernmost island on Earth… at least, if you’re NPR climate correspondent Alejandra Borunda. Two summers ago, Alejandra followed an expedition of scientists to Greenland’s Inuit Qeqertaat, or Kaffeeklubben (“Coffee Club”) Island. The researchers with her were aiming to find what plants grew at the farthest north point of the island. Along the way, she had an adventure … and witnessed the good, the bad and the muddy realities of scientific expeditions.
Interested in more exploratory science? Email us your question 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.
From its embrace of dubious research about autism, its skepticism over vaccines and its wholesale rejection of the consensus about climate change, the Trump administration has set off alarm bells within the scientific community. William Brangham spoke with two prominent researchers about "Science Under Siege," their new book chronicling what they argue is a concerted war on science. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy
Usually, when two different species mate, it’s a disaster. At least, that’s what scientists had generally thought about hybrids, the offspring of these unions. But some researchers are starting to change their view as they learn of more beneficial hybrid events. The Atlantic science journalist Katie Wu details two of these hybridization examples: one in desert frogs and one in two ancient plants that <> led to the modern potato.
Interested in more biology episodes? Email us your question 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.
Creepy crawly season is upon us, Short Wavers! We're welcoming fall with a contemplation of fear and anxiety. In human history, fear kept us safe. It helped us flee from predators. Anxiety made us wary of potential dangers — like venturing into a known lion-infested area. But what happens when these feelings get out of hand in humans today? And why do some of us crave that feeling from scary movies or haunted houses?
For answers, we talk to Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist from Wayne State University. He likes studying fear so much he wrote a whole book called Afraid. In this episode, Javanbakht gets into the differences between fear and anxiety, many of the reasons people feel afraid and why things like scary movies could even be therapeutic. (encore)
Want to know more about the science behind what keeps you up at night? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we might cover it on a future episode!
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.
Many people leave electronic devices plugged in when they’re not in use without a second thought. But everyday items that drain energy even when they’re turned off, like coffee machines, video game consoles and laptop chargers, account for 5 to 10% of nationwide home energy use. Stephanie Sy speaks with Alexis Abramson, dean of the Climate School at Columbia University, to learn more. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy
In a world bursting with colour, what’s the advantage of standing out in stark contrast?
Listener Jude in Canada wants to know why some animals are black and white. Why do zebras risk being so stripy? Why do pandas have such distinct marking? And do they have something in common?
Presenter Caroline visits Pairi Daiza, a zoo in Belgium. Together with her guide for the day, Johan Vreys, she looks at these weird and wonderful animals up close. First, she visits three zebras having breakfast. Ecologist Martin How from the University of Bristol explains his ingenious experiment involving horses with zebra blankets. Next on the tour is the giant panda which, according to Prof Tim Caro from the University of Bristol, looks the way it does to camouflage in snowy forests in China. But there are many more animals to see, and many more reasons to be monochrome, including the penguin and its tuxedo-like colouration. Hannah Rowland, senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool explains that it might have more than just a single function. It turns out, scientific answers aren’t always black and white.
Presenter: Caroline Steel
Producer: Florian Bohr
Editor: Ben Motley
(Photo: The zebra was running gracefully running in the green water - stock photo Credit: Surasak Suwanmake via Getty Images)
The launch of Taylor Swift’s much-anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, has inspired this week’s episode of Unexpected Elements.
First up, we hear how a Brazilian songbird courts its mate as part of a boyband. We then find out about the microbes that dance to survive in their extreme habitat.
Next up, Professor Troy Magney, a forest ecophysiologist at the University of Montana, tells us about his TSWIFT machine and how it can assess the health of the planet’s forests.
Also in the programme, we find out why migratory birds trick weather data, how fish sing, and how hackers used SWIFT bank payments to nearly pull off a billion-dollar heist.
All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Camilla Mota and Godfred Boafo
Producers: Imaan Moin and Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, with Robbie Wojciechowski and Lucy Davies
In the North Sea — between the United Kingdom, Norway and Denmark — thousands of flies swarmed an oil rig. Engineer Craig Hannah noticed they’d stay still on the rig for hours, suddenly taking off all at once. He was seeing hoverflies. Often confused with bees, they’re unsung pollinators. And they migrate, often hundreds of miles – including, it seems, to the middle of the ocean.
Today on the show: The mystery of why these insects are landing in the open ocean. Plus, a surprising finding in the Amazon rainforest and the sounds of life in a coral reef.
Interested in more science behind skincare products? Email us your question 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.
Scientists detect for the first time an unknown source of GPS interference coming from space. Also, as AI begins to design more and more DNA sequences being manufactured synthetically, how can those manufacturers be sure that what their customers are asking for will not produce toxic proteins or lethal weapons? And… how camera traps in polish forests reveal that the big bad wolf is more scared of humans than anything else.
For that last few years instances of deliberate jamming and interference of GNSS signals has become an expected feature of the wars the world is suffering. Yet this disruption of the signals that all of us use to navigate and tell the time nearly always emanate from devices on the ground, or maybe in the air. But in ongoing research reported recently by Todd Humphreys of University of Texas at Austin and colleagues around the world is beginning to reveal that since 2019 an intermittent yet powerful signal has been causing GPS failures across Europe and the North Atlantic. The episodes have been thankfully brief so far, but all the signs suggest it comes not from soldiers or aeroplanes, but from a distantly orbiting satellite somewhere over the Baltic Sea. It may not be malevolent, it could be a fault, but the net of suspicion is tightening.
A team of scientists including some from Microsoft report today in a paper in the journal Science an investigation to try to strengthen the vetting of synthetic DNA requests around the world. As AI-designed sequencies increase in number and application, the factories that produce the bespoke DNA are in danger of making and supplying potentially dangerous sequences to customers with malicious intents. But how do you spot the bad proteins out of the almost infinite possible DNA recipes? Tessa Alexanian of the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science, and one of the authors explains some of the thinking.
Finally, Liana Zanette of Western University in Ontario and colleagues have been hanging around in Polish forests scaring wolves. Why? Because as wolf numbers rise in protected reserves, more and more human-wolf interactions occur. And a suspicion has arisen that the legal protection they enjoy has led to them losing their fear of humans in a dangerous way. Not so, says Liana’s team, blowing away the straw arguments and setting fire to the political motivation to reduce their protection status. Wolves are still terrified of Nature’s apex predator – us.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
(Image: Simulation screen showing various flights for transportation and passengers. Credit: Oundum via Getty Images).
