This week, we’re sharing a special episode from TED Tech exploring Gen Z slang words like "unalive," "skibidi" and "rizz." Where do these words come from — and how do they get popular so fast? Linguist Adam Aleksic explores how the forces of social media algorithms are reshaping the way people talk and view their very own identities.
Technology’s role in our lives is evolving fast. TED Tech helps you explore the riveting questions and tough challenges we’re faced with that sit at the intersection of technology and humanity. Listen in every Friday, with host, journalist Sherrell Dorsey, as TED speakers explore the way tech shapes how we think about society, science, design, business, and more.
Tsunamis destroy buildings, habitats and danger to everything in its path on land. But how do they affect life under the water? That's what CrowdScience listener Alvyn wants to know, and presenter Anand Jagatia is searching beneath the waves for answers. Anand meets Professor Syamsidik who is learning about how tsuanami waves are formed to help protect against future disasters. He runs the Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Research Center at Universitas Syiah Kuala, Indonesia. With him at this state-of-the-art lab is Dr David McGovern, expert in ocean and coastal modelling at London South Bank University. David tells Anand how the energy of a tsunami is spread across the entire water column. To explain the forces at play, Anand chats to Professor Emile Okal a seismologist from Northwestern University in the United States. Tsunami wave can move as fast as 800 kilometres an hour but, despite this, out at sea you might not notice it - but can the same be said for marine life? We follow the wave as it nears land and all that force is contracted and begins to show its might. Professor Suchana 'Apple' Chavanich from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand was one of the first people to swim off the Thai coast after the 2004 tsunami and remembers how coral reefs were battered.
In Japan, after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami as the water retracted it pulled with it tons and tons of debris into the water. The fishing communities of the Sanriku Coast lost almost everything, their equipment was destroyed and the water was heavily polluted. Anand meets Hiroshi Sato who set up the Sanriku Volunteer Divers, a team of people who dragged the debris out of the water. One of them was diver and journalist Bonnie Waycott who tells her story of witnesses the destruction first hand and trying to rescue the fishing industry with Hiroshi. Finally, we learnt that the effect of modern tsunamis carries far further than people might have imagined. On the west coast of the United States Professor Samuel Chan is an expert in invasive species at Oregon State University. He explains how modern infrastructure is contributing to some incredible migrations. Presenter: Anand Jagatia Producer: Tom Bonnett Editor: Ben Motley
Photo: USA, California, Sonoma County, Bodega Bay, tsunami evacuation panel - stock photo Credit: Brigitte MERLE via Getty Images)
A 150-year-old bottle of Arctic Ale is being uncapped, which got the team talking about all things related to yeast, beer, and opening things.
First, we hear about a rare condition where the body brews its own alcohol. Next up, we find out that small amounts of alcohol make male fruit flies more attractive.
We’re then joined in the studio by food historian Pen Vogler, who helps us travel back in time to explore beer’s origins.
Next, we discover how air pollution is affecting our brains, and delve into some surprising ways that yeast could help the climate.
All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Chhavi Sachdev and Candice Bailey
Producers: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, with Lucy Davies and Robbie Wojciechowski
It’s another news roundup! This time, we cover how, using data analytics – and ironically, some AI – a team at Cornell University has mapped the environmental impact of AI by state. They determined that, by 2030, the rate of AI growth in the U.S. would put an additional 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The team further calculated that by 2030, AI could use as much water as 6 to 10 millions Americans do every year. All of this, they conclude, would put the tech industry’s climate goals out of reach. This episode, we also get into the potential for life on one of Saturn’s moons and a new discovery about why chameleons’ eyes are so special.
Interested in reporting on the environmental impact of AI? 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.
David Ewing Duncan has spent the last 25 years being poked and prodded in the name of science. He’s signed up for hundreds of tests because, as a journalist, he writes about emerging health breakthroughs. He says one recent test contains more useful data than anything he’s seen to date. He talks to host Emily Kwong about his score on the Immune Health Metric, which was developed by immunologist John Tsang. Together, David and John explain why immune health is so central to overall health and how a simple blood test could one day predict disease before it starts.
Read David’s full article about his experience with the Immune Health Metric. The piece is a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Aventine, a non-profit research foundation that creates and supports content about how technology and science are changing the way we live.
Interested in more health 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.
Cosmic dust can tell scientists about how ice covered Earth during the last ice age. This dust is leftover debris from asteroids and comets colliding in space and this dust constantly rains down on our planet. Researcher Frankie Pavia from the University of Washington recently used a brand new method for estimating climate conditions 30,000 years ago, by looking at the cosmic dust amounts in ancient arctic ocean soil. He and a team found new clues to what melted arctic ice at the end of the ice age. These results may be able to better inform ice melt in the future.
Interested in more space 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.
Recently, health influencers on Instagram and TikTok have been vocal about the side effects of hormonal birth control. Check out the most popular videos on the subject, and you’ll hear horror stories about sex drive and skin texture, depression and weight fluctuation. But doctors say that while some side effects are possible, the most extreme stories are often the rarest cases. And one of the most common side effects of not taking birth control … is unplanned pregnancy.
Interested in more health 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.
In your final moments, they say, you may walk down a tunnel of light. You might rise above your body, watching the scene below before passing into another world. Perhaps you’ll be met by glowing figures, see your life flash before your eyes, or feel a deep, unearthly calm.
These are the stories of people who’ve reached the edge of death and returned. They’re not rare, nor random, and they have a name: Near-Death Experiences.
CrowdScience listener Steven in Chile first heard of them during a CPR class and wondered, are they fictitious?
Psychologist Susan Blackmore once had an out-of-body experience as a student in Oxford, UK — floating above herself before soaring over the rooftops and dissolving into the universe. That single moment changed everything. She’s spent her career trying to understand what happened, and she believes such experiences are explainable.
At the University of Michigan in the US, neuroscientist Professor Jimo Borjigin has done what few have dared: record the dying brain in action. Her studies show that even after the heart stops, the brain can produce powerful surges of coordinated activity, bursts that might explain the lights, the tunnels, and the sense of peace. She believes Near-Death Experiences could become one of science’s most intriguing scientific frontiers for research into consciousness.
At University College London in the UK, neuroscientist Dr Christopher Timmermann is exploring similar states using psychedelics, pushing the boundaries between self and oblivion to identify what induces a near death experience and what we can learn about our consciousness along the way.
Near death experiences, a paranormal mystery or explainable phenomenon?
Presenter: Caroline Steel
Producer: Harrison Lewis
Editor: Ben Motley
(Photo: Gap in the wall - stock photo Credit: peterschreiber.media via Getty Images)
As rescue and relief efforts in the Caribbean are ongoing after Hurricane Melissa, Unexpected Elements looks at the science of storms.
We explore how AI might help us better predict the weather patterns, and whether it could act as an early warning signal to help us prepare for natural disasters, and we look at what a sinkhole off the Coast of Belize has helped reveal about 6000 years of storm history in the Caribbean.
Giles Harrison, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Reading University helps explain the unexpected link between bees and storm clouds. We also investigate whether storms with female names are more deadly, your letters have us contemplating banana varieties, and whether wind turbines could ever have an effect on the breeze.
All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Alex Lathbridge, with Andrada Fiscutean and Leonie Joubert
Producers: Margaret Sessa-Hawkins with Eliane Glaser, Minnie Harrop, and Lucy Davies.
Scientists know why leaves turn yellow in the fall: Chlorophyll breaks down, revealing the yellow pigment that was there all along. But red? Red is a different story altogether. Leaves have to make a new pigment to turn red. Why would a dying leaf do that? Scientists don’t really know. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on the leading hypotheses out there.
