On 21st April 2025, Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, died.
His funeral took place on 26th April, with thousands of mourners crowding into St Peter’s Square to pay their respects.
Following the death of a Pope, there are centuries-old traditions and rituals that must be followed, and that got the Unexpected Elements team thinking about the science surrounding loss.
First up, we delve into the thorny issue of when early humans started to carry out funerary rituals, before turning our attention to graveyards and the life that thrives within these sacred environments.
Next, we are joined Carl Öhman from Uppsala University in Sweden, who reveals what happens to our data when we die and why we should care about it.
Plus, we discuss the precious materials hiding in our old devices, and find out whether animals mourn.
All that, plus many more Unexpected Elements.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton, with Andrada Fiscutean and Edd Gent
Producers: Margaret Sessa Hawkins, with Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Robbie Wojciechowski and Minnie Harrop
Minecraft is a movie and a very popular video game with iconic block graphics that characters can "mine" for building material and gems. It's also what cognitive scientist Charley Wu and his team utilized to study how people learned as they played. Their unique study focused on both individual and social learning — and they found a clear answer to which players were most successful. (Hint: Get you a player who can do both.) Their results were published recently in the journal Nature Communications.
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Scientists from around the world have gathered together at the annual European Geosciences Union general assembly, to discuss current projects, working hypotheses and potential findings. There are nearly 18,000 in attendance this year and there is much to learn.
AMOC – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - brings warmth to the north and cooler waters to the south in huge volumes. Climate modellers have expressed concern for its collapse (and subsequent weather chaos) as temperatures rise more generally, but others have said it is more resilient. But Stefan Rhamstorf has announced that extending the models past 2100 can show a different picture. The odds have shifted from 10% to more like 50/50 if the Paris climate target is missed.
Has such climate change ever occurred before? And if so, what drove it? Hana Jurikova and colleagues have been using novel techniques to detect a link between atmospheric CO2 levels and rapid climate change in the geological past, and explains how boron records in ancient brachiopods might give us a clue.
What of the 6.2 magnitude earthquake near Istanbul last week? Could it have been worse? Will the next one be the big one? Expert Patricia Martínez-Garzón of GFZ in Germany doesn’t quite allay the fears.
Could more lives be saved from landslides and flash floods if we could set up a warning system? Stefania Ursica hopes so, and has looked to animal behaviour to design a programme to scan networks of seismic monitoring stations’ output for the faint signals. Encoding different hunting and communication strategies – from nomadic whales to humming birds and bats, her new algorithm might be just the thing, though prediction will always be a different problem.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producer: Alex Mansfield with Sophie Ormiston
Production co-ordinator: Josie Hardy
(Image: 3D render of a Topographic Map of Western Europe with the clouds from 27 January, 2025. Credit: Frank Ramspott/Getty Images)
Are university students unhappy? We won’t generalize, but many are, and this was something Bruce Hood noted. Being an experimental psychologist who teaches at the University of Bristol, an opportunity presented itself. Why not start a course on the science of happiness, and while teaching it collect data from the students attending?
The resulting course (created with advice from one his former students, Laurie Santos) proved popular, and Hood last year published a book, The Science of Happiness: Seven Lessons for Living Well. In this Social Science Bites podcast, Hood explains to interviewer David Edmonds the scientific basis of happiness, some details on how to measure it, and then some of those lessons for harvesting its benefits.
Hood explains how scholarship has determined some genetic basis for happiness, how circumstances contribute to but don’t dictate happiness, and how individuals focus more on the negative than the positive, which clearly not the most nurturing environment for happiness. There is a bias towards negativity, he says, “So that's why we know the negative things more quickly and more loudly than the positive.”
That sounds bad (see – negative). But there’s another bias at play, one that also favors optimism, that Hood attempts to harness. “So we tend to see the future as grim, and we have these distortions. But what's interesting, if you ask people, ‘Do you think to yourself individually you'll be better off in five years’ time?’ Then it seems to switch. People seem to say, ‘Yeah, I think I will be better.’ So, it's a kind of interesting paradox that we think the world's going to hell in a basket. And yet, as individuals, we think things can get better.”
Hood’s research interests arose around the visual development of infants, and then evolved to include intuitive theories, self-identity, essentialism and the cognitive processes behind magical thinking in adults. It was in relation to those that Hood first appeared on Social Science Bites, addressing the human belief in the supernatural. You can listen to that podcast, and also enjoy a lovely Alex Cagan poster built around the episode.
In its first 100 days, the Trump administration — specifically, the Department of Government Efficiency — shuttered agencies and slashed budgets pertaining to foreign aid, scientific research, food safety and more. How will this impact people's health and well-being both in the U.S., and around the world? To answer that question, we're calling in our colleagues: global health correspondent Gabrielle Emmanuel and health policy reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin.
(P.S. If you liked this episode, check out the breakdown of health and science policy changes we did after Trump's first 50 days — with different NPR reporters — here.)
Want to hear more about how policy changes affect scientific research and discovery? Let us know by emailing 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.
A good night's sleep makes a big difference to our mental and physical health. Without quality sleep, we're less productive. Grumpy. It can even affect our hearts. Meanwhile, more and more people are having problems falling and staying asleep, including kids. So some parents are turning to a supplement called melatonin as a potential solution. But some experts worry that there isn't enough research about how regularly taking melatonin affects kids in the long term. Today on the show, we explore the research with Michael Schulson, who recently wrote about the topic forUndark.
Want to hear more stories about human health? Email us and let us know 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 starfish and sea slugs to jellyfish and sponges, the ocean's invertebrates are some of the most ancient and diverse critters on Earth. And so are their superpowers, as marine biologist Drew Harvell calls their unique abilities. In her new book, The Ocean's Menagerie, she chronicles the amazing abilities of some of these spineless creatures and showcases how they've inspired our science and medicine.
In a remote part of Alaska, global warming is being blamed for endangering a treasure trove of Indigenous artifacts. Archaeologists at one dig site near the Bering Sea say they’re in a race against time. Nelufar Hedayat reports for the nonprofit news organization Evident Media. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders
Earlier in April, doctors at the National Institutes of Health made a promising step in the fight against cancer, announcing an immunotherapy treatment was able to shrink gastrointestinal tumors for about a quarter of patients. But NIH staffing shortages, layoffs and cuts are threatening to delay the rollout of this promising development. William Brangham speaks with Dr. Steven Rosenberg for more. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders
Coral reefs are a crucial part of the marine ecosystem, providing habitats for all sorts of marine life and protecting coastlines from storm damage. But scientists say rising ocean temperatures are posing a grave threat to the future of the world’s reefs. Ali Rogin reports. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders
