Episodes

  • Lessons in Love From Voles

    Lessons in Love From Voles
    Feb 14 2025
    For years, scientists have known that oxytocin is important in facilitating the feeling of love in humans. How do they know? Prairie voles. For years, scientists have relied on the cuddly rodents to help us humans understand how this protein works in our brains. But within the past few years, research has complicated that understanding, prompting the question: Can love prevail without the "love" hormone? (encore)

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    11 mins
  • Stopping A Deadly Disease On Apache Lands

    Stopping A Deadly Disease On Apache Lands
    Feb 12 2025
    Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever is one of the deadliest tickborne diseases in the United States, often killing people within about a week if left untreated. At one point, the San Carlos Apache Reservation had rates of infection 150 times the national average. But now, they've achieved a huge milestone — no deaths from the disease in at least five years. NPR science correspondent Pien Huang and producer Megan Lim visited the reservation to see the program that led to their success.

    Read Pien's full story here.

    Interested in hearing more science success stories? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

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    14 mins
  • What Happens Inside A Top-Secret U.S. Nuclear Facility?

    What Happens Inside A Top-Secret U.S. Nuclear Facility?
    Feb 11 2025
    The U.S. tested nuclear weapons until the early 1990s. Since then, scientists have been using supercomputers and experiments to simulate nuclear test detonations, without detonating any nukes. But there are signs the world's nuclear powers may be readying to test again: Russia, China and the U.S. are all upgrading their nuclear test sites.

    NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel was among a small group of journalists allowed to tour an underground laboratory where this research happens.

    Read more of science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel's reporting here.

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    14 mins
  • The Dangers Of Mirror Cell Research

    The Dangers Of Mirror Cell Research
    Feb 10 2025
    For people with two hands, one is usually dominant. On a molecular level, life takes this to the extreme. All of the DNA in earthly living things twists to the right, whereas the protein building blocks favor a kind of left-handed chemistry. But in recent years, scientists have worked toward a kind of mirror version of life. The technology to make mirror life likely won't exist for at least a decade. Still, a group of concerned scientists published a 299-page technical report calling for a stop to the science. New York Times science columnist Carl Zimmer explains how a mirror microbe could wreak havoc on life on Earth in the future.

    Check out the full technical report and Carl's full article.

    Curious about other controversial research? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

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    13 mins
  • How Physics Could Make Big Crowds Safer

    How Physics Could Make Big Crowds Safer
    Feb 7 2025
    What do large crowds of people and water have in common? They both act like fluids. When crowds cheer, sway and clump together, the movements look like ripples of water. Researchers hope insights from physics like this one could help officials and engineers create safer crowds at festivals.

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    10 mins
  • Microbes: It's Complicated

    Microbes: It's Complicated
    Feb 5 2025
    For a long time, microbes like the ones in Yellowstone's hot springs were studied in isolation. Molecular ecologist Devaki Bhaya says we should be studying them in community. Here's why.

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    Plus, if you liked this episode, check out our episode on the last universal common ancestor in the tree of life.

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    14 mins
  • Why Black Holes Are More Than They Seem

    Why Black Holes Are More Than They Seem
    Feb 4 2025
    Black holes are notorious for gobbling up, well, everything. They're icons of destruction, ruthless voids, ambivalent abysses from which nothing can return — at least, according to pop culture. But black holes have another side: Astrophysicists have seen powerful jets, sometimes millions of light-years long, shooting out of supermassive black holes – including the one at the center of our own galaxy. So today, we're getting to know the other side of black holes, and the powerful role they may play in creating and shaping the cosmos.

    Read more about the Blandford-Znajek process.

    Got other cosmic curiosities? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

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    13 mins
  • Not All Nature Comebacks Are Equal

    Not All Nature Comebacks Are Equal
    Feb 3 2025
    Ecologist Gergana Daskalova moved back to the small Bulgarian town of her childhood. It's a place many people have abandoned — and that's the very reason she returned. At the same time as land is being cleared around the world to make room for agriculture, elsewhere farmland is being abandoned for nature to reclaim. But what happens when people let the land return to nature? This episode, science reporter Dan Charles explains why abandoned land has conservationists and researchers asking: If we love nature, do we tend it or set it free?

    Read more of Dan's reporting for Science Magazine and NPR.

    Want us to cover other about ecology, biodiversity or land science stories? Let us know by emailing shortwave@npr.org!

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    12 mins