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Top 10 Science Friday Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Science Friday episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Science Friday for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Science Friday episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Asheville Was Never A ‘Climate Haven.’ Nowhere Is.
Science Friday
10/14/24 • 18 min
For years, Asheville, North Carolina, has been billed as a “climate haven,” a place safe from the touch of climate change-exacerbated disasters. But last month, Hurricane Helene called that label into question. Some of the worst damage of the storm occurred inland, in Western North Carolina.
Data visualization designer David McConville lived in Asheville for about 20 years, before moving to California.
“Watching people idealize Asheville was a little bit crazy-making,” McConville says. “There were very clear patterns of the combination of the topography and hydrology, weather patterns, and development patterns that were creating these dangers,” he says, referring to the extreme flooding and damage brought on by Hurricane Helene.
Resilience and adaptation for communities hit hard by storms is a huge area of conversation for cities. And for places hit hard consecutively, like Florida’s coast after Hurricanes Helene and Milton, that need is even more pressing. Joining Ira to talk about this is Dr. Jesse Keenan, associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana; and Dr. Jola Ajibade, associate professor of environmental and climate justice at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
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Why People Can’t Read Bar Graphs, First Complete Human Genome Released, Mars Book Club Finale. April 1, 2022, Part 2
Science Friday
04/01/22 • 47 min
Can You Read A Bar Graph?
Bar graphs seem like one of the simplest ways to represent data. Many people assume that the longer the bar, the bigger the number it represents. Sometimes bar graphs represent an average not a total count, which is trickier to understand.
And because bar graphs are everywhere, psychologists from Wellesley College wanted to determine how well people can actually read and interpret bar graphs. Turns out, one in five people in their study misunderstood the data the bar graphs intended to show. And sometimes simple-looking graphs actually make it harder to understand the data they are based on.
Ira talks with Jeremy Wilmer, associate professor, and Sarah Horan Kerns, research associate, at Wellesley College’s department of psychology, based in Wellesley Massachusetts about their bar graph research and curriculum to improve data literacy.
Scientists Release The First Fully Complete Human GenomeTwo decades ago, scientists announced they had sequenced the human genome. What you might not know is that there were gaps in that original sequence—about 8% was completely blank.
Now, after a years-long global collaboration, scientists have finally released the first fully complete assembly of the human genome. Researchers believe these missing pieces might be the key to understanding how DNA varies between people.
Six scientific papers on the topic were published in a special edition of the academic journal Science this week.
Ira talks with Karen Miga and Adam Phillippy, co-founders of the Telomere to Telomere Consortium, an international effort that led to the assembly of this new fully complete human genome.
Karen Miga is an assistant professor of bimolecular engineering and the associate director of the UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute, based in Santa Cruz California. Adam Phillippy is head of the Genome Informatics Section and senior investigator in the computational and statistical genomics branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health, based in Bethesda, Maryland.
One Last Martian Love FestAfter a month of non-stop Mars science, what questions do you still have about the Red Planet? SciFri producer Christie Taylor and co-host Stephanie Sendaula interview planetary scientist and Sirens of Mars author Sarah Stewart Johnson. Plus, they take your questions about the planet’s poles, its magnetic field, and the progress of the Perseverance rover.
7 Listeners
Why Do Cephalopods Make Ink?
Science Friday
06/18/24 • 18 min
The most wonderful time of the year has arrived: Cephalopod Week, Science Friday’s annual tradition of spotlighting all things octopus, squid, and cuttlefish.
One of the many things that make cephalopods special is their ink. What’s it made of? Why do they shoot it at their predators? And why did they evolve this incredible skill?
To talk all about inking, guest host Annie Minoff is joined by Dr. Lauren Simonitis, research and biological imaging specialist at Florida Atlantic University.
Learn more about how to get involved in Cephalopod Week!
Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
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4 Listeners
07/19/24 • 24 min
The foot-long meteor passed through the Earth’s atmosphere near the Statue of Liberty. Don’t worry, it was fine. Also, the follow-up to the 1996 movie “Twister” is a whirlwind of tornado science. A weather expert decodes its lingo—and real-life tornado trends.
A Small Meteor Blazes Over New York City
Tuesday morning, some New York area residents heard a loud boom and saw a daytime fireball streaking overhead. According to observers, a small meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere over New York City, passed by the Statue of Liberty, and proceeded west to New Jersey, moving at some 38,000 miles per hour. Meteor experts said that the object, estimated to be around a foot in size, posed no threat, as debris from an object that small would have burned up before reaching the ground.
Science Friday’s Charles Bergquist joins guest host Rachel Feltman to talk about the overhead display, and about other science news from the week, including a newly planned mission to fly by a near-Earth asteroid. They’ll also talk about a new pool of data for human genetics research, efforts to predict rogue waves, and the challenges of making food taste right in orbit.
The Tornado Science To Know Before Seeing ‘Twisters’
“Twisters,” the long awaited follow-up to the 1996 movie “Twister” drops in theaters today, July 19. It’s about a scientist (Daisy Edgar-Jones) who goes back to her home state of Oklahoma to try and stop a massive tornado outbreak from wreaking havoc on its citizens. On the way, she meets a quirky cast of storm chasers, and butts heads with a band of unorthodox “tornado wranglers” led by a YouTube personality (Glen Powell). “Twisters” delights in name-dropping tornado jargon, and its science advisory team said they hoped to make the movie as accurate as possible.
The movie makes science thrilling, but it also shows the ways that tornadoes affect people’s lives in the real world. For example, earlier this week, the Chicago area was hit with multiple tornadoes during a night of extreme weather, leaving thousands without power, and four tornadoes hit upstate New York, killing one person. This comes after a powerful, and some say unusual, tornado season in the Midwest. But just how tornadoes will continue to change is still unknown.
Digital producer Emma Gometz talks with Dr. Bill Gallus, a meteorology professor at Iowa State University, to decode some of the science from “Twisters” and understand how real-life tornadoes are changing.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.
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Why Are There So Many Drug Shortages In The U.S.?
Science Friday
07/18/24 • 33 min
If you’ve tried to get prescriptions filled in the last year or so, a pharmacist may have told you, “Sorry, we don’t have that drug right now.” That’s because there are some 323 active and ongoing drug shortages in the United States. That’s the highest number of such shortages since the American Society of Health System Pharmacists started tracking this data back in 2001.
These drug shortages touch every part of the healthcare system. Doctors are having to reconfigure their treatment plans due to short supply of certain drugs, like cancer treatments. And patients can be left going from pharmacy to pharmacy to get even the most common medications, like antibiotics.
SciFri’s John Dankosky talks with freelance journalist Indira Khera and journalist and physician Dr. Eli Cahan, who looked into why drug shortages happen, how they’re affecting the healthcare system, and what solutions are on the horizon.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
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3 Listeners
Old Things Considered: La Brea, Megalodon, Dino Footprints, Surviving History. Aug 25, 2023, Part 2
Science Friday
08/25/23 • 47 min
How Early Humans May Have Transformed L.A.’s Landscape Forever
Join us on a time traveling adventure, as we go back 15,000 years to visit what’s now southern California. During the last Ice Age, saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, and dire wolves prowled the landscape, until ... they didn’t. The end of the Ice Age coincided with the end of these species. And for decades, scientists have been trying to figure out a big question: Why did these animals go extinct?
A new study in the journal Science offers new clues and suggests that wildfires caused by humans might’ve been the nail in these critters’ coffins.
Guest host Flora Lichtman talks with paleoecologist Dr. Emily Lindsey and paleobotanist Dr. Regan Dunn, both curators at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, California, about what we can learn from animals preserved in tar pits, how fire transformed the ecosystem, and why we have to look to the past for modern day conservation and land management.
How Scientifically Accurate Are The Sharks In ‘Meg 2: The Trench’?
“Meg 2: The Trench” is the sequel to the 2018 movie “The Meg,” in which a team of ocean scientists discover a megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, thriving at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Megalodon went extinct over 2.6 million years ago ... or so the movie’s characters thought.
When the team’s research sub gets damaged, a skilled rescue diver, played by Jason Statham, is brought in, who happened to have encountered the same megalodon years earlier. Over the course of the movie, the team discovers how this long-thought extinct apex predator survived, and what they can do to stop it before it wreaks havoc on the surface world.
“Meg 2: The Trench” largely follows in that movie’s footsteps, but this time, it features not just one, but multiple megalodons. Oh, and they’re even bigger this time.
Universe of Art host D. Peterschmidt chats with Dr. Sora Kim, an associate professor of paleoecology at University of California, Merced, about what science the movie got wrong (and right) and how these over-the-top blockbusters can inspire the scientists of the future.
Scientists Discover Dinosaur ‘Coliseum’ In Alaska’s Denali National Park
Researchers recently discovered a rocky outcrop at Denali National Park in Alaska covered in dinosaur tracks, which they dubbed the “Coliseum.” It’s the largest dinosaur track site ever found in Alaska.
The area has thousands of prints from generations of dinosaurs living about 70 million years ago, including: duck-billed dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs, raptors, tyrannosaurs.
Flora Lichtman talks with Dustin Stewart, former graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and paleontologist for the environmental consulting firm Stantec, based in Denver, Colorado, about this dino hotspot.
Your Guide To Conquering History’s Greatest Catastrophes
Guest host Flora Lichtman takes us back to some of the scariest, deadliest moments in history. Think along the lines of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the Ice Age, and the asteroid that wiped out the dinos. But we’re going to revisit them using what we know now—and science, of course—to figure out if and how we could survive those events.
The idea of using science and hindsight to survive history is the premise of a new book, How to Survive History: How to Outrun a Tyrannosaurus, Escape Pompeii, Get Off the Titanic, and Survive the Rest of History’s Deadliest Catastrophes by Cody Cassidy.
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06/07/24 • 21 min
A Week Of Milestones For Spaceflight
This has been a week of milestones for human spaceflight. After years of delays, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, successfully launched Wednesday on the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket. On Thursday, it docked with the International Space Station.
Also on Thursday, SpaceX’s Starship rocket made its first successful launch and reentry after three previous attempts (the massive rocket burned up in the atmosphere on the last launch). And on a more sobering note, NASA announced that its famous 34-year-old Hubble Space Telescope is experiencing issues with its gyroscopes and is opting to only use one for the time being. The agency says Hubble can still do science, but less efficiently than it once could.
Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, joins Ira to discuss those and other top stories in science this week, including why the viral Joro spider you may have seen online does not pose a threat to humans, how a virus that’s spreading due to deforestation in South America could overwhelm local healthcare, and why the FDA voted against the medical use of MDMA.
Mexico Has Elected A Scientist President. What Will That Mean?
This week, Mexico elected a historic president: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, who will be the first woman to lead the nation, and was also an environmental engineer before entering politics.
Despite the president-elect’s scientific past, Sheinbaum Pardo has committed to following the lead of her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose science policies were deeply unpopular with many researchers in the country.
Mexico’s scientific community is split on how this election will impact science and research in the country. Rodrigo Pérez Ortega, a reporter at Science Magazine, joins Ira to talk through the complexities of this election and how scientists are reacting.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.
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NASA’s Europa Clipper Heads To Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa
Science Friday
10/21/24 • 18 min
On October 14, NASA launched Europa Clipper, its largest planetary mission spacecraft yet. It’s headed to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which could have a giant ocean of liquid water hidden under its icy crust. And where there’s water, scientists think there may be evidence of life. The spacecraft is equipped with nine different instruments and will complete nearly 50 flybys of Europa, scanning almost the entire moon.
SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Padi Boyd, NASA astrophysicist and host of the agency’s podcast “Curious Universe,” about the launch and the excitement at NASA. Then, Ira checks in with two scientists who are working on the mission about what they’re excited to learn: Dr. Ingrid Daubar, planetary scientist at Brown University and a Europa Clipper project staff scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Dr. Tracy Becker, planetary scientist at Southwest Research Institute and a deputy principal investigator for the ultraviolet spectrograph on the Europa spacecraft.
Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.
2 Listeners
10/18/24 • 17 min
Two giant pandas on loan from China have arrived at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. Also, originally from Central Asia, Kernza doesn’t need to be replanted every year, unlike crops such as corn and soybeans.
Pandas Return To Washington, D.C., Zoo
On Tuesday, two VIPs (Very Important Pandas) arrived at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, en route to new quarters at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
The arrival marks a new chapter of “panda diplomacy,” which leverages the public’s affection for the cute, charismatic animals to both strengthen US-China ties and fund conservation initiatives. Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist, joins SciFri’s John Dankosky to talk about the giant pandas’ arrival and other stories from the week in science.
Scientists Push For A Lesser-Known Grain Called Kernza
On a recent weekday afternoon, dozens of people filled the cozy taproom at Blue Jay Brewing Company. On tap that day was a fresh creation called New Roots. The American Lager was a hit, with many of the patrons going back to the bar for another glass.
Blue Jay’s owner and brewer, Jason Thompson, was also pleased with the result of this experimental beer, which he described as “earthy, almost nutty,” with a “lingering honey-like sweetness to it.” Those flavors came from his choice to use a novel grain called Kernza for 25% of the 600 pounds of grain needed for the whole brew, he said.
Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.
2 Listeners
06/27/24 • 18 min
The larger Pacific striped octopus is unusually social. But it wasn’t recognized by scientists until 2015, despite one man’s efforts. And, a deep-sea squid in the family Gonatidae was filmed cradling large eggs for its body size, which suggests it’s an entirely new species.
Why It Took Decades For This Octopus To Be Recognized
Octopus mating behaviors can be quite deadly. Many species are cannibalistic, making the entire prospect of mating dangerous, and female octopuses often die after laying one clutch of eggs. Their cannibalistic tendencies mean that octopuses don’t socialize as much as other animals.
But the larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO) is different. For one, they live together in colonies. And mating is not only a safer proposition, it involves beak-to-beak “kissing.” Plus, females can lay eggs repeatedly, even tending to embryos at various stages of development.
But because these behaviors are so uncharacteristic of most octopuses, the scientific community didn’t officially recognize their existence until 2015, despite the decades-long effort of a Panamanian diver and artist named Arcadio Rodaniche. When he tried to share his findings about the LPSO at a symposium and publish them in a journal, he was flatly rejected. But his persistent research and documentation of the species would eventually be validated when researchers were able to obtain and observe the octopuses in captivity.
SciFri producer Kathleen Davis sits down with freelance science writer Kenna Hughes-Castleberry to talk about an article she reported for Science Friday about the late Rodaniche and his yearslong effort to get official scientific recognition for the LPSO.
Read the story at sciencefriday.com.
Squid With ‘Giant’ Eggs Could Be A New Species
To finish up our celebration of Cephalopod Week we wanted to share a bit of squid news. A group of researchers recently identified a potentially new squid species in the family Gonatidae. Scientists took a closer look at some video footage captured back in 2015 and found a deep-water squid that was cradling some rather large eggs, which was not in line with other squid of the same family.
John Dankosky talks with Dr. Bruce Robison, midwater ecologist and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, about this new discovery.
Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.
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How many episodes does Science Friday have?
Science Friday currently has 656 episodes available.
What topics does Science Friday cover?
The podcast is about Life Sciences, Natural Sciences, Podcasts, Wnyc and Science.
What is the most popular episode on Science Friday?
The episode title 'Asheville Was Never A ‘Climate Haven.’ Nowhere Is.' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Science Friday?
The average episode length on Science Friday is 35 minutes.
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Episodes of Science Friday are typically released every day.
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The first episode of Science Friday was released on May 29, 2020.
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@guerrymcclellan
Jun 18
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