Science Friday

Wandering through a museum, you can get a glimpse of what life in ancient societies looked like. But what did it smell like? And is it even possible to get a whiff of, say, a freshly embalmed mummy, or a 5,000-year-old Saudi Arabian incense burner? That’s exactly what some chemists and olfactory designers are trying to do.Producer Kathleen Davis talks with archeo-chemist Barbara Huber and perfumer Carole Calvez about how they scientifically recreated the scent of ancient Egyptian mummies and brought that smell to museums on special cards.Guests:Dr. Barbara Huber is an archeo-chemist at the University of Tübingen in Germany.Carole Calvez is a perfumer and olfactory designer and a cofounder of  Iris & Morphée in Paris, France. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Cyanobacteria may be the ultimate lesson in resilience. These 3.5 billion-year-old organisms have lived through hell-on-earth conditions, and found creative ways to persevere. While the state of the world feels out of control, Host Flora Lichtman talks to molecular microbiologist Devaki Bhaya about the planet’s ultimate survivalists.Guest: Dr. Devaki Bhaya is a molecular microbiologist at Carnegie Science in Stanford, California.  The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), the largest particle collider in the United States, collided its last particles in early February. RHIC is a massive accelerator ring and set of instruments based at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, and was designed to accelerate gold ions to near-light speed before collision. It was the second most powerful accelerator on the planet, second only to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Since RHIC began running in 2000, scientists have used it to study the tiniest subatomic particles, which give insight into some of the universe’s biggest questions. Brookhaven nuclear physicist Gene Van Buren joins Host Flora Lichtman to look back on the history of RHIC, what physicists have learned from the collider, and what lies ahead for particle physics.Guest: Dr. Gene Van Buren is a nuclear physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay up

This year’s Winter Olympics feature a new event called “skimo,” or ski mountaineering. The racing event involves periods of skiing uphill using “skins” for traction, sprinting uphill on foot, and a downhill ski slalom to the finish. Mountaineering historian Peter Hansen joins Host Flora Lichtman for an introduction to skimo, and the scientific connections of early modern mountaineers. Then, wildlife ecologist Kevin White describes the amazing capabilities of the mountain goat, what’s known about the physical features that contribute to their climbing ability, and risks to mountain goat populations.Guests:Dr. Peter Hansen is a professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and author of the book The Summits of Modern Man: Mountaineering after the Enlightenment.Dr. Kevin White is a wildlife ecologist based at the University of Alaska Southeast.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, si

As ICE cracks down in Minneapolis and across the country, reporters and privacy advocates have drawn attention to how the agency is using technology: scanning people’s faces without consent, using private health records to make arrests, tracking people’s location in real time with phone data.So how does all this work? How does the United States’ data ecosystem make it possible for not just ICE, but any number of government agencies and businesses to buy our private data? And what actually happens after we send that DM or open up Instagram at a protest to post a picture?To learn more, Host Flora Lichtman sits down with law professor and tech policy expert Laura Moy. She’s testified in Congress about privacy laws and how data brokers profit off of personal data.Guest: Laura Moy is an associate professor of law at Georgetown Law, based in Washington, D.C.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, si

The new dietary guidelines from the USDA call for Americans to “eat real food” and consume less “highly processed” food. But how? By some estimates, ultraprocessed foods make up nearly 60% of the average American adult diet, and they’re all over school lunch menus.Health policy expert Laura Schmidt and nutrition policy researcher Alyssa Moran join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about ultraprocessed foods and our food supply. What might they be doing to our health, and what steps could policymakers take to help Americans eat less of them? Guests:Dr. Laura Schmidt is a professor at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.Dr. Alyssa Moran is deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of PennsylvaniaTranscripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

In an effort to make their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable, some farmers are experimenting with agrivoltaics: growing crops underneath solar panels. This dual harvest is working for some, but what will it take for agrivoltaics to work on a larger, more industrial scale? Joining Host Ira Flatow are journalist Jana Rose Schleis and environmental economics expert Madhu Khanna.Guests:Jana Rose Schleis is a news producer at KBIA in Columbia, Missouri. Her podcast series, “The Next Harvest,” is available on podcast platforms.Dr. Madhu Khanna is a professor of environmental economics and director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Point systems are everywhere. Ready for movie night? Consult Rotten Tomatoes. Vetting a new pediatrician? See how many stars they have. At work, it can be even more pervasive: There’s KPIs and ROIs because success has to be measurable.  But what happens when we boil something down to one nice number? What do we lose? Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, author of the new book The Score, joins Host Flora Lichtman to explore how metrics can be soul-crushing in work and in life, yet keeping score is freeing in the world of games. Read an excerpt from The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.Guest:Dr. C. Thi Nguyen is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He’s the author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

We’re bringing you a special bonus episode from our friends at the live call-in show “The Middle with Jeremy Hobson.” Jeremy is joined by Science Friday Host Flora Lichtman and theoretical astrophysicist Priya Natarajan to talk about how trust in science can be restored. It took a hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Trump Administration has now elevated science skeptics to positions of power and proposed giant cuts in scientific research. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

All the pups we love—from chihuahuas to great danes—are descendants of the mighty gray wolf. But how did we end up with so many breeds? The story that's often told is that dog diversity really took off with the Victorians in the 1800s, but new research is unleashing a different tale. Host Flora Lichtman talks with bioarchaeologist Carly Ameen about the diversification of dogs. Plus, a long-running experiment to tame silver foxes is cluing us into how domestication happens. Canine researcher Erin Hecht gives us a glimpse into the experiment and what it tells us about domesticated brains.Guests:Dr. Carly Ameen is a bioarcheologist and lecturer at the University of Exeter in England.Dr. Erin Hecht is an evolutionary biologist at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

We keep hearing that these are unprecedented times for science: scientific skeptics running federal agencies, growing mistrust of vaccines, and messaging from the highest levels of government that scientists are in the pocket of industry. To understand how unique this time really is, we’re talking to Naomi Oreskes, a science historian who has spent her career studying skepticism in science. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss our current moment, and how ghostwriting in scientific papers is harming public trust in science.Guest: Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University, based in Cambridge, MA.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

In a speech last week in a speech at the World Economic Forum, President Trump said China was making a lot of wind turbines, but not using much wind power in their own country. Is that right? China studies professor Jeremy Wallace joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the renewable energy landscape in China. They’ll dig into how China is flooding the world with affordable solar technology, making it the cheapest form of electricity in history. Plus, what energy tech China is manufacturing, what it's using domestically, and what it's exporting.Guest: Dr. Jeremy Wallace is the A. Doak Barnett Professor of China Studies at Johns Hopkins UniversityTranscripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Forty years ago this week, the space shuttle Challenger exploded in flight, 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral. All seven crew members were killed. In the months that followed, the tragedy was traced to a failed O-ring in one of the shuttle’s rocket boosters. Now, with the Artemis II mission preparing for launch to lunar orbit, what have we learned about spaceflight and risk? Former astronaut Jim Wetherbee joins Host Ira Flatow to remember the Challenger tragedy, and look ahead to the age of private spaceflight and the upcoming Artemis II mission.Guest: Jim Wetherbee is a former NASA astronaut, the former head of flight crew operations for NASA, and the author of Controlling Risk: Thirty Techniques for Operating Excellence.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

A rogue strain of flu, subclade K, has sickened more than 19 million people in the US so far this season. And the flu shot hasn’t offered that much protection. What’s going on with this superflustorm?Joining Host Flora Lichtman with some answers is Jennifer Duchon, a pediatric infectious disease specialist.Guest: Dr. Jennifer Duchon is a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This time last year, Los Angeles was on fire, and more than 16,000 homes and buildings burned to the ground. Cars, batteries, solar panels, insulation, and cleaning supplies went up in flames, releasing chemicals like lead, benzene, and asbestos into giant smoke plumes that wafted across the city.A year later, scientists are trying to understand the fallout of this urban wildfire—what chemicals got left behind, how to remediate them, and the threats to our health. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Yifang Zhu and Francois Tissot, who are at the forefront of this research. And for one of them, this work is personal.Guests:Dr. François Tissot is a professor of geochemistry at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Dr. Yifang Zhu is a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Deepfakes have been everywhere lately, from fake AI images of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro following his (real) capture by the United States, to X’s Grok AI generating nonconsensual images of real people in states of undress. And if you missed all that, you've almost certainly had your own deepfake close encounter in your feed: maybe rabbits bouncing on a trampoline or an unlikely animal friendship that seems a little too good to be true.Deepfakes have moved beyond the realm of novelty, and it’s more difficult than ever to know what is actually real online. So how did we get here and what is there, if anything, to do about it?Joining Host Flora Lichtman are Hany Farid, who’s studied digital forensics and how we relate to AI for over 25 years, and Sam Cole, a journalist at 404 Media who’s covered deepfakes and their impact since 2017.Guests:Dr. Hany Farid is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at University of California, Berkeley.Sam Cole is a journalist at 404 Media, based in New

When it comes to “bad” cholesterol, most cardiologists say lower is better. But what’s the best way to get that number down? Can diet and exercise alone do the job?Cardiologists Kiran Musunuru and Neha Pagidipati join Host Ira Flatow for a look at the latest in cholesterol-lowering treatments, including CRISPR technology that could turn off cholesterol-making genes for life. How does it work, and is it safe?Guests:Dr. Kiran Musunuru is the scientific director of the Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.Dr. Neha Pagidipati is the director of the Cardiometabolic Prevention Clinic at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, NC.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

An Associated Press investigation found that more than 420 “anti-science” bills were introduced in statehouses last year, targeting protections around public health issues like vaccines, milk safety, and fluoride. As state legislatures come back into session, what can we expect for 2026? Joining Ira Flatow is Laura Ungar, science and medical reporter for the Associated Press.Plus, reporter Elise Plunk joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the complex case of a citizen-led pollution monitoring program in Louisiana that persists despite a law banning the use of its data.Guests: Laura Ungar is a science and medical reporter for the Associated Press.Elise Plunk is an environmental reporter and Report for America corps member at the Louisiana Illuminator.The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

It’s a wintertime question that you may have had as you struggled down a frozen sidewalk, or strapped on some ice skates: Just why is ice slippery, anyway? It turns out the answer is somewhat complicated.Mechanical engineer Robert Carpick studies tribology, the science of surface interactions, from friction to wear to lubrication. He joins Host Ira Flatow to wrangle some new ideas about the slippery science of ice.Guest: Dr. Robert Carpick is the John Henry Towne Professor in the department of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Each year, around 90,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disease that can cause tremors and affect cognition. Scientists are working to identify some of the earliest signs of the disease, and to figure out how we might test for—and treat—Parkinson’s in the future.Neurologists Emily Tamadonfar and Michael Okun join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss what we know about why Parkinson’s starts and how it may be associated with genetic mutations, pollution, and other factors.Guests:Dr. Emily Tamadonfar is a clinical associate professor of neurology in the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.Dr. Michael Okun is a professor and executive director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at University of Florida Health in Gainesville, Florida.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday'