Science Friday

Researchers have engineered an artificial cell out of chemicals and biomolecules that, at a basic level, can eat, grow, duplicate its own genetic code, and reproduce itself. The cell, dubbed SpudCell, is aimed at creating a chassis that can be adapted to create biological factories for the chemicals humans rely on for modern life, from fuels to pharmaceuticals. But it also raises the question of what it means for something to be “alive.” 

Synthetic biologist Kate Adamala joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the technological advance, the possibilities for the artificial cell, and a nonprofit organization she h...

Imagine this: You’re an astronaut, you’ve landed on the moon, and as you’re taking one small step for mankind, you kick up a bunch of lunar dirt. Now, tiny, jagged particles of dust are on your spacesuit, sticking to the spacecraft, getting in the machinery, and into your lungs. These are the kinds of problems planetary geologist Erica Jawin is trying to solve as NASA prepares for future moon bases.

And what will you eat as an astronaut on the moon? Turns out that lunar dirt, or regolith, can be used to grow potatoes and ot...

Around 25 years ago, Ardem Patapoutian set out to investigate the fundamental biology behind our sense of touch. Through a long process of gene elimination, he identified a class of sensors in the cell membrane that turn physical pressure into an electrical signal. He changed the game in the field of sensation and perception, and in 2021 shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work. 

He joined Host Flora Lichtman in November 2025 to talk about his research, the odd jobs he worked along the way, and how he found a sense of belonging in science.

...

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, deep in the mountains of the Yukon, a ground squirrel pooped. That scat stayed frozen for millenia—until very recently, when researchers thawed it out and realized it was a literal data dump. They found traces of a surprising number of animals and plants, providing a detailed snapshot of life during the last ice age. Flora talks with biomolecular archaeologist Tyler Murchie about the gold mine that is ancient squirrel poop.

And, if you liked our poop jokes, you’ll want to hear how two different types of laughter are processed in t...

Pancreatic cancer is among the most deadly forms of cancer, and it can be difficult to catch early. But there’s some good news: Clinical trials of a new drug called daraxonrasib found that it doubled the survival time of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. And some oncologists are calling it a game changer—not just for pancreatic cancer, but potentially other forms of cancer too. Ira talks with oncologist Zev Wainberg, who led a clinical trial for the drug. 

Plus, ALS is a degenerative disease that causes patients to lose their ability to walk, swallow and event...

On a hot summer day, there’s nothing better than a dip in a cold pool. But you know who can ruin that for you? A scientist who studies pool chemistry. What chemical reactions are happening in that swimming pool when the water comes into contact with our bodily fluids and skin products?

Environmental engineer Ernest Blatchley sits down with Flora Lichtman to discuss his findings after two decades of research, including how urine in a pool makes that chlorine smell, and his work to make the air of the Paris Olympics’ indoor pools less toxic.

Gu...

The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed rule changes that would bring a major shift in how scientific grants are awarded by U.S. government agencies. Under the current process, researchers submit grant proposals that are then vetted and scored by a committee of experts in that scientific field, with top-scoring proposals recommended for funding.

If its proposed changes are enacted, the OMB would insert a political review into the process, allowing administration officials to determine whether grant proposals are aligned with administration priorities, regardless of their scientific merit. Those proposed rules are now...

If you have arachnophobia, consider this your opportunity to try exposure therapy: A new study suggests that 415 million years ago, in modern-day England and Wales, a scorpion the length of a golden retriever was scurrying around, complete with 6-inch pincers. Flora talks with lead study author Richie Howard about the finding.

If you’re grossed out by a 3-foot scorpion, you’re not alone. But, scorpion researcher Lauren Esposito says we’ve got it all wrong—scorpions are wonderful and caring creatures.

Guests:
Dr. Richie Howard is an invertebrate paleontologist and curator of fossil arthropo...

The FDA recently approved a sunscreen ingredient called bemotrizinol, or BEMT, that’s been used in Europe and Asia for years. This is the first new sunscreen ingredient approved in the United States in over two decades. Meanwhile, skin cancer has become the most common cancer in the U.S. 

Flora discusses the chemistry of sunblock with a sunscreen chemist AJ Addae, and the regulatory process that led to this approval with health journalist Michael Scaturro. 

Guests:

Michael Scaturro is a health journalist based in New York City. 

AJ Addae is a che...

If you watch sports, whether the recent NBA finals or the ongoing World Cup matches, you may have noticed that the athletes aren’t the only ones putting on a show. The announcers seem to be playing a beautiful game of their own, capturing the excitement and play-by-play of the game in a unique blend of sentence structure, elocution, and pitch. Linguists have even given this speech pattern a name: sports announcer talk.

Sociolinguist and dialectologist Valerie Fridland joins Host Flora Lichtman to break down the patterns and rules of this register.

Guest:

Dr...

There is a murderous crime spree happening right under—and perhaps inside—our noses. Killer microbes armed with weapons are eviscerating, assassinating, and detonating their fellow microbes. And the newest culprit? A protist that morphs into a cannibilastic supergiant when times get tough. 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Glen D’Souza and Ben Larson, two detectives who study these micro-murders. They chat about why microbes kill, how they choose their victims, and whether we can harness those weapons for good. 

Guests:

Dr. Glen D’Souza is a microbiologist and assistant professor at Arizona State Univ...

Do you ever hear a song that transports you to a specific place and time? This auditory wormhole has a name: musical daydreams. Music cognition expert Elizabeth Margulis studies why they happen, and what they tell us about our brains. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss this phenomenon.

Guest:

Dr. Elizabeth Margulis is a professor and director of Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab. She’s also the author of “Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams.”

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Researchers just published details of a massive undersea graveyard of whales deep in the Indian Ocean. Spanning about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles), it contains whale remains dating back more than 5 million years—and at least five active whale fall sites still teeming with life. Fossil whale expert Nick Pyenson joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss these findings.

Then, marine biologists Rachel Sipler and Sara Jobson join Ira Flatow to describe an unusual discovery in certain species of sea cucumbers: If a foot or tentacle becomes detached, the parts don’t wither up and rot away. Even without a stomach, thes...

Big cats used to roam the entire United States. You might know them as mountain lions, pumas, cougars, or catamounts. Though they go by many names, they're actually all the same species. 

Their current population is mostly confined to the West, and part of Florida, though in recent years they’ve been spotted in other areas east of the Mississippi River. Most cougars were gone from the Northeast by the 1800s, with the last verified accounts in the 1930s. 

Mountain lion ecologist Mark Elbroch hopes to reintroduce these big cats back into their previous habitats in N...

When Blue Origin’s New Glenn spacecraft exploded in an enormous fireball during a ground test a couple weeks ago, it sent shockwaves not only through the air, but through NASA’s timeline for the upcoming Artemis missions.

It also came at an especially bad time for Jeff Bezos’ rocket company—just days after it was awarded a slew of NASA contracts to deliver equipment to the moon. Blue Origin had also been expected to play a major role in the upcoming Artemis III and IV missions, but that’s now more up in the air depending on how soo...

‘Tis the season for porch beers and happy hours, and we’re taking on listener questions about how alcohol affects us. Like, is a glass of wine at dinner really good for you? And why do sugary drinks give us hangovers?

Joining Guest Host Jane Lindholm to answer these questions and more are brewer and chemist Tom Shellhammer and neuroscientist Jacqui Barker.

Guests:

Dr. Jacqui Barker is an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine.

Dr. Tom Shellhammer is a brewer and the Nor’Wester...

The 2026 World Cup will be the largest one yet, and FIFA is trying to make it the most high-tech, too. The federation has partnered with tech giant Lenovo to launch Football AI Pro, which is designed to analyze over 2,000 different metrics and deliver real-time insights to coaches, players, and analysts. Guest Host Jane Lindholm chats with ESPN writer Ryan O’Hanlon about how AI analytics actually play out in soccer.

Plus, how a team of researchers grew 16 stadiums’ worth of FIFA-class turf. Turfgrass scientist Jackie Lyn Guevara breaks down the importance of perfectly uniform turf, how the turf...

Elite athletes spend a lot of time training their bodies for strength, endurance, coordination, and precision. But what about their brains? Can psychology help athletes achieve peak performance? 

Joining Flora Lichtman to talk about this are professional climber Alex Honnold and Jessica Bartley, psychologist for U.S. Olympians and Paralympians. 

Guests: 

Alex Honnold is a professional climber, founder of the Honnold Foundation, and host of the Planet Visionaries Podcast: in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.

Dr. Jessica Bartley is senior director of psychological services for the U.S. Olympic and...

If you’ve ever been a child, had a child, or seen a child face down in a supermarket aisle screaming, you know that parenting can be tough. But humans aren’t the only ones raising their young, so how do animals deal with toddlers that won’t follow directions or little ones that are constantly begging for snacks?

Parent and science journalist Elizabeth Preston, who wrote the book “The Creatures' Guide to Caring,” joins Host Flora Lichtman to tackle some SciFri listeners’ parenting problems, from dawdling to the bedtime pop-out.

Read an excerpt from “The Creatures...

A few weeks ago, we talked to two sonic branding experts who compose music for household appliances. And we played for them a song “sung” by a washing machine that they didn’t really appreciate. But many of our listeners immediately identified the tune, a famous melody by 19th-century composer Franz Schubert.

And, as our guest tells us, it’s not just any tune—it’s one of Schubert’s most beloved compositions, “The Trout,” which he returned to several times during his short but prolific career.

L. Michael Griffel, a Schubert expert and former head of the music...

The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring Uganda is caused by the Bundibugyo virus. There’s no specific treatment or vaccine for this strain, unlike the more common Zaire strain that caused the 2014 outbreak. 

Molecular biologist Christian Happi has dedicated his career to improving genomic sequencing capabilities and virus monitoring across the continent of Africa. He joins Flora to discuss the challenges of the current outbreak and his vision for better disease surveillance. 

Guest:

Dr. Christian Happi is a distinguished professor at Redeemer’s University and runs the In...

If you look up where medicine originated, or the earliest medical interventions, you’ll probably find yourself reading about ancient Greece or Egypt or Mesopotamia. But what about before that? How did early humans treat illnesses or cope with injuries? What did a Neanderthal do if she broke a rib or had a toothache? 

Flora digs into these questions with archaeologist Penny Spikins and microbiologist Laura Weyrich. They chat about ancient treatments like antibiotics and root canals, why Neanderthals were always getting hurt, and how they took care of themselves—and each other.

Guests:

Dr...

A group of researchers and private investors are planning a series of privately funded missions to Venus, hoping to find signs of life. That may seem like a startling possibility. Although Venus is a close neighbor to Earth, it has a smothering atmosphere of carbon dioxide that has allowed the planet’s surface to heat to temperatures that would melt lead. There’s crushing pressure. And to top it off, there are clouds of sulfuric acid.

Astrophysicist and planetary scientist Sara Seager joins Host Ira Flatow to explain why she thinks life on Venus might be possible, high...

Many of the forces driving species to extinction—habitat destruction, pollution, climate change—also fuel the spread of disease. And plants and animals around the globe are facing their own little pandemics, from cancer to fungal diseases.

But what if we could treat them with cutting-edge medicines? Is there something drug developers could do to help? Chemist Tim Cernak thinks so. He has been developing drugs for people for 20 years, but his patient roster has started to include sea turtles, frogs, and giant reptiles. He talks with Flora about why he’s making drugs for wildlife and why mo...

The benefits of getting a shingles vaccine seem relatively straightforward: It will prevent you from getting shingles, a painful rash caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. But researchers have found a surprising link between getting the shingles vaccine and a lower risk of developing dementia. And that’s not the only vaccine that seems to have additional benefits. So what’s going on here? 

To help explain this research are epidemiologist Pascal Geldsetzer, who studies the association between the shingles vaccine and lower rates of dementia; and physician and epidemiologist Helen Chu, who studies the Flu...

Two disease outbreaks are dominating the news: Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and hantavirus, which started spreading on a cruise ship.

The U.S. has a one-of-a-kind medical facility that exists just for emergencies like this. It’s called the National Quarantine Unit, and it’s in Omaha, Nebraska. Right now, 18 Americans from the cruise ship where hantavirus broke out are in quarantine there. 

Host Flora Lichtman chats with Angie Vasa, a nurse and administrator who has worked at this emergency center for the last 17 years. They discuss how the facility works, what’...

When Lewis and Clark crossed the United States in the early 1800s, they recorded their wildlife observations along the way. Now, more than 200 years later, an expedition is following the same route and partnering with scientists across the U.S. to catalog animals and track the changes. Expedition leader Roland Kays joins Host Flora Lichtman to share some highlights.

Plus, using cell phone data and GPS collars, ecologists were able to see how animals moved (or not) when people were around. Ecologist Ruth Oliver tells us about her findings.

Guests:

Dr. Roland Kays...

On Monday, Pope Leo XIV presented his encyclical, an open letter from the church, on AI. The 42,000-word document covers a lot of terrain—from screen time to resource extraction to job loss—but the core message is summed up in the title: “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding The Human Person In The Time Of Artificial Intelligence.” 

How did the Pope arrive at these views? Among those advising him on AI and other matters are scientists: members of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with one of those members, anthropologist Marcelo Suárez-Orozc...

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have observed clouds on a hot gas giant exoplanet called WASP-94A b, some 700 light-years away. But these clouds aren’t your usual wisps of water vapor—they’re vaporized sand. Astronomer David Sing joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe the planetary weather, and how the researchers were able to observe it. 

Then, ecologist Elske Tielens joins Flora to describe how ecologists using weather radar data counted the insects aloft in U.S. skies: around 100 trillion of them on an average summer day.

Guests:

Dr. David Sing is...

It’s common knowledge that many diseases and conditions have some kind of genetic link. But that wasn't always the case. In 1990, long before the Human Genome Project tied so many health issues to differences in genetics, researchers identified a gene called BRCA1. It was the first gene linked to a hereditary form of any common cancer. People with certain variants of BRCA1 stood a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer than those without those mutations.  

Geneticist Mary-Claire King and her lab were the first to identify that gene. She joined Host Flora Lichtman in Sept...

Old creepy houses are a horror cliche, but why? Why do they freak us out? According to new research, it might have something to do with infrasound: a sound that’s below the range of human hearing, potentially emitted by low-rumbling pipes or old boilers more common in older houses.  

Psychologist and pseudoscience researcher Rodney Schmaltz explains his new study, and what role infrasound could play in leading people to feel unsettled in “haunted” places. Then, infrasound researcher Milton Garcés breaks down the infrasound that’s produced by volcanoes and asteroid impacts, and how it serves as a “keep...

We recently got a call from a SciFri listener in Florida who has autoimmune arthritis. He told us that over the years he’d taken 10 drugs, and each out eventually stopped working. He then tried to enroll in a clinical trial for a new drug for his condition, but he was rejected specifically because he was on his 10th drug.

Today we’re digging into clinical trials and how they work. Are there incentives for drug developers to leave out “problem children”? Or is it more complicated than that? Flora talks with lawyer and bioethicist Holly Fernandez Lynch ab...

The herbicide paraquat is so toxic it’s banned in over 70 countries. But its use in the U.S. is growing, despite known links to Parkinson’s disease. In southeastern Mississippi, an industrial plant is leaking tens of thousands of pounds of the chemical into the air.

Environmental reporter Delaney Nolan and epidemiologist Beate Ritz join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the implications of this leak, and what we know about how paraquat affects the body.

Guests: 

Delaney Nolan is an environmental reporter based in New Orleans. She reported this story for The Lens a...

Bucket hats. Low-rise jeans. Track suits. As you might’ve noticed, Y2K fashion is in right now. People say that fashion moves in 20-year cycles, and it turns out…it does! At least according to math.

Host Flora Lichtman sits down with mathematician Emma Zajdela to figure out how she analyzed over 35,000 images of women's clothing dating all the way back to the 1860s to confirm this theory.

Guest: 

Dr. Emma Zajdela is a Franco-American mathematician and science diplomacy activist.

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A recent study simulated the extreme temperatures and pressure of the Earth’s interior by squeezing a sample between diamonds and heating it with a laser. In those simulations, researchers found that the Earth’s core may contain vast amounts of hydrogen, locked away in alloys with iron and silicon. Planetary scientist Anat Shahar joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what this tells us about how the planet formed, and where water on Earth may have come from. 

Then, another kind of deep history: Paleontologist Arnaud Rebillard introduces Host Flora Lichtman to “regurgitalite”—fossilized vomit. Rebillard studied a sample of...

Just about every animal with a backbone yawns (maybe even dinosaurs), but why we do it is still something of a mystery. A SciFri listener from Texas recently spotted some research that suggests yawning could play a role in clearing waste products from the brain, and asked us to get to the bottom of it. Biomechanical engineer Lynne Bilston, an author on that study, joins Flora to discuss the findings and what they could mean for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

Plus, about a third of Americans aren’t getting the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, ac...

An upcoming resupply mission will carry tumor samples to the International Space Station for research. Experiments in microgravity have yielded shocking results: Some tumors triple in size in just 10 days—the kind of growth that could take 10 years on Earth. What does that mean for science, and for astronauts? 

Joining Ira to discuss this new frontier in cancer research are hematologist Catriona Jamieson and aerospace engineer Meenal Datta.

Guests: 

Dr. Catriona Jamieson is a hematologist at the UC San Diego Health Moores Cancer Center in California.

Dr. Meenal Datta studies the phys...

Have you noticed that your newer appliances are serenading you? Many new washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, and vacuums have sonic signatures. But why? And who are the composers making music for the machines in your home?

Flora talks to sonic branding experts Audrey Arbeeny, who has developed sounds for washing machines; and Joel Beckerman, who has composed for Roomba. 

Guests: 

Audrey Arbeeny is the owner and executive producer of Audiobrain. She’s composed for Whirlpool, KitchenAid, the London Olympic Games, and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. 

Joel Beckerman is a composer and founder of Made...

Scientists studying climate models say there’s a high chance this will be an El Niño year—and that we could be in for a “super” El Niño. The difference is indicated by sea surface temperatures in part of the Pacific Ocean rising a little—or a lot—above their long-term average.

El Niño is one half of what climatologists call the ENSO, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The oscillation operates on a roughly 3-7 year cycle, changing the path of the jet stream and shifting weather conditions around the world. An El Niño year, for insta...

In April, the crew of Artemis II got an unprecedented tour of the far side of the moon, and they brought back a proverbial shoebox full of pictures. Lunar scientist Kelsey Young stayed on Earth, and helped guide the astronauts through their photo shoots from Mission Control.

Young talks with Host Flora Lichtman about how the science team chose their shot list, how to lead distant astronauts in their scientific observations, and what researchers are learning from the images and in-the-moment descriptions captured by the Artemis II crew.

Guest: 

Dr. Kelsey Young is t...