Science Friday

Proteins are crucial for life. They're made of amino acids that “fold” into millions of different shapes. And depending on their structure, they do radically different things in our cells. For a long...

If you’ve heard the hammering of a woodpecker in the woods, you might have wondered how the birds can be so forceful. What does it take to whack your head against a tree repeatedly, hard enough to dri...

Our memories make us who we are—just ask Barbra Streisand. But despite the lyrics in many popular songs, memories aren’t frozen in time. When we call them up, the details shift and change. And neurosc...

Bearded vultures build giant, elaborate nests that are passed down from generation to generation. And according to a new study, some of these scavengers have collected bits and bobs of human history o...

The band Phish has toured for over 40 years. One of the draws of their legendary live shows—which can go on for 8 hours—is finding moments of “flow,” when the band members lock into an improvised jam,...

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 cel...

Over the last five years, billions of people have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. New research has found an unanticipated result of these vaccines: Cancer treatments are more ef...

One of the biggest debates in the dinosaur world is what was happening right before they went extinct. Were they already declining, or would they have thrived if not for the asteroid? Two recent studi...

As Black Friday approaches, you’re probably being inundated with ads for bigger, better televisions. But just how good is good enough? Are there limits to what our eyes can even make out?Visual percep...

Decades ago, non-native carp were brought onto fish farms on the Mississippi River to control algae and parasites. They escaped, thrived, and eventually flooded the Illinois River, outcompeting native...

Axolotls are one of the most charismatic and beloved amphibians out there. But did you know that there’s only one place in the whole world where you can find them in the wild? It’s Lake Xochimilco in...

Endometriosis is a painful disease that occurs when endometrium-like tissue grows outside of the uterus. It’s extremely common—if you have a uterus, you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it. Yet, it ta...

We've figured out how to harness renewable energy from many natural systems, like solar, wind, and geothermal power. But what about the ocean’s waves? It might seem like converting wave power into ele...

For Halloween, we bring you an ode to three quintessentially creepy creatures: bats, arachnids, and snakes. First, bat researcher Elena Tena joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe tracking the greater...

There’s an established playbook for getting one’s affairs in order before death—create a will, name legal guardians, and so on. But there’s also a newer consideration: what will happen to our digital...

At first blush, the plots of many horror movies don’t seem particularly appealing. Take “The Shining”: A murderous psychopath tries to kill his family in a haunted, secluded hotel. But horror movies h...

For decades, peanut allergies were on the rise in the US. But a study released on October 20 found that peanut allergies in babies and young children are now decreasing. This drop correlates with a ch...

Bacteria have been around for billions of years. Could they have come up with complex behaviors that we just don’t understand yet? Could they have their own language? Their own culture? Their own comp...

After years of development, lab-grown fish is taste-test ready for the public. Four restaurants in the US are serving up cultivated salmon made by the company Wildtype. Producer Kathleen Davis gives H...

Do science documentaries need a refresh? What if the goal wasn’t just teaching you something, but making you feel something? A new series from the BBC, airing on PBS, called “Human” tries to do just t...

TikTok and other social media sites are full of mental health content—often short, grabby, first-person videos detailing symptoms for conditions like ADHD and autism. But what does this mean for teens...

We’re taking a polar plunge into the science of sea unicorns, also known as narwhals!Narwhals are mysterious arctic whales with long, twirly tusks protruding from their foreheads, like a creature out...

Astrophysicists may have spotted evidence for “dark stars,” an unusual type of star that could possibly have existed in the earliest days of the universe, in data from the James Webb Space Telescope....

AI is everywhere these days, and though there’s debate about how useful it is, one area where experts think it could be game-changing is scientific research. It promised to be particularly useful for...

It’s easy to take maps for granted. After all, most of us have a pretty good map in our pockets at all times, ready to show us how to get anywhere on the globe. But to make a map useful, you have to d...

It seems like every week, there’s a new headline about some kind of sci-fi-esque organ transplant. Think eyeballs, 3D-printed kidneys, pig hearts.In her new book, Replaceable You: Adventures in Human...

Remember “The Biggest Loser”—the show where people tried to lose as much weight as quickly as possible for a big cash prize? The premise of the show was that weight loss was about willpower: With enou...

In July 1925, physicist Werner Heisenberg wrote a letter to Wolfgang Pauli sharing his new ideas about what would eventually become known as quantum theory. A hundred years later, that theory has been...

This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to three people whose combined discoveries outlined the role of the peripheral immune system—how the immune system knows to attack just foreign i...

It’s World Space Week, and we’re fueling up the rocket for a tour of some missions and projects that could provide insights into major space mysteries. Astrophysicist Hakeem Oluseyi joins Host Flora L...