Science, Spoken
2,361 episodes — Page 8 of 48
Climate Freeloaders Are Destroying the Planet
Governments are ignoring calls to stop fossil fuel expansion—despite there being little time left to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Is the Lightest Paint in the World
An energy-saving coating needs no pigments, and it keeps the surface beneath it 30 degrees cooler. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Quest for Injectable Brain Implants Has Begun
The hard electrodes inserted into the brain to treat Parkinson’s and paralysis damage the organ’s soft tissue. A new invention could change that. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Climate Report That Foretells Humanity’s Future
The IPCC’s synopsis of the state of climate science warns that we’re running out of time to avoid ever-worsening disaster. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Your Tap Water Is Filthy, but That Could Finally Change
The US is proposing bold action to clean thousands of “forever chemicals” out of drinking water. It’s long overdue. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How a Beam of Pellets Could Blast a Probe Into Deep Space
Researchers seek to develop advanced propulsion systems that can transform long-distance space exploration. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Create Your Optimal Bedtime Routine
We asked experts how to craft a more intentional, peace-filled ritual to support a better night’s sleep. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How to Lucid Dream (Even if You Think You Can’t)
Want to take control inside your dreams? Turns out it’s a skill you can practice. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Electron Is Having a (Magnetic) Moment. It’s a Big Deal
A new experiment pulled off the most precise measurement of an electron’s self-generated magnetic field—and the universe’s subatomic model is at stake. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The World’s First 3D-Printed Rocket Is About to Launch
Relativity Space’s attempt to reach orbit heralds the increasing use of 3D printing in the space sector. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
No One Knows if You Need Another Covid Booster
It’s cellular immunity, not antibodies, that probably protects against the coronavirus’s worst effects—and scientists haven’t worked out how long it lasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
It’s Time for a Flu Vaccine—for Birds
Avian influenza has killed millions of birds. Shots to prevent it already exist. Why isn’t the entire poultry industry using them? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Tiny, Explosive ‘Jetlets’ Might Be Fueling the Solar Wind
Scientists investigated a weird feature in Parker Solar Probe data—and may have discovered what drives the plasma that pervades the solar system. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Food System Is Awful for the Climate. It Doesn’t Have to Be
New modeling estimates that food production could add a degree Celsius to global warming. But it also points to powerful ways to make diets more sustainable. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
As Kenya’s Crops Fail, a Fight Over GMOs Rages
Faced with extreme drought, Kenya’s president approved a controversial new crop for farmers. Then the legal backlash began. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Old Are You, Really? New Tests Want to Tell You
About a dozen such consumer tests are now on the market, but the science of reading DNA for insights about longevity is still young. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Disruptors Who Want to Make Death Greener
Startups rush to gain a foothold in a burgeoning industry as New York and California move to legalize human composting. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Cute Animals Are Overrated. Let’s Save the Weird Ones
One million species are at risk of extinction, but a handful of charismatic creatures get all the hype. A new conservation strategy has a different focus. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
You Can Turn Your Backyard Into a Biodiversity Hotspot
New research shows that if done right, urban farms and gardens can support all kinds of species—for the good of people and the environment. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
No One Knows If Decades-Old Nukes Would Actually Work
Atomic weapons are complex, sensitive, and often pretty old. With testing banned, countries have to rely on good simulations to trust their weapons work. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
On-Demand Rocket Launches Are Coming
In a factory on the outskirts of Glasgow, aerospace manufacturer Skyrora is building rockets for a space-bound taxi service for satellites. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Stroke Paralyzed Her Arm. This Implant Let Her Use It Again
Electrical stimulation applied to the spinal cord temporarily restored arm and hand movement in two patients. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Rovers Are So Yesterday. It’s Time to Send a Snakebot to Space
The student winners of a NASA competition designed a serpentine bot that could sidewind across lunar regolith or roll down hills. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Bother Bringing Back the Dodo?
Audacious plans to resurrect the long-extinct bird could be lucrative. But the moonshot raises thorny philosophical questions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Bold Plan to Beam Solar Energy Down From Space
The European Space Agency is exploring a unique way to dramatically cut carbon emissions by tapping sunlight closer to the source. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
MDMA and Psilocybin Are Approved as Medicines for the First Time
Many are celebrating Australia’s decision to pave the way for these psychedelic therapies, but questions around accessibility remain. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Secret to Making Concrete That Lasts 1,000 Years
Scientists have uncovered the Roman recipe for self-repairing cement—which could massively reduce the carbon footprint of the material today. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Did the Seeds of Life Ride to Earth Inside an Asteroid?
Biological amino acids could have celestial or terrestrial roots. An experiment simulated their formation in deep space—but the mystery isn’t solved yet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
How Sensor-Dangling Helicopters Can Help Beat the Water Crisis
A simultaneous solution to California’s extreme drought and flooding is to bank more water underground. Send in the choppers (and a few ATVs). Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
A Looming El Niño Could Dry the Amazon
When a warm band of water develops in the Pacific, drought grips the rainforest. The Amazon, devastated by deforestation and fires, is especially vulnerable. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Scientists Grew Mini Human Guts Inside Mice
These tiny organoids with working immune systems mimic the function of the GI tract and could be used to study intestinal diseases and drugs to treat them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
At Last, the Milky Way Gets a Better Close Up
The largest catalog ever collected by a single telescope maps Earth’s 3 billion stellar neighbors—and helps track the dust that warps how we see them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The World’s Farms Are Hooked on Phosphorus. It’s a Problem
Half of the globe’s crop productivity comes from a key fertilizer ingredient that’s non-renewable—and literally washing away. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Not Cover Ugly Parking Lots With Solar Panels?
In France, a plan to cover swaths of asphalt with photovoltaics will bring renewable energy even closer to urban areas where it’s needed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Hey EV Owners: It’d Take a Fraction of You to Prop Up the Grid
If you agree to provide some of your car’s battery power in times of high energy demand, you’ll get paid, and help make the grid more stable. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
It’s Not Sci-Fi—NASA Is Funding These Mind-Blowing Projects
The space agency gave money to researchers working on liquid telescope mirrors, a lunar oxygen pipeline, and Martian building blocks made of fungi. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Medieval monks were, in many ways, the original LinkedIn power users
Focusing wasn’t much easier in the time before electricity or on-demand TV. In fact, you probably have a lot in common with these super-distracted monks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Scientific Fraud Is Slippery to Catch—but Easier to Combat
Fakery spans “beautified” data, photoshopped images, and “paper mills.” Experts and institutions are employing tools to spot deceptive research and mitigate its reach. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Lasers Are Mapping Scotland’s Mysterious Iron Age Passages
Digitized archaeology is making souterrains—subterranean passages in the Highlands—accessible in a way Indiana Jones could only dream of. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Tonga Eruption Is Still Revealing New Volcanic Dangers
One year later, researchers are still marveling at the power of the Hunga Tonga explosion—and wondering how to monitor hundreds of other undersea volcanoes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
This Seriously Hipster Bean Is Coffee’s Best Hope for Survival
Climate change is straining the world’s two favorite coffee species. Could a resilient 19th-century alternative solve the brew’s existential crisis? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The Key to California's Survival Is Hidden Underground
The state is ping-ponging between severe drought and catastrophic flooding. The solution to both? Making the landscape spongier. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why the Search for Life in Space Starts With Ancient Earth
Need to estimate, from trillions of miles away, how likely another world is to host life? There’s a flowchart for that. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
The US Just Greenlit High-Tech Alternatives to Animal Testing
Lab animals have long borne the brunt of drug safety trials. A new law allows drugmakers to use miniature tissue models or "organs on chips" instead. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
What This Fearsome Weapon Reveals About Early Americans
The hottest West Coast tech 16,000 years ago was a “projectile point” for hunting game. Though tiny, the artifact tells an outsize tale. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Meet the Earth’s Lawyers
ClientEarth helps shape new laws and enforce old ones to protect the planet and its most vulnerable inhabitants. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Climate Enforcers Need Hard Evidence. Friederike Otto Has It
World Weather Attribution ties disasters and extreme conditions to climate change—providing crucial leverage for legal and policy battles. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Why Do You Get Sick in the Winter? Blame Your Nose
A new study shows that as temperatures drop, nasal cells release fewer of the tiny protectors that bind and neutralize invading germs. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Drug Shortages Aren’t New. The Tripledemic Just Made You Look
Flu meds and prescription drugs have been in short supply all winter—but the problem goes back over a decade. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
In the Next Pandemic, Let’s Pay People to Get Vaccinated
Data from Sweden and the US suggests cash incentives increase uptake without denting people’s trust in vaccines or future willingness to get them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices