Science Friday

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Life Sciences
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Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday is the source for entertaining and educational stories about science, technology, and other cool stuff.

1 hr ago

Hot flashes and hormone therapy: the science of perimenopause

Perimenopause affects more than 4 billion people, but has historically been neglected by medicine. It’s the time before menopause when hormones start fluctuating wildly, leaving women with brain fog, hot flashes, dropping bone density, and mood changes. Thanks in part to social media, it’s more prominent in public discourse than it used to be. But it’s not just awareness that’s blown up: It’s also the promise that you don’t have to suffer like those before you, thanks to hormone therapy. After decades of controversy over prescribing estradiol and progesterone due to concerns of increased breast cancer and heart disease risk, new research has many providers reconsidering their approach. Joining Flora to sort out the science are reproductive endocrinologists Nanette Santoro and Genevieve Neal-Perry, who are both running some of the biggest long-term studies on perimenopause and the effects of hormone therapy. Guests: Dr. Nanette Santoro is a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz and is the president of the Endocrine Society. Dr. Genevieve Neal-Perry is a reproductive endocrinologist and the OB-GYN department chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
1 day ago

Telling the tale of human origins, one fossil tooth at a time

Where did we come from? How did humanity, with our complicated civilizations and all our human quirks and foibles, come to be? Much of what we know about those questions traces back to important fossil finds in Ethiopia. Paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie has been key in that hunt for answers. A skilled fossil-finder, he’s helped discover some of the most important known hominid fossils, including the bones used to describe the 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus garhi, the first pieces of a 4.4-million-year-old partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, and fossils of the 5.8-million-year-old Ardipithecus kadabba, to name a few. He joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about what fieldwork is really like, big questions in human origins, and making the field of paleoanthropology more equitable. Guest: Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie is the director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, and a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
2 days ago

Did the fire at the Library of Alexandria set humanity back?

In 48 B.C.E., a massive fire ripped through the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, one of the largest and most significant ancient libraries. An estimated 100,000 works of literature were lost. Throughout history, there are lots of examples of things being “lost”: cities, like Pompeii, graves of figures like Genghis Khan, and works of art from masters like Leonardo di Vinci. Author Sam Kean explores these historical losses in his new book, “The Museum of Lost Things.” He joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what we can learn from them. Read an excerpt from “The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary Cities, and Mythical Creatures That Vanished From History” Guest: Sam Kean is the author of eight books, including “The Museum of Lost Things." He is based in Washington, D.C. Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
3 days ago

Black bears are moving into the neighborhood. How do we coexist?

Living with black bears is complicated. They’re huge, hungry, and they really don’t care about your hostas. After a long period of being overhunted, black bears are on the rebound. And as they begin returning to parts of their native ranges, they’re finding humans there, too. Reporter Cassandra Stephenson joins Flora to talk about how these interactions are playing out in southeastern states. Then, carnivore ecologist Nyeema Harris joins to discuss best practices for coexistence. Guests: Cassandra Stephenson covers issues impacting rural West Tennessee as a Report for America corps member at The Tennessee Lookout. She’s based in Nashville. Dr. Nyeema Harris is an associate professor of wildlife and land conservation at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
5 days ago

Is a shorter course of antibiotics OK? + Genetic risk of fibromyalgia

You’ve probably been warned that if you don’t finish that course of antibiotics, you could wind up battling antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But a growing body of research suggests that the opposite might be true. What does this mean for you and your next sinus infection? Flora talks with antimicrobial resistance expert Amy Mathers to find out. Plus, the driver of fibromyalgia, a condition that can cause debilitating chronic pain and brain fog, has been something of a mystery. Patients’ imaging and blood work often turn up normal, and many have felt dismissed by doctors. A recent large-scale study identified a group of genes associated with the disease, a breakthrough that may help doctors understand people’s risk of developing the condition and reveal something about the nature of this mysterious illness. Flora talks with Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong, one of the study’s lead authors. Guests: Dr. Amy Mathers is medical director of antimicrobial stewardship and an associate professor of medicine and pathology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Dr. Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong is an assistant professor of computational biology and public health at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Washington state. Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
6 days ago

Why cannabis’s health effects are so hard to study

When states began legalizing recreational cannabis a couple decades ago, 25 million Americans said they used the drug. That number nearly tripled to 70 million by 2023. There are a lot of open questions about how it affects us. Why do some people find more pain relief from THC than traditional painkillers? Is it really better for sleep? What are the effects of long-term use? Host Flora Lichtman is joined by two scientists taking on these kinds of questions: Experimental psychologist Ryan Vandrey, who’s studied the health effects of cannabis for 26 years, and neuropsychologist Natasha Wade, who studies the effects of substance abuse on adolescent brains. She recently analyzed data from 11,000 teens to understand how cannabis affects development. Guests: Dr. Ryan Vandrey is an experimental psychologist and professor at the Johns Hopkins University Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit and helps lead the Johns Hopkins Cannabis Science Lab. Dr. Natasha Wade is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego and licensed clinical neuropsychologist. Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
10 Sept

Did scientists just find a dark matter particle? Maybe

There’s a flashy new find in the hunt for dark matter—the stuff that makes up 85% of all matter in the universe, but we have no clue what it is. A mile under Lead, South Dakota, is a giant cauldron filled with 7 tons of liquid xenon, encased in water and surrounded by super-sensitive photodetectors. Known as the LZ detector, its job is to look for flashes of light that come from particles bumping into xenon atoms. And during its observations, the researchers saw a very weird flash—a bump that doesn’t look like it came from any particle we know of. Flora talks with physicist Richard Gaitskell about the hunt for a dark matter particle and why he’s excited about this weird little finding. Guest: Dr. Richard Jeremy Gaitskell is a physicist at Brown University and a leading scientist in the search for particle dark matter. He is a co-founder of the Large Underground Xenon experiment. Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
9 Sept

Why physics and philosophy need each other

Once upon a time, much of what we call “science” was performed by people called “natural philosophers,” delving into mysteries of nature, physics, chemistry, and more. Physicist and author Carlo Rovelli argues that there’s still a great need for philosophy, and that the two fields can and should learn from each other in investigating reality. Rovelli joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about big ideas in physics, and his new book, “On The Equality of All Things: Lessons on Physics and Philosophy.” Read an excerpt from “On The Equality of All Things.” Guest: Dr. Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and the author of “On The Equality of Things.” Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

See All (1.4k)

Ira Flatow

Host
Flora Lichtman

Host
Yohannes Haile-Selassie

Guest
Sam Kean

Guest
Cassandra Stephenson

Guest
Nyeema Harris

Guest
Dr. Amy Mathers

Guest
Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong

Guest
Natasha Wade

Guest
Richard Jeremy Gaitskell

Guest

Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday is the source for entertaining and educational stories about science, technology, and other cool stuff.