Science Friday

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A Photographer Captures Nature In Mind-Boggling Detail Sep 10, 2025

Show notes

If you’ve flipped through an issue of National Geographic or scrolled through their social media, and caught a stunningly detailed photo of a tiny creature—like one where you can make out the hairs on a honeybee’s eyeballs, or the exact contours of a hummingbird’s forked tongue—you have probably seen the work of Anand Varma. He’s an award-winning science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab, a storytelling studio in Berkeley, California.

Varma speaks with Host Flora Lichtman and takes us behind the lens to show what it takes to capture iconic images of creatures that are so often overlooked.

Guest: Anand Varma is a science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab. He’s based in Berkeley, California.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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How Shoddy Science Is Driving A Supplement Boom Sep 09, 2025

Show notes

Dietary supplements are big business, with one recent estimate showing the industry is worth almost $64 billion in the United States alone. Take a casual scroll through your social media and you’ll find influencers hawking all kinds of supplements. But how effective are they? How are they regulated? And why are these “natural” remedies so appealing to millions of Americans?

To size up the science and culture of supplements, Host Flora Lichtman talks with supplement researcher Pieter Cohen, and Colleen Derkatch, author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture.

Guests: Dr. Pieter Cohen is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at the Cambridge Health Alliance where he leads the Supplement Research Program.
Dr. Colleen Derkatch is the author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture and professor of rhetoric at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Octopuses Use Suckers To ‘Taste’ Harmful Microbes Sep 08, 2025

Show notes

Put on your party hat and wet suit because it is Cephalopod Week, Science Friday’s annual celebration of all things, octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish. To kick things off, we’re bringing you an ode to the octopus arm. You may have heard that octopuses can use their arms to “taste” their surroundings, which they use for finding food. Now, researchers have unlocked a key mechanism in the octopus sensory system. Octopuses use their suckers to detect harmful microbes on the surface of crab shells or even their own eggs.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with molecular biologist Nicholas Bellono about the latest in octopus sensory science.

Guest: Dr. Nicholas Bellono is a professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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After CDC Director Is Ousted, More Senior Officials Resign Sep 05, 2025

Show notes

On August 27, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the White House fired CDC director Susan Monarez after only a month on the job. Right after she was ousted, other senior leaders resigned from the agency, including Demetre Daskalakis, an infectious disease physician and former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.

Dr. Daskalakis speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about the state of the agency and what these developments mean for public health.

Guest: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis is the former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Meet 3I/Atlas, An Object From Another Solar System Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

Earlier this summer, astronomers discovered something strange whizzing past Jupiter: an interstellar object. Scientists named it 3I/ATLAS. It’s only the third interstellar object ever observed, and it’s due to leave the solar system by the end of the year, so the race is on to learn as much as we can about it. Host Flora Lichtman talks with astrochemist Stefanie Milam about what this object could teach us about other solar systems—and ours.

And, for the past two years, researchers have been studying samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu, trying to tease out details about its origins, and what they tell us about our solar system. Researcher Jessica Barnes describes a new analysis of Bennu samples that found stardust, the residue of ancient exploding stars, older than our solar system.

Guests:

Dr. Stefanie Milam is an astrochemist at NASA and a project scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope.
Dr. Jessica Barnes is an associate professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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How Common Household Products Pollute Our Indoor Air Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

You have probably given some thought to outdoor air pollution, whether it’s wildfire smoke or smog from traffic. You may even check AQI measurements on your phone. But what about the air inside your home? Host Flora Lichtman talks to civil and environmental engineer Nusrat Jung, who studies indoor air pollution, about how we create toxic air without even knowing it, and what we can do to avoid it.

Guest: Dr. Nusrat Jung is a civil and environmental engineer at Purdue University.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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The Shape-Shifting Science Of Sand Dunes Sep 02, 2025

Show notes

In some places, sand dunes protect shorelines from the onslaught of ocean waves. In other places, the dunes themselves are on the move, and threaten human structures.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with mechanical engineer Nathalie Vriend, who studies the structure of sand dunes, about what makes a heap of sand a dune, and what scientists still hope to learn about sand.

Guest: Dr. Nathalie Vriend is an associate professor in mechanical engineering and leader of the Granular Flow Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Food Science Experts On Perfecting At-Home Ice Cream Sep 01, 2025

Show notes

Summer may be winding down, but we’re not quite ready to let go of beach days, backyard cookouts, or ice cream cones. We love ice cream here at SciFri, so we’re pulling a few of our favorite ice cream science stories out of the freezer this week.

Back in 2015, ice cream expert Maya Warren sat down with Host Ira Flatow to help us understand a science mystery of “unmeltable” ice cream that made the evening news in Cincinnati.

That same summer, Ira spoke to Jeff Potter, author of Cooking for Geeks, and Brian Smith, founder of Ample Hills Creamery, who give us science-backed tips for making smooth, velvety ice cream at home.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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An ER Doctor Reflects On Hurricane Katrina, 20 Years Later Aug 29, 2025

Show notes

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, and the levees designed to protect New Orleans failed. Huge swaths of the city flooded, and 1,600 people were trapped inside Charity Hospital. Physician Erica Fisher was working in Charity’s emergency room at the time, and she and her colleagues fought for days to keep their patients alive.

Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Dr. Fisher, now an emergency medicine physician at University Medical Center in New Orleans, about Hurricane Katrina and the vulnerability of our healthcare systems in the face of disasters.

Plus, science writer Maggie Koerth joins Flora to share other science news the week, including the link between heat waves and aging, updated COVID vaccine guidelines, the ancient origins of human mucus, and the possibility that dwarf planet Ceres could once have sustained life.

Guest: Dr. Erica Fisher is an emergency medicine physician at University Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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An Archaeologist And A Tattoo Artist Decipher Ancient Ink Aug 28, 2025

Show notes

Researchers recently used near-infrared photography to get a detailed look at ancient artwork showing scenes of wild animals tangled in a fight. But these weren’t paintings on a cave wall. They were tattoos on the arms of a Siberian woman who lived 2,300 years ago. What can ancient ink tell us about our ancestors?

Sticking and poking their way into this with Host Flora Lichtman are archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf and his research collaborator, tattoo artist Danny Riday.

Guests: Aaron Deter-Wolf is an archaeologist for the Tennessee Division of Archaeology in Nashville, Tennessee.
Danny Riday is a tattoo artist and independent researcher based in Les Eyzies, France.

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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