Science, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

The ‘Surreal’ Frenzy Inside the US’ Biggest Mask Maker Mar 23, 2020

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Prestige Ameritech typically makes 250,000 masks a day. Now it's manufacturing 1 million daily, and turning away orders for 100 million more.Â

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Mass Panic Is Unlikely, Even During a Pandemic Mar 20, 2020

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Hollywood tells us humans are prone to lose all rationality in a disaster, looting and trampling one another. But that’s not giving our brains any credit.

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How Long Does the Coronavirus Last on Surfaces? Mar 19, 2020

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Researchers looked at how long the virus can survive on cardboard, plastic, and stainless steel, as well as after being aerosolized and suspended in midair.

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What's Social Distancing? Flattening the Curve? Your Covid-19 Questions, Answered. Mar 18, 2020

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Everything you need to know about the coronavirus.

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Scientists Chase Snowflakes During the Warmest Winter Ever Mar 17, 2020

Show notes

Inside a cavernous hangar at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility along the Virginia coast, a gleaming white P-3 Orion aircraft sits parked under harsh floodlights. It’s just after midnight and a group of scientists, technicians and graduate students cluster underneath a wing, peering at a 5-inch crack in one of the ailerons that the pilot uses to maneuver the plane. Their disappointment is palpable.

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The Sea Is Getting Warmer. Will the Shrimp Get Louder? Mar 16, 2020

Show notes

The ocean is normally a fairly noisy place, with the sounds of happy dolphins, lonely whales and diesel-chugging ships saturating the undersea world. But climate change may turn up the volume on this liquid symphony as warmer sea temperatures boost the volume of noise produced by the small but incredibly loud percussionist in this orchestra: the snapping shrimp. This crustacean uses its oversize claw as a bubble-forming pistol of sorts, snapping it at more than 210 decibels.

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How UFO Sightings Became an American Obsession Mar 13, 2020

Show notes

In 1947, Kenneth Arnold was flying his CallAir A-2 between Chehalis and Yakima, Washington, when he took a detour to search for a downed Marine Corps aircraft. There was a reward for anyone who could find the plane, and who couldn’t use $5,000? Arnold flew around searching for a while, and accidentally found something else—something much stranger than what he’d actually been looking for. As he watched, rapt, nine objects flew through the air in formation.

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Plane Contrails Have a Surprising Effect on Global Warming Mar 12, 2020

Show notes

Of the varied conspiracy theories regarding contrails—you know, chemtrails—one stands out for being especially wrong: the belief that the plane-made clouds are chemicals the government is secretly spraying to battle climate change, to the peril of those on the ground. First, contrails are nothing but the incidental result of mixing hot, water-vapor-filled jet engine exhaust with cold air. Second, the government has nothing to do with them.

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Hungry Animals Can Change How Badly a Landscape Burns Mar 11, 2020

Show notes

As California has descended into wildfire hell, with ever bigger blazes burning ever more intensely over the last few years, an unlikely firefighting hero has emerged: the goat. Officials in mountain cities in particular have been hiring herds to hoover up overgrown vegetation, creating fire breaks around the edges of towns. It’s what these ungulates—and their brethren the world over—are born to do.

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Think Flash Floods Are Bad? Buckle Up for Flash Droughts Mar 10, 2020

Show notes

In late spring of 2012, climactic chaos descended upon the Midwest and Great Plains in the midst of the growing season. A drought is supposed to unfold on a timeline of seasons to years, but in the two weeks between June 12 and 26, the High Plains went from what a monitoring group called “abnormally dry” to “severe drought.

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