Science, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

NASA Is Ready To Get Down To Space Business, and More News Jun 10, 2019

Show notes

NASA is welcoming for-profit companies to space, Californians are slipping out of their measles vaccinations, and we've got some Father's Day gift ideas for you. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

California’s Vaccination Rate Slips as Medical Exemptions Rise Jun 10, 2019

Show notes

In the last few years California has gained ground in its fight to protect children from infectious diseases. But new data released this week shows that the state’s vaccination rate declined for the second year in a row. Last fall 94.8 percent of California kindergartners had received all their shots, down from 95.6 in 2016-2017. That drop may look small, but California has about as many kindergartners as Wyoming has people.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monterey Bay Is a Natural Wonder—Poisoned With Microplastic Jun 07, 2019

Show notes

California’s Monterey Bay is one of the more pure, more dynamic coastal ecosystems on Earth. Otters—once hunted nearly to extinction—float among towering kelp forests, which themselves have rebounded thanks to the booming otter population’s appetite for kelp-loving sea urchins. Great whites visit from time to time, as do all manner of whales and dolphins. All told, it’s one of the greatest success stories in the history of oceanic conservation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What to Do About CO2? Try Stuffing It Into the Gulf of Mexico Jun 07, 2019

Show notes

What if Texas oilmen (oilfolks?) could save the planet from climate change? Hardy-har-har. Given that the Lone Star State ranks sixth in heat-trapping carbon emissions worldwide, just behind Germany and ahead of South Korea, the idea sounds pretty far-fetched. But some recent developments have made the prospect a bit more conceivable. Texas is all about oil and gas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Telemedicine Makes It Safe to Get Abortion Drugs in the Mail Jun 06, 2019

Show notes

Every restriction on access to abortion draws the metaphoric walls closer. On who can dispense drugs, on what clinical tests are required first, on how far along the pregnancy can be—the rules are all designed to delay, deter, and delegitimize. It’s a Death Star Trash Compactor. The box around abortion gets smaller and smaller. That’s policymaking; technology, meanwhile, tends to see boxes as something to think outside of.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Mythical Form of Space Propulsion Finally Gets a Real Test Jun 06, 2019

Show notes

Since the birth of the space age, the dream of catching a ride to another solar system has been hobbled by the “tyranny of the rocket equation,” which sets hard limits on the speed and size of the spacecraft we sling into the cosmos. Even with today’s most powerful rocket engines, scientists estimate it would take 50,000 years to reach our closest interstellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If humans ever hope to see an alien sunrise, transit times will have to drop significantly.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drugs That Boost Our Circadian Rhythms Could Save Our Lives Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

This story is part of a series on how we make time—from productivity hacks and long walks to altering the function of our own circadian clocks. Before there was electricity or the internet or screens illuminated by thousands of liquid crystals rotating polarized pulses of photons, humans mostly lived by the daily comings and goings of the yellow burning ball of gas in the sky.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tired: Eating Bugs. Wired: Eating Bug Meat Grown in a Lab Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

Depending on whom you ask, the future of food is plant-based burgers that bleed. Or we should all be eating insects instead of cows. Or we need to grow hamburgers in the lab by culturing cells, thus avoiding having to feed and hydrate legions of cows burping up greenhouse gases. Or how about we mash these up a bit: What if we grew not beef in the lab, but insect meat? According to a group of researchers at Tufts, culturing bugs could be easier and more efficient than culturing cow cells.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Military Is Locked in a Power Struggle With Wind Farms Jun 04, 2019

Show notes

When Lt. Col. Joseph Goana takes off in his T-38 Talon training jet, he flies a loop north toward the Red River, which forms a meandering border between north Texas and southern Oklahoma. For decades, the remote farming area has been an ideal training ground for Air Force pilots like Goana. But in recent years, he says there’s been a new obstacle: wind turbines that now generate a third of Oklahoma’s electricity and 17 percent of the power in Texas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Study Exposes the Health Risks of Gene-Editing Human Embryos Jun 04, 2019

Show notes

A missing chunk of DNA, 32 base pairs long and smack in the middle of the CCR5 gene, might be the most studied mutation in human history. The spontaneous deletion, which arose thousands of years ago, has a striking relationship with one of the worst human diseases: HIV/AIDS. People who inherit this mutation from both of their parents are naturally immune. The only two people to have ever been cured both received bone marrow transplants from people who carry the Î”32 mutation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected