Science, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

An Underwater Skin Sensor Lets Swimmers Track Their Sweat Jan 30, 2019

Show notes

Sports teams collect sweat to analyze athlete performance, while companies market sweat replacement drinks and sweat-removal clothing to help keep sprinters, cyclists and tennis players happy. But so far, swimmers have been left high and dry. Today a team of researchers announced they have built a small, flexible, wireless sensor that sticks to a swimmer’s skin, allowing athletes to measure how much they need to drink during a workout or race.

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

SpaceX Revs Its Engines as It Gets Closer to Crewed Flight Jan 30, 2019

Show notes

Last Thursday, a shiny new SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sat perched atop NASA’s historic Pad 39A, at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, waiting to briefly fire its engines. The exercise was part of a routine pre-launch test. What wasn’t routine was the presence of a Crew Dragon capsule atop the slick black-and-white Falcon.

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

And Now, the Weather: Mars-like, With a Chance of Apocalypse Jan 29, 2019

Show notes

Depending on who you are and what you’re into, Earth isn’t particularly habitable. OK, sure, if you’re some kind of polyextremophile microorganism, the world is your oyster. Even oysters are your oyster. You can manage temperatures down to -10 degrees and up to 250 degrees, high salt levels, no light, and a local pH—a measurement of acidity—of zero. That is sour. But then, if you’re a polyextremophile microorganism, you’re probably not a reader. No offense.

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

This App Lets Kenya's Farmers Monitor Crops From Eyes in the Sky Jan 29, 2019

Show notes

Climate change is the most horrific threat our species has ever known: No matter how powerful you are or how much money you have, our transforming planet is a reckoning for every one of us. But there are degrees to this misery. If you’re perched in a Manhattan penthouse, the effects might not be immediately apparent (because you don’t care or aren’t paying attention, or both). If you’re a subsistence farmer in Kenya, the situation is already much more dire.

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

The Excruciating, Impossible Science of Airport Delays Jan 28, 2019

Show notes

Friday morning began with delays at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. That’s not unusual—New York’s airports are famously balky. But this time, the cause wasn't something prosaic, like a blizzard. It was staffing. Because of the federal government shutdown, the airport didn’t have enough Transportation Security Administration agents and air traffic controllers; things slowed to a ground stop.

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

We Need a Radical New Way to Understand Screen Use Jan 25, 2019

Show notes

To anyone reading this on a phone, tablet, laptop, or desktop (so, you know, basically all of you): We need to talk about how we talk about screen use. For too long the conversation’s been stuck on how much time we spend on our devices, and the effect that time has on our well-being. The more salient question for a society in which people’s lives increasingly revolve around screens is how we spend that time. But to answer that question, we need better data.

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

Drones Drop Poison Bombs to Fight One Island’s Rat Invasion Jan 25, 2019

Show notes

I get the feeling you don’t dislike rats enough. Because your struggles with the rodents chewing through your house pale in comparison to the problems wrought by rodents chewing through entire island ecosystems. Release just one pregnant rat on an island and soon enough the invasive predators will have decimated that pristine environment like an atom bomb.

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

One Scientist Hopes to Engineer the Climate With Antacid Jan 24, 2019

Show notes

To help cure the planet’s ailments, Zhen Dai suggests antacid. In powdered form, calcium carbonate—often used to relieve upset stomachs—can reflect light; by peppering the sky with the shiny white particles, the Harvard researcher thinks it might be possible to block just enough sunlight to achieve some temperature control here on Earth.

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

The Water in Your Toilet Could Fight Climate Change One Day Jan 24, 2019

Show notes

Day after day, you pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, whether you’re driving or turning on lights or eating meat. You can’t help it, because really, no human can. But I bet you haven’t stopped to think about how the simple act of pooping is also part of the problem: Worldwide, wastewater treatment facilities account for 3 percent of electricity consumption and contribute 1.6 percent of emissions. A drop in the horrifying bucket that is climate change, you might say.

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

We Can Still Avoid a Repeat of Last Year's Deadly Flu Season Jan 23, 2019

Show notes

As flu season nears its annual peak, between eight and nine and a half million people in the US have already been sickened by various strains of the respiratory virus, according to new estimates released Friday by federal health officials. That report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also estimates that approximately 100,000 people have been hospitalized for complications resulting from the flu. It’s still too soon to know how bad the 2018-2019 season will be.

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

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected