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New York: The city that never sleeps, the concrete jungle where dreams are made of and more recently ... home to a mysterious ant spreading across the city — before continuing across metropolitan and even state lines. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce joins host Regina G. Barber to trace the MahattAnts' takeover, explain why they're an interesting invasive species case study. Plus, how everyday people can get involved in research efforts to learn more about these critters.
Read more of Nell's ManhattAnt story here.And if you like this story, check out our story on ant amputation!
Interested in hearing more animal news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
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Have you ever scrolled through a TikTok without finishing it? Switched between YouTube videos halfway through one or the other? Pressed "fast forward" on a Netflix episode that just wasn't holding your interest? That habit is called "digital switching" — and it might be causing the exact thing you're trying to avoid: boredom. Emily and Regina break that and more of the week's news down with the help of All Things Considered's Ailsa Chang.
Read this study on digital switching and boredom in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Interested in hearing more psychology news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
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U.S. health officials now say COVID-19 is an endemic disease. That means it's here to stay – circulating fairly regularly like the flu. Even though that changes how public health officials think about managing the virus, they say it doesn't mean being less cautious or vigilant during surges, like the current one this summer. COVID still poses significant risks for older individuals and those with underlying conditions — and anyone who gets COVID is at risk of developing long COVID.
NPR science correspondent Rob Stein reported this story. Read Rob's full story here.
Interested in hearing more COVID or health news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
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All summer long, we've been on a 10-episode odyssey through the changing universe (check out the series). But there was one big set of objects that we skipped over: moons. So now we're back, with special guest, Radiolab's Latif Nasser, to talk about yes, our moon — and the many moons and quasi-moons beyond it. Where did our Moon come from? How many moons are out there? What's this "quasi-moon" of which we speak and why is it "dancing" around space?
Also, Latif tells us about Radiolab's contest to name a quasi-moon. Read all the details and submit a name here!
Lunar questions or otherwise celestial musings you think we should cover? We'd love to hear about it! You can reach us by emailing shortwave@npr.org.
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For blind and low vision adults, the ability to read braille can be life-changing. Braille literacy is directly linked to higher rates of academic success and better employment outcomes for them. But there's a problem. The U.S. is facing a national shortage of qualified braille teachers and there's a lack of scientific research around braille overall. An interdisciplinary team led by linguist Robert Englebretson wants to change that.
Read some of the team's work here:
- Englebretson R, Holbrook MC, Fischer-Baum S. A position paper on researching braille in the cognitive sciences: decentering the sighted norm. Applied Psycholinguistics. 2023.
- Englebretson, R., Holbrook, M.C., Treiman, R. et al. The primacy of morphology in English braille spelling: an analysis of bridging contractions. Morphology. 2024.
Interested in hearing more linguistics stories? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
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Some weapons used by the United States military are so powerful, they can pose a threat to the people who fire them — even in training. When weapons are fired, an invisible blast wave travels through the brains of anyone nearby. Exposure to lots of these blasts over time — even low level ones — has been shown to cause brain health problems for service members.
If you liked this episode, consider checking out some more episodes on the brain, including its waste system, face blindness and the neuroscience of loneliness.
Questions or ideas you want us to consider for a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!
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Over the next week, forecasts project extreme heat across much of the South, Midwest and parts of the West. So, this episode, health correspondent Pien Huang helps us take heat training cues from Olympians, many of whom spent weeks preparing for a sweltering Paris Olympics, by training in the heat to get their bodies used to hot, humid weather. But heat training is not just for competitive athletes. It's recommended for people in the military and those who work outdoors in hot weather — and it could even be useful for generally healthy members of the public. Plus, we get into some important caveats about who is best positioned to heat train — and why doing so doesn't minimize the problems of a warming climate.
Check out more of Pien's reporting on heat training.
And, if you liked this episode, consider checking out our episodes on the dew point, the power of sweat and coping with extreme heat.
Questions or ideas you want us to consider for a future episode? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We'd love to hear from you!
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Today, we're bringing you the final installment of our space summer series ... with the end ... of EVERYTHING. Will the universe end in a huge cosmic unraveling? A slow and lonely dissolution? Or a quantum-level transition that breaks the laws of physics? Theoretical astrophysicist Katie Mack breaks down three possible scenarios for how the universe as we know it will finally come to an end.
To celebrate the end of our Space Camp series, we also made a QUIZ! Check it out at npr.org/spacecamp.
Questions? Comments? Existential dread or excitement? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!
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Grizzly bears in the contiguous United States have been taken off — then put back on — the endangered species list twice since they were first labeled as threatened almost 50 years ago. Now, the issue is on the table again. Today, we get into the complicated science behind grizzly recovery, how humans have sliced up their habitat and what it will take to stitch that habitat back together again.
Interested in more charismatic megafauna? Email shortwave@npr.org. We've love to consider covering your favorite on a future episode!
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We at Short Wave have been following all things Olympics, from the medals and new records to the ugly accusations that two women boxers aren't really women. Last year, the boxers failed gender tests, according to the International Boxing Association. The IBA claims the women have a "hormonal imbalance" that gives them women an unfair advantage. The International Olympic Committee has condemned these claims and defended the boxers' right to compete in the women's category. But this Olympics is far from the first time the gender of athletes has been questioned.
NPR's Embedded podcast has a new series called Tested that gets into this history of sex testing in elite sports – in particular, track and field. In this excerpt, host Rose Eveleth digs deep on a big question: What constitutes an "unfair" advantage on the track?
Listen to the full Tested series now.
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