Stay ConnectedNew discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines — in just under 15 minutes. It’s science for everyone, using a lot of creativity and a little humor. Join hosts Emily Kwong and Regina Barber for science on a different wavelength.
Support public media by joining NPR+ at plus.npr.org. You’ll get perks for over 25 NPR podcasts, including sponsor-free listening for Short Wave.
Copyright: © Copyright 2019-2026 NPR - For Personal Use Only
Winter is upon us – and with the holiday travel and time spent indoors comes a triple threat of respiratory diseases: RSV, flu and COVID-19. Most of the country has been experiencing high or very high respiratory virus levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Host Regina G. Barber talks with NPR health correspondent Pien Huang about the annual 'tripledemic': what makes this winter different from winters past, who's most at risk and whether or not we're over the seasonal surge.
Want to hear about another health story making headlines? Email us about it at shortwave@npr.org — we might cover it on a future episode!
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Time is a concept so central to our daily lives. Yet, the closer scientists look at it, the more it seems to fall apart. Time ticks by differently at sea level than it does on a mountaintop. The universe's expansion slows time's passage. "And some scientists think time might not even be 'real' — or at least not fundamental," says NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel. In this encore episode, Geoff joins Short Wave Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber to bend our brains with his learnings about the true nature of time. Along the way, we visit the atomic clocks at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, consider distant exploding stars and parse the remains of subatomic collisions.
Want to know more about fundamental physics? Email shortwave@npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
If you work at home or in an office, you might spend a lot of your day sitting down and staring at a computer screen. That can have lots of negative effects – but it's hard to carve out significant time in the day to counteract that.
Our friends at NPR's TED Radio Hour wanted to know if small, frequent movement breaks might do the trick instead. Along with Columbia University Medical Center, they conducted a study of over 20,000 listeners and asked them to incorporate these movement breaks into their day. Today on the show, TED Radio Hour's Manoush Zomorodi digs into the surprising preliminary results with Columbia University researcher Keith Diaz.
Ideas to get moving? We want to hear them! Get in touch at shortwave@npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Since they were discovered in 2019, strange, glowing circles of light in space have mystified researchers. Now called odd radio circles, or ORCs, these rings of light sit in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. They pulse out of the centers of some galaxies – and until now, no one knew why.
In this episode, host Regina G. Barber talks to Alison Coil, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California San Diego, about her latest research. They break down what ORCs are, where they come from and what they might reveal about how galaxies evolve over billions of years.
Wondering about other happenings across the universe? Email us at shortwave@npr.org – we'd love to hear about it!
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Human beings are hardwired for social connection – so much so that we think of even the most basic objects as having feelings or experiences. (Yup, we're talking to you, Roomba owners!) Social robots add a layer to this. They're designed to make us feel like they're our friends. They can do things like care for children, the elderly or act as partners. But there's a darker side to them, too. They may encourage us to opt out of authentic, real-life connections, making us feel more isolated.
Today on the show, host Regina G. Barber explores the duality of social robots with Eve Herold, author of the new book Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots.
Curious about other innovations in technology? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
A winter storm brought heavy rain and snow to parts of the East Coast this weekend, which got us thinking about snowflakes. Those intricate, whimsical crystals are a staple of magical wintry scenes, but how big can they really get? Well, according to the Guinness World Record keepers, the "largest snowflake" ever recorded was a whopping 15 inches in diameter. It was spotted near Missoula, Montana in 1887. But Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at Caltech, has long been skeptical of that record. So he set out to find what makes a snowflake a snowflake and whether that 1887 record is scientifically possible. You can read more about what he discovered here.
Want to share the snowflakes you've spotted this winter? Email us a photo at shortwave@npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
The winter is usually when insects die or go into a state of paused development, but for tiny specks on the white snow called snow flies, it's time to run around, find a lover and make baby snow flies. Neuroscientist John Tuthill has been studying these creatures since he first came across them in 2016. He's found that not only can they survive in the cold, but if one of their limbs starts to freeze, they can self-amputate and pop it right off. That buys the snow fly time to find a mate and make sweet, sweet snow fly love.
Interested in other winter biology? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we'd love to hear from you!
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
In celebration of our 1000th episode, we're wrapping our heads around big numbers. Educational neuroscientist Elizabeth Toomarian talks about why humans' evolutionarily-old brains are so bad at comprehending large quantities–like the national debt and the size of the universe–and how to better equip ourselves to understand important issues like our finances and the impacts of climate change.
Interested in other ways our brains make sense of the world? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Ever gotten a scarlet, hot face after drinking? Or know someone who has? Many people felt it as they ring in the New Year with champagne toasts. That's because this condition, commonly called "Asian flush" or "Asian glow," affects an estimated half a BILLION people, who can't break down aldehyde toxins that build up in their bodies. But what if there's a benefit to having Asian glow?
Katie Wu, a staff writer for The Atlantic, has looked into the research a theory as to why the condition might have been a powerful tool for some of our ancestors to survive disease.
Read Katie's article to learn more.
Questions about other potential tradeoffs for our genetics? Email us at shortwave@npr.org. We've love to hear from you and we might cover it in a future episode!
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
2023 was filled with scientific innovation, exploration and new discoveries. A few of the biggest threads we saw unraveling this year came from the James Webb Space Telescope, the changing climate and artificial intelligence. Today, host Regina G. Barber wraps up these three areas of science news with the help of correspondent Geoff Brumfiel and All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro.
Got more science news? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
