Animal Storm Detection
A listener asks: Can animals sense natural disasters before they happen?
Podcast
A snail hides in plain sight. A high-speed continental collision. And what fossils tell us about future extinctions.
Podcast
Chewing gum that's not sticky. Worms and bacteria team up. Some very hairy genetics. And more.
Podcast
Whale-inspired windmills. Tracing the origins of a killer asteroid. Using vowels to sell. And more.
Hot Ice Roundup
Science fiction becomes science fact: Researchers have invented ice that won't melt and a way to make people invisible.
Podcast
Antibiotics made out of Teflon. A new diet for chickens. A virus that can cause obesity? Why things aren't quite as bad as we think they'll be. And just how fast can dolphins swim?
Podcast
Sparrows that prefer up-to-date songs, glaciers and global warming, upwardly mobile robots, bacteria to combat oil spills, and how self-tanners work.
Podcast
Do women really talk more than men? Insects that explode to foil predators. Energy from vibrations. What happens to our brains when we get thirsty. A skin test to predict behavioral problems.
Harvesting Vibrations
New devices generate power from environmental vibrations.
Alien Life Roundup
Extraterrestrial life could be very different from life as we know it.
Podcast
How the solar system formed, determining the standard for the kilogram, how brain damage affects art, cancer drugs from trees, protecting ports with underwater using sound.
Podcast
The dinosaur extinction may have been stinky, carbon emission rates may be worse than was thought, wild wheat plants itself, a cow with naturally skim milk, and what sound sounds like on other planets.
Podcast
Lasers + diamonds = cool physics, TV ads make kids eat more junk food, the domestic robot is inching closer to reality, talking about sin could lead to it, and a listener asks why allergies exist.
Diamonds and Lasers
A new technique uses diamonds and lasers to squeeze materials to high pressures.
Podcast
How supernovas make heavy elements, why teenagers have angst, some fierce arachnids get cuddly, why tanning is addictive, and the thinnest material ever made.
Thinnest Material
A new material is so thin it makes tissue paper look like a brick.
Podcast
Using ultrasound to find expensive wood, how cheese is helping to fight a tree fungus, the connection between prostate cancer and a lack of male sons, the division in your brain, and the secret to a ultra-white beetle.
Podcast
The secret of a Stradivarius violin, how giraffes block a head rush, using bees for homeland security, saving seagrass, and a strange new ingredient in the interstellar soup.