Science Friday

Dr. Masao Tomonaga was only 2 years old when the United States bombed his home city of Nagasaki. He survived, and grew up to become a physician for other survivors, known as hibakusha. He also studied hematology, and his research on leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes was foundational for understanding how radiation affects the body. 

In August 2025, the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he spoke w...

Imagine you wanted to get a general idea of what people are eating in a given community. You could look at grocery store sales, or do surveys, but neither can capture a complete picture. 

Microbiome researcher Lawrence David and his lab look to another source of data: genetic material in sewage water. It turns out that detectable DNA signatures of individual plant and animal species remain behind even after they’ve been ...

"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see."

There’s something about space that captures the imagination of scientists and artists alike. Just ask astrophysicist Derek Ward-Thompson and astronomer Brian May (yes, THAT Brian May, guitarist of Queen). In their book "Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3-D," they turn flat images of the gala...

In nature, enzymes are the catalysts that make much of biology work. They jumpstart chemical reactions that either wouldn’t happen, or would happen super slowly. They break down food, build other molecules, extract energy, and more. What if we could harness evolution to engineer designer enzymes that do other specific jobs that benefit us? 

Putting that idea into practice changed the game for chemistry, and earned France...

Brain cancers are rare, but devastating. Patients face short life expectancies after diagnosis. Brain tumors are often impossible to remove completely. And radiation and chemotherapy don’t always stop them from spreading. 

It’s a daunting class of disease to study, but that didn’t dissuade physician-researcher Michelle Monje from trying. She has spent two decades studying how brain tumors form and interact wi...

Astronaut food is not known as a frontier of culinary imagination, unless you count rehydrated shrimp cocktail. As NASA prepares for longer trips to the moon and Mars, is space cuisine ready for an overhaul? 

Flora speaks with retired astronaut Clayton Anderson, who spent 167 days in space, and chef David Skinner, who has advised NASA on how to make food for astronauts better. 

Guests:

Clayton Anderson spent 15 years as a...

At one point this year, the 50 hottest cities on the planet were all in one country: India. The average peak temperature in those cities was 112 F. India is one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world, and weather disasters, such as heat waves, have become more extreme and more common in recent years. 

So how is this extreme heat affecting people in India? And what needs to change to keep people safe? Flora speak...

About 130 days a year, a research vessel leaves Miami and sets out to catch, measure, sample, tag, and release sharks in Florida’s coastal waters. Over the course of a year, they’ll encounter about 600 animals in a process called “fisheries independent monitoring,” an effort to gather data on sea creatures that isn’t skewed by changes in fishing procedures, equipment, or regulations. 

Mar...

During the early Cold War era, the United States Army and later the NSA began recruiting and training codebreakers and intelligence officers to decipher intercepted Soviet messages.

Among those recruits were a group of highly skilled Black women who were employed as cryptologists to decode these messages. But their role in Cold War intelligence operations has been largely overlooked, until now.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with histor...

The tropical waters of Sri Lanka, an island off the coast of India, are home to a population of blue whales unlike any other. These whales stay put, while every other known population migrates. That discovery was made by budding scientist Asha de Vos more than 20 years ago—it made a splash, and so did she. She later became the first Sri Lankan to earn a PhD studying marine mammals, charting a new scientific path in her countr...

In the last couple months, Vermont, Alabama, and Oklahoma have passed data privacy laws. Massachusetts is negotiating its own version. Meanwhile, congressional lawmakers have introduced national privacy bills that would preempt these state laws.

In light of all this legislation, we’re revisiting an interview from February about how the United States’ data ecosystem makes it possible for any number of government agencies...

In 2020, Andrea Ghez shared the Nobel Prize for her observations of a supermassive compact object at the center of the Milky Way galaxy—an object that has all the hallmarks of a supermassive black hole. Ghez had developed techniques that allowed her to peer through galactic dust clouds with the Keck telescopes and observe the movements of stars orbiting the galactic center. Measuring their velocity and orbits provided informa...

Back in May, a paper published in Nature Sustainability reignited a decades-old debate about coastal Louisiana: Should people leave? Climate researchers wrote that due to rising sea levels, coastal Louisiana has crossed the point of no return and that governments should be making plans now for places like New Orleans to relocate.

Jessica Dandridge-Smith, who runs The Water Collaborative in New Orleans, speaks with Flora about why t...

Pompeii is known for its disastrous end with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but for archeologists, what came before is just as interesting. Researchers are using artifacts left behind in the remarkably well-preserved Roman city to piece together what life was like for the thousands of people who lived there 2,000 years ago. 

A new book and television show analyze some of these clues to tell the stories of the ordinary people ...

An outbreak of the foodborne illness cyclosporiasis has sent thousands of people running to the bathroom this summer. Health officials have linked the outbreak to lettuce served at Taco Bell locations in five states, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Food safety expert Byron Chaves joins Flora to talk about the “explosive” nature of the illness and why pinpointing a source of the parasite has been so di...

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for an early launch at the end of August. It will rest about a million miles from Earth at Lagrange point 2, where forces of gravity and motion balance out, allowing it to orbit the sun in sync with the Earth. The Roman Telescope is designed to collect masses of data that could inform questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets. Jackie Townsend, project manager for the...

For two decades, a perplexing illness has been spreading: After a lone-star tick bite, people find themselves with a severe allergic reaction to red meat. The CDC estimates up to 450,000 people in the U.S. may be affected with alpha-gal syndrome, up from just a few dozen documented cases in 2009. New research finds that in some states, more than 30% of people are positive for alpha-gal antibodies—but not all of them have the ...

One of the most irresistible questions in sci-fi stories about aliens is what our reaction will be when we learn of their existence. Horror? Bewilderment? Relief? Euphoria? It’s a scenario we love to imagine again and again, like in Steven Spielberg’s recent movie, “Disclosure Day.”

But how would humanity react if we learned of intelligent aliens? Can you actually study that? It turns out there’s a who...

Dino Martins has plucked maggots out of a dead elephant, pulled botflies out of camel snot, and willingly let a horsefly feast on him. Why? Because he’s obsessed with parasites.

Dino is an entomologist who grew up in rural Kenya, and he’s worked all over the world studying how insects keep this planet alive. And along the way, he met some of the world’s most iconic freeloaders, which he describes in his new book, ...