Science Friday Folgen

Uché Blackstock always knew she wanted to be a doctor. Her mother was a physician at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. Uché and her twin sister, Oni, would often visit their mother at work, watching her take care of patients. And they loved to play with their mother’s doctor’s bag.The sisters went on to become the first Black mother-daughter legacy students to graduate from Harvard Medical School.SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Uché Blackstock, emergency physician and founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, about her new memoir, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine.Read an excerpt from Legacy at sciencefriday.com.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hycean planets were thought to be covered by oceans of water, but a new study suggests it could be magma instead. And, author Rafi Kohan explains the psychological and physiological responses to trash talk, ahead of Super Bowl Sunday.Faraway Planets Could Have Oceans Of MagmaFar beyond our solar system are hycean planets—planets that have hydrogen-rich atmospheres and are covered in giant oceans. Scientists have long believed that those oceans were made of water, but a new study throws a wrench in that idea, suggesting that they could actually be oceans of magma.SciFri’s John Dankosky talks with Sophie Bushwick, senior news editor at New Scientist based in NYC, about this and other science news of the week, including a new type of thunderstorm, how droughts are affecting the Panama Canal, inhalable nanoparticles that could carry antibiotics, which dog breeds live longest, and a fern whose dying leaves can sprout roots.The Art And Science Of Trash TalkAs frivolous as it may sound, the use of trash talk has a long, hilarious history that dates back to the Bible and the Homeric poems. Fundamentally, this insult-slinging is the presentation of a challenge, and it’s found its way into sports, politics, and even cutthroat family board game nights.But there’s a science to trash talk that explains why it’s stuck around all these millennia, the psychology behind it, and how it can either rev up or fluster an opponent.Just in time for the 2024 Super Bowl, guest host John Dankosky talks with Rafi Kohan, author of Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage.Read an excerpt from Trash Talk at sciencefriday.com.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A new study uses artificial intelligence to show that each of our ten fingerprints are remarkably similar to one another. Plus, honey could be the secret ingredient in building a more eco-friendly “memristor,” which transmits data through malleable pathways.Is Each Fingerprint On Your Hand Unique?We often think about each fingerprint as being completely unique, like a snowflake on the tip of your finger.But a new study shows that maybe each person’s fingerprints are more similar to each other than we thought. Researchers trained artificial intelligence to identify if a thumbprint and a pinky print came from the same person. They found that each of a person’s ten fingerprints are remarkably similar in the swirly center.Ira talks with study author Gabe Guo, an undergraduate at Columbia University majoring in computer science, based in New York City.In This Computer Component, Data Slides Through HoneyA honey bear is probably one of the weirder things you’d see in a science lab, especially in a lab making computer parts.“It’s just processed, store-bought honey,” said Ph.D. student Zoe Templin. “Off the shelf — a little cute bear so we can put it in photos.”But for Templin and her colleagues at Washington State University, Vancouver, the honey is key.“It is cheap and it is easily accessible to everyone,” said master’s student Md Mehedi Hassan Tanim.The honey also has natural chemical properties that make it a promising foundation for a new kind of environmentally friendly computer component — one that could make computing faster and more energy efficient while reducing the impact on the environment.Read the rest of this article on sciencefriday.com.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.