Short Wave Folgen

For residents of Prek Touch, Cambodia — right on the banks of the Mekong River — flooding is a regular part of life. But as those floods worsen due to climate change, it’s getting harder to adapt. Along with other flood-prone regions throughout Southeast Asia, government officials are facing an issue: how to deliver widespread weather warnings in a timely, effective way. One solution that’s working for Prek Touch? Voicemails. Today on the show, NPR climate correspondent Rebecca Hersher explains how a simple phone alert can prompt preparation, increase evacuation, and save lives.Interested in more stories about natural disaster preparedness? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.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

Do you avoid small talk in the office, or with your neighbor in the elevator? If so, you might want to give it a chance. According to a study just published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, even when participants were primed that a conversation would be boring, it turned out to be more interesting than they anticipated. Today on the show, we get into that, plus why scientists gave lobsters painkillers, and a clue about the formation of the Grand Canyon. Interested in more science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org.Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.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

Neuroscientist Paul Nuyujukian likens the brain to a stadium full of people. To eavesdrop on the crowd you could put a microphone in the middle of the stadium. But to understand the conversations you need to record individual people. He thinks about the brain the same way. To understand brain disease, he studies neurons—one at a time. And his insights are shedding light on a big global issue—stroke. The World Health Organization predicts one in four adults will have a stroke in their lifetime. Strokes can cause death, or lead to paralysis or speech problems. But there’s still a lot researchers don’t know about how the brain recovers from an event like a stroke. Nuyujukian directs a lab at Stanford University that studies how the brain controls movement, including after neurological events like stroke. We get into how he does this, and why he hopes his research could eventually help people who’ve been paralyzed. Email us your questions about the brain – or anything else to do with science at shortwave@npr.org. We may turn it into an episode in the future!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.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