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The Panama Canal has been dubbed the greatest engineering feat in human history. It's also (perhaps less favorably) been called the greatest liberty mankind has ever taken with Mother Nature. But due to climate change, the Canal is drying up and fewer than half of the ships that used to pass through are now able to do so. So how did we get here? Today on the show, we're talking to Cristina Henriquez, the author of a new novel that explores the making of the Canal. It took 50,000 people from 90 different countries to carve the land in two — and the consequences of that extraordinary, nature-defying act are still echoing through our present.
A new study finds that in news stories about scientific research, U.S. media were less likely to mention a scientist if they had an East Asian or African name, as compared to one with an Anglo name.
When the dinosaurs walked the Earth, massive marine reptiles swam. Among them, a species of Ichthyosaur that measured over 80 feet long. Today, we look into how a chance discovery by a father-daughter duo of fossil hunters furthered paleontologist's understanding of the "giant fish lizard of the Severn." Currently, it is the largest marine reptile known to scientists.
Read more about this specimen in the study published in the journal PLOS One.
Have another ancient animal or scientific revelation you want us to cover? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we might talk about it on a future episode!
The largest periodical cicada brood in North America will span at least a dozen states in the Southeast. The brief, but spectacular, emergence has entomologists buzzing with excitement.
Our sun was born in a cosmic cradle with thousands of other stars. Astrophysicists say they want to find these siblings in order to help answer the question: Are we alone out there?
The recent deadly heat in West Africa is driven by human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels, particularly in the wealthy Northern Hemisphere, according to an international report.
We, The Voters — The Left. The Right. The Disillusioned is a special series from NPR exploring the issues most important to you when choosing your next leader.
500 million years ago, the world was a very different place. During this period of time, known as the Cambrian period, basically all life was in the water. The ocean was brimming with animals that looked pretty different from the ones we recognize today — including a group of predatory worms with a throat covered in teeth and spines.
Researchers thought these tiny terrors died out at the end of the Cambrian period. But a paper published recently in the journal Biology Letters showed examples of a new species of this worm in the fossil record 25 million years after scientists thought they'd vanished from the Earth. One of the authors of the paper, Karma Nanglu, tells us how this finding may change how scientists understand the boundaries of time.
Curious about other weird wonders of the ancient Earth? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
Addressing a problem first identified 50 years ago, federal regulators say stricter new rules to limit miners' exposure to silica dust are expected to finally go on the books on Tuesday.
More than 25 million adults in the U.S. have tinnitus, a condition that causes ringing or buzzing in the ears. An FDA approved device that stimulates the tongue, helped 84% of people who tried it.
Studies worldwide show that queer people tend to have more older brothers than other kinds of siblings. Justin Torres, a queer novelist and the youngest of three brothers, asks: Should it matter?
Kids have too much screen time and not enough autonomy, says author Jonathan Haidt. His book The Anxious Generation argues this has caused an epidemic of mental illness and suggests ways to fix it.
A nova of the T Coronae Borealis star system is expected to happen at some point through September, and will make it as bright as the North Star for several days.
We've all been there: You sit down for one episode of a reality TV show, and six hours later you're sitting guiltily on the couch, blinking the screen-induced crust off your eyeballs.
Okay. Maybe you haven't been there like our team has. But it's likely you have at least one guilty pleasure, whether it's playing video games, reading romance novels or getting swept into obscure corners of TikTok. It turns out that experiencing – and studying – pleasure is not as straightforward as it might seem. And yet, pleasure is quite literally key to the survival of humanity. So today on the show, we explore the pleasure cycle: What it is, where it lives in the brain and how to have a healthier relationship with the things that make us feel good.
Want more on the brain? Email us the neuroscience you want us to talk about at shortwave@npr.org! (Also please email us if you would like to gush about any of the books you've been loving — romantasy or otherwise!)