Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday is the source for entertaining and educational stories about science, technology, and other cool stuff.
1354 episodes transcribedDuring the early Cold War era, the United States Army and later the NSA began recruiting and training codebreakers and intelligence officers to deciph...
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, w...
In the last couple months, Vermont, Alabama, and Oklahoma have passed data privacy laws. Massachusetts is negotiating its own version. Meanwhile, cong...
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...
Back in May, a paper published in Nature Sustainability reignited a decades-old debate about coastal Louisiana: Should people leave? Climate researche...
Pompeii is known for its disastrous end with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but for archeologists, what came before is just as interesting. Researche...
An outbreak of the foodborne illness cyclosporiasis has sent thousands of people running to the bathroom this summer. Health officials have linked the...
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...
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 m...
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? Bewilderm...
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...
In March, China became the first country to approve an invasive brain-computer interface beyond clinical trials. The implant, called NEO, is now avail...
What happens when the skies are no longer dark at night? Writer Craig Childs biked from the brightest night sky, to the darkest, to find out what we l...
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda has become the third-largest on record. And while the regional response is m...
Gut feelings, trusting your gut, butterflies: We have lots of expressions about how our brains and our bowels are intertwined. But how well do we unde...
The band Phish has toured for over 40 years. One of the draws of their legendary live shows—which can go on for 8 hours—is finding moments of “flow,”...
Americans pay roughly three times as much for prescription meds as people in other wealthy nations. But why? Tahir Amin argues it’s largely to do with...
If you hear “colonial America” and “science,” one name probably comes to mind: Benjamin Franklin. But he wasn’t the only one thinking big thoughts and...
Researchers have engineered an artificial cell out of chemicals and biomolecules that, at a basic level, can eat, grow, duplicate its own genetic code...
Imagine this: You’re an astronaut, you’ve landed on the moon, and as you’re taking one small step for mankind, you kick up a bunch of lunar dirt. Now,...
