Science Friday - 30 Years Of Science Friday, Kansas’ Wind Energy Plan, Vaccinating Kids Under 12. November 5, 2021, Part 1

Episode Date: November 6, 2021

Behind The FDA’s Decision To Vaccinate Kids Under 12 This week, Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 12 was officially recommended by the CDC, after a unanimous vote from its independent advisory committee and the FDA’s authorization based on safety and efficacy data. In their analysis, the FDA said the benefits of the vaccine “clearly outweigh” the risks. The risks, which were referenced in a cost-benefit examination of the data, included circumstances that popped up in the study that were unrelated to getting the vaccine (like a broken arm and an accidentally swallowed penny that occurred during the observational period). As parents around the U.S. race to find appointments, Ira talks to science journalist Maggie Koerth about the safety data and what’s next for parents of young kids, including those under 5. They also discuss a NASA test of a system to defend the planet from killer asteroids, a new prediction that climate change will change the availability of food crops within the next ten years, and other science news headlines.   What’s Next For Kansas After 20 Years Of Wind Power? The wind farm business in Kansas has hit its awkward adolescence. It’s still growing 20 years in, but unsure what the near future might hold. If it wants to get through those tough years and continue to grow, it needs to find more workers, to figure out what to do with the dated-but-not-obsolete turbines erected two decades ago and to sort out a way to carry all that wind-harvesting muscle beyond the state’s borders. Consider the burly, newest version of wind farming at the Cimarron Bend wind farm south of Dodge City. “We just watch and listen to the towers,” said project supervisor Dewain Pfaff, who’s responsible for keeping about 300 turbines up and running. “If you can hear a noise we want to mitigate those issues as soon as possible.” Standing at the base of one of the newest turbines on the site, he’s dwarfed by the tower that rises 300 feet into the air. That’s almost as tall as the Kansas State Capitol. Add in the blade when pointing straight up and it’s taller than the tallest building in the state. That mammoth size is one way wind turbines have changed over the past 20 years. While the turbine is nearly 300 feet tall, the turbines at the very first large-scale wind farm in the state stretched only 200 feet above the ground. Transporting larger towers and blades is trickier, but inevitable. Read the rest at sciencefriday.com.   SciFri Reflects On Three Decades Of Covering Science News Thirty years ago this week, on Nov 8, 1991, the first episode of Science Friday aired as part of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” series. After 30 years, over 9,000 interviews, and several changes of distributors, offices, and studios, the program is still going strong. In this segment, host and executive producer Ira Flatow and SciFri director Charles Bergquist reminisce about some of the great guests and listener questions they’ve heard over the course of the program—from the very first episode, featuring the late Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland talking about the ozone hole, to a young fan helping to celebrate SciFri’s Cephalopod Week with her own ode to an octopus. Plus, moments with Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle, astronaut Leland Melvin, the late Carl Sagan, and more. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm I Refledo. Today marks another milestone in our three decades of this program. Well, actually, two milestones. First, we're back live on the air for the first time in 18 months, broadcasting from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. But an even bigger deal is that it's our birthday. Yay! As of November 8th, Science Friday has been on the air for 30 years now,

and we've got one heck of a highlight reel to show for it. We'll listen to that a bit later in the hour. But first, many children and their parents were anxiously awaiting this week for CDC approval of the Pfizer-COVID vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. That was the sound at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut when the announcement came out Tuesday night from the CDC. Eight-year-old friends Addison Woodman and Kalyn Kronin were in that group of kids, some of the first in the country to get the vaccine, and they had advice for other young people. I think getting your cavity filled hurts more than the shot. I just got my cavity filled, it hurts way more than getting a shot for 30 seconds. Seven-year-old Karim Omar, who was first in line for the shot, had this message.

Don't be afraid. It's for the stake of the world, so I say, don't be afraid and just do it. His voice is courtesy reporter Nicole Leonard at Connecticut Public Radio. Here's to talk more about the pediatric vaccine approval and other recent science stories. Maggie Kerth, senior science writer for 538. She's based in Minneapolis. Welcome back, Maggie. Hi, thanks for having me. Nice to have you as always.

Now, we have vaccines available for another age group, so that's great. It sounds like some long-awaited good news for parents and children. Yes, it absolutely is. In fact, as soon as I get off the phone with you guys, I am taking my kids. kids and to get their shots. You're kidding. Really? Wow. How did that feel? How did it feel? It feels really, really good. It feels relieving, and it feels like we're going to be able to kind of have a little bit more normal of our lives

back. That's terrific to hear. Can you give us an idea of how they decided, why they decided to do the kid shots now? Sure can. So I think one of the things that was most interesting to me about this is that this decision was based on the results of Pfizer's clinical trial, but it was also based on this independent FDA analysis that really looked at the cost-benefit balance. So they were considering both that Pfizer finding that its vaccine is 91% effective at preventing COVID-19 in kids ages 5 to 11, alongside both of the risks of severe illness and the risks of this mild, rare vaccine side effect that's caused heart inflammation in particularly young men. You know, Pfizer's data included no instances of that heart inflammation in kids 5 to 11. And despite, that's despite it

probably occurring in estimated 71.5 cases per million 16 and 17 year old boys vaccinated. But the FDA concluded that the benefits of vaccination outweighed those risks. Even if the number of kids hospitalized for heart inflammation exceeded the number of children. Exceed the number of of kids hospitalized for COVID, getting vaccinated would still be worth it because being hospitalized for this heart inflammation is just that much less risky than ending up hospitalized for COVID. So they did the cost-benefit analysis, and now parents can make appointments for their kids? Is it that simple? I mean, it depends on where you are. I had a little bit of trouble trying to track some things down here and kind of got lucky with the, uh,

one of the state vaccine clinics. But even as I was kind of going through that, like times would disappearing as I was in the process of like trying to snag one, which, you know, honestly I kind of take as a, like a good feeling. People are wanting to get this. And that's wonderful. Sounds like when the original vaccine came out.

That's what was happening. Let's move on to another topic, climate change. As we've mentioned, the International COP 26 Climate Change Summit is on in Glasgow right now. but back at home some bad news about agriculture in the coming decade. Tell us about that. Yeah, so there's a new climate modeling study that some researchers at NASA did that found that the impacts of climate change could hit global agriculture way earlier than

previously predicted. So the same team did modeling back in 2014, and they had at the time found that global corn yields would continue rising just by less through the end of this century. But this new projection is showing yields falling by more than 20% in that same time frame. And meanwhile, some equatorial regions that are really heavily corn dependent, places like Central America, for instance, they could see yields of corn falling within the next 10 to 20 years. Well, and that's just due to climate change. Yeah, so this is the change between those two different projections has to do with better crop

models than we used to have. But it's also about the fact that these trends and warming and rainfall are happening faster than we previously expected them to. And those changes are going to end up affecting different regions and different crops in different ways. So while corn is really losing productivity, the same model is also predicting that wheat production and higher latitudes will increase, at least for a little while, as rising temperatures make that plant more viable further north. Isn't that interesting? And of course, this will all translate to hunger and food insecurity in some places. It's not just an abstract now.

No, no, not at all, especially not for equatorial regions, tropical regions of the world that are going to be, you know, heating up beyond the point that their staple crops can stand a lot faster. Let's move on to some more uplifting news. It's kind of interesting NASA news. NASA is about to test our ability to deflect dangerous, asteroids from Earth. I've seen the movie a few times on this one. Right. Yeah, yeah. It is the year 2021, and humans are testing our abilities to successfully divert a killer asteroid by

intentionally crashing something into it. And I absolutely love this system because it's both wildly futuristic and also very like Aug hits thing with rock. But in this case, Og is hitting the thing with an unmanned spacecraft. So this spacecraft, the dartcraft is going to launch later this month, it will not be colliding with its intended target for about a year. That target is an asteroid called dimorphos, and it's not a threat to Earth in any way, but it is something that is in near enough Earth orbit that we can observe it with Earth-based telescopes and be able to measure how much we successfully budged it over after our spacecraft rams into it at 15,000 miles an hour. But ramming into it, the aim of it is not to split it.

it up into parts, right? Nope. The aim is just to like shove it over. Wow. So it's launch rocket, bomb asteroid, see what happens. Kind of, yeah. Yeah. And for context, this asteroid is about the size of the statue of liberty or maybe the pyramids of Giza and the spacecraft itself is about the size of a fridge. So there's no worry here about the asteroids hitting the earth

more than we already worry about that. So it's not going to increase that chance. No, there's no reason to worry that anymore than we already do. You know, one of the interesting things that I learned doing this research on this piece was that, you know, the last significant impact in 100 years that we've had happened in 2013, and that was

when an asteroid, the size of a small building, burned up in the sky above the Russian city of Chellabinsk. So, kind of is you an idea of like how big an asteroid has to be before you even worry about it, when an asteroid the size of a building is just a really cool dash cam video. No Tunguska here.

So we don't have to worry about that. And your next story is about whales. And what's interesting about it is that we know they're big. We know they eat a lot. But it turns out they eat a lot of a lot. Right. So just like side note before we get into this, I had not processed fully until this week that blue whales are bigger than the biggest

dinosaurs were, which is just wild. And part of this thing, we've got to get you out to the museum, American Museum and Natural History here. Apparently we do. I don't know how that hadn't like stuck in my brain yet after all these years, but oh my gosh. And this is really all about like how much it takes to feed a creature like that, which is lots and lots and lots, especially because its food is this very, very tiny crustacean called a krill. And scientists had assumed that because many of these giant whales were killed by humans over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries that, Crill populations would be just like exploding because we had so many fewer of their predators. But that didn't happen. And now researchers think it's because of this really interesting food cycle loop where the lack of iron-rich whale poop, which fed the phytoplankton, which fed the krill, means that even though there are fewer giant whales eating krill, there's not enough whale poop to sustain higher krill populations without them.

Wow. So what this research is really saying then is that the whaling industry disrupted, disrupted the entire ocean ecosystem, all that poop that did not get turned back into krill. Exactly. Yeah. These cycles are much more complex than we give them credit for. You know, conservationists get flak sometimes for focusing maybe more on whales than other less charismatic animals, but maybe they're into something here. If there's so much of that that these whales eating and pooping can affect. Right. Yeah, it's not just the whales.

It's also about like these tiny creatures that some of which we can't even see really with the naked eye. Wow. And we got just about a minute for your last story. It's really interesting hydro gels. Tell us what is a hydro gel. Yeah, it's this stretchy water absorbing material that could replace damaged human tissues and things like knee joints. they've been imperfect in the past, kind of too brittle and they lose elasticity over time. But now there are some researchers at Harvard who think they figured out how to make one that's stronger and longer lasting.

And they did it by basically changing the microscopic structure of these materials from something that looks like fish netting to something that looks a lot more like interwoven fabric. Yeah, you know, I've been following aerogels for years. We used to call them aerogales solid smoke because they're so light. lightweight, right? And sort of... Ooh, cool. Yeah. So we've got all kinds of stuff we can do with this that we don't know about yet, right? Right, yeah. I mean, like, the kind of thing people talk about it a lot is as a replacement for knee joints or, you know, like all these human tissues. And this stuff is strong enough that it can lift, you know, small weights. And so that's a really big advance in what these things can do.

Maggie, always great to have you. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's great to be back. Nice to have you. Maggie Kerth, Senior Science Writer for 538, he joined us live from Minneapolis. We're going to take a break to test the winds on wind farms in Kansas. I'm not going to say we'll be in Kansas anymore, but we will be. We'll be right back after this short break.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflato. And now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNN. St. Louis Public Radio Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. You know that famous scene in The Wizard of Oz where a giant windstorm in Kansas sweeps up Dorothy's house? Well, they are harnessing that wind with wind turbines at an amazing pace.

The state just hit a major milestone, 20 years since the first big wind farm went online, in a small town called Montezuma. Kansas is now the fourth biggest generator of, wind power in the country. Wind energy has changed both the landscape and economy of the region. So joining me today to tell us more about that is my guest, Brian Grimmett, Energy and Environment Reporter at KMUW and the Kansas News Service based in Wichita. Welcome back.

Hey, thanks for having me. Nice to have you. 20 years is a long time. What makes Kansas such a great candidate for wind power in the first place? Well, I mean, the pretty obvious thing, it blows a lot here. There's a lot of wind due to, you know, the geography of the United States. The wind either comes down into Canada through the plains or up from the Gulf. And there's not a lot there that gets in the way, no mountains. And so it just blows and it blows consistently and it blows enough to produce power. So how has wind power changed Kansas over the last two decades? Even just from a visual standpoint, it has changed the state quite a bit. I mean, seeing these big large wind farms, these big large wind turbines is something as common as seeing

a wheat field or a bunch of cattle out grazing. Orver Williams is one of the very first people who agreed to let one of these turbines go up on his land 20 years ago. And here's what he has to say about it. If you look at the long view, most people around here, I don't think even notice them anymore. It's also changed the state quite a bit economically. A lot of farmers, it's been a new source of revenue for them on top of just the regular crops. I guess they just become part of the landscape. So just how much power do Kansas's wind farms create? It's quite a bit. At this point, it's 42% of all the power that's created in the state. Wow. How much does that eat into Kansas's fossil fuel energy usage? It's changed quite a bit. So the very first wind farm in the state went up 20 years ago.

that year in 2001, coal was 80% of all the electricity generated in the state. And in 2020, coal was only 31% of all the electricity that was generated in the state. And if you're just looking at like megawatt hours, it's half of what it was in 2001 in 2020. That is amazing. And I imagine that wind farms, more and more of them are still coming online. Yeah. Every year, there's three or four new projects popping up in Kansas. Last year they added 896 megawatts, which I think was something like, it's in the top five of new wind projects going up in any state. So every year, there's more and more projects.

Brian, tell us what it's like to stand right by a wind turbine. So if you stand right next to right below one of these newer wind turbines, which are quite large, it actually can be pretty loud on a windy day. You go a little further and you don't really hear them. But right underneath them, there's a pretty big whoosh noise that you hear. Is there any tension between the wind energy industry and the farmers or other industries that need a lot of land, right? I mean, you've got to have a place to put these wind turbine. It kind of depends on who you ask.

Generally speaking, those that have wind farms have been pretty pleased with them. They've got all this land. The footprint of a wind turbine isn't very. large once the construction's done and you can remove all the equipment. You know, it's just a little square there that they take up and you can still farm right around it. You know, we're celebrating our 30th year on the show this year. And I remember it's got to be two decades ago that a rancher in Oklahoma, certainly another windy state, he phoned into the program to tell us he had installed wind turbines on his ranch and was making more money from selling his power than he was from ranching.

That's the good news. The bad news was that he was limited by the grid, not being able to install any more wind turbines. Is that sort of true in Kansas, too? It can be true. I mean, there's still growing new projects, but that is definitely one of the limits on continuing this trend of increased wind into the next decade or so. There needs to be a place for all this electricity to go, and that's where something called transmission lines come in. It's the wires that carry this electricity long distance from, you know, these rural areas where, there's plenty of space for the wind farms to the population centers that have need of this electricity. So is there sort of a tension in trying to get the power out of the state and where you

might send it? There's a lot of tension. It comes from regulators. It comes from the incumbent investor-owned utilities who have a little bit of control over where these transmission lines gets built or how they get built. And even some of the residents near some of these new proposals, they hear that all the wind power is going to go out of state, and they say, well, how is that going to benefit me if it's not even going to stay in my own state? And so some people are even actually using that idea as a negative. Oh, so because they think they're not going to make any money on this. Yeah, they think, oh, we're just going to help some big company from out of state make a lot of money, and we're not going to see anything if we're just shipping all of our electricity out of state.

That's not quite how it works, but that is one of the talking points that some people against the wind are using. That is interesting. Looking forward, are there big issues the industry is keeping an eye on? Yeah, so beyond transmission, one of the things that they're really working on is some of the waste issues. Right now, the turbine blades do get old and damaged and they need to be replaced. And there's not an easy way to recycle those. They're working on it. They've had some breakthroughs in the industry.

But for the most part, those current blades, they don't recycle either cheaply or easily. and so they just end up in landfills. And how do the residents, normal folk feel about the wind power? They're like two camps. People who have the turbines, they feel one way, and people who don't have them, they feel a whole different way. Yeah, that tends to be how the lines get drawn sometimes. You know, those who have the land.

Sometimes it's people who own the land so they get the payments, but they don't live anywhere nearby. So they're happy to have them. And then some of the people who live nearby and maybe don't have a one. wind turbine in their land, they're not as excited to have their view of the prairie, so to speak, damaged by, you know, these big structures. And there's misinformation about the turbines themselves, right?

I mean, people are spreading misinformation about all kinds of green things these days. Yeah, and especially within the last five years, the people I've spoken to said this misinformation has gotten a lot more prevalent, talking about how wind turbines cause cancer, or, you know, these other health effects that have been studied and shown that that's not really true. And some of this misinformation is coming from fossil fuel companies. There's been some reporting that shows that they've supported organizations that kind of push back against these. Some of it just comes where all misinformation comes from, just the Internet and people creating it. And some have an agenda, some don't, but it's out there and they lash on to it and bring it to these public meetings.

Surprise, surprise, on both counts. Thank you, Brian for taking time to be with us today. Yeah, you're welcome. Brian Grimmett, Energy and Environment Reporter for KMUW and the Kansas News Service based in Wichita, Kansas. 30 years ago this week, November 8, 1991 was the very first episode of Science Friday. Hard to believe, I know, we have covered lots of news, talked to lots of people over the years. So I thought it would be a good time to look back and reflect on some of the things that helped make the show special. Highlights from the past three decades, from the guests we've talked with, to the voices of all our listeners. Considering that we have conducted about 9,000 interviews over the years, it has been tough to narrow down a final few.

So I called in some help, sci-fi director Charles Berkwist, who's only been around for some 24 years of the program. He joins us. Hi, Charles. Hey, Ira. Happy anniversary. Thank you. As you said, I missed out on the first couple of years here. Take me back to the beginning. Where did the show come from? What was the idea? Good question. I get asked that a lot. Let me explain. A weekly national talk show about science was an idea I had back, well, 1989. No show like it existed. So I went to the National Science Foundation, who thought it was a good idea, and they funded it. I went to NPR. who also liked the idea, but said, you know what, its member stations were not used to a national talk show, so it might be a hard sell. Well, the 1990 Gulf War solved that problem when NPR created a national talk

show about the war. And when the war ended, you know, it lasted only a few weeks, there was this thirst for a daily talk show. So NPR created the Talk of the Nation series with Science Friday as the Friday edition. NPR would eventually drop talk of the nation and drop Science Friday, but being an independent organization, we would continue for many more years on our own and grow bigger than ever to where we are today. And that, in a nutshell, is the story. So tell me about the first show itself, though. Who did you have on? Yeah, that was an exciting show where we had to make choices. And of course, since we were a news show, we went with what was going on in the news. So one of our guests on our first show was the late Dr. Sherwood Rowland,

who would go on to win the Nobel Prize. For a strange phenomenon, we were just hearing about the ozone hole. We began then and are still putting in now about one million tons of CFCs per year into the atmosphere. And when you take one million tons of CFCs and multiply by chain length of 100,000, you can see how man can become a competitor with the natural processes, where the ozone depletion is sufficient from man's use of quarrying compounds to compete with the natural processes that remove ozone. Okay, so the thing that strikes me about that is that it kind of set the model for all the

rest of those shows that followed. You're talking directly to scientists and giving listeners a chance to call in and have a conversation with them too. Exactly right. We talked to some of the most awe-inspiring people over the years who made us think deeply about ourselves, like Carl Sagan, recalling the story of the planet Earth as a pale blue dot. I was an experimenter on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, and after they swept by the Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune systems, it was possible to do something I had wanted to do from the beginning, and that is to turn the cameras on one of these spacecraft back to photograph the planet from which it had come.

And clearly there would not be much scientific data from this because we were so far away that the Earth was just a point, a pale blue dot. But when we took the picture, there was something about it that seemed to me so poignant, vulnerable, tiny. And if we had photographed it from a much further distance, it would have been gone, lost against the backdrop of distant stars. And to me, I thought, there, that's us. That's our world. That's all of us. Everybody you know, everybody you love. Everybody you ever heard of lived out their lives there on a mode of dust in a sunbeam.

And it spoke to me about the need for us to care for one another and also to preserve the pale blue dot, which is the only home we've ever known. and it underscored the tininess, the comparative insignificance of our world and ourselves. That clip still gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. It was so powerful. And I'm trying to imagine what Sagan would say today about the state of our pale blue dot if he were still here. Yeah, I remember coming across that one in the old tape archives and just sitting, with that one for a while and listening. He was famous for talking about intelligent life

in outer space, but another interview I really loved was one with Jill Tarter, who went looking for it herself. We need to explore and find out what is. We've spent millennia asking the priests and the philosophers what we should believe about this question. Now scientists and engineers have some tools that will allow them to actually search and discover what is.

is. So I really, in every opportunity, try to substitute the verb to explore for the verb to believe. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Speaking of exploring, remember when Sylvia Earle dropped by? She was a frequent visitor, but the conversation I remember best was when she took us with her to explore down into the deep sea. Imagine being out, let's say where I was not so long ago, 100 miles offshore from the mouth of the Mississippi River, and descending through what at the surface is kind of green, even there. It used to be pure blue at the surface, but the Gulf of Mexico is suffering these days a bit,

but penetrating through that green and then break into clear blue water below, and then it gets darker as you descend into it. indigo and then almost a purvally blue and then not blue at all it's just gray and then black and it's dark yet it isn't really dark it's filled with light there are little sparkle flashes and glows all around you like it's like falling into a galaxy of little stars because most of the creatures in the deep sea have some form of firefly like kind of light and bioluminescence and as they brush up against the the submersible that you're in, they just are provoked into these little sparkles, sparkles, sparkles. It is such a joy, like falling into the Fourth of July. It's just a joy. It was such a joy to have her, as she was known as her deepness. And speaking of joyful people, Eric Candell was always a pleasure. As much as Sylvia shared her wonder of the ocean floor, Candell, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on learning and memory, was always eager to explore,

with us, his search for what it means to be human. What is the brain concerned with? It's concerned with who we are. What makes us who we are, what makes us as, you know, loving human beings, what makes us as aggressive human beings. And as we understand more, the biological underpinnings of it, we'll understand more of the detailed mechanisms of it, and we'll really get a biological humanism.

We'll understand humanistic issues in terms of biological mechanisms. So I kind of say, you may like that side of Eric, Ira, but one of the things that the rest of the staff always loved was his sense of humor and the way that you would work him during the course of an interview, just trying to get that magical Eric Candell laugh out of him. Of course, we couldn't talk about brain without talking about memory. You're tapping. I like memory. That's a topic you should go into. What of my favorite topics. I'm laughing now because he had such a great laugh.

He still has it. You know, you're right. I always tried to find a question that he could answer humorously just to hear that laugh. And I'm glad that we have it on tape, preserve forever. If you've been enjoying these classic clips as much as I have, we have a whole bunch more for you. Check out our series SciFry Rewind, where you can revisit past Science Friday. conversations from our three decades. Listen all year long. There's some great stuff in there. ScienceFri.com slash sci-fri-30 with the number 30 or ScienceFriday.com slash 30 years.

More of our anniversary memories in a moment. Stay with us. Hey there. I have some shocking news to share. This Monday, November 8th, Science Friday will celebrate 30 years. I know, I know I must have started hosting this show when I was three years old, right? Well, all kidding aside, this show, our guests, our producers, and you are listeners, have meant so much to me over the years. Together, we have discussed so much important news and had some really meaningful conversations, haven't we? And I'm grateful for all 1,500-plus broadcasts, 9,000 interviews, and nearly 200,000 minutes of airtime.

even with the blips, hiccups, and flubbing everybody's name, including my own. My goal has always been to make science a conversation around the dinner table, to invite all of you to explore and share my curiosity and love of science. So thank you for joining me. And now I'm going to ask you to please join me in celebrating by making a donation to support Science Friday's legacy and to be a steward of our continued work. You can go to sciencefriday.com slash support to make your gift or just visit our website. Thank you for all the years, past, present, and future.

This is Science Friday. I'm Iraflato. We're looking back this hour on 30 years of Science Friday with a selection of guests and listeners who've made it possible. Sci-Fright director Charles Berkwist is my wingmate. Before the break, Charles, we were talking about laughter and a sense of humor. and you know what? Another scientist with a great sense of humor, and you need one to make sense of hair-hirting ideas, is astronomer Priya Natarajan. I mean, it's crazy, isn't it? We don't know a 96% of the universe. I know, I know. This is the paradox of cosmology, right? That we know so much, and yet we know so little. We don't even know what the dark matter particle is, right, which is almost all of matter.

So I think that black holes per se, right, are a tiny constituent in terms of the budget, but they're really important in how they shape the universe. So, for example, because of the impact on space time, we really hope that gravitational wave events can be used as, you know, sort of like standard candles, like standard light bulbs, and can help us map the geometry and the fate of the universe. So I think in directly learning a lot about black holes has the potential to impact a lot of the other open problems in cosmology,

but, you know, in and of themselves, I think, they're super cool and exciting. And she is super cool and exciting. And you know, we've had whole bunches of physicists visiting us. Let me see if I can run down a few of them. Jan 11, Shirley M. Jackson, M. Jackson, Mildred Dressel House, Claudia Alexander, Lisa Randall, Stephen Weinberg, Brian Green. I could go on, Charles. I'd think you to say that we've had more physicists on Science Friday and more women physicists than anybody else. Yeah, and astronauts, too. We've, we've We've talked to astronauts in orbit. In 2013, we had a chat with Chris Hadfield. You remember him with the David Bowie Space Oddity played in space. And I loved our visit from former astronaut

and former pro football player Leland Melvin. You remember he was the one who had his official NASA portrait taken with his dogs on his lap. Oh, yeah. I do remember that he really did. He does love his pups, and he also has a deep commitment for bringing science to kids. We all have an opportunity to light a child's curiosity by just showing them something, and that light can go so far and just believing in them and giving them an opportunity. I think we sometimes, we're a fixed mindset where we focus down instead of letting kids know that they can be a mathematician and a jock or end up whatever it is, and just let their minds grow. Yeah, he's just terrific speaking about that. And speaking of kids, about whom I'm always thinking,

we've had some really fun and exciting moments when kids call in. I've always said that kids love science. Despite the common knowledge about kids in science, no, I don't think that's true. You just have to present it to them in the right way. And one of those times each year is, of course, our highly anticipated cephalopod week. Yeah, and a couple years ago, we, We had a youngster Gwendy during Cephalopod week. Share with us a poem about her favorite cephalopod. That was the octopus. Octopus, octopus.

Just like a jelly. Octopus, octopus. It's big fat belly. Octopus, octopus. It moves like jelly. Octopus, octopus. Whoa, hellie. I love it.

You know, you know, know what we get lots of kids participating. I know you've been on all these remotes that we've gone on. We've taken the show on the road all around the country from what, San Antonio to Salt Lake, Fairbanks, to Ithaca, Madison, to Gainesville, to Pasadena. And what is really special about going on the road is taking questions from youngsters, teenagers, high schoolers in the audience. You know what? It was first amazing to me, all of them running up to the most, microphone, and then it became the norm everywhere we went about how many kids would muscle their way past the adults. They'd run up to the microphone in a concert hall or theater of 2,000 people

to make sure they get their questions answered. And so many of those questions, like this one from a youngster in Wichita, Kansas, have been well incisive. Yeah, we were talking to M. Engasser and Rachel Stone from Wichita State University. Let's go to a question right here. I've seen many pictures of beetles rolling their dung. Why do they roll it that way? Well, what they're doing is they're going to this, you know, this pile of poop is suddenly plopped on the ground. And you have to imagine it like it's this incredible resource. It's like you're in the desert and there's no food at all.

And somebody drops this tray of cheeseburgers on the ground. And everybody's rushing all at once and they're greedy. They want their fair share of this really limited resource. And so this is just one strategy that Dung Beetle show. But what he's doing is he's trying to tear a hunk off for himself and take it away from all the chaos of that pile of cheeseburgers or poo. And he's taking it away so he can have it himself. You don't often get dung compared to a pile of cheeseburgers, Ira. No, no, you don't.

And one of the things I love about our listeners, whether they're on the road with us or, or they're on the phone or someplace, is that they ask such great and interesting questions as in this Q&A on a broadcast from Utah with paleontologist Randall Ermus. Over here, yes. How can you tell if you're just walking by if it's a rock or a fossil,

and if it is a fossil, how can you tell how old it is right off the bat? Well, we have a very scientific way of telling that it's fossil bone, which is to lick it. I'm not joking. I'm not joking. That's really true. Wait, wait.

It's technical. You lick it. Yeah. Yeah, so generally... I don't see that on National Geographic or any of... Well, you know, maybe their shows would be more popular if they showed them. No, it's a... I'm not, this is not a fib.

Rock typically does not stick to your tongue, but fossil bone generally does. So... And I haven't gotten any diseases, I don't think, so... I'm Ira Flato, this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Yeah, no one expected that answer. And speaking of surprise answers, it reminds me, I know you love this segment, Charles, of physicist Jeffrey Hanks, who came to the show to talk about creating and capturing antimatter. And I asked him a question about his work, you know, the same kind of question.

I ask lots of scientists, and that is what practical value comes out of your work? And his answer was, absolutely none. Absolutely none, a classic basic research point of view. That was so much fun to hear. Yeah, it was one of my favorites, but he does go on to explain his reasoning on that answer. This is about. And they pay me for this is kind of what people say about me sometimes. And when you think about all the surprise,

we've had over the years. Let's talk about three of them that stick out in my mind. And the first one was one of the many times that Oliver Sacks was a guest. He was not only a great popularizer, but there was so much about him that we didn't know about. I think I know where you're going with this one, Ira. I think you do. He was coming on the show to talk about one of his books, and we told him we had to shorten his interview time because we had a special opportunity to talk to someone who is chasing a giant squid in the South Pacific. Now, I thought, oh, no, he's going to start complaining. He's going to get upset.

Well, it turns out squid were among his favorite animals. And who knew? And he was so overjoyed. He asked if he could sit in on that interview, to which I said, of course, he could. And you know what? That Friday, he came dressed full cephalopod, a sefty shirt, and rubber-squee-s squid in each hand. That was a real surprise. Remember that?

I do. And later on, Flora Lickman got to go to his home and take videos of his entire cephalopod collection, which was something. Another one that I think is in your list of surprises was on our show back in 2002 with primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. I knew you'd remember that because you were involved in that interview. Let me tell everybody. We gave Dr. Goodall a long time to talk about her favorite subject, which is primates. And as we got down to the last two minutes, I really wanted to get a listener phone call in because, you know, that's what we are, a listener call-in show. So I went to the phones, and I got blindsided by a listener question.

Let's go to Sharif in Philadelphia. Hi. How you doing? It's a pleasure to speak with you. I wanted to know if you believe there are any undiscovered large ape species. You're talking about a Yeti or Bigfoot or Sasquatch. Is that what he's talking? Yes, yes, he is. Is that the message I'm missing here? I think that's the message you're missing. Is that right, Cherie? Pretty much.

I'm out of the loop. Go ahead. Well, now, you'll be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist. You are? Yeah, I've talked to so many Native Americans who've all described the same sounds, two who've seen them. I've probably got about, oh, 30 books that have come from different parts of the world, from China, from all over the place. And there was little tiny snippet in the newspaper just last week, which says that British scientists have found what they believed to be a Yeti hair,

and that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal. Now, that was just a wee bit in the newspaper, and obviously we have to hear a little bit more about that. Well, this age of DNA, if you find a hair, there might be some cells on it. Well, there will be, and I'm sure that's what they've examined, and they don't match up. What is my little tiny snippet said that don't match up with DNA cells from known animals. So apes. Did you always have this belief that they existed? Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist.

And you know, I wanted to follow up on the Yeti story, and you, Charles, were frantically giving me the wrap-up side because we had run out of time. You remember that? I mean, we're a live show. The clock does not stop. You've got to go. And the next time she came on the show, she reiterated her belief in Yeti, and it turned out years later, those DNA samples she talked about, I don't think they were ever confirmed as coming from a Yeti. Okay. Now, the third big surprise was an unexpected event that occurred when we were on the road at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Remember, we were chatting on the lawn at JPL with mission scientists waiting for a signal from the Mars Pathfinder. spacecraft signifying that it has successfully landed on Mars.

Welcome back to Talk of the Nation Science Friday. I'm Ira Flito. We're talking this hour about the Mars Pathfinder landing here, where we're coming to you live from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. And in the background, you can hear Mission Control applauding. We have confirmed that the spacecraft is now a completed pedal deployment. And we're transmitting our final semaphore on the low-gain antenna. Oh, that's great.

Wow. We now expect to get a signal in the spacecraft at 209 Pacific Daylight Time with real digital data. My God. Stay tuned for more excitement from Mars Passfinder. Yeah, there's a little bit of excitement here in Pasadena. Wow. That was totally unexpected because the signal arrived earlier than the mission scientists who were sitting around us thought it would.

They thought they'd be back in their offices by now. And the landing, well, it happened right as we went on the air, as you heard the time. Okay, let's move on to medicine because we've been on the air long enough to watch a sea change in medical research brought about by genetic engineering called CRISPR gene editing. Dr. Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her pioneering work in CRISPR. But when I spoke with her in 2017, an important point she made about genetic engineering was the need for scientists to consider the ethics of their research. You've had sort of an evolving feeling about the use of CRISPR, have you not? Very much so, yes. I'm an optimist, of course.

I'm very excited about the potential for this to do great things in the future. But I think it's a powerful tool that really requires careful thought about its use in various settings. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. The ethical blind spots of scientists were revisited when we spoke with Tricia Kahaulani Watson. about scientists who were not being sensitive to the religious and cultural values of the sites chosen on to build their telescopes on Monakea in Hawaii. It speaks to some of the frustrations that although they obtained certain permissions, they really didn't go through consultation with the community.

And I feel like the science community has better ethics than that. Lastly, no discussion about our history would be complete without the name Fauci. And while Dr. Anthony Fauci is now synonymous with COVID, we've been talking with him for decades about Ebola, SARS, AIDS, the flu. He's been around so long talking with us that the last time I talked with him, 80 years old now, I was wondering about his retirement plans. I first began talking with you about disease way back in the early 1980s when HIV AIDS was quickly emerging. Do you think we will have an AIDS vaccine any time soon? And wouldn't it be a fitting way coming full circle for a way for you to retire finally? You're trying to get rid of me, Ira. Never. So, you know, vaccines, as we've discussed on your show, more than once, Ira, vaccines for HIV are really problematic for the simple reason that the body does not like to make an immune response against.

HIV that is an adequate response to clear the virus and maintain essentially protection for life. Until we figure out a way to get a vaccine to do better than natural infection in inducing the kind of response that would be protective, we're not going to have an effective HIV vaccine. Do I think that's impossible? No. I think we've just got to use all of our scientific tools of structure-based vaccine design, of putting that envelope trimer in the right confirmation to trigger broadly neutralizing antibodies, I believe that when that occurs, we'll get a vaccine for HIV. Dr. Anthony Fauci, those are just some of the memories of our long history.

If you didn't hear your favorite segment and you would like to relive thrilling moments from yesterday year, please tell us what you would like to hear and do that on our Vox Pop app. What stories turned you on and are replay worthy? We'll be replaying segments all year long this anniversary year, perhaps something from our SciArt Stories. You make the call on our SciFri Vox Pop app wherever you get your apps. Thank you, Charles, for sitting in with me. Thanks, Ira. Just to another 30. And as they say in radio, the old clock on the wall says it's time we say goodbye. Here's Lauren Young with some of the folks that made this show possible. Thanks, Ira.

Johanna Mayer and Ella Fetter are our podcast producers. Kyle Marion Viterbo is our engagement producer. Danielle Dana is our executive director. And I'm Lauren Young, digital producer. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks, Lauren. And also a big thanks to you for all your archive work in getting this episode together. B.J. Leatherman composed our theme music.

We had a help today from audio engineers Lisa Goslin and Kevin Wolfe. It's good to be back in the studio. Have a great weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.