Science Friday Folgen

It all started harmlessly enough: People bought kits to grow mushrooms at home. But then, scientists in the upper Midwest noticed something strange. The golden oyster mushroom, which is not native to the United States, was thriving in local forests. Those homegrown mushrooms escaped our basements into the wild. Fungal ecologist Aishwarya Veerabahu joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what impact these invasive mushrooms might have on the ecosystem.Plus, nightshade expert Sandra Knapp describes the evolution of the potato plant, and how a lucky crossbreeding millions of years ago may have given rise to the starchy tubers we eat today.Guests:Aishwarya Veerabahu is a fungal ecologist and PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.Dr. Sandra Knapp is a Merit Researcher at the Natural History Museum in London.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

If you’ve flipped through an issue of National Geographic or scrolled through their social media, and caught a stunningly detailed photo of a tiny creature—like one where you can make out the hairs on a honeybee’s eyeballs, or the exact contours of a hummingbird’s forked tongue—you have probably seen the work of Anand Varma. He’s an award-winning science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab, a storytelling studio in Berkeley, California.Varma speaks with Host Flora Lichtman and takes us behind the lens to show what it takes to capture iconic images of creatures that are so often overlooked.Guest: Anand Varma is a science photographer, a National Geographic Explorer, and the founder of WonderLab. He’s based in Berkeley, California.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Dietary supplements are big business, with one recent estimate showing the industry is worth almost $64 billion in the United States alone. Take a casual scroll through your social media and you’ll find influencers hawking all kinds of supplements. But how effective are they? How are they regulated? And why are these “natural” remedies so appealing to millions of Americans? To size up the science and culture of supplements, Host Flora Lichtman talks with supplement researcher Pieter Cohen, and Colleen Derkatch, author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture. Guests: Dr. Pieter Cohen is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an internist at the Cambridge Health Alliance where he leads the Supplement Research Program. Dr. Colleen Derkatch is the author of Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture and professor of rhetoric at Toronto Metropolitan University.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.