Science Friday Folgen

Editors at scientific journals are quitting in droves. According to Retraction Watch, a watchdog publication, there have been at least 20 mass resignations since 2023.So, what’s going on? If you look closely, you’ll notice a common pattern—publishers are cutting back on the number of editors, increasing the number of papers, and charging hefty fees for authors to publish their work.The most recent mass resignation happened at the Journal of Human Evolution at the end of 2024. Both co-editors in chief and the entire editorial board quit, except for one person.What does this mean for the future of scientific publishing? Have these resignations made the big publishers change their ways? Is the strict academic publishing system we know in danger?To answer those questions and more, Ira talks with Dr. Andrea Taylor, former co-editor in chief of the Journal of Human Evolution; and Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch and editor in chief of The Transmitter.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Rejoice, amateur and professional astronomers: This January is a fantastic time for looking up at the sky.The flashiest event of the season is also one of the easiest to see without binoculars or a telescope. A “parade of planets”—Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—will be visible, and recognizable by their incredible brightness against the night sky. Uranus and Neptune will also be visible, but with a telescope. This string of planets will be visible for all of January.Additionally, the ATLAS comet, discovered last year by NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, has come close enough to the sun—8.3 million miles away—to be visible with binoculars or a telescope. Be careful, though: looking at sunrise or sunset could hurt your eyes.Astronomer Dean Regas, host of the podcast “Looking Up with Dean Regas,” joins Ira from Cincinnati, Ohio, to discuss the best things the winter night sky has to offer this year, with or without a telescope.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

From down here on Earth, life on the International Space Station seems magnificent: floating through the day, enjoying stunning views out your window, having an experience only a handful of other people will ever get.But what’s it really like to live up there? How does experiencing 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day change your perception of time? How do you cope with being so far from the people you love?Those are some of the questions explored in the novel Orbital, which won the Booker Prize late last year. In the book, author Samantha Harvey imagines the inner life of astronauts aboard the ISS.Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Samantha Harvey, along with astronaut Dr. Cady Coleman, who spent almost six months on the Space Station, and is an author herself. They talk about the unexpected mundanities of living in space, how Harvey was inspired to write the book during lockdown, and how astronauts make sense of their new reality when separated from the rest of humanity.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.