Science Friday Folgen

Bucket hats. Low-rise jeans. Track suits. As you might’ve noticed, Y2K fashion is in right now. People say that fashion moves in 20-year cycles, and it turns out…it does! At least according to math. Host Flora Lichtman sits down with mathematician Emma Zajdela to figure out how she analyzed over 35,000 images of women's clothing dating all the way back to the 1860s to confirm this theory. Guest:  Dr. Emma Zajdela is a Franco-American mathematician and science diplomacy activist. Other episodes you may enjoy: The Many, Many Ways Tuberculosis Shaped Human Life Functional Fashion From An Artist And A Caterpillar Want SciFri gear? Check out our new shop! Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A recent study simulated the extreme temperatures and pressure of the Earth’s interior by squeezing a sample between diamonds and heating it with a laser. In those simulations, researchers found that the Earth’s core may contain vast amounts of hydrogen, locked away in alloys with iron and silicon. Planetary scientist Anat Shahar joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what this tells us about how the planet formed, and where water on Earth may have come from.  Then, another kind of deep history: Paleontologist Arnaud Rebillard introduces Host Flora Lichtman to “regurgitalite”—fossilized vomit. Rebillard studied a sample of regurgitalite some 50 million years older than the dinosaurs. Guests:  Dr. Anat Shahar is a planetary scientist, and vice president for research at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Arnaud Rebillard is a PhD candidate in paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Berlin. Other episodes you may enjoy: Could Underground Hydrogen Reserves Put Clean Energy Within Reach? A Reptile’s Baffling Backfin And The Math Of Dashing Dinos Want SciFri gear? Check out our new shop! The transcript for this episode is available at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Just about every animal with a backbone yawns (maybe even dinosaurs), but why we do it is still something of a mystery. A SciFri listener from Texas recently spotted some research that suggests yawning could play a role in clearing waste products from the brain, and asked us to get to the bottom of it. Biomechanical engineer Lynne Bilston, an author on that study, joins Flora to discuss the findings and what they could mean for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Plus, about a third of Americans aren’t getting the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a new CDC report. We check in with sleep researcher Stuti Jaiswal to break down the report and find out how to get a better night's sleep. Check out an MRI video of what yawning looks like inside the body. Guests:  Dr. Lynne Bilston is a biomechanical engineer at UNSW Sydney in Australia. Dr. Stuti Jaiswal is a physician scientist and co-director, education at Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego, California. Other episodes you may enjoy: Does Taping Your Mouth Shut Help You Sleep? The Brain’s Glial Cells Might Be As Important As Neurons Want SciFri gear? Check out our new shop! Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.