Science for the People

Number 2. Poop. Crap. Doodoo. It's something that a lot of people just want to flush and forget, but others want to talk about it. Do they poop too much? Not enough? Easily enough? Not only can poop tell us about ourselves and our health, though, it could also doo much more. Feces can fertilize our crops, and with the right processing, toilet water can be refreshing. All we need to do is rethink our relationship with poo. This week we sit down with Bryn Nelson to talk about his new book Flush: The Remarkable Science of an Unlikely Treasure.

Usually when we talk about electricity we're talking about the technology that runs the modern world, but electricity is a lot more integral to our existance than making our tech work. Without electricty our bodies don't know how to move, see or hear, and the history of how we came to understand what electricity is and what it can do is wrapped up in our exploration of biology. Rachelle Saunders speaks with Tim Jorgensen, author of the new book "Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life", about the intertwined nature of electricity and life and how we came to understand it better.  

The word "poaching" conjures images of elephants, tigers and pangolins. But there's a multi-billion dollar industry in poaching...trees. It might seem ok at first, trees grow back right? But it's so much more complicated than that. Today we're talking with Lyndsie Bourgon about her new book Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods.

It seems like no one vaccine is ever enough. COVID mutates and the vaccines fall short. A new flu vaccine every year, and each one different from the last. Wouldn't it be nice if we just could get one? One flu shot and call it done? One COVID vaccine and make everything better? Well, scientists are trying their best to develop universal vaccines--one vaccine for the flu, one for COVID, and some for...worms? Yes. Worms. This week, we chat with Kawsar Talaat, an infectious diseases researcher at Johns Hopkins University, and Maria Elena Bottozzi, co-director of the vaccine center at the Baylor College of Medicine, about universal vaccines. Related Links:  A universal flu shot may be nearing reality Kawsar Talaat's research profile Maria Elena Bottazzi's research profile  

Television dramas make it seem like easy work for forensic investigators to determine when a person has died. But figuring out the time since death can be tricky for bodies that have weathered away to mere skeletons. This week we’re talking with forensic scientist and molecular biotechnologist Noemi Procopio about how proteins in bones could help. Procopio’s lab is looking for markers in bones that reveal a person’s age at death, how long it’s been since they died and the environment a body has been in. She also shares about her experience working on body farms scraping clues from bones. Related Links: Noemi Procopio One forensic scientist is scraping bones for clues to time of death Bone proteins may carry clues about how a body was buried Mining proteins for crime scene clues New research could help determine more accurate time of death for unidentified remains   

Sharks are fascinating, often misunderstood creatures, and many of them are threatened or endangered, and they definitely deserve our conservation effort. But conservation effort takes time, money, and focused attention: all things that are limited resources, as much as we might wish they weren't. So how do we focus our conservation efforst to make the biggest real impact for sharks (and other creatures) in an evidence-based way? We speak with interdisciplinary marine conservation biologist and author David Shiffman about his new book "Why Sharks Matter: A Deep Dive with the World's Most Misunderstood Predator", and dig deep into the ins and outs of marine conservation: what makes it difficult, what good conservation policy takes into account, how critical it is to ensure the impacted people and communities are included in decision-making, how to differentate conservation efforts and discussions from animal welfare efforts and discussions, and why that's so important.

Even the luckiest and healthiest of us will interact with the medical systems we live in eventually, and navigating these systems can be frustrating, scary, and intimidating. In this labyrinth filled with jargon, bureaucracy, and opaque layers of expertise we often don't understand, we expect to have some control over what happens to our bodies and to get a say in opting in or out of what treatments are offered, in particular if they are experimental. But this assumption does not always hold true, and we are not always aware of when our ability consent to medical research has been side-stepped. Rachelle Saunders speaks with Harriet Washington, ethicist and author of the book "Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent", about how modern medical research can bypass our understanding of medical consent. Related Links: ClinicalTrials.gov is a database of privately and publicly funded clinical studies conducted around the world Public Citizen section on clinical trials Limning the Semantic Frontier of Informed Consent, by Harriet Washington

There's no doubt that we humans have done some pretty awful things to our landscapes. Draining swamps, cutting down forests, shooting almost all the bison. Now, there are movements to preserve, conserve and bring those landscapes back. But for whom? Who benefits? This week we are talking to Laura Martin, author of the book Wild by Design: The Rise of Ecological Restoration about the often colonizing history of ecological restoration, and what that means for its future.

This week we’re zooming in on surfaces, where lots of action happens as things slip, grip, slide, and more. Our guest Laurie Winkless, author of the book "Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces", takes us on a tour of these in-between spaces, delving into what’s going on with atoms and molecules and how that plays out in nature and the engineered world.

In 2022 it seems surgery can perform miracles. Plastic surgery in particular can reshape noses, jaws, and even transplant entire faces. But not so long ago, plastic surgery as a field didn't even exist. This week, we're going back to the trenches of World War I to learn about the birth of plastic surgery in Lindsey Fitzharris' new book: The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Faces of World War I. We'll go ahead and warn you not to listen while eating.