Science Friday

Mental health information on social media can be both revelatory and misleading. How do clinicians and their patients make sense of it? TikTok and other social media sites are full of mental health content—often short, grabby, first-person videos detailing symptoms for conditions like ADHD and autism. But what does this mean for teens and young adults who spend hours a day scrolling? A new study published in PLOS One analyzes the 100 most viewed TikTok videos about ADHD to assess both how accurate they are and how young people respond to them. Researchers found that about half of the videos were inaccurate or missing key context, and that the more TikToks young adults watched, the less critical they were of the content. For some, watching social videos about mental health conditions led them to better understand themselves and eventually get a proper diagnosis and treatment. For others it made them consider if they have conditions they don’t meet the diagnostic criteria for. Host Flora Lichtman talks with the lead author of the ADHD TikTok study, Vasileia Karasavva, a PhD Student in clinical psychology at the University of British Columbia; and Dr. Jennifer Katzenstein, director of psychology, neuropsychology, and social work at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. 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.

Engineers take an in-depth look at why the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed and how to prevent future tragedies. In the early morning of March 26, 2024, the container ship Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. Within 30 seconds, the bridge collapsed into the river below. Six construction workers lost their lives. On the one-year anniversary of the accident, we talk about what went wrong, and how to improve the safety of our nation’s bridges and prevent another tragic crash. Host Ira Flatow is joined by Dr. Abi Aghayere, professor of civil engineering at Drexel University; and Dr. Thomas McKenney, associate professor of engineering practice in the naval architecture and marine engineering department at the University of Michigan. 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.

The company has genetic data of 15 million people, which could be shared with a future buyer. Here’s how to delete it. Plus, an experimental coating could make golf balls roll more reliably on greens with different conditions. After 23andMe Bankruptcy, Customers Urged To Delete Their Data If you’re one of roughly 15 million people who used 23andMe to unlock information from their DNA, consumer advocates have a message for you: Delete your data. On Sunday, the company, which has customers send saliva samples for DNA analysis, filed for bankruptcy. While many customers submitted their saliva for the purpose of ancestral analysis, 85% of customers also consent to their data used for genetic disease research. As the company searches for a buyer, consumer advocates, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, have urged customers to delete their data from 23andMe’s website. 23andMe and other genetic testing companies are not subject to HIPAA, meaning health and medical records kept by 23andMe could be shared with a future buyer. Producer Kathleen Davis joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss this and other top science stories of the week. Chemists Make A Coating That Can Slow A Golf Ball’s Roll With spring here, the days are getting warmer and longer, meaning conditions are perfect for a trip to the golf course. And while golf is certainly a game of physics—force, angles, parabolas—this week researchers presented work showing that chemistry could play an important role on the golf course as well. Speaking at the meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego, researchers described a high performance coating that could be incorporated into the polyurethane shell of a golf ball. The hydrophilic (water-loving) coating would make tiny bits of water stick to the surface of the golf ball and sheet off, modifying the way the ball interacts with the grass of the green. That interaction, says Tom Kennedy, owner of Chemical Innovative Solutions Inc., would lead to the ball rolling more slowly and reliably, especially on “fast,” closely-cut greens in dry and windy conditions. Kennedy joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss the technology, and how hydrophilic coatings could find a home in other applications, including solar cells. 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.

Certain words are overrepresented in text written by AI language models. A study investigates why such patterns develop. Also, the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, typically shorten as an organism ages. But when some fat-tail dwarf lemurs hibernate, they lengthen. ‘Delving’ Into The ‘Realm’ Of AI Word Choice Several years ago, some eagle-eyed readers of scientific papers noticed an unusual trend—an increase in the number of abstracts using certain words. The terms, including “delve,” “realm,” “evolving landscape,” and more, were suddenly appearing more often than they used to. Researchers analyzed the abstracts and compared them to abstracts written just a few years earlier, before the widespread availability of artificial intelligence large language model chatbots. They came to the conclusion that abstracts written by AI were more likely to use words from a list of around 20 favorites than regular human speech. The question was, why? If the models were trained on conventional writing, how did a preference for words such as “delve” creep in? Host Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Tom Juzek and Dr. Zina Ward of Florida State University, who set out to try to understand the origins of some of AI’s favorite words. When Dwarf Lemurs Hibernate, Their Chromosomes Do Something Odd The fat-tail dwarf lemur is one of the only primates that hibernate for the winter. A new study published in the journal Biology Letters takes a closer look at what’s going on inside lemur cells when they are in this extended phase of suspended animation. It turns out that their telomeres, the ends of the chromosomes, actually grow longer when the dwarf lemurs hibernate. Typically telomeres shorten as we age, as cells continuously divide. So, what exactly does this finding mean for lemurs and other primates, like humans? Host Flora Lichtman talks with the co-authors of this study, Dr. Marina Blanco and Dr. Lydia Greene, research scientists at Duke University. 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.

TB kills more than a million people each year. Dr. Mireille Kamariza has spent her career developing better detection and treatment tools. As the United States retreats from global health leadership—withdrawing from the World Health Organization, dismantling USAID—public health experts warn that there will be implications for the spread of certain diseases around the globe. One such disease is tuberculosis (TB), which is the deadliest infectious disease in the world. If you live in the United States, it’s likely that TB is not on your radar: It’s rare, and if someone is infected, there are effective treatments. But elsewhere in the world, more than a million people die of the bacterium each year, mostly in low-resource, high population regions. Tuberculosis isn’t a straightforward bug to treat. It has a unique armor, which helps it evade treatment like antibiotics. The current treatment regimen involves taking 16 pills a day for six months, which for people in regions with limited access to medicine, can be a massive barrier. Joining Host Flora Lichtman to discuss the science behind this deadly bacterium, and new tools to test for and treat it, is Dr. Mireille Kamariza, a chemical biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. 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.

In a new book, author John Green traces how the disease has impacted culture, geography, and even fashion over the centuries. Tuberculosis (TB) has had an incredibly large impact on human history. One staggering statistic? It’s been estimated that by the start of the 1800s, the disease had killed one in seven people who had ever lived. Because of this, tuberculosis affected human culture, geography, and fashion—and even killed off some of literature and media’s most famous heroines. While TB incidence has gone down tremendously in the United States, it remains a massive issue in low-resource nations. About 1.25 million people die of TB each year, making it still the deadliest infectious disease in the world. Author John Green explores humankind’s relationship with TB in the new book Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. Green speaks with Host Flora Lichtman about how TB’s path reflects our society and culture. He joins us from Indianapolis, Indiana. Transcript for this 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.

Researchers built the largest 3D map of our universe yet. What they found supports the idea that dark energy could have evolved over time. One of the mysteries of the universe is why it expands at the rate that it does. Back in 1998, two teams of researchers observed that not only was the universe expanding, but that the rate of expansion was increasing. That observation was the basis for a concept now known as dark energy. In the years since, cosmologists have been trying to get a handle on better measurements of that effect, and hoping to figure out what dark energy actually might be. This week, researchers on a project called DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, released results based on their first three years of data at an international physics conference. They found that it appears possible that dark energy—whatever it is—has changed over the lifetime of the universe. In other words, the so-called cosmological constant may not, in fact, be a constant. The data is not quite statistically significant yet, so researchers can’t definitively say that this is true, which leaves many questions about the nature of dark energy still unresolved. Dr. Andrei Cuceu of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Dr. Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the new research, and what remains to be discovered in dark energy. 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.

After nine months aboard the International Space Station, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have finally landed back on Earth. Also, a German physicist and homebrewer discovered brief, intense physical reactions that happen when you uncork a bubbly swing-top bottle. NASA Astronauts Return To Earth After Extended Stay On The ISS After 286 days aboard the International Space Station—278 days longer than their initial planned mission—NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams landed safely back on Earth on Tuesday, off the coast of Florida. Their mission turned into a nine-month stay on the station after their Boeing Starliner capsule had issues with its thrusters and NASA deemed it unsafe to carry the astronauts back. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule instead ferried them to Earth earlier this week. And they had a splashdown surprise: A pod of curious dolphins greeted them after they landed. Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Casey Crownhart, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review, to catch us up on that and other big science stories from this week, including why a company is trying to “refreeze” a massive glacier, why the 10 hottest years on record are the last 10, and how the London Zoo is trying to conserve a unique frog that incubates its young in its vocal sacs. The Physics That Makes Swing-Top Bottles ‘Pop’ For a lot of us, uncorking a bottle is the sound of celebration. It’s also a sound that we may not think too much about—until we open our next bottle. But Dr. Max Koch, a physicist at the University of Göttingen who does home brewing on the side, got to wondering what actually makes that popping sound. What’s happening inside that bottle, physics-wise? To find out more, he recorded the uncorking of an unsuccessful batch of his ginger beer using microphones and a high-speed camera, and analyzed the bubbly results with a physicist’s rigor. His team’s findings were published in the journal Physics of Fluids. Dr. Koch sits down with Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the brief but intense changes to temperature, sound, and speed that happen when you uncork a swing-top glass bottle. 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.

The framework of Adverse Childhood Experiences started with an unexpected finding over 30 years ago. How is our approach changing? We know that experiences from our childhood, both good and bad, shape who we become as adults. But, understanding what kinds of early experiences have staying power into adulthood and the wide range of impacts they can have is an emerging science. In the 1980s, Dr. Vincent Felitti ran a weight loss clinic in San Diego, California. He noticed that some patients who regained weight were more likely to have experienced sexual abuse in childhood.This eventually led him to conduct research on a larger scale to better understand the correlation between what he and his colleagues dubbed adverse childhood experiences, or ACES, and mental and physical health challenges later in life. This same 10-question survey Dr. Felitti gave participants in the 1990s is still used by researchers and clinicians to assess childhood trauma. But recently, some psychology experts have begun to question how accurately the ACES framework identifies trauma in diverse populations, since it was originally developed for a mostly white and affluent study population. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Preeti Simran Sethi, science writer and Rosalyn Carter Mental Health Journalism fellow, about her reporting for Science Friday about adverse childhood experiences. Also, to see more butterfly stories from our listeners, visit our story from last week. 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.

Former NIH director Dr. Harold Varmus speaks out about what recent budget cuts and policy changes could mean for science. One of the areas targeted by President Trump’s administration for cuts has been the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Cost-cutting actions have included the layoffs of some 1,200 NIH employees, the termination of research grants, a pause in the “study sections” that evaluate and award grant funding, and a cap on indirect costs included in research grants. Some of those moves have been paused following court cases. Dr. Harold Varmus, a former director of the National Institutes of Health, joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the actions, and the impact he fears they could have on the future of biomedical research in the United States. 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.

Fungal networks in the ground ferry crucial nutrients to plants. But how do brainless organisms form complex supply chain networks? Also, in this year’s baseball spring training, the new Automated Ball-Strike System is helping settle challenges to home plate pitch calls. Scientists Observe Fungi Creating Complex Supply Chains As the leaves start to pop out, it’s natural to look up and admire the trees. But actually, there’s a lot of action happening underneath your feet. Beneath you is a complex network of fungal trade routes carrying essential nutrients to the roots of plants, mined from the soil by fungus. It’s a subterranean supply chain. But how exactly do these complex networks form? How does the fungus decide where to ship which resources, or where to build roads? Basically, how does a brainless thread make decisions? Host Flora Lichtman is joined by Dr. Toby Kiers, an author on a recent study of those networks, and professor of evolutionary biology at Vrije University in Amsterdam. She’s also the executive director of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). A Rookie Robot Umpire Takes The Field Baseball fans are eagerly awaiting opening day. And while spring training is a time for teams to test out new players and strategies, it’s also a time for Major League Baseball to trial new rules and procedures. One of the things that the league has been testing this year is a robotic system to call balls and strikes. The Automated Ball-Strike System, which is based on the same technology used for line judging in tennis, isn’t calling every pitch, but is used to back up a challenge system at the plate. The tech is already in use in Triple-A games, and could make it to the major leagues in the years ahead. Baseball writer Davy Andrews joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about the technology, and how it could subtly change the rules of the game. 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.

Layoffs at the agency, which releases weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, could have serious implications. Also, funds for climate and sustainability-focused farming projects have been indefinitely frozen, even though the USDA has already signed contracts. 10% Of NOAA Staff Laid Off, With More Cuts Possible The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, better known as NOAA, impacts and provides services for Americans every day. The agency releases daily weather forecasts and monitors extreme weather, and it also conducts research into global weather and climate change. Along with many other federal science agencies, NOAA is being subjected to layoffs in the name of cost-cutting: 10% of the agency’s workforce has been laid off, with 1,000 more cuts potentially to come. According to Dr. Timothy Gallaudet, acting NOAA administrator during Trump’s first term, this is likely to lead to declines in quality of service and access to information about weather events. Host Flora Lichtman speaks to Umair Irfan, science correspondent at Vox, who has been covering the turmoil at NOAA. They also discuss other science stories of the week, including the death of prolific blood donor James Harrison. Frozen Climate And Conservation Funds Leave Farmers In Limbo Around the country, farmers are planning and planting this year’s crops. It can be uncertain work, made even more tenuous by some of the Trump administration’s changes to climate and conservation policies. The administration has frozen billions of dollars in grants to farmers for sustainable agriculture, conservation, and “climate smart” projects. In some cases, farmers had already signed contracts with the government and begun work on these projects. While some funding from the Inflation Reduction Act was recently released, many farmers across the country are still in limbo. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Patrick Brown, a farmer in Warren County, North Carolina; and Dr. Kitty O’Neil, an agricultural climate resiliency specialist at Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension about the future of farming in a changing climate. 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.

It’s March 14, or Pi Day, that day of the year where we celebrate the ratio that makes a circle a circle. The Greek letter that represents it is such a part of our culture that it merits our irrational attention. Joining Host Ira Flatow to help slice into our pi’s is Dr. Steven Strogatz, professor of math at Cornell University and co-host of Quanta Magazine’s podcast “The Joy Of Why.” They talk about how pi was “discovered,” the ways it’s figuring into recent science, and how AI is changing the field of mathematics. 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.

When you imagine prehistoric life, it’s likely that the first thing that comes to mind are dinosaurs: long-necked Apatosauruses, flying Pterosaurs, big toothy Tyrannosaurs. But what don’t get as much attention are the prehistoric plants that lived alongside them. Plants, shrubs, and trees played a key part in the food chains of dinosaurs, and many dinosaurs evolved to match the plant life available to them. The Apatosaurus’ long neck, for example, developed to reach leaves high up in prehistoric trees. Joining Host Flora Lichtman to defend the importance of prehistoric plants is Riley Black, author of the new book When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals and Evolution’s Greatest Romance. She’s based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Read an excerpt from When the Earth Was Green at sciencefriday.com. 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.

An international team of researchers used drones to study narwhals and learn more about their behavior. And, a total lunar eclipse will be visible across most of North and South America in the early morning hours of March 14. New Footage Shows How Narwhals Use Tusks To Hunt And Play We’re taking a polar plunge into the science of sea unicorns, also known as narwhals! Narwhals are mysterious arctic whales with long, twirly tusks protruding from their foreheads, like a creature out of a fairy tale. And it turns out that we don’t know too much about them, partly because they live so far north in the remote Arctic. An international team of researchers used drones to observe narwhals in the wild and learned new things about their behavior, including how they use their tusks to hunt and play. Host Flora Lichtman gets on the horn with Dr. Gregory O’Corry-Crowe, research professor and biologist at Florida Atlantic University, who was an author on the new narwhal study, published last month in Frontiers in Marine Science. How To See The ‘Blood Moon’ Lunar Eclipse This Week Early on Friday, March 14 (or super late on Thursday, March 13, depending on your time zone) people across the U.S. will be able to watch a total lunar eclipse, if skies are clear. The partial eclipse will begin at 1:09 a.m. Eastern time on Friday the 14th, with totality lasting from 2:26 to 3:31 a.m. Eastern. Astronomer Dean Regas joins Host Flora Lichtman to tell us what to expect, and share some tips for comfortable lunar eclipse viewing. 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.

A sweeping new study on one of the most beloved insects, maybe the only truly beloved insect—the butterfly—details its rapid population decline in the United States. The new research, published in the journal Science widens the butterfly net and looks at how more than 500 species have fared over the past 20 years. Researchers found that many populations are taking a nosedive. What’s causing the downswing, and is there anything we can do? Host Flora Lichtman talks with two of the study authors, Dr. Elise Zipkin, Red Cedar distinguished professor of quantitative ecology and director of the ecology, evolution and behavior program at Michigan State University; and Dr. Nick Haddad, professor of integrative biology also at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. 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.

On the very first day of Donald Trump’s second term, he signed an executive order targeting foreign aid programs, especially the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Comprising less than 0.1% of the federal budget, USAID provides international humanitarian and development aid for poverty eradication, education, disease prevention, and medical programs. The Trump administration has cut off funding for these programs and most of the USAID staff was placed on leave or laid off. Since January, hospitals and clinics in places like Thailand, Syria, and India have shuttered; clinical trials on HIV and maternal health have been canceled; and projects on polio, malaria, and tuberculosis prevention have been stopped. Then, this week, the Supreme Court rejected a bid to keep some aid funds frozen. But what does that mean in practice for USAID’s global health initiatives? Host Flora Lichtman talks about the global health implications of dismantling USAID with Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon and former head of global health at USAID; and Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, epidemiologist and director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa. 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.

Scientists aren’t always encouraged to be politically active. But recent political interference by the Trump administration has many fired up. And, the Blue Ghost lunar lander, part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, completed the first fully successful commercial moon landing. Protesters ‘Stand Up For Science’ At Rallies Across The Country Scientists and defenders of science are gathering in cities across the U.S. today as part of Stand Up for Science rallies, events to protest recent political interference by the Trump administration in science funding. The main rally in Washington, D.C. features speakers including Bill Nye, Dr. Frances Collins and Dr. Atul Gawande, and will advocate for ending censorship, expanding scientific funding, and defending diversity, equity, and inclusion. Host Flora Lichtman speaks to science reporter Anil Oza, a Sharon Begley Fellow at STAT and MIT, about the runup to Stand Up For Science, and what he’s heard from organizers and attendees. Then, Flora speaks with two listeners, D.C.-based planetary scientist Mike Wong and University of Louisville student Emily Reed, about why they’re fired up to attend local rallies. Touchdown For The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Last weekend, the Blue Ghost lander, built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace, became the first commercial spacecraft to execute a fully successful landing on the surface of the moon. On board the lander were 10 NASA instruments flown as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The lander will be in operation on the moon over the course of one lunar day (about 2 Earth weeks), before running out of battery power as the lunar night falls. Kevin Scholtes, an engineer at Firefly Aerospace, and Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about building a commercial spacecraft, the role of private companies in spaceflight, and some of the science the mission aims to achieve. 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.

Last year, 9,000 deceased donor kidneys were discarded due to storage and time limitations. A kidney “life support” machine could change that. Also, the SS United States will join Florida’s 4,300 artificial reefs—human-made places for fish and other marine life to live. How do these reefs work? The Effort To Save Thousands Of Donor Kidneys From Being Wasted Sylvia Miles was diagnosed with lupus in 2006, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack healthy tissue—including her kidneys. Miles, who lives in Indianapolis, was later diagnosed with advanced kidney disease, and was in need of a kidney transplant. Kidney diseases are one of the leading causes of death in the United States with 37 million people living with chronic kidney disease. Together with advanced kidney disease—the later stage of CKD—it cost Medicare billions of dollars in recent years. People like Miles, who need a kidney transplant, wait an average of five years—often on dialysis. But despite the long waitlists and organ shortages, around 9,000 kidneys from deceased donors last year were discarded due to perceived issues with their viability. A new Indiana-based organization, 34 Lives, is working to limit that waste and rehabilitate the organs. Read the rest of this article on sciencefriday.com. Ocean Liner SS United States Will Become An Artificial Reef This week, after a notable career, the SS United States, a 1950s ocean liner, took her sunset cruise. Like many retirees, the ship is heading south—from Philadelphia to Florida—where she’ll be reinventing herself. In this next chapter, the SS United States will have new passengers: fish and other marine creatures. The ship will be sunk to the bottom of the sea and turned into an artificial reef, joining more than 4,300 artificial reefs off the coast of Florida. Other sunken ships have become artificial reefs in the past, which have helped boost marine life as well as scuba diving and fishing tourism. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Scott Jackson, a regional specialized agent with the Florida Sea Grant and University of Florida IFAS extension, about the science behind artificial reefs, and what has been learned from decades of research. 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.

A journalist traveled to five continents to learn about the afterlife of our trash, and why most “recyclable” plastic actually isn’t. Have you ever gotten to the end of, say, a jar of peanut butter and wondered if it should go in trash or recycling? If it’s worth rinsing out? And where will it actually end up? Journalist Alexander Clapp had those same questions, and went to great lengths to answer them—visiting five continents to chronicle how our trash travels. Along the way, he discovered a multibillion dollar trash trade run by shady waste brokers, and a global industry powered by slimy spoons, crinkled plastic bags, and all the other stuff we throw away. It’s a putrid business that we’re a part of, and many of us know little about. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Clapp about the garbage business and his new book Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife Of Your Trash. 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.