Short Wave

Predicting elections is getting harder. What did the midterms teach us?

Famously, polls got the 2016 election wrong. And they’d been off for multiple elections since. So, Monday night, political scientist Jack Rametta nervously refreshed his

AI is changing mathematics -- but not how you think

Math has created some of humanity's oldest intellectual challenges. And AI is completely changing the game. This year AI solved one of math’s most difficult problems. Sin

OpenAI whistleblowers on the fight over AI safety | Machine Gods

Check out NPR’s newest podcast, Machine Gods. It’s the official podcast of the singularity, meaning — the hypothetical future when machines will outpace our own intellige

Could virtual reality speed up learning?

Does swinging a lightsaber help us learn? New research from Florida Atlantic University and Brown University found that movement dramatically helps with certain kinds of

Is your favorite crime show rooted in fake science?

If you’ve ever seen a crime show, you probably know how the plot unfolds: A victim is found, an investigation ensues and police conduct a high-stakes search for the culpr

MAHA’s midterm report card

It’s been just over two years since the rise of Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA. The movement united a coalition of moms, wellness influencers and voters across the p

You Can See Everything and the science of spotting liars

It feels like everyone we know is talking about the new documentary You Can See Everything. It tracks the effort of comedian and documentarian Nathan Fielder to suss out

The battle between matter and antimatter

At the beginning of our universe, in addition to matter, there was also an equal amount of antimatter, matter's opposite. But today, there's lots more matter than antimat

The dormant viruses in all of us may help explain long COVID

Virtually every human on Earth has a slew of different types of dormant viruses in our bodies. They are remnants of past infections and are—generally—harmless. Unless the

Can planting more trees make allergies worse?

Trees provide shade and clean air in congested cities, so planting more of them seems like a straightforward solution. But trees also produce a natural pollutant— pollen.

What are the odds we're not alone in the universe?

There are hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy we live in. Many of them have their own exoplanets. So why haven’t we found proof of alien life yet? And what’s the

What the world's leading researchers think about saunas

Saunas have gone from a Scandinavian tradition to a global wellness phenomenon. But how long should a person endure heat? Do saunas actually work? And if so, what are the

The terrifying physics of prehistoric sea monsters

While dinosaurs roamed the earth, giant monsters roamed the sea. Mosasaurs were like the deadly T-rexes of the ocean: They grew up to the size of a bus and chased down th

What's at stake if we can't regrow our forests

In 2022, parachutist Luigi Cani dropped 100 million seeds over the Amazon rainforest while skydiving. He did it to raise awareness about deforestation and help regrow the

What Flock cameras really see – and how

Police departments across the U.S. are installing Flock cameras, saying the surveillance devices help deter theft and solve crimes, like helping find stolen property and

The sound of fear: Why so many animals scream

It's Halloween season — and what better way to celebrate October 13th than to explore the haunting sound of fear? That's exactly what we do in this episode, where host Re

One of the toughest parts of ADHD is left out of the diagnosis

ADHD diagnoses are on the rise in the United States, but what if professionals are missing a key part of the disorder? In the 1970s, some clinicians recognized a lot of t

What's missing from the lethal injection conversation

You might have seen the news that Christa Pike, a convicted murderer in Tennessee, did not die from the injections given to her as part of her death penalty sentence last

Science-backed guidance for healthy screen time

We’re all aware – and wary – of doomscrolling. Lots of screen time can be bad for us. But what if that’s not always the case? We spoke with the author of a study that fou

The genetic secret helping bats survive a deadly epidemic

We’re easing you into Halloween season with an episode about bats. There’s a silent serial killer decimating little brown bats as they hibernate. White nose syndrome has