Once upon a time, much of what we call “science” was performed by people called “natural philosophers,” delving into mysteries of nature, physics, chemistry, and more. Physicist and author Carlo Rovelli argues that there’s still a great need for philosophy, and that the two fields can and should learn from each other in investigating reality.  

Rovelli joins Host Ira Flatow to talk about big ideas in physics, and his new book, “On The Equality of All Things: Lessons on Physics and Philosophy.”

Read an excerpt from “On The Equality of All Things.”

Guest:

Dr. Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and the author of “On The Equality of Things.”

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Between E. coli in blueberries, glass in popsicles, and that dreaded cyclospora, this summer was all about keeping a wary eye on the groceries in the fridge. But how does the recall data stack up against previous years? And are federal cuts to food safety agencies to blame? Flora talks to food safety expert Brian Ronholm to get the big picture.

Plus, more than 1.5 million cars have been recalled this year for risk of bursting into flames. As automotive journalist Jason Torchinsky explains, it's a miracle it doesn’t happen more often.

Guests:

Brian Ronholm is the director of food policy at Consumer Reports.

Jason Torchinsky is an automotive journalist and co-founder of Autopian.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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On social media, the vagus nerve often gets billed as the gateway to nervous system nirvana: It’s your ticket to better rest, relaxation, and health if you “stimulate” it correctly. Where did this idea come from, and what does the research say?

In March, Host Flora Lichtman talked with neurosurgeon Kevin Tracey, a pioneer of a field called bioelectronic medicine, which uses techniques to stimulate the nervous system with electricity. Back in the 1990s, he was the first to discover that the vagus nerve regulates the immune system and inflammation.

Guest:

Dr. Kevin Tracey is a neurosurgeon, and president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health. He is the author of The Great Nerve.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Much of the code that describes the inner workings of social networks, helps apps predict your musical interests, and underlies innovations in AI traces back to advances in mathematical theory and data science that fundamentally describe how massive networks behave.

Jennifer Chayes helped create that field of math. She also spent 20 years at Microsoft building interdisciplinary research labs. Now, at UC Berkeley, her interests lie in using machine learning to work on topics like materials science, cancer immunotherapy, ethical decision-making, and climate change. She joins Flora for a wide-ranging discussion about math, networks, AI, academia, and her path between them. 

Guest:

Dr. Jennifer Chayes is the dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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A new mRNA vaccine for melanoma is making headlines. Moderna and Merck recently announced results from their clinical trial suggesting that this new vaccine, in combination with the cancer drug Keytruda, reduced recurrence rates in patients. The companies have not yet released full data from the trial.

So, how does the vaccine work? And does this mark the beginning of a new era of cancer treatments using mRNA vaccine technology? Ira talks with physician Michael Postow, whose patients were part of the drug trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Guest:

Dr. Michael Postow is chief of the melanoma service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. 

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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When you see a mushroom popping up from the forest floor, that mushroom is just the tip of the fungal iceberg for a vast world beneath the surface. But the nature of fungal life makes it hard to answer some basic questions. What exactly does it mean to be one individual organism? And how do you tell how old a fungus is, when parts of it can recycle, regenerate, and grow again?

Flora talks with fungal researcher Kristin Aleklett about the challenge of fungal age, and how researchers are trying to better understand what fungi are doing in the world under the ground.

Guest:

Dr. Kristin Aleklett is a researcher at Lund University in Sweden.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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There’s been wave after wave of bad news about the ocean: warming temperatures, overfishing, acidification, coral bleaching. But in the last few years, there have also been some big wins for the big blue—as well as a narrative shift, in which the ocean itself has almost become its own larger-than-life character in conservation conversations.

So how should we think about the future of the seas? And how do the stories we tell about the ocean shape how we think about it? Flora chats with marine biologist Helen Scales, author of “What the Wild Sea Can Be,” which is the Science Friday book club pick for September and October. Check out the SciFri Book Club to read along.

Read an excerpt from “What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean.”

Guest:

Dr. Helen Scales is a marine biologist and author of several books, including “What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean.”

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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When humans finally land on Mars, what should they do? A report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine lays out the science objectives for a crewed Mars mission. In January, planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who co-chaired the report committee, joined Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the plans to send people to Mars.

We also get an update on the mission to survey the asteroid Psyche. Elkins-Tanton tells us how she managed the team that made the Psyche mission possible, and what she learned from her mistakes.

Guest:

Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton is a planetary scientist. She’s the head of NASA’s Psyche mission and director of UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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AI is popping up in many corners of society, but how are doctors using it in their practice? We asked our physician listeners to call in, and many of you did. What we heard mirrored broad trends: that more and more doctors are using AI tools for diagnosis, paperwork, and getting up to speed on patients. But they also have concerns.

So how is AI changing medical care? And how is it affecting patients? Joining Host Flora Lichtman to sort fact from hallucination is physician-computer scientist Jonathan Chen, who’s studied the accuracy of these models and how healthcare workers use them.

Guest:

Dr. Jonathan Chen is an associate professor of medicine and director for Medical Education in Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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We’ve been hearing for years that climate change makes weather more extreme, and extreme weather more frequent. But what’s been more difficult to measure is exactly how climate change influences a particular weather event. For example, how much more intense was Hurricane Lala because of climate change? How much more deadly were India’s heat waves this summer? A growing field called attribution science is trying to answer questions like these.

Flora chats with climate scientist Joyce Kimutai about the field and why it's so important. Then, we hear from climate law expert Maxine Burkett about how attribution science could be used in policy, and in the courtroom, to hold emitters responsible.

Guests:

Dr. Joyce Kimutai is a climate scientist specializing in attribution science. She works for the World Weather Attribution Consortium at Imperial College London and is the principal climate scientist for the Kenya Meteorological Services.

Maxine Burkett is a professor of climate, environment, and society at Stanford University in California.

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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GPS is such an essential part of our lives that it’s easy to forget there was once a world without it. But, like many tech advancements of the 20th century, GPS was originally created by the U.S. military. So how did it become a part of daily civilian life? And how vulnerable is it to manipulation?

Katherine Dunn has written all about this and more in her book, “Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World.”

Guest:

Katherine Dunn is a science journalist and author of “Little Blue Dot: How GPS Shaped the Modern World.”

Transcript will be available after the show airs on 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

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