If you watch sports, whether the recent NBA finals or the ongoing World Cup matches, you may have noticed that the athletes aren’t the only ones putting on a show. The announcers seem to be playing a beautiful game of their own, capturing the excitement and play-by-play of the game in a unique blend of sentence structure, elocution, and pitch. Linguists have even given this speech pattern a name: sports announcer talk.

Sociolinguist and dialectologist Valerie Fridland joins Host Flora Lichtman to break down the patterns and rules of this register.

Guest:

Dr. Valerie Fridland is a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno, and author of “Why We Talk Funny: The Real Story Behind Our Accents.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• The Art And Science Of Trash Talk
• What The Sigma Is Algospeak?

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

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There is a murderous crime spree happening right under—and perhaps inside—our noses. Killer microbes armed with weapons are eviscerating, assassinating, and detonating their fellow microbes. And the newest culprit? A protist that morphs into a cannibilastic supergiant when times get tough. 

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Glen D’Souza and Ben Larson, two detectives who study these micro-murders. They chat about why microbes kill, how they choose their victims, and whether we can harness those weapons for good. 

Guests:

Dr. Glen D’Souza is a microbiologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University in Tempe. 

Dr. Ben Larson is an assistant professor and cell biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. 

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

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Do you ever hear a song that transports you to a specific place and time? This auditory wormhole has a name: musical daydreams. Music cognition expert Elizabeth Margulis studies why they happen, and what they tell us about our brains. She joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss this phenomenon.

Guest:

Dr. Elizabeth Margulis is a professor and director of Princeton’s Music Cognition Lab. She’s also the author of “Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• A Neurologist Investigates His Own Musical Hallucinations
• Oliver Sacks Searched The Brain For The Origins Of Music

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

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Researchers just published details of a massive undersea graveyard of whales deep in the Indian Ocean. Spanning about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles), it contains whale remains dating back more than 5 million years—and at least five active whale fall sites still teeming with life. Fossil whale expert Nick Pyenson joins Host Flora Lichtman to discuss these findings.

Then, marine biologists Rachel Sipler and Sara Jobson join Ira Flatow to describe an unusual discovery in certain species of sea cucumbers: If a foot or tentacle becomes detached, the parts don’t wither up and rot away. Even without a stomach, these parts appear to directly extract nutrients from the surrounding seawater. “Zombie” sea cucumber parts have been observed surviving for more than three years.

Guests:

Dr. Nick Pyenson is curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Dr. Rachel Sipler is a senior research scientist in the Bigelow Laboratory in East Boothbay, Maine.

Sara Jobson a PhD student at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. Johns, Canada.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• Remembering Roger Payne, Who Helped Save The Whales
• Can A Microbe Conservation Movement Take Off?

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

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Big cats used to roam the entire United States. You might know them as mountain lions, pumas, cougars, or catamounts. Though they go by many names, they're actually all the same species. 

Their current population is mostly confined to the West, and part of Florida, though in recent years they’ve been spotted in other areas east of the Mississippi River. Most cougars were gone from the Northeast by the 1800s, with the last verified accounts in the 1930s. 

Mountain lion ecologist Mark Elbroch hopes to reintroduce these big cats back into their previous habitats in New England. But, should we? What are the benefits and drawbacks of reintroducing the apex predator into an ecosystem it's been away from for so long? 

Guest:

Dr. Mark Elbroch is the director of the puma program at Panthera, a big cat conservation organization. 

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• Surveying wildlife along Lewis and Clark’s route, 220 years later
• Are Raccoons On The Road To Domestication?

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

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When Blue Origin’s New Glenn spacecraft exploded in an enormous fireball during a ground test a couple weeks ago, it sent shockwaves not only through the air, but through NASA’s timeline for the upcoming Artemis missions.

It also came at an especially bad time for Jeff Bezos’ rocket company—just days after it was awarded a slew of NASA contracts to deliver equipment to the moon. Blue Origin had also been expected to play a major role in the upcoming Artemis III and IV missions, but that’s now more up in the air depending on how soon the company can rebuild its only launchpad.

And with NASA’s Artemis III crew announcement this week, Guest Host Jane Lindholm sits down with space reporters Ken Chang and Brendan Byrne to break it all down and what’s next for the space program.

Guests:

Ken Chang is a science reporter at the New York Times, where he covers NASA and the solar system.

Brendan Byrne is a space reporter for Central Florida Public Media and host of the podcast “Are We There Yet.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• Planning your photo ops for a trip around the moon
• The new frontier of cancer research is in space

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

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‘Tis the season for porch beers and happy hours, and we’re taking on listener questions about how alcohol affects us. Like, is a glass of wine at dinner really good for you? And why do sugary drinks give us hangovers?

Joining Guest Host Jane Lindholm to answer these questions and more are brewer and chemist Tom Shellhammer and neuroscientist Jacqui Barker.

Guests:

Dr. Jacqui Barker is an associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology & Physiology at Drexel University College of Medicine.

Dr. Tom Shellhammer is a brewer and the Nor’Wester Professor of Fermentation Science at Oregon State University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• What Causes Red Wine Headaches? It May Be Quercetin
• The Physics That Makes Swing-Top Bottles ‘Pop’

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

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The 2026 World Cup will be the largest one yet, and FIFA is trying to make it the most high-tech, too. The federation has partnered with tech giant Lenovo to launch Football AI Pro, which is designed to analyze over 2,000 different metrics and deliver real-time insights to coaches, players, and analysts. Guest Host Jane Lindholm chats with ESPN writer Ryan O’Hanlon about how AI analytics actually play out in soccer.

Plus, how a team of researchers grew 16 stadiums’ worth of FIFA-class turf. Turfgrass scientist Jackie Lyn Guevara breaks down the importance of perfectly uniform turf, how the turf was designed, and what she’ll be looking out for during the matches.

Guests: 

Ryan O’Hanlon is a staff writer at ESPN and the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game's Analytics Revolution.”

Dr. Jackie Lyn "Jack" Guevara is an assistant professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• We’re All Being Played By Metrics
• The Surprising Science Of Why Sneakers Squeak

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

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Elite athletes spend a lot of time training their bodies for strength, endurance, coordination, and precision. But what about their brains? Can psychology help athletes achieve peak performance? 

Joining Flora Lichtman to talk about this are professional climber Alex Honnold and Jessica Bartley, psychologist for U.S. Olympians and Paralympians. 

Guests: 

Alex Honnold is a professional climber, founder of the Honnold Foundation, and host of the Planet Visionaries Podcast: in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.

Dr. Jessica Bartley is senior director of psychological services for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• Can Better Equipment Eliminate Concussions In Sports?
• Olympic Ski Mountaineering, And Mountain Goat Climbing Feats

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

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If you’ve ever been a child, had a child, or seen a child face down in a supermarket aisle screaming, you know that parenting can be tough. But humans aren’t the only ones raising their young, so how do animals deal with toddlers that won’t follow directions or little ones that are constantly begging for snacks?

Parent and science journalist Elizabeth Preston, who wrote the book “The Creatures' Guide to Caring,” joins Host Flora Lichtman to tackle some SciFri listeners’ parenting problems, from dawdling to the bedtime pop-out.

Read an excerpt from “The Creatures' Guide to Caring: How Animal Parents Teach Us That Humans Were Born to Care.”

Guest: Elizabeth Preston is a science journalist and the author of “The Creatures' Guide to Caring.”

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• How Do Animals Understand Death?
• Why It Took Decades For This Octopus To Be Recognized

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

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A few weeks ago, we talked to two sonic branding experts who compose music for household appliances. And we played for them a song “sung” by a washing machine that they didn’t really appreciate. But many of our listeners immediately identified the tune, a famous melody by 19th-century composer Franz Schubert.

And, as our guest tells us, it’s not just any tune—it’s one of Schubert’s most beloved compositions, “The Trout,” which he returned to several times during his short but prolific career.

L. Michael Griffel, a Schubert expert and former head of the music history department at The Julliard School, joins us for our mea culpa to “Die Forelle.”

A transcript for this episode will be added to the original segment page: Who’s composing music for my washing machine?

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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