Science Friday

Where did we come from? How did humanity, with our complicated civilizations and all our human quirks and foibles, come to be? Much of what we know about those questions traces back to important fossil finds in Ethiopia.
Paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie has been key in that hunt for answers. A skilled fossil-finder, he’s helped discover some of the most important known hominid fossils, including the bones used to describe the 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus garhi, the first pieces of a 4.4-million-year-old partial skeleton of Ardipithecus ramidus, and fossils of the 5.8-million-year-old Ardipithecus kadabba, to name a few.
He joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about what fieldwork is really like, big questions in human origins, and making the field of paleoanthropology more equitable.
Guest:
Dr. Yohannes Haile-Selassie is the director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, and a professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In 48 B.C.E., a massive fire ripped through the Library of Alexandria in Egypt, one of the largest and most significant ancient libraries. An estimated 100,000 works of literature were lost. Throughout history, there are lots of examples of things being “lost”: cities, like Pompeii, graves of figures like Genghis Khan, and works of art from masters like Leonardo di Vinci.
Author Sam Kean explores these historical losses in his new book, “The Museum of Lost Things.” He joins Host Ira Flatow to discuss what we can learn from them.
Read an excerpt from “The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary Cities, and Mythical Creatures That Vanished From History”
Guest:
Sam Kean is the author of eight books, including “The Museum of Lost Things." He is based in Washington, D.C.
Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Living with black bears is complicated. They’re huge, hungry, and they really don’t care about your hostas. After a long period of being overhunted, black bears are on the rebound. And as they begin returning to parts of their native ranges, they’re finding humans there, too.
Reporter Cassandra Stephenson joins Flora to talk about how these interactions are playing out in southeastern states. Then, carnivore ecologist Nyeema Harris joins to discuss best practices for coexistence.
Guests:
Cassandra Stephenson covers issues impacting rural West Tennessee as a Report for America corps member at The Tennessee Lookout. She’s based in Nashville.
Dr. Nyeema Harris is an associate professor of wildlife and land conservation at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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You’ve probably been warned that if you don’t finish that course of antibiotics, you could wind up battling antibiotic-resistant bacteria. But a growing body of research suggests that the opposite might be true. What does this mean for you and your next sinus infection? Flora talks with antimicrobial resistance expert Amy Mathers to find out.
Plus, the driver of fibromyalgia, a condition that can cause debilitating chronic pain and brain fog, has been something of a mystery. Patients’ imaging and blood work often turn up normal, and many have felt dismissed by doctors.
A recent large-scale study identified a group of genes associated with the disease, a breakthrough that may help doctors understand people’s risk of developing the condition and reveal something about the nature of this mysterious illness. Flora talks with Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong, one of the study’s lead authors.
Guests:
Dr. Amy Mathers is medical director of antimicrobial stewardship and an associate professor of medicine and pathology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
Dr. Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong is an assistant professor of computational biology and public health at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Washington state.
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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When states began legalizing recreational cannabis a couple decades ago, 25 million Americans said they used the drug. That number nearly tripled to 70 million by 2023.
There are a lot of open questions about how it affects us. Why do some people find more pain relief from THC than traditional painkillers? Is it really better for sleep? What are the effects of long-term use?
Host Flora Lichtman is joined by two scientists taking on these kinds of questions: Experimental psychologist Ryan Vandrey, who’s studied the health effects of cannabis for 26 years, and neuropsychologist Natasha Wade, who studies the effects of substance abuse on adolescent brains. She recently analyzed data from 11,000 teens to understand how cannabis affects development.
Guests:
Dr. Ryan Vandrey is an experimental psychologist and professor at the Johns Hopkins University Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit and helps lead the Johns Hopkins Cannabis Science Lab.
Dr. Natasha Wade is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego and licensed clinical neuropsychologist.
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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