Science Friday

With President Trump’s moves to take control of Venezuela’s oil production—including the seizure of incoming and outgoing oil tankers—there’s been a lot of talk about the country’s deep reserves of crude. But not all oil is the same, and getting the Venezuelan reserves out of the ground might be neither cheap nor simple. So who wants that oil, and what is it good for?Petroleum engineer Jennifer Miskimins joins Host Ira Flatow to drill into the ABCs of oil production and refining.Guest: Dr. Jennifer Miskimins is 2026 president of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and head of the petroleum engineering department at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Growing up, Daisy Hernández was told that her aunt had become ill from eating a bad apple. She watched as her aunt became sicker and sicker, and didn’t learn until years later that she was living with Chagas disease. It affects around 8 million people, mostly across the Americas, and yet many of us have never heard of it.Hernandez’s book, The Kissing Bug, is SciFri’s first book club pick of the year. Host Flora Lichtman speaks with Hernández about her book, the story of her aunt who died of Chagas, and how a disease that affects so many people can be so neglected. Read an excerpt of The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease.Guest: Daisy Hernández is a journalist and the author of The Kissing Bug. She’s based in Chicago.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

What does it mean to be a wild animal in a world dominated by humans? A recent study found that city-dwelling raccoons’ snouts are getting shorter—a sign of domestication. Another study on dark-eyed juncos living on a Los Angeles college campus found that their beaks changed shape during the COVID-19 lockdown, when there wasn’t as much food and trash on campus.  Evolutionary biologist Pamela Yeh and animal domestication expert Raffaela Lesch join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss how wildlife is evolving in urban areas, what it means to be domesticated, and when we can expect to have a pet raccoon sleeping at the foot of the bed.  Guests:Dr. Pamela Yeh is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA.Dr. Raffaela Lesch is an assistant professor of biology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

A year ago this week, the Eaton and Palisades fires broke out in Los Angeles, and ultimately became one of the most destructive urban fire events in recent history. Today we’ll hear about a community brigade that is taking firefighting into its own hands through a technique called “home hardening.”Journalist Adriana Cargill, host of the new podcast “The Palisades Fire: A Sandcastle Special” from PRX, embedded with this group to understand what the future of firefighting could look like. She and Jack Cohen, a former research scientist with the USDA Forest Service, join Host Flora Lichtman to explain the science behind how people can prevent their own homes from burning.Guests:Adriana Cargill is a multimedia journalist and host of the podcast “The Palisades Fire: A Sandcastles Special.” She is based in Los Angeles, California.Dr. Jack Cohen is a former research physical scientist with the USDA Forest Service, based in Missoula, Montana.Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

When humans finally land on Mars, what should they do? A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine lays out the science objectives for a crewed Mars mission. Planetary scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who co-chaired the report committee, joins Host Flora Lichtman to talk about the plans to send people to Mars.We’ll 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. Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.