May. 17, 2013
Desktop Diaries: Daniel Kahneman
"I have always emphasized the willingness to discard," says psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. That philosophy works on two levels -- forget desk trinkets, Kahneman doesn't have a desk -- and he doesn't hoard ideas either he says.
May. 09, 2013
Gear for Your Coffee Grounds
Coffee experts percolate over how to get the most from your grounds. From the chemex to the wood neck, the brewmasters filter out reasons to choose one brewing device over another.
May. 03, 2013
Fermenting with Sandor Katz
Sandor Ellix Katz, self-proclaimed "fermentation revivalist" and author of "The Art of Fermentation" (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012) discusses the two "cultures."
May. 03, 2013
Living Inside the Box
Michele Bertomen and David Boyle bought an empty 20-by-40-foot lot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and built a home constructed from shipping containers.
Apr. 18, 2013
Every Spring, This Bird Struts its Stuff
Across Utah, the Greater sage-grouse performs a striking dance routine each morning at dawn.
Apr. 24, 2013
Science Project: Coffee
Get the scoop on coffee flavor with Harold McGee's counter-top chemistry experiment.
Apr. 12, 2013
Concocting the Perfect Cup of Coffee
Brew-masters pore over the chemistry and craft of making a good cup of joe.
Apr. 04, 2013
Making Tissues from Water Droplets?
Researchers turned tiny water droplets into cooperative networks that can change shape and pass electrical signals.
May. 14, 2009
Finding the Roots of an Ancient Crop
Agave plants, probably best known as the source of tequila, were important as a food crop long before the invention of margaritas. Wendy Hodgson, botanist at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, says the plants were cultivated as far back as 800 A...
Mar. 19, 2010
Tiny Dancers Show Rhythm's Roots
In perhaps the cutest study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, psychologist Marcel Zentner and Tuomas Eerola found that babies will spontaneously boogie when they hear music and other rhythmic sounds. The findings sugge...
Mar. 15, 2013
Tying Water in a Knot
These fluid knots are like smoke rings--but made of water and shaped like a pretzel instead of a donut.
Mar. 12, 2013
James Watson: Studio Session
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA — the now-famous double helix.
Mar. 08, 2013
Behold the Mighty Water Bear
Water bears, also known as tardigrades, can survive boiling, freezing, the vacuum of space and years of desiccation. Biologist Bob Goldstein, of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, describes water bears and explains why he studies them. ...
Mar. 01, 2013
Rap Nerdy to Me
MC Frontalot and Dr. Awkward rap about the nerd life -- from data encryption to rare diseases to video games.
Feb. 22, 2013
How Dirty Roaches Get Clean
Cockroaches are constantly grooming themselves, especially their antennae, says entomologist Coby Schal. A new study investigates benefits of clean antennae.
Feb. 14, 2013
Art Meets Geek in Toni Dove's Studio
You'll find cyborgs, robots, 3D projections, digital puppets and more in Dove's techno-savvy productions.
Feb. 08, 2013
Snowflake Safari
Next snowstorm, grab a magnifying glass and try snowflake hunting. Bullet rosettes, stellar plates, and capped columns are just a few of the varieties of snow crystal you can find in your backyard.
Feb. 01, 2013
How Owls Turn Heads
How do owls turn their heads 270 degrees without damaging their blood vessels? X-rays and dissections may provide an answer.
Jan. 25, 2013
Mold Compounds Sandy's Destruction
The Rockaways, a Queens, N.Y. neighborhood, is still recovering from Sandy. Debris from fires lingers on the streets, and buildings torn apart by the storm are crumbling on the beach. But those with restored heat and power have another concern: mold.
Jan. 18, 2013
What's So Cool About Frozen Water?
Ice can be hard to get a handle on, literally and figuratively. It can be cloudy or clear, as hard as concrete or as soft as a snowflake. Ice experts Erland Schulson, head of the Ice Research Lab at Dartmouth College, and Shintaro Okamoto, founder of...
Jan. 11, 2013
Getting a Grip on Finger Wrinkles
Why do your fingers get pruney after a swim? A new study suggests that wrinkles improve our handling of wet objects.
Jan. 04, 2013
Reel Science Friday: 2012 Highlights
Catfish eating pigeons, water traveling uphill, a blue whale barrel roll -- we're taking a stroll down memory lane for a look at the year's best moments in science cinema. What were your favorite science videos of 2012?
Dec. 21, 2012
Shooting Stars
Photographer Colin Legg makes time-lapse movies of celestial scenes. Legg shares tips, and describes some of the challenges of landscape astrophotography -- from babysitting cameras for days and nights on end to running electronics off the grid.
Dec. 14, 2012
Super-Sized Snapshot
Meet a Polaroid camera that weighs 235 pounds and takes 2-foot-tall instant snapshots.
Dec. 07, 2012
Blue Whale Barrel Roll
Blue whales can grow to 90 feet -- that's longer than a tennis court. To understand how they get so large, Jeremy Goldbogen studies their dining habits. And he found that blue whales do underwater acrobatics while they eat.
Nov. 30, 2012
Yet Another Reason to Spike That Eggnog
Will alcohol kill the bacteria in homemade eggnog? A festive microbiology lab investigates.
Nov. 23, 2012
Heavy Metal: The Physics of DIY Instruments
Composer and instrument builder Paul Rudolph makes music from garbage. John Powell, physicist and author of How Music Works, chimes in with an explanation of how Rudolph's modifications to the instruments helps transform noise into notes.
Nov. 16, 2012
Desktop Diaries: Temple Grandin
"I'm pure geek, pure logic," says Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University. We spent an afternoon with Dr. Grandin in her office in Fort Collins.
Nov. 09, 2012
Desktop Diaries: Oliver Sacks
Writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks explains what his desk means to him. From lumps of metal to lemurs, Sacks describes some of his treasures.
Nov. 02, 2012
Sandy's CT Scan, and Other Vital Images
Satellites looked at Sandy this week, and they also looked in.
Oct. 26, 2012
Plunge Into the Science of BASE Jumping
BASE stands for the objects the practitioners of the sport jump from: buildings, antennas, spans, earth. Wingsuits are sometimes involved; parachutes, always.
Oct. 19, 2012
Geek My Pumpkin
Maniac Pumpkin Carvers Marc and Chris carve hundreds of pumpkins each fall, which go for a few hundred bucks and rarely end up on stoops. They gave us some tips for how to bring our pumpkins to the next level this Halloween.
Oct. 12, 2012
Step Into an Optical Illusion
In Demon Hill, the rules of gravity don't apply as you expect them to. Down is not down, exactly. The room, created by Los Angeles artist Julian Hoeber and on display at the Harris Lieberman Gallery in New York, is modeled on a stock roadside att...
Oct. 05, 2012
This Beetle Puts the 'Extreme' in Extremity
The horn of a Japanese rhinoceros beetle (Trypoxylus dichotomus) can grow to be two-thirds the length of the rest of its body. And size matters. The male beetles use their horns to battle over feeding sites, where they also get access to female beetl...
Sep. 28, 2012
Wild California Condors Made Here
By 1982, fewer than two dozen California condors lived in the wild. By 1985, only one wild breeding pair was known to exist. That's when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service decided to capture all remaining wild California condors and bring them to...
Sep. 21, 2012
Printing Solar Panels in the Backyard
Imagine what you might do if you could print your own solar panels. That's kind of the dream behind Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein's Solar Pocket Factory -- although they see it more as the "microbrewery" of panel production rather than a to...
Sep. 14, 2012
Mushroom Madness
What happens at the Northeast Mycological Federation Foray? “Mushrooms only,” according to attendee Gary Lincoff, an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden and author of The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms. Sc...
Sep. 14, 2012
Fungi Fans 'Felt' the Love
At the Northeast Mycological Federation's 36th Annual Foray, some 15 crafty people learned how to use wool roving to create a mushroom-themed felt pillow. Cornelia Cho, a pediatrician and the president of the Mushroom Club of Georgia led th...
Sep. 07, 2012
To the Bat Cave!
Bat biologist Nickolay Hristov, of UNC’s Center for Design Innovation and Winston-Salem State University, develops new techniques for filming and visualizing bats and the caves they occupy. Some of the tools in his kit include a long-range lase...
Aug. 31, 2012
Unwinding the Cucumber Tendril Mystery
Plants may be stationary but they're rarely still, says biologist Roger Hangarter, creator of the website Plants in Motion. Researchers are using time-lapse photography to study the biomechanics of plant movement. For example, this week in the jo...
Aug. 29, 2012
Super Crisp Brains
A new microscope technique produces extra-sharp images of large swaths of the brain. The technique, described in Optics Express, combines light sheet microscopy -- which uses a thin sheet of light to illuminate the sample -- with confocal micro...
Aug. 24, 2012
Science of Good Dancing
Evolutionary psychologist Nick Neave filmed men dancing, converted the videos into dancing avatars and asked women to rate the avatars' dancing ability. The researchers found that the highly-rated male dancers had some moves in common. (Some advi...
Aug. 17, 2012
Poop and Paddle
This toilet floats. It's an outhouse and sewage-treatment plant in one, processing human waste through a "constructed wetlands." Adam Katzman, the inventor and builder of the toilet-boat, says it's meant to be more inspirational than practica...
Aug. 10, 2012
Building for Mars... Sometimes Painful, Always Glorious
Engineers Mike Passaretti and Lee Carlson give us a tour of Honeybee Robotics, a lab that built parts for Curiosity. Mike and Lee spent the last eight years, on and off, designing, building and testing a device called the Sample Manipulation System, ...
Aug. 03, 2012
Microscopic Movie Stars
Photographer Roman Vishniac is perhaps best-known for documenting Jewish communities in Eastern Europe before World War II, but he also was a science buff. In the 1950s-1970s, with funding from the Educational Testing Service, the National Science Fo...
Jul. 27, 2012
A Spacesuit Ballet
Of the suit he wore on the moon, Neil Armstrong wrote, "it was tough, reliable, and almost cuddly." But that cuddly suit, made by the company Playtex, had some stiff competition (literally) from rival rigid, metal designs. This video features archiva...
Jul. 20, 2012
Dive into Florida's Aquarius Reef Base
Take a tour of the only working undersea lab left today. (no sound) Hear the Science Friday interview with Sylvia Earle from inside Aquarius, 60 feet underwater. >>
Jul. 20, 2012
Getting a Leg Up: High Jump Explained
Jesus Dapena studies how humans reach great heights, biomechanically. The world record for the high jump -- the event in which a person propels him- or herself over a horizontal bar -- is just over eight feet. To understand how this is possible, Dape...
Jul. 11, 2012
Manhattanhenge: Watch a Star Align
Twice a year, the sunset lines up with New York City's street grid -- making for spectacular views. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, identified the cosmic event over a decade ago and coined it Manhattanhenge. L...
Jul. 06, 2012
DisCERN this: Large Hadron Rap
An original rap about the Large Hadron Collider--don't miss it. Brought to you by Will Barras, PhD student in the department of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh and science writer (and rapper) Kate McAlpine.
Jun. 29, 2012
Smart Milk Jug, Invented by Sixth Graders
"Making a pitcher that tells you if milk is bad or good would seem like the stuff of the future, but it can be made," says Harry Freedman, one of a team of 6th graders from P.S. 126/Manhattan Academy of Technology in New York City who invented an int...
Jun. 22, 2012
Medical Oddities from the Bowels of the Mütter
"Disturbingly informative," is how museum director Robert Hicks describes Philadelphia's Mütter Museum--items of interest include a gangrenous hand, wax models of extinct diseases, deformed bones and body parts. Now imagine what's in the...
Jun. 22, 2012
Bones, Books, and Bell Jars
In her new book, Bones Books and Bell Jars, physician and photographer Andrea Baldeck documents the collection of medical texts, instruments, and specimens at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.
Jun. 15, 2012
Desktop Diaries: Sylvia Earle
How do you become a scientist? "It's really easy: you start out as a little kid and then you never grow up," says explorer and biologist Sylvia Earle. In the latest installment of Science Friday's Desktop Diaries series, Her Deepness takes us...
Jun. 14, 2012
Behold the Beauty of the Ant
Taxonomy can be beautiful, according to Brian Fisher of the California Academy of Sciences. Fisher is the founder of AntWeb, an online repository of high-res glamor shots of ants, along with taxonomic information for each species. The AntWeb team has...
Jun. 08, 2012
What is a Flame?
When Alan Alda was 11 years old, he asked his teacher, "What is a flame?" Alda says his teacher answered: "oxidation" and left it at that. Six decades later, Alda was still wondering so he launched a contest. Scientists were challenged to answer the ...
Jun. 06, 2012
Alan Alda Takes on a Hot Topic
When Alan Alda was 11-years-old he wondered, 'what is a flame?' He asked his teacher and the answer wasn't very satisfying, Alda told Ira in our New York studios last March. Sixty years later, Alda was still looking for a good answer so h...
Jun. 01, 2012
Finding Glow-in-the-Dark Millipedes
Forget the fireflies, check out these lightning bugs of a different color. SciFri listener Chris Lavin stumbled upon fluorescing blue millipedes during an evening stroll near her home in Canyon, California and sent along video documentation. Gl...
May. 25, 2012
From The Archive: Battling Blight
Tim Stark, tomato farmer and proprietor of Eckerton Hill Farm in Lobachsville, PA, describes his battle with late blight during the summer of 2009.
May. 18, 2012
Bon Appetit, From The Backyard
Some New Yorkers are taking “locavore” to the next level -- eating snails from the yard, foraging mushrooms in the parks. Super foragers Anya Pozdeeva and Christopher Toole, of Vertically Integrated Farms, share foraging tips, and explain...
May. 04, 2012
Cracking the Egg Sprinkler Mystery
When engineer Tadd Truscott was in grad school, one of his classmates at MIT suggested they spin an egg in a puddle of milk and film it with a high-speed camera. What they saw was a tiny sprinkler system: the milk rose up the sides of the spinning eg...
Apr. 27, 2012
Pied Piper of Fish
Maurizio Porfiri wants to build robots that can herd fish like sheepdogs. Sound fishy? He's farther along than you might expect. A few years ago, Porfiri, a mechanical engineer at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, discovered real ...
Apr. 20, 2012
Untangling the Hairy Physics of Rapunzel
The secret to animating hair? Physics. Kelly Ward, senior software engineer for Walt Disney Animation Studios, was responsible for bringing Rapunzel's locks to life in Disney's Tangled. The hair had to look realistic, but not too real -- othe...
Apr. 20, 2012
Bay Bridge 2.0
Jordana Jackson, of the California Department of Transportation, takes us on a tour of the new Bay Bridge--connecting Oakland to Yerba Buena Island.
Apr. 12, 2012
Science Friday In Space
Ira chats with NASA commander Dan Burbank and flight engineer Don Pettit from the International Space Station. How do astronauts take a bath in space? What happens to their sense of smell in a weightless environment? Two NASA astrona...
Apr. 13, 2012
Desktop Diaries: E. O. Wilson
Many of us spend more time at our desks than anywhere else. In the latest installment of Science Friday's Desktop Diaries series, ecologist Edward O. Wilson takes us on a tour of his office, located in Harvard University's Museum of Comparati...
Apr. 13, 2012
Letter to a Young Scientist
Bonus clip! Edward O. Wilson addresses young scientists. In an episode of our Desktop Diaries video series, take a tour of Dr. Wilson's office.
Apr. 06, 2012
Coyotes Cruise NYC
Coyotes have been spotted in the Bronx, Queens and even Manhattan. Mark Weckel, a wildlife biologist at the Mianus River Gorge Preserve, has been documenting their immigration to New York City through "camera traps" he has set up in the city parks. W...
Nov. 15, 2007
Oliver Sacks on Music and the Brain
What does being struck by lightening have to do with musical ability? Find out. Ira speaks with author and neurologist Oliver Sacks about music and the brain and Sacks' latest book Musicophilia.
Nov. 25, 2009
Bird of a Different Feather
Are all turkeys created equal? Maybe not. A growing number of Americans are forking over hundreds of dollars for "heritage turkeys" for their Thanksgiving spreads, experts say. What's so special about heritage birds? We visit Garden of Eve, an or...
Apr. 21, 2008
Where Do Bees Do Their Business?
Beekeeper Sarah Christman explains what happens in a honeybee hive during the winter. Christman is the Milwaukee operations manager for Growing Power, Inc., a non-profit organization and land trust based in Milwaukee, WI that helps people grow, proce...
May. 13, 2008
Compost Keeps the Garden Toasty
A special recipe of coffee grounds, wood chips and brewery waste makes a compost that generates enough heat to warm greenhouses all through the cold Wisconsin winters.
May. 13, 2008
Raising Fish in a Greenhouse
Growing Power raises 50,000 fish each year...in greenhouses. Find out the secret to raising tilapia and perch--Wisconsin's favorite frying fish.
May. 13, 2008
Growing Power
Meet Will Allen--a farmer famous for his innovative approach to agriculture. From raising fish in greenhouses to heating with compost, Allen has developed efficient techniques for farming in urban environments. He is the CEO of Growing Power, Inc., a...
May. 13, 2008
Worms at Work
Steve Schiro, Milwaukee Projects Assistant at Growing Power, reveals his love for the worms he raises. Find out how worms transform food waste into rich soil.
May. 13, 2008
Your Garden's Favorite Beverage
Find out how to brew worm tea: a potent power-packed beverage for your plants. Warning: worm tea not for human consumption.
Jul. 04, 2008
Little Beetle, Big Trouble
A tiny invasive beetle is on the march. It's moving into Pennsylvania, which is bad for baseball. Most ash baseball bats come from wood grown in the state. Sven-Erik Spichiger, an entomologist for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, is tr...
Aug. 29, 2008
DisCERN this: Large Hadron Rap
An original rap about the Large Hadron Collider--don't miss it. Brought to you by Will Barras, PhD student in the department of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh and science writer (and rapper) Kate McAlpine.
Dec. 18, 2008
Another Reason To Spike That Eggnog
It is a question on the minds of many people this season: will adding alcohol to the homemade eggnog safeguard against salmonella? To find out, Science Friday teamed up with eggnog expert and microbiologist Vince Fischetti, who agreed to run some tes...
Jan. 23, 2009
Behold the Mighty Water Bear
Water bears, also known as tardigrades, can survive boiling, freezing, the vacuum of space and years of desiccation. Biologist Bob Goldstein, of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, describes water bears and explains why he studies them.
Apr. 10, 2009
Time Lapse from Space
While astronaut Don Pettit was living aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he used some of his off-duty time to make time lapse videos of what he was seeing outside of the ISS window.
May. 22, 2009
Belting Out A Physics Lesson
High school science teacher Sam Terfa wanted to demonstrate a fundamental physics principle: resonant frequency. To do so, he found the best singer at Minnehaha Academy and had him serenade a wine glass. It did not turn out well for the glass.
Jun. 05, 2009
Manhattanhenge: Watch A Star Align
Twice a year, the sunset lines up with New York City's street grid -- making for spectacular views. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, identified the cosmic event over a decade ago and coined it Manhattanhenge. L...
Dec. 18, 2009
Yet Another Reason To Spike That Eggnog
A perennial holiday dilemma: will alcohol kill the bacteria in homemade eggnog? Microbiologists Vince Fischetti and Raymond Schuch, from The Rockefeller University, ran an experiment in the lab to see whether salmonella can survive in a vat of spiked...
Feb. 09, 2010
Studio Session: Eric Kandel
Neurobiologist Eric Kandel shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system." Kandel visits the New York studio and chats with Ira about his new movie In Search Of Memory and ...
Jul. 15, 2010
Beach Season For Horseshoe Crabs
Each summer, horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) from the Yucatan to Maine crawl up on beaches to mate and lay eggs. That makes June and July a good time of year for marine scientists like John Tanacredi, of Dowling College, to monitor their numbers...
Oct. 15, 2010
March of the Immune Cells
Reporting in the journal Science, Paul Kubes and colleagues filmed immune cells called neutrophils finding their way to a mouse's wounded liver. The researchers wanted to understand how neutrophils find injuries when bacteria aren't around to...
Dec. 02, 2010
Desktop Diaries: Oliver Sacks
Many of us spend more waking hours at our desk than anywhere else. Writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks explains what his desk means to him in the first in a series of Desktop DiariesTM. From lumps of metal to lemurs, Sacks describes some of his treas...
Dec. 21, 2010
Bee Gentle
With no hive to defend, the honey bee swarm is focused on building a new home. No humans were stung in the course of making these videos. Check out our honey bee video collection here.
Oct. 28, 2011
Desktop Diaries: Brian Greene
Many of us spend more time at our desks than anywhere else. Theoretical physicist and mathematician Brian Greene takes us into his home office for a tour of his tidy workspace, in the second of Science Friday's Desktop Diaries series. Greene uses...
Mar. 24, 2011
A Spacesuit Ballet
Of the suit he wore on the moon, Neil Armstrong wrote, "it was tough, reliable, and almost cuddly." But that cuddly suit, made by the company Playtex, had some stiff competition (literally) from rival rigid, metal designs. This video features archiva...
May. 20, 2011
Desktop Diaries: Michio Kaku
Many of us spend more time at our desks than anywhere else. Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku takes us on a tour of his office, where he writes his bestsellers and records his radio shows. The futuristic 1950s TV show Flash Gordon jump-s...
May. 26, 2011
Tale of Two Tongues
Tongues are important, biologists say. Two recent studies explore tongue design and function--how they are used for lapping by dogs and for nectar retrieval by hummingbirds. Margaret Rubega, of the University of Connecticut, explains how hummingbird ...
Aug. 18, 2011
Poop and Paddle
This toilet floats. It's an outhouse and sewage-treatment plant in one, processing human waste through a "constructed wetlands." Adam Katzman, the inventor and builder of the toilet-boat, says it's meant to be more inspirational than practica...
Sep. 30, 2011
This Dome Is A Home
Kevin Shea lives in a wood-frame geodesic dome in Long Island, New York. Forty-four-feet-tall, 70-feet in diameter, it is equipped with a solar array, a wind turbine, a geothermal system and adorned with reclaimed material--from a garden made of 800 ...
Nov. 04, 2011
When Is a Moth Like a Hummingbird?
A hawk moth (Manduca sexta) feeds by hovering in front of flowers and slurping nectar through a proboscis, basically a body-length straw. To understand how these moths keep such a precise position in the air, Tyson Hedrick, a biomechanist at the Univ...
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Age of Wonder
Ira talks with Richard Holmes, author of 'The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.'
