Short Wave

Over half a billion people live by lakes that freeze over in the winter. But as the climate warms, those lakes are losing whole days of ice cover. Winters are also getting weirder, with more intense t...

Folks over 65 are putting in a lot of screen time. In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that people 60 years and older spend more than half their daily leisure time in front of screens, mostly watch...

Helicopters. Cargo containers. Old washing machines. For years, fishermen dumped this waste into the Gulf of Mexico. But they weren’t just trying to get rid of junk; they were trying to create artific...

Bring up aliens and a lot of people will scoff. But not everyone is laughing. Around the turn of the century, 3.8 million people banded together in a real-time search for aliens — with screensavers. I...

Almost 15% of adults suffer from a persistent, often intolerable sound... that is literally just in their heads. Why does the brain do this to us? We help one of our listeners get some answers.This is...

From TikTok and Instagram influencers to celebrities like Hugh Jackman and Kourtney Kardashian, intermittent fasting has gotten a lot of hype. The diet restricts what time you eat rather than what or ...

The 2026 Winter Olympics are unfolding in Milan and Cortina, and we can’t look away: We’re watching athletes fly down mountains on skis and glide — sometimes slipping and falling — on the ice. Vikram ...

Picture this: You’re at a pretend tea party, but instead of sitting across from toddlers in tiaras, you’re clinking cups with Kanzi—an ape with the incredible ability to communicate with humans. NPR s...

Early last year, a hundred researchers, clinicians and other experts on HIV discussed the development of an innovative vaccine that could prevent the disease. But just as the meeting was about to wrap...

The evolutionary purpose of kissing has long eluded scientists. Smooching is risky, given things like pointy teeth, and inherently gross, given an estimated 80 million bacteria are transferred in a 10...