Science Friday

China’s Chang’e 6 return capsule landed in Mongolia, carrying samples from the far side of the moon. Also, Paris has invested $1.5B in cleaning up the Seine for open-water swimming events, but recent tests indicate it’s not yet safe.A Sample From The Far Side Of The Moon Lands On EarthThis week, the return capsule from China’s Chang’e 6 lunar mission returned to Earth, touching down in a remote part of Inner Mongolia. Inside were dust and rock samples collected from the far side of the moon. Researchers hope that the samples could shed light on both the moon’s formation, and conditions in the ancient solar system.Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast “The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week,” joins guest host Anna Rothschild to talk about the mission and other stories form the week in science, including a CDC warning about dengue fever, a trans-oceanic butterfly flight, and the possibility of seeing a stellar nova in the coming weeks.Will The Seine Be Clean Enough For Olympic Swimmers?The Paris Summer Olympics are fast approaching. Opening ceremonies for the games kick off on July 26. And all eyes are on the notoriously polluted River Seine. Due to aging infrastructure, sewage has sometimes flowed directly into it. For the past 100 years swimming in the river was banned. Now, the French government has spent roughly $1.5 billion to upgrade sewage treatment in Paris in order for athletes to be able to swim in the Seine.Earlier this week, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo was set to take a dip in the river to prove its cleanliness. In protest some Parisians threatened to poop in the Seine to show their dislike of the disruptions and high price tag of the Games.The dip was postponed until after upcoming elections, but recent water quality tests indicate that the river is not yet safe to swim in.Guest host Anna Rothschild talks about the current state of the river with Dr. Dan Angelescu, founder and CEO of Fluidion, a water testing company based in Paris, France.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

The larger Pacific striped octopus is unusually social. But it wasn’t recognized by scientists until 2015, despite one man’s efforts. And, a deep-sea squid in the family Gonatidae was filmed cradling large eggs for its body size, which suggests it’s an entirely new species.Why It Took Decades For This Octopus To Be RecognizedOctopus mating behaviors can be quite deadly. Many species are cannibalistic, making the entire prospect of mating dangerous, and female octopuses often die after laying one clutch of eggs. Their cannibalistic tendencies mean that octopuses don’t socialize as much as other animals.But the larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO) is different. For one, they live together in colonies. And mating is not only a safer proposition, it involves beak-to-beak “kissing.” Plus, females can lay eggs repeatedly, even tending to embryos at various stages of development.But because these behaviors are so uncharacteristic of most octopuses, the scientific community didn’t officially recognize their existence until 2015, despite the decades-long effort of a Panamanian diver and artist named Arcadio Rodaniche. When he tried to share his findings about the LPSO at a symposium and publish them in a journal, he was flatly rejected. But his persistent research and documentation of the species would eventually be validated when researchers were able to obtain and observe the octopuses in captivity.SciFri producer Kathleen Davis sits down with freelance science writer Kenna Hughes-Castleberry to talk about an article she reported for Science Friday about the late Rodaniche and his yearslong effort to get official scientific recognition for the LPSO.Read the story at sciencefriday.com.Squid With ‘Giant’ Eggs Could Be A New SpeciesTo finish up our celebration of Cephalopod Week we wanted to share a bit of squid news. A group of researchers recently identified a potentially new squid species in the family Gonatidae. Scientists took a closer look at some video footage captured back in 2015 and found a deep-water squid that was cradling some rather large eggs, which was not in line with other squid of the same family.John Dankosky talks with Dr. Bruce Robison, midwater ecologist and senior scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, about this new discovery.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

In July 1945, the US deployed the world’s first nuclear weapon during the Trinity Test. Since then, the US has tested more than 200 nukes above ground in places including New Mexico, Nevada, and several Pacific Islands.For decades to come, “downwinders,” or people who lived near those test sites, and those involved manufacturing these weapons, were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. They’ve disproportionately suffered from diseases like cancer, autoimmune disorders, and more.The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was established in 1990 to provide victims of the US nuclear program a one-time payment to help cover medical bills. But the program has fallen short of helping everyone affected—like the downwinders living around the Trinity Test site in New Mexico.A new bill, which was passed in the Senate earlier this year, would expand the program to include more people and provide more money. It’s up to the House now to pass it, but Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana won’t call a vote. And the clock is ticking, because RECA expired on June 10. So what happens now?SciFri’s John Dankosky speaks with Tina Cordova, downwinder and co-founder of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in Albuquerque; Loretta Anderson, co-founder of the Southwest Uranium Miners’ Coalition Post ‘71, from the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico; and Lilly Adams, senior outreach coordinator at the Union of Concerned Scientists.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Some birds are famous for being extinct, like the Dodo and the passenger pigeon.But how do we prevent species from reaching that point? One of the starting points is to try and track down the birds that are “lost to science.” These are birds that have not been documented in over a decade, but just might still be out there, if we look for them.A new study analyzed data, images, and recordings from platforms that crowdsource observations from all over the world to identify birds “lost to science.” In total, the project, called The Search for Lost Birds identified 126 such species.SciFri producer Kathleen Davis is joined by Dr. John Mittermeier, director of the Search for Lost Birds at the American Bird Conservancy to talk more about the findings of this research and what it’s like to track down a “lost” bird.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

In 2005, countries around the world ratified the Kyoto Protocol. It was the first big, legally-binding international climate policy, but there was a big drawback: The United States, the world’s richest country and second-highest emitter, didn’t ratify it.In response, American mayors took action. Even if the US wouldn’t commit to cutting climate emissions, their cities would. It was the classic “think global, act local” move.It started with mayoral resolutions—a bunch of “whereases” laying out the reasons cities needed their own climate targets. Whereas manmade climate change is happening. Whereas cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s emissions. Whereas more than half the world’s people live in cities. Whereas cities are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.Therefore? Our city is going to do something about it. Mayors proclaimed, city councils adopted, and gavels cracked on podiums across the country as city climate plans were created, along with a new job to manage it all: the chief sustainability officer.Twenty years later, hundreds of US cities have climate plans. Their chief sustainability officers are responsible for aggressive decarbonization goals that require deep cuts to emissions, and fast. But are cities actually meeting their targets? And do city sustainability officers have what they need to meet them?Read the rest of this story at sciencefriday.com.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.