Science Friday

The new dietary guidelines from the USDA call for Americans to “eat real food” and consume less “highly processed” food. But how? By some estimates, ultraprocessed foods make up nearly 60% of the average American adult diet, and they’re all over school lunch menus.
Health policy expert Laura Schmidt and nutrition policy researcher Alyssa Moran join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about ultraprocessed foods and our food supply. What might they be doing to our health, and what steps could policymakers take to help Americans eat less of them? 

Guests:
Dr. Laura Schmidt is a professor at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco.
Dr. Alyssa Moran is deputy director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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In an effort to make their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable, some farmers are experimenting with agrivoltaics: growing crops underneath solar panels. This dual harvest is working for some, but what will it take for agrivoltaics to work on a larger, more industrial scale? 
Joining Host Ira Flatow are journalist Jana Rose Schleis and environmental economics expert Madhu Khanna.
Guests:
Jana Rose Schleis is a news producer at KBIA in Columbia, Missouri. Her podcast series, “The Next Harvest,” is available on podcast platforms.
Dr. Madhu Khanna is a professor of environmental economics and director of the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Point systems are everywhere. Ready for movie night? Consult Rotten Tomatoes. Vetting a new pediatrician? See how many stars they have. At work, it can be even more pervasive: There’s KPIs and ROIs because success has to be measurable.  
But what happens when we boil something down to one nice number? What do we lose? Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, author of the new book The Score, joins Host Flora Lichtman to explore how metrics can be soul-crushing in work and in life, yet keeping score is freeing in the world of games. 
Read an excerpt from The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.
Guest:
Dr. C. Thi Nguyen is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He’s the author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.
Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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We’re bringing you a special bonus episode from our friends at the live call-in show “The Middle with Jeremy Hobson.” Jeremy is joined by Science Friday Host Flora Lichtman and theoretical astrophysicist Priya Natarajan to talk about how trust in science can be restored. It took a hit with the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Trump Administration has now elevated science skeptics to positions of power and proposed giant cuts in scientific research.

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All the pups we love—from chihuahuas to great danes—are descendants of the mighty gray wolf. But how did we end up with so many breeds? The story that's often told is that dog diversity really took off with the Victorians in the 1800s, but new research is unleashing a different tale. Host Flora Lichtman talks with bioarchaeologist Carly Ameen about the diversification of dogs. 
Plus, a long-running experiment to tame silver foxes is cluing us into how domestication happens. Canine researcher Erin Hecht gives us a glimpse into the experiment and what it tells us about domesticated brains.
Guests:
Dr. Carly Ameen is a bioarcheologist and lecturer at the University of Exeter in England.
Dr. Erin Hecht is an evolutionary biologist at Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 
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.