In this episode, Yackety Sciences takes up even more of the essential questions of our time. How much of RFK, Jr.’s brain have the worms actually consumed? Is magnesium male or female? Can SIT save us from an invasion of man-eaters? When will fusion power bake our potatoes? And is Belle selling a lie as old as time? Join us for the answers (?) to all of these questions and more.

Got a question, comment, or correction? Yack right back at us at YacketyScience@gmail.com.

Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessed through FreeMusicArchive.org.; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Episode Art: Modified from screwworm photo by John Kucharski (PD).

Production help provided by Scott Gregory.

Yackety Science is recorded at the studios of Public Radio Tulsa, Kendall Hall, University of Tulsa, and at the Center for Creativity at Tulsa Community College.

Links:

RFK, Jr. and the COVID Vaccines

• Global Estimates of Lives and Life-Years Saved by COVID-19 Vaccination During 2020-2024 by Ioannidis et al. JAMA Health Forum ( 2025)

• Estimated number of lives directly saved by COVID-19 vaccination programmes in the WHO European Region from December, 2020, to March, 2023: a retrospective surveillance study. by Mesle et al. The Lancet (2024)

• Global impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study by Watson, Oliver J et al. The Lancet Infectious Diseases (2022)

• COVID 19 Vaccine Effectiveness. Our World in Data
  

Screwworms

• The U.S. confirms its first human case of New World screwworm. What is it? By Rachel Treisman. NPR.org (August 25, 2025)

• New World Screwworm: Rise, Fall, and Resurgence by Alicia Hibbard. ASM.org (Sept. 5, 2025).

Fusion Advances

• Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore achieve fusion ignition with groundbreaking approach: Achievement expands what’s possible in stockpile stewardship experiments. LANL.gov (July 31, 2025)

In this episode, the yackers are afflicted by chemical chaos, dirty dragonflies, and bloody- beaked birds. Lithium makes a move on fluorine, and sodium explodes all over Matt’s chemical minute, leaving behind the tastiest of residues. And Prof. Doug Mock reveals the secrets of family strife and why you should never turn your back on brother dearest. Join us as we step into the Avian Thunderdome!

Got a question, comment, or correction? Yack right back at us at YacketyScience@gmail.com.

Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessed through FreeMusicArchive.org.; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Episode Art: Image modified from great egret (Ardea alba) photo by Mike Baird. CC BY 2.O

Written and edited by Brian Cross and Matt Smith. Production help provided by Scott Gregory.

Yackety Science is recorded at the studios of Public Radio Tulsa, Kendall Hall, University of Tulsa, and at the Center for Creativity at Tulsa Community College.

Guest: Douglas Mock, Ph.D.

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  Profile: Douglas W. Mock, George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Biology

• More than Kin and Less the Kind

Links:

Lithium and Alzheimer’s Disease

• Aron, L., Ngian, Z.K., Qiu, C. et al. Lithium deficiency and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Nature (2025).

New Moon

• New Moon Discovered Orbiting Uranus Using NASA’s Webb Telescope

Dirty Dragonflies

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  The blueprint for survival: the blue dasher dragonfly as a model for urban adaptation (BMC Ecol Evo 25, 67 (2025))

In this episode of Yackety Science, co-hosts Matt Smith and Brian Cross answer all of the important questions. Why do froggies play possum? Why do monkeys scrump? Why are the Avengers prospecting in South Carolina? Why is NASA turning to the occult? And most important of all, does Princess Ariel sit on a throne of lies?

Got a question, comment, or correction? Yack right back at us at YacketyScience@gmail.com.

Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessed through FreeMusicArchive.org.; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Image Credit: Common toad Bufo bufo mating ball (multiple amplexus) by Dariusz Kowalczyk. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Production help provided by Scott Gregory.

Yackety Science is recorded at the studios of Public Radio Tulsa, Kendall Hall, University of Tulsa, and at the Center for Creativity at Tulsa Community College.

Links:

Drunken Monkeys

• Our ape ancestors’ taste for fermenting fruit may have paved a boozy evolutionary path (Science; July 31, 2025)

• Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation (PNAS; December 1, 2014)

Radioactive Wasps

• Radioactive wasp nest found at SC site where US once made nuclear bombs (South Carolina Public Radio; July 20, 2025)

Thanatosis and Explosive Mating

• Thanatosis in the Gold-striped Frog Lithodytes lineatus (Anura: Leptodactylidae) in the tropical dry forest of northeastern Colombia. (Giovany Díaz; Cuad. herpetol. 39 (1): 37-40; 2025)

• Droop dead! Female mate avoidance in an explosively breeding frog by Carolin Dittrich and Mark-Oliver Rodel (Royal Society Open Science; October 11, 2023)

Occultation of Uranus

• Planteray Alignment Provides NASA Rare Opportunity to Study Uranus by Charles Hatfield (NASA; April 22, 2025)

Disappearing Science (mRNA vaccines)

• Press Release from the Department of Health and Human Services

• Public health experts dismayed by RFK Jr.'s defunding of mRNA vaccine research (NPR; Aug. 6, 2025)