Join us as Team Yack takes on Neanderthal nookie, the science of butt breathing, and all the things scientists lose down Antarctic boreholes (Bowties!?). NASA fails to launch Artemis II, but Ourobookos, our new YS book club, gets off the launchpad with John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis. Matt spends a long minute talking chlorine chemistry, and the team says, “alright, alright, alright,” to Matthew McConaughey and the science of Interstellar.

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

Episode Art: Modified from Neanderthal_(28418907177) photo by Janine and Jim Eden (CC BY 2.0).

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

The Thwaites Glacier:

Deep Inside an Antarctic Glacier, a Mission Collapses at Its Final Step by Raymond Zhong. (NYT; Feb. 2, 2026)

Artemis II:

Information about Artemis II from NASA.

Enteral Ventilation (aka, Butt Breathing):

Safety and tolerability of intrarectal perfluorodecalin for enteral ventilation in a first-in-human trial by Fujii, Tasuku et al. (Med, Volume 6, Issue 12, 100887)

Neanderthal Nookie:

Interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans was strongly sex biased by Alexander Platt et al. Science 391,922-925(2026)

Montreal Protocol:

Read more about CFCs and the Montreal Protocol here.

Ourobookos, A Yackety Science Book Club

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green

“Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be­came fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.”

Yackers Matt and Brian return triumphantly to the studio for what some are calling the Second Coming, others the Puntocalypse, and still others Yackety Science Season 2. The team takes a whirlwind tour of 2025 science breakthroughs—tricky tumors, new swine finds, and fresh eyes on the skies. A helium-filled man-o-war floats to the top of the listener mailbag. Brian weeps all over Galileo’s telescopes. And Matt susses out the secrets of sulfur, taking its malodorous measure.

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

Episode Art: Carl Yagan standing atop Santucci’s armillary sphere at the Galileo Museum in Florence, Italy.

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

Green Energy:The Green Giant: Images of China’s clean energy infrastructure reveal a transformation of unmatched scale and speed. (Science, Vol 390, Issue 6779)

Gene Therapy and Rare Diseases:

Gene-editing therapy made in just 6 months helps baby with life-threatening disease by Jocelyn Kaiser (Science; May 15, 2025).

Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease by Musunuru et al. (NEJM N Engl J Med 2025;392:2235-2243)

New Gonorrhea Drugs :New antibiotics for gonorrhea could help beat back drug-resistant infections by Kai Kupperschimdt (Science, 11 Dec 2025)

Vera C. Rubin Observatory: All-Seeing Eye: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is set to transform astronomy. Its wide and fast survey will discover billions of dynamic objects while building up a deep map of the universe (Science, Vol 388, Issue 6753)

Denisovans Among Us: ‘Dragon Man’ skull belongs to mysterious human relative by Andre Curry (Science, 18 Jun 2025)

Neurons, Mitochondria, and Tumors: Hoover, G., Gilbert, S., Curley, O. et al. Nerve-to-cancer transfer of mitochondria during cancer metastasis. Nature 644, 252–262 (2025).

Particle Physics Mystery Solved:Long-running physics experiment dashes hope of new particles and forces by Adrian Cho (Science, Vol 388, Issue 6751)

Xenotransplants:Man’s pig kidney fails just shy of setting record (Science, Vol 388, Issue 6750.)

Heat Tolerant Rice: A natural gene on-off system confers field thermotolerance for grain quality and yield in rice. Li, Wei et al. (Cell, Volume 188, Issue 14, 3661 - 3678.e21)

In this most Nobel episode of Yackety Science, the Yackers visit Stockholm to explore quantum tunneling, gas storage, and the plight of scurfy mice. Along the way, they are struck by micro-lightning and the sight of a most gruesome in-flight snack. The element silicon makes for a rocky edition of Matt’s Chemical Minute. And Prof. Craig Davis of OSU stops by to talk bobwhite biology, wetland decline, and the futile search for sewage plovers.

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)

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: Dr. Craig Davis

Craig Davis holds the Bollenbach Chair in Wildlife Management at Oklahoma State University. His research focuses on several areas including the response of grassland birds to fire-grazing interactions, assessment and classification of wetlands, wetland bird ecology, aquatic and terrestrial invertebrate ecology, and upland gamebird ecology and management.

Links:

• 
  

  The Nobel Prize in Physics 2025 was awarded jointly to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis “for the discovery of macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling and energy quantisation in an electric circuit.”

• 
  

  The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 was awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Frederick J. Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi "for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance."

• 
  

  The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2025 was awarded jointly to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi "for the development of metal–organic frameworks."

• 
  

  This Chilling Recording Reveals Large Bats Catching, Killing and Eating Birds Midflight by Margherita Bassi - Daily Correspondent (Smithsonian; October 15, 2025)

• Spraying of water microdroplets forms luminescence and causes chemical reactions in surrounding gas by Yifan Meng, Yu Xia, Jinheng Xu, and Richard N. Zare (Science Advances; Vol 11, Issue 11; 14 Mar 2025)

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.

• 
  

  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

• 
  

  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)