On this week’s show: Tainted groundwater from nonstick chemicals and using smartphones for ear- infection detection

On this week’s show: Cats are finally proving their social smarts, and ghost riders help get a gauge on the traffic effects of ride-sharing apps

On this week’s show: how scientists are giving food and flowers a color rarely found in nature, and how a small fish has adapted to pollution—by stealing its cousin’s genes

On this week’s show: what calling race a “risk factor” actually means, and a book on making music with animals

On this week’s show: Ancient teeth reveal the origins of milk consumption, and how much we know about how much food we’re wasting

On this week’s show: Tiny teeth, finger, and toe bones found in a cave in the Philippines appear to belong to a new species of ancient human and watching rapid plant evolution in the lab

A single factory in Malaysia supplies about 10% of the world’s rare earth oxides, used in everything from cellphones to lasers to missiles. Controversy over the final resting place for the slightly radioactive byproducts has pushed the plant to the...

On this week’s show: A wave of horse injuries and deaths on a famed racetrack has stumped scientists, and researchers are looking into the impact of jailing—and bailing—people before trial

On this week’s show: the environmental costs of deep-sea mining and a trip to the distant asteroid Ryugu

On this week’s show: A new radio telescope promises to help sort out the more than 40 theories for the origins of fast radio bursts and researchers tackle the long-term health effects of pediatric cancer treatment