Short Wave Folgen

With a lot of us stuck at home, trying to physically distance from each other, one part of daily life has largely disappeared: bumping into strangers. On today's show, Maddie talks with Yowei Shaw, a reporter from NPR's Invisibilia, about the surprising benefits of stranger interactions. And Short Wave tries out QuarantineChat, a workaround to our current strangerless existence.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Trump administration has advanced the theory the coronavirus began as a lab accident, but scientists who research bat-borne coronaviruses disagree. Speaking with NPR, ten virologists and epidemiologists say the far more likely culprit is zoonotic spillover⁠—transmission of the virus between animals and humans in nature. We explain how zoonotic spillover works and why it's more plausible than a lab accident.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Dark energy makes up almost 70% of our universe and is believed to be the reason the universe is expanding. Yet very, very little is known about it. To figure out what we do know — and what it could tell us about the fate of the universe, we talked to astrophysicist Sarafina Nance. She studies cosmology, a field that looks at the origin and development of the universe.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy