Short Wave Folgen

The climate meeting known as COP27 has wrapped. Representatives from almost 200 countries attended to talk about how to tackle climate change and how to pay for the costs of its effects that the world is already seeing. Rebecca Hersher and Michael Copley from NPR's Climate Desk talk with Emily about why the meeting went into overtime, three big things that came out of it, and the long and bumpy road still ahead to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The idea came to Uma Valeti while he was working on regrowing human tissue to help heart attack patients: If we can grow tissue from cells in a lab, why not use animal cells to grow meat? Food production accounts for as much as a third of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The idea behind cultivated meat is to help feed the world while dramatically reducing human contributions to global warming and avoiding killing animals. NPR Health Correspondent Allison Aubrey has been visiting production facilities and talking with both food and climate scientists to understand how far away lab-grown meat is from store shelves, and what a meal of cultivated chicken tastes like.We'd love to hear your thoughts on our show. Take our survey: npr.org/shortwavesurvey Reach the show by emailing shortwave@npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In the mornings, Sonia Vallabh and Eric Minikel's first job is to get their two garrulous kids awake, fed and out the door to daycare and kindergarten. They then reconvene at the office and turn their focus to their all-consuming mission: to cure, treat, or prevent genetic prion disease. Prions are self-replicating proteins that can cause fatal brain disease. For a decade, Sonia Vallabh has been living with the knowledge that she has a genetic mutation that will likely cause in her the same disease that claimed her mother's life in 2010. Upon discovering she had the mutation, Sonia and her husband made a massive pivot: They went from careers in law and urban planning to earning their Ph.D.s, and founding a prion research lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. On today's episode, Sonia and Eric talk with Short Wave's Gabriel Spitzer about what it's like to run a lab with one's spouse, cope with the ticking clock in Sonia's genes, and find hope in a bleak diagnosis.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy