Pets, Pests, And Food: Our Complex, Contradictory Attitudes Toward Animals Does living with animals really make us healthier? Why do we eat some animals and keep others as pets? This week on Hidden Brain, we talk with psychology professor Hal Herzog about the contradictions embedded in our relationships with animals. Shankar Vedantam
Replacing Plastic: Can Bacteria Help Us Break The Habit? Entrepreneurs are eager to find substitutes for plastic that naturally degrade. One option is a "natural" plastic made by microbes and then eaten by them. But the process is still in early days. Christopher Joyce
Bald Eagle Caught Elegantly ... Swimming? A viral video shows another side of the U.S. national bird. As it turns out, bald eagles frequently swim, moving through the water using an avian-style butterfly stroke. Merrit Kennedy
Street In Front Of NASA Headquarters Renamed To Honor 'Hidden Figures' The name pays tribute to the legacy of African American women who played a major role in the space race but were long overlooked by history. Merrit Kennedy
How Almonds Went From Deadly To Delicious In a new study, researchers pinpoint the genetic mutation that transformed almonds from toxic and bitter to tasty and sweet. Susie Neilson
How A Bird Became Flightless Through Evolution — Twice More than 100,000 years ago, a bird flew from Madagascar to an island chain, where it lost the ability to fly. The seas rose and then fell and the bird flew back, only to become flightless again. Irina Zhorov
How Safe Is Sunscreen And How Much Should We Wear? NPR's Audie Cornish talks with Trisha Calvo of Consumer Reports about a study that finds the active ingredients in sunscreen may be absorbed into the bloodstream.
To Save The Science Poster, Researchers Want To Kill It And Start Over Scientists often share their latest research on posters displayed at big conferences. Posters are a long-standing tradition, but one reformer says they're mostly terrible and need to change. Nell Greenfieldboyce
Me, Myself, and IKEA: What Our Love For Swedish Furniture Says About Narcissism Are women named Virginia more likely to move to Virginia? Are people with the last name of Carpenter more likely to be carpenters? This week on Hidden Brain, we bring you a favorite 2017 episode about our preference for things that remind us of ourselves, and why this tendency can have larger implications than we might at first imagine. Shankar Vedantam
The Limits Of Human Endurance How do you study the upper limits of human endurance? Professor Herman Pontzer of Duke University tracked long-distance athletes running across the country. He talks with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro.