Science, Spoken

With sea levels expected to rise at least 26 inches by the end of the century due to human-driven climate change, to say that we have a problem is something of an understatement. By the middle of the next century, many of the world’s major cities will be flooded and in some cases, entire island nations will be underwater. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The duck is famous for two things: really liking bread (even though they’re not supposed to be eating it), and wielding insanely complicated reproductive bits. More specifically, male ducks have corkscrew-shaped penises, while females’ reproductive tracts corkscrew in the opposite direction. It’s a disturbing consequence of an evolutionary arms race, the females’ countermeasure to notoriously aggressive males. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When it comes to the nature of dark matter astronomers are still largely, well, in the dark. The existence of this mysterious substance was hypothesized more than forty years ago to explain discrepancies in the calculations of how galaxies ought to behave, based on their mass, and what was actually observed. In short, it seemed like mass was missing. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This year, 47 million Americans will spend an estimated $8.5 billion betting on the outcome of the NCAA basketball championships, a cultural ritual appropriately known as March Madness. Before the tournament starts, anyone who wants to place a bet must fill out a bracket, which holds their predictions for each of the 63 championship games. The winner of a betting pool is the one whose bracket most closely mirrors the results of the championship. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The idea behind the guillotine is this: If you’re going to execute someone, you may as well do it efficiently and humanely, at least by 18th-century standards. Decapitating the condemned with an ax or sword may take a few swings—unacceptable for carrying out justice in a "civilized" society. The guillotine, on the other hand, is downright surgical, a perversely methodical way to end a life. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If a woman (or non-female identifying person with a uterus and visions of starting a family) is struggling to conceive and decides to improve their reproductive odds at an IVF clinic, they’ll likely interact with a doctor, a nurse, and a receptionist. They will probably never meet the army of trained embryologists working behind closed lab doors to collect eggs, fertilize them, and develop the embryos bound for implantation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Like most people, Daniel Ibrahim remembers exactly where he was the first time he came across a tiny, bug-eyed, toothless, limp-tongued cat called Lil Bub, the internet-breaking Queen of Cute. It was September 2014, during a mild night in Berlin, when the molecular geneticist found himself watching a Vice documentary on social media-famous felines by the blue light of his computer. But unlike most people, Ibrahim’s next move wasn’t to buy a Lil Bub shirt or join the ranks of her 2. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Nearly a billion people could be newly at risk of tropical diseases like dengue fever and Zika as climate change shifts the range of mosquitoes, according to a new study. Since the life cycle of mosquitoes is temperature sensitive, scientists have long been concerned about how their prevalence might spread as the world continues to warm. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As a shopper, you can chose from labels touting a product’s chemical-free nature (Certified Organic), genetic makeup (Non-GMO), and effect on tropical ecosystems (Shade Grown). Now you could start to encounter a label that certifies that your daily internet traffic is sustainable as well. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For nearly 400 million years, amphibians have led a highly successful double life on Earth, foraging on terra and reproducing in water. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and any number of other worldwide catastrophes, but they’ve never seen a catastrophe quite like humanity. Already stressed by habitat degradation and the wildlife trade, amphibians are now reckoning with the chytrid fungi, pathogens that humans have spread the world over. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices