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Nina Lanza knows space rocks. In her day job as a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, she operates the Curiosity Rover’s ChemCam, using a rock-vaporizing laser to analyze the Martian surface. But as of last week, Lanza was having a very different kind of encounter with space rocks: She was picking them up off of the Antarctic ice.

For the past six weeks, Lanza has been a rookie member of the ANSMET (the Antarctic Search for Meteorites) 2015-2016 field team. For 40 years, the project (run out of Case Western Reserve University) has sent teams of scientists to the bottom of the globe to recover meteorites from all over the solar system, including chunks of the moon, comets, even Mars. After recovering a total of 569 meteorites with her team, Lanza checks in with Ira about the finds, and shares a few audio postcards from the field.

Confessions of a Meteorite Hunter

We answer your questions about the cold virus.

This Cold and Flu Season, Get to Know Your Enemy

Co-pay drug coupons can provide a discount for prescription medicines, but can carry a steep price in the long term.

The Cost of Co-Pay Drug Coupons

Researchers discover a psychological vaccine against misinformation.

Building an Immunity to Fake News

With federal scientific agencies facing restrictions on what they say and when, some scientists are planning to march on Washington.

Federal Science Freedom, Cancer Death Rates, Snake Trackers

Talking and texting on your phone while walking on a treadmill can reduce your balance by 19 to 45 percent.

Is Your Smartphone Weighing Down Your Workout?

Internalized stereotypes that can guide career choice manifest as young as age 6.

Girls Lose Sight of Own Brilliance at Young Age

In this segment, California governor Jerry Brown talks about how states can take the lead on issues like climate change and clean energy—with or without Washington, D.C.

How States Can Step Up for Science

A look at the scientific obstacles and breakthroughs involved in finding and developing new antibiotics.

How Can We Discover Better Antibiotics?

A robotic spacecraft could improve weather forecasting by fixing satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

Do Weather Instruments Need a Robot Repairman?

Robotics researchers are working to make a robotic life raft more autonomous and friendlier in order to aid lifeguards.

A Robotic Life Raft, the Evolution of Your Nose, and the Joy of Sleep

A new rule could allow medical residents in training to work for up to 24 hours at a stretch.

Training Docs Around the Clock

Can the shape of a congressional district tell us everything we need to know about its fairness?

Can Geometry Root Out Gerrymandering?

A play explores the loss of human and animal life after the Deepwater Horizon exploded in 2010. Plus, what do we know about the Gulf of Mexicos recovery since then?

Retelling the Story of the BP Oil Spill

New executive orders from the White House turn back elements of the Obama administration's climate change policies.

Climate Change Policy, a Hormonal Cycle on a Chip, and Titan's Electric Dust

A Texas company is distributing cardboard baby boxes in an attempt to prevent sudden, unexpected infant deaths.

Baby Boxes, Singing Fish, And E-DNA

Studies suggest cracking down on legalized marijuana will only make things worse.

Do We Need Pot To Fight The Opioid Epidemic?

Researchers look to the mysterious organ for a new way of monitoring fetal health during pregnancy.

Getting To Know The Placenta

What if getting vaccinated for influenza was as easy as slapping on a Band-Aid? Writing this week in The Lancet, researchers report the initial results of a phase one clinical trial of a bandage-like patch that would deliver vaccines by means of about a hundred dissolvable microneedles, which push the vaccine agents past the protective barrier of the skin. Mark Prausnitz, co-author of the study and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech, says that applying the patch feels something like pressing Velcro against your skin.

Flu? There’s A Patch For That

A care program that included medication coupled with caregiver education, home assessments, and personalized patient training slowed the progression of Alzheimers disease symptoms much more than medication alone.

More Comprehensive Patient Care Can Slow Symptoms Of Alzheimers

Science, technology, and other cool stuff from public radio's Science Friday. It's brain fun, for curious people. From WNYC Studios.