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Historic drought in the west and water diversion for human use are causing stretches of the Colorado and Mississippi rivers to run dry. "The American West is going to have to need to learn how to do more with less," says Laurence Smith, a river surveyor and environmental studies professor at Brown University. He recently dropped in for a chat with Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong about how scientists are turning a new page on managing two of The United States's central waterways, the Colorado and Mississippi Rivers.

From space, it looks almost elegant: a narrow plume cascading off the Pacific Ocean, spilling gently over the California coast. But from the ground, it looks like trouble: flash flooding, landslides and power outages. California is enduring the effects of an atmospheric river, a meteorological phenomenon where converging air systems funnel wet air into a long, riverine flow that dumps large amounts of rain when it makes landfall. "Atmospheric rivers can transport volumes of water many times that of the Mississippi River," says Dr. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with UCLA, the Nati...

Speaking to Short Wave from about 250 miles above the Earth, Josh Cassada outlined his typical day at work: "Today, I actually started out by taking my own blood," he said. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station are themselves research subjects, as well as conductors of all sorts of science experiments: Gardening in microgravity, trapping frigid atoms, examining neutron stars. Then, there's the joy of walks into the yawning void of space. Speaking from orbit, Cassada told fellow physicist and Short Wave Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber about research aboard...

Kwasi Wresnford describes the subjects of his research as "elfin": skittish little squirrel-cousins with angular faces, pointy ears and narrow, furry tails. He studies two species in particular: the Alpine chipmunk and the Lodgepole chipmunk. As the climate warms, these two chipmunks have developed different ways of coping. The Alpine chipmunk has climbed higher, in search of cooler habitat, while the Lodgepole chipmunk continues to thrive in its historic habitat. On this episode, Kwasi explains to Emily Kwong how these squirrelly critters typify two important evolutionary strategies...

For decades birth control research focused on women. Now there's a new push to develop gels, pills or other products that could keep men from getting their partners pregnant.