Beavers are having a moment, thanks to the new Pixar movie “Hoppers.” Amid some body-swapping shenanigans, the film is about humans coexisting with wildlife—particularly oversized rodents capable of reworking landscapes in profound ways.

The beaver science consultant on “Hoppers,” Emily Fairfax, joins Flora to talk about beavers’ brilliant, chaotic landscape engineering, and how the creatures show up in the movie. Then, reporter Zac Ziegler walks Flora through a successful beaver-centric engineering project in Oregon.

Guests:

Emily Fairfax is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Minnesota. She was a science consultant for the Pixar movie “Hoppers.”

Zac Ziegler is a reporter at KLCC in Eugene, Oregon.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• How The Humble Beaver Shaped A Continent
• Beavers Build Ecosystems Of Resilience

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

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Deep in an active nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario, researchers are installing and calibrating a set of sensitive detectors. They hope that the location roughly 6,800 feet underground will screen out much of the ordinary radiation and cosmic rays felt on the surface, and allow their detectors to sense tiny disturbances caused by a dark matter particle passing close to the nucleus of one of the germanium atoms in a target material.

If successful, the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment may shed some light on the nature of dark matter, an unseen something that is thought to make up around 85% of the matter in the universe.

Priscilla Cushman, a physicist who has been working on the project for over 20 years, joins Host Flora Lichtman to describe the hunt, the timeline of the experiment, and the big unknowns facing the SuperCDMS team.

Guest:

Dr. Priscilla Cushman is spokesperson for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, and a professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota.

Other episodes you may enjoy:

• Listening for the cosmic ‘dark ages,’ from the lunar far side
• Most Powerful Neutrino Ever Is Detected In the Mediterranean

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hurricane season officially begins in June. And in the event of a big storm, local and state governments often rely on help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA. But, President Trump has questioned the value of the agency.

“I've never been a big fan of FEMA. I like to keep it local. I like to see governors and neighboring states help each other as opposed to FEMA,” Trump said in March.

We’ve heard this from the administration about other federal agencies, but FEMA is a special case. People have mistrusted this agency since its founding in the late 1970s.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Micah Loewinger, co-host of the show “On The Media,” who traced FEMA’s history in a new series called “American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA.”

Guest:

Micah Loewinger is co-host of On The Media.Other episodes you may enjoy:

• As Disasters Escalate, What’s The Future Of FEMA?
• Can We Geoengineer Our Way Out Of A Natural Disaster?

Transcripts for each episode are available within 1-3 days at sciencefriday.com.

Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.