Donate

Play Live Radio

Next Up:

0:00

0:00 0:00

Available On Air Stations

KHSU 90.5 and KHSQ 107.7 may experience intermittent outages today as our engineering team updates infrastructure. Livestreams are unaffected. Thank you for your patience.

This week in science: sea monsters, long COVID patients' microbiome, elephant carcasses

NPR | By Nathan Rott,

Regina G. Barber

Published October 15, 2026 at 2:33 PM PDT

NPR's science podcast Short Wave brings us stories about the hunting habits of ancient sea monsters, the microbiome of long COVID patients, and how elephant carcasses replenish the savannah.

Nathan Rott

Nathan (Nate) Rott is a correspondent on NPR’s Science Desk, where he reports on the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it.

See stories by Nathan Rott

Regina G. Barber

Regina G. Barber is a co-host of Short Wave.