A Polar Expedition To The Top Of The World: Part 2

"Our journey continues on MOSAiC: the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate. Physicists, chemists, and biologists are all working to understand more about why Arctic ice is diminishing, and what it means for the planet."

"In this episode, Reporter Ravenna Koenig introduces us to some scientists, what they're studying, and life aboard a floating research center. You can find photos from her trip here."

"Follow Maddie Sofia on Twitter @maddie_sofia or Ravenna @vennkoenig. Email the show at shortwave@npr.org."

Trove Of Recipes Dating Back To Inquisition Reveals A Family's Secret Jewish Roots

"With the holidays approaching, it's the time of year for families to come together and share their traditions. But which traditions?"

"In a trove of old family recipes, Genie Milgrom found clues that led her to Inquisition-era Spain and her family's hidden Jewish heritage. Milgrom is a Cuban-American, now 65, who was raised a devout Catholic. Several years ago, when her Mom became ill, Milgrom went through her things and found a collection of recipes that had been recorded and handed down by generations of aunts and grandmothers. Some of the recipes traced all the way back to Inquisition-era Spain and Portugal."

"At her home in Miami, Milgrom pulls some of the recipes from a shelf. Many are written on yellowed paper in faded ink. "You can see old handwriting and little snippets of paper," she says. 'So this was just pages and pages and hundreds of these. ... Some are just crumbling'"

"As a girl, Milgrom says her maternal grandmother taught her some of the family's food customs. Many years later, she realized they revealed their secret Jewish roots."

Australia Just Had Its Hottest Day On Record

"Australia experienced its hottest day ever recorded on Tuesday, according to preliminary results from its national Bureau of Meteorology."

"The average maximum temperature across the country was 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit, topping the previous record of 104.5 degrees, set in January 2013."

"There's good reason to think that this record could be smashed again within the week — Diana Eadie, a meteorologist at Australia's BOM, said that the heat on Wednesday 'will only intensify.'"

"For weeks, Australia has been battling historic wildfires, exacerbated by brutally dry conditions, in many parts of the country. Nearly 100 wildfires are burning in the state of New South Wales alone, prompting authorities there to impose a total fire ban through Saturday."

"To give you some sense of just how hot it was on Tuesday, Stu Pengelly from Perth, in the state of Western Australia, provided a sizzling example: He managed to cook pork in his hot car. 'I cooked 1.5 kg pork roast inside an old Datsun Sunny for 10 hrs,' he said, as Australia's 9 News reported. 'It worked a treat!' Photos showed that the meat was indeed cooked through."

Archaeologists Discover Ancient Greek Royal Tombs Dating Back 3,500 Years

"A team of American archaeologists has discovered two large ancient Greek royal tombs dating back some 3,500 years near the site of the ancient city of Pylos in southern Greece. The findings cast a new light on the role of the ancient city — mentioned in Homer's Odyssey — in Mediterranean trade patterns of the Late Bronze Age."

"Each of the two tombs — one about 39 feet in diameter and the other about 28 feet — was built in a dome-shape structure known as a tholos."

"Among the findings inside the tombs were evidence of gold-lined floors, a golden seal ring and a gold pendant with the image of the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. The amulet suggests that Pylos traded with Egypt during Greece's Mycenaean civilization, which lasted roughly between 1650 and 1100 B.C. Homer's epics are set in the latter stages of this period."

"The discovery was made by Jack L. Davis and Sharon R. Stocker, an archaeological team from the University of Cincinnati. They had previously uncovered another burial site nearby in 2015 known as the Griffin Warrior grave. That site yielded significant findings including gold and silver treasure, jewelry and a long bronze sword believed to have possibly belonged to one of the early kings of Pylos."

Did That Really Happen? How Our Memories Betray Us

"Large numbers of people hold beliefs about memory that conflict with modern science. Perhaps the most pervasive false belief, held by about 60 percent of Americans, is that memory works like a video camera. In other words, the things we experience in our lives are recorded, stored and preserved in our brains as faithful reproductions, and retrieving our recollections is simply a matter of reviewing the video tape."

"But over the last 150 years or so, researchers have found that this analogy is wrong in startling ways. Memory is not like a video camera; a better way to think of it is as an act of reconstruction, or what you might call "mental paleontology." This is the analogy that psychologist Ayanna Thomas likes to use."

"'A paleontologist uncovers a fossil, just as we have to uncover a memory....but that paleontologist doesn't have all of the pieces,' she says. 'And what that individual has to do is fill in the gaps with best guesses and prior experience.'"

"What Thomas and other researchers have found, over and over again, is that our recollections are fallible. And the implications of this extend far beyond how we recall our childhoods or where we left our keys. They extend into serious settings, like the criminal justice system, where we constantly ask people to make recollections or remember things under oath."

Fewer Students Are Going To College. Here's Why That Matters

"This fall, there were nearly 250,000 fewer students enrolled in college than a year ago, according to new numbers out Monday from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which tracks college enrollment by student."

"'That's a lot of students that we're losing,' says Doug Shapiro, who leads the research center at the Clearinghouse."

"And this year isn't the first time this has happened. Over the past eight years, college enrollment nationwide has fallen about 11%. Every sector — public state schools, community colleges, for-profits and private liberal arts schools — has felt the decline, though it has been especially painful for small private colleges, where, in some cases, institutions have been forced to close."

"'We're in a crisis right now, and it's a complicated one,' says Angel Pérez, who oversees enrollment at Trinity College, a small liberal arts school in Hartford, Conn."

Life Along Pakistan's Mountain Highway Where China Is Investing Billions Of Dollars

"Much is expected of Karakoram Highway, which curls through the tall mountain ranges of northern Pakistan, reaching western China. Both countries are renovating it, seeing its potential as a trade route. Pakistan also views it as a way to consolidate control over territories contested with India."

"But some of the 500-mile route is barely a two-way road, carved out of the rock face that slopes sharply into valleys below. It is battered by rockfall, floods and earthquakes. A landslide in 2010 blocked a river and drowned about 14 miles of the road. In heavy snowfalls, the road all but shuts down."

"The riskiest part is the last stretch to China. 'We can actually call this part of the road as a museum of geohazards,' says Sarfraz Ali, a geologist who studies the impact of climate change on the highway at Pakistan's National University of Sciences and Technology."

"The Karakoram Highway, named for the spindly mountain range it traverses, was a major feat when it was built in the 1950s to 1970s. Now, the Chinese government has invested about $2 billion to rebuild a nearly 160-mile stretch of highway to replace the old Karakoram road between the Pakistani towns of Havelian and Raikot. The final stretch is expected to be completed in March."

'Dangerous Melodies' Examines Classical Music And American Foreign Relations

"At the height of the Cold War in 1958, Van Cliburn, a curly-headed kid from Texas, won the International Tchaikovsky Competition. He was hugged by Nikita Khrushchev and heralded like Elvis Presley when he returned."

"Classical music figures were once stars in America. They were pursued, recognized and gossiped about — people who had popular and cultural impact. Jonathan Rosenberg, a professor of history at Hunter College, has a new book that examines this phenomenon. It's called Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from The Great War through the Cold War."

"NPR's Scott Simon talks to Rosenberg about some of the genre's influential figures, including Van Cliburn, Richard Strauss and Aaron Copland. Listen in the audio player above and read on for highlights of their conversation."

"Van Cliburn went off to Moscow and won the [International Tchaikovsky] Competition. This was seen as a victory for the American system — the idea ... that he could go over there and win this competition and receive praise from Russians suggested to people that perhaps the United States was not comprised of a bunch of materialists and barbarians. In many circles, that was how we were seen."

44,000-Year-Old Indonesian Cave Painting Is Rewriting The History Of Art

"Scientists say they have found the oldest known figurative painting, in a cave in Indonesia. And the stunning scene of a hunting party, painted some 44,000 years ago, is helping to rewrite the history of the origins of art."

"Until recently, the long-held story was that humans started painting in caves in Europe. For example, art from the Chauvet Cave in France is dated as old as 37,000 years."

"But several years ago, a group of scientists started dating cave paintings in Indonesia — and found that they are thousands of years older."

"'They are at least 40,000 years old, which was a very, very surprising discovery,' says Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Australia's Griffith University. He and his colleagues used a technique called uranium-series analysis to determine the paintings' age. The oldest figurative painting in those analyses was a striking image of a wild cow."

"These works had been known for years by locals on the island of Sulawesi — but Brumm adds that 'it was assumed they couldn't be that old.'"

"Since that big reveal, Brumm's team — which he led with archaeologists Maxime Aubert and Adhi Agus Oktaviana — has been searching for more art in these caves. In 2017, they found something breathtaking — the massive hunting scene, stretching across about 16 feet of a cave wall. And after testing it, they say it's the oldest known figurative art attributed to early modern humans. They published their findings in the journal Nature."

Meteorologists Can't Keep Up With Climate Change In Mozambique

"Normal November weather in Mozambique's capital Maputo is pleasant and warm with a chance of epic thunderstorms. The sun will be shining in the morning, and then boom the sky opens up and a stiff wind begins to blow and it's probably best if you're inside."

"At 10 a.m. on an 85-degree Thursday this November, Mozambique's lead weather forecaster, Acacio Tembe, was stooped at a computer at the National Institute of Meteorology, trying to figure out whether a storm was in the cards that afternoon. He toggled between tabs with global weather maps put out by the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan. On every map, clouds and bands of rain moved in a lazy loop across Mozambique and neighboring South Africa."

"Tembe's phone rang. The man on the other end was in charge of drainage and water resources for the city of Maputo, and he wanted to know: Is there going to be a storm? Because just an inch and a half of rain can cause flooding in city streets."

"'We don't know,' Tembe told him. 'We are still analyzing the information.'"

"Tembe promised to let him know if they decided to issue a weather warning and then hung up and leaned forward in his swivel office chair. He stared silently at the clouds moving across his screen, as if putting his face closer to the monitor might somehow give him what he really needed: a map with better resolution."

Aluminum's Strange Journey From Precious Metal To Beer Can

"Aluminum is used everywhere from soda to space capsules, but that hasn't always been the case."

"Short Wave is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the periodic table with profiles of some of its favorite elements. Here are a few things you may not have known about aluminum."

"Aluminum is the most abundant element on Earth, and one of the cheapest to buy. But it used to be more valuable than gold."

"Aluminum is the third most common element in the Earth's crust, but it also bonds easily with other elements. That means it is not found in nature as a pure metal."

"For decades after it was first identified by British chemist Sir Humphry Davy in the early 1800s, scientists and tinkerers tried, and mostly failed, to find a good method for separating aluminum from everything else that stuck to it."

"France's Emperor Napoleon III was an early proponent of aluminum. He hoped the lightweight metal could be used to produce weapons and armor, giving his soldiers an edge in battle. The emperor funded the work of Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, who found a chemical method for obtaining pure aluminum, but it was still a slow process. An often repeated story goes that Napoleon III, frustrated with progress on aluminum, had much of France's stock melted down and turned into cutlery. He and his honored guests used aluminum utensils, while everyone else at the imperial dinner table made do with gold."

At Least 5 Dead After Volcano Erupts Off New Zealand Coast

"At least five people are dead after an eruption on a volcanic island off the coast of New Zealand on Monday, local officials have confirmed."

"New Zealand police say a number of people were injured and have been taken to an area hospital, but it remains too dangerous for emergency services to access the island and search for those missing."

"Authorities believe fewer than 50 New Zealanders and international tourists were on or near White Island – about 30 miles off the coast of New Zealand's North Island – but the exact number of people unaccounted for is unclear."

"'We are continuing to work as quickly as possible, through a number of channels of information, to confirm exact numbers of those involved, including those who remain on the island,' New Zealand Police said in a statement Monday."

"The volcano erupted just after 2 p.m. local time on Monday, according to The Guardian, which reports 23 people have been rescued. It also reports:"

"'No signs of life have been seen at any point,' police said after rescue helicopters and other aircraft had carried out a number of aerial reconnaissance flights over the island following the eruption on Monday afternoon. 'Police believe that anyone who could have been taken from the island alive was rescued at the time of the evacuation.'"

Colombia's Former Prison Island Gorgona Is Open For Tourists — And Snakes

"Guides hand out knee-high rubber boots before leading visitors on hikes around Gorgona National Park, an island 21 miles off Colombia's Pacific coast. The boots provide traction in the mud — and protection from poisonous snakes."

"The presence of scary reptiles is just one reason why the park remains largely unexplored by outsiders. It doesn't help that it is better known for its days as a kind of Colombian Devil's Island, when it housed a penal colony for 1,200 hardened criminals, from the 1960s-80s. Also, when tourism started to take off in Colombia a few years ago, Marxist guerrillas raided the island."

"'Tourism on Gorgona has always been a challenge,' Julia Miranda, director of Colombia's national park system, told NPR."

"But for adventure-seekers there's a lot to love about Gorgona. Fishing is prohibited so there are plenty of sharks, rays and other marine life to enthrall scuba divers. It's a prime spot for whale watching. And the island is full of monkeys, lizards and birds, some of them endemic."

"'It's like a mini-Galápagos,' says Jorge Ramírez, manager of Gorgona's only resort, referring to the Pacific islands off Ecuador where Charles Darwin devised his theory of evolution."

A Comet From Another Star Hints That Our Solar System Isn't One-Of-A-Kind

"A comet from another star will swing by our sun Dec. 8."

"Known as 2I/Borisov, it is the first comet to ever be seen coming from interstellar space. But despite its alien origins, astronomers say it actually looks pretty familiar."

"'Borisov is a comet very like what we have in our own solar system,' says Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer at Queen's University Belfast told NPR's Short Wave. Whatever planetary system it formed in, 'it's a lot like our own.'"

"Borisov was first spotted by an amateur astronomer named Gennady Borisov back in August. Professionals quickly followed up and established that the comet was not from our neighborhood. Many of the solar system's comets reside in the so-called Oort Cloud, a region many thousands of times farther out from the sun than Earth's orbit. Borisov, by contrast, is coming in from deep space."

"Ye Quanzhi of the University of Maryland is one of many astronomers trying to figure out where the heck it came from. He and his colleagues have been looking at photos of the comet, trying to trace its trajectory, and thus work out the last star it visited."

"'The Universe is big, so we can only speculate,' Ye says."

Nature's 'Brita Filter' Is Dying and Nobody Knows Why

"On "good" bad days, the shells lie open at the bottom of the river, shimmering in the refracted sunlight. Their insides, pearl white and picked clean of flesh, flicker against the dark riverbed like a beacon, alerting the world above to a problem below."

"'That's what we look for in die-offs,' says biologist Jordan Richard, standing knee-deep in the slow-flowing waters of the Clinch River in southwest Virginia. He points at a faint shape submerged about ten feet upstream. 'I can tell from here that's a Pheasantshell, it's dead and it died recently. The algae development is really light.'"

"The Pheasantshell is a freshwater mussel; a less-edible version of its saltwater cousin that spends most of its inconspicuous life part-buried in riverbeds, blending in with the rocks and filtering the water around them."

"In recent years though, biologists and fisherman noticed something was wrong. On sections of the Clinch and other waterways in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, dead mussels were turning up on shores and could be seen glinting from the river bottom. Surveys revealed more fresh dead or dying mussels half-buried and rotting in still-clasped shells."

Scientists Find Surprising Age-Related Protein Waves In Blood

"Scientists know if they transfuse blood from a young mouse to an old one, that they can stave off, or even reverse, some signs of aging. But they don't know what in the blood is responsible for this remarkable effect."

"Researchers now report that they've identified hundreds of proteins in human blood that wax and wane in surprising ways as we age. The findings could provide important clues about which substances in the blood can slow aging."

"The scientists studied nearly 3,000 proteins in blood plasma that was drawn from more than 4,000 people with a span of ages from 18 to 95. The project focused on proteins that change in both men and women."

"'When we went into this, we assumed you aged gradually, so we would see these changes taking place relatively steadily as individuals get older,' said Tony Wyss-Coray, a professor of neurology at Stanford University."

"Instead, Wyss-Coray and his colleagues report in Nature Medicine Thursday that these proteins change in three distinct waves, the first of which happens "very surprisingly" during our 30s, peaking around the age of 34."

Milan Kundera's Czech Citizenship Is Restored After 40 Years

"The novelist Milan Kundera left Czechoslovakia in 1975. He and his wife had gone to France for what was supposed to be a short stint at a university, and they did not go back. The communist government revoked Kundera's citizenship in 1979, and since then he has scarcely returned to his homeland, even after the fall of the Iron Curtain."

"But after 40 years, the author is a Czech citizen once more."

"Czech ambassador to France Petr Drulak went to Kundera's Paris apartment last week and handed him a citizenship certificate. 'For me it was very moving,' Drulak told Czech Radio. 'For all of us actually, it was a very emotional moment because after 40 years, Milan Kundera is a Czech citizen again.'"

"Drulak said the move was a symbolic gesture, and that the 90-year-old Kundera has always remained connected to his home country, even in exile."

"'He stayed by his convictions and identity, a profound Czech, I would say. He is really someone who is very linked to this country and he is very interested in what is going on in Czech Republic,' he said."

Raiders Of The Lost Crops: Scientists Race Against Time To Save Genetic Diversity

"Call it a tale of science and derring-do. An international team of researchers has spent six years fanning across the globe, gathering thousands of samples of wild relatives of crops. Their goal: to preserve genetic diversity that could help key crops survive in the face of climate change. At times, the work put these scientists in some pretty extreme situations."

"Just ask Hannes Dempewolf. Two years ago, the plant geneticist found himself in a rainforest in Nepal, at the foot of the Himalayas. He was riding on the back of an elephant to avoid snakes on the ground — and to scare away any tigers that might be lurking about. Then all of a sudden came an attack from above."

"'There were leeches dropping on us from all directions,' Dempewolf recalls — 'bloodsucking leeches.'"

"Now, this is far from where he thought he'd be when he got his Ph.D. But as a senior scientist and head of global initiatives at the Crop Trust, Dempewolf has been overseeing an ambitious international collaboration. More than 100 scientists in 25 countries have been venturing out to collect wild relatives of domesticated crops — like lentils, potatoes, chickpeas and rice — that people rely on around the world. The Crop Trust has just released a report detailing the results of this massive effort, which secured more than 4,600 seed samples of 371 wild relatives of key domesticated crops that the world relies on."

'Food Pharmacies' In Clinics: When The Diagnosis Is Chronic Hunger

"There's a new question that anti-hunger advocates want doctors and nurses to ask patients: Do you have enough food?"

"Public health officials say the answer often is 'not really.' So clinics and hospitals have begun stocking their own food pantries in recent years."

"One of the latest additions is Connectus Health, a federally funded clinic in Nashville, Tenn. This month, the rear of LaShika Taylor's office transformed into a community cupboard."

"It's a lot of nonperishables right now, just because we're just starting out," she says, but the clinic is working on refrigeration.

It's not that patients are starving, Connectus co-director Suzanne Hurley says. It's that they may have a lot of food one day and none the next. That's no way to manage a disease like diabetes, she says.

"I can prescribe medications all day, but if they can't do the other piece — which is a decent diet and just knowing they're not going to have to miss meals,' she says, "medications have to be managed around all of those things."

With Waters Rising And Its Population Falling, What Is Venice's Future?

"The lagoon city of Venice — a unique experiment nurtured by man and nature — suffered heavy damage in November as floodwaters reached their highest peaks in more than 50 years."

"But rising sea levels are not the only threat. As Venetians continue to leave their city, Venice risks becoming an empty shell sinking under mass tourism."

"Two weeks after the floods, St. Mark's Square resonates with a cacophony of languages — Spanish, Chinese and Russian. Awestruck visitors shriek and marvel as they take selfies in what Napoleon described as Europe's drawing room."

"But across the lagoon, Venetians are taking stock of the damage caused by a wave of exceptionally high tides known as "acqua alta" — high water."

"Pellestrina is home mostly to fishermen. For centuries, this 7 1/2-mile-long barrier island protected the Venetian lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. But on Nov. 12, a near-record high tide of more than 6 feet, combined with strong winds, made for a perfect storm and washed over Pellestrina's high embankments, flooding the island for a full day. Nearly everything on ground floors was destroyed."