In this latest episode, your humble Yackety Science podcast is once again fearlessly confronting the essential questions of our day and age. Such as, how much of RFK, Jr.'s brain could those now-famous worms have actually consumed? Is magnesium male or female? Can SIT save us all from an invasion of man-eaters? (And yes, we'll define "SIT.") When will fusion power be able to bake our potatoes? And is Belle (the Disney-movie heroine, mind you) selling a lie "as old as time"? Join us for the answers (?) to all of these questions and more.
Got a question, comment, or correction? Yack right back at us at YacketyScience@gmail.com.
Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessed through FreeMusicArchive.org.; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Episode art (as above): Modified from screwworm photo by John Kucharski (PD).
Production help provided by PRT's Scott Gregory (not a Disney-movie heroine; not yet, anyway).
Yackety Science is recorded at the studios of Public Radio Tulsa, Kendall Hall, The University of Tulsa, and at the Center for Creativity at Tulsa Community College.
Links:
RFK, Jr. and the COVID Vaccines
Global Estimates of Lives and Life-Years Saved by COVID-19 Vaccination During 2020-2024 by Ioannidis et al.⦁ ⦁ JAMA Health Forum⦁ ( 2025)
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2836434
Estimated number of lives directly saved by COVID-19 vaccination programmes in the WHO European Region from December, 2020, to March, 2023: a retrospective surveillance study. by Mesle et al. ⦁ The Lancet⦁ (2024)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(24)00179-6/fulltext
Global impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: a mathematical modelling study by Watson, Oliver J et al. ⦁ The Lancet Infectious Diseases⦁ (2022)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(22)00320-6/fulltext
COVID 19 Vaccine Effectiveness. Our World in Data
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status
Screwworms
The U.S. confirms its first human case of New World screwworm. What is it? By Rachel Treisman. ⦁ NPR.org⦁ (August 25, 2025)
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/25/nx-s1-5515487/new-world-screwworm-us-human-case
New World Screwworm: Rise, Fall, and Resurgence by Alicia Hibbard. ASM.org (Sept. 5, 2025).
https://asm.org/articles/2025/september/new-word-screwworm-rise-fall-resurgence
Fusion Advances
Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore achieve fusion ignition with groundbreaking approach: Achievement expands what’s possible in stockpile stewardship experiments. LANL.gov (July 31, 2025)
https://www.lanl.gov/media/news/0731-fusion-ignition
[end]