Funds from this grant provide three years of support to National Public Radio (NPR) for the continued publication and distribution of its acclaimed twice-weekly podcast, Planet Money and its off-shoot, The Indicator, both award-winning projects that examine key economic issues for a general audience in an accurate, accessible, and engaging way. With grant funds, NPR expects to publish over 300 podcast episodes per year--approximately 100 new episodes of Planet Money and 200 new episodes of The Indicator--covering a variety of important, compelling economic issues such as inflation, the ongoing effects of the pandemic on our economy, federal rental assistance, and remote work. Grant funds will also support the annual production of 150 video segments for Planet Money Shorts, an online video series that became the foundation of NPR’s first TikTok account.

This grant provides support to New York Times tech reporter Katie Hafner and Sloan Kettering Cancer Center bioethicist Amy Scharf, who are producing three new seasons of their Lost Women of Science podcast series. Grant funds will allow Hafner and Scharf to produce twenty additional episodes telling the stories and cataloguing the contributions of undercredited women scientists. Each new season will feature one major, multi-episode series about a leading, underappreciated female STEM pioneer and four-to-five standalone episodes about unknown scientists about whom there is not enough information for a multi-episode arc. Season Four will highlight the life and contributions of Isabella Aiona Abbot, who discovered over 200 species of marine algae in the Pacific and was the first native Hawaiian woman to earn a Ph.D. in science. This grant will bolster Hafner and Scharf’s complementary efforts to form a research center and archive at Barnard College of Columbia University.

This grant provides ongoing support for the production and distribution of Science Friday, a weekly public radio show hosted by Ira Flatow that reaches over two million listeners each week. Science Friday engages the public through participatory dialogue and conversation, a live call-in show, and Q&As that give listeners a direct line of communication to scientists, mathematicians, engineers, technologists, inventors, science journalists and policymakers. Grant funds will allow Science Friday to continue producing SciArts (a weekly segment seeking to bridge the gap between science and the arts), hold a monthly book club, stream 50 podcast episodes per year, and hold five to ten events per year.

This grant supports the production of Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda, a weekly podcast where the internationally acclaimed actor and science communicator interviews the nation’s leading intellectuals, scientists, artists, advocates, and thinkers.  Grant funds will support seven episodes of Clear+Vivid, now in its 14th season, to allow Alda to conduct interviews with scientists on a range of interesting and socially relevant topics, including AI, social cognition, brain trauma, robotics, neuroscience, psychiatry and optogenetics, philosophy in science, and forgetfulness. Episodes will be released through major podcasting platforms, on Clear+Vivid’s feed, and will be promoted by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, the nation’s leading science communication research, training, and education organization. The episodes will be released in late 2021 and early 2022.