Becky Fogel is Science Friday's production assistant. Before joining SciFri, Becky was a reporter at 103.3 KWBU FM, the NPR-affiliate station in Waco, Texas. There she covered local news from education and immigration to arts and health. She also covered national breaking news stories, including the 2013 explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, for NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC/Radio-Canada).
Becky grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts but doesn't have the accent to prove it. When she's not hounding scientists, you can find her running (or let's be honest, walking) in her local park, searching for delicious BBQ spots, and then ... eating ice cream.
You can follow her on Twitter @beckyfogel.
Surfers are always in search of the perfect conditions. Here's how a series of websites and apps — one dating back more than 20 years — have provided a serious edge.
Researchers are recommending an app to help parents and kids learn important math skills together.
Latino voters in the US are usually seen as one-issue voters, focused on immigration. Politicians, however, are ignoring another major topic of concern for Latino voters, and that issue is climate change.
Sneakers owe their development to waffle irons, rolling pins and the rubber tree. But how much is this innovative footwear changing the way the human body functions in the 21st century?
A group of researchers is looking into ways to recycle and re-use human urine as fertilizer, and hopefully save precious water supplies in the process. It’s a project they’re calling “peecycling.”
Three states carried the residue from the blowout of an abandoned gold mine in Colorado. The incident shines a spotlight on toxic waters released from mines into surrounding rivers.
The Washington, DC, national zoo has a new baby panda — but scientists only determined there was a pregnancy a few days before the panda was actually born. That's because scientists have yet to develop a method to conclusively determine whether a female giant panda is actually pregnant.
For years, scientists have known the basic ingredients behind a firefly's light. But a new study explains the process behind the backyard light show.
Lucy, otherwise known as Australopithecus afarensis, is long considered to be the lone ancestor of modern humans. But a new discovery in the Afar region of Ethiopia could mean that Lucy didn't exist in isolation.
As surprising as it may seem, humans share a common genetic ancestor with yeast. Yes, yeast. Now researchers have shown that even today, some human genes swapped into a yeast cell will function identically as the yeast genes they replaced.