In this episode, Brian braves the icy north winds to see half amillion cranes on the Platte River. Matt gets pig semen in his eye and comes away cancer free. Simian civil war breaks out among the chimpanzees of Uganda. And in Ourobookos, the war against TB finds both a bacterial villain and a questionable cure.

Got a question, comment, or correction? Yack right back at us at YacketyScience@gmail.com. And please follow us on Spotify, Instagram(@yacketysciene), Facebook (Yackety Science), and YouTube (@YacketyScience).

Episode Art: Modified from Crane Photo by Brian Cross.

Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessedthrough FreeMusicArchive.org.; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Production help provided by Scott Gregory.

Yackety Science is recorded at the studios of Public Radio Tulsa,Kendall Hall, University of Tulsa, and at the Center for Creativity at TulsaCommunity College.

Links:

Sandhill Crane Migration and Rowe Sanctuary:

●Information about Rowe Sanctuary

●All About Birds: Sandhill Cranes

Pig Semen and Cancer:

● Jiansong Zhao et al. Harnessing semen-derived exosomesfor noninvasive fundus drug delivery: A paradigm for exosome-based ocular fundus therapeutics. Sci. Adv.12,eadw7275(2026).

● Scientists turn pig semen extract into eye drops that kill cancer in mice by Darren Incorvaia, Fierce Biostech Mar27, 2026

Chimp Wars:

●Civil war among wild chimpanzees by James Brooks. Science392,146-147(2026).

Ourobookos, A Yackety Science Book Club

Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green

“Tuberculosis has been entwined with hu­manity for millennia.Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is seen as a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it. In 2019, author John Green met Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. John be­came fast friends with Henry, aboy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequi­ties that allow this curable, preventable infec­tious disease to also be the deadliest, killing over a million people every year. In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.”