In this episode, Team Yack returns to the far side of the moon along with the Artemis II astronauts. (Cue the Pink Floyd! Balloons and Jubilation!) We admire the versatility of the octopus’s kinky arm-penis-nose and report on Matt’s special box of emotional support particles. Argon, the laziest of all elements, makes a half-hearted, but punny, appearance in the chemical minute. And we cough dramatically into our hankies and collapse on the settee for a discussion of John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis.

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

Episode Art: Modified from Earthset photo taken by NASA’s Artemis II astronauts.

Theme music: “Funky Machine” (ID874) by Lobo Loco (Accessed through 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 Tulsa Community College.

Links

The Moon and Artemis II:

• Information about Artemis II from NASA
• Osiris Rex Photo of the Moon (2017)

Cephalopod Sex:

• To mate or predate? Octopuses use the same system for sensing food or a mate, which has implications for speciation. Science (April 2, 2026)
• A sensory system for mating in octopus by Pablo Villar et al. (Science 392(6793):96-101).
  

Anti-protons:

• Geneva’s CERN hails delicate test on transporting antimatter as a scientific success by Jamey Keaten (AP; March 24, 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, a boy 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.”