This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato, coming to you from the caveat theater in New York City.

And tonight we're celebrating, critiquing, and reflecting on all that 2019 brought us in science.

This year, we experienced some painful and heartbreaking moments, like the burning of the Amazon rainforest,

a worldwide resurgence of measles cases, and the first ever deaths linked

to vaping. But it wasn't all tragedy and loss. Just recently, Time magazine named youth climate

activist Greta Toonberg, Person of the Year, a powerful reminder of just how much climate

change became part of the conversation in 2019.

And the inspiring generation of youth drawing attention to it. And let's not forget all the

major scientific milestones we witnessed this year. We had the first image of a black hole,

the first time we used CRISPR to edit the genes of a living person. So we'll be talking about all that and more this hour.

But first, let me introduce our esteemed panelists.

Sitting right to my left is Rachel Feldman, science editor at Popular Science.

Welcome to Science Friday.

Thanks for having me, Ira.

Next to her is Wendy Zuckerman, science journalist, and host of Gimlet's Media's Science

Versus.

Nice to have you.

And Omerifan, staff rider at Vox.

Good to have you back, Omer.

Thank you.

All right, Amel, let me begin.

Let me kick things off with you. We had these wildfires in the Amazon this year, right? That really caught the world's attention. Right. Fires are natural in many ecosystems, but the Amazon rainforest, you know, the one with all the rain, doesn't typically catch on fire. In fact, scientists say that almost all the fires we see there are caused by

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