You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Okay, confession time.

I love thunderstorms.

The sounds, the flashes of light, the ground rumbling.

I love all of this when I'm indoors.

But when I'm outside in the rain and seen lightning coming my way, I, a full grown adult,

become terrified and run into the nearest building.

I've been that way ever since I can remember.

In a really on-roar, a physicist at a coal-poly technique near Paris says he was the same

as a kid.

I think like many kids, I was at the same time scared and fascinated by the lightning and

thunder, by the big flash of light that you see and waiting for the sound to know if it's

far or if it's close.

My dog was always frightened by the lightning and shaking like this.

When lightning doesn't just scare dogs and kids, it has real world consequences outside

of raising our heartbeats.

Storms delay flights, lightning strike buildings and wind farms.

People get struck by lightning every year.

Between 2006 and 2021, 444 people in the United States died from a lightning strike.

A really on and his multi-national team are on a mission to draw lightning away from planes,

people and other precious objects.

When it turns out, despite a brief flirtation with rockets, scientists' starting point

...