Hi, Ira here. A lot of you have said, hey, Ira, we like the podcast, but sometimes we just want to listen to one story at a time. And we hear you. So we're going to try something new. A topic or two a day spread out through Monday through Science Friday. Have a listen.

It's been a highly charged debate for around 40 years.

Does Venus have lightning?

This is really going against what we really thought these whistlewaves were telling us.

So it is a bit of a surprise to everyone involved, I think.

It's Friday, October 6th, and today is Science Friday. I'm SciFry producer Charles

Berkwest. The planet Venus has blazing hot temperatures, bone crushing pressures, and sulfuric

acid clouds. The longest any spacecraft has survived on the surface is thought to be around two hours.

But if you went to that dangerous place, would you have to worry about lightning?

New research takes on that question, and we'll talk about it.

But first, we check in on some of the week's science news with Flora Lickman.

This week, one of the rituals of science, an early morning wake-up call for scientists scattered around the world.

Biomedical folks on Monday, physicists on Tuesday, chemists on Wednesday.

It's Nobel Prize Week.

Joining me to talk about the winners and some other stories from the week in science is Umer Erfan,

staff writer at Vox.

He's based in Washington, D.C.

Welcome back, Umer.

Hi, Flora.

How's it going?

Good.

Okay, so let's dive into the prizes and let's start with medicine.

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