We're all spending a bit more time indoors this summer than we probably figured. But did you ever stop to think about why the places we live and work as designed the way they are? And how they could be designed better? We're talking with Emily Anthes about her new book "The Great Indoors: The Surprising Science of how Buildings Shape our Behavior, Health and Happiness".

Around the end of the second world war, a set of tiny miniature dioramas depicting a variety of deaths were created to help teach investigators how to approach a crime scene. You may have heard of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death and their maker, Frances Glessner Lee... but you probably didn't know how Lee became interested in forensics, that she used her inheritance to establish a department of legal medicine at Harvard Medical School to accellerate the field, or that she used her political savvy to push the adoption of the medical examiner system in more jurisdictions. We talk to Bruce Goldfarb, Nutshell Studies curator and author of the new book "18 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics", about the woman behind the famous Nutshell Studies considered to be one of the early pioneers of modern forensics.

Yes, bumble bees are important pollinators. But they're also fascinating, cute and colorful. This week's episode can trace its origins to a flowery Sierra Nevada meadow where host Carolyn Wilke reported on guest Michelle Duennes' project of catching bumble bees to study their health. Three years and hundreds of bees later, we check in on the project. Hear all about the adventures of working with bumble bees, from flash freezing bees in the field to baking pollen cookies for lab colonies. We also talk bee conservation, bumble bee colors, and a bit of roller derby.

Related links:

• Duennes Lab
• Michelle Duennes YouTube channel
• Bumble bee conservation at the Xerxes Society
• View photos of Bombus rufofasciatus, a bumble bee that lives in the Himalayas

By now we're all good and scared about antibiotic resistance, one of the many things coming to get us all. But there's good news, sort of. News antibiotics are coming out! How do they get tested? What does that kind of a trial look like and how does it happen? Host Bethany Brookeshire talks with Matt McCarthy, author of "Superbugs: The Race to Stop an Epidemic", about the ins and outs of testing a new antibiotic in the hospital.

This week on Science for the People, we're diving into the world of DNA barcoding. We speak with Mehrdad Hajibabaei, Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics at the University of Guelph, about the International Barcode of Life. And we discuss how you can contribute to the field of DNA barcoding with Sujeevan Ratnasingham, Associate Director of Informatics and Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics at the University of Guelph. This episode is hosted by Anika Hazra.

Related links:

• Hajibabaei Lab
• Centre for Biodiversity Genomics
• International Barcode of Life
• Sujeevan Ratnasingham and his Twitter feed
• LifeScanner

Like many people these days, you might be spending your time at home making bread. Maybe you couldn't find instant yeast and decided that sourdough didn't sound that hard. But the colony of wild yeast you've nurtured is more marvelous than you probably expect. Today host Marion Kilgour discusses a small corner of the wonderful world of yeast with Sudeep Agarwala from Ginkgo Bioworks.

Related links:

• A Twitter thread on sourdough advice from Sudeep Agarwala
• A Twitter thread on lentil-based sourdough from Sudeep Agarwala

One of the most amazing things modern medicine does is organ transplants: literally taking organs like the lungs or the heart from recently dead people and using them to replace the failing organs in living, critically ill people, giving them a second shot at living a fuller life. How and when did we first figure out how to do this? What does a modern transplant look like? And what is it like to be the doctor who takes from death to give life? This week host Rachelle Saunders talks with Dr Joshua Mezrich, Associate Professor of Surgery in the Division of Multi-Organ Transplantation at the University of Wisconsin and author of the new book "When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon", about the history of transplant surgery and his own history as a transplant surgeon and its ups and downs.