Best podcast@nature.com Podcasts (2024)

1
Squid-inspired pills squirt drugs straight into your gut 29:19

28m ago29:19

29:19

00:45 A squid-inspired device for needle-free drug delivery Inspired by squids’ ability to shoot ink, a team of researchers have developed swallowable devices that can deliver tiny jets of drugs directly into the gut lining, circumventing the need for needles. Previous studies have shown that most people prefer to take medication in pill form, rath…

1
Bone marrow in the skull plays a surprisingly important role in ageing 35:10

15h ago35:10

35:10

00:46 The role of skull bone marrow in ageing During ageing, bone marrow in the skull becomes an increasingly important site of blood-cell production. This is in stark contrast to most bones where the ability of marrow to make blood and immune cells declines. Studies in mice and humans showed that ageing results in skull bone-marrow expanding, and …

1
’Rapture and beauty’: a writer's portrait of the International Space Station 26:23

6d ago26:23

26:23

Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize shortlisted novel Orbital is set inside an International Space Station-like vessel circling 250 miles above Earth. It looks at a day-in-the-life of the crew, investigating the contrasts they experience during the 16 orbits they make around the planet, crossing continents, oceans and the line separating night and day. …

1
Surprise finding reveals mitochondrial 'energy factories' come in two different types 27:36

8d ago27:36

27:36

00:46 Mitochondria divide their labour to help cells thrive Researchers have uncovered that mitochondria divide into two distinct forms when cells are starved, a finding that could help explain how some cancers thrive in hostile conditions. Mitochondria are cellular powerhouses, creating energy and vital metabolic molecules, but how they are able t…

1
REBROADCAST: Talking politics, talking science 23:49

11d ago23:49

23:49

This series was originally broadcast in 2020. Science and politics are not easy bedfellows - "Stick to the science" is a three part series which aims to find out why. In the third and final episode we try to get to the bottom of how journalists, communicators and policymakers influence how science is perceived. We discuss the danger of politicizati…

1
REBROADCAST: Politics of the life scientific 24:42

12d ago24:42

24:42

This series was originally broadcast in 2020. Science and politics are not easy bedfellows - "Stick to the science" is a three part series which aims to find out why. In this episode we're asking how politics shapes the life of a working scientist. Be it through funding agendas, cultural lobbies or personal bias, there's a myriad of ways in which p…

1
REBROADCAST: A brief history of politics and science 28:48

13d ago28:48

28:48

This series was originally broadcast in 2020. Science and politics are not easy bedfellows - "Stick to the science" is a three part series which aims to find out why. In this episode we delve into the past, and uncover the complicated relationship between science, politics and power. Along the way, we come up against some pretty big questions: what…

1
How to recover from the trauma of a climate disaster 35:23

16d ago35:23

35:23

00:48 Rebuilding mental health after the floods Researchers have been investigating the best ways to help people deal with trauma in the wake of a climate disaster. In April and May devastating floods surged across Rio Grande do Sul in the South of Brazil, affecting two million people and killing hundreds. As people try to put their lives back toge…

1
Audio long read: Which is the fairest electoral system? Mega-election year sparks debate 18:39

20d ago18:39

18:39

By the end of 2024 up to two billion people will have gone to the polls, in a pivotal year of elections around the globe. This is giving political scientists the chance to dive into each election in detail but also to compare the differing voting systems involved. They hope understanding the advantages and drawbacks of the systems will help highlig…

1
Massive lost mountain cities revealed by lasers 29:55

22d ago29:55

29:55

00:48 The hidden cities of Uzbekistan Researchers have uncovered the scale of two ancient cities buried high in the mountains of Uzbekistan. The cities were thought to be there, but their extent was unknown, so the team used drone-mounted LiDAR equipment to reveal what was hidden beneath the ground. The survey surprised researchers by showing one o…

1
Star-eating black hole could power cosmic particle accelerator 29:36

1M ago29:36

29:36

In this episode: 00:46 An unusual γ-ray producing microquasar A type of binary-system known as a microquasar has been found to be firing out γ-rays at high energy-levels, which may make it a candidate to be a long-theorized natural particle-accelerator known as a PeVatron. These objects are thought to be a source of galactic cosmic rays, the origin…

1
This AI powered 'tongue' can tell Coke and Pepsi apart 38:46

1M ago38:46

38:46

00:55 Graphene Tongue Researchers have developed a graphene ‘tongue’ that uses AI to tell the subtle differences between drinks. Graphene has long been sought after as a chemical sensor, but tiny variations between devices have meant that it couldn’t be used very reliably. The team behind the ‘tongue’ got around this problem by training an AI to te…

1
Strange gamma-ray flickers seen in thunderstorms for the first time 30:55

2M ago30:55

30:55

00:46 Physicists spot new types of high-energy radiation in thunderstorms Physicists have identified new forms of γ-ray radiation created inside thunderclouds, and shown that levels of γ-ray production are much higher on Earth than previously thought. Scientists already knew about two types of γ-ray phenomena in thunderclouds — glows that last as l…

1
Audio long read: A day in the life of the world’s fastest supercomputer 20:19

2M ago20:19

20:19

The world's fastest supercomputer, known as Frontier, is located at the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. This machine churns through data at record speed, outpacing 100,000 laptops working simultaneously. With nearly 50,000 processors, Frontier was designed to push the bounds of human knowledge. It's bein…

1
Children with Down's syndrome are more likely to get leukaemia: stem-cells hint at why 21:58

2M ago21:58

21:58

In this episode: 00:46 Unravelling why children with Down’s syndrome are at a higher risk of leukaemia Children with Down’s syndrome have a 150-fold increased risk of developing leukaemia than those without the condition. Now, an in-depth investigation has revealed that changes to genome structures in fetal liver stem-cells appear to be playing a k…

1
Colossal 'jets' shooting from a black hole defy physicists' theories 34:06

2M ago34:06

34:06

In this episode: 00:45 The biggest black hole jets ever seen Astronomers have spotted a pair of enormous jets emanating from a supermassive black hole with a combined length of 23 million light years — the biggest ever discovered. Jets are formed when matter is ionized and flung out of a black hole, creating enormous and powerful structures in spac…

1
Ancient DNA debunks Rapa Nui ‘ecological suicide’ theory 41:41

2M ago41:41

41:41

In this episode: 00:45 What ancient DNA has revealed about Rapa Nui’s past Ancient DNA analysis has further demonstrated that the people of Rapa Nui did not cause their own population collapse, further refuting a controversial but popular claim. Rapa Nui, also known as Easter island, is famous for its giant Moai statues and the contested idea that …

1
The baseless stat that could be harming Indigenous conservation efforts 14:29

3M ago14:29

14:29

The often repeated claim that "80% of the world's biodiversity is found in the territories of Indigenous Peoples" appears widely in policy documents and reports, yet appears to have sprung out of nowhere. According to a group of researchers, including those from Indigenous groups, this baseless statistic could be undermining the conservation effort…

151
Long-sought 'nuclear clocks' are one tick closer 31:24

2M ago31:24

31:24

In this episode: 00:45 Why a 'nuclear clock' is now within researchers’ reach Researchers have made a big step towards the creation of the long theorized nuclear clock, by getting the most accurate measurement of the frequency of light required to push thorium nuclei into a higher energy state. Such a timekeeper would differ from the best current c…

1
Audio long read: So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it? 17:44

3M ago17:44

17:44

The 'file-drawer problem', where findings with null or negative results gather dust and are left unpublished, is well known in science. There has been an overriding perception that studies with positive or significant findings are more important, but this bias can have real-world implications, skewing perceptions of drug efficacies, for example. Mu…

1
Covert racism in AI chatbots, precise Stone Age engineering, and the science of paper cuts 20:40

3M ago20:40

20:40

In this episode: 00:31 Chatbots makes racist judgements on the basis of dialect Research has shown that large language models, including those that power chatbots such as ChatGPT, make racist judgements on the basis of users’ dialect. If asked to describe a person, many AI systems responded with racist stereotypes when presented with text written i…

151
Can ageing be stopped? A biologist explains 30:43

3M ago30:43

30:43

For millennia, humanity has obsessed about halting ageing and, ultimately, preventing death. Yet while advances in medicine and public-health have seen human life-expectancy more than double, our maximum lifespan stubbornly remains around 120 years. On the latest episode of Nature hits the books, Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan joins us to discus…

151
AI can't learn new things forever — an algorithm can fix that 19:50

3M ago19:50

19:50

00:46 Old AIs can’t learn new tricks An algorithm that reactivates dormant ‘neurons’ in deep learning based AIs could help them overcome their inability to learn new things and make future systems more flexible, research has shown. AIs based on deep learning struggle to learn how to tackle new tasks indefinitely, making them less adaptable to new s…

201
The mystery of Stonehenge's central stone unearthed 22:49

3M ago22:49

22:49

00:48 The mystery of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone Stonehenge’s central stone came from Northern Scotland, more than 600 miles away from the monument, according to a new analysis of its geochemistry. It is commonly accepted that many of the rocks that make up the iconic neolithic monument came from Wales, 150 miles from the site. Previously, it had been…

201
ChatGPT has a language problem — but science can fix it 36:50

3M ago36:50

36:50

AIs built on Large Language Models have wowed by producing particularly fluent text. However, their ability to do this is limited in many languages. As the data and resources used to train a model in a specific language drops, so does the performance of the model, meaning that for some languages the AIs are effectively useless. Researchers are awar…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

podcast@nature.com

Podcasts Worth a Listen

1
Nature Podcast

Springer Nature Limited

1
Squid-inspired pills squirt drugs straight into your gut 29:19

1
Bone marrow in the skull plays a surprisingly important role in ageing 35:10

1
’Rapture and beauty’: a writer's portrait of the International Space Station 26:23

1
Surprise finding reveals mitochondrial 'energy factories' come in two different types 27:36

1
REBROADCAST: Talking politics, talking science 23:49

1
REBROADCAST: Politics of the life scientific 24:42

1
REBROADCAST: A brief history of politics and science 28:48

1
How to recover from the trauma of a climate disaster 35:23

1
Audio long read: Which is the fairest electoral system? Mega-election year sparks debate 18:39

1
Massive lost mountain cities revealed by lasers 29:55

1
Star-eating black hole could power cosmic particle accelerator 29:36

1
This AI powered 'tongue' can tell Coke and Pepsi apart 38:46

1
Strange gamma-ray flickers seen in thunderstorms for the first time 30:55

1
Audio long read: A day in the life of the world’s fastest supercomputer 20:19

1
Children with Down's syndrome are more likely to get leukaemia: stem-cells hint at why 21:58

1
Colossal 'jets' shooting from a black hole defy physicists' theories 34:06

1
Ancient DNA debunks Rapa Nui ‘ecological suicide’ theory 41:41

1
The baseless stat that could be harming Indigenous conservation efforts 14:29

151
Long-sought 'nuclear clocks' are one tick closer 31:24

1
Audio long read: So you got a null result. Will anyone publish it? 17:44

1
Covert racism in AI chatbots, precise Stone Age engineering, and the science of paper cuts 20:40

151
Can ageing be stopped? A biologist explains 30:43

151
AI can't learn new things forever — an algorithm can fix that 19:50

201
The mystery of Stonehenge's central stone unearthed 22:49

201
ChatGPT has a language problem — but science can fix it 36:50

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