Nature Podcast
The Nature Podcast brings you the best stories from the world of science each week. We cover everything from astronomy to zoology, highlighting the most exciting research from each issue of the Nature journal. We meet the scientists behind the results and provide in-depth analysis from Nature's journalists and editors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
00:46 Data stored in glass
Nature: Microsoft Research Project Silica Team
Nature: Microsoft team creates 'revolutionary' data storage system that lasts for millennia
08:09 Research Highlights
Nature: Parasitic wasps use tamed virus to castrate caterpillars
Nature: Flexible joints: robot morphs into a range of cyborg species
10:10 An mRNA vaccine for Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
N...
In this episode:
00:26 Moderate caffeine intake might reduce dementia risk, study suggests
Nature: Coffee linked to slower brain ageing in study of 130,000 people
04:15 Using AI to work out the rules of a long-forgotten board game
Scientific American: Rules of mysterious ancient Roman board game decoded by AI
Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opini...
In this episode:
00:46 The immune cells that eat waste fats from fruit flies’ brains
Nature: Cho et al.
10:21 Research Highlights
Nature: Beetle is locked into an eternal dance ― with an ant
Nature: Super-sniffer aeroplane finds oil fields’ hidden emissions
12:41 Ancient DNA evidence reveals a nuanced story of the Bell Beaker Expansion
Nature: Olalde et al.
In this episode:
00:42 External, artificial-lung system keeps patient alive for transplant
Nature: 48 hours without lungs: artificial organ kept man alive until transplant
06:22 How lung cancer in mice hijacks neurons to outwit the immune system
Nature: How tumours trick the brain into shutting down cancer-fighting cells
Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinio...
00:46 Understanding how rete ridges form in the skin
09:32 Research Highlights
Nature: Genetically engineered ‘stinkweed’ comes up roses for making seed oil
Nature: Largest galaxy survey yet confirms that the Universe is not clumpy enough
11:52 The open-source AI that performs scientific literature reviews
In this episode:
00:36 Study probes genetics of extreme longevity
Nature: Still working at 107: supercentenarian study probes genetics of extreme longevity
05:32 Controlling fluorescent proteins’ brightness with magnets
Nature: ‘Remote controlled’ proteins illuminate living cells
00:46 Why completing difficult tasks feels rewarding
Nature: Touponse et al.
11:34 Research Highlights
Nature: Disappearing ‘planet’ reveals a solar system’s turbulent times
Nature: Getting to the (square) root of stock-market swings
13:43 How extreme weather events could threaten malaria elimination efforts
Nature: Symons et al.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode:
00:24 How babies share their gut microbes
Nature: Sending babies to nursery completely reshapes their microbiome
05:25 First evidence of tool use in cattle
Science: No bull: This Austrian cow has learned to use tools
00:46 Protein-sized superposition surpasses previous experiments
Nature: Pedalino et al.
News: Schrödinger's cat just got bigger: quantum physicists create largest ever 'superposition'
11:46 Research Highlights
Nature: Ancient pottery reveals early evidence of mathematical thinking
Nature: Gifted dogs learn new words by overhearing humans
14:11 How Trump’s second term has impacted researc...
In this episode:
00:40 The rock samples destined to remain on Mars
Nature: NASA won’t bring Mars samples back to Earth: this is the science that will be lost
05:24 The genetics of dogs’ droopy ears
Nature: Do their ears hang low? The genetics of dogs’ adorable floppy ears
In this episode:
00:47 AI can boost research productivity — at what cost?
Research article: Hao et al.
10:10 Research Highlights
Nature: Ancient ‘snowball’ Earth had frigidly briny seas
Nature: Putting immune cells into ‘night mode’ reduces heart-attack damage
12:41 JWST images are full of red dots, what are they?
Nature: Rusakov et al.
00:54 Turning an undersea cable into a seismic detector
Researchers have shown that they can piggyback a signal on a 4,400-kilometer-long telecom cable that runs from California to Hawaii, allowing it to act like 44,000 separate seismic-activity detectors. Their method takes advantage of impurities found in glass fibre-optic cables, which reflect light differently when they are stretched and distorted by the pressure of sei...
In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2026. We’ll hear about: small-scale AI models that could outcompete Large Language Models in reasoning, clinical trials of gene editing to treat rare human disorders, a sample collection mission from Phobos, and how changes to US policy by the Trump team are expected to impact science.
Anecdotal stories suggesting that weight-loss drugs can help people shake long-standing addictions have been spreading fast in the past few years, through online forums, weight-loss clinics and news headlines. And now, clinical data are starting to back them up.
Over a dozen randomized clinical studies testing whether GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic can suppress addiction are now under way, and neuroscientists are working out how these...
00:40 What a trove of potato genomes reveals about the humble spud
Researchers have created a ‘pangenome’ containing the genomes of multiple potato types, something they believe can help make it easier to breed and sequence new varieties. The potato’s complicated genetics has made it difficult to sequence the plant’s genome, but improvements in technology have allowed the team to combine sequences, allowing them to loo...
Nature: Asteroids, antibiotics and ants: a year of remarkable science
In this episode:
1:58 Evidence of ancient brine on an asteroid
Samples taken from the asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft suggest the parent body it originated from is likely to have contained salty, subsurface water. This finding provides insights into the chemistry of the early Solar System, and suggests that brines might have ...
00:46 The gifts that sparked a love of science
Nature put a call out for readers to tell us about memorable presents that first got them interested in science, or mementos of their life in research. These include telescopes, yeast-themed wedding rings, and... cows’ eyes.
Nature: The gift that shaped my career in science
08:12 “I am the Very Model of a Miniature Tyrannosaur”
In the first of our annual fes...
00:46 Evidence of the earliest fire
Baked soil, ancient tools, and materials that could be used to start fires show that Neanderthals were making fire in the UK 400,000 years ago — the earliest evidence of this skill found so far. Ancient humans are known to have used naturally occurring fires, but evidence of deliberate fire-starting has been hard to come by. A new suite o...
00:46 How satellite mega-constellations could ruin space-based astronomy
The ability of space-based telescopes to image the distant Universe could be in peril, according to new research investigating the impacts of light-pollution from future satellites. Streaks of reflected light from satellites currently in low-Earth orbit are already seen in telescope images, and planned launches could raise the number of satellites from...
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