Nature Podcast
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Top 10 Nature Podcast Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Nature Podcast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Nature Podcast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Nature Podcast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
How playing poker can help you make decisions
Nature Podcast
06/24/20 • 26 min
On this week’s podcast, life lessons from poker, and keeping things civil during peer review.
In this episode:
00:44 Deciding to play poker
When writer Maria Konnikova wanted to better understand the human decision making process, she took a rather unusual step: becoming a professional poker player. We delve into her journey and find out how poker could help people make better decisions. Books and Arts: What the world needs now: lessons from a poker player
09:12 Research Highlights
A sweaty synthetic skin that can exude useful compounds, and Mars’s green atmosphere. Research Highlight: An artificial skin oozes ‘sweat’ through tiny pores; Research Highlight: The red planet has a green glow
11:21 Developing dialogues
The peer-review process is an integral part of scientific discourse, however, sometimes interactions between authors and reviews can be less than civil. How do we tread the fine line between critique and rudeness? Editorial: Peer review should be an honest, but collegial, conversation
18:47 Briefing Chat
We take a look at some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time we talk about research into racism, and a possible hint of dark matter. Nature News: What the data say about police brutality and racial bias — and which reforms might work; Nature News: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings; Quanta: Dark Matter Experiment Finds Unexplained Signal
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09/18/24 • 34 min
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 space. Thought to be unstable, physicists had theorized there was a limit to how large these jets could be, but the new discovery far exceeds this, suggesting there may be more of these monstrous jets yet to be discovered.
Research Article: Oei et al.
09:44 Research Highlights
The knitted fabrics designed to protect wearers from mosquito bites, and the role that islands play in fostering language diversity.
Research Highlight: Plagued by mosquitoes? Try some bite-blocking fabrics
Research Highlight: Islands are rich with languages spoken nowhere else
12:26 A sustainable, one-step method for alloy production
Making metal alloys is typically a multi-step process that creates huge amounts of emissions. Now, a team demonstrates a way to create these materials in a single step, which they hope could significantly reduce the environmental burdens associated with their production. In a lab demonstration, they use their technique to create an alloy of nickel and iron called invar — a widely-used material that has a high carbon-footprint. The team show evidence that their method can produce invar to a quality that rivals that of conventional manufacturing, and suggest their technique is scalable to create alloys at an industrial scale.
Research article: Wei et al.
25:29 Briefing Chat
How AI-predicted protein structures have helped chart the evolution of a group of viruses, and the neurons that cause monkeys to ‘choke’ under pressure.
Nature News: Where did viruses come from? AlphaFold and other AIs are finding answers
Nature News: Why do we crumble under pressure? Science has the answer
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06/19/20 • 37 min
In this episode:
00:37 Lessons from the Ebola outbreak
We get an update on the pandemic response in the African countries still reeling from the 2014 Ebola crisis. Resource strapped and under pressure – can the lessons learned from Ebola help keep the coronavirus under control?
15:32 Dexamethasone, a breakthrough drug?
A UK-based drugs trial suggests that a cheap steroid could cut deaths by a third among the sickest COVID patients. We discuss what this could mean for the pandemic.
News: Coronavirus breakthrough: dexamethasone is first drug shown to save lives
20:06 One good thing
Our hosts pick out things that have made them smile in the last week, including altruistic bone marrow donors, and skateboarding.
22:48 The numbers don’t lie
A huge amount of projections, graphs and data have been produced during the pandemic. But how accurate are numbers and can they be relied upon?
News: Why daily death tolls have become unusually important in understanding the coronavirus pandemic
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Ancient 'giraffes' sported thick helmets for headbutting
Nature Podcast
06/08/22 • 18 min
00:33 A headbashing relative gives insights into giraffe evolution
How the giraffe got its long neck is a longstanding question in science. One possibility is that giraffes evolved longer necks for sexual competition, with males engaging in violent neck-swinging fights. Now, a team have described fossils of an ancient giraffoid species with a thick headpiece adapted for fighting, which could add weight to this hypothesis.
Nature News: How the giraffe got its neck: ‘unicorn’ fossil could shed light on puzzle
05:18 A wave of resignations signals discontent in academia
Around the world, the ‘great resignation’ has seen huge numbers of workers re-evaluating their careers and lifestyles and choosing to leave their jobs following the pandemic. Academia is no exception, with many scientists deciding to leave the sector in the face of increased workloads, systemic biases and pressure to publish.
Nature Careers: Has the ‘great resignation’ hit academia?
10:34 An emergency fix gets MAVEN back on track
Earlier this year, NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, which has been orbiting Mars since 2014, developed some serious equipment issues that prevented it from keeping its correct orientation in space. In a race against time, a team on Earth fixed the problem by developing a system that allowed the spacecraft to navigate by the stars.
Space.com: NASA's Mars MAVEN spacecraft spent 3 months on the brink of disaster
14:28 The Perseverance rovers continues its rock collection
NASA’s Perseverance rover has arrived at an ancient Martian river delta where it will spend the next few months exploring, while scientists assess where to drill and extract rock samples. It’s thought that rocks from this region have the best chance of containing evidence of Martian life, and plans are being developed to return them to Earth in the future.
Nature News: NASA’s Perseverance rover begins key search for life on Mars
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07/22/20 • 42 min
New evidence may push back the date on human arrival to the Americas, and an examination of science’s flaws.
In this episode:
00:59 Ancient Americans
Two papers suggest that humans were present in the Americas thousands of years before many people have thought. We examine the evidence. Research Article: Ardelean et al.; Research Article: Becerra-Valdivia and Higham; News and Views: Evidence grows that peopling of the Americas began more than 20,000 years ago
10:44 Coronapod
We discuss the latest results from vaccine trials around the world, and controversy in the US as COVID-19 data collection moves out of the CDC. News: Coronavirus vaccines leap through safety trials — but which will work is anybody’s guess
24:38 Research Highlights
How being green makes things easy for some frogs, and how waves will be affected by climate change. Research Highlight: How frogs became green — again, and again, and again; Research Highlight: Extreme Arctic waves set to hit new heights
27:11 How can science improve?
A new book highlights some of the flaws of how science is done. We caught up with the author to find out his thoughts on how science can be cleaned up. Books and Arts: Fraud, bias, negligence and hype in the lab — a rogues’ gallery
35:54 Briefing Chat
We take a look at some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time we discuss a puzzling new insight into the expansion of the Universe, and an update to Plan S that will allow open-access research to be published in any journal. Nature News: Mystery over Universe’s expansion deepens with fresh data; Nature News: Open-access Plan S to allow publishing in any journal
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The 'ghost roads' driving tropical deforestation
Nature Podcast
04/10/24 • 23 min
In this episode:
00:46 Mapping ‘ghost roads’ in tropical forests
Across the world, huge numbers of illegal roads have been cut into forests. However, due to their illicit nature, the exact numbers of these roads and their impacts on ecosystems is poorly understood. To address this, researchers have undertaken a huge mapping exercise across the tropical Asia-Pacific region. Their findings reveal over a million kilometers of roads that don’t appear on official maps, and that their construction is a key driver for deforestation.
Research Article: Engert et al.
10:44 Research Highlights
How climate change fuelled a record-breaking hailstorm in Spain, and an unusual technique helps researchers detect a tiny starquake.
Research Highlight: Baseball-sized hail in Spain began with a heatwave at sea
Research Highlight: Smallest known starquakes are detected with a subtle shift of colour
13:02 Briefing Chat
A clinical trial to test whether ‘mini livers’ can grow in a person’s lymph node, and the proteins that may determine left-handedness.
Nature News: ‘Mini liver’ will grow in person’s own lymph node in bold new trial
Nature News: Right- or left-handed? Protein in embryo cells might help decide
Nature video: How would a starfish wear trousers? Science has an answer
Vote for us in the Webbys: https://go.nature.com/3TVYHmP
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How gliding marsupials got their 'wings'
Nature Podcast
04/24/24 • 28 min
In this episode:
00:46 Optical clocks at sea
Optical atomic clocks are the most precise timekeeping devices on the planet, but these devices are huge and difficult to work with, limiting their use outside of the lab. Now, researchers have developed a portable optical clock and demonstrated its robustness by sending it on a perilous sea journey. The team hope that this work will pave the way to more practical uses of optical clocks, such as on satellites where they could help improve the accuracy of GPS technologies.
Research Article: Roslund et al.
News and Views: Robust optical clocks promise stable timing in a portable package
09:34 Research Highlights
Evidence of ritual burning of the remains of a Maya royal family, and the first solid detection of an astrophysical tau-neutrino.
Research Highlight: Burnt remains of Maya royalty mark a dramatic power shift
Research Highlight: Detectors deep in South Pole ice pin down elusive tau neutrino
11:52 How marsupial gliding membranes evolved
Several marsupial species have evolved a membrane called a patagium that allows them to glide gracefully from tree to tree. Experiments show that mutations in areas of DNA around the gene Emx2 were key to the evolution of this ability, which has appeared independently in multiple marsupial species.
Research article: Moreno et al.
News and Views: Marsupial genomes reveal how a skin membrane for gliding evolved
19:22 Briefing Chat
How overtraining AIs can help them discover novel solutions, and researchers manage to make one-atom thick sheets of ‘goldene’.
Quanta Magazine: How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data?
Nature news: Meet ‘goldene’: this gilded cousin of graphene is also one atom thick
Subscribe to Nature Briefing: AI and robotics
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The mystery of Stonehenge's central stone unearthed
Nature Podcast
08/14/24 • 22 min
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 thought that a central stone, called the Altar Stone, had also come from this area, known as the Preseli Hills. The new work suggests that the ancient Britons went much further, perhaps ferrying the Altar Stone hundreds of miles, to place the rock at the centre of Stonehenge.
Research Article: Clarke et al.
News: Stonehenge’s massive slabs came from as far as Scotland — 800 kilometres away
12:12 Research Highlights
How a parasite could help scientists break through the blood-brain barrier, and the physics of skateboard moves.
Research Highlight: Engineered brain parasite ferries useful proteins into neurons
Research Highlight: How expert skateboarders use physics on the half-pipe
14:13 A new way to break bonds
Chemists have demonstrated a way to break Selenium-Selenium bonds unevenly, something they have been trying for decades. Chemical bonds have to be broken and reformed to create new compounds, but they often don’t break in a way that allows chemists to form new bonds in the ways they would like. Breaks are often ‘even’, with electrons shared equally between atoms. To prevent such an even split, a team used a specific solvent and a combination of light and heat to force the selenium bonds to break unevenly. This could potentially open up ways to create compounds that have never been made before.
Research Article: Tiefel et al.
News and Views: Innovative way to break chemical bonds broadens horizons for making molecules
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05/28/24 • 36 min
Growing up in Alabama in the 1960s, mathematician Freeman Hrabowski was moved to join the civil rights moment after hearing Martin Luther King Jr speak. Even as a child, he saw the desperate need to make change. He would go on to do just that — at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, one of the leading pathways to success for Black students in STEM subjects in the United States.
Freeman is the subject of the first in a new series of Q&As in Nature celebrating ‘Changemakers’ in science — individuals who fight racism and champion inclusion. He spoke to us about his about his life, work and legacy.
Career Q&A: I had my white colleagues walk in a Black student’s shoes for a day
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10/18/23 • 30 min
In this episode:
00:47 An RNA-based viral system that mimics bacterial immune defences
To protect themselves against viral infection, bacteria often use CRISPR-Cas systems to identify and destroy an invading virus’s genetic material. But viruses aren’t helpless and can deploy countermeasures, known as anti-CRISPRs, to neutralise host defences. This week, a team describe a new kind of anti-CRISPR system, based on RNA, which protects viruses by mimicking part of the CRISPR-Cas system. The researchers hope that this discovery could have future biotechnology applications, including making CRISPR-Cas genome editing more precise.
Research article: Camara-Wilpert et al.
09:05 Research Highlights
Carved inscriptions suggest a queen named Thyra was the most powerful person in Viking-age Denmark, and the discovery of a puffed-up exoplanet that has just 1.5% the density of Earth.
Research Highlight: Runes on Viking stones speak to an ancient queen’s power
Research Highlight: ‘Super-puff’ planet is one of the fluffiest worlds ever found
11:38 Modelling the future of Greenland’s ice sheet melt
Climate-change induced melting of Greenland’s vast ice sheet would contribute to 7m of sea level rise. But it has been difficult to calculate how the ice sheet will respond to future warming. This week, a team suggest that abrupt ice loss is likely if the global mean temperature is between 1.7 °C and 2.3 °C above pre-industrial levels. Keeping temperature rise below 1.5 °C could mitigate ice loss, if done within a few centuries, but even a short overshoot of the estimated threshold could lead to several metres of sea-level rise.
Research article: Bochow et al.
17:50 Briefing Chat
A massive reproducibility exercise reveals over 200 ecologists get wildly-diverging results from the same data, and how melting simulated lunar-dust with lasers could help pave the Moon.
Nature News: Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
Nature News: How to build Moon roads using focused beams of sunlight
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FAQ
How many episodes does Nature Podcast have?
Nature Podcast currently has 867 episodes available.
What topics does Nature Podcast cover?
The podcast is about Podcasts, Technology and Science.
What is the most popular episode on Nature Podcast?
The episode title 'How playing poker can help you make decisions' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Nature Podcast?
The average episode length on Nature Podcast is 24 minutes.
How often are episodes of Nature Podcast released?
Episodes of Nature Podcast are typically released every 5 days.
When was the first episode of Nature Podcast?
The first episode of Nature Podcast was released on Mar 19, 2014.
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