To see in the New Year, host Rowan Hooper and the team look ahead to their science and cultural highlights for the coming months.

We start with 2 big planetary science missions due for launch in 2023. JUICE, which will be visiting Jupiter to study some of its moons, and Psyche, which is making a journey to an asteroid made completely of iron.

With covid still causing a huge burden of disease around the world, we find out how treatment of the disease is set to evolve this year, and what we can expect from the development of new vaccines.

2023 also looks to be the year of deep-sea mining, as we search for more minerals to fuel the green-revolution. But will countries regulate the industry in time, before it turns into a new wild west? 

And the team explains how our understanding of pregnancy and the earliest stages of life is set to change this year thanks to work that will accelerate the creation of synthetic embryos.

In cultural news, the team looks ahead to an exciting roster of new books coming out this year, including The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, In Ascension by Martin MacInnes, Saving Time by Jenny Odell, and Breathe: Tackling the Climate Emergency by Sadiq Khan.

In film and TV they discuss Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, Dune Part 2, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, and the TV adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons In Chemistry. There is particular anticipation for the Netflix adaptation of Cixin Liu’s extraordinary book, The Three-Body Problem.

On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Alison Flood, Madeleine Cuff, Jason Murugesu, Michael Le Page and Leah Crane. To read about these subjects and much more, you can subscribe to New Scientist magazine at newscientist.com.

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