Pain relief after surgery is a major headache as we don't have a lot of effective, and safe, options. Opioids in particular, like morphine, are very addictive and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths globally each year, and so doctors are desperate for alternatives. Now, scientists at the University of Buffalo have developed a long-lasting, local painkiller that can be injected into the site of injury to specifically prevent pain-transmitting nerve cells, or neurons, from passing on their painful messages to the brain. It works by stopping a process called endocytosis; this is where cells... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This week, listener Rick emailed us to ask "Why do we acquire lifelong immunity against some pathogens but not others?" Sally Le Page asked author and infectious disease researcher at Imperial College, London, John Tregoning, to jog our memories... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

He said he'd introduce them, now Boris Johnson has stepped back from mandating vaccine passports across England for venues like nightclubs. But what's provoked this viral volte-face? Also, saliva tests for Covid-19, few fatal coronavirus cases among the unvaccinated, what's the role of hand sanitisers, and are Covid booster jabs the way forward? Dr Chris Smith joins RNZ's Kim Hill to discuss the latest Covid-19 news... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Fluoride is the stuff in toothpaste that helps strengthen teeth. But if there's too much fluoride in the water it softens bones, and children become susceptible to bone deformities. It's very difficult and expensive to remove dissolved fluoride ions from water. But, inspired by nature, scientists have used polymers to produce a membrane that can filter out fluoride, as Sally Le Page heard from Ayse Asatekin... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Twitter has been the subject of another study, looking at how people's tendency to post tweets in moral outrage is affected by other people on the site. Increasingly in recent years, celebrities and other well-known individuals have found themselves being "cancelled". This usually happens when they do or say something that other users disagree with. The outpourings of outrage reverberate across the social network with many piling in publicly to scorn and humiliate the perpetrator. But why do people resort to this Twitter equivalent of lobbing rotten tomatoes at someone in the stocks?... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Scientists and doctors are always after good quality human cells for research and therapeutic purposes, but these can be hard to come by in sufficient quantities. Now, synthetic biology company bit.bio has opened up new headquarters in Cambridge to start supplying multiple different cell types by reprogramming stem cells. Eva Higginbotham heard more from founder and CEO Mark Kotter... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Many of us love putting out bird seed and watching birds feast away, and feel we're doing a good deed too, but a new paper out of Manchester Metropolitan University suggests we may actually be doing more harm than good. Eva Higginbotham spoke to BBC science correspondent Victoria Gill, who spoke with lead author Alex Lees previously... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Most schools across the UK are open and children are heading back to their classrooms. But to what extent will this affect the Covid case rates across the country and what can we do to avoid disrupting a third academic year? In Scotland, children returned to school sooner than their English counterparts: what can we learn from their experience? Chris Smith spoke with Linda Bauld, who specialises in public health at the University of Edinburgh... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Quite soon after the pandemic first struck a significant number of people began to complain of persistent symptoms in the aftermath of being infected with the new coronavirus. These manifestations have been dubbed "long covid". What's less clear is the extent to which this is happening not just to adults but also to children, and particularly teenagers. Terence Stephenson is at the UCL Gt Ormond St Institute of Child Health and spoke with Chris Smith... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We often look for water on remote planets and moons because, as far as we know, it's a requirement for life. Now a team of researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope to scrutinise Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, think they've found water in its atmosphere. Sally Le Page spoke with team member Kurt Retherford. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists