You might think we are special as humans for forming societies with complex structures. But we are not actually so different from other species in this regard. It was believed that complex social structures were a trait of large mammals only - but a recent study has shown that birds can form complex societies too. Amalia Thomas spoke to Danai Papageorgiou, who has been studying the social structure of a specific type of bird in Kenya in Africa... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

In recent months the satellite Voyager 2, launched in 1977, became the second man-made object to escape from our Solar System and begin its journey into interstellar space. We know it's done that because it's crossed the heliopause, a bubble made by particles, called a plasma, that stream off the Sun and surround our Solar system. To learn more about this Adam Murphy spoke to Du Toit Strauss from North West University in South Africa... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Oil production has multiple environmentally-devastating consequences - including creating of billions of gallons of salty, chemical-filled wastewater. Typically, companies dispose of this wastewater by pumping it deep underground. But a growing body of evidence shows that this pumping causes 'injection-induced earthquakes', most notably the Jones earthquake swarm: thousands of earthquakes that have occurred in Oklahoma over the last ten years. And a new study demonstrates that the fluid properties of wastewater make earthquakes stronger and more common where disposal is concentrated. Matthew... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We have smartphones, smart watches, even smart fridges. But now, from a paper published in the journal Photonics Research, we could be seeing smart glass. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a piece of glass that can mimic machine visual perception, basically how smart phones recognize your face to unlock the device, without needing any camera sensors, computer chips, or even a power supply! All the glass needs is light and tiny imperfections called "bubbles" within the glass to direct that light appropriately. Right now it has the capability to tell, in real time,... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This month, join Chris Smith to hear how sleep deprivation sends your endocannabinoids skyrocketing and triggers a tendency to binge, how many new genetic mutations you inherit from your parents, the gene for behaviour that turned out to be nothing of the sort, what good and bad learners have in common with youTube influencers, and from online collective whinge to paper in eLife: the careers of newly appointed PIs. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

One in five UK children are obese. The biological and social factors behind this are complex, but the long term consequences range from cardiovascular and liver disease to diabetes. Now, according to a new study, it may even affect the development of a child's brain too, with overweight children showing a thinner cortex in the parts of the brain concerned with self-control and decision-making. Speaking with Chris Smith, Cambridge University neuroscientist Lisa Ronan... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Considering people's wellbeing in making policy decisions is becoming more and more important, but it's only in recent years that governments have started to record the subjective satisfaction of the population. A team of researchers is looking to fill in the historical gap for national mood by analysing the text of old books published in the US, UK, Germany and Italy and computing a National Valence Index for each of these countries. Mariana Marasoiu spoke with lead author Thomas Hills about how it works... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Immunotherapy is the term used to describe techniques that provoke the immune system to attack and remove cancer. The argument goes that because the immune system is extremely specific in what it targets, and because it has a memory and can learn and improve its action as it goes along, this is a powerful weapon for fighting malignancies. But we need to show the immune system what to attack, which is where a new development from researchers at Yale Medical School comes in. What they've done is come up with a way to find the genetic differences between cancer cells and healthy cells, and... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

You're probably familiar with the 1966 science fiction film "Fantastic Voyage", where a submarine crew are shrunk to microscopic size and venture into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. They're not quite at the stage of shrinking scientists yet, but engineers in America have invented a flexible robot - thinner than a piece of thread - that can be controlled using a magnetic field and snake its way through blood vessels to track down and remove blockages. Phil Sansom spoke to inventor Xuanhe Zhao... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

What if the next refrigeration technology could be based on twisting and untwisting strands? A new paper published in Science by an international team of researchers explored how twisting and stretching can change the temperature of certain types of fibres, leading them to propose a new method for building fridges that are more efficient and more environmentally friendly than those used at present. Mariana Marasoiu untangled the findings with study lead author Ray Baughman... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists