Nature Podcast

By Springer Nature Limited

Technology

What's Nature Podcast about?

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.

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Amino acid slows nerve dama...

01.25.2023

00:45 The role of serine in diabetic neuropathyNerve damage is a common complication of diabetes, and can even lead to limb amputation. Thus far, the only way for people to slow its onset is by managing their diet and lifestyle. ...

Nature Podcast episodes:

01.25.2023 Amino acid slows nerve damage from diabetes, in mouse study 00:45 The role of serine in diabetic neuropathyNerve damage is a common complication of diabetes, and can even lead to limb amputation. Thus far, the only way for people to slow its onset is by managing their diet and lifestyle. ...
01.18.2023 Laser 'lightning rod' diverts strikes high in the Alps In this episode: 00:45 Laser-guided lightningScientists have shown that a specially designed laser can divert the course of lightning strikes in a real-world setting. The team fired the laser into the sky above a communications tower high in the Swiss ...
01.11.2023 The science stories you missed over the past four weeks In this episode of the Nature Podcast, we catch up on some science stories from the holiday period by diving into the Nature Briefing. We’ll hear: how Brazil’s President Lula has started to make good on his pro-environment promises; a ...
01.06.2023 Science in 2023: what to expect this year In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2023. We'll hear about vaccines, multiple Moon missions and new therapeutics, to name but a few. News: the science events ...
12.28.2022 The Nature Podcast’s highlights of 2022 In this episode: 00:53 How virtual meetings can limit creative ideasIn April, we heard how a team investigated whether switching from face-to-face to virtual meetings came at a cost to creativity. They showed that people meeting virtually produced fewer creative ...
12.21.2022 The Nature Podcast Festive Spectacular 2022 01:07 “Artemis and Dart”In the first of our festive songs, we celebrate some of the big space missions from this year: Artemis which aims to get people back to the moon, and DART which could help defend the Earth from ...
12.14.2022 COVID deaths: three times the official toll In this episode: 00:47 Estimating pandemic-associated mortalityThis week, a team of researchers working with the World Health Organization have used statistical modelling to estimate the number of excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The work ...
12.07.2022 Oldest DNA reveals two-million-year-old ecosystem In this episode: 00:45 World’s oldest DNA shows that mastodons roamed ancient GreenlandDNA recovered from ancient permafrost has been used to reconstruct what an ecosystem might have looked like two million years ago. Their work suggests that Northern Greenland was ...
12.02.2022 Gaia Vince on how climate change will shape where people live In the second episode of Nature hits the books, science writer and broadcaster Gaia Vince joins us to talk about her new book Nomad Century, which looks at how climate change could render large parts of the globe uninhabitable, and ...
11.30.2022 Mysterious fluid from ant pupae helps feed colony 00:45 Inert ant pupae produce a previously unobserved fluidAnt larvae metamorphose into adults by pupating. It was assumed that these inert pupae don’t play a role in the wider ant colony, but a team of researchers have found that they ...
11.25.2022 Audio long read: Science and the World Cup — how big data is transforming football Big data is playing an increasingly important role in football, with technologies capturing huge amounts of information about players' positions and actions during a match. To make sense of all this information, most elite football teams now employ data analysts ...
11.23.2022 The satellite-free alternative to GPS 00:45 Precision positioning without satellitesSatellite navigation has revolutionized how humans find their way. However, these systems often struggle in urban areas, where buildings can interfere with weak satellite signals. To counter this, a team has developed an alternative, satellite-free system, ...
11.16.2022 How a key Alzheimer's gene wreaks havoc in the brain 00:46 Artemis 1 is go!NASA’s Artemis 1 mission has successfully reached Earth orbit. After weeks of delays and issues, and a nail biting launch, the rocket marks the first step in a new era of moon exploration, with plans to ...
11.14.2022 Audio long read: She was convicted of killing her four children. Could a gene mutation set her free? Kathleen Folbigg has spent nearly 20 years in prison after being convicted of killing her four children. But in 2018, a group of scientists began gathering evidence that suggested another possibility for the deaths — that at least two of ...
11.09.2022 Molecular cages sift 'heavy' water from near-identical H2O 00:49 Separating heavy water with molecular cagesHeavy water is molecule very similar to H2O but with deuterium isotopes in the place of hydrogen atoms. Heavy water is useful in nuclear reactions, drug design and nutritional studies, but it's difficult to ...
11.04.2022 Audio long read: The controversial embryo tests that promise a better baby Companies are offering genetic tests of embryos generated by in vitro fertilization that they say allow prospective parents to choose those with the lowest risk for diseases such as diabetes or certain cancers. However, some researchers are concerned about the ...
11.02.2022 Flies can move their rigid, omnidirectional eyes – a little 00:46 How flies can move their eyes (a little)It's long been assumed flies’ eyes don’t move, and so to alter their gaze they need to move their heads. Now, researchers have shown that this isn’t quite true and that fruit ...
10.28.2022 Racism in Health: the harms of biased medicine When COVID-19 hit it didn't kill indiscriminately. In the US, being Black, Hispanic, or Native American meant you had a much greater risk of death than if you were white. And these disparities are mirrored across the world. In this ...
10.26.2022 Ancient DNA reveals family of Neanderthals living in Siberian cave In this episode: 00:54 Siberian cave offers first-ever glimpse into Neanderthal familyBy analysing ancient DNA recovered from bone fragments found in two Siberian caves, researchers have identified a set of closely related Neanderthals: a father and daughter, as well as ...
10.12.2022 Human brain organoids implanted into rats could offer new way to model disease In this episode: 00:45 Implanted brain organoids could offer new insights into diseaseBrain organoids — lab-grown, self-organizing structures made of stem cells — are used in research to better understand brain development and disease progression. However, these structures lack connections ...
10.05.2022 Virtual library of LSD-like drugs could reveal new antidepressants In this episode: 00:46 A virtual chemical library uncovers potential antidepressants Certain psychedelic drugs are of interest to researchers due to their promising antidepressant effects. To help speed up the discovery of molecules with useful properties, researchers have built a ...
10.03.2022 Nature's Take: How the war in Ukraine is impacting science The ongoing war in Ukraine has devastated the global economy, rocked geopolitics, killed thousands of people and displaced millions. Science too has been affected and the impacts on research are being felt more widely than just in Ukraine and Russia. ...
09.30.2022 Audio long read: What scientists have learnt from COVID lockdowns At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries introduced strict lockdowns to help prevent spread of the disease. Since then, researchers have been studying the effects of these measures to help inform responses to future crises. Conclusions suggest that ...
09.28.2022 A trove of ancient fish fossils helps trace the origin of jaws In this episode: 00:45 Piecing together the early history of jawed vertebrates A wealth of fossils discovered in southern China shed new light onto the diversity of jawed and jawless fish during the Silurian period, over 400 million years ago. ...
09.21.2022 Huge dataset shows 80% of US professors come from just 20% of institutions 00:46 Inequalities in US faculty hiringIn the US, where a person gained their PhD can have an outsized influence on their future career. Now, using a decade worth of data, researchers have shown there are stark inequalities in the hiring ...
09.14.2022 Complex synthetic cells bring scientists closer to artificial cellular life 00:46 Synthetic cells made from bacterial bitsFor years researchers have been interested in creating artificial cells, as they could be useful for manufacturing compounds and understanding how life works. Now a new method shows how this can be accomplished using ...
09.07.2022 Missing foot reveals world’s oldest amputation 00:46 Evidence of ancient surgeryA skeleton with an amputated foot discovered in Borneo has been dated to 31,000 years ago, suggesting that complex surgery might be much older than previously thought. The person whose foot was removed survived the procedure, ...
08.26.2022 Audio long read: Hybrid brains – the ethics of transplanting human neurons into animals The development of brain chimaeras – made up of human and animal neurons – is an area of research that has hugely expanded in the past five years. Proponents say that these systems are yielding important insights into health and ...
08.24.2022 How to make water that's full of holes In this episode: 00:45 How adding pores helps water carry gasAlthough water is an excellent solvent, it’s limited in its ability to dissolve gasses. To overcome this a team have developed ‘porous water’ containing tiny cages that can hold large ...
08.17.2022 Do protons have intrinsic charm? New evidence suggests yes 00:47 Evidence of a proton’s charmFor decades, scientists have debated whether protons have ‘intrinsic charm’, meaning they contain elementary particles known as charm quarks. Now, using machine learning to comb through huge amounts of experimental data, a team have shown ...
08.15.2022 Nature's Take: what's next for the preprint revolution In this first episode of Nature's Take, we get four of Nature's staff around microphones to get their expert take on preprints. These pre-peer-review open access articles have spiked in number over recent years and have cemented themselves as an ...
08.10.2022 Why low temperatures could help starve tumours of fuel Cold exposure in mice activates brown fat to deny tumours glucose, and the future of extreme heatwaves. 00:45 How cold temperatures could starve tumours A team of researchers have found that exposing mice to the cold could starve tumour cells ...
08.03.2022 Massive Facebook study reveals a key to social mobility 00:47 The economic benefits of social connectionsBy looking at data gathered from billions of Facebook friendships, researchers have shown that having more connections with people from higher income groups could increase future incomes by 20%. They also show how such ...
07.29.2022 Coronapod: the open-science plan to unseat big Pharma and tackle vaccine inequity Inequity has been a central feature of the COVID19 pandemic. From health outcomes to access to vaccines, COVID has pushed long-standing disparities out of the shadows and into the public eye and many of these problems are global. In this ...
07.27.2022 How humans adapted to digest lactose — after thousands of years of milk drinking 00:45 Working out how the ability to digest milk spreadHumans have been drinking milk for thousands of years, but it seems that they were doing so long before the ability to digest it became prevalent. Then around 2000 years ago, ...
07.20.2022 How researchers have pinpointed the origin of 'warm-blooded' mammals 00:46 When did mammals start to regulate their temperature?The evolution of ‘warm bloodedness’ allowed mammals to live in a more diverse range of habitats, but working out when this occurred has been difficult. To try and pin down a date, ...
07.13.2022 Ancient mud reveals the longest record of climate from the tropics 00:46 A long-term record of climate in the tropicsTo understand the history of the Earth’s climate, researchers often rely on things like ice cores, which contain layered frozen insights of thousands of years of history. However, in the tropics long-term ...
07.11.2022 Higgs boson at 10: a deep dive into the mysterious, mass-giving particle In this Podcast Extra, Nature's Lizzie Gibney and Federico Levi take a deep-dive into the Higgs boson, describing their experiences of its discovery, what the latest run of the Large Hadron Collider might reveal about the particle's properties, and what ...
07.08.2022 Coronapod: detecting COVID variants in sewage Since early in the pandemic, scientists have searched for signals of SARS-CoV-2 transmission by sampling wastewater. This surveillance method has provided vital information to inform public health responses. But the approach has never been particularly specific - pointing to broad ...
07.06.2022 Higgs boson turns ten: the mysteries physicists are still trying to solve 00:46 Happy birthday, Higgs boson - looking back at a momentous milestone for physicsTen years ago this week, scientists announced that they’d found evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle first theorised to exist nearly sixty ...
07.01.2022 Ed Yong on the wondrous world of animal senses In the first episode of our new series Nature hits the books, science journalist Ed Yong joins us to talk about his new book An Immense World, which takes a journey through the weird and wonderful realm of animal senses. ...
06.29.2022 Norovirus could spread through saliva: a new route for infection? 00:47 Enteric viruses may spread through salivaEnteric viruses, such as norovirus, cause a significant health burden around the world and are generally considered to only spread via the faecal-oral route. However, new research in mice suggests that saliva may also ...
06.27.2022 Audio long read: These six countries are about to go to the Moon In the next year, no fewer than seven missions are heading to the Moon. While NASA's Artemis programme might be stealing most of the limelight, the United States is just one of many nations and private companies that soon plan ...
06.24.2022 Coronapod: USA authorises vaccines for youngest of kids After a long wait, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have finally approved two COVID vaccines for use in children between the ages of six months and five years old. But ...
06.22.2022 How science can tackle inequality 00:38 The science of studying inequalityWe discuss the research looking to understand the root causes and symptoms of inequalities, how they are growing, and how a cross-disciplinary approach may be the key to tackling them. Editorial: Equity must be baked ...
06.15.2022 How the Black Death got its start 00:46 Uncovering the origins of the Black DeathThe Black Death is estimated to have caused the deaths of up to 60% of the population of Europe. However, despite extensive research, the origin of this wave of disease has remained unclear. ...
06.11.2022 Coronapod: COVID and smell loss, what the science says One of the most curious symptoms of COVID-19 is the loss of smell and taste. For most, this phenomenon is short lived, but for many around the world the symptom can persist for months or even years after the infection ...
06.08.2022 Ancient 'giraffes' sported thick helmets for headbutting 00:33 A headbashing relative gives insights into giraffe evolutionHow 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, ...
06.06.2022 Audio long read: The brain-reading devices helping paralysed people to move, talk and touch Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) implanted in the brains of people who are paralysed are allowing them to control prosthetics that are restoring a range of skills. Although the field is relatively young, researchers are making rapid advances in the abilities that ...
06.01.2022 Robot exercises shoulder cells for better tissue transplants 00:47 The robot shoulder that exercises cellsRecreating the movements that tendon cells experience as they develop in the human body is necessary for growing tissue for transplantation, but this has been difficult to achieve in a laboratory setting. Now, a ...

Older episodes

Nature Podcast

What's Nature Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Nature Podcast episodes:

Amino acid slows nerve damage from diabetes, in mouse study

Laser 'lightning rod' diverts strikes high in the Alps

The science stories you missed over the past four weeks

Science in 2023: what to expect this year

The Nature Podcast’s highlights of 2022

The Nature Podcast Festive Spectacular 2022

COVID deaths: three times the official toll

Oldest DNA reveals two-million-year-old ecosystem

Gaia Vince on how climate change will shape where people live

Mysterious fluid from ant pupae helps feed colony

Audio long read: Science and the World Cup — how big data is transforming football

The satellite-free alternative to GPS

How a key Alzheimer's gene wreaks havoc in the brain

Audio long read: She was convicted of killing her four children. Could a gene mutation set her free?

Molecular cages sift 'heavy' water from near-identical H2O

Audio long read: The controversial embryo tests that promise a better baby

Flies can move their rigid, omnidirectional eyes – a little

Racism in Health: the harms of biased medicine

Ancient DNA reveals family of Neanderthals living in Siberian cave

Human brain organoids implanted into rats could offer new way to model disease

Virtual library of LSD-like drugs could reveal new antidepressants

Nature's Take: How the war in Ukraine is impacting science

Audio long read: What scientists have learnt from COVID lockdowns

A trove of ancient fish fossils helps trace the origin of jaws

Huge dataset shows 80% of US professors come from just 20% of institutions

Complex synthetic cells bring scientists closer to artificial cellular life

Missing foot reveals world’s oldest amputation

Audio long read: Hybrid brains – the ethics of transplanting human neurons into animals

How to make water that's full of holes

Do protons have intrinsic charm? New evidence suggests yes

Nature's Take: what's next for the preprint revolution

Why low temperatures could help starve tumours of fuel

Massive Facebook study reveals a key to social mobility

Coronapod: the open-science plan to unseat big Pharma and tackle vaccine inequity

How humans adapted to digest lactose — after thousands of years of milk drinking

How researchers have pinpointed the origin of 'warm-blooded' mammals

Ancient mud reveals the longest record of climate from the tropics

Higgs boson at 10: a deep dive into the mysterious, mass-giving particle

Coronapod: detecting COVID variants in sewage

Higgs boson turns ten: the mysteries physicists are still trying to solve

Ed Yong on the wondrous world of animal senses

Norovirus could spread through saliva: a new route for infection?

Audio long read: These six countries are about to go to the Moon

Coronapod: USA authorises vaccines for youngest of kids

How science can tackle inequality

How the Black Death got its start

Coronapod: COVID and smell loss, what the science says

Ancient 'giraffes' sported thick helmets for headbutting

Audio long read: The brain-reading devices helping paralysed people to move, talk and touch

Robot exercises shoulder cells for better tissue transplants

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