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PODCAST

The World, the Universe and Us

From the evolution of intelligent life, to the mysteries of consciousness; from the threat of the climate crisis to the search for dark matter,The world, the universe and usis your essential weekly dose of science and wonder in an uncertain world. Hosted by journalists Dr Rowan Hooper and Dr Penny Sarchet and joined each week by expert scientists in the field, the show draws onNew Scientist’s unparalleled depth of reporting to put the stories that matter into context. Feed your curiosity with the

science

All Episodes

26:17

Weekly: Is personalised medicine overhyped?;...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/03/01

#239Two decades ago, following the Human Genome Project’s release of a first draft in 2001, genetic testing was set to revolutionise healthcare. “Personalised medicine” would give us better treatments for serious conditions, clear pictures of our risks and individualised healthcare recommendations. But despite all the genetic tests available, that healthcare revolution has not exactly come to fruition. Amid news that genetic testing poster child firm 23andMe has hit financial troubles, we ask

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45:34

CultureLab: What would life on Mars be like? The...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/27

Freezing temperatures, dust storms, radiation, marsquakes – living on Mars right now would be hellish. And getting there remains a multi-year journey. But what if we could make it habitable? Could we one day build settlements on the Red Planet or send human scientists to search for life?That’s the premise of the TV series For All Mankind, which explores a future where the space race continued after the moon landing and humanity kept spreading out across space. But in the name of a good story, real

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24:09

Weekly: ADHD helps foraging?; the rise of AI...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/23

#238ADHD is a condition that affects millions of people and is marked by impulsivity, restlessness and attention difficulties. But how did ADHD evolve in humans and why did it stick around? Through the help of a video game, a study shows that these traits might be beneficial when foraging for food.In 2023, we hit record after record when it comes to high temperatures on Earth, including in the oceans and seas. From the surface to 2000 metres down, it was hard to find a part of the ocean not

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17:34

Escape Pod #5 Sound: Prepare to feel relaxed, tingly...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/21

This is a re-airing of a podcast originally released in February 2021.Prepare to feel relaxed, tingly and amazed all in the space of 20 minutes. This episode is all about sound.We start with the musical tones of an elephant trumpeting, followed by a recording from Cornell University’s Elephant Listening Project, showing how they communicate at an infrasonic frequency, which humans can’t ordinarily detect.The team then attempts to send shivers down your spine by recreating ASMR, explaining why some

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23:55

Weekly: Reversing blindness; power beamed from space;...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/16

#237Glaucoma, which can cause blindness by damaging the optic nerve, may be reversible. Researchers have managed to coax new optic nerve cells to grow in mice, partly restoring sight in some. How the treatment works through an eyeball injection and why, for humans, prevention and early detection are still the best options.Black holes, just like planets and stars, spin. But they may be spinning a lot slower than we thought. When black holes gobble up matter around them, they start spinning faster and

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20:25

CultureLab: Where billionaires rule the apocalypse:...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/13

Real tech billionaires are reportedly building secret bunkers in case of post-apocalyptic societal collapse. It’s a frightening prospect, a world where only the super rich survive catastrophe. But it’s a world one author is exploring in her latest novel.Naomi Alderman is the prize-winning and best-selling author of The Power. Her latest book The Future imagines a world where billionaires survive a world-shaking cataclysm, only to find out they’re not as in charge of events as they think they are.The

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23:22

Weekly: Record-breaking fusion experiments inch the...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/09

#236This week marks two major milestones in the world of fusion. In 2022 a fusion experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory created more power than was required to sustain it – now, the same team has improved this record by 25 per cent, releasing almost twice the energy that was put in. Meanwhile, the UK’s JET reactor set a new world record for total energy output from any fusion reaction, just before it shut down for good late last year. Why these two milestones inch us closer to

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17:27

Escape Pod: #4 Mass: from lightest creates on earth,...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/06

This is a re-airing of a podcast originally released in February 2021.From some of the lightest creatures on earth, to the heaviest things in the cosmos, this episode is all about mass.It’s a magical opening to the show as the team discusses a group of insects called fairy wasps which are so light it’s near impossible to weigh them.They then turn to matters of massive proportions, discussing a little thing called dark matter.Finally the team wraps up by looking at the surprising, and slightly

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21:32

Weekly: Alzheimer’s from contaminated injections;...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/02/02

#235In very rare cases, Alzheimer’s disease could be transmitted from person to person during medical procedures. This finding comes as five people have developed the disease after receiving contaminated human growth hormone injections in the late 1950s to early 1980s – a practice that is now banned. What this finding means for medical settings and why most people don’t need to be concerned.Elon Musk’s mind-reading brain implant company Neuralink is carrying out its first human trial. The volunteer

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26:27

CultureLab: Earth’s Last Great Wild Areas – Simon...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/30

Very few places on our planet appear untouchedby humans, but in those that do, nature is still very much in charge – and the scenery is breathtaking. In the new BBC series Wilderness with Simon Reeve, journalist Simone Reeve takes us into the heart of Earth's last great wild areas, including the Congo Basin rainforest, Patagonia, the Coral Triangle and the Kalahari desert in Southern Africa.In this episode of CultureLab, TV columnist Bethan Ackerley asks Simon about the series and his many exciting

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23:56

Weekly: Why AI won’t take your job just yet; how...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/26

#234Is AI really ready to take our jobs? A team looked at whether AI image recognition could replace tasks like checking price tags on items or looking at the pupils of patients in surgery. The researchers found only a small fraction of these vision-reliant tasks could be cost-effectively taken over by AI – for now, anyway.There’s an old myth that singing to your plants helps them grow – apparently this actually works with fungus. A pair of experiments has found that fungus grows much more quickly

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16:15

Escape Pod: #3 Music: the jazz swing of birdsong and...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/23

This is a re-airing of a podcast originally released in February 2021.This episode is all about music, so today’s journey of escapism comes complete with odd, relaxing, soothing and interesting sounds to guide you through.The team opens with the sounds of animals, specifically the singing - if you can call it that - of gorillas, and the jazzy birdsong of the thrush.They then treat you to the sounds of data sonification, courtesy of Milton Mermikides, who translates motion into music, like the

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23:16

Weekly: Cloned rhesus monkey lives to adulthood for...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/19

#233A cloned rhesus monkey named ReTro is said to be in good health more than three years after his birth – a landmark achievement, as no other rhesus clone has lived to adulthood.. However, the method used to clone ReTro used fetal cells, a method that cannot create identical clones of adult primates. The method could still be useful for medical research.Fermented foods are meant to be healthy and good for our guts, but there’s a problem. Researchers have found antibiotic resistant bacteria in a

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22:29

CultureLab: Breaking space records, human bowling and...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/16

NASA astronaut Christina Koch not only took part in the first ever all-female spacewalks, but she also holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, after spending 328 days on board the International Space Station.So what does it take to live in space for such a long time, what does it mean to be a record-breaking astronaut – and how do you get used to gravity again when you finally come back home? New Scientist space reporter Leah Crane asks Chrstina all of these questions and

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22:35

Weekly: Brain regions shrink during pregnancy; oldest...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/12

#232During pregnancy the brain undergoes profound changes – almost every part of the cortex thins out and loses volume by the third trimester. It’s such a big change that you can tell if someone’s pregnant just by looking at a scan of their brain. How researchers discovered these changes and why they might be occurring.A massive, ancient group of cities has been discovered in the Amazon rainforest using lasers. It’s the biggest pre-Columbian urban area ever found in the Amazon and parts of it date

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17:00

Escape Pod: #2 Alliances in matters biological,...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/09

This is a re-airing of a podcast originally released in January 2021.The theme of this episode is alliances - human, biological and atomic. We start by celebrating the amazing properties of lichen, the symbiotic relationships it forms, how it shaped the earth and simply how beautiful it is to look at.Then we explore how carbon is able to create such an incredibly diverse range of materials, including soot, diamonds and graphite.We wrap up by delving into the life of renowned Hungarian mathematician

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30:12

Weekly: What’s next for science in 2024? A year of...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/05

#231It’s a new year and that means new science. But what (that we know so far) does 2024 hold?On the space front, agencies around the world have as many as 13 missions to Earth’s moon, while Japan’s MMX mission will launch to take samples from the Martian moon Phobos. NASA will finally launch the Europa Clipper mission to explore Jupiter’s ocean-bearing moon.On the technology front, Europe’s first ever exascale supercomputer, capable of performing billions of operations per second – only the third

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21:46

Escape Pod: #1 Understanding the self-awareness of...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2024/01/02

This is a re-airing of a podcast originally released in January 2021.An episode of Escape Pod all about understanding. We start by discussing the self-awareness of dolphins and whales, and the intricacies of their language and vocalisations. Then we marvel at the seemingly impossible abilities of gymnasts and ballerinas, most notably Simone Biles who performed a legendary triple double. And then we take a look at the Chinese board game Go - a game with more possible moves than there are atoms in the

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27:18

Best of 2023, part 2: India lands on the moon; the...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/29

What was your favorite science story of 2023? Was it the rise of orca-involved boat sinkings? Or maybe the successful landing of India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission at the moon’s south pole?This week, it’s the second and final part of our annual event about the best science stories of the year, with a roundup of some of the good news, animal news and all-around most important stories of 2023. Like how researchers discovered the high-tech material called graphene can also occur naturally…and did, deep in

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28:06

CultureLab: The best books of 2023, from joyful...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/26

Are you looking forward to catching up on some reading over the holiday season? Or perhaps you are on the prowl for book recommendations after receiving a few literary gift cards? If so, you are in luck – this episode is all about the books we think you’ll love to read.In this episode of CultureLab, culture and comment editor Alison Flood appears in her role as professional bookworm to share some of her favorite reads of the year. From a sobering story of life in the human-polluted ocean (narrated

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