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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

27:09

Best of 2023, part 1: Euclid telescope’s big year; AI...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/22

#229Your hands are heavier than you think. Beer goggles aren’t real. And many water utilities in the United Kingdom still use dowsing to find leaks in pipes.It’s the first part of our annual best-in-show of science stories from the year, with a roundup of some of the funniest and most futuristic-feeling headlines from 2023. Like the Euclid Space Telescope’s successful start to a mission that will map the sky and offer new insights into dark matter and the very structure of the universe. And a

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37:16

CultureLab: A duet between music and the natural...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/19

Composer Erland Cooper is known for playful, innovative, experimental projects. For example, he buried the only audio copy of a 2021 composition – then left treasure hunt clues for people to try to find it. Which one couple, eventually, did.In this episode of CultureLab, Cooper talks to writer Arwa Haider about his newest album, Folded Landscapes, where he is deep in conversation with the environment and our changing climate. The movements of the piece were recorded with the Scottish Ensemble

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23:26

Science of cannabis: #3 The weed of the future

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/17

Cannabis is one of the oldest products of human cultivation. And as it becomes increasingly legal for medical and recreational use around the world, its popularity is growing as well – even as researchers, limited by government prohibitions of the past and present, race to understand how the hundreds of chemicals in pot actually affect us and what the benefits and risks may be.But the object of all this research is itself changing: cannabis consumed today is more than ten times more potent than pot

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24:52

Weekly: New climate deal at COP28; AI mathematician;...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/15

#228We have a new, landmark climate deal, signalling the beginning of the end of fossil fuels. But even as the announcement at COP28 includes commitments for some of the most pressing issues, including giving money to countries most affected by climate change and setting goals for more renewables, some critics aren’t satisfied. With weak language around “transitioning away from” fossil fuels, does the deal go far enough?The first ever scientific discoveries have been made by an artificial

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15:43

CultureLab: The Royal Flying Doctors - Saving lives...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/12

The Australian outback is vast and the population is really spread out. This makes getting access to emergency healthcare incredibly challenging, as you may be a thousand kilometres or more from the nearest major hospital. The solution? Australia’s Royal Flying Doctor Service – one of the largest aeromedical organisations in the world, and, at nearly 100 years old, the first of its kind.In this bonus episode of the podcast, Australia reporter Alice Klein speaks to two RFDS team members about some of

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24:08

Science of cannabis: #2 The anatomy of a high

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/10

Human beings have cultivated cannabis for thousands of years. We have been using it for its euphoric effects for at least several thousand. And as prohibition in the United States and other nations gives way to legal, recreational use, more people are picking up pot for help with sleep, pain, or simple relaxation.But as medical and recreational use become more popular and increasingly accessible, what’s actually going on inside your body and brain when you imbibe? Cannabinoids, the chemicals in

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26:05

Weekly: IBM’s powerful new quantum computers; climate...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/08

#227Quantum computing researchers at IBM have stepped up the power of their devices by a huge amount. The company’s new device Condor has more than doubled the number of quantum bits of its previous record-breaking machine, which was released just last year. This massive increase in computational power is just one of the company’s latest achievements. It has also announced Heron, a smaller quantum computer but one that’s less error-prone – and therefore more useful – than any IBM has made.We’ve seen

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24:58

CultureLab: Teaching science through cooking with Pia...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/05

Did your chemistry lessons involve baking chocolate lava cakes? Have you ever wanted to eat your biology homework? While ‘Lessons in Chemistry’ brought a fictional cooking-as-chemistry story to TV viewers this fall, real-life scientist Pia Sörensen’s students are some of the few who can actually answer “yes.”Sörensen’s directs Harvard University’s Science and Cooking program, which teaches science lessons through the culinary arts. She is the author and editor of several books, including the

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22:08

Weekly: Biggest climate summit since Paris; thanking...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/12/01

#226This year’s COP28 could be the most important climate summit since the Paris Agreement in 2015. After opening in Dubai on Thursday, this will be the first time countries will formally take stock of climate change since agreeing to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. While we can expect world leaders to make some major commitments regarding renewable energy, sceptics are concerned the location of the summit will mean that fossil fuel interests end up disproportionately shaping the

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21:34

Science of cannabis: #1 A long history and a seismic...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/28

Cannabis is having a moment. Half of the US population lives in a state where marijuana is legal, and 9 in 10 people nationwide support legalisation in some form. This is a stark difference from mere decades ago, when prohibition was the norm in the entire US. Meanwhile, if you live in Malta, Uruguay, Canada – and maybe soon, Germany – your entire country is one with legal recreational pot. And access to medical marijuana extends to even more countries, including the UK and Australia.But as medical

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24:20

Weekly: Salt glaciers could host life on Mercury;...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/24

#225Life on Mercury? That would be a shocking discovery. The planet is incredibly inhospitable to life… as we know it. But the discovery of salt glaciers on its surface has opened up the possibility that extremophile bacteria could be buried beneath its surface. Lucky then that the BepiColombo mission is planned to take another look at Mercury soon.Ever wondered why you can go all night without getting hungry but can’t last a few hours in the day? Well, there may be cells in our brains that tell us

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14:41

Dead Planets Society: #11 Cube Earth Part Two

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/22

Turning the Earth into a cube, the gift that just keeps giving. Last episode we had fish bowl spaceships, this time we have sea monsters!If you thought cubifying the Earth couldn’t get more wacky, you’re in for a treat. In the Dead Planets Society season finale, Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte are once again joined by geophysicist Mika McKinnon. This time she explains what time would be like on a 6-faced planet, how you’d be able to experience all four seasons in a single day on Cube Earth and why this

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18:06

Dead Planets Society: #10 Cube Earth Part One

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/21

This is it, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. We’ve killed the sun, smushed the asteroid belt, burrowed into other planets… but now it’s time for the big one… Earth.In this two-part season finale, Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte do irreparable damage to our planet by turning it into a cube. Joining the pair in this mammoth task is geophysicist and disaster consultant Mika McKinnon. In this first episode Mika tackles the many life-changing knock-on effects of cubifying Earth, such as how only

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28:44

Weekly: Saving the trees we already have; why US men...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/17

#224Tree planting has become an incredibly popular way of attempting to store carbon dioxide and slow global warming. But new research estimates we may be able to store huge amounts of carbon dioxide without planting any new trees at all. All we have to do is protect the ones we already have. The world’s existing forests could store up to 228 billion tonnes of carbon, but is protecting them an achievable goal?Life expectancy for everyone in the US is on the decline, but especially for men, with the

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21:02

CultureLab: Orbital - A love letter to Earth from the...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/14

As astronauts look down on Earth from space, the experience is often life-altering. The “pale blue dot” looks fragile from way up there. And in the novel Orbital, we get to see our planet from the perspective of astronauts aboard the International Space Station, giving us a glimpse into why the distant view shifts their perspectives so dramatically.The book follows the team of astronauts as they observe Earth, collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the

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26:33

Weekly: Spinal cord stimulation for Parkinson’s...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/10

#223Spinal cord stimulation has, for the first time, been used to improve the mobility of someone with Parkinson’s Disease. Marc, who has battled the condition for 30 years, once fell five to six times daily, but now is able to walk kilometres per day thanks to an array of electrodes that stimulate the movement-related neurons in his spine. Though it was successful for Marc, the treatment is also highly customised and more research is needed before it might benefit people more broadly.In the world

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15:28

Dead Planets Society: #9 Unify the Asteroid Belt

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/07

Asteroids are cool, but they’re all spread out across the solar system. Wouldn’t it be neater if we could smush them all together to make one MEGA asteroid? Maybe even an asteroid… planet.From an asteroid sausage machine to a Jell-O infused asteroid donut, Leah and Chelsea discover just how difficult and disastrous it would be to merge the asteroid belt – with one surprising silver lining. Joining them in their quest are planetary scientists Andy Rivkin of John Hopkins University, and Kathryn Volk

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26:38

Weekly: Do you really need 8 hours of sleep?; The...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/11/03

#222At this point, most people have heard the accepted wisdom that you need 8 hours sleep every night, especially for a healthy brain. But what if we’ve got it all wrong? If you lie awake at night worrying about getting enough sleep, you may be in luck. A reminder that correlation is not causation, and some surprising new research into how our brains respond to lower amounts of sleep.In space news, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has just completed a fly-by of a ‘nearby’ asteroid, in preparation for a much

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29:48

CultureLab: Suzie Edge’s curious (and sometimes...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/10/31

Did you know we have King Louis XIV to thank for fistula surgeries? After surgeons worked hard to find a cure for his rear-end ailment, the operation became the height of fashion, with people queuing up to go under the knife so they could be just like their king.That’s just one of the incredible stories from Suzie Edge’s new book Vital Organs: A History of the World’s Most Famous Body Parts. Suzie Edge is a medical historian and frequently takes to TikTok to surprise (and sometimes shock) her

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28:44

Weekly: Security risks of ChatGPT; do other mammals...

The World, the Universe and Us ·

2023/10/27

#221Independent researchers have found new ways that OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool can assist bad actors, from providing the code needed to hack computer databases to teaching people how to make homemade explosives. While the company continually updates security safeguards, it turns out some languages can be used to bypass these guardrails.It has long been thought that only humans and some toothed whales go through the menopause. But are there other mammals out there who experience it too? And if so, is it

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