Nature Podcast15 Jun 2022

How the Black Death got its start

00:46 Uncovering the origins of the Black Death

The 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. Now, by using a combination of techniques, a team have identified a potential starting point in modern day Kyrgyzstan.

Research article: Spyrou et al.

06:57 Research Highlights

The cocktails of toxins produced by wriggling ribbon worms, and a tiny thermometer the size of a grain of sand.

Research Highlight: A poisonous shield, a potent venom: these worms mean business

Research Highlight: Mighty mini-thermometer detects tiny temperature changes

09:22 Researchers race to understand monkeypox

Around the world, there have been a number of outbreaks of monkeypox, a viral disease that has rarely been seen in countries outside of sub-Saharan Africa. Although infection numbers are small, researchers are racing to find out what’s driving these outbreaks and the best way to contain them. We get an update on the situation, and the questions scientists are trying to answer.

Nature News: Monkeypox vaccination begins — can the global outbreaks be contained?

19:20 Briefing Chat

We discuss some highlights from the Nature Briefing. This time, doubts over claims that a Google chat bot has become sentient, and the automated cloud labs that let researchers perform experiments remotely.

New Scientist: Has Google's LaMDA artificial intelligence really achieved sentience?

The Washington Post: The Google engineer who thinks the company’s AI has come to life

Nature News: Cloud labs: where robots do the research

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

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Episoder(912)

Briefing Chat: Baby T. rex were killers from birth, suggest new fossils

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What counts as a moon? Huge ‘exosatellite’ sparks debate

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22 Jul 0s

Briefing Chat: Sweet! Elusive sugar molecules found in space

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17 Jul 9min

‘Holy grail’ of naked mole-rat research reveals how queens rule

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15 Jul 22min

Briefing Chat: The 30 year-legacy of a science icon – Dolly the sheep

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10 Jul 10min

Nukes in space? Orbital detector could sniff out warheads

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8 Jul 25min

Togetherness: How co-operation built the world

In this episode, we speak with science journalist Rowan Hooper, whose book Togetherness: Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life's Greatest Collaborations takes a deep-dive into the world of co-operati...

1 Jul 31min

Audio long read: Is the peptide craze backed by science? The promise behind the hype

Peptides — short chains of amino acids — have become huge online. The popularity of these molecules has skyrocketed and they are now the latest cure-all trend on social media.But what does the science...

29 Jun 16min