Living on Mars would probably suck — here's why
Humans setting up home in outer space has long been the preserve of science fiction. Now, thanks to advances in technology and the backing of billionaires, this dream could actually be realised. But i...
19 Apr 202438min
Keys, wallet, phone: the neuroscience behind working memory
In this episode:00:46 Mysterious methane emission from a cool brown dwarfThe James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is revealing the makeup of brown dwarfs — strange space objects that blur the line betwee...
17 Apr 202434min
The 'ghost roads' driving tropical deforestation
In this episode:00:46 Mapping ‘ghost roads’ in tropical forestsAcross the world, huge numbers of illegal roads have been cut into forests. However, due to their illicit nature, the exact numbers of th...
10 Apr 202423min
Audio long read: Why are so many young people getting cancer? What the data say
Around the world, rates of cancers that typically affect older adults are increasing in those under 50 years old. Models based on global data predict that the number of early-onset cancer cases like t...
5 Apr 202416min
Pregnancy's effect on 'biological' age, polite birds, and the carbon cost of home-grown veg
In this episode:00:35 Pregnancy advances your ‘biological’ age — but giving birth turns it backGrowing a baby leads to changes in the distribution of certain chemical markers on a pregnant person’s DN...
3 Apr 202424min
How climate change is affecting global timekeeping
In this episode:01:28 Inflammation’s role in memoryHow memories are stored is an ongoing question in neuroscience. Now researchers have found an inflammatory pathway that responds to DNA damage in neu...
27 Mar 202426min
AI hears hidden X factor in zebra finch love songs
This podcast has been corrected: in a previous version at 5:55 we stated that that the team's 200mm devices currently contain only a couple of magnetic tunnelling junctions, in fact they studied 500-1...
20 Mar 202429min
Killer whales have menopause. Now scientists think they know why
In this episode:00:45 Making a map of the human heartThe human heart consists of multiple, specialised structures that all work together to enable the organ to beat for a lifetime. But exactly which c...
13 Mar 202427min
