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CultureLab: Surviving the climate crisis – Michael Mann’s hopeful lessons from Earth’s deep history
Our planet has gone through a lot. If we peer into the deep history of Earth’s climate, we see ice ages, rapid warming events and mass extinctions. A…
2 years, 11 months ago
Weekly: Antimatter falls down; Virtual healthcare comes with a price; What’s causing Europe’s insect apocalypse?
Season 1 Episode 217
#217
Antimatter is the counterpart to regular matter, but with an opposite electric charge, as well as other differences. So if it’s the opposite of n…
2 years, 11 months ago
Dead Planets Society: #6 Make Venus Earth Again
Season 1 Episode 6
Are the stresses of life getting too much? Fancy a relaxing getaway to a planet with stifling sulfuric acid clouds, choking quantities of CO2 and pun…
2 years, 11 months ago
Weekly: First ever RNA from an extinct animal; big news about small solar system objects; “brainless” jellyfish can still learn
Season 1 Episode 216
#216
For the first time ever, a team has extracted RNA from an extinct animal. Thylacines, or Tasmanian tigers, are carnivorous marsupials that went e…
2 years, 11 months ago
CultureLab: Real Life Supervillains - John Scalzi on the science of volcano lairs and sentient dolphin minions
You’re in the volcano lair of an evil supervillain, hellbent on taking over the world. In anger, he hurls one of his minions into the molten lava bub…
3 years ago
Weekly: Science that makes you laugh (and think); black holes behaving badly; drumming cockatoos
Season 1 Episode 215
#215
A smart toilet with a camera inside that analyses your poop, plus a study of people who are fluent in speaking backwards – these are just two rec…
3 years ago
Dead Planets Society: #5 The Return of Pluto
Season 1 Episode 5
Join Leah and Chelsea as they belatedly mourn the loss of Pluto as a planet. Back in 2006, Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet”, sparking widespread o…
3 years ago
Weekly: New type of brain cell; Alaska’s first bridge over a moving glacier; quantum batteries that never age
Season 1 Episode 214
#214
A multi-talented brain cell has been discovered – and it’s a hybrid of the two we already know about, neurons and glia. These glutamatergic astro…
3 years ago
CultureLab: The weird ways animals sense the world – Ed Yong on his book An Immense World
Whether it’s the hidden colours of ultraviolet that bees can see, the complex rhythms and tones of birdsong that we’re unable to hear, or the way a d…
3 years ago
Weekly: Our ancestors nearly went extinct?; Why beer goggles aren’t real; Smelling ancient Egyptian perfume
Season 1 Episode 213
#213
Our ancestors may have very nearly gone extinct. Around a million years ago, there were just 1300 humans left and it stayed that way for over a h…
3 years ago