Naked Scientists, In Short Special Editions Podcast

Driven to End Malaria: World Malaria Day 2026

26 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A child dies from malaria roughly every minute. A stark reminder of why urgent action is still needed. "Driven to end malaria, now we can, now we must...

Moths hear plants, and what fingerprints do for touch

28 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, how kangaroos alter their postures to store more energy in their Achilles tendons and boost movement efficiency, the moths that make ...

Nocebos, and why the eyes of some species stay shut at birth

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This month, compelling evidence for why some species keep their eyes closed for sometimes several weeks after birth, scientists prove that the "nocebo...

Aspirin vs Clopidogrel: The blood thinner battle

03 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Clots in our blood vessels can be responsible for very serious health problems such as strokes and heart attacks. To combat this, some people at risk ...

Public Success, Private Grief: remembering Peter Cowley

23 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Cowley was an entrepreneur, angel investor, and for many years was the Naked Scientists technology commentator, a role he fell into by accident ...

Keeping humans healthy in orbit

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With only a few walls between an astronaut and a rapid death, what do we know about the various dangers to the human body during space travel? Chris S...

Ants doing gene therapy, and tadpole microbiomes

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This month, as the eLife Podcast hits its century, we hear how getting frog dads to cross-foster tadpoles has revealed the way in which some frogs com...

Synthetic sustainable spuds

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the global population heads toward 10 billion, the pressure on agriculture is mounting. With that in mind, the UK's Advanced Research and Invention...

Scientists say they've bent spacetime

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

"Warp speed, Mr Sulu." It's the kind of command we've only heard in science fiction - until now. Did a team of scientists just bend spacetime using no...

Finland's giant virus, and monkeys take care of their teeth

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the eLife podcast, a university compost heap has turned up Finland's first documented "giant virus". Also, why monkeys de-sand their supper, and ho...

Naked Scientists SOS

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cambridge University have informed us that, for cost cutting reasons, they intend to make Dr Chris Smith redundant. Naturally, this jeopardises the Na...

Insect extinctions, and AI shot in the arm for drug design

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In episode 10 of the Cambridge Prisms Podcast, the shocking finding that as many as 2 invertebrate species are going extinct each week in Australia: w...

Storing data with "molecular firecrackers"

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Your personal data could soon be stored not on a phone or server but locked inside a molecule so tiny it's invisible to the naked eye. Researchers hav...

Brain-invading bacterium is making fruit flies extra frisky

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What if a parasite could rewire your brain - not to harm you, but to make you... more romantic? This week on The Naked Scientists, we're exploring the...

Speedy, soft robot powered by air alone

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Using only soft tubes and a continuous stream of air, a team of researchers at AMOLF in Amsterdam have created one of the fastest and simplest soft ro...

Frog toxicity, and what a year's schooling does to the brain

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is the impact of an extra year at school on the brain? Also, how poison dart frogs come by their toxins, using movies to track the developing inf...

What climate change does to kelp forests

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, how climate change impacts kelp forests, selecting for less animal-friendly variants, refining AI models for better water infrastruct...

Hollywood helps brain scientists probe thoughts

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This month, how films are helping neuroscientists link brain activity patterns to specific thought processes, a breakthrough in managing opiate overdo...

Personalised medicine, droughts, and dryland research

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Personalised medicine and gene screens for disease, why dinosaurs disappeared, planning for droughts, and new vistas in the drylands arena... Like thi...

Evolving flu, and the desert decomposition conundrum

20 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Predicting how influenza viruses will evolve, how deserts decompose matter despite the dry, what worms are revealing about a gene linked to autism, an...

Cancer mood control, and birth products blocking pain

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This month, signs that cancers communicate with the brain to alter mood, why antibodies are unreliable in research, evidence that social training can ...

Future cancer care, and the cost of large animal extinction

25 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, why approaches to cancer care need a pro-active approach in future, the opportunities arising for the cancer vaccine space, competenc...

Vampire bacteria, "hangry" males, and ants using moonlight

10 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This month, Chris Smith hears how blood-thirsty bacteria sniff out wounds to trigger infections, how ants navigate at night, how male and female brain...

Microbiomes control blood pressure, and the cost of water

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This month, evidence that the microbiome is controlling blood pressure - so will we treat hypertension with probiotics in future? Also, plastic is eve...

Hibernation, Ketamine and Aphantasia

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This month, how animals hibernate and evidence that muscle myosin makes its own heat in the cold, brain scans to reveal how ketamine relieves resistan...

The proteins responsible for feeling cold revealed...

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A problem that's been puzzling scientists for decades is the way our bodies recognise cold stimuli, and researchers at the University of Michigan have...

Apes reveal language origins, and being dyslexic in science

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This month we hear what orangutans can tell us about the origins of human speech, we ask if science making life even harder for dyslexics, where do th...

Making waves about coastline conservation, and plastic waste

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This month the connections that human inhabitants have to the coast, why we're still in the middle of a worsening extinction crisis despite internatio...

Bees can't taste pesticides, and how albatrosses get aloft

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the eLife Podcast this month, signs that bees are oblivious to pesticides in nectar, sea anemone stinging strategies, a new means of cell-cell comm...

Recycled plastics pollute food, and the value of water

10 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Better awareness of the precious resource that is water, getting a grip on coastal ecosystems and the impact of pollution, why recycled plastics are a...

Wildlife Trade Extinctions and 21st Century Psychology

20 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This time we hear how many species are being driven to extinction by human trade, why clinical psychology needs an update for the 21st Century, how no...

Surviving a fusion bomb

11 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ken Mcginley was there during some of the first tests of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s. We were lucky enough to hear his story... Like this podcast? Ple...

Does our language affect our decision making?

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There are many factors that might affect the way we make decisions: our age, our past experiences, even our mood that day. But now, a new study has su...

Microbial life deep underground

06 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Comparatively, we know an awful lot about life on the surface of planet earth. We know a lot less about the extent of life in our oceans, and we know ...

How the pandemic affected child development

21 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Babies born during the Covid-19 lockdowns are behind on their language development. That's the finding of a recent study comparing infants born during...

New Ultrasound Technique for Breast Imaging

30 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A new non invasive technique to pick up breast cancer has been unveiled by UK scientists. Breast cancer is the most diagnosed form cancer in the UK. ...

Search and rescue rats

15 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Apopo is a charity that trains African giant pouched rats for humanitarian purposes, with a view to combating some of the challenges faced by countrie...

TV is influencing careers

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Did you end up in your dream job? Or did you end up pursuing a career quite intensely for some reason that eludes you? Perhaps the media representatio...

FIFA Fall Out with EA

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There's news of a huge rift in the world of video games... EA Sports, who made the first ever FIFA football game in 1993, have announced that they wil...

Did the lockdown make us more creative?

17 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Now, I want you to cast your mind back to that first lockdown (if you can bear it) and to think about the ways you chose to fill all that new found fr...

Dog and Dingo DNA sequences

29 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Dingoes are native Australian dogs, although how and when they got to Australia isn't known. They were certainly already there by the time the first w...

Coffee without the coffee beans

28 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Coffee prices are on the rise and the plant is said to decline by 60% before 2050, meaning new coffee alternatives are being considered in order to gi...

Recreating smells from the past

07 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If I asked you to give up one of your five senses, which one would you choose? Chances are, instead of giving up your ability to see or hear, your sen...

A new method for recycling plastics

04 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The world has a huge problem with plastics. While they are a materials scientist's dream in terms of their properties, they are an environmentalist's ...

Data storage in DNA

24 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers have been studying DNA as a method to store binary data. As data generation continues to increase in the information age, we need new meth...

Solving puzzles to help cancer research

23 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Playing games may be something you do in your spare time or in the queue at the supermarket, but striving for that elusive high score can also now con...

Pig grunts indicate their emotions

17 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There are over 7,000 documented languages in the world to date, and now we might have another to add to the list: the one spoken by pigs. No, this is ...

Indoor pollution from cleaning

11 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers from Indiana University studied the reactions of volatile compounds released when cleaning with ozone in the air. They found the reactions...

The Dangers of Nuclear Weapons

10 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Nuclear weapons are at the forefront of news but what are they and how do they work? Anoushka Handa reports... Like this podcast? Please help us by su...

Creating Oxygen on the Moon

02 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As NASA aims to send humans back to the moon in the upcoming years, research on how to supply oxygen to future settlements on the moon are underway. O...

Roman faeces housing fossilised parasites

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Washing our hands has become paramount during the pandemic, but the Romans didn't seem to bestow any importance to this, leading to parasites and infe...

Blood clot tests with smartphones

28 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Blood clotting is important in preventing excessive bleeding, but for millions of people, it can also mean increased risk of mortality due to certain ...

Shades of Blue Stop a Mosquito Biting You

25 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever got a horrible mosquito bite whilst on holiday and wondered 'why me again?' And was your travel buddy someone who never got one? It coul...

Magnetic Fields Guide Migratory Birds

23 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There's a growing body of evidence that birds can detect magnetic fields like the one around the Earth, possibly by "seeing" them. And this, researche...

Car Dependence in Greenfield Housing

17 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Greenfield housing developments are residential communities built upon land which was not previously occupied by anything else. These modern homes are...

Why don't plants freeze to death in Winter?

14 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Krzysztof wrote in to ask 'Why don't plants freeze to death during Winter?' and James Tytko tracked down Professor Howard Griffiths, from the Universi...

Black hole seen forming new stars

09 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Black holes are known for their awesome destructive powers, ripping stars apart piece by piece. But now, scientists have seen evidence of a black hol...

Trees for the Jubilee

06 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Planting trees has a great impact on creating a greener environment. The Queen's Green Canopy is an initiative to encourage people to plant a tree in ...

Game of Life still revealing secrets

03 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Mathematicians Ville Salo and Ilkke Toermae from Finland have solved a long-standing problem in the field of cellular automata (The Game of Life). De...

Organising our memories

02 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Memories form a large part of human interaction. Scents, tastes and touch all can invoke us to remember particular events. But how do we know the orde...

Automating Blood Smears

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Blood smear analysis is a repetitive, laborious, and time consuming job. Research at the University of Cambridge has led to developing a 3D printed de...

Making new year's resolutions SMART

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's the new year, and with that comes a tradition to commit to new year's resolutions. But the typical goals of giving up drinking, or losing weight,...

Ichthyosaur found in Rutland

27 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The astonishing discovery of this jurassic era creature has been covered on our show before, but this recording features special insight into the dig ...

The Reforestation Re-evaluation

26 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Tropical rainforests are deforested at an alarming rate to make way for cultivating crops and rearing livestock. But what happens when these forest ar...

Sleep and Alzheimer's

24 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Changing the way the brain controls how we sleep, as a new study suggests, might be a way to cut the risk of Alzheimer's Disease. Alzheimer's is the c...

Do Asteroids Pose a Real Threat?

19 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Katie King interviews Huw James, from the Royal Astronomical Society, about the reality of the chances planet-killing asteroids could collide with Ear...

Listening vs hearing

13 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Hearing and listening... is there a difference? I am sure that we have all been guilty of letting our minds drift out of a conversation before realisi...

Language and the Brain

12 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Understanding the human brain and how it completes complex tasks, like processing other people's speech as well as producing its own, is a complex tas...

What is the impact of a black hole?

10 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomers believe that nearly every galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its centre, this being true for our very own Milky Way. These objects ex...

IVF embryos are more successful than expected

07 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

During IVF or in-vitro fertilisation, sperm and eggs are mixed together in a dish to produce fertilised embryos, one or two of which are placed in the...

Making antibiotics more effective

04 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

While the coronavirus pandemic is at the forefront of our minds, it's not the only health crisis looming on the horizon. Antimicrobial resistance has ...

Omicron update: what's in store for Australia

19 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Chris Smith joins Indira Naidoo on the ABC's Nightlife programme to discuss the latest developments in science and answer questions from listeners....

The recent evolution of human beings

16 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Us humans are thought to have appeared on Earth around 300,000 years ago. But how much have we changed since then? New research from Shanghai Jiao Ton...

100 years of insulin

15 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

2021 marks 100 years since insulin was first discovered. The World Health Organisation estimates that 422 million people around the world have diabete...

Cooling down rapidly warming cities

14 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

More than 50% of the world's population now lives in urban areas and, in recent years, many major cities have been hit with extreme weather events due...

Tree growth extended in urban jungles

13 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Cities have been found to be warming at faster rates than the rest of the planet due to the materials used such as concrete absorbing heat more readil...

The science of hugs

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As we near Christmas, we will be subjected to a fair few more hugs than usual! Some of them can be great, and others... just downright awkward. But wh...

Sleep schedules & healthier hearts

06 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We know that sleep is critical for our physical and mental wellbeing, but as it turns out, the answer doesn't simply lie in the number of hours we spe...

Omicron, variant of concern. What do we know?

04 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Virologist Chris Smith talks with Radio New Zealand National's Kim Hill on Saturday 27th November as the world contemplates the discovery of the Covid...

Whales eat (and poop) more than we thought

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Earth's largest animals, whales, need a lot of food... that goes without saying. But, new research from a team at Stanford University have found that ...

NASA's planetary defence test

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Now this might have flown under your radar, but last Wednesday NASA launched the DART mission, a spacecraft on a one-way collision course with an aste...

Covid Surges in Europe

29 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Covid cases in many European countries are suddenly substantially up. But in a dramatic role reversal, the UK has gone from the standout Covid-19 bad ...

Why does Covid-19 vaccine protection wane?

20 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Covid is surging across Europe, but what's causing it, and will the UK follow suit, or are Europe hot on our heels? Should vaccines be mandatory, and ...

Fusion experiment yields new record energy

17 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

When two atoms join together, the laws of physics tell us that a large amount of energy will be released, but the experiments performed so far by scie...

Dogs can pick out words from speech

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The first part of understanding a new language is working out where one word stops and the next word starts out of a string of syllables. Researchers ...

Facebook's Metaverse

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Recently Facebook announced a name change for the company to Meta, which comes during the midst of a marketing plug by Mark Zuckerberg for his new tak...

What does oxytocin sound like?

12 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We talk a lot about proteins on this programme - what they do, how they work - but have you ever wondered what they sound like? A group of scientists ...

Antibiotics upgraded to tackle superbugs

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Antibiotics are such an important part of modern medicine but their effectiveness has been waning in the last few decades as certain bacteria, so call...

Humans navigate inefficiently in cities

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever noticed that you take one particular walking route to the shops, only to take a completely different route on the way back? If so, you m...

Hydrogen electrolyser wins Earthshot Prize

09 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Earthshot Prize is an ambitious environmental program created by His Royal Highness Prince William to find and develop solutions for the climate e...

COVID-19 nanotube-based sensor

04 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

"Test! Test! Test!" was the instruction from the World Health Organisation when the Covid-19 pandemic began to take hold around the world. Now scienti...

How Alzheimer's Disease Unfolds

29 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

New research published this week has turned what we know about Alzheimer's disease progression on its head. Instead of the disease gradually spreading...

Potential health benefits of winter swimming

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Wild water swimming is becoming ever more popular and, according to a new study published recently in Cell Reports Medicine, combining dips in cold wa...

E-Waste Day: what to do with old electronics?

20 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Who doesn't like to pick up a cold drink from the fridge and sit down to watch a show on their laptop or TV? Electrical appliances have made our lives...

HeLa cells: do you own your own body parts?

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

A form of cultured cell, known as a HeLa cell, is at the centre of a lawsuit that is being brought against a large scientific company that uses these ...

New painkiller: local and long-lasting relief

13 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Pain relief after surgery is a major headache as we don't have a lot of effective, and safe, options. Opioids in particular, like morphine, are very a...

Vaccines passports in England shown the door

25 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

He said he'd introduce them, now Boris Johnson has stepped back from mandating vaccine passports across England for venues like nightclubs. But what's...

Self-assembling filter can remove fluoride

23 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Fluoride is the stuff in toothpaste that helps strengthen teeth. But if there's too much fluoride in the water it softens bones, and children become s...

Moral outrage on Twitter is contagious

22 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Twitter has been the subject of another study, looking at how people's tendency to post tweets in moral outrage is affected by other people on the sit...

bit.bio: a new source of human cells

17 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Scientists and doctors are always after good quality human cells for research and therapeutic purposes, but these can be hard to come by in sufficient...