The World, the Universe and Us

While testing samples in the Atacama desert, a region of Earth with very similar rocks to those on Mars, astrobiologists have discovered a mysterious “dark biome” of organisms we’ve never seen before. With sample missions taking place on Mars itself, the team discusses what we might find. Bow and arrows were first used in Europe much earlier than we thought. 54,000 year old arrowheads have been di...

Venice, Italy, is often voted the world’s most beautiful city. Built across 120 small islands in a shallow lagoon, it’s been an important financial and cultural centre for over a thousand years. But it faces an existential threat from sea level rise caused by climate change. Rowan Hooper visits the city’s new water defence system – a €6 billion sea barrier designed to defend Venice against high ti...

The UK’s rivers are in a dire state. Full of sewage, chemicals and prescription drugs, life in our rivers is suffering. New Scientist has teamed up with the i newspaper to launch the Save Britain’s Rivers campaign to raise awareness of the issue and get changes in the law. The team explores the problem, which includes question marks over illegal activity, and explains the aims of the campaign. UFO...

Hear the chattering sounds of a narwhal, the surprisingly tuneful tones of singing sea ice, and the alarming crashes of ice shelves collapsing in this special bonus episode of the podcast. These rare noises, captured by hydrophones in the Arctic and Antarctic, paint a fascinating image of two of our planet’s lesser-known regions.  Rowan Hooper catches up with Stuart Fowkes, the founder of Cities a...

The continuing avian flu epidemic is devastating bird populations. And now there are concerns over increasing numbers of mammals becoming infected. As reports rise, the team finds out whether this strain of bird flu may begin to pose a bigger threat to humans. Everyone’s jumping on the AI chat bandwagon. As ChatGPT continues to make headlines, two big companies have just announced their contributi...

The immune system is the intricate constellation of cells and molecules in our bodies that defends us against disease and on this special bonus episode of New Scientist Weekly we delve into the latest science on how the immune system works. Why do some people never seem to get ill? What was the effect of covid lockdowns on our immune system? Is it really possible to boost your immune system throug...

An ancient and debunked method of searching for water leaks is still being used by some of the UK’s water companies. The team finds out why water dowsing is still in practice, despite being scientifically discredited. But they also find out how it might actually work - just not in the way you think. People have sometimes complained that the chimps in the various Planet of the Apes films have unrea...

The new HBO series The Last of Us is making waves, raking in a steady stream of high reviews. Based on a game of the same name, it’s set in a world where a parasitic fungus called Cordyceps has mutated to infect and zombify humans. In this bonus episode of the podcast, Bethan Ackerley asks if this could actually happen in real life. She’s joined by fungal pathogens expert Professor Matthew Fisher...

A vaccine for the respiratory virus RSV may be ready this year. In fact, after decades of efforts, successful vaccines have arrived like buses, with three of them on the way. As a particularly devastating virus for young children and the elderly, the team explains just how impactful these new vaccines will be. You may have read headlines that Earth’s core is changing direction - but the team expla...

On this special episode of the show, host Rowan Hooper and environment reporter Madeleine Cuff chat with climate scientist Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter. Tim has just contributed to a research paper that suggested governments could trigger a mass shift to plant-based diets, simply by serving more vegan burgers in schools and hospitals. We discuss with Tim the power of leveraging so-called...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, hear Rowan Hooper’s extended interview with Assaad Razzouk, author of Saving the Planet Without the Bullshit: What they don’t tell you about the climate crisis. For a refreshing take on the climate crisis, find out why Assaad believes we need to feel less guilty about our personal actions when it comes to tackling climate change. In this episode he argues thin...

A cure for ageing, without the price-tag? It might sound too good to be true, but the team digs into new evidence that shows low-frequency ultrasound may rejuvenate cells in our body which are thought to cause age-related diseases.  Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is missing half of its matter - and the team asks where it’s all gone. They also discuss NASA’s ShadowCam which has taken pictures of Shackl...

In this bonus episode of the podcast, hear an extended interview with Cassie Lynch, a descendent of the Noongar people of south west Australia who’s been studying their storytelling tradition. Find out how ancient accounts of rising sea levels from the end of the ice age around 7000 years ago have been passed down through aboriginal stories. And discover what we can learn from the events of the pa...

Scientists working for oil giant Exxon between 1977 and 2003 accurately predicted the pace and scale of climate change and warned of the harm of burning fossil fuels, while firm’s executives played down the risk. Now Exxon’s quantitative climate projections have been assessed for the first time.  On this special episode of the podcast, host Rowan Hooper discusses the Exxon science with New Scienti...

Will artificial intelligence replace lawyers in the future? The team learns about a new, chat-bot style bit of tech that fights your legal battles for you, and is about to be tested in a real court room. But is it ethical, or even legal? Gibbons love to sing, but what we’ve just learnt is male and female gibbons also enjoy belting out synchronised musical duets. The team plays some of these deligh...

To see in the New Year, host Rowan Hooper and the team look ahead to their science and cultural highlights for the coming months. We start with 2 big planetary science missions due for launch in 2023. JUICE, which will be visiting Jupiter to study some of its moons, and Psyche, which is making a journey to an asteroid made completely of iron. With covid still causing a huge burden of disease aroun...

A holiday special of the podcast and a free-gift giveaway this week, as we celebrate five of New Scientist’s best front-page features of 2022. As well as discussing the features and why they chose to tackle them, the team chats about the beautiful cover artwork for each story. First up is the news that AI is helping to decode the lost stories of ancient Mesopotamia, revealing the secrets of ancien...

Recorded live online for New Scientist subscribers, in this holiday special the team takes you through their stand out moments of the year, the funniest stories to hit the headlines, and their hopes for 2023 - and they answer questions from the audience too. For stand-out highlights of 2022, the team discusses Deepmind and its transformative AI AlphaFold which predicted the structures of most know...

There’s been an exciting breakthrough in nuclear fusion. For the first time on Earth, a controlled fusion reaction has generated more power than it requires to run, bringing us closer than ever before to a viable way of producing clean energy for the world. So, what’s the catch? The team finds out. The New Scientist team reports from a worryingly quiet COP15. It’s hoped the biodiversity conference...

An extinct species of ancient human may have been much more advanced than we first realised. First discovered 10 years ago, Homo neladi had a brain about a third the size of ours and yet it may have done complex things like burying its dead and controlling fire. The team learns about the latest finding from the Rising Star cave near Johannesburg. Mars has long been described as geologically dead,...

Following repeated delays, the COP15 biodiversity conference is finally going ahead. On December 7th representatives from most of the countries in the world will meet to reach an agreement on how to address the global biodiversity crisis. There’s already a draft agreement in place, and the team explains the ambitions it lays out. But is this event likely to move the needle? A species of rat which...

The southwestern US is currently in the midst of a megadrought - the worst in 1200 years. And it has put the Colorado River in crisis, an essential source of water for more than 40 million people. Can it be saved? Chelsea Whyte investigates. The team unveils the fun new names that have been chosen to define incomprehensibly massive and incredibly tiny numbers. These prefixes describe measurements...

Cheering greeted Brazil’s president-elect, Lula da Silva, when he appeared at COP27 this week. Madeleine Cuff brings us a report from the climate conference in Egypt, where Lula has made bold promises to protect the Amazon. She also tells us what we can expect from this year’s draft treaty - and why the text has been causing quite a stir. There’s plenty going on in Space, with NASA’s Artemis missi...

Warnings over the world’s mad dash to create new supplies of fossil fuels, discussions about climate loss and damage, and talk about nature-based solutions. COP27 in Egypt is in full swing. Our reporter Madeleine Cuff brings us the latest, direct from Sharm el Sheikh. This week’s Sci-fi alert is the unusual discovery of a star with a solid surface. The team explains how on this magnetar (the dense...

In a special episode of the podcast, host Rowan Hooper visits Newlands Corner in the North Downs in southern England, the site of one of the oldest and most significant populations of wild yews growing anywhere in the world. Yew trees are familiar from churchyards and are also revered by pagans and shamans. They can live for many hundreds of years. The grove at Newlands Corner is an exceptional ec...