New Scientist Escape Pod

Shining a light on the invisible forces that surround us, this episode is all about the unseen world. Normally we don’t notice bats flitting above our heads at night, and we certainly can’t hear their ultrasonic squeaks. But the team listens to three incredible recordings of bat sonar that have been converted into sound waves audible to us. They then discuss the elusive neutrino, a subatomic particle which is so desperate to remain unseen it barely interacts with the rest of the world. And the discussion takes a magical twist, as the team explains the real-life technology creating ‘perfect’ invisibility cloaks (just don’t expect to be running around like Harry Potter anytime soon). On the pod - for this final episode of season one of Escape Pod - are Rowan Hooper, Anna Demming and Tim Revell. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts. Special thanks to Hanna Tuulikki for the bat recordings. 

This episode celebrates some of the world’s most important sites for the discovery of elements. A quarry in the village of Ytterby in Sweden is first up, where almost 10% of naturally occurring elements have been discovered. The team then takes a trip to Strontian in Scotland, the only place in the UK that’s given its name to an element - one which inspired the legendary Strontium Dog in the comic 2000AD. And moving further afield, the team’s trip takes them to a lab in Russia, an element factory on the front line of new discoveries. On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Anna Demming and Josh Howgego. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts.

Making sense of the many weird and wonderful interactions that inform our view of the world, this episode is all about perception. The team opens with the incredible noise of a binaural sound, to illustrate the subtle complexity of the way we hear the world around us. They then put perception under the microscope, zooming in at a quantum scale where life becomes nothing more than pixels. And they wrap up with a fascinating discussion about metacognition, or put simply, how much we know about what we know. On the pod are Timothy Revell, Anna Demming and Clare Wilson. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts.

Celebrating the forgotten people behind history’s biggest scientific breakthroughs, this episode is an ode to unsung heroes. Starting with the American chemist Alice Ball, the team discusses her groundbreaking work on leprosy in the 20th century. They then remember the German mathematician Emmy Noether whose theorem is so impressive it puts Pythagoras to shame! And last but not least Mary Sherman Morgan gets the spotlight, an American rocket fuel scientist who helped the US enter the space race. On the pod are Timothy Revell, Bethan Ackerley and Anna Demming. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts.

From music to nature to infinity, this episode is all about scales. The team opens with a keyboard ditty as they explore the science behind musical scales - and why major chords sound happy, while minor chords sound sad. They then find themselves tangled up in spider webs, finding out how various structures at different scales club together to give them their extraordinary strength. And finally, the team stares into infinity, visiting Hilbert’s infinite hotel, a mind-boggling thought-experiment which offers a fun and simple answer to an otherwise complex question - how exactly does infinity work? On the pod are Timothy Revell, Anna Demming and Sam Wong. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts.

Get in the zone and find your zen - this week’s episode is all about flow. It may sound vague, but there’s a lot of fascinating science behind the concept. The team starts by explaining what’s going on in your brain when you find the “sweet spot” in an activity and lose all sense of time. They then explore how elite performers achieve flow in their sport through years of intense practise. And finally, they point out that you don’t actually have to be doing anything at all to get in the flow - there’s always meditation! On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Anna Demming and Graham Lawton. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts.

We’re shuttling you off planet for some true escapism this week to visit a few of our team’s favourite moons. Starting close to home, let’s sing the praises of our moon, Luna, which might be boringly inert but is too often taken for granted. Moving further out, to Jupiter, the team explore the thick ice sheets of the smoothest moon in the solar system, Europa. And they wrap up in the orbit of Saturn, with Titan, a peculiar moon which is like a mirror-Earth, and one of the best places in the solar system to search for alien life. On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Leah Crane and Timothy Revell. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts.

From beetle explosions to the deep dark depths of the ocean, this episode is all about escape. The team discusses the amazing (and sometimes disgusting) way bombardier beetles escape predators. They explain what it takes for an object to reach escape velocity, celebrating the mathematical mind of Katherine Johnson while they’re at it. And they explore the daunting realms of free-diving, and the lengths people will go to for a bit of peace and quiet. On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Anna Demming and Timothy Revell. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts

From the quickest animal in the world to the fastest supercomputer, this episode is all about speed. Opening with the cries of the peregrine falcon, the team finds out how the bird has evolved to endure flying at more than 200mph. Then they explain how scientists, starting from Galileo, attempted to measure the speed limit of the universe, the speed of light, and how Einstein understood what it meant. And they explore the mind-blowing capabilities of Fugaku, the fastest supercomputer in the world. On the pod are Rowan Hooper, Anna Demming and Timothy Revell. Find out more at newscientist.com/podcasts