New Scientist Podcasts

Cannabis is having a moment. Half of the US population lives in a state where marijuana is legal, and 9 in 10 people nationwide support legalisation in some form. This is a stark difference from mere decades ago, when prohibition was the norm in the entire US. Meanwhile, if you live in Malta, Uruguay, Canada – and maybe soon, Germany – your entire country is one with legal recreational pot. And access to medical marijuana extends to even more countries, including the UK and Australia.But as medical and recreational use become more popular and increasingly accessible, how exactly did we get to this moment of change? What has research been able to tell us – so far – about how the plant produces its euphoric effects, what medical purposes it may be able to serve or how it might be harmful? And how could our relationship with this unassuming leaf change in the coming decades?In the first of this three-part special series on the science of cannabis, Christie Taylor explores our deep history with cannabis, from the first domestication 12,000 years ago in Northwest China, to the current skyrocketing popularity in the United States and around the world.Learn more: The team at New Scientist investigates cannabis and the brain, the environmental cost of growing cannabis, and other questions in this special reporting series. Visit newscientist.com/cannabis

#225Life on Mercury? That would be a shocking discovery. The planet is incredibly inhospitable to life… as we know it. But the discovery of salt glaciers on its surface has opened up the possibility that extremophile bacteria could be buried beneath its surface. Lucky then that the BepiColombo mission is planned to take another look at Mercury soon.Ever wondered why you can go all night without getting hungry but can’t last a few hours in the day? Well, there may be cells in our brains that tell us when it’s time to eat. A mice study found AgRP brain cells fire faster right around the time the rodents usually chow down. If this is true in humans too, it may clue us into our own hunger cues.Earth has been hit by a powerful cosmic ray, the second most powerful ever detected. This tiny subatomic particle contains a massive amount of energy and is thought to have come from a place in space called the cosmic void. How it got here is a mystery and has scientists excitedly searching for an answer.Babies are learning how to speak before they’re even born. While we know babies come to know the sound of their parents’ voices while in the womb, it turns out just hearing people talk enhances their future language skills and ability to recognise specific languages.Plus: Why one bat in Europe uses its penis as a hand, how a robot is being trained to pick up your dirty washing and why plants in Europe are more productive on the weekend.Hosts Timothy Revell and Christie Taylor discuss with guests Leah Crane, Clare Wilson, Alex Wilkins and Chen Ly. To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.Event:Separating the science from the hype with the latest research on cannabis.

Turning the Earth into a cube, the gift that just keeps giving. Last episode we had fish bowl spaceships, this time we have sea monsters!If you thought cubifying the Earth couldn’t get more wacky, you’re in for a treat. In the Dead Planets Society season finale, Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte are once again joined by geophysicist Mika McKinnon. This time she explains what time would be like on a 6-faced planet, how you’d be able to experience all four seasons in a single day on Cube Earth and why this re-formed planet would spur on the evolution of some pretty strange lifeforms, including sea monsters.Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a hole in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt to destroying the sun – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.Your hosts are Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte.If you have a cosmic object you’d like to figure out how to destroy, email the team at deadplanets@newscientist.com. It may just feature in a later episode… And if you just want to chat about this episode or wrecking the cosmos more generally, tweet @chelswhyte and @downhereonearth. 

This is it, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. We’ve killed the sun, smushed the asteroid belt, burrowed into other planets… but now it’s time for the big one… Earth.In this two-part season finale, Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte do irreparable damage to our planet by turning it into a cube. Joining the pair in this mammoth task is geophysicist and disaster consultant Mika McKinnon. In this first episode Mika tackles the many life-changing knock-on effects of cubifying Earth, such as how only portions of the planet would be habitable, why we would need giant fish bowls on wheels to cross from one face to the other and why earthquakes would become the new normal.Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a hole in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt to destroying the sun – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.Your hosts are Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte.If you have a cosmic object you’d like to figure out how to destroy, email the team at deadplanets@newscientist.com. It may just feature in a later episode… And if you just want to chat about this episode or wrecking the cosmos more generally, tweet @chelswhyte and @downhereonearth.

#224Tree planting has become an incredibly popular way of attempting to store carbon dioxide and slow global warming. But new research estimates we may be able to store huge amounts of carbon dioxide without planting any new trees at all. All we have to do is protect the ones we already have. The world’s existing forests could store up to 228 billion tonnes of carbon, but is protecting them an achievable goal?Life expectancy for everyone in the US is on the decline, but especially for men, with the “death gap” between men and women increasing dramatically in recent years. Why are men now dying nearly six years before women on average? Covid-19, opioid use, suicide and firearms are all influencing the worrisome trend.Bonobos are the peacekeepers of the primate world. While their close cousins, chimpanzees, prefer to fight with rival groups to resolve conflict, bonobos prefer to have sex – and they generally get along with members of other groups. Why some bonobos are friendlier than others, and what that might tell us about human aggression and cooperation.Physicists have created tiny lasers from soap bubbles. This whimsical sounding technological feat is surprisingly simple to recreate. With a few ingredients, you too could create a bubble laser at home. Useful for detecting electric fields and pressure changes, this could become a much more affordable way of producing sensors in the future.Plus: How 20 per cent of people who take Paxlovid, a covid-19 drug that reduces the risk of severe illness, rebound and get the virus again a few days after they stop taking it; how to seed new life on a planet by “catching” a comet; and how one artificial intelligence model has learned how to beat us at both chess and poker, and what this might say about creating more “generally” intelligent AIs.Hosts Timothy Revell and Christie Taylor discuss all of this with guests James Dinneen, Corryn Wetzel, Sam Wong and Karmela Padavic-Callaghan. To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.Need a listening ear? UK Samaritans: 116123; US 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988; hotlines in other countries.Event: Separating the science from the hype with the latest research on cannabis.

As astronauts look down on Earth from space, the experience is often life-altering. The “pale blue dot” looks fragile from way up there. And in the novel Orbital, we get to see our planet from the perspective of astronauts aboard the International Space Station, giving us a glimpse into why the distant view shifts their perspectives so dramatically. The book follows the team of astronauts as they observe Earth, collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But author Samantha Harvey says she hopes Orbital is as much a painting as it is a novel, writing in expressive prose to capture the epic vistas witnessed from space each day. From glaciers and deserts, to the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans – and even the destructive force of an intensifying typhoon. In this episode, Rowan Hooper asks Harvey about her inspirations and how she was able to so vividly capture this sense of Earth from afar. Plus a meditation on what it means, emotionally, to look at our planet from space and reckon with how we are changing it. To read about subjects like this and much more, visit newscientist.com.

#223Spinal cord stimulation has, for the first time, been used to improve the mobility of someone with Parkinson’s Disease. Marc, who has battled the condition for 30 years, once fell five to six times daily, but now is able to walk kilometres per day thanks to an array of electrodes that stimulate the movement-related neurons in his spine.  Though it was successful for Marc, the treatment is also highly customised and more research is needed before it might benefit people more broadly. In the world of synthetic biology, an international team has crafted a yeast cell with half its DNA manufactured in a lab, marking a significant step in our ability to rewrite and alter complex genomes. While yeast is already used to create useful substances such as beer and insulin, synthetic yeasts could be engineered to create an even wider variety of molecules more easily. Why yeast might be just the beginning for synthetic organisms.Can the secret to affordable, clean energy have been in the ocean all this time? Engineers are bringing a 140-year-old idea back to life, with the aim of harnessing the massive temperature difference between warm surface water and cold, deep sea water. A process known as Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) was originally proposed in the 19th century and is now being tested in some island nations. How this sustainable method works and the obstacles to its widespread adoption.New evolutionary research shows that crabs evolved to leave the ocean up to 17 different times in the 230 million years since they arose. What these crustaceans’ remarkable evolutionary flexibility might reveal about adaptability across the animal kingdom.Plus: Using tiny microphones to record happy rat squeaks, a breakthrough in underwater radio communication and a smashing fact about left-handed badminton players. Hosts Christie Taylor and Chelsea Whyte discuss all of this with guests Michael Le Page, James Dinneen and Alexandra Thompson. To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.

Asteroids are cool, but they’re all spread out across the solar system. Wouldn’t it be neater if we could smush them all together to make one MEGA asteroid? Maybe even an asteroid… planet.From an asteroid sausage machine to a Jell-O infused asteroid donut, Leah and Chelsea discover just how difficult and disastrous it would be to merge the asteroid belt – with one surprising silver lining. Joining them in their quest are planetary scientists Andy Rivkin of John Hopkins University, and Kathryn Volk of the University of Arizona.Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a hole in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt to destroying the sun – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.Your hosts are Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte.If you have a cosmic object you’d like to figure out how to destroy, email the team at deadplanets@newscientist.com. It may just feature in a later episode… And if you just want to chat about this episode or wrecking the cosmos more generally, tweet @chelswhyte and @downhereonearth.

#222At this point, most people have heard the accepted wisdom that you need 8 hours sleep every night, especially for a healthy brain. But what if we’ve got it all wrong? If you lie awake at night worrying about getting enough sleep, you may be in luck. A reminder that correlation is not causation, and some surprising new research into how our brains respond to lower amounts of sleep.In space news, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has just completed a fly-by of a ‘nearby’ asteroid, in preparation for a much bigger excursion out into the solar system. Lucy’s next mission takes it to Jupiter, where it’ll be exploring the asteroids that follow in the gas giant’s orbit, and which may be fragments from early planetary formation. Also, unusual dense spots buried deep within Earth’s mantle may actually be remains of an ancient planet that collided with ours. What buried bits of ‘Theia’ might tell us about Earth’s cosmological history and the creation of our moon.The UK’s first summit to discuss the safety and security of AI and its role in society has now drawn to a close. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak brought together more than 100 delegates from 28 countries, including tech CEOs such as Elon Musk. Amid frustrations over transparency, and a lacklustre policy result, what did the summit actually achieve?Can you find the head on a starfish? Researchers investigating the animal’s genes are finding that starfish are actually just heads, and perhaps nothing else, crawling around on their lips. What this finding tells us about the way ecology and natural selection shape animal evolution.Plus: Why some flatworms are great at sex, while others can regrow their heads – and why they can’t do both at the same time. How a desert plant is adapting to low moisture environments with salty sweat. And why chimps seek out high ground to spy on their rivals.Hosts Timothy Revell and Christie Taylor discuss all of this with guests Clare Wilson, Leah Crane, Matt Sparkes and Claire Ainsworth. To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.Events and Links:newscientist.com/tours