• Briefing Chat: What Brazilian centenarians could reveal about the science of ageing
    Jan 30 2026

    In this episode:



    00:36 Study probes genetics of extreme longevity

    Nature: Still working at 107: supercentenarian study probes genetics of extreme longevity



    05:32 Controlling fluorescent proteins’ brightness with magnets

    Nature: ‘Remote controlled’ proteins illuminate living cells


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    10 mins
  • How your brain chemistry rewards hard work
    Jan 28 2026

    In this episode:



    00:46 Why completing difficult tasks feels rewarding

    Nature: Touponse et al.



    11:34 Research Highlights

    Nature: Disappearing ‘planet’ reveals a solar system’s turbulent times

    Nature: Getting to the (square) root of stock-market swings



    13:43 How extreme weather events could threaten malaria elimination efforts

    Nature: Touponse et al.


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    24 mins
  • Audio long read: ‘I rarely get outside’ — scientists ditch fieldwork in the age of AI
    Jan 26 2026
    This is an audio version of our Feature: ‘I rarely get outside’: scientists ditch fieldwork in the age of AI

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    18 mins
  • Briefing Chat: The canny cow that can use tools, and how babies share their microbiomes
    Jan 23 2026

    In this episode:



    00:24 How babies share their gut microbes

    Nature: Sending babies to nursery completely reshapes their microbiome



    05:25 First evidence of tool use in cattle

    Science: No bull: This Austrian cow has learned to use tools


    Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    12 mins
  • The biggest 'Schrödinger's cat' yet — physicists put 7,000 atoms in superposition
    Jan 21 2026
    00:46 Protein-sized superposition surpasses previous experiments

    Nature: Pedalino et al.

    News: Schrödinger's cat just got bigger: quantum physicists create largest ever 'superposition'


    11:46 Research Highlights

    Nature: Ancient pottery reveals early evidence of mathematical thinking

    Nature: Gifted dogs learn new words by overhearing humans


    14:11 How Trump’s second term has impacted research

    Nature: US science after a year of Trump

    Nature: US science in 2026: five themes that will dominate Trump’s second year

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    27 mins
  • Briefing Chat: Can NASA return rocks from Mars? And why dogs have long ears
    Jan 16 2026

    In this episode:



    00:40 The rock samples destined to remain on Mars

    Nature: NASA won’t bring Mars samples back to Earth: this is the science that will be lost



    05:24 The genetics of dogs’ droopy ears

    Nature: Do their ears hang low? The genetics of dogs’ adorable floppy ears


    Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    10 mins
  • AI can turbocharge scientists' careers — but limit their scope
    Jan 14 2026

    In this episode:



    00:47 AI can boost research productivity — at what cost?

    Research article: Hao et al.



    10:10 Research Highlights

    Nature: Ancient ‘snowball’ Earth had frigidly briny seas

    Nature: Putting immune cells into ‘night mode’ reduces heart-attack damage



    12:41 JWST images are full of red dots, what are they?

    Nature: Rusakov et al.


    Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    22 mins
  • A mysterious ancient fingerprint and a lemon-shaped planet — the stories you’ve missed
    Jan 7 2026
    00:54 Turning an undersea cable into a seismic detector

    Researchers have shown that they can piggyback a signal on a 4,400-kilometer-long telecom cable that runs from California to Hawaii, allowing it to act like 44,000 separate seismic-activity detectors. Their method takes advantage of impurities found in glass fibre-optic cables, which reflect light differently when they are stretched and distorted by the pressure of seismic waves.


    Science: Seafloor telecom cable transformed into giant earthquake detector


    04:17 The origin of an ancient boat

    Chemical analysis of the caulking found on the wood an ancient boat has helped researchers identify the origins of the vessel, that sank off the coast of Denmark 2,400 years ago. The team’s analysis suggests it voyaged from much farther away that had been thought — perhaps coming from the Baltic Sea region. The team also found a fingerprint left in the caulk, although who it belonged to is unknown.


    LiveScience: Fingerprint of ancient seaborne raider found on Scandinavia's oldest plank boat


    08:29 How heating up helps some plants pollinate

    Some plants called cycads (Zamia spp.) heat up to attract the beetles that pollinate them. These beetles have heat-seeking sensors in their antennae, which they use locate the plants. Male cycads warm up around 3 hours before females, meaning that beetles head to them before first carrying pollen over to the females.


    Science: Heat-seeking beetles drawn to plants that glow in infrared


    13:08 The exoplanet shaped like a lemon

    The discovery of exoplanet PSR J2322-2650b reveals how unusual other worlds can be. This exoplanet takes just 7.8 hours to orbit an ultra-dense pulsar whose intense gravity pulls PSR J2322-2650b into a lemon shape.


    New Scientist: Strange lemon-shaped exoplanet defies the rules of planet formation


    Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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    17 mins