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The Nature Podcast brings you the best stories from the world of science each week. We cover everything from astronomy to zoology, highlighting the most exciting research from each issue of the Nature journal. We meet the scientists behind the results and provide in-depth analysis from Nature's journalists and editors. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Clear reporting connects new findings to their methods, limits and wider consequences across an unusually broad scientific range.
Nature Podcast turns new research into focused conversations that move quickly from a finding to the methods and consequences behind it. Benjamin Thompson and the other presenters ask direct questions, giving studies on mouse behaviour, heatwave attribution, disease prediction…
Mouse brains lead to university exams; your curiosity gets no time to settle into one lane.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Mission Control conversation makes a lunar flyby feel close, visual, and still unfinished.
Nature Podcast's Artemis 2 special keeps the lunar flyby grounded in Mission Control in Houston, where Alex Witsey follows scientists working around the mission.
A brisk science briefing where strange findings are pulled back to their mechanisms and consequences.
Nature Podcast packs three research stories into a quick look at how science moves from surprise to consequence. It opens with eye drops made from pig semen, moves through a Danish study of 13,000 parents who had enrolled in a PhD and later had children, and ends with sunbirds,…
A measured launch-night look at Artemis 2, its wider lunar view, and the Apollo history behind it.
Artemis 2 comes through as a crewed trip around the Moon and, just as importantly, a marker for a longer human return to lunar work. The episode starts in the uneasy stretch after launch, with four astronauts still bound for Earth orbit and roughly another 24 hours of systems…
A flight-based study brings the first minutes of lean-burn contrails into sharper view.
A white plume at cruising altitude becomes a close-up study of how aviation shapes the atmosphere. This episode follows scientists measuring the earliest moments of contrail formation around an aircraft, linking soot, ice crystals and cloud formation to the climate effects of…
A sharp look at bird flu vaccine hopes, plus muons and carbon offsets.
Nature Podcast gives its attention to a flu vaccine aimed at broad protection across H5 avian influenza variants. The case for that effort is laid out clearly: some H5 viruses have become highly contagious, hit farmed and wild birds hard, spilled into mammals, and been tied to…
A measured tour through the numbers behind rising autism diagnoses.
Nature's Long Read follows the rise in autism diagnoses and the dispute over what the numbers mean, moving from the HHS Secretary's April press conference to the research methods used to count autism.
A brisk, broad Nature Podcast episode that moves from internet images to exoplanets, Nobels, and the show's 20th anniversary.
The Nature Podcast episode works best when it starts with stereotypes in internet images and keeps the tone plainspoken and direct. From there, it shifts into exoplanets, with a clear stop at Proxima Centauri and the first planets found there, then widens to the 2025 Nobel…
A solid science hour that balances a tyrannosaur debate, a breast cancer prevention trial, and a short animal-inspired device note.
The episode follows a long-running tyrannosaur dispute, asking whether Nanotyrannus was a juvenile T. rex or a separate species. It is at its strongest when it leans on the new limb-bone analysis, the size comparison, and Lawrence Whitmer's commentary, which keep the fossil…
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Tracy Wilson and Holly Frey narrate overlooked history, from Courbet's realism to IUD regulation.
Mike Duncan narrates Rome's full history solo, from Aeneas to Romulus Augustulus's exile in 476.
Nature Podcast's Long Read episode examines what is actually behind the rise in autism diagnoses — presenting the scientific consensus that the increase is predominantly driven by broadened diagnostic criteria, increased awareness, and better identification rather than a true epidemic of the underlying condition — in direct contrast to HHS Secretary RFK Jr.'s claim of an environmental toxin epidemic, a framing that researchers say ignores decades of genetics and population science and risks directing the new $50 million NIH Autism Data Science Initiative toward predetermined, unscientific conclusions.
This episode explores the science behind achieving better sleep, focusing on circadian rhythms, light exposure, meal timing, and consistent sleep schedules.
This episode covers the first confirmed detection of a coronal mass ejection from a distant star, using radio data from the LOFAR telescope, and discusses its implications for exoplanet habitability.
This episode explores a study attributing heatwaves to emissions from major fossil fuel companies, discussing legal accountability and climate science.
Nature Podcast examines a major study showing that internet images — scraped from Google searches, Wikipedia, and IMDb — contain systematic gender and age stereotypes that not only reflect but actively reinforce societal biases about who belongs in which roles.
Science journalist Lizzie Wade discusses her book Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures with Nature Podcast host Benjamin, arguing that the defining feature of historical catastrophes is not the death toll but the radical transformation they force on surviving societies.
This episode of Nature Podcast marks the 10th anniversary of the first direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO facilities in the United States, an event that confirmed a prediction Einstein made in 1916.
This episode explores how the tick-borne encephalitis virus enters the brain via the LRP8 receptor, offering potential treatment insights, and discusses Nature's AI analysis of U.S.
This episode covers a breakthrough in avian influenza vaccine research, where scientists designed a single vaccine offering broad protection against multiple H5 variants, tested successfully in ferrets.
This episode explores the debate over whether Nanotyrannus is a juvenile T-Rex or a separate species, featuring new fossil evidence.
Nature Podcast journalist Benjamin interviews Yoshua Bengio, one of the acknowledged founding figures of modern AI and chair of an international AI safety advisory panel, about his shift from research to safety advocacy and his views on the three main categories of AI risk identified in the International AI Safety Report he co-authored.
The Nature Podcast covers Delphi2M, a new AI system from Moritz Gerstung at the German Cancer Research Center that predicts a person's simultaneous risk of developing over 1,000 different diseases by analyzing their complete health record.
This episode explores how ancient viral DNA sequences in the human genome regulate embryo development, using CRISPR and blastoid models to reveal their role in controlling primate-specific genes.
This episode explores how hunger and hormones interact in mouse brains to trigger aggressive behavior toward pups, revealing neural integration mechanisms.
This episode explores how bowhead whales live over 200 years, focusing on a protein that enhances DNA repair and reduces cancer risk, with implications for human aging.
This episode covers the Artemis 2 mission's lunar flyby and the role of science at Mission Control.
The episode discusses a potential new treatment for retinoblastoma using eye drops derived from pig semen exosomes, along with updates on the Artemis 2 moon mission.
The episode covers the launch of NASA's Artemis 2 mission, which will take a crew of four around the moon, with analysis from a space journalist.
This episode discusses the formation and climate impact of contrails from aircraft, and a new study on lean burn engines.
An investigation into data manipulation in diet research papers from Brian Wansink's lab, uncovered by volunteer data sleuths.
Nature Podcast examines Iberian harvester ant queens that produce Messa structa males, a separate species that diverged five or six million years ago.
Adrian Owen's 2005 experiment asked an unresponsive 23-year-old woman to imagine playing tennis, and her brain's movement areas lit up on the scan.
This episode discusses a soft brain implant that grows with an amphibian embryo, enabling stable neural recording during development.
This episode discusses a team of researchers aiming to transport antimatter particles from CERN to other facilities for further study.
This episode discusses a study on global variations in professorship paths, how cancer cells use mitochondria to evade destruction, and the impact of the Gaza war on science.
This episode covers a computational method for making anti-venoms and news about Earth's temperature breaching a climate threshold.
The hosts discuss a major retraction of a hydroxychloroquine paper and its implications for scientific publishing.