Naked Scientists Special Editions

Special Editions

Probing the weird, wacky and spectacular, the Naked Scientists Special Editions are special one-off scientific reports, investigations and interviews on cutting-edge topics by the Naked Scientists team.
English United Kingdom Science
960 Episodes
1 – 20

Making waves about coastline conservation, and plastic waste

This month the connections that human inhabitants have to the coast, why we're still in the middle of a worsening extinction crisis despite international laws and treaties designed to protect nature, the promise of pharmacogenomics and personalised medicine, the plastic pollution problem and how to tackle it, and why water…
14 Feb 35 min

Recycled plastics pollute food, and the value of water

Better awareness of the precious resource that is water, getting a grip on coastal ecosystems and the impact of pollution, why recycled plastics are a threat for food packaging and kitchen utensils, how we can help humans to step up in extreme environments, and the opportunity offered by "lived experience"…
10 Nov 2023 37 min

Wildlife Trade Extinctions and 21st Century Psychology

This time we hear how many species are being driven to extinction by human trade, why clinical psychology needs an update for the 21st Century, how non-specialists can help to plug the gap in mental health services, what art can do for science and conservation of coastal habitats, and the…
20 Oct 2023 37 min

Surviving a fusion bomb

Ken Mcginley was there during some of the first tests of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s. We were lucky enough to hear his story... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
10 Aug 2023 7 min

Does our language affect our decision making?

There are many factors that might affect the way we make decisions: our age, our past experiences, even our mood that day. But now, a new study has suggested that the language we speak also plays a part in our willingness to wait for a reward. Researchers gave the choice…
22 Feb 2023 6 min

Microbial life deep underground

Comparatively, we know an awful lot about life on the surface of planet earth. We know a lot less about the extent of life in our oceans, and we know even less about the life festering deep beneath us, in the rocks underground. Scientists estimate that 20% of the earth's…
5 Feb 2023 5 min

How the pandemic affected child development

Babies born during the Covid-19 lockdowns are behind on their language development. That's the finding of a recent study comparing infants born during the pandemic with similar children born in previous years. The reason, as the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland's Susan Byrne explains to Risa Bagwandin, is that social…
20 Oct 2022 4 min

New Ultrasound Technique for Breast Imaging

A new non invasive technique to pick up breast cancer has been unveiled by UK scientists. Breast cancer is the most diagnosed form cancer in the UK. Dense breast tissue, particularly common in young women, is difficult to image using existing techniques. Now scientists at the National Physical Laboratory have…
30 Sep 2022 3 min

Search and rescue rats

Apopo is a charity that trains African giant pouched rats for humanitarian purposes, with a view to combating some of the challenges faced by countries in the developing world. Originally, they trained these much shunned rodents to sniff out unexploded landmines left over from wars in countries like Mozambique. More…
15 Jun 2022 5 min

Search and rescue rats

Apopo is a charity that trains African giant pouched rats for humanitarian purposes, with a view to combating some of the challenges faced by countries in the developing world. Originally, they trained these much shunned rodents to sniff out unexploded landmines left over from wars in countries like Mozambique. More…
15 Jun 2022 5 min

TV is influencing careers

Did you end up in your dream job? Or did you end up pursuing a career quite intensely for some reason that eludes you? Perhaps the media representation of your profession had a part to play. Shrikanth Narayanan and colleagues from the University of Southern California created a dataset to…
6 Jun 2022 5 min

FIFA Fall Out with EA

There's news of a huge rift in the world of video games... EA Sports, who made the first ever FIFA football game in 1993, have announced that they will no longer be licensing the FIFA name. Chris Berrow, from the Naked Gaming Podcast, has been finding out why and what…
16 May 2022 3 min

Did the lockdown make us more creative?

Now, I want you to cast your mind back to that first lockdown (if you can bear it) and to think about the ways you chose to fill all that new found free time. Perhaps, like the participants of a survey conducted by the Paris Brain Institute to learn more…
16 May 2022 5 min

Dog and Dingo DNA sequences

Dingoes are native Australian dogs, although how and when they got to Australia isn't known. They were certainly already there by the time the first western explorers visited the continent, but fossil dingo remains go back only a few thousand years. So what is the relationship between dogs and dingoes,…
29 Apr 2022 7 min

Coffee without the coffee beans

Coffee prices are on the rise and the plant is said to decline by 60% before 2050, meaning new coffee alternatives are being considered in order to give us that caffeine hit. Harry Lewis speaks to Charlie Shaw from Atomo coffee to find out how they've been making our favourite…
27 Apr 2022 4 min

Recreating smells from the past

If I asked you to give up one of your five senses, which one would you choose? Chances are, instead of giving up your ability to see or hear, your sense of smell would be in pole position for the chop. Scientists in Germany think we're under appreciative of smell…
7 Apr 2022 6 min

A new method for recycling plastics

The world has a huge problem with plastics. While they are a materials scientist's dream in terms of their properties, they are an environmentalist's worst nightmare, because they don't break down naturally and are very hard to recycle. But Athina Anastasaki, from ETH Zurich, has set herself the goal of…
4 Apr 2022 5 min

Data storage in DNA

Researchers have been studying DNA as a method to store binary data. As data generation continues to increase in the information age, we need new methods to store it. DNA is extremely robust and can store data 100 times more densely compared to a computer hard drive. In order to…
23 Mar 2022 5 min

Solving puzzles to help cancer research

Playing games may be something you do in your spare time or in the queue at the supermarket, but striving for that elusive high score can also now contribute to science! Julia Ravey grabbed her mobile and caught up with Marc Marti-Renom; he's part of a team at the Centre…
23 Mar 2022 6 min

Pig grunts indicate their emotions

There are over 7,000 documented languages in the world to date, and now we might have another to add to the list: the one spoken by pigs. No, this is not an April Fool come early. Elodie Mandel-Briefer, from the University of Copenhagen, has assembled a vast dataset of pig…
17 Mar 2022 6 min
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