Naked Scientists Special Editions Podcast

The origins of life on earth has been a mystery since, well since life began. Researchers from Germany this week have found a crucial link in explaining how we got from the soup of chemicals on early earth to the very first cell, lending support to the so called RNA world theory. Lead researcher Professor Thomas Carell spoke to Emma Sackville about what RNA theory is and how their research supports it... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Could limbs have evolved from fish gills? While it might sound fishy, scientists from the University of Cambridge have discovered that the same genetic programme, triggered by a gene called Sonic Hedgehog, is involved in the development of limbs, fins and gills. The idea that the formation of gills and legs might be linked is actually not a new one and was first proposed more than a century ago based on the similarities in appearances of the two structures, but scientists abandoned the notion as fanciful thinking. Connie Orbach went to see researcher Andrew Gillis, who has discovered that the... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

In Archaeology is it better to keep an object in the ground or dig it up? Connie Orbach spoke to curators of the Fitzwilliam Museum's Death On The Nile exhibition Helen Strudwick and Julie Dawson and physicist Nishad Karim to find out how techniques from physics are allowing us to visualise objects without damaging them... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Humans are awesomely clever, right? We've colonised the world, manipulated our environment, developed incredible technology and can even make brilliant science radio shows like this one. And it's all thanks to the squishy grey stuff in our skulls - our brains. It's often said that humans have unusually big brains, which explains our exceptional intelligence, but it turns out that may not strictly be true. Kat Arney looks at the popular myth that a bigger brain means a higher level of intelligence... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

We might have sexually transmitted infections to thank for our modern-day monogamous society, according to a new study from Canada this week. Between ten and fifteen thousand years ago, as agriculture was established and humans swapped a hunter gatherer lifestyle for life in larger group settlements, our ancestors also appear to have embraced monogamy - having a single partner, rather than multiple wives. Mathematician Chris Bauch has designed a computer simulation that suggests that, as populations increase in size, the threat of sexual disease drives the switch to monogamy, and the desire to... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

The drug LSD, or lysergic acid diethylamide, was first made in the 1930s in Switzerland by chemist Albert Hoffman, who also tried the agent on himself and described his psychedelic experience. LSD was widely used until the 1960s when it was made illegal, so very little research has actually been done using modern neuroscience techniques to look at how LSD affects the brain and how it might be useful therapeutically. Until now, that is. Imperial College's Robin Carhart-Harris has been administering the drug to volunteers, as he explained to Chris Smith... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Without satellites operating above us, we would be in considerable trouble; even ATM machines don't work without them! So this week, Graihagh Jackson has been at the Royal Academy of Engineering, where leaders in satellite and space technology have been meeting to discuss what's up there Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This week, we've had a first glimpse at the wealth of data sent back by the New Horizons probe, which reached Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, last summer. Open University space scientist David Rothery has been taking a look at the papers charting some of the discoveries, which were unveiled this week in the journal Science, and he went through the findings with Chris Smith... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Strokes are a major cause of permanent disability and they affect millions of people every year. The cause is usually a lack of blood flow to one part of the brain, which destroys the affected brain area and robs the victim of the ability to perform whatever tasks that brain area used to process. But an electrical current applied to the head for a short time, even years after a stroke, appears to open up new circuits in the brain, restoring some of the lost abilities, as Oxford University's Heidi Johansen-Berg explained to Chris Smith... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

ExoMars 2016 launched successfully last week, but why are we going back to the red planet? This mission aims to seek out methane, which could be a crucial clue to whether there is life on Mars. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

It is that time of year again when we should start to see bees buzzing around gardens but populations of bees have been declining recently as disease and lack of food stores are hitting them hard. With a third of global food supply coming from crop species that are to some extent dependent on bees it's important that we halt this decline. Felicity Bedford went to Cambridge University's King's College to meet Kristen Treen, who looks after the honeybees there, and see how their beehives have been getting on this winter Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Back in the 1960s, US researcher Stanley Milgram stunned the world with a study showing that members of the public were prepared to inflict potentially lethal electric shocks on supposedly innocent volunteers, if a lab-coated scientist ordered them to do so. In fact the recipients of the shocks were actually actors, who escaped unharmed. Milgram's experiments raised many ethical questions - not least about whether it was right to do them at all - and Patrick Haggard from UCL is now trying to find out to what extent people feel a sense of responsibility or control when they're ordered to do... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Results that scientists are describing as "unprecedented" in the treatment of cancer have been announced at a conference this week. A team led by Stanley Riddell, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in the US, have developed a method to reprogramme the immune system to selectively target cancer cells. This means that, unlike traditional chemotherapy, which can't tell healthy and tumour tissue apart - and this is what causes unpleasant side effects - the immune system acts with surgical precision, selectively weeding out rogue cancer cells while leaving healthy tissue... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Many people make the assumption that climate change means that places will become warmer; and indeed some will. But more important in some ways is how the climate in a particular geography might become more variable. Because, if the temperatures, cloud cover and rainfall become less predictable and operate over a greater range than they have historically, this could affect how the ecosystems - the web of plant and animal life - in those areas can operate. And this week scientists took the first steps towards studying whether this is a real risk and highlighting those areas we need to worry... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

American band They Might be Giants, famous for charting singles 'Birdhouse in your Soul' and 'Istanbul', have also made an album all about science. It's called 'Here Comes Science', and aims to teach children about things like biology and physics, featuring songs like 'My Brother the Ape' and 'I Am a Paleontologist'. The band dropped by Cambridge as part of a tour promoting their new album 'Glean', so Naked Scientist Georgia Mills took the opportunity to speak to founding member John Linnell about songs, science and controversy... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

100 years after Einstein predicted them, scientists have finally discovered gravitational waves. For 25 years, hundreds of scientists across 16 countries have been trying to detect these elusive ripples and yesterday, the LIGO team announced they had finally detected them. Graihagh Jackson went to the announcement and met with the British scientists on the LIGO team... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Last week, the outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil prompted the World Health Organisation to declare a global health emergency. The virus is spreading fast and has been linked to microcephaly, in which children are born with underdeveloped brains. Consultant virologist Tim Wreghitt spoke to Chris Smith about the situation... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This week, a British researcher got the green light to genetically modify human embryos - this is the first time that gene editing has been approved in embryos. However, it hasn't been met with open arms by everyone, with some arguing this is the first step to 'designer babies.' Graihagh Jackson spoke to Geneticist Andrew Wood to find out what exactly gene editing involves... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Sperm whales are renowned for being the biggest toothed whales of our seas, migrating thousands of miles every year. But this week, photos of cetacean carcasses were splashed across the media.16 of these majestic creatures have beached across the UK, the Netherlands and Germany Some arrived alive, some were already dead and there's a lot of speculation as to what caused it to happen Graihagh Jackson's been investigating with the help of marine ecologist Bill Amos Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

Science is full of conspiracy theories, the moon landings were faked and climate change is a hoax, but how many of them are likely to be true? Felicity Bedford spoke to Dr. David Robert Grimes from Oxford University who has given conspiracy theorists the benefit of the doubt and built a mathematical model to test whether, if these conspiracies were real, they would still be a secret... Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists