Best Pandemic Pulse Podcasts (2025)

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Vera C. Rubin Observatory first images 37:48

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19m ago37:48

37:48

A spectacular new 10-year telescopic survey of the universe gets underway in Chile. Also, a project to create human chromosomes completely synthetically. Almost three decades ago Tony Tyson (now of UC Davis) and colleagues were standing in the control room of the world’s biggest (at the time) digital astronomical camera. It was 3am when he suggeste…

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Half a universe once lost now found 41:41

7d ago41:41

41:41

The universe is thought to consist of 70% Dark Energy, 25% Dark Matter, and just 5% Baryonic matter which is the atoms that make up you and me. At least, that’s what the models suggest. But a well-kept secret between astronomers and cosmologists for all these years has been that they have not actually ever seen almost half of that 5% normal matter …

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The first solar polar pictures 34:56

14d ago34:56

34:56

ESA’s Solar Orbiter camera probe begins raising its orbit towards the sun’s poles, whilst Betelgeuse’s elusive buddy continues to sneak past our best telescopes. Earlier this year, Solar Orbiter started to stretch its orbit over greater latitudes – effectively standing on cosmic tiptoes to catch a glimpse of the Sun’s poles. This week, we have seen…

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Potential fungal 'Agroterror'? 44:17

21d ago44:17

44:17

What is Fusarium graminearum and why were scientists allegedly smuggling it into the US? Also, Alpine Glacier collapse and an HIV capitulation. The FBI has accused two Chinese scientists of trying to smuggle a dangerous crop fungus into the US, calling it a potential agro-terrorist threat. But the fungus has long been widespread across US farms, an…

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Thirteen months to a chip off the moon 35:53

28d ago35:53

35:53

China is aiming to join the small club of nations who have successfully returned scientific samples of asteroids for analysis on earth, teaching us more about how our and potentially other solar systems formed. Tianwen-2 launched successfully this week, bound for an asteroid known as Kamo‘oalewa, which sits in a very strange orbit of both the earth…

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WHO Pandemic Agreement reached 40:18

1M ago40:18

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This week, 124 countries agreed at the World Health Assembly in Geneva on measures aimed at preventing a future pandemic. The agreement very strongly favours a “One Health” approach, appreciating how so many potential pathogens originate in human-animal interactions. Still to agree on the terms of how to share pathogens and information with global …

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Vaccinating rabies’ reservoir dogs 38:45

1M ago38:45

38:45

In 2015, the World Health Organisation set the goal of eradicating rabies deaths from dog-bites to “Zero by 2030”. A team at the University of Glasgow and colleagues in Tanzania have been assessing the efficacy of dog vaccination schemes for reducing the numbers of human infections over the last 20 years. As Prof Katie Hampson tells Science in Acti…

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Gain-of-Function: Loss-of-Funding 26:30

2M ago26:30

26:30

This week, the White House posted an executive order which details the administration’s intent to stop ‘dangerous gain-of-function research’. We talk to Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and biosecurity expert at Johns Hopkins University who fears the timing and added bureaucracy could stop all sorts of important biosciences unnecessarily, and that th…

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Scientists of the world unite 29:25

2M ago29:25

29:25

Scientists from around the world have gathered together at the annual European Geosciences Union general assembly, to discuss current projects, working hypotheses and potential findings. There are nearly 18,000 in attendance this year and there is much to learn. AMOC – the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation - brings warmth to the north and…

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Wet market SARS CoV-2 origins revisited 35:17

2M ago35:17

35:17

Last week, the website covid.gov looked very different, containing information on coping with covid and US research. This week it leads you to a White House webpage outlining the lab-leak hypothesis – that the pandemic was the result of dodgy lab work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The scientific consensus however continues to suggest a zoonot…

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Any more for Moore’s Law? 29:07

2M ago29:07

29:07

After 60 years of doubling computer complexity every two years, can Moore’s law still predict the future power of the devices we use? In 1965, electronics pioneer Gordon Moore was asked to predict the next ten years of progress with the then new-fangled silicon integrated circuits. He estimated, based on physics and manufacturing technologies then …

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Researching pain, painlessly 43:03

3M ago43:03

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Pain, particularly chronic pain, is hard to research. New therapeutics are hard to screen for. Patients are not all the same. Sergui Pascu and colleagues at Stanford university have been growing brain samples from stem cells. Then they began connecting different samples, specialised to represent different brain regions. This week they announce thei…

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Transforming for impact: Lessons from Dress for Success 17:30

3M ago17:30

17:30

Text us your thoughts on this episode In this episode, Kelly Pedersen, PwC's global retail leader, speaks with Michele C. Meyer-Shipp, CEO of Dress for Success, about the transformation journey of Dress for Success, a global nonprofit., The conversation highlights key lessons for leaders aiming to navigate organizational change. With growth can com…

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Earthquakes and the first breath of life on Earth 31:37

3M ago31:37

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How Myanmar’s tragic earthquake left a 500km scar on the surface of the earth in just 90 seconds. Also, more hints of a link between shingles vaccines and reduced dementia, and how earth’s first oxygen breathers seem to have evolved way before there was enough oxygen to breath. Judith Hubbard is a seismologist and earthquake analyst who has been gl…

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Breakthrough antivirals and fresh US grant cancellations 28:35

3M ago28:35

28:35

This week, after five years of research, two newly discovered antiviral molecules have been shown to combat coronaviruses. Johan Neyts of the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Leuven outlines how he hopes the new molecule developed by his team might help us deal with emerging pandemics in the future. But as the US halts all Covid related resea…

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Columbia cuts and "transgender mice" 28:42

3M ago28:42

28:42

There is continued upheaval in US scientific institutions under the new Trump administration. This week $400 million dollars-worth of grants have been frozen at Columbia University in response to “illegal” protests on the campus. President Trump also recently accused the Biden Administration of spending $8 million dollars on "transgender mice" expe…

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New warnings, familiar faces, and radio pulses 44:56

4M ago44:56

44:56

Five years after the WHO pandemic announcement, an H5N1 call to arms from global health leaders. Also, the oldest western European face is found, the oldest impact crater possibly identified, and strange radio signals from space maybe explained. Presenter: Roland PeaseProducer: Alex MansfieldProduction Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: U…

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An uncertain forecast for meteorology 44:19

4M ago44:19

44:19

As the new administration in the US continues to make cuts to government agencies and scientific funding, NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been particularly trimmed. This week the professional organisation for weather forecasters – the American Meteorological Society has published a statement pleading for clemency, arg…

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Asteroid 2024 YR4 crisis averted? 36:30

4M ago36:30

36:30

Just two weeks ago the world learned of an asteroid that had an almost 3% chance of striking earth in less than a decade. Astronomers kept looking, and a team including Olivier Hainaut at ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Palanar, in Chile, have managed to narrow down the uncertainty such that we now know it will definitely not hit the earth. The secre…

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Who runs science? 36:28

4M ago36:28

36:28

The Lancet this week features a paper calling for a financially sustainable network of influenza labs and experts across Europe. Marion Koopmans was one of the 32 expert signatures, and she describes how Europe needs to learn some lessons from the model developed previously in the US. The ongoing worries around avian H5N1 would be a great example o…

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High confidence, high stakes: Meeting market demands with the right team 21:58

4M ago21:58

21:58

Text us your thoughts on this episode In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies are facing a combination of tech disruption, shifting workforce dynamics and evolving customer expectations. From keeping up with market-speed execution to building resilient talent pipelines and fostering organizational agility, leaders are navigating a com…

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Hits from space 36:47

4M ago36:47

36:47

This week the recently spotted asteroid 2024 YR4 had its odds of missing us “spectacularly” slashed by 1 percentage point. Still nothing to worry about maintains Patrick Michel of the International Asteroid Warning Network, and he expects that with better tracking data in the next few months (even courtesy of the JWST) that tiny chance of collision…

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Earthquakes swarms and whale chart toppers 32:35

5M ago32:35

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The mystery swarm of small earthquakes near the island of Santorini beg for more data collection. Also, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US goes offline and whales learn song like kids learn language. Presenter: Roland PeaseProducer: Alex MansfieldProduction co-ordinator: Josie Hardy (Photo: Greece earthquake. Credi…

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Make science great again 40:41

5M ago40:41

40:41

Nasa's OSIRIS-REx mission to collect a sample from an asteroid has been a great success. Asteroid Bennu's sample yields a watery pool of history, thanks to an international team of scientists including the London Natural History Museum's Sarah Russell. Also, in a week of tumultuous changes to federal funding and programmes, we hear from some US sci…

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Arctic carbon starting to flip 26:29

5M ago26:29

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Thirty per cent of the Arctic is switching from carbon sink to carbon source. But could future fertilizer be made deep underground using less resources? Also, how and perhaps why globally 2024 had the highest number of fatal landslides in over 20 years, and an unexpected sound from space prompts a re-evaluation of how the earth’s magnetic field int…

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AI antivenoms and vegetarian hominids 34:55

5M ago34:55

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New types of snake-bite anti-venoms are designed by AI. Also, how much meat did human ancestors eat? How the Baltic Nord Stream gas pipeline rupture of 2022 was the biggest single release of methane ever caused by humans, and that Pluto met Charon, not with a bang, but more of a kiss. Using a high precision technique for spotting different isotopes…

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The road ahead: Business strategies for the new administration 39:25

5M ago39:25

39:25

Text us your thoughts on this episode Join PwC to explore what’s top of mind for the C-suite following the recent US election and key actions to foster agility and seize opportunities in 2025 under a new administration. As we move into a new administration led by President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican Congress, business leaders are focused o…

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First US avian flu fatality 30:09

6M ago30:09

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H5N1 bird flu is still spreading across farms in the USA and this week claimed its first human life in North America - an elderly patient in Louisiana infected by backyard poultry. But last week, Sonja Olsen, Associate Director for Preparedness and Response in the CDC’s flu division, and her colleague Shikha Garg, published new analysis in the New …

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Five years of Covid: Part two 27:57

6M ago27:57

27:57

Sars CoV-2 has been with us for five years. In the second of a 2-part special, Science in Action asks how well was science prepared for it? And are we any better prepared for the next one? Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield, with Debbie Kilbride Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth…

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Five years of Covid: Part one 28:25

6M ago28:25

28:25

Sars CoV-2 has been with us for five years. In the first of a two-part special, Science in Action asks how well was science prepared for it? And are we any better prepared for the next one? Presenter: Roland PeaseProducer: Alex Mansfield, with Debbie KilbrideProduction co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth…

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Sun Grazing 26:43

6M ago26:43

26:43

New insights into how our skin learns to tolerate and co-exist with bacteria on its surface show great potential for the development of simpler and less invasive vaccines. Stanford University’s Djenet Bousbaine has published two papers in Nature detailing the microbiological research and mouse vaccination experiments that could change the future of…

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Warming oceans kill millions of birds 33:56

7M ago33:56

33:56

Heatwaves in the pacific ocean have had a devastating effect on seabird populations in the north eastern US. Julia Parrish and colleagues publish this week 4 million deaths of Alaskan common murres attributable to rising water temperatures during 2014-16, representing half the population. One idea is that the fish on which the birds feed swim at de…

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Bovine H5N1 gets a sniff of humans 33:54

7M ago33:54

33:54

Scientists have found that just one mutation in the current H5N1 virus in cattle can switch its preference from avian to human receptors. Jim Paulson and colleagues at the Scripps Institute did not use the whole virus to investigate this, but proteins from one of the Texas farm workers found to be infected. It suggests the bovine H5N1 virus has alr…

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Fifty years of Charm 39:27

7M ago39:27

39:27

November 1974 became known as the “November Revolution” in particle physics. Two teams on either side of the US discovered the same particle - the “J/psi” meson. On the "J" team, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Sau Lan Wu and colleagues were smashing protons and neutrons together and looking for electrons and positron pairs in the debris. Ov…

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Faster, wetter, worse tropical storms 34:22

7M ago34:22

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It is hard not to have noticed the intensity of storms around the world this year, not least the Atlantic storms that battered the eastern US. A new study, using a new technique, confirms their attribution to climate change, and goes further, finding that many of them were actually raised in intensity category compared to how strong they might have…

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Drastic plastic reductions 31:47

8M ago31:47

31:47

Before December, the United Nations aims to have a global treaty in place covering efforts to limit global plastic production and pollution. In a paper in the journal Science, a team of scientists have used machine learning to estimate what happens by 2050 if we do nothing. But they have also found that the problem is solvable, with the right polit…

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New ways to study coronaviruses 29:10

8M ago29:10

29:10

Many coronaviruses exist in nature that we don’t know much about. We don’t even know how and whether most of them might bind to human cells. Research published in Nature, by scientists at Wuhan and Washington Universities, describes a new way of designing novel receptor sites on cell cultures so that many types of coronavirus may now be cultured an…

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Global warming strikes again 33:55

8M ago33:55

33:55

This week at least 150 people have been killed due to devastating flash flooding sweeping through areas of Valencia in Spain. Ana Camarasa Belmonte, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Valencia, has been studying the flood patterns and hydrology of the area for years. Even she was astounded by the magnitude of the inundation. And, …

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Betelbuddy and Silk Road Cities 35:44

8M ago35:44

35:44

Betelgeuse, one of the brightest and most famous stars in the northern night sky, has varied in brightness with an elusive pattern ever since observations began. Many theories exist as to why it ebbs and flows with apparently two distinct rhythms – one shorter and another around 2000 days long. But just recently two independent astronomical teams h…

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Marvels of life and death 36:02

8M ago36:02

36:02

The “dewilding” effects of fish farming and mariculture are in the spotlight this week. Farmed fish can impact marine ecosystems in several ways, and surprisingly one of those is the effect it has on consumer perceptions of the impact of eating farmed fish, as researchers Becca Franks of NYU and Laurie Sellars at Yale suggest. Meanwhile, Manu Prake…

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Nobel convergence 38:04

9M ago38:04

38:04

In the week the Nobel prizes for science are announced, Roland Pease takes a look at the stories behind the breakthroughs being recognized, and the themes that connect them. From the discovery of the tiny fragments of RNA that regulate our cells’ behaviour, via computer structures that resemble our brains, and harnessing those sorts of computers to…

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Excesses of rain 34:16

9M ago34:16

34:16

As we were putting the finishing touches to last week’s Science in Action, the US National Weather Service was warning of Hurricane Helene’s fast approach to the Florida coast – alerting people to ‘unsurvivable’ storm surges of up to 6 metres. But the category 4 storm powered, as forecast, far past the coast and into the rugged interior of Tennesse…

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Historic weather extremes revealed using tree-rings 26:49

9M ago26:49

26:49

Valerie Trouet of the University of Arizona tells us how tree-ring data has been used to show how the jet stream has shaped extreme weather in Europe for centuries, influencing harvests, wildfires and epidemics. Monash University’s Andy Tomkins discusses how, around 460 million years ago, the Earth was briefly encircled by a ring of dust – like Sat…

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Flash floods in the Sahara 26:54

9M ago26:54

26:54

The Sahara Desert has been experiencing unusually heavy rainfall due to an extratropical cyclone, causing flash floods in Morocco. We hear from Moshe Armon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A 485-million-year temperature record of Earth reveals Phanerozoic climate variability. Brian Huber of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History i…

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A landslide-induced megatsunami in Greenland 29:28

10M ago29:28

29:28

Nearly a year ago, the top of a mountain on the Greenland coast broke off and slid a thousand metres down into the Dickson Fjord. The impact created a tsunami that started two-hundred-metres-high and sloshed between the cliffs for nine days, producing a global seismic signal. But it was so remote, only now are the details becoming clear. We hear fr…

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Concerning viruses found in fur farmed animals 30:44

10M ago30:44

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A Chinese survey of diseased animals farmed for their fur – such as mink, foxes and raccoon dogs - has revealed high levels of concerning viruses, including coronaviruses and flu viruses, many of which appear to jump easily from species to species. John Pettersson of Uppsala University discusses the threat to us humans. We learnt early on in the Co…

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Wow! A mystery signal solved 29:01

10M ago29:01

29:01

In 1977 astronomers recorded a brief and strange radio transmission that looked like it perhaps had even come from an alien civilization. It was named the Wow! signal – because that’s what astronomer Jerry Ehman wrote on the computer printout upon its discovery. But now a team including Abel Méndez of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo have c…

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Fisheries mismanagement uncovered 29:18

10M ago29:18

29:18

Fishery assessment models – the “backbone” of fisheries management – overestimate the sustainability of the world’s fisheries, according to a study of 230 fisheries worldwide, and populations of many overfished species are in far worse condition than has been reported. We hear from Rainer Froese of GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.…

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The spread of rabies into Cape fur seals 30:21

11M ago30:21

30:21

In June this year there was the first detected occurrence of rabies in Cape fur seals, discovered after a rabies case in a dog that had been bitten by a seal. Professor Wanda Markotter, Director of the Centre for Viral Zoonoses at University of Pretoria, has been trying to work out how the virus spread into seals and how to keep people (and their p…

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Building supply chain resiliency in an uncertain world 23:30

11M ago23:30

23:30

Text us your thoughts on this episode In this episode, Dinkar Saran, Pharma and Life Sciences Operations Partner at PwC, and Jim Cafone, SVP of Global Supply Chain at Pfizer, dive into operations transformation and its critical role in building resilient and sustainable supply chains, revenue growth and differentiation in an ever-changing world. Th…