New Scientist Podcasts New Scientist

#247
What does India’s election season mean for climate change? Last year India overtook the European Union as the third largest annual emitter of greenhouse gases. And as voters head to the polls in the middle of an intense heat wave, it’s critical whichever party wins continues to push towards the goal of net zero emissions by 2070. But as the country continues to invest in expanding coal power, is that target achievable?
Animals of all kinds communicate in so many different ways, but what are they saying to each other? Arik Kershenbaum is the author of Why Animals Talk, and has been studying everything from wolves to gibbons in their natural habitats. He explains what he’s learnt about animal communication and shares some of the sounds he’s captured during his travels. Hear the haunting howl of a lone wolf, the crescendo of a gibbon chorus and more.
There’s no such thing as empty space. Quantum theory says where there looks to be nothing, there is always something – namely a soup of particles and antiparticles flickering in and out of existence. And researchers have, for the first time, used these quantum fluctuations to create tiny, self-assembling devices that can manipulate light.
Botanists at Kew Gardens have mapped what’s known as a “tree of life” for over 9500 species of flowering plants. This work gives us the most detailed look at the origins and evolutionary history of these plants to date – and could tell us about their future too.
After 5 months of radio silence, NASA has made contact with its Voyager 1 spacecraft again. We recap the epic story of the Voyager mission, which launched 46 years ago, and find out how engineers managed to fix a spacecraft that’s currently 15 billion miles away in interstellar space.
Hosts Christie Taylor and Rowan Hooper discuss with guests James Dinneen, Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Chen Ly. To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.
Consciousness event: newscientist.com/newyorkmind

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How much faith should we be putting in artificial intelligence? As large language models and generative AI have become increasingly powerful in recent years, their makers are pushing the narrative that AI is a solution to many of the world’s problems.
But Meredith Broussard says we’re not there yet, if we even get there at all. Broussard is the author of More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech. She coined the term “technochauvinism,” which speaks to a pro-technology bias humans often have, where we believe technological solutions are superior to anything else. 
In this episode, she tells New Scientist’s Sophie Bushwick that our trust in AI systems could have devastating consequences.
From discriminatory mortgage-approval algorithms, to the racial biases of facial recognition technology, to the misinformation that appears in chatbots like ChatGPT, Broussard explains why there’s no such thing as trustworthy AI. And she discusses the need for greater education about AI, to help us separate reality from marketing.
To read about subjects like this and much more, visit newscientist.com.

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#246
Our best climate models for helping limit global warming to 1.5oC may have wildly overestimated our chances. To reach this goal, models are relying heavily on geological carbon storage, a technology that removes carbon from the atmosphere and places it underground. But it may not be nearly as effective as models have suggested, making the task of decarbonising much more difficult. Do we need to rethink our approach?
Intel has announced it has constructed the world’s biggest computer modelled on the human brain and nervous system. This neuromorphic computer, called Hala Point, may only be the size of a microwave oven, but its innovative technology could someday run artificial intelligence that’s smarter and more energy efficient.
After a blast of sound from a keyboard shot through her whole body, experimental musician Lola De La Mata was hit with debilitating tinnitus. It was so profound it left her with vertigo, difficulty walking, speech problems and unable to make music. Years later, she is now putting a spotlight on the condition with a new album, Oceans on Azimuth. Hear her story and music from the album in a special feature. Plus, read Clare Wilson’s recent feature about the future of tinnitus and hearing loss.
Do birds dream? They just might. Birds’ vocal cords move in their sleep, as if they’re singing, but don’t actually make a sound. Now researchers have managed to use these vocal movements to synthesise their songs and hear them aloud – with surprising results. Does this prove that birds dream?
Plus: The biggest stellar mass black hole ever found is very close by; fossil hunters uncover the jawbone of an extinct reptile that may have been the biggest ever to swim the oceans; how skin wounds can cause gut problems.
Hosts Timothy Revell and Christie Taylor discuss with guests Madeleine Cuff, Matt Sparkes and Karmela Padavic-Callaghan. To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.

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How do you destroy a black hole? Turns out they're pretty tough cookies.
Kicking off a brand new series of Dead Planets Society, Chelsea Whyte and Leah Crane take on the universe's most powerful adversaries. With the help of their cosmic toolbelt and black hole astronomer Allison Kirkpatrick at the University of Kansas, they test all the destructive ideas they can think of.
Whether it’s throwing masses of TNT at it, blasting it with a t-shirt gun full of white holes, loading it up with a multiverse worth of matter, or sending it back in time – they try everything to kill a black hole. Will they succeed?
Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a hole in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt to destroying the sun – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.
Your hosts are Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte.
If you have a cosmic object you’d like to figure out how to destroy, email the team at deadplanets@newscientist.com. It may just feature in a later episode…

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#245
The multiverse may be bigger than we thought. The idea that we exist in just one of a massive collection of alternate universes has really captured the public imagination in the last decade. But now Hugh Everett’s 60-year-old “many worlds interpretation”, based on quantum mechanics, has been upgraded.
The northern white rhino is on the brink of extinction but we may be able to save it. Scientists plan to use frozen genes from 12 now dead rhinos to rebuild the entire subspecies. But how do you turn skin cells into actual rhinos and will it work?
A single-celled alga has done something thought to have happened just three times in the entire history of life on Earth. Braarudosphaera bigelowii has formed a unique bond with a bacterium living inside it and has developed a new cellular structure. This organelle may be why this alga became so successful and widespread.
We’ve got a new way of looking for aliens without having to go planet hopping. The method involves scouting the universe for planets that are close together and look similar to each other – hinting that an advanced civilisation may have colonised them.
We’ve had the orbits of the planets turned into music, we’ve heard the sonification of data and even heard what a black hole sounds like. This time, it’s the turn of mushrooms. Musician and artist Brian D’Souza has used a process called biosonification to produce musical tones from Shiitake and Reishi mushrooms. Learn more about Brian D’Souza here. And get details of his live performance on April 19th here.
Plus, we mark the passing this week of Peter Higgs, who first proposed the existence of the Higgs boson and later won the Nobel Prize for his efforts.
Hosts Timothy Revell and Rowan Hooper discuss with guests Karmela Padavic-Callaghan, Michael Le Page and Corryn Wetzel. To read more about these stories, visit newscientist.com.

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Half of the human population undergoes the menstrual cycle for a significant proportion of their lifetimes, yet periods remain a taboo topic in public and private life. And that makes it harder both to prioritise necessary scientific research into conditions like endometriosis and for people to understand the basics of how their bodies work.
Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation is gynaecologist Jen Gunter’s latest book. In this practical guide, she dispels social, historical and medical myths about menstruation and offers answers to your biggest period-related questions – including why we menstruate in the first place, when a missed period is a health concern and “how heavy is too heavy?”
In this episode, Christie Taylor speaks to Gunter about how humans are part of an exclusive club of menstruators in the animal kingdom, the persisting social stigma around menstruation and menopause, and why these processes remain under-researched in science despite their vast importance. Plus, a call from Gunter to take seriously the very individual and sometimes painful experiences people may have with their periods, while also creating more access to menstrual care.  
To read about subjects like this and much more, visit newscientist.com.

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