Science writer and New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer's latest book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe dives into the invisible maelstrom of microbial life swirling in the air around us — examining how it helped shape our world, and the implications that breathing it in can have on human health. Carl joined us to discuss historical efforts to show that diseases could spread large distances through the air, the staunch resistance to this idea, and what the rivalry between these two groups meant for public health.

Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe Carl Zimmer Dutton (2025)

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In this Podcast Extra, we hear the latest on how decisions by the Trump administration are affecting science in the US. Most recently, a purge of National Institutes of Health (NIH) leadership has seen the chiefs of multiple institutes and centres removed from their posts.

Plus, after cancelling nearly all NIH projects studying transgender health, the White House has directed the agency to focus on studying “regret” after a person transitions to align their body with their gender identity.

News: ‘One of the darkest days’: NIH purges agency leadership amid mass layoffs

News: Exclusive: Trump White House directs NIH to study ‘regret’ after transgender people transition

News: Are the Trump team’s actions affecting your research? How to contact Nature

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Researchers have developed a tiny, temporary pacemaker that dissolves when no longer needed, helping to overcome some of the challenges associated with current devices. Temporary pacemakers are often required after heart surgery but implanting them can require invasive procedures. This new device is injectable, requires no external power and is controlled using light shone through the skin. The tiny pacemaker has shown promise in animal and heart models, and the team think it could also be used in other situations where electrical stimulation is needed, like the brain.

Research Article: Zhang et al.

Measurements show that global warming is causing lakes to lose their oxygen, and a massive, 30-year analysis showing that a diet of plant-rich foods is associated with healthy ageing

Research Highlight: Life-giving oxygen is wafting out of lakes worldwide

Research Highlight: The best foods for healthy ageing ― and the worst

A large-scale population study suggests that getting a shingles vaccine reduces the probability of someone getting dementia by around one-fifth. By taking advantage of the way a shingles vaccine was rolled out in Wales, a team were able to compare dementia outcomes in vaccine-eligible people to those born just a few weeks earlier who were ineligible. Although more tests will be needed to confirm this finding and to understand the mechanisms behind it, the team hope that vaccination against this viral infection could represent a cost-effective way to for preventing or delaying dementia.

Research article: Eyting et al.

Data suggests that racial profiling plays a role in whether someone receives a traffic citation or fine, and studies suggest that paying researchers who review manuscripts could speed up the peer-review process, without affecting the quality of reviews.

Ars Technica: Study of Lyft rideshare data confirms minorities get more tickets

Nature: Publishers trial paying peer reviewers — what did they find?

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With money pouring in and an unprecedented level of public attention and excitement, scientists are publishing a steady stream of papers on ways to measure how rapidly a person’s body is declining.

However, there are mixed feelings of enthusiasm and apprehension among researchers about efforts to develop tests that measure the impact of ageing on the body, as they are often interpreted and presented without a full reckoning of the uncertainties that plague them.

This is an audio version of our Feature: How quickly are you ageing? What molecular ‘clocks’ can tell you about your health

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In this episode:

Researchers have identified a new molecule with antibiotic activity against a range of disease-causing bacteria, including those resistant to existing drugs. The new molecule — isolated from soil samples taken from a laboratory technician’s garden — is called lariocidin due to its lasso-shaped structure. The team say that in addition to its potent antibiotic activity, the molecule also shows low toxicity towards human cells, making it a promising molecule in the fight against drug-resistant infections.

Research Article: Jangra et al.

A reduction in ships' sulfur emissions linked to a steep drop in thunderclouds, and the epic sea-voyage that let iguanas reach Fiji.

Research Highlight: Ship-pollution cuts have an electrifying effect: less lightning at sea

Research Highlight: Iguanas reached Fiji by floating 8,000 kilometres across the sea

13:54 Assessing the nuances of humans’ biodiversity impacts

A huge study analysing data from thousands of research articles has shown that the human impacts on biodiversity are large but are in some cases context dependent. The new study reveals that at larger scales, communities of living things are becoming more similar due to human influence, but at the smaller scale they are becoming more different. "These are generally unwanted effects on biodiversity," says study author Florian Altermatt, "this is one more very strong argument that stopping and reducing these pressures to halt and reverse biodiversity declines is needed."

Research article: Keck et al.

How a proposed green-energy facility in Chile could increase light pollution at one of the world’s most powerful telescopes, and how a calving Antarctic iceberg revealed an unseen aquatic ecosystem.

Nature: Light pollution threatens fleet of world-class telescopes in Atacama Desert

Scientific American: Stunning Antarctic Sea Creatures Discovered after Iceberg Breaks Away

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A tiny satellite has enabled quantum-encrypted information to be sent between China and South Africa, the farthest distance yet achieved for quantum communication. Using a laser-based system, a team in the city of Hefei was able to beam a ‘secret key’ encoded in quantum states of photons, to their colleagues over 12,000 km away. This key allowed scrambled messages to be decrypted — including one containing a picture of the Great Wall of China. The team’s system is drastically smaller and cheaper that previous attempts, and they think it represents a big step towards the creation of a global network of secure, quantum communication.

Research Article: Li et al.

News: Mini-satellite paves the way for quantum messaging anywhere on Earth

How storms known as ‘atmospheric rivers’ could replenish Greenland’s ice, and a prosthetic hand that can distinguish objects by touch almost as well as a human.

Research Highlight: Mega-storm dumps 11 billion tonnes of snow ― and builds up a melting ice sheet

Research Highlight: Robotic fingers can tell objects apart by touch

Researchers have created an AI system called TextGrad which can provide written feedback on another AI’s performance. This feedback is interpretable by humans, which could help researchers tweak the incredibly complicated, and sometimes inscrutable models that underpin modern AIs. “Previously optimising machine learning algorithms requires quite a lot of human engineering,” says James Zou, one of the team behind this work, “but with TextGrad, now the AI is able to self-improve to a large extent.”

Research Article: Yuksekgonul et al.

The first two months of Donald Trump’s presidency has seen swingeing cuts to US federal funding for research, particularly to research associated with DEI. We hear the latest on these cuts and their impact from reporter Max Kozlov.

Nature: ‘My career is over’: Columbia University scientists hit hard by Trump team’s cuts

Nature: How the NIH dominates the world’s health research — in charts

Nature: ‘Scientists will not be silenced’: thousands protest Trump research cuts

Nature: Exclusive: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants

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Taking inspiration from industrial forging, researchers have demonstrated a way to squeeze molten metals into atomically-thin layers, creating relatively large flakes of 2D metals. Using a hydraulic press containing two sapphire anvils, a team was able to create sub-nanometer thick sheets of different metals — these sheets had diameters exceeding 0.1 mm, orders of magnitude larger than other methods have achieved. 2D metals have been theorized to possess several useful properties not seen in their larger, 3D counterparts, but have been difficult to make at scale, something this method may help overcome.

Research Article: Zhao et al.

News and Views: Metals squeezed to thickness of just two atoms

The discovery of ancient puppets on remains of a large pyramid offers a glimpse into rituals in Mesoamerica, and how the presence of a certain pattern of sleep brainwaves might help predict which people will recover from an unresponsive state.

Research Highlight: Ancient puppets that smile or scowl hint at shared rituals

Research Highlight: Who’s likely to wake up from a coma? Brainwaves provide a clue

SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has become one of the most closely examined viruses on the planet. In the five years since the pandemic, over 150,000 articles have been written about it, and 17 million genome sequences have been generated. We discuss the lessons virologists have learnt from this intense study of a single organism, and how these might help the world prepare for future pandemics.

News Feature: Four ways COVID changed virology: lessons from the most sequenced virus of all time

How an AI alert-system could help researchers train their telescopes on a neutron star collision, and how expiration dates on plastic food-waste helped biologists age birds’ nests.

Nature: How AI could let us watch epic star collisions in real time

Science: Plastic waste in bird nests can act like a tiny time capsule

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A 1.5-million-year-old cache of animal-bone tools reveals that ancient humans systematically crafted with this material much earlier than previously thought. Researchers uncovered 27 bone artefacts in Tanzania honed into sharp tools almost 40 cm long. This discovery pushes back the dedicated manufacture of bone tools by around a million years and could have helped these early humans develop new kinds of technology. “This raises a lot of interesting questions,” says study author Ignacio de la Torre.

Research Article: de la Torre et al.

Cane toads’ remarkable homing abilities, and evidence that the block of rock that makes up southern Tibet originated in what is now Australia.

Research Highlight: Take me home, country toads

Research Highlight: Lhasa′s rocks reveal an Australian birthplace

To help protect against infection, cells in the body will selectively cut proteins to produce molecules known as antimicrobial peptides, according to new research. A team has found that many potential peptides appear to be locked up within proteins — to get them out, cells shift the activity of a waste-disposal system called the proteasome, known for its role in protein degradation and recycling. In tests, one of these peptides showed efficacy at protecting mice from infection, indicating that these molecules could one day have therapeutic potential.

Research Article: Goldberg et al.

News and Views: Protein waste turned into antibiotics as a defence strategy of human cells

An update on two missions heading to the Moon to look for water, and why fears that a crucial ocean-current system will collapse in the face of climate change may be incorrect.

Nature: Meet the ice-hunting robots headed for the Moon right now

Nature: Iconic ocean-current system is safe from climate collapse ― for now

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