In this episode, reporter Miryam Naddaf joins us to talk about the big science events to look out for in 2026. We’ll hear about: small-scale AI models that could outcompete Large Language Models in reasoning, clinical trials of gene editing to treat rare human disorders, a sample collection mission from Phobos, and how changes to US policy by the Trump team are expected to impact science.

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Anecdotal stories suggesting that weight-loss drugs can help people shake long-standing addictions have been spreading fast in the past few years, through online forums, weight-loss clinics and news headlines. And now, clinical data are starting to back them up.

Over a dozen randomized clinical studies testing whether GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic can suppress addiction are now under way, and neuroscientists are working out how these weight-loss drugs act on brain regions that control craving, reward and motivation.

Scientists warn that the research is still in its early stages, but some researchers and physicians are excited, as no truly new class of addiction medicine has won approval from regulators in decades.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Will blockbuster obesity drugs revolutionize addiction treatment?

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Researchers have created a ‘pangenome’ containing the genomes of multiple potato types, something they believe can help make it easier to breed and sequence new varieties. The potato’s complicated genetics has made it difficult to sequence the plant’s genome, but improvements in technology have allowed the team to combine sequences, allowing them to look for subtle differences in between varieties.

Nature Podcast: 16 April 2025

Research Article: Sun et al.

According to legend, physicist Werner Heisenberg formulated the mathematics behind quantum mechanics in 1925 while on a restorative trip to the remote North Sea island of Heligoland.

To celebrate the centenary of this event, several hundred researchers have descended on the island to take part in a conference on all things quantum physics. Nature reporter Lizzie Gibney was also in attendance, and joined us to give an inside track on the meeting.

Nature Podcast: ​​​​​​​13 June 2025

A minuscule robot that can manipulate liquid droplets, and the discovery of ancient puppets on the remains of a large pyramid offers a glimpse into rituals in Mesoamerica.

Research Highlight: This tiny robot moves mini-droplets with ease

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

Researchers have developed two compounds that can kill malaria-causing parasites within mosquitoes, an approach they hope could help reduce transmission of the disease. The team showed that these compounds can be embedded into the plastics used to make bed nets, providing an alternative to insecticide-based malaria-control measures, which are losing efficacy in the face of increased resistance.

Nature Podcast: ​​​​​​​21 May 2025

Research article: ​​​​​​​Probst et al.

The first skeletal evidence that Roman gladiators fought lions.

BBC News: Bites on gladiator bones prove combat with lion

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Nature: Asteroids, antibiotics and ants: a year of remarkable science

In this episode:

Samples taken from the asteroid Bennu by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft suggest the parent body it originated from is likely to have contained salty, subsurface water. This finding provides insights into the chemistry of the early Solar System, and suggests that brines might have been an important place where pre-biotic molecules were formed.

News & Views: Asteroid Bennu contains salts from ancient brine

Nature Podcast: Asteroid Bennu contains building blocks of life

Cells are often grouped into categories according to the RNA molecules they produce. However a study of zebrafish (Danio rerio) brains revealed that cells can be functionally diverse even if they appear molecularly similar. This finding adds more nuance to how a cell's ‘type’ is ultimately defined.

News & Views: Does a cell’s gene expression always reflect its function?

An assessment of death rates in India’s coastal megacity of Mumbai revealed that the impact of extreme rainfall events will be highest for women, young children and residents of informal settlements. This situation is likely to become more pronounced as a result of climate change.

News & Views: Extreme rainfall poses the biggest risk to Mumbai’s most vulnerable people

Inspired by animals like barnacles and aided by machine learning, researchers have developed a super-sticky compound that works as an underwater adhesive. To demonstrate its properties, researchers applied it to a rubber duck, which stuck firmly to a rock on a beach despite being battered by the sea.

News & Views: AI learns from nature to design super-adhesive gels that work underwater

Nature Podcast: Underwater glue shows its sticking power in rubber duck test

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Baked soil, ancient tools, and materials that could be used to start fires show that Neanderthals were making fire in the UK 400,000 years ago — the earliest evidence of this skill found so far. Ancient humans are known to have used naturally occurring fires, but evidence of deliberate fire-starting has been hard to come by. A new suite of evidence pushes back the date of fire mastery by 350,000 years. The team behind the finding believe it helps create a more nuanced picture of Neanderthals, who perhaps gathered round fires and told stories in ancient Europe.

Research Article: Davis et al.

News and Views: Oldest known evidence of the controlled ignition of fire

Machine-learning algorithms can help to identify traces of life in ancient rocks — plus, why paintings containing a vivid green pigment lose their lustre over time.

Research Highlight: AI finds signs of life in ancient rocks

Research Highlight: The mystery of emerald green — cracked

Research suggests that artificial-intelligence chatbots can influence voters’ political views and have a bigger effect than conventional campaigning and advertising. One study found that chatbot conversations swung participants’ candidate preferences by up to 15 percentage points, while another revealed that the chatbots’ effectiveness stems from their ability to synthesize a lot of information in a conversational way.

Nature: AI chatbots can sway voters with remarkable ease — is it time to worry?

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The ability of space-based telescopes to image the distant Universe could be in peril, according to new research investigating the impacts of light-pollution from future satellites. Streaks of reflected light from satellites currently in low-Earth orbit are already seen in telescope images, and planned launches could raise the number of satellites from around 15,000 to over half-a-million. Computer modelling revealed that this drastic increase would result in images taken by instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope becoming unusable by astronomers. The team propose a series of strategies to help mitigate these impacts, preventing this future becoming reality.

Research Article: Borlaff et al.

How researchers have sped up the trapping of antimatter atoms — plus, how hydrogen fuel emission benefits vary considerably from sector to sector.

Research Highlight: Laser cooling traps more antimatter atoms than ever before

Research Highlight: Hydrogen fuel isn’t always the green choice

Glitches in video calls are an annoying feature of everyday life, but these brief interruptions could have serious real-world impacts, according to analysis from a team of researchers. In one experiment, the team found that video calls with glitches decreased the likelihood of someone being hired for a job. Analysis of other data suggested glitchy calls were associated with lower chances of individuals being granted parole. The team behind the work think that these visual errors break the illusion that a video call is a real face-to-face conversation, potentially impairing judgements about the quality of the information discussed.

Research article: Brucks et al.

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CRISPR-based gene editing has revolutionized modern biology, but these tools are unable to access the DNA that resides inside mitochondria. Researchers are eager to access and edit this DNA to understand more about the energy production and the mutations that can cause incurable mitochondrial diseases.

Because CRISPR can’t help with these problems, researchers have been looking for other ways to precisely edit the mitochrondrial genome. And the past few years have brought some success — if researchers can make editing safe and accurate enough, it could eventually be used to treat, and even cure, these genetic conditions.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Faulty mitochondria cause deadly diseases — fixing them is about to get a lot easier

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