Host: Benjamin Thompson
Welcome back to the Nature Podcast. This week, it’s our annual festive spectacular. There’ll be games.
Host: Noah Baker
There’ll be seasonal science songs.
Host: Benjamin Thompson
And we’ll be hearing about some of the people who’ve made an impact on the world of science this year. I’m Benjamin Thompson.
Host: Noah Baker
And I’m Noah Baker.
[Jingle]
Host: Benjamin Thompson
So, here we are then, Noah. We’ve got a packed show today. Later on, we’ll have Shamini’s latest end-of-year festive challenge in which a few of us try to describe some complex science stories only using very simple words.
Host: Noah Baker
I haven’t heard this yet, but I have heard it being discussed and I can’t wait. I’m a massive xkcd fan, which is where this idea originated from. But before we do that, let’s start with a song. Earlier on this year, you might remember a certain momentous flight of a helicopter on Mars. NASA’s Ingenuity craft became the first vessel to fly on another planet, and in this song we pay tribute to it. This is ‘Oh powered flight’, written by me and performed by the Simon Langton Boys’ School Choir, directed by Emily Renshaw-Kidd. If you want to sing along, you can find the lyrics in the show notes.
Oh powered flight
Host: Noah Baker
That was ‘Oh powered flight’, performed by the Simon Langton Boys’ School Choir, directed by Emily Renshaw-Kidd.
Host: Benjamin Thompson
So, Noah, we’re coming towards the end of 2021, and it has been a big year in science once again.
Host: Noah Baker
Absolutely. Obviously, coronavirus has dominated many of the news cycles. We’ve had variants that pop up. We’ve had massive issues with vaccine inequity to talk about. But outside of that, inequity issues have really been brought to the fore. That’s something that’s been discussed a lot. We’ve also had huge developments in other parts of science. So, we’ve had missions flying helicopters on Mars, we’ve had programmes that can solve long-running problems in protein structural biology, and of course it’s been a massive year for climate change as well. We had the COP26 conference in Glasgow as well as lots of developments with things like extreme weather. An awful lot to talk about.
Host: Benjamin Thompson
Oh, 100%. And every year, Nature takes a look back at some of the big science stories of the year and the people who were important to them, and this year of course is no different, and that’s Nature’s 10, and later in the podcast, we’ll be hearing about a few of the folk who made the list this year.
Host: Noah Baker
But before we get to that, it’s time for a bit of holiday fun. She’s put her sparkly jacket on. Introducing quiz-show host extraordinaire, Shamini Bundell.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Hello, everyone and welcome to this year’s end-of-year festive challenge. I am your host Shamini Bundell. I have put together a fiendishly difficult communication challenge for my three competitors. To start off with, we have your favourite ever Nature Briefing editor – it’s Flora Graham.
Flora Graham
Happy holidays!
Host: Shamini Bundell
We have the most glorious and stripy of podcast hosts – it’s Benjamin Thompson.
Benjamin Thompson
Thank you very much, Shamini. You’re of course referring to my top. For those people who are at home, I do have an array of Breton stripes, one of which I am very much wearing today, and I am excited to be here.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Listeners, you’re missing out on all the stripes that we get to see here on the Nature Podcast. But it is not as fantastic as Nick Petrić Howe, who is wearing a bow tie today. Thank you for putting the effort in.
Nick Petrić Howe
That’s okay. This is the bow tie I like to wear when I crush my enemies, so you guys are going down.
Benjamin Thompson
Challenge accepted.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Be afraid. This year’s challenge involves looking back over some of the fascinating science stories that we have covered in the Nature Podcast and the Nature Briefing during 2021, and the challenge is to tell your fellow competitors about these wonderful stories. But of course, it’s not that easy. The competitors may only communicate using the 1,000 most common words in the English language. Now, you might remember there was an xkcd comic about this idea, for those of you familiar, and we’ll be using today a special text editor made by Theo Sanderson, which you can type into and it will tell you if you’ve used a word that is not in the list of the top 1,000 most common English words. And I am going to be dealing out arbitrary festive points today for you all, depending on how well you explain the news stories and kind of how quickly everyone else is able to guess what on Earth you’re talking about. So, let’s start off with Flora Graham. Now, I have sent you, in a very top-secret message, some information about this particular story from this year.
Flora Graham
Okay. Big, long nose animal…
Nick Petrić Howe
Brilliant.
Flora Graham
Had little bits in its teeth that were very old.
Nick Petrić Howe
Is this the mammoth tusk where they revealed they found the DNA or something, or the proteins, in a mammoth tusk that showed its journey over time?
Host: Shamini Bundell
Oh, it is not that story.
Flora Graham
No.
Host: Shamini Bundell
That was another very similar story we reported on. This is not quite that.
Nick Petrić Howe
Okay.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Good guess though.
Nick Petrić Howe
Was this the oldest mammoth fossil ever discovered or something like that? Or was it the oldest DNA?
Flora Graham
You’ve got it. The oldest DNA found in mammoth teeth.
Benjamin Thompson
Yeah.
Flora Graham
Or as I like to call them, big, long nose animals.
Benjamin Thompson
Yeah, that one helped get a better of idea of the mammoth family tree, right? And I think it was hidden in the permafrost for years and then some researchers found it and managed to get the oldest DNA on record, right? That’s amazing.
Flora Graham
It was in the permafrost for 1.6 million years, and it did help identify a whole new kind of mammoth which lived in Siberia.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Yeah, so this was in the mammoth’s molar teeth, and it was the oldest ancient DNA found. Excellent team effort there, I think. Right, Nick Petrić Howe.
Nick Petrić Howe
Oh no.
Host: Shamini Bundell
It’s a complex one. Let’s see how well you do.
Benjamin Thompson
The fact you’re sitting there, Nick, with your head in your hands suggests that this is going to be a tricky one.
Nick Petrić Howe
It’s not going to be easy, but let’s see. If I start talking very staccato it’s because I’m typing the words as I’m saying them to see if I can use them. Okay, let me think about this. Nope. Okay, flying animals…
Benjamin Thompson
Flying animals, right.
Flora Graham
Birds.
Nick Petrić Howe
Flying animals can find way…
Flora Graham
Oh, flying animals can detect magnetic fields using special cells in their eyes.
Nick Petrić Howe
Yes, exactly.
Flora Graham
Quantum physics in their eyes.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Ah, Flora.
Nick Petrić Howe
It’s quantum compass.
Flora Graham
That was just such a great story.
Nick Petrić Howe
It was an awesome story.
Flora Graham
I mean, it was one of the stories of the year, I think. Everywhere I go, people are like have you heard about the birds’ eyes and I’m like, I know, it’s amazing.
Host: Shamini Bundell
We covered this one in podcast and we have a wonderful video on it and, yes, it’s about particular structures in the eyes of birds that are helping them migrate using the Earth’s magnetic field lines, almost like they can maybe see the Earth’s magnetic field lines. Excellent. I’d say that was pretty successful. Benjamin Thompson, it is your turn.
Benjamin Thompson
Right, hah, okay. Right, big…
Nick Petrić Howe
Always a good start.
Benjamin Thompson
Not veg… oh no… that’s not right. Let me start again. Big… this is really tough.
Flora Graham
World’s biggest vegetable discovered?
Nick Petrić Howe
Laughs
Benjamin Thompson
Big water animal is not dark… here we go. Big water animal is not dark far underwater is the best I can come up with right now.
Nick Petrić Howe
Oh, this was the story were sharks that glow on their underside. Is that the story?
Benjamin Thompson
Yeah, that’s it, Nick. I’m astonished you managed to get that from that. Yeah, this is a giant luminous shark that was discovered off the coast of New Zealand and, Shamini, I’m sure you can tell us a bit more about it.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Yeah, so it’s the biggest known luminous vertebrate, and they basically didn’t know that these sort of deep sea sharks had this like glow-in-the-dark ability, which is of course bioluminescence. It’s quite common down there, but this was quite a new discovery on these big sharks. Excellent, well done, Nick. Right, Nick, getting harder. Let’s see how you do.
Nick Petrić Howe
This one is really hard and I’ll do my best with it but there’s so many words that I don’t know how I’m going to replace, but let me have a go. No more bad make car-go-thing in the world.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Very nice.
Flora Graham
Oh, no more leaded petrol. Leaded petrol is now illegal for standard vehicles everywhere in the world. It was just made illegal in its last place.
Nick Petrić Howe
Yes!
Benjamin Thompson
Nice.
Flora Graham
Although it is still used in like some certain niche applications.
Nick Petrić Howe
Yes, as the UN put it, the era of leaded petrol is over.
Host: Shamini Bundell
That was an amazingly efficient clue and an excellent guess.
Flora Graham
I mean, to be fair, these are stories I picked for the Briefing, so I’m like these are some of my favourite stories of the year.
Host: Shamini Bundell
One last challenge for you, Flora, and once again, I’ve tried to up the ante. You’ve been doing great so far, so I’m hoping to find something that can really challenge you here.
Flora Graham
I know you’ll remember this story. This was a huge story. Okay, so… oh, not allowed to use that word… no… nope… can’t use that one.
Benjamin Thompson
Oh my goodness. This sounds like a tough one.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Finally.
Nick Petrić Howe
We’ve tripped Flora up.
Flora Graham
Okay, I feel like it does need another word, but here we go. Life on hot space rock… no!
Nick Petrić Howe
What could be a hot space rock, like Mercury or something like that? Venus maybe? No life on Venus?
Benjamin Thompson
Oh, yeah, there was a lot of discussion about was it sort of certain molecules in the atmosphere that may or may not have been made by life? Is that right?
Flora Graham
That’s right. We’re talking about phosphene gas on Venus.
Nick Petrić Howe
Yes.
Flora Graham
And there’s this idea that it may be phosphene is a by-product of some kind of organic molecule action happening in the atmosphere of Venus. Some people say yes but then there was some pushback from other researchers saying, as I put it, no.
Nick Petrić Howe
Laughs.
Host: Shamini Bundell
So, it was actually in 2020 when some people published some evidence about phosphene gas in the atmosphere of Venus, which would be sort of quite significant, and then the story that we reported on this year said we think it’s probably sulfur dioxide instead, and there’s been a lot of scepticism about that particular claim. But it’s not settled yet. Right, Benjamin Thompson.
Benjamin Thompson
I don’t know where to start with this one. Here we go. Bottom drag lets out bad air, more than fly time.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Amazing.
Nick Petrić Howe
Laughs.
Benjamin Thompson
It’s the best I could do.
Flora Graham
Is this about button jeans versus zip fly jeans?
Benjamin Thompson
It couldn’t be more not about that if I tried, Flora, to be honest with you. Let me see if I can add some more words. Bottom drag lets out bad air more than fly time. Bad for hot times.
Nick Petrić Howe
Bad for hot times, bad for climate change maybe?
Benjamin Thompson
Climate change, Nick, yes.
Nick Petrić Howe
Is this about planes not being very efficient or something and that being bad for climate change. More emissions or something like that?
Benjamin Thompson
Here we go. I can fit another word in. Bottom bed drag lets out bad air. More than fly time.
Flora Graham
Oh, climate change effects of trawling is worse than flying or something, like the carbon emitted by bottom trawling is greater than all the people flying around.
Benjamin Thompson
Flora, you are a genius to get that from that.
Host: Shamini Bundell
So, apparently the marine sediments are the world’s largest carbon sink, and the trawling releases as much carbon dioxide as the entire aviation industry.
Nick Petrić Howe
The entire aviation industry… wow.
Host: Shamini Bundell
Bad for hot times.
Benjamin Thompson
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been flippant there but that does seem super bad, right?
Host: Shamini Bundell
I had to have some serious stories. I had to have some climate change stories in here. Wonderful, well, I think that’s probably all we have time for. The struggles that you have endured will, I’m sure, be put to good use next time you’re doing a podcast piece, a Briefing, writing a headline.
Nick Petrić Howe
Who won?
Host: Shamini Bundell
Oh, who won? You know what, I think this is controversial but I’m going to have to give the winner award to Flora. Congratulations. Well, thank you all so much for joining and we’ll see you all soon. And happy nearly the end of 2021.
Host: Noah Baker
I should have been in that quiz. I would have nailed it. Anyway, next up, we have the second and final instalment of our holiday songs for this year. It’s easy to forget in a year so dominated by COVID that there were other huge stories in science. One which came to mind when we started thinking about these songs was AlphaFold – an algorithm created by DeepMind which was able to solve protein structures better than any algorithm ever before. This has been a huge and long-running problem in biology and something we thought should be immortalised in song. Last year we got a tweet asking for more Hanukkah representation in these songs. I hope that what you’re about to hear does some justice to that request. This is ‘Alphafold oh Alphafold’, written by Kerri Smith and myself, with everything else, and I mean everything – the arrangement, all the instruments, all the vocals, recording, mixing, the lot – by the marvellous, multi-talented, musical wizard, Phil Self.
Alphafold oh Alphafold
Host: Noah Baker
That was ‘Alphafold oh Alphafold’, written by Kerri Smith and me, and performed by Phil Self.
Host: Benjamin Thompson
Now on the show, it’s time for a little reflection on some of the people who have shaped science in the past 12 months, and who better to do so than Richard Van Noorden, one of Nature’s features editors, and our very own Nick Petrić Howe.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
Richard, how are you doing?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
Very well, thanks, Nick. How are you?
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
Yeah, not so bad. Thank you so much for joining me. So, one of the ways that Nature likes to look back over the past year in science is with Nature’s 10. Richard, for the uninitiated, what is Nature’s 10?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
So, Nature’s 10 is our pick of ten people who played a part in big science stories this year. It’s not a top ten list, but it’s our way of reflecting on what happened in the past year and some of the people who mattered in those science policy happenings and events.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
And this year has been one that has again been dominated by the ongoing pandemic. And something that has cropped up time and time again, and of course is of serious concern right now, is variants. Now, Richard, one of the people on the list has been key to identification and tracking of some of these variants. Can you tell me a little bit about Tulio de Oliveira?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
Yeah, so, de Oliveira and his team are in South Africa, and our listeners may already have heard of him because this year his team announced the discovery of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus – that was in November – and all of that had a little bit of an eerie similarity to last year, when his team announced the discovery of the Beta variant of the coronavirus in South Africa. So, Tulio is really the leader of sequencing efforts in South Africa, to try and chronicle and track new variants of the coronavirus as they arise. And we’ve picked him, not just because he’s been central to the tracking of variants of this virus, but also because he’s really been leading the way in showing the importance of having disease surveillance around the whole world.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
And as you mentioned there, he was part of the effort that detected Omicron in South Africa. Now, this was at a risk of sanctions, which did eventually happen, from other countries, but he pushed ahead on with that anyway. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
He suspected that the announcement might bring travel bans, and some South Africans, some politicians, have even queried why he’s making these announcements because they see that it only brings travel bans to South Africa. But he says this is the way you stop a pandemic, is by quick action. You can’t just wait and see. So, it was the right thing to do for his team. Now, he leads the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform, which was created in 2017, and it’s tracked many other pathogens as well. But with coronavirus, we’ve never seen so many different samples of the virus sequenced in such a short period of time. Millions and millions of sequences have been uploaded online. De Oliveira is now moving to set up something called the Centre for Epidemic Research, Response and Innovation, and it’s going to house Africa’s largest sequencing facility, and it will work to control epidemics in Africa and the global south.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
Well, obviously very important work and work that has informed policy in real time. And keeping on the COVID topic, one of the other people highlighted this year has been an important voice in the battle for vaccine equity – Winnie Byanyima. What can you tell me about her and why she was chosen?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
Yeah, so, Winnie Byanyima is the head of UNAIDS – that’s the United Nations programme on HIV – but we’ve chosen her because she’s been one of the prominent voices for health equity and reducing inequality, and when it comes to coronavirus, that’s all about getting vaccines everywhere around the world. Even as early as 2020, she was saying that low- and middle-income countries can’t just rely on donations. The only way to get vaccines to everyone is to have loads of companies manufacture them and get systems of distribution everywhere. Now, that hasn’t actually happened. Companies have held tightly to the manufacturing rights for their vaccines. Wealthy countries have got most of the vaccines. And this is all rather reminiscent, for Byanyima, of her experience with the AIDS epidemic in the early 2000s, when there were lifesaving drugs available but not in her home country of Uganda. So, Byanyima really finds all this infuriating. She says the idea that you can sell a lifesaving technology like you would sell, as she puts it, a luxury handbag, is immoral and greedy and wrong. And she co-founded a group called the People’s Vaccine Alliance. She’s been trying to change thinking by pointing out to leaders that supporting vaccine equity furthers their own goals, right. Getting vaccines everywhere will help quell this pandemic for the whole world.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
So, as you mentioned there, companies have kind of held on to the manufacturing rights to these vaccines, so have there been any successes on this front?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
In May, I mean, the US ordinarily defends patents but it actually supported a proposal from South Africa and India to waive the intellectual property around COVID vaccines. Now, there’s a lot of work to be done from there because the European Union and other countries are still opposed to this kind of waiver, and the companies that own the IP are not licensing their technologies and they’re not sharing the knowledge needed to produce them much, and they still say that waivers would undermine innovation. But Byanyima, she’s certainly been a figurehead for these kinds of arguments and, in fact, she goes further than that. It’s not just about these vaccines. It’s pointing out that inequality and equity drives the spread of illnesses all around the world, all kinds of illnesses. And at UNAIDS, she’s putting equity at the centre of its work. So, pointing out that the way to defeat illness is not only and not just by getting vaccines and drugs everywhere but also to address existing inequalities, in access to world medical treatments but also water, sanitation, living conditions, work and so on. And the people we talked to said Winnie Byanyima is sort of driving this conversation way before other people have thought about it.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
Well, obviously there’s still a way to go on this one, and I’m sure we’ll hear about this more next year. But moving away from COVID, now, one of the other big science stories this year has been about the red planet. Mars has seen quite a few visitors this year from agencies around the world, and in this year’s Nature’s 10, we’ve highlighted one of the key people behind China’s rover, Zhang Rongqiao.
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
Yeah, Zhang Rongqiao is the chief designer on China’s Mars mission, and he’s really played a key part in the decision to send, sort of in one shipment, an orbiter, a lander and a rover to Mars – China is the first country to do that – and coordinated a team of tens of thousands who built and operated this Tianwen-1 mission and the Zhurong rover. Notoriously, it’s very hard to land on this planet, and nearly half of all missions to Mars have ended in failure. So, a big success for China this year, and something that Zhang has been working towards for many, many years.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
And part of the mission here for China was to demonstrate its ability to get a mission to Mars, but Zhang has also pushed for a lot of science to be brought into this as well. What sort of new science is going to be done and has been done with China’s rover and orbiter?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
Yeah, I mean, it’s fair to say that the primary goal of this mission was to sort of develop China’s deep space mission prowess. But the rover does have six scientific instruments and the orbiter has seven, and we’re going to learn more about a previously unexplored patch of Mars in the Northern hemisphere. The rover landed on this impact crater called Utopia Planitia, and now it’s heading towards a region that might once have been the coastline of an ancient ocean, so hopefully we’ll learn something more from that about the geology of this region and what happened to water on Mars. Data collected by these instruments has been shared with about two dozen teams and results are kind of slowly seeping out. So, there’s a little bit of science coming here. I don’t think there’ll be as much as will come from NASA’s mission, and probably the real research is going to come later for China. China is going to launch a mission to asteroids to get a sample from an asteroid in 2024, and it’s going to go to Mars again in 2030.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
Well, for the final person I wanted to talk about, I’ll bring us right back down to Earth, and this year was also a key year in the battle against climate change. We saw COP26 here in the UK, where nations updated their targets in their attempt to keep us on track to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Now, in Nature’s 10 we’ve highlighted Victoria Tauli-Corpuz. What role has she played in fighting climate change?
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
We’ve chosen Tauli-Corpuz because she has fought for decades for the rights of Indigenous peoples. She herself is an Indigenous leader from the Philippines, and she’s scored major successes this year. At COP26, several wealthy nations and some philanthropies stepped up with US$1.7 billion to help Indigenous peoples preserve forests and protect biodiversity. That was really a watershed moment for Tauli-Corpuz’s work. She has been, for many years, trying to convince people that the best way to preserve forests and other biodiversity hotspots is to work with the Indigenous peoples who already live there, and this in fact is something that very recently has been backed up by scientific literature. It’s only really been in the past five or ten years that satellite data has shown that Indigenous territories are less prone to deforestation and mining and building dams – all things that can be environmentally harmful – than areas without Indigenous peoples living in them.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
And as I understand it, she has personal experience and decades of it in this space.
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
Yeah, she grow up in the mountains of the Philippines in an Igorot village, and in the 1970s, the regime of the former president Ferdinand Marcos wanted to log their people’s forests and install a dam in the river, and she helped lead the opposition. She actually stopped the dam being installed. And from that she sort of realised how the fates of Indigenous peoples like her background and the world’s forests are intertwined. So, what she’s sort of working on now at her foundation in the Philippines is to help Indigenous communities gain rights to their traditional lands and bolster their own governance systems because now this money is available, they’ll be wanting to propose projects and access these funds. As she puts it, it’s really about helping the Indigenous peoples to empower themselves and strengthen their capacity to protect the places they live in.
Interviewer: Nick Petrić Howe
Well, again, very important work, and everyone who’s featured in Nature’s 10 has done incredible things in the past year. We only had time to talk about these people, but there are a whole ten of them, so, listeners, if you’re interested in finding out more then head over to the show notes where there’ll be a link to the feature article of Nature’s 10. But for now, Richard, thank you so much for joining me.
Interviewee: Richard Van Noorden
Cheers, thanks.
Host: Noah Baker
And that’s it for this edition of the show, and our last regular podcast of 2021. I want to take a moment to thank not only everyone on the Nature Podcast team, including you, Ben, but also to thank you at home for listening to us. We’ve had amazing responses from all of our listeners this year. We’ve had people writing in questions, engaging in polls, sending us tweets. It really makes a difference to hear what you think of the stories we cover, and also helps inform which stories we’re going to cover in the future, so do keep getting in touch. We love hearing from you.
Host: Benjamin Thompson
Yeah, absolutely right, Noah. And, listeners, you can do so on email – podcast@nature.com – or on Twitter – @NaturePodcast. And if you feel like leaving us a nice review then that would be much appreciated. So, as Noah said, this is our last regular show of 2021, but next week we’ll have our annual clips show, where the team pick out some of the stories that have stood out to them over the past 12 months. And we’ll have an audio long-read as well. And then we’ll back in the new year with more stories from the wider world of science.
Host: Noah Baker
But for now, thank you so much. We’re going to take a bit of a break and come back raring to go in 2022. I hope we’ll see you then.