This podcast has come to an end. So long, and thanks for all the fish! Links to download the archive of all our episodes can be found here: https://scienceontop.com/goodbye

A Lot Of Poop

Aug 25th, 2020 21m 8s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:30 A team in Kenya and the UK have discovered a microbe that completely protects mosquitoes against the malaria parasite. 00:10:17 Everybody poops, but if you don't it's very bad as one unfo

A quick update

Aug 5th, 2020 3m 55s

An update on what's happening with the show. The quick version: we're still here, but the world's on fire and things are a bit tough. We'll be back. Stay safe everyone. Wednesday 5 August 2020

You Get An Ocean!

Jun 17th, 2020 22m 39s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:28 Good news in quarantine, two pandas in Hong Kong have finally mated! It only took them ten years! 00:04:29 Lots of moons in our solar system seem to have subsurface oceans, and now it look

The Same... But Opposite

May 11th, 2020 29m 42s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:39 When it comes to giving birth in the animal world, there's mostly only two options: live babies, or eggs. But very rarely, it can be both! Such is the case with the yellow-bellied three-t

E-mouse-icons!

Apr 30th, 2020 22m 13s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:40 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany have used a machine-learning algorithm to finally answer one of science's most confounding puzzles: Is that mouse over there happy? Or a

They Smacked It With A Shovel

Apr 19th, 2020 36m 49s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely 00:03:36 NASA's Mars InSight probe has finally managed to drill into the Martian rock and soil - thanks to a traditional repair technique! 00:13:04 The idea that glass is

Crazy Finds A Way

Apr 13th, 2020 24m 12s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:35 Professor Maria Croyle from the University of Texas in Austin has been working on alternative delivery mechanisms for vaccines without giant needles. And one promising method she's develo

Noodle-Fingered Hugs

Mar 30th, 2020 47m 19s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:27 How do you study wibbly wobbly jellyfish, without damaging them or stressing them out? You give them a noodly hug, of course! 00:08:27 When a satellite runs out of fuel, it's sent up into

Air Sea'n'Sea

Mar 20th, 2020 31m 19s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:28 An Australian research team has come up with a luxurious plan to save endangered seahorses. 00:04:54 A more precise method of determining the methane produced by human activities draws a

Coronavirus with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz

Mar 13th, 2020 42m 54s

As the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 sweeps the world, the only thing spreading quicker is panic and misinformation. So we caught up with Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist, writer and podcaster to find out what's really going on with COVID-19.

SoT 350: Rocks Were Never Not Great

Feb 27th, 2020 40m 46s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:14 A team at Howard Hughes Medical Institute has been working with Google, and has just announced that they have mapped the “connectome” in the central region of brain of a fruit fly. That's

Hot Drinks In Hot Weather

Feb 7th, 2020 8m

Here's a little taste of the sort of thing to expect when Science on Top returns very soon - on hot days are you better off drinking hot or cold drinks?

Cuttlefish Watching 3D Movies

Jan 29th, 2020 7m 55s

Have you missed us? Looking forward to another season of Science on Top? Here's something to whet your appetite - a story of cute cephalopods, curious scientists and 3D glasses!

Our Favourite Science Stories of 2019

Dec 17th, 2019 44m 2s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Ass/Prof Mick Vagg 00:00:48 The switch to agricultural societies 12,000 years ago may have changed how we talk, introducing the 'f' and 'v' sounds. 00:04:58 The cane toad is an introduced pest in

Massive Stars Are Fluffy!

Dec 13th, 2019 34m 49s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:56 As unprecedented bushfires ravage Australia, Forbes published an article declaring koalas are "functionally extinct". And while they do face considerable threats, the situation is not qui

Carbonite

Dec 4th, 2019 43m 1s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:24 For the first time, doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have purposefully put at least one human patient in suspended animation. This could be a great help to surgeon

Guinea Pig Guinea Pigs

Nov 26th, 2019 35m 16s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:01:23 Danuvius guggenmosi was a great ape that lived 11.6 million years ago in southern Germany and it has just been formally described in the journal Nature. But the really interesting thing ab

Daisy

Nov 15th, 2019 34m 52s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:35 Researchers at the University of Richmond taught a group of 17 rats how to drive tiny little plastic cars. The rats found driving to be relaxing! 00:11:28 Why do we like music? It's a ques

Teeny-Tiny Black Holes

Nov 7th, 2019 33m 44s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:32 A zebra's stripes seem to reduce the number of flies that they attract, so what would happen if you painted a cow like a zebra? Japanese researchers did exactly that, and found a similar

More Water Rats!

Oct 31st, 2019 27m 20s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:34 Snails are a French delicacy that has led to the near extinction, and now revival, of tiny culturally and scientifically important snails in French Polynesia. 00:06:45 3.5 million years

Grumpy, Hungry, Wanting Chocolate

Oct 21st, 2019 39m 51s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:29 A new hypothesis in the quest to explain the bizarre dimming patterns of Tabby's Star: could it be a moon getting shredded? 00:18:36 It's a belief that's been widely held since 1971: wome

The 2019 Ig Nobel Prizes

Oct 9th, 2019 57m 25s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall, Peter Miller The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that first make us laugh, then make us think. We take a look at this year’s winners: from the benefits of pizza to the temperature of French po

They Look Snarly

Sep 29th, 2019 25m 29s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:33 The large holes in T-Rex's skull might not have been for muscles, but thermoregulating blood vessels according to a paper published in the Anatomical Record. 00:06:13 An Australian team ha

Sauce Is Key

Sep 16th, 2019 44m 57s

Hosts: Ed Brown, Penny Dumsday, Lucas Randall 00:00:47 After a British teenager went blind, media reports came thick and fast about the dangers of a junk food diet. But was he just a fussy eater, or was there a lot more to it than the headlin