Covid -19 origins

After the end of a near 17-year legal battle between popstar Katy Perry and fashion designer Katie Perry, the Unexpected Elements team has been inspired to explore the question at the heart of the case – what's in a name? First, we hear how marmosets use their calls as a way of n ...  Show more

With this year’s Oscars on the horizon, and vampire film Sinners nominated for a record-breaking 16 awards, the Unexpected Elements team sinks their teeth into some blood-sucking science.First, we discover that Vlad the Impaler, the Romanian prince who inspired Dracula, may have ...  Show more

If you took a fly into a really tall elevator and let it out at the top, would it still be able to fly? And what’s the absolute highest an insect could possibly go? It’s a question that’s been bugging CrowdScience listener Chee for a while, but presenter Alex Lathbridge is on ...

The All of Us Research Program is undergoing the herculean task of gathering genomic data from over one million people living in the United States, from widely different backgrounds, in the hopes of accelerating health care research. However, within the scientific community many, ...  Show more

NASA's Perseverance rover has been trundling around the Jezero crater since it landed successfully in February 2021. A few weeks ago it made its first attempt at collecting a sample of rock. Unfortunately the rock turned out to be so crumbly it disintegrated away. But Perseveranc ...  Show more

Data collated from swab samples taken in Wuhan’s market in the early days of the Covid pandemic suggest animals sold in the market were carrying the virus at the time. It’s the strongest evidence yet for an intermediate species – one which passed the virus on to humans after beco ...  Show more