The Nature Podcast highlights of 2025
Nature Podcast
podcast@nature.com
4.5 • 893 Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
00:40 What a trove of potato genomes reveals about the humble spud
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.
10:28 Hundreds of physicists on a remote island: we visit the ultimate quantum party
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
19:54 Research Highlights
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
23:03 These malaria drugs treat the mosquitoes — not the people
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.
33:49 Briefing Chat
The first skeletal evidence that Roman gladiators fought lions.
BBC News: Bites on gladiator bones prove combat with lion
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Benjamin here. It's almost time to say goodbye to 2025. And if you've been following the nature podcast for a while, you'll know that around about this time, we like to take a look back at some of the stories we've covered |
| 0:21.3 | on the show over the past 12 months. In this edition of the podcast, members of the team will |
| 0:27.8 | each be picking out something they made in 2025 and telling us why it stood out to them. |
| 0:34.1 | Kicking things off this time round is Nick Petrich Howe and his choice. |
| 0:39.9 | So I was looking back this year on the stories that I've covered for nature, |
| 0:44.4 | and I decided to go with one all about potatoes. |
| 0:49.4 | And it's because they've got some really fascinating genetics and history that we delve into into this podcast |
| 0:55.5 | and a lot of things that I didn't know before reporting on this, such as, you know, there's not a lot of |
| 1:01.1 | diversity in potatoes. A lot of potatoes are quite similar in terms of their genetics, despite them |
| 1:06.2 | looking quite different when they're on our plates. And also, I have slipped in a few references to |
| 1:13.0 | something or another throughout, so enjoy them when you come across them. From the 16th of April, |
| 1:18.6 | here's next highlight from 2025. First up on the show, researchers have been creating a collected |
| 1:25.1 | group of genomes known as a pan genome to understand the genetic diversity of the humble potato. |
| 1:33.5 | This effort could help in the breeding of new potato varieties, such as those adapted to disease or climate change. |
| 1:41.0 | Now, potatoes are incredibly flexible. You can boil them, you can mash them, and you can even |
| 1:46.9 | feed over 1 billion people with them. But if you want to make a new variety of them, that isn't |
| 1:54.4 | so easy. So compared to their cultivars, potato is practically difficult because of the tetraploidation. |
| 2:02.3 | This is Sergio Tussaud, a geneticist who's very familiar with the difficulties |
| 2:07.5 | potatoes and the breeding of their different varieties or cultivars pose. |
| 2:13.3 | You see, the potato is tetraploid, meaning that instead of having two sets of chromosomes, |
| 2:20.0 | like you and I do, potatoes have four. |
| 2:23.8 | So this makes it particularly difficult what is related to breeding programs, right? |
... |
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