Welcome to Break It Down, your bite-size guide to this week in science. Join hosts Eleanor Higgs and Rachael Funnell as they discuss the biggest news stories of the week with guests from the IFLScience team and maybe even a surprise expert or two. Here’s what you may have missed in episodes 1 to 15, available on all your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Podbean, Amazon Music, and more.
Episode 15 – Sexy Neanderthals, Head Transplants, And Dark Extinction
This week on Break It Down, we now know when humans and Neanderthals hooked up, could a human head transplant ever be realistic, a dino fossil skin preserved like glass has both scales and feathers, sometimes stars completely vanish, a skull from China tells us more about the Dragon Man, and we delve into the concept of dark extinctions.
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 14 – Hot Dinosaurs, Alien Megastructures, And Reaching Point Nemo
This week on Break It Down, COVID’s new FLiRT variants, when and which dinosaurs went warm-blooded, could a lost river explain the pyramids, the search for alien megastructures, the shrinking Y chromosome, and what’s it like sailing to Point Nemo? Really hard, apparently.
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 13 – Talking Whales, Dinosauroids, and Psychedelic Milk Toads?
This week in Break It Down, scientists discover the “sperm whale phonetic alphabet”, AstraZeneca pull their COVID vaccine from the shelves, why a weak magnetic field might be a good thing for life on Earth, rock art reveals that the Sahara looked a little different 4,000 years ago, toads might be helping treat depression, and what on Earth is a dinosauroid?!
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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AstraZeneca pull their COVID vaccine
Magnetic fields and complex life
Episode 12 – Alpaca Sex, Brainy T. Rex, And Could Earth Have Rings?
This week in Break It Down, the debate on T. rex intelligence rages on, a world-first video shows an orangutan applying leaves as medicine, the most complete Neanderthal gets a face, why alpaca sex is so weird that no other mammal does it like them (that we know of), the mystery of a giant hole in Antarctic ice solved, and could Earth ever get its own rings?
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 11 – Gassy Uranus, Giant Megaraptors, And The Pharaoh’s Curse
This week in Break It Down, we explore why Uranus might contain more methane than we thought, just what is happening to bacteria on the ISS, quite how long animals have been making their own light for, why carvings on a bear bone are culturally important, giant megaraptor footprints in China, and whether anything spooky might happen if you dare to enter the Pharaoh’s tomb.
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 10 – Tiny Titanosaurs, Giant Snakes, And Transatlantic Heart Transplants
This week in Break It Down, a new species of tiny titanosaur is compared to a cow, a 47-million-year-old snake becomes the largest ever, an RNA breakthrough brings us closer to “universal vaccines”, a heart flies 7,000 kilometers to its recipient, we question Stonehenge’s relationship to the Moon, and why the philosophy of science matters in the modern day.
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 9 – More Whale Sex, Pet Foxes, And The B.O.A.T
This week in Break It Down, 12-million-year-old snails reveal the oldest preserved fossil pigments, the violent mating dance of blue whales is caught on camera, scientists investigate the source of space’s brightest-ever explosion, foxes may have been the OG domestic canid, when is the North Star not the North Star, and what the hell even is a “henge”?
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 8 – Space Rainbows, Ancient Animal Art, And Heart-Eyed Toads
This week in Break It Down, a rainbow-like glory is detected beyond our Solar System, a sand-slab stingray may be the oldest animal art, ancient etchings in Peru may depict psychedelic music, scientists complete the world’s largest digital camera, and a toad with heart-shaped pupils. Plus, how far can a bird fly without flapping? Turns out, pretty damn far.
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 7 – Black Holes, Barbie Pigs, And The Apocaclipse
This week in Break It Down, why the solar eclipse can be fatal, Barbie pigs 5,000 meters below the sea, world-first cooperative mimicry in two spiders pretending to be a flower, the first image of magnetic fields around black hole Sagittarius A*, why climate change might be about to change the time, and are men really more likely to be psychopaths than women? The science appears to suggest otherwise.
So sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Childbirth VS kick to the balls
Episode 6 – Scandalous Pyramids, Quantum Tornadoes, And The Longest Eclipse
This week in Break It Down, a hill becomes a pyramid and then a hill again, quantum tornadoes teach us about black holes, a living human gets a pig kidney for the first time, Homer’s Iliad helps us find shipwrecks, the world’s rarest fish makes a comeback – one ridiculous baby at a time – and we find out about the longest eclipses on, and off, record.
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Getting it wrong is a part of science
Episode 5 – Superb Nova, Space Crime, And Eclipse Tortoises
This week in Break It Down, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a nova, astroforensic science, why everybody thinks male mammals are so big, the world’s oldest body piercings, 70 years in an iron lung, and the strange things animals do during a total solar eclipse. We’re looking at you, Galápagos tortoises.
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Unexplained anomalous phenomena
Episode 4 – De-Extincting Mammoths, The Oldest Fossil Forest, And Elephant Burials
This week in Break It Down, we talk de-extincting the mammoth, the world’s oldest fossil forest, elephant burials, hypervaccination (and by hyper, we mean 217 COVID vaccinations in 29 months), a small Pacific nation that spans all four hemispheres, and a contentious question on geologists’ lips: are we in the Anthropocene?
Sit back, relax, and let’s Break It Down…
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Episode 3 – Whale Sex, Smashing Asteroids, And More (Giant) Whales
This week in Break It Down, the first-ever photographs of humpbacks humping involves two males, NASA changes the shape of an asteroid, a tiny fish makes a big din, some very old megaliths in Peru, the heaviest animal on the planet, and the bizarre story of one of the biggest astrophysical discoveries in recent times.
Sit back, relax, and let’s break it down…
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Space Spiders And Adam Sandler
Episode 2 – Giant Anacondas, Small Stars, And Lab-Grown Testicles
This week in Break It Down, we discuss how a Will Smith series led to the discovery of a new species of giant anaconda, plus the smallest star ever discovered, lab-grown testicles, an electric vehicle breakthrough, sophisticated Neanderthal glue, and how to destroy a dinner party by dropping the question: is math discovered or invented?
Sit back, relax, and let’s break it down…
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Episode 1 – Shingrays, Space Lasers, And Pink Fairy Armadillos
This week in Break It Down, we discuss whether or not an aquarium in the US is about to become home to the world’s first “shingray,” how scientists are sending messages and power from space, a groundbreaking cancer breakthrough, fossil forgeries, and what on Earth a pink fairy armadillo is.
Sit back, relax, and let’s break it down…
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Space lasers and radio messages
Bias In Science with Subhadra Das
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