The Nature Podcast festive spectacular 2025

0:21Welcome back to the Nature Podcast. This week, it's time for our annual festive spectacular. There'll be games and songs. We'll hear about some memorable science gifts. And there'll be nature's roundup of the people who helped shape science this year. I'm Nick Patrick Howe. And I'm Benjamin Thompson.

0:45So it's that time again. I can't quite believe another 12 months have passed. For those of you who haven't heard one of these before, we like to mix things up a bit. And to start with, tis the season where a lot of folk like to give or perhaps receive gifts. And sometimes these things can resonate through someone's lifetime, really be an important touchstone for them. Mine was the Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening for the original Game Boy, since you're asking. Yours may be different. And Nature has been investigating the lasting impact of science-related gifts in a feature article written by Anne-Marie Conlon, who joins me now.

1:22Anne-Marie, hi. Hi, Ben. It's nice to be here. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And say a lot of publications do gift guides, like things to buy, the top 10 presents. And you've been looking at it from kind of a different angle, though, right? And saying looking at these things that have stuck in people's minds. Yes. So we decided to reach out to our audience and ask them about the gifts that have really stayed in their minds, maybe things that they got as a child or a gift that a colleague gave them, maybe a lab mate, that really they still remember today. So we asked our readers for their favourite science gifts and we had a huge response.

1:55Yeah, well, absolutely right. And you've been writing about them, as I say, in a feature article, and it brings warmth to the heart. Some of these memories that people remember, sometimes, you know, 60, 70 odd years ago, and sometimes much more recently. It's been so lovely to hear from all our readers. I was just kind of squealing with delight reading all the emails every day that we got through. It was quite emotional to hear some of this actually. And let's run through a few of the examples of things that people have told you about. So some of my favourite examples are things that people got as very small children that really sparked a love of science.

2:27One of them was a man called Gilles Leclerc who was 11 years old in 1968 and he asked for a telescope for Christmas and he got it just in time for the Apollo 8 mission that did the historic lunar orbit. And I asked him if he tried to see the spacecraft and he said he knew well enough that he wouldn't actually see it, but he just wanted to see the moon when it was all abuzz and he was always really in love with the idea of space. And he ended up working for the Canadian Space Agency and discussing with NASA how to get a Canadian astronaut onto the Artemis 2 mission. So he said this is something that 11-year-old him never would have dreamed of doing.

3:01So it was so lovely that it's come full circle from this gift he got as a child. And another example was from a man called George Pantelos, who's now a cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon and a bioengineer. And he said his favourite gift was actually an experience that he had when he was five years old. His father had a shortwave radio and he heard the signal from the Sputnik satellite. And that really ignited in him a real fascination with what was happening up in space. And another nice detail from that interview that I had with him was that his grandfather is Slovak and he used to call him Yuri and it was around the time that Yuri Gagarin was going into space where he said he thought if that Yuri can go into space maybe this Yuri can go into space and his job now involves working with NASA and other space agencies to test things like how you could perform surgical procedures in space.

3:49He told me one of the things he's working on right now is the idea of how do you give CPR to an astronaut who's had a cardiac arrest when you're weightless. Goodness well in those cases then the seed was certainly planted early. One thing that does come across in your feature as well is that books are important as well. Receiving a book and maybe being transported into another world is sometimes a key driver for folk ultimately becoming researchers. One of my favourite stories was from Cindy Williams, who's now a retired plant ecologist. And she said that when she was about 10 years old, she got a present from her aunt and uncle, a book that had a stereoscope.

4:24So you could kind of see the pictures in vivid detail. and the book was called Aerial Stereo Photographs for Stereoscope Viewing in Geology, Geography, Conservation, Forestry and Surveying. They need to workshop that title a little bit. But she said, I love this quote, she said, it changed my life, they did not remember it. So it just goes to show that the gift givers might not realise the full impact of the gift that they're imparting and the wisdom and the knowledge that they're giving to someone just by giving them a book about science. And is this something that follows through what appears to be a momentous event in a young person's life is ultimately forgotten by everybody else, but it's a core memory for them?

5:00Yes. Well, it's really lovely that a lot of the people that wrote in said their parents got them things like chemistry sets or lab equipment. And Mary Anderson, who's a biochemist, said to me that she got this chemistry set when she was too young. So I think she was about seven years old, she said. And she said she couldn't quite remember why her parents would have got it for her. She thought that maybe her mother saw it in a department store and just kind of liked the look of it because her family weren't particularly into science or chemistry. So it is this kind of thing of sometimes it's just the chance where they happen upon a gift that opens up a whole world to a small child.

5:33And it's worth saying it's not just gifts for young people that you cover in this article. There are some wonderful examples of folk who are actually working in research now and the gifts they've gotten from their colleagues, which is giving them a lift or whatever it's done. One email that I really loved was from a reader called Virginia McDonough, who's a molecular biologist. And she said she and her husband met in graduate school working in a yeast lab. When they got married, as a kind of in-joke to themselves, they got an engraving on the rings that represents the fusion of two mating types of yeast, which they said their family didn't really understand, but they thought it was quite fun.

6:09And your feature obviously is out now, and we'll put a link to it in the show notes. Do you think you've picked up any tips, any wisdom you could impart to our listeners if they're looking to get a gift for someone at this time of year? Well, I was thinking about this and it seems to be that you can't quite tell what's going to leave a mark on someone because as one of my early readers was saying, it's so amazing that people have remembered gifts from 70 years ago. One of the things that I think is a common theme was that a lot of the emails we got from people mentioned feeling kind of seen or understood or felt like the gifts that they got were kind of acknowledging an early interest in science and helping it grow.

6:44There was one great email we got about a man who's now the executive director at a zoo in California. And he said that the best science gift he ever got was the sheep skull that his grandmother cleaned and mounted on a frame for him. And he said what was amazing about that was the rest of his family kind of knew he was interested in natural history, but just ignored it. Whereas this gift really made him feel supported by her. And then that's led him to this amazing career in wildlife conservation and research. And of all the gifts that you write about in your feature, is there any that you yourself would be delighted to get now?

7:16I suppose a lot of the gifts are the kind of thing that you might give someone as a child with a burgeoning interest in science so maybe not totally applicable to me to get a chemistry set in my 40s but one of the gifts that really shows that you can't tell what's going to make someone happy is one of our readers got some cow's eyes to dissect when she was a child in middle school and it was because she was a glasses wearer and she wanted to figure out how eyes worked so her mother got her some cow's eyes from a slaughterhouse she thinks and she could dissect them and look inside. So that to her was beautiful and an amazing gift.

7:49And I don't want that this year, please. So I think you can never know what's going to be the perfect gift for someone, I suppose. Well, I would say the perfect gift would be telling someone about the Nature podcast, but I am biased. But let's leave it there. Anne-Marie, thank you so much for joining me. Great. Thank you. Nature's Anne-Marie Conlon there. Head over to the show notes for a link to her feature article. And in fact, Anne-Marie will be back after this brief musical interlude. Yes, that's right. It's time for the first of our songs, where we celebrate some of the science that we've talked about in the past year.

8:19As you may recall, this year saw a big story about a little dinosaur. A fossil that was thought to be a baby Tyrannosaurus rex was actually its own species, Nanotyrannus. And here in the UK, this time of year often means going to the theatre and seeing something a bit silly. So with that in mind, here's I Am The Very Model of a Miniature Tyrannosaur to the tune of the major general song from the Pirates of Penzance. I am the very model of a miniature Tyrannosaur, a very different species from the T-Rex that you knew before. And though you may have thought I was a child, a small T-Rex offspring, I stand before you almost fully grown, a pocket-sized short king.

9:19For some of you, this finding could be rather controversial, as experts and debate have been at times quite adversarial. But this new study is quite clear. In fact, it's almost trivial. The T-N-N-O-T-R-A-N-O stands before you unequivocal. The T-N-N-O-T-R-A-N-O stands before you unequivocal.

9:46My cousin T-Rex is an icon paleontological But youngsters have been missing from the record prehistorical So when I was discovered some researcher said it's crystal clear It's similar but miniature, we found our baby T-Rex here So when I was discovered some researcher said it's crystal clear It's similar but miniature, we found our baby T-Rex here For decades there were arguments and scientists did not agree Until a team from Carolina took another look at me They published careful measures of a fossil here for all to see So now I get my very own tyrannosaur taxonomy Their measurements were thorough with analysis of every bone And counting rings of growth revealed that I was nearly fully grown And so this study changes lots of data that you thought were known I'm not a baby T-Rex, but a species of my very own My teeth are many more in number than T-Rex has in its roar And my arms are longer than the king of lizards' tiny claw In short, in matters predatory, cretaceous and dinosaur I am the very model of a miniature Tyrannosaur Short and might as well, a tripletius, a dinosaur I am the very model of a miniature Tyrannosaur That was I Am The Very Model of A Miniature Tyrannosaur performed by Luke Thomas with backing vocals by Kelly Luckin, Michael Broom, Mario Satchwell, Rochelle Shorm Adam Pickles, Katie Roper, James Harvey and Nature's own Katrina Clark That song was written by Dan Fox, with editing by myself and Sharmini Bundel.

11:31And the music was performed by Phil Jackson, with sound mixing by Jonathan Armitage. Next up, it's time to get competitive, as it's the festive quiz, this year hosted by Sharmini Bundel.

11:46Hello and welcome to the annual end of year Nature Podcast quiz with me, your host, Sharmini Bundel. After I missed last year's competition, I'm back to provide the people with what they really want, Nick Petrich Howe, which is an entirely vibe-based point system, which is the only real way, I think we can all agree, to run a festive quiz. I hard disagree, but go on. Well, last year's winner, Dan Fox, he's been banned from competing in 2025, so there is no defending champion. It's everything to play for. I have with me here three wannabes ready to test their knowledge of this year's science news.

12:23May I introduce you all to Benjamin Thompson, Nick Petridge Howe and Anne-Marie Conlon. How confident are we feeling today, competitors? I am very confident. I feel like I have the vibe to take the vibes points. Ooh, bold words. I have the vibe. I am excited for my first ever quiz. Yes, first quiz. I hope you get in the vibes on my vibes-based points system. I have a selection of questions for you this year. They're all based on 2025's podcast and video headlines. and the theme is all about the connections between different stories an entirely original concept which I have named connective tissue to give it that sciencey twist so I will be asking you to untangle the connective tissue in each case between different things and I will say you are free to work together it's the season of love and cooperation how do we get a winner?

13:15well there will be only one winner ultimately so up to you how much you want to work together So we're going to dive in with our very first question. I'm going to ask you, what is the connective tissue between these four animals? A T-Rex, a wasp, a direwolf and a duck. So this is a bit of a memory test because we have had stories this year about T-Rexes, wasps, direwolves and ducks. So it will require you to some extent to remember what those stories were. So the T-Rex, that was a fun story about the little dinosaur, which wasn't a T-Rex, but a lot of people thought it was a baby T-Rex. The other ones I can't remember.

13:56A direwolf, anyone remember the direwolf story? Direwolf was a company called Colossal that are bringing the direwolf back from extinction. I think they did a woolly mouse as well earlier in the year. The duck. Nick knows about the duck. Yeah, I remember doing the duck because mostly because some researchers stuck a rubber duck to a rock. and that was instant like, yes, I want to cover this because some researchers did that. I'm failing to see the connection now, unless it's just animals, but you said animals was the topic. It's slightly more specific. We forgot wasps. Oh, wasps. Wasps and wasp mimics.

14:28Oh, yeah, how good a mimic needs to be to fool a bird. And how did they test it? They printed 3D copies of these different hoverfly mimics. In the duck story, they use an actual rubber duck. Yeah. The T-Rex story, presumably they had or made a model based on some fossils. You're not quite on the right angle here, Ben. We have some 3D printed wasps. We have a rubber duck. We have what they thought was a T-Rex but wasn't. Things that aren't quite the thing. Oh. That is correct. Animals that either aren't real or aren't the animal that they're claimed to be. Oh, okay. Yes, because a lot of people said the direwolf is not really a direwolf because it's like a re-engineered wolf with slightly different tweaks to the genes to give it some of the traits of a dire wolf.

15:17Is it in fact a dire wolf? The rubber duck is not a duck. No, that's just a plastic duck, as were our 3D printed wasps. Yes, I think that's a bundle of vibe-based points for Anne-Marie there, but it was good teamwork. There was teamwork. We've got a couple of questions now, which are hybrid headlines. so I have gone through podcast and video headlines and I have merged three of them together so I'm going to give you a headline that is made out of three separate headlines and I'm going to ask you what the original was for three separate stories three separate stories three separate headlines I've taken the words from those headlines great and I've clobbered them together okay okay like Some sort of Frankenstein headline.

16:05So our first one is, Aqua Tweezers turned this brain atomically thin. I remember something about anvils, like tiny sapphire anvils, was it? Like squeezing something thin. That is correct. That was squeezing metals to be 2D. I think the brain was the Vesuvian eruption turned a brain into glass. Absolutely correct. You've got turned this brain. That was indeed the Vesuvius brain to glass story. We've got atomically thin. That was indeed sapphire anvils, squeeze metals atomically thin. But what about the aqua tweezers? I think this was a video produced by the reigning champion, Dan. I can't remember what the story actually was.

16:44It was something aqua tweezers, did they move atoms or something like that? This is, I'm going to tell you, this was aqua tweezers manipulate particles with water waves. It is indeed one of Dan's videos. And it's about how scientists use waves to control things. We have optical tweezers using waves of light to trap and manipulate things. They've got sound waves using to control particles. But this was using water waves to control particles, depending on the interference between the different waves. I kind of got that. Yeah, roughly. Well, you did say something about molecules. Moving atoms, I think.

17:22It's not quite right. I would like the point, though. It's vibes, Chamonix. Vibes. Do I have the vibes? It is vibes. Do you have the vibes? Well, the rest of us don't have any vibes. I'm going to give you half a point for that. You win by default. Oh, it's half point territory now. Okay, all right. All right. We've got another hybrid headline for you here. Okay. Ancient viral DNA gives robots a soft infrared vision. I've got the first one. I think I have the middle one. I think I have the middle one as well. Giving robots a soft touch is the original story, and I remember it because it's quite recent, and it was one of Nick's videos about this robot that has, like, spongy fingers.

17:59That's not how you describe it. It has fingers with like little tiny, maybe I should let you describe it. Yeah, they have little tiny magnetic fibers at the end that can stiffen on demand using magnetic fields. And they can use that to pick up all sorts of things, including crisps, potato chips for Americans, and even a worm, which was a bit of an odd clip. But go see the video for that. It was a cool video. Yeah. So that's the middle one. You've got gives robots a soft. That was indeed smart fabric gives robots a soft touch. Okay. And the first one is ancient viral DNA. So that's about these very old sequences of what once was viral DNA inside human genomes, which seems to be an important role in embryo development, at least in analogues to embryos in lab experiments.

18:44That's exactly right. Ancient viral DNA helps human embryos develop, is the headline there, which just leaves the very end of the hybrid headline, infrared vision. oh oh oh oh i remember this one because i think i helped film it because it was lizzie talking about lizzie gibney who often appears on the podcast and it was about the contact lenses that give you infrared vision these contact lenses give humans infrared vision yes that's very cool story that was super cool well that was our hybrid headline section and we've got another connective tissue based question here this is a tricky one oh oh have i made this quiz too hard no it's you who are wrong let's see what connects these four stories again from pod and video the stories were about an extremely flat salt lake in bolivia a new kind of pacemaker an ecosystem six miles below the surface of the sea and a mosquito factory in brazil and i will say that Anne-Marie, you help us with all our headlines.

19:51The headlines are very important for getting the connection in this case. That ruins my plan. So I think they might be, are they all like superlatives? So the ocean was the deepest ever something, something. Ecosystem. Ecosystem. The deepest ever ecosystem. It was the salt lakes. I'm not entirely sure what's the superlative. Is it the biggest ever mirror? Absolutely correct. Okay, I did write all these headlines. What were the other two? A new kind of pacemaker and a mosquito factory in Brazil. Mosquito factory is the biggest ever mosquito factory. And they're breeding mosquitoes to kind of counteract mosquito-based viruses because they're mosquitoes that won't spread these viruses in Brazil.

20:31And one of our reporters went to the mosquito factory. And the pacemaker, I don't know. Is it the smallest? Smallest. Oh, my God, I win. Oh, that's good. Ann Marie, win that round. You just, wow. Wow. Oh, that was well done. Sorry, everyone, for not giving you a look. Oh, no. The actual headlines for each of them were, is this really the world's largest mirror? World's tiniest pacemaker could revolutionise heart surgery. Earth's deepest ecosystem discovered six miles below the sea. And nature goes inside the world's largest mosquito factory. Here's the buzz. Ah, that was a good headline. But there were so many, there's a million mosquitoes or something.

21:12If you watch the video, we did a video on a story. there's millions of eggs and then they put them in these little boxes and post them out to people so that they can release them in their own areas. We've got one more headline based question to go. This is a little bit of a broader one. Okay, so I've been going back over our back catalogue for the year and I noticed there are two pod stories whose headlines contain a film reference. Can you name them? I love sneaking film references in but I do it so often. that I noticed. Maybe there were more and I didn't spot them but I noticed too. Film specifically, not TV, because we definitely had a headline with TARDIS in it.

21:50But TARDIS, Doctor Who. We talked about the TARDIS. Okay. Film specifically. Can we have more of a clue? I've got a clue for each of them. Okay, so your first movie reference headline is Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Oh, hang on. Obviously the film version of that is Apocalypse Now. Obviously. Everyone knew that. I don't remember the headline, I remember Dan being so pleased with himself when he came up with it. Apocalypse Then? Yes. And it was about the history of, it was the book show. The history of cataclysms and apocalypses around the world and how they affected human society, maybe in ways that were kind of unexpected.

22:32Yeah, it was a fascinating chat, that one. Yeah, and also it was interesting because we're worried about climate change. If this is an apocalyptic time, as people are often fond of saying, what can we learn from looking at the apocalypses of the past? That's right, Lizzie Wade, science writer, wrote that one. That was a great headline. So the headline was Apocalypse Then, How Cataclysms Shaped Human Societies. It was a great one. Got points for Anne-Marie and Ben there. And the second clue I've got for a second movie-based headline, the clue is Rick Moranis. Ghostbusters. No. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

23:04Oh, yes. Is going to be one as well, right? We did a headline that was a play on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. But what was it? Honey, I Ate the Kids. Honey, I Ate the Kids. I was about to say it. Okay, Nick, I think possibly you all get points for that. That was a beautiful collaborative effort. It was indeed, the headline was Honey I Ate the Kids, How Hunger and Hormones Make Mice Aggressive. Yeah. But we have to qualify with this headline that the researchers didn't let the mice eat their children. Yeah, they did measurements of their brains that showed that these mice wanted to. They saw the pups as food and they were aggressive towards them.

23:41They tried to attack them. But the researchers didn't let it go that far. But yeah, it was about the neuroscience of how it is that hunger and hormones can combine to lead to an aggressive response in mice. Well, with that, I will bring this year's festive quiz to an end. And I think we can all appreciate the success of the Vibes-based point system, which sees Anne-Marie as the indisputable winner. I think even if it wasn't Vibes-based, Anne-Marie might have taken that one. That was headline based. You know it helped. Very headline based. If you are interested in any of the stories that we've discussed and you want to refresh your memory on some of the exciting science from 2025, we will stick links to those in the show notes.

24:24You can go check them out. But thank you all for joining me this year. Thanks also to Dan Fox. We will consider lifting his ban for next year. I hope you've enjoyed the quiz and we will see you all in 2026. Looking forward to it. Thanks.

24:43I think it's fair to say that Anne-Marie absolutely destroyed us there. But listeners, I feel that in many ways. Nick, you and I are the moral victors. I think I've been the moral victor for many years now and never actually the victor. So sure, I'll take what I can get. But now I think it's time for one of our festive songs. This one is on a more traditional line, but with a science story twist. It's about something we were just talking about in the quiz. the researchers who stuck a rubber duck to a rock using a newly designed super sticky hydrogel. So this next song is Hard the Hydrogel is Stuck to the tune of Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

25:20Enjoy.

25:37Stuck Firmly to This rubber duck Piece of Rock and oxytide Firm against The ocean's might Hydra gels Made now Sticky Waterproof In salt and sea With some proteins to inspire and AI as amplifier of the glue is sticking firmly to the small dark thing I shall with water's protein drink blue with Everlasting stick Brought in water Come unstuck Tested on this rubber deck Sticking for eternity Until someone pulls it free Divers data trade it well making down this hydrogel all the hydrogel sticks well stronger than the molest shell Hail the side as the prince of blues, hail The dove with steamy mass More than moving that rich grass There'll be some white lights and grass One and eighty proteins drawn From the creatures of the wild Then we fight with angels Then I sit in rocky pools All the hydrogel is stuck For me to this robot That was Hard, the Hydrogel is Stuck performed by Nature's own Katrina Clark with Luke Thomas, Kelly Luckin, Michael Broome, Mario Satchwell, Rochelle Sharm, Adam Pickles and Katie Roper.

28:34That song was written by me with editing by Sharmini Bundel and the music was performed by James Harvey with sound mixing by Jonathan Armitage. Finally this week, it's time to do some reflecting on what the past 12 months have looked like for science and we do that with the help of Nature's 10 which is Nature's annual list of folk who have helped to shape science. Joining me to talk about them is Brendan Marr, a features editor here at Nature. Brendan, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me, Ben. It's an absolute pleasure. And you're one of the folk driving Nature's 10 this year.

29:06Yeah, you know, we try to look at the year of highlights for science and science and society and people that just sort of exemplify what was going on, you know, either through their work or through their experiences. And I think we caught a good range of some of the great things that have happened and some of the maybe not so great things that have happened. And we'll just kind of talk about those events through the people that, you know, lived them and did them. Well, let's talk about a few of them then. Let's start nine kilometers below the surface of the ocean or about 1.6 leagues, if you're a Jules Verne fan.

29:39And this is Mengren Du from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Right. So she was in a submersible and discovered, you know, the deepest known animal ecosystem ever recorded. And while she was down there, she discovered a variety of brand new species. We cover this story on the podcast and the images from this paper, they're quite haunting, right? Because you have this sort of barren seafloor all this way down and then these little patches of things sprouting out, right? And this is quite a diverse group of different organisms. Yeah, a whole bunch of different species. The animals down here, they live off of chemosynthetic bacteria that make energy from methane and hydrogen sulfide seeping out of the seafloor.

30:19It's kind of different from the hydrothermal vents that we often think about at the bottom of the seafloor. And this one's a lot deeper. And gosh, I can't imagine the sort of bravery it takes getting into a little submersible with just a few other people and going so deep down. It must be just an amazing experience. I'm not claustrophobic, but I know this submarine is, what, 1.8 meters across. And it is essentially a three-person titanium can. And she's quite offhand about this endeavor, right? Yeah, she's not afraid at all, which I wish I could say the same for myself. And obviously this finding got quite a lot of coverage, right?

30:54We're very interested in the very depths of the ocean, which people don't know a huge amount about. Does this research give any more insight into what's going on down there, do you think? Yeah, you know, researchers once thought that there was nothing that could keep life surviving down here, except maybe dead whales floating down and feeding a sort of short-lived ecosystem while the whale decomposes. but there's just lots of different ways for life to exist it always seems to find a way right as the old saying goes well let's move on to the second person we're going to talk about and that's susan menares who was briefly director of the u.s centers for disease control and prevention that's the cdc to you and i why has she made this year's list what's her story right well she was appointed by president trump to head the cdc which as we know has been somewhat embattled organization during the course of the Trump administration.

31:46And when she was named, there was kind of a big sigh of relief from a lot of people thinking, you know, now we've got a qualified scientist, someone who has like 20 years experience working in science and the government, who's going to be helming this organization. And less than a month in, she was fired by RFK Jr. Right. So it really was a matter of, you can almost count it in terms of days then. And what happened? What led to this abrupt ending of her position then? So she testified in a congressional hearing in September that it was for holding the line on scientific integrity. She said that RFK Jr.

32:21had instructed her to fire some of the top scientists at the agency and to approve vaccine recommendations that she hadn't even seen. RFK would refute that particular account. And he said that she had told him that she was untrustworthy. And there was a domino effect to this as well, right? Several other folk followed her as well. Among the people that left shortly after she was fired, we had Deborah Horry and three other senior CDC scientists. Now, Horry, she also testified on Capitol Hill and said that Kennedy and his team had really not been consulting the CDC scientists on key decisions, including this was a big decision in May that was going to limit access to COVID-19 vaccines for children and pregnant people.

33:01So this is right at the heart of what a lot of people expected RFK Jr.'s agenda to be when he took the helm at the Health and Human Services. And it's all kind of played out kind of according to our worst expectations that he's going to limit access to vaccines and downplay their effectiveness and play up what he perceives as their dangers and their risks. As you say, it's been quite the year for the CDC. We've covered that several times on the podcast. Does Monares give a sense of what she's hoping for the agency, even though she was removed so quickly into her tenure? Well, she and many others had reported that the morale there is just at an all time low.

33:44They don't have support from the government. And there had just recently been a shooting at the CDC. It was a person who was upset about the COVID-19 vaccine, saying that it was making people sick. and there was a police officer killed during that shooting. And, you know, all of this really traces back to the words of RFK Jr. and others who have been maligning this organization for a long time. It's kind of hard to stress how important the CDC has been, both for this country and globally, at maintaining public health and making a place for public health. It's a really hard position to be in because at the CDC, when you're doing your job right, nobody notices, right?

34:26But any mistake always gets amplified because you're talking about people's health. Let's keep going, Brendan, and maybe let's move to India for our next entrant in this year's Nature's Ten. And that's Archal Agrawal. Tell me a bit about him. So Agrawal, he's a PhD in applied mathematics. And he remembers talking with a very enthusiastic undergraduate about a project. And the student had this great idea for moving things forward is that he could formulate a description of this project using some software that basically plagiarizes but changes the phrasing of published work so that it seems like it's newly written.

35:05So Agrawal was obviously horrified at this. And I think it led a spark in him that people could so boldly dip into things like plagiarism and misconduct. So he started really trying to take stock of what was going on in Indian science. And one place to look at that is through retractions. So he helped kind of map out how many retractions were happening at Indian universities. And that's made a big impact. He resigned from his university post and he launched this India Research Watch, which is a kind of an online group of scientists and students who highlight integrity issues, including plagiarism and other kinds of publication misconduct.

35:43and Indian officials have really taken notice of what he's doing and they're actually changing the university standards so that they're not just measuring metrics of how often someone publishes but they're actually looking at metrics of how often someone retracts. And it's worth saying not all papers are attracted due to misconduct some are attracted as part of the scientific enterprise maybe his work concentrates more on those that have some suspicion attached it has to be said that this has come at some significant cost to him personally, but he is resolute in what he's doing. Yeah. So Agrawal has had some trouble finding work and he's also facing a lawsuit that was filed by a private university against several members of the India Research Watch Group.

36:27We quote him in our story as saying, you know, once in a while, I think maybe I should stop doing this. But he's really kept going and begun to run workshops for universities and raise awareness to these issues, because with research integrity, you really can't do anything to fight it if you're not aware of it, if you're not looking for it. Well, let's keep moving, Brendan. Let's move back to the US for our next entrant, and that is Tony Tyson. Now, we started this chat in the depths of the oceans, but Tony really has played a key role in looking the other way, looking into distant space. Right.

36:59So the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile opened this year, and it's going to be putting distant galaxies in the southern sky in a much sharper focus and a lot of that is all thanks to tony tyson he's the person who dreamt up this scope who led the quest to get it built so it has this like huge digital camera and uh i try to think back to the first digital camera i ever had what was the first digital camera you ever had do you remember how many megapixels it had in it i think mine was a two megapixel it was mind-blowing right yeah 3200 megapixels in every shot all right marginally better and the size of a small car as well if i remember rightly yeah size of a small car and tony as you say it really was a key driver for this telescope being built from literally the drawing board through to the final adjustments to make sure it was working yeah that's right and people really are pinning some high hopes on this observatory one of the interesting things it can do is take time-lapse video of what's going on in deep space and they are hoping to map out the dark matter in the universe using this three-dimensional approach.

38:07Tony at 85 then is one of the more senior folk to be included in Nature's Ten. Let's talk about the youngest entrants this year and certainly one of the youngest entrants we've had while doing Nature's 10. Tell me about them. Yeah, we've got a baby. KJ Muldoon lives outside of Philadelphia. He was born with a genetic disorder called CPS1 deficiency, which makes it really difficult and possibly impossible to process ammonia in the liver. So you have ammonia kind of building up in the system and poisoning organs. It's bad. It's a fatal disease if untreated. Liver transplant is an option, but roughly half of the kids with this disorder will die from it.

38:47But now there is an approved medical therapy that uses CRISPR gene editing. And this one is different and special because it was specifically designed just for KJ. And they did this in a matter of months. So this kind of miraculous mobilization of the biomedical enterprise was just incredible. And it shows what really could be possible in the future with these super personalized gene therapy approaches. And you're right, obviously KJ is the focus of this article, but there was a huge team of medics and biomedical scientists and biochemists and ethicists and all sorts of folk who worked on this treatment for him then.

39:28And it really was a race, it has to be said. Yes, the team had to work really hard. And what's kind of interesting is that the team of scientists, the ones who were really making kind of decisions about whether they could go ahead with this or not, they made a point of it not to meet K.J. Muldoon. They wanted to make sure that any decisions that they made were based on the data and, you know, sort of what the best signal from their experiments was showing rather than being influenced by meeting this child that was potentially facing a very difficult fate. And this kid is cute. Described beautifully in the article as having a megawatt chubby cheeked smile.

40:06And the team, when they started investigating this, they predicted maybe they could do it in 18 months, which is a really fast turnaround for essentially a clinical trial of one. Instead, they turned it around in six. And yeah, a quite remarkable turnaround then to get this therapy into KJ. How is he doing since, do we know? So our understanding is that he's doing quite well. I know the doctors were all pleased with his progress. And more broadly then, Brendan, this shows that these hyperspecific drugs can be effective. And Of course, there'll be many other families experiencing heartbreaking situations like this.

40:42I suppose the question now is, how does science ensure that other children will have the same opportunity? You know, that's going to take a lot of work. What this team helps show is that it is possible, but you need to work within a regulatory framework to make these kinds of treatments, you know, really come out quickly for individuals and in a cost effective way. You know, that's just going to take a lot of organizing and regulatory hard work. including, as you pointed out, you know, ethicists need to be involved in this. You have to get buy-in from a lot of people to make sure that this is something that can be done safely and something that can be done equitably, that people who need it can actually access it.

41:22Well, Brendan, absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much. We'll put a link to Nature's 10 in the show notes so listeners can go and read all these excellent articles. But for the time being, Brendan Maher, thank you for joining me. Thanks, Ben. Well that brings us to the end of the show but fear not listeners there'll be plenty more content to keep you entertained over the festive period Later this week Nature's News and Views team will join us to talk about a few of their science highlights of the year and next week we'll be choosing our favourite podcast stories of the year in our annual Clips show And in the new year we'll be looking ahead to what to expect in 2026 Until then, I'm Nick Petra-Chow and I'm Benjamin Thompson.

42:04Thanks for listening.