The Nature Podcast
The Nature Podcast is released on a weekly basis and is intended as a free audio supplement for the famous journal Nature. I believe that the Nature Podcast is an invaluable resource for time and money-strapped students that wish to keep abreast of any new developments in pretty much every scientific field.
Even though I have a subscription to Nature and try to selectively read every biologically-related article each week, it’s still useful to listen to the podcast, as I find that it simplifies and consolidates the main gist of some pretty complex research.
In fact, the podcast is so good that I often find myself listening to and understanding the basics of research from outside the biological field, such as astrophysics (which is quite interesting incidentally!).
Thus, I believe that listening to the Nature Podcast can help give a broader appreciation of all sciences. This is especially useful at an undergraduate level, where I believe there’s a ‘funneling’ effect of teaching; as you progress through your degree you get a more and more detailed understanding of a certain section of the discipline you’re studying, but as a result, the overall picture of what is going on in the other sciences in general can be lost. Would you agree?
The Nature Podcast makes my learning and inclusion of outside reading easier, and more diverse. I hope that many of you make use of this resource and perhaps consider listening to it on the way into university each week.
Submitted by Heny Mori
5 comments:
Sounds interesting - is the content easy to understand for a non-biologist such as myself who only took science up till A-level?
I have a related question to the one above. Who do you think the podcast is designed for? Is it a 'public' communication or do you think it's mostly scientists that use it?
In response to your question:
Anonymous: 'Sounds interesting - is the content easy to understand for a non-biologist such as myself who only took science up till A-level?'
Henry: The content of the podcasts for medical and biological research does tend to be rather technical and rely on some understanding of the processes involved, but for every story there is a quick summary to put it into context and introduce the topic. The presenter is also very good at asking questions that the audience may be thinking at the time of listening.
Ultimately, yes some content is complicated and you may think 'what?!'. I find that it's very dependent on how well the researcher can convey his/her ideas succintly and to a wider scientific audience. Saying that, I haven't done Physics since A- level and I find that I can understand alot of what is reported in the physics field for example. Most likely that says more about the successful way the presenter introduces the topic than my brilliance at physics :)
My advice is to give it a listen and see how you get on; I'm sure you'll understand the overall picture of what is being reported even if you aren't intimately familiar with specific pathways and protein names etc. Generally it's accessible stuff, although some biochem/chemistry stories can be a bit horrid. It also gives you 'discussion ammo' for those times when you get stuck next to a boring biologist/doctor at a dinner party...
Henry
Sarah: 'I have a related question to the one above. Who do you think the podcast is designed for? Is it a 'public' communication or do you think it's mostly scientists that use it?'
Henry: I thought about this, and came to the conclusion that it's easy to forget how much knowledge scientists take as a given. For example, I may have understood the gist of the content of a biological podcast at A-Level, but I wouldn't have been able to understand all the finer details that I can now.
Some stories are better reported than others and if a topic grabs your interest, I think that it's easier/more pleasurable to grasp what is being said. For such stories, any undergraduate scientist with A-levels in science SHOULD be able to understand what is being said.
I would say though that the Nature podcast is aimed at the scientific community with the level of understanding of each story dependent on the prior knowledge/stage of learning of the listener. I am sure that the audience spread is wide, from A-level students right up to researchers and Professors. For the general public, however, I would say that the material covered in each podcast would not be accessible unless they have taken science A-Levels.
Henry
After reading your comments, I listened to a Nature podcast, and found it highly informative and interesting. Although I am a life science graduate I do think that the podcast could be understood by non-scientists, and in fact my father (who works in banking) now listens to these podcasts on a regular basis on his commute to work. Go Nature!!
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