Subscribe now

Podcasts

Podcasts for the insatiably curious by the world’s most popular weekly science magazine. Everything from the latest science and technology news to the big-picture questions about life, the universe and what it means to be human.

New Scientist Weekly is our flagship show where we discuss the week’s biggest breakthroughs with our internationally recognised team of journalists. Hosted from our New York bureau by Timothy Revell and Christie Taylor. New episodes every Friday.

Dead Planets Society Join Leah Crane, Chelsea Whyte, and some of the world's foremost experts as they discuss outlandish and mind-blowing what-ifs about the universe. What if Earth was actually cube shaped? Can we destroy the sun? Is it possible to make Pluto a planet again? New episodes every other Tuesday.

CultureLab is an array of delights from pop culture. Sometimes we interview the world’s most exciting authors about their fascinating books, other times we delve into the science behind a movie or TV show or just why we love it so much. New episodes every other Tuesday.

About this episode

11 September 2023

Join Leah and Chelsea as they belatedly mourn the loss of Pluto as a planet. Back in 2006, Pluto was demoted to “dwarf planet”, sparking widespread outrage… a decision the team is still determined to reverse.

Special guests are Kathryn Volk of the University of Arizona and Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology, who discuss several approaches to boosting Pluto’s status, from helping it pack on the pounds, to dragging it into the inner solar system, to sabotaging one of its neighbours…

Dead Planets Society is a podcast that takes outlandish ideas about how to tinker with the cosmos – from punching a hole in a planet to unifying the asteroid belt to destroying the sun – and subjects them to the laws of physics to see how they fare.

Your hosts are Leah Crane and Chelsea Whyte.

If you have a cosmic object you’d like to figure out how to destroy, email the team at deadplanets@newscientist.com. It may just feature in a later episode… And if you just want to chat about this episode or wrecking the cosmos more generally, tweet @chelswhyte and @downhereonearth.

Latest podcast episodes

The big interview episodes

Escape Pod episodes

New Scientist Weekly Extra episodes