Readers' Science Gifts That Shaped Careers

00:46 The gifts that sparked a love of science

Nature put a call out for readers to tell us about memorable presents that first got them interested in science, or mementos of their life in research. These include telescopes, yeast-themed wedding rings, and... cows’ eyes.

Nature: The gift that shaped my career in science

08:12 “I am the Very Model of a Miniature Tyrannosaur”

In the first of our annual festive songs celebrating the science of the past year, we tell the story of a diminutive dinosaur that turned out to be its own species.

Nature Podcast: Meet the ‘Wee-rex’. Tiny tyrannosaur is its own species

Nature Video: Hotly debated dinosaur is not a tiny T. rex after all

11:43 A very scientific quiz

An all-star cast competes for the glory or being the winner of the Nature Podcast’s 2025 festive quiz.

Nature: Meet the ‘Wee-rex’. Tiny tyrannosaur is its own species

Nature: This company claimed to ‘de-extinct’ dire wolves. Then the fighting started

Nature Podcast: 3D-printed fake wasps help explain bad animal mimicry

Nature Video: ‘Aqua tweezers’ manipulate particles with water waves

Nature Podcast: Sapphire anvils squeeze metals atomically-thin

Nature Video: Vesuvius volcano turned this brain to glass

Nature Podcast: Ancient viral DNA helps human embryos develop

Nature Video: Magnetic fibres give this robot a soft grip

Nature: These contact lenses give people infrared vision — even with their eyes shut

Nature Video: Is this really the world's largest mirror? Researchers put it to the test

Nature Podcast: World’s tiniest pacemaker could revolutionize heart surgery

Nature Podcast: Earth’s deepest ecosystem discovered six miles below the sea

Nature Podcast: Nature goes inside the world’s largest ‘mosquito factory’ — here’s the buzz

Nature Podcast: Apocalypse then: how cataclysms shaped human societies

Nature Podcast: Honey, I ate the kids: how hunger and hormones make mice aggressive

25:21 “Hard the Hydrogel is Stuck”

Our second festive song is an ode to a rubber duck that was stuck to a rock, thanks to a newly designed, super-adhesive hydrogel.

Nature Podcast: Underwater glue shows its sticking power in rubber duck test

Nature Video: Why did researchers stick a duck to a rock? To show off their super glue

28:42 Nature’s 10

Each year, Nature’s 10 highlights some of the people who have helped shape science over the past 12 months. We hear about a few of the people who made the 2025 list, including: a civil servant who stood up for evidence-based public-health policy; the science sleuth who revealed a retraction crisis at Indian universities; and the baby whose life was saved by the first personalized CRISPR therapy.

Nature: Nature’s 10

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