Their original intro was a banger. It’s something like a ringtone trying to do pop punk. 5 seconds into the intro, the hosts start telling you the upcoming stories as the music fades in and out. A host tells the date and her name, then the other hosts introduce themselves. 40 seconds in, the show starts. The whole time that song was fun. A+ intro. I would have no problem listening to the intro anywhere.

Compare that to their current intro. It’s a slow dollar store Brian eno jingle that swells as you hear the most cliche’d clips about what science is. You have an old professorial European talking about “data”. You have an annoying kid asking a question about light. 40 seconds into the intro, and you’re just getting the headlines. That just takes a few seconds, then you’re forced to suffer through 10 more seconds of the Brian eNot.

An example of the old intro: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02159-6 after just 5 seconds you’re hearing about mollusk fossils

Example of the new intro: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01230-1 It’s cringe. I would die if someone heard that intro coming from my car (still a good podcast though).