In the third of Nature‘s election-themed podcasts available online, the journal looks at where US innovation policy might go under a new president. You can listen or read a trascript at the journal’s podcast index page. In the latest podcast, Stephen Ezell of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says that “substantial amounts of research into basic science must occur before we can ever reach technology and therefore government has a substantial role to play in being a funder of basic and applied research in the United States. When you look at a great number of US companies and industries, specific companies like Google, like (UNCLEAR 14:18), like Oracle, these were all companies that got their initial funding from basic government grants for research in science and technology. Extending and increasing the amount of government funding for research is one of the most important things the next administration can do.” The panel goes on to discuss how research could be funded and possible mechanisms for promoting US competitiveness in the global sphere. William Bates of the Council of Competitiveness compares the presidential candidates: “Senator Obama has been very explicit in endorsing doubling of the research budget. Senator McCain speaks about the importance of research, but I think he has been a little more hesitant to embrace a specific doubling goal of the research agencies. They’re certainly talking about it and that’s a big step in the right direction.” Hear or read more via the Nature podcast index.

An archive of the Nature Podcasts, which are all free, can be found here. Each week, Nature authors talk about their newly published papers, on topics ranging from craters formed by asteroid collision, tsunami risk in the Bay of Bengal, the sequence of the grapevine genome, a mouse with obsessive compulsive disorder, a new species of ape, and many more.