Discovery
Episodes
The Life Scientific: Gareth Collett
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Movies might have us believe that bomb disposal comes down to cutting the right wire. In fact, explosive devices are complex and varied - and learning...
The Life Scientific: Sonia Gandhi
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many people will be familiar with Parkinson’s disease: the progressive brain disorder that causes symptoms including tremors and slower movement, le...
The Life Scientific: Mark O'Shea
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do you feel about snakes? What about highly venomous ones?For Mark O’Shea, close encounters with the world’s most rare and deadly snakes are n...
Different Voices
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What’s it like to wake up with a brand new voice?For those with foreign accent syndrome, this is their reality. Patients who develop this rare speec...
The Animal Employment Agency
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We live in a time of automation and robotics; the machines run the factories, and AI will soon take all the jobs. And yet, even today, there are certa...
Bodies
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The London Anatomy Office accepts around 350 human bodies donated for medical research and education annually. You may imagine that these bodies are p...
The Life Scientific: Kevin Fong
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There can't be many people in the world who've saved lives in hospital emergency rooms and also helped care for the wellbeing of astronauts in space –...
The Life Scientific: Dame Pratibha Gai
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chemical reactions are the backbone of modern society: the energy we use, the medicines we take, our housing materials, even the foods we eat, are cre...
The Life Scientific: Catherine Heymans
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever considered the lighter side of dark matter? Comedy has proved an unexpectedly succesful way to engage people with science - as today's g...
The Life Scientific: Tim Coulson
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a young man, traveling in Africa, Tim Coulson - now Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford - became seriously ill with malaria and was to...
The Life Scientific: Brian Schmidt
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever pondered the fact that the universe is expanding? And not only that, it's expanding at an increasing speed - meaning everything around u...
The Life Scientific: Jane Goodall
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall died last week at the age of 91. In tribute, we’re re-sharing this interview from 2020, where she reflects...
The Life Scientific: Jacqueline McKinley
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How much information can you extract from a burnt fragment of human bone?Quite a lot, it turns out - not only about the individual, but also their bro...
The Life Scientific: Jonathan Shepherd
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Surgeons often have to deal with the consequences of violent attacks - becoming all too familiar with patterns of public violence, and peaks around we...
The Life Scientific: Doyne Farmer
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Doyne Farmer is something of a rebel. Back in the seventies, when he was a student, he walked into a casino in Las Vegas, sat down at a roulette table...
The Life Scientific: Tori Herridge
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Elephants are the largest living land mammal and today our planet is home to three species: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, an...
The Life Scientific: Sir Magdi Yacoub
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What does it take to earn the nickname, ‘The Leonardo da Vinci of heart surgery’?That's the moniker given to today's guest - a man who pioneered h...
The Life Scientific: Claudia de Rham
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Claudia de Rham has rather an unusual relationship with gravity.While she has spent her career exploring its fundamental nature, much of her free time...
The Life Scientific: Neil Lawrence
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When you think of Artificial Intelligence, does it inspire confidence, or concern?Although it's now generally accepted that this technology will play ...
The Life Scientific: Liz Morris
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A frozen, white world at the far-reaches of the globe, where you're surrounded by snow and silence, might sound rather appealing. Factor in temperatur...
The Life Scientific: Anthony Fauci
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to a world where medicine meets politics: a space that brings together scientific research, government wrangling, public push-back and healthc...
Tooth and Claw: Praying Mantises
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Investigating an insect known for eating its prey alive – including, at times, its own species - the praying mantis! With bulging eyes and a triangu...
Tooth and Claw: Leopards
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Investigating an elusive big cat known for its excellent tree climbing abilities - the leopard! This master of camouflage is found from the south of A...
The Thirst for Water
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of The Evidence, Claudia Hammond discusses all things hydration with a panel of experts. Where do our hydration guidelines come from? ...
Tooth and Claw: Harpy Eagles
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Named after a beast from Greek mythology, the harpy eagle is widely considered to be the most powerful bird of prey due to its strong legs and huge ta...
Tooth and Claw: Killer Whales
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Investigating the black-and-white apex predator of the sea – the killer whale! Able to predate even great white sharks, this marine mammal is the la...
The Life Scientific - Tim Peake
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What's it like living underwater for two weeks? What's the trickiest part of training to be an astronaut? What are the most memorable sights you see f...
How does heat affect our health?
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What effect will warming temperatures have on health? One place to look for answers is Bulgaria. In the summer of 2023, Bulgaria experienced numerous ...
Unstoppable: Inge Lehmann
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From growing up in a progressive Denmark to studying mathematics at a gender-segregated Cambridge University, Inge Lehmann had to power through the sh...
Unstoppable: Tebello Nyokong
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber are both scientists, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about the women that came before them. In Un...
Unstoppable: Kura Paul-Burke
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber are both scientists, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about the women that came before them. In Un...
Unstoppable: Jocelyn Bell Burnell
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber are both scientists, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about the women that came before them. In Un...
Unstoppable: Tu Youyou
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber are both scientists, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about the women that came before them. In Un...
Unstoppable: Purnima Devi Barman
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber are both scientists, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about the women that came before them. In Un...
The Life Scientific - Anna Korre
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the famous frog once said, it's not easy being green. And when it comes to decarbonising industry, indeed, reducing emissions of all sorts, the tas...
The Life Scientific - Rosalie David
17 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rosalie David is a pioneer in the study of ancient Egypt. In the early 1970s, she launched a unique project to study Egyptian mummified bodies using t...
The Life Scientific - Peter Stott
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 2003, Europe experienced its most intense heatwave on record - one that saw more than 70,000 people lose their lives. Experiencing th...
The Life Scientific - Ijeoma Uchegbu
03 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine a nanoparticle, less that a thousandth of the width of a human hair, that is so precise that it can carry a medicine to just where it’s need...
The Life Scientific - Darren Croft
25 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Darren Croft studies one of the ocean’s most charismatic and spectacular animals – the killer whale. Orca are probably best known for their predat...
The Life Scientific: Bill Gates
17 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Bill Gates is one of the world's best-known billionaires - but after years at the corporate coalface building a software empire and a vast fortune, hi...
Uncharted: A different kind of justice
10 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A small, informal survey leads to shocking revelations about the US justice system, with its truths only uncovered decades later. Meanwhile, an ambiti...
Uncharted: The golden spike
03 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At a conference in Mexico, one scientist’s outburst sparks a global quest to find a ‘golden spike’ - the boundary marking the shift into a new g...
Uncharted: Songs of the sea
27 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A PhD student with a passion for whales stumbles upon a strange, eerie sound deep beneath the ocean waves, something that will soon rock her world. Me...
Uncharted: The grain of truth
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Amid the desperation of war-starved Netherlands, a doctor defies conventional wisdom to save gravely ill children, uncovering a treatment that sparks ...
Uncharted: Love Bytes
13 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A mathematician searching for love discovers that relationships aren’t always as simple as equations—are his calculations the issue, or is there s...
Inside Health: Life after my mountain accident
06 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, Niall McCann was left with a bruised spinal cord when he crashed his speed glider into the side of a mountain at 50mph.He shares his journey ...
Inside Health: Can Insomnia be fixed?
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps you couldn't drift off, or maybe you woke in the middle of the night and then couldn't nod off again. In this edition of Inside Health we're t...
Hay Festival Special
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Chris van Tulleken shares stories from the making of his chart-topping podcast, Fed. In conversation with Leyla Kazim, at Hay Festival 2024.In Fed,...
Inside Health: How can we age well?
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the Hay Festival, James and a panel of experts explain what we can all do to help ourselves age well.We discover what’s going on in our bodies ...
The Life Scientific - Peter Goadsby
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Throbbing head, nausea, dizziness, disturbed vision – just some of the disabling symptoms that can strike during a migraine attack. This neurologica...
The Life Scientific: Kip Thorne
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kip Thorne is an emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Caltech, the California Institute of Technology, and someone who has had a huge impact o...
The Life Scientific - Vicky Tolfrey
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It's summer - no really - and although the weather might have been mixed, the sporting line-up has been undeniably scorching - from the back-and-forth...
The Life Scientific - Dawn Bonfield
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The engineering industry, like many other STEM sectors, has a problem with diversity: one that Dawn Bonfield believes we can and must fix, if we're to...
The Life Scientific: Raymond Schinazi
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent decades, we have taken huge steps forward in treating formerly fatal viruses - with pharmacological breakthroughs revolutionising treatment ...
The Life Scientific - Janet Treasure
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From anorexia nervosa to binge-eating, eating disorders are potentially fatal conditions that are traditionally very difficult to diagnose and treat -...
The Life Scientific: Anne Child
28 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Marfan syndrome is a genetic disorder that makes renders the body’s connective tissues incredibly fragile; this can weaken the heart, leading to pot...
The Life Scientific: Conny Aerts
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us have heard of seismology, the study of earthquakes; but what about asteroseismology, focusing on vibrations in stars?Conny Aerts is a profe...
The Life Scientific: Dr Nira Chamberlain
14 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When does a crowd of people become unsafe? How well will the football team Aston Villa do next season? When is it cost-effective to replace a kitchen?...
The Beaches
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A top secret little-known mission that changed the outcome of World War II. Not Alan Turing's Enigma code-breaking mission but a daring foray, conduct...
Protein: Powerhouse or piffle?
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Take a trip around the supermarket and you'll see shelves of products claiming to be 'high in protein'. Scroll through your social media and you'll fi...
The Life Scientific: Mike Edmunds
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the universe made of? Where does space dust come from? And how exactly might one go about putting on a one-man-show about Sir Isaac Newton?The...
Hannah Critchlow
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With 86 billion nerve cells joined together in a network of 100 trillion connections, the human brain is the most complex system in the known universe...
The Life Scientific: Fiona Rayment
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The reputation of the nuclear industry has had highs and lows during the career of Dr Fiona Rayment, the President of the Nuclear Institute. But nowad...
Sheila Willis
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Sheila Willis is a forensic scientist who was Director General of Forensic Science Ireland for many years.She has spent her life using science to h...
The Life Scientific: Charles Godfray
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Charles Godfray, Director of the the Oxford Martin School tells Jim Al-Kahlili about the intricate world of population dynamics, and how a h...
The Life Scientific
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Jonathan Van-Tam, or ‘JVT’ as he's arguably better known, first came to widespread public attention in his role as Deputy Chief Medical Office...
Fed: Beyond the bird
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Chris van Tulleken wrestles with the dilemma of slaughter. Could he bring himself to dispatch an animal himself? Is he happy supporting an industry...
Fed: Big chicken
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We're a planet addicted to chicken and our appetites fuel a massive global industry, but is it one we should support?While some cite it as a shining e...
Fed: The fast food trap
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Like many of us, Dr Chris van Tulleken is always trying to eat better food: healthy, high welfare, good for the environment. This kind of consumer dem...
The Evidence: Salt
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For eons, salt has been crucial to human health, culture, and diet. On this episode of The Evidence, we explore the strange science of salt taste – ...
Fed: Fine Print
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do YOU know what you're eating? Are you sure?Dr Chris van Tulleken is keen to make good food choices, and buy the best chicken possible for his dinner...
Fed: The Ethical Consumer's Dilemma
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve heard about the potential problems around chicken welfare. But how does that square with their impact on the environment?Dr Chris van Tulleken...
Fed: U OK Hen?
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We eat chicken. A LOT of it. We might love the taste, but what about how we're treating those birds?After witnessing first-hand the reality of indoor ...
Fed: A Chicken and Egg Story
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
So we started farming this bird called chicken, and it spread around the world. But what does it actually TAKE to feed us the amount of chicken we wan...
Fed: The invention of chicken
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Chris van Tulleken is on a mission to find out what we’re eating, why, and who or what might be influencing our decisions. And he’s starting hi...
Unstoppable: Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber both have a love of science, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about some of the leading women at t...
Unstoppable: Olga González-Sanabria
10 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her last year of high school, Olga González-Sanabria went on a field trip to the University of Puerto Rico’s school of engineering – and immed...
Unstoppable: Asima Chatterjee
03 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a lab in 1950s Kolkata, Asima Chatterjee laboriously extracts chemicals from the Indian snakeroot plant. She knows she will have to send the produc...
Unstoppable: Florence Bell
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Florence Bell’s scientific career began in the 1930s whilst studying at Cambridge University. The University did not grant degrees to women at the t...
Unstoppable: Nzambi Matee
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber both have a love of science, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about some of the leading women at t...
Unstoppable: Hedy Lamarr
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Julia Ravey and Dr Ella Hubber both have a love of science, but it turns out there’s a lot they don’t know about some of the leading women at t...
The Evidence: Maternal Health in Malawi
08 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The process of childbirth can be painful yet amazing, but at times and in some places, also very dangerous. Recorded in Malawi, East Africa, Claudia H...
Obsessed with the Quest: Humpback Heat Run
06 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Underwater cameraman Roger Munns set himself and his team an incredible challenge. In 2008, they visited Tonga to film the biggest courtship ritual of...
Obsessed with the Quest: Inside the Minds of Chimpanzees
29 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Primatologist Catherine Hobaiter has spent more of her adult life in the rain forests of Uganda, with family bands of chimpanzees, than she has with h...
Wild Inside: The sea lion
22 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Ben Garrod and Dr Jess French get under the skin (and blubber) of the California sea lion, to crack the key to its success both on land and ...
Wild Inside: The aphid
15 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The tiny sap-sucking aphid, at just a few millimetres long, is the scourge of many gardeners and crop-growers worldwide, spreading astonishingly rapid...
Wild Inside: The Bearded Vulture
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ominously called the lamb vulture, there are many myths and misconceptions surrounding the bearded vulture. Flying the mountainous ranges across centr...
Wild Inside: The Red Kangaroo
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Wild Inside returns for a new series to take a look at some of our planet’s most exceptional and unusual creatures from an entirely new perspective:...
Uncharted: Access denied
25 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Fry explores two tales of data and discovery.A young researcher gains access to a secretive data set and discovers a system causing harm to the...
The Evidence: The science of the menopause
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Millions of women around the world experience the menopause each year; it’s an important milestone, which marks the end of their reproductive years....
Uncharted: The gossip mill
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Fry explores two more tales of data and discovery.Gossip and rumour are plaguing a tile manufacturing company. The chatter is pulling morale to...
Uncharted: The happiness curve
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Fry explores two tales of data and discovery.Do orangutans - or humans - experience a midlife crisis? Hidden deep in the data, two economists h...
Uncharted: The doctor will see you now
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Fry explores two tales of data and discovery.Two couples are brought together by a tragedy and a tatty piece of paper, which reveals a serial m...
Uncharted: The returning soldier
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Fry explores two tales of data and discovery.In a few specific years across the 20th Century, the proportion of boys born, mysteriously spiked....
The Life Scientific: Michael Wooldridge
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have a long-held fascination with the idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a dystopian threat - from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, through to...
The Life Scientific: Mercedes Maroto-Valer
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do you solve a problem like CO2? As the curtain closes on the world’s most important climate summit, we talk to a scientist who was at COP 28 an...
The Life Scientific: Sir Harry Bhadeshia
05 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Life Scientific zooms in to explore the intricate atomic make-up of metal alloys, with complex crystalline arrangements that can literally make or...
The Life Scientific: Cathie Sudlow
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Big data” and “data science” are terms we hear more and more these days. The idea that we can use these vast amounts of information to unders...
The Life Scientific: Sir Michael Berry
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Jim Al-Khalili meets one of Britain's greatest physicists, Sir Michael Berry. His work uncovers 'the arcane in the mundane', revealing the s...
The Life Scientific: Sarah Harper
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
People around the world are living longer and, on the whole, having fewer children. What does this mean for future populations? Sarah Harper CBE, Prof...