Making Science with Tom Whipple
Episodes
Breakthroughs in Cancer Research
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Cancer Research UK is funding the breakthroughs that matter. Did you know that over the past 50 years, their work has helped double cancer ...
Time-lords and the extra seconds
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The start of the New Year in 2017 began in the usual way, with a countdown. But what happens when that countdown is eleven seconds rather than ten? In...
The Tree of Life
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Making Science, Tom Whipple tells the story of physician and alchemist Johannes Baptist van Helmont. In the 17th-century Van Helmon...
Glow in the dark cocktails and radioactive health drinks
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Sunshine Dinner of 1904 in New York was known for its glow-in-the-dark theme, featuring illuminated decorations, paint and of course, drinks. But ...
The kilogram that lost its weight
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For over a century, the kilogram was defined by a single, shiny lump of metal locked in a vault near Paris. But what happens when your definition of m...
How do you hide a lump of gold in plain sight?
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's April in 1940. The Nazis are occupying Copenhagen. As they march through the streets, a stark realisation hits the physicist Niels Bohr. He has h...
How far can bull frogs jump? (And why it matters!)
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The story of a frog who broke records and confounded science. Professor Tom Roberts from Brown University spent his whole career studying the biomecha...
Are friars electric?
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1746, Antoine Nolie conducted an experiment with 200 monks to determine the speed of an electric current - by making the monks stand in a circle ho...
Islands of Ice and Straw
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Making Science, Tom Whipple delves into the intriguing science of latent heat and the thermodynamic properties of water - and how t...
War, Stones and Metals!
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When the Stone Age met the Bronze Age? It's time for Tom to explore the profound impact of alloys on a clash of Stone and Bronze Age technologies in b...
Death rays and other would-be inventions!
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the first of the series of Making Science, Tom Whipple, Science Editor at the Times, explores the strange history of a 'death ray’ that supposedl...
Introducing Making Science with Tom Whipple
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to Making Science with Tom Whipple, Science Editor at The Times and Sunday Times. This is the podcast about the often bizarre mixture of innov...