The Life Scientific
Episodes
The Patrick Vallance Interview
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Could the lessons learnt during the pandemic put us in a stronger position to tackle other big science-based challenges ahead, such as achieving carbo...
The Life Scientific at 10: What makes a scientist?
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How damaging is the stereotype of white males in white coats? Do scientists think differently? Or do the qualities we associate with being a nerd do t...
Hannah Cloke and predicting floods
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This summer, many parts of the world have seen devastating flooding, from New Orleans and New York, to the UK, Germany and Belgium. More than 300 peo...
Derk-Jan Dijk on the importance of sleep
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How many of you have sleep problems? Maybe it’s waking up in the middle of the night and then not being able to get back to sleep, or waking up too ...
Brenda Boardman on making our homes energy efficient.
21 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When did you last really think about the amount of electricity your household uses? Are all your appliances A rated? Have you switched to LED lights...
David Eagleman on why reality is an illusion
14 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Literature student turned neuroscientist, Prof David Eagleman, tells Jim Al-Khalili about his research on human perception and the wristband he create...
Hannah Fry on the power and perils of big data
07 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
‘I didn’t know I wanted to be a mathematician until I was one’ says Hannah Fry, now a Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at University Colle...
Tamsin Edwards on the uncertainty in climate science
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Certainty is comforting. Certainty is quick. But science is uncertain. And this is particularly true for people who are trying to understand climate c...
Mike Tipton on how our bodies respond to extreme conditions
25 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As the craze for cold water swimming continues, Jim Al Khalili talks to triathlete and Professor of Extreme Physiology, Mike Tipton. Is it as good fo...
Nira Chamberlain on how mathematics can solve real-world problems
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When does a crowd of people become unsafe? How well will Aston Villa do next season? When is it cost-effective to replace a kitchen?The answers may se...
Helen Scales on marine conservation
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Luminescent bone-eating worms, giant squid and a sea cucumber commonly known as the headless chicken monster: some extraordinary creatures live at the...
Peter Goadsby on migraine
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Throbbing head, nausea, dizziness, disturbed vision – just some of the disabling symptoms that can strike during a migraine attack. This neurologica...
Jane Clarke on Protein Folding
27 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Jane Clarke has had a fascinating double career. Having been a science teacher for many years, she didn’t start her research career until ...
Professor Martin Sweeting, inventor of microsatellites
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When Martin Sweeting was a student, he thought it would be fun to try to build a satellite using electronic components found in some of the earliest p...
Theresa Marteau on how to change behaviour
13 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We all know how to be more healthy. And yet we are also remarkably good at NOT doing what we know is good for us. We keep meaning to get fit, but the...
Mark Spencer on how plants solve crimes
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Inside the mind of a forensic botanist, Mark Spencer tells Jim Al-Khalili how he uses plant evidence to help solve crimes. By studying the vegetation ...
Sarah Bridle on the carbon footprint of food
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What would happen to our carbon emissions if we all went vegan? Astrophysicist, Sarah Bridle tells Jim Al-Khalili why she switched her attention from ...
Richard Bentall on the causes of mental ill health
23 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For a long time people who heard voices or suffered paranoid delusions were thought to be too crazy to benefit from talking therapies. As a young man ...
Jane Hurst on the secret life of mice
16 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mice, like humans, prefer to be treated with a little dignity, and that extends to how they are handled.Pick a mouse up by its tail, as was the norm i...
Anne Johnson on the importance of public health
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Public health has been on all of our minds during the pandemic and Prof Dame Anne Johnson has spent more time thinking about it than most of us. She s...
Giles Yeo on how our genes can make us fat
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us think we’re in control of what we eat and that, coupled with what we do, dictates our shape and size. It’s physics after all - if you ...
Cath Noakes on making buildings Covid-safe
19 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Cath Noakes studies how air moves and the infection risk associated with different ventilation systems. Early in the pandemic, she was invi...
Chris Jackson on sustainable geology
12 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Jackson is the kind of scientist who just loves to get out into the landscape he loves. He’s often introduced as ‘geologist and adventurer’...
Scientists in the Spotlight during the Pandemic
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
More of us have been exposed to so more science than ever before during 2020. And our insatiable appetite for science shows no sign of diminishing. Ba...
Neil Ferguson on modelling Covid-19
22 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Neil Ferguson is known to many as Professor Lockdown. The mathematical models he created to predict the spread of Covid-19 were influential but, he sa...
Sarah Gilbert on developing a vaccine for Covid-19
15 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Gilbert started working on a vaccine for Covid-19 just as soon as the virus genome was sequenced. Within weeks, she had a proof of principle. ...
Steve Haake on technology, sport and health
08 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Haake,has spent much of his career using technology to help elite sports people get better, faster and break records. He has turned his hand t...
Francesca Happé on autism
01 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Francesca Happé started out as a research psychologist thirty years ago, she thought she could easily find out all there was to know about auti...
Heather Koldewey on marine conservation
25 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Heather Koldewey wants to protect our oceans from over-fishing and plastic pollution. An academic who is not content to sit back and let the...
Dale Sanders on feeding the world
18 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Dale Sanders has spent much of his life studying plants, seeking to understand why some thrive in a particular environment while others stru...
Andy Fabian on black holes
11 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Andrew Fabian from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy has spent his career trying to unravel the mystery of how some of the most dramatic ev...
Alice Roberts on bones
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s amazing what we can learn from a pile of old bones. Having worked as a paediatric surgeon for several years (often doing the ward round on roll...
Clifford Stott on riot prevention
16 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why does violence break out in some crowds and not in others and what can the police do to reduce the risk of this happening? Professor Clifford Stot...
Emma Bunce on the gas giants
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Emma Bunce, Professor of Planetary Plasma Physics at the University of Leicester, was inspired to study the solar system as a child by a TV programme ...
Jane Goodall on living with wild chimpanzees
02 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jane Goodall, aged 86, reflects on the years she spent living with the wild chimpanzees in Gombe in eastern Tanzania and tells Jim Al Khalili why she ...
Liz Seward and the dream of spaceflight
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to Liz Seward, Senior Space Strategist for Airbus Defence and Space. Liz's young interest in Science Fiction led to a c...
Frank Kelly on air pollution
19 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Long before most of us gave air pollution a second thought, Frank Kelly was studying the impact of toxic particles on our lungs. In a pioneering set o...
Debbie Pain on conserving globally threatened bird species
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Debbie Pain has spent the last 30 years solving some of the most devastating threats to birdlife, saving many species from the brink of exti...
Jim McDonald on power networks
05 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jim McDonald grew up in Glasgow. He was the son of a rope-maker and the first in his family to go to university. Now he’s the Principal of Strathcly...
Brian Greene on how the universe is made of string
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Jim talks a man who studies the universe at the largest and smallest scales imaginable. When Brian Greene was just twelve years old, he wandered round...
Myles Allen on understanding climate change
04 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Myles Allen has spent thirty years studying global climate change, trying to working out what we can and can't predict. He was one of the f...
Matthew Cobb on how we detect smells
03 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It’s been estimated that humans are capable of detecting a trillion different smells. How is this possible when we have just 400 types of olfactory ...
Anya Hurlbert on seeing colour
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As a professor of visual neuroscience at Newcastle University, Anya Hurlbert is one of our most respected researchers into the way we see colour. In a...
Optical communications pioneer Polina Bayvel
11 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve come to expect to be connected instantly to anywhere in the world and to have unlimited information at our fingertips. We shop online, stream ...
2019 Nobel Prize winner for Physiology or Medicine, Sir Peter Ratcliffe
04 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Sir Peter Ratcliffe, Director of Clinical Research at the Francis Crick Institute, as well as Director of Oxford University’s Target Discovery Insti...
Peter Fonagy on a revolution in mental health care
28 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Fonagy arrived in the UK from Hungary aged 15, not speaking a word of English. His family was in Paris. He was bullied at school, failed every e...
Susannah Maidment on stegosaurs
14 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Susie was dinosaur-mad as a child. But unlike most children, she never grew out of her obsession. She tells Jim about an exciting new stegosaur find i...
Patricia Wiltshire on how pollen can solve crimes.
07 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Patricia Wiltshire grew up in a mining village in South Wales, left home when she was 17 and worked for many years, first as a medical technician and ...
Elizabeth Fisher on chromosomes in mice and men
12 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Fisher, Professor of Neurogenetics at University College London, spent 13 years getting her idea – finding a new way of studying genetic d...
Demis Hassabis on artificial intelligence
05 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the 200th episode of The Life Scientific, Jim Al-Khalili finds out why Demis Hassabis wants to create artificial intelligence and use it to help hu...
Saiful Islam on materials to power the 21st century
29 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Not so long ago, all batteries were single use. And solar power was an emerging and expensive technology. Now, thanks to rechargeable batteries, we h...
Adrian Owen on scanning for awareness in the injured brain
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Neuroscientist Adrian Owen has spent much of his career exploring what he calls ‘the grey zone’, a realm of consciousness inhabited by people with...
Martha Clokie on the viruses that could improve our health
15 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Could viruses improve our health where antibiotics have failed? As a child, Martha Clokie spent a lot of time collecting seaweed on Scottish beaches. ...
Anne Magurran on how to measure biodiversity
08 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anne Magurran started her career as an ecologist counting moths in an ancient woodland in northern Ireland in the 1970s, when the study of biological ...
Richard Wiseman on lying, luck and the paranormal
01 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How do you tell if someone is lying? When Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, con...
Jonathan Ball on his arms race against viruses
30 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ebola, Zika, Sars, Mers - rarely a week goes by without a deadly virus stealing the headlines. For Jonathan Ball, getting to know a virus at its most...
Robin Dunbar on why we have friends
23 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Maintaining friendships is one of the most cognitively demanding things we do, according to Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar. So why ...
Katherine Joy on moon rock
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Katherine Joy studies moon rock. She has studied lunar samples that were brought to earth by the Apollo missions (382kg in total) and hunted for luna...
DNA detective Turi King
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When a skeleton was unearthed in 2012 from under the tarmac of a car park in Leicester, Turi King needed to gather irrefutable evidence to prove that ...
Ewine van Dishoeck on cosmic chemistry
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ewine van Dishoeck has spent her life studying the space between the stars. Not so long ago, interstellar space was thought to be an empty, sterile vo...
Plastic pollution with Richard Thompson
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
A Professor of Marine Biology who was not particularly academic at school, Richard Thompson went to university after running his own business selling ...
Erica McAlister on the beauty of flies
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Erica McAlister, of London's Natural History Museum, talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the beautiful world of flies and the 2.5 million specimens for w...
Richard Peto on why smoking kills but quitting saves lives
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When Sir Richard Peto began work with the late Richard Doll fifty years ago, the UK had the worst death rates from smoking in the world. Smoking was t...
Irene Tracey on pain in the brain
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pain, as we know, is highly personal. Some can cope with huge amounts, while others reel in agony over a seemingly minor injury. Though you might fe...
Paul Davies on the origin of life and the evolution of cancer
26 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Physicist, Paul Davies is interested in some of the biggest questions that we can ask. What is life? How did the universe begin? How will it end? And ...
Corinne Le Quéré on the global carbon cycle
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the history of planet Earth, the element carbon has cycled between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. This natural cycle has mai...
Ken Gabriel, Why your Smartphone is Smart.
13 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
How insight with a stick and piece of string led to an engineering adventure taking in spacecraft, military guidance systems and the micro-mechanical ...
2018 Nobel Prize winner, Donna Strickland, on laser physics
05 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When the first laser was built in 1960, it was an invention looking for an application. Science fiction found uses for these phenomenally powerful bea...
Gwen Adshead on treating the minds of violent offenders
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Whether it’s a news story or television drama, human violence appals and fascinates in equal measure. Yet few of us choose to dwell on what preoccup...
2018 Chemistry Nobel Prize winner, Sir Gregory Winter
19 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In an astonishing story of a scientific discovery, Greg Winter tells Jim Al-Khalili how decades of curiosity-driven research led to a revolution in me...
Sue Black on women in tech
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Sue Black left home and school when she was 16. Aged 25, she attended an access course to get the qualifications she needed to go to university to stu...
Jim Al-Khalili on HIS life scientific
05 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In an ideal (quantum) world, Jim Al-Khalili would be interviewing himself about his life as a scientist but since the production team can’t access ...
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell
19 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Jocelyn Bell Burnell forged her own path through the male-dominated world of science - in...
Clive Oppenheimer on the volcanic offerings of our angry earth
11 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Clive Oppenheimer has, more than once, been threatened with guns (a Life Scientific first?). He's dodged and ducked lava bombs and he's risked instant...
Sky at Night presenter Maggie Aderin-Pocock
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Maggie Aderin-Pocock has been fascinated by space since she was a young child. When she was six years old she caught the bug when she saw a picture o...
Banning chemical weapons with Alastair Hay
27 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Alastair Hay, now Emeritus Professor of Environmental Toxicology at the University of Leeds, is a chemist who’s had a dual career as an academic res...
Formula One engineer Caroline Hargrove
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do you convince Formula One racing drivers that they are speeding round the race track at Le Mans when, in fact, they are sitting in a simulator i...
Mike Stratton and cancer genes
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When Michael Stratton was a young doctor he would diagnose cancer by studying tissue samples under a microscope. However, over the past 30 years he’...
Detective of the mind Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Suzanne O'Sullivan has been described as “a detective of the mind”. She’s a neurologist who helps some patients with the strangest of symptoms, ...
Noel Fitzpatrick on becoming a supervet
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For all his success as a Supervet on TV and as a pioneering orthopedic surgeon, Noel Fitzpatrick insists that his life has been full of failures. He ...
Jacqueline McGlade on monitoring the environment from space
23 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An ecologist who fell in love with computing, Jacqueline McGlade pioneered the use of satellites study the state of the global environment. Today than...
Rachel Mills exploring the sea floor
19 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Rachel Mills is a marine geochemist who studies the sea floor and hydrothermal vents, where water erupts from the earth's crust at 360 degre...
Frank Close and particle physics
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Close is a theoretical particle physicist and a pioneer of popular writing about physics. His first book aimed at a non-specialist audience, The...
Sheena Cruickshank on the wonders of the human immune system
05 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Traditional descriptions of the human immune system bristle with military analogies. There are "lines of defence" against "enemy invaders"; "border gu...
John Taylor on being an inventor
29 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Crawshaw Taylor is a prolific inventor who specialises in designing and manufacturing thermostatic controls. His ingenious integrated control sys...
Cat Hobaiter on communication in apes
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Dr Catherine Hobaiter studies how apes communicate with each other. Although she's based at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, she spends a lot...
Caroline Dean reveals the genetic secrets of flowering
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As a girl, Caroline Dean would watch the cherry trees in her childhood garden unfurl their pink and white blossom and wonder how it was that they all ...
Carlo Rovelli on why time is not what it seems
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Carlo Rovelli first became interested in the nature of time when he took LSD as a young man. Later he became curious about the world of the almost abs...
Callum Roberts on the urgent need for marine conservation
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Biology at the University of York, learnt to dive in a leaky wet suit in the North Sea when he was a boy. As a stu...
Stephen Reicher on the psychology of crowds
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Stephen Reicher is a social psychologist at St Andrews University who has spent decades understanding how people behave when in a group. To do so, he'...
Clare Grey on the Big Battery Challenge
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Next time you swear at the battery in your mobile phone, spare a thought for the chemist, Clare Grey. Having developed a new way of looking inside sol...
John Burn and the genetics of cancer
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Sir John Burn, has made Newcastle on Tyne a centre for research on genetics and disease. He was one of the first British doctors to champion...
Richard Henderson zooms in on the molecules of life
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What once took decades, now takes days, thanks to an astonishingly powerful new technique invented by Richard Henderson, winner of the 2017 Nobel Priz...
Wendy Barclay and the flu virus
30 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
2018 is having the worst flu season for seven years. Influenza continues to make a lot of us feel very ill, and it can of course be fatal. Wendy Barcl...
Eugenia Cheng on the mathematics of mathematics
23 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nothing annoys Eugenia Cheng more than the suggestion that there is no creativity in mathematics. Doing mathematics is not about being a human calcula...
Eben Upton on Raspberry Pi
16 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When Eben Upton was in his twenties, he wanted to get children thinking about how computers think, to boost the number of people applying to read comp...
Adrian Thomas on the mechanics of flight
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As a young man Adrian Thomas took to the skies in order to better understand the mechanics of flight. He's a paragliding champion and a Professor of Z...
Ellen Stofan on being NASA chief scientist
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When Ellen Stofan was just four years old, she witnessed the worst rocket launch-pad disaster in NASA's history convinced that her father, (who was a ...
Tim Birkhead on bird promiscuity
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Tim Birkhead talks to Jim Al Khalili about his 40 years of research on promiscuity in birds, his love of Skomer Island and its guillemots, a...
Steve Cowley on Nuclear Fusion
10 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Cowley has said that "fusion is arguably the perfect way to power the world". But he's had to add that "it is hard to make fusion work. Indeed, ...