Podcast Episodes

Pierre Friedlingstein on carbon’s pivotal role in climate change

The COP30 climate summit is taking place in the Brazilian city of Belém, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest, which continues to face widespread deforestation. We all know that our climate is changing…

Published on 1 day, 16 hours ago

Julia Simner on tasty words and hearing colours

Imagine if you were listening to an opera or a Taylor Swift concert, and as the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the music was accompanied by a rainbow of colours only you could see. Perhaps while l…

Published on 1 week, 1 day ago

Caroline Smith on meteorites and potential ancient life on Mars

Caroline Smith is passionate about space rocks, whether they’re samples collected from the surface of asteroids and the Moon and hopefully Mars one day soon, or meteorites, those alien rock fragments…

Published on 2 weeks, 1 day ago

AP De Silva on building molecular fluorescence sensors for healthcare

From humble beginnings in his native Sri Lanka, to a more than 40 year academic career at Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. AP (Amilra Prasanna) De Silva’s research into molecular photosensors has le…

Published on 3 weeks, 1 day ago

Peter Knight on quantum technologies

There are problems and tasks so hard and complicated that it would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack them. But in the next decade, we may well have quantum compute…

Published on 4 weeks, 1 day ago

Eleanor Schofield on conserving Tudor warship the Mary Rose

In July 1545, King Henry VIII watched from Southsea Castle on England's south coast as his fleet sailed out to face the French - only to witness his prized warship, the Mary Rose, sink before his eye…

Published on 1 month ago

George Church on reimagining woolly mammoths and virus-proofing humans

"My ideas are often labelled as impossible, or useless, or both. Usually when people say that I'm on the right track."

George Church is a geneticist, molecular engineer, and one of the pioneers of mod…

Published on 1 month, 1 week ago

Gareth Collett on a career in bomb disposal

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 how to dispose of them safely involves intense t…

Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago

Sonia Gandhi on building model brains to tackle Parkinson’s disease

Many people will be familiar with Parkinson’s disease: the progressive brain disorder that causes symptoms including tremors and slower movement, leading on to serious cognitive problems. You might n…

Published on 1 month, 3 weeks ago

Mark O'Shea on close encounters with venomous snakes

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 not only his profession, but his passion. Mark is a P…

Published on 2 months ago