The Life Scientific

By BBC Radio 4

Personal Journals Society & Culture Technology

What's The Life Scientific about?

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future

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The Life Scientific episodes:

04.23.2024
Mike Edmunds on decoding galaxies and ancient astronomical artefacts
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? These are all questions that Mike Edmunds, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at...
04.16.2024
Hannah Critchlow on the connected brain
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. Dr. Hannah Critchlow is an internationally acclaimed neuroscientist who has spent her career...
04.09.2024
Fiona Rayment on the applications of nuclear for net zero and beyond
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 nowadays the role of nuclear science and engineering has become more widely accepted in the...
04.02.2024
Nick Longrich on discovering new dinosaurs from overlooked bones
We are fascinated by dinosaurs. From blockbuster hits to bestselling video games, skeleton exhibitions to cuddly plushies, the creatures that once roamed the planet have fully captured our imagination, giving us a portal to a completely alternative Earth. And it’s...
03.27.2024
Sheila Willis on using science to help solve crime
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 help solve cases, working on crime scenes and then analysing material in the...
03.19.2024
Sir Charles Godfray on parasitic wasps and the race to feed nine billion people
Professor Charles Godfray, Director of the the Oxford Martin School tells Jim Al-Kahlili about the intricate world of population dynamics, and how a healthy obsession with parasitic wasps might help us solve some of humanity's biggest problems, from the fight...
03.12.2024
Jonathan Van-Tam on Covid communication and the power of football analogies
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 Officer during the Covid-19 pandemic. But even before that, Jonathan had built an impressive career based on...
12.19.2023
Michael Wooldridge on AI and sentient robots
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 Terminator movies. But somehow, we still often think of this technology as 'futuristic': whereas in fact, it's...
12.12.2023
Mercedes Maroto-Valer on making carbon dioxide useful
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 and is working to solve our carbon dioxide problem. Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer thinks...
12.05.2023
Sir Harry Bhadeshia on the choreography of metals
The Life Scientific zooms in to explore the intricate atomic make-up of metal alloys, with complex crystalline arrangements that can literally make or break structures integral to our everyday lives. Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia is Professor of Metallurgy at Queen...
11.28.2023
Cathie Sudlow on data in healthcare
“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 understand and analyse phenomena, and find solutions to problems, is gaining prominence, both in...
11.21.2023
Sir Michael Berry on phenomena in physics' borderlands
Professor Jim Al-Khalili meets one of Britain's greatest physicists, Sir Michael Berry. His work uncovers 'the arcane in the mundane', revealing the science that underpins phenomena in the world around us such as rainbows, and through his popular science lectures...
11.14.2023
Professor Sarah Harper on how population change is remodelling societies.
People around the world are living longer and, on the whole, having fewer children. What does this mean for future populations? Sarah Harper CBE, Professor in Gerontology at the University of Oxford, tells presenter Jim Al-Khalili how it could affect...
11.07.2023
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy on human evolution and parenthood
Our primate cousins fascinate us, with their uncanny similarities to us. And studying other apes and monkeys also helps us figure out the evolutionary puzzle of what makes us uniquely human. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s work brings a female perspective to...
10.31.2023
Edward Witten on 'the theory of everything'
The Life Scientific returns with a special episode from the USA; Princeton, New Jersey, to be precise. Here, the Institute for Advanced Study has hosted some of the greatest scientific minds of our time - Einstein was one of its...
09.19.2023
Alex Antonelli on learning from nature's biodiversity to adapt to climate change
With the world's biodiversity being lost at an alarming rate, Alexandre Antonelli, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has made it his life's mission to protect it. He is a bio-geographer revealing how changes to the Earth's...
09.12.2023
Paul Murdin on the first ever identification of a black hole
Astronomer Paul Murdin believes a good imagination is vital for scientists, since they're so often dealing with subjects outside the visible realm. Indeed, over a long and successful career his imagination has taken him on a journey through space, discovering...
09.05.2023
Bahija Jallal on the biotech revolution in cancer therapies
Some of the most complex medicines available today are made from living cells or organisms - these treatments are called biopharmaceuticals and in this episode of The Life Scientific Dr Bahija Jallal, CEO of Immunocore, shares her story of leaving...
08.29.2023
Sir Colin Humphreys on electron microscopes, and the thinnest material in the world
How much more of our world could we understand, if we could take stock of it, one atom at a time? If we could see the structure of individual molecules, understand the complex ways they interact with one another, and...
08.22.2023
Chris Barratt on head-banging sperm and a future male contraceptive pill
Reproductive science has come a long way in recent years, but there's still plenty we don't understand - particularly around male fertility. The reliability and availability of data in this field has become more of a concern in light of a...
08.15.2023
Gideon Henderson on climate ‘clocks’ and dating ice ages
We’re used to hearing the stories of scientists who study the world as it is now but what about the study of the past - what can this tell us about our future? Gideon Henderson’s research focuses on trying to...
08.08.2023
Deborah Greaves on wave power and offshore renewable energy
If you’ve ever seen the ocean during a storm, you’ll understand the extraordinary power contained in waves. On an island nation like Britain, that power could well be harnessed to produce clean energy; so why have we barely begun to...
06.27.2023
Harald Haas on making waves in light communication
Imagine a world in which your laptop or mobile device accesses the internet, not via radio waves – or WiFi – as it does today but by using light instead: LiFi. Well, that world may not be as far...
06.20.2023
Anne Ferguson-Smith on unravelling epigenetics
Our genes can tell us so much about us, from why we look the way we look, think the way we think, even what kind of diseases we might be likely to suffer from. But our genes aren't the whole...
06.13.2023
Anne-Marie Imafidon on fighting for diversity and equality in science
Anne-Marie Imafidon passed her computing A-Level at the age of 11 and by 16, was accepted to the University of Oxford to study Maths and Computer Science. She's used to the 'child prodigy' label that's followed her throughout her career,...
06.06.2023
Bruce Malamud on modelling risk for natural hazards
From landslides and wildfires to floods and tornadoes, Bruce Malamud has spent his career travelling the world and studying natural hazards. Today, he is Wilson Chair of Hazard and Risk and Executive Director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk...
05.30.2023
Gillian Reid on making chemistry count
How often do you think about chemistry? The chances are, not often - but it is vital to every part of our lives, from the air we breathe, to the processes that take place inside our bodies and the materials...
05.23.2023
Andre Geim on levitating frogs, graphene and 2D materials
The world around us is three-dimensional. Yet, there are materials that can be regarded as two-dimensional. They are only one layer of atoms thick and have remarkable properties that are different from their three-dimensional counterparts. Sir Andre Geim created the first-ever...
03.28.2023
Julie Williams on Alzheimer’s disease
There are almost a million people in the UK living with dementia, and Alzheimer’s is the most common form. But the disease actually starts long before any noticeable symptoms appear, and over the past decade, studies have shown that it...
03.21.2023
James Jackson on understanding earthquakes and building resilience
Since 1900, our best estimates suggest that earthquakes have caused around 2.3 million deaths worldwide; we saw the devastating effects of one just recently, in Turkey and Syria. And as scientists have been at pains to point out over the...
03.14.2023
Marie Johnston on health psychology and the power of behavioural shifts
Marie Johnston is a pioneer in the field of health psychology: the discipline that seeks to understand how psychological, behavioural and cultural factors contribute to our physical and mental health. Today an emeritus professor in health psychology at the University...
03.07.2023
Julia King on manipulating metals and decarbonising transport
Professor Dame Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, is an engineer whose fascination with metals, and skill for handling both research projects and people, has taken her from academia to industry to the House of Lords. She tells Jim Al-Khalili...
02.28.2023
Danny Altmann on how T cells fight disease
Jim Al-Khalili talks T cells, our immune response and Long Covid with Prof Danny Altmann. Danny Altmann joined ‘team T cells’ in his twenties and has been studying how these killer operate ever since. How do they know which...
02.21.2023
Haley Gomez on cosmic dust
Jim Al-Khalili talks to astrophysicist Haley Gomez about defying expectations and becoming a world expert on cosmic dust. For centuries, cosmic dust was a major source of irritation to optical astronomers because, like smog, it stopped them from seeing the...
02.07.2023
Adrian Smith on the power of Bayesian statistics
How a once-derided approach to statistics paved the way for AI. Jim Al-Khalili talks to pioneering mathematician, Professor Sir Adrian Smith. Accused early in his career of ‘trying to destroy the processes of science’, Adrian went on to prove...
01.31.2023
Clifford Johnson on making sense of black holes and movie plots
Clifford Johnson's career to date has spanned some seemingly very different industries - from exploring quantum mechanics around string theory and black holes, to consulting on some of Hollywood's biggest movies; but it makes sense once you understand his ambition...
01.24.2023
Rebecca Kilner on beetle behaviours and evolution
A fur-stripped mouse carcase might not sound like the cosiest of homes – but that’s where the burying beetle makes its nest; and where Rebecca Kilner has focused much of her research. A Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of...
01.17.2023
Pam Shaw on the research battle against motor neurone disease
Motor Neuron Disease (MND) is a degenerative disease that relentlessly attacks the human nervous system, deteriorating muscle function to the point where patients can no longer move, talk, eat, or even breathe. To date there’s no cure, and until...
01.10.2023
Chris Elliott on fighting food fraud
Professor Chris Elliott is something of a ‘food detective’. A Professor of Food Safety and Microbiology at Queen's University Belfast and a founding director of its Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS), his work is all about developing scientific solutions to...
10.18.2022
A passion for fruit flies
What use to science is a pesky organism that feeds on rotting fruit? Professor Bambos Kyriacou has spent fifty years observing the behaviour of fruit flies. He keeps them in the lab and in his garden in their thousands, has...
10.11.2022
Why study sewage?
Leon Barron monitors pollution in our rivers, keeping tabs on chemicals that could be harmful to the environment and to our health. He’s also gathered intelligence on the behaviour of millions of Londoners by studying the water we flush down...
10.04.2022
The sounds of coral reefs
Tim Lamont is a young scientist making waves. Arriving on the Great Barrier Reef after a mass bleaching event, Tim saw his research plans disappear and was personally devastated by the destruction. But from that event he discovered a novel...
09.27.2022
Can computers discover new medicines?
Daphne Koller was a precociously clever child. She completed her first degree – a double major in mathematics and computer science – when she was just 17 and went on to become a distinguished Professor at Stanford University in California....
09.20.2022
Emily Holmes on how to treat trauma
Emily Holmes is a distinguished Professor of Clinical Psychology at Uppsala University and a neuroscientist who struggled to learn to read and write as a child. She tells Jim Al-Khalili about her work as a mental health scientist and...
09.14.2022
Judith Bunbury on the shifting River Nile in the time of the Pharaohs
Think Sahara Desert, think intense heat and drought. We see the Sahara as an unrelenting, frazzling, white place. But geo-archaeologist Dr Judith Bunbury says in the not so distant past, the region looked more like a safari park. In the...
09.06.2022
Frances Arnold: From taxi driver to Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize-winning chemist Frances Arnold left home at 15 and went to school ‘only when she felt like it’. She disagreed with her parents about the Vietnam War and drove big yellow taxis in Pittsburgh to pay the rent. ...
06.28.2022
Sir Martin Landray on saving over a million lives
Who could forget the beginning of 2020, when a ‘mysterious viral pneumonia’ emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Soon, other countries were affected and deaths around the world began to climb. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, there were no...
06.21.2022
Vlatko Vedral on the universe as quantum information
Vlatko Vedral describes himself as a quantum information practitioner, who believes that our universe is made up of quantum bits of information. It is information, he tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili, rather than energy or matter, the traditional building...
06.14.2022
Adam Hart on ants, bees and insect burgers
Ant-loving professor, Adam Hart, shares his passion for leaf cutting ants with Jim Al Khalili. Why do they put leaves in piles for other ants to pick up? Talking at the Hay Festival, Adam describes the experiments he...
06.07.2022
Jacinta Tan on anorexia nervosa and the mind
When a person with severe anorexia nervosa refuses food, the very treatment they need to survive, is that refusal carefully considered and rational, as it can appear to those around them? Or is it really the illness that’s causing...

What's The Life Scientific about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Life Scientific episodes:

Mike Edmunds on decoding galaxies and ancient astronomical artefacts

Hannah Critchlow on the connected brain

Fiona Rayment on the applications of nuclear for net zero and beyond

Nick Longrich on discovering new dinosaurs from overlooked bones

Sheila Willis on using science to help solve crime

Sir Charles Godfray on parasitic wasps and the race to feed nine billion people

Jonathan Van-Tam on Covid communication and the power of football analogies

Michael Wooldridge on AI and sentient robots

Mercedes Maroto-Valer on making carbon dioxide useful

Sir Harry Bhadeshia on the choreography of metals

Cathie Sudlow on data in healthcare

Sir Michael Berry on phenomena in physics' borderlands

Professor Sarah Harper on how population change is remodelling societies.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy on human evolution and parenthood

Edward Witten on 'the theory of everything'

Alex Antonelli on learning from nature's biodiversity to adapt to climate change

Paul Murdin on the first ever identification of a black hole

Bahija Jallal on the biotech revolution in cancer therapies

Sir Colin Humphreys on electron microscopes, and the thinnest material in the world

Chris Barratt on head-banging sperm and a future male contraceptive pill

Gideon Henderson on climate ‘clocks’ and dating ice ages

Deborah Greaves on wave power and offshore renewable energy

Harald Haas on making waves in light communication

Anne Ferguson-Smith on unravelling epigenetics

Anne-Marie Imafidon on fighting for diversity and equality in science

Bruce Malamud on modelling risk for natural hazards

Gillian Reid on making chemistry count

Andre Geim on levitating frogs, graphene and 2D materials

Julie Williams on Alzheimer’s disease

James Jackson on understanding earthquakes and building resilience

Marie Johnston on health psychology and the power of behavioural shifts

Julia King on manipulating metals and decarbonising transport

Danny Altmann on how T cells fight disease

Haley Gomez on cosmic dust

Adrian Smith on the power of Bayesian statistics

Clifford Johnson on making sense of black holes and movie plots

Rebecca Kilner on beetle behaviours and evolution

Pam Shaw on the research battle against motor neurone disease

Chris Elliott on fighting food fraud

A passion for fruit flies

Why study sewage?

The sounds of coral reefs

Can computers discover new medicines?

Emily Holmes on how to treat trauma

Judith Bunbury on the shifting River Nile in the time of the Pharaohs

Frances Arnold: From taxi driver to Nobel Prize

Sir Martin Landray on saving over a million lives

Vlatko Vedral on the universe as quantum information

Adam Hart on ants, bees and insect burgers

Jacinta Tan on anorexia nervosa and the mind