What can chemistry reveal about what it means to be human? On Radio 4’s weekly conversation programme, Tom Sutcliffe leads a conversation that ranges from the molecules within us to the experimental pioneers who transformed our understanding of the material world.

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu discusses Chain Reaction, her vivid and deeply personal journey into the chemistry underpinning everything we touch, consume and inhabit. She brings to life the chemical bonds that hold our bodies together and the reactions that sustain all life, while recounting her own story, from childhood in post war Nigeria to a groundbreaking career designing treatments for blindness.

Science historian Kit Chapman introduces The Age of Alchemy, tracing the long, global evolution of chemistry before it became a modern science. Travelling from ancient Sri Lankan steel forges to Egyptian alchemical texts and Chinese herbal laboratories, he reveals how early experimenters, merging mysticism, medicine and metallurgy, laid crucial foundations for scientific method and discovery.

Professor Mark Miodownik set up the Institute for Making at University College London and is Royal Society Professor of Public Engagement with Science. He is a leading materials scientist who has led work on plastic waste and biodegradable plastics. He discusses the latest research on the chemical composition of the things we are making, and the things we throw away.

Producer: Ruth Watts