Discovery

By BBC World Service

Technology

What's Discovery about?

Explorations in the world of science.

4.4

644 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Chilean mummies

10.25.2021

Photo: Chilean Mummy from the Chinchorro Culture, Credit: Bioarchaeology lab of the University of Tarapaca

Discovery episodes:

10.25.2021 Chilean mummies Photo: Chilean Mummy from the Chinchorro Culture, Credit: Bioarchaeology lab of the University of Tarapaca
10.18.2021 Earthshot 3 - The prize winners Over the last 2 weeks we have featured the 15 finalists in the Earthshot prize, an initiative to highlight and award projects designed to conserve and sustain natural environments, and improve our lives in ways that are sensitive to issues ...
10.11.2021 Earthshot 2 – Tackling our energy crisis Just how do we balance the growing demand for electricity worldwide with the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions to address climate change? In our second programme on the Earthshot prize Chhavi Sachdev looks at some of the solutions. From ...
10.04.2021 Earthshot 1 While international meetings to discuss climate change and polices that affect the world can seem rather distant to us as individuals, on a local level there are many exciting and creative initiatives all over the world where people are developing ...
10.02.2021 The Evidence: To boost or not to boost? The divide between the Covid vaccine haves and have-nots has been described as “criminal”, with only 20% of people in low and middle income countries having had one dose, compared with 80% in higher income countries. Countries with high vaccination ...
09.27.2021 China's great science leap President Xi Jinping is investing seriously into his strategic vision of turning China into a nation of scientific pace-setters. China’s past contributions to modern-science have been proportionally lacklustre, but with a reinvigorated focus over the past two decades, China is ...
09.20.2021 China's great science leap President Xi Jinping is investing seriously into his strategic vision of turning China into a nation of scientific pace-setters. China’s past contributions to modern science have been proportionally lacklustre, but with a reinvigorated focus over the past two decades, China ...
09.13.2021 Covid origins: The science Presenter: Roland Pease Picture: Wuhan Residents Told Not To Leave As Coronavirus Pneumonia Spreads, Credit: Stringer/Getty Images
09.06.2021 Future vaccines The COVID19 pandemic has revolutionised the way vaccines are made, and underlined the inequalities in access to vaccines. But will it leave a legacy? Roland Pease explores the potential for mRNA and other revolutionary vaccines to make future health protection ...
08.30.2021 Tamsin Edwards on the uncertainty in climate science Certainty is comforting. Certainty is quick. But science is uncertain. And this is particularly true for people who are trying to understand climate change. Climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards tackles this uncertainty head on. She quantifies the uncertainty inherent in all ...
08.29.2021 The Evidence: How will the pandemic end? When all restrictions are lifted in a highly vaccinated country, how manageable is the coronavirus? Both Israel and UK’s experiments to do just that, have raised new worries about raising the risk of new vaccine resistant variants. Claudia Hammond and ...
08.23.2021 The Life Scientific: Professor Martin Sweeting 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 personal computers. An amateur radio ham and space enthusiast, he wanted to create ...
08.16.2021 The Life Scientific: Dr Nira Chamberlain When does a crowd of people become unsafe? How well will the football team Aston Villa do next season? When is it cost-effective to replace a kitchen? The answers may seem arbitrary but, to Nira Chamberlain, they lie in mathematics. ...
08.09.2021 Lost for words Struggling to find words might be one of the first things we notice when someone develops dementia, while more advanced speech loss can make it really challenging to communicate with loved ones. And understanding what’s behind these changes may help ...
08.06.2021 Introducing: Season 2 of 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter How animals make us smarter – we thought you might like to hear our brand new episode. It’s about a robotic arm inspired by an elephant’s trunk. For more, search for 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter wherever you get ...
08.02.2021 A sense of music Music can make us feel happy and sad. It can compel us to move in time with it, or sing along to a melody. It taps into some integral sense of musicality that binds us together. But music is regimented, ...
07.31.2021 Whatever happened to…those Covid-19 stories Whatever happened to those sniffer dogs who were seeking out any passengers infected with Covid-19 at Helsinki airport? And did plans to sample sewage to spot outbreaks early prove successful? This week on The Evidence, we have listeners’ questions about ...
07.26.2021 Dare to repair: Fixing the future Mark Miodownik, explores the environmental consequences of the throwaway society we have become and reveals that recycling electronic waste comes second to repairing broken electronics. He asks what we can learn from repair cultures around the world , he looks ...
07.19.2021 Dare to repair: The fight for the right to repair Many electronics manufacturers are making it harder for us, to fix our broken kit. There are claims that programmed obsolescence is alive and well, with mobile phone batteries designed to wear out after just 400 charges. They claim it's for ...
07.12.2021 Dare to Repair: How we broke the future Materials engineer Professor Mark Miodownik looks back to the start of the electronics revolution to find out why our electronic gadgets and household goods are less durable and harder to repair now. As he attempts to fix his digital clock ...
07.05.2021 Tooth and claw: Tigers “As it charges towards you, you can actually feel the drumbeat of its feet falling to the ground”. Nothing quite says fear more than standing before a charging tiger. Yet so often it’s also the poster-predator for conservation. The tiger ...
06.28.2021 Tooth and claw: Bears Teddy bears might be popular with children but real bears are anything but cuddly. Brown, Black and Grizzly bears are the most well-known and have a well-deserved fearsome reputation. But for most part, bear attacks are not nearly as common ...
06.26.2021 The Evidence: How Covid damages the human body A year and a half in, and in many ways Covid-19 is still an enigma. All over the world, doctors and scientists are still struggling to understand exactly how this new virus undermines our defences and then damages, even destroys, ...
06.21.2021 Tooth and claw: Lions From Aslan to Simba, from the Wizard of Oz to heraldry, children in the West probably recognise this king of beasts before they can name the animals in their own back yards. But what about people who have lions roaming ...
06.14.2021 Tooth and claw: Crocodiles We have a morbid fascination with predators. And we've had it since the very first people carved figures or painted on cave walls thousands of years ago. Predators are still revered as gods in many cultures. Our cultural fascination is ...
06.07.2021 Peter Goadsby on migraine neurological condition is far more common than you might think, affecting more people than diabetes, epilepsy and asthma combined. While medications, to help relieve the symptoms of migraine, have been around for some time, they haven’t worked for everyone. And ...
05.31.2021 Patient zero: First outbreak “Aboriginal people had a name for it... they called it ‘Devil Devil’...” In 1789, a disease tore through Aboriginal communities around Sydney Cove, or Warrane, leaving dead bodies floating in the harbour, and scattered along the shorelines. The evidence points ...
05.29.2021 The Evidence: Sharing Vaccines – what’s gone wrong? The lofty ambition of the global community was that across the globe, those with the highest risk of losing their lives to this virus should be vaccinated first. With 99% of deaths coming in the over fifties, the plan was ...
05.24.2021 Patient zero: Back from the brink A six-year old boy in Papua New Guinea woke up one day in 2018 and was suddenly unable to stand up. Less than a year later, children in three other Asia Pacific nations were experiencing the same alarming symptoms. A ...
05.17.2021 Patient zero Ticking time bomb In 2012 doctors in Tennessee started seeing patients with unusual symptoms. It became a race against time to find a diagnosis. A series of investigations revealed that the patients were infected with a fungus that was causing a form of ...
05.10.2021 Patient zero: Spillover in suburbia A horse mysteriously falls ill in her paddock, and before long dozens of other horses from her stables are sick. As the horses start to die vicious, painful deaths, their trainer falls into a coma and is placed into intensive ...
05.03.2021 The noises that make us cringe Why do some people find noises like a fork scraping a plate so terrible? asks Findlay in Aberdeenshire. Rutherford and Fry endure some horrible noises to find out the answer. Warning - This episode contains some horrible sounds Trevor Cox, ...
04.26.2021 The Hamster Power Hypothesis "How many hamsters on wheels would it take to power London?" asks Judah from Virginia in the USA. Rutherford & Fry return with engineering, ethics and economics to answer this electric query. Smart grid engineer Lynne McDonald helps keep the ...
04.19.2021 The Martian Mission What would it take for humans to live permanently on Mars? asks Martin in Weston-super-Mare, UK. The doctors dig into requirements and possibilities of a long-term Martian outpost. We know that many missions to Mars have failed, for a range ...
04.12.2021 The equal rights stuff In 1976, Nasa launched a campaign to help recruit the next generation of Astronauts. It was fronted by African-American actress Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek’s Lt. Uhura, as part of an effort to ensure the astronaut corps represented the diversity of ...
04.05.2021 Lithium: Chile’s white gold The Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2019 was awarded to John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino "for the development of lithium-ion batteries." These rechargeable batteries are in our phones, and in our laptops. And they will be the batteries ...
03.29.2021 Patient zero: Coronavirus and contact tracing Today’s episode is about the history we’re still living. From Melbourne to Munich, Lombardy to Wuhan and all the way back again, this episode is about what happened when we faced those first coronavirus cases. Where things went well, where ...
03.27.2021 The Evidence: Mental health and the pandemic Year two of the pandemic, and in tandem with rising rates of illness, death, acute economic shock and restrictions on everyday life, mental health problems have risen too. Claudia Hammond and her panel of global experts answer listeners’ questions about ...
03.22.2021 Patient zero: The December transplant Three transplant patients died within a week of each other in Melbourne in December 2006 and alarm bells started ringing. One of the patients was Karen. When she got a phone call from the hospital offering her a kidney transplant, ...
03.15.2021 Patient zero: something in the water It was October 2010 when reports first emerged of a mysterious disease spreading through Haiti. In a hospital in Saint Marc, about an hour north of the country's capital Port-au-Prince, 400 cases of adults with watery diarrhoea had been reported ...
03.08.2021 The Life Scientific: Jane Hurst 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 in laboratories for decades, and it gets anxious. Make a ...
03.01.2021 The Life Scientific: Cath Noakes Professor Cath Noakes studies how air moves and the infection risk associated with different ventilation systems. Early in the pandemic, she was invited to join the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE and asked to study the transmission routes ...
02.27.2021 The Evidence: Keeping out Covid-19 From flight bans and entry bans to compulsory quarantine and virus testing, most countries have introduced travel restrictions in an effort to control the spread of the virus. But for a virus that knows no borders, do cross-border health measures ...
02.22.2021 The Life Scientific: Giles Yeo Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.
02.15.2021 The power of night Lucy Cooke meets some of the animal kingdom’s nocturnal inhabitants to understand why it pays to stir once the sun goes down. She examines some of the extraordinary nocturnal adaptations from the largest group of mammals, the bats, to the ...
02.08.2021 The power of one We humans are a supremely social species, but the coronavirus pandemic has forced many of us into solitary confinement. It feels like an unnatural, regressive move, that goes against our collective nature. So why do some species embrace the power ...
02.01.2021 The power of celibacy You might think that sex is essential for life, but you'd be wrong! Lucy Cooke travels to the Hawaiian island of Oahu to meet a community of mourning geckos - self-cloning sisters who have done away with males altogether. An ...
01.30.2021 The Evidence: The Shapeshifting Virus News that at least three new variants of SARS-CoV-2 have emerged in three separate continents have sent a chill throughout the scientific community. All viruses mutate but the speed and scale of the changes and the fact they occurred independently, ...
01.25.2021 Science Trumped When US health expert sighed last week that science could now speak again, his sense of relief was shared by many scientists. Since the start of the Trump administration, experts inside the US government's science agencies, and those outside working ...
01.18.2021 Plant scientist Dale Sanders Professor Dale Sanders has spent much of his life studying plants, seeking to understand why some thrive in a particular environment while others struggle. His ground breaking research on their molecular machinery showed how plants extract nutrients from the soil ...

Older episodes

Discovery

What's Discovery about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Discovery episodes:

Chilean mummies

Earthshot 3 - The prize winners

Earthshot 2 – Tackling our energy crisis

Earthshot 1

The Evidence: To boost or not to boost?

China's great science leap

China's great science leap

Covid origins: The science

Future vaccines

Tamsin Edwards on the uncertainty in climate science

The Evidence: How will the pandemic end?

The Life Scientific: Professor Martin Sweeting

The Life Scientific: Dr Nira Chamberlain

Lost for words

Introducing: Season 2 of 30 Animals That Made Us Smarter

A sense of music

Whatever happened to…those Covid-19 stories

Dare to repair: Fixing the future

Dare to repair: The fight for the right to repair

Dare to Repair: How we broke the future

Tooth and claw: Tigers

Tooth and claw: Bears

The Evidence: How Covid damages the human body

Tooth and claw: Lions

Tooth and claw: Crocodiles

Peter Goadsby on migraine

Patient zero: First outbreak

The Evidence: Sharing Vaccines – what’s gone wrong?

Patient zero: Back from the brink

Patient zero Ticking time bomb

Patient zero: Spillover in suburbia

The noises that make us cringe

The Hamster Power Hypothesis

The Martian Mission

The equal rights stuff

Lithium: Chile’s white gold

Patient zero: Coronavirus and contact tracing

The Evidence: Mental health and the pandemic

Patient zero: The December transplant

Patient zero: something in the water

The Life Scientific: Jane Hurst

The Life Scientific: Cath Noakes

The Evidence: Keeping out Covid-19

The Life Scientific: Giles Yeo

The power of night

The power of one

The power of celibacy

The Evidence: The Shapeshifting Virus

Science Trumped

Plant scientist Dale Sanders

Other shows like Discovery: