Discovery

By BBC World Service

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Explorations in the world of science.

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Introducing The Bomb

08.12.2020

Emily’s grandad worked on the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Could another man – Leo Szilard - have stopped it? This is the new series from the BBC World Service – search for The Bomb wherever you get your podcasts.

Discovery episodes:

08.12.2020 Introducing The Bomb Emily’s grandad worked on the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Could another man – Leo Szilard - have stopped it? This is the new series from the BBC World Service – search for The Bomb wherever you get your podcasts.
08.10.2020 On the menu Shark, bear and crocodile attacks tend to make the headlines but humans fall prey to a much wider variety of predators every year, from big cats and snakes, to wolves, hyenas and even eagles that’ve been known to snatch the ...
08.03.2020 Human Genome Project's 20th Anniversary Adam Rutherford celebrates the 20th anniversary of one of the most ambitious and revolutionary scientific endeavours of all time - the Human Genome Project. Its scope and scale was breath-taking, set up to read every one of the 3 billion ...
07.27.2020 Brian Greene Brian Greene studies the universe at the largest and smallest scales imaginable. When he was just twelve years old, Brian wandered round Columbia University in New York looking for someone to teach him mathematics, with a letter of recommendation from ...
07.20.2020 Jane Goodall 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 believes the best way to bring about change is to ‘creep into people’s ...
07.13.2020 Bed After a long journey, there’s nothing nicer for Katy than climbing into her own bed. It’s often the first major purchase we make when we grow up and leave home. Its significance was not lost on our ancestors. The bed ...
07.11.2020 Covid-19: Recovery Claudia Hammond and a panel of international experts look at the latest research into Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus which is sweeping through the world. Our panel of experts discuss how many people make full recoveries but ...
07.06.2020 Toilet You may call it the toilet, the loo, the privy, the potty, the can or even the bathroom, but whatever you call it, this everyday object has its roots in Bronze Age Pakistan. It even had a seat! But how ...
06.29.2020 Wine glass Have you got one of those wine glasses that can hold an entire bottle of wine? Katy Brand does and she’s even used it for wine - albeit because of a sprained ankle, which would have stopped her from hobbling ...
06.27.2020 The Evidence: Covid 19: vaccines and after lockdown Claudia Hammond and a panel of international experts look at the latest research into Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus which is sweeping through the world. We look at vaccines to stop the spread of the coronavirus. And ...
06.22.2020 Fork The fork is essential. Even camping without one is a false economy, in Katy’s experience. Even a spork - with a spoon at one end and a fork at the other, with a knife formed along one prong - just ...
06.15.2020 High heel Katy Brand loves a high heel. Once known by friends and family for her ‘shoe fetish’, her dad even gave her a ceramic heel that could hold a wine bottle at a jaunty angle. These days, Katy’s cherished heels from ...
06.13.2020 The Evidence: Covid 19: Transmission and South America Claudia Hammond and a panel of international experts look at the latest research into Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus which is sweeping through the world. As the disease spreads how is South America handling the pandemic? How ...
06.08.2020 Toothbrush What is the most personal item you own - one you don’t want anyone else using? For Katy Brand it’s her toothbrush. So how did the toothbrush become one of life’s essentials? With the help of resident public historian of ...
06.01.2020 Helium Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, celebrates the art and science of the chemical elements. Today he looks at helium. Helium is a finite resource here on Earth and many branches of science need it. Doctors ...
05.30.2020 The Evidence: Covid 19: Sub-Saharan Africa and Testing Claudia Hammond and a panel of international experts look at the latest research into Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus which is sweeping through the world. As the disease spreads how is sub-Saharan Africa handling the pandemic? We ...
05.25.2020 Aluminium and strontium Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, celebrates the art and science of the chemical elements. Today he looks at aluminium and strontium, elements that give us visual treats. At the time of Emperor Napoleon the Third ...
05.18.2020 Gold and silver Andrea Sella, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, celebrates the art and science of chemical elements. In this episode he looks at two elements we have valued for millennia – gold and silver. Nina Gilbey at the London ...
05.16.2020 The Evidence: Covid 19: ending lockdowns Claudia Hammond and her panel of scientists and doctors analyse the latest science on the coronavirus and answer the audience’s questions on the impact of the pandemic. Dr Lucy van Dorp of UCL explores the genetics of the virus and ...
05.13.2020 Science of Dad Whilst most men become fathers, and men make up roughly half the parental population, the vast majority of scientific research has focused on the mother. But studies have started to reveal the impact of fatherhood on both dads themselves and ...
05.04.2020 Ignaz Semmelweiss: The hand washer Lindsey Fitzharris tells the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss, the hand washer. In a world that had no understanding of germs, he tried to apply science to halt the spread of infection. Ignaz Semmelweis observed that many young medical students at ...
05.02.2020 The Evidence: Mental health and Covid 19 Now that more than half the population of the world has been living for a time in lockdown, Claudia Hammond and her panel of psychologists and psychiatrists answer the audience’s questions on the impact of the pandemic on our mental ...
04.27.2020 Desert locust swarms The pictures coming in from East Africa are apocalyptic. Billions of locusts hatching out of the wet ground, marching destructively through crops, and launching into flight in search of new terrains. "This is certainly the worst situation we have seen ...
04.20.2020 Anne Magurran 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 diversity was a very young science. Later she studied piranas in a flooded forest in ...
04.18.2020 The Evidence: Young people, lifting lockdowns, USA and Kenya updates Claudia Hammond and a panel of international experts look at the latest research into Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus which is sweeping through the world. As the disease spreads, younger people have perhaps not been getting the ...
04.13.2020 Richard Wiseman How do you tell if someone is lying? When Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, conducted a nationwide experiment to identify the tell-tale signs, the results were surprising. If you want to ...
04.06.2020 Professor Saiful Islam Not so long ago, all batteries were single use. And solar power was an emerging and expensive technology. Now, thanks to rechargeable batteries, we have mobile phones, laptops, electronic toys, cordless power tools and other portable electronic devices. And solar ...
04.04.2020 The Evidence: Taiwan, Vaccines, Africa Preparedness International experts discuss the latest research into Covid-19
03.30.2020 Elizabeth Fisher: Chromosomes in mice and men Elizabeth Fisher, Professor of Neurogenetics at University College London, spent 13 years getting her idea – finding a new way of studying genetic disorders – to work. She began her research career at a time, in the 1980s, when there ...
03.24.2020 Adrian Owen Neuroscientist Adrian Owen has spent much of his career exploring what he calls ‘the grey zone’, a realm of consciousness inhabited by people with severe brain injuries, who are aware yet unable to respond to those around them. It's this ...
03.21.2020 The Evidence: Coronavirus Special A panel of international experts take a global look at the science of Covid-19. We hear about vaccines, treatments, strategies to contain the virus and the role of big data.
03.16.2020 Professor Martha Clokie Professor Martha Clokie tells Jim Al-Khalili how she found viruses that destroy antibiotic-resistant bugs by looking in stool samples, her son's nappies and estuary mud. Could viruses improve our health where antibiotics have failed? As a child, Martha Clokie spent ...
03.10.2020 Demis Hassabis Jim Al-Khalili finds out why Demis Hassabis wants to create artificial intelligence and use it to help humanity. Thinking about how to win at chess when he was a boy got Demis thinking about the process of thinking itself. Being ...
03.02.2020 Isaac Newton and the story of the apple The story of how Newton came up with his gravitational theory is one of the most familiar in the history of science. He was sitting in the orchard at Woolsthorpe, thinking deep thoughts, when an apple fell from a tree. ...
02.24.2020 Science Stories - Sophia Jex-Blake Naomi Alderman tells the science story of Sophia Jex-Blake, who led a group known as the Edinburgh Seven in their bid to become the first women to graduate as doctors from a British university. Her campaign was long and ultimately ...
02.17.2020 Science Stories - Mary Somerville, pioneer of popular science writing Mary Somerville was a self-taught genius who wrote best-selling books translating, explaining and drawing together different scientific fields and who was named the nineteenth century's "queen of science". Born Mary Fairfax in 1780, she was an unlikely scientific hero. Her ...
02.10.2020 Stem cells: Hope and hype Lesley Curwen reports on the magical aura that has been drawing so many people around the world to pay for “regenerative” therapies which harness the healing power of stem cells. In this programme, she reports on the battle of regulators ...
02.03.2020 Stem cell hard sell Stem cells are cells with superpowers. They can become many different types of cells in our bodies, from muscle cells to brain cells, and some can even repair tissue. But the remarkable promise of this exciting new field of medicine ...
01.27.2020 The road to Glasgow Climate change is upon us. In 2018 the IPCC published a report with the most significant warning about the impact of climate change in 20 years. Unless the world keeps warming to below 1.5% degrees Celsius the impact on the ...
01.20.2020 Ecological grief As the Earth experiences more extreme weather, and wildlife is dying, from corals, to insects, to tropical forests, more people are experiencing ecological anxiety and grief. Science journalist Gaia Vince has been reporting on the growing crisis across our planet’s ...
01.13.2020 The misinformation virus In this online age, the internet is a global megaphone, billions of messages amplified and shared, even when they're false. Fake science spreads faster than the truth ever could, unhindered by national boundaries. Mainstream scientists are struggling to respond. The ...
01.06.2020 The silence of the genes In summer of 2019 NICE approved the use of a completely new class of drugs: the gene silencers. These compounds are transforming the lives of families who have rare debilitating – and sometimes fatal - diseases such as amyloidosis and ...
12.30.2019 Alexis Carrel and the immortal chicken heart Philip Ball tells the story of Alexis Carrel, the French surgeon who worked to preserve life outside the body and create an immortal chicken heart in a dish. His quest was to renew ageing flesh, repair and rebuild our bodies ...
12.23.2019 Ramon Llull: Medieval prophet of computer science Philip Ball tells the story of Ramon Llull, the medieval prophet of computer science. During the time of the Crusades Llull argued that truth could be automated and used logic over force to prove the existence of the Christian God. ...
12.16.2019 Ignaz Semmelweiss: The hand washer Lindsey Fitzharris tells the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss, the hand washer. In a world that had no understanding of germs, he tried to apply science to halt the spread of infection. Ignaz Semmelweis observed that many young medical students at ...
12.09.2019 Madame Lavoisier's Translation of Oxygen Philip Ball tells the story of Madame Lavoisier; translator of oxygen. At a time when science was almost a closed book to women, Madame Marie Anne Lavoisier’s skills were indispensable. A translator, illustrator and critic of scientific papers, she learnt ...
12.02.2019 Galileo's lost letter Galileo famously insisted in the early 17th Century that the Earth goes round the Sun and not vice versa – an idea that got him into deep trouble with the Catholic Church. In 1633 Galileo was put on trial for ...
11.25.2019 Robin Dunbar Maintaining friendships is one of the most cognitively demanding things we do, according to Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar. So why do we bother? Robin has spent his life trying to answer this deceptively simple question. For most of ...
11.18.2019 Katherine Joy 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 lunar meteorites in Antarctica, camping on ice for weeks on end and travelling around on ...
11.11.2019 Sir Gregory Winter 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 medicine. Forced to temporarily abandon his work in the lab when a road rage incident left him ...

Older episodes

Discovery

What's Discovery about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Discovery episodes:

Introducing The Bomb

On the menu

Human Genome Project's 20th Anniversary

Brian Greene

Jane Goodall

Bed

Covid-19: Recovery

Toilet

Wine glass

The Evidence: Covid 19: vaccines and after lockdown

Fork

High heel

The Evidence: Covid 19: Transmission and South America

Toothbrush

Helium

The Evidence: Covid 19: Sub-Saharan Africa and Testing

Aluminium and strontium

Gold and silver

The Evidence: Covid 19: ending lockdowns

Science of Dad

Ignaz Semmelweiss: The hand washer

The Evidence: Mental health and Covid 19

Desert locust swarms

Anne Magurran

The Evidence: Young people, lifting lockdowns, USA and Kenya updates

Richard Wiseman

Professor Saiful Islam

The Evidence: Taiwan, Vaccines, Africa Preparedness

Elizabeth Fisher: Chromosomes in mice and men

Adrian Owen

The Evidence: Coronavirus Special

Professor Martha Clokie

Demis Hassabis

Isaac Newton and the story of the apple

Science Stories - Sophia Jex-Blake

Science Stories - Mary Somerville, pioneer of popular science writing

Stem cells: Hope and hype

Stem cell hard sell

The road to Glasgow

Ecological grief

The misinformation virus

The silence of the genes

Alexis Carrel and the immortal chicken heart

Ramon Llull: Medieval prophet of computer science

Ignaz Semmelweiss: The hand washer

Madame Lavoisier's Translation of Oxygen

Galileo's lost letter

Robin Dunbar

Katherine Joy

Sir Gregory Winter

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