Never Lick the Spoon

Every schoolchild will tell you that Penicillin, one of the great discoveries of the 20th century, was discovered by Alexander Fleming. But it was a young German refugee that brought Penicillin out of the scientific papers and into the hospital, his name was Ernst Chain. Kieran travels to University College London to speak to Ernst’s son, Benny, himself a pioneer in biochemistry.

3D printing has evolved to the stage where we can now create aircraft parts, satellite components, medical implants and even copies of people’s faces. However, as Kieran finds out, this promising field also has potentially troubling aspects. Also, in the era of "fake news", we hear how science communication is more important than ever with the presenter of the BBC World Service programme "Digital Planet", Gareth Mitchel.

Kieran hears how the efforts of a Physics postdoc for greater recognition for female scientist resulted in her being named in Nature's 10 scientists that mattered in 2018, and we speak to the next generation of female entrepreneurs.

In our first episode, Kieran finds out how social you are can influence how you feel about social media. We also hear how researchers in Imperial are developing smart tattoos capable of monitoring health by changing colour, which could tell an athlete when they are dehydrated or a diabetic when their blood sugar level rises.