Forty years ago, the large blue butterfly was extinct in Britain. The intensification of farming has pushed half of the butterfly species in the UK to the brink of extinction. However, at Daneway Banks Nature Reserve in Gloucestershire, the large blue butterfly has made a comeback.

In this episode, Biology masters student Tosca Hulett discusses the extinction an re-establishment of the large blue butterfly with Professor Jeremy Thomas, one of Europe's most accomplished butterfly experts.

While now a favourite Halloween costume, being a witch in the early modern period was a serious matter. Between the years 1400 and 1782, around 40,000-60,000 people, primarily women, were executed in Europe for being "witches." Who were these witches and why were they so feared?
In this episode, Minh Nguyen, a 2nd-year history undergraduate at New College, speaks to Dr. Leif Dixon, lecturer in early modern history at Regent’s Park College to explore the social, religious, and political context behind witch-hunting, and discover what ‘witchcraft’ really was.

What is it that makes you the same person that you were ten minutes ago, ten hours ago, ten years ago? Derek Parfit, in his seminal work ‘Reasons and Persons’ (1984) recognises the interplay between personal identity and ethics, something which produces a puzzling paradox of existence. If a person's existence is inevitably flawed, is it morally wrong to bring such a person into existence or, is bringing a different, better-off, but non identical person in their place is a more ethical decision? The non-identity problem asks whether we have really made anyone better off.

In this episode, Todd Horton, law graduate from Trinity College, will be interviewing Professor Christopher Fowels, Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Trinity College, in seeking to untangle this complex paradox.

Religion, spirituality, and psychotherapy - How do these concepts interrelate within the context of student mental health? Professor Alistair Ross, associated with the Department of Continuing Education in Oxford, talks to Arun Joseph, Clinical Neurosciences graduate student at Jesus College, to discuss his work on the relationships between sacred, spirituality, religion, and psychotherapy and what they mean for optimising student mental health.

Professor Fiona Stafford is a member of the English Language and Literature Faculty here at Oxford and a Fellow of Somerville College. Her research areas include not only Romantic literature, focussing on such writers as Austen, Keats and Wordsworth, but also ideas of place and nature in literature, and the cultural history of flowers and trees.  A recent event organised by Professor Stafford aimed to bring these two areas of interest together and investigate the way in which the natural worlds impacts our reception of stories and literature. Flora Symington, 3rd year English undergraduate at Somerville, talks to her about the relationship between literature and green spaces.

You may have heard a lot of discussion about the Roman Empire lately, but how much do we really know about the men at the heart of it all - the Roman Emperors? In this episode Alice Hazell, a classical archaeology and ancient history student at Lady Margaret Hall, speaks to Dr Panayiotis Christoforou, departmental lecturer in Roman History, and author of his recently published book ‘Imagining the Roman Emperor’ to find out who the Emperors really were and how they were perceived by those they ruled.

The natural world around us is so incredibly diverse. However, one factor that all creatures share, it appears, is the need for aggression. Whether it be contesting territory, finding a mate, or stealing food supplies, most organisms will at one point need to exhibit aggressive behaviour to benefit their own survival. 

In this episode of OxPods, biology PhD student Hannah Ogden talking to OxPod’s senior member Prof Jonathon Green, an animal diversity lecturer, and researcher at the University of Oxford who studies evolution and the diversity of social behaviours across the animal kingdom.

Life uncertainty measures reveal the ‘ultimate inequality’. In Mexico, new demographic research is showing the effect of violence on life uncertainty and mortality, highlighting it as an unrecognised public health problem.

Demographer José Manuel Arbuto, associated with Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science in Oxford, talks to Miya McFarlane, Human Sciences Undergraduate at Regents Park College, to discuss his work on violence, life uncertainty, and mortality in Mexico.

Most can agree that building a postcolonial country involves complex interactions between cultural, religious, ethnic, gender, and class based cleavages. But how can the language or languages used in building nations affect a country’s development?

In this episode, Sophia Herbert, PPE student at New College, speaks to Andrew Marshall, Junior Research Fellow in politics at New College to discuss and compare the implications of national language status on government policy and conceptions of the nation in the ethnolinguistically diverse societies of Tanzania and Kenya.

Antibiotics have made a huge contribution to human health by successfully tackling infectious diseases worldwide. But what happens when these drugs are no longer effective? How much do we know about the resistance that bacteria develop, and what new approaches are scientists looking at to tackle this problem?

In this episode, Ruby Ellis, an undergraduate biochemistry student at Magdalen college, speaks to Professor Craig Maclean at the department of Biology, whose research looks at the evolution of antibiotic resistance.