Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future
Latest episodes
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David Canter on how psychology can save lives and catch killers
Although books and movies might suggest otherwise, catching criminals is of course less about hunches and gut instinct, and more about gruelling analysis of hard data - including w…
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28 min ↗
Edith Heard on unravelling the mystery of X-chromosome inactivation
Imagine looking at a map of a city you thought you knew inside-out, only to discover a collection of tightly knit neighbourhoods that nobody had ever realised existed... Edith Hear…
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Ginger Kerrick on manning Nasa's Mission Control and getting to Mars
What do you do when your childhood dream of becoming an astronaut is grounded at the final hurdle?If you’re physicist Ginger Kerrick, you go on to help run the missions instead. Af…
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Dean Lomax on discovering ichthyosaurs and defying nay-sayers
Have you ever been told you aren't good enough to do something, then gone ahead and proved the naysayers wrong by doing it anyway - in glorious, headline-grabbing style? That is th…
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Helen Hastie on the future of human-robot relations
What if robots of the future weren’t just clever machines, performing tasks in isolation, but trusted teammates you could have a chat with? That could respond naturally to conversa…
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28 min ↗
Seth Berkley on the importance of vaccinating the world
Dr Seth Berkley is an epidemiologist and global health leader whose career has been shaped by one central problem: vaccines save lives, but only if people can actually get them.His…
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Hiranya Peiris on unravelling the story of the universe
Hiranya Peiris is playing a starring role in a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. However, it’s a movie with a difference – there’s no director and…
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Washington Yotto Ochieng on the navigation tech that keeps our world moving
As a child growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, Washington Yotto Ochieng once watched a plane cross the night sky and told his mother he wished he could trav…
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28 min ↗
Lucy Carpenter on how our oceans are destroying ozone
Working on a remote tropical island in the Atlantic might sound like some sort of romantic idyll - but trying to conduct scientific research on a windy, isolated volanic outcrop is…
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Jens Juul Holst on the gut hormone discovery behind weight-loss drugs
As recently as a few years ago, the idea of a self-administered injection that would deliver proven weight-loss results might have sounded fantastical. Today, these medications are…
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Jim Ashworth-Beaumont on how a near-fatal accident made him a better clinician
It's a rare thing to encounter a medical specialist who has experience of his field from the expert and the patient perspective - but not unheard of...Jim Ashworth-Beaumont is an o…
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28 min ↗
Jehane Ragai on the science of authenticating artworks
Ever heard of the unsuccessful Dutch painter who decided to humiliate his critics by forging Vermeers, which the artworld subsequently dubbed 'masterpieces'? Or the businessman who…
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29 min ↗
Tony Juniper on parrots, princes and environmental protection
Tony Juniper is an environmentalist who has worn many hats, over the course of his career.After developing a passion for birds in childhood, his first job saw him working to save e…
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28 min ↗
Pierre Friedlingstein on carbon’s pivotal role in climate change
The COP30 climate summit is taking place in the Brazilian city of Belém, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest, which continues to face widespread deforestation. We all know that our…
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28 min ↗
Julia Simner on tasty words and hearing colours
Imagine if you were listening to an opera or a Taylor Swift concert, and as the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the music was accompanied by a rainbow of colours only you could se…
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28 min ↗
Caroline Smith on meteorites and potential ancient life on Mars
Caroline Smith is passionate about space rocks, whether they’re samples collected from the surface of asteroids and the Moon and hopefully Mars one day soon, or meteorites, those a…
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AP De Silva on building molecular fluorescence sensors for healthcare
From humble beginnings in his native Sri Lanka, to a more than 40 year academic career at Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. AP (Amilra Prasanna) De Silva’s research into molecular…
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Peter Knight on quantum technologies
There are problems and tasks so hard and complicated that it would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack them. But in the next decade, we may well ha…
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28 min ↗
Eleanor Schofield on conserving Tudor warship the Mary Rose
In July 1545, King Henry VIII watched from Southsea Castle on England's south coast as his fleet sailed out to face the French - only to witness his prized warship, the Mary Rose,…
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George Church on reimagining woolly mammoths and virus-proofing humans
"My ideas are often labelled as impossible, or useless, or both. Usually when people say that I'm on the right track."George Church is a geneticist, molecular engineer, and one of…