Recent episodes

Flying high with the fruit fly

by Laura Martin-Coll and Siamak Redhai

“With the strange feeling that my ancestors were roaming free in Africa, all of a sudden, I was born in a plastic bottle containing banana paste, closed with ...

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Journey to the centre of the Earth – the core of our planet

by Lidunka Vocadlo

Connecting rainforest hunter-gatherers with wildlife conservation? There’s an app for that!

by Simon Hoyte

Medicines in Chains: Reducing side effects with polymers

by Christina Picken

Physics
How to photograph an atom and save the world

by Oscar Williams

How can the behaviour of a single atom provide insights into our energy demands? How do we know that atoms actually exist? And what on ...

Printable electronics – A flexible future

by Matthew Dyson

What do all the electronic gadgets you own have in common? Aside from using electricity, they are always solid, box-like objects, regardless of whether they ...

Spacetime simulation

by Euan McLean

What if I told you that humans have been simulating tiny universes on computers? They're not quite the size of our universe, or even of ...

Am I crazy or is it physics

by Katy Clough

For any theoretical physicist, there is a moment when you know you have “made it”, and that moment is when you receive your first letter ...

VIDEO EPISODES
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The woman who unmasked the forger

by Mary Wellesley

In 1930, the chief librarian of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, Belle da Costa Greene, was approached about a rare medieval panel painting by the Spanish master Jorge Inglés. The painting was to be offered to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s board of trustees by its purchasing agent, ...

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Dude, where's my car? (How philosophy might help you find it!)

by Luke Fenton-Glynn

In the cult film Dude, Where’s My Car?, Jesse and Chester wake up in their house, after a night of partying, and are unable to ...

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The invisible killer of World War I: Blast injury

by Emily Mayhew

Paris, 1917. A neuroscientist, Augusta Dejerine-Klumpke, arrived for work. A wind from the east carried the sound of artillery and gunfire up and down the ...

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Why Martin Luther King had the US Constitution on his side

by Adam Smith

In December 1955, at the Holt Street Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr., made a speech that he intended, he later said, to “be militant ...

Literature
Opening medieval manuscripts

by Henrike Lähnemann

Opening a book unfolds a new world. In the case of the pocket-sized prayer-book Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Lat. liturg. f. 4, it ...

Walking through Dickensian London

by John Mullan

In this podcast, Dickens expert John Mullan takes us on a journey through this great writer's mind, touching on his relationship to London, dreams, Bedlam, ...

Tales from a Master’s Notebook

by Philip Horne

I’ve spent most of my career working on Henry James, the great American novelist, born in New York City in 1843, who came to Europe ...

Young travels of self-discovery: Past and present

by Emma Pauncefort

Taking a ‘year out’ upon leaving school has become pretty commonplace for the English private school girl or boy. Even more commonplace is the decision ...

AUDIO episodes
Walking through Dickensian London

by John Mullan

In this podcast, Dickens expert John Mullan takes us on a journey through this great writer's mind, touching on his relationship to London, dreams, Bedlam, and more.

Am I crazy or is it physics

by Katy Clough

For any theoretical physicist, there is a moment when you know you have “made it”, and that moment is when you receive your first letter from someone who claims to ...