Recent episodes

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 ...

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

Social Sciences

Senses of self — the autistic experience

by Melissa Bovis

Have you ever wondered why some of us love the taste of marmite but others hate it? Each one of us shows differences in sensory ...

How could Artificial Intelligence change learning and teaching?

by Rose Luckin

“It’s a November morning in a school classroom and the year is 2027. As the winter sun streams through the windows, a fourth-grade teacher named ...

Captain America and the state of US politics

by Jason Dittmer

This is a story about an all-American winner; a man loved by millions; a man who, as President, could single-handedly solve the problems facing the ...

A philosopher’s take on Global Basic Income

by Hillel Steiner

One of the more rarely encountered phenomena in this world is agreement between people on opposing sides of the left-right political spectrum. And yet there ...

VIDEO EPISODES

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Neuroscience

Saving newborns from brain damage

by Ping Yip

A happily pregnant mother arrived at the hospital to give birth to her baby boy. It was supposed to be one of those routine births, ...

Why do we have a brain

by Alejandro Galvez-Pol

Imagine fairly simple tasks, like snapping your fingers, or moving your feet to the rhythm of your favourite song. Even though these are very basic ...

Can we cure neurological disorders by modifying the genome?

by Gabriele Lignani

How many of us know at least one person with a neurological disorder? In one way or another, we all do, since this doesn’t only ...

Neural cartography: Mapping the brain using a very strong magnet

by Gaelle Coullon

Human beings are natural explorers. We like to discover strange new places and make maps of the worlds we find. However, one particular world that ...

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 ...