The Ideas List

Episode

Title

First
Broadcast

Repeated

Comments

Mondex

20250113

20250114 (R4)
20251221 (R4)

Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. To prepare, she put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview.

Fast forward to the present day and Claudia, now an award-winning broadcaster and presenter of Radio 4's All in the Mind, is sorting through the drawer of paper she keeps to recycle in her printer and she discovers the list of stories she'd prepared to pitch at that interview three decades earlier.

In this quirky, personal journey, Claudia revisits five ideas from her Ideas List to find out what happened next. She tracks each headline-grabbing story forward through the false-starts and dead ends, the surprises and successes. And she asks what each tale teaches us about the tortuous path of scientific progress.

In the first episode she looks into a bold experiment in digital cash which aimed to consign notes and coins to history.

Mondex looked like any other debit or credit card but it wasn't associated with a bank account. The money was right there on the card and it was designed to be used for all those smaller purchases where cash was king, from a lunchtime sandwich to a pint in your local.

Swindon was chosen as the place to trial Mondex and in July 1995, amid a blaze of publicity, the card was launched in the town centre. The first official Mondex transaction was a copy of the local paper, the Swindon Advertiser.

Claudia meets one of the inventors of Mondex, Tim Jones. He tells her about the moment of inspiration which turned digital cash from a bright idea into reality. We also hear from Rob Jamieson whose job it was to win hearts and minds for Mondex among the businesses and residents of Swindon. And photographer Richard Wintle recalls the excitement of launch day, when the eyes of the world were on the Wiltshire town.

Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange

Claudia Hammond revisits a bold experiment in digital cash, launched in Swindon

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. She starts with a bold experiment in digital cash which was launched in Swindon

Thirty years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. To prepare, she put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview.

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago

[LISTEN NOW]

Inhalable Vaccines

20250114

20250115 (R4)
20251225 (R4)

Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. She put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview. In this quirky, personal journey, Claudia revisits five ideas from her Ideas List to find out what happened next. She tracks each headline-grabbing story forward through the false-starts and dead ends, the surprises and successes. And she asks what each tale teaches us about the tortuous path of scientific progress.

In this episode, Claudia reexamines a story about inhalable flu vaccines that she had found in the New Scientist edition from March 11th, 1995. Normally, vaccines are administered via injections, but, in some ways, this isn't ideal as it does not induce immunity in the mucosal tissues in the upper airways and nose.

In the early 90s, virologist Jan Wilschut decided to explore an idea: what if we were to create vaccines that could be administered right where influenza viruses enter the human body? After some very promising experiments in mice, he and his colleagues work together with a pharmaceutical company. But translating their approach into an actual medical treatment proves too difficult. And Jan wrote off the idea entirely.

Immunologist Chris Chiu shares with Claudia that, for the last decade or so, children in the UK have received an intranasal flu vaccine. The issue is that it is the only vaccine of its kind and does not work in adults. Other attempts to create similar intranasal or inhalable vaccines have not been successful as of yet. But there is hope on the horizon. The Covid pandemic has renewed interest in the idea of stopping infections in their tracks. And with new technological developments and a better understanding of the human immune system, Chris believes that inhalable vaccines could become a reality in the future.

Jan Wilschut didn't follow any of these new developments. And hearing about it now made him reflect on his old failed attempt to revolutionise flu vaccines. Maybe his idea was just too visionary.

Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange

Claudia Hammond re-examines an attempt to revolutionise flu vaccines.

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. This time, she examines an attempt to revolutionise flu vaccines.

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago

[LISTEN NOW]

Intrusive Memories

20250115

20250116 (R4)
20251231 (R4)

In this episode Claudia goes back to an idea which she had heard about from a friend. Philippa Hyman had been a fellow psychology student and housemate at university. And now she was working as a research assistant on a project run by Chris Brewin at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Chris's research has been key to our understanding of PTSD. One of the symptoms of PTSD is unpleasant or difficult memories which come to mind involuntarily and repeatedly, These intrusive memories can also occur in people with depression and, in the study Philippa was working on, they explored the association between intrusive memories and depression in a group of people who were facing challenging life circumstances – in this case a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Thirty years on, Claudia meets Prof. Chris Brewin to reflect on a study which highlighted the vital importance of considering cancer patients' psychological needs alongside their treatment.

Today, Dr. Philippa Hyman works in exactly this area, providing psychological support for patients in London. She and Claudia - still good friends - look back to her role interviewing patients for Chris's original study and consider how far we've moved on in embedding that parallel approach – body and mind together – in medical practice.

And Sharon-Ann Phillips, who in 2015 was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, shares her experience of intrusive memories and how psychological support has helped her to overcome negative thoughts and images and change her perspective on life.

Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange

Claudia Hammond looks back to a study exploring intrusive memories in cancer patients

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. Today she considers a study of depression and intrusive memories in cancer patients

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago

[LISTEN NOW]

Breeding Robots

20250116

20250117 (R4)

In this episode, Claudia re-examines an ingenious experiment that applied Darwinian evolution to robotics and spawned a new academic field.

Claudia visits researcher Phil Husbands in his old robotics laboratory at Sussex University. As they explore a giant gantry robot, Phil shares the story of how a robot similar to this one was used in his original experiment that mimicked Darwinian natural selection. Over multiple generations of artificial DNA – essentially bits of randomised code – the robot learned how to complete a simple tasks.

At the time, the mainstream approach to artificial intelligence was logic-based and Phil's work was part of a larger wave of newer, more adaptive methods. The experiment helped create the field of evolutionary robotics, but Phil's approach didn't go as far as he and his contemporaries believed it would. And it did not lead to the AI revolution we have seen in recent years.

Josh Bongard was a student of Phil's at Sussex University and went on to have a career in evolutionary robotics, taking Phil's method and developing it further. In the late 2010s, he embarked on a new project working with a group of biologists from another university. This collaboration led to the creation of Xenobots, biological robots made out of frog cells that can move around and even self-replicate.

Josh credits a lot of his success to Phil and to the time he spent at Sussex University as a student. Sometimes an idea can take on a life of its own.

Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange

Claudia Hammond revisits an ingenious experiment combining robotics and evolution

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. Today she looks into a groundbreaking experiment combining robotics and evolution

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago

[LISTEN NOW]

05 LAST

Fingerprints

20250117

20250118 (R4)

Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. It was a big opportunity so she prepared meticulously. She put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview to show that she knew a good science story and would be perfect for the role.

Fast forward thirty years and Claudia, now an award-winning broadcaster and presenter of Radio 4's All in the Mind, is sorting through the drawer of recycled scripts, briefs and notes she keeps to re-use in her printer. Right at the bottom of the inches-thick pile she comes across the list of stories she'd prepared to pitch at that interview three decades earlier.

In this episode Claudia picks up on a story about the FBI, the United States' domestic intelligence and security service. By the mid-1990s the FBI had 200 million fingerprint records, all kept on individual cards and stored in filing cabinets which took up an acre of floor space. Searching through these records could take so long that police were forced to release suspects before a match could be found.

The FBI's fingerprint system was clearly - and urgently - in need of digitisation so that it could be kept as computer records. But because each individual record needed a lot of computer memory, an acre of filing cabinets would simply be replaced by an acre of computer servers!

Enter Chris Brislawn from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who devised a radical new data-compression system. He tells Claudia how he made the breakthrough using the mathematical theory of wavelets. This allowed the important information about a fingerprint to be separated from the unimportant information and, as a result, vastly reduce the file size.

And the system Chris invented is still used by the FBI today As Craig Watson from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology attests, it was an example of the right idea at exactly the right time.

Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange

Claudia Hammond hears how the FBI modernised its manual system for storing fingerprints

Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago

Claudia Hammond hears how the FBI digitised its unwieldy manual system for storing fingerprints and meets the mathematician who cracked the code to make it possible

[LISTEN NOW]

Episodes

Episode	Title	First Broadcast	Repeated	Comments
01	Mondex	20250113	20250114 (R4) 20251221 (R4)	Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. To prepare, she put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview. Fast forward to the present day and Claudia, now an award-winning broadcaster and presenter of Radio 4's All in the Mind, is sorting through the drawer of paper she keeps to recycle in her printer and she discovers the list of stories she'd prepared to pitch at that interview three decades earlier. In this quirky, personal journey, Claudia revisits five ideas from her Ideas List to find out what happened next. She tracks each headline-grabbing story forward through the false-starts and dead ends, the surprises and successes. And she asks what each tale teaches us about the tortuous path of scientific progress. In the first episode she looks into a bold experiment in digital cash which aimed to consign notes and coins to history. Mondex looked like any other debit or credit card but it wasn't associated with a bank account. The money was right there on the card and it was designed to be used for all those smaller purchases where cash was king, from a lunchtime sandwich to a pint in your local. Swindon was chosen as the place to trial Mondex and in July 1995, amid a blaze of publicity, the card was launched in the town centre. The first official Mondex transaction was a copy of the local paper, the Swindon Advertiser. Claudia meets one of the inventors of Mondex, Tim Jones. He tells her about the moment of inspiration which turned digital cash from a bright idea into reality. We also hear from Rob Jamieson whose job it was to win hearts and minds for Mondex among the businesses and residents of Swindon. And photographer Richard Wintle recalls the excitement of launch day, when the eyes of the world were on the Wiltshire town. Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange Claudia Hammond revisits a bold experiment in digital cash, launched in Swindon Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. She starts with a bold experiment in digital cash which was launched in Swindon Thirty years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. To prepare, she put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview. Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago [LISTEN NOW]
02	Inhalable Vaccines	20250114	20250115 (R4) 20251225 (R4)	Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. She put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview. In this quirky, personal journey, Claudia revisits five ideas from her Ideas List to find out what happened next. She tracks each headline-grabbing story forward through the false-starts and dead ends, the surprises and successes. And she asks what each tale teaches us about the tortuous path of scientific progress. In this episode, Claudia reexamines a story about inhalable flu vaccines that she had found in the New Scientist edition from March 11th, 1995. Normally, vaccines are administered via injections, but, in some ways, this isn't ideal as it does not induce immunity in the mucosal tissues in the upper airways and nose. In the early 90s, virologist Jan Wilschut decided to explore an idea: what if we were to create vaccines that could be administered right where influenza viruses enter the human body? After some very promising experiments in mice, he and his colleagues work together with a pharmaceutical company. But translating their approach into an actual medical treatment proves too difficult. And Jan wrote off the idea entirely. Immunologist Chris Chiu shares with Claudia that, for the last decade or so, children in the UK have received an intranasal flu vaccine. The issue is that it is the only vaccine of its kind and does not work in adults. Other attempts to create similar intranasal or inhalable vaccines have not been successful as of yet. But there is hope on the horizon. The Covid pandemic has renewed interest in the idea of stopping infections in their tracks. And with new technological developments and a better understanding of the human immune system, Chris believes that inhalable vaccines could become a reality in the future. Jan Wilschut didn't follow any of these new developments. And hearing about it now made him reflect on his old failed attempt to revolutionise flu vaccines. Maybe his idea was just too visionary. Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange Claudia Hammond re-examines an attempt to revolutionise flu vaccines. Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. This time, she examines an attempt to revolutionise flu vaccines. Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago [LISTEN NOW]
03	Intrusive Memories	20250115	20250116 (R4) 20251231 (R4)	Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. She put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview. In this quirky, personal journey, Claudia revisits five ideas from her Ideas List to find out what happened next. She tracks each headline-grabbing story forward through the false-starts and dead ends, the surprises and successes. And she asks what each tale teaches us about the tortuous path of scientific progress. In this episode Claudia goes back to an idea which she had heard about from a friend. Philippa Hyman had been a fellow psychology student and housemate at university. And now she was working as a research assistant on a project run by Chris Brewin at Royal Holloway, University of London. Chris's research has been key to our understanding of PTSD. One of the symptoms of PTSD is unpleasant or difficult memories which come to mind involuntarily and repeatedly, These intrusive memories can also occur in people with depression and, in the study Philippa was working on, they explored the association between intrusive memories and depression in a group of people who were facing challenging life circumstances – in this case a cancer diagnosis and treatment. Thirty years on, Claudia meets Prof. Chris Brewin to reflect on a study which highlighted the vital importance of considering cancer patients' psychological needs alongside their treatment. Today, Dr. Philippa Hyman works in exactly this area, providing psychological support for patients in London. She and Claudia - still good friends - look back to her role interviewing patients for Chris's original study and consider how far we've moved on in embedding that parallel approach – body and mind together – in medical practice. And Sharon-Ann Phillips, who in 2015 was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, shares her experience of intrusive memories and how psychological support has helped her to overcome negative thoughts and images and change her perspective on life. Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange Claudia Hammond looks back to a study exploring intrusive memories in cancer patients Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. Today she considers a study of depression and intrusive memories in cancer patients Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago [LISTEN NOW]
04	Breeding Robots	20250116	20250117 (R4)	Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. She put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview. In this quirky, personal journey, Claudia revisits five ideas from her Ideas List to find out what happened next. She tracks each headline-grabbing story forward through the false-starts and dead ends, the surprises and successes. And she asks what each tale teaches us about the tortuous path of scientific progress. In this episode, Claudia re-examines an ingenious experiment that applied Darwinian evolution to robotics and spawned a new academic field. Claudia visits researcher Phil Husbands in his old robotics laboratory at Sussex University. As they explore a giant gantry robot, Phil shares the story of how a robot similar to this one was used in his original experiment that mimicked Darwinian natural selection. Over multiple generations of artificial DNA – essentially bits of randomised code – the robot learned how to complete a simple tasks. At the time, the mainstream approach to artificial intelligence was logic-based and Phil's work was part of a larger wave of newer, more adaptive methods. The experiment helped create the field of evolutionary robotics, but Phil's approach didn't go as far as he and his contemporaries believed it would. And it did not lead to the AI revolution we have seen in recent years. Josh Bongard was a student of Phil's at Sussex University and went on to have a career in evolutionary robotics, taking Phil's method and developing it further. In the late 2010s, he embarked on a new project working with a group of biologists from another university. This collaboration led to the creation of Xenobots, biological robots made out of frog cells that can move around and even self-replicate. Josh credits a lot of his success to Phil and to the time he spent at Sussex University as a student. Sometimes an idea can take on a life of its own. Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange Claudia Hammond revisits an ingenious experiment combining robotics and evolution Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview thirty years ago. Today she looks into a groundbreaking experiment combining robotics and evolution Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago [LISTEN NOW]
05 LAST	Fingerprints	20250117	20250118 (R4)	Thirty years ago years ago, in March 1995, a fresh-faced Claudia Hammond arrived at the BBC for a job interview as a trainee science producer. It was a big opportunity so she prepared meticulously. She put together a comprehensive list of science and health stories, ready to pitch at the interview to show that she knew a good science story and would be perfect for the role. Fast forward thirty years and Claudia, now an award-winning broadcaster and presenter of Radio 4's All in the Mind, is sorting through the drawer of recycled scripts, briefs and notes she keeps to re-use in her printer. Right at the bottom of the inches-thick pile she comes across the list of stories she'd prepared to pitch at that interview three decades earlier. In this quirky, personal journey, Claudia revisits five ideas from her Ideas List to find out what happened next. She tracks each headline-grabbing story forward through the false-starts and dead ends, the surprises and successes. And she asks what each tale teaches us about the tortuous path of scientific progress. In this episode Claudia picks up on a story about the FBI, the United States' domestic intelligence and security service. By the mid-1990s the FBI had 200 million fingerprint records, all kept on individual cards and stored in filing cabinets which took up an acre of floor space. Searching through these records could take so long that police were forced to release suspects before a match could be found. The FBI's fingerprint system was clearly - and urgently - in need of digitisation so that it could be kept as computer records. But because each individual record needed a lot of computer memory, an acre of filing cabinets would simply be replaced by an acre of computer servers! Enter Chris Brislawn from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who devised a radical new data-compression system. He tells Claudia how he made the breakthrough using the mathematical theory of wavelets. This allowed the important information about a fingerprint to be separated from the unimportant information and, as a result, vastly reduce the file size. And the system Chris invented is still used by the FBI today As Craig Watson from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology attests, it was an example of the right idea at exactly the right time. Producers: Florian Bohr and Jeremy Grange Claudia Hammond hears how the FBI modernised its manual system for storing fingerprints Claudia Hammond revisits a list of ideas she prepared for a BBC job interview 30 years ago Claudia Hammond hears how the FBI digitised its unwieldy manual system for storing fingerprints and meets the mathematician who cracked the code to make it possible [LISTEN NOW]