The Life Scientific

Although he describes himself as a simple-minded Northern bloke, he has acquired an almost God-like status on our TV screens; while the 'Cox effect' is thought to explain the significant boost to university admissions to read physics. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about learning to be famous, his passion for physics and how he sometimes has difficulty crossing the road.

In 2005 Brian was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship for his work on high energy particle collisions at CERN and elsewhere - an enviable academic achievement. In 2009, he was voted one of the sexiest men alive by People magazine. He has invented a new kind of celebrity - a scientist who's regularly snapped by the paparazzi.

Brian wants everyone to be as excited as he is about the laws that govern our universe: the beautiful, counter-intuitive and often weird world of quantum mechanics that explains what happens inside the nucleus of every atom, right down at the level of those exotically named elementary particles - quarks, neutrinos, gluons, muons.

Challenged by Jim to explain the rules of quantum mechanics in just a minute, Brian succeeds; while conceding that the idea that everything is inherently probabilistic, is challenging. Even Einstein found it difficult. Schrodinger's cat, or Brian Cox, for that matter, are simultaneously both dead and alive. That's a fact. What this is all means is another question. 'Am I just an algorithm?' Brian asks. 'Probably', says Jim.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Brian Cox, physicist and media star, talks fame and quantum mechanics with Jim Al-Khalili.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Expert health advisor and professor of medicine Carol Black talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Growing up in Hamilton, Scotland during a time of energy insecurity, Fiona was determined to understand more about why her school lacked the energy to heat up all of the classrooms or why there were power cuts causing her to have to do her homework by candlelight - and in nuclear she knew there was a possible solution.

But it's not just in clean energy that Fiona has spent her career, she's also been involved in investigating how nuclear science can be used in treating cancer and space travel, as well as promoting gender diversity in the nuclear industry.

Speaking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Fiona discusses how she's always tried to keep close to the science during her career in order to keep her ‘spark'!

Produced by Jonathan Blackwell

Jim Al-Khalili talks to the president of the Nuclear Institute about all things nuclear.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.

Jim Al-Khalili talks growing up in a time of energy insecurity, the role of nuclear in clean energy, treating cancer and space travel with the president of the Nuclear Institute.

We share 99% of our DNA with the chimpanzee and the bonobo. And yet we're often surprised to learn that apes, like us, can be both kind and clever. Behavioural biologist and best-selling author, Frans de Waal has spent many years observing our closest living animal relatives. He pioneered studies of kindness and peace-making in primates, when other scientists were focussing on violence, greed and aggression. Empathy, he argues, has a long evolutionary history; and he is determined to undermine our arrogant assumptions of human superiority. Frans talks to Jim Al-Khalili about growing up on the Dutch polders, chimpanzee politics, and the extraordinary sex lives of the bonobos.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

For centuries, cosmic dust was a major source of irritation to optical astronomers because, like smog, it stopped them from seeing the stars. Now studies of these tiny particles are challenging some deeply held assumptions about the physics of the universe.

Haley's research has changed the textbook explanation of how cosmic dust is formed and helped to open our eyes to just how many galaxies there are in the universe.

In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to physics and inspiring the next generation of physicists and astronomers from less privileged communities. A cause which is very close to her heart.

Produced by Anna Buckley and recorded in the Pier Head Building in Cardiff as part of the Cardiff Science Festival.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astrophysicist Haley Gomez.

Dr. Hannah Critchlow is an internationally acclaimed neuroscientist who has spent her career demystifying and explaining the brain to audiences around the world. Through her writing, broadcasting and lectures to audiences – whether in schools, festivals or online – she has become one of the public faces of neuroscience.

She tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili that her desire to understand the brain began when she spent a year after school as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital. The experience of working with young patients - many the same age as her - made her ask what it is within each individual brain which determines people's very different life trajectories.

In her books she's explored the idea that much of our character and behaviour is hard-wired into us before we're even born. And most recently she's considered collective intelligence, asking how we can bring all our individual brains together and harness their power in one ‘super brain'.

And we get to hear Jim's own mind at work as Hannah attaches electrodes to his head and turns his brain waves into sound.

Producer: Jeremy Grange

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow on connections within - and between - brains.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili meets neuroscientist Dr Hannah Critchlow to explore the idea that our character and behaviours are hard-wired into our brains before we're even born.

And how exactly might one go about putting on a one-man-show about Sir Isaac Newton?

These are all questions that Mike Edmunds, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University and President of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), has tackled during his distinguished career. And although physics is his first love, Mike is fascinated by an array of scientific disciplines - with achievements ranging from interpreting the spread of chemical elements in the Universe, to decoding the world's oldest-known astronomical artefact -

Recording in front of an audience at the RAS in London, Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to Mike about his life, work and inspirations.

And who knows, Sir Isaac might even make an appearance -

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Mike Edmunds on the chemical make-up of galaxies and decoding the Antikythera Mechanism.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to astrophysicist Mike Edmunds about the chemical make-up of galaxies, decoding the ancient Antikythera Mechanism, and his one-man show about Newton.

Professor Charles Godfray, Director of the the Oxford Martin School tells Jim Al-Kahlili about the intricate world of population dynamics, and how a healthy obsession with parasitic wasps might help us solve some of humanity's biggest problems, from the fight against Malaria to sustainably feeding a global community of 9 billion people.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.

Their work is changing the world we live in, but what do we really know about their lives beyond the lab?

Each week on The Life Scientific, Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at Surrey University, invites a leading scientist to tell us about their life and work. He wants to get under their skin and into their minds; to find out what first inspired them towards their field of research and what motivates them to keep going when the evidence seems to be stacking up against their theories. And he'll ask what their ideas and discoveries will do for us.

He'll talk to Nobel laureates as well as the next generation of beautiful minds, finding out what inspired them to do science in the first place and what motivates them to keep going. The programme will also feature short drop-ins from fellow scientists. Some will comment on our guest's early career, the implications of their discoveries, or offer alternative perspectives.

In this first programme, Jim talks to geneticist Paul Nurse, arguably the most powerful scientist in Britain today. Nurse's interest in science was sparked by the early days of the space race, when one night as a boy, he chased Sputnik down the road in his pyjamas, in a vain attempt to catch up with the Russian satellite as it passed overhead.

Nurse, a Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society is now firmly part of the science establishment but his upbringing and early academic life was far from conventional. Brought up by working class parents, in North London, Nurse struggled at first to even get accepted by any University. According to one of his tutors (who we'll hear from in the programme) Nurse didn't exactly shine as an undergraduate, either. But these experiences taught him to be self reliant, determined and not afraid of failure.

It was a attitude that paid off. In 2001, Nurse shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research on how cells divide, a process which is not only fundamental to all living things but has major implications for understanding and treating diseases like cancer.

His rise was, some say, meteoric. But it's not how he sees it, especially in the early days: ' I did have a lot of trouble getting a proper job'. Now President of one of the oldest and most respected scientific institutions in the world, Nurse's career has been far from predictable, and at times, controversial. Yet the same could be said for his personal life, when in his 50s, he was hit with a major revelation that would change forever how he viewed his past.

Confirmed guests on future programmes include the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker; Astronomer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell; the brains behind the Human Genome Project, John Sulston; Epidemiologist Michael Marmot, neuroscientist Colin Blakemore and Molly Stevens, a tissue engineer who's work growing bones could mean the end of metal pins for broken legs;

Producers: Anna Buckley and Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Confirmed guests on future programmes include the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker; Astronomer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell; the brains behind the Human Genome Project, John Sulston; Epidemiologist Michael Marmot, neuroscientist Colin Blakemore and Molly Stevens, a tissue engineer whose work growing bones could mean the end of metal pins for broken legs;

Jim Al-Khalili meets leading paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer to find who our ancestors were.

As a post graduate Chris went on a road trip with a difference, driving round Europe in an old Morris Minor measuring Neanderthal skulls. After being thrown out of several countries, the results of his analysis led to a controversial theory which ran counter to what many people thought at the time. Chris suggested that our most recent relative originated in Africa. He also reveals how genetics has transformed his work and talks about his own unconventional origins.

That there were cannibals in Somerset is one of the more surprising findings of Chris' work on early man in Britain and Jim discovers what it's like to work on an archaeological dig.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Pinker studies how the mind works. Presenter Jim al-Khalili wants to find out how his mind works. Pinker replies: 'as a psychologist you look at your own life as data and say geez that's what I'm like'.

From verbs to violence, he's author of several books that many say are mind-changing.

He's now something of a science superstar, but his early experiments with electrodes on rats didn't quite go according to plan: 'I realised then that that kind of science required a level of meticulousness that I just didn't have'. So instead of studying neuroscience, he became a cognitive psychologist.

Now perhaps better known for his writing than his science, he shot to fame with his book The Language Instinct, based on his early studies of how children tackle irregular verbs, for example saying 'holded' not held, and 'digged' instead of dug. These cute sounding mistakes are proof that three year olds are grammatical geniuses, he says. And he met his wife Rebecca Goldstein over an irregular verb.

Later, Pinker set the cat among the social science pigeons by stressing the importance of nature rather than nurture: an assertion that led to some bitter arguments with, among others, the psychologist Oliver James.

He readily admits that genes aren't everything: he's decided not to have children and says 'if my genes don't like it, they can go jump in the lake'. But he says, 'there's a phobia of genetics that it's time to get over'. Our failure to even think about genetic influences has given us a false impression of the amount of influence parents have over their children: it's skewed the science.

Parents like to think that they mould and shape their children in certain ways but Pinker argues, as long as children are not abused, parenting makes little difference to how they turn out at 18.

His most recent book 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' is about the decline in global violence from 8500 BC. Despite two World Wars, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq, Darfur and many others, Pinker asserts that we are living in the most peaceful times ever and wants to know why our better angels triumph over our inner demons. Is he now showing the better angel of his Nature?

Each week on The Life Scientific, Jim al-Khalili invites a leading scientist to tell us about their life and work: he wants to get under their skin and into their minds. And he'll ask what their discoveries might do for us. He talks to Nobel laureates as well as the next generation of beautiful minds and finds out what inspired them to do science in the first place and what motivates them to keep going. Fellow scientists will comment on their work, putting it in context and offering alternative perspectives.

Future guests include: astronomer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell; the brains behind the Human Genome Project, John Sulston; Molly Stevens, a tissue engineer who's work growing bones could mean the end of metal pins for broken legs; Hugh Montgomery, who discovered the fitness gene.

Themes and ideas from the interviews will be explored on The Life Scientific website, which will aggregate some of the best Radio 4 Science archive around the topics discussed in the programmes.

Inside the mind of science writer and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker.

A'Life Scientific, The

Jocelyn Bell Burnell forged her own path through the male-dominated world of science - in the days when it was unusual enough for women to work, let alone make a discovery in astrophysics that was worthy of a Nobel Prize.

As a 24-year-old PhD student, Jocelyn spotted an anomaly on a graph buried within 100 feet of printed data from a radio telescope. Her curiosity about such a tiny detail led to one of the most important discoveries in 20th century astronomy: the discovery of pulsars - those dense cores of collapsed stars.

It's a discovery which changed the way we see the universe, making the existence of black holes suddenly seem much more likely and providing further proof to Einstein's theory of gravity.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was made a dame in 2008 and a year later became the first ever female president of the Institute of Physics.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer Jocelyn Bell- Burnell.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell forged her own path through the male-dominated world of science - in the days when it was unusual enough for women to work, let alone make a discovery in astrophysics that was worthy of a Nobel Prize.

In 1974, her supervisor and head of department won the Nobel prize for Physics for a discovery which was essentially hers. Some people call it the No-Bell, Nobel prize because they feel so strongly that Jocelyn Bell-Burnell should have shared in the award.

As a 24-year old PhD student, Jocelyn spotted a tiny smudge on a graph buried within 100 feet of printed data from a radio telescope. Her supervisor, Tony Hewish, dismissed this 'bit of scruff' as insignificant; but she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Her curiosity about such a tiny detail led to one of the most important discoveries in 20th century astronomy - the discovery of pulsars - those dense cores of collapsed stars.

Jocelyn Bell -Burnell was made a dame in 2008 and a year later became the first ever female President of the Institute of Physics.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell.

As a 24-year old PhD student, Jocelyn spotted an anomaly on a graph buried within 100 feet of printed data from a radio telescope. Her curiosity about such a tiny detail led to one of the most important discoveries in 20th century astronomy - the discovery of pulsars - those dense cores of collapsed stars.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell forged her own path through the male-dominated world of science - in the days when it was unusual enough for women to work, let alone make a discovery in astrophysics that was worthy of a Nobel Prize.

In 1974, her supervisor and head of department won the Nobel prize for Physics for a discovery which was essentially hers. Some people call it the No-Bell, Nobel prize because they feel so strongly that Jocelyn Bell-Burnell should have shared in the award.

As a 24-year old PhD student, Jocelyn spotted a tiny smudge on a graph buried within 100 feet of printed data from a radio telescope. Her supervisor, Tony Hewish, dismissed this 'bit of scruff' as insignificant; but she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Her curiosity about such a tiny detail led to one of the most important discoveries in 20th century astronomy - the discovery of pulsars - those dense cores of collapsed stars.

It's a discovery which changed the way we see the universe, making the existence of black holes suddenly seem much more likely and providing further proof to Einstein's theory of gravity.

Jocelyn Bell -Burnell was made a dame in 2008 and a year later became the first ever female President of the Institute of Physics.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell forged her own path through the male-dominated world of science - in the days when it was unusual enough for women to work, let alone make a discovery in astrophysics that was worthy of a Nobel Prize.

As a 24-year-old PhD student, Jocelyn spotted an anomaly on a graph buried within 100 feet of printed data from a radio telescope. Her curiosity about such a tiny detail led to one of the most important discoveries in 20th century astronomy: the discovery of pulsars - those dense cores of collapsed stars.

It's a discovery which changed the way we see the universe, making the existence of black holes suddenly seem much more likely and providing further proof to Einstein's theory of gravity.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was made a dame in 2008 and a year later became the first ever female president of the Institute of Physics.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astronomer, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

When Professor Sir Michael Marmot was a junior doctor he decided that medicine was failed prevention.

To really understand disease you have to look at the society people live in. His major scientific discovery came from following the health of British civil servants over many years. The Whitehall studies, as they're known, challenged the myth about executive stress and instead revealed that, far from being 'tough at the top', it was in fact much tougher for those lower down the pecking order. This wasn't just a matter of rich or poor, or even social class. What Marmot showed was the lower your status at work, the shorter your lifespan. Mortality rates were three times higher for those at the bottom than for those at the top. The unpleasant truth is that your boss will live longer than you.

What's more, this social gradient of health, or what he calls Status Syndrome, isn't confined to civil servants or to the UK but is a global phenomenon. In conversation with Jim Al-Khalili Michael Marmot reveals what inspires and motivates his work.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Colin Blakemore is a neuroscientist who nearly became an artist.

He specialised in vision and the development of the brain, and pioneered the idea that the brain has the ability to change even in adulthood contrary to the popular view at the time.

Professor Blakemore, the youngest ever Reith Lecturer, is an influential science communicator and is committed to raising the profile of brain research.

Because of his work he was targeted by animal rights campaigners for over a decade, but rather than keeping a low profile as advised, he decided to work with the activists and explain his point of view about the need for animal testing in medical research.

He was appointed head of the Medical Research Council in 2003 but threatened to resign shortly after when he was refused a knighthood, because of his defence of animal research.

He has been equally outspoken on many issues including classification of drugs and GM foods.

His current areas of research include how the brain develops which has implications for many diseases including autism and schizophrenia.

He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about why he's not been afraid to stand up to his critics.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Colin Blakemore is a neuroscientist who nearly became an artist. He specialised in vision and the development of the brain, and pioneered the idea that the brain has the ability to change even in adulthood contrary to the popular view at the time.

Professor Blakemore, the youngest ever Reith Lecturer, is an influential science communicator and is committed to raising the profile of brain research. Because of his work he was targeted by animal rights campaigners for over a decade, but rather than keeping a low profile as advised, he decided to work with the activists and explain his point of view about the need for animal testing in medical research. He was appointed head of the Medical Research Council in 2003 but threatened to resign shortly after when he was refused a knighthood, because of his defence of animal research. He has been equally outspoken on many issues including classification of drugs and GM foods. His current areas of research include how the brain develops which has implications for many diseases including autism and schizophrenia.

Professor Blakemore, the youngest ever Reith Lecturer, is an influential science communicator and is committed to raising the profile of brain research. Because of his work he was targeted by animal rights campaigners for over a decade, but rather than keeping a low profile as advised, he decided to work with the activists and explain his point of view about the need for animal testing in medical research. He was appointed head of the Medical Research Council in 2003 but threatened to resign shortly after when he was refused a knighthood, because of his defence of animal research. He has been equally outspoken on many issues including classification of drugs and GM foods. His current areas of research include how the brain develops which has implications for many conditions including autism and schizophrenia.

Neuroscientist Colin Blakemore talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work.

Molly Stevens does geeky hard core science but her main aim is to help people. Twenty years ago, nobody thought it was possible to make human body parts in the laboratory, but today scientists are trying to create almost every bit of the body. Professor Molly Stevens grows bones. Towards the end of her PHD, a chance encounter with the founding father of tissue engineering and an image of a little boy with chronic liver failure, convinced her that this was what she wanted to do. Ten years on, she runs a highly successful lab at Imperial College London and has been photographed by Vogue.

InProducer: Anna Buckley.

Nicky Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge University. Her work challenges how we think of intelligence and she says that birds' brains developed independently from humans or apes. Members of the corvid family, such as crows and jays appear to plan for the future and predict other birds behaviour in her elegant experiments.One experiment she has designed was inspired by Aesop's fable of the hungry crow.

Her work raises questions about the understanding of animal behaviour, including whether, as humans, we can ever interpret the actions of other species accurately.

But she says her research with birds and other animals can help illuminate young children's activities and how their brains develop.

Nicky Clayton is scientist in residence at the Rambert Dance Company and her latest collaboration with Mark Baldwin, the artistic director, is 'Seven for a secret, never to be told' which takes concepts from childhood behaviour and reinterprets them choreographically.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Nicky Clayton talks to Prof Jim Al-Khalili about her work on the intelligence of birds.

When, as a young man, John Sulston first decided to sequence the DNA of a worm, many of his fellow scientists thought he was wasting his time. It took twenty years of painstaking research but it paid off handsomely. Sulston's research on this humble worm led to one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the modern age - the sequencing of the human genome. Jim al -Khalili talks to Sulston about the highs and lows of doing genetic research; fighting to keep scientific findings in the public domain; protecting human health against corporate wealth; and having his DNA portrait done.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim al-Khalili talks to biologist John Sulston.

Professor Uta Frith was born and grew up in Germany and partly because of this has a life long interest in languages and culture. When she first came to England, the predominant ideology was that there was no such thing as dyslexia. Professor Frith wanted to understand what could be happening in the brain to prevent intelligent children from learning to read and to spell. With neuro-imaging techniques it is possible to find very specific differences in the brains of dyslexics and non dyslexics. This can be used to develop techniques to overcome learning difficulties. And she says one of the most exciting developments is how neuroscience can be used in education to help all children learn more effectively.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Professor Uta Frith came from a grey post war Germany to Britain in the swinging sixties, when research into conditions such as autism and dyslexia was in its infancy. At the time many people thought there was no such thing as dyslexia and that autism was a result of cold distant parenting, but Professor Frith was convinced that the explanation for these enigmatic conditions lay in the brain. And she set out to prove this through a series of elegant experiments. Together with her students Francesca Happe and Simon Baron Cohen she developed the idea that people with autism find it hard to understand the intentions of others, known as theory of mind. Neuro-imaging experiments carried out with her husband Professor Chris Frith, meant she was able to show that there is a region in the brain which is linked to dyslexia. Uta Frith talks about her pioneering work that has changed how we view these brain disorders with Jim Al Khalili.

Jim meets psychologist Prof Uta Frith, whose work changed how we view brain disorders.

is an experimental wizard, a flamboyant thinker and a stickler for scientific procedure.

As a young man at Cambridge in the sixties, he heard Francis Crick (of DNA fame) ask questions 'that made him sound rather stupid'; broke into workshops and performed experiments through the night with Bach and Pink Floyd playing at top volume.

True eureka moments are, in fact, quite rare in science but, at the age of 39, Tim Hunt performed an experiment on sea urchin eggs that changed both his life and our understanding of every living thing.

He had very little idea what exactly it all meant but had a strong sense that he was onto something important.

And he was.

Back in the early eighties, it just wasn't obvious that all life worked in the same way.

But what Tim Hunt showed was that the process by which cells divide (and therefore live and grow) is the same in all living things and that this process is controlled by a protein that appears and disappears in the most startling fashion.

It was a most unexpected result that many believed was rather insignificant but Hunt pursued it.

Accused by some of 'wild speculation based on faulty logic': that same logic led to him winning the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 2001.

In 1990, he joined Cancer Research.

In theory his discovery should shed light on why cancerous cells multiply out of control but, in reality, he says, progress in cancer research has been disappointingly slow.

In fact, he says all the money that poured into cancer research did more to help us tackle HIV than it did to help cure the big C.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Tim Hunt is an experimental wizard, a flamboyant thinker and a stickler for scientific procedure.

True eureka moments are, in fact, quite rare in science but, at the age of 39, Tim Hunt performed an experiment on sea urchin eggs that changed both his life and our understanding of every living thing. He had very little idea what exactly it all meant but had a strong sense that he was onto something important. And he was.

Back in the early eighties, it just wasn't obvious that all life worked in the same way. But what Tim Hunt showed was that the process by which cells divide (and therefore live and grow) is the same in all living things and that this process is controlled by a protein that appears and disappears in the most startling fashion.

It was a most unexpected result that many believed was rather insignificant but Hunt pursued it. Accused by some of 'wild speculation based on faulty logic': that same logic led to him winning the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 2001.

In 1990, he joined Cancer Research. In theory his discovery should shed light on why cancerous cells multiply out of control but, in reality, he says, progress in cancer research has been disappointingly slow. In fact, he says all the money that poured into cancer research did more to help us tackle HIV than it did to help cure the big C.

He's the man on the telly with the big moustache, famous for A Child of Our Time, The Human Body and Making Babies but Robert Winston is also a well respected scientist.

He played a pioneering role in developing IVF technology, and has brought life to many hundreds of couples who had given up hope of ever having a baby.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Robert Winston about why he quit the theatre to become a medic, creating human life in a test tube and why he disagrees with RICHARD DAWKINS about The God Delusion.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Lord Robert Winston on IVF, the House of Lords and scientists' ethical responsibilty.

He's the man on the telly with the big moustache, famous for A Child of Our Time, The Human Body and Making Babies but Robert Winston is also a well respected scientist. He played a pioneering role in developing IVF technology, and has brought life to many hundreds of couples who had given up hope of ever having a baby . Jim Al-Khalili talks to Robert Winston about why he quit the theatre to become a medic, creating human life in a test tube and why he disagrees with Richard Dawkins about The God Delusion.

He's the man on the telly with the big moustache, famous for A Child of Our Time, The Human Body and Making Babies but Robert Winston is also a well respected scientist. He played a pioneering role in developing IVF technology, and has brought life to many hundreds of couples who had given up hope of ever having a baby. Jim Al-Khalili talks to Robert Winston about why he quit the theatre to become a medic, creating human life in a test tube and why he disagrees with Richard Dawkins about The God Delusion.

Prof Jim Al-Khalili talks to planetary scientist Colin Pillinger about life on Mars.

Jim al-Khalili talks to psychiatrist, Robin Murray about his life's work trying to understand why some people have schizophrenia and others don't. As a young man, Murray lived in an Asylum in Glasgow for two years, mainly because it offered free accommodation to medical students. Struck by how people's minds could play tricks on them and the lack of proper research into the condition, he resolved to put the study of schizophrenia on a more scientific footing. Fifteen years ago he believed schizophrenia was a brain disease. Now, he's not so sure. Despite decades of research, the biological basis of this often distressing condition remains elusive. Just living in a city significantly increases your risk (the bigger the city the greater the risk); and, as Murray discovered, migrants are six times more likely to develop the condition than long term residents. He's also outspoken about the mental health risks of smoking cannabis, based both on his scientific research and direct experience working at the Maudsley Hospital in South London.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili meets leading paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer to find who our ancestors were.

As a post graduate Chris went on a road trip with a difference, driving round Europe in an old Morris Minor measuring Neanderthal skulls. After being thrown out of several countries, the results of his analysis led to a controversial theory which ran counter to what many people thought at the time. Chris suggested that our most recent relative originated in Africa. He also reveals how genetics has transformed his work and talks about his own unconventional origins.

That there were cannibals in Somerset is one of the more surprising findings of Chris' work on early man in Britain and Jim discovers what it's like to work on an archaeological dig.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

What do miniature solar cells, making clothes that dissolve in the rain and new treatments for motor neurone disease all have in common? Chemistry - according to Professor Tony Ryan of Sheffield University. He develops innovative materials with nanotechnology. In this week's, The Life Scientific, Tony Ryan talks to Jim Al-Khalili and explores issues around the still controversial science of nanotechnology, including how safe it is and how scientists need to learn to talk to the public.

Much of Tony's work involves unlikely collaborations to discover novel ways of solving problems and of communicating science. He argues that chemistry can solve today's global challenges such as supporting the needs of 7 billion people in terms of food and power.

Clothes that absorb a dangerous greenhouse gas and sheets of plastic solar cells are just a few of his ongoing projects. He says chemistry needs to learn how to recycle every atom, whilst still providing all the things that people want - energy, food, electronics, clothing, and drugs.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Angela Gallop, the scientist who provided the vital forensic evidence in the recent re-trial for the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

Angela describes the painstaking scientific detective work that led her team to find a tiny blood clot on Gary Dobson's jacket, that was not identified during the original trial in 1995; and how they proved that this evidence was not the result of contamination during the handling and storage of the clothing exhibits.

Never before in the history of criminal justice have so many cases relied so heavily on scientific evidence. Forensic scientists have ever more sophisticated and powerful techniques at their disposal but, as long as these techniques rely on human judgement (and a surprising number still do) there will be limits to their reliability. Much as we would like to believe the opposite, forensic science is fallible.

Further, even when the science is kosher, there's ample scope in a court of law for good science to be made to look bad and bad science, good. Lawyers locked into an adversarial system can all too easily cast doubt on excellent scientific evidence. Equally, Angela warns of the dangers of putting science on a pedestal.

After a brief spell studying sea slugs on the Isle of Wight, she joined the Forensic Science Service, later switched to working for the defence and is now probably the most sought after forensic scientist in the UK, involved in countless high profile cases, including the Cardiff Three, the coastal path murders aw well as both the trial and re-trial of Stephen Lawrence.

Further, even when the science is kosher, there's ample scope in a court of law for good science to be made to look bad and bad science, good. Lawyers locked into an adversarial system can all too easily cast doubt on excellent scientific evidence. Equally, Angela warns of the dangers of putting science on a pedestal .

Once described by one writer as 'The Maverick Master of Medical Evidence'. Iain Chalmers trained as a doctor, eventually specialising in obstetrics. But early in his career, he started to question the basis of everything he was trained to do and this set him on a very different path: to champion treatments based on the best available evidence, first in his own field and then across healthcare. It's a journey that has at times challenged the foundations of medical practice.

In 1992, he was appointed Director of the Cochrane Centre, which led to the foundation of the Cochrane Collaboration, dedicated to ensuring that patients, doctors and researchers have access to unbiased information about the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, across the world.

Iain wants to reduce uncertainty in medicine so that patients can make sensible choices about their care. There are now 30,000 Cochrane members world wide, from Brazil to Belgium, Spain to South Africa. He's been hugely influential both within medicine but across all areas of social policy and the inspiration for a generation of evidence-based, sceptical enquirers such as Ben Goldacre. A frequent irritant of the medical establishment Iain become one of them when he was knighted for services to healthcare in 2000.

Having spent his career trying to change the mindset of the medical community from the inside, he's now pushing from the outside, arguing that patients' concerns should drive the medical research agenda.

Producer: Rami Tzabar.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to pioneering health services researcher, Iain Chalmers.

Jim enters the multiverse with Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. He's worked on the big bang, black holes and the formation of galaxies but what he would really like to know is if there is life elsewhere in the universe.

As an ex president of the Royal Society and a member of the House of Lords he is at the heart of science policy and worked with the G8 to put science on the international agenda. An atheist, he has attracted criticism from other scientists for his religious views.

He says we can now be fairly certain of what happened in the universe from a nanosecond after the big bang until today and is a supporter of the idea that there may have been many big bangs leading to many universes.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to environmental scientist John Lawton about making space for nature. A keen birdwatcher from the age of 7, John describes his studies of birds, dragonflies and bracken and his groundbreaking experiments in the Ecotron, essentially a box full of nature. For the last few decades John has advised successive governments on a host of environmental issues such as GM crops, road traffic pollution and nature conservation. His latest report Making Space for Nature was turned into policy remarkably fast but, he says, it isn't always easy to get governments to listen to environmental advice based on science.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

As the search continues for the elusive Higgs boson or 'God' particle, Jim al-Khalili talks to CERN physicist, Tejinder Virdee. Tejinder explains why this particle is so fundamental to our understanding of the nature of the universe and describes how, in the early days, a handful of committed scientists and politicians pushed Europe to create one of the most complex machines ever made, the Large Hadron Collider.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim talks CERN physicist, Tejinder Virdee about the search for the elusive Higgs boson, also known as the 'God particle'. Last December, scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider caught a tantalising glimpse of the Higgs; but they need more data to be sure of its existence. Twenty years ago, Tejinder set about building a detector within the Large Hadron Collider that's capable of taking forty million phenomenally detailed images every second. Finding the Higgs will validate everything physicists think they know about the very nature of the universe: not finding it, will force them back to the drawing board. By the end of the year, we should know one way or the other.

Angela describes the painstaking scientific detective work that led her team to find a tiny blood clot on Gary Dobson's jacket, that was not identified during the original trial in 1995; and how they proved that this evidence was not the result of contamination during the handling and storage of the clothing exhibits.

Never before in the history of criminal justice have so many cases relied so heavily on scientific evidence. Forensic scientists have ever more sophisticated and powerful techniques at their disposal but, as long as these techniques rely on human judgement (and a surprising number still do) there will be limits to their reliability. Much as we would like to believe the opposite, forensic science is fallible.

Further, even when the science is accurate, there's ample scope in a court of law for good science to be made to look bad and bad science, good. Lawyers locked into an adversarial system can all too easily cast doubt on excellent scientific evidence. Equally, Angela warns of the dangers of putting science on a pedestal.

After a brief spell studying sea slugs on the Isle of Wight, she joined the Forensic Science Service, later switched to working for the defence and is now probably the most sought after forensic scientist in the UK, involved in countless high profile cases, including the Cardiff Three, the coastal path murders as well as both the trial and retrial of Stephen Lawrence.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to the forensic scientist Angela Gallop.

Further, even when the science is accurate, there's ample scope in a court of law for good science to be made to look bad and bad science, good. Lawyers locked into an adversarial system can all too easily cast doubt on excellent scientific evidence. Equally, Angela warns of the dangers of putting science on a pedestal .

Jim al-Khalili talks to James Lovelock about elocution lessons, defrosting hamsters and his grand theory of planet earth, Gaia. The idea that from the bottom of the earth's crust to the upper reaches of the atmosphere, planet earth is one giant inter-connected and self-regulating system.

It's a scientific theory that's had an impact way beyond the world of science: Gaia has been embraced by poets, philosophers, spiritual leaders and green activists. Vaclav Haval called it 'a moral prescription for the welfare of the planet'.

James Lovelock, now 92, talks about the freedom and frustrations of fifty years spent working outside the scientific establishment.

Public interest in Gaia proliferated after the publication of his first book Gaia: a new look at life on earth in 1979; but the scientific community remained highly sceptical. For decades Gaia was ignored, dismissed and even ridiculed as a scientific theory. To this day, evolutionary biologists, in particular, take issue with the notion of a self-regulating planet. John Maynard Smith called it 'an evil religion'.

Jonathon Porritt says Lovelock taught him 'the value of cantankerous, obstinate independence, sticking to what you think is right and making those the cornerstones of your existence'. Outspoken in support of nuclear power, Lovelock has offered to store a large amount of high level nuclear waste in a concrete box in his garden. On climate change, he believes it's too late for mankind to save the planet.

At the start of his Life Scientific, Lovelock says he learnt more working as an apprentice for a photographic firm in south London than he ever did later at university. The best science, he insists, is done with your hands as well as your head.

Thanks to Henry Higgins style elocution lessons aged 12, he was able to get a job at the well respected National Institute for Medical Research. Wartime science was all about solving ad -hoc problems and he loved it. A prolific inventor, he made a very early microwave oven to defrost hamsters and invented the Electron Capture Detector - an exquisitely sensitive device for detecting the presence of the tiniest quantities of gases in the atmosphere and led to a global ban on CFCs.

Aged 40, Lovelock decided to go it alone and, he insists, the theory for which he is best known, Gaia, simply would not have been possible had he remained working within the scientific establishment.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

James Lovelock on elocution lessons, defrosting hamsters and Gaia.

After decades spent studying the link between blood sugar and insulin, she talks about the absolute thrill of discovery as well as the long lean years 'in a cloud of not knowing'. It's very rare indeed for a scientist to see any medical benefit from their research but Frances Ashcroft has been lucky. Her scientific understanding of a key biochemical mechanism in our pancreatic cells has helped transform the lives of hundreds of children who are born with diabetes, enabling them to come off insulin injections and instead take a daily pill.

Producer: Anna Buckley

And yet, thirty years on, it's still not clear precisely what goes wrong with the mechanism in the much more common Type II diabetes, now affecting hundreds of millions.

Frances Ashcroft on a lifetime spent studying the link between blood sugar and insulin.

Jim Al-Khalili meets British Antarctic Survey scientist Lloyd Peck and discovers giant sea spiders. They and other small animals grow far bigger than usual in the extreme cold. Diving is an important part of Lloyd's job and we hear what it's like to play football under the ice. Studies suggest that the sea temperature is rising, and Lloyd investigates whether the animals he researches will be able to adapt and survive.

Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Jim Al-Khalili meets neuroscientist Barbara Sahakian. Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain which effect our memory and understanding, and neuropharmacology is the study of drugs which can be used in conditions like Alzheimer's disease or depression. But can new treatments improve the performance of surgeons or pilots and could they even be used to make us more entrepreneurial?

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim al-Khalili talks to the former chief scientific advisor Robert May about public trust.

Jim Al-Khalili meets John Pickett, whose experimental work on GM wheat caused a public debate.

'Jim Al-Khalili meets John Pickett, whose experimental work on GM wheat caused a public debate.'

Professor John Pickett's research into GM crops was at the centre of a public debate last month.

His experimental work has engineered insect alarm systems into wheat, so that the plants give off chemicals which repel greenflies or aphids.

Activists known as 'Take the Flour Back' had threatened to destroy field trials, but the day passed peacefully.

Professor Pickett's research for over 30 years has been based on using insect pheromones (the chemical messengers the insects send to one another) and understanding how plants are able to attract or push crop pests away. A pioneering technique he's developed known as push pull means that farmers in Africa have been able to improve their yields simply by planting what are known as companion crops that repel pests and trap crops which entice the insects. So if this approach is so successful is there really a need for GM versions?

Jim Al-Khalili meets John Pickett, whose recent work on GM wheat caused a public debate.

Geneticist Steve Jones lives life in the slow lane, studying snails.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to botanist, Pat Wolseley about her obsession with lichen and the environmental secrets it holds. This humble and ancient organism contains a wealth of information about the quality of air we breathe. Certain species thrive on road traffic pollution: others prefer acid rain. And, for the last five years, thousands of people throughout the UK have been gathering scientific data on different lichen populations in their local area and using it to monitor air pollution.

For fifteen years, Martin Siegert has dreamt about Lake Ellsworth, a hidden lake buried beneath the Antarctic ice that's been cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years. Having studied data from airborne radar surveys, Martin knew the lake must exist and was determined to find out more. Finally, this winter, a team of British scientists led by Martin will drill through three kilometres of ice to unlock the secrets of this hidden lake. Can life exist in such a cold, dark and isolated place? And if so what form will it take? Martin describes working in Antarctica as being like an episode of Mash and explains why, unlike so many Antarctic scientists, he prefers analysing data to having icy adventures.

A world in which planes are silent may sound like a pipe dream; but University of Cambridge engineer, Dame Ann Dowling, and her team proved it is possible to build an aircraft that barely makes any noise. A brilliant mathematician and a keen pilot, Ann now heads of one of the largest engineering departments in Europe. Her design for a silent aircraft could improve the quality of life for millions of people living near airports worldwide: so does she mind that it never got off the ground? Jim talks to Ann Dowling about mathematics, engines and how she always wanted to do something useful.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

He's written many other books on evolutionary biology, such as 'The Extended Phenotype' 'Unweaving the Rainbow' and 'The Ancestors Tale'. In 2006 he published a polemic which he describes as 'a gentlemanly attack on religion', 'The God Delusion'. Jim asks what he hoped to achieve by writing the book and finds out why he would rather be known for his science than his atheism.

Jim Al-Khalili meets evolutionary biologist and author Prof Richard Dawkins.

Andrea Sella is a science showman, whose theatrical demonstrations of chemistry are filling theatres up and down the country. But as Professor of Materials and Inorganic Chemistry, Jim Al-Khalili asks him if he would rather be known for his research into rare metals than for his whizz bang displays.

Jim Al-Khalili interviews Prof David Nutt about research into drugs and the brain.

Jim Al-Khalili meets Prof Sunetra Gupta, a scientist and novelist.

Jim al-Khalili talks to the next chief scientific advisor to the government, Sir Mark Walport about how he thinks science can save the UK economy; how he plans to ensure that scientific evidence is taken seriously by an arts-dominated civil service and why he believes scientific research should be made available to everyone, free of charge. Sir Mark, who started his Life Scientific studying immune responses, has spent the last ten years in charge of one of the largest funders of medical research in the world, the Wellcome Trust. Many love his robust, straight-talking style: others find him uncompromising. He hopes to tackle environmental change and many of the problems associated with our ageing population, as well as changing Whitehall's attitude to science. It's hard to predict what other issues he may have to deal with, but even without an unexpected crisis, many anticipate that his forthcoming time in government will be nothing if not eventful.

Jim Al-Khalili interviews Professor Hugh Montgomery about the gene for fitness.

As the Curiosity rover ventures into previously unexplored territory on the surface of Mars and attempts to pick up and analyse rock samples for the first time, many hope that the NASA robot might find signs of life on the red planet. But, after so many false dawns and with such ambiguous evidence, how can we know for certain whether or not there was ever life on Mars? Jim al-Khalili and Monica Grady, Professor in Planetary Sciences at the Open University, discuss what life on Mars might look like; Monica's passion for meteorites and the asteroid named 'monicagrady' in her honour.

Jim al-Khalili talks to the next chief scientific advisor to the government, Sir Mark Walport about how he thinks science can save the UK economy; how he plans to ensure that scientific evidence is taken seriously by an arts-dominated civil service and why he believes scientific research should be made available to everyone, free of charge. Sir Mark, who started his Life Scientific studying immune responses, has spent the last ten years in charge of one of the largest funders of medical research in the world, the Wellcome Trust. Many love his robust, straight-talking style: others find him uncompromising. He hopes to tackle environmental change and many of the problems associated with our ageing population, as well as changing Whitehall's attitude to science. It's hard to predict what other issues he may have to deal with, but even without an unexpected crisis, many anticipate that his forthcoming time in government will be nothing if not eventful.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Jared Diamond about how his passion for the birds of Papua New Guinea overtook his medical interest in the gall bladder, and led him to undertake a scientific study of global history.

Science polymath and celebrated author, Jared Diamond has tackled some of the big questions about humanity: what is it that makes us uniquely human not just a third species of chimpanzee; and why do some societies thrive and others struggle to survive, or collapse?

Once a Professor of Physiology (specialising in the gall bladder), he became increasingly fascinated by the birds of Papua New Guinea and does an excellent imitation of the ptilinopus fruit dove, among others.

Now Professor of Geography at University of California in LA, he stresses the vital importance of the environment in determining the success or otherwise of a society. He argues first that it was settled agriculture that enabled the white man to develop guns, germs and steel and later that abuse of the environment is often responsible for their collapse.

But can the history of humanity really be understood in much the same way as we might seek to explain the success or otherwise of a particular species of bird?

Jared Diamond on gall bladders, global history and the birds of Papua New Guinea.

2012 Nobel Prize winner, John Gurdon, on cloning a frog decades before Dolly the Sheep.

Sir John Gurdon talks to Jim al-Khalili about how coming bottom of the class in science was no barrier to winning this year's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. We're familiar with Dolly the Sheep but many people find the idea of cloning humans rather disturbing. It seems to cut to the core of who we are; but, scientifically speaking, we are getting closer to a time when cloning people might be possible. John Gurdon gives it fifty years. After a famously bad school report for science, he won the Nobel Prize for cloning a frog, decades before Dolly the Sheep. He talks to Jim al-Khalili about his pioneering work on cloning and where it all might lead.

2012 Nobel Prize winner John Gurdon on cloning a frog decades before Dolly the Sheep.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Amoret Whitaker, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Her intricate understanding of the life cycles of the flies, beetles and the other insects' which feed on decomposing bodies means she is regularly called by the Police to the scene of a crime or a murder investigation. There she collects and analyses any insect evidence to help them pin point the most likely time of death. In some instances, this can be accurate to within hours.

She is just one of only a handful of forensic entomologists working in the UK. She talks to Jim about her life as a research scientist, breeding flies in the far flung towers of the Natural History Museum and her work as a forensic expert with police services across the country. Dropping her work at a moment's notice she can be called any time of day to anywhere in the country to attend a crime scene. She also talks about her regular trips to a research facility at the 'Body Farm' at the University of Tennesee in Knoxville in Ameria to get a better understanding of how real human bodies decompose.

Her passion is insects and while our instinctive reaction to flies and maggots may be one of revulsion - when you take time look at them properly, and in detail, she says you can see what truly incredible creatures they are.

Amoret Whitaker talks about insects and their role in helping solve crimes.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Robert Mair, professor of Civil engineering at Cambridge University about his life as an engineer in academia and industry and world expert on finding innovative solutions to the problems of building tunnels under already congested cities.

He talks about his innovative technique of 'compensation grouting' which prevented Big Ben from tilting and even cracking and coming away from the Houses of Parliament during the excavations for Westminster station which were the deepest in London and whose tunnels were just 28 metres from Big Ben.

Robert chaired the report, commissioned by the government into the safety of 'fracking' or hydraulic fracturing, where water and chemicals are pumped, under pressure, into shale rock to release gas. The technique has hit the headlines amid concerns about the risks of its use causing earthquakes and contaminating water supplies. Robert explains why, with the best practice and strong regulation, the technique could be safely used in the UK.

He also talks about his latest work on how smart sensors which can harvest their own energy. And when built into buildings, roads, tunnels they could make sure the engineering projects of the future will be able to continuously monitor and report on their own safety.

Robert Mair talks about tunnelling under Big Ben, Crossrail and engineering for the future

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Robert Mair, professor of Civil engineering at Cambridge University about his life as an engineer in academia and industry and his expertise on finding innovative solutions to the problems of building tunnels under already congested cities.

He talks about his innovative technique of 'compensation grouting' which prevented Big Ben from tilting and even cracking and coming away from the Houses of Parliament during Jubilee line extension.

Crossrail is one of the biggest engineering projects in Europe and involves constructing 26 miles of new tunnels underneath London's busy streets and under the existing tube network. Robert talks the latest tunnelling technology being used and the huge drilling machines with names like 'Ada' and Phyliss' which use high pressure to minimise ground movements as they drill and even have a kitchen and bathroom facilities on board.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith, from the Birkbeck Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development in London talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her Life Scientific. Starting out as a simultaneous interpreter for the United Nations she soon decided that not being allowed to express any thoughts of her own wasn't for her. After a chance encounter with Jean Piaget, one of the most renowned psychologists of all time, she decided to pursue psychology and over forty years later she is a world expert in brain development and how babies and children learn. Her research has been cited not just by fellow psychologists, but by philosophers, linguists, educationalists, geneticists and neuroscientists. Her controversial response to guidance issued by the American Academy of Paediatrics, that parents should discourage TV viewing in children under 2, is that if the subject matter is chosen well, and is scientifically based, a TV screen can be better for a baby than a book.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith, from the Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development in London talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her Life Scientific. Starting out as a simultaneous interpreter for the United Nations she soon decided that not being allowed to express any thoughts of her own wasn't for her. After a chance encounter with Jean Piaget, one of the most renowned psychologists of all time, she decided to pursue psychology and over forty years later she is a world expert in brain development and how babies and children learn. Her research has been cited not just by fellow psychologists, but by philosophers, linguists, educationalists, geneticists and neuroscientists. Her controversial response to guidance issued by the American Academy of Paediatrics, that parents should discourage TV viewing in children under 2, is that if the subject matter is chosen well, and is scientifically based, a TV screen can be better for a baby than a book.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to roboticist and psychologist, Noel Sharkey.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at Sheffield University.

Jim finds out why the brilliant mathematician who became female Australia junior chess champion as a teenager and who got a first class degree in medicine decided she was unhappy with the uncertainties of diagnosis as a doctor, and turned her back on clinical medicine in the quest for answers to the bigger questions about public health. She talks about pioneering research into the causes of cancer, effects of the contraceptive pill, radiation from Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Most recently as lead investigator on the million women study she has looked at the risks and health effects from taking HRT. She has said that it is a 'crime' that more research hasn't been done on what is known about women who don't get breast cancer to prevent breast cancer in other women.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to breast cancer pioneer Valerie Beral.

His quest to find the origins of cosmic rays has taken him from the North York Moors to the South Pole and the pampas grasslands of Argentina where he has been instrumental in creating the largest ever Cosmic ray detector, covering an area bigger than Luxembourg.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Alan Watson about his quest to discover the source of cosmic rays.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Sue Ion about working in the nuclear industry post-Chernobyl.

When Nancy Rothwell is not making decisions about the university's £800 million annual budget and 50,000 students and staff, she oversees a laboratory of researchers developing and trialling an experimental treatment to prevent death and disability caused by stroke. Given that someone in the UK will have a stroke every five minutes, that adds up to a lot of people who might end up benefitting from Nancy Rothwell's life in science.

Nancy did not start her career working on the brain. As a young scientist, in 1970s, she made her reputation with original and high profile research into the causes of obesity, and the role of a tissue type known as brown fat. But in the early 1990s, a shock finding from an experiment stopped her in her tracks. It revealed something new and profound about the brain - a classic case of serendipity in science and a result that redirected Nancy Rothwell's research into the new and challenging field of neuroscience.

Jim Al-Khalili in conversation with the neuroscientist Prof Dame Nancy Rothwell.

When Nancy Rothwell is not making decisions about the university's ?800 million annual budget and 50,000 students and staff, she oversees a laboratory of researchers developing and trialling an experimental treatment to prevent death and disability caused by stroke. Given that someone in the UK will have a stroke every five minutes, that adds up to a lot of people who might end up benefitting from Nancy Rothwell's life in science.

Geologist Sanjeev Gupta talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his love of exploring exotic terrains, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the red deserts of Mars. His research has taken him across the earth and now into space, working as a Long Term Planner on NASA's current Mars Curiosity Mission.

But Sanjeev Gupta's big discovery lay at the bottom of the English Channel. Unearthing a 'wacky' theory from the 1980s, Sanjeev set out to prove that a series of megafloods caused Britain to separate from continental Europe and become an island.

Producer: Michelle Marti.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Lord John Krebs left academia to run the Food Standards Agency. He tells Jim Al-Khalili about life in the public sphere and dealing with foot and mouth disease, and badgers and TB.

As a scientist, John Krebs made his name discovering that the brains of birds that store seeds are different from those that don't. But he gave up his successful research career and job as Professor of Zoology at Oxford University to move into science policy and management. After five years as Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, John Krebs became the first Chairman of the Food Standards Agency, where he was embroiled in controversial questions such as is organic food better for us and how can the spread of foot and mouth disease be stopped.

Lord Krebs is now Master of Jesus College, Oxford, but is still involved in issues where science meets public policy, in particular the debate over whether culling badgers will prevent cattle contracting TB.

He talks to Jim al-Khalili about his life in science and in the public eye and about how he brings a scientific approach to every issue.

As a scientist, John Krebs made his name discovering that the brains of birds that store seeds are different from those that don't. But he gave up his successful research career and job as Professor of Zoology at Oxford University to move into science policy and management. After five years as Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, John Krebs became the first Chairman of the Food Standards Agency, where he was embroiled in controversial questions such as is organic food better for us and how can the spread of foot and mouth disease be stopped.

Lord Krebs is now Master of Jesus College, Oxford, but is still involved in issues where science meets public policy, in particular the debate over whether culling badgers will prevent cattle contracting TB.

He talks to Jim al-Khalili about his life in science and in the public eye and about how he brings a scientific approach to every issue.

That's the aim of today's guest, Prof Dame Linda Partridge who studies the genetics of ageing. From fruit flies to nematode worms, she uses simple organisms to unmask the secret processes that cause our bodies to deteriorate as we get older.

But her route into science was far from normal - growing up in a Catholic convent boarding school, the girls were encouraged to be good housewives rather than diligent scientists. However, the lack of science facilities and teachers meant that the students had to run their own laboratory, ordering chemicals and tending to equipment.

It was the start of a long and successful career, which has culminated in Linda becoming the Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany and the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College, London.

Her life's goal is to produce pharmacological treatments that will help people stay healthier in old age. But what are the social and economic impacts of our growing longevity?

Producer: Michelle Martin.

The science of longevity - Jim Al-Khalili chats to geneticist Prof Dame Linda Partridge.

When she started her career, physicist Dame Athene Donald took a decision that shocked her colleagues. She wanted to apply the strict rules of physics to the messy, complicated world of biology.

Since then, she has taken the field of biological physics out of an unfashionable rut in the 1980s, and helped to turn into one of the most exciting and promising areas in science today.

As Professor of Experimental Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge University, she studies the microscopic structure of everyday stuff, from plants to plastics.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Athene about her life and her passionate campaign to get more women working in science.

Producer: Michelle Martin

Ewan Birney talks to Jim Al-Khalili about deciphering the human genome and junk DNA.

Ewan Birney talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his work on deciphering the human genome and the race to come up with the right number of genes that make us human. Ewan explains why he started a sweepstake to get fellow scientists to estimate the final number and why numbers were wildly wrong. He explains his role in the recent controversy over claims about the demise of 'Junk' DNA. He also talks about artificial DNA and whether it could be the future for information storage? With a colleague, he has already used a small speck of artificial DNA to store Shakespeare's sonnets. In theory, all of the world's information could be held on DNA in a space the size of a small room. If kept cold, dry and dark, DNA lasts for thousands of years so could it be the archive medium of the future?

Is it more reckless to eat a bacon sandwich everyday or to go skydiving? What's the chance that all children in the same family have exactly the same birthday? Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor David Spiegelhalter about risk, uncertainty and the real odds behind everyday life.

As one of the world's leading statisticians, he is regularly called upon to help answer questions in high profile inquiries - like the one into the Harold Shipman murders, infant heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary and the PiP breast implant scandal.

Jim finds out more about the Life Scientific of the man who despite winning many awards and his research papers being some of the most cited in his field David Spiegelhalter says he isn't really that good at maths.

Liz is professor of social interaction at the University of Loughborough and her unusual approach involves collecting and analysing the fine details of hundreds of real, spontaneous conversations as a source of raw data. This is in contrast to more traditional means, used by other psychologists of finding out what people think by asking them directly using surveys and questionnaires.

Her most recent research has overturned ideas about the best ways to teach people how to communicate, negotiate or deal with confrontation. Role play using actors to stage a scenario, has been seen by many as a gold standard training device. But, Liz says there's no evidence to show that it works. Her alternative technique is based on her own scientific research and is already being widely used by different organisations from the Police to Mediation services and even hospitals, to help with doctor patient relationships.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor Elizabeth Stokoe about studying real-life conversations.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to zoologist Russell Foster about circadian rhythms and jet lag.

Joanna Haigh, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College, London, studies the influence of the sun on the earth's climate using data collected by satellites. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about how she got started on her career in climate physics: she can trace her interest in it back to her childhood when she built herself a home weather station.

Jo Haigh explains why we need to know how the sun affects the climate: it's so scientists can work out what contribution to warming is the result of greenhouse gases that humans produce, and what is down to changes in the energy coming from the sun.

She has sat on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and discusses with Jim how it delivers its reports. And as a prominent scientist who speaks out about the dangers of increasing man made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, she explains how she responds to climate change deniers.

Now the Centre does everything from testing new treatments for cancer, stroke and heart disease to probing the homing sense of pigeons. Mark Lythgoe's team develops new techniques to image the living body and its biochemical activities in ever-minute detail, with radio, light and ultrasound waves.

In The Life Scientific, Mark Lythgoe talks about the frontier research at his centre and the thrill he gets from it. As well as a scientist, he is also an intrepid mountain climber and believes there are parallels between the experiences of a mountaineer and those of an inventor of new views of the human brain and body.

Professor Lythgoe talks candidly about his unconventional journey and struggle to make a successful career in science which took him through making plastic pipes in a factory, training Israeli attack dogs and working with Australian Aboriginal people. He describes the deep sense of failure which powered with his progress once he had a foot in the laboratory door.

Mark also discusses his collaborations with artists on sci-art projects. He says one film project about a young girl with a severe brain condition helped to make him the scientist he is today.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses medical imaging and mountain climbing with Prof Mark Lythgoe.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses digging up dinosaurs in remote places with Prof Mike Benton.

Ian Stewart, Professor of Maths at Warwick University, has had a dual career as a research mathematician and as a populariser. He wrote his first book for a general audience - on chaos theory - over thirty years. He's also the author of short stories and novels of science fiction, and of the Science of Discworld series.

Ian Stewart talks to Jim al-Khalili about his life, including his research into applying mathematics to problems of biology and how he communicates the ideas of number and maths to the general public.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to neuroscientist and occasional stand up comedian, Professor Sophie Scott about how she is using brain imaging techniques to reveal secrets of the complexity of brain activity when we speak and when we hear others speak. And Sophie Scott explains why laughter is such an important human social tool. But why is it that if we're laughing hard it can completely override our ability to speak? Also why it's not just humans who have a funny bone: even rats laugh.

Australian geneticist Jenny Graves discusses her life pursuing sex genes in her country's weird but wonderful fauna, the end of men and singing to her students in lectures.

Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, has spent a career at the forefront of developments around the web and digital media. Trained as a mathematician, she moved to the fledgling department of computer science in the mid 1980's, a time of great change and great excitement in the field.

She talks to Jim Al Khalili about the rate that things have changed, how the web is still not quite what it should be, and about the new discipline she has helped to found known as Web Science.

Working alone in Edinburgh in the sixties, Peter Higgs was considered 'a bit of a crank'. 'No-one wanted to work with me', he says. In 1964, he predicted the possible existence of a new kind of boson but, at the time, there was little interest in his boson. And in the years that followed, Peter Higgs says, he was 'looking in the wrong place for the application'.

Three years later, the Higgs mechanism was shown to be central to the new Standard Model of

Physics, which brings together three of the four fundamental forces of nature and has dominated physics ever since. Higgs met one of the key architects of the Standard Model several times, but they failed to realise they were working on the same thing. He particularly regrets one night at physics summer camp when he decided to go to bed early. The others meantime stayed up all night working up The Standard Model.

The seventies was an exciting time for particle physics but Higgs says he 'struggled to keep up'.

His PhD was in a different field and he says he 'lacked technical competency'. He says work pressure contributed to the breakdown of his marriage and that perhaps he suffered a personality change in the mid-sixties when he realised his research might be on to something good and started working harder.

Four decades and several billion pounds on, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN confirmed that the Higgs boson had indeed been found and Peter Higgs shot to fame.

This ephemeral speck of elusive energy is now so well-known it's featured in car adverts and countless jokes. There's even song by Nick Cave called the Higgs Boson Blues. But Higgs has always called it the 'scalar boson' and remains embarrassed that it is named after only him.

Three different research groups, working independently, published very similar papers in 1964 describing what's now known as the Higgs mechanism. And Higgs remains surprised that another British physicist, Tom Kibble from Imperial College, London didn't share the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics along with him and Belgian physicist, Francois Englert.

(Kibble) wrote a longer paper which was really very important in generalising the sort of thing I had written in '64 ', says Higgs.

Peter Higgs found physics boring, as it was taught at school. He was going to be an engineer, like his father, but was clumsy in the lab and, he says, became a theoretical physicist 'by default'.

When the 2013 Nobel Prize winners were announced, many assumed Higgs was blissfully unaware that he might win or just not that interested. In fact, he left the house quite deliberately that morning fully expecting the Nobel Committee to call.

These days, he's constantly stopped in the street and asked for autographs and photographs which, he says, is 'nice but a bit of a nuisance'.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Peter Higgs opens up to Jim Al-Khalili about the real story of the Higgs boson.

[Kibble] wrote a longer paper which was really very important in generalising the sort of thing I had written in '64 ', says Higgs.

Forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black began her career with a Saturday job working in a butcher's shop. At the time she didn't realise that this would be the start of a lifelong fascination with anatomy.

Her job has taken her to some extreme and challenging locations to identify human bodies, such as Kosovo, where she uncovered evidence used in the UN's War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

Back home, Sue has been integral in solving many high-profile criminal cases, including cracking Scotland's biggest paedophile ring in 2009.

In The Life Scientific, Jim Al-Khalili asks how she deals with the emotional pressures of the job, and why she is so fascinated by the inner workings of the human body.

In her spare time, Sue Black also advises crime fiction authors like Val McDermid, providing inspiration for new plotlines and characters.

In return, Val and a group of writers have offered to help with Sue's latest challenge - fundraising for a mortuary. This facility will use new techniques to embalm bodies and promises to revolutionise the way surgeons are trained.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses global mental health with psychiatrist Prof Vikram Patel.

Working at a nuclear weapons laboratory in the US, he enjoyed huge budgets and the freedom to make the most amazing materials. But he gave that up to work with artists and designers because he believes that if you ignore the sensual aspects of materials, you end up with materials that people don't want.

For Mark, making is as important as reading and writing. It's an expression of who we are, like music or literature, and 'everyone should be doing it'. To this end, he wants our public libraries to be converted into public workshops, with laser cutters and 3 D printers in place of books.

Mark Miodownik talks nuclear weapons, 3D printers and smart materials with Jim Al-Khalili.

Anne Glover talks to Jim Al-Khalili about glow-in-the-dark bacteria and advising ministers

Anne Glover is currently one of the most influential scientists in Europe. She advises the President of the European Commission on the research behind issues ranging from nuclear power to genetically modified foods. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about how she makes an impact working across the many countries in Europe with different ideas about science. For example, Germany and France have very different attitudes to nuclear power.

Anne Glover is also a Professor at Aberdeen University where she uses glow in the dark microbes to solve problems such as polluted land. It's a technique she developed after seeing minute glowing creatures while swimming at night in the Algarve.

She tells Jim about her life in the lab, setting up a company to exploit her bioluminescent microbes and how she gets on in the world of politics.

Alf Adams remembers his small idea that changed the world, with Jim Al-Khalili.

Charles Darwin described the eye as an 'organ of extreme perfection and complication'. How this engineering marvel of nature forms out of a few cells in the developing embryo has been the big question for Veronica van Heyningen, emeritus professor at the MRC's Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

Veronica is a world lead in the genetics of the development of the eye. She tells Jim Al Khalili about her part in the discovery of a gene called Pax-6 which turned to be a master builder gene for the eye, in all animals which have eyes - from humans to fruit flies.

As she explains, further research on this gene may eventually help people with the genetic vision impairment, Aniridia. It was Veronica's research on patients with this condition which led to the gene's final discovery. She tells Jim about why it's important for scientists to engage in public discussion on the ethical implications of their work.

Veronica also talks about her arrival in Britain as an 11 year old. Her family escaped from communist Hungary in 1958. Both of her Jewish parents had been sent to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.

Julia Slingo's fascination with meteorology began as she, as a sixth former, gazed out of her bedroom window and wondered what controlled the shapes of clouds and why the clouds usually came from the west. In the 1970s she was one of the few women scientists at the British Meteorological Office and worked in the early days of computer modelling of weather and climate. As the first female professor of Meteorology in the UK, she crusaded for greater computing power and capacity to improve both weather forecasting and global climate models.

Julia Slingo took up the job of the chief scientist at the Met Office in 2009. Her profile has been high in the last few months following her remarks that the persistent heavy rains and storminess of Winter 2013 to 2014 were likely to be linked to anthropogenic climate change.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Dame Julia Slingo, the chief scientist at the Met Office.

His career has spanned more than five decades and is marked by a remarkable body of high-impact research and landmark studies. The theme running through all his work has been child development, on the subtle interplay between nature and nurture and on the factors that make the difference between a child flourishing, or floundering.

Evacuated during World War Two, to a Quaker family in the USA, Mike Rutter tells Jim Al-Khalili about the impact this move, aged seven, had on him. He describes the inspirational teachers who persuaded him that research and clinical work as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, was for him, and he admits that an early mentor insisted he mustn't receive any formal training in child psychiatry, something he hasn't received to this day!

He was awarded this country's first ever professorship in child psychiatry in 1973 and he's credited with founding the field of developmental psychopathology. This involves the study, over time, of normal and abnormal child development. He's currently Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at King's College, London and still a practicing child psychiatrist.

An early breakthrough was his discovery that autism, or infantile psychosis as it was then known, had a genetic basis, something barely suspected at the time.

Beautifully designed studies of populations over time followed, many of them landmark studies still cited today. They established the framework for studying and investigating mental illness in the community. The Isle of Wight Studies (1964-74) surveyed the mental health of children living on the island and for the first time in such research, children themselves were directly interviewed and questioned. Before this, Mike Rutter tells Jim, the assumption had been that what children thought and said didn't really matter.

In the 1970s, the Fifteen Thousand Hours study, delivered ground-breaking evidence about the combination of factors that affected the performance and behaviour of children in inner city secondary schools. Findings from this study were included by both the Labour and Conservative parties in their 1979 election manifestos.

Maternal Deprivation Reassessed' was Mike Rutter's challenge to John Bowlby's hugely influential theory of maternal attachment. It was described as 'a classic in the field of childcare' and it transformed the debate about the relationships that help babies to flourish.

His fascination with the underlying reasons why and how children vary in their ability to weather and cope with adversity, led to the growth of resilience science. For more than 40 years Mike Rutter, 'the intellectual father', has led this field of study.

His name is particularly associated with 'natural experiments' and one of the best known is the English Romanian Adoptees study that he set up in the early 1990s and still runs today. The children being followed are those rescued from the orphanages of Nicolai Ceausescu and adopted by families in this country. Because of the appalling conditions many of these babies and toddlers experienced in Romanian institutions, Professor Rutter understood that tracking and studying them as they grew up in loving homes here, would provide important insights into how early deprivation affects children's development.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Jim Al-Khalili meets child psychiatrist Prof Sir Michael Rutter.

Janet Hemingway on malaria and the coming of insecticide resistance, with Jim Al-Khalili.

Astronomer and Sky at Night TV presenter Chris Lintott tells Jim Al Khalili about his 'Citizen Science' project of crowd-sourced astronomy, Galaxy Zoo, and of working with Brian May and the late Sir Patrick Moore.

Botanist Sandy Knapp talks about her adventures collecting plants in South America.

In the late 60s and early 70s Chris was one of the theoretical physicists who were busy sketching what would become known as the standard model of particle physics. An early believer in the physical reality of the 'Quark Model', Chris's work helped confirm that the protons and neutrons at the centre of atoms are themselves made up of 3 quarks.

He was also influential in showing that Peter Higgs' theory of mass was not just sufficient, but also necessary.

So when later he was made Director General of CERN, he was well placed to know, and to explain to the heads of the member states, that investing in the construction of something called the Large Hadron Collider would be a scientifically fruitful thing to do. Indeed, it has been said that there would be no LHC without Chris' calm international scientific diplomacy.

Since then, Chris has been influential in several other international big-physics collaborations, including the world's most ambitious nuclear fusion programme, ITER.

Chris Llewellyn Smith on quarks, bosons and running the biggest experiments in history.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses earthquakes and fracking for gas with geologist Zoe Shipton.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses earthquakes and fracking for gas with geologist Zoe Shipton.

In October 2013, Jeremy Farrar was appointed Director of the Wellcome Trust - UK's largest medical research funding charity. The Trust funded £750 million's worth of health-related research - about the same as the government's Medical Research Council. This means Jeremy Farrar is a major figure in British science.

Since 1996, the doctor and clinical scientist had run the Wellcome-funded Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam - a British-Vietnamese collaboration specialising in infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV, TB and avian flu. He lost close friends and colleagues when the SARS pandemic took off in East Asia in 2003, and dealt with the first cases of the dangerous H5N1 bird flu when it arrived in Vietnam the following here.

In conversation with Jim Al-Khalili, Dr Farrar talks about the personal and professional impact of those experiences and of his feelings of impotence as a doctor treating HIV/AIDS patients as a junior doctor in London in 1980s.

With his international perspective and his hands-on experience of the deadly potential of infectious diseases, he talks to Jim about the great health challenges faced by the world in the coming decades.

Since 1996, the doctor and clinical scientist had run the Wellcome-funded Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam - a British-Vietnamese collaboration specialising in infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV, TB and avian flu. He lost close friends and colleagues when the SARS pandemic took off in East Asia in 2003, and dealt with the first cases of the dangerous H5N1 bird flu when it arrived in Vietnam the following here.

In conversation with Jim Al-Khalili, Dr Farrar talks about the personal and professional impact of those experiences and of his feelings of impotence as a doctor treating HIV/AIDS patients as a junior doctor in London in 1980s.

With his international perspective and his hands-on experience of the deadly potential of infectious diseases, he talks to Jim about the great health challenges faced by the world in the coming decades.

Jim Al-Khalili in conversation with Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust.

Carol Robinson describes her remarkable journey from leaving school at 16 to work as a lab technician at Pfizer, to becoming the first female Professor of Chemistry at both Oxford and Cambridge University, despite an eight year career break to bring up three small children.

Getting back into the workplace wasn't easy. Carol was hired for a job for which she was over-qualified because she 'used to be good' and advised not to dress so smartly because people would think she was a secretary. She managed to negotiate a day a week to do her own research and secured much sought after Royal Society funding to support it.

For decades, Carol felt insecure about having a degree from a further education college, which she achieved by studying part-time for seven years while working at Pfizer; but now Carol is proud of her unconventional route into academia and actively recruits students to her lab from a wide range of different backgrounds.

In her hands, mass spectrometry has been transformed from a routine technique for checking what chemicals are present in, say an antibiotic, into a powerful research tool for drug development. Her motto when doing experiments is, 'it's not working yet' and she's happy to risk drilling into this hugely expensive machine to try and get it to do what she wants.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Getting back into the workplace wasn't easy. Carol was hired for a job for which she was over-qualified because she 'used to be good' and advised not to dress so smartly because people would think she was a secretary. She managed to negotiate a day a week to do her own research and secured much sought after Royal Society funding to support it.

For decades, Carol felt insecure about having a degree from a further education college, which she achieved by studying part-time for seven years while working at Pfizer; but now Carol is proud of her unconventional route into academia and actively recruits students to her lab from a wide range of different backgrounds.

In her hands, mass spectrometry has been transformed from a routine technique for checking what chemicals are present in, say an antibiotic, into a powerful research tool for drug development. Her motto when doing experiments is, 'it's not working yet' and she's happy to risk drilling into this hugely expensive machine to try and get it to do what she wants.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Carol Robinson on her journey from lab technician to professor of chemistry.

Although he describes himself as a simple-minded Northern bloke, he has acquired an almost God-like status on our TV screens; while the 'Cox effect' is thought to explain the significant boost to university admissions to read physics. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about learning to be famous, his passion for physics and how he sometimes has difficulty crossing the road.

In 2005 Brian was awarded a Royal Society Research Fellowship for his work on high energy particle collisions at CERN and elsewhere - an enviable academic achievement. In 2009, he was voted one of the sexiest men alive by People magazine. He has invented a new kind of celebrity - a scientist who's regularly snapped by the paparazzi.

Brian wants everyone to be as excited as he is about the laws that govern our universe: the beautiful, counter-intuitive and often weird world of quantum mechanics that explains what happens inside the nucleus of every atom, right down at the level of those exotically named elementary particles - quarks, neutrinos, gluons, muons.

Challenged by Jim to explain the rules of quantum mechanics in just a minute, Brian succeeds; while conceding that the idea that everything is inherently probabilistic, is challenging. Even Einstein found it difficult. Schrodinger's cat, or Brian Cox, for that matter, are simultaneously both dead and alive. That's a fact. What this is all means is another question. 'Am I just an algorithm?' Brian asks. 'Probably', says Jim.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Brian Cox, physicist and media star, talks fame and quantum mechanics with Jim Al-Khalili.

She started by working on how to make fireworks safer and has been involved in research with bees to see whether they can be used smell different types of explosives. Her current project involves testing the rocket fuel that will be used in Bloodhound, the British designed and built supersonic car that aims to reach a speed of 1,000mph.

Her work involves finding out how to best detect explosives in airports and elsewhere, teaching security professionals how to differentiate between false alarms and the real thing. She also works on explosives used in warfare and discusses the ethical issues involved.

Producer: Melissa Hogenboom.

Jackie Akhavan talks about the ethical issues of working on explosives used in war.

She started by working on how to make fireworks safer and has been involved in research with bees to see whether they can be used smell different types of explosives. Her current project involves testing the rocket fuel that will be used in Bloodhound, the British designed and built supersonic car that aims to reach a speed of 1,000mph.

Her work involves finding out how to best detect explosives in airports and elsewhere, teaching security professionals how to differentiate between false alarms and the real thing. She also works on explosives used in warfare and discusses the ethical issues involved.

Producer: Melissa Hogenboom.

Jackie Akhavan talks about the ethical issues of working on explosives used in war.

X- ray crystallography, now celebrating its 100th anniversary, is used to study the internal structure of matter. It may sound rather arcane but it's the reason we've now know the structure of hugely important molecules, like penicillin, insulin and DNA. But while other scientists scoop up prizes for cracking chemical structures, Elspeth works away behind the scenes, (more cameraman than Hollywood star), improving the methods and techniques used by everybody working in the field.

If only it was as simple as putting a crystal in the machine and printing off the results. Growing a single crystal of an enzyme that gives TB its longevity took Elspeth's team no less than fifteen years. No pressure there then when harvesting that precious commodity.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Oxford crystallographer Elspeth Garman.

X- ray crystallography, now celebrating its 100th anniversary, is used to study the internal structure of matter. It may sound rather arcane but it's the reason we now know the structure of hugely important molecules, like penicillin, insulin and DNA. But while other scientists scoop up prizes for cracking chemical structures, Elspeth works away behind the scenes, (more cameraman than Hollywood star), improving the methods and techniques used by everybody working in the field.

If only it was as simple as putting a crystal in the machine and printing off the results. Growing a single crystal of an enzyme that gives TB its longevity took Elspeth's team no less than fifteen years. No pressure there then when harvesting that precious commodity.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Oxford crystallographer Elspeth Garman.

As Chief Scientist at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London, Chris inspires engineers, doctors and other scientists to create medical devices for the 21st century.

Applying silicon chip technology, more commonly found inside mobile phones, he tackles seemingly insurmountable problems in medicine to create devices that bridge the electronic and biological worlds - from a digital plaster that monitors a patient's vital signs to an artificial pancreas to treat diabetes.

His latest creation, coined a 'lab on a chip', analyses a person's DNA within minutes outside the laboratory. The hand-held device can identify genetic differences which dictate a person's susceptibility to hereditary diseases and how they will react to a drug like warfarin, used to treat blood clots.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Chris Toumazou talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the science of invention.

As Chief Scientist at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London, Chris inspires engineers, doctors and other scientists to create medical devices for the 21st century.

Applying silicon chip technology, more commonly found inside mobile phones, he tackles seemingly insurmountable problems in medicine to create devices that bridge the electronic and biological worlds - from a digital plaster that monitors a patient's vital signs to an artificial pancreas to treat diabetes.

His latest creation, coined a 'lab on a chip', analyses a person's DNA within minutes outside the laboratory. The hand-held device can identify genetic differences which dictate a person's susceptibility to hereditary diseases and how they will react to a drug like warfarin, used to treat blood clots.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Chris Toumazou talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the science of invention.

Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, Maggie has spent a lifetime attempting to answer philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, but from a computational viewpoint.

Tin cans', as she sometimes calls computers, are information processing systems, the perfect vehicle, she believes, to help us understand, explore and analyse the mind.

But questions about the human mind and the human person could never be answered within one single academic subject. So the long career of Maggie Boden is the very epitome of cross-disciplinary working. From medicine, to psychology, to cognitive and computer science, to technology and philosophy, Professor Boden has spent decades straddling multiple academic subjects, helping to create brand new disciplines along the way.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Maggie Boden, a world authority in the field of AI.

Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, Maggie has spent a lifetime attempting to answer philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, but from a computational viewpoint.

Tin cans', as she sometimes calls computers, are information processing systems, the perfect vehicle, she believes, to help us understand, explore and analyse the mind.

But questions about the human mind and the human person could never be answered within one single academic subject. So the long career of Maggie Boden is the very epitome of cross-disciplinary working. From medicine, to psychology, to cognitive and computer science, to technology and philosophy, Professor Boden has spent decades straddling multiple academic subjects, helping to create brand new disciplines along the way.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Maggie Boden, a world authority in the field of AI.

Professor of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum, he talks to Jim Al-Khalili about why these arthropods, joint-legged creatures which look a bit like woodlice and roamed the ancient oceans for almost 300 million years, are so important for helping us to understand the evolution of life on our planet.

These new trilobite fossils were found at an exciting time for the earth sciences because of the emergence of plate tectonics. The discovery of communities of trilobite fossils could be used to reconstruct the shape of the ancient world and Richard used the new discoveries to help map the geologically very different Palaeozoic continents and seas.

He admits that he's a born naturalist, fascinated by all aspects of the natural world (he's a leading expert on fungi) with a powerful drive to communicate its wonders to a wider public. His books and TV programmes on geology, the evolution of the earth, fossils as well as the creatures that survived mass extinctions have brought him a whole new audience.

And Richard reveals to Jim an earlier secret life, as a writer of humorous books, all written under a pseudonym.

Jim Al-Khalili meets Mr Trilobite, the palaeontologist and naturalist Richard Fortey.

Professor of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum, he talks to Jim Al-Khalili about why these arthropods, joint-legged creatures which look a bit like woodlice and roamed the ancient oceans for almost 300 million years, are so important for helping us to understand the evolution of life on our planet.

These new trilobite fossils were found at an exciting time for the earth sciences because of the emergence of plate tectonics. The discovery of communities of trilobite fossils could be used to reconstruct the shape of the ancient world and Richard used the new discoveries to help map the geologically very different Palaeozoic continents and seas.

He admits that he's a born naturalist, fascinated by all aspects of the natural world (he's a leading expert on fungi) with a powerful drive to communicate its wonders to a wider public. His books and TV programmes on geology, the evolution of the earth, fossils as well as the creatures that survived mass extinctions have brought him a whole new audience.

And Richard reveals to Jim an earlier secret life, as a writer of humorous books, all written under a pseudonym.

Jim Al-Khalili meets Mr Trilobite, the palaeontologist and naturalist Richard Fortey.

As Chief Medical Officer, the first woman to fill the post, she guides government decisions on pressing health issues such as antimicrobial resistance, mental health and, most recently, Ebola.

Having spent many years working as a haematologist, focussing on sickle cell disease, Dame Sally now works tirelessly to put scientific evidence at the heart of Government decisions that affect out health. And it's this quest for evidence that has inspired much of her career.

As Director General for Research and Development at the Department of Health, she saw the opportunity to overhaul health research in the National Health Service, focussing on the needs of patients. It was a hugely controversial idea which others had tried to implement, and failed. But she stuck to her guns and the National Institute for Health Research, which she created, is now the envy of the world.

Named one of the most powerful women in the country, Dame Sally also has a powerful voice abroad. Through her work at the World Health Organisation, she's brought the world's attention to global threats like antimicrobial resistance.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Dame Sally Davies about looking after the nation's health.

As Chief Medical Officer, the first woman to fill the post, she guides government decisions on pressing health issues such as antimicrobial resistance, mental health and, most recently, Ebola.

Having spent many years working as a haematologist, focussing on sickle cell disease, Dame Sally now works tirelessly to put scientific evidence at the heart of Government decisions that affect out health. And it's this quest for evidence that has inspired much of her career.

As Director General for Research and Development at the Department of Health, she saw the opportunity to overhaul health research in the National Health Service, focussing on the needs of patients. It was a hugely controversial idea which others had tried to implement, and failed. But she stuck to her guns and the National Institute for Health Research, which she created, is now the envy of the world.

Named one of the most powerful women in the country, Dame Sally also has a powerful voice abroad. Through her work at the World Health Organisation, she's brought the world's attention to global threats like antimicrobial resistance.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Dame Sally Davies about looking after the nation's health.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Prof Dave Goulson about his obsession with bees.

Recently Dave has found himself in a media storm as he's been studying the effects of pesticides called neo-nicotinoids on bumblebees. After he and others published research showing that the neo-nicotinoids have a detrimental effect on the foraging of bumblebees, the EU has brought in a temporary ban on some of them. But some farmers say that their harvests will be poor if they can't use these pesticides. Dave and Jim discuss the balance between conserving nature and feeding people.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Prof Dave Goulson about his obsession with bees.

John won the prize for his once radical insight into how we know where we are. When he first described the idea of 'place cells' in the brain back in 1971, many scoffed. Today it's accepted scientific wisdom that our spatial ability depends on these highly specialized brain cells.

A keen basketball player,John says, he has put this principle to the test by trying to shoot hoops with his eyes closed. But this belies the years of painstaking experiments on rats that John performed to prove that a rat's ability to know where it is depends not only on its sense of smell, but also on a cognitive map, or internal GPS, inside the rat's brain.

He describes how he listened in on the unique firing patterns of individual rat brain cells using the tiniest electrodes: 'You almost imagine they are singing to you', he says, as he imitates the different sounds made by individual neurons. And, he says, he misses them when they fall silent.

It's important to John, and for his results, that his rats are happy and John welcomes the strong controls over animal experiments in the UK. Computer models are useful but, he says, they could never replace the need for experiments on animals, in the work that he does. And,while it need not necessarily have been the case, experiments on rats' brains have provided valuable insight into the workings of the human brain. John's research was entirely curiosity-driven but it could provide vital clues to understanding dementia and is already being used to develop a test for the earliest stages of Alzheimer's.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

2014 Nobel Prize-winner John O'Keefe talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

John won the prize for his once radical insight into how we know where we are. When he first described the idea of 'place cells' in the brain back in 1971, many scoffed. Today it's accepted scientific wisdom that our spatial ability depends on these highly specialized brain cells.

A keen basketball player,John says, he has put this principle to the test by trying to shoot hoops with his eyes closed. But this belies the years of painstaking experiments on rats that John performed to prove that a rat's ability to know where it is depends not only on its sense of smell, but also on a cognitive map, or internal GPS, inside the rat's brain.

He describes how he listened in on the unique firing patterns of individual rat brain cells using the tiniest electrodes: 'You almost imagine they are singing to you', he says, as he imitates the different sounds made by individual neurons. And, he says, he misses them when they fall silent.

It's important to John, and for his results, that his rats are happy and John welcomes the strong controls over animal experiments in the UK. Computer models are useful but, he says, they could never replace the need for experiments on animals, in the work that he does. And,while it need not necessarily have been the case, experiments on rats' brains have provided valuable insight into the workings of the human brain. John's research was entirely curiosity-driven but it could provide vital clues to understanding dementia and is already being used to develop a test for the earliest stages of Alzheimer's.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

2014 Nobel Prize-winner John O'Keefe talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Matt Taylor talks to Jim Al-Khalili about being in charge of the Rosetta space mission to the distant comet, 67P. It is, he says, 'the sexiest thing alive', after his wife. He describes his joy when, after travelling for ten years and covering four billion miles, the robot, Philae landed on the speeding comet 67P; and turned the image tattooed on his thigh from wishful thinking into a triumph for science. Matt's father, a builder, encouraged him to do well at school. He wanted him to get a job in science and Matt didn't disappoint, joining the European Space Agency in June 2005. His charm and exuberance have brought competing teams together as they fight for their science to have priority on Rosetta. His enthusiasm has helped to spark and fuel a global interest in the mission and he deeply regrets his choice of shirt on one occasion.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Matt Taylor talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the Rosetta comet mission.

Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her research on the teenage brain

Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her research on the teenage brain

Just twenty years ago, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) would not allow women to camp in Antarctica. In 2013, it appointed Jane Francis as its Director. Jane tells Jim Al-Khalili how an intimate understanding of petrified wood and fossilised leaves took her from Dorset TMs Jurassic coast to this icy land mass. Camping on Antarctic ice is not for everyone but Jane is addicted, even if she does crave celery and occasionally wish that she could wash her hair. Fossils buried under the ice contain vital clues about ancient climates and can be used to check current computer models of climate change. The earth can withstand a great range of temperatures: Antarctica was once covered in lush forest. But the question is: can humans adapt? As the ice caps melt, sea levels will continue to rise. And, says Jane, the time to start planning for that is now.

The director of the British Antarctic Survey, Jane Francis talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

As a young woman, Stephanie Shirley worked at the Dollis Hill Research Station building computers from scratch: but she told young admirers that she worked for the Post Office, hoping they would think she sold stamps. In the early 60s she changed her name to Steve and started selling computer programmes to companies who had no idea what they were or what they could do, employing only mothers who worked from home writing code by hand with pen and pencil and then posted it to her. By the mid-80s her software company employed eight thousand people, still mainly women with children. She made an absolute fortune but these days Stephanie thinks less about making money and much more about how best to give it away.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Software pioneer Dame Stephanie Shirley talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Nigel Shadbolt talks to Jim al-Khalili about how a degree in psychology and philosophy lead to a career researching artificial intelligence and a passion for open data.

Sir Nigel Shadbolt talks about artificial intelligence and open data with Jim Al-Khalili.

Nigel Shadbolt talks to Jim al-Khalili about how a degree in psychology and philosophy lead to a career researching artificial intelligence and a passion for open data.

Sir Nigel Shadbolt talks about artificial intelligence and open data with Jim Al-Khalili.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Professor Susan Jebb, the UK's authority on obesity, who has spent much of her career trying to help us put those good intentions into practice.

Her challenge is not for the faint hearted. When she first got interested in obesity, as a research scientist, rates were already on the rise. Yet no one took the problem seriously. Today, with over sixty percent of adults overweight or obese, Susan remains unwavering in her commitment to ensuring we do.

As Professor of Diet and Population Health at Oxford University and Chair of the government's Responsibility Deal Food Network, she wants all of us and the food industry to improve the nation's health by translating the science of what we eat into practice.

And health is what it's all about. Obesity now poses such a danger that it's been dubbed the 'new smoking'.

Produced by Beth Eastwood.

Obesity expert Susan Jebb talks to Jim al-Khalili about the science of what we eat.

Fat, sugar, salt - we all know we should eat less of them, and take more exercise, but as a nation with an ever expanding waistline we are becoming increasingly overweight.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Professor Susan Jebb, the UK's authority on obesity, who has spent much of her career trying to help us put those good intentions into practice.

Her challenge is not for the faint hearted. When she first got interested in obesity, as a research scientist, rates were already on the rise. Yet no one took the problem seriously. Today, with over sixty percent of adults overweight or obese, Susan remains unwavering in her commitment to ensuring we do.

As Professor of Diet and Population Health at Oxford University and Chair of the government's Responsibility Deal Food Network, she wants all of us and the food industry to improve the nation's health by translating the science of what we eat into practice.

And health is what it's all about. Obesity now poses such a danger that it's been dubbed the 'new smoking'.

Produced by Beth Eastwood.

His research has taken him in all kinds of directions, from reading philosophy, to computing and virtual reality, and mapping the brain. As well as running the interdisciplinary centre and carrying out experiments that test ideas about consciousness, Anil Seth has co-written a popular book, The 30 second brain, and was the consultant on Eye Benders, the winner of the Junior Royal Society Book Prize in 2014.

He talks to Jim al-Khalili about how scientists can study altered states of consciousness, such as sleep and coma. He explains how he uses virtual reality to understand conditions where our idea of ourselves is distorted, such as in the Alice in Wonderland syndrome.

Anil Seth discusses the hard problem of understanding consciousness with Jim Al-Khalili.

Bats make up one in five of all mammal species on Earth, from the miniscule bumblebee bat to the enormous megabat.

As well as controlling harmful insects bats also pollinate a large variety of crops, from bananas to blue agave plants that are used to make tequila.

Kate has pioneered ground-breaking technologies that allow the public to monitor bats, including the citizen science website Bat Detective.

This work led her to investigate human infectious diseases, including those spread through animals. Together with a global team of researchers, they drew up a map of global hotspots to try and predict where the next 'zoonotic' disease will emerge.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

From bats to biodiversity, ecologist Kate Jones discusses her Life Scientific.

Kate Jones is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity at UCL and the Institute of Zoology. An expert in evolution and extinction, her special interest is in bat research and conservation.

Bats make up one in five of all mammal species on Earth, from the miniscule bumblebee bat to the enormous megabat.

As well as controlling harmful insects bats also pollinate a large variety of crops, from bananas to blue agave plants that are used to make tequila.

Kate has pioneered ground-breaking technologies that allow the public to monitor bats, including the citizen science website Bat Detective.

This work led her to investigate human infectious diseases, including those spread through animals. Together with a global team of researchers, they drew up a map of global hotspots to try and predict where the next 'zoonotic' disease will emerge.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

The stakes are high and it's never clear cut. He often dreads having to talk to patients and their families. Damage to healthy brain cells can result in a dramatic change to someone's quality of life; but if a bit of a tumour remains, it's likely to grow back. 'How do you tell someone that the best option may be to go away and die?

Once, against his professional judgment, Henry went ahead with surgery because the patient wanted him to operate. The patient died and he blames himself for not being stronger. He talks openly about the cemetery that all doctors inevitably carry with them; and why he would rather be seen as a fallible human being, than either a superhero or villain. Perhaps it's inevitable that doctors are put on a pedestal but it can be unhelpful.

Despite a chronic lack of science at school and university, Henry decided to become a neurosurgeon, having found general surgery rather disgusting. Soon after, his three month old son had surgery for a brain tumour: an experience which, he says, helped him to appreciate the fog of anxiety and concern that descends on the people he treats.

Getting the balance right between compassion and detachment is a constant challenge. And Henry admits, he pioneered brain surgery under local anaesthetic, in part as a way of confronting head on the almost 'Jekyll and Hyde like split' between being a surgeon in the operating theatre and a friendly consultant who talks to and cares for his patients.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh talks to Jim Al-Khalili about slicing through our thoughts.

The stakes are high and it's never clear cut. He often dreads having to talk to patients and their families. Damage to healthy brain cells can result in a dramatic change to someone's quality of life; but if a bit of a tumour remains, it's likely to grow back. 'How do you tell someone that the best option may be to go away and die?

Once, against his professional judgment, Henry went ahead with surgery because the patient wanted him to operate. The patient died and he blames himself for not being stronger. He talks openly about the cemetery that all doctors inevitably carry with them; and why he would rather be seen as a fallible human being, than either a superhero or villain. Perhaps it's inevitable that doctors are put on a pedestal but it can be unhelpful.

Despite a chronic lack of science at school and university, Henry decided to become a neurosurgeon, having found general surgery rather disgusting. Soon after, his three month old son had surgery for a brain tumour: an experience which, he says, helped him to appreciate the fog of anxiety and concern that descends on the people he treats.

Getting the balance right between compassion and detachment is a constant challenge. And Henry admits, he pioneered brain surgery under local anaesthetic, in part as a way of confronting head on the almost 'Jekyll and Hyde like split' between being a surgeon in the operating theatre and a friendly consultant who talks to and cares for his patients.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh talks to Jim Al-Khalili about slicing through our thoughts.

Dorothy Bishop is a world-leading expert in childhood language disorders.

Since the 1970s, she has been instrumental in bringing to light a little-known language disorder that may affect around two children per class starting primary school.

Specific Language Impairment', or SLI, was originally deemed to be the fault of lazy parents who didn't talk to their children. But through her pioneering studies on twins, Dorothy found a genetic link behind this disorder, helping to overturn these widespread misconceptions.

Dorothy talks to Jim Al-Khalili about how families react when they discover there's a genetic basis to their problems, and why this language impairment isn't as well known as other conditions, like autism and dyslexia.

A critic of pseudoscience and media misreporting, Dorothy discusses her experiences of speaking out against folk psychology and bad science journalism.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Since the 1970s, she has been instrumental in bringing to light a little-known language disorder that may affect around two children per class starting primary school.

Specific Language Impairment', or SLI, was originally deemed to be the fault of lazy parents who didn't talk to their children. But through her pioneering studies on twins, Dorothy found a genetic link behind this disorder, helping to overturn these widespread misconceptions.

Dorothy talks to Jim Al-Khalili about how families react when they discover there's a genetic basis to their problems, and why this language impairment isn't as well known as other conditions, like autism and dyslexia.

A critic of pseudoscience and media misreporting, Dorothy discusses her experiences of speaking out against folk psychology and bad science journalism.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Why do some children find language difficult? Dorothy Bishop talks about her life's work.

Carlos Frenk discusses this mysterious missing mass, which is still mysterious and missing, with Jim al-Khalili. And they talk about modelling the universe inside computers.

Carlos Frenk talks to Jim Al-Khalili about creating the universe inside a computer.

Carlos Frenk discusses this mysterious missing mass, which is still mysterious and missing, with Jim al-Khalili. They talk about modelling the universe inside computers, and how Carlos persuaded his university to hire the architect Daniel Liebskind to design a building for creative thinking about the cosmos.

Carlos Frenk talks to Jim Al-Khalili about dark matter and modelling the cosmos.

Her team were involved in studying the infamous Philpott case in Derby when six children tragically died in a fire set by their parents, Mick and Mairead. They devised experiments to find out why, despite having smoke alarms fitted inside the house, none of the children woke up.

Chemistry has also been pushed to the limits to identify 'legal highs', or Novel Psychoactive Substances. Around 350 new drugs are released on to the market every month, with Europe a hotspot for buyers.

Plus, Niamh talks about the serious problems facing the world of forensic science. The field, she says, is in crisis. With rock-bottom research budgets, and the list of miscarriages of justice growing, how can we fix forensic science?

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Forensic chemist Niamh Nic Daeid talks about investigating fires and analysing legal highs

Her team were involved in studying the infamous Philpott case in Derby when six children tragically died in a fire set by their parents, Mick and Mairead. They devised experiments to find out why, despite having smoke alarms fitted inside the house, none of the children woke up.

Chemistry has also been pushed to the limits to identify 'legal highs', or Novel Psychoactive Substances. Around 350 new drugs are released on to the market every month, with Europe a hotspot for buyers.

Plus, Niamh talks about the serious problems facing the world of forensic science. The field, she says, is in crisis. With rock-bottom research budgets, and the list of miscarriages of justice growing, how can we fix forensic science?

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Forensic chemist Niamh Nic Daeid talks about investigating fires and analysing legal highs

E O Wilson has been described as the 'world's most evolved biologist' and even as 'the heir to Darwin'. He's a passionate naturalist and an absolute world authority on ants. Over his long career he's described 450 new species of ants.

Known to many as the founding father of socio-biology, E O Wilson is a big hitter in the world of evolutionary theory. But, recently he's criticised what's popularly known as The Selfish Gene theory of evolution that he once worked so hard to promote (and that now underpins the mainstream view on evolution).

A twice Pulitzer prize winning author of more than 20 books, he's also an extremely active campaigner for the preservation of the planet's bio-diversity: he says, 'destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal'.

E O Wilson talks to Jim al-Khalili about his life scientific.

Known to many as the founding father of socio-biology, EO Wilson is a big hitter in the world of evolutionary theory. But, recently he's criticised what's popularly known as The Selfish Gene theory of evolution that he once worked so hard to promote (and that now underpins the mainstream view on evolution).

A twice Pulitzer prize winning author of more than 20 books, he's also an extremely active campaigner for the preservation of the planet's bio-diversity: he says, 'destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal'.

EO Wilson talks to Jim al-Khalili about his life scientific.

Leading biologist EO Wilson talks to Jim Al-Khalili about ants, altruism and evolution.

Jim al-Khalili talks to botanist Geoff Palmer, the UK's only professor of brewing and distilling, about revolutionising the malting industry and his unusual scientific career after arriving from Jamaica in 1955 as a 14 year old boy. When he went for an interview for an MSc in 1964 the representative from the Ministry of Agriculture suggested he go back home and grow bananas. Why? Because he didn't know the difference between wheat and barley. Undeterred he went on to become a world authority on barley, brewing and distilling and Scotland's first black professor. His research on how malt could be made more quickly saved the brewing industry millions. But he says, it's only through good luck and with the help of good Samaritans that his career took the course it did, helping him get to university and even to finish school. Now at the age of 75, he's still fighting to make education and a scientific career available to everyone, regardless of their background.

Jim talks to internationally renowned professor of brewing and distilling Geoff Palmer.

Carol Black was an overweight child who, aged 13, put herself on a diet. Now, as an expert advisor to the government, she's the woman behind recent newspaper headlines suggesting that obese people who refuse treatment could see their benefits cut. In the last decade, Carol has conducted several reviews on work and health, sickness absence and how best to help people with obesity, alcohol and drug problems get back into the workplace. In 2008 she suggested the Sick Note should be replaced with a Fit Note which states what people can do rather than what they can't. Later she recommended that an independent assessor should decide who is, or is not, Fit for Work. Dame Carol Black talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the challenges associated with advising government on these controversial issues; and how, despite relative adversity and several bad decisions, she achieved such a position of power and influence.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Danielle George is a radio frequency engineer from the University of Manchester. She designs amplifiers that have travelled everywhere, from outer space to underground.

Becoming a professor aged just 38, she talks to Jim about the challenges of age discrimination and working in a male dominated field.

As presenter of last year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, she's passionate about DIY electronics and coding, and how to inspire the UK's next generation of inventors.

Becoming a professor aged just 38, she talks to Jim about the challenges of age discrimination and working in a male dominated field.

As presenter of last year's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, she's passionate about DIY electronics and coding, and how to inspire the UK's next generation of inventors.

Engineer Danielle George tells Jim about her passion for getting children into electronics

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Professor Robert Plomin talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the genetics of intelligence.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Professor Robert Plomin talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the genetics of intelligence.

At the time, Patrick Vallance was Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Head of the Department of Medicine at University College London. A pioneer of research into some of the body's key regulatory systems, he had also been publicly critical of BIG Pharma for 'funding studies more helpful to marketing than to advancing clinical care'. So what made him go over to 'the other side'?

His involvement with the industry was limited until one evening in 2006 when he was asked a question over a dinner, a question that would be pivotal to his life and career.

Today, Patrick is head of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies with annual revenues in excess of 20 billion pounds and nearly a hundred thousand employees worldwide. Whilst GSK is no stranger to scandal, since he joined, Patrick has attempted to tackle the culture of secrecy that pervades the industry. He's since reshaped the way GSK carries out its research and has been behind several radical initiatives in global healthcare, to produce a more collaborative approach to tackling major diseases like malaria.

Jim Al-Khalili meets Patrick Vallance heading drug development at a pharmaceutical company

I'm determined to prove botany is not the 'Cinderella of science'. That's what Professor Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden in Kew, told the Independent in 2014.

In the two years since she took on the job at Kew she's been faced with a reduction in government funding. So, Kathy Willis has been rethinking the science that's to be done by the staff of the Gardens - and been criticised for her decisions.

But as well as leading this transformation, Kathy has a distinguished academic career in biodiversity. She is currently a professor at Oxford University and, during her research career, she's studied plants and their environments all over the world, from the New Forest, when she was a student in Southampton, to the Galapagos Islands where she studied the impact of the removal of the giant tortoises on the vegetation there.

Jim al-Khalili discusses the future of biodiversity with Kathy Willis.

In the two years since she took on the job at Kew she's been faced with a reduction in government funding. So, Kathy Willis has been rethinking the science that's to be done by the staff of the Gardens - and been criticised for her decisions.

But as well as leading this transformation, Kathy has a distinguished academic career in biodiversity. She is currently a professor at Oxford University and, during her research career, she's studied plants and their environments all over the world, from the New Forest, when she was a student in Southampton, to the Galapagos Islands where she studied the impact of the removal of the giant tortoises on the vegetation there.

Jim al-Khalili discusses the future of biodiversity with Kathy Willis.

Kathy Willis, Kew Gardens' director of science, discusses biodiversity with Jim Al-Khalili

Paul Younger, Professor of Energy Engineering at University of Glasgow, in conversation with Jim al-Khalili

in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at the Sage, Gateshead.

Paul Younger's future career was inspired by the hills around him near the River Tyne. From a background in geology he now carries out research into, as he says, 'keeping the lights on and keeping homes and businesses warm whilst decarbonising our energy systems.

Paul Younger spent many years at the University of Newcastle, where he built up his expertise in the relationship between water and rocks. He has advised on what happens to mines when they are closed - from the North East to Bolivia. His knowledge of the rocks beneath our feet has brought him to planning how we can use more geothermal energy in the future. He's also looking into other unconventional ways of generating energy - such as turning coal deep underground into gas.

Paul Younger, Rankine Professor of Energy Engineering at the University of Glasgow, in conversation with Jim al-Khalili in front of an audience at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

Paul Younger's future career was inspired by the hills around him near the River Tyne. From a background in geology he now carries out research into, as he says, 'keeping the lights on and keeping homes and businesses warm whilst de-carbonising our energy systems.

He spent many years at the University of Newcastle, where he built up his expertise in the relationship between water and rocks. He has advised on how to clean up the highly polluted water left in mines after they are closed - from the North East to Bolivia.

His knowledge of the rocks beneath our feet has lead him to investigating how we might use more geothermal energy in the future. Paul Younger tells Jim al-Khalili about the experimental holes that have been drilled in County Durham and central Newcastle, and explains why these projects are now mothballed. And Professor Younger also talks about his research into other unconventional ways of generating energy - such as turning coal deep underground into gas.

Paul Younger's future career was inspired by the hills around him near the River Tyne. From a background in geology he now carries out research into, as he says, 'keeping the lights on and keeping homes and businesses warm whilst de-carbonising our energy systems.

He spent many years at the University of Newcastle, where he built up his expertise in the relationship between water and rocks. He has advised on how to clean up the highly polluted water left in mines after they are closed - from the North East to Bolivia.

His knowledge of the rocks beneath our feet has lead him to investigating how we might use more geothermal energy in the future. Paul Younger tells Jim al-Khalili about the experimental holes that have been drilled in County Durham and central Newcastle, and explains why these projects are now mothballed. And Professor Younger also talks about his research into other unconventional ways of generating energy - such as turning coal deep underground into gas.

Professor Paul Younger talks to Jim Al-Khalili about keeping the lights on in the future.

Peter first came across this strange new virus in 1976 when he was working as a very junior researcher in a small lab in his home town, Antwerp. Weeks later he was in Zaire meeting patients and trying to understand transmission routes.Faced with a new virus and a new continent and surrounded by people dying, he says he felt very much alive. His career path was set.

Today, as chair of the Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, his work on Ebola is well known. He insists that lessons must be learnt from the recent crisis and acted upon. But most of Peter's career has been devoted to stopping the transmission of another deadly virus, HIV. In 1979, he helped with the autopsy of a man who had arrived at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in London, horribly thin and with a fever of unknown origin. Opening the body was a horrible shock, raising more questions than it answered. Soon after, Peter was back in Central Africa dealing with another mysterious epidemic,establishing safe blood banks and caring for the sick.

He went on to become Director of UNAIDS and just last year announced that existing efforts to opt the spread of HIV are woefully inadequate. The rate of new infections is falling, but not fast enough to prevent an overall increase in the number of people who will be living with HIV in future and who will need antiretroviral therapy to stay alive.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Peter Piot talks to Jim Al-Khalili about how to stop deadly viruses like Ebola and HIV.

Peter first came across this strange new virus in 1976 when he was working as a very junior researcher in a small lab in his home town, Antwerp. Weeks later he was in Zaire meeting patients and trying to understand transmission routes.Faced with a new virus and a new continent and surrounded by people dying, he says he felt very much alive. His career path was set.

Today, as chair of the Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, his work on Ebola is well known. He insists that lessons must be learnt from the recent crisis and acted upon. But most of Peter's career has been devoted to stopping the transmission of another deadly virus, HIV. In 1979, he helped with the autopsy of a man who had arrived at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in London, horribly thin and with a fever of unknown origin. Opening the body was a horrible shock, raising more questions than it answered. Soon after, Peter was back in Central Africa dealing with another mysterious epidemic,establishing safe blood banks and caring for the sick.

He went on to become Director of UNAIDS and just last year announced that existing efforts to opt the spread of HIV are woefully inadequate. The rate of new infections is falling, but not fast enough to prevent an overall increase in the number of people who will be living with HIV in future and who will need antiretroviral therapy to stay alive.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Peter Piot talks to Jim Al-Khalili about how to stop deadly viruses like Ebola and HIV.

Peter Piot talks to Jim Al-Khalili about Zika, Ebola and HIV.

With the Zika epidemic in Brazil being declared an international health emergency just months after the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor Peter Piot about a lifetime spent trying to stop the spread of deadly viruses.

Peter came across a strange new virus in 1976 when he was working in a small lab in his home town, Antwerp. Weeks later he was in Zaire meeting patients and trying to understand the transmission routes of this terrifying new virus which, together with colleagues, he named Ebola. Thousands of miles from home and surrounded by people dying, he says he felt very much alive. His career path was set.

He was heavily involved in the recent Ebola epidemic but most of Peter's career has been devoted to stopping the transmission of another deadly virus, HIV. He spent most of the eighties trying to convince the world that HIV/AIDS was a heterosexual disease and much of the nineties trying to mobilise the World Health Organisation and other UN agencies to take the threat posed to the world by HIV more seriously. It wasn't easy.

Today he is Director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London.

Naomi Climer is one of the most senior British women engineers working in the communications industry, and after decades working on major projects she's left the world of business to become the first female president of Institution of Engineering and Technology (the IET). As part of her presidency, Naomi has launched a campaign called - Engineer a better World - to make us realise that engineering is an exciting and creative activity.. and, in particular, to attract and retain more women in the profession.

Naomi Climer's most recent role was running Sony's Media Cloud Services. She was based in California where, she says, engineers are treated like rock stars. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about how British engineers can gain higher status than they do today.

Naomi Climer is one of the most senior British women engineers working in the communications industry, and after decades working on major projects she's left the world of business to become the first female president of Institution of Engineering and Technology (the IET). As part of her presidency, Naomi has launched a campaign called - Engineer a better World - to make us realise that engineering is an exciting and creative activity.. and, in particular, to attract and retain more women in the profession.

Naomi Climer's most recent role was running Sony's Media Cloud Services. She was based in California where, she says, engineers are treated like rock stars. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about how British engineers can gain higher status than they do today.

Dr Nick Lane is attempting to answer one of the hardest questions in science. How did life on earth begin? You might think that question had been solved by Darwin in the 19th century. He wrote that he thought life might have started on earth 'in a warm little pond', where all the necessary ingredients: water, sunlight and nutrients combined in this 'primordial soup' to create the very first biomolecule of life. Others - like Fred Hoyle - thought that life came to earth from elsewhere in space. But Nick Lane has different ideas of how, and where, it happened. The place in question was deep under the sea in hydrothermal vents. Amongst other research he carries out at University College London, he's running an experiment to try to recreate this moment.

Nick Lane had an unusual route to this point in his scientific career. For some years he left his research career to become a medical journalist and write popular books. A rare opportunity took him back into the laboratory.

Dr Nick Lane is attempting to answer one of the hardest questions in science. How did life on earth begin? You might think that question had been solved by Darwin in the 19th century. He wrote that he thought life might have started on earth 'in a warm little pond', where all the necessary ingredients: water, sunlight and nutrients combined in this 'primordial soup' to create the very first biomolecule of life. Others - like Fred Hoyle - thought that life came to earth from elsewhere in space. But Nick Lane has different ideas of how, and where, it happened. The place in question was deep under the sea in hydrothermal vents. Amongst other research he carries out at University College London, he's running an experiment to try to recreate this moment.

Nick Lane had an unusual route to this point in his scientific career. For some years he left his research career to become a medical journalist and write popular books. A rare opportunity took him back into the laboratory.

Epidemiologist Prof George Davey Smith talks to Jim Al-Khalili about health inequalities.

Professor George Davey Smith of Bristol University talks to Jim al-Khalili about why some of us have long healthy lives and others don't. Is it down to social class or genetics?

Epidemiologist Prof George Davey Smith talks to Jim Al-Khalili about health inequalities.

When George Davey-Smith started work as an epidemiologist, he hoped to prove that the cause of coronary disease in South Wales soon after the miner's strike was Thatcherism. The miners said they thought it was a combination of having a poor constitution and bad fortune. Thirty years later, George admits he would have done well to listen to them. Having spent decades studying the influence on our health of a huge number of variables, from lifestyle factors like car ownership to our genetic inheritance and most recently epi-genetic effects; George has concluded that whether or not individuals get sick is, to a significant extent, down to chance. But that's not to say that public health interventions are a waste of time.They can boost the overall health of a population, significantly.

George is director of the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

All the information that's needed for life is written in our DNA. But how do we get from DNA code to biological reality? That's the job of the ribosomes - those clever molecular machines that are found in every living cell. And in 2008 Venki Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize for determining their structure. Jim talks to Venki about the frantic race to crack the structure of the ribosome, probably the most important biological molecule after DNA; why he thinks the Nobel Prize is a terrible thing for science; and his new job as President of the Royal Society.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

All the information that's needed for life is written in our DNA. But how do we get from DNA code to biological reality? That's the job of the ribosomes - those clever molecular machines that are found in every living cell. And in 2008 Venki Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize for determining their structure. Jim talks to Venki about the frantic race to crack the structure of the ribosome, probably the most important biological molecule after DNA; why he thinks the Nobel Prize is a terrible thing for science; and his new job as President of the Royal Society.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Before Helen Sharman replied to a rather unusual radio advertisement her life was, in many ways, quite ordinary. She was working as a chemist in a sweet factory, creating and testing flavours. Much to her surprise, her application to be an astronaut was successful and two years later, following an intense 18 month training course at a military base just outside Moscow, she was selected for Project Juno, the 1991 mission to the Soviet space station, MIR. And so became the first British astronaut. On the 25th anniversary of this historic mission, Helen talks to Jim about her life before MIR; some of the less glamorous aspects of being in space; and the difficult process of coming down to earth.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Before Helen Sharman replied to a rather unusual radio advertisement her life was, in many ways, quite ordinary. She was working as a chemist in a sweet factory, creating and testing flavours. Much to her surprise, her application to be an astronaut was successful and two years later, following an intense 18 month training course at a military base just outside Moscow, she was selected for Project Juno, the 1991 mission to the Soviet space station, MIR. And so became the first British astronaut. On the 25th anniversary of this historic mission, Helen talks to Jim about her life before MIR; some of the less glamorous aspects of being in space; and the difficult process of coming down to earth.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Helen Sharman talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the ups and downs of being in space.

Barely a month goes by without news of another catastrophic flood somewhere in the world, like the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 or the flooding of New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina a year later, and the role of climate change is often mooted. Here in the UK this winter, flood victims were once again caught in a cycle of despair and anger as they tried to make sense of why their homes were flooded and what could be done to prevent it happening again.

Jim talks to environmental scientist, Professor Carolyn Roberts, who is pre-occupied by problems like this. She applies water science, in particular, to work out why such events occur and the role we humans play in them. Her passion for problem solving in watery places also takes her into the intriguing world of forensics where she assists the police when bodies are found floating in rivers and canals.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Barely a month goes by without news of another catastrophic flood somewhere in the world, like the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 or the flooding of New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina a year later, and the role of climate change is often mooted. Here in the UK this winter, flood victims were once again caught in a cycle of despair and anger as they tried to make sense of why their homes were flooded and what could be done to prevent it happening again.

Jim talks to environmental scientist, Professor Carolyn Roberts, who is pre-occupied by problems like this. She applies water science, in particular, to work out why such events occur and the role we humans play in them. Her passion for problem solving in watery places also takes her into the intriguing world of forensics where she assists the police when bodies are found floating in rivers and canals.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Not content with dreaming up theoretical models of the Universe, and writing bestselling science books, he gathers audiences of thousands for his talks with leading figures, from Noam Chomsky to Johnny Depp. And soon, he will star as an evil scientist in the film 'Salt & Fire' directed by Werner Herzog.

Inside the world of physics, Krauss predicted the existence of a mysterious 'dark energy' in space, several years before it was found, although the Nobel Prize for the discovery was later given to three other scientists.

As a public atheist, Krauss has come to blows with religious and political lobbies inside the United States. He tells Jim Al-Khalili why 'coming out' as an atheist in the US is considered so controversial.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Author and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss discusses dark energy with Jim Al-Khalili.

Not content with dreaming up theoretical models of the Universe, and writing bestselling science books, he gathers audiences of thousands for his talks with leading figures, from Noam Chomsky to Johnny Depp. And soon, he will star as an evil scientist in the film 'Salt and Fire' directed by Werner Herzog.

Not content with dreaming up theoretical models of the Universe, and writing bestselling science books, he gathers audiences of thousands for his talks with leading figures, from Noam Chomsky to Johnny Depp. And soon, he will star as an evil scientist in the film 'Salt & Fire' directed by Werner Herzog.

Inside the world of physics, Krauss predicted the existence of a mysterious 'dark energy' in space, several years before it was found, although the Nobel Prize for the discovery was later given to three other scientists.

As a public atheist, Krauss has come to blows with religious and political lobbies inside the United States. He tells Jim Al-Khalili why 'coming out' as an atheist in the US is considered so controversial.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Author and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss discusses dark energy with Jim Al-Khalili.

Not content with dreaming up theoretical models of the Universe, and writing bestselling science books, he gathers audiences of thousands for his talks with leading figures, from Noam Chomsky to Johnny Depp. And soon, he will star as an evil scientist in the film 'Salt and Fire' directed by Werner Herzog.

Lawrence Krauss has had an unusual career for a cosmologist.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Marcus Du Sautoy shares his passion for mathematics with Jim Al-Khalili.

Marcus du Sautoy wasn't particularly good at maths at school; but a teacher spotted his aptitude for abstract thought and he started reading, and enjoying, journals filled with mathematical proofs. His thesis on the mathematics of symmetry launched him as a world class mathematician. And before he dies he wants to know: can you predict the properties of the next symmetrical object that could possibly exist in a hundred thousand dimensions or more? Marcus talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his passion for the performing arts, as well as mathematics; and why, for him, mathematics is as much a creative art as a science.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Hazel Rymer has journeyed closer to the centre of the earth than most, regularly peering into the turbulent, fiery world than makes up the earth's core. By taking measurements of micro-gravity on, and inside, volcanoes all over the world, she hopes to better understand why they erupt and what happens when they do. Having lost a close colleague to a random volcanic eruption, she appreciates the risks involved and, at the same time, insists that they are no greater than driving on the M25. She talks to Jim Al-Khalili about learning to think like a geologist after studying physics; the joys and frustrations of doing fieldwork on volcanoes; and why she loves gravity meter, G513.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Half a century after the search for gravitational waves began, scientists confirmed that they had finally been detected in February 2016. Physicists around the world were ecstatic. It was proof at last that Einstein was right: the tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime that he predicted a hundred years ago are real. And now that we can detect them, a new era for astronomy is anticipated. Traditional telescopes rely on light for information. No good when you want to find objects that are dark. Now for the first time we can 'see' black holes colliding.

Sheila talks to Jim at the Cheltenham Science Festival about her part in this momentous discovery.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Nick Davies has been teasing apart the dark relationship between the cuckoo and the birds it tricks into bringing up its young, for more than three decades. The Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Cambridge has spent more than 30 springs and summers on nearby fenland of watching, recording and crucially experimenting. Nick's studies have deployed simple yet ingenious experiments, among the reed beds where the birds nest. They have involved mock eggs, stuffed birds and miniature loudspeakers, to piece together the cuckoo's dark story. He has even swopped cuckoo chicks with blackbird nestlings in the nests of the feathered parasite's victims. No birds are harmed in his revealing tests.

Prof Davies also talks to Jim al-Khalili about the origins of his life with birds, and the revolution in animal behaviour science beginning as he began his scientific career. Ideas about the selfish gene and game theory, along with DNA fingerprint in the 1980's, transformed the research of zoologists asking 'why' questions about what animals do.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

Nick Davies has been teasing apart the dark relationship between the cuckoo and the birds it tricks into bringing up its young, for more than three decades. The Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Cambridge has spent more than 30 springs and summers on nearby fenland of watching, recording and crucially experimenting. Nick's studies have deployed simple yet ingenious experiments, among the reed beds where the birds nest. They have involved mock eggs, stuffed birds and miniature loudspeakers, to piece together the cuckoo's dark story. He has even swopped cuckoo chicks with blackbird nestlings in the nests of the feathered parasite's victims. No birds are harmed in his revealing tests.

Prof Davies also talks to Jim al-Khalili about the origins of his life with birds, and the revolution in animal behaviour science beginning as he began his scientific career. Ideas about the selfish gene and game theory, along with DNA fingerprint in the 1980's, transformed the research of zoologists asking 'why' questions about what animals do.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

Hazel Rymer has journeyed closer to the centre of the earth than most, regularly peering into the turbulent, fiery world than makes up the earth's core. By taking measurements of micro-gravity on, and inside, volcanoes all over the world, she hopes to better understand why they erupt and what happens when they do. Having lost a close colleague to a random volcanic eruption, she appreciates the risks involved and, at the same time, insists that they are no greater than driving on the M25. She talks to Jim Al-Khalili about learning to think like a geologist after studying physics; the joys and frustrations of doing fieldwork on volcanoes; and why she loves gravity meter, G513.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Hazel Rymer has journeyed closer to the centre of the earth than most, regularly peering into the turbulent, fiery world than makes up the earth's core. By taking measurements of micro-gravity on, and inside, volcanoes all over the world, she hopes to better understand why they erupt and what happens when they do. Having lost a close colleague to a random volcanic eruption, she appreciates the risks involved and, at the same time, insists that they are no greater than driving on the M25. She talks to Jim Al-Khalili about learning to think like a geologist after studying physics; the joys and frustrations of doing fieldwork on volcanoes; and why she loves gravity meter, G513.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Faraneh Vargha-Khadem talks to Jim Al-Khalili about how memories are made.

Self-taught Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Faraneh Vargha-Khadem has spent decades studying children with developmental amnesia. Her mission: to understand how we form memories of the events in our past, from things we've experienced to places we've visited and people we've met. She talks to Jim about the memories we lay down during our lives and the autobiographies stored in our brains that define us as individuals. Faraneh was also part of the team that identified the FoxP2 gene, the so called 'speech gene', that may explain why humans talk and chimps don't. Plus Faraneh discusses how her Baha'i faith informs her scientific thinking.

Despite decades of conservation work, in zoos and in the field, the rate at which species are going extinct is speeding up. Georgina Mace has devoted her Life Scientific to trying to limit the damage to our planet's bio-diversity from this alarming loss. For ten years she worked on the Red List of Threatened Species, developing a robust set of scientific criteria for assessing the threat of extinction facing every species on the planet. When the list was first published, she expected resistance from big business; but not the vicious negative reaction she received from many wildlife NGOS. Her careful quantitative analysis revealed that charismatic animals, like the panda and the polar bear, are not necessarily the most at risk.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Despite decades of conservation work, in zoos and in the field, the rate at which species are going extinct is speeding up. Georgina Mace has devoted her Life Scientific to trying to limit the damage to our planet's bio-diversity from this alarming loss. For ten years she worked on the Red List of Threatened Species, developing a robust set of scientific criteria for assessing the threat of extinction facing every species on the planet. When the list was first published, she expected resistance from big business; but not the vicious negative reaction she received from many wildlife NGOS. Her careful quantitative analysis revealed that charismatic animals, like the panda and the polar bear, are not necessarily the most at risk.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

As an acoustic engineer, Trevor started his career tackling unwanted noises, from clamour in the classroom to poor acoustics in concert halls. But his jaunt inside a sewer sparked a new quest to find and celebrate the 'sonic wonders of the world'.

In this episode he shares these sounds with Jim Al-Khalili and discusses the science behind them.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Acoustic engineer Trevor Cox discusses the science of sound with Jim Al-Khalili.

Inside a Victorian sewer, with fat deposits sliding off the ceiling and disappearing down the back of his shirt, Trevor Cox had an epiphany. Listening to the strange sound of his voice reverberating inside the sewer, he wondered where else in the world he could experience unusual and surprising noises.

As an acoustic engineer, Trevor started his career tackling unwanted noises, from clamour in the classroom to poor acoustics in concert halls. But his jaunt inside a sewer sparked a new quest to find and celebrate the 'sonic wonders of the world'.

In this episode he shares these sounds with Jim Al-Khalili and discusses the science behind them.

Producer: Michelle Martin.

Charles Darwin first alerted us to our ape ancestry. Genome analysis tells us we share 99% of our DNA with our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, the chimpanzee and the bonobo. And yet we seem surprised to learn that apes are kind and clever, traits we tend to like to think of as being uniquely human. Behavioural biologist and best-selling author, Frans de Waal has spent many years in offices overlooking chimp colonies, observing their behaviour on a daily basis. He pioneered studies of kindness and peace-making in primates, when other scientists were focussing on violence, greed and aggression. Empathy, he argues, has a long evolutionary history; and he is determined to undermine our arrogant assumptions of human superiority. Frans talks to Jim Al-Khalili about growing up on the Dutch polders, chimpanzee politics, and the extraordinary sex lives of the bonobos.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili talks cloning with the creator of Dolly the sheep, Ian Wilmut.

Dolly the sheep was born near Edinburgh, twenty years ago this summer. She was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult animal, (named after Dolly Parton because she was created from a breast cell). And became a global media star, inspiring both amazement that an animal be created with three mothers but no father,and fear. Many worried about where such a development might lead. The papers reported: 'dreaded possibilities are raised'; 'cloned sheep in Nazi storm'. Professor Ian Wilmut,the man who created Dolly, was compared to Frankenstein. Jim talked to Ian in front of an audience at the Edinburgh Festival and asked him why he decided to try and clone a sheep; how he and the team did it; and whether cloning humans is now a real possibility.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Lynne Boddy enthuses about fungi.

In a career of over fifty years Sir Roger Penrose has changed the way we see the Universe. He carried out seminal research on black holes and the big bang, and he's questioned the current received wisdom on some of the most important ideas in science, such as quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence and where consciousness comes from. His ideas in geometry directly influenced the work of the Dutch artist M.C. Escher.

Now Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, Roger Penrose is one of the world's most lauded mathematical physicists. He's written a number of popular science books in which he certainly doesn't shy away from the mathematics.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Roger Penrose about his continuing fascination with the biggest questions in science.

Plastic Bags and the DNA in our cells are both polymers, very long molecules ubiquitous in nature and in their synthetic form, in materials like polythene, perspex and polystyrene. Professor Dame Julia Higgins has spent a lifetime researching the structure and movement of polymeric material.

Trained as a physicist, Dame Julia was one of the early researchers in polymer science and throughout her career worked alongside chemists and engineers. No surprise then that she was the first woman to become both a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

In the 1960s with other young researchers she worked at the Harwell Atomic Energy Research Centre in Oxfordshire, one of the first people to use neutron scattering as a technique to investigate how polymer molecules move.

Emeritus Professor of Polymer Science and former Principal at the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College, London, Professor Higgins tells Jim Al-Khalili how she used her influence as a leading academic to improve representation of women in top posts in science and medicine.

How do we know where we are? The question sounds simple enough. But there's much more to it than simply looking around. Our sense of place is embedded in the very structure of our brains, in such a way that we can remember the exact place we used to play as a child, even if the neighbourhood has been transformed and few of the original visual cues remain. The park you played in as a child may now be full of high rise flats but somehow you know where your favourite tree used to be. Richard Morris has devoted his Life Scientific to trying to understand this profound sense of place and in 2016 was awarded the prestigious Brain Prize for his work on brain cells and circuits. Over the years, he's performed thousands of of experiments on rats in water mazes, an experimental tool that he invented in the eighties and that's now used in labs all over the world. And, in one of his latest experiments, he set up a rat restaurant.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

The US science superstar, Neil de Grasse Tyson grew up in the Bronx, and studied astrophysics at Harvard, Columbia and Princeton Universities before becoming director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. But he's best known for his TV and movie appearances, his books, podcasts and his tweets or 'scientific droppings' as he likes to call them. He has over 6 million followers on Twitter and is often credited with turning millennials around the world on to science. Neil tells Jim al-Khalili why he's so committed to making science feel exciting, why we are all stardust and why Pluto isn't a planet.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

In 2008, Michele was awarded the hugely prestigious Hughes medal for her work - an honour last given to a woman in 1906! She's also been voted by the UK Science Council as one of the country's top 100 living scientists. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about growing up in South Africa, moving from mathematics to managing space missions and what they hope will happen when Cassini crashes into Saturn later this year.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Michele Dougherty tells Jim why she diverted the Cassini mission to Saturn.

In 2008, Michele was awarded the hugely prestigious Hughes medal for her work - an honour last given to a woman in 1906! She's also been voted by the UK Science Council as one of the country's top 100 living scientists. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about growing up in South Africa, moving from mathematics to managing space missions and what they hope will happen when Cassini crashes into Saturn later this year.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Michele Dougherty tells Jim why she diverted the Cassini mission to Saturn.

Michele Dougherty tells Jim Al-Khalili why she diverted the Cassini mission to Saturn.

Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the Anthropocene, the Age of Man.

, professor of Palaeobiology at Leicester University, talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the Anthropocene, the concept that humans now drive much geology on the earth.

Jan Zalasiewicz, professor of Palaeobiology at Leicester University, talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the Anthropocene, the concept that humans now drive much geology on the earth.

Jan Zalasiewicz, Professor of Palaeobiology at Leicester University, talks to Jim al-Khalili about the Anthropocene, the concept that humans now drive much geology on the earth. He's one of the leading lights in the community of scientists who are working to get the Anthropocene, the Age of Man, recognised.

They discuss the controversy about the date of when it began- some say it was a thousand years ago, or the Industrial revolution, others that it was the Second World War, and yet others that it's as recent as the 1960s. It all turns on finding the Golden Spike, a layer in rock strata above which the geology changes.

Jan Zalasiewicz began his career as a traditional geologist studying rocks 500 million years old in Welsh border. After years out in the field mapping the landscape for the British Geological Survey he moved into academia at Leicester University.

Is it true that some people put on weight more easily than others? And if so why? It's a question that's close to many of our hearts. And it's a question that medical researcher, Professor Sadaf Farooqi is trying to answer. In 1997, Sadaf noticed that two children she was studying lacked the hormone leptin. From there, she went on to discover the first single gene defect that causes obesity. For most us, how much we eat is within our control. But for children with this rare inherited condition and, it turned out, several other rare genetic disorders, the evidence is clear. A voracious appetite is not a lifestyle choice: it's a biological response to brains signalling starvation. Sadaf tells Jim how she discovered ten rare genetic disorders that cause severe childhood obesity and what this means for the rest of us.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Alison Smith, Professor of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, is a world expert on algae, which range in size from giant kelp to microscopic cyanobacteria. They are found all over the world from the Arctic to the Tropics, live in water and make energy from the sun by photosynthesis. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about their biology and their many uses, such as biofuels.

Think of algae and you'll probably think trouble. Algal blooms turned the diving pool green at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Smelly seaweed ruins many a trip to the beach. But Alison Smith, Professor of Plant Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, argues that we should appreciate algae more. They range in size from giant kelp to microscopic diatoms. They are found all over the world from the Arctic to the Tropics, live in water and make energy from the sun by photosynthesis. Alison Smith talks to Jim al-Khalili about algae's sometimes bizarre biochemistry and how she discovered that they obtain their vitamins from bacteria they live alongside in the sea. They also discuss how we are beginning to farm algae to make all kinds of chemicals, from food stuffs to biofuels. We may become very dependent on them when the oil runs out.

How did time and space begin? From the age of ten, Sean Carroll has wanted to know. He first read about the big bang model of the universe as a child. Later, he turned down two job offers from Stephen Hawking. The big bang model of the universe is well established but, as Sean readily admits, the big bang itself remains a mystery. In the beginning, Sean applied Einstein's theories of relativity to this problem. But mid-career and painfully aware that trying to out Einstein Einstein was a tough call, he turned his attention from the very big to the very small. His most recent work imagines a universe without time and without space and describes how these two rather important aspects of our existence might have been created, using the laws of quantum mechanics and, in particular, the idea of quantum entanglement. Apparently it's quite straightforward. Things that are more entangled are closer. It doesn't explain the origin of time, however.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

His current role, as President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has given him a platform to bang the drum for parity of funding, better training for doctors and the need to reduce stigma around mental health (and armchair psychiatrists who think it's OK to diagnose the new American President with a mental illness get short shrift as well).

Professor of Psychological Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, part of King's College in London, Simon Wessely has always been fascinated by those puzzling symptoms and syndromes which can't easily be explained. So it was perhaps inevitable that he would find himself at the centre of research trying to explain the distressing and debilitating illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Threats and abuse finally led to him leave this particular research field, and he moved instead to military health and another complex illness which appeared after the first Gulf War in the early 90s, Gulf War Syndrome.

Years of detailed epidemiological studies about the health of British troops followed through the King's Centre for Military Health Research and many of the findings had a direct impact on policy within the armed forces.

Yet for somebody who has spent years as a psychiatrist treating patients with serious mental illness, Simon tells Jim Al-Khalili that people are tougher than many in authority give credit for and his research has had a major impact on the way we treat people after traumatic events. We used to think 'better out than in' but studies showed after the London 7/7 Bombings for example, that jumping in and getting people to talk through the trauma straight away can actually do more harm than good.

Professor Sir Simon Wessely has spent his whole career arguing that mental and physical health are inseparable and that the Cinderella status of mental health funding is a national disgrace.

His current role, as President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has given him a platform to bang the drum for parity of funding, better training for doctors and the need to reduce stigma around mental health (and armchair psychiatrists who think it's OK to diagnose the new American President with a mental illness get short shrift as well).

Professor of Psychological Medicine at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, part of King's College in London, Simon Wessely has always been fascinated by those puzzling symptoms and syndromes which can't easily be explained. So it was perhaps inevitable that he would find himself at the centre of research trying to explain the distressing and debilitating illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Threats and abuse finally led to him leave this particular research field, and he moved instead to military health and another complex illness which appeared after the first Gulf War in the early 90s, Gulf War Syndrome.

Years of detailed epidemiological studies about the health of British troops followed through the King's Centre for Military Health Research and many of the findings had a direct impact on policy within the armed forces.

Yet for somebody who has spent years as a psychiatrist treating patients with serious mental illness, Simon tells Jim Al-Khalili that people are tougher than many in authority give credit for and his research has had a major impact on the way we treat people after traumatic events. We used to think 'better out than in' but studies showed after the London 7/7 Bombings for example, that jumping in and getting people to talk through the trauma straight away can actually do more harm than good.

Alan Winfield talks to Jim al-Khalili about the ethics of robots, from drones to androids.

Alan Winfield is the only Professor of Robot Ethics in the world. He is a voice of reason amid the growing sense of unease at the pace of progress in the field of artificial intelligence. He believes that robots aren't going to take over the world - at least not any time soon. But that doesn't mean we should be complacent.

Alan Winfield talks to Jim al-Khalili about how, at a young age, he delighted in taking things apart. After his degree in microelectronics and a PhD in digital communication at Hull University, he set up a software company in the mid-80s, which he ran for the best part of a decade before returning to academia. In 1993, he co-founded the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at the University of the West of England, by far the largest centre of robotics in the UK. Today, he is a leading authority, not only on robot ethics, but on the idea of swarm robotics and biologically-inspired robotics. Alan explains to Jim that what drives many of his enquiries is the deeply profound question: how can 'stuff' become intelligent.

Alan Winfield talks to Jim al-Khalili about the ethics of robots, from drones to androids.

C. elegans is a rather special worm, so-named for the elegant way it moves in sinusoidal curves. It's studied, and much loved, by thousands of scientists around the world. Alison Woollard joined this exclusive club of worm scientists when she moved to the world famous Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, also known as 'worm Mecca' in 1995. She started her career working as a lab technician, having dropped out of university. After later graduating from Birkbeck, she worked on yeast. But once she found the worm there was no turning back. She describes the hours she spent staring down the microscope at these tiny creatures, unprepossessing to the uninitiated, but an absolute joy to her. These hours led her to the discovery of two genes responsible for different defects in the tails of the male worms, called male abnormality 2 and male abnormality 9. (There are no female worms by the way, only males and hermaphrodites). It's not easy finding a gene or genes when you don't even know what it is that you're looking for, only the effect it has on the tails of mutant worms, each no more than a mm long. And it took Alison a year of repetitive trial and error to see which normal gene corrected the fault in the next generation. 'Most days are failures', she says. Finding her first gene was a euphoric moment. She celebrated by buying everyone a cup of tea.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Daniel Dennett has never been one to swallow accepted wisdom undigested. As a student he happily sought to undermine the work of his supervisor, Willard Quine. Only one of the most respected figures in 20th century philosopher, a thinker eminent enough to appear on US postage stamps. Later in Oxford, he became frustrated by his fellow philosophers' utter lack of interest in how our brains worked and was delighted when a medical friend introduced him to neurons. And so began an intellectual quest to understand the human mind that spans five decades. He has always believed that our minds are machines. And anyone who disagrees lacks imagination, he says. Reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins introduced him to the power of Darwin's theory of evolution. And he has, perhaps, taken Darwinism further than anyone, seeking to explain how we evolved from uncomprehending bacteria to highly intelligent human beings. We know we evolved from chimpanzees. And that we share 99 % of our DNA with our closest animal relatives. So why would poetry, ethics, science and literature be somehow cut-off or insulated from our underlying biology, he asks. 'You've given this much ground. Think about giving a little bit more

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Daniel Dennett has never been one to swallow accepted wisdom undigested. As a student he happily sought to undermine the work of his supervisor, Willard Quine. Only one of the most respected figures in 20th century philosophy, a thinker eminent enough to appear on US postage stamps. Later in Oxford, he became frustrated by his fellow philosophers' utter lack of interest in how our brains worked and was delighted when a medical friend introduced him to neurons. And so began an intellectual quest to understand the human mind that spans five decades. He has always believed that our minds are machines. And anyone who disagrees lacks imagination, he says. Reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins introduced him to the power of Darwin's theory of evolution. And he has, perhaps, taken Darwinism further than anyone, seeking to explain how we evolved from uncomprehending bacteria to highly intelligent human beings. We know humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor. And that we share 99 % of our DNA with our closest animal relatives. So why would poetry, ethics, science and literature be somehow cut-off or insulated from our underlying biology? 'You've given this much ground. Think about giving a little bit more'.

Nick Fraser regularly travels back in time (at least in his mind) to the Triassic, a crazily inventive period in our evolutionary history that started 250 million years ago. Wherever there are ancient Triassic creatures buried underground, Nick is never far behind; and his 'fossil first' approach to life has been richly rewarded. In 2002, he unearthed a new species of gliding reptile in Virginia, USA. Last year in southern China, he identified the remains of a creature so utterly odd that the paleontologists who studied this species before him had got it all wrong. And earlier this year he was part of a tiny but hugely exciting discovery much closer to home, hidden in the Scottish borders in rocks that are over 350 million years old: an ancient amphibian, imaginatively named Tiny, that is the earliest known example of an animal with a backbone to live on land. It may even have had five fingers.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Liz has devoted the last fifteen years of her career as a microbiologist to work out how this microscopic killer invades and consumes its victims - victims which include a host of disease-causing bacteria which have also acquired resistance to antibiotics which once killed them.

As well as studying the numerous tricks and weapons which Bdellovibrio have evolved to despatch and feed on other bugs, Prof Sockett's lab at the University of Nottingham is also testing the bacteria's potential as a new kind of treatment in the era of antibiotic resistance. Deadly infections may not be able to outwit this bacterial top predator in the way they have with ever increasing numbers of antibiotic drugs.

Liz talks to Jim Al-Khalili about how a BBC TV children's show first introduced her to the superfast killer bacteria, how Roman villas led her towards a life of discovery,

and how her lab in Nottingham might be compared to the kitchen of a restaurant and her team to a brigade of chefs.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

Jim Al-khalili talks to Professor Liz Sockett about the evil genius of predatory bacteria.

Yet Professor Graham MacGregor doesn't believe it's up to us to reverse this situation. It's up to the food industry, he says, who manufacture the processed foods, to take the 'rubbish' out.

Now Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine, Graham MacGregor has spent much of his career campaigning tirelessly to persuade the food industry to do just that - to reduce these demons in our diet - firstly salt, and now sugar.

And he's had remarkable success. As a nation we now eat thirty thousand tonnes less salt each year than we did fifteen years ago, saving the NHS a staggering £1.5 billion per year.

Blood pressure lies at the heart of this huge saving and, as Graham explains to Jim al-Khalili, blood pressure is not a natural consequence of ageing. High blood pressure is simply a consequence of too much salt.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Prof Graham MacGregor about his remarkable war on sugar and salt.

And he's had remarkable success. As a nation we now eat thirty thousand tonnes less salt each year than we did fifteen years ago, saving the NHS a staggering ?1.5 billion per year.

Tiny tree dwelling snails, partula, were so abundant across French Polynesia that garlands of partula shells would be presented to visitors to the islands. But when immunologist Dr Ann Clarke joined her husband, the late evolutionary biologist Professor Bryan Clarke, on expeditions to research the unique way this species had developed, a study in speciation turned, before their eyes, into a study of extinction.

Ann witnessed first-hand the terrifying speed that biological controls, another mollusc introduced to kill a different, larger predatory snail, instead turned on Partula, and within a few short years, drove them to extinction in the wild.

The subsequent scramble to save the species resulted in the launch of a global effort called The Frozen Ark to save the genetic resources of all animals which, like partula, face obliteration.

The Frozen Ark was founded by Ann, her husband and the late Professor Ann MacLaren and with consortium members around the world, tissue and genetic material from threatened fauna is preserved as an ultimate animal conservation back-up. More than 48,000 samples have been collected by Frozen Ark members in zoos and natural history museums around the world from more than 5,500 different species. Frozen samples inform multiple captive breeding programmes, including at London Zoo, where descendants of partula rescued from extinction, are being bred ready for re-introduction back to their home in French Polynesia.

And all this wasn't Ann's main career!

As well as admitting to Jim that she was read bedtime stories as a child by the great JR Tolkien and that in her first ever job as a lab technician she helped Nobel Prize winner Sir John Gurdon with his nuclear transfer experiments, Ann also had a long and successful career as an immunologist and embryologist, fuelled by a life long interest in embryonic tolerance and immunity.

For a long time Fay Dowker was mathematically precocious, but emotionally uncertain. These days, despite working in an area with few academic allies, she is more confident than ever. Her approach to a Theory of Everything, known as causal set theory, acknowledges the quantum nature of the universe and takes the arrow of time more seriously than Einstein. Bye bye time travel. Fay started her Life Scientific working on the assumption that the texture of the universe was continuous and smooth, with Stephen Hawking as her supervisor. But mid-career, she changed her mind. She now thinks in terms of 'atoms' of space-time. Down at the tiniest scale imaginable, the universe is granular, made of discrete entities that represent a point in space and a moment in time. Most theoretical physicists were shocked to discover in 1998 that the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating. Not the causal set theorists. Unlike everyone else, they were expecting this result. What's more, if causual set theory is right, there will be no need to explain dark energy, an idea which seems 'just wacky and a little bit malicious', to Fay.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

To the untrained eye, a plant's existence may seem rather uneventful. It spends its days rooted to the spot, seemingly at the mercy of its environment.

Not so, plant biologist Ottoline Leyser explains to Jim Al-Khalili. Plants are intelligent creatures that possess a unique ability to adapt in ways we animals can only dream of. They can alter their entire body plan of roots and shoots, when required, in response to their surroundings.

Now Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory and Professor of Plant Development at Cambridge University, Ottoline has spent her career unearthing the mysterious mechanisms that underpin this process. She's pieced together the finely-tuned network of hormonal signals which regulate how the roots and shoots of a plant develop.

These new insights into what plants get up to are so remarkable that Ottoline is determined to change the way we think about them.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Now Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory & Professor of Plant Development at Cambridge University, Ottoline has spent her career unearthing the mysterious mechanisms that underpin this process. She's pieced together the finely-tuned network of hormonal signals which regulate how the roots and shoots of a plant develop.

Tim O'Brien has earned the nickname 'the awesome astrophysicist dude from Jodrell Bank' He is Professor of Astrophysics at Manchester University, and the associate director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, best known for the giant, iconic radio dish of the world-famous Lovell telescope which sits majestically on the Cheshire plain, where he carries out research on the behaviour of transient binary stars called novae.

For twenty-five years Tim O'Brien has been telling the public about astronomy, and recently he's also become an organiser of concerts. Building on some very successful one-day events, the first Blue Dot Festival was held at Jodrell Bank in July 2016 and the second will be this summer. Tim talks to Jim al-Khalil about how he pops up on stage between acts to tell the audience about science - and doesn't get bottled off!

Tim O'Brien has earned the nickname 'the awesome astrophysicist dude from Jodrell Bank' He is Professor of Astrophysics at Manchester University, and the associate director of Jodrell Bank Observatory, best known for the giant, iconic radio dish of the world-famous Lovell telescope which sits majestically on the Cheshire plain, where he carries out research on the behaviour of transient binary stars called novae.

For twenty-five years Tim O'Brien has been telling the public about astronomy, and recently he's also become an organiser of concerts. Building on some very successful one-day events, the first Blue Dot Festival was held at Jodrell Bank in July 2016 and the second will be this summer. Tim talks to Jim al-Khalil about how he pops up on stage between acts to tell the audience about science - and doesn't get bottled off!

To volcanologist Tamsin Mather, volcanoes are more than a natural hazard.

They are 'nature's factories', belching out a rich chemical cocktail of gases. It's these gases or 'plumes' that fascinate her the most. She likes nothing more than crouching on a crater's edge collecting a smouldering mix of ash and gases, a clue to what's brewing deep inside.

As Professor of Earth Sciences at Oxford University, her work is helping to not only predict when a volcano may erupt, but to understand how volcanoes shape our planet both now and over geological time.

Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Jennifer Doudna's research has transformed biology. And this is not an understatement. Her work has given us the tools to edit genes more precisely than ever before.

Her scientific career began with work to understand the actions of RNA, part of the machinery of every cell. But, after a meeting in 2005 with a colleague at the University of California, Berkeley, where Jennifer is currently a professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology, she changed her direction of research. Through collaborations all over the world she's since developed the gene editing system called CRISPR/cas9. She's been awarded multiple prizes for her work. The CRISPR/cas9 system has created opportunities that could be used for both for good and for ill. Unlike many scientists who leave the ethical implications of their research to others, Jennifer Doudna has decided to engage with her critics. She talks to Jim al-Khalili about her decision to do this.

Jennifer Doudna talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her research that is transforming genetics.

Marine ecologist Tracey Rogers talks to Jim Al Khalili about her research on one of Antarctica's top predators. This is the leopard seal - a ten foot long killer which glides among the ice floes in search of prey ranging from other seals to penguins to tiny krill. Tracey's research has encompassed the animal's prolific and eerie underwater singing to radical changes in its diet that appear to be linked to climate change.

Now a senior researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia, Tracey first encountered the species as a less than successful seal trainer at a zoo in Sydney. There she met a giant female leopard seal named Astrid. Astrid's singing one Christmas day in the early 1990s set Tracey on the path to become the world's authority on this Antarctic species.

Tracey tells Jim how her first expedition to study leopard seals was met with almost universal scepticism until she dropped an underwater microphone into the water. In the following 25 years, she has worked to decode the meanings and qualities of the leopard seal song and explored the changes being forced upon the species by climate change. Tracey describes what made her return to Antarctica again and again and tells the story of how she almost met her end in the perilous shifting world of the pack ice. And then there's the time a leopard seal mistook her for a penguin.

There is a longer version of this interview in the podcast of this episode - more on the seal vocalisations and how Tracey saved the life on a young colleague who fell into the freezing sea.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

Lucie Green studies the sun - that giant, turbulent ball of burning gas at the centre of our solar system. Her first ambition was to become an art therapist, but she soon switched from art to astrophysics, and before long had fixed her gaze on our local star. It may be 93 million miles away, but the sun's extensive and ever changing magnetic field determines the 'weather' throughout our solar system. Under a worst-case scenario, bubbles of super-hot plasma and streams of high energy particles - spat out when the surface of the sun erupts - can hurtle towards planet earth, damaging communication and navigation satellites and bringing down electrical power supplies.Thanks to the work that Lucie and others have done to raise awareness of these coronal mass ejections, solar belches as Lucie likes to call them are now a recognised threat to national security, alongside flooding, pandemic flu and terrorist attacks.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Steve Cowley has said that 'fusion is arguably the perfect way to power the world'. But he's had to add that 'it is hard to make fusion work. Indeed, after more than 60 years of fusion research, no device has yet made more energy than it consumes'.

But Steve Cowley isn't giving up. He's spent over 30 years working towards making nuclear fusion a viable way of generating energy. Steve Cowley has done theoretical research on how to contain the incredibly hot material you need to get fusion going. As the Director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy he guided the British contribution to research. And he has led the UK's participation in ITER, an international experimental reactor being built in France that is planned to be the next step towards making nuclear fusion commercially viable.

Jim al-Khalili discusses with Steve Cowley, now President of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, why nuclear fusion, which has such promise as a clean form of energy with no dangerous waste, has proved so hard to achieve.

Steve Cowley has said that 'fusion is arguably the perfect way to power the world'. But he's had to add that 'it is hard to make fusion work. Indeed, after more than 60 years of fusion research, no device has yet made more energy than it consumes'.

But Steve Cowley isn't giving up. He's spent over 30 years working towards making nuclear fusion a viable way of generating energy. Steve Cowley has done theoretical research on how to contain the incredibly hot material you need to get fusion going. As the Director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy he guided the British contribution to research. And he has led the UK's participation in ITER, an international experimental reactor being built in France that is planned to be the next step towards making nuclear fusion commercially viable.

Jim al-Khalili discusses with Steve Cowley, now President of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, why nuclear fusion, which has such promise as a clean form of energy with no dangerous waste, has proved so hard to achieve.

Professor Tim Birkhead talks to Jim Al Khalili about his 40 years of research on promiscuity in birds, his love of Skomer Island and its guillemots, and the extraordinary musical talent of the male bullfinch.

Tim Birkhead is an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist at the University of Sheffield. The primary focus of his research has been reproduction in birds. He pioneered the study of promiscuity or extra-pair mating in birds, and one of its evolutionary consequences - sperm competition.

In the early 1970s Tim questioned and then exploded the assumption that female birds were always sexually monogamous - a zoological dogma originating with Charles Darwin. Tim first explored this in the guillemot colony on Skomer Island in Wales: a population of seabirds which he has studied continuously for more than 40 years in the cause of both evolutionary insights and conservation. Tim talks with passion about an ongoing funding crisis that hit this research programme recently and how the public response to it has been the most inspiring event in his career.

A side branch of Tim's research includes the jaw-dropping musical mimicry of the male bullfinch. The programme includes a recording of a captive bird whistling a German folk tune with super-human skill.

ADVISORY! There is a longer version of the conversation in the podcast of this edition. In this edit, Tim talks about the truly weird false penis of the male red-billed buffalo weaver: an extreme evolutionary product of sperm competition in this species and what amounts to an avian tickling stick. Tim also addresses the controversial topic of sperm competition in humans and the myth of 'kamikaze sperm'.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

When Ellen Stofan was just four years old, she witnessed the worst rocket launch-pad disaster in NASA's history convinced that her father, (who was a rocket engineer) was on board. He wasn't. Nonetheless, for many years NASA was not her favourite place. In 2013, however, she became she became their chief scientist, a post she held for 4 years. Barak Obama dreamt of putting people on the red planet by 2032 and Ellen did everything she could to develop a realistic plan to make this happen. (A 2032 arrival is ambitious but NASA is considerably closer than it was before Ellen took charge of the science.)

Her research career began studying radar data from a Soviet mission to Venus, trying to see beyond the thick toxic cloud that surrounds it. She wanted to understand how Venus evolved so very differently from its nearest neighbour, earth. She has also used radar data from satellites to study planet earth. And in 2008, was the lead author on a paper that revealed the extent of the lake on Saturn's moon, Titan. It contains hundreds of times more gas and liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on earth.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

As a young man Adrian Thomas took to the skies in order to better understand the mechanics of flight. He's a paragliding champion and a Professor of Zoology who specialises in the dynamics of insect flight. On a typical day, he can be found inside a wind tunnel that's been custom-made to study insects instead of jumbo jets. Using lines of smoke and high speed video cameras, he measures exactly how different insects flap their wings. When he's not writing academic papers, he's inventing clever machines based on his insights into how nature achieves certain results. His latest project is a drone that's inspired by a dragonfly. This nimble robot can accelerate rapidly in any direction and, having flexible wings rather than rotary blades, it glides when the battery dies rather than dropping dangerously to the ground. He's also working on a wheelchair modelled on a spider and a boat with a fin rather than a propeller.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

When Eben Upton was in his twenties, he wanted to get children thinking about how computers think, to boost the number of people applying to read computer science at university. He dreamt of putting a chip in every classroom. The result was Raspberry Pi, a tiny gadget, little bigger than a credit card, that can be hooked up to any keyboard and monitor, to create a programmable PC. And it's cheap. Raspberry Pi Zero, sticker price just £5, was given away free with a computer magazine in 2015. Eben tells Jim how it all began, in his loft with soldering irons and post it notes, and how, by ruthlessly pursuing a philanthropic goal he became CEO of a highly successful business enterprise.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

When Eben Upton was in his twenties, he wanted to get children thinking about how computers think, to boost the number of people applying to read computer science at university. He dreamt of putting a chip in every classroom. The result was Raspberry Pi, a tiny gadget, little bigger than a credit card, that can be hooked up to any keyboard and monitor, to create a programmable PC. And it's cheap. Raspberry Pi Zero, sticker price just ?5, was given away free with a computer magazine in 2015. Eben tells Jim how it all began, in his loft with soldering irons and post it notes, and how, by ruthlessly pursuing a philanthropic goal he became CEO of a highly successful business enterprise.

Nothing annoys Eugenia Cheng more than the suggestion that there is no creativity in mathematics. Doing mathematics is not about being a human calculator, she says. She doesn't spend her time multiplying big numbers in her head. She sits in hotel bars drawing (mainly arrows) with a fine quill pen, thinking about how ideas from different areas of mathematics relate to one another and hoping to reveal a unifying, underlying logic to the whole of mathematics. Her area of research, Category Theory, makes algebra seem superficial. And if that makes your head hurt a little, don't worry. Feeling confused is an essential part of doing mathematics. 'You can't make progress without it' Eugenia says. Jim asks Eugenia what drove her to such a high level of abstraction and learns more about her mission to rid the world of maths phobia, by baking.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Photo credit: Paul Crisanti, PhotoGetGo.

2018 is having the worst flu season for seven years. Influenza continues to make a lot of us feel very ill, and it can of course be fatal. Wendy Barclay, Professor Virology at Imperial College London, has spent many years trying to learn everything she can about the way flu viruses behave. These microscopic infectious organisms are formidable foes - they mutate all the time, making it hard to predict which strain is going to be the one to make us sick and therefore to design effective vaccines against it.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Wendy Barclay about how she uses genetics to understand how flu viruses mutate. She explains how she began her scientific career studying physical sciences but then became fascinated by viruses. Her first experience of working with viruses was when she found herself doing nasal swabs of snuffling volunteers when she did her PhD looking for a vaccine against the common cold.

'

What once took decades, now takes days, thanks to an astonishingly powerful new technique invented by Richard Henderson, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Richard grew up in a remote village in the Scottish borders exploring the countryside and reading the weekly bundles of comics sent by his great aunt, as part of a care package for his family. When he started work at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, a string of Nobel Prizes had been awarded for x-ray crystallography, a technique that had revealed the double helix structure of DNA, and the atomic structure of haemoglobin, vitamin B12 and insulin. But Richard decided to experiment with a radical new approach, using electrons not x-rays. After an early success in 1975, he spent the next 15 years trying to improve the resolution of electron crystallography and, in 1990, he managed to see in astonishing atomic detail how individual atoms were arranged within a particular biological molecule. Next, however, he decided that the future of microscopy lay in different direction and,despite the initial results being very blurry, he embraced a more direct approach to microscopy that involved flash freezing molecules to catch them, mid-movement, as they existed in nature.

Undeterred by a steady stream of technical problems, Richard spent the next 17 years refining this new approach to microscopy convinced that it should outperform all the others and, in 2012, he was proved right. Cryo electron microscopy now enables us to see how the individual atoms are arranged within biological molecules that were previously opaque. We are seeing atomic structures that have never been seen before and, since these are the molecules that make life possible, knowing what they look like is worth millions to pharmaceutical companies trying to design drugs to activate or inhibit their action.

Richard talks to Jim Al-Khalili about half a century of problem solving and the bold strategic decisions that led him to be awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, together with Joaquim Frank and Jacques Dubochet.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

'

Professor Sir John Burn, has made Newcastle on Tyne a centre for research on genetics and disease. He was one of the first British doctors to champion the study of genes in medicine back in the 1980s. More recently his research with families with a propensity to develop certain cancers has shown the benefits of taking aspirin as a prevention against the disease. John Burn was part of the team that set up the Centre for Life on derelict industrial land near the River Tyne, where the public can watch research in action. It now attracts a quarter of a million visitors each year to its public science centre. John Burn was knighted for services to medicine in 2010 and was one of first 20 'local heroes' to have a brass plaque on Newcastle Quayside in 2014, alongside Cardinal Hume, Alan Shearer and Ant and Dec.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the genetics of cancer with Professor Sir John Burn.

Ailie talks to Jim about how she rose from doing experiments with sewage to become one of the most successful engineers in the UK.

Producer: Anna Buckley

From sewage treatment to Crossrail, engineer Ailie MacAdam talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Ailie's first engineering challenge was working out how to get the solids to settle in a mixture of raw sewage at a treatment plant in Stuttgart. Years later, she worked on the Boston Big Dig and realised that large scale construction projects were her thing. A seven lane highway was rerouted underground and a bridge built using blocks of expanded polystyrene to support the on off ramps. When Bostonians complained about the vibrations from all the drilling, their beds were put on springs. She returned home to the UK to run the transformation of St Pancras Station in London, creating an international terminal for Eurostar while preserving the historic features of the original building. Preventing 690 cast iron pillars that supported the platform from 'breaking like carrots' was a particular challenge, as was keeping the Midlands mainline running. Next she took on Crossrail and was in charge of the challenging central London section, with a budget of £7.5 billion. Aware that diverse teams tend to be more successful she recruited a top team of engineers in which 30 % were women.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Ailie's first engineering challenge was working out how to get the solids to settle in a mixture of raw sewage at a treatment plant in Stuttgart. Years later, she worked on the Boston Big Dig and realised that large scale construction projects were her thing. A seven lane highway was rerouted underground and a bridge built using blocks of expanded polystyrene to support the on off ramps. When Bostonians complained about the vibrations from all the drilling, their beds were put on springs. She returned home to the UK to run the transformation of St Pancras Station in London, creating an international terminal for Eurostar while preserving the historic features of the original building. Preventing 690 cast iron pillars that supported the platform from 'breaking like carrots' was a particular challenge, as was keeping the Midlands mainline running. Next she took on Crossrail and was in charge of the challenging central London section, with a budget of ?7.5 billion. Aware that diverse teams tend to be more successful she recruited a top team of engineers in which 30 % were women.

Ailie's first engineering challenge was working out how to get the solids to settle in a mixture of raw sewage at a treatment plant in Stuttgart. Years later, she worked on the Boston Big Dig and realised that large scale construction projects were her thing. A seven lane highway was rerouted underground and a bridge built using blocks of expanded polystyrene to support the on off ramps. When Bostonians complained about the vibrations from all the drilling, their beds were put on springs. She returned home to the UK to run the transformation of St Pancras Station in London, creating an international terminal for Eurostar while preserving the historic features of the original building. Preventing 690 cast iron pillars that supported the platform from 'breaking like carrots' was a particular challenge, as was keeping the Midlands mainline running. Next she took on Crossrail and was in charge of the challenging central London section, with a budget of £7.5 billion. Aware that diverse teams tend to be more successful she recruited a top team of engineers in which 30 % were women.

Ailie talks to Jim about how she rose from doing experiments with sewage to become one of the most successful engineers in the UK.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Ailie's first engineering challenge was working out how to get the solids to settle in a mixture of raw sewage at a treatment plant in Stuttgart. Years later, she worked on the Boston Big Dig and realised that large-scale construction projects were her thing. A seven lane highway was rerouted underground and a bridge built using blocks of expanded polystyrene to support the on off ramps. When Bostonians complained about the vibrations from all the drilling, their beds were put on springs. She returned home to the UK to run the transformation of St Pancras Station in London, creating an international terminal for Eurostar while preserving the historic features of the original building. Preventing 690 cast iron pillars that supported the platform from 'breaking like carrots' was a particular challenge, as was keeping the Midlands mainline running. Next she took on Crossrail and was in charge of the challenging central London section, with a budget of £7.5 billion. Aware that diverse teams tend to be more successful she recruited a top team of engineers in which 30% were women.

From sewage treatment to Crossrail, engineer Ailie MacAdam talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Next time you swear at the battery in your mobile phone, spare a thought for the chemist, Clare Grey. Having developed a new way of looking inside solids (using nuclear magnetic resonance), her interest in batteries was sparked by a man from Duracell who asked her a question at an academic conference, and charged up by some electrochemists she met playing squash. For the last twenty years she has sought to understand the precise chemistry of the rechargeable lithium ion battery. And her insights have led to some significant improvements. In 2015 she built a working prototype of a new kind of battery for electric cars, the lithium air battery. If this laboratory model can be made to run on air not oxygen, it could transform the future, by making electric cars more energy efficient and considerably cheaper.

Clare talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the years she has spent studying rechargeable batteries, seeking to understand, very precisely, the chemical reactions that take place inside them; and how this kind of fundamental understanding can help us to make batteries that are fit for the 21st century.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Clare Grey about the batteries that could power our future.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Stephen Reicher is a social psychologist at St Andrews University who has spent decades understanding how people behave when in a group. To do so, he's often had to immerse himself among the subjects of his studies, from the Bristol riots in 1980 to the millions of Hindu pilgrims who go to the Magh Mela. Stephen Reicher talks to Jim al-Khalili about the positive and the negative sides to a crowd and the role of a leader of a crowd. He explains how he gave up a place to read medicine, to the annoyance of his parents, to study psychology. Now, he says, his mother would be proud of him as he's publishing research on the health benefits of attending mass gatherings.

Psychologist Stephen Reicher talks to Jim al-Khalili about how we behave in crowds.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Biology at the University of York, learnt to dive in a leaky wet suit in the North Sea when he was a boy. As a student, he was introduced to the extraordinary diversity of marine life on a coral reef in the Red Sea. His job was to count different species of fish but he also noticed several different species of fish working together to defend a common resource, lurid green algal lawns. Life on coral reef is notoriously competitive and collaboration on this scale was unexpected. In 1991 he wrote a ground-breaking paper about marine reserves showing how it is possible to have our fish and eat them. It was a radical suggestion at the time. Now many countries are committed to protecting 10% of the ocean in this way by 2020. Aiming to maintain fish stocks in their current state is, Callum says, ridiculously unambitious. On sabbatical at Harvard University, he started reading historical accounts by pirates, travellers and fishermen and his eyes were opened wider still to just how rich marine life could be. As early as the 12th century laws were being put in place to help preserve fishing stocks. Two hundred years ago off the coast of Britain a diverse array of sea fans and sponges covered the sea floor. There were millions of oysters and scallops the size of dinner plates.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Carlo Rovelli first became interested in the nature of time when he took LSD as a young man. Later he became curious about the world of the almost absurdly small, where time has no meaning and space is grainy.

He took seven years to complete his undergraduate degree, having spent a lot of time protesting against the political establishment, falling in love and travelling. An extended hippy trip across north America was, he says, perhaps the most useful time of his life. All this rebelling taught him the value of seeing the world in a different way and the benefits of challenging the status quo. In the end he concluded it was easier, and more meaningful, to challenge Einstein's understanding of time, than it was to overthrow the government.

He's a theoretical physicist who became a household name when his book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics became an unexpected international bestseller. His concise, and poetic, introduction to the laws and beauty of physics has sold more than a million copies. He's also a pioneer of one of the most exciting and profound ideas in modern physics, called loop quantum gravity.

Early in his research career, he rejected more mainstream approaches to unifying physics (string theory for example) in favour of trying to understand the quantum nature of gravity. No one in Italy was working on this when he started to think about it in the early 1980s, and his PhD thesis was effectively unsupervised. The quantum world he studies is a billion trillion times smaller than the smallest atomic nucleus. When understood at this absurdly tiny scale, the world is 'a frenzied swarming of quanta that appear and disappear'. It makes no sense to talk about time as we understand it, or even things. The world is made up of a network of interacting events, 'kisses not stones', that are linked together by loops. And the evidence that's needed to prove the theory of loop quantum gravity will be found by studying the white holes that emerge when a black hole dies.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

As a girl, Caroline Dean would watch the cherry trees in her childhood garden unfurl their pink and white blossom and wonder how it was that they all flowered at exactly the same time.

She tells Jim Al-Khalili that the flowering synchronicity she observed was to spark a life-long fascination with the timing mechanisms of plant reproduction, in particular with a process called vernalisation - how plants respond to extreme cold.

Professor Dame Caroline Dean of the John Innes Centre in Norwich has focussed right down to the molecular level, homing in on the individual cells and genes that flip the flowering switch.

For thirty years running her own lab Caroline has been asking (and answering) questions like why some plants need a period of cold before they can flower the following Spring, how plants know that the cold winter is really over and it's safe to flower and, when winter is so different around the globe, how do plants adapt?

Her team focused in on one gene - with the snappy title of Flowering Locus C or FLC - and by delving into the world of epigenetic regulation, they uncovered the processes by which this gene was slowly turned off over winter, enabling the plant to flower the following spring.

These ground-breaking discoveries have profound implications for human health and for food security.

As Caroline tells Jim, the cellular memory system behind a plant gene flicked to the 'off' position, is very similar to the switching and expression of genes that cause diseases like cancer in the human body.

And as the climate warms and fluctuating temperatures affect our seasons, her work will deepen understanding of the molecular basis for flowering times - vital for farmers and plant breeders to adapt and protect our food supply.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Dr Catherine Hobaiter studies how apes communicate with each other. Although she's based at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, she spends a lot of her time in the forests of Uganda, at the Budongo Research Centre. There, she's endlessly fascinated by the behaviour of great apes.

Cat Hobaiter tells Jim al-Khalili about the difficulties of carrying out research on chimps in the wild. It can take years to win the trust of the apes. She says that her approach is to adopt the attitude of a moody teenager. Look bored and the chimps will ignore her, but at the same time she is watching them closely. Her particular research area is in understanding not the sounds that apes make, but their gestures. From her observations she's found that they use around 80 different gestures - many of which are common, in the sense that they have the same meaning, across different species like chimps and bonobos. One thing she and her team hope to learn from these studies is how we humans have evolved spoken language.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

John Crawshaw Taylor is a prolific inventor who specialises in designing and manufacturing thermostatic controls. His ingenious integrated control system is found in in one billion electric kettles worldwide, enabling kettles to switch off automatically when the water boils, stopping the element from boiling dry and preventing plastic kettles from catching fire under a worst case scenario. 600 million of his safety controls for the small electric motors have been sold to date, and are used mainly to prevent the motor in windscreens wipers from overheating. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his struggle with severe dyslexia at school, the art of inventing and why he doesn't believe in selling an idea.

Producer: Anna Buckley.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Traditional descriptions of the human immune system bristle with military analogies. There are 'lines of defence' against 'enemy invaders'; 'border guards' at 'strategic points. And when barriers are breached, there's 'a call to arms'. That's before you mention Natural Killer Cells.

But Professor of Immunology and Public Engagement at the University of Manchester, Sheena Cruickshank, tells Jim that as well as the war-like descriptions, our immune system is now being understood in terms of its capacity for diplomacy too. Jaw-jaw as well as War-war.

Our immune system has to know when to tolerate the trillions of microbes that live on us and in us, to hold fire but also to know when full-scale immune activation is required.

Central to Sheena's research is what's behind the switch from 'watch and wait' to 'attack mode' at key barrier sites in our bodies.

Her aim is to find tools that will help diagnose and manage chronic inflammatory diseases and beyond that, to identify ways to strengthen peoples' own immunity and ultimately make them better.

But she's always wanted science to have a strong presence outside of the laboratory and she believes strongly that researchers have a duty to reach out beyond their institution to the community about their work. If they do that, she tells Jim, everybody benefits and the science too, will be enriched.

Producer: Fiona Hill.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Frank Close is a theoretical particle physicist and a pioneer of popular writing about physics. His first book aimed at a non-specialist audience, The Cosmic Onion, was published 35 years ago. His latest, Half Life, is the story of physicist and spy, Bruno Pontecorvo. Frank has also had a distinguished research career studying the fundamental structure of matter. It was during his PhD in the late 60s that quarks were discovered. These are the fundamental entities we now know make up particles such as protons and neutrons, which in turn make up the nuclei of atoms, and therefore all of us and everything around us. Frank Close went on to make a name for himself studying what holds the quarks together inside matter. Among his many best-selling books was his thorough account of the controversial claims about the discovery of cold fusion - the idea of unlimited fusion energy in a test tube - and which brought the remarkable story to the world's attention in his book Too Hot to Handle. Frank has spent most of his working life around the Thames Valley - at the Rutherford Appleton Labs, and now at the University of Oxford where is an emeritus professor of physics. In front of an audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival Jim al-Khalili discusses physics and writing with Frank Close.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Professor Rachel Mills is a marine geochemist who studies the sea floor and hydrothermal vents, where water erupts from the earth's crust at 360 degrees. The thick plumes emit many metals such as copper, gold, iron and rare earth minerals that are deposited on the sea bed. Rachel's career has taken her all over the world and 4km deep under the ocean in small submersibles. These journeys are exciting and terrifying as samples are taken to understand how the metals travel many thousands of miles. The metals are involved in creating nutrients that supply the ocean's food chain and control carbon uptake. There is also a lot of interest in mining the valuable deposits but can this be done without upsetting the ocean's eco-system?

Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.



An ecologist who fell in love with computing, Jacqueline McGlade pioneered the use of satellites study the state of the global environment. Today thanks to programmes like Google Earth, we can see the surface of the earth in great detail. But when Jacqueline was a student, earth observation satellites were used for weather forecasting and not much else. Early in her career, she used satellite images to study fish populations, thinking it would be useful to know not only how many fish were in the sea but where they were likely to be. Few believed such an ambitious undertaking would be possible but, after a spell in Silicon Valley, Jacqueline found a way. The moving maps she created changed the way oceanographers and fishermen viewed the sea. In the early 1980s, she started trying to model the global climate using some of the earliest supercomputers and a roomful of un-networked PCs. As Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, she introduced monitoring systems for a range of environmental indicators and insisted that the information provided by Europe's first earth observation satellite should be made available to everyone for free. She retired from her latest job, as chief scientist to the United Nations Environment Programme last year and now lives in a mud hut in the Masai Mara, having married a Masai chief.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

For all his success as a Supervet on TV and as a pioneering orthopedic surgeon, Noel Fitzpatrick insists that his life has been full of failures. He didn't enjoy studying for his specialist vet exams and spent ten years working as an actor before setting up his veterinary practice, Fitzpatrick Referrals. Determined to offer animals access to medical treatments and facilities that are more commonly reserved for humans, he has pioneered several new surgical procedures for small animals, specialising in spinal injuries and creating bionic limbs. The prosthetic leg he made for a German shepherd dog Storm was the first of its kind, inspired by the method that was used to rebuild the arm of one of the victims of the 7/7 bombing in London. And he built the world's first prosthetic paws for a cat called Oscar whose feet had been crushed by a combine harvester. Now he's on a mission to break down the barriers between human and veterinary medicine so that both animals and humans can benefit from cutting edge research, without the need to do experiments on animals.

Producer: Anna Buckley

JTrust Me, I'm A Scientist

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Suzanne O'Sullivan has been described as `a detective of the mind??. She's a neurologist who helps some patients with the strangest of symptoms, from so-called ‘Alice in Wonderland' seizures to those suffering from temporary blindness or paralysis, and that turn out to originate in their subconscious minds.

By the time these people get to see Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan they'll often have been to many specialists, undergone a range of tests and given a variety of diagnoses. Suzanne's an expert on epilepsy, and the unusual ways that seizures can manifest themselves, who currently works at University College Hospital in London and for the Epilepsy Society.

As well as diagnosing and treating patients, Suzanne has also written books about some of her most memorable, and frankly bizarre, cases. Her first book, It's All in Your Head, which won the Wellcome Book prize in 2016, describes many of her case studies involving patients whose illnesses are psychosomatic. But, she argues that this is an area of medicine that has not been studied deeply enough yet. After all, for the patients themselves, these debilitating symptoms are all too real.

Detective of the mind Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan talks about brain seizures with Jim Al-Khalili

Suzanne O'Sullivan has been described as `a detective of the mind?? She's a neurologist who helps some patients with the strangest of symptoms, from so-called ‘Alice in Wonderland' seizures to those suffering from temporary blindness or paralysis, and that turn out to originate in their subconscious minds.

Suzanne O'Sullivan has been described as `a detective of the mind`. She's a neurologist who helps some patients with the strangest of symptoms, from so-called ‘Alice in Wonderland' seizures to those suffering from temporary blindness or paralysis, and that turn out to originate in their subconscious minds.

Mike Stratton's first foray into genetics culminated in the discovery of the BRCA 2, one of the main genes involved in hereditary breast cancer. Following this painstaking detective work he and the Institute for Cancer Research became embroiled in a patent dispute with his collaborators. And at the beginning of the 21st century, he set himself the hugely ambitious goal of identifying all the mutations in DNA that led to every type of cancer. His critics said it was a crazy idea, but Mike and his colleagues at the Sanger Centre, just outside Cambridge have done it.

Mike Stratton talks about searching for cancer genes with Jim al-Khalili.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

When Michael Stratton was a young doctor he would diagnose cancer by studying tissue samples under a microTrespasser's Guide To The Classics, A

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Formula One engineer Caroline Hargrove talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Alastair Hay talks about ridding the world of chemical weapons with Jim Al-Khalili.

Alastair Hay, now Emeritus Professor of Environmental Toxicology at the University of Leeds, is a chemist who's had a dual career as an academic researcher and an outspoken activist and campaigner. The common theme has been the application of his knowledge to how chemicals affect our lives, in the workplace and during conflicts. Alastair Hay is best known for his work to rid the world of chemical weapons, a concern about this horrific form of warfare that goes back to the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. His work culminated in the Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997, outlawing their production, stockpiling and use.

He spent his childhood in Zimbabwe and returned to the UK when he won a scholarship from Shell to study chemistry in London in the late 1960s. After a spell working on the biochemistry of animals, including a stint at London Zoo where one of his more difficult jobs was taking blood from penguins, he moved on to studying the effects of chemicals on humans.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Alastair Hay about his love of chemistry and his shock to see that chemical weapons are still being used over twenty years after the signing of the Convention.

Alastair Hay talks with Jim Al-Khalili about ridding the world of chemical weapons.

After studying physics and mechanical engineering, Maggie worked in industrial research before returning to her first love, astronomy, when she managed the building of an instrument on a giant telescope in Chile. Now, she spends her time presenting TV programmes, in particular the BBC's Sky at Night, and inspiring the next generation of schoolchildren to become scientists. Maggie's come a long way since her own childhood. Her parents separated when she was four years old, and their prolonged custody battle meant she attended 13 schools in as many years. In addition, she was diagnosed as dyslexic and put in remedial classes where she wasn't ever expected to achieve academically.

Sky at Night presenter Maggie Aderin-Pocock talks to Jim Al-Khalili about astronomy.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

He studies volcanoes; science that by necessity, requires his presence at the volcanic hotspots of the world. It was at the lip of a bubbling lava crater on one of the earth's most active volcanoes, Mount Erebus in Antarctica, that he met the film and documentary maker Werner Herzog. The two became friends and went on to make a volcano movie together. Clive, who's Professor of Volcanology at the University of Cambridge, tells Jim academics and film makers share the same complementary skill set: thorough research, slick location recording and a familiarity with rejection as 9 out of 10 film pitches (or grant proposals) are turned down!

As well as a forensic fascination with the dramatic impact of ancient and modern volcanism on the landscape, Clive discusses how multiple scientific disciplines are now needed to understand the complex historical, archaeological, climatological and environmental impacts of the earth's volcanic eruptions. He wades into the bitter academic row about what did it for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago: meteorite or volcanism? And he details the importance of Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption in the Philippines for our deeper understanding of anthropogenic climate change.

Producer: Fiona Hill

Clive Oppenheimer on volcanoes that shake the world.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists

Jim Al-Khalili discusses the scientific life with fellow scientists.

When Jim was at school in Iraq it was cool to work hard and do well. Being singled out for praise by his physics teacher when he did significantly better than even his brightest friends in a physics test aged 13, he decided ‘physics is common sense and problem solving

~Life Scientific, The

In an ideal (quantum) world, Jim Al-Khalili would be interviewing himself about his life as a scientist but since the production team can't access a parallel universe, Adam Rutherford is stepping in to ask Jim questions in front of an audience at The Royal Society. Jim and his family left Iraq in 1979, two weeks before Saddam Hussein came to power, abandoning most of their possessions. Having grown up listening to the BBC World Service, he had to drop his ts to fit in at school in Portsmouth where he was one of just three boys in a class of more than a hundred girls. He specialised in nuclear physics and spent fifteen years in front of a computer screen trying to understand an exotic and ephemeral sub-atomic phenomenon known as the halo effect. His ‘little eureka moment' came in 1996 when Jim discovered that, for the mathematics to add up, these halo nuclei had to be a lot bigger than anyone had thought. It isn't going to lead to a new kind of non-stick frying pan any time soon but it was exciting, nonetheless. More recently he has become interested in quantum biology. It started as a hobby back in the 1990s when physicists were sceptical and many biologists were unconvinced. Since then evidence has been stacking up. Several studies suggest that lasting quantum mechanical effects could explain photosynthesis, for example. 'It maybe a red herring' Jim admits but Jim and his team at the University of Surrey are determined to find out if the idea of quantum biology makes sense. Could life itself depend on quantum tunnelling and other bizarre features of the sub-atomic world?

Download the special extended podcast to hear questions from past guests on The Life Scientific and some cheeky contributions from members of the Al-Khalili family.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Physicist Jim Al-Khalili tells Adam Rutherford what motivates and inspires him.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Sue Black tells Jim Al-Khalili how she became a software engineer.

Sue Black left home and school when she was 16. Aged 25, she attended an access course to get the qualifications she needed to go to university to study computer science. It was a bit lonely being the only student in a mini- skirt surrounded by a sea of suits, but she came top of the class nonetheless. She signed up to do a PhD (not really know what a PhD was) and worked on the ripple effect in software. What happens when you change one bit of code? Does it mess up everything else? A lot of new software is created by building on and adapting existing programmes so it's a useful skill. In 2003 she embarked on a three year campaign to save Bletchley Park where, ten thousand people built some of the first computers and wrote code to crack the Enigma code used by the Nazis during World War Two. More than half of the people who worked there were women. No-one had any previous experience of computers. And more than half a century on, there are fewer women working in tech than there were in the 1960s. Sue is determined to change this backwards step. Perhaps another Bletchley Park recruitment drive is needed to encourage more people, women in particular, to engage with tech and help to build our future?

Sue Black left home and school when she was 16. Aged 25, she attended an access course to get the qualifications she needed to go to university to study computer science. It was a bit lonely being the only student in a mini- skirt surrounded by a sea of suits, but she came top of the class nonetheless. She signed up to do a PhD (not really know what a PhD was) and worked on the ripple effect in software. What happens when you change one bit of code? Does it mess up everything else? A lot of new software is created by building on and adapting existing programmes so it?s a useful skill. In 2003 she embarked on a three year campaign to save Bletchley Park where, ten thousand people built some of the first computers and wrote code to crack the Enigma code used by the Nazis during World War Two. More than half of the people who worked there were women. No-one had any previous experience of computers. And more than half a century on, there are fewer women working in tech than there were in the 1960s. Sue is determined to change this backwards step. Perhaps another Bletchley Park recruitment drive is needed to encourage more people, women in particular, to engage with tech and help to build our future?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Sir Gregory Winter, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Professor Gwen Adshead, however, thinks about little else. As a Forensic Psychotherapist, she works with some of the most vilified and rejected members of society. They are the violent offenders who are detained in prisons and in secure NHS hospitals, like Broadmoor, whose actions have been linked to their mental illness.

Gwen has sought to understand the psychological mechanisms behind their violent behaviour so that she can help them. A pioneer in the field, she provides an environment in which men and women are encouraged to speak the unspeakable and think the unthinkable, in the hope that they will one day be able to change their minds.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Gwen Adshead tells Jim Al-Khalili how she treats the minds of violent offenders.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Donna Strickland, the first woman to win a Physics Nobel Prize in 55 years.

Ken Gabriel now heads up a large non-profit engineering company, Draper, which cut its teeth building the guidance systems for the Apollo space missions, and is now involved in developing both driverless cars and drug production systems for personalised medicine.

Ken himself has a career in what he might term ‘disruptive engineering'. His research married digital electronics with acoustics - and produced the microphones in our phones and computers. He has a strong track record in defence research and has also worked for Google, taking some of the military research methods into a civilian start up. This led to the development of a new type of modular mobile phone which has yet to go into production.

He tells us why aiming for seemingly impossible goals is a good idea, and how a structured systems based approach can help channel engineering creativity.

How working with robots in the 1980s kicked off a microelectronics revolution.

Ken himself has a career in what he might term ‘disruptive engineering'. His research married digital electronics with acoustics - and produced the microphones in our phones and computers. He has a strong track record in defence research - including the initial rejection by his paymasters of the stealth bomber. And he has also worked for Google, taking some of the military research methods into a civilian start up.

Ken Gabriel now heads up a large non-profit engineering company, Draper, which cut its teeth building the guidance systems for the Apollo space missions, and is now involved in developing both driverless cars and drug production systems for personalised medicine.

Ken himself has a career in what he might term ‘disruptive engineering'. His research married digital electronics with acoustics - and produced the microphones in our phones and computers. He has a strong track record in defence research and has also worked for Google, taking some of the military research methods into a civilian start up. This led to the development of a new type of modular mobile phone which has yet to go into production.

He tells us why aiming for seemingly impossible goals is a good idea, and how a structured systems based approach can help channel engineering creativity.

How working with robots in the 1980s kicked off a microelectronics revolution.

Corinne le Quere is the founder of the Global Carbon Budget, which each year reports on where carbon dioxide is being emitted and where it is being absorbed around the world. More specifically, she studies the relationship between the carbon cycle and the earth's climate, and how it is changing.

Corinne is Professor of Climate Change Science at the University of East Anglia. After a degree in physics in her native Canada she became aware of the importance of how carbon moves around the planet and the way it controls the Earth's climate. This took her to studying meteorology and oceanography and in particular a fascination with the role of the huge Southern Ocean in trapping and holding onto carbon.

She talks to Jim al-Khalili about modelling how carbon moves around the earth and how she communicates the latest research to the public.

Professor Corinne le Quere talks to Jim Al-Khalili about tracing global carbon.

Throughout the history of planet Earth, the element carbon has cycled between the atmosphere, the oceans and the biosphere. This natural cycle has maintained the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and has allowed life to exist for billions of years. Corinne Le Qu退r退 is a climate scientist who keeps track of where the carbon comes from and where it goes - all on a truly global scale.

Corinne Le Qu退r退 is the founder of the Global Carbon Budget, which each year reports on where carbon dioxide is being emitted and where it is being absorbed around the world. More specifically, she studies the relationship between the carbon cycle and the earth's climate, and how it is changing.

As the chair of SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Post Detection Task Group, he's the person responsible for announcing to the world when we make contact with aliens. He's now Regents Professor of Physics at Arizona State University in the American south west where he runs research groups studying the evolution of cancer and the origins of life.

Paul Davies talks to Jim al-Khalili about how he applies the principles of physics to these big questions and about how he has worked closely with religious thinkers.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Physicist Paul Davies on the origin of life, aliens and the evolution of cancer.

That is where Irene Tracey, Nuffield Professor of Anaesthetic Science at Oxford University, has been focussing her attention. Known as the Queen of Pain, she has spent the past two decades unravelling the complexities of this puzzling sensation.

She goes behind the scenes, as it were, of what happens when we feel pain - scanning the brains of her research subjects while subjecting them to a fair amount of burning, prodding and poking.

Her work is transforming our understanding, revealing how our emotions influence our experience of pain, how chronic pain develops and even when consciousness is present in the brain.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Irene Tracy tells Jim Al-Khalili how imaging the brain reveals how and why we feel pain.

Irene Tracey tells Jim Al-Khalili how imaging the brain reveals how and why we feel pain.

Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and until last year co-director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit with Professor Sir Rory Collins, Richard Peto pioneered 'big data', setting up enormous randomised clinical trials and then, in a novel approach, combining results in what became known as meta-analyses, amassing unequivocal evidence about how early death could be avoided. He showed how asprin could prevent heart attacks and how the oestrogen-blocking drug tamoxifen really did affect survival rates for breast cancer patients.

Results on paper saves lives in the real world, he says, and he's famous for catchphrases like: 'death in old age is inevitable, but death before old age is not' and 'you can avoid more deaths by a moderate reduction of a big cause, than by a big reduction in a small cause' as well as 'take the big numbers seriously'.

One of the world's leading epidemiologists, Richard Peto's landmark study with Alan Lopez at the World Health Organisation predicted that a billion people would die from diseases associated with tobacco this century, compared to a hundred million killed by tobacco in the 20th century. The chilling message galvanised governments around the world to adopt anti-smoking policies. And Professor Peto's studies about smoking cessation ('smoking kills, stopping works') provided the public health evidence needed to encourage smokers that, however long they had smoked for, it was always worth quitting.

Producer: Fiona Hill

Epidemiologist Richard Peto on the links between tobacco, disease and early death

Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and until last year co-director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit with Professor Sir Rory Collins, Richard Peto pioneered 'big data': setting up enormous randomised clinical trials and then, in a novel approach, combining results in what became known as meta-analyses, amassing unequivocal evidence about how early death could be avoided. He showed how asprin could avoid heart attacks and how the oestrogen-blocking drug tamoxifen really did affect survival rates for breast cancer patients.

According to Erica, a world without flies would be full of faeces and dead bodies. Unlike, for example, butterflies and moths, whose caterpillars spend their time devouring our crops and plants, fly larvae tend to help rid the world of waste materials and then, as adults, perform essential work as pollinators. Yet they are rather unloved by humans who tend to regard them as pests at best and disease vectors at worst.

2019 is international Year of the Fly, and dipterists and entomologists around the world are working to raise the profile of the many thousands of species so far known to science.

Erica tells Jim about her work in the museum, cataloguing and identifying new species either sent in from other researchers or discovered by her and her colleagues on swashbuckling trips around the world. Modern gene sequencing techniques are revealing new chapters in the life histories of species, and her collection of 300 year old dead flies continues to expand our knowledge of how the world works.

Perhaps in the future, she argues, we will all be eating pasta and bread made from fly-larvae protein, or using small tea-bag like packets of maggots in our wounds to clean out gangrenous infection.

Producer: Alex Mansfield

Dr Erica McAlister talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the beautiful world of flies.

Producer: Anna Buckley

How RICHARD THOMPSON alerted the world to the micro-plastics in the ocean.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Main Image: Ewine van Dishoeck receiving the Kavli Prize in astrophysics, 4 September 2018 in Oslo. Credit: Berit Roald / NTB SCANPIX / AFP) / Norway

Astrochemist Ewine van Dishoeck tells Jim Al-Khalili about the space between the stars.

Under the microscope was not just the king's genetic identity, but his historic reputation. Was Richard the ruthless villain depicted by Shakespeare? Or did the incoming Tudors spread 'fake news' to besmirch his name?

She tells Jim about the unfolding DNA detective story which spanned 500 years, unearthing evidence that would help to reveal the real Richard III. But first, she had to gather the genetic evidence by pulling out one of his teeth.

Producer: Michelle Martin

Main image: Turi King

Credit: Jonathan Sisson

How geneticist Turi King identified the 500-year-old skeleton of Richard III.

When a skeleton was unearthed in 2012 from under the tarmac of a car park in Leicester, Turi King needed to gather irrefutable evidence to prove that this really was the body of Richard III, England's infamous medieval monarch.

Under the microscope was not only the king's genetic identity, but his entire reputation. Was Richard a ruthless villain, as depicted by Shakespeare? Or did the incoming Tudors spread 'fake news' to besmirch his name? As Jim discovers, clues in his skeletal remains have helped to solve some of these mysteries, and reveal the real Richard III.

When she was young, Turi King wanted to be the next Indiana Jones. Her love of archaeology led her to study genetics so she could use ancient DNA to solve historic mysteries.

She tells Jim how genetic testing, of both the dead skeleton and his living relatives, provided the vital evidence they needed to identify Richard III. But first, she had to extract his DNA, by pulling out one of his teeth.

How geneticist Turi King identified the 500 yr old skeleton of Richard III.

Beneath the magnificent desolation of the moon's surface, multicoloured rocks contain vital clues about the history of our solar system. Every crater on the moon is evidence of a collision and the chemistry of these rocks tells us when these collisions took place. Katherine's research supports the idea that a period known as the late heavy bombardment was a particularly turbulent time. Could the late heavy bombardment explain the origin of life on earth?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Lunar geologist Katherine Joy tells Jim Al-Khalili why we need to go back to the moon.

Katherine Joy studies moon rock. She has studied lunar samples that were brought to earth by the Apollo missions (382kg in total) and hunted for lunar meteorites in Antarctica, camping on ice for weeks on end and travelling around on a skidoo. Working at the forefront of the second wave of lunar exploration, she studied remote sensing data from Europe's first mission to the moon, Smart 1 which launched in 2003 and data from many subsequent missions. She tells Jim Al-Khalili why she believes the moon is the most exciting destination in our solar system and explains what it can tell us about the long history of planet earth.

Beneath the magnificent desolation of the moon's surface, multicoloured rocks contain vital clues about the history of our solar system. Every crater on the moon is evidence of a collision and the chemistry of these rocks tells us when these collisions took place. Katherine's research supports the idea that a period known as the late heavy bombardment was a particularly turbulent time. Could the late heavy bombardment explain the origin of life on earth?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Lunar geologist Katherine Joy tells Jim Al-Khalili why we need to go back to the moon.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why do we have friends? Robin Dunbar tells Jim Al-Khalili.

Ebola, Zika, Sars, Mers - rarely a week goes by without a deadly virus stealing the headlines.

For Jonathan Ball, getting to know a virus at its most basic level is crucial to mounting a defence. As the son of a coal miner, who grew up in a mining village in the 1970s, a future in academic research studying deadly viruses wasn't really on the agenda.

Yet his work has led him to the forefront of scientific research to find the antibodies that can protect us from some of the nastiest diseases known to humankind.

As Professor of Virology at Nottingham University, he's interested in how a virus evolves and mutates, as it moves from person to person, so that he can pinpoint chinks in its armour to find a way to disable it.

However, there are occupational hazards to his chosen field of work. Just when his own research was starting to show promise, another team pipped him to the post!

Yet, ever the optimist, he believes this just adds to the excitement.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Richard is a rare breed: a scientist who is also a practising magician. By the age of 17 he was performing magic tricks at children's parties and a member of the exclusive Magic Circle. He chose to study psychology to try and understand why we believe the unbelievable and spent many years doing research on the paranormal: studying s退ances, haunted places and extra sensory perception. Could a belief in the paranormal be the price we pay for scientific discovery, he wonders?

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Richard about his magical Life Scientific and finds out more about his work on lying, ESP and luck. Are some people born lucky or is it a mind-set that can be learnt?

Producer: Anna Buckley

How to spot a liar. Professor Richard Wiseman tells Jim Al-Khalili

Professor Anne Magurran on how nature is going the same way as our high streets.

Martha became interested in how these viruses - or bacteriophages as they're known - might be used to treat disease. Before long, Martha had moved from studying African violets in Uganda to looking at stool samples under the microscope and asking fellow parents to donate their babies' dirty nappies to her research. She spent many years looking for phages that attack the superbug C. difficile, which is responsible for a particularly nasty form of diarrhoea and results in tens of thousands of deaths every year. And she has shown, in animal models at least, that these phages could succeed where antibiotics have failed.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Professor Martha Clokie on the viruses that destroy antibiotic-resistant bugs.

In the late 1990's, Adrian started to question the assumption that they lacked awareness and a chance discovery set him on a novel path of enquiry - could some of these patients be conscious or aware even though they don't appear to be?

His research has revealed that some are, and he's pioneered techniques to help them to communicate with the outside world.

This emerging field of science has implications, not only for patients but, for philosophy and the law.

A Britain scientist, Adrian now runs a research programme at the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University in Canada, dedicated to reaching people in this ‘grey zone'.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Adrian Owen tells Jim Al-Khalili about his search for awareness in brain-injured patients.

In the late 1990's, Adrian started to question the assumption that they lacked awareness and a chance discovery set him on novel path of enquiry - could some of these patients be conscious or aware even though they don't appear to be?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Professor Saiful Islam on the materials that make renewable energy possible.

Thinking about how to win at chess when he was a boy got Demis thinking about the process of thinking itself. Being able to program his first computer (a Sinclair Spectrum) felt miraculous. In computer chess, his two passions were combined. And a lifelong ambition to create artificial intelligence was born.

Demis studied computer science at Cambridge and then worked in the computer games industry for many years. Games, he says, are the ideal testing ground for AI. Then, thinking memory and imagination were aspects of the human mind that would be a necessary part of any artificially intelligent system, he studied neuroscience for a PhD.

He set up DeepMind in 2010 and pioneered a new approach to creating artificial intelligence, based on deep learning and built-in rewards for making good decisions. Four years later, DeepMind was sold to Google for £400 million. The company's landmark creation, Alpha Go stunned the world when it defeated the world Go champion in South Korea in 2016. Their AI system, AlphaZero taught itself to play chess from scratch. After playing against itself for just four hours, it was the best chess computer in the world. (Humans had been defeated long ago).

Many fear both the supreme intelligence and the stupidity of AI. Demis imagines a future in which computers and humans put their brains together to try and understand the world. His algorithms have inspired humans to raise their game, when playing Go and chess. Now, he hopes that AI might do the same for scientific research. Perhaps the next Nobel Prize will be shared between a human and AI?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Demis Hassabis tells Jim Al-Khalili why he wants to create artificial intelligence.

Lizzie Fisher talks to Jim al-Khalili about how she was inspired to study genetics while standing on the red carpet, how she kept going during the 13 years it took to introduce human chromosomes into mice and why she's starting the process all over again.

Elizabeth Fisher on studying chromosomal abnormalities in mice and men

Producer: Anna Buckley

Also coming up on The Life Scientific in the New Year.

Myles Allen, an Oxford Professor of Geosystems and the lead author on several IPCC reports on climate change. He describes the system he proposed for separating out human and non-human causes of climate change and assesses some of the claims made by Extinction Rebellion.

Professor Peter Fonagy describes his pioneering theory of ‘mentalization' (the ability to make sense of our emotional states) and how he created the evidence base for different psychotherapeutic interventions. Therapy saved his life when he was a child refugee who arrived in the UK from Hungary and sparked his interest in the field.

Dr Susannah Maidment shares her passion for dinosaurs. She has spent many months dating rocks in the Morrison Formation in the American mid-West trying to sort out exactly what happened when in. One of the many questions she has tried to answer is why so many dinosaur species evolved from walking on two legs to moving about on four. Quite unlike our own species which evolved from four legged ancestors.

And winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize for physiology or Medicine, Professor Sir Peter Ratcliffe

Using pollen to solve crimes. Prof Pat Wiltshire talks to Jim Al Khalili.

Patricia Wiltshire grew up in a mining village in South Wales, left home when she was 17 and worked for many years, first as a medical technician and then as a business secretary (a profession her first husband considered to be more ladylike). When she was studying botany A level at evening classes, her teacher encouraged her to apply for university as a mature student. (She would never have considered it otherwise). And so began her career as a palynologist (studying pollen). She worked for many years reconstructing ancient environments on archaeological sites. But a phone call from a police detective led to a dramatic change of direction, when she was in her fifties. Since then, Pat has been involved in some of the most high-profile murder cases in Britain, including the murder of two ten year old girls in Soham in Cambridgeshire in 2002. She tells Jim Al-Khalili how she pioneered the use of pollen as evidence in criminal cases. Studying spores taken from suspects and victims, she can establish who's been where and when. Her life, she says, has been 'a mess' but, on many occasions, the pollen she has gathered and analysed has helped to see that justice has been done.

She is at her happiest out in the field, with a hammer and a notebook, studying rocks and looking for dinosaur remains. We tend to lump dinosaurs together as though they all roamed the earth at the same time which is silly - given that they had the run of the place for nearly two hundred million years. Susie wants to sort out exactly which dinosaurs lived when. Although she warns, the fossil record is woefully incomplete. We will probably only ever know about 1% of what there is to know about all the dinosaurs that ever lived.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Susannah Maidment tells Jim how she came to be a world authority on stegosaurs

She is at her happiest out in the field, with a hammer and a notebook, studying rocks and looking for dinosaur remains. We tend to lump dinosaurs together as though they all roamed the earth at the same time which is silly - given that they had the run of the place for nearly two hundred million years. Susie wants to sort out exactly which dinosaurs lived when. Although she warns, the fossil record is woefully incomplete. We will probably only ever know about 1% of what there is to know about all the dinosaurs that ever lived.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Susannah Maidment tells Jim how she came to be a world authority on stegosaurs

Where there is a healthy attachment, the ability to ‘mentalise' is passed down from mother to baby. Others can learn later in life. And when they do that the effect on their mental health can be transformative, Peter proved. He pioneered a new way of treating people with borderline personality disorder which he called mentalisation based treatment, or MBT. Shocked to discover that such a simple approach was so effective with patients who had previously been very difficult to help, he set up randomised control trials to prove the effectiveness of MBT compared with the standard clinical treatment at the time. The results were a revelation and led to a revolution in mental health care for patients with a wide range of mental health problems, from borderline personality disorder to drug dependency and psychosis.

Producer: Anna Buckley

How Peter Fonagy changed the way we treat our mental health.

Peter Fonagy arrived in the UK from Hungary aged 15, not speaking a word of English. His family was in Paris. He was bullied at school, failed every exam and thought of ending his life. Therapy saved him, he says. Years later, he trained to be a clinical psychologist and then a psychoanalyst. His research on attachment styles between a mother and her baby (which can be healthy, anxious or avoidant) was ground breaking. He went on to show that the human need to be understood runs very deep indeed. The ability to ‘mentalise' (to say that we're feeling angry rather than being angry, for example) enables us to understand our own thoughts and feelings. And, Peter believes, it forms the cornerstone of good mental health. He pioneered a new way of treating people with borderline personality disorder which he called mentalisation based treatment, or MBT. Shocked to discover that such a simple approach was so effective, he set up randomised control trials to prove the effectiveness of this new approach to mental health care. The results were a revelation and it led to a revolution in mental health care for patients with a wide range of mental health problems, from borderline personality disorder to drug dependency, eating disorders and psychosis.

He talks to Jim about how his early medical career led him into a deeply unfashionable area of medicine that would solve how and why our bodies are so clever at being able to fine tune themselves to keep functioning under a range of conditions. His early ground breaking discoveries may have been initially turned down by a major scientific journal, but he would go on to pave the way for promising new strategies to fight anaemia and many other challenging diseases, most notably cancer.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

The 2019 Nobel Prize-winner Sir Peter Ratcliffe on living with low oxygen.

Polina Bayvel has been at the forefront of creating the optical fibre networks that are capable of transporting vast quantities of data from one place to another: linking continents via cables laid under oceans or enabling computer systems in data centres to share information. Without these high speed networks, ultra-fast high-capacity broadband will remain a dream. Polina tells Jim Al Khalili how she moved to the UK from the Soviet Union when she was 12 and worked in industry for many years, before deciding that she wanted to set up a lab to find out what optical fibres were capable of: just how much data could they transport, and how fast?

Producer: Anna Buckley

The invention of the optical fibres that makes ultra-fast broadband possible.

Image Credit: Fisher Studios, Oxford.

The physicist behind net zero. Prof Myles Allen talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

She explains how the multidisciplinary approach to research in vision from physics to psychology, and encounters with some leading Nobel Prize winners, has fostered a love of the slippery nature of colour. When, a few years ago, an online image of a blue and black striped dress spun virally out of control, it divided us all. Half of us were adamant the dress was white and gold, and the other half convinced it was blue and black, and it caused us all to question the objective way we think we see the world as it really is. Colour is, Anya argues, made in the mind, not just out there in the world and we don't always see it in the same way.

And as she reveals to Jim, with recent technological advances in LED lighting, she's turned her attention to the nature of light itself, and how by controlling its components, it could have a profound influence on both our state of mind and the appreciation of our rich world of colour.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Anya Hurlbert tells Jim Al-Khalili how colours are made in the mind.

Producer: Anna Buckley

What maggots teach us about our sense of smell. Prof Matthew Cobb tells Jim Al-Khalli

Jim talks a man who studies the universe at the largest and smallest scales imaginable. When Brian Greene was just twelve years old, he wandered round Colombia University looking for someone to teach him mathematics, with a letter of recommendation from his school teacher. While his mother wanted him to make money, his father encouraged Brian to pursue his passion, which was trying to understand the nature of the universe. He studied physics at Harvard University and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. While at Oxford he learnt about a bold new Theory of Everything which predicts that the universe is made not of particles but rather tiny strings which vibrate in multiple dimensions. Now a Professor at Colombia University, he has worked on string theory ever since. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the rise and fall of string and superstring theory and why when he first started to think about what would happen to the universe at the end of time, he experienced a feeling of ‘hollow dread'.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Jim talks a man who studies the universe at the largest and smallest scales imaginable. When Brian Greene was just twelve years old, he wandered round Columbia University in New York looking for someone to teach him mathematics, with a letter of recommendation from his school teacher. While his mother wanted him to make money, his father encouraged Brian to pursue his passion, which was trying to understand the nature of the universe. He studied physics at Harvard University and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. While at Oxford he learnt about a bold new Theory of Everything which predicts that the universe is made not of particles but rather tiny strings which vibrate in multiple dimensions. Now a Professor at Columbia University, he has worked on string theory ever since. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about the rise and fall of string and superstring theory and why when he first started to think about what would happen to the universe at the end of time, he experienced a feeling of ‘hollow dread'.

Jim McDonald grew up in Glasgow. He was the son of a rope-maker and the first in his family to go to university. Now he's the Principal of Strathclyde University, a non-executive director of Scottish Power and President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He worked in the electrical power industry for many years before becoming an academic. Much of his life has been spent making sure that we all have access to the electricity we need, when we need it. That includes when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow! As we rely more and more on renewable energy and more of us start driving electric cars, making sure the National Grid is fit for purpose is going to be a real challenge. But Jim is on the case.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Professor Debbie Pain has spent the last 30 years solving some of the most devastating threats to birdlife, saving many species from the brink of extinction. Her childhood passion for bird spotting drove her into conservation research with the RSPB and the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust. She's led scientific groundwork all over the planet: from reversing a dramatic mysterious decline in Asian vultures in the Indian sub-continent through to daring helicopters journeys into remote foggy North-East Russia in a bid to locate and conserve eggs of a hugely charismatic and threatened bird - the Spoon-billed Sandpiper. And as she tells Jim, her career defining research into one of the great hidden threats to birdlife - the toxic effect of billions of spent lead shot used to catch game birds - is finally turning the tide on attitudes to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of wildfowl.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

The impact of lockdown on the quality of the air we breathe.

Long before most of us gave air pollution a second thought, Frank Kelly was studying the impact of toxic particles on our lungs. In a pioneering set of experiments on human volunteers in northern Sweden, he proved that pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides and particulates, are harmful to our health. And he is the driving force behind an air quality monitoring system in London that is the envy of the world.

When in the late 1990s, the UK government was encouraging us all to buy diesel cars to help reduce our carbon emissions, he warned that while diesel engines might be less bad for the planet than petrol engines, they were more damaging to our health. Later Frank and his team provided evidence that the car manufacturers were not telling the truth about emissions from diesel vehicles.

As the chair of the Government Medical Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution, he has worked tirelessly to try and move air pollution up the political agenda and worked closely with successive Mayors of London to improve air quality in the capital. Changing all the buses from diesel to hybrid or electric vehicles would make a huge difference, he says. But we will also need to get used to relying less on driving our cars to get us from A to B.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to Liz Seward, Senior Space Strategist for Airbus Defence and Space. Liz's young interest in Science Fiction led to a career designing spacecraft and robots for exploring our own earth, other planets, and the stars.

From a library in the US where the science fiction section stood next to the children's section, Liz took inspiration from Robert A. Heinlien and Arthur C. Clarke through a degree in Physics and Space Science at the University of Leicester to begin a career at EADS Astrium (now part of Airbus), initially as a Thermal Engineer. As Liz explains to Jim, thermal engineering lies at the heart of any successful space mission. Any metal box floating in space has to deal with the searing heat of the Sun on one side and the deep, deep freeze of the cosmos on the other. Engineering solutions to cope with these extremes means the difference between triumph and failure.

Liz has worked on several missions and international collaborations, including a design for a landing (since de-scoped) on Mercury aboard the current BepiColombo mission due to arrive at Mercury in 2025, and the experimental Areolus satellite that currently keeps our weather forecasters up to speed on global wind dynamics.

A large part of Liz's career was spent with the ESA Martian rover, named Rosalind Franklin, which should have been on its way to the red planet this summer, but has been delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nowadays at Airbus, Liz works on the strategy of maximizing commercial potential in space, whilst abiding by issues of responsibility around exploration, pollution, and even space traffic management. What if a launch to Mars collides with a long dead weather satellite on its way there? Or that the first detection of life on Mars turns out to be a cold virus from Stevenage?

But as she explains to Jim, miniaturization and cheaper launches suggest a bright future for human activity in space. And one day, it may include vertical satellite launches from Scotland, and even passenger flights from Cornwall.

Producer Alex Mansfield,

Sound production by Giles Aspen.

Jane Goodall, aged 86, reflects on the years she spent living with the wild chimpanzees in Gombe in eastern Tanzania and tells Jim Al Khalili why she believes the best way to bring about change is to ‘creep into people's hearts'. Jane shot to fame when she appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1963 and appeared in a documentary film directed by Orson Welles. Her ground breaking observations introduced us to the social and emotional lives of wild chimpanzees and changed our view of what it is to be human. Images of her younger self play wrestling with baby chimps make Jane feel slightly apprehensive now but at the time she didn't give it a second thought. However, she did take care to protect her young son. Seeing distressing footage of chimps who were living in captivity, she gave up fieldwork to become an activist, working to liberate chimpanzees that were being used for medical research or sold for meat or as pets, and setting up chimp sanctuaries for animals that were no longer able to live in the wild. For the last thirty years, she has campaigned gently but relentlessly to protect wild animals and wild places, touring the world and performing on stage in front of huge audiences. Her global youth programme, Roots and Shoots has inspired and empowered millions of people to understand and respect nature, leading some to call her ‘the mother Theresa of the environment'. A label she dislikes.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Photo credit: the Jane Goodall Institute / By Bill Wallauer

What can we learn from chimpanzees? Jim Al-Khalili talks to Jane Goodall

Professor Emma Bunce shares her passion for Jupiter and Neptune with Jim Al-Khalili.

Emma Bunce, Professor of Planetary Plasma Physics at the University of Leicester, was inspired to study the solar system as a child by a TV programme that featured Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune. She has spent the last 20 years focusing on the magnetic fields around the outer planets, in particular that of Jupiter. The Earth's magnetic field interacts with the solar wind to create aurorae, the spectacular Northern lights. Emma's discovered how aurorae are also produced at Jupiter's poles.

Emma Bunce talks to Jim al-Khalili about her fascination with the gas giants, why she has to be patient to check out her theories as missions to the planets are few and far between and how she'd love to work on a spacecraft to Neptune. And in the year when the Royal Astronomical Society marks its 200th anniversary, Emma explains why she's taken on the role of its President.

How to stop peaceful protests turning into riots.

Why does violence break out in some crowds and not in others and what can the police do to reduce the risk of this happening? Professor Clifford Stott tells Jim Al-Khalili about his journey from trouble maker to police advisor and explains why some policing strategies are more successful than others.

As a teenager Clifford was often in trouble with the police. Now he's a professor of crowd psychology who works with the police suggesting new evidence-based strategies for public order management. ‘If we misunderstand the psychology of the crowd then all attempts at crowd control are doomed to fail', he says. Cliff's work on football crowds revolutionised the way matches were policed and led to a dramatic reduction in football hooliganism. He's studied the riots in London and other British cities in 2011 and the mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019. And in 2020 he joined the government advisory board, SAGE to advise the government on how to reduce the risk of civil unrest in the wake of a global pandemic.

Producer: Anna Buckley

AKA Clifford Stott On Riot Prevention

As a teenager Clifford was often in trouble with the police. Now he's a professor of crowd psychology who works with the police suggesting new evidence-based strategies for public order management. ‘If we misunderstand the psychology of the crowd then all attempts at crowd control are doomed to fail', he says. Cliff's work on football crowds revolutionised the way matches were policed and led to a dramatic reduction in football hooliganism. He's studied the riots in London and other British cities in 2011 and the mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019. And in 2020 he joined the government advisory board, SAGE to advise the government on how to reduce the risk of civil unrest in the wake of a global pandemic.

Producer: Anna Buckley

How to stop peaceful protests turning into riots.

Producer: Anna Buckley

What can we learn from human remains? Alice Roberts talks bones with Jim Al Khalili.

Jim Al-Khalili hears how Andy gets to capture epic galactic events in motion to build up a picture of this vast ecosystem - and also how he earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for discovering the deepest note in the universe - a B flat , 57 octaves below middle C.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Professor Andy Fabian on supermassive black holes and their dramatic hold over galaxies.

Professor Andrew Fabian from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy has spent his career trying to unravel the mystery of how some of the most dramatic events in the universe can profoundly influence its evolution. For over 50 years he's been examining our universe using X-ray satellites orbiting way above earth's atmosphere . He's built up compelling evidence that supermassive black holes at the heart of galaxies are the engines that drive the movement of energy through the universe and provide the building blocks for the formation of new galaxies. They're extraordianry insights, for which he's now been awarded the 2020 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics, one of the world's most prestigious science prizes.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why the world needs more plant scientists. Prof Dale Sanders talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Saving seahorses and turning old fishing nets into luxury carpets.

Francesca Happe talks to Jim al-Khalili about the abilities of people with autism.

Steve Haake,has spent much of his career using technology to help elite sports people get better, faster and break records. He has turned his hand to the engineering behind most sports, from studying how golf balls land, to designing new tennis racquets and changing the materials in ice skates. He's now Professor of Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University and was the Founding Director of the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre there.

Since the 2012 London Olympics, Steve has also been working to improve the health and wellbeing of all of us. As Chair of the Parkrun Research Board he's heavily involved in this international phenomenon in which thousands of people have sprinted, jogged and stumbled around a 5-kilometre course on Saturday mornings, which he's shown really does encourage people to be generally more active.

Jim al-Khalili talks to Steve Haake about how he got from a physics degree to being one of the leading sports engineers in the world, and how we can all improve our health by moving more.

Producer: Anna Buckley

How did Sarah Gilbert get so far, so fast in developing a vaccine for Covid-19?

AKA Sarah Gilbert On Developing A Vaccine For Covid-19

Sarah Gilbert started working on a vaccine for Covid-19 just as soon as the virus genome was sequenced. Within weeks, she had a proof of principle. By early April, her team at the Jenner Institute in Oxford had manufactured hundreds of doses ready for use in clinical trials. In phase one of these trials, completed in July, this vaccine was shown to be safe for use in a thousand healthy volunteers, aged between 18 and 55. It also provoked exactly the kind of immune response to Covid-19 that Sarah was hoping to achieve. Larger scale clinical trials are currently underway in the UK, South Africa and Brazil. If everything goes according to plan and the vaccine meets all the necessary regulatory standards, it will be manufactured in multiple locations including the Serum Institute in India and made available for use in low to middle income countries. AstraZeneca has already committed to making two billion doses, each costing about $4. The UK has an order in for 100 million. Sarah talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her life and work. As a young woman, she nearly gave up on a career in science. Now she's in charge of one the most successful vaccine projects in the world. How did Sarah and her Oxford team get so far, so fast in developing a vaccine against Covid-19?

Producer: Anna Buckley

How did Sarah Gilbert get so far, so fast in developing a vaccine for Covid-19?

Producer: Anna Buckley for BBC Radio Science

Predicting the spread of Covid-19. Neil Ferguson talks to Jim Al-Khalili about lockdown.

As a child growing up in Derby, Chris learned to love the outdoors on family trips to the Peak District. Recently, you may have seen him abseiling into a crater of an active volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a BBC TV series. He's also been telling us about the link between our planet's geology and climate change as part of the recent Royal Institution Christmas lectures.

Chris talks to Jim al-Khalili about working in the oil and gas exploration industry at the start of his career, searching for massive deposits of salt deep inside the earth and his experience of being a black geologist.

Geologist Chris Jackson on the earth's past, deep salt and abseiling into a volcano.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Photo credit: University of Leeds

How good ventilation dramatically reduces the risk of inhaling tiny airborne pathogens.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Photo credit: University of Leeds

How good ventilation dramatically reduces the risk of inhaling tiny airborne pathogens.

But what if we're wrong? What if our genes have a powerful influence over how we put on weight, and why many struggle to lose it?

Over the past two decades, this once controversial idea has gained acceptance and has inspired the work of Giles Yeo. His research on the genetics of obesity at Cambridge University reveals the powerful ways in which our genes, which function within our brains, influence our eating behaviour.

These genes are far better suited to times of food scarcity. Fast forward to the modern diet, packed with sugar and fat, and our genetic makeup quickly becomes a recipe for disaster.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Giles Yeo reveals the role our genes play in the obesity epidemic.

For many years Anne was uncertain about a career in medicine. But the time she spent in the slums of Caracas and working as a GP in some deprived areas of Newcastle opened her eyes to the importance of good public health.

In the early days of the HIV AIDS epidemic, Anne proved that HIV AIDS was transmitted heterosexually. Her landmark study involved asking people detailed questions about their sex lives and she went on to co-create the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. The survey was banned by the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and thought by many to be a scientific enterprise that was doomed to fail. But it continues to this day, informing our sex education policy and public health interventions to control the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. In the noughties, Anne turned her attention to influenza. She was heavily involved in Flu Watch, a community survey that collected a great wealth of data during the Swine Flu pandemic of 2009. It revealed high levels of asymptomatic infections and showed how T cell immunity could offer protection against different strains of influenza. Insights that have proved to be highly relevant to the study of Covid-19 and how it spreads.

Anne tells Jim Al-Khalili what gets epidemiologists like her out of bed in the morning and why it's so important to focus on prevention as well as cure.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Credit: Academy of Medical Sciences/Big T Images

From HIV to influenza and Covid-19, why prevention is better than cure.

Pick a mouse up by its tail, as was the norm in laboratories for decades, and it gets anxious. Make a mouse anxious and it can skew the results of the research it's being used for.

What mice like, and how they behave, is the focus of Professor Jane Hurst's research. Much of that behaviour, she's discovered, can be revealed by following what they do with their noses - where they take them and what's contained in the scent marks they sniff.

Now William Prescott Professor of Animal Science at the University of Liverpool, Jane has unravelled a complex array of scent signals that underpin the way mice communicate, and how each selects a mate.

Within this heady mix of male scent, she's identified one particular pheromone that is so alluring to females that she named it Darcin, after Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Jane Hurst reveals how mice are ruled by their noses.

Richard talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his quest to understand psychosis and how his own mental health has suffered at times. He's interested in how adverse life events affect our mental health and has shown that people who suffer abuse, bullying and victimization as children are three times more likely to have a psychotic episode later in life. A large survey of our mental health, launched by Richard and colleagues on day one of the first lockdown has revealed that lockdown and Covid-19 has not led to a tsunami of mental illness that many feared. 10% of the population has seen their mental health improve.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why madness is in the world not in us. Prof Richard Bentall talks about his life and work.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why did a rising star in the study of dark energy turn her attention to food?

AKA Sarah Bridle On The Carbon Footprint Of Food

What would happen to our carbon emissions if we all went vegan? Astrophysicist, Sarah Bridle tells Jim Al-Khalili why she switched her attention from galaxies to food. A rising star in the study of extra-galactic astronomy, Sarah was a driving force behind one of the most ambitious astronomy projects of recent times, the Dark Energy Survey of the universe. A few years ago, she started trying to calculate the carbon emissions from different foods so that she could make more informed choices about what she was eating in terms of the impact they were having on climate change. Before long, she was adapting the statistical tools and techniques she had developed to study dark matter and dark energy, to quantify the carbon cost of different foods and lobby government to make food labels indicating carbon cost of foods compulsory.

Why did a rising star in the study of dark energy turn her attention to climate change?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why did a rising star in the study of dark energy turn her attention to climate change?

Mark tells Jim Al-Khalili how he came to be a forensic botanist. After working in bars and clubs in Soho for many years, he decided to study for a degree in botany and developed a special interest in water moulds. As a curator of the botanical collections at the Natural History Museum in London, he became intimately acquainted with British flora past and present. And, more recently, has spent a lot of time monitoring urban wildlife - recording how the composition of native species and non-native species in the capital is changing, as the global climate changes and the global trade in plants continues.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Inside the mind of a forensic botanist, Mark Spencer.

Behavioural psychologist, Professor Dame Theresa Marteau wants to understand why, despite the best of intentions, so many of us fail to adopt healthier lifestyles. She talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her life and work and why, after studying the evidence she changed her mind about how to change our behaviour.

Back in the 90s, it seemed reasonable to assume that telling people they were at high risk of dying would jolt them into eating more healthy and taking more exercise. Now we know better. Thanks in large part to research pioneered by Theresa, we have a much more sophisticated understanding of what drives our behaviour. Turns out, small scale interventions to redesign our environment can exert a big influence on our behaviour by nudging us all into make better decisions, in ways that beyond our awareness. Spoiler Alert - smaller wine glasses really do make you drink less!

Responses to Covid-19 show that nations can act rapidly and radically in response to immediate threats to health, even at huge cost. Can we do the same to tackle other threats to global health?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Prof Dame Theresa Marteau tells Jim Al-Khalili about her life and work.

Back in the 90s, it seemed reasonable to assume that telling people they were at high risk of dying would jolt them into eating more healthily and taking more exercise. Now we know better. Thanks in large part to research pioneered by Theresa, we have a much more sophisticated understanding of what drives our behaviour. It turns out that small scale interventions to redesign our environment can exert a big influence on our behaviour by nudging us all into make better decisions, in ways that are beyond our awareness. Spoiler alert - smaller wine glasses really do make you drink less!

Producer: Anna Buckley

Photo Credit: SSTL

How Martin Sweeting made a satellite on his kitchen table.

Professor Jane Clarke has had a fascinating double career. Having been a science teacher for many years, she didn't start her research career until she was 40. Today she is a world-leading expert in molecular biophysics and, in particular, in how protein molecules in the body fold up into elaborate 3D structures, that only then enables them to carry out their roles. How they do this has been one of the fundamental questions in biology and the key to combating some of our most challenging diseases, caused by the misfolding of proteins.

Jane talks about her journey, from Tottenham schoolteacher to Cambridge Professor and Fellow of the Royal Society, and how, despite the obstacles she's encountered along the way, she's always been driven by her passion to understand the mystery of the machinery of life.

Producer: Adrian Washbourne

While medications, to help relieve the symptoms of migraine, have been around for some time, they haven't worked for everyone. And what happens in the brain during a migraine attack was, until recently, poorly understood.

Peter Goadsby is Professor of Neurology at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and is a true pioneer in the field of migraine.

Over the course of his career, he has unravelled what happens in the brain during a migraine attack and his insights are already benefiting patients - in the form of new medications that can not only treat a migraine, but also prevent it from occurring.

Peter shares this year's Brain Prize, the world's largest prize for brain research, with three other internationally renowned scientists in the field.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Peter Goadsby on migraine attacks and the new treatments his research has inspired.

While medications, to help relieve the symptoms of migraine, have been around for some time, they haven't worked for everyone. And what happens in the brain during a migraine attack was, until recently, poorly understood.

Peter Goadsby is Professor of Neurology at King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience and is a true pioneer in the field of migraine.

Over the course of his career, he has unravelled what happens in the brain during a migraine attack and his insights are already benefiting patients - in the form of new medications that can not only treat a migraine, but also prevent it from occurring.

Peter shares this year's Brain Prize, the world's largest prize for brain research, with three other internationally renowned scientists in the field.

Producer: Beth Eastwood

Peter Goadsby on migraine attacks and the new treatments his research has inspired.

Metals such as copper, manganese and cobalt are in high demand in the manufacture of mobile phones and renewable energy technologies, such as batteries for electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels. Deep sea mining companies argue that we will need these metals to create a carbon Net Zero economy. Meantime, the World Wildlife Fund is pushing for a moratorium on deep sea mining. And several companies agree: including Google, BMW, Volvo and Samsung. Do we need to choose between green and blue? Or is there a third way that protects both the planet and all the riches in our oceans?

Marine biologist, Helen Scales talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her life and work: fish watching off an atoll in the South China Sea to assess the extinction risks to the Humphead Wrasse and a research expedition to explore the brilliant abyss. And she warns of the environmental devastation that could be caused if plans to mine the metals on the bottom of the ocean were to be allowed to go ahead.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Fish watching and the downsides of deep sea mining. Helen Scales talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

The number of people accessing mental health services in the UK has reached record levels since the start of the pandemic. Many are seeking help for the first time, for others delays in treatment have made life in lockdown much harder.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists claims the number of adults experiencing some form of depression has doubled since March 2020. They say NHS services are struggling to cope with demand, meaning some people are having to wait weeks for referrals.

Life on hold follows six people as they navigate their way through mental health services. They tell us how they have coped, offer their experiences of support and set out their hopes for life post-lockdown.

Among them is Jessie, a frontline worker, who started experiencing anxiety while working to help those suffering from coronavirus. Matt's ongoing battle with depression became worse after losing his job at the start of the pandemic, while Anjani, a student at Nottingham University struggled being thousands of miles away from her family in India. These are intimate stories of the widespread, but less publicised battle being played out as the world fought Covid 19.

Produced and Presented by Anna Hodges

Technical Production by Mike Smith

The answers may seem arbitrary but, to Nira Chamberlain, they lie in mathematics. You can use maths to model virtually anything.

Nira Chamberlain is President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and Principle Mathematical Modeller for the multinational engineering company SNC-Lavalin Atkins.

He specialises in complex engineering and industrial problems, creating mathematical models to describe a particular feature or process, and then running simulations to better understand it, and predict its behaviour.

Nira is one of just a handful of esteemed mathematicians featured in ‘Who's Who', Britain's book of prominent people, and the first black mathematician.

Since 2018, he's made the Black Power List, which celebrates the UK's top 100 most influential people of African or African-Caribbean heritage, ranking higher than Stormzy and Lewis Hamilton when he was first listed. Proof, he says, that maths really is for everyone.

PRODUCER: Beth Eastwood

Jim Al-Khalili asks Nira Chamberlain how he uses maths to solve real-world problems.

Dr Nira Chamberlain is President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and Principal Mathematical Modeller for the multinational engineering company SNC-Lavalin Atkins.

Nira is one of just a handful of esteemed mathematicians, and the first black mathematician. to be featured in ‘Who's Who', Britain's book of prominent people.

Mike studies why people drown. He wants to understand the precise physiological changes that occur when we expose ourselves to extreme environments and to use that information to help save lives. (Shivering and sweating will only get you so far when it comes to temperature control).

Most deaths at sea are caused by the initial cold water shock response, not hypothermia. People gasp for air and swallow lethal quantities of water.

So is it a case of kill or cure for cold water swimmers?

What does the scientific evidence say about the idea that repeated cold water immersion can boost our immunity and have an anti-inflammatory effect?

Mike tells Jim how he came to specialise in this area of science and why he believes we should all be challenging our bodies more.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Mike Tipton on cold water swimming.

Climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards tackles this uncertainty head on. She quantifies the uncertainty inherent in all climate change predictions to try and understand which of many possible storylines about the future of our planet are most likely to come true. How likely is it that the ice cliffs in Antarctica will collapse into the sea causing a terrifying amount of sea level rise?

Even the best supercomputers in the world aren't fast enough to do all the calculations we need to understand what might be going on, so Tamsin uses statistical tools to fill in the gaps.

She joined the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018 and is currently working on the 6th Assessment Report which will inform the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP26.

She tells Jim Al-Khalili about her life and work and why she wishes more people would have the humility (and confidence) to consider the possibility that they might be wrong.

Producer: Anna Buckley

All climate change models are wrong. Tamsin Edwards tells Jim Al Khalili why.

Keen to continue doing mathematics, she joined the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London just as people were starting to us data to understand human behaviour. (Yes. If you zoom out enough and use some mathematical tools, there are parallels between the airflows around racing cars and the way humans behave.) She has studied everything from the mathematics of love, to civil unrest, advising governments and Deep Mind, the artificial intelligence research lab owned by Google.

At a public lecture in Berlin in 2018, she learnt the hard way that it's a mistake to detach data from its context. Never again will she forget to ask, what do these numbers represent? How else could my algorithms be used? Is this something we, as a society, want?

Data and algorithms help humans to solve problems. Big, difficult problems like climate change and Covid-19. Mathematics can help us to police a riot or find love. But the idea that maths and numbers are value-neutral is deeply flawed, Hannah says. The artificial intelligence we create is a reflection of who we are. It can discriminate horribly. But, applied wisely, it could help us to start to overcome our unconscious biases and prejudice.

We humans are not perfect. Neither is AI. If we scrutinise the algorithms that now make so many decisions for us and make sure that their priorities are our priorities, then perhaps we can get the best of both. In the Age of the Algorithm, humans have never been more important

Hannah Fry tells Jim Al-Khalili about her life as a mathematician and why her attitude to risk and statistics changed dramatically earlier this year.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why, in the Age of the Algorithm, humans have never been more important.

‘I didn't know I wanted to be a mathematician until I was one' says Hannah Fry, now a Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at University College London. Her mother pushed her hard at school, coming down on her like a tonne of bricks when she got a C for effort in mathematics. Never mind that she was top of the class. By the time she'd finished a PhD in fluid dynamics, she had realised that she probably wasn't going to be a hairdresser and pursued her other passion, Formula One. Sadly F1 wasn't the dream job she'd imagined: all the interesting equations were wrapped up in computer simulations and no further maths was needed.

Keen to continue doing mathematics, she joined the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London just as people were starting to use data to understand human behaviour. (Yes. If you zoom out enough and use some mathematical tools, there are parallels between the airflows around racing cars and the way humans behave.) She has studied everything from the mathematics of love to civil unrest, and has advised governments and Deep Mind, the artificial intelligence research lab owned by Google.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Can we create new senses? Prof David Eagleman talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

For decades now, Brenda Boardman has been thinking about how to reduce the amount of energy we use in our homes. We have Brenda to thank for the rainbow-coloured energy efficiency labels with their A- G ratings that appear on new fridges, freezers, TVs, dishwashers, and washing machines. As a result of these labels and subsequent legislation, it's no longer possible to buy an energy inefficient fridge or incandescent light bulbs. And there's a strong incentive for manufacturers to make appliances ever more energy efficient. But the introduction of the Energy Performance Certificate for homes has been less successful.

So, is achieving carbon net zero in our homes a realistic proposition?

Brenda tells Jim Al-Khalili how much she learnt travelling the world, having just missed out on a place at university. And why in her thirties she decided to study part-time for a degree. Working and bringing up children at the same time, it took a while to complete a degree and then a PhD. But, aged 48, Brenda began her academic career working at the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford and has no regrets about the time she spent getting to know who she was an what the world was like.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Can we achieve carbon net zero in our homes? Brenda Boardman talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

~Life Scientific, The

How many of you have sleep problems? Maybe it's waking up in the middle of the night and then not being able to get back to sleep, or waking up too early, or nodding off all too often in front of the TV - ¦ or, more embarrassingly, during work meetings? One thing's for sure: our modern world means that we are not sleeping in the way we used to. Derk-Jan Dijk, Distinguished Professor of Sleep and Physiology at the University of Surrey and Director of the Surrey Sleep Centre, says: we are the only species to extend our day using artificial light, and that has consequences.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Derk-Jan Dijk about the many aspects of sleep that he has studied over the last thirty years - ? such as how circadian rhythms interact with our sleep cycles, and how sleep changes in people with dementia.

How does sleep change as we age? Derk-Jan Dijk talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Hannah Cloke talks to Jim al-Khalili about how her fascination with the water on the earth goes back to her childhood - her memories of holidays for instance all revolve around swimming or building dams on the beach. She is now passionate about finding new ways of telling the public about the dangers of flooding, which includes writing poetry.

Hannah Cloke talks to Jim Al-Khalili about predicting this summer's serious floods.

And ask: has the job description changed? Success in science is often defined by making discoveries and publishing papers but, as the pandemic made clear, we also need scientists who can interact with decision makers in government and elsewhere. Do scientists need to learn new skills to participate in the decision making process? Do they (or at least some of them) need to be more outward looking, aware of the world beyond their laboratories and ready to engage? Or do the corridors of power need to open their doors to more people with a scientific training? And, if Britain is to become a science superpower, is it time that scientists stopped being squeamish about making money?

Jim's guests are Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation, Prof Dame Ottoline Leyser; Nobel Prize winning biologist and Director of the Crick Institute, Prof Sir Paul Nurse; geologist and Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer, Christopher Jackson; and forensic scientist and member of the House of Lords, Prof Dame Sue Black.

Producer: Anna Buckley

What does it take to be a scientist? Jim Al-Khalili and distinguished guests discuss.

Jim's guests are Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation, Prof Dame Ottoline Leyser; Nobel Prize winning biologist and Director of the Crick Institute, Prof Sir Paul Nurse; geologist and Royal Institution Christmas Lecturer, Prof Christopher Jackson; and forensic scientist and member of the House of Lords, Prof Dame Sue Black.

Jim Al-Khalili and distinguished guests reflect on ten years of The Life Scientific.

In a multi disciplinary career following early training as a rheumatologist, Tim founded the UK Twins Registry at Kings College London to unravel the extent to which genes contribute to a vast range of human conditions and diseases. But the puzzling differences he observed in identical twins would fuel his current research on the gut microbiome and the discovery that each of us has a unique mix of gut bacteria - in effect a chemical factory that dictates our highly individual responses to different foods.

Tim tells Jim Al-Khalili how his research has evolved to successfully develop a new scientific approach to personalised nutrition - through technology that during the pandemic has famously been pressed into service to track Covid symptoms across the UK, and that's now revealing how a diverse diet has huge implications for Covid-19 outcomes.

Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Professor Tim Spector on fuelling gut microbes for long term health.

‘Meerkat Manor' and many natural history TV documentaries that have followed the lives of these small appealing mongooses were filmed at the field research centre in South Africa which Tim set up three decades ago.

Colleagues describe Tim Clutton-Brock as one of the giants in the field of animal behaviour and societies, seeking to explain them from an evolutionary and ecological perspective.

He is renowned for his ambitious, long-term studies of populations of animals in the wild. His research follows hundreds of individuals to see how the animals develop and fare over their entire lifetimes and what factors determine their longevity and their success at producing offspring.

Among the numerous species which Tim has studied are red deer on the island of Rum in Scotland and meerkats in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa. From the minutiae of the lives of many individual animals, his aim has been to see the big picture - explanations that provide a logical framework for what we see in Nature.

Professor Clutton-Brock talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his five decades of research; including why sons cost mothers more than daughters, getting close to fighting stags at night, and how to tame a meerkat so she'll let you ultrasound her belly.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

What makes meerkats so cooperative and why do sons cost mothers more than daughters?

Thanks to Professor Peacock and her colleagues, the UK was way ahead of other countries in establishing a national network of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing and genomic analysis although she was the target of criticism when COG-UK was being set up in the spring of 2020. However, as she tells Jim Al-Khalili, it paid off. For example, it was the sequencing of virus samples by the consortium that last December identified the fast-spreading Alpha or so-called Kent variant. This was the variant responsible for the terrible second wave of deaths and hospitalisations last winter. It was a combination of the overwhelmed hospitals, rocketing infection rates and the discovery of Alpha that persuaded the government to tighten the rules for that Christmas and institute the lockdown in January.

Before the pandemic, Sharon Peacock was a pioneer and advocate for the application of pathogen genome sequencing in the National Health Service to tackle the growing menace of antibiotic resistance. She is a consultant in microbiology and Professor of Public Health and Microbiology at the University of Cambridge. This is not a list of titles and achievements which Sharon could have possibly imagined when she left school at 16, to work full time in her local corner shop.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Leading the UK's hunt for new and dangerous Covid-19 variants.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Can we trust our memories of events? Julia Shaw talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Sir Shankar Balasubramanian is responsible for a revolution in medicine. The method he invented for reading, at speed, the unique genetic code that makes each one of us who we are, is ten million times faster than the technology that was used in the human genome project at the turn of the century. What's more, it can be done much more cheaply than before and on a desktop machine. And it's transforming healthcare, by helping us to understand the genetic basis of many diseases (particularly cancers) and to develop new diagnostic tests, medicines and personalised treatments.

‘DNA has never failed to keep me excited and curious' says Shankar, winner of the highly prestigious 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. He didn't set out to create a game-changing technology or to make a lot of money. He just wanted to understand the DNA double helix in the greatest possible detail; to reveal how it worked, molecule by molecule. And he still rides a rickety old bicycle to work in Cambridge.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Image ©University of Cambridge

The man who found a way to decode DNA at speed.

‘DNA has never failed to keep me excited and curious' says Shankar, winner of the highly prestigious 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. He didn't set out to create a game-changing technology or to make a lot of money. He just wanted to understand the DNA double helix in the greatest possible detail; to reveal how it worked, molecule by molecule. And he still rides a rickety old bicycle to work in Cambridge.

For hundreds of millions of years, our mammalian ancestors remained small. Most were mouse-sized. None were bigger than a badger. Steve studies how, when an asteroid collided with earth 66 million years ago, the mammals got lucky. All the big dinosaurs were wiped out and only the small ones with wings survived. (Birds are dinosaurs, by the way). Within half a million years, mammals of all shapes and sizes had taken over on planet earth. Sabre-toothed flesh eaters, cow-sized plant guzzlers and a host of other warm blooded placental animals evolved alongside the badger sized burrowers.

Steve talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work, including the recent discovery of an incredibly well-preserved Pterosaur on the Isle of Skye, a place he likes to call Scotland's Jurassic Park.

Producer: Anna Buckley

How did mammals come to dominate our planet? Prof Steve Brusatte talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

Stephen Brusatte analyses the pace of evolutionary change and uses it to understand the big transitions in our evolutionary history. For example, how did dinosaurs evolve into birds. ‘Flight is something that just kind of happened when the time was right', says Steve. If you met a Velociraptor today you'd probably mistake it for a large bird that couldn't fly.

The movie Jurassic Park cemented Steve's intense interest in dinosaurs as a child and he remains deeply curious about T. rex, Triceratops and all the other dinosaur species that dominated our planet for a hundred million years. He's studied the rise and fall of the dinosaurs and the fall and rise of mammals.

Our earliest mouse-sized ancestors existed more than 200 millon years ago. When the dinosaurs dominated, mammals were no bigger than a badger and very much overshadowed. But when an asteroid collided with earth 66 million years ago, the mammals got lucky. All the non-bird dinosaurs were wiped out and within half a million years, there was an enormous diversity of mammals including sabre-toothed flesh eaters and cow-sized plant guzzlers, as well as badger sized burrowers.

Steve talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work using data to answer big questions in evolution. He describes hunting for fossils in the Algarve, New Mexico and the Gobi desert and the recent discovery of an incredibly well preserved Pterosaur on the Isle of Skye.

How did mammals come to dominate our planet? Prof Stephen Brusatte talks to Jim Al-Khalili

Stephen Brusatte analyses the pace of evolutionary change and uses it to understand the big transitions in our evolutionary history. For example, how did dinosaurs evolve into birds. ‘Flight is something that just kind of happened when the time was right', says Steve. If you met a Velociraptor today you'd probably mistake it for a large bird that couldn't fly.

For hundreds of millions of years, our mammalian ancestors remained small. Most were mouse-sized. None were bigger than a badger. Steve studies how, when an asteroid collided with earth 66 million years ago, the mammals got lucky. All the big dinosaurs were wiped out and only the small ones with wings survived. (Birds are dinosaurs, by the way). Within half a million years, mammals of all shapes and sizes had taken over on planet earth. Sabre-toothed flesh eaters, cow-sized plant guzzlers and a host of other warm blooded placental animals evolved alongside the badger sized burrowers.

Steve talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work, including the recent discovery of an incredibly well-preserved Pterosaur on the Isle of Skye, a place he likes to call Scotland's Jurassic Park.

Producer: Anna Buckley

How did mammals come to dominate our planet? Prof Steve Brusatte talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

He is a professor of Evolutionary Biology and Science Engagement at the University of East Anglia and the presenter of several landmark TV series on animal bones and extinction, such as The Secrets of Bones and most recently, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard. Ben shares his passion for the contrasting insights into conservation and extinction, the value they play, and describes his own extraordinary journey from exploring animal remains washed up on Norfolk beaches to years spend tracking chimps in Uganda to eminent science communicator and public figure.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

What can bones tell us about evolution, behaviour and extinction?

As a black, working class woman from a council estate in Newcastle, she was in a minority of one studying engineering at university in London and encountered terrible racism and sexism. She went on to build digital networks all over the world, the networks that make today's instant multimedia communications possible. And Chi built the first mobile phone network in Nigeria, when the country was without a reliable electricity supply. Today she is Shadow Minister for Science, Research and Innovation.

When Chi decided to go into politics, her engineering colleagues were not impressed. Why would anyone leave their noble profession to enter a chaotic, disreputable and dubiously useful non-profession, they asked. But, Chi believes, parliament desperately needs more scientists and engineers, not only to help us solve science-based problems but also to create technical jobs and build a strong economy.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why politics needs more scientists and engineers.

Being a black, working-class woman from a council estate in Newcastle, Chi Onwurah was in a minority of one studying engineering at university in London in the 1980s. ‘It was probably the worst experience of my life' she says. But it led to the best experience of her life, to date: building the first mobile phone network in Nigeria. It was no mean feat in a country which was without a reliable electricity supply at the time, and Chi was delighted when her Nigerian father (who had desperately wanted her to be a doctor) conceded that perhaps engineering was a useful profession after all.

Talking to Jim Al-Khalil about her life and work, Chi shares her passion for digital networks, the networks that make today's instant multimedia communications possible from social media to online banking. But mid-career Chi decided to stand for parliament, much to her engineering colleagues dismay. Why would anyone want to leave such a noble profession to enter such a chaotic, disreputable and dubiously useful non-profession as politics, they asked. Even today, there are shockingly few members of parliament who understand science and engineering. And it's a problem, says Chi.

Learning about statistics at school helped Chi to realise that she was an outlier and 'not a freak' as some of her classmates called her. These days she represents the people she grew up with in parliament and is Shadow Minister for Science, Research and Innovation.

AKA Chi Onwurah On Why Engineering Is A Caring Profession

Being a black, working-class woman from a council estate in Newcastle, Chi Onwurah was in a minority of one studying engineering at university in London in the 1980s. ‘It was probably the worst experience of my life' she says. But it led to the best experience of her life, to date: building the first mobile phone network in Nigeria. It was no mean feat in a country which was without a reliable electricity supply at the time, and Chi was delighted when her Nigerian father (who had desperately wanted her to be a doctor) conceded that perhaps engineering was a useful profession after all.

Tackling climate change in isolation is a mistake, he says. We need to consider all the challenges facing humanity and identify strategies that deliver benefits on all fronts: food security, bio-diversity and human development goals.

He tells Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work and the urgent need for our degraded peat bogs to be restored. Peat bogs that have been drained (for grazing or to plant trees) add to our carbon emissions. Healthy peat bogs, however, are carbon sinks.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Restore peat bogs to mitigate climate change and improve bio-diversity.

This is one of the thorny ethical dilemmas that Jacinta Tan has wrestled with over the course of her career. She is deeply curious about the mind, and has spent hundreds of hours sitting with people with anorexia nervosa, not persuading them to eat, rather listening to them talk about what's going on in their minds and how the illness influences their decisions.

These rich internal worlds, that she has revealed, shape her work as a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, where she treats people with eating disorders. The views of those with the conditon and their families have been central to the recent government reviews of the Eating Disorder Services that she led in Scotland and Wales.

These conditions can be hugely challenging to treat. Jacinta Tan tells Jim Al-Khalili how it's the art of medicine, as much as the science, that helps people recover.

PRODUCER: Beth Eastwood

How does a person with anorexia nervosa think? Jacinta Tan talks to Jim Al-Khalili.

When a person with severe anorexia nervosa refuses food, the very treatment they need to survive, is that refusal carefully considered and rational, as it can appear to those around them? Or is it really the illness that's causing them to say ‘no'?

Ant-loving professor, Adam Hart, shares his passion for leaf cutting ants with Jim Al Khalili. Why do they put leaves in piles for other ants to pick up?

Talking at the Hay Festival, Adam describes the experiments he designed to test the intelligence of the hive mind. When does a waggle dance become a tremble dance? And how do the honey bees know when this moment should be?

We like the phrase ‘as busy as a bee'. In fact, bees spend a lot of time doing nothing at all, a sensible strategy from the point of view of natural selection.

And where does Adam stand on insect burgers?

Producer: Anna Buckley

Vlatko is Professor of Quantum Information Science at the University of Oxford and the Principal Investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore and he talks to Jim in front of an audience at the Cheltenham Science Festival.

At school in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, young Vlatko was bowled over by the idea that you could take the micro-laws of quantum mechanics, and apply them to the complex systems of the macro world.

And he admits that what still drives his research is the need to see and understand the big picture.

Producer: Fiona Hill

A self-confessed physics fundamentalist decodes reality.

Vlatko Vedral describes himself as a quantum information practitioner, who believes that our universe is made up of quantum bits of information.

It is information, he tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili, rather than energy or matter, the traditional building blocks of classical Newtonian physics, that can help us to understand the nature of reality.

At high school in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia, young Vlatko was bowled over by the idea that you could take the micro-laws of quantum mechanics, and apply them to the complex systems of the macro world.

This drive to see the big picture, was fuelled when, as an undergraduate at Imperial College, London, he saw three words - `Information is physical` - the title of a paper by the IBM physicist, Rolf Landauer.

It was a light-bulb moment for Vlatko, who realised that the kind of information processing that the universe is capable of, depends on the underlying laws of physics.

This revelation led to Vlatko's incarnation as a self-confessed `physics fundamentalist` who unashamedly crowns physics the Queen and other disciplines, her servants. It is physics alone, he tells Jim, which can answer the fundamental questions of the universe and discover the ultimate reality.

His PhD in 1997 at Imperial College, London, applied quantum mechanics, including super-positioning and entanglement (which Einstein famously called `spooky action at a distance`), to Claude Shannon's Information theory, making Vlatko one of the pioneers in the field of quantum information.

As new quantum computers come on stream, he tells Jim, quantum information practitioners, like him, will have the capacity to simulate complex systems in the macroscopic domain.

Who could forget the beginning of 2020, when a ‘mysterious viral pneumonia' emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Soon, other countries were affected and deaths around the world began to climb. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, there were no proven treatments to help prevent those deaths.

As the World Health Organisation declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, and the UK and the rest of the world braced itself for what was to come, doctor and drug-trial designer Martin Landray had his mind on a solution, devising the protocol, or blueprint, for the world's largest drug trial for Covid-19.

As Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Oxford University, Martin was perfectly positioned to jump, delivering what became known as the RECOVERY Trial. The trial was tasked to deliver clarity amid the predicted chaos of the pandemic and galvanised every acute NHS hospital in the UK. Within its first one hundred days, it had yielded three major discoveries and it has transformed Covid-19 treatment worldwide, already saving over a million lives. Sir Martin Landray was recently knighted for this work and RECOVERY's legacy lives on, not just for Covid. Martin plans to revolutionise drug trials for other diseases too.

PRODUCER: Beth Eastwood

Sir Martin Landray on how he discovered the drugs for Covid-19 with the RECOVERY Trial.

Who could forget the beginning of 2020, when a ‘mysterious viral pneumonia' emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Soon, other countries were affected and deaths around the world began to climb. Perhaps most alarmingly of all, there were no proven treatments to help prevent those deaths.

Decades later, after several changes of direction (from aerospace engineer to biotech pioneer), she invented a radical new approach to engineering enzymes. Rather than try to design industrial enzymes from scratch (which she considered to be an impossible task), Frances decided to let Nature do the work. ‘I breed enzymes like other people breed cats and dogs' she says.

While some colleagues accused her of intellectual laziness, industry jumped on her ideas and used them in the manufacture of everything from laundry detergents to pharmaceuticals.

She talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her journey from taxi driver to Nobel Prize, personal tragedy in midlife and why advising the White House is much harder than doing scientific research.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Turning microbes into living factories.

Nobel Prize-winning chemist Frances Arnold left home at 15 and went to school ‘only when she felt like it'. She disagreed with her parents about the Vietnam War and drove big yellow taxis in Pittsburgh to pay the rent.

Decades later, after several changes of direction (from aerospace engineer to biotech pioneer), she invented a radical new approach to engineering enzymes. Rather than try to design industrial enzymes from scratch (which she considered to be an impossible task), Frances decided to let Nature do the work. ‘I breed enzymes like other people breed cats and dogs' she says.

In the more recent New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, from around 3.5 thousand years ago (the time of some of Egypt's most famous kings like Ahmose I, Thutmose III, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and queens like Hatshepsut) evidence from core samples shows evidence of rainfall, huge lakes, springs, trees, birds, hares and even gazelle, very different from today.

By combining geology with archaeology, Dr Bunbury, from the department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge and Senior Tutor at St Edmund's College, tells Jim Al-Khalili that evidence of how people adapted to their ever-changing landscape is buried in the mud, dust and sedimentary samples beneath these ancient sites, waiting to be discovered.

With an augur (like a large apple corer), Judith and her team take core samples (every ten metre sample in Egypt reveals approximately 10,000 years of the past) and then read the historical story backwards. A model of the topography, the environment, the climate and the adapting human settlements can then be built up to enrich the historical record.

The core samples contain chipped stones which can be linked directly to the famous monuments and statues in the Valley of the Kings. There are splinters of amethyst from precious stone workshops, tell-tale rubbish dumped in surrounding water as well as pottery fragments which can be reliably time-stamped to the fashion-conscious consumers in the reign of individual Pharaohs.

The geo-archaeological research by Judith and her team, has helped to demonstrate that the building of the temples at Karnak near Luxor, added to by each of the Pharaohs, was completely dependent on the mighty Nile, a river which, over millennia, has wriggled and writhed, creating new land on one bank as it consumes land on another. Buildings and monuments were adapted and extended as the river constantly changed course.

And Judith hopes the detailed, long-range climate records and models we already have, can be enriched with this more detailed history of people, their settlements and their activities within a changing landscape and this will contribute to our ability to tackle climate change.

Producer: Fiona Hill

A geo-archaeologist digs down to enrich our knowledge of ancient Egypt and beyond.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Why images are more powerful than words in shaping how we think and feel.

Daphne Koller was a precociously clever child. She completed her first degree – a double major in mathematics and computer science – when she was just 17 and went on to become a distinguished Professor at Stanford University in California. But before long she'd given up this comfortable academic position to create the biggest online education platform in the world. In 2018, she founded the drug discovery company Insitro hoping to create a space where data scientists and molecular biologists could work together as equals.

Daphne tells Jim Al-Khalili how a single question from her supervisor nudged her to use her considerable mathematical ability to do something useful and why she believes the time is right for artificial intelligence to discover new medicines.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Daphne Koller was a precociously clever child. She completed her first degree - a double major in mathematics and computer science - when she was just 17 and went on to become a distinguished Professor at Stanford University in California. But before long she'd given up this comfortable academic position to create the biggest online education platform in the world. In 2018, she founded the drug discovery company Insitro hoping to create a space where data scientists and molecular biologists could work together as equals.

Jim Al-Khalili meets Tim Lamont, a young ecologist making waves restoring coral reefs

Producer: Anna Buckley

Leon Barron tells Jim Al-Khalili how he developed an intense interest in sewage.

Bambos Kyriacou tells Jim Al-Khalili why he studies the behaviour of fruit flies.

A Professor of Food Safety and Microbiology at Queen's University Belfast and a founding director of its Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS), his work is all about developing scientific solutions to protect us from contaminated food, be it accidental or criminal.

Following the 2013 horse meat scandal - ` when prepared foods purporting to be made from beef were found to contain undeclared horse-meat - ` Chris conducted the independent review of the UK food system that brought to light the growing threat of food crime. Since then, his name's become synonymous with solving cases of food fraud; today he receives regular tip-offs on everything from oregano scams to dodgy potatoes.

But as Chris tells Jim Al-Khalili, his team at the IGFS are pioneering new techniques to read the molecular fingerprint of foodstuffs, with technology that they hope will stop the fraudsters in their tracks - ¦

Producer: Lucy Taylor

How 'fingerprinting' technology could help prevent another horse meat scam.

Professor Chris Elliott is something of a - ?food detective'.

Following the 2013 horse meat scandal - ? when prepared foods purporting to be made from beef were found to contain undeclared horse-meat - ? Chris conducted the independent review of the UK food system that brought to light the growing threat of food crime. Since then, his name's become synonymous with solving cases of food fraud; today he receives regular tip-offs on everything from oregano scams to dodgy potatoes.

To date there's no cure, and until fairly recently there were only minimal treatments to ease the symptoms.

Pam Shaw has dedicated her career to changing that.

A Professor of Neurology at Sheffield University and Founding Director of the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience, she recently led clinical trials into a drug that delivered unprecedented results: showing that it could slow the progression of MND in certain patients, and even improve symptoms for some.

It's just one small step – but with a new tranche of research funding and a national institute to study the disease on the cards, Pamela believes this could be the start of real progress in understanding and treating Motor Neuron Disease.

Producer: Lucy Taylor

How new drug trials could mark a turning point in MND research.

To date there's no cure, and until fairly recently there were only minimal treatments to ease the symptoms.

Pam Shaw has dedicated her career to changing that.

A Professor of Neurology at Sheffield University and Founding Director of the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience, she recently led clinical trials into a drug that delivered unprecedented results: showing that it could slow the progression of MND in certain patients, and even improve symptoms for some.

It's just one small step - but with a new tranche of research funding and a national institute to study the disease on the cards, Pamela believes this could be the start of real progress in understanding and treating Motor Neuron Disease.

Producer: Lucy Taylor

How new drug trials could mark a turning point in MND research.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astrophysicist Haley Gomez about defying expectations and becoming a world expert on cosmic dust.

For centuries, cosmic dust was a major source of irritation to optical astronomers because, like smog, it stopped them from seeing the stars. Now studies of these tiny particles are challenging some deeply held assumptions about the physics of the universe.

Haley's research has changed the textbook explanation of how cosmic dust is formed and helped to open our eyes to just how many galaxies there are in the universe.

In 2018 she was awarded an MBE for services to physics and inspiring the next generation of physicists and astronomers from less privileged communities. A cause which is very close to her heart.

Produced by Anna Buckley and recorded in the Pier Head Building in Cardiff as part of the Cardiff Science Festival.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to astrophysicist Haley Gomez.

A Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Cambridge, Rebecca's work – initially with cuckoos, then more recently with the beetles – has shed invaluable light on the relationship between social behaviours and evolution.

She tells Jim Al-Khalili how the beetles' helpfully swift generational churn and mouse-based parenting has allowed her team to study evolution in action, demonstrating for the first time what was previously just evolutionary theory.

Producer: Lucy Taylor

How corpse-based beetles can answer long-standing questions about human evolution.

A fur-stripped mouse carcase might not sound like the cosiest of homes - but that's where the burying beetle makes its nest; and where Rebecca Kilner has focused much of her research.

A Professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Cambridge, Rebecca's work - initially with cuckoos, then more recently with the beetles - has shed invaluable light on the relationship between social behaviours and evolution.

A Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Clifford's worked in the United States for decades – but was born in the UK, then spent his formative years on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, before moving back to England to study.

Here, he fell in love with quantum mechanics - before moving to the US, where he's broken new ground in finding ways to talk about quantum gravity and black holes.

Clifford's other big passion is getting as many people as possible engaged with science, making it more exciting, entertaining and most importantly diverse - and it's this attitude that's led to regular work as a science consultant on various TV shows and films; and even a recent cameo in a major movie...

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Jim Al-Khalili hears about new approaches to quantum questions and using science in films.

A Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Clifford's worked in the United States for decades - but was born in the UK, then spent his formative years on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, before moving back to England to study.

Danny Altmann joined ‘team T cells' in his twenties and has been studying how these killer operate ever since. How do they know which cells to search and destroy?

The T cell wing of our immune response is highly targeted and incredibly clever, on a par with the most sophisticated military intelligence operation and in recent decades there have been dramatic advances in our understanding of how it all works .

Danny tells Jim how he came to study our immune response to all sorts of pathogens, from anthrax to zika, why he spends every morning from 5 to 6am in the bath reading 19th century classics and why he's determined to try and understand Long Covid.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Danny Altmann joined ‘team T cells' in his twenties and has been studying how these killer operate ever since. How do they know which cells to search and destroy?

Twenty years later, in front of a blackboard in Nottingham, he had an a-ha moment. And proved that a much derided approach to statistics (first suggested by Rev Thomas Bayes in 1763 with reference to billiard balls) was a failsafe way to learn from data and make predictions. All of a sudden, Bayesian Statistics was no longer a dirty word. And he immediately applied these new methods to real world problems form improving survival rates for kidney transplants to tracking Russian submarines. Whatever the data set, the approach was the same. And it paved the way for dramatic explosion in machine learning and AI we see today.

Professor Sir Adrian Smith tells Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work: how he nearly got fired in week one of being a civil servant but went on to save the science budget in 2010 and why, these days, he's happier working outside government, as CEO of the Turing Institute and President of The Royal Society.

Producer: Anna Buckley

Adrian Smith tells how a derided area of mathematics led him to a method that underpins AI

Jim Al-Khalili talks to pioneering mathematician and President of The Royal Society, Professor Sir Adrian Smith about his years in the mathematical wilderness and the urgent need for a more mathematically and data literate workforce in the UK.

Once accused of ‘trying to destroy the processes of science', Adrian went on to prove that Bayesian statistics was mathematically solid and could be applied to all sorts of real world problems: from improving survival rates for kidney transplant patients to tracking Russian submarines.

A mathematical proof that paved the way for a dramatic explosion in machine learning and AI.

Working as a civil servant (and being, he says, ‘neither civil nor a servant'), Adrian helped to protect the science budget in 2010, transforming the landscape for scientific research in the UK. For more than a decade, he's been making the case for educational reforms to make sure for that the UK workforce has the mathematical and data skills it needs in an age of big data and AI.

He's now President of the Royal Society and one the most influential people in British science.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to the pioneering mathematician Professor Sir Adrian Smith.

How a once-derided approach to statistics paved the way for AI. Jim Al-Khalili talks to pioneering mathematician, Professor Sir Adrian Smith.

Accused early in his career of ‘trying to destroy the processes of science', Adrian went on to prove that a branch of statistics (invented by the Reverend Thomas Bayes in 1764) could be used by computers to analyse vast sets of data and to learn from that data.

His mathematical proofs showed that Bayesian statistics could be applied to all sorts of real world problems: from improving survival rates for kidney transplant patients to tracking Russian submarines. And paved the way for a dramatic explosion in machine learning and AI.

Working as a civil servant (2008-2012) he helped to protect the science budget in 2010, transforming the landscape for scientific research in the UK. And he has been vocal, over many years, about the urgent need to make sure children in the UK leave school more mathematically able.

In 2020, he became President of the UK's prestigious national science academy, The Royal Society.

Accused early in his career of ‘trying to destroy the processes of science', Adrian went on to prove that a branch of statistics (invented by the Reverend Thomas Bayes in 1764) could be used by computers to analyse vast sets of data and to learn from that data.

She tells Jim Al-Khalili how the dressmaking skills she learnt from her mother as a child helped her to understand the composite structures used in wind turbines later in life. And how she designed metal alloys that are resistant to both large and small cracks.

As the author of the UK government's Review of Low Carbon Cars in 2007, Julia set out a route to decarbonising a major segment of the transport sector within 25 years, making an important contribution to the UK's plans to try and achieve Net Zero.

But achieving Net Zero is not enough. With demand for electricity set to double or treble by 2050, there's an urgent need to radically reform our national infrastructure and guarantee supply.

Julia became a cross-bench member of the House of Lords in 2015. She's now chair of its Science and Technology Committee, holding the government to account on its promise to make the UK a science superpower.

A metals-focused engineer's route from academia to industry to the House of Lords.

Today an emeritus professor in Health Psychology at the University of Aberdeen, her career exploring behavioural interventions has shown that even the subtlest shift in how we act can dramatically change our behaviour and lives for the better – whether that's in an individual recovering from a stroke, or a nation coming to terms with pandemic safety measures, while her work setting up the UK's first stress management clinic showed why mental health support needed to come out of psychiatric hospitals and into general practice.

Marie tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili why she believes the right interventions can be a powerful tool in improving public health, and indeed our healthcare system; and how an accident at the hairdresser's many years ago helped her become more approachable...

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Why subtle changes in how we act can radically change our lives and our health.

Today an emeritus professor in health psychology at the University of Aberdeen, her career exploring behavioural interventions has shown that even the subtlest shift in how we act can dramatically change our behaviour and lives for the better - whether that's in an individual recovering from a stroke, or a nation coming to terms with pandemic safety measures, while her work setting up the UK's first stress management clinic showed why mental health support needed to come out of psychiatric hospitals and into general practice.

But thanks to the work of people like James Jackson, an Emeritus Professor of Active Tectonics at the University of Cambridge, we are finding new ways of understanding and withstanding seismic activity.

James tells Jim Al-Khalili about his career travelling the world in search of quake sites and fault lines – trialling new technology and techniques in a quest to understand the processes that shake and shape our planet's surface; and working out how this information can help vulnerable cities become more resilient to quakes in future...

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

How studying processes that shape the planet's surface can help us become more resilient.

James tells Jim Al-Khalili about his career travelling the world in search of quake sites and fault lines - trialling new technology and techniques in a quest to understand the processes that shake and shape our planet's surface; and working out how this information can help vulnerable cities become more resilient to quakes in future...

Julie Williams has been at the forefront of this effort, uncovering the genes that make us susceptible, and has transformed our understanding of this devastating disease. She has brought researchers together to create bigger datasets and more powerful studies. Her current work with scientists from other fields, like immunology and computational biology, is looking at the mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's disease.

Julie tells Jim about her early interest in science, her time as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Welsh government, and her belief in ‘team science' – collaborating and sharing research findings across international borders and disciplines.

Produced by Florian Bohr

Julie Williams on the genetics of Alzheimer's disease.

Julie tells Jim about her early interest in science, her time as Chief Scientific Advisor to the Welsh government, and her belief in ‘team science' - collaborating and sharing research findings across international borders and disciplines.

Sir Andre Geim created the first-ever man-made 2D material, by isolating graphene, and is one of the pioneers in this line of research. Even beyond his Nobel Prize-winning work on graphene, he has explored new ideas in many different areas of physics throughout his career.

Andre tells Jim about his time growing up in the Soviet Union, being rejected from university based on his German ethnicity, his move to Western Europe, and levitating frogs.

Produced by Florian Bohr.

The Nobel prize-winning physicist talks about the world's strongest material, graphene.

The chances are, not often - but it is vital to every part of our lives, from the air we breathe, to the processes that take place inside our bodies and the materials we use.

Gillian Reid is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Southampton and she is on a mission to make sure we all know what chemistry can do for us - and how it is tackling some of society's biggest challenges.

Hers is a story of firsts - the first in her immediate family to go to university and the first female member of staff in the chemistry department at the University of Southampton, where she later became the first female Professor and Head of Department. She is also the reigning President of the Royal Society of Chemistry - one of very few women to have taken on that mantle in its 182-year history.

She tells Jim Al-Khalili about life as a female professor in a male-dominated space - and what needs to change to unlock chemistry for everyone. He also hears how Gillian is discovering new compounds that could revolutionise tech and medicine.

We'll also hear why she thinks research isn't actually that hard and how chemistry can be a little bit like Lego - ¦ Do join us.

Produced by Gerry Holt

Jim Al-Khalili hears how chemistry is connected to every part of our lives.

Today, he is Wilson Chair of Hazard and Risk and Executive Director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University - but as he tells Jim Al-Khalili, a lifelong passion for discovery has taken Bruce from volunteering with the Peace Corps in West Africa and a Fulbright Fellowship in Argentina, to fieldwork in India; not only studying hazards themselves, but also the people they affect - and building up the character and resilience to overcome personal tragedy along the way...

Over the years, his work in the field has opened up new ways of understanding such events: from statistical modelling to show how groups of hazards occur, to examining the cascading relationships between multiple hazards. And today, his focus is on projects that can bring tangible benefits to people at serious risk from environmental hazards - finding innovative ways to help them to better manage that threat.

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

From landslides to tornadoes, Bruce Malamud talks modelling risk and multi-hazard cascades

She's used to the 'child prodigy' label that's followed her throughout her career, but that doesn't mean she's had an easy ride.

It was a combination of personal experience and the discovery that the number of women working in the STEM sectors - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - was in free-fall that inspired Anne-Marie to found Stemettes: a not-for-profit social enterprise introducing girls to STEM ideas and careers in fun and accessible ways. It's now in its tenth year and still growing, while Anne-Marie has received an MBE, enjoyed a successful stint as the numbers guru on the TV series Countdown, and is the current President of the British Science Association.

In conversation in front of an audience at the 2023 Cheltenham Science Festival, she tells Jim Al-Khalili about her quest for equality and diversity across the scientific community - and explains why she thinks everyone has the potential to be a 'child prodigy', given the right opportunity...

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Jim Al-Khalili speaks to Anne-Marie Imafidon about championing girls in STEM.

Welcome to the fascinating world of 'epigenetics', which our guest, the molecular geneticist Anne Ferguson-Smith, describes as 'genetics with knobs on'.

Anne, now Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Cambridge, tells Jim about her life and work. She's spent her professional life at the cutting edge: from a degree in a brand new field of Molecular Biology, to post-grad working on brand new genetic structures, through to a lifetime of discoveries and breakthroughs which have changed our understanding of the genome.

Yet she wasn't always destined to be a scientist. She says she was a 'bad student' for a lot of her early life, and believes that embracing failure is an essential part of being a working scientist.

Produced by Emily Knight

Jim Al-Khalili unravels the tangled chains of genetic (and epigenetic) inheritance.

Well, that world may not be as far away as you might think. In fact, the technology is already here; and it's thanks in large part to the engineering ingenuity of Harald Haas, Distinguished Professor of Mobile Communications and Director of the Li-Fi Research and Development Centre at the University of Strathclyde.

He tells Jim Al-Khalili about the two decades he has spent researching optical wireless communications, building up to his LiFi breakthrough in 2011, where he made waves in the scientific community and beyond by showing how a simple desk lamp could be used to stream a video.

Harald's research could well have a very real impact on people's lives, reinventing the way we connect online – but, as Jim hears, his early life was dogged by a very real fear he may have the same devastating disease that took his mother's life at an early age; an experience that shaped his early years and which has driven him to succeed in his own life and career.

Produced by Gerry Holt.

Jim Al-Khalili hears how light can be used to access the internet.

Imagine a world in which your laptop or mobile device accesses the internet, not via radio waves - or WiFi - as it does today but by using light instead: LiFi.

Harald's research could well have a very real impact on people's lives, reinventing the way we connect online - but, as Jim hears, his early life was dogged by a very real fear he may have the same devastating disease that took his mother's life at an early age; an experience that shaped his early years and which has driven him to succeed in his own life and career.

Deborah Greaves is trying to change that. As Professor of Ocean Engineering at the University of Plymouth, she combines physical wave tanks with sophisticated computer modelling to test how well wave power devices respond to stormy seas. And as Director of the Supergen ORE Hub, she brings together researchers in offshore renewable energy to imagine a future of widespread, eco-friendly ocean power.

Deborah tells Jim Al-Khalili about growing up in Plymouth fascinated by the sea, and about breaking from the norm in her arts-focused family, to pursue a degree in engineering. But she spent years as a civil engineer building tunnels for the London Underground - and going on expeditions to the Arctic with her husband - before undertaking a PhD at Oxford University, exploring what happens when waves crash into solid structures.

She eventually returned to Plymouth and set up the institute's Coastal, Ocean and Sediment Transport (COAST) Laboratory - a building with a swimming-pool-sized wave tank for testing new technologies. As Jim hears, these wave devices have an extraordinary diversity of uses - and could help to propel Britain into a greener energy future.

Produced by Phil Sansom.

Jim Al-Khalili speaks to Deborah Greaves about wave energy and her love of the sea

Gideon Henderson's research focuses on trying to understand climate change by looking at what was happening on our planet thousands of years ago.

His work has taken him all around the world - to the deepest oceans and the darkest caves - where he collects samples containing radioactive isotopes which he uses as “clocks ? to date past ice ages and other major climate events.

As a geochemist and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, his work deals with the biggest questions, like our impact on the carbon cycle and climate, the health of our oceans, and finding new ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

But in his role as Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, he also very much works on the present, at the intersection between the worlds of research and policy. He has overseen the decision to allow gene-edited food to be developed commercially in England and a UK surveillance programme to spot the Covid-19 virus in our waste-water.

Produced by Gerry Holt.

Jim Al-Khalili hears how study of the past climate can help us understand our future.

His work has taken him all around the world - to the deepest oceans and the darkest caves - where he collects samples containing radioactive isotopes which he uses as `clocks` to date past ice ages and other major climate events.

The reliability and availability of data in this field has become more of a concern in light of a study published this year, suggesting that sperm counts worldwide have dropped 62% in the past 50 years. As yet there is no clear answer as to why that is.

Professor Chris Barratt is one of the scientists working to change that. He's the Head of Reproductive Medicine at Ninewells Hospital and the University of Dundee Medical School, and has dedicated his career to better understanding male infertility; driving breakthroughs in how to study sperm dysfunctions – and most recently spearheading advances in developing a male contraceptive pill.

Chris talks to Professor Jim Al-Khalili about his academic struggles as a youngster, the lecture that changed his life, his research into 'head-banging sperm' and why he believes a new male contraceptive could be a game-changer.

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Professor Chris Barratt discusses breaking new ground in male fertility research.

Professor Chris Barratt is one of the scientists working to change that. He's the Head of Reproductive Medicine at Ninewells Hospital and the University of Dundee Medical School, and has dedicated his career to better understanding male infertility; driving breakthroughs in how to study sperm dysfunctions - and most recently spearheading advances in developing a male contraceptive pill.

How much more of our world could we understand, if we could take stock of it, one atom at a time? If we could see the structure of individual molecules, understand the complex ways they interact with one another, and witness first-hand how they move?

These are questions for electron microscopy, and more broadly, for Materials Science.

Materials scientists peer into the atomic structure of the stuff that makes up our world, to figure out the relationships between the structure of a material, and its resulting properties. They study how to change materials at the molecular level, to improve the way they function in the real world. It's an interdisciplinary field that spans the physics and chemistry of matter, engineering, and industrial manufacturing. It's led to an enormous number of advances, from nanotechnology to aerospace engineering, pioneering medical innovations to quantum computing.

And SOME of these advances are thanks to the work of Professor Colin Humphreys.

As Professor of Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London, and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Department of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge, Colin works on materials with fascinating properties that would be hard to understand without delving into their atomic structure: semiconductors, superconductors, nanoparticles, and ultra-high temperature aerospace materials.

He's also a committed student of Christianity and applies his scientific mind to questions of biblical scholarship: calculating the exact date of the crucifixion for example, or naturalistic explanations for miracles.

Produced by Emily Knight

She tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili that she has always found herself ahead of the curve. When she began in oncology, the study of cancer, the common treatment was chemotherapy which attacked all the cells in an affected area. Her first studies into cancer treatments were looking at how certain therapies could focus in on the cancerous cells and move away from what she describes as the 'sledgehammer' of traditional chemotherapy.

It was an early step in what became known as targeted cancer therapies, and it set Bahjia on course for a career dedicated to developing innovative drugs to improve cancer patients' lives. Through a deep understanding of the science and a resolute commitment to putting treatments in the hands of people who need them, she has produced astonishing results. Bahija has brought drugs to market faster than many believed was possible, and she has managed it by being an inspirational leader and encouraging her teams to think differently. How has she done it? Part of the secret, she says, is diversity of thought.

Presented by Professor Jim Al-Khalili

Produced by Tom Bonnett

Indeed, over a long and successful career his imagination has taken him on a journey through space, discovering various new and unusual celestial occurrences - notably the first successful identification of a black hole, Cygnus X-1.

Paul tells Jim Al-Khalili how he spent much of his career at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, working with astronomers around the world on some of the most advanced telescopes ever built. He headed up the Astronomy section of the UK's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, was Director of Science for the British National Space Centre and even has an asteroid named after him.

This list of achievements is testament to the fact that Paul has never let his disability hold him back; a leg brace and walking sticks have been part of his life since contracting polio in childhood. But he maintains that as long as you have curiosity and a vibrant imagination, nothing should stand in your way.

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Paul Murdin shares his story of the first identification of a black hole, Cygnus X-1.

His work is a masterclass in joined-up thinking, bringing together different fields of research by starting conversations between scientists who would rarely talk to one another. Together, they paint a more holistic picture of how our planet's biodiversity has developed in the hope of informing how we can protect it in the future.

Alex tells presenter Jim Al-Khalili about a life spent in the wild, beginning with his earliest memories of growing up in Brazil cataloguing life in the Atlantic Rainforest. That passion is still with him today. We've only scratched the surface of understanding what lives here on Earth, he says, more than 4,000 new species are found every year. Alex is passionate that we need to speed up the rate at which we document the richness of life, arguing if we don't identify what there is we can't protect it.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili

Produced by Tom Bonnett

Jim Al-Khalili meets the Kew Gardens' director using bio-geography to protect biodiversity

Here, the Institute for Advanced Study has hosted some of the greatest scientific minds of our time - Einstein was one of its first Professors, J. Robert Oppenheimer its longest-serving director - and today's guest counts among them.

Edward Witten is Professor Emeritus at the Institute and the physicist behind M-Theory, a leading contender for what is commonly referred to as ‘the theory of everything', uniting quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity.

He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about a career that's spanned some of the most exciting periods in modern theoretical physics - and about one particular problem that's both obsessed and eluded him since his days as a student -

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Physicist Edward Witten on M-Theory, the leading contender for a 'theory of everything'.

Physicist Edward Witten speaks to Jim Al-Khalili about his work on M-Theory, a leading contender for 'the theory of everything'.

Edward Witten is Professor Emeritus at the Institute and the physicist behind M-Theory, a leading contender for what is commonly referred to as - ?the theory of everything', uniting quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of gravity.

He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about a career that's spanned some of the most exciting periods in modern theoretical physics - and about one particular problem that's both obsessed and eluded him since his days as a student - ¦

Sarah is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, and studies female primate behaviour to create a richer picture of our evolutionary history, as well as what it means to be a woman or a parent today.

Her overarching aim is to understand the human condition, a goal she initially planned to pursue by writing novels. Instead, she found her way into science: her groundbreaking study of infanticide among langur monkeys in northern India overturned assumptions about these monkeys' murderous motivations.

Later in her career, she looked into reproductive and parenting strategies across species. We humans are primed by evolution, she believes, to need a lot of support raising our children. And that's a concern she found reflected in her own life, juggling family commitments with her career ambitions as a field researcher, teacher, and science writer.

Produced by Cathy Edwards.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses monkey infanticide and human parenting with Sarah Hrdy.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to anthropologist Sarah Hrdy about monkey infanticide, sexual selection and human parenting strategies, from her perspective as a scientist and a mother.

Presenter: Jim Al-Khalili

Producer: Tom Bonnett

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor Sarah Harper about societal ageing and falling fertility

Jim Al-Khalili discusses how ageing populations and falling birthrates could change the world with Professor Sarah Harper from the Oxford University Institute of Population Ageing.

Presenter: Jim Al-Khalili

Studio Producer: Tom Bonnett

Audio Editor: Gerry Holt

Professor Jim Al-Khalili meets one of Britain's greatest physicists, Sir Michael Berry. He describes his work revealng the science that underpins phenomena in the world around us.

Cathie Sudlow, Professor of Neurology and Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, has been at the forefront of enabling health-related research using ever-increasing datasets. She tells presenter Jim Al-Khalili why this type of research matters, how the COVID-19 pandemic changed attitudes towards data in healthcare, and why the NHS gives the UK a big advantage when it comes to population-wide studies.

Over the course of her career, Cathie has held a variety of roles at different organisations, and she is currently Chief Scientist and Deputy Director at Health Data Research UK. She believes that there is no room for prima donnas in science, and wants her field to be open and collaborative, to have the most impact on patients' lives.

Produced by Florian Bohr.

Jim Al-Khalili discusses population-wide health research with Professor Cathie Sudlow.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor Cathie Sudlow about population-wide health research, and whether bigger always means better when it comes to healthcare datasets.

Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia is Professor of Metallurgy at Queen Mary University of London and Emeritus Tata Steel Professor of Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge. He's been described as a ‘steel innovator' – developing multiple new alloys with a host of real-world applications, from rail tracks to military armour.

Harry's prolific work in the field has earned him widespread recognition and a Knighthood; but it's not always been an easy ride...

From his childhood in Kenya and an enforced move to the UK as a teenager, to the years standing up to those seeking to discredit the new path he was forging in steel research - Jim Al-Khalili discovers that Harry's achievements have required significant determination, as well as hard work.

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Sir Harry Bhadeshia on his work in metallurgy and choreographing crystalline structures.

Professor Sir Harry Bhadeshia tells Jim Al-Khalili about his career in metallurgy and creating the super steel that forms the high-endurance rail tracks in the Channel Tunnel.

As the curtain closes on the world's most important climate summit, we talk to a scientist who was at COP 28 and is working to solve our carbon dioxide problem.

Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer thinks saving the planet is still Mission Possible - but key to success is turning the climate-busting gas, CO2, into something useful. And as Director of the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions at Heriot-Watt University and the UK's Decarbonisation Champion, she has lots of innovative ideas on how to do this.

She also has a great climate-themed suggestion for what you should say when someone asks your age -

Produced by Gerry Holt

Jim Al-Khalili chats to a 'solutions scientist' about solving our CO2 problem.

Jim Al-Khalili chats to a 'solutions scientist' about how to solve our CO2 problem.

But somehow, we still often think of this technology as 'futuristic': whereas in fact, it's already woven into the fabric of our daily lives, from facial recognition software to translator apps. And if we get too caught up in the entertaining sci-fi narrative around AI and the potential threat from machines, there's a more pressing danger that we overlook real and present concerns - from deep fakes to electoral disinformation.

That's why Michael Wooldridge is determined to demystify AI and explain how it can improve our lives, in a whole host of different ways. A Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, and the Director of Foundational AI Research at the Alan Turing Institute, Mike believes the most common fears around this technology are 'misplaced'.

In a special 300th edition of The Life Scientific, recorded in front of an audience at London's Royal Institution (RI), Mike tells Jim Al-Khalili how he will use this year's prestigious RI Christmas Lectures to lift the lid on modern AI technology and discuss how far it could go in future.

Mike also reminiscences about the days when sending an email was a thrilling novelty, discusses why people love talking to him about the Terminator at parties, and is even challenged to think up a novel future use of AI by ChatGPT...

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Michael Wooldridge, professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, talks AI.

In a special 300th show from the Royal Institution, Jim Al-Khalili talks to Michael Wooldridge about the future of AI and why people always ask him about The Terminator at parties.

But even before that, Jonathan had built an impressive career based on a long-held fascination with respiratory illness and infectious diseases. He's worked across the public and private sectors, contributing significantly to improving our understanding of influenza and treatments to address such viruses.

It's hard to believe that back in his teens, JVT – the man who advised the nation on pandemic precautions and helped make the UK's vaccine roll-out possible – nearly didn't get the grades he needed to go to medical school. But early challenges aside, Jonathan went on to discover a love for both medical research and public speaking: making complex public health messages easier to digest – not least by using analogies relating to his beloved football.

Speaking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili in the first episode of a new series of The Life Scientific, Jonathan discusses his life and career: from academic emphasis in childhood and imposter syndrome at medical school, to pandemic pressures around Covid-19 and big birthday celebrations.

Produced by Lucy Taylor.

Sir Jonathan Van-Tam discusses his work around infectious diseases and Covid-19.

Sir Jonathan Van-Tam discusses his long-held fascinations - infectious diseases, vaccines and football - plus his role in the national medical response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

She has spent her life using science to help solve cases, working on crime scenes and then analysing material in the lab, and presenting scientific evidence in court.

It's a complicated business. Forensic science relies on powerful technology, such as DNA analysis, but it cannot be that alone - it's also about human judgement, logical reasoning and asking the right questions.

It is these fundamentals of forensic science that Sheila has fought for through her long career and what she fears may be becoming lost from the field now.

We find out what happens when the two very different worlds of science and the law clash in the courtroom. How to walk the line of presenting scientific evidence where there is pressure to be definitive where often science cannot be - and what this part of the job has in common with food packaging.

And what makes a good forensic scientist?

We'll turn the studio at London's Broadcasting House into a live crime scene to see if host Professor Jim Al-Khalili would be any good as a forensic investigator -

Produced by Gerry Holt

Forensic scientist Dr Sheila Willis on when the worlds of science and the law collide.

Forensic scientist Dr Sheila Willis on what happens when the two very different worlds of science and the law collide.

Dr Nick Longrich is a palaeontologist and senior lecturer at the University of Bath, and he studies the dinosaur bones that many have overlooked. By rummaging through the back rooms of museums, he finds traces of never-before-described dinosaurs and goes on the hunt for other specimens to confirm or deny his hunch. Through these adventures, he's discovered over a dozen new species, painting a more detailed picture of our prehistoric world.

Nick is also fascinated by rare ‘one in a million year' events – like asteroid collisions or mega volcanic eruptions – and investigates how the event that wiped out the dinosaurs created the world we live in today. From an Island off the coast of Alaska, Jim Al-Khalili discovers how Nicks early immersion in nature has trained his brain to spot the subtle differences in the world around us that many would overlook.

Produced by Julia Ravey.

Jim Al-Khalili talks dinosaurs and 'one in a million year' events with Dr Nick Longrich.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to Dr Nick Longrich, who shares how 'uninteresting' fossils can lead to fascinating findings and how rare events have shaped evolution.