Advertise on podcast: Discovery

Imagine looking at a map of a city you thought you knew inside-out, only to discover a collection of tightly knit neighbourhoods that nobody had ever realised existed... Edith Heard has achieved something rather similar with DNA. Edith is a leading expert in epigenetics: put simply, the science around how our bodies can turn particular genes on or off without actually altering our DNA. She’s spent her career studying the mechanisms that make us who we are and transforming our understanding of how X chromosomes are expressed; notably, how female cells turn off the spare X chromosome. Talking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Edith discusses her journey from a shy and introverted youngster to the cutting edge of European science - including her latest role as Director of London’s prestigious Francis Crick Institute.

What do you do when your childhood dream of becoming an astronaut is grounded at the final hurdle? If you’re physicist Ginger Kerrick, you go on to help run the missions instead. After failing the medical of her astronaut application process, Ginger went on to become Nasa’s first non-astronaut CAPCOM and its first Hispanic female Flight Director. Across a remarkable three-decade career, she helped train the International Space Station’s first long-term crew, logged thousands of hours in Mission Control, and shaped future missions to the moon and Mars. All with her trademark determination and resilience – qualities forged through life experiences that might have derailed someone else entirely. In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Ginger reveals the highs and lows of life at Nasa, and discusses the future of human spaceflight: from the potential of AI, to missions to Mars.

Here's a little fact you might have heard before: humans are around 70% water. About the same percentage as a sweet potato, incidentally. But what does that actually mean? Sure, there's blood, that accounts for some of it. And the lymphatic system has a fair amount too, sloshing around. There is water in each of our cells. But that does not add up to the full 70%, so where is the rest of it? In 2018, a scientific paper was published which gives a tantalising clue. The authors revealed for the first time that our 'interstitial spaces' - those gaps, between our bones and joints and all of our organs - spaces which are often sidelined in conventional anatomy - those spaces were full of a kind of soft, gel-like liquid. Flowing around the body. Bringing essential substances to where they are needed. Connecting all the disparate parts of us and communicating between them. They called this massive, fluid-filled system 'The Interstitium', and suggested that it might be a brand new, previously undiscovered organ. This moist, fibrous network seems to be important, in ways we still do not quite understand. It seems to have a key role in so many of our body's essential functions, from wound repair, to the maintenance of our body-clocks, to the spread of cancer from one tissue to another. And it is everywhere. Emily Knight takes a journey deep into the human body, into the ocean within us, the spaces in between the things we think of as 'us'. And discovers the way it flows, and the things that flow through it.

An ant becomes infected by a fungus which takes over its nervous system, turning the ant into a vehicle for the fungus’s reproduction and killing the ant in the process. It sounds like science fiction, but it is happening in rainforests around the world. It is a parasitic relationship that has inspired the TV series The Last of Us, but it also reveals a great deal about control, autonomy and the interconnectedness of the natural world. Cultural entomologist Bridget Nicholls investigates this intriguing natural phenomenon with Merlin Sheldrake, mycologist and writer; Philip Ball, science writer; Mark Brown, director of the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge University; Nura Sidarus, lecturer in Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London; Lore Lixenberg, mezzo-soprano and sound artist, and Jason Singh, sound artist and composer. Jason's recordings and compositions feature throughout this documentary. Presenter: Bridget Nicholls Producer: Eliane Glaser

Design is never neutral and small choices can have a big impact. Dr Ella Hubber and journalist Katie Silver explore how consumer products marketed to women are frequently developed without fully understanding their needs. Along with expert insight, they look at everything from footwear based on male anatomy to menstrual products tested with unrealistic methods, revealing how these decisions can affect comfort, performance and even health. As awareness grows, they also ask what change can look like and whether everyday products can finally reflect women’s real needs. Presenter/producer: Ella Hubber Assistant Producer: Scarlett Victoria Researcher: Elliott Prince Editor: Ilan Goodman

CPR mannequins, medical implants and surgical tools. These are life changing and lifesaving medical devices. But when they are built around male bodies, what does that mean for everyone else? Through expert insight, Dr Ella Hubber and journalist Candice Bailey uncover how gaps in research can lead to higher complication rates in women, why the “one-size-fits-all” design method falls short, and how even the operating theatre can fail women. As awareness grows, they also ask what change can look like and whether the tools used in healthcare can finally serve every body.[EH1.1] Presenter/producer: Ella Hubber Researcher: Elliott Prince Editor: Ilan Goodman

Dr Ella Hubber and journalist Katie Silver unpack how artificial intelligence is far from neutral, and why that matters. They speak to experts who reveal how some AI is trained with bad data and how this means it can often reflect the same inequalities found in society be that in voice assistants, hiring tools, or translation apps. As awareness grows, they also ask what change can look like. Better training, better regulation, and the technologies shaping our future working fairly for everyone. Presenter/producer: Ella Hubber Researcher: Elliott Prince Editor: Ilan Goodman

On every street corner, at every bus stop, in every public toilet the message is clear: this city is not built for women. Along with journalist Chhavi Sachdev, Dr Ella Hubber explores how urban design often fails to reflect the realities of women’s lives. They unpack issues like why women spend longer queuing for toilets, how safety concerns shape the way women move through cities, and why transport systems built around linear commutes fail those juggling care, work and home. As awareness grows, they also ask what change can look like. More inclusive planning, policies shaped by lived experience, and cities finally designed to work for everyone. Presenter/producer: Ella Hubber Researcher: Elliott Prince Editor: Ilan Goodman

Safety equipment is often designed around an “average” male body and Dr Ella Hubber wants to understand the consequences this has for women. Alongside journalist Candice Bailey and expert voices, we hear how healthcare workers are forced to adapt to PPE never made for them and how car safety systems fail to reflect the way women’s bodies respond in collisions. As awareness grows, they also ask what change can look like and if, through better data, and more women’s input, safety equipment can protect us all equally. Presenter/Producer: Ella Hubber Researcher: Elliott Prince Editor: Ilan Goodman

After working exclusively with male mice while looking for a treatment for type 1 diabetes, Dr Ella Hubber begins to uncover a much bigger issue: modern medicine is not built equally for everyone. Along with journalist Chhavi Sachdev, she explores how decades of clinical research have overlooked women with serious consequences. Through expert interviews, they examine how women were historically excluded from clinical trials, why biological differences matter in how drugs work, and how this has led to higher rates of side effects. The story reveals how gaps in research continue to shape women’s healthcare today. As awareness grows, they also ask what change can look like. More representative trials, pharmaceutical companies held accountable, and medicine finally built for everyone. Presenter/Producer: Ella Hubber Researcher: Elliott Prince Editor: Ilan Goodman

Our antibiotics are failing us. In 2025, the UK Government said antibiotic resistance (AMR) contributes to more than 35,000 deaths each year in the UK. Emergency doctors say they are losing patients on a regular basis when they run out of ways to treat them. Antibiotics have saved countless lives, but alongside them, there is another unlikely sounding ally in this fight: viruses, so small that they can attack and kill the bacteria causing these devastating infections. They are called bacteriophages, or phages for short. There are more of them than any other commonly occurring natural entity on the planet. And we could be about to see doctors using them on very ill patients in the UK. The thing is scientists have studied bacteriophages for nearly a century. They are used routinely in other countries, and science journalist Marnie Chesterton, who has been following this story for nearly a decade, asks why, suddenly, is phage all the rage?

Have you ever been told you aren't good enough to do something, then gone ahead and proved the naysayers wrong by doing it anyway - in glorious, headline-grabbing style? That is the satisfying story of Dr Dean Lomax. Dean grew up in Doncaster with a passion for fossils but after failing various school exams, was told by teachers that he'd never make it as a palaeontologist. Undeterred by leaving school with no qualifications, Dean sold his childhood Star Wars collection to fund a fossil-hunting trip to America that changed his life - after which a chance discovery led to him publishing his first ever scientific paper at the age of just 20. Today, he’s an expert on ichthyosaurs - the massive marine reptiles that once inhabited our seas - and has discovered and named several new species, written books for both adults and children, and brought the prehistoric world to life on TV. Talking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Dean discusses dinosaurs as a 'gateway science', discovering the Rutland Sea Dragon and the importance of cutting out noise from nay-sayers to follow your dreams...

What if robots of the future weren’t just clever machines, performing tasks in isolation, but trusted teammates you could have a chat with? That could respond naturally to conversational cues and even explain their work? Making this relationship a reality is a focus for Helen Hastie, Professor of Human-Robot Interaction and Head of the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Helen’s career has taken her from developing early dialogue systems - the ancestors of today’s generative AI - to working on sophisticated bots that can serve coffee with a side of small-talk, teach struggling kids with empathy, or provide calm and confident decisions as triage nurses. She’s also driven some of the UK’s flagship robotics initiatives, including as co-lead of the National Robotarium. Talking to Professor Jim Al-Khalili - who reveals he was once told off for rudeness by an early chatbot - Helen explains her hopes for useful, reliable and ultimately trustworthy robots; machines that aren’t just in our world but a welcome part of it.

Dr Seth Berkley is an epidemiologist and global health leader whose career has been shaped by one central problem: vaccines save lives, but only if people can actually get them. His 40-year career has spanned the global, from helping to build Uganda’s first HIV surveillance system and founding the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative; to leading Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance for more than a decade – overseeing the immunisation of hundreds of millions of children worldwide. And when COVID-19 struck, Seth co-founded COVAX, the global initiative designed to stop wealthy nations monopolising vaccines. In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Seth discusses the highs and lows of his globe-trotting career - from saving millions of young lives through vaccine distribution, to setting his own shattered leg after a climbing accident in Namibia - and addresses the huge challenge of tackling vaccine scepticism.

Hiranya Peiris is playing a starring role in a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. However, it’s a movie with a difference – there’s no director and no script. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time is one of the most ambitious projects in the world of astronomy, with a mission to create a decade-long time-lapse movie of the visible universe, to answer fundamental questions about its origin, evolution and, ultimately, its fate. Hiranya is Professor of Astrophysics 1909, the prestigious Chair at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. Over her career she’s been one of the pioneers of a revolution in astronomy, bridging fundamental physics with the observational data coming back from space, to establish the first evidence-based standard model for the origin, evolution and fate of the universe. The endeavour has transformed the field from the ‘wild west’ of physics to the modern era of precision cosmology. Ironically, it was another movie, of sorts, Carl Sagan’s documentary series ‘Cosmos’, that first sparked Hiranya’s interest in the universe as a young girl. Always keen to inspire women to follow in her footsteps and choose careers in science, if this interview were a live show she’d have reserved the front row for schoolgirls.