Scientists, conservationists and other researchers are using audio soundscapes in innovative ways to record the natural world in rich detail and help develop strategies to preserve it. Gaia Vince visits the Dear Earth exhibition at London’s Southbank Centre where she interacts with the ‘Tell It To The Birds’ artwork by Jenny Kendler. This piece transforms spoken word into birdsong, which Jenny hopes will help raise awareness of threatened species. She is joined by Dr Patricia Brekke from the Zoo...
Jul 19, 2023•36 min
On Tuesday, the United Nations reported that the breach of the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River in Ukraine will impact heavily on global food security, causing a rise in food prices and leaving many without access to clean drinking water. Nine days after the disaster Gaia looks to the future alongside Kira Rudyk, Ukrainian MP who is also leader of the opposition party Golos and Laura Wellesley, senior research fellow in the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House. Earlier this we...
Jul 13, 2023•28 min
For World Ocean Day, Gaia Vince finds out how the planet’s seas could help us to generate clean power, capture CO2 and feed the world. Gaia is joined in the studio by science journalist and marine biologist Olive Heffernan. She dives into the controversy regarding the potential of mining in deep oceans and discusses whether the seas could become the location for Industrial Revolution 2.0. We’re used to seeing seaweed wrapped around our sushi rolls but it’s so much more than that. As well as bein...
Jul 05, 2023•33 min
In the headlines this week eminent tech experts and public figures signed an open letter that read “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” One of the signatories was Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called ‘godfather of AI’. He’s become so concerned about the risks associated with artificial intelligence that he recently decided to quit his job at Google, where he had worked for more than a decade. But...
Jun 29, 2023•28 min
This week, we hear from the University of Florida’s Dr David Duffy. He heads up a team of researchers who are studying sea turtles. In order to track the animals and their diseases, the scientists devised a method of collecting fragments of DNA from tanks at the university’s turtle hospital, as well as from sand and water in the local environment. While they found plenty of turtle DNA, they were surprised to uncover large amounts of high-quality human eDNA. Duffy tells us all about the study and...
Jun 21, 2023•31 min
The Royal Society is the oldest scientific academy in the world. Since being established in 1660, it has painstakingly archived thousands of papers, letters, manuscripts and illustrations from some of science’s most enquiring minds. In this episode, Victoria Gill takes a trip to the society to pore over some of the most intriguing artefacts within its vaults. While there, she finds out more about the formation of the Royal Society and how science has been shaped over the centuries. Along the way...
Jun 14, 2023•30 min
Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and hurricanes all have the power to cause deadly destruction. One event can lead to another, causing a chain reaction of devastation that can take years to rebuild from. But do all natural events have to turn into a disaster? Is there anything we can do to mitigate their impacts? Gaia Vince speaks to Anastasios Sextos, Professor of Earthquake Engineering at the University of Bristol to find out how we can engineer buildings to withstand...
Jun 07, 2023•32 min
In 2020, the UK government committed to protecting at least 30% of land and sea for nature by 2030. Step seven years into the future with Gaia. The UK has achieved its biodiversity goal, but what does wild Britain look like? Richard Benwell, CEO of wildlife and Countryside Link, Meredith Whitten, a researcher and urban environment planner at LSE, Hugo Tagholm, CEO of Oceana and George Monbiot, an environmental writer whose book Regenesis explores sustainable agriculture, describe this radical ne...
May 31, 2023•29 min
James Watson and Francis Crick, who detailed the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, are perhaps two of the most iconic scientists of the 20th Century. Yet the story of how they made their incredible discovery is perhaps equally famous, with a notorious narrative suggesting that they only identified the structure after taking the work of Rosalind Franklin and using it without her permission. Now, 70 years after the discovery of DNA’s structure, it is perhaps time to rewrite the tale. New evid...
May 24, 2023•33 min
Whilst the globe struggles to shift to green sustainable energy sources, one industry has its sights set solely on the stars. Space X just launched the biggest rocket the world’s ever seen, and it won’t be their last even if it did end its test flight with a bang. As we enter a new golden age of space travel, Vic asks Associate Professor in Physical Geography Dr Eloise Marais if we are paying enough attention to the environmental impacts posed by a rapidly growing space industry. Have viruses, b...
May 17, 2023•28 min
When was the last time you had to use your negotiating skills? Did you walk away satisfied? This week junior doctors are half way through their 4 day walkout, with senior NHS figures suggesting the cancellation of between 250,000 and 350,000 appointments/operations. Victoria Gill is preparing to debate her way through the science of disagreement and identify what qualities make for the perfect negotiator. Associate Professor Sunny Lee, Deputy Director of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion at Uni...
May 11, 2023•28 min
In this special edition of Inside Science, Vic Gill prepares to rummage through our rubbish, to peek behind the curtain of the UK's recycling habits and see how well prepared we are as a nation to further our efforts of sustainable waste management. Presenter: Vic Gill Producer: Emily Bird
May 04, 2023•28 min
Far away and not enough, those are criticisms of the government’s latest net zero initiative – a plan to reduce emissions . We ask Jim Watson Professor of Energy Policy and Director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources for his assessment. And there’s money to be made from private health testing, the growth of Covid testing has been followed by an upsurge in private screening for cancer in particular, but how useful is it really? BBC Health correspondent Matthew Hill takes a look. Every...
Apr 27, 2023•35 min
Data collated from swab samples taken in Wuhan’s market in the early days of the Covid pandemic suggest animals sold in the market were carrying the virus at the time. It’s the strongest evidence yet for an intermediate species – one which passed the virus on to humans after becoming infected by bats carrying the virus. Dr Florence Debarre from the Institute of ecology and environmental sciences, in Paris and Professor Eddie Holmes from Sydney University discuss the findings. Beethoven’s genome ...
Apr 20, 2023•28 min
Researchers from London’s Francis Crick Institute have found a type of artificial sweetener is able to dampen down immune system responses - at least in mice. Karen Vousden and Fabio Zani tell us about the implications. And Ronan McCarthy from Brunel University has found a range of different artificial sweeteners have antibacterial properties. We discuss the connections between these two areas of research and the prospect of developing drug treatments from artificial sweeteners. Penny Johnes fro...
Apr 13, 2023•41 min
The government has launched a new 10-point plan designed, it said to “cement the UK’s place as a global science and technology superpower”. We speak with Sir Paul Nurse, director of the Francis Crick Institute, for his take on the government's plan and the findings of his own review of the UK’s research landscape. In 1963, in a now famous speech at the Labour Party conference in Scarborough, Labour leader and soon to be Prime Minister Harold Wilson promised a new Britain would be forged in the “...
Apr 06, 2023•29 min
Science writer Philip Ball has followed the relationship between government and its scientific advisors throughout the pandemic. He discusses the role of scientific advisors in the light of conflicting information following the leak of a number of former Health Minister Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages. Phil tells us why he believes greater transpearency is needed around the advice offered to government. The head of the US FBI has suggested the Covid 19 pandemic may have been started through a l...
Mar 30, 2023•36 min
Sea ice coverage hit a recording-breaking low in the Antarctic this week, but what does this mean for the rest of the world? Why is the region so difficult to predict? And what could further changes in climate mean for the South Pole? Often the Arctic dominates conversations around polar warming but this week, with the help of climate modelling expert Tamsin Edwards, Kings College London, we’ll be tackling these questions and more. We’ll hear from British Antarctic Survey researcher Nadia Fronti...
Mar 23, 2023•32 min
Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui caused international outrage when in 2018 when he used the gene-editing tool known as CRISPR Cas-9 to edit the genomes of two human embryos. That experiment, described by the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology described as ‘abominable’, resulted in the birth of twin girls. The experiment also landed Dr He in prison for three years. Now, out of prison and working for a company in Beijing that proclaims to offer “affordable gene therapy” – He Jiankui has been...
Mar 16, 2023•29 min
This week’s programme is a thought experiment: What would the world be like if energy became superabundant and very cheap? Energy is vital for every aspect of our society, and the energy cost of extraction, processing, manufacture and transport is priced into every product we buy. Today’s energy crisis is having a huge impact, from affecting diplomatic relations between nations to the availability of food. How can our energy systems evolve and what could cheap abundant energy mean for us, our re...
Mar 09, 2023•28 min
Defra, the department for Environment, food and Rural affairs, released its latest Environmental Improvement plan this week. Many environmental groups have criticised the plan for having vague commitments, and landowners are asking where the money is going to come from if say farmers are going to move land out of production and into conservation. For a view away from these vested interests we’ve turned to the Office of Environmental protection – the body set up after Britain left the EU to scrut...
Mar 02, 2023•31 min
What if all schools offered only plant-based options for 3 out of 5 lunches a week? Would that be enough to trigger a broader societal shift to eating less meat, and allow us to meet our sustainability commitments? We’re not talking about making school dinners entirely vegetarian — just 3 lunches a week. We discuss the benefits and practicalities of such a shift with : Tim Lenton, Professor of Climate change at the University of Exeter. Economist Marco Springmann Senior Researcher, Oxford Martin...
Feb 23, 2023•31 min
Former Energy Minister Chris Skidmore’s report into Net Zero calls for ambitious policies to drive energy transition, framing it as a huge economic opportunity to drive national growth. Using and conserving energy in the home is one theme the report tackles. We discuss home insulation with Colm Britchfield , policy advisor at E3G. His recent report found those in some of the worst housing , in the private rented sector could save hundreds of pounds a year if their homes were properly insulated. ...
Feb 16, 2023•32 min
ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an online conversational chatbot, launched by OpenAI in November 2022. To date it remains an online sensation, allowing users to generate poems, essays, code and images in seconds. But fear bubbles in academic circles that artificial intelligence could promote plagiarism in secondary and tertiary education. Technology writer and broadcaster Bill Thompson, and teacher of 20 years digital philosopher Rebecca Mace from University of West London sugges...
Feb 09, 2023•30 min
The UK's first satellite launch faced several delays in 2022, but Virgin Orbit's Cosmic Girl is prepped for imminent take off. BBC science correspondent Jonathan Amos has been following the activity in Newquay and, alongside Melissa Thorpe head of Spaceport Cornwall, describes the potential this launch has to promote and bolster the UK's space industry. Is laziness a particularly human trait? Apparently not according to Dr Daniella Rabaiotti from the Zoological Society of London. Her research sh...
Feb 02, 2023•28 min
Nations are racing to protect 30% of the planet by 2030 in an attempt to halt biodiversity loss, but one novel approach may be able to safeguard species under threat of imminent extinction. Vic visited Nature’s Safe in May, a cryogenic biobank, storing the genetic information of at risk species in futuristic biological freezers. But will it serve as a viable tool to bring wildlife back from the brink if the ecosystems in which these animals reside are degraded beyond repair? The Greenland ice sh...
Jan 26, 2023•28 min
How many Scientists does it take to cook Christmas dinner? Marnie seeks help from a food scientist, a geneticist, a doctor and a botanist to create the perfect festive feast.
Jan 19, 2023•28 min
Base editing is a technique for substituting the building blocks of DNA. It has only been around for a few years, so its use to apparently cure cancer was all the more remarkable, as BBC Health Correspondent James Gallagher tells us. We take a trip down the river Wye with ecologist Steve Ormerod who tells us why the river is a microcosm for some of the global issues being discussed at the UN Biodiversity summit in Montreal. BBC Environment Correspondent Victoria Gill gives us the latest on the s...
Jan 12, 2023•28 min
The UN Convention on Biological Diversity summit, currently taking place in Montreal Canada, intends to develop ways of reducing the global loss of biological diversity by drawing up a series of international commitments to help humanity to live more harmoniously with nature. The scientific evidence paints a grim picture of species decline and extinction, pollution and destruction of natural habitats. The aim of the meeting is to find ways to stop and even reverse such decline. We meet leading f...
Jan 05, 2023•28 min
For a week at the beginning of December 1952, London was under a blanket of deadly smog. As a result, the Clean Air Act came into force a few years later banning smoky sulphurous fuels. However air pollution researchers are now concerned that rising emissions from wood burners may be undoing many of the gains from the Clean Air Act. We hear from Dr Gary Fuller, air pollution scientist at Imperial College London and author of The Invisible Killer, the Rising Global Threat of Air Pollution and How...
Dec 29, 2022•32 min
