The Life Scientific

Conversations with leading scientists about their work and discoveries AI summary

BBC Radio 4 Visit website › Science · EN · 362 episodes · latest 2026-11-10

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What it is about

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future

Publisher’s own description, taken unchanged from the podcast feed.
(C) BBC 2026

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Latest episodes

  1. 2026-11-10 · 28 min

    Vaccines save millions of lives each year but, to work, most need to be kept cold throughout their journey, from the factory where they’re made to the clinic where they’re given. This relies on what’s known as the cold…

  2. 2026-11-03 · 28 min

    Finding the wreck of the Titanic would be a career-defining achievement for most people. For oceanographer Robert Ballard, it's just one chapter in a life packed full of extraordinary marine exploration.Bob located the…

  3. 2026-10-27 · 28 min

    What do the very first writhing movements of babies have in common with orangutans solving problems for food? Well, according to Gillian Forrester they may both offer clues about how we humans developed language.Working…

  4. 2026-10-20 · 28 min

    Although books and movies might suggest otherwise, catching criminals is of course less about hunches and gut instinct, and more about gruelling analysis of hard data - including when it comes to the psychological…

  5. 2026-10-13 · 28 min

    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…

  6. 2026-10-06 · 29 min

    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…

  7. 2026-05-26 · 28 min

    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.…

  8. 2026-05-19 · 28 min

    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…

  9. 2026-05-12 · 28 min

    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,…

  10. 2026-05-05 · 28 min

    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…

Episode details from the publisher’s feed. Playback happens at the publisher.

Publisher details

Owner
BBC
Oldest episode in feed
10/2011 · over 15 years
Typical length
29 min
Format
Episodic Newest first, episodes stand alone

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