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The Life Scientific

BBC Radio 4

Sciences

Société & Culture

Fréquence : 1 épisode/15j. Total Éps: 359

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

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Données mises à jour le 26/10/2026

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David Canter on how psychology can save lives and catch killers

mardi 20 octobre 2026 • Durée 28:18

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 side.

David Canter is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool, who took exactly this approach in the 1980s when he was asked to help police track down a serial killer. David had built his reputation as an environmental psychologist, studying how people behave in emergency situations and even advising the government on how to prevent disasters in football stadiums. But when he was asked to apply his unique methodology to help track down a serial killer and rapist, he realised that data-driven analysis of a suspect's behavioural patterns could be invaluable to any investigation.

David tells Jim Al-Khalili about how he founded the field of investigative psychology - and went on to advise on major criminal investigations, write award-winning books and even make time to pursue a parallel life as a composer.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production

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Edith Heard on unravelling the mystery of X-chromosome inactivation

mardi 13 octobre 2026 • Durée 28:21

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.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production

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Ginger Kerrick on manning Nasa's Mission Control and getting to Mars

mardi 6 octobre 2026 • Durée 28:31

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.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production

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Dean Lomax on discovering ichthyosaurs and defying nay-sayers

mardi 26 mai 2026 • Durée 28:24

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...

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production

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Helen Hastie on the future of human-robot relations

mardi 19 mai 2026 • Durée 28:22

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.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production

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Seth Berkley on the importance of vaccinating the world

mardi 12 mai 2026 • Durée 28:24

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.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili. Produced by Lucy Taylor. A BBC Studios production.

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Hiranya Peiris on unravelling the story of the universe

mardi 5 mai 2026 • Durée 28:20

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.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Beth Eastwood A BBC Studios production

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Washington Yotto Ochieng on the navigation tech that keeps our world moving

mardi 28 avril 2026 • Durée 28:25

As a child growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, Washington Yotto Ochieng once watched a plane cross the night sky and told his mother he wished he could travel on it. But he remembers her encouraging him to dream bigger...

Today, Washington is a Professor of Engineering at Imperial College London, and President of the Royal Institute of Navigation. Over a career bridging industry and academia, he has helped shape the movement of urban transport; how satellites guide us and locate us; and how governments manage the technologies underpinning so much of modern life.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili speaks to Washington about his inspirational upbringing, how reliant we've become on technologies such as GPS, and his work encouraging the next generation of engineers in both the UK and Africa.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor

A BBC Studios production

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Lucy Carpenter on how our oceans are destroying ozone

mardi 21 avril 2026 • Durée 28:23

Working on a remote tropical island in the Atlantic might sound like some sort of romantic idyll - but trying to conduct scientific research on a windy, isolated volanic outcrop is no picnic, as Lucy Carpenter can attest!

Lucy is an atmopsheric chemist and a Professor at the University of York, whose work has helped to transform understanding of how oceans shape the air above them. She was one of the founding scientists behind the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory, established on São Vicente in 2006 and now a key global monitoring site. Measurements made there helped overturn a long-standing assumption: ozone loss is not solely a human-made problem. Lucy and her colleagues showed that gases released by natural marine processes can trigger chemical reactions that destroy ozone - demonstrating that the sea is not simply a passive backdrop to climate change but an active participant; affecting aerosols, clouds and ultimately the climate itself.

More recently Lucy's expertise has taken her into the policy arena, co-chairing the scientific assessment panel for the Montreal Protocol: the international agreement designed to protect the ozone layer.

In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Lucy dicusses her journey from sampling ocean air to turning the tide of global environmental policy - and explains why her passion for duathlons could arguably be seen as an easier pastime than scientific research.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production

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Jens Juul Holst on the gut hormone discovery behind weight-loss drugs

mardi 14 avril 2026 • Durée 28:25

As recently as a few years ago, the idea of a self-administered injection that would deliver proven weight-loss results might have sounded fantastical. Today, these medications are a reality and a global phenomenon; hailed in many quarters as “miracle drugs" for their success in treating obesity and diabetes.

They do this by replicating a gut hormone called GLP‑1, which tells the brain you’ve eaten enough and nudges the pancreas to release insulin; and this hormone was discovered and decoded thanks to years of work by today's guest.

Jens Juul Holst is a Professor of Medical Physiology and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. His efforts laid the groundwork for today’s weight loss jabs, earning him a slew of high-profile accolades and awards. Now it seems they might not only have positive impacts on obesity and diabetes, but also other health issues...

But alongside the big success comes some big questions: including concerns over side effects, weight regain post-treatment, the black market in such drugs, and their cost and accessibility.

In a frank conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Jens address these issues and shares his hopes for the future of GLP-1-focused research.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Lucy Taylor A BBC Studios production

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