Discovery

People around the world are living longer and, on the whole, having fewer children. What does this mean for future populations? Sarah Harper CBE, Professor in Gerontology at the University of Oxford, tells presenter Jim Al-Khalili how it could affect pensions, why it might mean we work for longer, and discusses the ways modern life is changing global attitudes to when we have children, and whether...

Our primate cousins fascinate us, with their uncanny similarities to us. Studying other apes and monkeys also helps us figure out the evolutionary puzzle of what makes us uniquely human. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s work brings a female perspective to this puzzle, correcting sexist stereotypes like the aggressive, philandering male and the coy, passive female. Sarah is professor emerita of anthropology at...

The Life Scientific returns with a special episode from the USA; Princeton, New Jersey, to be precise. 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 ph...

Exercise in older age is high on the agenda, but the idea that with age comes bags of time and a desire to ‘get out there’ isn’t true for a lot of us. How do you juggle exercise around caring for partners, grandchildren or staying in work? What if you haven’t exercised for years? What can your body take, and how has it changed with age? James Gallagher hears how octogenarian athlete ‘Irongran’ kee...

How many hours do you spend sitting down per day? Six? Maybe eight? Or 10? Between commuting, working and relaxing, sitting can soon add up to hours and hours. James Gallagher delves into the science to find out exactly how much sitting is too much; when does it become worrying for our health? James visits a lab to explore what prolonged sitting does to the body and he’ll find out whether there’s...

A look at the evidence that links the health of our mouths with the rest of our bodies.

Adam Hart investigates the fastest land animal in the world – the cheetah! Built for high-speed chases, these spotted cats are slender, with semi-retractable claws for good grip and a flexible spine plus a long tail for balance and manoeuvrability. Cheetahs rely on speed over brute strength when hunting – and can make tight, quick turns to shift course in fast pursuit of their prey. But with shrin...

Adam Hart investigates a frenzied and voracious fish from South America – the piranha! Said to be able to strip their prey to the bone in mere minutes, there are plenty of gruesome tales about the bubbling bloodbaths that occur when shoals of these hardy fish feed in the freshwaters across South America - from up in Venezuela in the Orinoco River, to the Amazon and down to the Paraná River in Arge...

Adam Hart investigates the most famous and feared predator in all the ocean – the great white shark! With rows of large, serrated teeth, it’s often thought of as a ferocious man-eater and was the villain of the film Jaws – which frightened a generation of beachgoers. This star of the silver screen may be the subject of fascination and fright for many, but is it really the ultimate predator of the...

Adam Hart investigates the largest terrestrial member of the weasel family – the wolverine. They’re far more than just a superhero played by Hugh Jackman! With a reputation for gluttony and ferocity, these solitary killers use snowstorms to hunt much larger prey. Found in the snowy tundra and boreal forests of the Northern Hemisphere, their future looks uncertain – they've come into conflict with...

With the world's biodiversity being lost at an alarming rate, Alexandre Antonelli, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has made it his life's mission to protect it. He is a bio-geographer revealing how changes to the Earth's landscape, such as the formation of mountain ranges and rainforests, leads to the evolution of new species and causes plants, fungi and animals to move arou...

Astronomer Paul Murdin believes a good imagination is vital for scientists, since they're so often dealing with subjects outside the visible realm. 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-K...

Some of the most complex medicines available today are made from living cells or organisms - these treatments are called bio-pharmaceuticals and in this episode of The Life Scientific Dr Bahija Jallal, CEO of Immunocore, shares her story of leaving her home in Casablanca, Morocco to become a world leader in developing bio-pharmaceutical cancer treatments. She tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili that sh...

Reproductive science has come a long way in recent years, but there's still plenty we don't understand - particularly around male fertility. 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. Profe...

We’re used to hearing the stories of scientists who study the world as it is now but what about the study of the past - what can this tell us about our future? 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 - wh...

If you’ve ever seen the ocean during a storm, you’ll understand the extraordinary power contained in waves. On an island nation like Britain, that power could well be harnessed to produce clean energy; so why have we barely begun to tap this bountiful resource? Deborah Greaves is trying to change that. As Professor of Ocean Engineering at the University of Plymouth, she combines physical wave tank...

Erica McAlister on the bee intellect and whether bigger brains are always better. Plus cockroaches may be reviled by many people, but Erica discovers the extraordinary flexibility of their simple nervous system led to the birth of neuroendocrinology. (Photo: A honey bee feeding on nectar from Echinacea purpurea. Credit: Barnaby Perkins)

What are allergies and what is the purpose of them? What can we do to try and prevent them? And what are the best ways of accurately and safely diagnosing them?

Erica McAlister on the innocuous wasp-like black soldier fly, a crown jewel of a fast-growing insect farming industry that's addressing the urgent need to find cheap clean protein. And how Namib Desert beetles have evolved in a very special environment, where the only source of water exists in the air. (Image: Desert beetle in Namib desert. Credit: Martin Harvey/Getty Images)

Blowflies may be some of the most reviled insects on the planet, but as Erica McAlister discovers, they are central to the surprisingly long tradition of forensic entomology and how there's more than meets the eye in the distinctive structural colour of the morpho butterfly wing, whose dazzling sheen is a key for camouflage and commerce. (Photo: A fly on a leaf. Credit: Christina Bollen/Getty Imag...

Dr Erica McAlister uncovers a treasure trove of remarkable insights from the insect world including the innocuous flies that are Drosophila melanogaster. More is known about these flies than any other animal on the planet, as a model for human genetics. And the hoverfly that arguably undergoes the biggest transformation of any animal and how insect metamorphosis could be a tool to track future cli...

Dr Erica McAlister uncovers a treasure trove of remarkable insects from the humble flea whose jump enables them to fly without wings and the mystery of the hawkmoth’s tongue, whose varying length has offered the simplest and most effective proof of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection in action. Producer: Dr Adrian Washbourne Presenter: Dr Erica McAlister (Photo: Dr Erica McAlister. Credit...

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. 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...

Anne-Marie Imafidon passed her computing A-Level at the age of 11 and by 16, was accepted to the University of Oxford to study Maths and Computer Science. 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 -...

Our genes can tell us so much about us, from why we look the way we look, think the way we think, even what kind of diseases we might be likely to suffer from. But our genes aren't the whole story. There are other, complex and intriguing systems within every cell in our bodies which control which of our tens-of-thousands of genes are switched on, or off, in different parts of the body, and under d...