The Wonder Podcast for Curious Kids

Her real name was Krystyna Skarbek.  She was Polish but spied for the British during WW11. She was brilliant and daring in a male-dominated field.  And a law unto her self.  She took risks few others would have done.  And saved lives with her rare ingenuity.  Codenames and pseudonyms, she had many: Madame Marchand, Jacqueline Armande or just plain Pauline. And, of course, Christine Granville.  She...

Once the heavens were the domain of just gods and angels – which is one of the reasons why Icarcus fell back to earth. Humans only really mastered flight when they developed their understanding of two crucial concepts: lift and thrust. In the early 1900s, with the invention of the petrol engine, the Wright brothers took to the sky in a biplane, albeit for only 59 seconds at first. By 1949, when th...

Welcome to Season 2 of The Wonder Podcast. This episode tells the true story of a thief who stole the Mona Lisa. Every year 10 million visitors come to the Louvre museum in Paris to see this portrait of a 16th-century Italian noblewoman by Leonardo da Vinci. But it was not until she was stolen on 21 August, 1911 that the Mona Lisa achieved global fame.   So who took her, and why wasn't she found f...

The new coronavirus has had a huge impact on our daily lives, and has made some people very sick but others who caught it haven’t been ill at all. You might be wondering how we fight off illnesses like coronavirus. This week’s episode is about the immune system and how it works to protect humans from diseases caused by viruses and bacteria. Using the garden as an analogy, we explain the difference...

What do we love about a good film? Is it that they transport us to a different world? To places where our imagination can take flight? The films of Studio Ghibli are full of strange creatures and extraordinary flying machines; places where sprites live and incredible transformations are possible; and lots of cats – even a cat that looks like a bus. They celebrate the beauty of nature, daring inven...

Seventy two years ago over 800 passengers arrived in the UK from the Caribbean aboard the Empire Windrush. This episode tells the story of their journey: from their initial optimism to the difficulties they faced adapting to life in Britain.  The Empire Windrush lent its name to the 'Windrush generation', the people that came from the West Indies to live in the UK over a period of 25 years. Not on...

Hello Wonder! Carnivorous plants are awfully strange, and strangely awful. They may sound like the stuff of nightmares, or science-fiction, but they are most definitely real and ready to commit murder to survive. They attract, then trap, their victims and devour the bodies. These deadly assassins grow in every remote region of the world, except Antartica. And lurk underwater too.  In episode three...

Hello Wonder! Have you ever wondered, what is the point of sport?  Of kicking a ball? Hitting a ball? Serving a ball? Of running a race? Of cycling? Or swimming? Or which jockey, on which horse, finishes first? Why bother counting the number of runs made by a bat striking a red leather ball? Why does both playing and watching sport obsess us so? Is it just a game? Or is sport a quest of perfection...

Hello Wonder! The fourth episode of The Wonder Podcast tells the story of a schoolgirl from Pakistan who stood up for girls’ rights to an education. To silence her, the Taliban, a group of religious extremists, shot her. Malala Yousafzai did not just survive: she became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Her journey began in the Swat Valley, a remote corner of Pakistan, and eve...

Hello Wonder!  Welcome to the first episode of The Wonder Podcast. It tells the story of Buzz Aldrin – fighter pilot, astronaut and member of the first manned space mission to another world – and how he lent his name to a famous Space Ranger superhero. You guessed it, Buzz Lightyear. Most of us can only dream of adventures to far-off places but on 20 July, 1969 two men stepped onto the moon. Back...

Hello Wonder! The second episode of The Wonder Podcast tells the story of Queen Mary I who has been called a 16th-century Greta Thunberg – she was passionate, clever and very determined. She was also the first proper queen of England. Her father Henry VIII once called her ‘the greatest pearl in the kingdom’ yet today she is remembered as ‘Bloody Mary’ since she had hundreds of her Protestant enemi...