Unexpected Elements

French president Emmanuel Macron recently announced that Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa painting will be moved to her very own room at the Louvre, as part of a plan to renovate the iconic museum. And that got us thinking. Once the crowds have gone home every night, the Mona Lisa will be all by herself, with no other paintings to smile at enigmatically across the room. So this week, we are ta...

Celebrations for the Lunar New Year kicked off on 29th January, and this year is the Year of the Snake. We start things off by discussing the purpose of some mysterious serpent markings on the banks of the Orinoco River. Next, we find out about the origins of snake oil, before digging into the psychology of why we trust snake-like people. Plus, herpetologist Dr Mark O’Shea tells us all about his w...

The Hindu festival of Kumbh Mela is currently underway in India. As part of the event, millions of pilgrims will take a cleansing dip in the confluence of the Ganges, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati. Inspired by this headline, we splash into a whole bathtub of stories about the science of cleaning. We find out why it’s so important to prevent contamination of other planets and moons, and how spa...

After the comic malfunctions of a self-driving car, which drove its passenger/prisoner in endless circles, Unexpected Elements rounds its attention on the humble circle. Explore how one man calculated the circumference of the Earth 2,000 years before GPS was invented, then be spellbound by the Magic Circle and the mysterious woman who broke into it. And as we hit the five-year anniversary of the C...

Team Unexpected have been digging into their mind palaces to pull on the scientific research that has stuck with them most over the past year. We hear from Professor John Parnell, geologist at the University of Aberdeen, about the role of plankton in forming ancient mountains. How ocean bubbles play a role in climate regulation with bubble physicist Dr Helen Czerski from University College London....

Happy New Year! This week, the Unexpected Elements team is reflecting on 2024 and looking forward to 2025 for renewed chances to spot the northern lights while they're at their peak visibility in this current solar cycle, and we recap on cellular regeneration advancements and regulations in embryonic stem cell models.  We chat to Professor Rene Oudmaijer from the Royal Observatory of Belgium who e...

December is a time of celebration, family feuds, and now scientific rivalries. It's also one of the most wasteful months of the year, with festivities in full swing across the globe. No wonder the world is overflowing with rubbish—both literal and metaphorical! Unexpected Elements dives headfirst into the scientific bin to wallow in waste. Could worms be the unexpected heroes of our plastic pollut...

As news breaks that archaeologists have found the tomb of St Nick in Turkey, we check in on the North Pole Father Christmas, and fact-check his present giving schedule with advanced level physics and a Gant chart. Plus, prepare for stories of reindeers high... despite their apparent immunity to their favourite hallucinogenic mushroom treats. And we burrow into Santa’s iconic beard to find any micr...

This week, a banana sold at auction for $6.2 million dollars. Well, not quite… it’s actually a piece of conceptual art and it’s WAY more than just a banana. There’s also some duct tape. In response to this most bananas of auctions, the Unexpected Elements team are going bananas for bananas! We investigate the science of slipping on a banana-skin. Is it just ‘cartoon physics’ or are they actually a...

This week we’re looking at a political agreement that will hand back sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. In the 1970s, the UK removed the entire Chagossian population to make way for a US military base. The islanders have been fighting for their right to return ever since. If deal can be agreed, the islanders are hoping they will have the chance to go home. And this got us thinking abo...

It’s Black Friday! Everyone is camping in the street, staying up all night for the very best deals around. And Unexpected Elements are joining in. We take a look at the huge underground trade of vital resources...not run by criminals but fungi. Then it is onto illegal animal trade and the 300 pets who got a terrible deal, strapped to a man’s chest as he tried to make it through airport security. H...

Headlines that Canadian uranium deposits could make it a nuclear superpower has the Unexpected Elements team musing on all manner of superpowers. Tardigrades are an obvious candidate – boil them, freeze them, irradiate them in space, these adorable creatures are almost indestructible. We also meet Dr Deep Sea, Joseph Dituri, from the University of South Florida, who lived under water for 100 days...

It’s been 24 years since the release of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, which left audiences captivated by the story of Maximus the gladiator, played by Russell Crowe. Now, Gladiator II is hitting the cinemas, so this week we enter the arena to take a look at some gladiatorial science. We hear about an angry little fish that fights off its rivals in mouth-to-mouth combat, we discover how humans have loo...

Russia has fined Google more than two undecillion rubles, which is more than 20 decillion dollars. How much you ask? 20 decillions is a 20 with 33 zeros behind it, more money than there is in the entire world! This unpayable fine inspired us to look at extremely large numbers, from the amount of cells in our body, to infinity hotels and beyond. Plus, two-time world memory champion Jonas von Essen...

On this weekend ahead of the US election, we clock the importance of so-called swing states – and swing into action looking into not politics, but the science of swings. We examine how a pendulum swung by French physicist Foucault demonstrated that the earth is spinning, and hear about how the gibbon became the king of swingers – and what current-day elite climbers can learn from them. We also hea...

White blobs have been appearing on the beaches in Newfoundland, Canada. They’re kind of doughy-looking, and smell of vegetable oil. As yet, officials are not sure what they could be. Of course, this got the Unexpected Elements team intrigued, so we decided to dedicate the programme to the weird world of blobs, slime and bizarre things that wash up onshore. We hear about the fabulous hagfish, which...

Spoiler alert! At the end of the fourth season of Emily in Paris, the protagonist sets off to go to Rome. In response, the French President Emmanuel Macron has promised that “we will fight hard” to keep Emily in Paris in France. Why does he care so much? A recent study suggests that 38 per cent of all visitors to Paris name the show as one of the reasons for visiting. Inspired by this factoid, we...

After 31 years, a mammoth treasure hunt consisting of solving eleven cryptic clues has finally concluded. A replica of the final prize – a golden owl – was dug up in France, leaving fellow treasure hunters both disappointed and relieved. Inspired by this pursuit, the Unexpected Elements team unearth some of science’s hidden gems. From the potential resurrection of ancient healing tree balm to the...

Did you know the iconic yellow smiley face was first designed in 1963? However, its creator, Harvey Ball, soon worried that the symbol had become over-commercialised. To counter this, he introduced World Smile Day in 1999, celebrated on the first Friday of October, as a way to encourage acts of kindness and spread smiles. In the spirit of making you smile, the Unexpected Elements team has gathered...

Join Marnie Chesterton and her panel of science journalists Chhavi Sachdev and Jes Burns, on their Oregon science mission. We investigate building materials of the future, from creative cement alternatives to buildings made of wood, and hear from forest scientist Sarah Jovan about how one humble plant has made huge changes to Portland's air quality. Plus, we make waves with a new wave energy testi...

This week, Apple releases the new iPhone 16. It's new, it's shiny, and tech-nerds will be queueing round the block for a chance to snap it up. But why? We look at the science behind why we get so dazzled with new and shiny things. We hear about the psychology behind our magpie tendencies, and find out it might all be connected to one of our deepest evolutionary drives: for clean, fresh, sparkling...

Ngā Wai Hono i te Pō ascends the Māori throne as the new Kuini (Queen), much to the joy of her people, heralding a new age of prominence for the Kiingitanga movement. We ask whether the new queen may have a biological advantage making her a better fit for leadership, whilst searching for examples of matriarchy in the animal kingdom and analogous human societies. As is customary, Ngā Wai Hono i te...

Here on Unexpected Elements, we've been glued to the drama of the Paralympic games in Paris. But it's not just the thrill of the competition that's got us hooked, we've also become obsessed with some of the high-octane training regimes undertaken by the athletes. Take American 'Armless Archer' Matt Stutzman, who shoots arrows through the windows of his own house and car to recreate the high pressu...

Following anti-tourism protests across popular Spanish cities and towns, we are looking for the world's most unwelcome visitor. Our panellists (and producers) are pitching their terrible tourists to see who really is the worst of them all. Some of our contenders include... The wild boars who's unanticipated vacay to Rome has gone on for so long and caused so much carnage that researchers are putti...

The US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams are currently stranded on the ISS. They arrived on the Boeing Starliner, which was meant to bring them home after eight days. Unfortunately, it has run into tech issues, meaning that the astronauts may be stuck up there for up to eight months. We started to ponder, what could an extended period of being stuck in space do to your body? Next we look...