What You Need To Know

It may feel like it at the time but if you've been finding your sleep disrupted in lockdown you're very much not alone. Professor Jane Falkingham from the University of Southampton has studied the negative impact of lockdown on sleep and found it an increasing problem across the nation. In this episode, she shares her key findings with Lucrezia Millarini before James Wilson - aka The Sleep Geek -...

In this special episode of the podcast, ITV News presenter Nina Hossain puts a wide range of audience questions to England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam. Professor Van-Tam, who has won his own loyal audience for his straight-talking guidance throughout the pandemic, addresses concerns over the AstraZeneca vaccine, the extended gap between the two jabs, the impact of mixing vaccin...

Email scammers feed on a crisis so it's no surprise that criminals have looked to exploit the global pandemic to try to steal money and data from unsuspecting victims. In this episode Lucrezia Millarini speaks to Adenike Cosgrove from the cybersecurity researcher firm Proofpoint, who are working to expose the fraudsters. These are the examples of fake emails disguised as vaccine alerts or health o...

Her song parody videos as a Tired and Tested mum on Instagram and Facebook have won Sophie McCartney a huge online audience during the pandemic. But what ITV News presenter Faye Barker wants to know is: are Sophie's comic mash-ups born from gritty experience or is the mother-of-two secretly having a lot of fun in lockdown? It doesn't take Sophie long to set the record straight and reveal her strug...

Lockdown - or any restricted living across the UK - presents a major challenge for everyone's mental health while the pandemic continues to rage. So how can you cope with the winter woes as we all continue to live largely indoors with even exercise largely restricted? Psychologist Elissa Makris of Thrive - a game-based mental health app endorsed by the NHS - talks Kylie Pentelow through several wa...

UK. South Africa. Brazil. The new variants of the Covid-19 vaccines - originating here and in Africa and South America - are now common parlance but how deadly are they and can the current vaccines protect against them? With some concerning news emerging from South Africa, Science Editor Tom Clarke explains everything you need to know on the various variants to Lucrezia Millarini. Why do they occu...

How long does immunity to Covid-19 last after you’ve been infected or received the vaccine? Since the pandemic began it's one of the main questions we’ve wanted to answer. Now the SIREN study - the world’s largest investigation into Covid infections - has found antibodies protect us for far longer than the original estimation of three months. In this episode, Science Editor Tom Clarke speaks to th...

The closure of schools across the UK amid national lockdowns in England and Scotland has intensified pressure on parents and guardians yet again as weeks of home schooling resume. So what can they do to help children - and themselves - cope with the stressful challenge of turning the home once again into a classroom? Kerry-Jane Packman of the charity Parentkind tells Lucrezia Millarini what you ne...

The start of 2021 feels like a critical moment in the fight against coronavirus. Record levels of daily cases fuelled by a new variant of the virus and the national lockdowns in England and Scotland and mass restrictions in Wales and Northern Ireland mean there are few reasons to be cheerful. Yet the mass rollout of two vaccines shows there is an end in sight. So how far from normality are we? And...

Christmas is often a time belt-strings are loosened but this year's social restrictions and the economic hardship caused by the pandemic have increased the financial pressures of the season. So how can you spend your money wisely amid the present giving and preparations for this year's limited festivities in our first - and hopefully last - Covid era Christmas? ITV News presenter Kylie Pentelow sp...

In this special edition, Science Editor Tom Clarke speaks to the chair of the UK vaccine task force Kate Bingham on the day history is made in the battle against Covid-19 with the first vaccines being administered in Britain. Kate delivers all you need to know about the rollout, how the vaccine will be delivered across the globe and also talks about its legacy as the NHS launches its biggest ever...

In this special edition of the podcast, Science Editor Tom Clarke talks to Ben Osborn, the UK boss of pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer, after the breakthrough news that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has been judged safe for use in the UK. Tom puts all the key questions to Ben, including how many doses can be delivered, whether the UK should have ordered more of its vaccine compared to the alternative va...

At first glance it appears that, at 70%, Oxford-AstraZeneca's vaccine offers less potential protection against Covid-19 than the 95% protection potentially provided by vaccines being developed by Pfizer and Moderna. However, in this podcast edition, Professor Jen Rogers tells Science Editor Tom Clarke why there is very legitimate cause for celebration at the Oxford University interim data results....

For ITV News's resident Covid-19 statistician, Professor Jen Rogers, keeping across the deluge of data on the pandemic is an occupational hazard. But what can the rest of us do to make sense of the standout statistics which have filled the news headlines for months? Jen shares her expert advice with Lucrezia Millarini, while also reacting to the latest update on the advances towards a long-awaited...


Everyone’s excited about the vaccine breakthrough by developers Pfizer and BioNTech. But what does the study tell us? When can you get it? And, crucially, how do we know that it's both effective and safe? 

ITV News's Covid-19 statistician - a clinical trial specialist - Prof Jen Rogers tells Science Editor Tom Clarke exactly what you need to know in this special podcast. Including, why we should...

“Addiction is an illness of isolation.” So says Michael Rawlinson of Action on Addiction in this conversation with ITV News presenter Lucrezia Millarini. He says he has seen a clear rise in the number of people battling addictions - be it alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography or other vices - since the UK began a national lockdown back in March. Now the nation is locked down for a second time, how...

Life amid a pandemic has thrown up so many challenges and mathematician David Sumpter accepts that crunching the numbers can't solve all of our problems. Yet the author of The Ten Equations That Rule The World: And How You Can Use Them To Improve Your Life tells Lucrezia Millarini that some relatively simple maths could help guide you while making decisions during the crisis. In this podcast, he e...

Many have called the autumn surge in UK virus cases a critical moment in the coronavirus crisis, amid ever-changing local restrictions. Health Editor Emily Morgan updates ITV News Presenter Mary Nightingale on what this means for the country's health as a nation as we head into the winter. How prepared is the NHS? Why has England's test and trace system performed so poorly? And what other challeng...

In the history of post-war television news there has never been a story like the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. And, of course, with several months still to go until the end of the year, it is far from over. In this special edition of the podcast, ITV News Presenter Mary Nightingale is joined by three colleagues to share their experiences of reporting on the first six months of the pandemic. Along wit...


“The critical issue is not whether the economy as a whole will recover - it will. But it’s the nature of the recovery which matters.” While optimistic that Britain will restore economic order following the pandemic crash, Robert Peston is less confident on the future of our collective workforce. It's a topic he has been investigating for the Tonight programme and readily admits, to presenter Juli...

While we’ve all adjusted to a new way of living these past six months, anthropologist James Suzman argues the time is right to really push for radical change in our lives. The author of Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time tells ITV News presenter Lucrezia Millarini what would have been viewed at the start of 2020 as “ridiculously radical” is ready for re-evaluation and embracement. “Something...

She's best known as Alan Sugar's fearsome interviewer on The Apprentice so how will Linda Plant deal with being in the hotseat herself? ITV News presenter Lucrezia Millarini puts Linda through her paces in an engaging debate on whether working from home should become a permanent part of our working lives. It's fair to say Linda is not a fan of the concept, but does Lucrezia get a little bit of fle...

Months of lockdown has given many people more time than ever to reconnect with reading - but it also brought an almighty halt to the publishing industry's summer offerings. A rush of new titles is being released this autumn and smash hit Jack Reacher author Lee Child - speaking from Colorado - and esteemed poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay - from Hackney, east London - share their thoughts on a yea...

Aside from the threat to our health, one of the biggest disruptions from this pandemic has been the impact on children’s education across the UK. 
 Home schooling has been the norm for so many households, but by the first week of September the majority of the UK’s secondary and primary pupils will be back at school.   
 ITV News presenter Lucrezia Millarini is joined on this edition of the podcast...

News At Ten anchor Tom Bradby is joined by ITV News Science Editor Tom Clarke to answer all your key questions on the coronavirus pandemic. The Q&A session was driven by our Facebook users on Tuesday night as the pair appeared live and reacted to the incoming queries before appearing on News At Ten. Which included... How close are we now to a vaccine? How are cases going up but deaths and hospital...