Air Conditioning
No summer blockbuster. No Las Vegas and no skyscrapers in Dubai. No chocolate bars when the weather gets hot. Air conditioning is one of those things we take for granted but that has transformed the w...
24 Jul 202229min
Baby Formula
The United States has been suffering from a baby formula shortage for months now. It’s shown how reliant we are on this one commodity. People need it to feed their babies. It doesn’t get much bigger t...
20 Jul 202229min
Measurements
A pint might be Britain’s most beloved measurement. But what’s the name for the distance a reindeer can walk before it needs to pee?The way we measure things changes the way we see the world. Measurem...
17 Jul 202235min
Sign Language
Imagine knowing no language at all…*wordlessness*…and then giving birth to one.This is what happened amongst the children at a school for the deaf in Nicaragua in the 1980s. And my guest today was the...
13 Jul 202232min
Mummies
When the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead they were trying to stop time, to preserve the body so well that it would last throughout eternity.They succeeded (sometimes). There are mummies that wh...
9 Jul 202230min
Cryonics: Living Forever?
Often mistakenly called Cryogenics, Cryonics is the speculative practice of preserving and storing recently dead bodies at very low temperatures — all in the hope we may one day be able to bring them ...
6 Jul 202243min
Video Games
A whistle stop tour of the 50 year history of video games — and all the innovations along the way, from our TV sets to virtual reality.Why are the roots of gaming in universities and labs?What technol...
3 Jul 202235min
Drone Delivery
The drones are coming. In twenty years there’s going to be a hundred times more flying planes, taxis, parcels in the airspace than today thanks to drone technology. Assuming we don't try to stop them ...
29 Jun 202223min
