BBC Discovery

What a great question to ask, Why does human hair go grey? Is it ever possible for it to go white overnight from shock? This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday the 31st of May. It will also be broadcast on Sunday the 29th of May in…

We are roughly symmetrical on the outside with two eyes, two arms, and two legs, but inside we are all over the place! This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday the 24th of May. It will also be broadcast on Sunday the 22nd of May in Phuket…

We use wi-fi every day, but do you know how it works? This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday the 17th of May. It will also be broadcast on Sunday the 15th of May in Phuket at 8:30 AM on 91.5 FM and 102.5 FM and Online…

What mystery, the teenage brain? ‘Why are teens prone to risky behaviour?’ asks Dr Mark Gallaway, ‘especially when with their friends?’ This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday the 10th of May. It will also be broadcast on Sunday the 8th of May in Phuket at 8:30…

A Jaguar last week Wild Inside, The Burmese Python and now The Ocean Sunfish In the final week of this three-part series Ben Garrod and Jess French get under the skin of Mola mola the world’s largest bony fish to unravel this bizarrely shaped predator’s ability to swim to a huge range of depths. Producer…

This week the question is why did the dinosaurs die out and the mammals survive? Steve Brusatte analyses the pace of evolutionary change and tries to answer big questions. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Monday the 4th of March. It will also be broadcast on Sunday…

Did you know that Sir Shankar Balasubramanian is responsible for a revolution in medicine? This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday 29th of March. It will also broadcast on Sunday the 27th of March in Phuket at 8:30 AM on 91.5 FM and 102.5 FM and Online…

We look at wolves, and the programme is slightly different because the predator we’re talking about is very much a predator of our imaginations. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday the 22nd March. It will also broadcast on Sunday the 20th March in Phuket at 8:30…

The army ant might be small enough to squash underfoot but, make no mistake, it’s a formidable predator. The classification ”army ant” is actually a general term that refers to any of about 18 genera of ant that exhibit extremely aggressive nomadic behaviours and indiscriminately kill by overwhelming prey with their massive numbers. This programme…

Adam Hart discovers why rattlesnakes make good mothers and how deadly their venom is. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday 8th March. It will also broadcast on Sunday the 6th March in Phuket at 8:30 AM on 91.5 FM and 102.5 FM and Online via the…

Cursed as a worthless scavenger and cast as villainous cowardly sidekicks in Disney’s The Lion King, the spotted hyena is one of the world’s most misunderstood of all predators. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday 1st March. It will also broadcast on Sunday the 27th of…

UCL oceanographer Helen Czerski explores life in the ocean depths with a panel of deep sea biologists. Update to last weeks programme where Dr Kevin Fong convenes a panel of astronautical minds to discuss the next decade or two of space exploration and now week go into the deep sea. A panel of deep sea biologists. They…

Dr Kevin Fong convenes a panel of astronautical minds to discuss the next decade or two of space exploration. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday 15th of February. It will also broadcast on Sunday the 13th of February in Phuket at 8:30 AM on 91.5 FM…

Professor Tom Kariuki has spent his career battling for science in Africa, both as a leading immunologist and as the former director of the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery Page and is available until Tuesday the 8th of February. It will also broadcast…

Do you know what a painless heart is? Dr Mitch Lomax is a sports scientist at the University of Portsmouth. She helps actual Olympic swimmers get faster. She explains how most of the muscles attached to our skeletons work: Tiny fibres use small-scale cellular energy, which, when all these fibres work in concert, turns into…

Welcome to Discovery, the weirdness of water, this is part 2 of a 3 part series with presenters Hannah Fry & Adam Rutherford. Part 1, Water do you understand it? Zooming in and out of water is available for you to follow the whole series. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC Discovery…

I don’t understand why water has so many properties on different scales ranging from very large and cosmic to very small quantum and quirky. Could you help by zooming in and out on the water to explain what is known about it? Asks Neil Morton in Stirling. Rutherford and Fry learn about the special hydrogen…

UPDATE 16th February 2022. James Webb Space Telescope sends back the first test image. On February 11, NASA released the first composite images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Each of the 18 bright white dots is the same Ursa Major star reflected from Webb’s primary mirror segments to its secondary mirror and Near Infrared Camera…

CRISPR is the latest and most powerful technique for changing the genetic code of living things. Update: In the decade since the genome editing capabilities of CRISPR Cas9 emerged, research into novel medicines has boomed – but alongside progress comes new ethical considerations. Listen to the latest on Science in Action. This method of gene…

Professor Matthew Cobb looks at how genetic engineering became a big business – from the first biotech company that produced human insulin in modified bacteria in the late 1970s to the companies like Monsanto, which developed and then commercialised the first GM crops in the 1990s. This programme is available NOW on Demand on the BBC…

Dreams and Nightmares this week on Discovery as biologist Matthew Cobb presents the first episode in a series which looks at the 50-year history of genetic engineering, from the concerns around the first attempts at combining the DNA of one organism with the genes of another in 1971 to today’s gene-editing technique known as CRISPR….

Coral reefs are some of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, and also some of the noisiest. Up close, a healthy reef teems with trills, whoops, buzzes, hums and snaps made by the diverse lifeforms that inhabit it. This programme is available NOW on Demand at the Discovery Page and is available now until Tuesday…

Geoengineering is already underway from Australia to the Arctic as scientists try to save places threatened by global heating. It’s time for a global conversation about how we research these powerful techniques, with agreements on how and where to deploy them. This week’s show is available to hear On Demand now, and on-air Sunday 15 th…

Even with the best efforts, it will be decades before we see any change in global temperatures through our mitigation efforts. Given the pace of global heating and the time lag, scientists are exploring additional ways of reducing global temperature before our emissions reductions have any impact. Gaia Vince explores ways of actively removing carbon…

Over the last 2 weeks, we have featured the 15 finalists in the Earthshot prize, an initiative to highlight and award projects designed to conserve and sustain natural environments and improve our lives in ways that are sensitive to issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Here we discuss this year’s winning projects and…

Just how do we tackle our energy crisis and balance the growing demand for electricity worldwide with the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions to address climate change? In our second programme on the Earthshot prize Chhavi Sachdev looks at some of the solutions. From projects looking at providing green hydrogen to industry worldwide and…

While international meetings to discuss climate change and policies that affect the world can seem rather distant to us as individuals, on a local level there are many exciting and creative initiatives all over the world where people are developing practical solutions to the environmental problems they see. The Earthshot prize highlights many of these…

President Xi Jinping is taking a Great Science Leap for China and investing seriously in his strategic vision of turning China into a nation of scientific pace-setters. China’s past contributions to modern science have been proportionally lacklustre, but with a reinvigorated focus over the past two decades, China is fast turning from imitator to innovator….

The COVID19 pandemic and future vaccines. The Pandemic has revolutionised the way vaccines are made and underlined the inequalities in access to vaccines. But will it leave a legacy? Roland Pease explores the potential for mRNA and other revolutionary vaccines to make future health protection faster, safer and more flexible, whether ‘universal’ vaccines will give…

Certainty is comforting. Certainty is quick. But climate science is uncertain. And this is particularly true for people who are trying to understand climate change. Climate scientist, Tamsin Edwards tackles this uncertainty head-on. She quantifies the uncertainty inherent in all climate change predictions to try and understand which of many possible storylines about the future…

Steve Haake has spent much of his career using technology to help elite sportspeople get better, faster and break records. He has turned his hand to the engineering behind most sports, from studying how golf balls land, to designing new tennis racquets and changing the materials in ice skates. Steve Haake Professor of Sports Engineering He’s…

“What’s the point of wasps?” asks listener Andrew, who is fed up with being pestered. For this series, with lockdown learning in mind, Drs Rutherford and Fry are investigating scientific mysteries for students of all ages. Do wasps do anything to justify their presence as a picnic menace? Ecologist Seirian Sumner researches social wasp behaviour…