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PODCAST

Unexpected Elements

BBC World Service

The news you know, the science you don’t. Unexpected Elements looks beyond everyday narratives to discover a goldmine of scientific stories and connections from around the globe. From Afronauts, to why we argue, to a deep dive on animal lifespans: see the world in a new way.

science

All Episodes

49:29

The only one

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/08/16

The Olympics is all about flying the flag for your home country, shoulder to shoulder with your team-mates. But what if you have no team-mates? At this year’s Olympic games, four countries had just one competitor. Like Sean Gill from Belize, Somalian runner Ali Idow Hassan, or Romano Püntener, a mountain-biker representing Liechtenstein.This got us thinking about the only one. The panel discuss what it must be like to be an ‘Endling’ – the last remaining animal of an otherwise extinct species, and

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49:29

Let them eat crab

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/08/09

This week we’re inspired by the price of a lobster dinner fit for a king. The recently revealed price tag for President Macron’s banquet back at the end of 2023, about half a million dollars, kickstarts an Unexpected Elements challenge – can the team create something similar and manage to save not only cash, but an Italian ecosystem from an American invader? And waste not want not as we discover how the bits of a crustacean dinner you’d usually throw in the bin may be the key to a new generation of

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49:29

Can I eat it?

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/08/02

Champagne has been discovered in a 100+ year old shipwreck. It's an amazing find. But can you drink it? Speaking of bubbly, we learn more about the physics of bubbles, and why understanding it is crucial for the climate. Also on the show, a 2,000 year-old mystery about a navigation device that persists up to the present day.

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49:29

Breaking, climbing, and surfing

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/07/26

This week the panel take a look at their favourites of the newer Olympic sports as Paris 2024 gets underway. Surfing will happen in Tahiti this year, but could it ever be held on Titan, in orbit around Saturn? Obviously very unlikely, but not for the reasons you might expect. No vertebrate on earth can rock-climb like a gecko. Can nanomaterials come to our aid? And Amy Pope, Principal Lecturer of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University helps us understand the physics challenges the B-boys and

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49:29

Marriage madness

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/07/19

Radhika Merchant has married her partner Anant Ambani, the youngest son of Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. When your Dad is the 11th richest person in the world, worth over $112bn, you can afford a wedding year, rather than a wedding day, right? After seven months of celebration, Marnie and the panel review the festivities to see if there is any science lingering under the ‘I dos’. Hear of Hindu wedding customs and superstitions, and why something called evolutionary lag might be behind

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49:29

Political Jet Lag

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/07/12

In the lead up to the US election President Joe Biden admitted to ‘screwing up’ in a debate against Donald Trump. His excuse? Several trips around the world, a cold and severe jet lag. Joe has Marnie and the panel wondering how we can fly better.We’ll be stopping off to hear how one species, much like the US president, should consider reducing it’s airmiles, if only to avoid a pointless 16,000km round trip every year. There’ll also be a stopover in Northern Canada to hear how thinning ice is making

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49:29

Mushroom magic

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/07/05

In Australia, more than six people were hospitalised suffering from hallucinations and persistent vomiting. The thing they all had in common? They ate a specific brand of hemp-infused mushroom gummies, which have since been recalled.But why take mushroom supplements in the first place? Social media claims fungi harnesses the power to unlock your hidden potential, to increase concentration and reduce stress. This week’s panel looks into the evidence. Will these claims crumble under scrutiny?Professor

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49:29

Lights out

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/06/28

A nationwide power outage in Ecuador left 18 million people in the dark, shutting down traffic lights and the capital’s subway system.But Ecuador isn’t the only place dealing with blackouts. In Nunavut, Canada, where panelist Meral Jamal lives, power outages happen frequently, including as she was preparing for this programme. How do you deal with a power outage in a remote place? And how did the Inuit manage the cold winter months without electricity at all?What is the darkest colour in the world

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49:30

Seismic swift

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/06/21

At a recent Taylor Swift concert in Scotland, seismographs measured a “Swift Quake” caused by foot-stomping fans. But this wasn’t the only star that has made the ground shake - there have been several others, including Travis Scott and Bruce Springsteen. Could this power be harnessed in some way?Turning our attention to non-popstar quakes, there are some animals that seem to predict earthquakes. A pond in Italy, usually filled with toads during breeding season, was suddenly void of them shortly

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49:29

An Unexpected Burger

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/06/14

Could a scientific burger compete against the fast food giants? We fear not!You will need:• Meat - A tick capable of inducing alpha gal syndrome, a disease that makes you allergic to red meat. • Garnish - Lettuce grown in space. (WARNING: it is more susceptible to bacterial infection than that grown on Earth). • Buns - A short but thick guide to the human buttocks with Heather Radke. Why do we humans have such large behinds? • Something sweet - We’ve chosen the humble baobab seed. An unusual tree

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49:30

Balloon manoeuvres

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/06/07

After North Korean balloons delivered trash to South Korea, we explore balloons of all kinds, why they can be useful, and when they’re not.Scientists have been using balloons for a long time, from pig bladders dropped from great heights, to Michael Faraday inventing the rubber balloon. Floating through the air seems like a great, energy-efficient way to fly. So why isn’t the sky full of airships? And party balloons are fun… but do we want to waste our precious helium on parties? What is this limited

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49:30

Eternal Flames

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/05/31

As the Olympic torch makes its way through France, we investigate the fires that continually smoulder and those which are stomped out. You might expect snow to make a solid fire extinguisher, but in Canada, it is somehow keeping embers alight. These ‘Zombie fires’ keep burning through the winter, releasing huge amounts of carbon into the air and enhancing the tinderbox for summer wildfires. While wildfires leave trails of destruction, for some plants and animals, they act as a catalyst for life –

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49:30

A world going on underground

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/05/24

How would you feel if you spent more and more of your life underground? Could that be how more and more of us live in the future? Presenter Marnie Chesterton and panellists Candice Bailey in Johannesburg, South Africa and Tristan Ahtone in Helsinki, Finland dig into subterranean science. Did you know around a million people live underground in China's capital Beijing? Have you heard of the race to dig the deepest hole in the Earth? In this episode we explore how humans have been digging deep for

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49:30

Winning Losers

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/05/17

In a competitive world, is it always best to finish first? A tribute to second place, second thoughts, and second opinions.You might assume that Olympic gold medallists have more successful lives than their silver-placed competitors. A study shows that on average winners die a year younger than the runners up, and earn less money.In the invasive jelly-fish wars of the Black Sea of recent years, it seems the second-comers prevailed over the voracious first-timers. And what about siblings? Does the

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49:29

Unexpected birthday party

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/05/10

It’s time for an unexpected celebration and we look to science for advice on clothes, cake and how presenter Marnie and panellists Christine and Candice can improve their singing. We also hear about the sleuths who have tracked down an animal that’s been presumed extinct for almost a century, we help a listener find the answer to whether using sunscreen is stopping him from getting vitamin d and Marnie talks to the Dog Aging Project to ask why studying healthy ageing in our canine companions can

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49:29

Horsey driverless cars and competitive cloning

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/05/03

The sight of horses running wild in a city leads panellist Tristan Ahtone in Helsinki to rethink how we rate horses' welfare, Chhavi Sachdev in Mumbai tells the story of the country that is cloning the Lionel Messi of horses for sport and presenter Marnie Chesterton finds out why roboticist Eakta Jain is studying horses to engineer better relationships between humans and autonomous vehicles. All that, plus the slippery record for the world's biggest snake, how the alphabet came to be and asteroid

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50:39

A scientific séance

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/04/26

Join the Unexpected team as they journey beyond the borders of reality to ask why we believe in the illogical. After a fraudulent psychic dupes 1.3 million Americans, panellist Camilla Mota turns to history for insight into how scientists debunk such con artists. The Unexpected library harbours secrets of paranormal experimentation and dead air live on the BBC, and panellist Phillys Mwatee reveals why our beliefs win out over hard evidence written in ink. Nevertheless, in a world rife with

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49:27

Computer memories and quantum futures

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/04/19

These days, over a trillion semiconductor microchips are made and shipped each year. The industry is worth eye-watering amounts, and since the 2020-2023 global shortage, nearly all governments are trying to get a slice of the industrial wafer.But what was it like just 40 years ago trying to get yourself a home computer when your communist leaders didn’t approve, and there were nowhere enough devices to go round anyway? Andrada Fiscutean spoke to some of the bootleggers.These days, not only are

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49:30

Beyoncé, banjos and dancing chemistry

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/04/12

Beyonce's new album tops the charts with a reappraisal of who can do country music and the Unexpected Elements team has a hoedown. Panellist Christine Yohannes unearths new research that changes our understanding of the origins of cowboys. Chhavi Sachdev has a thing or two to teach Beyonce as she reveals why the banjo has it's characteristic twang and we meet a man with powerful chemistry - TikTok dance sensation Dr Andre Isaacs from the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts tells presenter

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50:18

Unexpected elections

Unexpected Elements ·

2024/04/05

In a year when billions of people have been to the ballot box, what do stickleback fish have to do with it? Alex Lathbridge, Tristan Ahtone and Candice Bailey discuss some unexpected elements of electoral studies.Can ancient geology really map election outcomes? What has machine learning done for polling? Psychologist Sandra Obradović drops in to share some of her expertise in the psychology of voting with the team.Plus, what does a solar eclipse have to do with dragons?Presenter: Alex Lathbridge,

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