PODCAST

Science In Action

BBC World Service

The BBC brings you all the week"s science news.

science

All Episodes

31:30

How science got here, and where next

Science In Action ·

2025/10/30

As anti-science leaves research reeling, does evidence-based policy in a scientific society have much of a future? Michael Mann, Naomi Oreskes, Angie Rasmussen and Deb Houry discuss some of the sources and motivations that perhaps belie the current state of scientific affairs. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: The End street sign. Credit: Sanfel via Getty Images).

37:58

Coral extinctions and chalky unknowns

Science In Action ·

2025/10/23

As two species of coral are killed off by the 2023 heatwave in the Florida reefs, the abilities of different plankton species to cope with rising CO2 remain crucially unknown. Also, retrospective research shows a strong suggestion that mRNA covid vaccination might serendipitously boost certain types of cancer immunotherapy. And, if you can’t identify changing agricultural crop types from satellite observations, why not just strap a camera to your bike helmet? Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex

38:45

Paris agreement impacts and drought realities

Science In Action ·

2025/10/16

Ten years on from the Paris climate agreement, has it helped? Also, an international drought experiment, insights from 2D water, and social distancin in ants.Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth(Photo: Small bushfire. Credit: Lea Scaddan/Getty Images)

31:57

Old faces and big spaces in small places

Science In Action ·

2025/10/09

The 2025 Nobel prizes are announced this week – how did Science in Action’s predictions fare? Science author and thinker Philip Ball judges.The Whitley Fund for Nature this week hosted a “People for Planet” summit, exploring possible solutions to save nature. Amongst the speakers was Prof Martin Wikelski, of ICARUS, who has spent many years tracking wildlife around the world using tiny radio sensors. As he describes to Roland, he shortly hopes to launch a network of satellites to enable a global

36:03

A mystery satellite has been jamming GPS in Europe

Science In Action ·

2025/10/02

Scientists detect for the first time an unknown source of GPS interference coming from space. Also, as AI begins to design more and more DNA sequences being manufactured synthetically, how can those manufacturers be sure that what their customers are asking for will not produce toxic proteins or lethal weapons? And… how camera traps in polish forests reveal that the big bad wolf is more scared of humans than anything else. For that last few years instances of deliberate jamming and interference of

36:15

Autism and the epigenetics of early brain development

Science In Action ·

2025/09/25

Epigenetic changes during early brain development, and the complexities of autism. Also, how bacteria learn to parry antibiotics, the subterranean burp that shook the Island of Santorini, and new guidance for sharing land between farming space and living space for the pollinators on which it depends. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Blastocyst embryo, light micrograph. Credit: Science Photo Library via Getty Images).

26:29

Stephen Hawking gets it right again

Science In Action ·

2025/09/18

Gravitational waves show two black holes merge just how Hawking predicted. Plus, a space mission without a target. And a Space probe without a confirmed budget.In January 2025 the LIGO gravitational wave observatories witnessed two distant black holes spinning into each other. In the ten years of LIGO’s operations, that’s not a first. But the instruments have been improved to such an extent that this time some very important predictions of General Relativity and out understanding of black holes

26:28

Asteroids, comets and where to find them

Science In Action ·

2025/09/11

Scientists’ latest plans for welcoming interstellar visitor 3I/Atlas next month, and arranging a rendezvous with comet Apophis in 2029, as heard this week at the EPSC-DPS international planetary science joint meeting in Helsinki. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Ella Hubber, with Alex Mansfield Production coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth Image: Artist's impression of an asteroid in space (Credit: European Space Agency/ESA Science Office)

28:22

Why is Afghanistan so vulnerable to earthquakes?

Science In Action ·

2025/09/04

Despite the relatively low magnitude, earthquakes in Afghanistan this week have left more than1000 dead. Afghan researcher Zakeria Shnizai from the University of Oxford unpicks some of the main causes of the country’s vulnerability to earthquakes. Also this week, we talk to the climate scientist who led a 400+ page rebuttal to the US Department of Energy’s report on climate change. We hear about research which has mapped the activity of over 600,000 neurons in 279 regions of the mouse brain to

37:16

How Fear Spreads

Science In Action ·

2025/08/28

What can modern epidemiological methods tell us about French Revolutionary history? Also, the origins of horse riding, solar systems, and star dust itself. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production Coordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth (Image: Storming of the Bastille Paris France 1789 illustration. Credit: Grafissimo via Getty Images).

30:13

Not cold fusion all over again

Science In Action ·

2025/08/21

A desktop nuclear fusion reactor that uses electrochemistry to up the ante. Also, a global survey of human wildfire exposures finds Africa burning ahead, plus tiny swarming robots and record-breaking 2024 ice melts from glaciers on Svalbard. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield Production co-ordinator: Jana Holesworth (Photo: The Thunderbird Reactor at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Credit: Berlinguette Group/UBC)

30:43

Vaccine study retraction request rejected

Science In Action ·

2025/08/14

US Health Secretary RFK Jr’s call to retract a study on childhood vaccines is resisted by the journal. Also antibiotics get designed by AI, and a new way for stars to die. A study focussing on Danish childhood vaccination data has attracted the US Secretary for Health’s anger, as RFK jr calls for the journal in which it was published, the Annals of Internal Medicine, to retract it. The Editor, Christine Laine, talk to Science in Action about the strengths and challenges of observational studies. The

29:37

An end to allergic reactions?

Science In Action ·

2025/08/07

As the United States secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr., announces a $500 million cut to mRNA vaccine research in the United States, we hear a statement from the Nobel Prize winning biologist who made mRNA vaccines possible. A team of scientists from Northwestern University have uncovered the pathway believed to protect some people from allergic reactions (even when they are sensitive to an allergen) and have tested a drug which could protect the most severely allergic.

30:19

Getting ahead of tsunamis

Science In Action ·

2025/07/31

After most of the population of the Pacific rim sought higher ground this week, we speak with the architect of the tsunami warning technology. Also how aging Killifish might help us probe our senior moments. This week, an M8.8 earthquake near Kamchatka in the western pacific led to tsunami evacuation alerts thousands of miles away. Seismologist Judith Hubbard was writing about the area in the days leading up to it, following a M7.4 event 9 days before, which we now know to categorize as a foreshock

29:56

Discovering Betelgeuse’s Betelbuddy

Science In Action ·

2025/07/24

Have we found Betelgeuse’s ‘Betelbuddy?’ An astronomical mystery seems to be solved as the long-predicted stellar companion to the bright star Betelgeuse has been detected by a team of researchers led by Steve Howell of the NASA Ames Research Center using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. Steve discusses this breakthrough alongside astronomer Andrea Dupree of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who has discussed the predictions of this star on previous Science in Action programmes

27:38

Biggest black hole merger observed

Science In Action ·

2025/07/17

Two black holes have collided and combined in the largest merger yet observed. Mark Hannam of Cardiff University and member of the study explains how the Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatories (LIGO) detected this ‘violent’ event through spacetime.The lifestyle of ancient humans had an impact on their risk for infectious diseases. Astrid Iversen of the University of Oxford explains how the shift away from being hunter-gatherers played a role in the origins of human pathogens. Nitrogen

33:47

Tracking ocean circulation systems

Science In Action ·

2025/07/10

The European Space Agency plans to use satellite gravity data to track weakening ocean circulation systems. Rory Bingham of the University of Bristol explains how these satellites can ‘weigh’ the Earth’s water and might help resolve whether we’re approaching the climate tipping point of a shutdown of ocean circulation in the Atlantic Ocean, something we've been following for a while. Scientists have been able to retrieve ancient proteins from fossilized tooth enamel in the Canadian High Arctic. Ryan

35:50

Bird flu surges in Cambodia

Science In Action ·

2025/07/03

There's a surge in cases and deaths from H5N1 bird flu in Cambodia - we hear what's the driver and how concerned we should be. Erik Karlsson, Head of Virology at the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh and director of the WHO’s H5 Reference Laboratory has been watching the uptick.An interstellar interloper has been spotted entering our solar system. Most likely a comet, and possibly visible in the sky, it’s just the third such visitor we’ve ever seen. Josep Trigo of Spain’s Institute of Space Sciences

37:48

Vera C. Rubin Observatory first images

Science In Action ·

2025/06/26

A spectacular new 10-year telescopic survey of the universe gets underway in Chile. Also, a project to create human chromosomes completely synthetically.Almost three decades ago Tony Tyson (now of UC Davis) and colleagues were standing in the control room of the world’s biggest (at the time) digital astronomical camera. It was 3am when he suggested astronomers could do better. This week, the Vera C Rubin Observatory unveiled first images from the telescope he envisioned. Unprecedented in so many

41:41

Half a universe once lost now found

Science In Action ·

2025/06/19

The universe is thought to consist of 70% Dark Energy, 25% Dark Matter, and just 5% Baryonic matter which is the atoms that make up you and me. At least, that’s what the models suggest. But a well-kept secret between astronomers and cosmologists for all these years has been that they have not actually ever seen almost half of that 5% normal matter because it is thinly dispersed as gas between the galaxies and galactic clusters. This week, two studies have been published putting that

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