IFLScience - The Big Questions - Podcasts

38:20

Just How Queer Is The Natural World?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/09/24

Gay penguins and fish that change sex? How about birds engaging in lesbian behavior? We delve into the natural world and its often underreported queer behaviors that have frequently been steeped in historical prejudices and biases. From mammals and birds to squid and beetles, queer behaviors and biologies are more prevalent than you might imagine among non-human animals. So just how queer is the natural world? Host Eleanor Higgs speaks to Josh Luke Davis, author of A Little Gay Natural

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71:44

What's The Next Frontier In Dementia Research?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/09/10

Improving the detection and treatment of dementia is at the forefront of 21st-century neuroscience. As with many gnarly problems, experts are not united on how best to approach this. Some research garners lots of attention from press and public alike; some, much less so.Host Laura Simmons speaks to three scientists looking at dementia from three quite different perspectives. Fernando Gonzalez Ortiz, MD, PhD is a doctor and neuroscientist at the University of Gothenburg who specializes in

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41:37

How Close Are We To Talking To Animals?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/08/27

Do you ever wish you could talk directly to your pet? Or have the Eliza Thornberry or Dr Dolittle experience for real? Unravelling the mysteries of animal speech might be closer than you think with Project CETI’s work on decoding sperm whale language. With remarkable similarities to human speech, just how far away are we from learning the language of another species?Host Eleanor Higgs spoke to Dr David Gruber, founder & CEO of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), about decoding whale

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22:04

Can AI Be Conscious?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/08/13

Large language models, often called artificial intelligence (AI), are everywhere nowadays. There is potential in the use of this form of AI, but also many drawbacks. Lots of excitement, plenty of concerns. The biggest worry? That AI could become conscious. Maybe they already are… Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti speaks to Dr Alex Hanna, sociologist and director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, to talk about the big claims surrounding these computational approaches. You can listen to

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45:29

Are "Natural Disasters" On The Rise?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/07/30

As global temperatures continue to rise, heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and storms are becoming more numerous, lasting longer, and affecting places that were never built to withstand them. Understandably, many people feel unsettled by this growing uncertainty - but are these disasters inevitable?Join Dr Russell Moul as he talks to Dr Samantha Montano, a disasterologist and emergency management expert, about the ways in which disasters are changing and how societies respond to them. They

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32:02

How Do You Name A New Species?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/07/16

The world of taxonomy is a puzzling one. Some species names are grand, some are funny, some are seemingly unoriginal. Others are a hat tip to Indigenous Peoples or geographical places, while some isolate a single scientist or celebrity. This got us wondering, how exactly do you name a species?To find out, Senior Science Writer Rachael Funnell sat down with Professor Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist at London’s Natural History Museum who has seen taxonomy from the other side, naming new species

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38:06

Could AI find A Cure For Cancer?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/07/02

Amid all the recent noise around generative AI, it’s easy to overlook the fact that there are scientists across almost any field you could think of who have been using artificial intelligence in their work – sometimes for decades. This technology is being leveraged to explore some of the most weighty and complex problems facing humanity, and medical research is no exception to this. Host Laura Simmons speaks to Professor Florian Markowetz, Professor of Computational Oncology at the University of

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25:19

Should We Send Signals To Aliens?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2026/06/18

We don’t know if life exists beyond Earth. If it does, we don’t know if these lifeforms have technology like us or maybe even better. Perhaps they could detect us? Despite the unknowns, humans have sent messages to the stars in an attempt to communicate with hypothetical aliens. Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti speaks to Dr Vishal Gajjar, an astronomer with the SETI Institute, about should we, not just can we, actively message aliens and how we are already pretty noticeable to anything out there if they

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21:19

Can Magic Be Used As A Tool In Science?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/12/23

What is magic? Rabbits out of hats? Card tricks? Someone in a sparkly outfit getting sawn in half? Well, yes, but it’s also about defying expectations.To psychologist and magician Dr Gustav Kuhn, founder of the UK’s only MAGIC Lab, it’s about causing you to question what you think to be real. Having practiced magic from a young age, he embarked on a psychology degree to try and get a better understanding of what made a good trick, or a good performance. Thing is, he realized along the way that a

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35:13

Searching For Nessie: IFLScience Takes On Cryptozoology

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/10/31

In this bonus Halloween special episode of The Big Questions, IFLScience takes on the “mystery” of the Loch Ness Monster.Although it’s been nearly 100 years since Nessie was first brought to international attention, no one has provided any unambiguous proof of its existence, and yet every year, thousands of people flock to Scotland in hopes of seeing it. To find out what’s going on, we dispatched our IFLScience Investigates team – a motley bunch of intrepid sleuths – to dig into the story’s

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40:41

Why Do People Believe In The Paranormal?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/10/23

Everyone loves a good ghost story. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, there’s something about the eerie and the uncanny that we all enjoy. But for many people, the things that go bump in the night are not just the stuff of stories; they’re real. In fact, countless numbers of people across the world have their own stories of the strange, whether they’re ghosts, aliens, or any other spook. How do we explain that?Join host Dr Russell Moul as we discuss the psychology underpinning paranormal

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43:27

What Is Time And How Do We Measure It?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/10/09

Time is everything to us: in terms of physical laws, in how we experience the world, and how society works. Still, its true nature remains beyond us. As scientists search for a deeper understanding, the way humans relate to time has changed massively.To explore the questions of what time is and how we measure it, host Dr Alfredo Carpineti is joined by Dr Emily Akkermans, Curator of Time at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, which is celebrating its 350th anniversary this year.

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41:03

Is De-extinction Really Possible?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/09/25

De-extinction. It’s not a word many of us were thinking about just a decade ago, but it’s one that we’re getting ever more familiar with. The de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences has set its sights on de-extincting 5 key species whose extinction is thought to have either been caused, or heavily contributed to, by humans: the woolly mammoth, thylacine, dodo, moa, and dire wolf.By their definition of “functional de-extinction,” they’ve already brought back the dire wolf, and have set a goal to

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43:45

Are We In The Anthropocene?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/09/11

In March 2024, geologists rejected the proposal that we are in a new geological era: the Anthropocene, a time dominated by human activity on the planet. And yet, the evidence of our impact on the Earth’s ecology and climate continues to mount up around us. So how could this decision make sense given everything going on in the world today?To dig through the layers of confusion surrounding the Anthropocene, host Dr Russell Moul spoke to Professor Erle Ellis, from the Department of Geography and

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35:23

What Will The Fossils Of The Future Look Like?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/08/28

Today’s rubbish may well be the fossils of tomorrow. Plastic bags, old pens, cheap clothing, or even chicken bones are all examples of possible “technofossils”, rapidly accumulating debris and detritus that may come to represent the story of humanity in the geological record long after we’re gone.But it doesn’t have to be this way. Host Dr Russell Moul speaks to Professors Sarah Gabbott and Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, authors of Discarded: How Technofossils Will be Our Ultimate

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31:02

Will We Ever Have A Universal Flu Vaccine?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/08/14

Lining up for your seasonal flu shot is an annual ritual, but what if it didn't have to be this way? Wouldn't it be great if we could develop a universal vaccine that could protect us against all current and future virus strains? Host Laura Simmons speaks to Dr Florian Krammer, a professor in vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, to find out just how far humanity has reached in our quest to finally conquer the flu with an all-purpose vaccine.

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30:58

How Has The Internet Changed The Way We Use Language?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/07/31

Language can evolve surprisingly quickly, and nothing has sped it up quite like the invention of the Internet. So, how does it affect how we communicate, not just on our devices but offline, IRL?Join host Tom Hale, senior journalist at IFLScience, as he discusses this and more with Internet linguist Dr Gretchen McCulloch, where they explore the origins of internet acronyms, interpreting tone via emojis, memes in real life, and the universal need for ironic punctuation marks.

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25:04

How Do Black Holes Shape The Universe?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/07/17

Of all the celestial bodies, none induce awe and fear in equal measure quite like black holes. They are incredible astrophysical objects and there are plenty of reasons why they are so iconic. In their supermassive form in particular, they have influenced the formation and evolution of galaxies, and more. Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti sat down with astrophysicist, science communicator, and author Dr Becky Smethurst, to ask: How do black holes shape the universe?

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38:07

Are We Living Through A Sixth Mass Extinction?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/07/03

While climate change, species extinctions, and increasing carbon dioxide levels might feel like media buzzwords at this point, they all remain very real threats to biodiversity across the globe, and by extension, the future of our planet. Some have even argued that these are warning signs that we are living through a sixth mass extinction.Host Eleanor Higgs discusses Earth’s previous mass extinctions with palaeontologist Professor Michael Benton from the University of Bristol, and how we can use

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31:23

Would You Rather Go To Space Or The Bottom Of The Sea?

IFLScience - The Big Questions ·

2025/06/19

The expanse of space and the oceanic abyss hold a fascination for humanity; extreme environments where our bodies and technology are pushed to their limits, yet we continue to explore. We take this tongue-in-cheek question seriously and pose it to astronauts and explorers who have done both.Join co-hosts Dr Alfredo Carpineti and Katy Evans as they share insights from space travellers and deep-sea visitors Luca Parmitano, Dr Kathy Sullivan, and Victor Vescovo on the challenges and rewards of

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