Discovery

“I shall largely speak of mice,” the paper begins “but my thoughts are on man.”
So begins a truly extraordinary scientific paper, and an equally extraordinary story.
“Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population.” was published in 1973 by John Calhoun, and it detailed his increasingly bizarre research into the psychological effects of overcrowding. Over two decades he built a series of ‘rodent utopias’, where he could keep a population of rats or mice, meet all their basic food and shelter needs, but mess around with population levels. He wanted to see how they responded to having to live, cheek-by-tiny-jowl, with far more other rats than they were used to. And it wasn’t pretty. Social orders melted into chaos, rodents fought indiscriminately, or shut themselves away at the top of the enclosure. Mating orders collapsed, population numbers tanked, and eventually, every single rat was dead.
His work came at a prescient time. In the 60s and 70s, the exponentially expanding human population was a hot-button topic, and ‘population panic’ was in full swing. Alongside the expansion of cities, creeping urban sprawl, rising city-centre crime rates and 'urban sinks', there grew a concern that human living conditions were about to take an interminable dive. How would we live, with so many of us on earth? Calhoun’s work was leapt on by the press and public as a dire prediction of our own coming collapse. His rodent utopias became a subject of great interest among architects and city planners, psychologists and sociologists, and anyone fascinated by the human condition. But has his work been misunderstood?
50 years on, what lessons can we take from the work of a ground-breaking but often misunderstood scientist, in the face of a human population now exceeding 8 billion. Emily Knight explores his extraordinary work, its implications for humanity, and the possibility of a human utopia, that might not look anything like you expect.
Presented and Produced by Emily Knight in Cardiff

In July 2024 a startling scientific paper was published.
Headlined ‘Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor’, scientists told how they had discovered oxygen being made two and a half miles down, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Their claim centred on small polymetallic nodules on the seafloor, and the key question - could these lumps of metal somehow be making oxygen in complete darkness?
It was an extraordinary finding that, if proven, could overturn hundreds of years of scientific knowledge about how this crucial ingredient for life is made. It prompted global headlines and split scientists.
But a year and a half on, are we any closer to knowing the answer... Is dark oxygen really possible?
BBC News science correspondent Victoria Gill investigates for BBC Radio 4, and finds so much more than a scientific anomaly.
Dark Breath is the story of a scientific controversy played out in real time. A row about science that became personal. And a discovery that crashed headlong into the debate about whether we should mine metals from the deep sea.
What does the story tell us about the messy and human scientific process? And what bearing does it have on the decision to exploit some of the last untouched parts of our planet?
Presenter: Victoria Gill
Producer: Gerry Holt
Editor: Ilan Goodman

The rapid spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria is already claiming lives - and a far greater global crisis is on the horizon.
In this three part series for Discovery, reporter Roland Pease traces how we reached this point, uncovers the forces driving resistance ever faster, and meets the scientists racing to outpace evolving superbugs before our lifesaving medicines fail for good.
Episode 3 - Failed market. A successful new antibiotic must not only treat bacteria that resist existing therapies, it must be kept in reserve for only the hardest cases lest new kinds of resistance evolve, and yet it must pay back the developers' investment. No wonder several leading antibiotic companies have failed financially in the past 8 years. Is there a way to make antibiotic development pay?

The rapid spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria is already claiming lives and a far greater global crisis is on the horizon.
In this three part series for Discovery, reporter Roland Pease traces how we reached this point, uncovers the forces driving resistance ever faster, and meets the scientists racing to outpace evolving superbugs before our lifesaving medicines fail for good.
Episode 2 - The chemists' challenge. With all the low-hanging fruit in the antibiotic search space gone, chemists are having to work harder and be cleverer to top up the antibiotic pipeline. The chances of finding even one successful compound in a working life are low, but can new approaches like AI or genetics make the difference?

The rapid spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria is already claiming lives and a far greater global crisis is on the horizon. In the first episode of a three-part series, reporter Roland Pease traces the rise of resistance since the discovery of penicillin, its consequences for patients, and how bacteria are getting widening the treatment gap.