BBC Inside Science

After 144 years the tallest tower on the Sagrada Familia is finally complete, but when Gaudi first designed it, the technology to build the tower didn’t exist. We’re joined by Tristram Carfrae, structural engineer and designer at Arup who was tasked with this impossible feat over a decade ago.
With the reappearance of screwworm in North America, we ask – is it ever acceptable to intentionally drive a species to extinction? Tom is joined by Dr Gregory Kaebnick from the Hastings Center for Bioethics to dive into the science that could make it happen and the ethics stopping us.
Four in five of us will check the weather daily, but do we really know what our apps are telling us? Meteorologist Simon King guides us through the complex models behind these forecasts that govern our daily decisions.
Plus, science journalist Caroline Steel is in the studio bringing us the scientific discoveries the headlines missed, but that you need to know.
Presenter: Tom Whipple
Producer: Kate White
Editor: Martin Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Are we moving away from science as a strictly human endeavour? This is the view of Pushmeet Kohli, head of AI for Science at Google DeepMind. He joins Tom Whipple to discuss the use of the AI tool Co-Scientist as a collaborator in the lab, and the challenges in making Artificial Intelligence that works in science. Clare Bryant from the University of Cambridge also joins the conversation.
And Steve Brusatte, Professor of Palaeontology at the University of Edinburgh, joins the program to talk about his new book, The Story of Birds, tracing a 150‑million‑year journey from small, feathered dinosaurs to the birds of today.
Plus, science journalist Caroline Steel joins us to discuss the latest scientific discoveries that you might have missed.
Presenter: Tom Whipple
Producers: Dan Welsh and Kate White
Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth
Editor: Martin Smith

From Hay Festival 2026, a dive into a big year for our oceans, with plankton specialist Vincent Doumeizel and physicist turned oceanographer Helen Czerski.
Vincent is author of the Power of Plankton, which describes the crucial history and future of plankton and planktonic life on our planet. Helen's book The Blue Machine looks at the physical oceanic processes that shape the world.
Presented by Tom Whipple
Produced by Alex Mansfield

With 2023’s El Niño – a recurring pattern of extreme weather across the pacific basin - still leaving a bad taste in people's mouth, 2026 sees an El Niño stirring in the Pacific Ocean and there are warnings that this will be one of the strongest yet.
Roland Pease speaks with Amanda Maycock, a climatologist from Leeds University, to discuss what this climate phenomenon is and how it will impact the world from October to early next year.
He also hears from Scott Evans from the American Museum of Natural History, who has been exploring the Mackenzie mountains of Canada’s Northwest Territory to better understand the biology and ecology of life on earth before anything we might recognize - from the Ediacara era. This was before the explosion of different animal types with hard shells and bones in the later, Cambrian, time. In certain places around the world, much older rocks from the ancient ocean floor reveal an ecosystem abounding with soft, squidgy animal wierdness.
In Canada Scott has found a new trove of these fossils, but from far deeper below the surface of those ancient seas. Did animal life begin deep in the darkest depths rather than paddling in pools nearer the land?
Today, over half a billion years later, bottom trawling, a common fishing method involving dragging heavy nets across the bottom of the seafloor, is an environmentally destructive process that rips up everything in its path to maximise catch. We talked to Amanda Vincent, a professor at the Institute for the Oceans and fisheries of the British Columbia university and founder of the international Project Seahorse conservation group, about what bottom-trawl bans can achieve, in the light of results published about a renaissance of biodiversity off the coast of Scotland in an area where trawling has been banned for several years.
Plus, we talk to science journalist Gareth Mitchell, who explains how bottom trawling can also have negative consequences on technology, as well as other science news you may have missed, including updates on solar storms and robotic wolf shortages in Japan.
Presenter: Roland Pease
Producers: Alex Mansfield and Dan Welsh
Editor: Martin Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Following three deaths linked to the deadly hantavirus disease on a cruise ship this month, the scientific community is racing to answer the many unknown questions surrounding the outbreak.
Tom Whipple speaks to Dr Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Basel and co-founder of Pathoplexus, an online database of pathogen genomes, to explore what the new hantavirus genomic sequences can tell us.
He also hears from Dr Nicole Luri, Executive Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response from the NGO The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness (CEPI), to hear what steps would be taken if the hantavirus strain had the potential to become a pandemic, and how far their "100 days" mission has come.
With less than a month until the men’s football World Cup kicks off in the United States, Canada and Mexico, there are warnings from climate scientists that football’s global governing body FIFA needs to do more to combat the risks from the high temperatures both players and fans are expected to face. We speak to Dr Theodore Keeping from the World Weather Attribution team at Imperial College London to hear about the predicted conditions and the concerns they are raising.
Plus, mathematician Kit Yates from the University of Bath brings us his pick of the week’s science news you might have missed, including new hearing technology that might help you follow conversations in rowdy parties.
Presenter: Tom Whipple
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Editor: Ilan Goodman
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth