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EscapePod Podcasts

Shows worth your time, picked up where you left off.

D

Science

Discovery

BBC World Service

Explorations in the world of science.

300 episodes

The Ocean Within Us 28 Sept 2026 · 27 min Here's a little fact you might have heard before: Humans are around 70% water. About the same percentage as a sweet potato, incidentally. But what does that actually mean? Sure, t…

The art of being a Zombie Ant Fungus 21 Sept 2026 · 27 min An ant becomes infected by a fungus which takes over its nervous system, turning the ant into a vehicle for the fungus’s reproduction and killing the ant in the process. It sounds…

Women Not Included: Consumer Products 14 Sept 2026 · 27 min Design is never neutral and small choices can have a big impact. Dr Ella Hubber and journalist Katie Silver explore how consumer products marketed to women are frequently develope…

Women not included: Medical devices 7 Sept 2026 · 27 min CPR mannequins, medical implants and surgical tools. These are life changing and lifesaving medical devices. But when they are built around male bodies, what does that mean for ev…

Women not included: Artificial Intelligence 31 Aug 2026 · 27 min Dr Ella Hubber and journalist Katie Silver unpack how artificial intelligence is far from neutral, and why that matters. They speak to experts who reveal how some AI is trained wi…

Women Not Included: Urban Planning 24 Aug 2026 · 27 min On every street corner, at every bus stop, in every public toilet the message is clear: this city is not built for women. Along with journalist Chhavi Sachdev, Dr Ella Hubber expl…

Women Not Included: Safety Equipment 17 Aug 2026 · 26 min Safety equipment is often designed around an “average” male body and Dr Ella Hubber wants to understand the consequences this has for women. Alongside journalist Candice Bailey an…

Women Not Included: Drugs and clinical trials 10 Aug 2026 · 27 min After working exclusively with male mice while looking for a treatment for type 1 diabetes, Dr Ella Hubber begins to uncover a much bigger issue: modern medicine is not built equa…

The friendly virus 22 Jun 2026 · 26 min Our antibiotics are failing us. In 2025, the UK Government said antibiotic resistance (AMR) contributes to more than 35,000 deaths each year in the UK. Emergency doctors say they…

The Life Scientific: Dean Lomax 15 Jun 2026 · 26 min Have you ever been told you aren't good enough to do something, then gone ahead and proved the naysayers wrong by doing it anyway - in glorious, headline-grabbing style? That is t…

The Life Scientific: Helen Hastie 8 Jun 2026 · 26 min What if robots of the future weren’t just clever machines, performing tasks in isolation, but trusted teammates you could have a chat with? That could respond naturally to convers…

The Life Scientific: Seth Berkley 1 Jun 2026 · 26 min Dr Seth Berkley is an epidemiologist and global health leader whose career has been shaped by one central problem: vaccines save lives, but only if people can actually get them. H…

The Life Scientific: Hiranya Peiris 25 May 2026 · 27 min Hiranya Peiris is playing a starring role in a movie that promises to tell perhaps the greatest story of all time. However, it’s a movie with a difference – there’s no director an…

The Life Scientific: Washington Yotto Ochieng 18 May 2026 · 27 min As a child growing up on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, Washington Yotto Ochieng once watched a plane cross the night sky and told his mother he wished he could tra…

The Life Scientific: Lucy Carpenter 11 May 2026 · 26 min Working on a remote tropical island in the Atlantic might sound like some sort of romantic idyll - but trying to conduct scientific research on a windy, isolated volanic outcrop i…

The Life Scientific: Jens Juul Holst 4 May 2026 · 26 min As recently as a few years ago, the idea of a self-administered injection that would deliver proven weight-loss results might have sounded fantastical. Today, these medications ar…

The Life Scientific: Jim Ashworth-Beaumont 27 Apr 2026 · 26 min It's a rare thing to encounter a medical specialist who has experience of his field from the expert and the patient perspective - but not unheard of... Jim Ashworth-Beaumont is an…

Inside Universe 25 20 Apr 2026 · 27 min “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 Square…

Dark Breath 13 Apr 2026 · 26 min 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 bei…

Superbugs: Resistance Rising Part 3 6 Apr 2026 · 29 min 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…

Superbugs: Resistance rising, part 2 30 Mar 2026 · 26 min 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 Ro…

Superbugs: Resistance rising, part 1 23 Mar 2026 · 30 min 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, reporte…

The Life Scientific: Jehane Ragai 16 Mar 2026 · 26 min Ever heard of the unsuccessful Dutch painter who decided to humiliate his critics by forging Vermeers, which the artworld subsequently dubbed 'masterpieces'? Or the businessman wh…

The Life Scientific: Tony Juniper 9 Mar 2026 · 26 min Tony Juniper is an environmentalist who has worn many hats, over the course of his career. After developing a passion for birds in childhood, his first job saw him working to save…

The Life Scientific: Pierre Friedlingstein 2 Mar 2026 · 26 min The COP30 climate summit is taking place in the Brazilian city of Belém, a gateway to the Amazon rainforest, which continues to face widespread deforestation. We all know that our…

The Life Scientific: Julia Simner 23 Feb 2026 · 26 min Imagine if you were listening to an opera or a Taylor Swift concert, and as the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the music was accompanied by a rainbow of colours only you could s…

The Life Scientific: Caroline Smith 16 Feb 2026 · 26 min Caroline Smith is passionate about space rocks, whether they’re samples collected from the surface of asteroids and the Moon and hopefully Mars one day soon, or meteorites, those…

The Life Scientific: AP De Silva 9 Feb 2026 · 26 min From humble beginnings in his native Sri Lanka, to a more than 40 year academic career at Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. AP (Amilra Prasanna) De Silva’s research into molecular…

The Life Scientific: Eleanor Schofield 2 Feb 2026 · 26 min In July 1545, King Henry VIII watched from Southsea Castle on England's south coast as his fleet sailed out to face the French - only to witness his prized warship, the Mary Rose,…

The Life Scientific: Peter Knight 26 Jan 2026 · 26 min There are problems and tasks so hard and complicated that it would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack them. But in the next decade, we may well h…