The noises that make us cringe

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. His 40-year career has spanned the global, from helping to build Uganda’s first HIV surveillance syste ...  Show more

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 and no script. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time is one of the most ambitious projects in the world o ...  Show more

Everyone is bothered by certain sounds – chewing noises, dogs barking, babies crying, leaf blowers, but 20% of the population could have a very different, more visceral reaction - anger and panic! These intense reactions are attributed to a real condition called misophonia and it ...  Show more

Humans are noisy. The National Park Service estimates that all of our whirring, grinding, and revving machines are doubling or even tripling global noise pollution every 30 years. A lot of that noise is negatively affecting wildlife and human health. Maybe that’s why we’re so con ...  Show more

"Why do our tummies rumble - and when they do, does it always mean we are hungry?" asks listener James, aged 12. For this series, with lockdown learning in mind, Drs Rutherford and Fry are investigating scientific mysteries for students of all ages. To get to the bottom of this n ...  Show more

Does the sound of someone smacking gum drive you crazy? It's possible you're just a cranky jerk, but science presents another possibility: misophonia. Tune in to learn more about the mysterious condition that makes some noises so difficult to cope with.