Inventing Fire: the First Spark of Humanity

If you can never connect to a printer, if furniture jumps out to stub your toe, if when you do the dishes the water jumps out the sink to soak you - then you are victim of the inanimate malice of things.The belief that all things are essentially out to get us us has a name - Resi ...  Show more

400 years ago on the River Thames a mad genius showed off the world's first submarine. A crowd of thousands including King James watched as Cornelis Drebbel disappeared beneath the murky water, only reemerging after three whole hours had passed.The same genius also came up with p ...  Show more

Justin Rowlatt goes right back to the origin of our species two million years ago to explore how the mastery of fire by early humans transformed our metabolism, helping us to evolve our uniquely energy-hungry brains. The physical evidence for early use of fire is frustratingly th ...  Show more

Fire changed everything for early humans! In this episode, we’ll learn how people first discovered fire and how it helped them survive. Fire gave them warmth, light, and a way to cook food. It also kept them safe and helped them make new tools. We’ll talk about how fire brought p ...  Show more

Many of us enjoy cooking – but when did we switch from eating our food raw, to heating it? Listener Logan enjoys his beef burgers rare, but wants to know why he still feels compelled to grill them? Presenter Anand Jagatia travels to a remote South African cave where our ancestors ...  Show more

Creating fire was possibly the most important human discovery, but it's easy to take for granted. But. Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of the chemistry of fire in their quest to explain everything in the universe.