A very dark day

Roald Dahl Day is celebrated each year on 13 September. Dahl gave us much-loved children’s books like Matilda, The BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which have captivated kids for generations.Dahl is also a controversial figure, and made anti-semitic remarks that his fam ...  Show more

The 80th birthday celebrations of the late, great Queen frontman Freddie Mercury have us marvelling at mercury at an elemental level: as a killer, a cure and more.First, we hear about how to make a telescope mirror out of a spinning bowl of liquid mercury. Then we hear about kill ...  Show more

A talk to go with Episode 3. Now that Pan is down in The Inner, chronobiologist Herman Wijnen talks through what happens to our minds and bodies without sunlight. Produced by Eliza Lomas and Becky Ripley. You can also take part in our Forest 404 Experiment to see how you respond ...  Show more

To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Guy Garvey, lyricist and lead singer of the band Elbow, has selected the episode on eclipses, first broadcast in December 2020. Solar eclips ...

It’s election time but over here in Science Land, we’re heading off to the seaside for our summer special. We chat seagulls with Professor Paul Graham on Brighton beach and find out why they are so misunderstood - from what we call them to why they pinch our chips. We bust some s ...  Show more

Lucy Cooke meets some of the animal kingdom’s nocturnal inhabitants to understand why it pays to stir once the sun goes down.She examines some of the extraordinary nocturnal adaptations from the largest group of mammals, the bats, to the mysterious long fingered lemur, the Aye Ay ...  Show more