sciencemuseum: Recent Episodes
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A panel of authors and journalists come together to discuss the disturbing re-emergence of scientific research into racial differences.
Nationalism is on the rise and it’s perhaps no coincidence that dangerously divisive race science has seen a re-emergence in recent times.
British science journalist Angela Saini’s 'Superior: The Return of Race Science', tells the story of the persistent thread of belief in biological racial differences. It has been described as ‘a wake-up call for those who believe science is always objective and apolitical’.
This discussion brings together Angela and a panel of acclaimed authors and journalists to discuss the roots of race science and to what extent it is on the rise in 2019.
Speakers include:
Samira Ahmed – journalist, writer and broadcaster whose credits include BBC Front Row and Newswatch. she writes for the Guardian and New Humanist and is a visiting Professor of Journalism at Kingston University. Derek Bardowell – former journalist and author of 'No Win Race: A Story of Belonging, Britishness and Sport', published in May 2019 Gavin Evans – lecturer at Birkbeck University and author of 'Skin Deep: Journeys in the Divisive Science of Race', to be published in August 2019 Angela Saini – science journalist and author of 'Superior: The Return of Race Science'
Astronomer Royal Martin Rees joins astrophysicist and legendary Queen guitarist and songwriter Dr Brian May to discuss the past, present and future of space travel.
In a conversation moderated by the Science Museum’s Roger Highfield, Martin Rees and Brian May will explore the significance of the Moon landing, the progress in spaceflight since 1969, and what lies ahead for humans in space.
Hear from a panel of running experts, including five-time Team GB Olympian Jo Pavey MBE and top running coach Dr Martin Yelling, discussing what it takes to run 26.2 miles, what separates the best from the rest and what it takes to turn yourself into a long-distance runner. This is a live recording of Science and Running, which took place at the Science Museum on 27 March 2019.
How might artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural interface technology change the way we hear, experience and feel music?
Rough Trade Books and the Science Museum present an exploration of the future of technology for music and its fans, centring around newly published book 'Ecstatic Data Sets' by Late of the Pier.
Joining us to explore these topics and more are:
Jarvis Cocker—former Pulp frontman, solo artist, writer and broadcaster
Sam Potter—musician in cult band Late of the Pier and author of 'Ecstatic Data Sets'
Hannah Peel—singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist musician
Prof Kelly Snook—Professor of Media Arts Technology, instrument maker, producer and NASA Lunar Program Scientist
Robert Thomas—composer, adaptive music producer, sound designer and programmer
We are also joined by artist Robert Barry for a reading from 'Three True Tales About Music and Technology', available from Rough Trade Books.
Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government Dr Patrick Vallance in conversation with Roger Highfield at the last Science Museum Lates on Wednesday 28 November discussing Brexit, gene editing and Artificial Intelligence.
The Science Museum has assembled a panel comprised of the most influential figures in F1 racing, including expert engineers and sports science specialists, to reveal the secrets behind enabling the likes of Lewis Hamilton to clock speeds upwards of 200mph in their pursuit of Grand Prix glory.
How is it that F1 cars can withstand the rigour and incredible forces inflicted upon them, time and time again? What new technologies have been developed to maximise performance, and how are some these developments finding application outside of motorsport? And what do elite racing drivers do to hone their strength, endurance and reaction times to operate a multi-million-pound machine at unfathomable speeds?
On the panel are: James Allison, Technical Director for Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport Annastiina Hintsa, Chief Operating Officer, Hintsa Performance Karl Surmacz, Principal Data Scientist, McLaren Applied Technologies Oliver Carpenter, Curator of Infrastructure & Built Environment, Science Museum
PROGRAMMING IS IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE HM GOVERNMENT’S YEAR OF ENGINEERING PROGRAMME, MADE POSSIBLE WITH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF: Bechtel and Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Roger Highfield, Director of External Affairs, discusses Venki Ramakrishnan’s critically-acclaimed book, Gene Machine: the Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome.
To mark the publication of his book Gene Machine Roger Highfield, talked to Venki Ramakrishnan of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology, LMB, and President of the Royal Society.
Professor Hawking recorded these inspiring words before he died.
This audio was broadcast as part of the launch of Professor Stephen Hawking's final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions. Find out more via https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/stephen-hawking-on-how-to-shape-the-future-of-humanity/
The co-authors of Professor Hawking's final research paper, Professor Malcolm Perry from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge and Professor Andrew Strominger from Harvard University together with Professor Fay Dowker – a one-time student of Professor Hawking and now Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London discuss Hawking's final research paper.
This audio was broadcast as part of the launch of Professor Stephen Hawking's final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions. Find out more via https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/stephen-hawking-on-how-to-shape-the-future-of-humanity/
Lucy and Tim Hawking speaking at the launch of Stephen Hawking's final book, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, which was held at the Science Museum on Monday 15 October 2018.
More information is available via https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/stephen-hawking-on-how-to-shape-the-future-of-humanity/
Internationally acclaimed singer, pianist and songwriter Joe Stilgoe, invites you to help him explore what science can reveal about the mood of music with the help of Philip Ball, science writer, polymath and musician. This recording will see Joe turn your suggestions into sounds that can both move us and help Phil reveal the secrets of our musical instinct.
Ever wondered what makes a happy tune happy and a sad song sad? Would you like to find out how the human brain is affected by changes in tempo, key and intervals? Featuring improv performance by Joe, in-depth discussion, and no small amount of audience participation, this broadcast presents the perfect opportunity to learn from the experts.
We are honoured that Louise Brown, the first person to be born through IVF, celebrated her 40th birthday at the Science Museum. She was joined by Roger Gosden, a former doctoral student of IVF pioneer Robert Edwards and expert in female infertility, for a one-off in-conversation event in our IMAX Theatre, chaired by Science Museum Director of External Affairs, Roger Highfield.
The development of in vitro fertilisation, or IVF, culminating in the ‘miraculous’ birth of Louise Joy Brown on 25 July 1978, was a defining moment for reproductive technology pioneered by British researchers. Louise’s birth followed ten years of experimentation, hundreds of failed attempts and many setbacks for Robert Edwards, Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy, the scientists responsible for this remarkable achievement.
Celebrate International Women in Engineering Day and the Year of Engineering 2018 with a special event in connection with Marvel's record-breaking blockbuster film, Black Panther.
Set in the mysterious African Republic of Wakanda, the film introduces a new Marvel character—engineering whizz Shuri, aka Princess of Wakanda, who leads the development of amazing new technology (such as super-strength shielding and maglev trains) and is also an expert in medical engineering.
This panel discussion of real world engineers, media experts and STEM ambassadors discuss Wakandan Tech, wider job opportunities of studying engineering and how big screen representation can influence career choice. The panel includes: Angela Saini: Science Journalist, Engineer and author of 'Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong' Yewande Akinola: Chartered engineer, television presenter and STEM ambassador. Maja Pantic: Professor of Affective and Behavioural Computing at Imperial College and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Nike Folayan: Chartered engineer, Systems Integration Consultant and founder and chair of the Association for Black and Minority Ethic Engineers.
Andrea Wulf meets fellow Royal Society Science Book Prize winner Gaia Vince, to celebrate a new award for her critically acclaimed best-seller ‘The Invention of Nature’.
Recorded at the Science Museum on 30 May 2018.
The Science Museum are delighted to partner with the Royal Society, whose President Sir Venki Ramakrishnan joins British mathematician Eugenia Cheng, author of Beyond Infinity: An expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics, to discuss the brilliance of Ramanujan and the importance of his work to modern mathematics. This panel discussion is chaired by the Science Museum’s own Roger Highfield (Director of External Affairs).
Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest challenges the world faces today. Left unchecked it could return modern medicine to the dark ages. India, having some of the highest antimicrobial resistance rates in the world, is the focal point for an action plan in developing countries, known as the “Chennai Declaration” and in some ways is leading the world.
Dr Ghafur is also a consultant in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology at the Apollo Hospitals in India.
This talk was recorded as Dr Abdul Ghafur, a coordinator of the landmark Declaration, spoke at the Science Museum Lates event “Illuminating India” on 28 November 2017.
Human reproduction is entering a new era. Join Prof Sir Doug Turnbull, Dr Marta Shahbazi, Dr Norah Fogarty and Dr Roger Highfield to uncover how far science has progressed – from the very first test tube baby in Oldham, to creating GM babies and even artificial embryos. Find out how ‘three-parent babies’ could eliminate serious genetic diseases and have a say on the morals of ‘playing God’, in a discussion with leading scientists. Where will this revolution in procreation take us next?
Recorded at the Science Museum on 27 September 2017
One day your doctor will be able to recreate you in a computer so that a virtual version of you can be used to try out treatments, like a crash test dummy, guinea pig and trial volunteer all rolled into one. Your digital doppelgänger could breathe, blister and bleed. It could be dissected, probed and explored in unprecedented detail, helping to work out the treatments that work best for you.
Join Roger Highfield with Prof Peter Coveney (UCL) who leads the consortium, on simulating how drugs work in the body, for instance to treat cancer and Aids Prof Blanca Rodriguez (Oxford University), on virtual hearts Prof Marco Viceconti (Sheffield University), a key player in the Virtual Physiological Human initiative Prof Alfons Hoekstra (University of Amsterdam), on virtual blood vessels and more
The authors of three critically acclaimed books on the post-truth era met in public for the first time to discuss what the ‘war on truth’ means for science. With Fiona Fox, Director of the Science Media Centre, they discussed the implications of ‘fake news’ on climate change policy, government legislation and on research in areas from reproductive science to evolution.
Fiona was joined by:
Evan Davis, BBC presenter, Newsnight anchor and author of Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit (Little, Brown)
Matthew d’Ancona, columnist for the Guardian, Evening Standard and New York Times, Science Museum Group Trustee and author of Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back (Ebury)
James Ball, Special Correspondent for BuzzFeed UK, author of Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World (Biteback Publishing)
In preparation for an upcoming exhibition on contemporary agriculture, we invited industry leaders and experts to one of the world’s most sustainable buildings, The Crystal, to discuss the challenges of sustainable food production and the potential solutions science and technology are bringing to the table.
Mike Barry, Director of Sustainable Business at Marks & Spencer, Andrew Frame, Director of Emerging Technologies at ARM Holdings, Angela Karp, Director of Science, Innovation and Partnerships at Rothamsted Research Centre and Briony Mathieson, Global Head of Corporate and Sustainability Communications at Olam International were led in a discussion by Presenter Tom Heap.
Dr Adrian Owen is a British neuroscientist based in Canada who has made pioneering studies of the 'grey zone': the twilight worlds of consciousness that lie between awareness, sleep, coma and death. In this lived recorded talk, he discusses them with the Science Museum’s Roger Highfield
NASA Administrator, Major General Charles Bolden delivers a special presentation to school students about his experiences leading NASA's space program, his space expeditions, and his goal in interesting students in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also known as STEM.
In recent decades, an art movement has emerged that illuminates the latest advances in science. The Science Museum’s Roger Highfield joins science historian Arthur I. Miller, author of Colliding Worlds: How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art, artist Paul Prudence and conceptual designer Mike Phillips to explore the new avant-garde. Find out more about the artists involved, what drives them and their struggles in developing a dramatically different art form.
Recorded at the Science Museum, This illustrated lecture from Sir Christopher Frayling explores the birth of 'Frankenstein', the book's legacy and the ways in which the original has been distorted over time – a two hundred year journey in the company of re-animators, automata, robots and replicants.
This is followed by a round table discussion with the anatomist and top BBC presenter Alice Roberts, the lead curator of our new Robots exhibition Ben Russell, as well as Sir Christopher Frayling.
Our extra guest is journalist, film critic, and fiction writer, Kim Newman. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction.
Listen as Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón discusses his sci-fi thriller Gravity with the journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed.
The talk is the latest in a series of events around Cosmonauts, the most significant exhibition of Soviet and Russian space artefacts ever staged outside Russia, and will celebrate the stories of heroism found in space-travel fiction and reality.
Gravity received a leading ten Oscar-nominations and won seven including Best Director for Cuarón, who also co-wrote the screenplay for Gravity, which stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney and uses computer-generated imagery to provide a vivid glimpse of life in orbit. The stunning cinematography was brought to life with the help of British visual effects company Framestore.
Samira Ahmed presents Radio 4's Front Row and BBC1's Newswatch and has a special love of science fiction. She writes and presents documentaries about popular culture, history and science including H.G. Wells and the H Bomb and a feature on a generation's love affair with the Space Shuttle programme. Ahmed is Visiting Professor of Journalism at Kingston University.
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, is one of the pioneers of space exploration. He was a member of the original twenty selected for the first cosmonaut squad in 1960. In 1965 he carried out the first ever walk in space from the Voskhod 2 spacecraft. Ten years later he shook hands in orbit with astronaut Tom Stafford during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. In a very special event at the Science Museum, hear Leonov talk about these missions and his truly remarkable space career.
Hosted by Media Space at the Science Museum and organised in collaboration with the University of Westminster, this recording of the Fiction and Photography Symposium looks at issues around the use of fiction in photography.
Listen to speakers David Bate, Mia Fineman, Lucy Soutter, Christina de Middel, Peter Kennard and Federica Chiocchetti explore what place fiction has in a medium often valued for its veracity.
This event was organised to coincide with the Media Space exhibition Joan Fontcuberta: Stranger Than Fiction. The exhibition will run at the National Media Museum, Bradford from 20 November 2014 to 8 February 2015.
To mark the opening of the new Information Age gallery, the Science Museum played host to a panel event, featuring some of the world's leading thinkers and entrepreneurs sharing their insights and predictions about the big events that have shaped the communication technology we are familiar with today.
The broadcast of the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 was watched by millions of viewers across Britain. These memories, captured over 60 years later, recall how it felt to witness a privileged historical event on the television for the first time.
Discover the story behind these memories and more in our new Information Age gallery, which opens 25 October 2014 http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/informationage
Particle Fever director Mark Levinson and star Monica Dunford were joined by journalist and broadcaster Alok Jha for a pre-screening Q&A about physics and film making.
Particle Fever follows the stories of six scientists and engineers involved in the world's greatest experiment, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
This special screening was part of the Collider events programme. Discover more about the Collider exhibition at http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collider
James Lovelock talks at the Science Museum about his life and career as an independent scientist. Find out more about the Unlocking Lovelock exhibition at http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/lovelock
Historians Lisa Jardine and Jon Agar took part in a lively conversation about science and society since World War 2. This was part of the Collider events series at the Science Museum http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collider
The crackle of a spark transmitter. Tested for research on the Information Age exhibition. More information via http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/about_us/masterplan/information_age.aspx
In the last of our three, free audiobook extracts, Tony White reads from his novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South, first published in 2013 by the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD.
Download the FREE ebook from the Science Museum website - www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/shackletonsman until 24 July 2013, or from the Atmosphere Gallery display until April 2014. Shackleton’s Man Goes South is the Science Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery commission for 2013, published exclusively as part of the Contemporary Arts Programme. © Tony White, 2013. All music © Jamie Telford, 2013. Recording engineer Andrew Phillis.
Also available: Part One: Patience Camp https://soundcloud.com/sciencemuseum/science-museum-exclusive Part Two: The Captain's Table https://soundcloud.com/sciencemuseum/02-the-captain-s-table
Tony White reads from his novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South, first published in 2013 by the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD. Download the FREE ebook from the Science Museum website - www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/shackletonsman until 24 July 2013, or from the Atmosphere Gallery display until April 2014. Shackleton’s Man Goes South is the Science Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery commission for 2013, published exclusively as part of the Contemporary Arts Programme. © Tony White, 2013. All music © Jamie Telford, 2013. Recording engineer Andrew Phillis.
Jean Singleton, a telephone operator at Enfield exchange, talking about what made a good telephone operator.
Tony White reads from his novel Shackleton’s Man Goes South, first published in 2013 by the Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD.
Download the ebook on 24th April from the Science Museum website - http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ClimateChanging/Events/shackletons_man.aspx
Shackleton’s Man Goes South is the Science Museum’s Atmosphere Gallery commission for 2013, published exclusively as part of the Contemporary Arts Programme.
© Tony White, 2013. All music © Jamie Telford, 2013. Recording engineer Andrew Phillis.
Part one of an interview with musician Andy Wheddon, who circuit bent a children's toy for the Oramics to Electronica exhibition in the Science Museum. This interview is part of the Oramics to Electronica Podcast series.
First podcast of the Oramics to Electronica Podcast Series. In this interview Dennis Kelles-Krause, the Science Museum conservator who cleaned and restored the Oramics Machine, describes what it was like to work with the machine and what discoveries were made during the cleaning process.
Head over to the Science Museum's blog to get in touch with electronic music's roots and learn how to make a tape loop! Here are some example loops we made using little more than some stationery, a few old cassettes and a stuffed cat! http://sciencemuseumdiscovery.com/blogs/insight/make-your-own-tape-loop/
Head over to the Science Museum's blog to get in touch with electronic music's roots and learn how to make a tape loop! Here are some example loops we made using little more than some stationery, a few old cassettes and a stuffed cat! http://sciencemuseumdiscovery.com/blogs/insight/make-your-own-tape-loop/