BBC Radio 5 Live
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5 Live's science podcast, featuring Dr Chris and Naked Scientists with the hottest science news stories and analysis.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Direct, curious interviews connect new scientific findings to their methods, limitations and real-world consequences.
Chris Smith guides 5 Live Science Podcast through current research with an alert interviewer’s instinct for the next useful question. Its multi-segment format moves between medicine, astronomy, technology and environmental research, usually bringing in the people closest to the…
Dark comets aren't alien spacecraft; you still get the pleasure of finding out what nudges their orbits.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Bird flu, prostate cancer, Roman lead pollution, and Mark Abrahams make for a brisk, varied hour.
The episode threads together the United States' first human death from bird flu, a new drug for drug-resistant prostate cancer, and widespread Roman lead pollution, with Chris Smith keeping the pace steady across medicine, history, and lab work.
A policy minded science roundup that connects public health, conservation, and the year ahead.
This episode moves with a clear purpose, starting with health policy and vaping restrictions, then shifting into marine protection and blue finance before landing on the case for letting nature recover.
A brisk science roundup that moves through public policy, prehistory, and astronomy.
5 Live Science moves from public policy to deep time and then to Jocelyn Bell Burnell without losing its footing. The discussion of the Terminally Ill Adults End of Life Bill has the most weight, with enough context to make clear how sensitive and unfinished the issue still is…
A year-end science tour that turns Labradors, robotics, and games into one brisk holiday listen.
5 Live Science uses its year-end sweep to move from greedy Labradors to cryo chambers and robotic fish, and Will Tingle keeps the pace steady as the show threads together 2024 science stories and a gaming Christmas coda.
A brisk BBC science hour that keeps the strange grounded.
This BBC science hour moves from obesity and OCD to dark comets and a battery idea built from radioactivity trapped in diamonds. Its best passages are the ones that keep pushing a strange claim toward mechanism, especially the dark-comet section, which turns an alien-spacecraft…
A brisk science round-up connects GenCast, nuclear propulsion and the uneasy question of crustacean pain.
5 Live Science takes a wide swing through nuclear fission, AI weather forecasting and the question of whether crabs feel pain. GenCast is framed as beating the strongest traditional medium-range forecast and doing better with extreme weather, while the nuclear section makes…
Steven Novella and a rotating panel dissect weekly science news and debunk pseudoscience claims.
Chris Smith opens 5 Live Science on the first U.S.
BBC Radio 5 Live Science opens with Chris Smith framing 2025 around vaping law, GPT-5, lunar missions, marine protection, archaeology, and David Baker's protein-design work.
A wide-ranging 2024 year-in-review episode of BBC 5 Live Science, culminating in a Titans of Science profile interview with astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who recounts building a radio telescope with a sledgehammer, discovering pulsars at 24, and watching her supervisor win the Nobel Prize for her work.
5 Live Science's year-end special revisits 2024 science stories about Labradors, Geoff Hinton, cryotherapy, robotic fish, and game design.
["Chris Van Tulleken says the 2024 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures will tackle food processing and obesity while Britain faces a rate of roughly a quarter of children leaving primary school living with obesity.", "Tom Scott describes a carbon-14 diamond battery from the University of Bristol that turns radioactive decay into microamps at about two volts and could run for thousands of years.", "Arev Sumaishah says ancient DNA places Neanderthal-modern human mixing at about 45,000 to 49,000 years ago, while David Rothery explains why Oumuamua and about 14 dark comets still puzzle astronomers.", "Patrick Dolan and Trevor Robbins describe OCD through door-checking, rereading work, germ fears, habits, and uncertainty, with James Titko steering the segment toward treatment."]
Eleftherios Casuras says crabs and lobsters may need pain relief, not boiling water.
Chris Smith opens a 5 Live Science edition with Robert Seder's NIH primate study, which found that the antibody level protecting the lungs differs from the level protecting the nose.
Mick Hastings: about 10,000 neurons the size of a grain of rice define our 24-hour life on their own.