Shows
IFLScience - We Have QuestionsHow Can Swimming For 37 Hours Help Tackle Ocean Plastic?In 2022, a new world record was set in the waters off Grand Cayman in the western Caribbean Sea. I, a once avid collector of the Guinness World Records annual album, was most excited by the prospect, but ask environmentalist Oly Rush about it, and he’d sooner talk to you about plastic.
You see, this wasn’t just any swim. This was a 36-hour-and-59-minute test of endurance to raise awareness of one of the greatest plights currently threatening marine species. The Grand Swim, as it would become known in a subsequent documentary about the grueling achievement, detai...
2026-01-2623 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsHow Did Frogs Become A Pregnancy Test For Humans?People were finding out they were pregnant via frogs until the 1960s.
We all know that many of the tools in human life have been inspired by nature’s creations, but how often do you stop and really think about where these products come from? A new gallery at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London is encouraging visitors to think more about their impact on the planet, as well as showcasing the inspiring work that demonstrates that however doom and gloom the news might be, hope is not lost.
Among its many intriguing displays, we...
2025-12-2226 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsCan Sheep Livers Predict The Future?Is it possible to predict the future by slicing open a farm animal and peering inside its liver? Scientists of the 21st century would surely be skeptical about approaching this question, but for the curious minds of ancient times, it was a tried and tested method for looking ahead and foreseeing what the gods had in store for you, your family, or your world.
Known today as liver divination, this mysterious art was mastered by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, two mighty civilizations that flourished in Mesopotamia and carved their names into the bedrock of h...
2025-11-2423 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsBurying Scientists Alive in the SnowPolar Bears International (PBI) is serious about protecting bears, and in the pursuit of reliable data have gone to some extremes in the past. From burying scientists alive out in the snow to novel collar-camera setups that have enabled them to predict when polar bear moms and their new cubs are going to emerge from their dens.
In an era of “drill, baby, drill,” now is a tougher time for polar bears than ever before. An essential step towards getting them the protection they require centers around demystifying their denning habits and what young bears need to surv...
2025-10-2033 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsCan Transplants Change Your Personality?There’s a strange phenomenon reported among some recipients of organ transplants whereby people report altered memories, tastes, and personality changes. A particularly curious example included a woman who, having never much liked chicken nuggets, found herself compelled to eat them after receiving an organ from a man who had nuggets on his person when he died.
Similarly perplexing changes in taste have also been reported among the recipients of bone marrow transplants, from loving gherkins to switching from white to red wine. This is something the UK-based stem cell charity Anthony Nolan knows a thing or tw...
2025-09-2220 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsDo Humans Have Pheromones?Humans smell, there’s no denying it, but are some of those smells sending out chemical signals we aren’t consciously aware of? Are we, like ants, giving off pheromones?
We spoke to Dr Tristram Wyatt, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford, to find out.
2025-08-2538 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsWhy Are Yawns Contagious?It’s perhaps one of the greatest injustices of human bodily functions that the yawn has become so stigmatized in social settings. Crack one out and you’ll likely receive accusations of being bored or rude. It seems ironic, really, because the science of yawning tells us that, if anything, it’s a sign you’re trying harder to pay attention.
That’s what we discovered when we sat down with Dr Andrew Gallup, Teaching Professor of Behavioral Biology at Johns Hopkins University and a bit of an expert in yawning. We wanted to find out why this open...
2025-07-2138 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsCan We Preserve A Human Brain For Upload (And Why Aren't Transplants An Option)?When we talk about death, we often say things along the lines of “it's a fact of life,” but the view can be very different when you’re facing the real and imminent prospect of no longer existing. Given the chance, can we be so sure that we wouldn’t try anything for a little more time?
According to neuroscientist Dr Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, most of the general public would like 10 years more life than they’re statistically likely to get when asked “how long do you want to live?”, and it seems the hunger for more doesn’t diminish as tim...
2025-06-2653 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsWhy Does Snow Sometimes Look Blue?Snow is beautiful, but also powerful and destructive – and, if we’re honest, a bit confusing. For something made entirely of water, it can come in many forms: light and fluffy, sticky and heavy, shaped like a perfect snowflake, or falling in needle-like flecks. Its consistency changes a lot, but so does its color, which got us wondering: why does snow sometimes look blue?
To find out, we reached out to Dr Andrew Schwartz at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab in California. As no strangers to snow, and we were delighted to learn that yes, thei...
2025-06-2319 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsWhy Don’t Animals Have To Brush Their Teeth?Wake up? Brush your teeth. Going to bed? Brush your teeth. The dental routine of being a human can be a bit monotonous, but it’s an important step towards maintaining a happy mouth. It can be slightly baffling, then, to spot a photo of a bonobo with a seemingly perfect grin. How are wild animals getting away with it as we dutifully march off to our next dental hygienist appointment? Why don’t animals have to brush their teeth?
It's a question that led us to the office of Peter Kertesz, who, as well as seeing huma...
2025-05-2619 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsWhat Happens To Eyes During The Mummification Process?The mummification process is perhaps one of the most talked about aspects of Ancient Egyptian life. It highlights the morbid curiosity shared by those of us alive at a time when funerary practices have gone in a different direction. It’s also a skewed view, offering us insights into the death rituals of only the ancient very rich.
The complex process of mummification is one we’re still trying to understand, not least because trying to step into the mindset of people living thousands of years ago is tricky when you’re burdened with the cultural norms of the...
2025-04-1828 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsHow Do You Rediscover A “Lost” Species?DNA analysis confirmed in 2023 that a trapdoor spider lost to science had been rediscovered in the Portuguese village it was named after following a 92-year disappearance. Fagilde’s trapdoor spider (Nemesia berlandi) was first described in 1931 before apparently dropping out of existence – but all that changed when an expedition team happened to look under just the right rock.
It marked the 12th “most wanted” lost species to be rediscovered since Re:wild’s Search for Lost Species launched in 2017, which got us wondering: how on Earth does such an epic mission unfold? Fagilde’s trapdoor spider was rediscovered by a...
2025-03-2432 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsWhy Do Humans Play Games?Stick two humans in an enclosed space with nothing to do, and before long, someone is likely to suggest a game of I Spy. Kids are so hot for smartphone games that it inspired its own meme format, and while certain generations might like to tell you this compulsion is a new thing – the fact is, humans have been playing games for thousands of years.
It’s believed that gaming actually predates language, begging the question: why do humans play games? We spoke to Kelly Clancy, a neuroscientist and author of Playing With Reality: How Games Shape Our...
2025-02-2438 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsHow Do You Begin Searching For Alien Life?From the brain-exploding Martians of Mars Attacks! to the wonderful diversity of Men In Black’s extraterrestrial entourage, the possibility of alien life is a concept that has captured the imagination of our entire planet. Most of us only get to explore it at the movies – but for some scientists, the search for alien earths is at the core of their career.
One such scientist is Professor Lisa Kaltenegger, an astronomer who quite literally wrote the book on Alien Earths. That was why we were so excited to catch up with her at CURIOUS Live to find out w...
2025-01-2020 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsWhat Attacks You In The Most Remote Place On Earth?Point Nemo is the most remote place on Earth, the coordinates where – most of the time – the nearest humans are those occasionally whizzing overhead on the International Space Station. They sail by at a lofty 408 kilometers (253 miles) above the water’s surface, but recently a father-son explorer duo went splashing through the waters of Point Nemo.
Chris Brown is on a mission to become the first person to tick off traversing all of the “Poles Of Inaccessibility”, and on his latest adventure, he brought along his son, Mika. It would take them 2,688 kilometers (1,670 miles) from the nearest land – a jo...
2024-12-2027 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsThe Biggest Wild Goose is... Poisonous?Geese are famously aggressive animals whose sassy attitude appears to be crucial to their social rank. Large in size with peculiar "geese teeth", they can be scary, and yet despite this, 45 percent of Britons reckon they could take on a goose. It’s a curious question that got two naturalists wondering: isn’t it time someone did a podcast on how many animals you could take in a fight?
That’s just one segment of How Many Geese, a nature podcast headed up by Jack Baddams and Roddy Shaw that aims to bring comedy and science together. We caug...
2024-11-1834 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsWhat's It Like Working In A Human Tissue Bank?Sometimes surgeons need to remove parts of our bodies to make them healthy, but where do those sections of human go? They can be destroyed, but other times – with the patient’s consent – they are handed over to scientists to see what we can learn from diseased tissues.
Those scientists work in what we call tissue banks, or biobanks, and they are a curious place indeed. As a technician, you never quite know when – or what – is going to arrive in a bucket at the door, but when it does, they must be treated as rare and valuable...
2024-10-2130 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsHow Do Sunken Cities End Up Underwater?Submerged settlements, also known as sunken cities, might sound mythical but they are very real, and while their migration underwater makes them harder to find, it can also preserve them far better than they would have fared surface-side. Marine archaeologist Professor Jon Henderson knows this all too well. As Head of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, his studies have taken him from the frozen crannogs of Scotland to the submerged ancient town of Pavlopetri in southern Laconia, Greece.
Underwater archaeology pits researchers in a race against time as they must study ruins emerging from th...
2024-09-2340 minIFLScience - We Have QuestionsIntroducing 'We Have Questions' Our New Science PodcastJoin IFLScience as we explore the questions nobody thought to ask but everyone wants the answers to. Get the behind-the-scenes conversations from CURIOUS magazine’s We Have Questions interviews, as we hunt down the experts to answer some of science’s stranger questions.
2024-09-1001 min