Instant Genius - How chemistry underpins every area of our lives

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

While we may not always be consciously aware of it, chemical processes are busy whirring away every second of every day, no matter what we’re doing or where we look. Be it the reactions that continuously occur in our own bodies to keep us alive, the manufacturing processes used to make the clothes we wear, the homes we live in and the products we rely on to make our lives more comfortable, or even in the development of the medicines we use to treat disease. In this episode, we’re joined by Prof Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, professor of pharmaceutical neuroscience at University College London, and president of Wolfson College, Cambridge, to talk about her latest book, Chain Reaction – The Wondrous Chemistry of Everyday Life. She tells us how all of the bodily functions we take for granted are grounded in the chemistry of the atoms and molecules we’re made of, how we’ve harnessed the processes of chemistry to create the materials we rely on for our survival every single day, and how taking a moment or two to think about these fascinating processes can open us up to a whole new way of looking, not only at ourselves, but also at the world we live in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit name audio.com to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius, a bi-size masterclass in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor of BBC Science Focus. While we may not always be consciously aware of it, chemical processes are busy whirring away every second of every day, no matter what we're doing or where we look,

be it the reactions that continuously occur in our bodies to keep us alive, the manufacturing process is used to make the clothes we wear, the homes we live in and the products we rely on to make our lives more comfortable, or even in the development of the medicines we use to treat disease. In this episode, we're joined by Professor Dame Ijoma Uchebu, Professor of Pharmaceutical Neuroscience at University College London and President of Walson College Cambridge to talk about her latest book, Chain Reaction.

the wondrous chemistry of everyday life. She tells us how all of the bodily functions we take for granted are grounded in the chemistry of the atoms and molecules we're made of, how we've harnessed the processes of chemistry to create the materials we rely on for our survival every single day. And how taking a moment or two to think about these fascinating processes can open us up to a whole new way of looking, not only at ourselves but also at the world we live in.

Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Oh, it's such a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Jason. Oh, you're welcome. It's great to have you on. So today we're talking about your latest book, Chain Reaction, the wondrous chemistry of everyday life. So you start off the book by saying that chemistry is everywhere and everything's chemistry. So I'd say in a way the books are kind of invitation to, you know, whatever you might be doing, to just take a moment to think about the chemical processes that are going on all around us. You know, is that a fair summation? Absolutely. I mean, you've really got it spot on. So what I want people to do after reading the book is to really look at their world differently and to understand that every single thing that they look at, feel, touch, smell is composed of atoms, all arranged into molecules.

And those molecules then arranged into the architecture that gives the form to whatever is they're looking at. So if they're looking at a loved one, if they're looking at a plant, if they're looking at an animal, whatever they're looking at, if they're looking at a distant planet, it all comes down to the atoms that make them up. So I think a nice place to start then is first by looking within ourselves at the processes that are occurring in our bodies every second of every day. So I'd say if you look at it in one way, we can be thought of as sort of walking chemical factories? Totally. So first of all, of course, we are made up of just a few chemicals, actually.

We're made up of mostly water, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and our genes. And then you've got a few other smaller chemicals, hormones like insulin, dopamine, that all make us up. And then these chemicals have been arranged uniquely into cells, and these cells arranged into organs. And at every moment that we are, are awake or asleep, there is a chemical reaction taking place. If we eat our food, there's a chemical reaction that comes in and chops our food up into small, small units so that our food can be absorbed. And whenever we take a medicine, there are chemical processes that take place to make sure that once the medicine's done its job, it's broken down into smaller units and it's flushed

away in our urine. Chemical processes are taking place all the time. And even we're going to When we experience pleasure, there is a chemical release called dopamine. We want to carry out a particular movement. Chemicals are released to make that movement happen. So it's happening all the time. And sometimes we're not even thinking about it. So there are cells in our body making new proteins, destroying older proteins. Things are happening all the time. Trillions of reactions have taken place all the time. As you and I are speaking, oh my God, we've been flushed through with many, many chemical reactions. Yes, you mentioned water there. So I think this is a good one to kick off with. So I think a lot of people will know from school or even watching quiz shows or, I mean,

I don't know, even other television shows. There are bodies are mostly water, which is quite interesting in and of itself. But I guess most people, they'll know, oh yeah, yeah, they sort of know that, but their knowledge of that will end there. We know we have to stay hydrated, drink, I don't know what the guidelines are, and a couple of litres of water a day. But what happens to all that water that we're drinking? What's it doing? Yes, so we're mostly water. And the younger you are, the more water you have. And you can actually, if you look at younger people, they do seem to be a little bit more hydrated than we older people who tend to look that little bit drier as you age. So I'm about

50% water. And as a child, I was probably more watered around the 60, 70%. You know, I would say two thirds of me would have been water. Where is all that water? Oh my God, it's everywhere. So first of all, we have a waterway running through us, and that's our blood. And that is mostly water. So if you think about your blood, it's cells and it's water. That's what the blood is. So mostly that's water. Then you think about the cells and the cells. And the cells, and the cells also contain water. And there's water between the cells as well. So we need all this water to shuttle things around. The water in our blood helps the cells move around the blood and helps oxygen move around the blood because it hitches a ride on a very important protein that makes our

blood red and then it sails around the blood to all the other cells in our body, making sure that those cells can breathe when we breathe. So water is all around us in our stomach, in our intestine. Sometimes you actually hear water moving through your intestine. You can hear a bit of a gurgle. And there's water in our urine. There's water in our feces. There's water in our mouths. As I'm talking now, my mouth is full of water. It's water up our nose, lining the cavities of our nose. Is water in our brain. I mean, need I go on? That's great. So you mentioned there, So this is another one. A lot of people would say, oh, proteins, yeah, I've heard of that. It's in meat and certain vegetables in various quantities or whatever. We need it to survive.

But I think that's probably as far as most people's knowledge will go. But proteins are absolutely essential for life, aren't they? So first off, what exactly are they? Yeah, so proteins. I mean, if you ask someone, would you like some protein with your meal? Oh, they think about a nice juicy steak, a bell. burger, a piece of pork, maybe an egg. But actually, what are proteins? It's a good question. So proteins are very large molecules. Molecules come in different sizes. Remember we said that atoms come together. They're bound together to create molecules. And sometimes molecules also come together to create even bigger molecules. In the case of proteins, they're made of

smaller molecules called amino acids. These are very, very small molecules. And these are very small molecules. And these These molecules are all joined end to end to make up the protein. This is the basic unit of a protein, no matter whether you're thinking about a piece of steak, or you're thinking about an egg, or you're thinking about the proteins in our body. They are all made out of amino acids joined end to end to make a larger molecule. So these larger molecules that we call proteins, we can either eat them and have a nice meal, if you're that inclined, or they are around in our bodies and they are are working so hard. They are the workhorses of ourselves. They are doing everything because proteins also

come in a form of a chemical called an enzyme. And what an enzyme does is that those chemical reactions that I talked about earlier, what the enzymes do are they make those chemical reactions proceed really, really at rapid speed. So for example, I've had a nice piece of steak. I've chewed it it's in my stomach, it now has to be broken down. There is an enzyme that swoops out called pepsin that immediately starts smashing the protein molecule to bits into smaller units that can then pass through the cells in my stomach and intestine and go into my body to do all the wonderful things that proteins have to do in my body.

So the proteins really in our bodies are working so hard to make sure that those chemical reactions I talked about happen really quickly. If they didn't happen so quickly, then what you would see is that I would eat the steak, it won't be broken down into smaller units, and it will just pass through out into the ocean through the sewers. And I'd get nothing from it. So the various proteins in our bodies are the workhorses of our very existence.

So let's take this idea of chemistry being everywhere outside of our bodies then. So we talked about how it's involved in our physiology and biology there. But first thing, I suppose, if we think about looking outside our bodies, we need something to clothe ourselves in. And I would bet, I'm not a betting person, but if I gathered a hundred people up and asked them to name a few examples of how we benefit from chemistry in our everyday lives, not too many of them would mention clothing.

Yes, you're absolutely right. I mean, clothing is a wonder of chemistry. And with clothing, what we're looking at is the fundamental unit that makes our clothes. So most people will know well, clothes are made from fibres that are woven. You can actually see the weave if you bring out a sweater or your cotton t-shirt and you look really closely. You can see the fibers are interlocked to make the garment. If you have a hand-knitted sweater, this is really very obvious to you. Now, the individual fibers are actually made out of chemicals.

And those chemicals are again, these very long molecules I talked about. And they could be proteins if, for example, you're wearing wool. Because wool itself is made out of proteins. They could be proteins if you're wearing silk, because silk again is made out of proteins. If you're wearing cotton, then the chemical is slightly different. And in that case, you have a compound called cellulose. But once again, it's made out of many, many small molecules all joined end-to-end to make a bigger molecule. It's at this stage that I'll introduce a new word, and that word is polymer.

Polymer simply means that you've got lots and lots of small units all joined end-to-end to make a huge molecule. The difference is a thousandfold when it comes to a small molecule and a polymer. Huge. Now, you need these very long molecules, the polymers I'm referring to. They could be cellulose, they could be proteins. You need these very long molecules to make our fibers, because that means that the fibres themselves can be quite long without breaking up very easily. Now, we know about the proteins and the cellulose that make up our,

silk, wool and of course, cotton. But there is a hero of these polymers called polyester. You would have seen the word polyester on the labels of your clothing. And this is a synthetic polymer. That means it's not got from sheep like wool. It's not got from silkworms like silk. It's not grown like cotton. It's made in the laboratory by clever chemists. And because it's made in the laboratory. It can be made on demand in huge quantities. You don't have to worry about feeding your sheep. You don't have to worry about generating your silkworms or growing your cotton. You can just make it in the lab. And this is an incredibly cheap polymer that we use to make our clothing these days. And again, we work with polymers so that they can make the long fibres. If we didn't have polymers, the fibers will be

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So polymerisation is really a long name for making polymers. So that's all it is. And really it is the process by which you add one molecule to another in order to make a long chain of molecules. And if you think about a polymer as being similar to a pearl necklace with a clasp done. So it's a long row of beads. And each bead, you can just imagine

to be a molecule. Now, how do you actually make this long line of molecules? It's comparatively simple. So what you do is, you first of all take the first molecule, and that very first molecule is going to start the whole process off. And that very first molecule then reacts with another molecule, which we call the initiator. This initiator turbocharges the first molecule in our polymer and activates it. Once activated, this activated first molecule will react with a second molecule. Now you have an activated duo. And this activated duo is searching around for a molecule to react with. Reacts really quickly with a third molecule. Now you have a reactive trio and so on and so forth until you have a really long molecule and that's your polymer. How does it all stop? You can stop

it by actually adding something to stop the reaction, or you can stop it when two activated units join up, and then we have no more activated units in the reaction. So really, you can think about it. It's almost like starting a fire. You start with a very small flame, and that grows and grows and grows and grows and grows, as each time you keep adding more and more molecules to it until eventually it stops. So we talked about polyester there, which we mentioned is a synthetic material. But let's move on to a wider class of materials

that, I mean, absolutely changed the world. And that's plastics. So first off, you know, the obvious question is exactly what do we mean by a plastic? Yeah, so a plastic, that's a fabulous mid-20th century invention. A plastic really is made out of polymers. So polyester can be used to make water bottles.

And in that case, you've got the same material that is used to make fabrics being used to make water bottles. And then when you have them in a water bottle, we call this a plastic. To be honest, you can actually say that the clothes made of polyester are also plastics. They can also be described as plastics. But really, plastics are these polymers that have then been made to form certain shapes. So they can be water bottles, they can be bumpers for cars, they can be used to make the seats, the plastic seats that we see, for example, when we go to a school hall, to listen to a concert from one of our children. Normally you have these plastic seats. They can even be used to make plastic roofs.

So again, it's these polymers that have come together and been used to make important materials that have various shapes. And these are the plastics. Don't forget the plastic bags. Again, these are the polyethylene, made from small, small units of ethylene, joined together, you get your plastic bags. So plastics really are polymers made in the lab. And the problem with plastics is that because you have one molecule joined to another and joined to another and joined to another with very strong chemical bonds, It's very hard to break down plastics. It's very hard to get plastics to degrade. Proteins easier to degrade.

You can use enzymes to degrade them, but plastics are very difficult to degrade. And that's why they're very useful. For example, they can be used to store materials for long periods because they're not going to degrade. They can be used to carry wet materials because the bonding is so tight that water doesn't seep through. but also they last for so long.

And so when we've finished using the plastic and we dispose of it, it sits and sits and sits. And so we have a bit of a problem. Yeah, so that is one of the big sort of environmental question of this age. So how bad is the situation? Because, you know, you only have to look around, you can go anywhere, really.

And if you were to keep a notepad, a tally or something, you'd see plastics everywhere. Yes, plastics are everywhere. Let's first of all say that plastics have transformed our lives. There is a passage in the book where I imagine a world with no plastics. And this is a very scary world. Now, first of all, if you go shopping and you want to buy anything, your meat is probably wrapped in plastic.

That keeps it lasting for longer. Your fish, if you buy it, will be put into a bag lined with plastic, which means that the water from the fish will not damage your cheese, will not damage your bread. You buy bottles of juice or milk in plastic bottles or in cartons lined with plastic. You wouldn't have been able to do this before plastics were invented. You would have to have heavy glass bottles. You wouldn't have the plastic bag. It would be very difficult.

If you went to hospital, you wouldn't have a plastic disposable syringe. The bed you lay on wouldn't be lined with plastic. It'll be soiled by the previous. patient who either soiled the bed by accident or bled out on the bed or simply died on the bed, you would have to lie on that too. So you can imagine a world without plastics would be terrible, but you're absolutely right, plastics are everywhere. Now because plastics, we rely on them so much, they're everywhere, they're in the computers, they're in our phones, they're everywhere. That means that when we finish using those things, we have to dispose of them. And so plastics

are now sitting in landfills, and we literally do not know what to do with them. But aha, there may be a solution on the horizon. I came across a paper where someone had found a bacterial enzyme that degrades the plastic that makes polyester. And so there could be a glimmer of hope on the horizon if these enzymes could be really, really used thrown into the landfill to degrade the plastic. because the bacteria actually uses the plastic as a food source. This was a recent discovery.

So there is some form of hope. And also there are people trying to make biodegradable plastics. Plastics made from starch, for example, in order to get the kind of materials we need, but that don't have the hangover, the environmental hangover that we don't want. So sticking with plastics for a little while longer. So a big topic of discussion is something called microplastics. So what do we mean? What's the difference between just regular plastic and microplastic? So the microplastic term relates to small amounts of plastics that are about the size of a 5P coin.

I don't know if you've ever seen one of those recently. Not for a while. We don't really use coins so much these days. So they're about half the size of 5P coin, about 5mm in size or less. The problem with these is that, for example, if you had to pick up plastic refuse and it was large enough for you to see, you could go around and collect it and you could bury it in a landfill. But the really tiny bits that are so small you cannot collect.

And we have evidence now that they sit in our oceans, these very small pieces of plastic. And there is recent evidence to show that they've been found within our bodies. So there was a recent study that found these tiny, tiny, tiny, bits of plastics in pregnant women, and even on the side of the placenta that nourishes the growing baby. So this is emerging evidence. We need a few more studies to really understand how bigger problem this is. But the fact that you've got these microplastics turning up in places where we would never have expected them within our bodies, at the bottom of our oceans,

likely to be consumed by the fish we eat. The problem is bigger than we thought it was previously. But we should always remember that a world without plastics is a world where more people were likely to die, either because they went to a hospital and got an infection from a glass syringe that wasn't really sterilized very well, or life was even more inconvenient.

So let's have a look at another topic that you discuss, that I thought was interesting. Another one that people, if you ask them, they probably wouldn't think as being a product of chemistry. And that's the buildings that we all live in and work in. So all the materials we use, you know, to build everything from the smallest homes to the largest skyscrapers, are possible thanks to our knowledge of chemistry.

Absolutely. It should be really obvious, but we don't really think about it like that. And the reason we can build our homes, and we've been building homes for thousands of years. But one thing that has been quite instrumental for building taller homes is the brick, is concrete, is cement. When you want to build a home, you take little units of stone, for example, and you put them all together. You have a mortar, that's the glue that holds all the stones together, and you can build a reasonably sized home. And what the brick does is it allows you to build higher homes, because with the brick, you get a whole bunch of chemicals together, mostly silicon, aluminium-type chemicals, silicon dioxide, sand and clay. And you bring all these chemicals together, and then you heat them at a very high temperature.

What happens there is that you get all the different chemicals which are sitting separately to fuse together. and form one nice solid unit. So if you think about building your sandcastle on the beach, if you've ever done that, you take all the sand and you can compact the sand. You can build a nice structure. The tide comes in, that structure's gone. Because all the sand grains are not joined together. They're just held together by maybe a little bit of water,

forming a very weak bond between the sand grains. But when you make a brick, they are fused together by strong chemical bonds. So you can then take one brick and put it on top of another brick and create a really high structure. So that's the bricks. But we have other chemicals in the homes. We also have cement, which again, you get material from the earth, sand and other materials. You fire all those together. You get a nice material.

that allows you to glue one brick to another in a way which is really, really strong. Again, it's the chemistry in cement that allows you to do this. Then you think about the wood. The wood that you're using is, again, cellulose and another chemical called lignin. These are all the chemicals in wood that go on to help you create your home. You might have wood paneling. You might have wooden window frames. You might have wooden floors.

Again, the wooden floors are cellulose and lignin. two chemicals that make up wood. And then you have your glues. Your glues are working really hard to keep your home together. The way we normally see glues and paste is, for example, if we want to put wallpaper on the wall, you would put a paste on the wall, put a paste on the wallpaper, put them together, the water dries out, and then the chemicals in the paste hold the paper against the wall quite tightly. If you've ever scraped wallpaper off the wall, you've ever scraped wallpaper off the wall. You know that it can be held really, really tightly because it's quite a laborious job. It needs a lot of energy. So all of these chemistries go on to make the homes that we live in and

cherish. Then think about the paints. Again, the paints are some chemical compounds that appear coloured to us because of the way they absorb light and some other compounds like some paces and glues that allow these chemical compounds to stick to our walls and to stick to surfaces. We're living within our homes in an amazing building, really composed of different chemicals, all put together to give us shelter from the wind, the rain and the sun. So let's end with looking at medicines. I think a lot of people would have been a lot more aware of drug development following the COVID-19 pandemic. But of course, we wouldn't be able to develop. But of course, we wouldn't be able to develop medicines if we didn't know what was going on with the chemistry within them?

Absolutely. I mean, my job is to develop medicines. That's my science. Now, to find a medicine, for example, to really discover a medicine, one thing you have to do is understand the disease. And in understanding the disease, most of the times you're understanding what's happened to proteins in the body. And diseases are caused normally, not always, but normally when a protein is not behaving the way it should. So you discover there's this protein that's not behaving the way it should. That gives us the disease. And then you say, okay, can I look at this protein and can I change what it's doing so the disease will go?

And so you hit it with all sorts of chemistries, all sorts of chemical compounds. It's not done in a random fashion. It's done quite systematically. and you find some chemical compounds that either change the protein or make this protein that's causing the disease inactive. So you've got a whole bunch of chemical compounds now and you have to find out the one that is the most effective. So you do a few more tests and you end up with a handful of chemical compounds that are most effective at changing the disease. You continue your tests and you test in humans and finally you have a compound. And then,

you have to make that compound into a medicine. And you can use other compounds that are not going to actually change the protein in the body, but they're going to change the way the active pharmaceutical ingredient. That's the chemical that you've found that really changes the protein. They're going to change the way this chemical interacts in the body. And so you bring all these together and you have your medicine. Your medicine can be taken as a pill, can be taken as an injection, can be taken. as a spray up the nose. And that's the way medicines are developed. And you have medicines that are small molecules like aspirin, and you have medicines that are very large like antibodies. And one of the very first antibodies to be developed as a medicine was an antibody which we know as

a herceptin. This antibody can target cancer cells and cause them to die. And this was discovered by some biologists. And this was discovered by some biologists. And this is a insectin. And this is a little bit. This antibody is used today to treat women that have breast cancer, for example. But again, this antibody was found by finding out what's happening to the breast cancer cells. How are they different from other cells? Finding a protein that's very different. And they're using this antibody to change the way this protein behaves and bring about a cure for the cancer or make sure that the tumour cells themselves are destroyed.

So that's the way medicines are found. and that's the way medicines are developed. And it takes ages. It can take 10 years to develop a medicine. And many, many people have to be involved in this. So we've only covered a portion of what's actually in the book there. But I think anyone listening will be convinced by the original argument that we started with. Chemistry really is everywhere.

And everything is chemistry, including you, including me. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. brought to you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Professor Dame Ijoma Uchebou. To discover more about the topics we've just discussed, check out her latest book, Chain Reaction, The Wondrous Chemistry of Everyday Life. If you liked what you just heard,

then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then why not check out our YouTube channel at Science Focus. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your app store of choice. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital

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