Whether you’re curious about getting healthy, the Big Bang or the science of cooking, find out everything you need to know with Instant Genius. The team behind BBC Science Focus Magazine talk to world-leading experts to bring you two bite-sized masterclasses on a new subject each week. New episodes are released every Monday and Friday and you can subscribe to Instant Genius on Apple Podcasts to access all new episodes ad-free and all old episodes of Instant Genius Extra. Watch full episodes of Instant Genius on BBC Science Focus Magazine's YouTube channel. Follow us on X: @SFIGPod
633 episodes transcribedAccording to the United Nations, around one-third of all the food currently produced across the planet is being lost or wasted, oftentimes before it e...
This episode was recorded on November 6th 2025. Artificial intelligence has been the movement of the moment in recent years. Since it burst to promin...
Recent UN data tells us that currently 670 million people around the world are going hungry. There’s little doubt that food security is one of the mos...
Along with their vast size and habit of jumping playfully out of the water, whales are renowned for their haunting melodic vocalisations. However, aft...
Over the past several decades nutritional advice from doctors and expert researchers has largely relied on one-size-fits-all approach – eat five porti...
Throughout our lives we all go through several significant periods of change – puberty, young adulthood, middle age, retirement. Each comes with its o...
Wikipedia. It needs almost no introduction. Few websites are more well-known, more commonly used and more foundational to the web as we know it than t...
Hippies, the Beatles, flower power, magic mushrooms, raves and festivals – that’s what most of us associate with psychedelics. But there is mounting e...
What will we all be eating in 2050? How will it be produced? And how can our diets keep us healthier for longer? If these are questions you'd like ans...
The commonly held story goes that we all begin life as a single cell in our mother’s womb and go on from there to develop into fully formed adult huma...
Thanks to hundreds of years of scientific progress we now know, that like every other living thing on Earth, human beings are simply assemblages of at...
Stars feel like a fundamental feature of the Universe – as essential as planets, galaxies and space itself. But since we know the Universe had a begin...
Humanity is beautifully diverse. Some of that diversity is visible, but hidden beneath the surface, there is also a hidden web of genetic variation th...
Chances are that when most of us think about the notion of crime our minds turn to acts committed against an individual – be it theft, fraud or even p...
Be it a cold, drafty room in a creaky old country house or a still, quiet forest on a dark night, chances are that at one point or another we’ll all h...
Chances are when we’re treated with medicines in hospital or pick up our prescriptions at the pharmacy, we don’t give much thought about how the drugs...
Is our planet under threat from the depths of space? In this episode, we talk to solar physicist Dr Ryan French. Normally, Ryan is busy unravelling th...
Many of us treat our pet dogs or cats with the same love and attention that with give to our human babies, some of us give our cars or other prized po...
It’s a little-known fact that bats are one of the most successful animals on Earth, with almost 1,500 different species currently identified. Their ag...
Thanks to their comical waddle-like way of walking, striking tuxedo-patterned plumage or graceful ability to seemingly ‘fly’ beneath the water, pengui...
