The complete BBC Radio 4 popular science series

Science Stories

In these ten absorbing series, award-winning authors Naomi Alderman and Philip Ball and guest presenters Tracey Logan, Kevin Fong, Simon Schaffer and Lindsey Fitzharris take a look at the many amazing events and characters from science's long history. In this collection, which runs close to 23 hours in total, they throw light on the revolutionary visionaries who defined how we see the world, from pioneers and prophets to inventors, experimenters and creators. 
 
Among the topics explored are feuding dinosaur hunters, jumping genes, the engine that nearly ran out of steam, the day the Earth stopped standing still, how laughing gas was discovered, the first female professional scientist in Britain, and how an eel sparked our interest in electricity. So, if you want to know more about a medieval bishop's Big Bang theory, how Florence Nightingale saved lives with statistics, the medieval equivalent of GPS, the woman who tamed lightning, Cyrano de Bergerac's designs for a spaceship, and what happened when Einstein decided to fix the fridge, our presenters are here to fill you in. Helping them discover the fact behind the fiction are a host of scientists and experts, including Professor Edith Hall, Hannah Fry, Tim Spector, Marcus du Sautoy, Richard Wiseman, Natalie Haynes and Tracy Chevalier. 
 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates: 
 
The Bone Wars 10 June 2015 
The engine that ran out of steam 17 June 2015 
DNA's Third Man 24 June 2015 
How Perkin brought purple to the people 1 July 2015 
Seeing is Believing - The Leviathan of Parsonstown 8 July 2015 
Submarine for a Stuart King 6 January 2016 
How an eel sparked our interest in electricity 13 January 2016 
The meteorite and the hidden hoax 20 January 2016 
The duchess who gatecrashed science 27 January 2016 
Einstein's Fridge 3 February 2016 
Florence Nightingale: Statistician 18 May 2016 
Chaucer's Astrolabe - The Medieval GPS 25 May 2016 
Paul Ehrlich's 'Magic Bullet' and the Cure for Syphilis 1 June 2016 
Maxwell's Demon 8 June 2016 
Blood Banks 15 June 2016 
The Day The Earth Stopped Standing Still 30 November 2016 
How Much Testosterone Makes You a Man 7 December 2016 
The man who predicted deforestation and climate change 200 years ago 14 December 2016 
The Woman Who Tamed Lightning 21 December 2016 
Mesmerism 28 December 2016 
Jumping Genes 4 January 2017 
The Birth of Photography 11 January 2017 
Pavlov and his Dogs 7 June 2017 
The Medieval Bishop's Big Bang Theory 14 June 2017 
The Man Who Found Physics in Shells, Seeds and Bees 28 June 2017 
Caroline Herschel and the Comets 5 July 2017 
A wolf, a goat and some cabbages 22 November 2017 
The Wondrous Transformation of Caterpillars 29 November 2017 
Lise Meitner: Humanitarian physicist 
who unlocked the science of the atom bomb 6 December 2017 
How Humphry Davy discovered laughing gas 13 December 2017 
Michael Faraday and his 'instructess' in chemistry 20 December 2017 
17th-Century Space Flight: The Real Cyrano de Bergerac 13 June 2018 
Urea and the Wohler Myth 20 June 2018 
Descartes' Daughter 27 June 2018 
Hypatia: The Murdered Mathematician 4 July 2018 
Mary Anning and Fossil Hunting 11 July 2018 
Eddington's Eclipse and Einstein's Celebrity 12 December 2018 
Lucretius, Sheep and Atoms 19 December 2018 
Kepler's Snowflakes 26 December 2018 
Lady Mary Montagu's Smallpox Experiment 2 January 2019 
Ibn al-Haytham and How We See 9 January 2019 
Galileo's lost letter 13 August 2019 
Madame Lavoisier's Translation of Oxygen 20 August 2019 
Ignaz Semmelweiss: The Hand Washer 27 August 2019 
Ramon Llull: the medieval prophet of computer science 3 September 2019 
Alexis Carrel and the immortal chicken heart 10 September 2019 
Mary Somerville, pioneer of popular science writing 11 December 2019 
Sophia Jex-Blake, first woman doctor in Scotland 18 December 2019 
Isaac Newton and the story of the apple 25 December 2019 
 
© 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Kevin Fong (OBE) is a medical doctor specialising in anaesthesia and intensive-care medicine and is departmental lead for major-incident planning at UCL Hospitals. He also flies as a doctor with a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service, has worked with NASA’s human spaceflight programme and was the writer and presenter of the number-one hit podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon. In 2020 he was seconded as National Clinical Adviser to NHS England's Covid-19 Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response Team. He holds degrees in astrophysics, medicine and engineering.

Kevin Fong

Invaluable. A powerful testament to the human spirit

Enthralling from start to finish. Fong captures brilliantly the stomach-clenching drama of striving for excellence on the brink of chaos. No-one is better placed to dissect how humans best navigate our complex, volatile high-stakes world

RACHEL CLARKE, author of The Story of a Heart

Humane, gripping and profound. Kevin Fong has written a book only he could write. His approach gives all of us a chance to achieve the impossible

CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN, author of Ultra-Processed People

Easily the best book I’ve read this year, full of exceptional storytelling. No-one should have to learn lessons this hard, but Kevin Fong has stared down the abyss again and again, made sense of the impossible, and brought that perspective back to make the world a better place

Inspiring tales of people at their very best, and a moving reminder of the resilience, courage and hope that carry us through life’s toughest moments

OLIVIA COLMAN, Academy Award-winning actor

This gripping, essential book is a masterclass in human resilience and a blueprint for navigating the unknown

Kevin Fong brilliantly cuts across disciplines to give rare, useful tools and insights. A must-read for anyone making big decisions when short on information

One of the clearest and most human examinations I’ve read of how people and organizations adapt under pressure when the stakes are highest. This book belongs on the shelf of every leader responsible for others in uncertain environments

Gen. STANLEY McCHRYSTAL, author of Team of Teams

A vivid page-turner and a must-read manual for how teams and leaders can work effectively in the face of irreducible uncertainty

Full of hard-won wisdom, this is a brilliant book

Never underestimate the power of a small team with deep knowledge and good communication. And when a pandemic starts, you'd better hope that lots of them step forward

SARAH GILBERT, co-developer of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine

How High-Performance Teams Navigate the Unknown

Kevin Fong, doctor, expert in major-incident planning and response, and writer-presenter of the hit podcast 13 Minutes to the Moon, shares crucial insights into teamwork, crisis management and resilience in this essential survival guide for an uncertain world. 
 
No plan survives the first five minutes of contact with reality – so how should we prepare for what follows? 
 
Kevin Fong has spent his working life in high-risk, high-performance teams – flying as a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service doctor, working with NASA’s human spaceflight programme, as well as being part of the UK’s frontline response to major incidents and terror attacks. Told through gripping stories of the most challenging, high-pressure emergencies across medicine, aviation and spaceflight, Minute Six provides crucial, counter-intuitive insights into how the best teams and organisations succeed against the odds, learn from failure and go again. 
 
As Fong shows, decisions in the face of irreducible uncertainty are the ultimate team sport and their success depends wholly on the wider systems that support them. He exposes the key principles for designing those systems: distributed leadership, deference to expertise, delegation of authority, graceful failure, embracing complexity and finding the right balance between humans and technology. The ultimate lessons are these: never lose sight of the humans in the loop, and when it comes to managing fast-moving threats in the face of the unknown, the edge of chaos is exactly where you need to be. 
 
Combining hard-won expertise with superb storytelling, Minute Six is the essential survival guide for an ever-more volatile and uncertain world.

Kevin Fong

Praise for Minute Six

Invaluable. A powerful testament to the human spirit

Enthralling from start to finish. Fong captures brilliantly the stomach-clenching drama of striving for excellence on the brink of chaos. No-one is better placed to dissect how humans best navigate our complex, vola ...

Humane, gripping and profound. Kevin Fong has written a book only he could write. His approach gives all of us a chance to achieve the impossible

Invaluable. A powerful testament to the human spirit

Enthralling from start to finish. Fong captures brilliantly the stomach-clenching drama of striving for excellence on the brink of chaos. No-one is better placed to dissect how humans best navigate our complex, vola ...

Humane, gripping and profound. Kevin Fong has written a book only he could write. His approach gives all of us a chance to achieve the impossible

Invaluable. A powerful testament to the human spirit

Enthralling from start to finish. Fong captures brilliantly the stomach-clenching drama of striving for excellence on the brink of chaos. No-one is better placed to dissect how humans best navigate our complex, vola ...

Humane, gripping and profound. Kevin Fong has written a book only he could write. His approach gives all of us a chance to achieve the impossible

Books by Kevin Fong

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter