Around the world many girls leave school before completing their education. It's said that those who stay to the end of high school have more agency and choice, but also earn more money and have fewer and healthier children.
Tom Heap hears how education and access to family planning don't just impact family size, they can also propel young women into positions of leadership where they can help their communities adjust to climate change.
Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London helps Tom calculate just how useful secondary education for girls can be in the fight against climate change.
Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock
Researcher: Sarah Goodman
Produced in association with the Royal Geographical Society. Special thanks for this episode to Professor Mark Maslin from University College London and David Johnson of the Margaret Pyke Trust.
Simple and sublime seagrass meadows work naturally to absorb carbon. The leaves cause friction in the water and trap carbon from organic matter in the sediment. Yet industrial activity and pollution has damaged and reduced the extent of the meadows around the UK coast. With the marine environment improving, work is being done to restore patchy seabeds and create new ones, both in the UK and around the world. Take a dip with Tom Heap as he explores the wonders and potential of these plants on the sea floor.
Back in the studio Dr Tamsin Edwards of King's College, London helps Tom calculate just how useful seagrass can be in the fight against climate change.
Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock
Researcher: Sarah Goodman
Produced in association with the Royal Geographical Society. Special thanks for this episode to Professor Vincent Gauci from the University of Birmingham.
BBC Radio Four presents 39 ideas to relieve the stress that climate change is exerting on the planet.
Trees soak up carbon dioxide, trees store carbon dioxide. So why not build with wood instead of concrete and steel? The usual reason is strength, but Dr Michael Ramage at Cambridge University has what he thinks is the answer- cross-laminated timber. It's strong enough to build a skyscraper and replaces lots of that carbon from conventional building. Tom Heap and Dr Tamsin Edwards take a look at the global possibilities of cities built of wood.
Producer : Alasdair Cross
Researcher: Sarah Goodman
Produced in association with the Royal Geographical Society. Special thanks for this episode to Dr Harry Kennard from University College London.
We’re resourceful, adaptable and the smartest thing this planet has ever seen. We got ourselves into this mess but we can get ourselves out of it. BBC Radio Four, in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society presents 39 ideas to relieve the stress that climate change is exerting on the planet.
From tiny solar cells to the total transformation of the Siberian landscape, Tom Heap and Dr Tamsin Edwards from Kings College, London view the fundamental problem of our age from a fresh perspective. Small things that make a big difference. Big things that make a small difference. We’re going to need every one of them.
In the first programme Tom discovers the secret of low-carbon rice with Dr Smita Kurup from Rothamsted Research.
Producer : Alasdair Cross
Researcher: Sarah Goodman
Produced in association with the Royal Geographical Society. Special thanks for this episode to Professor Vincent Gauci from the University of Birmingham.
This has been an incredible year for scientific advance and collaboration, epitomised by the roll out of vaccines that didn’t exist a year ago, against a virus that no one had ever heard of .
And yet at the same time its been a year of incredible frustration. We are stil largely using the same methods to counter the virus that were used in past pandemics, going back a hundred years.
Here we look back at key the findings on who is most susceptible and why, and ask how to improve the strategies for reducing transmission.
As regular listeners may recall, CrowdScience has delved into the strange world of fungi before, as we dug down into the forest floor to reveal how plants and trees are connected to the vast mycelial network known as the “wood wide web”. But what makes this network possible and how might it have evolved? Fungi are incredible clever, or at least , it appears that they’re capable of displaying complex behaviour that gives them the appearance of intelligence. In this episode, we speak to fungal ecologist and author of a new book, Merlin Sheldrake, about fungal “brains”, the evolution of magic mushrooms and zombie insects – the astonishing way certain fungi can take over the bodies of ants and wasps in order to sow their spores above ground.
Tony Greer is a macro analyst and author of the Morning Navigator Newsletter. In this conversation, he and NLW discuss how central banks continued to kick the can down the road on debt as well as unexpected sources of strength for the economy heading into 2021.
On Christmas Day, 2020, Reginald Foster passed away at the age of 81 in a nursing home facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He had been diagnosed with COVID-19 a few days before.
This episode is not necessarily about his passing however, it is about his life, and in particular how he had one of the most unique jobs in the world.
Learn more about Reginald Foster, the world’s foremost Latinist, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In the waning days of the 19th century, a passenger steamer crossing the Pacific Ocean en route from Australia to Canada did a particular thing, at a particular place, at a particular time.
If it wasn’t for a last-second decision of the captain of the ship, we wouldn’t be talking about the ship today and it would have been forgotten in history.
Learn more about the SS Warrimoo, and how it and its spontaneous captain made history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
In our first programme of the year, we gathered a group of scientific experts directly involved in analysing the structure and impact of the SARS- Cov-2 coronavirus. There were concerns over the emergence of two new variants, Alfa and Beta, especially whether these variants might spread more quickly or outmanoeuvre the suite of new vaccines that were about to be rolled out.
And now with Omicron, the same questions are being asked about this variant’s ability to spread and overcome our defences.
We’ve invited the same scientists back to give us their assessment of our journey with Covid 19 over the past year and discuss their findings on Omicron.
Featuring:
Ravi Gupta Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Cambridge
Tulio De Oliveria Professor on Bioinformatics, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Dr. Allie Greaney From the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Washington School of Medicine
And Professor Jeremy Luban from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Should you wash your eggs? Well, believe it or not, there is quite an international debate about this question from CrowdScience listener Susan. In Canada, where Susan grew up, commercially sold eggs are washed before they reach stores, whereas in the UK where she is now living they are not. So what is best to avoid contamination?
It’s one of a number of egg-themed questions that CrowdScience tries to crack in this episode. One of our presenters, Marnie Chesterton, heads over to Susan’s home in London to cook some eggs and explore other egg cooking questions from our listeners, such as what is the science behind frying an egg without it sticking to the pan and why are some boiled eggs harder to shell than others?
Meanwhile, this episode’s other presenter, Anand Jagatia, explores questions about eggs after they have hatched. He investigates a case of curious chicken behaviour sent in by listener Laurie, as well as working out how a cuckoo knows it’s a cuckoo when it’s been raised in another bird’s nest.
Featuring: Dr. Vincent Guyonnet, Dr. Valérie Lechevalier, Dr. Siobhan Abeyesinghe and Dr. Ros Gloag
