BBC Inside Science

BBC Inside Science

BBC Radio 4

A weekly programme that illuminates the mysteries and challenges the controversies behind the science that's changing our world.

Categories: Science & Medicine

Listen to the last episode:

400 thousand years ago our early human cousins dropped a lighter in a field in the East of England; evidence that was uncovered this week and suggests that early neanderthals might have made fire 350 thousand years earlier than we previously thought. Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes is honorary researcher at the universities of Cambridge and Liverpool and author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art. She explains what this new discovery could mean for our own ancestors.

Should we genetically modify our farmed salmon to prevent it breeding with their wild relatives? Dr William Perry from Cardiff University thinks this could help the endangered wild Atlantic salmon recover it’s numbers.

And Lizzie Gibney, Senior Physics Reporter at Nature joins Tom Whipple to dig into the new science released this week.

Think you know space? Head to bbc.co.uk, search for BBC Inside Science, and follow the links to the Open University to try The Open University Space Quiz.

Previous episodes

  • 998 - Would our ancestors have benefited from early neanderthals making fire? 
    Thu, 11 Dec 2025
  • 997 - A 'functional' cure for HIV? 
    Thu, 04 Dec 2025
  • 996 - Why aren’t gene therapies more common? 
    Thu, 27 Nov 2025
  • 995 - What’s in the wording of the COP 30 negotiations? 
    Thu, 20 Nov 2025
  • 994 - Could technology replace animal testing in science? 
    Thu, 13 Nov 2025
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