We're back! Here's what to expect this season, starting June 19, 2025.If you missed any previous episodes, catch up here:IFLScience The Big Questions

It’s the holiday season, and what better time to gather your loved ones together and absolutely trounce them in an hours-long board game marathon? Humans have been playing and enjoying competitive games for centuries. For this special episode of The Big Questions, host Laura Simmons sat down with Kelly Clancy, neuroscientist and physicist, and author of recent book Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World, to find out more about why we love competition so much, and what our long history of gameplaying together can teach us about each other – and ourselves. 

Welcome to IFLScience’s first-ever Halloween podcast special, bringing you a feature-length episode of The Big Questions as we take on the UK’s most haunted castle. We journeyed to Northumberland up by the Anglo-Scottish border to spend the night in Chillingham Castle, a place that allegedly boasts an above-average number of ghosts. We wanted to explore what attracts people to sites such as this one, even inspiring folks to gear up with a host of ghost-hunting tools and try and communicate with spirits, despite the fact we’ve yet to find any evidence for their existence. At IFLScience, we don’t do things by halves, so we threw it all at the wall: Ouija boards, dungeon immersion, dowsing rods, spirit boxes, and just a bit of old-fashioned wandering around in the dark. We also spoke to Emeritus Professor Chris French, an expert in anomalistic psychology, and the founders of the Recreational Fear Lab to top up on the science of fear and better understand why it is the paranormal has us all in such a choke hold. So, join IFLScience's Chris Carpineti, Dr Beccy Corkill, Rachael Funnell, and Dr Russ Moul as they journey into the unknown in this very special episode of The Big Questions.

It’s no secret that octopuses are intelligent – but are they sentient? And how is that reflected in the way that they’re treated? Host Rachael Funnell is joined by Sy Montgomery, author of Secrets of the Octopus, and Sophika Kostyniuk, Managing Director at the Aquatic Life Institute, to discuss the evidence for octopuses’ sentience, and how that could impact the rights they’re afforded in science, agriculture, and the wider world.

Are humans done evolving – or could settling on an alien world with an environment unlike Earth’s take us on a different evolutionary trajectory? Host Tom Hale is joined by Scott Solomon, author and professor of bioscience at Rice University, to discuss the myriad ways Homo sapiens may continue to evolve on Earth, and how future human settlements on Mars might influence our species’ evolution.   

Antibiotic resistance is a major health concern. We now have several harmful microbes that have evolved into versions unaffected by common treatments. To find new antibiotics scientists are looking further afield, including in the ocean. Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti speaks to Dr Sam Afoullouss, a marine scientist at the University of South Florida, about the interesting chemistry found in the deep sea and its potential to be the pharmacy of the future.  

Coming soon: join IFLScience as we explore the questions nobody thought to ask but everyone wants the answers to. Get the behind-the-scenes conversations from CURIOUS magazine’s We Have Questions interviews, as we hunt down the experts to answer some of science’s stranger questions.Until then, catch up with the E-magazine here: https://www.iflscience.com/curious-magazine

Where do baby dinosaurs come from? It’s a question that’s been burning in the collective brain of the IFLScience team for some time. In this episode, host Rachael Funnell speaks with science writer and palaeontologist Riley Black to find out what science has discovered so far about the sex lives of dinosaurs.

Our Solar System is very stable. Planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets go forth in their orbit without trouble. But it won't be like this forever. The future of the solar system will have major changes in the Sun and in the planets. We spoke with astronomer Dr Jon Zink to cast our mind's eye far into the future and explore the end of the solar system.

Hinging our happiness on animals known to have a significantly shorter lifespan than our own was, in hindsight, a bad idea. Saying goodbye to a pet is an incredibly painful time in a person’s life, but what if there were a way we could help our pets live longer, better lives? That’s exactly what Celine Halioua has been exploring as CEO and founder of Loyal, a biotech startup developing drugs to extend dog lifespan. Join host Rachael Funnell as she finds out if science really can help dogs live longer. 

Science can’t be sexist, we hear you cry, it’s methodical, rational. And yet science is carried out by humans who are often a product of the time and place they operate in, struggling to overcome intrinsic biases and outside influence. Host Katy Evans is joined by zoologist and presenter Lucy Cooke, author of Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal, to discuss how these biases have affected – and sometimes prevented – what we know about animal biology in some truly eye-opening ways, and hopefully debunk some myths along the way. 

It’s no secret that the planet is getting warmer, but how are our bodies responding to increased exposure to extreme conditions? From record-breaking temperatures to an uptick in severe weather warnings, the consequences of the climate crisis are all around – so how is climate change impacting our health? This is The Big Question host Rachael Funnell put to author and neuroscientist Clayton Aldern. Author of The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Minds, Brains and Bodies, Aldern is well versed in the science that backs up what we know about how extreme weather can alter the way we think, act, and feel. You can listen to this episode and subscribe to the podcast on all your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Podbean, Amazon Music, and more. A transcript of the conversation is available here.

Homo sapiens – us – are the only surviving human species. The question, and it is a big one, is why? Who were the species that came before us, or lived alongside us, and what happened to them? Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti is joined by Professor Chris Stringer, human evolution research lead at the Natural History Museum, London, to explore the journey that we and the other human species took to end up here.

Here is a little teaser for our brand new podcast: Break It Down! Coming soon to a podcast app near you...

During the holiday season, many of us will be tucking into delicious meals which may well include a whole host of meats. But have you ever thought about going meat-free this time of year? With concerns over the impact of meat consumption on the planet, thoughts are turning to the future of the industry and how the tastes and textures that many people enjoy can be replicated in meat-free alternatives. In a bonus holiday episode of IFLScience The Big Questions, available on all platforms, host Eleanor Higgs speaks with Daniel Dikovsky, chief technology officer at Redefine Meat, to find out how scientists and engineers are working to create plant-based, 3D-printed meat alternatives without the environmental impact.

Solar activity goes through cycles. The main one is about 11 years long and its maximum is marked by powerful eruptions of electromagnetic radiation known as solar flares, as well as releases of plasma known as coronal mass ejections. The most powerful known flare happened in 1859 and led to telegraph stations catching fire across the US, and Northern and Southern Lights becoming visible in the tropics. Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke with Dr Ryan French, astronomer at the National Solar Observatory and author of The Sun: Beginner's Guide to Our Local Star, to find out about solar flares and what would happen if a massive one took place today.

The climate crisis is affecting glaciers across the world in myriad ways. Dramatic melting, steep declines, and overall reduction in mass are some of the changes seen in both polar glaciers and the mountainous peaks of every continent. Understanding these changes requires understanding how we monitor these enormous ice masses. The health of glaciers affects the well-being of the populations living near them, but they have far-reaching consequences, such as global sea level rise.  Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke with Dr Peter Davis from the British Antarctic Survey about Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, otherwise known as the "Doomsday Glacier". Thwaites is Antarctica's most endangered glacier and studying it is of global importance. 

As much as everyone enjoys flying abroad for their holidays, the cost of the climate impact might be making people think twice. So what can we do? Aside from paying to offset the carbon, the emergence of a new industry is hoping to change the way we fly. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) or e-fuels are looking to replace traditional fuels as a much greener alternative, but there’s still a long way to go. Host Eleanor Higgs spoke with Sophie Zienkiewicz and Alasdair Lumsden, co-founders of Carbon Neutral Fuels, to find out if it might be possible to replace the fuel in our airplanes, capture carbon from the world around us, and provide a carbon-neutral alternative when we take to the sky.

There are many methods that allow us to look back into Earth’s past and study its climate, including the collection of ice cores. Extracting ancient ice from deep inside some of the most remote glaciers can reveal how our planet has changed over millions of years. But it’s not just about the past: what is ancient ice telling us about the future? Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke with Dr Liz Thomas of the Ice Core Research Group at the British Antarctic Survey to discuss how understanding Earth’s changing climate helps refine our models for the future and how the natural world is responding to the unfolding climate crisis.

The Sun shapes what goes on in space around our planet. Plasma from our star is continuously thrown at Earth in the form of solar winds or coronal mass ejections, changing the shape of the magnetic field, and affecting the atmosphere and anything in it, like the satellites that we depend on. These changes are part of what we call space weather. Host Dr Alfredo Carpineti spoke to Dr Nigel Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey about what space weather actually is and how it affects us. We even have some incredible recordings of what these space weather events sound like!