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About This Podcast
The news you know, the science you don’t. Unexpected Elements looks beyond everyday narratives to discover a goldmine of scientific stories and connections from around the globe. From Afronauts, to why we argue, to a deep dive on animal lifespans: see the world in a new way.
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Recent Episodes
The beautiful game
As the Fifa Men’s World Cup kicks off this week in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, football fever is everywhere – and this has the Unexpected Elements team exploring all things…
Science bears fruit
Long live the king – of mangoes! In India the famed ‘king of mangoes’, the Alphonso mango, is in drastically short supply after a particularly bad bout of adverse weather. Inspired by the mango’s…
Celebrating science on Africa Day
How do you translate the latest science work across the 2000 different languages spoken around the African continent? And have you heard of sky mountain? Africa Day has the Unexpected Elements team…
Unexpected enhancements
Have you ever wondered what happen to salmon when too much cocaine seeps into their rivers? Inspired by the Enhanced Games, we lookat unexpected areas of performance enhancement. Peptides are making…
Hantavirus outbreak and what’s in a name
An outbreak of hantavirus on the MV Hondius cruise ship has us looking at the unexpected science around the disease. First up, why is this outbreak such an unusual occurrence? Then, what's in a…
One hundred years of Sir David Attenborough
Sir David Attenborough is arguably the world’s favourite broadcaster, and this week he’s blowing out the candles on his 100th birthday cake. Inspired by his significant birthday, we decided to…
The soaring price of condoms
The blockade on the strait of Hormuz has led to an unexpected consequence – condom prices are set to increase by up to 30 percent! This has us delving into all things contraception, starting with…
Chernobyl: 40 years later
On 26th April 1986, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded, releasing vast amounts of radiation. Now, 40 years later, it remains the worst nuclear accident in history.…
The ribbiting science of frogs
In 2025, Russian-born scientist Kseniia Petrova picked up some spliced frog embryos from a laboratory in France and brought them back to the USA to aid her research into ageing and cancer. She was…
Is everyone accounted for?
This month, India began the immense undertaking of surveying its population of 1.4 billion people in the world’s largest ever census. Inspired by this huge task, the Unexpected Elements team explores…
Putting science on the map
China’s ambitious underwater mapping operation takes us on a voyage into the depths of ocean and map science.We look at what a network of underwater microphones can tell us about underwater…
A bumper edition
Japanese pedestrians have been forcefully colliding with each other in a spate of butsukari otoko – or ‘bumping man’ – incidents and the Unexpected Elements team has been inspired to investigate some…
In the name of science
After the end of a near 17-year legal battle between popstar Katy Perry and fashion designer Katie Perry, the Unexpected Elements team has been inspired to explore the question at the heart of the…
Out for blood
With this year’s Oscars on the horizon, and vampire film Sinners nominated for a record-breaking 16 awards, the Unexpected Elements team sinks their teeth into some blood-sucking science.First, we…
The colour of science
The Hindu festival of Holi has the Unexpected Elements team delving into the science of colour. First up, forget chicken and egg, we bring you a whole new controversy of which came first: colour or…
A sweet treat
A dip in global cocoa prices got the Unexpected Elements team wondering about chocolate science. First, we look at how the microbial communities in cocoa beans fine tune the taste of chocolate. Also,…
Seeing double
Identical twins on trial for murder in France have left forensic experts unable to answer the question of which one pulled the gun’s trigger. With both having the same DNA, it got the Unexpected…
Are you lucky?
K-pop fans in Taiwan have been turning to the God of love in the hope it will boost their luck in getting concert tickets. It got the Unexpected Elements team thinking, are some people just lucky?…
Let the games begin
The Winter Olympics has the Unexpected Elements team looking into some of the incredible science behind the sports. First up, the tale of India’s lone luge pilot: how did using old train tracks as…
Are you still with us?
Are You Dead?That’s the name of an app that’s gone massively viral in China. Every two days, you click a green button to confirm you’re alive and well – but if you miss it, an emergency contact is…
Frequently Asked Questions
Unexpected Elements has published 330 episodes since May 2019, covering topics in Science.
Unexpected Elements is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 56m.
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