logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2024
27m 25s

Uncharted: The returning soldier

Bbc World Service
About this episode

Hannah Fry explores two tales of data and discovery.

In a few specific years across the 20th Century, the proportion of boys born, mysteriously spiked. We follow one researcher’s obsessive quest to find out why.

And next, a tale of science and skulduggery. Michael Mann was a respected climate scientist, unknown outside of a small academic circle, until he produced a graph that shocked the world and changed his life forever.

Producer: Ilan Goodman

Up next
Yesterday
Women Not Included: Urban Planning
On every street corner, at every bus stop, in every public toilet the message is clear: this city is not built for women. Along with journalist Chhavi Sachdev, Dr Ella Hubber explores how urban design often fails to reflect the realities of women’s lives. They unpack issues like ... Show More
26m 30s
Aug 17
Women Not Included: Safety Equipment
Safety equipment is often designed around an “average” male body and Dr Ella Hubber wants to understand the consequences this has for women. Alongside journalist Candice Bailey and expert voices, we hear how healthcare workers are forced to adapt to PPE never made for them and ho ... Show More
26m 29s
Aug 10
Women Not Included: Drugs and clinical trials
After working exclusively with male mice while looking for a treatment for type 1 diabetes, Dr Ella Hubber begins to uncover a much bigger issue: modern medicine is not built equally for everyone. Along with journalist Chhavi Sachdev, she explores how decades of clinical research ... Show More
26m 30s
Recommended Episodes
Sep 2023
1. The Returning Soldier
It’s 1973 and the UK is in crisis: runaway inflation, industrial strike action and political turmoil. Unnoticed at the time - in hospitals and front rooms around the country - something odd is happening with the country’s newborns. A higher proportion of boys are being born than ... Show More
14m 31s
Sep 2024
17. The Golden Spike
At a conference in Mexico, one scientist’s outburst launches a global quest. Hannah Fry follows a group of researchers on the hunt for a ‘golden spike’: the boundary, marking a shift into a dramatic new geological period dominated, not by volcanoes and asteroids, but the influenc ... Show More
15m 52s
Sep 2023
Introducing... Uncharted with Hannah Fry
Behind every line on a graph, there lies an extraordinary human story. Mathematician Hannah Fry is here to tell us ten of them. Uncharted with Hannah Fry will lead us through ten captivating mysteries to reveal the power of numbers behind each one. Along the way we discover the r ... Show More
46s
Sep 2024
14. Whispers from the Cosmos
In a shabby brick hut in 1967, a young researcher spots a bizarre, pulsing signal: a cosmic whisper picked up a huge receiver she helped to build. Is it just mundane interference - or could it be alien life? Hannah Fry shares a tale of one woman’s journey through the male-dominat ... Show More
15m 31s
Sep 2023
2. The Hockey Stick
In 1998, the climate scientist Michael Mann published a simple graph shaped like an ice hockey stick: a long straight line which curves suddenly upward at the end. It was based on decades of intrepid work by scientists around the world. But the line held a stark warning. For Mich ... Show More
13m 59s
Sep 2024
Introducing... Uncharted with Hannah Fry Series 2
From exposing fraud to finding true love, mathematician Hannah Fry follows the numbers on thrilling adventures of data and discovery. Join her for Series 2 of Uncharted. 
2m 5s
Oct 2023
9. Access Denied
A young researcher gains access to a secretive data set and discovers something shocking. What happens when a system designed to help people harms them instead? Hannah Fry tells a tale about the mysterious realm of artificial intelligence.Episode Producers: Lauren Armstrong-Carte ... Show More
14m 10s
Oct 2023
10. Devil in the Detail
Thomas Herndon was happily studying economics at the University of Massachusetts, when one day is punctured by a discovery. It appears to be an anomaly which, if true, will shake the intellectual foundations of a global movement, and could undermine politicians around the world. ... Show More
14m 44s