Catch up TV
2025: Maggie Aderin-Pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 1. Destination Moon
Scientists in 2025 detected the 'strongest hint yet' of biological activity outside our solar system on exoplanet K2-18b, sparking growing excitement about the real possibility of extraterrestrial life. In this series of lectures, Dame Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock sets out on a journey to find it. In lecture 1, self-confessed ‘lunartic’ Maggie begins by exploring our fascination with our closest neighbour, the moon.\n\nMaggie first became obsessed with the moon as a child, when she would watch it with her dad, and aged 14, she even built a telescope of her own. Four hundred years earlier, Galileo first assembled glass lenses and made a telescope, which Maggie and audience volunteers will help to recreate. He too pointed it at the moon, astonishing the world with his drawings and inspiring a raft of theories about the type of alien life that might be living there. The moon wouldn’t be confirmed as lifeless until humans actually set foot on it in 1969.\n\nMaggie explores the history of our own species in space, joined by the UK’s latest crew of European Space Agency astronauts - Rosemary Coogan, John McFall and Meganne Cristian. From the early Apollo missions to the planned Artemis Moon landing in 2027, the astronauts join children from the audience in a series of demos that illustrate the challenges of human space travel and the reality of colonies on the moon and beyond. \n\nMaggie uses this lunar viewpoint to look back on our own planet and ask some fundamental questions about life. Cosmic mineralogist Prof Sara Russell from the Natural History Museum studies space rocks and demonstrates what they can tell us about where life’s precursors came from and how life on earth may have got started. We then meet some of the most weird and wonderful creatures that have evolved here on our planet, like the scaly foot snails that live at hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean, at temperatures of over 350°C. What are the limits for life on another world, and what might it look like? \n\nFinding other planets that might host life will require us to ‘see the invisible’. Maggie and her volunteers demonstrate, using UV torches and infrared cameras, how today’s modern telescopes allow us to do just that. \n\nFinally, Maggie examines what it means to be a 'goldilocks planet' - not too hot, not too cold - just right for life. In a full audience participation demo, we question if there is another habitable world out there and what it would need to be like. What are we searching for in our quest to find an extraterrestrial species? \n\nThis is the 200th anniversary year of the Christmas Lectures. They are the most prestigious event in the Royal Institution calendar, dating from 1825, when Michael Faraday founded the series for children. They have become the world’s longest-running science television series and promise to inspire children and adults alike each year through explosive demonstrations and interactive experiments with the live theatre audience.
Source: BBC 4
Most recent episodes of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 1. Destination Moon
Scientists in 2025 detected the 'strongest hint yet' of biological activity outside our solar system on exoplanet K2-18b, sparking growing excitement about the real possibility ...
28-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 1. From Taste Buds To Toilet
Dr Chris van Tulleken follows the extraordinary journey food takes through our bodies – from the very first moment we see and smell a potential meal... until it finally em ...
25-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 3. The Big Food Hack
What did the very first meal on earth look like? To begin his third and final Christmas Lecture in an explosive fashion, Dr Chris van Tulleken takes us back more than four billi ...
31-12-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 2. How Food Makes Us
In this lecture, Dr Chris van Tulleken investigates how we get energy from our food and how what we eat makes us who we are. He reveals how combustion engines get their energy i ...
30-12-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 3. The Future Of Ai: Dream Or A Nightmare?
Professor Mike Wooldridge grapples with the future of AI in the third and final Christmas lecture. \n\nMike takes a ride in a driverless car. Autonomous vehicles, once a science ...
04-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 2. My Ai Life
Professor Mike Wooldridge reveals the huge role AI already plays in our daily lives – sometimes without us even realising its role. \n\nMike investigates how games like ch ...
03-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 1. How To Build An Intelligent Machine
Professor Mike Wooldridge asks: what is artificial intelligence? He compares how AI works and learns with how the human brain functions. \n\nExploring the roots of AI, Mike reve ...
02-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2022: Dame Sue Black: 3. Living Body
The final lecture in the series begins with a ‘heist’. A jewel thief steals a precious man-made diamond from the Royal Institution’s collection. Can forensic e ...
28-09-2023
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2022: Dame Sue Black: 2. Missing Body
Professor Sue Black investigates a Christmas murder mystery to show how serious crimes are solved when there isn't a body. \n\nSue is joined by an expert team including leading ...
20-09-2023
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2022: Dame Sue Black: 1. Dead Body
Professor Sue Black has been dubbed the ‘corpse whisperer’ for her role in deciphering the messages hidden within a dead body. In this first lecture in the Royal Ins ...
13-09-2023
BBC 4
Most popular episodes of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2025: Maggie Aderin-pocock - Is There Life Beyond Earth?: 1. Destination Moon
Scientists in 2025 detected the 'strongest hint yet' of biological activity outside our solar system on exoplanet K2-18b, sparking growing excitement about the real possibility ...
28-12-2025
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2023: Professor Mike Wooldridge - The Truth About Ai: 3. The Future Of Ai: Dream Or A Nightmare?
Professor Mike Wooldridge grapples with the future of AI in the third and final Christmas lecture. \n\nMike takes a ride in a driverless car. Autonomous vehicles, once a science ...
04-01-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2022: Dame Sue Black: 1. Dead Body
Professor Sue Black has been dubbed the ‘corpse whisperer’ for her role in deciphering the messages hidden within a dead body. In this first lecture in the Royal Ins ...
13-09-2023
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 3. The Big Food Hack
What did the very first meal on earth look like? To begin his third and final Christmas Lecture in an explosive fashion, Dr Chris van Tulleken takes us back more than four billi ...
31-12-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2014: Sparks Will Fly - How To Hack Your Home: 2. Making Contact
30-12-2014
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2018: Who Am I?: 1. Where Do I Come From?
Professor Alice Roberts meets our ancient ancestral family, from armadillos to sharks, and discovers our true place in the tree of life. With 4D scanning, giant origami and a uk ...
26-12-2018
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2024: Chris Van Tulleken - The Truth About Food: 2. How Food Makes Us
In this lecture, Dr Chris van Tulleken investigates how we get energy from our food and how what we eat makes us who we are. He reveals how combustion engines get their energy i ...
30-12-2024
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2016: Supercharged - Fuelling The Future: 1. Let There Be Light!
26-12-2016
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2018: Who Am I?: 3. What Makes Me, Me?
Are you genetically destined to despise brussels sprouts? We’re all human, but why are we all so different? With the help of a line-up of dogs and many sets of twins, Prof ...
28-12-2018
BBC 4
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
2014: Sparks Will Fly - How To Hack Your Home: 1. The Light Bulb Moment
29-12-2014
BBC 4