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EXPeditions
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The EXPeditions podcasts take you into the worlds of leading thinkers, scholars and scientists. Lively, accessible, reliable, these audio journeys guide you through key terrain in science and society, history, art and all the humanities.

  1. 3D AGO

    Migration in ancient Greece | Naoíse Mac Sweeney

    Migration is a crucial part of what made the ancient Greek world. It must have been crucial in the way this world came together, but it also must have been crucial in keeping this world linked and connected. About Naoise Mac Sweeney  "I'm Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Vienna. My research focuses on the construction of identity and cultural interaction. I am especially interested in the making of communities – not only their physical formation through landscape and architecture but also their social formation through cultural practice and conceptual formation through the construction of identity. I am a 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My work to date has focused on these topics from the Iron Age to Classical periods in the ancient Greek world and Anatolia, in particular on Greek cities Ionia and Cilicia but also on Troy and myths of the Trojan War. My current project expands the geographical frame, considering migration and mobility around the Mediterranean in the Iron Age. I am also interested in wider engagement with antiquity and the politics of reception and heritage. I passionately believe that those of us who study the past also have a responsibility to the present." Key Points • The ancient Greek world was vast and geographically fragmented, and migration was essential to its formation and cohesion. • Mobility was continuous and often circular rather than a single outward diaspora, culminating in cultural convergence that created a shared Greekness. • Greek communities were bound more by shared language, ritual and everyday practices than by common laws or institutions. What archaeology shows us is that culture comes first and identity follows after. • Migration is not new, people have always moved around and mobility is a fundamental part of the human condition.

    10 min

  2. 6D AGO

    Astronomers discovering other worlds | Jo Dunkley

    Astronomers have long thought that other stars likely had their own planets around them, but they just didn't know whether they were there, because planets are incredibly hard to see. About Jo Dunkley "​​​​​​I am the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics ​and Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. I am a 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. ​My research is in cosmology, studying the origins and evolution of the Universe. My major projects are the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Simons Observatory.  I have been the analysis leader for ACT for the past few years, and am currently the Spokesperson of the Simons Observatory. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society." Key Points • Most exoplanets are detected through a star’s slight wobble or brief dimming during transit, yielding thousands of confirmed worlds. • Citizen scientists have helped uncover additional planets by analyzing publicly released telescope data. • The Milky Way’s immense population of stars, each potentially hosting a plethora planets, makes extraterrestrial life statistically plausible, even if unlikely. • Dark energy currently drives faster cosmic expansion, yet its unknown nature means a future collapse cannot be dismissed.

    14 min

  3. JAN 29

    Where does the "witch" come from ? | Anthony Bale

    The witch comes out of a deeply misogynistic, deeply anti-feminist ideology of the Middle Ages and is very much connected to violence against women and the erasure of women. About Anthony Bale "I am Professor of Medieval & Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. I research later medieval English literature and culture. Throughout my work I've been concerned with the relationship between margins and peripheries in medieval culture, and with recovering neglected sources and voices from the medieval past. I am a 2011 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My early work focussed on Christian-Jewish relations, popular religion, and the history of antisemitism, followed by studies of the poetry of John Lydgate, the cult of St Edmund of East Anglia, and medieval histories of emotion. This then led me into pilgrimage studies, the history of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and editing and translating The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford UP, 2012) by John Mandeville and The Book of Margery Kempe (Oxford UP, 2016). In 2023 I published A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: the World through Medieval Eyes (Penguin, 2023; Norton 2024). From 2023-26 I hold a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to support my research on the Ottoman Siege of Rhodes (1480) and the development of late medieval news media." Key Points • The story of Alice Kyteler and the witchcraft allegation of 1324 helped crystallize the church's new view that magic was heresy, and it shaped the later stereotype of the witch. • The trial is not simply a story set in Ireland but one about how the church at a particular place and time invented its enemies. • The record alleges secret gatherings, diabolical pacts and harmful magic; Alice escaped, but one of her co-accused was burned at a period that coincides with the festival of Halloween. • Witchcraft accusations flourish in stressed communities and spread through rumor or gossip, causing real harm. Modern portrayals often sanitize the witch, despite misogynist origins connected to violence against women and their erasure.

    21 min

  4. JAN 26

    Invisible dark matter in the universe | Jo Dunkley

    If dark matter is a new kind of particle, it can travel through our body, through anything. It doesn't interact with the regular atoms we know of. It does obey the law of gravity. About Jo Dunkley "​​​​​​I am the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics ​and Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. I am a 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. ​My research is in cosmology, studying the origins and evolution of the Universe. My major projects are the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Simons Observatory.  I have been the analysis leader for ACT for the past few years, and am currently the Spokesperson of the Simons Observatory. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society." Key Points • Dark matter makes up roughly five times more mass than visible matter, influencing cosmic structures through gravity while remaining invisible to light. • Astronomer Vera Rubin’s measurements of unexpectedly fast star rotations in spiral galaxies provided decisive evidence that massive dark matter halos surround galaxies. • Modern projects like the Atacama Cosmology Telescope map dark matter by tracking how it bends the cosmic microwave background, turning long-duration sky scans into detailed mass maps. • The new maps match the standard cosmological model, confirming dark matter’s gravitational behavior, but scientists still do not know the particle’s identity or the nature of dark energy.

    15 min

  5. JAN 22

    Margery Kempe: a medieval voice | Anthony Bale

    The story of a 15th century bourgeois woman opens an absolutely unique window onto the medieval past, onto details of everyday life – domesticity, embarrassment, caring for one's husband, food – these really important parts of being alive. About Anthony Bale "I am Professor of Medieval & Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. I research later medieval English literature and culture. Throughout my work I've been concerned with the relationship between margins and peripheries in medieval culture, and with recovering neglected sources and voices from the medieval past. I am a 2011 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My early work focussed on Christian-Jewish relations, popular religion, and the history of antisemitism, followed by studies of the poetry of John Lydgate, the cult of St Edmund of East Anglia, and medieval histories of emotion. This then led me into pilgrimage studies, the history of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and editing and translating The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford UP, 2012) by John Mandeville and The Book of Margery Kempe (Oxford UP, 2016). In 2023 I published A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: the World through Medieval Eyes (Penguin, 2023; Norton 2024). From 2023-26 I hold a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to support my research on the Ottoman Siege of Rhodes (1480) and the development of late medieval news media." Key Points • The Book of Margery Kempe is among the earliest named English life narratives and offers a rare female voice on domestic life, spirituality and pilgrimage. • The sole surviving manuscript vanished for centuries. It was rediscovered in the 1930s in a Derbyshire country house during a ping pong game, which sparked modern study and the recovery of women's voices from the Middle Ages. • Kempe carefully shared her visions within church limits during fierce anti-heresy campaigns, facing real threats of being burnt yet presenting her work as divinely ordained. • Her candid descriptions of mental distress, erotic devotion and caregiving make the book pivotal for the history of emotions and relatable today.

    24 min

  6. JAN 19

    The origins of the universe | Jo Dunkley

    If we're to go back to the Big Bang, or as close to that as we can get, we think we would find ourselves at a moment a fraction of a second after the beginning of time. About Jo Dunkley "​​​​​​I am the Joseph Henry Professor of Physics ​and Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. I am a 2015 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. ​My research is in cosmology, studying the origins and evolution of the Universe. My major projects are the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Simons Observatory.  I have been the analysis leader for ACT for the past few years, and am currently the Spokesperson of the Simons Observatory. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society." Key Points • The universe is roughly 14 billion years old, with just 5% ordinary matter and the rest dark components we still don’t understand. • General relativity shows how mass curves space-time, letting gravity shape galaxies, stars and planets. • When atoms formed 380,000 years after the Big Bang, light finally streamed freely, leaving the cosmic microwave background whose tiny ripples became today’s structures. • The Big Bang was uniform expansion everywhere, not an explosion from a point, so the universe has no center.

    21 min

  7. JAN 14

    Propaganda in Medieval times | Anthony Bale

    With the 1480 Siege of Rhodes, we start to see the first use of the word ‘news’ in English to mean reports of recent events. You can reconstruct in quite a lot of detail who has the interest in the news, who has the means to produce the news, and you can locate that in particular moments in time, in cities, in political contexts. About Anthony Bale "I am Professor of Medieval & Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge. I research later medieval English literature and culture. Throughout my work I've been concerned with the relationship between margins and peripheries in medieval culture, and with recovering neglected sources and voices from the medieval past. I am a 2011 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. My early work focussed on Christian-Jewish relations, popular religion, and the history of antisemitism, followed by studies of the poetry of John Lydgate, the cult of St Edmund of East Anglia, and medieval histories of emotion. This then led me into pilgrimage studies, the history of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, and editing and translating The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford UP, 2012) by John Mandeville and The Book of Margery Kempe (Oxford UP, 2016). In 2023 I published A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: the World through Medieval Eyes (Penguin, 2023; Norton 2024). From 2023-26 I hold a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to support my research on the Ottoman Siege of Rhodes (1480) and the development of late medieval news media." Key Points • Rhodes was a crossroads of East and West under the Knights Hospitaller, a Western crusading order that protected and cared for pilgrims to Jerusalem. • After 1453, rapid Ottoman expansion turned Western Christendom into what was perceived as a shrinking world and tightened Ottoman control over vital trade and pilgrimage routes. • The 1480 siege of Rhodes sparked Europe-wide panic over Ottoman advances. John Kay’s Middle English account may have recorded the first English use of “news” for reports of recent events. • News and propaganda spread through eyewitness reports, translations, images and compilations like Fasciculus temporum, which blurred history with current events. These sources reveal how power and omission shape narratives and modern fake news.

    30 min

  8. 12/20/2025

    Aaron William Moore - Interwar science fiction and modern culture

    I started my research on science fiction in the early 20th century in China, Japan and the Soviet Union because I was interested in why their stories were so different. How do we explain this difference of attitude towards the future? About Aaron William Moore "I am the Handa Chair of Japanese-Chinese Relations at the University of Edinburgh and a modern historian of China and Japan. I also work in modern literature. I am a 2014 Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner. I am a comparative and transnational historian working with documents in Japanese, Chinese and Russian. I predominantly teach modern history of East Asia. My work includes studies of war diaries, the history of childhood and youth and speculative science writing and science fiction." Key Points • North Asian writers of the early 20th century often saw disruptive technology as a potential path to utopia rather than doom, contrasting with the predominantly dystopian Western outlook. • Their visions of future warfare centered on single, decisive technologies, like death rays, engineered plagues or mechanized armies, that would render conventional military strength irrelevant and directly threaten civilian populations. • Hirabayashi Katsunosuke argued that modern culture is shaped by engineers and technology, anticipating Walter Benjamin’s ideas and insisting that new media would expand rather than exhaust human imagination. • The pragmatic, largely non-theological response to radical technologies in the Soviet Union, China and Japan helps explain their quick adoption of innovations and willingness to reshape society around them.

    18 min
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The EXPeditions podcasts take you into the worlds of leading thinkers, scholars and scientists. Lively, accessible, reliable, these audio journeys guide you through key terrain in science and society, history, art and all the humanities.

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