Sporting history was made at this year’s London Marathon. Sabastian Sawe became the first man to finish a competitive race in less than two hours. How are elite athletes getting so much faster? We investigate how runners are harnessing the science of physiology and the technology of shoes to increase their speed. Plus, how anybody can train for a marathon—or just get fit fast.

Guests and hosts:

• Ainslie Johnstone, The Economist’s data and science correspondent
• Tim Cross, senior science writer and author of the “Well Informed” newsletter
• Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• London Marathon
• Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3
• Exercise hacks

Audio and commentary taken from the BBC's live coverage of the London Marathon, April 26th 2026.

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

In the popular imagination, the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant sits in an abandoned, post-apocalyptic wasteland. In reality, the site of the world’s worst nuclear-energy disaster is a thriving experimentation ground for scientists studying the long-term impacts of radiation. This week, 40 years after the meltdown, we investigate what that laboratory has found so far.

Guests and hosts:

• Jason Palmer, host of “The Intelligence” podcast
• Olena Pareniuk of the Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants
• Jim Smith of the University of Portsmouth
• Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Chernobyl nuclear disaster
• Nuclear safety
• Radiation physics

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

The universe—and everything inside it—shouldn’t exist. The big bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and their mutual annihilation should have resulted in nothing more than a sprawling ball of energy. But, in fact, the universe is dominated by matter, while antimatter is vanishingly rare. To try to understand why, physicists have taken antimatter on a road trip—for the first time in history.

Guests and hosts:

• Sam Wikeley, The Economist’s science correspondent
• April Cridland of CERN’s antimatter factory
• Stefan Ulmer of HHU Düsseldorf and CERN’s BASE experiment
• Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Antimatter
• The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN)
• Particle physics

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

The AI race is intensifying. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, according to Demis Hassabis, the boss of Google DeepMind. Journalist and biographer Sebastian Mallaby has had unprecedented access to Mr Hassabis over the past three years. In this episode, he tells us how the AI pioneer was swept into a commercial and geopolitical contest that he never expected. Can Mr Hassabis’s aim of safely building artificial superintelligence still be achieved?

Guests and hosts:

• Sebastian Mallaby, author of “The Infinity Machine”
• Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Demis Hassabis and Google DeepMind
• AI safety and regulation
• China’s open-source AI industry

Watch The Economist’s recent interview with Demis Hassabis on “Inside Tech” here.

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Imagine if a single vaccine could protect against a vast array of pathogenic threats. Recent research suggests that a universal vaccine to fend off respiratory viruses, bacterial infections—even allergens—might become a reality. Such jabs would be vital for blunting the impact of the next pandemic.

Guests and hosts:

• Ainslie Johnstone, The Economist’s data and science correspondent
• Mihai Netea of Radboud University Nijmegen
• Pamela Bjorkman of the California Institute of Technology
• Bali Pulendran of Stanford University
• Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Broad-spectrum vaccines
• Immunology
• mRNA technology

Listen to Ainslie’s related reporting on dementia and infections by scrolling back to our March 2025 episode, “Going viral: could infections cause Alzheimer's?”

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

The conflict in Iran has been described as the “first AI war”. But how is artificial intelligence actually being deployed? We examine the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine, which raise some thorny questions about the mechanics and ethics of the future of war.

Guests and hosts:

• Shashank Joshi, defence editor at The Economist
• James Lawson, a director at Helsing
• Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Military technology
• Autonomous weapons
• Artificial intelligence

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

The mechanisms of games are often used to motivate people—from tracking health to scrolling social media feeds and even the way school is graded. But C. Thi Nguyen is worried we’re over-obsessing about keeping score. He wants us to focus more on the things we enjoy doing, rather than letting metrics hijack our lives.

Guests and hosts:

• C. Thi Nguyen, a philosopher at the University of Utah and author of “The Score”
• Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor

Topics covered:

• Games
• Metrics
• Social media

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

The spat between America’s government and Anthropic has some alarming implications. In AI development, it appears speed is being prioritised over safety. Artificial intelligence could not only give bad actors the capabilities to unleash destruction, evidence is building that the models themselves are becoming more capable of deceit. Is a catastrophe imminent?

Guests and hosts:

• Alex Hern, The Economist’s AI writer
• Adam Beaumont, director of Britain’s AI Security Institute (AISI)
• Jade Leung, Chief Technology Officer at AISI
• Alok Jha, host of “Babbage”

Watch Zanny Minton Beddoes, The Economist's editor-in-chief, interview Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s boss, on “The Insider”.

Topics covered:

• Anthropic vs America’s government
• AI safety
• Cyber security

Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.

Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.

For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.