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Making Science with Tom Whipple

Making Science with Tom Whipple

By: The Times
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About this listen

 What connects 200 hand-holding monks, a lump of gold hidden in a beaker, and irradiated cocktails? Welcome to Making Science with Tom Whipple, Science Editor at The Times and Sunday Times. This is the podcast where history, innovation, and the unexpected collide, as we uncover jaw-dropping stories behind the scientific discoveries we take for granted.

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The Times Nature & Ecology Science World
Episodes
  • Islands of Ice and Straw

    Islands of Ice and Straw
    Jun 23 2025
    In this episode of Making Science, Tom Whipple delves into the intriguing science of latent heat and the thermodynamic properties of water - and how this science played a pivotal role in one of the strangest Allied schemes during World War II - a plan to create an 'iceberg aircraft carrier' known as Project Habakkuk.

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    9 mins
  • War, stones and metals!

    War, stones and metals!
    Jun 16 2025

    When the Stone Age met the Bronze Age? It's time for Tom to explore the profound impact of alloys on a clash of Stone and Bronze Age technologies in battle. Who would have thought blending copper and tin would have such an impact on human history! How are alloys created? What properties made them useful? And what transformative role did they play in ancient toolmaking and modern engineering?


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    9 mins
  • Death rays and other would-be inventions!

    Death rays and other would-be inventions!
    Jun 9 2025

    In the first of the series of Making Science, Tom Whipple, Science Editor at the Times, explores the strange history of a 'death ray’ that supposedly promised to change modern warfare forever. In 1924, engineer and inventor Harry Grindell Matthews claimed to have created a beam that could stop an engine, ignite gunpowder, and incapacitate enemy soldiers from up to four miles away. Harry Grindell Matthews never revealed how his technology worked and few had seen the ray in action. So was it true? Perhaps the science of electromagnetic spectrum holds the answer.


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    9 mins

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