Programmes in the series are available online after broadcast – visit the Material World website, choose the programme, and click on the 'listen again' link near the top of the second column.

The following programmes were co-productions with The Open University:

A trip to Chesil Beach can reveal details about the surface of Titan. Listen again to 28th November 2008

What are we learning from a thirty-year research project on Mount Etna? Listen again to 20th November 2008

How do we research the sounds made by animals too small to see, too small to hear? Listen again to 9th October 2008

The psychology summer school provides a starting point for wide-ranging explorations of human behaviour. Listen again to 30th August 2007

How do you set about carrying out environmental research? Listen again to 23rd August 2007

A trip to Staithes in North Yorkshire takes Quentin back 150 Million Years. Listen again to 16th August 2007

Quentin Cooper travels to Bristol to meet OU students working with robots. Listen again to 9th August 2007

The Summer School in York was the the location for a debate on the future of chemistry in British universities. Listen again to 17th August 2006

Recorded at an Open University Summer School at the Sussex University Falmer campus, Quentin Cooper and guests ask if a scientific education is really worth it. Listen again to 10th August 2006

Quentin Cooper met with students attending an Open University Summer School on the Heriot-Watt campus. Listen again to 3rd August 2006

The Material World presented a special edition to mark Interdepdence Day at the Royal Geographical Society. Listen again to 6th July 2006

Quentin Cooper came to the Open University campus in Milton Keynes to ask if we're at risk from a collision with a Near Earth Object – and what we can do if we are. Listen again to 5th January 2006

Do we know enough about the chemicals in 'natural' botanical cures to make the best of them – or are we putting ourselves at risk? Listen again to 29th December 2005

As the world's population expands, so does demand for potable water. How can that demand be met? Listen again to 22nd December 2005

Recorded at the Centre for Life in Newcastle, an audience debate considers the risks and possibilities of gene therapy and stem cell research – and the ethics. Listen again to 15th December 2005

Organic food is great – but can we feed the billions on the planet without some intensive farming? And will climate change make some genetic modification inevitable? Listen again to 8th December 2005

Grey goo or a universal cure-all? Press coverage of nanotechnology tends to veer between one extreme and the other; you can rely on The Material World to balance the debate. Listen again to 1st December 2005

The first in a series of debates organised by The Material World and the OU saw an audience at the British Association Festival of Science focused on climate change and food security. Listen again to 8th September 2005

Content last updated: 17/07/2006

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