Alongside all the exhibitors, activities and family-friendly shows, we also take a deep at every festival in our hybrid events. Here are the recordings from the Festival in 2025!
Alongside all the exhibitors, activities and family-friendly shows, we also take a deep at every festival in our hybrid events. Here are the recordings from the Festival in 2025!
The wettest days are wetter than ever in the UK, and the extremes are forecast to get more extreme into the future. Meanwhile we keep building in ways that expose us to more floods, like the ones seen in the past year. On the other hand, weather forecasting is getting better and better at predicting where the next flood will be. But is that enough? We hear from a panel of experts about the challenge of preventing floods in a changing climate, of making the forecasts more useful, and what we can do individually to protect ourselves.
Chaired by Roland Pease
Professor Elizabeth Kendon, Head of Climate Extremes, Met Office Professor
Hannah Cloke, Hydrology, Reading University
Dr Thomas Kjeldsen, Dept of Civil Engineering, Bath University
Join us for a live link up from the Festival of Tomorrow 2025 with Dallas Campbell, who takes us behind the scenes in the brand new Hawking Building at the Science Museum Group’s Science and Innovation Park in Swindon. Home to over 300,000 items – from a towering tramcar to an x-ray telescope – the Hawking Building is transforming public access to our shared scientific heritage. Dallas is joined by Jessica Bradford, the Science Museum’s Head of Collections and Principal Curator on a tour through some of the most remarkable stories under this one gigantic roof. The Science Museum’s Science Director and author, Roger Highfield is live in the room to introduce the session and answer questions.
Join Festival Director, Dr Roderick Hebden, as he quizzes Prof Dame Ottoline Leyser, CEO of UK Research and Innovation on the the UK's plans to Build a Green Future, and Ben McCarthy, Head of Nature Conservation & Restoration Ecology at the National Trust on their new strategy to restore nature. What do they really mean in practice? How will we get there and what difference can the UK make to tackle such huge global challenges?
Advances in satellite technology provide tools to both monitor levels of greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) across the globe and increasingly pinpoint their sources with unprecedented precision. Join us for a panel discussion with leading climate scientists and satellite engineers to explore how state-of-the art sensors and space-based information is reshaping and accelerating the fight against climate change and the urgent shift towards a sustainable, low-carbon future. Chaired by Paul Fisher, Knowledge Exchange Manager, European Space Agency Claire Macintosh - Applications Engineer, European Space Agency Harjinder Sembhi - Lecturer in Earth Observation Science University of Leicester Emily Dowd - researcher at the Centre for Satellite Data in Environmental Science programme, University of Leeds
Asteroid 2024 YR4 may be passing worryingly close to us, or even on a collision course with our moon, but who is keeping watch on these near earth objects? On April 13 2029, Asteroid Apophis will buzz within 32,000 km of Earth. Apophis is not a threat, but a unique chance for astronomers to get a truly up-close view of an asteroid. Lessons could help us prepare defences next time one does come too close. But there is almost no time to get missions prepared to the meet, and maybe land on, the speeding space rock.
Dr Patrick Michel is a member of the International Asteroid Warning Network and is leading the European effort to launch RAMSES (Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety) a year before, to chase the asteroid round the Sun and catch up just before the Earth encounter, and learn how the Earth’s environment affects it, maybe even get a selfie with Apophis behind.
Dr Stefania Soldini, is an associate professor of space engineering who was on the team that deliberately crashed a NASA probe into an asteroid in 2022 as an experiment in space defence. Before that was the remote pilot of a Japanese mission that tracked, landed robots on and brought back samples of another asteroid Ryugu. She’s now designing fleets of tiny cube sats that could assess dangerous asteroids in the future.
Dr Ashley King is a planetary scientist based at London’s Natural History Museum specialising in meteorites and asteroid samples and what they reveal about the origins of the solar system. He was on the team that analysed pieces of the Winchecombe meteorite crashed into the Gloucestershire town in 2021, and recently brought to the Diamond X-ray facility near Oxford, grains from Asteroid Bennu that had been collected by NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission.
Roland Pease is a Swindon-based science journalist and Festival of Tomorrow regular
Dr Stefania Soldini, UKRI Future Leader Fellow at University of Liverpool
Dr Patrick Michel ESA RAMSES, Principal Investigator [live online from Nice, France]
Dr Ashley King, UKRI Future Leader Fellow at Natural History Museum, and Meteorite specialist
Bal and Taj, the dynamic voices behind the Changing Suits Podcast (The Cultural Barrier), bring their personal and professional insights to this live podcast session. Drawing on their experiences of collaborating with the NHS, they’ll discuss the stark healthcare inequalities faced by South Asian and diverse communities.
From breaking the stigma surrounding mental health to increasing awareness about early cancer diagnosis and vaccine hesitancy, Bal and Taj will unpack the cultural and systemic barriers that perpetuate these disparities. Through their journey, they’ve uncovered not only significant gaps within South Asian communities but also troubling shortcomings in the very services designed to support them.
They’ll share powerful personal stories, from their mother facing racial discrimination when attempting to book a simple GP appointment, to their own shocking experience of being told, almost accidentally, that services are tailored for ‘normal’—non-diverse—communities. These real-life examples shine a light on the often-overlooked struggles of South Asians within the healthcare system.
This engaging and eye-opening session will reveal practical solutions, inspire change, and highlight the urgent need for more inclusive healthcare. Join Bal and Taj to break barriers, challenge norms, and be part of the movement toward equity and understanding in healthcare.
Whether it’s pollinating our plants, cleaning up our mess, or (unfortunately!) being dinner for birds, bats and each other, insects do a power of good in our environment. And though for too many of us, their creepy-crawly lifestyle is off putting, experts can see sensational sensory powers, miracles of mechanics, and an otherworldy workforce that keeps our planet ticking over. Join us to be enthralled by their biological superpowers, to appreciate their place in ecology, and to be enthused to help conserve them.
Chaired by Roland Pease, BBC science journalist
Alun Anderson, Ecologist, former New Scientist Editors
Dr Beth Mortimer, Royal Society University Research Fellow, Oxford University
Dr Claire Carvell, Senior Ecologist, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, & leader of the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme
Mysteries of the Antarctic Seas
Half a kilometre under the ice of the Antarctic coast, Dr Autun Purser and colleagues discovered fish protecting eggs in submarine nests over a vast area, 240 sq km of the seafloor. Their specially designed, remotely operated deep-sea sled had triumphed. And the fish nests were only the start. They are returning to the Antarctic ice on the German ice breaker with new kit and are giving the Festival of Tomorrow an exclusive live insight into science at the world’s most remote and vulnerable environment. Expect a guided tour of the ship, too!
Swindon-based science journalist Roland Pease will lead the questions.
Dr Autun Purser, Alfred Wegener Institute [live from Antarctica]
Dr Lisa Chakrabarti, Nottingham University [live from Antarctica]