Uncharted with Hannah Fry

2008, Hungary: a researcher stands on a factory floor quizzing a bemused employee. The tile manufacturing company is in trouble, and the researcher is there to help. But his questions seem silly: Who do you go to for advice? Who do you chat to?

What use is the science of networks to a company producing floor tiles?

Hannah Fry tells a tale about the precarious power of networks.

Episode Producer: Ilan Goodman Sound Design: Jon Nichol...

Life has its ups and downs, its sudden successes and unexpected obstacles. But amongst all the unpredictable variation, two economists believe they have identified a deep and powerful influence on our happiness: age. Happiness, it turns out, is U shaped.

Hannah Fry tells a tale of orangutans, joy and misery…and joy!

Presenter: Hannah Fry Executive Producer: Martin Smith Series Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter Episode Producer: Ilan...

Thomas Herndon was happily studying economics at the University of Massachusetts, when one day is punctured by a discovery. It appears to be an anomaly which, if true, will shake the intellectual foundations of a global movement, and could undermine politicians around the world.

Hannah Fry tells the extraordinary story of a student who will go head to head with two of the greatest economic minds in modern times. But can he win?

Epis...

How well do you make decisions?

It’s never easy, but today John Carter is faced with an agonising choice and has just 60 minutes to make the right call. One path could lead to glory, while the other might result in death.

Hannah Fry tells a tale of risk, decision making, and the single graph that changed it all.

Episode Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter Sound Design: Jon Nicholls Story Editor: John Yorke

A series for Radio 4 by BBC S...

Singapore, 2016. A high-tech driverless train system starts glitching in wild and unpredictable ways. The train company, the government, even the military are at a loss: no-one can figure out what is causing the problem. Until Jason Bay and his team of data scientists assemble an old-fashioned timetabling graph, first developed in 19th century France, which exposes an invisible culprit.

Behind every line on a graph, there lies an ex...

It’s a hot summer’s day in 1998. Two couples stand side by side in a small courtyard. Brought together by chance, they may never have met if not for one thing. A tatty piece of paper, the contents of which will change their lives, and the lives of thousands across the country, forever.

Hannah Fry tells the tale of this single sheet of A4 uncovered a dark pattern and a serial murderer hiding in plain sight.

A warning for sensitive l...

In 1998, the climate scientist Michael Mann published a simple graph shaped like an ice hockey stick: a long straight line which curves suddenly upward at the end. It was based on decades of intrepid work by scientists around the world. But the line held a stark warning. For Michael, notoriety, abuse and a global battle over the reality of climate change followed. Hannah Fry tells the remarkable story of the people behind the h...

It’s 1973 and the UK is in crisis: runaway inflation, industrial strike action and political turmoil. Unnoticed at the time - in hospitals and front rooms around the country - something odd is happening with the country’s newborns. A higher proportion of boys are being born than ever before in the 20th Century. What was behind this puzzling trend?

Hannah Fry follows one researcher’s obsessive mission to unravel the mystery.

Episode...