On the anniversary of the first telegraph being sent, the team discover how the telegraph was used as a colonial tool in Ghana, and how an eccentric Brazilian emperor helped spark a communications revolution. They also reveal how tiny worms have helped scientists work out how our hearing works, and how bioelectricity might help focus your mind and heal your wounds. There’s a tale of evil seaweed causing havoc for coastal communities, a scientist studying misophonia makes a pitch for The Coolest Science in the World, and there’s a listener question about how chickens fly. And Marnie delves into a lesser known history of space flight, with the tale of a Zambian man who dreamt of being an astronaut.

After the elections in Thailand and Turkey, we explore the forces that shape how you decide to vote. Clue: a lot of it comes down to us being social animals. We getting stuck into various sticky subjects – the glue that holds together animal societies, the cells in our bodies and even the International Space Station. We also looking at how the blueprint of the human genome just got a whole load better. Also, join our mission to find the coolest science in the world, with the scientist who explores ocean gases. We have your correspondence and questions, including "How do birds know which perch will work?", and we take a peek inside a world of silicon as we hear how South Korea reacted to the global chip shortage.

Unexpected Elements is all about finding surprising stories and nuggets of science in everyday news. Each week we start by taking a news story that’s floating around and use that as a launchpad for three other science stories that become increasingly unexpected. This week, the team squints at the recent lavish ceremony and ritual of the British King’s coronation and asks: What does it all mean? Why is ritual so important to us humans, and why does it always seem to involve precious objects? That’s where we start - but in this show, our global panel of science journalists can take us to all sorts of places. We’ll be touring the ocean floors with the scientist who wants to map all of them, soaring in the skies of India to discover why one of the country’s biggest birds might be in trouble, and we’re even going off planet to find out about an asteroid with enough gold in it to build a nice shiny house out of the stuff – for every human on Earth.

34 days after it first formed at the far end of the Indian Ocean, record-breaking Cyclone Freddy made a repeat landfall on Mozambique as well as passing over Malawi, causing extensive damage and loss of life. Climate scientists Liz Stephens and Izidine Pinto join Roland to give an update on the destruction and explain how Cyclone Freddy kept going for an exceptionally long time. At the Third International Human Genome Summit in London last week, Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi announced he had created baby mice from eggs formed by male mouse cells. Dr Nitzan Gonen explains the underlying science, whilst Professor Hank Greely discusses the ethics and future prospects. And from one rodent story to another, SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in brown rats scurrying around New York sewers. Dr Thomas DeLiberto from the US Department of Agriculture gives Roland the details. When imagining a robot, a hard-edged, boxy, humanoid figure may spring to mind. But that is about to change. CrowdScience presenter Alex Lathbridge is on a mission to meet the robots that bend the rules of conventionality. Inspired by how creatures like us have evolved to move, some roboticists are looking to nature to design the next generation of machines. And that means making them softer. But just how soft can a robot really be? Join Alex as he goes on a wild adventure to answer this question from listener Sarah. He begins his quest at the ‘Hello, Robot’ Exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany to define what a robot actually is. Amelie Klein, the exhibition curator, states anything can be a robot as long as three specific criteria are met (including a cute cuddly baby seal). With this in mind, Alex meets Professor Andrew Conn from the Bristol Robotics Lab who demonstrates how soft materials like rubber are perfect contenders for machine design as they are tough to break and - importantly for our listener’s question - bendy. Alex is then thrown into a world of robots that completely change his idea of what machines are. He is shown how conventionally ‘hard’ machines are being modified with touches of softness to totally upgrade what they can do, including flexible ‘muscles’ for robot skeletons and silicon-joined human-like hands at the Soft Robotics Lab run by Professor Robert Katzschmann at ETH Zurich. He is then introduced to robots that are completely soft. Based on natural structures like elephant trunks and slithering snakes, these designs give robots completely new functions, such as the ability to delicately pick fruit and assist with search and rescue operations after earthquakes. Finally, Alex is presented with the idea that, in the future, a robot could be made of materials that are so soft, no trace of machine would remain after its use... Image credit: Jack McBrams/Getty Images Producer: Roland Pease Assistant Producer: Sophie Ormiston

We meet experts at the Human Genome Editing Summit in London, seeking to cure genetic disease and ensure that it is safe and available to all. Roland Pease hears from Victoria Gray, the first person to be cured of the debilitating and life-shortening disease sickle cell anaemia by gene editing, and from the scientists making it possible. Also, the prospect of work to attempt gene rescue in fetuses before they are born. But the technology is expensive and complex. The question troubling the participants is to ensure people across the world can benefit from it, not just the rich and privileged. And what are the limitations of gene editing? Can it be made more effective, safer? And what of gene edits that will be inherited by future generations?