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Coronation exploration

Following King Charles III's lavish coronation ceremony, we ask why ritual is so important to humans, and why it often seems to involve precious objects.

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.

Available now

51 minutes

Last on

Sun 14 May 2023 19:06GMT

Broadcasts

  • Thu 11 May 2023 09:06GMT
  • Thu 11 May 2023 23:06GMT
  • Sun 14 May 2023 00:06GMT
  • Sun 14 May 2023 19:06GMT

Podcast