You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

Thank you for downloading the Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4.

Scarcely a week goes by when Professor Dame Sally Davis isn't in the news. As chief medical officer, she advises the government on diverse issues,

antimicrobial resistance, mental health and of course more recently Ebola.

She's the first woman to fill the post and the first chief medical officer to be made a

fellow of the Royal Society earlier this year. Dame Sally works tirelessly to

put scientific evidence at the

at the heart of government decisions that affect our health and it's this quest for

evidence that has shaped much of her career. As Director General for

research and development at the Department of Health, she seized the chance to

overhaul health research in the National Health Service.

It was a hugely controversial move and one that others had tried to achieve and failed. But she stuck to her guns and the National

Institute for Health Research which she created is now the envy of the world.

Sally's influence extends far beyond our shores.

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