Dough - The Future of Flight

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 695 Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Can supersonic air travel make a comeback?

Greg Foot, host of the BBC Radio 4 show 'Sliced Bread', now brings you 'Dough'.

Each episode explores future wonder products that might rise to success and redefine our lives.

Experts and entrepreneurs discuss the trends shaping what today's everyday technology may look like tomorrow, before a leading futurist offers their predictions on what life might be like within five, ten and fifty years.

This episode examines the future of flight.

How could new, supersonic flights not cost the earth? Will your future taxi be a flying one without a pilot? Could a new shape for aeroplanes make them more spacious and efficient?

Alongside Greg is the futurist, Tom Cheesewright, and expert guests Mariya Tarabanovska, an aerospace engineer and the founder of Flight Crowd, a non-profit educational organisation focused on electric aviation and Simon Davies, chief test pilot at Vertical Aerospace, a British aerospace technology company.

This episode was produced by Jay Unger.

Dough is a BBC Audio North Production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio podcasts.
0:07.3	Right, you feeling ready? I'm feeling ready.
0:10.8	I'm Amal Rajin. Join me on my new podcast for in-depth conversations with pioneers and
0:16.0	innovators, talking about the trends and ideas that could help shape and change our future.
0:21.4	We are going to be digital citizens of this AI world, whether we like it or not.
0:26.2	From declining birth rates to disinformation online, can they solve the world's biggest challenges?
0:32.0	What I would love to do is go to the transfer and say radically cut the taxes of those with children.
0:37.3	Radical with me, Amal Rajan.
0:39.3	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:43.2	Hello, I'm Greg Foote and welcome to Doe, the BBC Radio 4 show that explores future
0:48.2	wonder products that might rise to success and redefine our lives.
0:52.1	Each episode, I sit down with entrepreneurs and experts
0:54.8	discuss what today's everyday technology may look like tomorrow. This time, we're discussing
1:00.0	the future of flight, asking whether you might soon be flying faster than the speed of sound.
1:05.6	On a flight fuelled by cooking oil? And will your taxi of the future be a flying one?
1:13.2	My co-pilot for this episode on hand to help me circumnavigate a world of flight facts,
1:18.8	its futurist Captain Tom Cheesewright. Tom, I say that half jokingly, but it wouldn't surprise me
1:25.9	if you have a pilot's license and you secretly fly. I do not yet. Okay. I've not built a plane. I might be tempted to build a jetpack at some point. That'd be cool. Again, if you'd also said it's 3D printed, Greg, I'd be like, yeah, yeah. I mean, of course it is, Tom. Of course it is. I know flight there is something that you're particularly interested in. Absolutely. But you're especially interested in the potential return of supersonic air travel, i.e. flying faster than the speed of sound.
1:52.7	We haven't had commercial supersonic flight since Concord stopped in 2003. Did you ever get a chance to fly on Concord?
2:17.9	This is going to sound strange, but not while it was flying. There is an amazing museum in the south of Germany where they have Concord upon stilts, and it looks like it's taking off, and you can climb aboard and go and sit in it right up to the cockpit, as if you are taking off in Concord, but sadly, no, never while it was flying.
2:21.0	But that's what's got you excited and that's clearly why we're talking about it today.
2:21.5	Absolutely.
	...

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