The Life Scientific: George Church

Discovery

BBC

Science

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"My ideas are often labelled as impossible, or useless, or both. Usually when people say that I'm on the right track." George Church is a geneticist, molecular engineer, and one of the pioneers of modern genomics. He's also someone who makes a habit of finding solutions to the seemingly impossible. Over the course of his career so far, George developed the first method for direct genomic sequencing, helped initiate the Human Genome Project, and founded the Personal Genome Project: making huge quantities of DNA data publicly available for research. Today, as a professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT, he’s working on some of the most headline-grabbing - and controversial - science on the planet: from the so-called "de-extinction" of woolly mammoths, to growing transplant-suitable organs in pigs, to virus-proofing humans. When inspiration strikes, there seems to be little that will slow him down - even the fact that he has narcolepsy, the neurological disorder that causes sudden sleep attacks. In fact, as George tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili, some of his best ideas come in those moments between waking and sleep...

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts.
0:07.5	It's like going into an ice bath with your hands as the ice.
0:10.8	In 2025, we were here for the entertainment.
0:13.8	Ellis and John.
0:14.9	Have you not considered just coffee, which is what I do?
0:17.6	Sightracked with Annie and Nick.
0:19.4	Stevie Wonder, welcome.
0:37.8	My pleasure. Loyal Carnar is with us. Want to hear all about Glastonbury. And Celebrity Traitors Uncloaked. Welcome to Uncloaked Island. Oh, thanks for having me, Ed. The winner. I know still hasn't sunk in. Get the best of 2025 with podcasts on BBC Sounds. Hello, what if we could bring back the woolly mammoth, not for spectacle, but to help
0:43.5	save the planet, or improve the success rate of transplants by growing human-compatible organs
0:49.4	in pigs? What if everyone in the world could have their genome sequenced as easily as getting a blood
0:54.9	test, so we could spot diseases before they even appear? These ideas might sound like science
1:00.9	fiction, but they're being made reality by today's guest, who makes a habit of finding solutions
1:06.5	to the seemingly impossible. George Church is a geneticist, molecular engineer and one of the
1:12.1	pioneers of modern genomics. A professor at Harvard Medical School and MIT, he developed the
1:18.2	first method for direct genomic sequencing, helped initiate the human genome project, and
1:24.1	founded the personal genome project, making huge quantities of DNA data publicly available for research.
1:31.5	Today he's working on some of the most headline-grabbing and often controversial science on the planet,
1:37.2	from de-extinction to virus-proof humans to slowing down aging.
1:41.9	Clearly he's not a man to be slowed down himself,
1:46.7	not even by the fact that he has narcolepsy,
1:50.3	the neurological disorder that causes sudden sleep attacks.
1:52.9	In fact, George says some of his best ideas come in the moments between waking and sleep.
	...

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