The Life Scientific: Tim Coulson

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As a young man, traveling in Africa, Tim Coulson - now Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford - became seriously ill with malaria and was told a second bout would probably kill him. Aged only 20, this brush with his own mortality led him to promise himself he would write a complete guide to science: life, the universe and everything. His aim was to understand the existence of all living things - no mean feat!

Over the course of a colourful career, Tim's work has taken him all over the world: including researching wolves in Yellowstone National Park, little fish called guppies in the rivers of Trinidad and silvereye birds on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Using complicated mathematical models he builds up a picture of ecosystems seeking to explain how predators impact both evolution and ecosystems. And finally, more than thirty years after he vowed to write the book that would explain everything we know about science, he's done just that.

In conversation with Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Tim talks about his journey from youthful ambition to science demystifier.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Geraldine Fitzgerald Revised for World Service by Minnie Harrop

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.3	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron.
0:10.5	Evil genius.
0:11.6	He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it.
0:15.5	That's like hiding at your own funeral.
0:17.1	Yeah, a big, great gig.
0:18.6	I'm Russell Kane.
0:19.6	Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius.
0:24.2	Becoming that rich, I'll say that at some level of genius.
0:26.4	It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:29.4	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's
0:33.5	out of ice cream.
0:34.9	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:38.1	Hello, today my guest is someone who's brushed with death from malaria as a young man in Africa
0:43.5	led him to be obsessed not only with his own mortality, but more broadly with how all animals and
0:49.1	plants thrive or die out in nature. Using data collected in the field, Tim Coulson, Professor of Zoology at Oxford
0:56.1	University, develops mathematical models to explain and predict complicated ecosystems, like the
1:03.3	consequences of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, how little fish called
1:08.9	guppies evolve differently in the streams of Trinidad and the
1:12.3	impact of climate change on wild sheep in the outer Hebrides. When the young Tim was recovering
1:18.1	from his bout of malaria, he promised himself that he'd write a complete guide to science. His ambitious
1:24.4	book, A Little History of Everything, from the Big Bang to You, reflects his extraordinary ambition to comprehend the world.
	...

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