We Didn't Start the Fire

Curious Cases

BBC

Technology, Science

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It has been said that you can't start a fire without a spark, but as Hannah and Dara are about to discover, that's not true!

Welcome to the fiery phenomenon of spontaneous combustion, when something can ignite all on its own: no matches, no sparks, no external flame. It happens when certain materials heat themselves up internally through chemical or biological reactions, and if that carried on unchecked and the material gets hot enough, it can eventually ignite itself.

This process can occur in various everyday items such as piles of hay or grass clippings, oily rags and in certain instances lithium batteries; but there are also several useful chemical substances that autoignite when they come into contact with air - as Hannah, Dara and a wary BBC fire officer witness in the studio...

So how can we stop things regularly bursting into flames? How scared should we be about oiling floorboards and our increasingly battery-powered life? And is spontaneous human combustion really a thing? Our investigators are on the case.

To submit your question to the Curious Cases team, please email: [email protected]

Contributors: - Andrea Sella, Professor of inorganic chemistry at University College London - Emanuel ‘Big Manny’ Wallace, former science teacher now a science content creator - Matt Oakley, fire investigations officer at Surrey Fire and Rescue Service - Roger Byard, Emeritus Professor of pathology at the University of Adelaide and a senior specialist forensic pathologist at Forensic Science SA (FSSA)

Producer: Lucy Taylor Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem

A BBC Studios Production

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 bit 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. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:41.0	You're about to listen to a brand new episode of Curious Cases.
0:43.9	Shows are going to be released weekly, wherever you get your podcast.
0:48.6	But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes first on BBC Sounds.
0:53.2	I'm Hannah Fry.
1:11.7	And I'm Dara O'Brien. And this is Curious Cases. The show will we take your quirkiest questions? Your crudious conundrums. And then we solve them. With the power of science. I mean, do we always solve them? I mean, the hit rate's pretty low. But it is with science. It is with science. Look, I have a problem.
1:13.2	Tell me. You know, I think, and I've been very quiet about this for the last two years
1:17.0	we've been doing this show. Good of you. That when the approach is made for me to come in here,
1:21.0	the title sort of promised some... Curious cases? Yeah, I mean...
1:24.7	What were you expecting? Well, I was expecting more like,
1:45.8	What mysterious secrets does the universe? Like in Arthur C. Clark's mysterious world, in 1970s, here's some grainy footage of a Yeti. I thought that we'd be out looking for alien life and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're like, curious, weird things. Crop circles, that sort of thing. Yeah, and I've been very good at me sitting here talking to all these esteemed scientists and it's really interesting.
1:46.8	But you wanted supernatural.
1:48.0	My God. Yeah, yeah. We're like curious, weird things. Crop circles, that sort of thing. Yeah, and I've been very good at me sitting here talking to all these esteemed scientists
1:45.8	and really interesting.
1:46.8	But you wanted supernatural.
	...

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