Create the Future

Over decades of space exploration, thousands of rockets have launched, resulting in a sea of debris circling the Earth. It's estimated that there are 30,000 objects over 10 cm, 500,000 marble-sized debris, and 100 million smaller than that.Episode host Anna Ploszajski bravely goes into the unknown, in conversation with:Mike Lindsay, Chief Technology Operator at Astroscale, a start-up seeking to make space more sustainable by pioneering clean-up tech.Hugh Lewis, Professor of Astronautics at the University of Southampton.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find podcast transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.

When you have your morning shot of caffeine, do you stop to savour the engineering involved? Chemistry and mechanics are vital to the growing, roasting, grinding, brewing, and pouring ...Host Guru Madhavan - a tea drinker by trade - chairs a caffeinated conversation with:Professor Tonya Kuhl, chemical engineer and Co-Director of the UC David Coffee Center.Professor Jonathan Morris, author of Coffee. A Global History and host of the A History of Coffee podcast.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find podcast transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.

First described in sci-fi writing in the '50s, the revolutionary dream of 3D printing became a basic reality in the 1980s. One field that is truly has transformed today is that of assistive tech and prosthetics.Host Roma Agrawal is joined by:Willy Allègre, biomedical R&D engineer at Electronic Lab of Kerpape Rehabilitation Center.Enzo Romero, inventor and researcher building prosthetics that incorporate haptic feedback.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find podcast transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.The 2025 Create the Trophy Competition is now open! The competition gives young people aged 14-24 the opportunity to get involved, testing their design skills using the latest in 3D-design technology. 

It's been a year of elections around the world. How do engineering and design choices affect the candidates running and results generated in our elections? And why do we have far more channels to rate our Uber drivers than we do our politicians?Host Guru Madhavan chairs a political summit with:Charles E. Phelps, provost emeritus of the University of Rochester and expert in health economics.Eswaran Subrahmanian, research professor at Carnegie Mellon University and expert in decision support systems.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find podcast transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.

Super shoes are reshaping distance running. Thanks to innovative materials and construction, this new type of footwear is engineered to help runners go quicker with less effort. So how fast can we go in the future? And is it cheating?!Ready? Set ... Go! Host Roma Agrawal races through a fascinating conversation with:Jared Ward, long distance runner, Olympian, and BYU professor.Wouter Hoogkamer, researcher at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies human locomotion and biomechanics.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find podcast transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.

Stronger than steel, more robust than concrete, more flexible than wood? Is bamboo the construction industry's new miracle material. And do bamboo buildings really perform better in earthquakes?Host George Imafidon constructs a fascinating conversation with Seb Kaminski, a structural engineering specialising in bamboo and seismic design.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find episode transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.

How might flocks of birds, nests of ants, and swarms of bees influence the future behaviour and self-organisation of robots? Welcome to the world of swarm engineering, where sci-fi meets bio-mimicry.George Imafidon hosts a soaring conversation with Dr. Razanne Abu-Aisheh, a robot swarms expert from Bristol University.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find episode transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.

Robotic spacecrafts? Manned missions to Mars? Affordable tourist trips to the stars? New life found? What is the likely future of space flight?Host Guru Madhavan pilots a soaring, speculative conversation with:Charles F. Bolden Jr., who in 2009 was appointed NASA Administrator by President Obama, making him only the second astronaut to hold that position.Professor Dava Newman, aerospace engineer, director of the MIT Media Lab, and holder of the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics chair at MIT.New episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find podcast transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.

Could the creation of reversible glue unlock a new future for the way we recycle plastic bottles and their labels?Host George Imafidon gets stuck into a sticky conversation about glue with:Professor Mark Geoghegan, Roland Cookson Professor of Engineering Materials at Newcastle UniversityDr Adriana Sierra Romero, a nanotechnologist with a focus on polymer and polymer nanocompositesNew episodes - conversations about how to rebuild the world better - every other Friday.Find episode transcripts on our website.Follow @QEPrize on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more.