Current Thinking: Helen Czerski's Hay Festival appearance broadcast on BBC Radio 4

Gresham College's Professor of the Environment, Helen Czerski, took to the stage at the recent Hay Festival for a deep dive into the world of oceans.

She was joined on stage by interviewer Tom Whipple and plankton specialist Vincent Doumeizel for a 25-minute discussion about the importance of oceans as the engine of life for the planet.

As you’d expect for a literary festival, the conversation turned around their respective books: Helen’s Blue Machine, winner of the Wainwright Prize for Conservation Writing; and Vincent’s The Power of Plankton, shortlisted for the 2026 Taste of Science Prize.

Helen explained how the tide turned on her career as a physicist with her research now focused on the physics of breaking waves and bubbles at the ocean surface. She revealed two pet hates. First when the Gulf Stream is wrongly used to describe the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).  The second is when commentators say we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about Earth's oceans.

The interview, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Inside Science programme on May 28, is now available on BBC Sounds.

Earlier this year Helen presented a six-part lecture series at Gresham College looking at the interconnected systems that make our planet habitable. Browse below.