EXCLUSIVE: Professor Hannah Fry and Vsauce creator Michael Stevens are teaming to host the new podcast in Goalhanger‘s Rest is… franchise.
Launching in a week’s time on November 25, video-first show The Rest is Science will explore big ideas and surprising questions twice a week.
Every Tuesday, they’ll go deep dive into a single topic to explore the science and history behind it, while a Thursday ‘Field Notes’ episode will see a curious object begin a journey through the ideas it represents.
Clips on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube shorts will be interspersed between episodes, and a partnership with Cancer Research UK will see the charity provide monthly insights, which Fry and Stevens will explore further.
The series joins the suite of Rest is… podcasts at Gary Lineker, Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport’s Goalhanger, sitting alongside the likes of The Rest is Classified, The Rest is Politics, The Rest is Entertainment, The Rest is History and The Rest is Football. Goalhanger exited TV production a year ago to focus on its booming podcasting business, which recently surpassed one billion lifetime streams and has made more than 70 million full episode downloads.
Episode one of The Rest is Science will see Fry and Stevens exploring whether water is actually ‘wet’ and how minerals shape its taste. They’ll also look into the planet’s vanishingly small supply of drinkable water, the dangers of over-hydration and the substance’s cosmic origins.
Further episodes will look at whether humans are still evolving in the era of texting and supermarkets, why we cry and assess whether skyscrapers could be built with mushrooms, explore a Scottish island that powers itself entirely off-grid and how moths navigate using stars.
Here’s the trailer.
Fry is a British mathematician, broadcaster and Professor for the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge known for her sassy, witty and warm presenting style and ability to explain complex subjects in digestible form. She has fronted shows such as the BBC’s science program The Secret Genius of Modern Life and Bloomberg’s The Future with Hannah Fry. Her new series, Nat Geo and Bloomberg’s The Infinite Explorer launched this year, and she is developing a doc on AI for the BBC, which will launch next year.
Stevens, meanwhile, is an American educator, inventor and the creator and host of Vsauce, the YouTube science and education channels that have accumulated 24 million subscribers and over six billion views. He has extensively toured Brain Candy Live, a stage show he created with MythBusters‘ Adam Savage, and is a co-founder of The Curiosity Box, a subscription science and maths toys business.
“We wanted to make a show that takes familiar ideas and turns them inside out – breaking them down and looking so closely that they start to feel almost unrecognisable,” said Fry. “Science is full of things we think we understand – time, randomness, beauty, evolution – until you actually start to question them. Then you realise how strange, fragile, and completely astonishing reality really is.”
Stevens added: “With The Rest Is Science, we wanted to go beyond pop science and maths – to dig into the kinds of details that usually get skipped over. I’ve always been fascinated by that space between what we know and what we think we know. That’s where curiosity really lives, and that’s the space this show explores.”
Davenport, co-founder at Goalhanger, said the series “signals what’s next for Goalhanger – video-first storytelling, global talent, and ambitious ideas built to travel. It caps off our biggest year yet, expanding across formats, audiences, and partnerships, and sets the tone for where we’re heading next – all the while reaching record audiences across our shows.”
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