We’re delighted to announce we are one of the livestream venues for this year’s CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution. Running for almost 200 years, the CHRISTMAS LECTURES were started by Michael Faraday to inspire and engage young people with science, and this year Practising NHS doctor and leading science presenter Chris van Tulleken will delve deep inside our bodies to explore how the food we eat has a fundamental impact on our own health and that of our planet.

This event is perfect for all the family! Children and people of all ages can come and watch the magic of the Lectures unfold in real time as they’re filmed in front of an audience in the Ri’s Theatre in London. They’ll have the chance to get involved with hands-on activities and be the first to learn the truth about food before the 2024 CHRISTMAS LECTURES are broadcast on BBC Four and iPlayer in late December.

Chris will investigate how food has fundamentally shaped human evolution, uncovers the importance of our microbiome – as the extra ‘organ’ we didn’t know we had – and asks how we can all eat better in future, for the sake of our own health and the health of the planet.

The lectures will include fact-fueled demos, special guest appearances, festive food hacks, and a healthy dose of self-experimentation. From tastebuds to toilet, we’ll find out what happens in the body when we eat. How we eat with our eyes (green eggs and ham anyone?) and how smell and even sound can affect the taste of our food.  

Chris will take us on a journey to the centre of his gut as he swallows a camera-pill to unpack the digestion process at every saliva-soaked step. He’ll reveal how we transform food into fuel – and into the building blocks of life – and how our digestive systems match up to those of our animal relatives. We will find out how many stomachs a cow really has, and why platypuses have no stomach at all. Chris will venture into the amazing world of the human gut microbiome and ask who’s really in charge: us or our microbe passengers? 

Chris will reveal how he believes we can repair this broken relationship with food – investigating what we should be eating and joining forces with expert chefs and scientists of all kinds to cook up some weird and wonderful sustainable future foods in the Ri Theatre. 

Featuring animal, as well as human guests, this year’s lectures will provide plenty of surprises, shocks and some truly gross moments. And there’ll be startling facts to chew over about how our modern food is made and what it’s doing to our bodies.