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How did President Trump transform science in 2025?

2025 was the year Trump’s government shook up science. Can the USA still call itself a science superpower? And learning from Finland on where to put our nuclear waste.

This week President Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget announced that a major climate research centre would be broken up. 2025 has brought a wave of reorganisations and funding cuts, reshaping the ways science is done in the USA. Veteran science journalist Roland Pease tells us whether we’re starting to see the impacts.

Victoria Gill gets a subterranean tour of Finland’s new nuclear waste disposal facility. It’s the first country in the world to get one and the UK are interested in learning how they did it. Victoria is also joined by science journalist Caroline Steel to talk about this week in science research.

And 40 years ago, Dian Fossey was murdered at her home in Rwanda where she had spent decades studying mountain gorillas. Gilly Forrester, Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Sussex talks about why the data collected from Dian’s ‘gorillas in the mist’ continues to shape science today.

To discover more fascinating science content, head to bbc.co.uk search for BBC Inside Science and follow the links to The Open University.

Presenter: Victoria Gill
Producers: Clare Salisbury, Kate White and Tim Dodd
Editor: Martin Smith
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

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27 minutes

Last on

Christmas Eve 202505:04
BBC Radio 4

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