Petites histoires de sciences

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The French Academy of Sciences launches its first podcast series in partnership with Canal Académies. At the microphone, Étienne Ghys, one of its two perpetual secretaries.


 

31.10.2025
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Petites histoires de sciences

Petites histoires de science is a weekly podcast from the French Academy of Sciences devoted to the great scientific adventures that have shaped the way we understand the world. In fifteen minutes, each episode explores a historical episode, a discovery, a controversy or a character, always with a concern for clarity and context.

These stories are aimed at a curious audience, with no technical prerequisites, but eager to go beyond received ideas. For science is neither a series of fixed truths, nor a simple catalog of results: it is a patient, collective and often conflicting construction, made up of errors, debates, experiments and revisions.

Through the history of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geophysics, computer science, ecology, climatology and Earth sciences, this podcast proposes to understand how knowledge is made, how it circulates, and why it deserves to be defended with rigor and humility.

Each season tackles a specific theme, broken down into several complementary episodes, to show science "in the making", in all its human, cultural and intellectual richness.

"I like to talk about science and give a voice to those who do it, in France or elsewhere, but also to those who are interested in it, who use it or who work with scientists. The themes will be chosen according to the people I meet, current events, the questions I'm asked, the discussions and conferences I attend, and whatever piques my curiosity."

Etienne Ghys à la bibliothèque de l'Institut de France, en mars 2025. © Académie des sciences/Mathieu Baumer
Etienne Ghys Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences

"The Shape of the Earth "series

How do we know that the Earth is round? That it turns on itself? Why was it thought to be flat in the Middle Ages? How did scientists measure the dimensions of our planet, sometimes under extreme conditions?
 
This season of Petite histoire de science is devoted to one of history's greatest scientific adventures: the gradual discovery of the Earth's true shape. Through a series of episodes, we explore the ancient proofs of the globe's roundness, the great measurement campaigns of the XVIIᵉ and XVIIIᵉ centuries, Maupertuis's expeditions to Lapland, Arago's adventure, the birth of the metric system, and the contributions of modern geophysics.
 
We'll see how the shape of the Earth became a scientific, political and geopolitical issue, at the crossroads of astronomy, physics, mathematics and navigation. We'll also follow debates between scientists, rivalries between nations, and advances in instrumentation.
 
This season accompanies the exhibition organized jointly by the Académie des sciences and the Royal Society, on show at the Bibliothèque Mazarine from March 31. It extends, in audio form, this plunge into three centuries of science and exploration.
 
At a time when doubts and misconceptions about our planet are still circulating, this season invites us to understand how, step by step, mankind has learned to measure the Earth - and, through it, to better situate itself in the universe.