Extremes

Pioneering medical scientist Dr Kevin Fong shows how our exploration of the physical world has run in parallel with advances in our understanding of the human body’s capacities and limits. But can human exploration go much further?

RSA Thursday

A century has passed since Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica.  In the intervening hundred years we have redefined the way we explore and how we see our survival.

Our exploration of the physical world has run in parallel with advances in our understanding of the human body through the study of physiology and medicine. Together these have allowed us to extend across the globe, beyond our deepest oceans and highest mountain peaks; on into the endless frontier of space.

In ten short decades we have taken much of what was once routinely fatal and made it survivable.  Life has never been longer lived, never safer. 

Pioneering medical scientist and broadcaster Dr Kevin Fong visits the RSA to ask: with the space shuttle in retirement, has human exploration has reached its limits? What has the exploration of the past century taught us and how we might continue To Boldly Go? 

Speaker: Dr Kevin Fong, doctor of medicine, honorary senior lecturer in physiology at University College London and Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Fellow.

Chair: Alok Jha, science correspondent, The Guardian.