You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

Thank you for downloading the Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4.

Hello, my guest today has a love of language,

from the simplicity and clarity of a mathematical equation

to the beauty of a Keats poem.

Sunetra Gupta is a researcher and a novelist,

but she says she doesn't see a division between arts and science,

only different ways to express ideas.

As a professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, she studies mathematical

models to explain how infectious disease, such as HIV, malaria and flu evolve, which could lead to the

development of new vaccines.

And Sinatra has written five novels, one of which was long listed for the Orange Prize.

She also translates the work of the Bengali poet Togor.

Welcome, Senetra.

...