Iain Stewart is Professor of Geoscience Communication at Plymouth University. What that really means is that he is a geologist that spends much of his time writing and talking about our planet - how it works, its volatile history and what all that means for those living on it.

His work has involved not only looking back millions of years into our past, but trying to work out what we can learn about our future from the inter-relationships between people, places and the environment in our geological history.

Recorded on one of Edinburgh's seven dormant volcanoes, in this episode of Brainwaves Iain Stewart explains how a better understanding of geoscience is far more than just the geology under our feet and how geologists around the world seem to be one lifelong fieldtrip where ever they go. Show less