Brain Train Podcast

This episode, killer robot designer James Coglan wants to know whether he can harness the power of insect intelligence to carry out his evil plans. Elli Leadbeater from Royal Holloway University stalls for time until the cops arrive.

Brain Train driver Alice Bell steps aside and hands her whistle over, as our new co-host, museums polymath Rachel Souhami, steps up to the plate. It’s like when The Doctor regenerates.

In her inaugural episode, Rachel asks programmer James Coglan whether computers are going to kill us all, and host Martin Zaltz Austwick worries about robots kicking down his door.

On the eve of the Scottish Referendum, (thoroughly) modern historian Charlotte Riley ask pure mathematician Chris Good about the fairness of voting systems, host Alice Bell steers them onto sewage, badgers and her aunts, and Chris wonders aloud whether he'll ever see a locally compact first countable Dowker Space in ZFC his lifetime. There is literally something for everyone.

This episode, tenancy lawyer Justin Bates asks Charlotte Riley why cold war USA and USSR came together to condemn Britain in 1956 over an Egyptian canal. What happened next may surprise you*.

Alice Bell hosts and writes clickbait tweets.

*she provided a really fascinating explanation of the Suez crisis

Caitjan Gainty is guided by housing lawyer Justin Bates through the tangled wreckage that once was tenants' rights in England and Wales. Brain train engineer Martin Zaltz Austwick cracks his knuckles loudly on-mic and nibbles bourbons despondently.

This episode artist Camilla Sutherland diagnoses the state of American health insurance with medical historian Caitjan Gainty, in a touching and personal story of baby scans and economics.