Explain that Stuff

Today we discover how atoms vibrating 9,192,631,770 times a second can help us tell time. Welcome to the wonderful world of radio-controlled, atomic clocks!

From HAL and "Speak & Spell" to Siri, and Alexa, we look at how speech synthesizers work... and why they still don't work perfectly!

Is there still a place for the lone genius inventor - the Edison, Ford, Tesla, or Marconi? Or is invention now solely the province of giant corporations like Apple, IBM, and DuPont?

Hurrah, the Olympics is nearly here! From springy pole vaulters and leaping long jumpers to spinning ice skaters and slippery swimmers, we're going to take a quick tour through the surprising science behind sport!

Let's zip back over two and half thousand years to understand the sparky story of electricity, from Thales and Aristotle to Edison, Marconi, and James Clerk Maxwell!

How goes a gecko stick to the ceiling... why doesn't glue stick to the tube? Today, I'm exploring adhesive and cohesive forces and trying not to come unstuck as I explore the sticky science of glues.

Can you feel the force? Maybe it's gravity - the tingling attraction between everything in the Universe and everything else. Where does it come from? What causes it? How near are we to understanding it?

From anatomy to abnormality, we compare nature's finest marvel (the human brain) with the best that humans have so far produced (the electronic computer). How are they similar and how are they different? Is the Net becoming increasingly brain-like? Will it ever become conscious and self-aware?

What is intelligence and, if it's such an essential part of being human, can we ever really hope to build an "intelligent machine"? What are the different kinds of AI? What's the difference between old-style AI and new-style machine learning? How will we know when we've built a machine that is truly intelligent?

A two-minute introduction to the podcast!