Explaining Science to my Dad

Lily has just about recovered from the excitement of the James Webb Space Telescope's first science images, and she's ready for Lloyd's next question: "How can we use a telescope to look for aliens?".

With support from Eva-Maria Ahrer (University of Warwick Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability), Lily helps Lloyd to understand how we use telescopes like JWST to figure out what's in the atmospheres of planets, and what this can tell us about life beyond our solar system.

Credits: Produced by Lily Shepherd. Featuring Eva-Maria Ahrer. Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram).

Lloyd has been trying to eat more vegetables, but he can't stop thinking about cake. Which has got him wondering: why does cake taste so good if it's bad for us?

With help from the king of tasty tomatoes Professor Harry Klee (University of Florida) and author Mark Schatzker (The Dorito Effect, The End of Craving) Lily helps Lloyd to understand what flavour is, what makes food delicious, and why cake isn't actually all that bad for you.

Credits: Produced by Lily Shepherd. Featuring Harry Klee and Mark Schatzker. Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram).

Lloyd's spotted something interesting in the news recently: plastic-eating enzymes. This new method of recycling seems to be a perfect solution to plastic pollution, but could it really transform the way we use and re-use our plastic?

With help from Daniel Acosta (University of Texas Austin), who is a part of the team behind some ground-breaking new research into the enzyme FAST-PETase, Lily guides Lloyd through the fascinating world of enzyme engineering, and helps him to understand how enzymes could change the way we recycle forever.

Credits: Produced by Lily Shepherd. Featuring Daniel Acosta. Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram).

With the reopening of the LHC and the launch of its newest experiment FASER, Lloyd's been reading about dark matter... and he's got questions. What is dark matter? And how on earth do you look for something you can't see?

With help from Dr Michaela Queitsch-Maitland (University of Manchester) and Savannah Shively (University of California Irvine), who both work on FASER, Lily helps Lloyd to understand what dark matter is, how we know it's there, and why we're closer than ever before to figuring out where it comes from.

Credits: Produced by Lily Shepherd. Featuring Nathan Welham. Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram).

Lloyd wants to know why Lily is a better than singing than him, so this episode's question is: "Why can we sing?"

With help from Nathan Welham from the University of Wisconsin Department of Surgery, Lily explains how human beings are able to use their bodies as instruments, and why some of us are just built better for singing than others.

Credits: Produced by Lily Shepherd. Featuring Nathan Welham. Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram).

In this episode, a question from listener Freddie - “What’s heavier, cold water or hot water?” - leads Lily and Lloyd into a discussion about why water is so important for life on Earth. 

With help from Elle Bethune from the UK Centre for Astrobiology, Lily explains how water’s weirdness helped life to form on our planet, and how it could help to create life on other planets in the universe.

Credits: Produced by Lily Shepherd. Featuring Elle Bethune. Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram).

Explaining Science to my Dad is back for a new series! In this episode, Lily answers a puzzling question from listener Shirley about why identical twins are often different. With help from Max, Sergio, and Colette from the Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology, King’s College London, Lily introduces Lloyd to the field of epigenetics, and explains why there might be more to the age-old nature vs. nurture question than we think.

Credits: Produced by Lily Shepherd. Featuring Colette Christiansen, Max Tomlinson, and Sergio Villicana Munoz. Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram).

Our fifth episode deals with Big Heavy Stuff which is actually Really Very Small Stuff, as Lily tries to unpick Lloyd’s confused anxiety about quantum entanglement - the concept that Albert Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’. Lily takes us on a crash course in quantum mechanics with the help of Virginia Ciriano, a PhD student in quantum computing at University College London. 

Credits: Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram)

Our fourth episode starts with Lily and Lloyd standing on a sandbank in the North Sea, having sailed out in an old whelk boat. This sparks a new question from Lloyd - what exactly happened to Doggerland? As usual, the truth is more complicated - and more interesting - than he expected, as Lily explains sea levels, mammoths, sediment and mega-tsunamis with the help of Rachel Bynoe (@rachelbynoe), who has the glorious title of palaeolithic archaeologist at the University of Southampton and studies the submerged archaeology of the North Sea.

Credits: Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram)

Having watched Jurassic Park too many times, Lloyd wonders if it's possible to bring back extinct animals using only their DNA. The truth, as it turns out, is far more complicated, and far more interesting, as Lily explains with the help of Ben Novak, lead scientist at Revive and Restore and head of that organisation's flagship project, The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback.

Credits: Podcast theme written exclusively for us by Ben Vize (@benvizemusic on Instagram)