Instant Genius

A late summer sunset, a peaceful, verdant forest, or a Shakespearean sonnet – these are all things that move us emotionally thanks to what we perceive as their beauty. But why is this so, why do environments, art, music, and even ideas move us so emotionally?

In this episode, we’re joined by Prof Nicholas Humphrey, an evolutionary psychologist and author, to talk about his latest book, Why Is the World So Beautiful? Our Minds in Search of Nature’s Rhymes.

He tells us how our sense of beauty is likely linked to our evolutionary tendency to seek out the patterns found in nature, why the appreciation of beauty seems to be unique to humans, and explains how our sense of beauty is anchored in the way that we try to understand the world we live in.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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Whenever we buy a new product or use a service, we simply expect it to work as advertised, usually without giving much thought to how it came to being in the first place. However, behind the scenes, every piece of technology we use, be it a toaster, a lawnmower or even the aeroplane we travel in when we head off on our holidays, has gone through a rigorous series of tests to ensure its safety and efficacy. This often-overlooked aspect of our everyday existence is carried out by test engineers.

In this episode we’re joined by tech journalist and author Alex Davies to talk about his latest book, How to Keep a Plane in the Sky – Tales from the Wild, Unseen World of Test Engineering.

He tells us how engineers design the products we rely on to perform well beyond any expected limits of use, how they build in safeguards to account for almost every eventuality and the great lengths they go to to account for human unpredictability.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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Currently, around one in ten of us are living with asthma. For many, the symptoms can be relatively mild, but for others, attacks can be severe, debilitating, and even life-threatening. For the most part, we’ve relied on the same method of treatment to manage the condition for the last few decades. However, new research is showing great promise in helping those who suffer from this often-overlooked condition.

In this episode, we’re joined by Dr Samantha Walker, director of research at Asthma + Lung UK.

She tells us how asthma occurs in several different forms, why we still have so much to learn about the root causes of asthma, and how new technology can help us to treat this often-misunderstood condition more effectively.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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These days, supermarket shelves are filled with thousands of different products all vying for our attention; the options are almost endless. However, if we look back in time, we find that our early ancestors simply ate what they were able to hunt and gather and eventually farm. Thanks to the huge number of options we now have available, many of us choose to follow diet plans of various kinds, be it veganism, low-fat, low-carb, or the paleo diet, but what can we learn from evolutionary history about what we should really be eating if we want to live longer, healthier lives?

In this episode we’re joined by Prof Daniel Lieberman, an author and evolutionary biologist based at Harvard University, to talk about his latest book, Fed Up – What Evolution Reveals about Food, Diet and Eating Well.

He tells us why many of us find it so difficult to eliminate certain foodstuffs from our diets over the long-term, how humans evolved to store more body fat than other mammals, and why the good news is that humans are perhaps nature’s ultimate omnivores.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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Though often thought of as the poor cousin to our other senses, our sense of smell has played a key role in human life since its very beginnings. It helps us to determine whether certain foods are safe to eat, protects us from environmental dangers such as fire, mould and toxic chemicals, and has even been weaponised for use as a form of racial or economic discrimination. Without it, the world would be a vastly different place.

In this episode we’re joined by Dr William Tullett, an historian and author based at the University of York, to talk about his new book, Sniff – A History of Smells.

He tells us how advances in technology over the last several centuries have resulted in significant impacts on the odours that pervade our everyday lives, how many of us would rather give up our sense of smell than our phones, and explains how we can all reconnect with our sense of smell to widen our experience of the world we live in.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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The possibility that we may be living in a simulation created by a more technologically advanced civilisation has occupied the minds of scientists, philosophers and fiction writers for decades. We may never be able to satisfactorily answer this question, but perhaps the best way of investigating its feasibility is by looking at how we might go about creating a simulation universe ourselves.

In this episode we’re joined by Prof Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, who investigates this question in her new book, How to Design a Universe – The Science of Real and Virtual Worlds, the royalties of which will be given to the Royal Observatory Trust, which supports astronomy youth projects across Scotland.

She tells us what our current knowledge tells us about the way that the universe operates, explains why we’d need an enormous amount of computing power to generate a simulation universe, and investigates the question of why we, or a more advanced civilisation, might attempt to do this in the first place.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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Often in life, we find ourselves being accused of being lazy or accusing others of acting lazily, or maybe even becoming frustrated by what we see as laziness in our own actions. But what do we really mean by the term laziness, why is it viewed as a taboo that transcends cultures, and what effect does considering ourselves or others lazy have on our mental health?

In this episode, we’re joined by Prof Katrien Devolder, an ethicist based at the University of Oxford and research leader of Project Lazy.

She tells us about the different ways we view laziness in ourselves and others, why working smarter and more efficiently is often misconstrued as laziness, and the impact AI is having on our views of laziness.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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No matter how gently or politely we live our lives, at one point or another, it’s inevitable that we’ll find ourselves in a situation in which we disagree with another person and find ourselves having to defend our opinion or perspective. For many of us, these situations are hugely uncomfortable, perceived as destructive, and are to be avoided at almost all costs. Why is this, could interpersonal conflicts actually be useful and even healthy in the maintaining of relationships, and what can we do to better negotiate the heated situations we sometimes find ourselves in?

In this episode, we’re joined by dialogue facilitator and author Priya Parker to talk about her latest book, The Art of Fighting.

She talks us through some of the common situations that are likely to trigger conflict and disagreement, explains the profound effects conflict can have on group dynamics, and tells us about the many benefits we can all gain from developing ‘healthy heat’.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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When we know a certain fact about the world or hold a certain belief how do we know that others also know this, how do we base our thoughts and actions on our knowledge of what we assume others know, and what impact does this have on the way that society as a whole functions?

In this episode, we’re joined by Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, best-selling author and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, to talk about his latest book, When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows – Common Knowledge and the Science of Harmony, Hypocrisy and Outrage.

He tells us about the effects common knowledge has on social norms and the ways in which we all act, the profound effects that the Internet and social media has had on the way that common knowledge is spread and consumed, and how deepening our understanding of the implications common knowledge has on our lives can help us all get along more harmoniously.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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When most of us think about time our minds likely turn to thoughts of the second hand that ticks around a clock, or maybe the occasions we’ve been late to catch a bus. But if we stop to think about what time actually is things quickly get more subtle and complicated. Does time only exist in our minds as a psychological illusion, does it really only run forwards and not backwards, and how close is modern physics to helping us to figure out its true nature?

In this episode we’re joined by physicist, best-selling author and BBC presenter Prof Jim Al-Khalili to talk about his latest book, On Time – The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick.

He tells us how thinkers going back as far as ancient Greece have struggled to define what time really is and how it works, how Einstein’s theories tell us that time can run at different rates in different circumstances, and how understanding its true nature maybe key in our search for a theory of everything.

Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website).

https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30

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