Instant Genius

Laughter is a fundamental part of our lives, but why do we do it? We spoke to Sophie Scott, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University College London to better understand why and how we laugh.

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Whether it’s from reading Beatrix Potter’s Mrs Tiggy-Winkle or from encounters in our own gardens, many of us have a special place in our hearts for hedgehogs. But sadly, the charismatic mammals are having a bit of a hard time of late, with their numbers declining across the globe. So, what can we do to help them?

In this episode we catch up with Dr Sophie Lund Rasmussen, a research associate at WildCRU, at the University of Oxford, or as she is otherwise known Dr Hedgehog.

She tells us about the current state of hedgehog conservation, what she’s learnt from many years of studying them and how we can make our gardens more hedgehog friendly.

To find more about her work studying hedgehogs, follow her on Facebook.

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Chances are, many of us will have tried to drop a few pounds at some point in our lives. And it’s likely that to do so we will have cut down on the amount of calories we are consuming, exercised a bit more and relied on willpower to stop ourselves reaching for the biscuit tin, bag of crisps or can of fizzy drink. But is there a more effective method?

In this episode we catch up with Dr Andrew Jenkinson, a bariatric surgeon based at University College London Hospital and author of the book How to Eat Well (And Still Lose Weight).

He tells us how our brains are hard-wired to crave salty, fatty, sugary foods and how gaining a better understanding of our biology can help us to turn our unhealthy eating patterns into healthy ones, for good.

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Since their first appearance on our supermarket shelves several decades ago, avocados have gone from being a mere exotic curiosity to a regular feature on many millennials’ breakfast tables. But how has this happened and what does it mean for our diets, the food industry and the environment?

In this episode we speak to Honor May Eldridge, a food and farming expert and author of the book The Avocado Debate. She tells us about the avocado’s fascinating journey from everyday staple in traditional South and Central American cuisine to western superfood, how nutritious the fruit really is and whether or not we should feel guilty for eating smashed avocado on toast?

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How can we rearrange our lives to get a bit more energy? In her new book Pace Yourself: How to have energy in an exhausting world, Amy Arthur traces the latest science that can help you find the right pace in every aspect of your life to make your day-to-day a little less exhausting.

This episode, Amy talks us through surprising insights like why having toast for breakfast may not be the best start to your day, warning signs for spotting when you’re close to exhaustion, and her top tips for protecting your energy.

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UFOs, tarot cards, and ghostly figures. The paranormal world is all around us, but how can the unexplainable be explained? We spoke to Chris French, the head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London to find out more about the world of the paranormal.

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In our short history of space exploration, humans have already changed the Moon significantly. From the cultural heritage of our first footprints to the damage caused by spacecraft crashes, our presence is almost frozen in time in the Moon’s dusty regolith. Now, researchers are arguing for the formalisation of a new epoch on the Moon: the lunar Anthropocene. This epoch, they argue, began in 1959 with Russia’s Luna 2 spacecraft becoming the first ever to land on the Moon. We spoke to one of the researchers, space archaeologist Dr Justin Holcomb at the University of Kansas in the US, to learn more.

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It’s a feeling most of us will have experienced at some point: you arrive at work in the morning and open your email client only to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unread messages staring back at you.

In this episode we catch up with Dr Emma Russell, a psychologist based at the University of Sussex.

She tells us about the far-reaching effects dealing with a constant stream of emails can have on our mental health, why some of us are more prone to these negative effects than others, and how we can take back control.

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Could you ever take a pill that actually prevents ageing? If we’re lucky, absolutely. In fact, such a pill might be available within the next decade. That’s according to our guest today Andrew Steele, the author of Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old.

In this episode, the second and final of our anti-ageing specials, Andrew unpacks the most promising longevity drugs currently being trialled.

If you haven’t done so already, check out part one of this series, where Andrew explains the simple lifestyle changes that can slow, stop and potentially reverse your biological age.

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How would you like to slow, stop or even reverse your body’s ageing? Although that might sound like science fiction, a growing body of research suggests that ageing isn’t inevitable, that you can control a large proportion of how you age.

How exactly? That’s just what we’ll be unpacking across two episodes with guest Andrew Steele, the author of Ageless: The new science of getting older without getting old. In this first part of our anti-ageing special, we’ll go through how to assess your own biological age, and how to slow it with several simple lifestyle changes.

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