Instant Genius

The end of the Universe may be a common feature in science fiction, but this one isn’t a crisis that can be averted by a team of superheroes. The Universe really will come to an end one way or another, and we have an idea how – five ideas, actually.

In this week’s episode of the Science Focus Podcast, astrophysicist Dr Katie Mack talks to us about the future of the cosmos. She dives into these five possible apocalypses, from the Universe gradually fading out to the ‘quantum bubble of death’.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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For many, the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown restrictions has isolated us from the people we love, reducing our social life to screens and Zoom meetings. But even with the added visual, communicating online still isn’t as straightforward as being in-person. It can feel like jokes fall flat when everyone has their microphone off, and the jittering of poor signal can make anyone’s face hard to read.

But what if our computers could read and respond to our emotions? If the engagement of a virtual meeting could be shown on-screen to generate a buzz like the one of a live audience?

That’s just one possibility of a future with emotionally intelligent machines. Researcher and CEO Rana el Kaliouby believes that by teaching computers to read facial expressions, they could detect early signs of Parkinson’s, prevent drivers from getting behind the wheel when tired, or help teachers design educational programmes that keep kids engaged.

Rana speaks to us about making machines empathetic, being named by Forbes as one of America's top 50 women in tech, and how her research into human emotions has affected her personal life.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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A recent study carried out at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, UCLH, on confirmed or suspected COVID-19 patients has found neurological complications of the virus can, in some rare cases include delirium, brain inflammation, stroke and nerve damage.

We spoke to Dr Rachel Brown, an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellow involved with the study to find out more.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

COVID-19 could cause delirium, brain inflammation and stroke

A study carried out on a small number of confirmed or suspected Covid-19 patients at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery has linked the coronavirus to a number of neurological conditions.

Can you tell us about your research?

COVID-19 is still predominantly a respiratory illness, but in a small subset of patients we’ve been seeing neurological symptoms and syndromes.

Some of the early studies from Wuhan showed that around a third of patients were having neurological symptoms. In those early descriptions a lot of the symptoms that people were describing included things like headache and dizziness, loss of smell and things that could just really be attributed to viral illness.

As we gained more experience, we noticed other cases appearing that looked a little bit different. We have information from...

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Many of us have found solace in nature over the last few months, relishing our time outdoors, especially when it was limited to one form of exercise a day. A recent report by the RSPB found that people see access to nature as being important for health and wellbeing during and in recovery from the coronavirus crisis.

One man who has always been connected to the natural world is David Lindo. Known by most as the Urban Birder, David is a champion for the wellbeing benefits of wildlife, encouraging us all to get outside and see what we can find, be it in the garden, the city, or the countryside.

In this week’s episode of the Science Focus Podcast, David tells us about the human benefits of biodiversity, the need for conservation education, and diversity within the birding community.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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If, like us, you love to read a good science book, (and thanks to this podcast we’ve read a fair few over the years), you’ll probably recognise the feeling of having more questions about its subject at the end of the book than before you even turned page one.

It’s because of this that we decided to launch the Science Focus Book Club, where we pick out what we think is an excellent, thought provoking science book and ask your questions to its author.

You can sign up for the newsletter to find out which book is coming up next, but to give you a taster, in May, our legion of science book fans read Fast Asleep, by Science Focus columnist and BBC presenter Dr Michael Mosley.

In this week’s podcast we’ve selected a few of our favourite Q&As where he explains everything you need to know about sleep; from what it is, why we need it and how to get more of it.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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If I asked you to build a robot, the first materials you would probably reach for would be some metal bits and plastic bobs.

However, mechanical engineer Ritu Raman designs machines made with biological material, and has created all manner of wonderful machines, including a walking robot made with muscle tissue.

In this week’s episode of the Science Focus Podcast, she tells us about how to integrate biology into engineering and what these remarkable devices can do that traditional machines can’t.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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In a previous episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we discovered how a team of scientists harnessed the combined power of hundreds of thousands of players of the massively multiplayer online game Eve Online to help in the search for exoplanets.

Now, the next phase of this programme, called Project Discovery, is turning its sights from the stars to the coronavirus pandemic.

This week we speak to scientists Ryan Brinkman and Jerome Waldispuhl, and Project Discovery’s creator Atilla Szantner about why they intend to turn gamers into citizen scientists to help find a cure for COVID-19.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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In 1969, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people ever to walk on the Moon, a feat over the next three and a half years only 10 other space explorers would go on to achieve.

Now it has taken nearly 50 years, but NASA once again has ambitions to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024.

The Artemis Program is a wide-reaching effort by numerous space agencies and led by NASA, with ambitions to not only put human feet on the lunar surface but to build a permanent base there, with a lunar space station in orbit around the Moon.

To find out more, this week we speak to Dr Jacob Bleacher, Chief Exploration Scientist for human exploration at NASA, about how we are going to get there, what effect deep space will have on the astronauts, and why now is the time to go back to the Moon.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

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Not so long ago, English scientists believed that they could study differences between people and that certain ethnicities were ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than others – of course, white Europeans were put at the top of any list.

In the 19th Century, anthropologist and statistician Francis Galton took this even further when he coined the term ‘eugenics’, the idea that science could better the human race by promoting the spread of certain genes, deemed ‘good’, and by halting the distribution of those deemed bad.

While these Victorian ideas have since been refuted and discarded by the scientific community, there are those in society that turn to race science in an attempt to justify their bigotry and racism.

Subhadra Das has spent the last eight years as a museum curator for the science collections at University College London, specialising in the history of scientific racism and the history of eugenics.

She tells us how Francis Galton’s idea spread through Victorian society, and why it’s important to understand science’s racist history in order for us to move forward.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

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Brendan Walker originally trained and worked as an aeronautical engineer, but now has a far more thrilling job title, quite literally - he’s a thrill engineer.

He’s been working with theme parks to help create the most exciting rollercoasters, using design principles to craft extreme, human emotional experiences to the rides.

He tells us why people have a love/hate relationship with rollercoasters, the fine line between fun and fear, how to get your thrills in lockdown and most importantly, where the best place to sit on a rollercoaster might be.

Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts.

This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations.

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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