Instant Genius

Two years to the day the great physicist Professor Stephen Hawking was interred at Westminster Abbey, and at the time of his death, we spoke to one of the people that knew him best, Leonard Mlodinow.

Leonard is an American theoretical physicist who worked with Stephen on the books The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time, and his own book chronicling their time together, Stephen Hawking: A Memoir of Friendship and Physics (£20, Allen Lane), will be released in September this year.

In this republished interview he speaks with BBC Science Focus editor Daniel Bennett about writing together, his qualities, and what they did when they weren’t talking physics.

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

Read more about Professor Stephen Hawking:

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No matter how open-minded we consider ourselves to be, all of us hold biases towards other people.

Dr Pragya Agarwal is a behavioural and data scientist, ex-academic, and a freelance writer and journalist, who runs a research gender equality think tank The 50 Percent Project.

Her new book, Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias (£16.99, Bloomsbury Sigma), unravels the way our implicit or 'unintentional' biases affect the way we communicate and perceive the world, and how they affect our decision-making, even in life and death situations.

In this week’s podcast, she explains where these biases come from and why it’s important for us to recognise and unlearn them to help make the world a better, fairer place.

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

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mental health has become a hot topic in recent years, with campaigns asking us to be kind on social media and to reach out to friends who are struggling.

It seems now more than ever, we have a better understanding of what it means when someone is struggling with their mental health, but despite this, some people feel that the stigma surrounding it stops them from getting the help they need.

Professor Anthony David is a neuropsychiatrist at University College London, whose book Into the Abyss (£14.99, Oneworld) tells the stories of patients he has treated and what their cases have taught him.

He speaks to our editorial assistant Amy Barrett about why this stigma exists and whether it’s getting any better.

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

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest Prof Richard Wiseman is a spectacularly creative scientist who started off his career as a magician before becoming a psychologist. Over the last few decades, Richard has studied the art of deception, parapsychology and the concept of good luck alongside many other aspects of the human mind.

Richard has a hugely popular YouTube channel called Quirkology, with a mere 2.15m subscribers and has written a book called Shoot For The Moon (£20, Quercus), which takes a closer look at the psychology that achieved the Moon landings.

Over two quickfire, 30-minute episodes, Richard tells BBC Science Focus magazine editor Daniel Bennett how to make himself luckier, whether magicians make the best psychologists and why the stories we tell ourselves matter.

And if you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, check out any of Richard’s books at richardwiseman.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @RichardWiseman.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Christiana Figueres is the former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and it was her work that led to its members signing the 2015 Paris agreement.

Together with Tom Rivett-Carnac, she created Global Optimism, an organization focused on bringing about environmental and social change.

Their book, The Future We Choose (£12.99, Bonnier), reveals that we are on the precipice of two futures: one where net-zero emissions is achieved, and one where it is not, and this week they’re talking to our editorial assistant Amy Barrett about the Paris Climate Agreement, why we need to reduce carbon emissions, and how we all have a role to play in combating climate change.

• Read the edited interview –"We stand at the fulcrum between two worlds. It really is a question of choosing what future we wan"t

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

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our guest Prof Richard Wiseman is a spectacularly creative scientist who started off his career as a magician before becoming a psychologist. Over the last few decades, Richard has studied the art of deception, parapsychology and the concept of good luck alongside many other aspects of the human mind.

Richard has a hugely popular YouTube channel called Quirkology, with a mere 2.15m subscribers and has written a book called Shoot For The Moon (£20, Quercus), which takes a closer look at the psychology that achieved the Moon landings.

Over two quickfire, 30-minute episodes, Richard tells BBC Science Focus magazine editor Daniel Bennett how to make himself luckier, whether magicians make the best psychologists and why the stories we tell ourselves matter.

And if you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, check out any of Richard’s books at richardwiseman.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @RichardWiseman.

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here on Earth, we take the force of gravity for granted. For years, researchers have neglected to study its influence because of this very reason, but with commercial spaceflight on the horizon, researchers are now racing to discover what living off-Earth might do to our bodies and our brains.

In this week’s episode, we hear from psychologist Dr Elisa Raffaella Ferrè.

She explains how her studies are revealing the impact of gravity on our cognition through her experiments in a zero-g environment aboard the so-called ‘Vomit Comet’– the aircraft used to train astronauts for the weightlessness in space.

• Read the edited interview - This is your brain on space: how gravity influences your mental abilities

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

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we talk to one of the world’s leading pioneers in the field of nanotechnology, Sonia Contera.

Nanotechnology is the application of science at a truly nano scale. To put that in perspective, if a nanometre were the size of a cup of tea, a meter would cover the diameter of the whole Earth.

Being able to control the world at such an intricate level has the potential to revolutionise medicine - enabling us to target cancer cells, deliver drugs and fight antibiotic resistance – but how do we create technology to that size?

Sonia talks to our editorial assistant Amy Barret about how her work in nanotechnology began, building proteins unknown to nature, and why going nano is nothing like in the movies.

Her book Nano Comes To Life (£22, Princeton University Press), is out now.

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

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first time a fish crawled out of the water and onto land, it was a turning point that led to brand new kinds of life. But this couldn’t happen on its own: that fish would have needed both lungs and legs.

Neil Shubin, evolutionary biologist and author of Some Assembly Required (£18.99, Oneworld), says that fish didn’t evolve these traits to help them live on land. In fact, the reason they could live on land was that they repurposed the body parts they had already.

The same remarkable changes have happened all through evolutionary history, from the first vertebrate life to the first flying dinosaurs.

He speaks to our Online assistant Sara Rigby.

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

Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast:

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices