Instant Genius

By day Dr Becky, is an astrophysicist, unravelling the mysteries of supermassive black holes, but by night entertains science buffs like us on her YouTube channel.

In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast she explains how to find a black hole (and why they’re actually incredibly bright), what an astrophysicist does all day, and why flooding YouTube with scientists is the best way to counteract disinformation and bogus theories.

Her book Space: 10 Things You Should Know (£9.99, Orion), is out now and you can read an extract from it here.

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Hopefully by now the last crumbs of mince pie will be wiped clean and Grandad has woken up from his Christmas day nap.

If you’re anything like us, that period between Christmas and New Year means only one thing – lazing in front of the TV and watching the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. This institution has been sharing the wonders of science and entertaining children and adults alike for generations, and this year’s host hopes this year will be no different.

Our editorial assistant Amy Barret sat down with Hannah Fry, only the fourth mathematician to deliver one of the lectures, who’ll be showing the audience how maths secretly underpins much of the world around us in her lecture series called Secrets and Lies, broadcast on BBC Four on 26-28 December at 20:00.

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

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If you’re stuffing your face with mince pies this Christmas Day, spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of people working in the NHS providing vital medical support over the festive period.

One person who has seen his fair share of Christmas shifts is comedian and writer Adam Kay, who in a previous life worked as a junior doctor. His new book, Twas the Nightshift before Christmas (£9.99, Harper Collins), is at times, a graphically intimate diary of what happens on a labour ward over the holidays.

Our editorial assistant Amy Barrett spoke to Adam over the phone about whether Christmas is more dangerous than other seasons, some of the issues facing healthcare at this time of the year, and life after medicine.

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

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Kathryn D Sullivan made history on 11 October 1984 when she became the first American woman to make an Extravehicular Activity, something most of us will know as a space walk, and in this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, she explains how maybe ‘walk’ isn’t the most appropriate way of describing it.

She also reveals the importance of planning over plans, the influence of the Hubble Space Telescope, and whether this year’s news story about spacesuits for women was really as problematic as the headlines suggested.

Let us know what you think with a review or a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Brian Switek, the pen name of science writer and fossil fanatic Riley Black. This year she released a book called The Secret Life of Bones: Their Origins, Evolution and Fate (£9.99, Duckworth), which as well as explaining how and why we evolved bones, explains the relationship us humans have with these sturdy struts of osseous tissue.

In this week's episode of the Science Focus Podcast, she helpfully explains what a bone is and how they turn into fossils, as well as how they revealed Richard III’s diet, were historically used to justify scientific racism, and why Hollywood is getting aliens all wrong.

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We’re living in the age of big data. Scientists can collect and store more information than ever before. So how can they manage it all?

That’s where citizen science comes in. Members of the public can log in to the Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science platform, and do the hard work of sorting through the data.

Whether that’s searching for alien planets or spotting penguins, the project’s co-founder Chris Lintott says that the public aren’t just helping out, but doing real science.

In his new book, The Crowd and the Cosmos: Adventures in the Zooniverse (£20, OUP), Chris explains how, in just a few minutes in your lunch break, you can contribute to fields from astronomy to zoology.

He speaks to BBC Science Focus 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.

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Why are teens so emotional? Why won’t they listen when adults depart their worldly knowledge? Why won’t they tidy their rooms?

Well, there are plenty of parenting books out there that attempt to answer these questions, but in the new book Why Your Parents Are Driving You Up the Wall and What To Do About It (£8.99, Penguin) by neuroscientist, comedian and science writer Dean Burnett, for the first time, it’s teens who are getting an insight into their parents’ minds.

The book is all about reverse parenting, and offers teens an answer to why their parents are always dragging them out of bed, why they’re so obsessed with asking ‘How was school?’ and other common complaints.

He speaks to BBC Science Focus editorial assistant Amy Barrett.

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

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If you need advice for the best way to move house, predict the weather or take a selfie, Randall Munroe, the creator of the webcomic xkcd, can’t help you.

But if you’re willing to get creative, Randall’s book How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems (£16.99, John Murray Press) will show you the worst ways to solve your problems, with some help from tennis star Serena Williams and astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield along the way.

In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, Randall talks to online assistant Sara Rigby about why the worst solution to a problem can be the most interesting.

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

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Some scientists now believe we are living in a new epoch, the age of invention and human influence on the world, called the Anthropocene.

In 2014, science journalist and broadcast Gaia Vince took readers on a journey through this new world in her award-winning book, Adventures in the Anthropocene. Documenting the startling impacts of human’s growth on Earth, Gaia opened eyes to the future that we have all but set in stone.

Her new book, Transcendence (£20, Allen Lane), looks instead to our past, and how humans have evolved as much through our culture as through our genes. How did Homo sapiens out-live our hominin relatives, and what made us so different from the other primates?

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

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Every Tuesday morning, physicist and science communicator Jim Al-Khalili presents the long-running radio programme The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4. On 5 November 2019, the show celebrates its 200th episode, so we caught up with Jim just after recording this landmark show.

He talked to us about what it’s like to work on The Life Scientific, he fights the corner for creativity in science, and reveals why research and scientists keep him optimistic about the future.

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