Instant Genius

Jim Al-Khalili explains how artificial intelligence has changed the world, who benefits from it, and why we probably shouldn’t be afraid of it destroying humanity.

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Imogen Heap has pushed the creative boundaries in the creation of electronic music, but now she is using technology a different way that she hopes will create a fairer and more inclusive future for musicians. She talks to us about how blockchain could revolutionise the music industry, and how her innovative mi.mu gloves are changing the way we create and perform electronic music.

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This summer has been one of the hottest on record, so we asked climate change researcher Dann Mitchell what has caused the summer heatwave, can we expect more, and is there anything we can do about it?

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What asteroids can tell us about our Solar System

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Geologist Prof Andrew Scott on our complex relationship with wildfires

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Women are underrepresented in science, and some experts are asking whether there are biological reasons why. Meanwhile, racial studies are creeping back into mainstream science. We talk to Angela Saini about the science of gender and race, and about how to even the playing field.  

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Algorithms are everywhere. They can make our lives easier, by curating our Twitter feeds and Netflix suggestions. But they can also be bad. They lack empathy and we can become too reliant on their logical abilities, putting ourselves and others at risk. Here we talk to mathematician Hannah Fry, who tells us all about the good, the bad and the downright ugly of the algorithms that surround us.  

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There are 100 billion stars in our Galaxy – surely we can’t be the only intelligent lifeform out there? In this week’s Science Focus Podcast we speak to Mike Garrett, the Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, about the search for extraterrestrial life, what we’ll do if we find them, and what it means for us as humans.

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Russian space dogs paved the way to sending humans into the cosmos. By studying how space flight affected dogs, scientists could establish whether it was safe to blast humans into space too. In this episode, we talk to Vix Southgate, who has just written a children’s book about the dogs Belka and Strelka – the first two creatures to go into orbit and return safely back to Earth.

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Whether it’s cheating on our spouse, slacking off at work, or eating too much junk, we all occasionally do things we shouldn’t. Jack Lewis talks to us about the neuroscience of sin, how we can resist it, and the wacky experiments that test our ability to behave.

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