What's it like to be a Chief Scientific Advisor? Why does the European Commission's Scientific Advice Mechanism use both advisors and academies? What have the advisors learned in the first five years of the mechanism's existence and what tips would they give to their successors?

Professors Rolf-Dieter Heuer and Pearl Dykstra discuss these questions with Toby Wardman of SAPEA. We also talk about making sense of disagreements science, whether the world is really losing faith in experts, and whether time travellers recently saved the world from being destroyed by a miniature black hole.

Resources discussed in this episode

• The Scientific Opinion 'Scientific Advice to European Policy in a Complex World': https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/support-policy-making/scientific-support-eu-policies/group-chief-scientific-advisors/scientific-advice-european-policy-complex-world_en