Science, possibly

If you'd spent your entire scientific career getting nominated for the Nobel Prize ... nominated by all your students and collaborators, many of whom were Laureates themselves ... nominated more times than anyone else, ever ... and yet you never won the damn thing ... how would *you* feel if you met the chaps who received a Nobel for an experiment that utterly failed to find the very thing it was looking for? Chris tells James the story of Michelson, Morley, and their attempts to nail down the luminiferous aether.

We're sold a lie in school, that science follows a simple path from idea to understanding, from hypothesis to test, from abstract to conclusion. The path of research is never so flat, it's covered in bumps and cracks and sometimes great big sinkholes too. James shares his own personal research journey, along with a packet of nummy smokey-flavoured crickets.

Bit of advice? Don't call your next project your "Operation Moonshot" unless it's a suitably grand mission deserving of the title. If you do, kick the deadline down the road a bit, give Future You time to work out the details. Whatever you do, don't announce a shiny new, £100b COVID mass testing system to save the population and the economy, that you'll definitely roll out in, say, a month, maybe two. James tells Chris the sorry tale of the UK government's grandiose plan that, far from getting to the moon, didn't even make it to the launchpad.

We all know the USA got there first — Apollo 11 and all that. Far more interesting are all the moonshots that didn't quite get there, whether because the ambition was too great, or the budget too small, the science too dodgy or the ideas just too damn weird. Chris takes James on a journey to the Moon that involves far more warmongering than he expected.

From rock-star surgeons leaving a trail of death behind them, to eminent physicists denying student collaborators authorship — and subsequent Nobel glory — for groundbreaking research ... well, science is full of dodgy people. But as Chris informs James this week, everyone's doing ethically dubious stuff. Like, literally, everyone.

The french revolutionaries wasn't just into lopping off heads, they were really keen on measurement standards too. Why measure temperature between brine and armpit when you can use a decimal scale? Why keep a yardstick in a cheese dome when you can measure length with the immutable speed of light? James tells all, and unveils the smallest hill upon which he's prepared to die for accurate measurement.

Look into my eyes. You're falling into a trance. Now, act like a chicken. Chris tells James about the history of hyponosis, and describes his own strange experiences with the power of suggestion. James then explains to Chris how his body is broken, his brain is rubbish, his mind is a fool, and it would be much better to just upload oneself into a machine.

What's the oldest scientific instrument? The oldest science text? And what, if anything, is the connection with the lost civilisation of Atlantis? James explains all. Then Chris talks for too long about old animals and plants, some who cheated, before telling the tragic tale of Donald R Currey And The Oldest Tree.

Can machines be intelligent? What does intelligence even mean? Can you build it with cogs and springs, or electrons and chips? Why are our computers so sexist and racist? Why do they cheat so much? What if you could capture someone's intelligence with a single number — an Intelligence Quotient, if you like? Am I smart if I do well at pub quizzes? Why is everyone so stupid? And who won the Big IQ contest, James or Chris? It doesn't matter. (It totally does.)

James looks deep into his slumbering mind and discovers science is less useful than just Googling "What does it mean if I dream about a courgette?", while Chris questions the ethics of subjecting undergrad psychology students to sleep torture experiments and discovers that having kids really does mess you up long term.