Science(ish)

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics went to ‘a discovery that shook the world’, gravitational waves. These were detected by the LIGO experiment, a century after Einstein first predicted them. But behind the celebration, another story has been brewing which calls into question the science beneath the headlines. Might LIGO have got it wrong? Enter Science(ish)’s very own Dr Michael Brooks.

Featuring: Dr Andrew Jackson

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Do some numbers have special significance? Inspired by Darren Aronofsky’s film Pi, Rick and Michael explore the greatest numbers known to humankind. From the mercurial zero which medieval Italy declared “illegal”, to the golden ratio that can explain something as abstract as beauty, this episode charts why humans have fallen so deeply in love with mathematics.

Featuring: Prof Ian Stewart

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Can meditation change your brain? Rick and Michael take a moment to reconnect with their breath and journey into the mystical science behind the film Doctor Strange. Exploring how monks use meditation to stave off hypothermia and send their gamma brain waves off the charts, this episode brings you the neuroscience behind the western world’s latest obsession: mindfulness. 

Featuring: Dr Danny Penman

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Could we create Frankenstein’s monster? The boys celebrate the 200th year anniversary of Mary Shelley’s genre-defining novel with a deep-dive into the underbelly of science: from grave-robbing and re-animating the dead, to the cutting edge of synthetic biology, this episode tackles the fundamental ethical conundrum at the heart of science fiction’s most famous book. 

Featuring: Dr Kathryn Harkup

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Can science beat the casino? Through the Matt Damon-Ed Norton classic Rounders, the boys explore how mathematicians have tried to conquer the world of gambling. From gaming the national lottery to blackjack and roulette, there’s more to probability theory than predicting the weather - in this episode it’s all about the cold hard cash.

Featuring: Prof Adam Kucharski

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What if our universe is just a giant computer? In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the Earth is just a computer calculating the meaning of life, and in this episode the boys tackle one of the boldest claims of modern science: that everything we think, feel, and touch is simply the product of some fundamental computer code running in the background. Buckle your ears in, it’s time to peek behind the curtain.

Featuring: Prof Juergen Schmidhuber

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Are we any good at predicting the future? Through David Cronenberg’s film The Dead Zone, the boys explore the fiendishly difficult science of foretelling the course of history. Why do the professional pundits get it wrong so often? Might you have what it takes to become a ‘Superforecaster’? And the biggest question of all: what exactly would baby-girl-Stalin have done?

Featuring: Prof Phil Tetlock

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‘Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep...’ These iconic words from the 80s classic A Nightmare on Elm Street have got the boys thinking: from sleep paralysis to insomnia to narcolepsy, what’s actually happening when sleep goes wrong? Are we all living through a sleep-loss epidemic? And why has Brooksy suddenly decided to take up the didgeridoo? All will be revealed in this week’s bedtime episode of Science(ish). 

Featuring: Dr Henry Nicholls

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With the utopian vision of a driverless world hitting the headlines, the boys cut through the hype by exploring the science of fully autonomous vehicles through the TV series Knight Rider. Will we really be better off without humans behind the wheel? And most importantly: would you rather your driverless car knocked down an elderly couple or three jay-waking criminals? Decision time...

Featuring: Prof Paul Newman

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