Science(ish)

Science(ish) marks the 100-year anniversary of the devastating Spanish Flu outbreak by exploring the real threat behind the film Contagion: How vulnerable are we to the next deadly pandemic? Are we ready for it? And will you stop touching your face so bloody much after listening to this episode?

Featuring: Dr Jonathan Quick

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Inspired by Netflix series Altered Carbon, Rick and Michael tackle the science behind Silicon Valley’s ultimate wet dream: uploading our minds to a computer. Isn’t it time you moved beyond your pathetic human biology and treated yourself to an upgrade?

Featuring: Dr Randal Koene

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Could we reverse ageing and live forever? Science(ish) confronts our own mortality and explores the growing field of research which is bringing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button closer to reality. Might immortality be possible? And what would you be willing to do to get it... faecal transplant, anyone?

Featuring: Dr Aubrey de Grey

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Inspired by the 109-year-old novel ‘The Machine Stops’ which remarkably predicted the internet as we know it today, Rick and Michael explore whether someone could ever switch our machine off - and if the internet might someday ‘wake up’?

Featuring: Prof Milton Mueller

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With the Doomsday Clock now at two minutes to midnight, the boys go nuclear and explore the legendary political satire Dr. Strangelove. Could Trump fire off a nuke like he fires off a tweet? And how close are we to complete annihilation? The questions are big, the answers are bigger.

Featuring: Prof Peter Feaver

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Through the sci-fi horror ‘The Cell’, Rick and Michael delve into the murky ‘grey zone of consciousness’ which separates life from death. Their quest: to discover if we could communicate with someone in a coma.

Featuring: Prof Adrian Owen

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A treat for all the vegans out there. Rick and Michael tackle John Wyndham’s ‘The Day of the Triffids’, exploring whether plants can think, feel, and learn. And of course, the most fundamental question of all: who’s the real master of the earth - humans or wheat?

Featuring: Prof. Monica Gagliano

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With the help of a real-life hacker, Rick and Michael go worldwide(web) by asking 'how vulnerable are we to hackers?'. We're talking Stuxnet, the internet of things, and baby monitors that talk back.

Featuring: Jake Davis (formerly; Topiary of Anonymous)

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Michael decides it’s time to get cerebral and opts for Neil Burger’s ‘Limitless’. We’re talking brain myths, we’re talking nootropics, and of course, we’re talking/taking modafinil.

Featuring: Professor Barbara Sahakian

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The boys go deadly serious with 1990 sci-fi classic ‘Flatliners’. Brain death, consciousness, and everything in between.

Featuring: Professor Leslie Whetstine

Produced By: Max Sanderson

Sound Designer: Ivor Manley

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