Scientifically...

On 12 April 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became an explorer like none other before him, going faster and further than any human in history, into what had always been the impenetrable and infinite unknown.

Raised in poverty during the Second World War, the one-time foundry worker and a citizen of the Soviet Union became the first human to fly above the Earth in the vastness of space.

In doing so he became an instrument in The Cold War – an ideological battle between the superpowers: East versus West, communism versus democracy.

Dr Kevin Fong tells the story of how 27 year old Yuri Gagarin came to launch a new chapter in the history of exploration and follows the cosmonaut’s one hour flight around the Earth.

The Soviet Union's triumph in 1961 was the event that galvanised the United States to win the Space Race: to send the first people on the Moon by the end of the decade. Yuri’s own ambitions to voyage to the Moon were frustrated by his political masters, a faltering Soviet lunar space program and two tragic accidents.

As well as presenting archive recordings, Kevin talks to space historians and writers:

Tom Ellis, historian at the London School of Economics

Actor Stewart Campbell is the voice of Yuri Gagarin. Tony Turner is Soviet space program founder Sergei Korolev. Nicholas Murchie is General Nicolai Kaminin, head of cosmonaut training.

Technical production is by Giles Aspen and Jackie Margerum.

Co-writer and producer: Andrew Luck-Baker of the BBC Audio Science Unit.

(Picture: Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Photo credit: Imagno/Getty Images.)

First broadcast on Saturday 10 Apr 2021.

Nick Baker’s collection of programmes and interviews reflects on how the impact of technology has changed, from the dawn of language to the age of virtual reality.

In this final episode, ‘Anywhere’, Nick looks at bigger changes in our physical perceptions, and experiences a new medium – Virtual Reality, as developed in the BBC Virtual Reality hub.

But there’s a different, more subtle way in which digital technology changes our perception of personal space, and that idea’s probed in an edition of ‘The Digital Human’ presented by Aleks Krotoski, called ‘Between’.

Then, a warning from literature, and from history. Stephen Fry and Nick Baker discuss E.M. Forster’s 1909 novella, ‘The Machine Stops’, which envisages a physical world changed, if not destroyed by technology. But what happens when that technology breaks down?

Presenter: Nick Baker

Nick Baker’s collection of programmes and interviews reflects on how the impact of technology has changed, from the dawn of language to the age of virtual reality.

In this episode, Software, Nick revisits two of the past music software formats that used to dominate. In The Curse of the Cassette [from 1997], he recalls the downside of a much reviled format. Then, in the AB of CD [from 1988] Simon Bates looks at what the then revolutionary medium would bring to pop music.

Nick also meets Simon Rooks from the BBC archives.

Presenter: Nick Baker.

Nick Baker’s three-part collection of programmes and interviews reflects on how the impact of technology has changed, from the dawn of language to the age of virtual reality.

This first episode, Hardware, features Stephen Fry along with an edition of Fry’s English Delight about the physicality of written language, from its earliest scrawlings to the digital age.

Also, in The Persistence of Analogue, tech writer Leigh Alexander says despite all the boundless conveniences of the digital world, it can sometimes feel as if something has been lost in the transition to an always-on virtual society.

Presenter: Nick Baker

Stephen M. Stigler's Law of Eponymy states that no scientific discovery is named after its original discoverer.

Professor Stigler, a statistician at Chicago University, defined his own law in a tributary paper to his friend, the sociologist Robert Merton, in 1980.

Merton had been famous in sociology for writing about the "self-fulfilling prophecy", amongst other things, and also for a long treatise about how often the same law or principle in science has been discovered multiple times by different people.

Merton also wrote about how Isaac Newton's famous phrase "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" was not itself even his own metaphor.

Stigler's amusing and humble paper was thus, despite including some new statistical insights into the phenomenon (and even a reasoned suggestion as to its cause), more of a jovial tribute to his friend's earlier insights than an aggressive assertion of nominative priority.

It self-fulfilled its own eponymous point.

But the joke, and the law, stuck. And it continues to ask important questions about the nature of knowledge, the sociology - and the popular history - of science itself.

Presenter: Robin Ince

Produced by Alex Mansfield-Sella. First broadcast on Thursday 3 September 2020.

n 1969, Canadian educationist Lawrence J. Peter developed an unorthodox concept that became known as The Peter Principle: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence". His satirical insights into business struck a chord with many subordinates across a range of organisations. Peter went on to develop his theory further, claiming that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties".

So how is any work achieved? Are companies giant machines for sorting people into precisely the jobs they can't do? And to what extent are brilliant people really promoted until they become awful managers? Robin Ince decodes the humorous jargon that ensured Peter's book remained on best seller list for months after its publication. He hears from Yale Professor of Finance Kelly Shue, who offers the first empirical evidence for the Peter Principle in action, and Prof Robert Sutton of Stanford University on how to evade this law of hierarchy and dodge ever reaching your level of incompetence.

Produced by Adrian Washbourne. First broadcast on Thursday 27 Aug 2020.

If a newspaper headline ends in a question mark, is the answer always no? And if so, are journalists who use them being lazy and cynical?

Ian Betteridge described what is now known as Betteridge's Law of Headlines in a small blog post in 2009. Is it still relevant in our current age of clickbait and media bubbles? Robin Ince puts these questions to Caroline Frost, an ethicist, entertainment journalist and broadcaster, often seen reviewing the papers on a Sunday night on the BBC News Channel, and to Gemma Milne, a tech journalist and author of a book about the dangers of hype in science journalism called "Smoke and Mirrors".

Produced by Alex Mansfield. First broadcast on Monday 24 August 2020.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson may have trained as a naval historian, but it was his succinct humorous essay for the Economist magazine in 1955 that was to overshadow much of his career. In it, he laid out his fundamental law of bureaucracy - "work expands to fill the time available" - and he went on to explain how organisations become bloated regardless of the work in hand. It was instantly recognised by subordinates, and made for uncomfortable reading for those near the top of any institutional hierarchy.

Robin Ince explores how the law and its corollaries have taken on a life of their own, and are now being reinterpreted as remote working becomes the new normal for many.

Produced by Adrian Washbourne. First broadcast on Thursday 20 August 2020.

“If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.” Murphy’s Law is now a part of our culture, used to describe wrong outcomes of every sort, from how buttered toast falls to the way catastrophes strike.

People have uttered similar laments since time immemorial. But the modern origin of the phrase traces back to two men on one fateful day in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base in California: Colonel John Stapp whose work would later save countless lives in safer cars and airplanes and Captain Ed Murphy whose contributions would lead to safer cockpit controls and foretell the development of better computers and software.

Robin Ince uncovers their tangled tale which sprang from a series of mishaps when what could go wrong did go wrong, risking life and limb for the rider, and how, ironically, the origin of Murphy’s Law went unnoticed by Murphy himself.

But does this law simply tap into our tendency to dwell on the negative and overlook the positive? Or are the rules of probability - the mathematical likeliness that something will occur - sufficient to support it? We hear how the mathematician whose car’s clutch ceased to function 100km from home, at night in the middle of a rainstorm with no phone and a flooded tool kit, came up with the definitive equation to predict how often things really do go wrong for no good reason.

Produced by Adrian Washbourne. First broadcast on Monday 17 August 2020.

After becoming ill with covid six months ago, Inside Science presenter Adam Rutherford is only now getting back to normal. He didn’t go to hospital and, like many, thought he’d be back on his feet within a week or two. But his symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath are taking months to subside and he’s still not 100%.

He is not alone. The scale of what’s become known as ‘long covid’ is only now coming to light. Tens of thousands of people are still enduring serious and oddly diverse symptoms, having been initially infected several months ago, from fatigue and muscle aches, to blood clots and kidney failure.

One of the most striking aspects of the disease is the stark differences in people’s experiences. Some recover quickly, while others battle with distressing and long-lasting symptoms.

What are the underlying mechanisms driving these symptoms? What is it about the virus SARS-CoV-2, and the immune response it triggers, that could explain such widespread destruction in the body? Could there be several subtypes of the disease?

A nationwide study, called PHOSP-COVID, is now underway to answer these questions. It’s taking the long view - recruiting ten thousand patients who were hospitalised with covid and following them up for at least a year and, many, for much longer. Adam explores the emerging science behind ‘long covid’ and asks what the repercussions might be for patients, for the NHS and for society.

Produced by Beth Eastwood. First broadcast on Tuesday 29 September 2020.