What separates humans from other animals? It’s not our advanced communication skills, or our intelligence, or our technology. Those things are all trivial compared to the real difference: We’ve learned to care about how much we smell.

All of humanity’s hard work has simply been an attempt to develop technology that can help us smell less, and this week’s episode is about our achievement: Deodorant. Finally, our journey is complete and we can die off.

People here in the UK love a drink “dahn nuh pahb”, which is British for “down the pub”.

If you feel the same way (Perhaps because you’re also British) then you might like this latest episode of Take Five, which is about alcohol.

Listen responsibly.

Show notes and links:

* Drinking and alcohol – Live Well (www.nhs.uk)

The NHS site on alcohol, which is not biased at all!

If you’ve ever owned bread, you’ve probably toasted some of it at some point.

Isn’t it great? It’s browner, warmer, and tastes a bit different.

When you think about it, what can’t toast do? I mean, except most things? Exactly. Best invention since sliced bread.

One of the Take Five hosts feels particularly strongly about Travel, which happens to be the topic of this week’s show.

Have a listen and see if you can tell who it is.

Most of us live in a house. But what if you wanted to live somewhere a lot less permanent instead? No, I’m not talking about a sweet mobile home with an extending section in case you have friends around. I’m talking about yurts, of course!

That’s right. Live in a round thing for a little bit! Buy a yurt!

What, you’re still here? You didn’t immediately run to the yurt shop?

If you’re still not sure about the benefits of living in a yurt, give this episode of Take Five a listen. It probably won’t teach you anything about yurts, but at least you’ll feel better about how unsure of them you are, given that we’re even more so.

Oh, God! What’s that on your face?! Oh; no, wait, wait. It’s just your eyebrows.

… Still, eyebrows are weird, right? Listen to Jack and Anthony talk about it for five minutes.

The topic of this week’s show, hedgehogs, is a bit misleading. A hog is a pig, and they’re usually big and ugly. But hedgehogs are cute and snuffly! Way to mislead us, hedgehogs!

Don’t worry – if you have no idea what hedgehogs are, this episode isn’t about big ugly things. It’s about cute snuffly things.

If your name is Marc, then you’re in for a treat, because this episode is about you! Well, more accurately it’s about your name. If your name is spelled “Mark”, then maybe you won’t enjoy it as much? Then again, it’s a podcast and you can’t read podcasts so it’ll sound like we’re saying your name.

The rest of you who aren’t named “Marc” or “Mark”, you’ll have to enjoy this episode purely because of the hosts’ personalities.

Sometimes on Take Five, neither of us knows what the topic of that episode actually means. And when I say “sometimes”, I mean “this is the first time”. But I suspect it will happen again, so “sometimes” is still accurate.

The topic for this week is “Automower”, and this episode is proof that even if both of us are clueless, we can still make magic.

Show notes and links:

* This link has no title (dictionary.com)

Proof that not even the dictionary knows what an automower is.

We’re always on the hunt for extra terrestrial life, but we’re not paying much attention to the weird stuff we already have, are we?

If you take a good long look at a starfish, for example, you start to realise that perhaps whatever we’re looking for when it comes to aliens can be found right here in our own oceans. Because let’s face it – Starfish are pretty weird. And awesome.

Which is why it’s a good thing that “Starfish” is the topic of this week’s episode of Take Five! Get your weird on and listen now.