By BBC World Service
What are the big ideas shaping our world now?
The 2020 pandemic has transformed our world, but it won’t be the last to do so. How should we prepare for the future? Along with one of the world’s leading epidemiologists, David Edmonds explores the science of pandemics – and...
Some people are addicted to drugs, others to alcohol. Addicts often crave a substance, and yet when they inject or consume it, it doesn’t bring them any pleasure. David Edmonds finds out how humans can want something, but not like...
Love him or loathe him, we can all agree that Donald Trump is not a ‘normal’ President. Previous presidents would never behave like President Trump. Is the abnormal becoming normal? And how can we tackle people who say uncomfortable things?
Have you ever thought that your city is too regulated? Or that the city you live in doesn’t do enough to police people who break the rules? In this episode, David Edmonds has been speaking to Michele Gelfand, a psychologist...
We spend around a third of our lives asleep, but the reason we sleep is still something of a mystery. Could it be the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made? What does sleep actually do for us? David...
Ernst Fehr is well named: he’s an economist who writes about fairness. In fact, until his pioneering work, economists had been dismissive about whether fairness was a subject worthy of study. Now some have tipped Fehr to win a Nobel...
David Edmonds speaks to a leading criminologist who says we can do much better in identifying rogue cops before they act. Produced by Robbie Wojciechowski for the BBC World Service.
Watching a scary movie, you feel scared. But how do our brain and body work together to tell us about our emotions? A brilliant young scientist has been finding out why the art of interoception could help us better manage...
Every time you book a journey from an app like Uber, you’ll be providing the company with data - and making one man in Chicago very happy. He’s an economist who’s been examining the data, and his findings are fascinating.
Why is more than half the world’s population living in cities? Why are some more successful than others? And what is their future post-pandemic? David Edmonds searches for answers to these questions and more with the world’s foremost economist on...
There are some things - cockroaches, poo, wounds - that most of us find disgusting. But is disgust useful? Can our sense of disgust be misused? We ask an academic who describes herself as a ‘disgustologist’. Since recording this programme,...
Do you know why you believe what you believe? Why you are left or right wing, say, or why you find another person attractive? You probably think you do, but we’ll be explaining why you shouldn’t be so confident.
When most couples get married they’re optimistic that their union won’t end in divorce. The statistics show this to be hopelessly naive. But we’ll be talking to a philosopher who argues that irrational optimism is…well, rational.
Suppose a country is ruled by a dictator. Suppose many people want to topple the dictator. What’s the best way of doing it – a campaign of violence or non-violence? There’s an academic from Harvard who has the answer. ...
There are thousands of academic papers about depression. There are, in comparison, virtually none about laughter. We’ve been talking to a leading expert on laughter – who argues that we should take it more seriously. Picture Credit: Tim...
There are thousands of academic papers about depression. There are, in comparison, virtually none about laughter. We’ve been talking to a leading expert on laughter, who argues that we should take it more seriously.
Suppose you knew that after your natural death the human race would die out – perhaps, for some reason, humans had become infertile. How would that alter how you live your life? How would it change your attitude to the...
Some countries, like Norway, are rich. Other countries, like Niger, are poor. Why? Why do some countries succeed whilst others fail? There are various possible theories. Some say that certain countries have geographical or resource advantages. Others claim that the...
Humans are a unique species in many ways, but an important one is that we communicate with sophisticated language, using words and grammar. So how does language work? Is there a single mechanism in the brain, or multiple mechanisms? Is...
Can you imagine a future without doctors? We’re in the midst of a robotics and Artificial Intelligence revolution. Many jobs humans currently do will in future be carried out by machine? But what about those in the medical profession? AI...
Are trees intelligent? We think of humans as intelligent – maybe animals too. But vegetation? Well, one of the world’s leading tree researchers, Suzanne Simard, insists that trees should be seen as intelligent. They communicate with each...
Is consciousness everywhere? Human consciousness - our subjective experience - remains a mystery. How is it that we can smell coffee and feel the touch of a flower? How does the brain produce consciousness? Well, one of the world’s top...
Teenagers are an alien species. Well, that’s not exactly the conclusion of Sarah-Jayne Blakemore’s research, but it’s a crude summary. Professor Blakemore is a leading neuroscientist who studies the teenage brain. When humans enter adolescence their brains,...
How can we reduce murder rates? Homicide is frequent in some countries, rare in others. The countries in which the homicide rate is very high include El Salvador and Honduras. The countries in which the murder rate is very low...
What is the cause of famine? The obvious answer is shortage of food. But, says the Nobel-prize winning economist Amartya Sen that misses a vital point. In his research on famines, he showed that there’s usually enough...
Do black woman face more prejudice than black men or white women? The legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced a new way of thinking about disadvantage in society. She called it ‘intersectionality’. It attempts to analyze how different forms of marginalization...
Inequality makes people anxious. How? Well, according to Kate Pickett, in unequal societies we become more conscious of our position in society, more aware of our status. That creates anxiety. And that in turn is linked to all sorts of...
Are we all racist? Harvard professor Mahzarin Banaji is the architect of what is arguably psychology’s most influential experiment. It’s called the Implicit Association Test (the IAT) and it has been taken millions and millions of times. ...
In an era of fake news, are we living through a crisis in trust? Without trust society couldn’t function. We need to know that individuals and organizations are competent and reliable, that they’re not corrupt and that they’ll...
How do you stop different groups hating each other? Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Palestinians and Jews in the Middle East. Muslims and Hindus in India. Is building walls between them the solution? According...
What’s the best way of persuading parents in developing countries to immunize their kids? Do women politicians make a difference to what policies are pursued? If you want to reduce malaria is it best to give people mosquito nets for...
Many criminal court cases rest on eye-witness accounts of what happened. There’s a problem though. Elizabeth Loftus – one of the world’s most influential psychologists – has shown in numerous experiments that memory is not nearly as reliable as we...
What is the biggest cause of climate change? According to biomedical researcher Pat Brown it’s an extremely inefficient technology – aka cows. Maintaining livestock is hugely expensive. It produces greenhouse gases. And it takes up much of the land we...
Why is there so much outrage on social media? And what does this have to do with our moral conscience? Molly Crockett is a neuroscientist who runs her own lab at Yale University. She believes that concern about reputation may...
A great advantage of the internet and social media is that they allow us to keep in touch with all our friends, even when they move away. That means our group of friends can carry on expanding indefinitely. Except, says...
Babies know little and learn slowly. Right? Not according to child psychologist Alison Gopnik. She has spent decades investigating the extraordinary talents and abilities of babies and young children. Her conclusion: they’re much smarter than you might think. The...
One day – and Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom believes it may not be far away – computers could become super-intelligent. At that stage they’ll far surpass human intelligence. They may be able to solve our most intractable problems...
Professor Sandy Pentland is the modern pioneer of what’s called ‘Social Physics’ - the analysis of human interactions using so called Big Data. Mining data - from credit cards, electronic ticketing and mobile phones - we can now take a...
The Growth Mind Set. Is there such a thing as innate talent? Possibly. We’re not all capable of winning a Nobel physics prize. But according to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck children who believe that talent is...
Can our experiences be passed down biologically to our children and grandchildren? Quite a thought given for a long time now the orthodoxy has been that our traits are transmitted through our genes meaning that how your father or mother...
We’re used to seeing political pundits on our television screens predicting future events – who will win an election, whether a war or social unrest might break out, whether an international treaty will be signed. How accurate are these...
What can monkeys tell us about the stock market? Apes and monkeys are our closest animal relatives. We share a common evolutionary history. Through studying them, Laurie Santos believes we can learn a bit about ourselves and our attitude...
The search for the most interesting ideas around - ideas which are shaping our understanding of the world and our place within it. Written and presented by David Edmonds, who will be talking to leading thinkers from fields such as...
