The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

By BBC Radio 4

What's The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry about?

Science sleuths Dr Adam Rutherford and Dr Hannah Fry investigate everyday mysteries sent by listeners.

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LAST EPISODE

Stephen Fry's Identity Crisis

11.08.2019

Stephen Fry (no relation) asks Adam and Hannah to investigate the following question: "All my life I have been mildly plagued by the fact that I have a quite appalling ability to remember faces. I cut people I should know ...

The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry episodes:

11.08.2019 Stephen Fry's Identity Crisis Stephen Fry (no relation) asks Adam and Hannah to investigate the following question: "All my life I have been mildly plagued by the fact that I have a quite appalling ability to remember faces. I cut people I should know ...
11.01.2019 A Frytful Scare Part 2 Rutherford and Fry delve into the history of roller coasters in the second instalment of their investigation into why we enjoy being scared. Amelie Xenakis asks: "Why do people enjoy roller coasters? I am a thrill-seeker and I am always ...
10.25.2019 A Frytful Scare Part 1 It was a dark and stormy night around the time of Halloween. A secret message arrived addressed to Rutherford & Fry from a mysterious woman called Heidi Daugh, who demanded to know: "Why do people like to be scared? For ...
10.18.2019 Curious Cases Returns Rutherford and Fry are back with Series 14. In an extended podcast trailer they discuss their favourite strange-but-true scientific studies, from jetlagged hamsters to flatulent snakes. Presenters: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford Producer: Michelle Martin
05.03.2019 Jurassic Squawk "Is there is any way of knowing what noises, if any, dinosaurs would have made?" asks Freddie Quinn, aged 8 from Cambridge in New Zealand. From Jurassic Park to Walking with Dinosaurs, the roars of gigantic dinosaurs like T.Rex are ...
04.26.2019 The Lunar Land Pt2 In the second installment of our double episode on the Moon we ask what life would be like if we had more than one Moon. From the tides to the seasons, the Moon shapes our world in ways that often ...
04.19.2019 The Lunar Land Pt 1 A double episode to mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, and the first humans to walk on the Moon. Harley Day emailed curiouscases@bbc.co.uk to ask “Why do we only have one Moon and what would life on Earth be ...
04.12.2019 An Instrumental Case “We play many musical instruments in our family. Lots of them produce the same pitch of notes, but the instruments all sound different. Why is this?” asks Natasha Cook aged 11, and her Dad Jeremy from Guelph in Ontario, Canada. ...
04.05.2019 The Periodic Problem "Will the periodic table ever be complete?" asks Philip Craven on Twitter. In 2016 four new chemical elements were given the official stamp of approval - nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson. And 2019 was named by the UN as the ...
03.29.2019 The Mesmerist “Is hypnosis real, and if so how does it work? Does it have any practical uses and which of Hannah and Adam is most susceptible?” This question came from two Curios, Peter Jordan aged 24 from Manchester and Arran Kinnear ...
03.22.2019 Coming Soon – More Curious Cases Hannah and Adam return to crack open the Curious Cases they’ll be examining during the coming series, from the sound of musical instruments to the science of hypnosis. Please send your questions for future episodes and entries for Curio of ...
12.21.2018 The Horrible Hangover "My name is Ava and I've never had a hangover," writes Ava Karuso. "I'm a 25 year-old Australian and I enjoy going out for drinks. However, the next day when everyone else sleeps in and licks their wounds, I get ...
12.14.2018 The Good Bad Food “Why does bad food taste so good?” asks Alan Fouracre from Tauranga, New Zealand. "And by ‘bad’ food, I mean the things we are told to hold back on like sausage, chips and chocolate." From sugar to salt and fat, ...
12.07.2018 Two Infinities and Beyond Part 2 This is the second part of our eternal quest to investigate infinity, inspired by this question from father and son duo Sorley and Tom Watson from Edinburgh: “Is anything in the Universe truly infinite, or is infinity something that only ...
11.30.2018 Two Infinities and Beyond Part 1 “Is anything in the Universe truly infinite, or is infinity something that only exists in mathematics?” This momentous question came from father and son duo from Edinburgh Sorley aged 10 and Tom, aged adult. It's a subject so big, that ...
11.23.2018 The Stressful Scone "How do accents start and where did they come from?” asks Sachin Bahal from Toronto in Canada. Hannah is schooled in speaking Geordie by top accent coach Marina Tyndall. And Adam talks to author and acoustics expert Trevor Cox about ...
11.16.2018 The Viking Code "Is it true all British people can trace their ancestry to Vikings and how do ancestry DNA tests work?" asks Chloe Mann from Worthing. Genetic ancestry tests promise to reveal your ancestral origins and map your global heritage, but do ...
09.07.2018 A World of Pain "Why do people experience pain differently when they go through the same event?" asks Claire Jenkins from Cwmbran in Wales. Professor of Pain Research, Irene Tracey, welcomes Adam in to the room she calls her 'Torture Chamber'. Burning, electrocuting, lasering ...
08.31.2018 The Random Request Two random questions in this episode. "Is anything truly random, or is everything predetermined?" asks Darren Spalding from Market Harborough. Hannah and Adam go in search of random events, from dice throws to lava lamps. Can we predict the outcome ...
08.24.2018 The Running Joke "How fast can a human run and would we be faster as quadrapeds?" This question flew in via Twitter from historian Greg Jenner. Is there a limit to human sprinting performance? In this episode we investigate the biomechanics of running, ...
08.17.2018 The Alien Enterprise Part 2 Do alien civilisations exist? When will ET phone home? In the second part of our alien double bill, Hannah and Adam boldly go in search of intelligence. They may be some time. What will aliens look like? Where should we ...
08.10.2018 The Alien Enterprise Part 1 Mike Holcombe from Largs in Scotland asks, "How do we look for alien life and what are we expecting to find?" In the first of two episodes on the search for ET, Hannah and Adam look for life inside the ...
06.01.2018 The Dawn Chorus "Winter is finally over and the birds are all singing their hearts out at dawn. What's all the noise about? And why are some songs so elaborate?" asks Tony Fulford from Ely in Cambridgeshire. We find out how birds produce ...
05.25.2018 The Lucky Number "My boss insists that if you choose the same numbers in the lottery each time your probability of winning will increase. Is this true?" asks Vince Scott from Edinburgh. National lotteries are played in more than 80 countries worldwide, but ...
05.18.2018 The Déjà Vu "Do we know what causes déjà vu?" asks Floyd Kitchen from Queenstown in New Zealand. Drs Rutherford and Fry investigate this familiar feeling by speaking to world-leading reseacher Chris Moulin from the University of Grenoble in France and memory expert ...
05.11.2018 The Human Instrument "What happens to the human voice as we age? If I hear a voice on the radio, I can guess roughly how old they are. But singer's voices seem to stay relatively unchanged as they age. Why is this?" All ...
05.04.2018 The Fifth Dimension "What is the fifth dimension?" asks Lena Komaier-Peeters from East Sussex. Proving the existence of extra dimensions, beyond our 3D universe, is one of the most exciting and controversial areas in modern physics. Hannah and Adam head to CERN, the ...
03.02.2018 The Cosmic Egg "How do we measure the age of the Universe?" asks Simon Whitehead. A hundred years ago this wouldn't even have been considered a valid question, because we didn't think the Universe had a beginning at all. Even Einstein thought that ...
02.28.2018 The Atomic Blade "What makes things sharp? Why are thinner knives sharper? What happens on the molecular level when you cut something?" All these questions came from Joshua Schwartz in New York City. The ability to create sharp tools allowed us to fashion ...
02.23.2018 The Tiniest Dinosaur "What is the tiniest dinosaur?" asks younger listener Ellie Cook, aged 11. Today's hunt takes us from the discovery of dinosaurs right up to the present day, which is being hailed as a 'golden age' for palaeontology. One new species ...
02.16.2018 The Enigma of Sex, Part 2 The second instalment in our double bill on the science of sex, answering this question from Robert Turner, a Curio from Leeds: "Why do we only have two sexes?" Drs Rutherford and Fry look for anomalies in the animal kingdom ...
02.09.2018 The Enigma of Sex, Part 1 "Why do we only have two sexes and are there any anomalies in the animal kingdom?" asks Robert Turner from Leeds. From reptilian virgin births to hermaphrodite sea slugs, over the next two episodes Drs Rutherford and Fry examine the ...
01.12.2018 Goldfinger's Moon Laser "The other day I was watching the James Bond film Goldfinger. He boasts a laser powerful enough to project a spot on the Moon. Is this possible? If so, just how powerful would such a laser need to be?" This ...
01.05.2018 The Curious Face Off "Are machines better than humans at identifying faces?" asks the excellently named Carl Vandal. Today's Face Off leads our intrepid detectives to investigate why we see Jesus on toast, Hitler in houses and Kate Middleton on a jelly bean. Face ...
12.29.2017 The Cosmic Speed Limit "We often read that the fastest thing in the Universe is the speed of light. Why do we have this limitation and can anything possibly be faster?" Ali Alshareef from Qatif in Saudia Arabia emailed curiouscases@bbc.co.uk with this puzzling problem. ...
12.22.2017 The Dreadful Vegetable "Why don't children like vegetables?" asks Penny Young from Croydon, and every parent ever. This week Rutherford and Fry dig into the science of taste and discover that there may be more to this question than meets the eye. Children ...
12.15.2017 The Baffled Bat "Why don't thousands of bats in a cave get confused? How do they differentiate their own location echoes from those of other bats?" This puzzling problem was sent in to curiouscases@bbc.co.uk by Tim Beard from Hamburg in Germany. Since ecolocation ...
09.29.2017 Adventures in Dreamland "Why do we dream and why do we repeat dreams?" asks Mila O'Dea, aged 9, from Panama. Hannah and Adam delve into the science of sleep. From a pioneering experiment on rapid eye movement sleep, to a brand new 'dream ...
09.22.2017 The Shocking Surprise Why do we get static shocks? Jose Chavez Mendez from Guatemala asks, "Some years ago, in the dry season, I used to be very susceptible to static electricity. I want to know - why do static shocks happen?" The team ...
09.15.2017 The Sticky Song Why do songs get stuck in our heads? And what makes some tunes stickier than others? Drs Rutherford and Fry investigate 'earworms', those musical refrains that infect our brains for days. Every morning 6Music DJ Shaun Keaveney asks his listeners ...
09.08.2017 The Polar Opposite No one knows why the Earth's magnetic North and South poles swap. But polar reversals have happened hundreds of times over the history of the Earth. So, asks John Turk, when is the next pole swap due and what will ...
09.01.2017 The Curious Cake-Off Can chemistry help us bake the perfect cake? Listener Helena McGinty aged 69 from Malaga in Spain asks, "'I have always used my mother's sponge cake recipe. But is there a noticeable difference in the outcome if you vary some ...
06.16.2017 Kate Bush's Sonic Weapon "It started while listening to the excellent Experiment IV by Kate Bush. The premise of the song is of a band who secretly work for the military to create a 'sound that could kill someone'. Is it scientifically possible to ...
06.15.2017 Itchy and Scratchy "What is an itch and how does scratching stop it? Why does scratching some itches feel so good?!" asks Xander Tarver from Wisborough Green in West Sussex. Our doctors set off to probe the mysteries of itch, and discover that ...
06.14.2017 The Burning Question "What is fire? Is it a solid, liquid or a gas? Why is it hot and why can you see it in the dark?" asks Hannah Norton, aged 10. Dr Fry visits the Burn Hall at The Buildings Research Establishment ...
06.02.2017 The Dark Star "What's inside a black hole and could we fly a spaceship inside?" asks Jorge Luis Alvarez from Mexico City. Some interstellar fieldwork is on the agenda in today's Curious Cases. Astrophysicist Sheila Rowan explains how we know invisible black holes ...
05.19.2017 The Cat Who Came Back "How on earth do cats find their way back to their previous home when they move house?" asks Vicky Cole from Nairobi in Kenya. Our enduring love for our feline friends began when Egyptian pharaohs began to welcome domesticated moggies ...
03.15.2017 A Code in Blood "Why do we have different blood types?" asks Doug from Norfolk. The average adult human has around 30 trillion red blood cells, they make up a quarter of the total number of cells in the body. We have dozens of ...
03.10.2017 The Forgetful Child "Why don't we remember the first few years of our lives?" asks David Foulger from Cheltenham. The team investigate the phenomenon of 'infant amnesia' and how memories are made with Catherine Loveday from the University of Westminster. A whopping 40% ...
03.10.2017 The Astronomical Balloon "How far up can a helium balloon go? Could it go out to space?" asks Juliet Gok, aged 9. This calls for some fieldwork! Adam travels to the Meteorology Department at the University of Reading where Dr Keri Nicholl helps ...

Older episodes

The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry

What's The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Curious Cases of Rutherford & Fry episodes:

Stephen Fry's Identity Crisis

A Frytful Scare Part 2

A Frytful Scare Part 1

Curious Cases Returns

Jurassic Squawk

The Lunar Land Pt2

The Lunar Land Pt 1

An Instrumental Case

The Periodic Problem

The Mesmerist

Coming Soon – More Curious Cases

The Horrible Hangover

The Good Bad Food

Two Infinities and Beyond Part 2

Two Infinities and Beyond Part 1

The Stressful Scone

The Viking Code

A World of Pain

The Random Request

The Running Joke

The Alien Enterprise Part 2

The Alien Enterprise Part 1

The Dawn Chorus

The Lucky Number

The Déjà Vu

The Human Instrument

The Fifth Dimension

The Cosmic Egg

The Atomic Blade

The Tiniest Dinosaur

The Enigma of Sex, Part 2

The Enigma of Sex, Part 1

Goldfinger's Moon Laser

The Curious Face Off

The Cosmic Speed Limit

The Dreadful Vegetable

The Baffled Bat

Adventures in Dreamland

The Shocking Surprise

The Sticky Song

The Polar Opposite

The Curious Cake-Off

Kate Bush's Sonic Weapon

Itchy and Scratchy

The Burning Question

The Dark Star

The Cat Who Came Back

A Code in Blood

The Forgetful Child

The Astronomical Balloon

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