A music-packed episode of some of our favourite music from and about fiction! From concept albums to point-and-click adventures, and Vikram Seth to Rez and Stalwart.

Floods, custard shortages, beards, raccoons, Command & Conquer, environmental pressures, vulnerability theory and more.

Here’s an article about the Minecraft mod Rachel mentioned.

…assuming a spherical shark…

How the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force) crop up in TV shows, comics, films and more! Michael is the host of Burst the Bubble.

Genetic engineering, stem cell research, and the impact of biotechnology on societies past, present and future, mundane and fantastical.

Televisions in Papua New Guinea; Heinz ketchup varieties; Fight Club; Dell, Apple and freedom from choice.

Getting old; toddlers going caving; Star Wars fan-edits; Falling Down; responsible breakdowns; parachuting; American Beauty; living in a cave for a month; factory workers versus CEOs; sleep cycles; ageing, ulcers, chocolate and turkey.

Full Metal Jacket; the transitions between cushy modern life and the battlefield; the hippocampus; the boredom of military life; predictability and control; blood flow in fight or flight; spiders and leopards.

Over-grooming; a child in a road accident in China; over-litigious-ness; the bystander effect; social stress; first aid training.

Happy birthday Kim; robots; humans are inefficient batteries; squeaky burgers; the end of the world in the late 90s; Demolition Man, Escape From New York; knitting; Equilibrium; hug speakeasies.

Being engaged to Zooey Deschanel; The Matrix; The Truman Show; surveillance vs. voyeurism; “other markers are available”; Neuromancer; Ghost in the Shell; cyborg rats.

Theremins; 1984 vs. We (and Brave New World); book roulette; reading poets; James Randi; Escape From New York’s special effects; glow-in-the-dark cats; circumcision.

Superhero vigilantes with pepper spray; trick or treat; silent movies; Wall-E; Beneath A Steel Sky; GATTACA’s temporal ambiguity; The Forever War; Czech dog poo vigilante; The Culture; elitism.

Chaos, the weather, and why mathematicians can prove there isn't an answer to everything.

Niraj is a PhD student in nanophotonics, and wrote a children's book called Butterfly Flo and the Everything Effect—a story about a butterfly in the Australian bush who learns about chaos theory and how he can change the weather.

Andy and Will chat about what they've been reading and watching over the summer.

Final episode of the series with Dr Amy Milton on the subject of memory, and how to erase it.

Dorée gives us a glimpse into the troubled minds of Victorian horror writers, and their pathological fears of, well, pathology.