The Mystery of the Teenage Brain

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Welcome back to a brand new series of The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry.

19.

So we always go on about how we've forgotten what series it is, but we've counted.

It's 19.

At what point do we stop counting?

19.

18.

18.

Here we go then.

Another episode for your ears.

Today we are talking about people accused of being lazy, rude, and surly.

People who make poor decisions based on confused logic and rampant self-interest.

Now, are you talking about British politics again, Hannah?

Not this time.

No, today we are talking about teenagers.

And okay, those are the stereotypes about teens at their absolute worst.

But, Adam, you've got teenage kids and yours are lovely.

Yeah, I agree.

Thank you very much.

I mean, I think they're all lovely and I think their friends are too.

I coach a rugby team on Sunday mornings.

So I spend a couple of hours with 40, 14-year-old boys, and they're all lovely too.

It is possible to to have lovely teenagers.

Indeed, it is.

They do smell a bit weird, and they're alarmingly hairy.

Good to know.

Well, we have actually had a bunch of questions in about teenagers sent in to curiouscases at bbc.co.uk.

And so we are going to be investigating the strange goings-on in the brains and bodies of people as they go from childish to slightly less childish versions of themselves.

Indeed, so an exasperated Michelle Lewis from County Durham asks, Why can't my teens get out of bed on a morning?

My son argues that it's the stage of his developing brain and thinks school should start later in the day.

What does the science say?

Good excuse, Master Lewis.

We also had another question in from Emma, who is 13, and she asks, why are teenagers so antisocial?

I will talk to people at school and then go home and shut myself in my room.

Why does this happen?

Emma, wanting to be alone and avoiding your family is a perfect...

perfectly sensible way to live.

You're all good.

Now, we're going to come to all of those questions in a moment, but I think it's important to get some of the basics out of the way first.

Because surely, Adam, a lot of the weird stuff that teenagers do just comes down to the fact that their bodies are awash with hormones.

That is almost certainly true, but we've got to think about what hormones actually are, because at their most basic level, hormones, they're just molecules that one bit of the body releases to tell another bit of the body to behave in a certain way.

And so, it's not just sex hormones.

There are hormones that tell you when you're hungry, or when you're full, or when you're tired, or when you're horny.

But we're not just talking about the sex hormones here.

No, not at all.

So there are the sex hormones are essential for the development of

the things associated with the changes in teenagers' bodies.

Thank you for putting it so delicately.

You find those hormones in adults too though.

So why does it have such an effect on teenagers?

Well it's a transition, right?

So

some of those sex hormones that we talk about as being, you know, the teenagers are awash with, like testosterone and estrogen and progesterone, right?

They do exist at earlier stages when you're kids but it's just when on the onset of puberty when all of those massive changes in your bodily growth and sexual maturity and and you know getting hairy and all that sort of stuff those are big those sex hormones are being produced at a much higher level at that time and that accounts for a lot of the the changes that we see in teenagers bodies so it's about growth really it is about growth but it's not only about growth because those hormones are also swirling around in their brains and the brain is undergoing massive changes at that time as well.

Now, nobody on earth knows more about teenage brains than Sarah Jane Blakemore, who's a professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge.

And she's the she literally wrote the book on this, Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain.

Now, she told us: while there's a lot of growing that's happening in teenage bodies, not everything is getting bigger.

Yeah, in fact, the brain slightly decreases in size across adolescence.

I don't think that's particularly functionally relevant, but you know, contrary to what you might imagine, the brain reaches its adult size by about age eight or nine years, and it doesn't change very much in volume after that.

I don't know about you, but I find that very weird to imagine an adult-sized brain in a nine-year-old's head.

But we know that a nine-year-old doesn't have sort of, they don't have an adult brain in terms of its function, so it can't just be about size.

Exactly, it's not just about size, it's all about change.

Until about 20, 25 years ago, it was assumed that the human brain stops developing in childhood.

That's what I was taught as an undergraduate.

I know that because I remember my undergraduate lectures and I also kept my undergraduate textbooks and that's exactly what they say.

We now know that that's completely false and in fact the human brain continues to develop right throughout adolescence and even into the early to mid-20s.

We know that because we're now able to scan the living human brain with MRI scanning, which gives us really beautiful, detailed images of the living human brain at all ages and many many studies around the world have used MRI scanning to track changes in brain structure and brain function across the lifespan and what all of those studies point to is these very substantial and protracted changes both in terms of structure and function in the brain across adolescence into early adulthood.

Now I've got to tell you Hannah From what Sarah Jane just said, it's almost impossible to overstate how radical what she just said is then.

Well, in the sense that people used to think that your hardware was fixed, and

as you grew up, it was just software that changes.

Whereas now we realize that it's your brain itself that is actually changing.

Exactly.

The overall size doesn't really change from when you're a kid, when you're sort of eight, nine, ten, to when you're an adult.

But during teenage years, right into your 20s, in fact, there's a whole load of shuffling and rewiring and massive change that's happening within the overall size of the brain.

But what kinds of change, though, if it's not the size?

Well, you've got, you know, you've got grey matter and white matter, and grey matter is like the neurons that say the actual brain cells and the white matter is all the connecting stuff between those brain cells and what what she was just saying is that is that white matter increases in volume but grey matter actually decreases and this is all part of what we describe as neuroplasticity.

So all of those three neurodevelopmental processes which are occurring during adolescence axonal growth, myelination and synaptic pruning are mechanisms of neuroplasticity.

That is the way the brain adapts according to its environment.

The adolescent's environmental experiences or social experiences, cultural experiences can sculpt and mold the way his or her brain is developing.

There's quite a lot of words in that.

You're going to have to help me with.

Right.

Axonal growth.

Yeah, okay.

So axons are the wiring between brain cells.

So are these getting thicker?

They're getting thicker, yeah.

Myelination.

Myelination, so myelin sheaths are these little wrapped-up bits that go around the axons, which protect them and insulate them.

It's just like insulation wire.

Thinking quicker.

Thinking quicker and more efficiently.

Right, and synaptic pruning?

Well, the synapses are the connections between neurons at the axons.

Basically, when you learn things and when you reinforce particular behaviours, you're making connections that become semi-permanent or even permanent between brain cells.

And if they don't get used, if you've got connections that are not being stimulated, then the brain just trims them.

It literally prunes them.

Use it or lose it.

Exactly.

So, this is how behaviours get learnt and identities get created and reinforced.

It's actually happening at a cellular level in the brain.

So, all of these put together, then, is that what leads to teenagers having strange behaviours?

Is this the reason why you get teenage girls who spend hours just practicing their new signatures on the back of a workbook when they've decided who their crush is going to be?

Little insight into teenage Hannah Fry there.

We'll come to you as a teenager in a moment.

Okay, this is a genuinely confusing time for teenagers and for their parents, even if their parents happen to be a professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania like Francis Jensen.

I'm a neurologist and a neuroscientist, and

I studied neurodevelopment in my laboratory,

but I

noticed when I had my own two sons that as they morphed from childhood into teenagehood, there was

a lot going on that I couldn't really explain.

And I was determined at that point.

It triggered me to really delve into the literature and also some of the work we were doing in our own lab to really understand

what was known about the teenage brain.

Okay, Francis seems like a good person to give us some idea about what Emma asked us at the beginning of the program about why teenagers can be so antisocial.

That's a very good question.

It's a complicated question, actually.

So let me just start by saying

teenagers, while they may not have as much connectivity as they will later in their frontal lobes, their prefrontal lobe, which is used for decision-making and impulse control, they do have very active and almost fully mature social areas of their brain because they are located a little bit more behind the frontal lobes.

So the development for both white matter and gray matter is happening from the back to the front.

So right around where your ears are is your limbic system and some of your social areas of your brain.

And they're kind of using their social brain without the prefrontal cortex and the frontal executive brain being able to regulate it as much.

At the same time, teenagers are also at this point where they're trying to figure out their identity, right?

This is when they're beginning to understand what kind of a person person they are.

What's their character?

Who are they?

And that requires also a natural push to be independent and not so dependent upon, say, your parents in the house that you go home to, which could mean that the teenager might be more inclined to isolate themselves from their parents.

Is there an evolutionary angle to all of this?

Why teenagers might care a bit more about fitting in with their friends rather than their parents?

Well, you know that I'm super cautious about applying evolutionary explanations for human behavior.

That's why I asked you.

Yeah, right.

Well, I mean, I'm going to hand this one over to Sarah Jane Blakemore because she's a really good person to ask about this.

The whole point of adolescence is that this is a period of life in which we become gradually independent from our parents, from our families.

And one element of being an independent adult is being affiliated with your peer group, understanding where you lie in the complex social hierarchy, because that's what you're going to have to do as an adult.

So maybe that kind of evolutionary theory explains why young people are drawn towards their peers and maybe slightly away from their parents as they go through their teenage years.

That idea of gaining your independence away from your parents, I remember a conversation I had with your wife actually about it.

Did you?

What?

She said something very wise.

She told me about an idea that when you have a teenage daughter in particular, you should think of yourself as though you are the sides of a swimming pool and that your daughter goes off to swim on her own, but should always know that she can return to the sides and you'll be there to support her whenever whenever she needs it.

I thought that was a really beautiful analogy.

Well she's a very wise woman my wife.

That's a really lovely lovely analogy that if they get in trouble they know that they can always come back.

Yeah and as they get more confident as a swimmer they know that one day they don't they don't have to but they always can if they want to.

I think it's quite tough being a teenager.

I completely agree.

I think it's really hard being a teenager.

And you're not just saying that because teenagers form a core part of our audience.

Well, we like their parents too.

I mean, I think it's a generally good idea to let your teenagers lead the way.

On the other hand, I mean, there are definitely times when it's a bit difficult to stand back as a parent when they're doing objectively stupid things.

Well, actually, we did have a question from Dr.

Mark Galloway, which really relates to that particular idea.

He wrote, I'm aware that there is evidence that teenagers seem to take more risks despite being aware of the risk.

I'm also aware that groups of teenagers are much more likely to take high-risk actions than when alone.

The hold my beer effect.

So, my question is: why is this happening?

Well, again, Sarah Jane Blakemore is the real expert on that.

She actually did many of the first experiments about risk-taking in teenagers.

And again, it all comes down to their changing brains.

So, one of the theories of adolescent risk-taking is called the dual systems model or the mismatch model.

There are various different versions of this theory.

And what it suggests is that the regions of the brain that are associated with processing reward and emotion, so these are generally subcortical regions or of the limbic system, are hypersensitive during adolescence, particularly in early adolescence.

So they're firing away, giving you a rewarding emotional feeling of when you take a risk.

Whereas the prefrontal cortex and other regions of the brain that are associated with inhibiting risk-taking, with stopping yourself making dangerous decisions, for example, are still very much in development and don't fully mature until at least the mid-20s.

And so therefore, in adolescence, you get this mismatch between the limbic regions that are firing on all cylinders to give you a kind of kick out of risk-taking versus the prefrontal cortex, which is not fully mature yet and so doesn't give you the ability to inhibit risk-taking.

Do you reckon you were riskier when you were a teenager?

Yeah, I mean, there's a limited number of stories I can tell on the radio, but yes, definitely the polite artist.

Can you tell one story on the radio?

One time at school, I found a box of bullets.

What school did you go to?

There was a big military, you know, there was a CCF, there was an Army, Navy, and the other one at our school.

And I found this box.

They were actually blanks, 22s.

But blanks still are explosives.

They don't have a cap on them.

They're

still dangerous.

So I took them home and with my two brothers, one of whom was a teenager at the time, the other one a bit younger, we sat on the patio in our back garden and hit them with hammers.

Did they explode?

And yes, it turns out they do explode when you hit bullets with hammers.

It's a wonder that humanity survived this long.

Absolutely baffling, especially when teenage boys actually exist.

Yep, sorry about that, Dad.

What about you?

What, risky behaviour?

Yeah.

I didn't go out, mate.

As a mathematician, I was just reading math textbooks the whole time.

Okay, this is the big idea then with all of this about risky behaviours: that you're just not old enough to worry about what might happen to you.

Well, sort of.

I mean, that basic idea is accepted, but there are definite limitations to this theory.

So if you think about the kinds of risks we worry about young people taking, so these are things like, I don't know, smoking or binge drinking or taking drugs or dangerous driving, those are risks that adolescents don't often do when they're on their own.

It's when they're with their friends, when they're with their peers, that they tend to take these risks, if they take them at all.

And that's what I think personally was missing from the original versions of those theories.

Okay, so one specific example of this, experimental evidence for risk-taking in teenagers, it comes from this guy called Steinberg.

They use car racing video games, so big simulations, and he gets teenage boys and adults to play these racing games.

And the key thing here is it really is dependent on who is also present when they're doing the racing games.

So they're either alone or with someone watching them.

And what he found is that adolescents take more risks.

So things like, you know, speeding or driving recklessly or just gunning it through traffic lights when they're being watched.

Whereas the adults took the same number of risks regardless of whether they were alone or being spied upon.

Okay, the idea then is that teens do take more risks, but only in specific circumstances, not just in general.

Yeah.

All of this stuff is really difficult to test, by the way.

So I asked Sarah Jane if there were

what we do in biology quite often, which which is we test this kind of stuff in animal models.

Many, many other species are studied in terms of adolescent behaviour, but in the lab it's mostly mice and rats.

Now mice and rats undergo about 35 days of what we would call adolescence, that is between going through puberty and becoming fully sexually mature adults.

And in those 35 days of adolescence, you can measure behaviour and you can see that behaviour changes.

There's behaviour that's unique to that period.

For example, risk-taking behaviour

increases, exploration of the environment increases, and social behaviour changes really quite dramatically during adolescence in rodents.

There's one study published a few years ago showing that adolescent mice drink more alcohol when they're with other mice, and that's not true for adult mice.

Okay, quite a lot to unpack here.

First off, why are the mice drinking alcohol?

Well, I mean, so that is a fair point.

That is the experimental conditions, but maybe they like it.

How do they know it's rebellious?

Because adult mice don't drink habitually.

At all.

They don't have access to off-license.

What if there's an adult mouse that just really enjoys a glass of wine over dinner?

Well, that's where it starts.

Okay, but really, why are they drinking more alcohol?

Okay, so really...

When mice drink alcohol, they get a neurochemical reward in their brains.

They like it.

They do.

They like it.

But adolescent mice, they do more of this because the risk-reward ratio is enhanced by the social situation, by whichever teenage mice are egging them on.

So it is the same as in humans?

Basically, yeah.

So let's think about this.

Where are we?

Right.

Teenagers have to deal with growth.

They've got a crazy melee of hormones.

They've got brain scrambling, remodeling, and that's all while they're trying to establish these social relations with a bunch of people who are going through the exact same biological extravaganza and having to forge independence from their secure attachment with their parents.

Yeah.

I mean, it sounds exhausting, doesn't it?

No wonder they need a bit of a lion.

And that was exactly Michelle Lewis's question.

Why can't teens get out of bed on a morning?

My son argues that it's the stage of his developing brain and thinks school should start later in the day.

Well, I think that's a very smart answer, young Master Lewis.

So, to help us find an answer to that question, we are joined in the studio by Dr.

Rachel Sharman.

She is from the University of Oxford's Sleep and Circadium Neuroscience.

Rachel, a question like this: How on earth do you go about trying to investigate it?

Well,

actually, it's been done across a whole range of mammals, not just humans.

We know that at puberty, a whole range of mammals from the Daegu to the hamster to the monkey to the adolescent in their bedroom needs to sleep longer.

Their body clock shifts at puberty.

So, you know, we have that 24-hour rhythm in our body.

So, for us, going to bed at 11, for a teenager that would feel like you were putting them to bed three hours earlier.

So can you imagine trying to go to bed at, well, before the nine o'clock news, that's when all the good telly starts.

So they're not tired until later on.

And that means they need to sleep a little bit longer into the morning.

And you're getting them up and you're getting them to go to school and getting them to do things at nine o'clock, which for us would be like trying to do maths at 6 a.m.

I couldn't think of anything worse.

I can't think of anything better, better, frankly.

Why couldn't you just, what if you just popped a teenager on a plane and sent them to a different time zone that was three hours, three hours in the right direction?

That's exactly it.

So teenagers are between one to three hours phase delayed and it locks to puberty.

Why it happens, we're not entirely sure, but they're living somewhere between Ireland and New York for puberty and then about 20,

yeah, between 23 it starts to drift back.

So I know working in universities, when you're sat there looking at your first-year undergraduates, okay, they may have been out partying all night, and that may be contributing to why they're tired, but it's also their body clock.

And it also may be that we're actually quite boring lecturers for three of us.

Perhaps.

Speak to yourself.

I think maths at 6 a.m.

with Hannah is a delight for everybody.

Do we have any clues about why this is happening?

What are the mechanisms inside our body that might be causing this?

So we know that they've got this shift in their body clock, in their their melatonin rhythm.

Now melatonin isn't a sleep hormone as such and it's often mislabeled as that.

It's more of a darkness hormone.

So it triggers that it is night and it triggers all of the rhythms in your body that hey it is time to rest and it's time to restore.

So it tells your gut to slow down.

It tells everything just to wind down slowly for rest for night and that is shifted.

in adolescence that starts later on in the night than it would pre-puberty or once this phase is finished.

We also think that the adolescent eye is slightly more responsive to light.

So you've all heard about the blue light issue and using technology late into the night isn't great because our eye is triggered to recognise dawn

and as a signal to, hey, wake up, break down that melatonin, get on with your day.

And we think the adolescent eye is slightly more responsive.

So when they are getting that light in the evening, they're not able to go to sleep.

So teenagers are often trapped in

this vicious cycle.

Have you studied kids who are in school and how they feel about sleep?

Yes, so the Teen Sleep Project at the University of Oxford, we tried to look at different ways to address this problem.

And we sort of went in pretty big, pretty bold, and decided we wanted to run a randomized control trial, recruit in 100 schools and randomize into delaying school start times, nothing at all, or a sleep education programme.

And we found out that no school in their right mind, and very rightly so, would come onto a trial where they'd go through six months of sort of legal stuff and preparation with their governing board to delay school start times to be told by a very cheery scientist, I'm sorry, you're in weightless control.

We'll see you in two years.

Thanks for doing all that work, though.

So, what we wanted to do was take a lot of our sort of intervention from the US.

Now, in the US, they start school incredibly early.

And if you're very, very bright, you start school even earlier.

So, usually, schools start about half past seven in the morning.

If you're really bright, you're starting school at half past past six.

And

the American Academy of Sleep Medicine have now said school shouldn't start before half past eight in the morning.

Now, that is still probably slightly earlier than most of our schools in the UK.

But what they found is by delaying school start times by an hour, you see improvement in grades.

You don't have to change the teachers.

Kids just start to perform better.

They are less angry at home.

There are less car crashes because remember they can drive earlier than we can in the US, and you see this whole range of benefits by delaying that school start time.

Didn't you also put trackers on students?

We did.

So, when we were testing our sleep education package, we wanted to see if sleep would change.

So, we measured the students' sleep, about 100 students across 10 schools, and we measured their sleep for two weeks before and two weeks after our sleep intervention

package.

And we found some incredibly interesting results.

The teenagers were getting a lot less sleep than expected.

They were using the weekends to lie in and we also had some very interesting effects on certain days of the week where they just decided not to sleep at all.

What do a proper all-nighter?

A lot of them did proper all-nighters.

There was one day where a group of students, and of course this is all blinded, so I didn't know whether they were males, females, who who they were, what school they were at.

But I had about

10, so students across all the data points.

They all pulled this all-nighter.

They got about three hours' sleep.

And I was like, this is it.

I've got my Nobel Prize.

This is incredible.

They've all done something.

They've all synced.

Perhaps it's the moon.

And

I was just speaking to

one of our teachers, and they were like, oh, no,

I can't remember now whether it was Call of Duty or FIFA.

Something was released and they pulled an all-nighter.

And I was speaking to you with students about it afterwards, and I was like, Why did you do that?

and they were like, Well, what am I going to talk about the next day when I'm in school?

I completely relate to that.

I pulled an allighter.

Why were you having all-nighters when you were a kid?

Oh, I pulled an all-nighter when Call of Duty VI came out last year.

Oh, oh, as an adult, okay.

Yeah,

you know, I was about to say that this really demonstrates the incredible social pressure that's on our teenagers, but apparently, it's just the social pressure on gamers.

Yep, Rachel, do you think that teenagers are getting enough sleep overall when you include the lions at the weekends?

No, because the problem with sleep is once it's gone, it's gone.

You can't catch up on it.

And this is how we see the students getting into these vicious cycles, that they're going to bed at the same time,

as long as Call of Duty FIFA isn't released, they're going to bed the same time

weekends and weekday nights, dependent on their body clock.

That is the time they are able to fall asleep.

They get extra sleep on the weekends, but then they can't go to sleep, so they lie in on a Sunday morning and then they can't go to sleep Monday night, so then we have a compression again.

And it's that elongation compression that it's like being jet lagged repeatedly, and it's no good.

So we found on our teen sleep study they were getting somewhere between six hours, 45, seven and a bit, and they should really be getting eight to ten hours for their age.

And these are up to 18 years old, okay, so 14 to 18, and their brain is still developing.

they need that sleep we use sleep for the brain to restore refresh and have our synaptic plasticity the neuronal pruning and what are the big tips then in terms of having better night sleep is it the obvious stuff like not being on your phone before you go to bed we always say it takes about 60 minutes to get ready for sleep properly so 60 minutes before bed start that wind down stop doing homework stop revising try and put those mobile phones down read a book and begin this calming wind down routine.

Have you noticed that lots of our listeners write in and say that I listen to us

to go to sleep, which I think is a compliment.

I think I'm reading it as a compliment.

Is that a compliment, Rachel?

Yeah, you're part of their rest and relaxation and wind down.

I think that's great.

I would take that as a win.

Should we sell it?

We should sell a sleep tape of us talking, boring people just to go to sleep.

Go to sleep.

Just start talking about Darwin and it'll go on for six hours.

That only works for you.

Well, on that note, thank you very much, Rachel.

We really appreciate that.

Thank you.

So, Dr.

Fry, have we worked out why teenagers are so weird?

Well, Dr.

Rutherford, they're not weird.

They're just going through a lot.

Yes, massive hormonal brouhaha.

Physical and brain drama.

Social and cultural upheaval.

And we should all stop dissing them and just give teens a bit of a break.

Well, there you go.

So, teenagers, they do have a hard time, and I think we need to be much more forgiving about this incredibly difficult time of their lives.

I definitely remember being a teenager, and

the people who treated me like a child, and the people who treated me like a young adult, and having a much better relationship that

was founded on a lot more respect and compassion with the people who I think were more understanding.

I think that's how I want to be when I am a parent of a teenager.

Yeah, I completely agree.

And I try to do that now.

But at the same time, you know, the cringe factor that my kids have for me trying to do,

it's a very fine line between really nice parents and nerdy dads.

Well, you do do a lot of dad dancing and that is.

Embarrassing dad dancing.

One thing I wanted to tell you, actually, you know,

what Rachel was talking about there, about

school start times and whether they're appropriate.

There was actually a big, big experiment that happened in Boston where they decided to try and shift the start time of teenagers just to make it more appropriate for their bodies and rejigged the entire school bus system to make sure that everybody in the entire state would have a more appropriate start time.

The thing is, is that they got an algorithm to run all the calculations for them.

I know it is great.

They didn't really check the answers before just publishing the new timetables.

So it ended up that some kids, some younger kids, were

basically starting school at like 7 a.m.

and like the bus was coming to pick them up at like half five in the morning.

And these kids would have to go to bed at sort of 4.30 p.m.

Their parents weren't getting to see them.

It was, so they threw the whole thing out, got rid of the whole thing.

And now it's like, okay, back to 8 a.m.

start time for everyone.

God, imagine getting that.

that text message.

We get text messages from the various schools that my kids go to and it says things like, you know, it's World Book Day on Friday.

Your kid has to come dressed as a witch.

And you look at them and go, Oh god, we have to do that now.

Imagine getting one that said,

There's a new start time,

6:30.

I'm not doing that, yeah, no,

you're bunking off this week.

Yeah, um, should we do curio of the week?

Let's do it

and fries, curio of the week.

All right, so we've been between series, so we've got an absolutely huge letterbox, bulging letterbox, full of Curio of the Weeks, potential Curie of the Week.

So we're going to just

dive straight in.

Dear Dr.

Rutherford and Dr.

Fry, good start.

I'm actually a professor, but it's okay.

I won't hold you against it.

This is from Evelyn, not age 12, so she can be forgetful for this.

I won't hold it against you.

After binge listening to your podcast, for what must be something like the fifth time?

I mean, Evelyn, you're Curie of the Week already.

I don't even care what follows from that.

Even we haven't listened to it that many times.

Maybe this is who we should call and we can't remember if we've covered something already.

Which does happen remarkably often.

Evelyn, have we done this subject before?

We can't remember.

Anyway,

oh, in brackets, or possibly more.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe Curie of the series, Evelyn.

I felt the need to draw the superhero known as Raccoon and his amazing psychic Super Math Marvel Number Girl.

I wonder which one's me and which one's you.

I have included both digital and on-paper versions of both drawings of these iconic characters.

I hope you like them.

Now, I think we need to describe these.

Yeah, we'll put them up on the website, but I think audio descriptions of pictures work really well.

It does.

And I feel like I've come out short in this

picture.

It does look quite a lot like you, though, weirdly.

Adam is pictured as an actual raccoon with some some very severe white eyebrows and just a very dainty little moustache.

He's wearing a Canadian hat and stripy tail and a purple cape.

Looks lovely.

Yes.

Evelyn, my superhero that I imagined during the hypnosis episode, you can tell us exactly when that was.

It was a man dressed as a raccoon.

It wasn't an actual raccoon.

Too late.

Too late.

And what do you look like?

I, meanwhile, appear with flowing, beautiful red hair, a green tank top and I've got a little pie tattoo on my arm on the bicep nice perfectly accurate and then in the second picture which is a more sort of dynamic superhero like a Jack Kirby cover from the classic 1970s Marvel comics

nope no reaction at all sorry raccoon man is standing on top of

Supermath Marvel Girl's head

a worthy a worthy winner of Kira of the Week there thank you very much for sending that in even if you have any questions that you want us to investigate, or indeed any other submissions for Cura of the Week, are we still giving out badges?

Ilan, are we still giving out badges?

I have no idea.

He says he has no idea.

We make an executive decision live on the radio.

Yes, we are.

Yes, we are.

Loads of them.

Yeah, loads of them.

Do we have to do anything for them?

And cake, don't you?

No, we don't have to do anything.

You have to send out cake as well, Elan.

Cake, badges, capes.

And a marching band.

To deliver it in person, regardless of where you are in the world.

That's the promise.

That's our promise we make.

Yes, exactly.

Anyway, if you fancy some of that, then send in your questions to curiouscases at bbc.co.uk and we will see you next week.

Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be hurt.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.