The Infinite Monkey's Guide To… Murder

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You're about to listen to an episode of the Infinite Monkeys Guide 2.

Episodes will be released on Wednesdays, wherever you get your podcasts.

But if you're in the UK, you can listen to new episodes first on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

I'm Robin Inks.

And welcome to a new series of the Infinite Monkeys Guide 2, where we bring you some of our favourite clips from the show, covering subjects subjects as diverse as failure and the future.

And there will be a lot of failure in the future, by the looks of things, won't there?

I mean, including obviously the sun swelling into a red giant and destroying us.

Yeah, ultimately.

Heat and death.

Entropy and failure.

Inescapable.

Over the last 15 years, we've talked many times about the birth of the universe and the origin of life.

And don't forget, and the beauty of the colours of the rainbow.

So Brian, of course, will be saying the wonder of this and the wonder of that, not as much as he does on tele.

And at times, you will actually be able to hear his smile as it cracks the sponge at the edge of the microphone.

Listen, can you hear his smile now?

Sponge.

Oh, you can with your smile.

But for every action, we have to know that, of course, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

So, though Brian will spend a lot of his time smiling happily, every now and again he has that kind of smile of a murderer as his thoughts turn to killing.

The reason I bring up Brian's occasional bloodlust after loving the universe perhaps a bit too much is that today's Infinite Monkeys Guide is an Infinite Monkeys Guide to murder.

Can I just interject there and say the BBC's ethics board would like to make it clear that we take no responsibility for any criminal activities that may be generated by this show and remind you that murder can seriously damage your health and other people's.

That's a very good point actually.

Obviously there's a lot of talk of death in kind of the world of physics, but you know the world of stand-up comedy that's filled with the language of death.

A great gig you've killed.

On a bad night you've died.

So it may be no surprise that lawyer turned comedian Susan Kalman is fascinated by the way people commit murder.

That happens a lot, it happens a lot, doesn't it?

That a lot of lawyers go into stand-up comedy, don't they?

I thought you could say a lot of lawyers go into murder via comedy.

Well, I suppose it's a similar thing, isn't it?

You know, if you think of someone like John Mortimer and the brilliant Rumpole of the Bailey and the way that Leo McKern played him, a lot of it is performance, isn't it?

It's that kind of, you know, if you can get the jury laughing, you'll be amazed what you can get your client off with.

And just think from Rumpole of the Bailey.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rumpole of the Bailey.

And, oh, god, here comes she who must be obeyed.

I didn't know Richard Feynman was in Rumpola.

Oh, I love Rumpola the Bailey.

But it has that thing, that bit when someone's been won over by the charisma of a barrister.

So that's the thing is next time you're up for all those parking tickets for parking your limo, just make sure you open with a couple of light, nice one-liners, then a shaggy dog story, you'll get off whatever.

I don't get the tickets, it's my driver.

Anyway, that is why we introduced Susan Kowman to psychologist Dr.

Julia Shaw and also forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black.

And this is what Susan had explained to her.

There's an assumption that being psychopathic is going to be good for you, which it might be because you're high on callousness and low on empathy, which makes it easier to hurt people.

But most murders are committed by people who it's a fight that gets out of control.

It's more someone who's aggressive, hot-tempered, and it's not a psychopath.

It's a passion, isn't it?

It's a passion.

It's a moment of passion.

Murder is on television so much.

And more often than not, the murders that we see on television in terms of in dramas is incredibly well prepared.

Half the show is about someone planning.

It is that thing again of you know, someone puts an umbrella out of a chimney and connects it to a record player that's playing the 1812 overture and coincides the murder with the sound of the cannons.

But that must be, I mean, not just that example, otherwise,

that level of preparation is very, very rare, I'd assume.

Most murders are not anticipated.

So it is a moment of argument, it's alcohol-fueled, it's drug-fueled, whatever it may be.

And suddenly you're faced with a situation which has gone beyond where you ever expected it to go and you're left with a body.

What do you do with it?

If I can give you a bit of advice, should you ever find yourself in that position?

Don't dismember.

Don't.

It's awfully messy.

I know.

Can I borrow your pen?

Yeah.

And then people think, I'll go and drop the body parts in different places.

Every time you do that, you've gone from one potential crime scene to about six, so you're more likely to be caught.

So don't.

Do you know what?

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this conversation already, and we're it's just started, is I'm fascinated because one day this might come in useful.

I've never done a show where the audience are just going, oh,

because the thing about it, I think, is that most people have at some point even fleetingly considered murdering someone.

You've considered it, you've considered it, you've thought about

more than once, Susan.

We've all fleetingly, and most of us say that silly, but we have potentially thought about it.

And I think most of the people who think about it, and like the distinguished guest over there, have absolutely no knowledge apart from what they've seen on the television,

which would make them believe that they could commit the perfect crime.

Because if you've watched all of these programmes, surely you have the background.

For me,

genuinely, people go,

is that not true?

I categorise my friends.

It's interesting what you were saying, Sue, about your husband, into

would they help me if I committed a murder?

I'd help you.

And you would do that.

I wouldn't.

We've got the same name.

This is Strangers on a Train, Reddit.

There's a sleeper leaving tonight, and if they've both got tickets.

Do you also classify your Oxford colleagues in such a way?

I couldn't possibly comment on that.

Now, of course, 100 years ago, you could get away with murder by saying that the person found dead in the woods was probably killed by that dancing bear that had escaped its leash in the middle of a tango.

That, by the way, genuinely is a case, a dancing bear in the forest of Dean.

I don't know about the dance style, so I might be wrong about it being a tango.

Were they acquitted?

The human got away with it.

The bear, far from it.

But the first time that we met forensic botanist Mark Spencer, we found out some just incredible.

He can be identified by Brambles.

Yeah.

It's that whole thing of the- I mean, it's not the Bramble.

You don't ask the Brambles.

That was almost a children's book for you, wasn't it?

A new version of Brambly Hedge mixed with a little bit of Agatha Christie there.

What's that, Brambly Hedge?

What kind of voice would the Brambly Hedge have?

Oh, Brambly Hedge would have a voice like this, I think.

So you'd go

who committed the murder, Brambly Hedge.

Well, I can tell you now, it was the priest.

Oh, it's very chilly.

It's nearly autumn.

Where have my berries gone?

Yeah.

Here's what I've been saying.

Police are generally very familiar with the built environment when they see serious crime, you know, people's households, factories, offices, but you take them into the wider landscape with all this weird green stuff that everybody ignores and it's all a bit terrifying to them and they can't see structure, context, time and space, which is potentially very helpful for understanding crime.

So it'll often be used working with forensic anthropologists and archaeologists to locate burial sites, for example, by disturbance patterns, vegetation.

And when we are lucky enough to find somebody, actually look at the vegetation disturbance patterns, particularly things like my old friend the bramble, to actually

give some kind of assessment for potentially how long somebody's been there.

Usually, the kind of casework I do, the people have been often either on the ground or in the ground for months or years, and the vegetation may well be one of the first clues to kind of help you assess who is that person, how long have they been there.

Well, so you're looking for new growth?

And why is the bramble particularly?

Well, brambles are just one of my favourite plants, you know.

Do you know what a a a person who studies brambles is called?

A brambologist?

A batologist.

A batologist.

A batologist, which is a delightful word, from the Greek upper batus, very.

And wha why it doesn't seem to me to be a particularly wide or deep field, the study of brambles.

Indeed,

it is a nice thing.

It's especially niche, it is fair to say, even for a botanist.

But brambles often tend to grow, along with stingy nettles, in places where people do bad things to other people.

And as a consequence, if for example stinging nettles are everywhere.

I know, but particularly in places where people do bad things.

You know, they won't often be in the middle of a field, but they'll be on the edge of a field where, for example, somebody would bury somebody, you know, if they want to hide a body.

So brambles, bless them, you see them as these big, horrible, messy thickets.

I see them as very tidy, organized plants that actually produce a lovely rhythm of cycle of growth, which actually, once you get to understand it, can give you a a bit of a sort of reverse chronology.

It's about a bit like looking at tree rings psychologically, but backwards in time from the outside.

So I can actually give an estimate, or potentially can, of you know, if the brambles are over somebody's remains, they may well have been in the ground, say, from 2010 or something like that.

Also, if you look at a field, let's say, or a piece of woodland, you can see it almost in 4D.

You can see that you can see slices through time, the growth.

It's fair to say that I look at vegetation in quite a different way to most other people.

In terms of the entertainment industry, fleas are best known for their work in flea circuses.

Yeah, well, of course, the classic flea circuses.

That's what a lot of fleas run away to join the circus, but end up getting involved in crime drama, it seems.

Don't they?

No.

A flea circus is not real.

No, they don't run away and get involved in crime dramas.

Oh, okay.

Oh, they do, actually.

Oh, they do.

Yeah.

And they don't.

I mean, that's the great thing about you, Brian.

Every opinion you have is always in a superposition.

Is T is open to me?

There is

because

I change my opinion when evidence is presented to me, and the evidence that's been presented to me in this case is the next line in the script.

Yeah, that'll explain it.

Which says that, as well as forensic botany, there is forensic entomology.

Dr.

Amaret Whittaker told Dave Gorman how fleas can help you solve a murder, and that's why I changed my mind because I saw that.

So, they do sometimes get involved in crime drama.

Not crime drama on television, but real crime.

Fleas like warmth, basically.

So, as soon as an animal dies, they will jump off that animal and find another host.

So,

fleas are not generally involved in forensics.

But, in fact, the first ever case I did did actually involve fleas, which is a very sort of simple case.

And it'd be great if all cases were that simple, but it did actually involve fleas.

Well, but I'm not going to let you stop there.

Oh, okay.

That's far too anyway.

It involved fleas, but please move on.

If you can talk about it, are you allowed to talk about it?

Okay, yeah.

So, very, very simply,

the police called me up because they had a

house where they believed a murder had taken place.

The people that owned the house had thrown out a carpet

because they said that they had a very heavy infestation of fleas, and they had three dogs, so you know, it's not impossible.

So, the police wanted to know: is this a good enough excuse for having thrown out a carpet that you've got such a heavy flea infestation?

So, I said, Well, it's possible, however, these days we don't have quite such a problem because we all have vacuum cleaners, and the immature stages of fleas actually live in kind of carpets and soft furnishings and basically the nest of the host.

So, I had this really bright idea.

I said, Well, why don't you find out if they've got a vacuum cleaner in the house?

And if they have, then send me the dust bag out of it.

And so, that's probably the worst job I've ever done: going through somebody else's vacuum cleaner.

I did find evidence of a few fleas, not a heavy infestation at all.

So the police then went back to them and said, Okay, we've consulted a flea expert.

She says you're talking rubbish.

You don't have heavy infestation fleas.

And so the couple then confessed, and they said, Actually, it was our son who did kill somebody, and that's why we threw the carpet out.

So,

wow.

I mean, anytime I see anyone taking a carpet out, I suspect there's a body in there.

It always looks like it, doesn't it?

But for actually to be one.

Back in series 27, we recorded one of our most contentious episodes yet.

As many people will know, for years the beekeepers have had very much the ear of the opinion formers, using the deliciousness of honey and the attractive wax candles to brainwash the Guardian-reading liberal elite into believing the superiority of the bee, while wasps have been seen as stripey, malevolent villains of the picnic season.

Yes.

But the Guardian readers are wrong, again,

because behavioural ecologist Serian Sumner joined us to argue that wasps are better than bees.

To an initially sceptical, it has to be admitted, perhaps even cynical audience.

You know, there were a few kind of wasp fans, but it was very dominant that people just felt it's definitely going to be bees.

It's definitely going to be bees.

Because we're in the centre of London, aren't we?

So they're all into the centre of London.

Oh, of course, yeah, because they've all got their bees on.

Bees, what's that stuff?

Bees.

Honey.

Bees, bees.

What's that stuff that leaks out of bees?

Said the scientist Brian Cox.

You know, there's all that stuff.

It leaks out of bees and then they stick it on top of it.

I come from, I didn't have honey in all them.

We didn't have honey in all of them.

We didn't have honey in all them in the 70s.

I think what it was with Sarian was her description of the zombie wasp and its paralysing ways that, well, it didn't win everyone over, but it was pretty darkly fascinating.

Everybody loves the zombie wasps.

It's the emerald jewel wasp.

She's very beautiful.

She's very glossy.

She's kind of iridescent.

She's also quite small.

She is a stinging wasp and she's solitary.

She lives on her own.

So she hunts cockroaches.

Cockroaches tend to be quite big.

She's got the problem that she's got to find the cockroach.

That's the easy bit.

The second problem is she's got to paralyze the cockroach.

Well, that's kind of all right, she can do that.

The third problem is she's got to get the cockroach to the burrow that she's prepared, her nest.

And the cockroach is very big.

So, her solution, well, evolution has provided her with a solution, is this.

She has two very precise things.

So, one is in the thorax, which is the main body of the cockroach, which stops it squirming around such that it's still enough that she can then inject right into its brain with a neurotoxin, which renders the cockroach still able to walk but has no will.

And so then what she does is she grabs it by I'm not actually this isn't gonna this isn't gonna be very good for the wasp.

What do you mean?

She grabs the semi-paralysed cockroach by its antenna and she walks it like a poodle to its underground tomb and it it buries itself basically in the tomb and then she lays it her egg on it and seals it up.

And then that cockroach is paralyzed but remains a beautifully fresh living larder because it's still alive.

And also, the wasp has put all these sort of antibiotics and antibacterial stuff in with it as well.

And then the egg hatches into the larvae, and you know the story: the larvae eat the cockroach from the inside, well, carries on eating it, and it's a beautiful story.

Everybody loves the zombie, yeah, yeah, get zombie one.

Just to be fair, sorry, there's an even better one though.

There is this wasp, it's a spider-hunting wasp, it doesn't build a nest, so it's quite unusual for a hunting wasp, solitary hunting wasp.

It lays its egg on this spider called homolitus, and the spider is oblivious and it goes about its business with this wasp egg on its bottom.

And then the egg hatches into a larva and proceeds to eat the spider from the rear forwards, only eating the bits that are just not necessary, so the bits of chitin and bits of fat and bits of muscle.

And meanwhile, the spider is carrying on its daily business, oblivious to the fact that its dairy air is being nibbled nibbled up by a wasp larva.

And it carries on eating until it's big enough to pupate.

And only at that point, so the last things it eats are the vital organs.

And at that point, when it's ready to pupate, the spider finally keels over and dies, and all that's left of it is its mandibles.

Finally, to the fungi or fungi.

Is it fungi or fungi?

Either.

Okay.

Finally, to the fungi fungi.

Merlin Sheldrake, mushroom expert and author of the hugely successful Entangled Life, told us how how certain fungi or fungi both hunt and become hangmen for the nematode worm.

Nematode.

Is it nematode word?

There are fungi that do hunt animals in a way that in more familiar kind of predation to us, and they hunt nematode worms.

And there's lots of different ways to hunt nematode worms.

This is an ability that has evolved independently in different parts of the fungal lineage.

Some are able to

eavesdrop on nematode life by being sensitive to chemicals that nematodes produce to do basic things like reproduce and communicate with each other.

And some fungi produce nooses, which lure nematodes towards them, and then the nematode goes into the noose, and then the noose inflates in a tenth of a second, immobilizing the nematode, giving the fungus time to grow through its mouse and digest it from the inside.

There are other ones that produce

storks.

The most horrifying thing any of us have heard all day.

It gets worse.

There are ones that produce storks, oyster mushrooms.

Many people might enjoy eating oyster mushrooms, but if they are hungry, then they can produce storks with a poisonous droplet at the top, which attracts, like a beacon, attracts nematodes.

They hit the toxic droplet, they get paralyzed, again, giving the fungus time to grow inside it.

But you have perhaps the weirdest ones I find are the ones that they produce mobile cells, little swimming cells.

They swim through the watery soil films and they're attracted to nematodes.

And when they get to a nematode, they stick to it and they harpoon it with a specialized kind of cell called a gun cell,

giving the rest of the fungus time to grow up and to catch up with this sight of this kill and make merry.

So, there's lots of ways to do it.

After most episodes, we hope that the show has given you some ideas, whether perhaps about the fabric of space-time or sometimes the something it's like to be a bat.

But for once, we hope this episode hasn't given you too many ideas.

Well, maybe some ideas, but don't mention us in court is the main thing.

Yeah, Brian.

But to make up for this week's show, next week we're talking about love.

Do you believe in the existence of love?

I can't remember if you were programmed to.

Because I know the first version we had of you, we did try and program Love in it, but that was just an absolute mess.

It was chaos.

So we removed Love from Your Circuitry for about series two to nine.

I can't remember if we put it back in or not.

Yeah.

What is this thing?

Now, all the episodes we took clips from are available on BBC Sounds, and you can find all the details of those in the program description for this show.

Bye!

Bye!

In the infinite monkey cage!

Till now, nice again.

Hi, I'm Kiri Pritcher McLean.

I'm the host of Best Medicine from BBC Radio 4, a comedy show that celebrates medicine's inspiring past, present, and future.

The cytosponge is a capsule on a thread.

I'm saying a pill on a stray.

Have you invented being a drugs mule?

A load of top comedians, doctors, scientists, and inventors try to convince me what's the best medicine every episode by showcasing anything from micro-robotic surgery, Victorian clockwork surgical sores, world-first life-saving heart operations, and more than a few ingenious cures for cancer.

So, you're sort of aiming to cure cancer by mixing like olive oil and washing up liquids.

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You'll laugh, you'll learn, it will restore your faith in humanity.

You might even live longer.

Best medicine, listen and subscribe on BBC Sounds.

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