The Infinite Monkey Cage 100

Speaker 1 This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

Speaker 2 Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, host of You're Dead to Me, the comedy podcast from the BBC that takes history seriously.

Speaker 2 Each week, I'm joined by a comedian and an expert historian to learn and laugh about the past.

Speaker 2 In our all-new season, we cover unique areas of history that your school lessons may have missed-from getting ready in the Renaissance era to the Kellogg brothers.

Speaker 2 Listen to You're Dead to Me Now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 5 Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway. We the man to be hosted! Winner, best score!

Speaker 6 We the man to be seen!

Speaker 5 Winner, best book! We the man to be quality! It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Speaker 7 Suffs.

Speaker 5 Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th. Tickets at BroadwaySF.com

Speaker 6 When disaster takes control of your life, ServePro helps you take it back. ServePro shows up faster to any size disaster to make things right, starting with a single call, that's all.

Speaker 6 Because the number one name in cleanup and restoration has the scale and the expertise to get you back up to speed quicker than you ever thought possible.

Speaker 6 So whenever never thought this would happen actually happens, ServePro's got you. Call 1-800-SERVPRO or visit ServePro.com today to help make it like it never even happened.

Speaker 12 This is the BBC.

Speaker 13 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your hosts, Professor Brian Cox and Robin Ince.

Speaker 15 And I'm Brian Cox.

Speaker 16 Welcome to the 100th edition of the Infinite Monkey Cage.

Speaker 17 Yet this has now been going so long, it started in 2009, a time when Brian Cox was so naive that he actually believed you could persuade people to believe things with evidence.

Speaker 18 Well,

Speaker 17 tragically now, he spends most of his life online just there going, no, it's got to be a sphere. It can't be flat.
Oh, that shadows, eclipses. No, it's not 6,000 years old.
It's at least 13.

Speaker 17 Oh, you can't put that on the side of a bus. People will never believe it.

Speaker 16 So for the avoidance of doubt, this is a show where we assume our audience knows that the Earth is an oblate spheroid.

Speaker 16 The Big Bang was a hot, dense phase in the evolution of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.

Speaker 16 All life on Earth is related to a universal common ancestor, and you can put that on the side of a bus and they will believe you.

Speaker 17 Right, so Brian's job in the show is to help explain the nature of the universe using theoretical and particle physics, and my job is to interrupt him every time I see the audience going, I don't understand what he's saying anymore.

Speaker 17 I mean, I think he believes he understands what he's saying, but I'm utterly, utterly lost.

Speaker 17 That's generally actually my problem with you. My problem is that when when I first hear you speak, I think I'm beginning to understand this.

Speaker 17 And then slowly it kind of drifts off into me hearing you doing an Alan Bennett monologue.

Speaker 17 And so it starts off with him just going, as we travel through the solar system, we see the still unexplained rings of Saturn. Mother saw the rings of Saturn the other day and

Speaker 17 she didn't think much of it at all. She said she preferred the ring road around the Scarborough bypass.

Speaker 17 She once saw Roy Hood there having a ham and piccolilly sandwich in a lay-by.

Speaker 17 I said, Mother, how do you know it was was a ham and piccolilly sandwich? She said, I've got a good eye for relish.

Speaker 17 I said,

Speaker 17 I'll try to explain the universe. She said, I haven't got time.
I didn't understand Poirot last Sunday, so I'm going to explain the universe. And anyway, Foyle's wars on in a minute.

Speaker 17 I've got a thing for Michael Kitchen.

Speaker 16 So, having failed to get through 99 episodes with any single subject from dark energy to the origin of life to the immortality of strawberries, we've decided to increase the entropy of the show show by having three panels instead of one and attempting to deal with cosmology, biology, the future of humanity, and pretty much everything else in under one hour.

Speaker 16 We've invited some of our favourite panelists, physicists, anatomists, and Shakespearean actors, to find out what we know about the universe that we didn't know when we began the series in 2009.

Speaker 17 And to ensure that liturgical matters are not sidestepped, we will also be assisted by Theology Corner, in which we have two of our favourite clerics, the Reverend Richard Coles and the former former Dean of Guildford Cathedral, the very Reverend Victor Stock, and they will be hosted by our regular religious correspondent, Katie Brand.

Speaker 17 Now, Katie, I know that.

Speaker 21 In their churches, do they have a physics corner?

Speaker 23 I just want to know

Speaker 21 the symmetry of this or not.

Speaker 9 Oh, yes.

Speaker 17 The Anglican church, you don't even need to believe in God.

Speaker 24 We're very soft on that kind of thing.

Speaker 17 It's about the recipes first and the beliefs.

Speaker 7 I'm sicking in Westminster

Speaker 7 Oh,

Speaker 17 how quickly the show changes.

Speaker 18 I like it when Americans are angry.

Speaker 28 It's on.

Speaker 17 So I was going to ask you, Katie, you went to a convent school and you did end up in a point, didn't you, as a young person where you went, I don't know whether to be a nun or an astronaut.

Speaker 29 Yes, it was difficult.

Speaker 29 I had NASA on the phone and the Archbishop of Canterbury beating down my door, and in the end, I thought, no, I need something that will satisfy my massive ego but also allow me to be really lazy.

Speaker 29 So I became a panel show comedian instead.

Speaker 25 So become a vicar, actually, on the basis of that.

Speaker 11 That's true.

Speaker 29 Actually, there's a lot of crossover apparently psychologically between being a comedian and a vicar.

Speaker 11 Well, do you know that?

Speaker 8 We have a lot of crossover in the Church of England, but

Speaker 11 the bishops don't like it.

Speaker 17 So, for our first panel, we are joined by a cosmologist, a theoretical physicist, a python, and an actor who makes us question the very notion that new energy cannot be created in this universe.

Speaker 17 And they are.

Speaker 21 Yeah, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist from across the pond. I'm based in New York City, where I serve also as director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium.

Speaker 32 I'm Faye Dauke. I'm a theoretical physicist, and I work at Imperial College in in London.

Speaker 15 I'm Eric Idle. I'm a theoretical comedian.
And I'm available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Speaker 13 My name is Brian Blessed.

Speaker 33 I'm very humble.

Speaker 13 I have great modesty. I'm a great actor.
I've climbed every three times. I've been to the North and the South Pole.
There's no end to my greatness, Brian.

Speaker 10 And this is our panel!

Speaker 17 Neil, we'll start off with you. So in the last 10 years, what do you think has been the most remarkable discovery about our understanding of why our universe is as it is?

Speaker 21 There are tons of discoveries, but if you had to rank them, like picking your children, top one, maybe I'd say the discovery of the Higgs boson. I would say.

Speaker 21 I don't know how many people are familiar with this particle, but it was long hypothesized, and there were books written about it. In fact, one book was called The God Particle.

Speaker 21 Just let the theology corner know.

Speaker 21 If you were going to be a particle, this might be the particle you choose to be. Because as other particles move through its field, it actually grants them their mass.
Now, that's a badass particle.

Speaker 21 If you're just ranking what particles do in the universe. Now, if you want to know how it works, I have an analogy, if I may.

Speaker 21 And I'll do this with Brian's permission, because you work in this, Brian, right?

Speaker 34 This is your field.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I'm checking. I'm checking.
You're checking.

Speaker 18 Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 21 Brian's like, hangs out at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN. But thinking about how to get people to understand the Higgs boson, I think of a Hollywood party.
Okay? If you are unknown,

Speaker 21 an unknown actor, at a Hollywood party, and you enter and the bar is across the way, you could just walk there with no impedance to your progress.

Speaker 21 You have a low party mass.

Speaker 21 Okay? If you are famous and you walk in, if you're a Beyoncé and you walk into a party, people crowd around you and you cannot move very quickly. You have accreted party mass.

Speaker 21 So the Hollywood party field granted the popular person more mass than the unpopular person.

Speaker 21 And this is a, when you want to think about why one particle has a higher mass than another, you can think of this sort of interaction with the Higgs feel.

Speaker 21 And there are other science comedians in the world, by the way. One of them is Brian Mallow.
He is the origin of this next joke.

Speaker 21 Higgs Boson walks into a church, and the priest, it's a Catholic church. The priest said, I'm sorry, we don't allow Higgs bosons in church.

Speaker 21 And the Higgs boson said, Excuse me, but without me, you can't have mass.

Speaker 28 Brian Mellow on that one.

Speaker 16 To me, that's top.

Speaker 21 That's one of the top few of the decade.

Speaker 16 I think in your list of descriptions of the Higgs boson, you omitted to mention that Eric has written extensively on this subject.

Speaker 7 I did not know that, Eric.

Speaker 4 It's a little known fact.

Speaker 15 Would you like me to do it?

Speaker 25 I think I would.

Speaker 16 All right, there's a little song I wrote about the Higgs boson.

Speaker 15 Not many people have known this, but there's the Higgs boson, and there's leptons, and there's blue ones, there's the Higgs boson, and there's positons and muons there are photons there are protons there's neutrinos positinos there are quarks and there's electrons in the Higgs boson there's neutrinos angelinos in the Higgs boson there are Sauvignons and Pinos in the Higgs boson there are bonos yoccoonos Brianinos cappuccinos both Latinos and Latinos in Higgs boson there are gluons there are mu ones in the Higgs boson there are many there are few ones in the Higgs boson there are gold ones there are blue ones there are old ones there are new ones and some we haven't got a clue on in the Higgs boat.

Speaker 17 I have to ask you, because this is the thing, you've written some brilliant songs about science, and do you find one of the problems is that when you write jokes about anything else, they don't have to be peer-reviewed.

Speaker 17 But because there was, I know, Neil, you were on the science march in.

Speaker 7 Were you in Washington? Did you go on that?

Speaker 21 No, but I tweeted heavily while it was going on.

Speaker 17 Because

Speaker 17 that's how we will always remember nearly all of the great things we did. I was very much there with Nemoticon.

Speaker 17 But this is when we did the science march, people were coming up with chants, and then there was a guy at the front who would actually say, You can't use that one, I'm afraid, because it's a chant that misleads.

Speaker 17 And we ended up having to have a peer-reviewed marching sign? Yeah, we ended up with things like, What do we want? Cats in a super position. When do we want them until observed?

Speaker 9 But it's an internet.

Speaker 21 What do we want? A time machine. When do you want it?

Speaker 11 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 9 I'm sorry, there's an interjection from the theology call.

Speaker 29 I sense that the Reverend Richard Coles has a question, so I just think it's a very important thing.

Speaker 25 It's a really stupid question.

Speaker 30 I mean, you look at CERN and you marvel at it, it's enormous. What I don't understand is why is the Higgs poseal important?

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 18 can I take this?

Speaker 35 I got this. Brian, I got this.
I'll check.

Speaker 18 I got this.

Speaker 16 I'm listening.

Speaker 35 I got this.

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 8 Sir?

Speaker 21 Other than it's important to physics, we have no idea yet how it will be important to our lives or to civilization. And your question was asked of the electron when it was first discovered.

Speaker 21 It was asked of quantum physics as a branch of our understanding of the universe when it was discovered. Yet quantum physics today is the foundation of the entire information technology revolution.

Speaker 15 It would take decades.

Speaker 21 But at the time, because it's a new discovery, if too many people are around saying, how does that put food on my plate? then civilization stalls in that moment.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 21 as scientists, we have to be

Speaker 21 content

Speaker 21 discovering something new without regard to its relevance to civilization, because history has shown that give it some decades, civilization finds a way to tax it.

Speaker 30 So you mean my Wi-Fi is going to work one day?

Speaker 16 Faye, Faye, what's your big discovery of the last 10 years?

Speaker 32 In cosmology, I would choose the direct detection of gravitational waves.

Speaker 32 Those are ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted to exist by Einstein using general relativity over a hundred years ago.

Speaker 32 Actually, Einstein thought that they were so difficult to detect that we would never actually directly observe them, them, even though the theory says that they must be there.

Speaker 32 But a hundred years after the prediction, we now have the technology that enables us to build detectors that can actually measure these tiny oscillations in the structure of space and time.

Speaker 32 They are created in the universe in

Speaker 32 huge events like the collision of two enormous black holes to form another black hole and this creates these ripples which move outwards into the universe and travel for billions of light years, reach us, and we can measure them, detect them.

Speaker 32 I actually cried during the press announcement

Speaker 32 because the

Speaker 32 experiment that detected them, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, was being planned while I was a student. And so that whole enterprise spanned my whole career.

Speaker 32 Many of my colleagues and friends have worked directly on it. And it was a very moving and exciting moment.

Speaker 16 So yeah, I burst into tears. Was it the discovery itself or was it the possibility of observing things, as you said, like the collision of black holes, that that discovery opens up?

Speaker 32 It was all those things.

Speaker 32 So to feel that you're witnessing this moment in the great arc of the history of science, Not just in the past, but looking forward to the future, these gravitational waves open up a new channel of communication that we can have with the universe.

Speaker 32 So we can now it's as if we were only we only had sight before, but now we can actually hear. So there's just new information that we can receive from the universe in this way via gravitational waves.

Speaker 32 So we look forward to a new era of gravitational wave astronomy.

Speaker 16 So speaking of channels of communication to the universe, Brian,

Speaker 30 what is your

Speaker 16 take on these great discoveries, the observation of the collisions of black holes, the origin of mass in the universe? How do you picture those advances in our knowledge?

Speaker 13 Being a greenhorn, I must say that I get passionately moved by Horizon, by your own programs, and the marvelous things that are taking place now.

Speaker 13 in the universe. I think the Huygens-Cassini project has been staggering and moving.

Speaker 13 And now that we've suddenly found it, the smallest of the moons,

Speaker 13 barely the size of Britain, Enceladus, the little Cassini has found it, it's got geysers

Speaker 13 on board that go thousands of miles into the sky, you know, like Iceland, the bigger ones, giant ones.

Speaker 13 And this little Cassini, I watched it on television a few months ago with the whole of NASA there, and this lady from New Zealand, and gradually it did its last recording and sent its last information back.

Speaker 13 And it got to Saturn where it would die and everyone's weeping in the studios there at NASA and it goes beep beep beep beep beep beep

Speaker 13 and dies.

Speaker 13 And it was the most moving thing I've ever seen

Speaker 13 on television.

Speaker 13 I rejoice in the fact that now we're going to have James Webb's telescope to probe deeply into your universe. Oh, what miracles are in front of us? Imagine what a Jules Verne H.G.

Speaker 13 Wells would do if they had a laptop. Can they imagine they could see Pluto? H.G.
Wells.

Speaker 9 Yeah, that's made you quiet.

Speaker 16 Eric, I know your name is now on Mars, on the Curiosity Rover, but what would you like to see?

Speaker 16 We've looked back at the last 10 years, but as Brian said, there are things he'd like to see in the next 10.

Speaker 36 What would you like to see?

Speaker 15 Well, I think the most important thing from a layman's point of view is the popularity of science has grown enormously over the last 10 years, thanks to programs like this.

Speaker 15 And bringing comedy into science has been very important. And I think that's because it's ongoing, it's happening at the moment.

Speaker 15 And we actually haven't heard anything from God for the last 2,000 years.

Speaker 15 With the single exception of the controversy in the Vatican about whether or not God is present in gluten-free bread for communion, which is actually a controversy that's been going on.

Speaker 16 So that's what you'd like to have resolved?

Speaker 35 I think we should,

Speaker 15 yes, I think we should know. I think he should, is he going to be in diet-free Coke or is he, you know, what relationship does God possess with Schlemming and

Speaker 16 we should say we've actually, we should just pop over to Theology Corner to say, where is God?

Speaker 29 I referred to myself satirically some years ago on the show as the resident theologian to try and cover up the fact that I don't know anything about science and very little about theology.

Speaker 29 So I'm quite amazed to now have a whole corner with actual vicars.

Speaker 29 But I was going to ask the two of you just briefly because we've said on the show before about religion being like the sort of origins and the history of human curiosity in a way and that doesn't need to be so divided that humans in the early stages looked up at the sky and said, What's that?

Speaker 29 And because they didn't have a lot of scientific instruments or knowledge at their disposal, there was sort of some way to try and describe the universe.

Speaker 29 But have you, Richard, for example, in your career, have you seen science and religion try and come together more recently and not be so divided?

Speaker 25 For me, it's never been a problem at all.

Speaker 30 I've never had the slightest feeling that kind of being a faithful Christian has in any way interfered with being genuinely curious and fascinated by science.

Speaker 30 That's not to say we don't have form, we do have form. And of course, you don't have to go very far, sorry, Galileo.

Speaker 11 You don't have to go, but you don't have to go very far away to...

Speaker 29 I'm sure that's done the trick, that apology.

Speaker 30 But seriously, I mean, what's much more interesting to me is rather than that very polemical idea of science and religion as being kind of competitors for truth and the loyalty of people, it's much more about how they are related, in fact.

Speaker 30 If you look at the history of the development of science, if you look at the Royal Society, for example, and the numbers of of people in the Royal Society who were there because of a certain way in which the Church and the Enlightenment had worked together, in a way Calvinism had opened up the Book of Nature, it's a much more interesting story to see in terms of continuities.

Speaker 30 That's not to diminish the sharpness of the conflict.

Speaker 30 And I would just like to say on the record, and I'm sure I speak for many church people here, that I have absolutely no difficulty at all with accepting that Darwin's account of how we got to where we got to is absolutely sound and completely consistent with my understanding too.

Speaker 30 I also want to say just very quickly, Eric, at Finden's

Speaker 30 at St Mary's Finden, we offer both gluten and gluten-free both.

Speaker 1 I want to say something else about Stephen Hawking and his ledger stone, which we have placed over his ashes in Westminster Abbey.

Speaker 8 We have deliberately buried Stephen Hawking

Speaker 1 exactly adjacent to Isaac Newton. And in Latin on Isaac Newton's ledger stone, it says his name, and then it says the mortal remains of.

Speaker 38 The Dean of Westminster, John Hall, rather cleverly has put on Stephen Hawking's ledger stone all that is mortal of.

Speaker 1 Because the place was packed, Brian was there,

Speaker 1 the world of education and science knows there's something immortal about that man.

Speaker 1 And the Abbey has put that that in stone.

Speaker 17 Thank you very much.

Speaker 15 Ecclesiastical corner.

Speaker 17 Yes, I am beginning to think that attempting to do a panel in 15 minutes on what is ultimately the entire history of cosmology, but also about religious conflict versus science, may well have been more difficult than imaginary, because you told me time may not actually exist and may be a construct, and time's arrow.

Speaker 17 But I definitely felt time's arrow over that one.

Speaker 17 I think we did. I've had in my ear for the last 20 bloody minutes, we need to move to the last one.

Speaker 18 So,

Speaker 17 even though time is may well be a fiction, we're in a block universe, everything's happening at the same time.

Speaker 17 That's fine, but it turns out Radio 4 follows different rules.

Speaker 16 Thank you to everybody on the panel. We'll be returning to Theology Corner later on, and thank you for our discussion of the future and history of physics.
Thank you.

Speaker 17 It's now time for the next panel, and throughout our 18 series, we've had an ability to stir righteous ire amongst certain Radio 4 listeners.

Speaker 17 In fact, before we even went on air, we received I think it was 12 different complaints that said that our title was disgusting, and yet again, it was another Radio 4 show that celebrated animal cruelty.

Speaker 17 And we wrote back to each one of those complaints and explained that an infinite monkey cage was roomy, very roomy.

Speaker 16 I mean, arguably, I suppose the universe is an infinite cage, isn't it? With monkeys in it.

Speaker 17 Yep, it's Hilbert's cage. Move the monkeys to the odd numbers.
They don't want to do it.

Speaker 9 I don't care.

Speaker 18 Anyway, so.

Speaker 11 It is indeed.

Speaker 9 Anyway,

Speaker 17 our next panel, we're going to try and avoid an avalanche of emails and actually letters, mainly. They love letters.

Speaker 27 They do love. Can we get a nice letter?

Speaker 17 Oh, I like that. An email, lazy.
A letter, they're angry in Dorset.

Speaker 16 Green ink. Always green ink.
Anyway, this is the biology panel. panel, and to avoid any emails, let me be very precise.

Speaker 16 We'll be looking specifically at hominin evolution as opposed to hominid evolution because we're focusing on modern humans and their immediate ancestors and excluding things like orangutans.

Speaker 9 So now,

Speaker 17 let's meet our panel. And they are.
Oh, oh, sorry.

Speaker 7 We haven't met you for

Speaker 12 hominins are hominids as well.

Speaker 9 Oh, but

Speaker 9 I was going to say that.

Speaker 16 It's a specific mistake in order to see whether the Radio 4 listeners are listening, so they will write letters. And they need to write letters.
It's the reason for their existence.

Speaker 23 Good.

Speaker 33 And our panel is.

Speaker 12 I'm Alice Roberts. I'm an anatomist and anthropologist and professor of public engagement in science at the University of Birmingham.

Speaker 41 I'm Sue Black, I'm Queen of the Dead, because last time I got embroiled in the entire story of Are Strawberries Dead, can I say, my life has never been the same since.

Speaker 41 I'm an anatomist, I'm a forensic scientist, and I'm at the University of Lancaster.

Speaker 42 I'm Dave Gorman, and in 1990, I dropped out of a math degree.

Speaker 43 I'm Andy Hamilton, and I am the perplexed idiot on the end.

Speaker 40 Sue,

Speaker 16 before we go on, of course, not all strawberries are dead. I mean the subtlety of the strawberry.
We've been there.

Speaker 41 We've been there.

Speaker 41 We're never going back.

Speaker 44 It's which one.

Speaker 41 Just remember, they will never find your body and they will never be able to identify you.

Speaker 16 Does that bespeak to true experts?

Speaker 41 Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Speaker 16 Alice,

Speaker 16 what has been the most important discovery in biology of the last decade?

Speaker 12 Well, if we're focusing on human evolution, there have been some amazing revelations. Ten years ago, we knew that the species originated in Africa.

Speaker 12 We knew that we'd spread around the globe way back in the Ice Age and the Pleistocene.

Speaker 12 And what most of us working in the field didn't think was that we'd interbred with any other species along the way.

Speaker 12 There were a few people suggesting that there were fossils that looked like they might be hybrids between modern humans and Neanderthals, but most of us just didn't buy it.

Speaker 12 Then

Speaker 12 ancient genetics happened and the ability to extract DNA out of very old bones, to sequence it, to recover whole genomes.

Speaker 12 And in 2010, we had the publication of the Neanderthal genome, and suddenly we saw in the DNA that there was this clear evidence for interbreeding with Neanderthals. So I'm about 2.7% Neanderthal.

Speaker 12 You all have quite a bit of Neanderthal in you.

Speaker 12 Everyone's got a bit of Neanderthal in them. And then there's other species, we don't really know what they look like.

Speaker 12 There's ones called the Denisovans, we just know them from a couple of teeth and a finger bone. But we've got a whole genome, so they're another population.

Speaker 12 And again, we interbred with them and they interbred with some other archaic hominins. So we just really weren't clear about the level of shenanigans that went on in human evolution.

Speaker 9 And now we are.

Speaker 16 And that's a discovery that was enabled by technology essentially. So the increasing availability and cheapness of DNA sequencing.

Speaker 12 Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's got quicker and quicker and cheaper and cheaper to do it.

Speaker 12 It's also about how you then stitch it back together. So

Speaker 12 it's about the software, it's about the statistics that are then used to reassemble a whole genome from what actually is very tiny pieces,

Speaker 12 little stretches of DNA that can be just 100 base pairs long. And you've got to reassemble that until you get an entire genome.

Speaker 12 So, and it's just we're getting quicker and quicker at this, so the revelations are going to come thick and fast, I'm sure.

Speaker 42 Did we know that different species coexisted and we just thought they hadn't interbred? Yeah, we did, yeah. Because that seems to me to be

Speaker 42 proves you don't know my mate Barry.

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 42 Because the minute you go, yeah, but they were all around at the same time, I'm assuming as a layperson, and they were obviously getting it on because some blokes will anything.

Speaker 40 Well, I think the thing is that this

Speaker 12 I tell you it's just blokes, though.

Speaker 18 Well, no,

Speaker 18 obviously.

Speaker 12 But the weird thing is that this kind of came as a bit of a revelation, and I think maybe we're just all a bit prudish about human evolution, but it came as a revelation for humans.

Speaker 12 And then, surprise, surprise, every single other species that we've looked at in this way, where we've been able to look across the whole genome and go, right, did you interbreed with anything else along the way?

Speaker 12 They all did. So, dogs interbred with wolves, apples, apples interbred with crab apples so badly that they're more crab apple than original apple now.

Speaker 16 Here's the thing I don't understand about biology.

Speaker 17 Oh, you've ruined cider, haven't you?

Speaker 20 Is it literally apples got crabs?

Speaker 31 Yeah.

Speaker 16 Is it something I don't understand about biology? One of the many things I don't understand about biology.

Speaker 16 So I thought the definition of a species was one that a group of organisms that could not breed with other organisms.

Speaker 16 So in what sense are Neanderthals a different species from Homo sapiens if there could be interbreeding?

Speaker 12 Brian, I know this is going to be tricky because you're a physicist and you like to have nice, neat answers for things and equations that make everything work.

Speaker 16 Just consistency.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 11 Biology is a bit messier than that.

Speaker 12 So we try and put things in boxes, and then consistently, what biology does is break out of those boxes. So we can go, right, this is what a species is.

Speaker 12 It is a group of organisms that normally interbreed with each other. And when they try and interbreed with another species, they're going to be infertile.
And I suppose the crucial thing is normally,

Speaker 12 yeah, kind of normally, usually that's what they do, but occasionally they can interbreed with other species and have fertile offspring. They might have sub-fertility, so we think that's happened.

Speaker 12 So we think that, for instance, lots of Neanderthal DNA has been cleared out of our genomes because it created some problems with fertility. And they didn't have IVF clinics in Neanderthal times.
So

Speaker 12 we've got all of these areas in our genome where that DNA has been cleared out. But yeah, it's just not as simple as we used to think.
It's getting much more complex and I think a lot more exciting.

Speaker 17 See, Brian hates that. Brian's a, oh, the universe has got life in it.
Isn't it messy?

Speaker 44 Is it going to be absolute zero?

Speaker 17 Hurry up, absolute zero. Simple equations.

Speaker 17 Sue, I wanted to ask you about something that I was really that sounds fascinating that you know about, which is going back to Neanderthals, using DNA to make, is it organoid brains?

Speaker 17 This again seems to be an incredible change in the possibilities with the last.

Speaker 41 We've been able to develop within the last few years the most incredible technology that allows us to target specific areas of DNA very, very specifically and to cut them out.

Speaker 41 So, either to delete them or to add something new. Somebody said it was a bit like having molecular scissors with a sat-nav.

Speaker 41 So, it's about being able to just very precisely cut the DNA and hone in to be able to do that.

Speaker 41 If you can then take something like Neanderthal DNA, which we now can find, we can replace that gene with a Neanderthal gene.

Speaker 41 What we're then able to do, so this is into stem cells, what they're now able to do is to grow an organoid, which is just a small pea-sized group of cells.

Speaker 41 And it's developed into something that's almost like a mini-brain, it's like a mini neocortex, so that there are oscillating electrical signals in it.

Speaker 41 So, what they want to do next is to see whether they can take those electrical signals, link them up to a robot, and see if we can actually get Neanderthal genes orchestrating movement in another object.

Speaker 41 Isn't that just out of this world?

Speaker 16 It's a strange.

Speaker 17 Andy, you've got to admit, the Neanderthal robot paradigm that we're talking about there, that's.

Speaker 43 It's going to be a bit of a shock for the Neanderthal, though, isn't it?

Speaker 43 His world would not have been full of robots, would it?

Speaker 43 I'm very excited by the.

Speaker 43 What I love is the way this is kind of demolishing the model I grew up with, which was the model was that Homo sapiens had been this sort of cheeky chappy ducker and diver, and we had,

Speaker 43 you know, we had out-competed the Neanderthals,

Speaker 43 possibly by murdering them, which is textbook out-competing.

Speaker 43 But it now looks like presumably what we're saying is that there was a kind of absorption of populations, there was a lot of interbreeding, possibly in the face of a lot of parental objection.

Speaker 43 Your father doesn't want you going out with a Neanderthal, he says they're grunters.

Speaker 43 But that is what we're talking about, isn't it? And it means

Speaker 43 there's no such thing, you know, all those people who get so angry out there about racial purity.

Speaker 43 You know, in a way, what this is illustrating is there is no purity. Everything's a mashup.
I'm probably fooling myselves. They'll probably get more angry, won't they?

Speaker 43 They'll probably go marching around saying, there are people in this country walking our streets who aren't even our species.

Speaker 9 That's probably what will happen.

Speaker 12 No, but I think you're right, and look because

Speaker 12 this theme of mixing carries on until much more recent times. So, I think we've been kind of obsessed with the idea of species differentiating and growing out like a tree, so the kind of tree of life.

Speaker 12 And we've thought about that in terms of within species as well. So, thinking about human populations and how they've diverged away from each other.

Speaker 12 But what we're finding is that the history of more recently of human populations is a lot more fusion than we've thought of in the past. So,

Speaker 12 race is biologically meaningless. It is completely biologically meaningless.
You can't divide up you just cannot divide up the human species in that way.

Speaker 16 You describe a world in biology that's moved very, very quickly over the last ten years.

Speaker 16 And if we look into the next ten years, I think some of the issues you raise I saw actually I was looking out into the audience and looking at Andy when you were talking about recreating and regrowing a part of a Neanderthal brain.

Speaker 16 And there is something, I think, to many people unsettling about our the increase in our knowledge and capabilities in the biosciences, which you don't really see in physics.

Speaker 16 Is that a conflict that you can?

Speaker 41 I think it's where biology often comes into conflict, I dare I say it, with our theology corner, which is just because you can do it, should you do it.

Speaker 18 I just really like clerical corner.

Speaker 9 I really like a mullah fruit corner.

Speaker 42 We're the yogurt, and occasionally we stir a little bit of that jam in.

Speaker 17 It's lovely. It's not a mullah fruit corner.

Speaker 18 No, no, no, no, they're not from the church.

Speaker 18 But

Speaker 29 whether these two vicars ever encounter genuine creationists now and what you say to them when you meet them?

Speaker 38 Yeah, of course. Oh, of course we do.

Speaker 17 I preached a sermon at Westminster Abbey recently.

Speaker 1 We have a lot of Americans in the congregation at Westminster Abbey, which is a bit of a challenge sometimes.

Speaker 1 And I explained about Darwin being buried there and that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 And I said that in the 19th century in the Church of England there was absolutely no controversy at all about honouring this man and burying him here.

Speaker 8 And I said, I believe in some parts of the United States there's something called creationism, which I believe

Speaker 7 is taught in some schools.

Speaker 1 I said, it's not an alternative, it's rubbish.

Speaker 16 Alice has been dying to say to me.

Speaker 9 Okay,

Speaker 12 I'm delighted that the Church of England accepts evolution as a fact, as does the Catholic Church. But that's the church, and that doesn't filter down.

Speaker 12 We know that there's more and more creationism amongst vicars, and there's more and more.

Speaker 12 When you get down to a level of teachers in primary schools and C of primary schools, there's a lot of creationism. So, even though we think it's not a problem in this country, it really is.

Speaker 12 That's one thing. And the next thing is that I appreciate the need to talk about science with the whole of society.

Speaker 12 And I think that we shouldn't be talking about science as one thing and not doing it with morals and ethics in mind all the time.

Speaker 12 Of course, all scientists should always have morals and ethics in mind. We shouldn't be passing that over to somebody else to deal with.

Speaker 12 To suggest that the morals doesn't happen within science, I think, is silly.

Speaker 12 We can't operate as a society like that.

Speaker 16 Thank you to our panel.

Speaker 9 Thank you.

Speaker 16 You're listening to the one hundredth episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage here on Radio Four, and wonderfully, you can also watch this special episode captured by the cameras on iPlayer throughout July or on your TV online.

Speaker 17 And you'll be able to find out that rather than having a portrait in his attic, Brian actually merely has a Radio 4 co-host and he sucks the life force out.

Speaker 17 We used to look the same age, Runs, didn't we?

Speaker 25 We did.

Speaker 25 We did.

Speaker 16 It's even worse, actually, because you can press the red button on your TV remote control from any BBC channel at various times from Monday the 16th of July until Tuesday the 24th of July.

Speaker 17 Various times?

Speaker 16 Yeah, they weren't very specific. It doesn't matter anyway, because we're living a block universe.
No such thing as the present. It's a reference frame-specific concept.

Speaker 17 Right, now with barely any time left, we move on to our final panel, where we deal with everything else that has been discovered in the last 10 years and everything else that might possibly be discovered in the next 10 years.

Speaker 17 So we should be able to easily cover that. But as you always say, Brian, time is a reference frame-specific device.

Speaker 16 You'd be surprised, actually, how many people don't understand the difference between coordinate time and proper time.

Speaker 9 You're certainly right. Anyway, our panel are.

Speaker 34 David Spiegelholter. I'm a statistician, professor for the public understanding of risk from the University of Cambridge.

Speaker 45 My name's Tony Ryan. I'm a professor of polymer science, that's Plastics Brian, at the University of Sheffield and the director of the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures.

Speaker 36 I am Richard Wiseman, Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire.

Speaker 29 I'm Katie Brand. You'll be amazed to hear I'm not a professor of anything, but I am an eager amateur and would like to learn.

Speaker 17 David, we'll start with you. Over the last 10 years, I think there's a natural thing that people do as they get older, which is to presume that the world is getting worse.
As

Speaker 17 someone working in statistics, is that true?

Speaker 16 Are we seeing a world that is going downhill?

Speaker 34 It's been a great period for statistics. It used to be a fairly low-profile profession, but now everyone's doing data science and algorithms and machine learning.

Speaker 34 So there's so much interest in data now. And even in this sort of post-truth world, people are more and more interested in what the great Hans Rosling calls factfulness.

Speaker 34 And when we look at the facts, we can get some pretty good news. In this country, life expectancy has been going up about a year and a half over the last nine years, not as fast as it used to.

Speaker 34 We're getting happier, according to the Office of National Statistics measures, by a little bit. Still, the most miserable time of life is between 45 and 49.
And at best, it's between 65 and 69.

Speaker 3 So I've got something to look forward to.

Speaker 34 But there's other good news about young people. It is quite extraordinary.

Speaker 34 Drug taking's down, smoking's down by about a quarter among 16 to 24s, drinking's down, less than half of 18 to 24s had a drink last week now.

Speaker 34 And the best statistic of all, the most extraordinary one,

Speaker 34 difficult to believe that since 2009, teenage pregnancy rate has halved in this country in that short period.

Speaker 34 It used to be one in 30, 15 to 17 year old girls used to get pregnant every year, and now it's less than one in 60.

Speaker 29 I feel like there might be a correlation between that and the statistic about less drinking.

Speaker 35 Exactly. Now,

Speaker 34 everyone asks why, and I have done some calculations. The correlation is 0.998

Speaker 34 between teenage pregnancy rates and the proportion of houses without internet.

Speaker 34 Now, I don't know if there's any reason. I actually probably think there's a huge correlation with avocado consumption as well.
But I couldn't get hold of that data.

Speaker 29 Just if you unpack that statistic, because I don't really understand maths very well, because I went to a convent school and I didn't do any maths till I was eight. We just did art and Jesus.

Speaker 23 That's it.

Speaker 29 So I'm struggling to catch up.

Speaker 29 But are you basically saying that the correlation is that teenagers are just spending all their time on Facebook pretending they've had sex rather than actually going out and making babies?

Speaker 34 Yeah, I wouldn't ever say what causes what. I only collect look at.

Speaker 34 Was that the correlation that you that's the sort of suggestion people have said because the rise of social media, but if you look at

Speaker 34 social media, they've just grown enormously over that same period. But there are other slightly sillier statistics.
I was looking at baby names.

Speaker 9 I think it's fine.

Speaker 34 Oliver is still number one. It was number one in 2009, it's number one now.
Although, actually, if you add up the four spellings of Mohammed, they are now top.

Speaker 3 They've just beaten Oliver now.

Speaker 34 And other names have come up, you know, Jackson and Ezra and Arlo have really shot up the league tables.

Speaker 34 But there's some names that remain deeply unpopular: David, Richard, Tony, Katie's gone down in the theater,

Speaker 34 Robin, but absolutely rock bottom is Brian.

Speaker 35 I

Speaker 35 changed at all.

Speaker 29 Statistically across this show, we've kind of bucked the trend, haven't we?

Speaker 16 Because there are two Brian.

Speaker 44 Well, and also I blame.

Speaker 34 That's in the past. Now, there's a hundred kids a year given the name Brian.
It hasn't changed.

Speaker 21 It's 100%.

Speaker 15 I blame Eric Heidel.

Speaker 16 Sorry? I blame Monty Python. I blame Life of Brian.

Speaker 44 That's when it starts.

Speaker 16 1979, it falls up a cliff. It's Idol's fault.

Speaker 39 It's his fault.

Speaker 17 I have to admit, you really do dice with danger because when you said that about Brian, I saw Brian Blessed's face and it really went into my head.

Speaker 17 Richard, what do we have any great change of understanding about why humans behave as they do in the last 10 years? How much has changed in terms of human behaviour?

Speaker 7 I think we have.

Speaker 36 Before I get into that, though, I should say, I've actually carried out research into the effect of names on people's lives.

Speaker 36 And so I see particularly particularly that the first letter of their surname. So, the further down the alphabet you are, you're used to seeing the names in alphabetical order.

Speaker 36 You're used to seeing your name come further down. So, the further down you are, the least successful you are in life.
So, as a wiseman, I find that quite upsetting.

Speaker 36 As a Cox, I'm doing much better. But I might change my name to Alan Aardvark

Speaker 36 for later on. So, anyway, but I was focusing on changes since 2009, and allegedly, a big one is a rise in narcissism, which I actually predicted brilliantly in 2008.

Speaker 36 But when you unpack that data, and this is one of the reasons why I love psychology, you start to realize it's a bit rocky, because again, your perception would be, oh, there's all these narcissistic teenagers out there, and they're just posting selfies and not having sex and things like that.

Speaker 36 And you think,

Speaker 36 is that really true? And so you start trying to answer that question, because there's not been narcissistic surveys every year, so it's very difficult.

Speaker 36 All you can do is really like take a snapshot now of how narcissistic teenagers are and compare them to how narcissistic people a little bit older are.

Speaker 36 But it may be you become less narcissistic as you age, and that's why you get that kind of correlation. So, we don't really know whether people are becoming more and more narcissistic.

Speaker 36 My feeling is they are

Speaker 16 Tony, from your perspective, what's the most important change we've seen over the last decade?

Speaker 45 Well, over the hundred episodes of the infinite monkey cage,

Speaker 45 the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has crept up and up and up. So, in 2013 at Moana Lua, it went past 400 ppm for the first time.

Speaker 45 In 2016, in the middle of May, it passed 400 ppm at the South Pole. So, this is having a profound effect on us and on future generations.
And that, we're never going to go back.

Speaker 45 So, in 1962, when I was born, it was 320 ppm, 0.03%.

Speaker 45 Now it's 0.04%.

Speaker 45 We're back to numbers. But those numbers will pan out to climate change.
And climate change will mean that we have to change the way we live.

Speaker 45 And the interesting thing for me about the next hundred episodes is how much inconvenience can we put up with. I've been a professor of plastics for 30 years.

Speaker 45 And now I'm a pariah. Everyone hates me.
You know, single-use Tony.

Speaker 9 We want to get rid of him.

Speaker 9 Although,

Speaker 29 I have to say, the number of bags for life I've got, I'll have to be reincarnated 400 times.

Speaker 45 And the beautiful thing is, the biggest car in the car park has the most bags for life, right? You know, the most eco bags are always in there.

Speaker 45 And you have to use an eco bag 147 times to get ahead of using a fresh polyethylene carrier bag every time.

Speaker 18 Wow.

Speaker 17 Richard, have we found out anything? I mean, it seems there's quite a few books coming out now which are talking about how things like social media affect us.

Speaker 17 And I think when, you know, Tony, when you're mentioning things like climate change, it's fascinating to see some of the opinions that get picked up by people, which don't really seem to be based on any grounding and evidence.

Speaker 17 What are we learning about how we should be approaching ideas and the tricks that our own brains appear to play with us to make us, you know, I suppose, better human beings at judging ideas?

Speaker 36 Well, I guess what social media means is that you can spread ideas and come into contact with more ideas.

Speaker 36 And so, before, if you've got somebody with an idiotic idea, they could shout that out and it would sort of reach a relatively small number of people.

Speaker 36 And now, of course, you can reach many, many people. And so, I think there's just a need, and this is what psychology does brilliantly, to be very, very skeptical and very critical.

Speaker 36 I've always been very skeptical my whole life, even when I was seven, I only thought I was six.

Speaker 21 That's how

Speaker 21 far back

Speaker 4 it goes.

Speaker 17 I loved your pause there, by the way. You went, no, some of them are picking up on it.

Speaker 18 No, it was

Speaker 18 as many as I'd hope.

Speaker 6 It turned into a war of attrition, actually.

Speaker 9 And they won.

Speaker 36 So I think there's a need for skepticism. But the other problem, I think, psychologically is there's an enormous amount of comparison going on.
People are always comparing themselves to others.

Speaker 36 People are posting how well they're doing, how beautiful they look, or whatever. It gets back to the narcissism.
And we know that's one of the roots of unhappiness.

Speaker 36 So comparing yourselves to others, particularly people who've got more in whatever it is, not a great idea. So, I just think sort of dialing back on that would be a little bit better.

Speaker 16 Katie, we've had positive and negative discussions on this panel. Are you an optimist or a pessimist about the next 10 years or so?

Speaker 29 Oh, well, I'm always naturally an optimist because I'm usually drunk.

Speaker 29 But no, I am naturally optimistic, and I'm glad to be that way, especially in the current global climate.

Speaker 29 But I feel quite optimistic, and one of the reasons I feel optimistic, and

Speaker 29 one of the things that's been really important for me and a lot of people over the last last few years, and I hope it continues, is the acknowledgement of the role of non-white male scientists in the progress of humanity,

Speaker 29 the contribution of women over the years.

Speaker 29 You know, I watched a fantastic documentary about Cassini and all of the female engineers that worked on that, and all this stuff about getting women into STEM

Speaker 29 and all the fantastic female scientists that I have found totally inspiring and fascinating over the years that I've been able to be part of this show. And, you know, I'm not a scientist at all.

Speaker 29 I wasn't taught science properly at school. As I said, I wasn't taught maths at all till I was eight.

Speaker 29 And so I really am very ignorant and I don't have a great knowledge base, but I've learnt so much about it.

Speaker 29 And I think, you know, there's often this argument that the sort of, oh, we had to let the great men get on with science over the years, otherwise, we wouldn't be where we are now.

Speaker 29 But I always think, but we'd be a lot further by now if we'd pulled everyone's knowledge throughout history.

Speaker 29 We would be, I can't begin to imagine how much further we'd be by now in terms of our progress.

Speaker 29 So I'm really excited by the fact that all these geniuses out there throughout history that have been ignored or dismissed or oppressed might now be able to join in and bring their knowledge and their genius insights.

Speaker 29 And we can really start to motor now and get on with it.

Speaker 17 I'm going to take the dangerous decision of throwing over to Ecclesiastical Corner without your chaperoning.

Speaker 29 They've worn me out, Robin. I had to come over here for a refuge.

Speaker 45 Robin, I do need you to know something. They couldn't be here without plastic because their dog collars are made from PVC.

Speaker 20 They are PVC dog collar wearers.

Speaker 17 Oh, one use, Tony.

Speaker 17 How do you feel now, in terms of Percy, about the future and about, you know, does the book of Revelation change now that we have different levels of optimism, pessimism, and possibilism?

Speaker 1 I owe a a great deal to the scientists because one called Brian Cox invited me to CERN and go and have a look at this extraordinary place, which I didn't understand at all before I went and understood a great deal less after I'd been there.

Speaker 1 But one of the reasons I accepted the invitation from Brian was that it was in Geneva and I'd never been to Geneva.

Speaker 26 And when we got to Geneva, I discovered that there was a new museum of the history of the Reformation.

Speaker 1 Now, can you imagine anything more boring?

Speaker 8 Actually, it was brilliant. And I took Brian and some other people who we were together, a group of scientists and me, to look at this museum.

Speaker 19 And I made the point going round that without the Reformation, we wouldn't be doing particle physics.

Speaker 19 And without the Enlightenment, we wouldn't be having this program.

Speaker 38 So all sorts of things, though they shudder and creak, move forward.

Speaker 37 And that's now, in some religious circles, regarded in a rather bad light.

Speaker 8 And people say, oh, you know, that's a kind of facile optimism.

Speaker 38 I don't believe that.

Speaker 37 I think that there's enormous progress for good.

Speaker 8 And I see it every day in the council of state where I live with a lot of Muslim neighbours.

Speaker 19 And every time something awful happens in London and I feel oppressed by what's happened and a bit helpless. I go and talk to the neighbours, and somehow

Speaker 26 huge things for good happen, partly because they listen to programmes like this.

Speaker 17 Victor knows how to make sure he stays in the edit.

Speaker 30 I'm very lucky. I was born in 1962, same year as you, and that's made me a very, very lucky person.
I was born into a world where I had a fantastic education.

Speaker 30 My parents paid for the first part of it, but the state paid for it thereafter. I couldn't have had a better education.
My health was very well provided for, apart from the years of HIV and AIDS.

Speaker 30 We got through that.

Speaker 30 Gay man. I couldn't have picked a better time to have been a gay man.

Speaker 30 Unimaginable positive change in that.

Speaker 30 But I also have to say that now I look at the generation after me and I think it's hard to sustain that feeling of optimism for them that has been sustained in my life.

Speaker 30 I think there's stuff on the horizon.

Speaker 30 Horrible populist politics, dark things arising in East and West, huge fundamental changes in the way we organise ourselves, the economy of the world, what we do to the planet, that make me that tinge that optimism I feel about the present moment with a little bit of prudent thoughtfulness.

Speaker 17 We should have done you the other way round. Then it would have ended up beat.

Speaker 17 We have run out of time pretty much now. So we ask the audience a question.

Speaker 17 Normally it's the studio audience, but today it's the audience at home and we ask them which scientific advance do you hope becomes reality before the 200th episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage?

Speaker 17 And these are the answers we've received.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I've got one from Rhys Olwin, who said a giant space hooveta clear Pluto's orbit so it can be reinstated as a planet.

Speaker 17 Oh, Neil will be on to that one. The Steve Greenaway says the ability to scientifically explain what went wrong with Morrissey.

Speaker 16 This one's complete nonsense from Dave Fleming. It says the acceptance that chemistry is the most important scientific discipline.

Speaker 11 Yes!

Speaker 17 Do you know what? I wouldn't have said that when we know a chemist is about to come out shortly with matches and fire.

Speaker 17 This one just says, this is from Al. It says, we hope they can identify the procrastination gene.
And

Speaker 28 then we've got

Speaker 17 Terry Cartmail would like a cure for laziness or lightsabers. On second thoughts, lightsabers.

Speaker 17 Vicki says, clones of Brian that never age. Hang

Speaker 17 on.

Speaker 17 I'm thinking that Brian might have already secretly done that. It would explain so much.

Speaker 19 Hmm, so smooth.

Speaker 17 So that's the end of the hundredth episode and on to the next hundred.

Speaker 16 Yeah, but it can't be a hundredth episode, can it, on Radio 4 without a cake?

Speaker 17 But because this is an infinite monkey cage cake, obviously ours will be an incendiary cake, highly flammable and potentially toxic and probably inedible.

Speaker 17 But we're going to try and see what we can do with that by introducing our very special cake chemist for the day, Andrea Seller, and our beautiful cake wheelers, Brian Blessed and Eric Heidel.

Speaker 15 I've had some bloody jobs in my time.

Speaker 9 I've nothing about you, Brian.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there we are. Mack a bit, back a bit.
There we go.

Speaker 19 We should sing happy birthday, shouldn't we?

Speaker 14 Happy birthday to you!

Speaker 18 Happy birthday to you!

Speaker 18 Happy birthday, dear Fidel Monkey Cage!

Speaker 18 Happy birthday to you!

Speaker 40 Hip-hip!

Speaker 40 Hip-hip!

Speaker 40 Hip-hip!

Speaker 16 Eric, is this the highlight of your career?

Speaker 4 I've always wanted to bring on a birthday cake for you, Brian, now you're 100.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes, and, you know, that painting is looking a little old in your attic, I think.

Speaker 11 I think it is. decaying away.

Speaker 16 Andrea,

Speaker 11 what?

Speaker 11 What are you going to do?

Speaker 11 Chemistry, chemistry.

Speaker 46 So the challenge is how to keep this flammable but edible. Tough challenge for a chemist.
What we've got is

Speaker 46 a small palisade of fire. So we've got little cups here, which have got a little bit of methanol in them, and each one has some salt.
And I think what that's going to do is it's going to link

Speaker 46 my subject, chemistry, with the universe.

Speaker 19 By salt, I know you.

Speaker 16 You don't really mean just salt, do you?

Speaker 11 No,

Speaker 46 salt in the chemical metaphorical sense. So, I mean, amongst other things, we've got a nice British element.
We've got strontium and potassium as well.

Speaker 46 We've got one that

Speaker 46 is poisonous. We've got barium.

Speaker 46 That should be fun. We've got a little bit of cesium.

Speaker 17 Can you tell us where that barium is, or have you just shoved them around so we're going to have cake rooms?

Speaker 11 Around, around.

Speaker 46 Watch, watch.

Speaker 16 I think we may be able to see.

Speaker 17 Well, let's have this final episode of Monkey Case has just become.

Speaker 15 Shall we like?

Speaker 47 Go for it.

Speaker 17 It's the first time I've ever seen you back off anything, Brian.

Speaker 47 Can I just say, it's never happened before.

Speaker 11 I move it.

Speaker 14 This beard could go up at any moment.

Speaker 16 You've climbed Everest without oxygen. Why are you cowering behind the desk?

Speaker 15 Because of games.

Speaker 46 And here come the colours.

Speaker 3 Yes, here we go.

Speaker 46 Here come the colours. We've got the yellow of the sodium.
We've got the green of the copper. The red of strontium is starting to appear.

Speaker 46 appear, we've got the purple of the cesium and the lilac of potassium, and finally somewhere hidden in all there is the apple green of the barium.

Speaker 16 And that's the and that's the poisonous one, okay?

Speaker 46 That's the poisonous one. And notice how it's it's drifting beautifully towards the icing, which

Speaker 11 which may actually reach its melting point.

Speaker 17 Have you got a wedding coming soon with a groom you don't like, then book Andreas so for your top cakes.

Speaker 16 I think we're going to give this corner to Brian because he's indestructible.

Speaker 47 The Rasputin of Everest.

Speaker 17 So, that brings us to an end of this show. Thank you so much.
That is an amazing cake. My skin on that effigy looks so smooth, and I have so much hair.
I like it.

Speaker 16 Yeah, so thank you to all our guests. Welcome to the new series.
We're now going to eat this severely singed and poisonous cake. But for now, I think it's probably a final from some of us.
Goodbye.

Speaker 4 I find quite a bit of animate confusing today.

Speaker 23 Now, Now science is all the rage.

Speaker 4 The Afron collider is banging away.

Speaker 22 Trying to guess our age.

Speaker 31 A particle here, a particle there.

Speaker 18 In this weird phantom world, which can be anywhere.

Speaker 18 Which might just explain why I'm losing my health.

Speaker 39 In the infinite monkey game.

Speaker 16 You're listening to the 100th episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage, and wonderfully, you can also watch this special episode captured by the cameras on iPlayer throughout July or on your TV online.

Speaker 17 And you'll be able to find out that rather than having a portrait in his attic, Brian actually merely has a radio for a co-host and he sucks the life force out.

Speaker 31 Anyway.

Speaker 17 Ah, we used to look the same age once, didn't we?

Speaker 25 We did.

Speaker 25 We did.

Speaker 16 It's even worse actually, because you can press the red button on your TV remote control from any BBC channel at various times from Monday the 16th of July until Tuesday the 24th of July.

Speaker 17 Various times?

Speaker 16 Yeah, they weren't very specific.

Speaker 12 This is the BBC.

Speaker 5 Sucks! The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway. We demand to be home! Winner, best score!

Speaker 6 We demand to be seen!

Speaker 5 Winner, best book!

Speaker 5 It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Speaker 7 Suffs!

Speaker 5 Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th. Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.